Gringo

Abraham likely has billions of descendants.

<a href="http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~humphrys/FamTree/Royal/ca.html" target="_blank">Mark Humphrys</a> makes a good point about the brotherhood of man and how indivduals can literally sire global poplulations in just s few centuries. He writes, "Before 700 AD, every single human is either ancestor of no one alive today, or ancestor of everyone alive today. So the Islamic Muhammad, the Irish/Celtic Niall of the Nine Hostages, the English/Saxon Cerdic, and the Continental/pre-Norman Charlemagne, are all ancestors of everyone alive today. In fact, the model predicts that 80 percent of the entire population at this time is an ancestor of everyone alive today."

Click <a href="http://fogwhistle.ca/acts/gentile.html" target="_blank">here</a> for another relevant article.

So although the number of Abraham's descendants may not at first seem comparable to the number of stars, it is very possible. Nearly everyone on the planet today may be descended from him. Eventually, everyone will likely be. And though there are only several billion people on the planet alive today, if one adds all of the past generations and future generations of Abraham's descendants, the number would become quite vast, perhaps as vast as the number of stars or grains of sand.

Don't get me entirely wrong. I'm not deliberately obtuse. I'm not trying to cloud the issue to win the argument. I'm a believer who has a problem believing. On Judgement Day, many of you may be Christians looking down on me. If my faith is built upon a totally false foundation, I'd rather lose it. But there are Scriptures and personal experiences that maintain my believing. Yet there are the other Scriptures and personal experiences that keep me from fully believing. I'd like to be on one side of the fence or the other (hopefully the right side), so that's my quest. But just like everyone else, I have my prejudices and just knowing you have them doesn't make them go away.

Peez

As has been pointed out, there is a contradiction between the stars being "beyond count" and the stars being numbered (even a very large, by our thinking, number). Even ignoring that, however, were you not proposing that this prediction of Abraham's descendants being "beyond count" is evidence of scientific foreknowledge in the bible? For it to rate as such, at the very least you must demonstrate that Abraham's descendants are, indeed, beyond count. Just asserting that they might be very large in number (even including everyone), is insufficient. As far as I can see, there is no evidence that he has left any descendants. Thank you, I hope that I was not being offensive. I did find some of your statements suggested that you might be playing games with us, but it is not my intention to dismiss you. I am really quite amiable .

Peez

Happy Wonderer

You really need to get to a mountaintop away from lights sometime -- and not just to prove us infidels wrong. It is an amazing experience. My roomates were really into astronomy (I was up at 3:00am the night before most of my finals just to watch the tiny fuzzy snowball that was Hally's Comet.) Anyway, we all went out to one of the Cascades to look at the stars one summer. It is a totally different experience from looking at stars from your back yard, words don't do it justice.

Take your sleeping bag and lots of warm clothes. It was mid-summer (about 80(f) in the valley) and below freezing up there. We made it until about 4:00AM but these guys were dedicated.

There may be "only" about 6000 naked-eye objects but it sure looks immense.

HW

Gringo

Thank you for your responses. The point is well taken about the Koran. Those verses about the "drop of semen" determining sex and what not are clearly too vague for calling it scientfic foreknowledge. As I freely admitted before, I have my prejudices. But yet the verses in Jeremiah that I cited seem more specific than those used in the article for Muslim apologetics.

In hindsight those verses in Jeremiah appear too general to use as definite proof of scientific foreknowledge, but it impresses me that the three comparisons in God's promise to Abraham fit and make sense for what we now know from Science. But your arguments are making sense too. In a way, their untying some knots for me in my thinking. However, I don't know if I'll ever be able to make the final cut. When I'm ever close, either a Scripture reading or some other personal experience rejuvinates my faith-- either as the Christian would say through God's grace or as the skeptic would say through a healthy dose of early brainwashing.

Right or wrong, some of you seem comfortable in the certainty in your position. That's a good thing for one's inner peace. There are plenty of Christians who seem to experience the same. But inner peace can be a bad thing if leads one to be blind to danger. Are there any verses in the Bible that give any of you a little pang of doubt pertaining to your unbelief?

My apologies to the moderators for swinging wildly off topic here.

[ February 15, 2002: Message edited by: Gringo ]</p>

Automaton

Christians never learn, do they?

"The Koran is too vague! That the author of that Bible verse couldn't count the stars that he saw, he accurately predicts all of modern astrophysics, and cosmology! Why do you atheists doubt?" *sigh*

Gringo

LOL! Sounds pretty funny paraphrased like that. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Happy Wonderer

One thing that I have noted recently about apologetics is that they seem to expect us to make "all or nothing" choices about belief. They seem to be looking for the one perfect argument to make to a skeptic that will win them over, or the one perfect bible verse.

The book the "Case for Christ" is an extreme example of this. My (possibly unfair...) summary of one of the arguments is:

1) The Bible says Jesus lived in Nazareth
2) The Bible says Jesus did miracles & is the son of God
3) Modern archeology says Nazareth may have existed

THEREFORE: Archeology proves that Jesus did miracles and is the son of God!

(Apologies in advance for the lack of references, this is from memory as I'm travelling and don't have the book here.)

My point is that it is unlikely that you will find a skeptic who is troubled by any particular passage in the Bible. Even if there was some passage that could be seen as predicting space flight , that wouldn't validate any of the other statements. (After all, Jules Verne wrote a novel that predicted space flight in the general sense, but was wrong in all the details...)

Another problem is that as far as I know, the Bible doesn't ever say that it is trying to predict modern science. (If it were, it would be nice if it had given just a few tiny clues about cholera and the true causes of the various plagues, at least a lot of innocent Jews wouldn't have been killed for well-poisoning.) To try to bolt these claims on after the fact isn't convincing unless you already believe.

At the risk of further straying from the topic, I'll reverse your question. Have any of the theists here converted from some other non-Christ religion (or no religion) based only upon what they have read in the Bible? I'm not questioning your sincerity or current belief in how great the Bible is, but is there anybody who was a skeptic at chapter 1 and found themselves convinced at the end?

My hypothesis is that Church comes first, then the Bible.

HW

Paradisedreams2

Though I don't think the bible gets into anything concerning science (I don't believe it contradicts it except where people THINK IT DOES) I do have to say that if back then (before satellites even columbus) the if it states, "The Earth is a sphere with hangs on nothing" was an "Miraculuos" guess for something that was considered heresy for the longest time until columbus hauled his ass around the world.

Actually Columbus proved that the statement in the scripture was true long after anyone could possibly have known for sure that it was correct.

Problem was Christians were screaming it was "flat" when their own scriptures tell them the very opposite point.

Its always how it is lol!

[ February 16, 2002: Message edited by: Paradisedreams2 ]</p>

HRG

Unfortunately, there are other verses which describe Earth unambigously as a disk, with the firmament stretched over it - sometimes even having four corners ....
May I point you to the fact that he did not - and that many Greek philosophers considered the earth to be a sphere. Eratosthenes even calculated its radius with surprising accuracy.
Does the name Sebastian del Cano ring a bell ? He was the first mate of Magellan and the first one to sail around the globe.
Some passages say exactly that the Earth is flat. Others can be interpreted differently.

Regards,
HRG.

Buckster

Whoa, whoa, WHOA!!!

Where, oh WHERE did you get THIS verse, please?