Sea originating fossils have been found at high altitudes of every continent.
Right, and that's because the Earth is not 6000 years old. High altitudes are from tectonic plates moving which causes Earth's crust to rise. That's why when you look at rock strata you look at the rock type, not the location. Radiometric dating has also confirmed this independently. Whoever wrote this must have failed middle-school geology class.
Quote:
The oldest known living trees, Bristlecone Pines in California, are about 5000 years old. This would coincide with the recovery of the earth after the flood.
The Origin of Civilization appeared near the resting place of the Ark at about the same time that the flood occurred.
This is just dumb. There are plenty of artifacts from civilizations older than 5000 BC, plenty of which are nowhere near the ark, like China.
Quote:
Geologist classify rock formations by the type of rock they contain. A layer of the same type of rock is called a stratum. Many scientist believe that certain types of stratum originated in certain time periods such as the Eocene, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods of time. There are many places on the earth where the order of these strata in reversed. Examples of this are the Matterhorn and Mythen peaks in the Alps. The order of the strata has been completely reversed in respect to the earth around it. Though many explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, the catastrophic effects of a flood as described in the Bible is still the best explanation.
Again, see a middle-school geology textbook & plate tectonics. The same rock strata also prove that no such flood existed and that the Earth existed for millions of years prior to this event.
Quote:
Sedimentary deposits cover large parts of the earth. These are the type of deposits that result from movement of water.
If there was really a global flood it would be on all of the earth, not just most of it. Of course the Earth will largely have sedimentary deposits. What do you expect when 75% of the Earth is covered in water, knowing that land moves, and seabeds rise? North America was underwater 500 million years ago, so what?
Quote:
An analysis of 30,000 radiocarbon dating results published in the "Radiocarbon" journal shows an unmistakable spike in the death of living things about 5,000 years ago.
Cannot find such a journal, so I can only assume it's as imaginary as this flood. But even if it's true it doesn't mean anything because it's not one of the main mass-extinctions. And I find it funny how creationists are willing to use carbon-dating for this, but not when it comes to the age of the earth or the shroud of Turin. Talk about double-standards.
Your second link discusses the vapor canopy model which is soundly rebutted in my link. There is no record of any flood from the Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time. The geological record & the ice cores disprove the global flood. Period. The debate has been over. The rest of the world is simply waiting on theists to catch up.
Quote:
Then the LORD said, "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great
and their sin so grievous"
Genesis 13:13 Now the men of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly
against the LORD.
Hitler on the Jews:
“...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”
“Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear."
Deuteronomy 21:10-14
"As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."
Go around doing whatever the hell you want to other civilizations? Sounds alot like Hitler's & Stalin's philosophy to me.
Quote:
Yea, I totally believe you , as you are an expert on the bible and your
information comes from 100% credible and neutral sources. Yep.
You disagree that the bible has genocide, rape & violence? The justifications for genocide I'm talking about are the ones that you're giving me. How do I know these same justifications of "they were evil and deserved to die" weren't invented by the writers much like your so-called prophecies weren't invented after-the-fact? Again, this reads like an account of bronze-age troglodytes, not one from the creator of the universe.
Quote:
But let me guess, you`ll condone wicked male gangbangers and condemn God
How long are you going to keep repeating this tired old strawman? It's not the "gangbangers" I'm defending. I condemn the killing of women, children & the elderly, which goes along with genocide. I also condemn the fact that God forced people to kill, and punished them if they wouldn't. Forcing someone else to kill is the stuff of psycho-torturers in horror movies, not a benevolent creator.
What's ironic though is that one of your previous justifications for killing the Canaanites was so that their bad morals would not "rub off" on the Israelites.
"You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices."
So, in an effort to prevent the Israelites from turning into rapists & murderers, God forces the Israelites to....murder & rape their enemies. Great plan! God fails again. Like I said, why go through this roundabout way of making the Isrealites do your dirty work? Especially since God has no qualms directly killing people in other parts of the bible. The answer is that it's not God who is condoning this, it is man. Let's move on to something else already, sheesh.
Also, I don't appreciate your assertion that I don't care about genocide. Of course I care. You may have been desensitized to it since you figure God can do whatever he wants, but I still consider it a heinous crime, and luckily so does the rest of the international community. Again, real justice would be holding a trial and judging those responsible, or if you have the powers of God, simply removing the wicked people & giving them their own punishment. Real justice does not involve marching in, taking slaves, taking women as concubines, and slaughtering the rest, including animals. Very simple concept that I'm not sure how else I can explicate.
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I have a question or two for you EternalWrath. You have clearly done your homework and I respect that.
There are many events in the Bible that can and have been corroborated with empirical evidence. Many events are plain untrue / just stories, but there are certainly a good deal of them that we can accept as being true (with some margin of error on the recorder's part). Let's say that again: there are many events described in the Bible that actually did happen.
But you seem to imply that your belief in god stems from logic. To me there seems to be a gap here... Simply because the Bible is correct about some (or even many) things, does not mean it is right about everything. We have evidence to support that certain events took place, but we have absolutely zero evidence to support the existence of God (I genuinely would like to see some, without pointing to the Bible).
There is a gap here, is there not?
If not, what am I missing (evidence for God existing)?
If so, can you be clear about what you fill this gap with? Belief or evidence? If evidence, what evidence?
@EternalWraith: Go
Right...that's why secular Australia, Japan have much lower crime. Is that also why Christian founders kept slavery in the core of the Constitution and prevented women from voting?
Religious people tend to have low IQ which prevents them from comprehending their own hypocrisies, global warming, and evolution - pretty much science, logic, and reasoning.
There is no proof of there truely being a god. God is just something who you choose to believe in, like the big bang, or other things we believe in but cannot fully explain. I myself does not believe in God, but that does not mean I am correct when i say there is no god. Anything is possible in the world, and we will never have the answer for everything. But we are human, our curosity will get the best of us and as we think deeper and deeper we create our own opinion and these opinions turn into beliefs. Beliefs are things we see as answers for things that are unexplained, things we choose to believe in. And yet we may never truely know through the test of time if we were correct or incorrect in our beliefs we just hope we are correct. We may try to gather proof or attempt to prove other peoples beliefs and evidence incorrect but no amount of evidence will ever allow us to be certian that god is 100% real or 100% fake.So make your chioce, but dont be certain of your beliefs..... just hope your correct.
You guys should read the Book of Enoch. It will explain some of the carnage.
Theoretical:
With regards to God not warning other peoples, this is just not true. My proof is Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar wasn't Jew, but a pagan, yet he's showed a dream for example.
There have been encounters with "prophets" and other nation's priests. Pharao's diety's vs Moses' 10 plagues was also shoutcasted to prove this.
Thing is, God will not force other peoples in those times. Why that is can be argued in many ways and respects. Based on the blogs and tweets in the Bible, it is as though it was a dilemma situation.
"I have a stiffed necked people here (which is both good and bad to some purpose), and I have a plan through them for the human race as they progress from age to age, and they'll surely be pwnd because the other neighbor will not listen..."
It seems that Moses' God did not have much of a choice, given that man has been given the power to choose, and yet is not above the order of things upon which their choices are to be made. To a certain degree, I think some of the carnage was given as a command, but I'm not certain if this was started by God or if Moses (being a man of rage that he is) could have made his own decision.
If I recall, there was a passage that mentioned this once, or at least implied such.
But yeah, not sure. I don't read much of the Old testament books especially those written by moses.
@GnaReffotsirk: Go
Citing quotes from a fiction story isn't proof. You might as well say that "Twilight" is proof that vampires glitter in the sun; poor ignorant fools who think vampires spontaneously combust into flames. Why else would someone write that shit, unless it was inspired by truth? Buffy and Blade are obviously heretics.
I don't know when Moses "released" his series of books, but I'm sure the Jews themselves would not have believed them if they were all "Twilight" books.
Trace our own series of literature and how we can tell fiction from accounts, and how we come to believe and lose belief of their authenticity and accuracy.
But then again there are examples of how another book can be taken by another person and introduce them in such a way and with certain combination of things to convince some people or group.
But I highly doubt that an entire nation would believe in something written so strongly for generations upon generations without that book having a lot of facts or truths in it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Whatever you do, wholeheartedly, moment by heartfelt moment, becomes a tool for the expression of your very soul.
Which is why NOT the entire nation believes in hocus pocus biblical stories. Those stories have as much fact as historical fiction at best. A lot of Germans, one might even say the entire nation, believed in "Mein Kampf", another book that was written so strongly, and look at the outcome. The whole world also used to believe the sun and the moon chased each other around earth, explaining why the sun and moon rarely appear in the sky together, and that the stars revolved around earth, proving that earth was the center of the universe.
But I highly doubt that an entire nation would believe in something written so strongly for generations upon generations without that book having a lot of facts or truths in it.
It has nothing to do with nation believing in it. It was forced on people by their governments and those governments picked up to enforce more control over the people or for diplomatic reasons. Thats how bible spread across Europe. Majority of the people couldnt even read in those times. (Well most of the western people couldnt read until the industrial revolution!)
Also it is know that there were many more stories and books about Jesus before finalizing the New Testament, from that time the church did everything to destroy any other book about Jesus and Christianity. Some also say that there was much more "complex" books compared the books in the New Testament and these books werent accepted into bible because it was to much for the general population to understand... like the Gospel of Judas.
Jesus Christ...Write a long post and then get a browser crash, only to have Google Chrome fail to restore it at this convenient time
@Gradius12
I like the fact that you actually analysed and gave counter arguments for those links.
Right, and that's because the Earth is not 6000 years old
I do not believe the earth is 6000 years old. Just making a mention.
1.There is no record of any flood from the Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time. 2.The geological record & the ice cores disprove the global flood. Period. The debate has been over. 3.The rest of the world is simply waiting on theists to catch up.
False. It is important to realize that recorded Egyptian history begins about 3000 BC. Egyptian prehistory was probably very short, with little time passing after the great Flood. That aside, there are many references from a broad spectrum of ancient civilizations that testify to a Worldwide Flood. And while this doesn't "prove" that there was a worldwide flood, it does add (significant) weight to the Biblical account in Genesis of just such an event. These extra-Biblical accounts tell of a great flood that wiped out almost all life on the earth. For example, the Cree and Tolec Indians, ancient Persia, Greece, India, China, Mesopotamia, and Hawaii are just a few such cultures. Many of these have the following three things in common:
1. The flood destroyed nearly all animal life on the earth,
2. A vessel of safety was provided.
3. Animals and people were on board.
The overwhelming consistency among flood legends found in distant parts of the globe indicates they were derived from the same origin (the Bible's record), but oral transcription has changed the details through time.
A number of Babylonian documents have been discovered which describe the same flood.
The Sumerian King List, for example, lists kings who reigned for long periods of time. Then a great flood came. Following the flood, Sumerian kings ruled for much shorter periods of time. This is the same pattern found in the Bible. Men had long life spans before the flood and shorter life spans after the flood. The 11th tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic speaks of an ark, animals taken on the ark, birds sent out during the course of the flood, the ark landing on a mountain, and a sacrifice offered after the ark landed.
2. I doubt the presumed(or expected) findings of the `Greenland` ice cores offer any certainty or credibility to the point of it being 100%(that it alone could suffice as full validation). Even still, here is something to consider:
In the late 60's and early 70's:
"Two American oceanographic vessels pulled from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico several long, slender cores of sediment. Included in them were the shells of tiny one-celled planktonic organisms called foraminifera. While living on the surface, these organisms lock into their shells a chemical record of the temperature and salinity of the water. When they reproduce, the shells are discarded and drop to the bottom. A cross-section of that bottom ... carries a record of climates that may go back more than 100 million years. Every inch of core may represent as much as 1000 years of the earth's past." Emphasis Added
"The cores were analyzed in two separate investigations, by Cesare Emiliani of the University of Miami, and James Kennett of the University of Rhode Island and Nicholas Shackleton of Cambridge University. Both analyses indicated a dramatic change in salinity, providing compelling evidence of a vast flood of fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico. Using radiocarbon, geochemist Jerry Stripp of the University of Miami dated the flood at about 11,600 years ago." To Emiliani, all the questions and arguments are minor beside the single fact that a vast amount of fresh melt water poured into the Gulf of Mexico. 'We know this,' he says, 'because the oxygen isotope ratios of the foraminifera shells show a marked temporary decrease in the salinity of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It clearly shows that there was a major period of flooding from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago... There was no question that there was a flood and there is no question that it was a universal flood. Emphasis Added
"Emiliani's findings are corroborated by geologists Kennett and Shackleton, who concluded that there was a 'massive inpouring of glacial melt water into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River system. At the time of maximum inpouring of this water, surface salinities were... reduced by about ten percent."
3. Such a broad statement makes you lose some credibility for a plethora of reasons.
To conclude. There are vast amounts of data scientific or otherwise that can be used to advocate a global flood or not. I acknowledge some of the points you made(which are good), but as I mentioned before, the variables for this are too numerous to comprehend(Mistakes in analysis and assumptions become very easy). Personally I lend more into believing a Global flood did indeed happen. The exact date, I do not know, and guessing on my part would mean nothing for this.
The site link you posted is indeed interesting and I can appreciate the questions posed and will also no doubt further study it(Thank you). Im also open to discussing specifics from the site. Slightly `off-topic` link but interesting http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,143737,00.html
I condemn the killing of women, children & the elderly, which goes along with genocide. I also condemn the fact that God forced people to kill, and punished them if they wouldn't. Forcing someone else to kill is the stuff of psycho-torturers in horror movies, not a benevolent creator.
Women aren`t any more innocent than men. Back in the ancient world, and even now. Age also makes little difference for the person/s in question. People tend to assume that children are innocent, even if their parents are doing bad things. The assumption is unfounded. For example, Palestinian Muslim children are officially taught in grammar school to hate their Jewish neighbors. They are so well indoctrinated that some of them give up their lives in suicide bombings as children. Corruption literally does breed corruption, which is why God did not want the Hebrews tainted by the other corrupt cultures of the Middle East.
Anyway, for Sodom and Gomorrah, there were none righteous. Except Lot and his family.
Then Abraham said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten(righteous) can be found there?" God answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.".
There`s your answer. Nothing more I can say or justify. Comparing it to Hitler and Stalin is foolish and does nothing for the argument, as you now attempt to draw analogies based on humanity vs the point of it being from the Creator God. And if you are willing to accept that the judgement of the creator is superior over everything, then the scriptures pertaining to this is not a mystery or puzzle in anyway.
What's ironic though is that one of your previous justifications for killing the Canaanites was so that their bad morals would not "rub off" on the Israelites.
"You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices."
So, in an effort to prevent the Israelites from turning into rapists & murderers, God forces the Israelites to....murder & rape their enemies. Great plan! God fails again
Sigh. This is one of the reasons, but not the main reason(I see my last post was written in vain). Also, no where does God command rape. If you make one more ill-educated assumption like this, I will conclude our dialogue finished because I have no time for discourse with a person that has prejudice, philosophical bias, and unbelief in the miraculous. Such interaction does nothing for me.
Justice was served to those nations(wicked) on divine accord and judgement, on a level slightly higher than what you can or want to comprehend(Trial by court and judging via human means?, really?. The humor actually fails to illicit even a laugh). Yes God commanded that they be destroyed and Killed, and that Israel will be planted there.
Could they all have just `poofed` and vanished?, or all turned magically into bananas?. Yea, maybe. If you or I or something/one else was God. But thats not the case. You dont have to agree, but the reality is unchanging on the methods of his Judgements and will.
"Ah yea but cavemen invented the bible and God to Justify those events". No, I can quite certainly say the bible is the inspired and written word of God and not an invention of man. Not because the `bible` says so, but because of my faith in the evidence that proves the contrary. I also would expect that you do not believe simply because an `atheist` says or assumes so, that you would also test any such claims. Though that might be wishful thinking on my part.
Whilst I can appreciate the debate and good arguments from the side of Gradius. You seem nothing more than a sheep(Unless Im missing something from your contributions to this thread). Bravo indeed.
False. It is important to realize that recorded Egyptian history begins about 3000 BC.
The biblical chronology puts the flood at 2345 BC, so again, my point is made. The tombs dated from the time of the flood have no evidence of flooding either.
Quote:
A number of Babylonian documents have been discovered which describe the same flood.
The Sumerian King List, for example, lists kings who reigned for long periods of time. Then a great flood came. Following the flood, Sumerian kings ruled for much shorter periods of time. This is the same pattern found in the Bible. Men had long life spans before the flood and shorter life spans after the flood. The 11th tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic speaks of an ark, animals taken on the ark, birds sent out during the course of the flood, the ark landing on a mountain, and a sacrifice offered after the ark landed.
The epic of Gilgamesh is a myth. The flood was said to have occured in the early dynastic period. Here is a sample of the history from this period:
"The main part of the third millennium, now called the Early Dynastic period, saw the gradual development of Sumerian civilization, based on numerous city states. From the Early Dynastic period comes the earliest Sumerian literature, including the epic poetry about Gilgamesh. The Sumerians lived in a complex, unpredictable and frequently hostile environment. They had to contend with floods, droughts, storms, dust, heat, disease and death. They strove to uncover order and organization in the world to overcome feelings of futility and powerlessness. "
No mention of a global flood, and no mention of something as important as humanity being wiped out.
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That aside, there are many references from a broad spectrum of ancient civilizations that testify to a Worldwide Flood. And while this doesn't "prove" that there was a worldwide flood, it does add (significant) weight to the Biblical account in Genesis of just such an event.
There are more differences in the flood myths than similarities by virtue of the fact that the myth is reinvented by every culture. But people also independently came up with the ideas that disease is caused by demons and that dragons existed, just like people all over the world claim to have seen aliens & UFOs. Whatever myths people independently created in ancient history do not give any extra weight to anything or mean anything.
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indicates they were derived from the same origin (the Bible's record)
The flood of Gilgamesh was written before 2000 B.C, and Genesis was written in 400 BC, so I fail to see how it's other religions that are doing the plagiarizing. You need to start considering the fact that your religion has some serious elements of plagiarism, like that Jesus is basically a copy of Mithra.
Quote:
2. I doubt the presumed(or expected) findings of the `Greenland` ice cores offer any certainty or credibility to the point of it being 100%(that it alone could suffice as full validation). Even still, here is something to consider:
In the late 60's and early 70's:
"Two American oceanographic vessels pulled from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico several long, slender cores of sediment. Included in them were the shells of tiny one-celled planktonic organisms called foraminifera. While living on the surface, these organisms lock into their shells a chemical record of the temperature and salinity of the water. When they reproduce, the shells are discarded and drop to the bottom. A cross-section of that bottom ... carries a record of climates that may go back more than 100 million years. Every inch of core may represent as much as 1000 years of the earth's past." Emphasis Added
"The cores were analyzed in two separate investigations, by Cesare Emiliani of the University of Miami, and James Kennett of the University of Rhode Island and Nicholas Shackleton of Cambridge University. Both analyses indicated a dramatic change in salinity, providing compelling evidence of a vast flood of fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico. Using radiocarbon, geochemist Jerry Stripp of the University of Miami dated the flood at about 11,600 years ago." To Emiliani, all the questions and arguments are minor beside the single fact that a vast amount of fresh melt water poured into the Gulf of Mexico. 'We know this,' he says, 'because the oxygen isotope ratios of the foraminifera shells show a marked temporary decrease in the salinity of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It clearly shows that there was a major period of flooding from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago... There was no question that there was a flood and there is no question that it was a universal flood. Emphasis Added
"Emiliani's findings are corroborated by geologists Kennett and Shackleton, who concluded that there was a 'massive inpouring of glacial melt water into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River system. At the time of maximum inpouring of this water, surface salinities were... reduced by about ten percent."
Couple things:
1) This proves that there was a flood in the Gulf of Mexico, not the entire planet. If you want to prove a global flood, it has to be in all the ice cores, and it's not in the Greenland ice cores.
2) Noah's flood was not 10000 years ago, therefore this can all be dismissed right off the bat.
3) I find it funny that you dismissed my sources as "biased", even though I haven't seen you get your info from anywhere else besides creationist websites. Here is the one that you copy/pasted your latest info from: http://www.earthage.org/floodevidences/more_flood_evidences.htm
Aside from the fact that the info comes from a Reader's Digest article (not the most prestigious of scientific journals), it's the front page of the site that bothers me the most. Seriously. Here is their understanding of evolution:
Quote:
Your Great, Great, 1000th Great Grandfather
was a Jellyfish ... that ...
(over millions and millions of years) ...
might have (just) evolved from ...
say, an Amoeba ...
that resulted from a lightning bolt ...
that struck a primordial slime-pool ...
with just the right mixture on chemicals ...
or
Quote:
Hello, Is Anybody Home? Cause Mother Earth may Not be "Billions of Years" Old: after All
facepalm
Quote:
3. Such a broad statement makes you lose some credibility for a plethora of reasons.
I fail to see why. Theists make factual statement about physical reality and so far they're the only ones that can't seem to move on after their theories are discredited. When people deny core scientific frameworks like evolution, it starts to become a problem.
Quote:
To conclude. There are vast amounts of data scientific or otherwise that can be used to advocate a global flood or not.
That's because the ancient world had plenty of floods, some of them serious ones at that. Theists misrepresent whatever evidence they can find for any flood because they don't actually care about geology & science. The only time theists care about science is when they're trying to find proof for their already pre-determined conclusions. Obviously not all theists, but still.
Quote:
Women aren`t any more innocent than men. Back in the ancient world, and even now. Age also makes little difference for the person
Just give it a rest dude. I've heard every excuse for genocide imaginable by now.
Quote:
Anyway, for Sodom and Gomorrah, there were none righteous. Except Lot and his family.
Then Abraham said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten(righteous) can be found there?" God answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.".
There`s your answer. Nothing more I can say or justify.
That's fantastic, but we're not talking about Sodom & Gomorrah, so it's not a very good answer.
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Sigh. This is one of the reasons, but not the main reason(I see my last post was written in vain).
I...never said it was the main reason. In fact I said "justifications", as in, plural. But thanks for conceding the point I guess? <_<
Quote:
Also, no where does God command rape. If you make one more ill-educated assumption like this, I will conclude our dialogue finished because I have no time for discourse with a person that is emotionally biased and has blinders on. Such interaction does nothing for me.
I used to be a Christian, and it's not difficult to cherrypick the meaning or translation to justify pretty much any passage you want. I won't be making any more assumptions about the bible because Tolkfan was pretty much right, debating this book is like debating batman vs. superman. It seems that you've already made up your mind that the bible "is the most perfect & historically accurate book ever" so there's nothing else to discuss. But at least I can learn some more about geology.
Quote:
"Ah yea but cavemen invented the bible and God to Justify those events". No, I can quite certainly say the bible is the inspired and written word of God and not an invention of man. Not because the `bible` says so, but because of my faith in the evidence that proves the contrary. I also would expect that you do not believe simply because an `atheist` says or assumes so, that you would also test any such claims. Though that might be wishful thinking on my part.
Christians: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Jews: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Sikhs: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Hindus: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Muslims: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Pretty easy question for me to answer. I have no religion. I never believed in any kind of god at any point in my life, and the furthest I ever went into believing the supernatural was, for a while, believing in ghosts, but eventually I figured out that that was just a function of my fear of death and stopped believing in those too. Anything that can be observed is a part of nature, and anything that is not a part of nature doesn't concern me.
Ironically(or perhaps not), whenever I play an Elder Scrolls game, I always play a believer.
Warning: This post is silly and has nothing to do with anything.
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
Oh I believe I can fly
Let me just leave this here for a giggle.
Nice job Mozared. You officially started an awkward silence.
Edit: Oooh, 300th post!
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Curse PremiumAlright let's look at the first link.
Right, and that's because the Earth is not 6000 years old. High altitudes are from tectonic plates moving which causes Earth's crust to rise. That's why when you look at rock strata you look at the rock type, not the location. Radiometric dating has also confirmed this independently. Whoever wrote this must have failed middle-school geology class.
Wrong: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416104320.htm
This is just dumb. There are plenty of artifacts from civilizations older than 5000 BC, plenty of which are nowhere near the ark, like China.
Again, see a middle-school geology textbook & plate tectonics. The same rock strata also prove that no such flood existed and that the Earth existed for millions of years prior to this event.
If there was really a global flood it would be on all of the earth, not just most of it. Of course the Earth will largely have sedimentary deposits. What do you expect when 75% of the Earth is covered in water, knowing that land moves, and seabeds rise? North America was underwater 500 million years ago, so what?
Cannot find such a journal, so I can only assume it's as imaginary as this flood. But even if it's true it doesn't mean anything because it's not one of the main mass-extinctions. And I find it funny how creationists are willing to use carbon-dating for this, but not when it comes to the age of the earth or the shroud of Turin. Talk about double-standards.
Your second link discusses the vapor canopy model which is soundly rebutted in my link. There is no record of any flood from the Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time. The geological record & the ice cores disprove the global flood. Period. The debate has been over. The rest of the world is simply waiting on theists to catch up.
Hitler on the Jews:
“...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”
“Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear."
Deuteronomy 21:10-14
"As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."
Go around doing whatever the hell you want to other civilizations? Sounds alot like Hitler's & Stalin's philosophy to me.
You disagree that the bible has genocide, rape & violence? The justifications for genocide I'm talking about are the ones that you're giving me. How do I know these same justifications of "they were evil and deserved to die" weren't invented by the writers much like your so-called prophecies weren't invented after-the-fact? Again, this reads like an account of bronze-age troglodytes, not one from the creator of the universe.
How long are you going to keep repeating this tired old strawman? It's not the "gangbangers" I'm defending. I condemn the killing of women, children & the elderly, which goes along with genocide. I also condemn the fact that God forced people to kill, and punished them if they wouldn't. Forcing someone else to kill is the stuff of psycho-torturers in horror movies, not a benevolent creator.
What's ironic though is that one of your previous justifications for killing the Canaanites was so that their bad morals would not "rub off" on the Israelites.
"You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices."
So, in an effort to prevent the Israelites from turning into rapists & murderers, God forces the Israelites to....murder & rape their enemies. Great plan! God fails again. Like I said, why go through this roundabout way of making the Isrealites do your dirty work? Especially since God has no qualms directly killing people in other parts of the bible. The answer is that it's not God who is condoning this, it is man. Let's move on to something else already, sheesh.
Also, I don't appreciate your assertion that I don't care about genocide. Of course I care. You may have been desensitized to it since you figure God can do whatever he wants, but I still consider it a heinous crime, and luckily so does the rest of the international community. Again, real justice would be holding a trial and judging those responsible, or if you have the powers of God, simply removing the wicked people & giving them their own punishment. Real justice does not involve marching in, taking slaves, taking women as concubines, and slaughtering the rest, including animals. Very simple concept that I'm not sure how else I can explicate.
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Edit: Oooh, 300th post!
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I have a question or two for you EternalWrath. You have clearly done your homework and I respect that.
There are many events in the Bible that can and have been corroborated with empirical evidence. Many events are plain untrue / just stories, but there are certainly a good deal of them that we can accept as being true (with some margin of error on the recorder's part). Let's say that again: there are many events described in the Bible that actually did happen.
But you seem to imply that your belief in god stems from logic. To me there seems to be a gap here... Simply because the Bible is correct about some (or even many) things, does not mean it is right about everything. We have evidence to support that certain events took place, but we have absolutely zero evidence to support the existence of God (I genuinely would like to see some, without pointing to the Bible).
There is a gap here, is there not? If not, what am I missing (evidence for God existing)? If so, can you be clear about what you fill this gap with? Belief or evidence? If evidence, what evidence?
@Gradius12: Go
Lawyered him. Bravo.
This thread reminds me of this one.
https://www.cortexrp.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2617
@Gradius12: Go
Epic.
@EternalWraith: Go Right...that's why secular Australia, Japan have much lower crime. Is that also why Christian founders kept slavery in the core of the Constitution and prevented women from voting? Religious people tend to have low IQ which prevents them from comprehending their own hypocrisies, global warming, and evolution - pretty much science, logic, and reasoning.
There is no proof of there truely being a god. God is just something who you choose to believe in, like the big bang, or other things we believe in but cannot fully explain. I myself does not believe in God, but that does not mean I am correct when i say there is no god. Anything is possible in the world, and we will never have the answer for everything. But we are human, our curosity will get the best of us and as we think deeper and deeper we create our own opinion and these opinions turn into beliefs. Beliefs are things we see as answers for things that are unexplained, things we choose to believe in. And yet we may never truely know through the test of time if we were correct or incorrect in our beliefs we just hope we are correct. We may try to gather proof or attempt to prove other peoples beliefs and evidence incorrect but no amount of evidence will ever allow us to be certian that god is 100% real or 100% fake.So make your chioce, but dont be certain of your beliefs..... just hope your correct.
Just wanted to get that out there :p
You guys should read the Book of Enoch. It will explain some of the carnage.
Theoretical: With regards to God not warning other peoples, this is just not true. My proof is Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar wasn't Jew, but a pagan, yet he's showed a dream for example.
There have been encounters with "prophets" and other nation's priests. Pharao's diety's vs Moses' 10 plagues was also shoutcasted to prove this.
Thing is, God will not force other peoples in those times. Why that is can be argued in many ways and respects. Based on the blogs and tweets in the Bible, it is as though it was a dilemma situation.
"I have a stiffed necked people here (which is both good and bad to some purpose), and I have a plan through them for the human race as they progress from age to age, and they'll surely be pwnd because the other neighbor will not listen..."
It seems that Moses' God did not have much of a choice, given that man has been given the power to choose, and yet is not above the order of things upon which their choices are to be made. To a certain degree, I think some of the carnage was given as a command, but I'm not certain if this was started by God or if Moses (being a man of rage that he is) could have made his own decision.
If I recall, there was a passage that mentioned this once, or at least implied such.
But yeah, not sure. I don't read much of the Old testament books especially those written by moses.
Whatever you do, wholeheartedly, moment by heartfelt moment, becomes a tool for the expression of your very soul.
@GnaReffotsirk: Go Citing quotes from a fiction story isn't proof. You might as well say that "Twilight" is proof that vampires glitter in the sun; poor ignorant fools who think vampires spontaneously combust into flames. Why else would someone write that shit, unless it was inspired by truth? Buffy and Blade are obviously heretics.
I don't know when Moses "released" his series of books, but I'm sure the Jews themselves would not have believed them if they were all "Twilight" books.
Trace our own series of literature and how we can tell fiction from accounts, and how we come to believe and lose belief of their authenticity and accuracy.
But then again there are examples of how another book can be taken by another person and introduce them in such a way and with certain combination of things to convince some people or group.
But I highly doubt that an entire nation would believe in something written so strongly for generations upon generations without that book having a lot of facts or truths in it.
Whatever you do, wholeheartedly, moment by heartfelt moment, becomes a tool for the expression of your very soul.
@GnaReffotsirk: Go
Which is why NOT the entire nation believes in hocus pocus biblical stories. Those stories have as much fact as historical fiction at best. A lot of Germans, one might even say the entire nation, believed in "Mein Kampf", another book that was written so strongly, and look at the outcome. The whole world also used to believe the sun and the moon chased each other around earth, explaining why the sun and moon rarely appear in the sky together, and that the stars revolved around earth, proving that earth was the center of the universe.
It has nothing to do with nation believing in it. It was forced on people by their governments and those governments picked up to enforce more control over the people or for diplomatic reasons. Thats how bible spread across Europe. Majority of the people couldnt even read in those times. (Well most of the western people couldnt read until the industrial revolution!)
Also it is know that there were many more stories and books about Jesus before finalizing the New Testament, from that time the church did everything to destroy any other book about Jesus and Christianity. Some also say that there was much more "complex" books compared the books in the New Testament and these books werent accepted into bible because it was to much for the general population to understand... like the Gospel of Judas.
Jesus Christ...Write a long post and then get a browser crash, only to have Google Chrome fail to restore it at this convenient time
@Gradius12
I like the fact that you actually analysed and gave counter arguments for those links.
Right, and that's because the Earth is not 6000 years old
I do not believe the earth is 6000 years old. Just making a mention.
1.There is no record of any flood from the Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time. 2.The geological record & the ice cores disprove the global flood. Period. The debate has been over. 3.The rest of the world is simply waiting on theists to catch up.
False. It is important to realize that recorded Egyptian history begins about 3000 BC. Egyptian prehistory was probably very short, with little time passing after the great Flood. That aside, there are many references from a broad spectrum of ancient civilizations that testify to a Worldwide Flood. And while this doesn't "prove" that there was a worldwide flood, it does add (significant) weight to the Biblical account in Genesis of just such an event. These extra-Biblical accounts tell of a great flood that wiped out almost all life on the earth. For example, the Cree and Tolec Indians, ancient Persia, Greece, India, China, Mesopotamia, and Hawaii are just a few such cultures. Many of these have the following three things in common:
1. The flood destroyed nearly all animal life on the earth,
2. A vessel of safety was provided.
3. Animals and people were on board.
The overwhelming consistency among flood legends found in distant parts of the globe indicates they were derived from the same origin (the Bible's record), but oral transcription has changed the details through time.
A number of Babylonian documents have been discovered which describe the same flood.
The Sumerian King List, for example, lists kings who reigned for long periods of time. Then a great flood came. Following the flood, Sumerian kings ruled for much shorter periods of time. This is the same pattern found in the Bible. Men had long life spans before the flood and shorter life spans after the flood. The 11th tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic speaks of an ark, animals taken on the ark, birds sent out during the course of the flood, the ark landing on a mountain, and a sacrifice offered after the ark landed.
2. I doubt the presumed(or expected) findings of the `Greenland` ice cores offer any certainty or credibility to the point of it being 100%(that it alone could suffice as full validation). Even still, here is something to consider:
In the late 60's and early 70's:
"Two American oceanographic vessels pulled from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico several long, slender cores of sediment. Included in them were the shells of tiny one-celled planktonic organisms called foraminifera. While living on the surface, these organisms lock into their shells a chemical record of the temperature and salinity of the water. When they reproduce, the shells are discarded and drop to the bottom. A cross-section of that bottom ... carries a record of climates that may go back more than 100 million years. Every inch of core may represent as much as 1000 years of the earth's past." Emphasis Added
"The cores were analyzed in two separate investigations, by Cesare Emiliani of the University of Miami, and James Kennett of the University of Rhode Island and Nicholas Shackleton of Cambridge University. Both analyses indicated a dramatic change in salinity, providing compelling evidence of a vast flood of fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico. Using radiocarbon, geochemist Jerry Stripp of the University of Miami dated the flood at about 11,600 years ago." To Emiliani, all the questions and arguments are minor beside the single fact that a vast amount of fresh melt water poured into the Gulf of Mexico. 'We know this,' he says, 'because the oxygen isotope ratios of the foraminifera shells show a marked temporary decrease in the salinity of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It clearly shows that there was a major period of flooding from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago... There was no question that there was a flood and there is no question that it was a universal flood. Emphasis Added
"Emiliani's findings are corroborated by geologists Kennett and Shackleton, who concluded that there was a 'massive inpouring of glacial melt water into the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River system. At the time of maximum inpouring of this water, surface salinities were... reduced by about ten percent."
3. Such a broad statement makes you lose some credibility for a plethora of reasons.
To conclude. There are vast amounts of data scientific or otherwise that can be used to advocate a global flood or not. I acknowledge some of the points you made(which are good), but as I mentioned before, the variables for this are too numerous to comprehend(Mistakes in analysis and assumptions become very easy). Personally I lend more into believing a Global flood did indeed happen. The exact date, I do not know, and guessing on my part would mean nothing for this.
The site link you posted is indeed interesting and I can appreciate the questions posed and will also no doubt further study it(Thank you). Im also open to discussing specifics from the site. Slightly `off-topic` link but interesting http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,143737,00.html
I condemn the killing of women, children & the elderly, which goes along with genocide. I also condemn the fact that God forced people to kill, and punished them if they wouldn't. Forcing someone else to kill is the stuff of psycho-torturers in horror movies, not a benevolent creator.
Women aren`t any more innocent than men. Back in the ancient world, and even now. Age also makes little difference for the person/s in question. People tend to assume that children are innocent, even if their parents are doing bad things. The assumption is unfounded. For example, Palestinian Muslim children are officially taught in grammar school to hate their Jewish neighbors. They are so well indoctrinated that some of them give up their lives in suicide bombings as children. Corruption literally does breed corruption, which is why God did not want the Hebrews tainted by the other corrupt cultures of the Middle East.
Anyway, for Sodom and Gomorrah, there were none righteous. Except Lot and his family.
Then Abraham said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten(righteous) can be found there?" God answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.".
There`s your answer. Nothing more I can say or justify. Comparing it to Hitler and Stalin is foolish and does nothing for the argument, as you now attempt to draw analogies based on humanity vs the point of it being from the Creator God. And if you are willing to accept that the judgement of the creator is superior over everything, then the scriptures pertaining to this is not a mystery or puzzle in anyway.
What's ironic though is that one of your previous justifications for killing the Canaanites was so that their bad morals would not "rub off" on the Israelites.
"You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices."
So, in an effort to prevent the Israelites from turning into rapists & murderers, God forces the Israelites to....murder & rape their enemies. Great plan! God fails again
Sigh. This is one of the reasons, but not the main reason(I see my last post was written in vain). Also, no where does God command rape. If you make one more ill-educated assumption like this, I will conclude our dialogue finished because I have no time for discourse with a person that has prejudice, philosophical bias, and unbelief in the miraculous. Such interaction does nothing for me.
Justice was served to those nations(wicked) on divine accord and judgement, on a level slightly higher than what you can or want to comprehend(Trial by court and judging via human means?, really?. The humor actually fails to illicit even a laugh). Yes God commanded that they be destroyed and Killed, and that Israel will be planted there.
Could they all have just `poofed` and vanished?, or all turned magically into bananas?. Yea, maybe. If you or I or something/one else was God. But thats not the case. You dont have to agree, but the reality is unchanging on the methods of his Judgements and will.
"Ah yea but cavemen invented the bible and God to Justify those events". No, I can quite certainly say the bible is the inspired and written word of God and not an invention of man. Not because the `bible` says so, but because of my faith in the evidence that proves the contrary. I also would expect that you do not believe simply because an `atheist` says or assumes so, that you would also test any such claims. Though that might be wishful thinking on my part.
Whilst I can appreciate the debate and good arguments from the side of Gradius. You seem nothing more than a sheep(Unless Im missing something from your contributions to this thread). Bravo indeed.
@TLBarrin: Go
The post I wrote to you crashed and I will have to retype it.
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Curse PremiumThe biblical chronology puts the flood at 2345 BC, so again, my point is made. The tombs dated from the time of the flood have no evidence of flooding either.
The epic of Gilgamesh is a myth. The flood was said to have occured in the early dynastic period. Here is a sample of the history from this period:
"The main part of the third millennium, now called the Early Dynastic period, saw the gradual development of Sumerian civilization, based on numerous city states. From the Early Dynastic period comes the earliest Sumerian literature, including the epic poetry about Gilgamesh. The Sumerians lived in a complex, unpredictable and frequently hostile environment. They had to contend with floods, droughts, storms, dust, heat, disease and death. They strove to uncover order and organization in the world to overcome feelings of futility and powerlessness. "
No mention of a global flood, and no mention of something as important as humanity being wiped out.
There are more differences in the flood myths than similarities by virtue of the fact that the myth is reinvented by every culture. But people also independently came up with the ideas that disease is caused by demons and that dragons existed, just like people all over the world claim to have seen aliens & UFOs. Whatever myths people independently created in ancient history do not give any extra weight to anything or mean anything.
The flood of Gilgamesh was written before 2000 B.C, and Genesis was written in 400 BC, so I fail to see how it's other religions that are doing the plagiarizing. You need to start considering the fact that your religion has some serious elements of plagiarism, like that Jesus is basically a copy of Mithra.
Couple things:
1) This proves that there was a flood in the Gulf of Mexico, not the entire planet. If you want to prove a global flood, it has to be in all the ice cores, and it's not in the Greenland ice cores.
2) Noah's flood was not 10000 years ago, therefore this can all be dismissed right off the bat.
3) I find it funny that you dismissed my sources as "biased", even though I haven't seen you get your info from anywhere else besides creationist websites. Here is the one that you copy/pasted your latest info from: http://www.earthage.org/floodevidences/more_flood_evidences.htm
Aside from the fact that the info comes from a Reader's Digest article (not the most prestigious of scientific journals), it's the front page of the site that bothers me the most. Seriously. Here is their understanding of evolution:
or
facepalm
I fail to see why. Theists make factual statement about physical reality and so far they're the only ones that can't seem to move on after their theories are discredited. When people deny core scientific frameworks like evolution, it starts to become a problem.
That's because the ancient world had plenty of floods, some of them serious ones at that. Theists misrepresent whatever evidence they can find for any flood because they don't actually care about geology & science. The only time theists care about science is when they're trying to find proof for their already pre-determined conclusions. Obviously not all theists, but still.
Just give it a rest dude. I've heard every excuse for genocide imaginable by now.
That's fantastic, but we're not talking about Sodom & Gomorrah, so it's not a very good answer.
I...never said it was the main reason. In fact I said "justifications", as in, plural. But thanks for conceding the point I guess? <_<
I used to be a Christian, and it's not difficult to cherrypick the meaning or translation to justify pretty much any passage you want. I won't be making any more assumptions about the bible because Tolkfan was pretty much right, debating this book is like debating batman vs. superman. It seems that you've already made up your mind that the bible "is the most perfect & historically accurate book ever" so there's nothing else to discuss. But at least I can learn some more about geology.
Christians: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Jews: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Sikhs: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Hindus: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
Muslims: "my faith in the evidence proves that my religion is the best"
@EternalWraith: Go
Jesus tells god stuff even though he's supposed to be almighty?
Pretty easy question for me to answer. I have no religion. I never believed in any kind of god at any point in my life, and the furthest I ever went into believing the supernatural was, for a while, believing in ghosts, but eventually I figured out that that was just a function of my fear of death and stopped believing in those too. Anything that can be observed is a part of nature, and anything that is not a part of nature doesn't concern me.
Ironically(or perhaps not), whenever I play an Elder Scrolls game, I always play a believer.
Warning: This post is silly and has nothing to do with anything.
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
Oh I believe I can fly