Stephen T-B

Douglas: “...remember what the rainbow signifies, according to the Bible?"
Yes, and it's just that sort of remark that reveals the mind-boggling detachment from reality which we find among those who believe the OT is an accurate historical record.
Douglas, if you were to stand on the bridge which crosses the gorge just below the Victoria Falls on the River Zambezi in Africa you will see - at the right time of the day - a complete circle of refracted light a segment of which, in another place, would be familiar to you as a rainbow.
The only reason you've only ever seen that arch in the sky is because the ground gets in the way.
And you aren't looking at an arch in the sky anyway: you are looking through the segment of a cone at the apex of which is your eye. (I hope someone will put me right if I'm wrong in this.)
The person who wrote the story of the Flood didn't know that; he thought the rainbow was something put across the sky by a somewhat abashed god, and he was merely re-telling a folk story which had been passed down from generation to generation and probably originated in a localised catastrophe. Don't forget that the known world at that time was very small - small enough for people to actually think that 40 days and nights of rain could completely cover it with water.
If the rainbow does represent god's promise never to cause another Flood - as incredibly you think it does - then can you please explain what the rainbow had signified BEFORE the Flood; or is it your case that the nature of light was altered by the Flood and that prior to that date, refraction had not been possible. Or do you believe that it had never rained and been sunny at the same time?

Cutter

OK, I'm not that familiar with the bible, but was the rainbow meant to mean there'll be no more world-wide killer floods does it?

Well gee, given god's track record in the bible, I personally (if I believed in it that is) would fully expect there WILL be another flood. And when everyone digs out their bibles pointing out that passage, god'll turn around and say something like "Hey you guys, I was just fuckin' with ya! Christ, I can't believe you dummies bought that!"

Stephen T-B

Calling Douglas ( or any Creationist): Your attention is required.

Jerry Smith

Dumb question... Why didn't God just start out with Noah's family & the two's and sevens? Could have saved himself some work, and the YEC's wouldn't be too much put out to condense earth history to 4000 instead of 6000 years ...

Caverdude

Okay Douglas, please clear something up for me. Why would God kill EVERYTHING? Does that mean all living things were evil? Even non-sentinent biological species such as trees and worms? How can a tree be evil? And by the way, were there trees and other plants on the ark? If not, how did so many millions of plant species survive? Did God fail in his quest to kill everything except for what was on the ark? C'mon, do you really expect us to believe this story as literal truth?

Liquidrage

Free will is a poor reason for why a diety would allow evil to occur.

An omniscient deity could create life and give it free-will while not giving it the means by which then can kill other life forms.
And if I could think of this, so could a diety.

To elaborate.
I, as a human, lack the capability to jump from here (Tallhassee) to California in one jump.

So obviously, even if we were created and given free-will, we were not given infinite abilities.
One could argue in this context that with *faith* all things are possible. However, it would still be much harder to jump from California from here then to jump from my floor to the couch.

There is just no reason why if we were created by something omniscient and we were given free-will that we were also given the physical ability to kill one another.

The fact that not just evil exists, but that millions are every day saddened by the loss of loved ones, the fact that millions themselves die, the fact that people have died so horribly that it pains one to even think about it, that pain and suffering are commonplace, that life needs to consume life in order to survive, to name but a few human miseries, is proof positive that if anyone or anything created all this knowing full well how it would turn out, that something is disgusting.

And quite honestly I am disgusted by anyone that would knowingly support the idea of such a being.

Boro Nut

God couldn't stand all the violins. I don't blame him.

Boro Nut

RogerLeeCooke

Well, this is, after all, "Christian" science (as opposed to Christian Science—no, come to think of it, not opposed at all). If sin is the explanation for cholera, and rain didn't fall until God decided to drown everyone, it isn't a large step to believing that the laws of refraction began to apply in historical time.

I never cease to marvel at the ability people have to rationalize even the most implausible scenarios. You guys are doing a good job of showing them up for what they are.

RogerLeeCooke

And you haven't even touched on the shipbuilding principles needed to construct out of "gopher wood" a ship the size of Noah's Ark. The relative amount of space devoted to beams and other reinforcement in any structure increases with the size of the object (since strength of materials increases as the square of the linear dimension, but weight increases as the cube). Noah's Ark would have had to be so full of posts and beams, that you'd have had trouble getting a mouse inside, much less a giraffe.

Caverdude

I have been following this thread for several nights now and it seems that Douglas has declined to reply to the most recent posts. Hey Doug, are you out there or have you given up?