BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Amos
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 01:36 PM

There is nothing about telepathy to rebut atheism. It might militate against hard-core materialism, as well it should, but it does not say much about theology without a long bow being stretched.
PEople in high connection with each other experience "coordinated thinking" all the time, and sometimes it actually seems telepathic rather than just similar. And the rebuttal on the grounds of anecdote is, in my opinion, a bit small-minded when dealing with subjective communication events which simply do not lend themselves to replicability of the rigorous physical sort any way.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 03:46 PM

Excuse me, but I didn't rebut anecdotal "evidence" out of hand. I said
...bar anecdotes, which shouldn't really count as evidence, eh? At least, not on their own!

I certainly agree about co-ordinated thinking. It happens all the time with me and the missus, but there's a perfectly simple explanation for it: we go back a long way with our similar experiences, and this, combined with the fact that we experience broadly similar events during the day, means that our thought processes will inevitably collide on occasion. "On occasion" is crucial: even though we marvel at having thought the same thought at the same time, ninety-nine point-I-don't-know-how-many-nines percent of the time we are not thinking the same thoughts. Which is the more remarkable?

It's also worth dwelling a little more on Paul's excellent point: Toss a coin 120 times, and record the results. The probability of getting that sequence is exactly one in two to the power of 120. Impossible, but you just did it.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 03:48 PM

Sorry. My italics ran away with me there.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Greg F.
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 04:28 PM

Anecdotal "evidence"...........Isn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 05:28 PM

Agreed, which is why I put it in quotes, but we do love anecdotes. As long as there's real evidence as well. Which, in the case of God or telepathy, there isn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: akenaton
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 06:01 PM

If I were to post my telepathic experiences, would I not be relating an "anecdote"?

It is strange,but I feel distinctly uneasy about passing on the details of these experiences......almost like betraying a trust.
Although I dont believe in a "supreme being" I have a sense of something spiritual having happened.

My evidence, is that I passed on the "communications" to Mrs Akenaton and within a couple of hours we had news of an unexpected death in horrific circumstances.
To my way of thinking,that goes against any scientific explanation, in the same way as religious experience.

I have not YET had any such religious experiences.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 06:28 PM

Ake, serious question:   Did you have no hint or indication of any kind that something like that might happen?

I think that, without schlepping into the supernatural, there may very well be mechanisms by which telepathy can occur. I certainly wouldn't write it off. I know a few people who are solid, down-to-earth, and not given to flights of fancy who have told me of weird experiences they've had.

Ever read any of physicist Michio Kaku's writings? He's a rock-solid scientist, but he has some very intriguing speculations along this line. He makes no claims, he just raises some interesting lines of inquiry.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: akenaton
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 08:02 PM

I'll have a look Don, but personally, I think the phenomenon is natural, but to most people it smacks of magic and illusion...just like some folks view belief in god.
I used to be rather dismissive of people "of faith" these days I am much more tolerant.

To answer your question, neither my wife or I had any reason to expect the death, which was the result of an accident.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 31 Jan 12 - 10:44 PM

"Which, in the case of God or telepathy, there isn't."

I knew you were gonna say that!

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 01:21 AM

Oh, so we have got sidetracked into the telepathy bit, which I still say is a different discourse. But FWIW, my experiences of the phenomenon were not to do with foreseeing soon-forthcoming events, or knowing of things that had happened before confirmation, as Ake's seem to have been; but more in the nature of many instances of precise thought-transference by the same person with whom I lived in close proximity over a period. If anyone wants an account of it all, say so & I will furnish it

~M~ ~

though I still do not regard it as really germane to the topic of this thread; tho another on people's telepathic experience might be worthwhile if anyone would like to start one?

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:10 AM

"though I still do not regard it as really germane to the topic of this thread; tho another on people's telepathic experience might be worthwhile if anyone would like to start one?"

And I knew YOU were gonna say that!

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 03:19 AM

Prove it!

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 05:01 AM

I wonder how much the putative phenomenon of telepathy is really something which comes out of the nature of randomness? I suppose that human intuition would tend to suggest that things in a randomised sample should be evenly spread. But, in reality, randomised samples tend to exhibit 'clumpiness'. In other words if you take 100 numbered, but otherwise identical, objects and shuffle them you will tend to see 'runs' of adjacent numbers (e.g. 48, 7, 56, (24,25,26), 92, 5 etc. I've put the 'run' of adjacent numbers in brackets. When gamblers encounter such runs they tend to believe (wrongly) that their 'luck has come in'.

I usually read in bed in the morning with the radio on in the background and fairly frequently I hear an announcer say a word at the same time as I'm reading it. I think that this is a statistical phenomenon, related to randomness - not a, previously unknown/unrecognised natural phenomenon. I think that it's highly likely that something similar happens with respect to peoples' thoughts.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 06:02 AM

That's right. Put alongside the number of times you're reading a word and the radio announcer does not say the same word, the "coincidence" suddenly doesn't seem so remarkable. Thousands upon thousands of times a day, there are "opportunities" for such collisions that just don't come to anything. Coincidence is a very intriguing subject which should be studied by anyone given to believing in telepathy.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Mr Happy
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 06:07 AM

Are we likely to be drifting into Deja Vue next, or has that been done before? 8-)

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 06:23 AM

Are we likely to be drifting into Deja Vue next, or has that been done before? 8-)

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 07:31 AM

From the Office of the Official Legendary Pedant

"Déjà vu"

please.


~M~ OLP

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Mr Happy
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 08:30 AM

I don't think we have to write 'loanwords' in their original language

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 09:33 AM

Isn't "deja vue" the uncomfortable feeling that you've been to Belle Vue before even though you haven't?

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Penny S.
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:02 PM

Thanks for that tale, Sugarfoot Jack. Can you give me references? I don't have any, because it was part of a geology lecture, but I did hear of a meteorite which was found with the gastroliths of a dead dinosaur. These things are fun to think about, aren't they?

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:24 PM

*I* have had weird experiences of reaching for the phone to call someone, and had the phone ring and found them calling ME. scary? No, because many, many times I have missed calls or caught those I was calling not at home.

Coincidence can make us tend to find causation where there is really no 'good' reason to assume any. Having 'intense' mental experiences can do similar things. I have had dreams which shook me.... but really found no reason to suspect they were other than the semi-conscious brain making connections from memories and re-assembling them in patterns to reflect stresses of life.

I 'think' many religious 'visions' happen the same way...especially in people who already believe certain ways. Telepathy may...or may not... follow similar patterns.

We are only a few decades into an understanding of just how complex and powerful the brain/mind is.... and I think it is judicious to avoid too many conclusions about what it can or can't do until much more is known.

I KNOW the temptation to 'explain' strange experiences and correlate them with others, but history is full of examples of faulty tries....

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:48 PM

Heh heh in the funnies the other day someone finds a voodoo doll, so they call someone over to test it. Sticking a pin in, the finders asks, do you feel anything? The subject says, only a very strong feeling that I've done this before. Ah, said the finder, must be a deja voodoo doll.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Don Firth
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:01 PM

I'd be far more interested in Dejah Thoris.....

No, wait! That's not earth, that's Mars!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: frogprince
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:35 PM

Deja Vu is an establishment a few miles from us where guys go to study up on comparative gynocology.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:40 PM

Isn't Deja Fu the uneasy feeling that you've been kicked in the nuts once before by a martial arts practitioner?

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:50 PM

To my buddy, Don Firth. I'm with you 100%.

Done by one of my favourite artists.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: GUEST,Iona
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 03:58 AM

"I'm simply stating that we see no animals, in the fossil record or without, that support the claim that one creature can turn into another. It's perfectly rational to say that one variation of the bear species can turn into another variation of the bear species. But there is no support for the claim that a bear can turn into another species, as Evolution says that they ought. "

As Bill D has already pointed out, you're either willfully misunderstanding what evolution is or you're having a pop. Either way, this isn't a debate if you can't recognize the difference between evolution and magic and insist on using the two concepts interchangeably.

Then define to me evolution! The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary says this:

"B. a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations; also : the process described by this theory"

Berkeley College gives this statement :

"large-scale evolution [is] the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations."
The ability of one creature (the evolutionary 'ancestor of all beings') to turn into another. That's what I'm talking about. Evolution. The ability of a monkey-like creature to gradually generate descendants that are humans *and* monkeys. The theory that enough mistakes in the genetic code can produce the remarkable and intricate human body that we see today. But that theory has no evidence in the fossil record! We see stasis in the fossil record, and we don't see any transitional forms. We ought to be able to go through the fossil record and say "These are the geological layers, all in order, these are the fossils, all in order, that prove that we have evolved."
But we can't even come close to saying that! Instead we see evidence of fully formed creatures (many of whom are still existent today), and no primitive ancestors.We see the same, fully-formed animals in all the layers. Clams, clams, ocean fossils, more clams..... If Evolution were true then we ought to find millions of transitional forms in the fossil record, all in corresponding layers. But we don't. Here's an illustration of the impossibility of the millions of years theory: A find in the Krukowski Quarry near Mosinee, Wisconsin. What was the find? Fossilized jellyfish.
Excuse me? Fossilized Jellyfish?
    Yeah. What's that all about? A jellyfish is compromised of about 95-98% of water. When a jellyfish is washed ashore, the water disappears and the body flattens.
Most fossils we find today are from hard-boned creatures, because bones fossilize easily. But jellyfish are so very soft that it's nearly impossible to fossilize one. Darwin once said "no organism wholly soft can be preserved". The Krukowski jellyfish prove him wrong.
Evolutionists say that the Krukowski jellyfish are part of the 'Cambrian layer', a time period they claim occurred about 510 million years ago. They say that the hordes of jellyfish we find in the quarry swam into the sandy shores of ancient Wisconsin as they migrated, hunted, and reproduced. Then they claim that strong tides (perhaps from storms) could have washed the jellyfish up on the shore, and, because no predators had evolved yet, the waves gradually buried them with coarse sand and they fossilized.
Creationists like myself propose something different.
Taking the evolutionary scenario, even if there weren't predators to eat the jellyfish as they lay on the shore, why didn't the jellyfish deflate in the sun and decay--instead of fossilizing?
Second, when a jellyfish washes up on land, it will pump its bell in an attempt to get back to the water, leaving little rings in the sand. There are no rings around the fossils in Mosinee.
Again, if the jellyfish were washed up onto sand (exposed to air), they would have lost their 90-odd percentage of water and shrunk. There is no fossil evidence of the jellyfish changing size.
This proves that the jellyfish were fossilized very rapidly, not over millions of years. How about Noah's flood?
Another thing that throws a wrench in the evolutionist's theory is that the fossils of the jellyfish are in rippled sand.
Waves create ripples as they come into shore. But when the waves go back out, they erase the ripples. The only place that the ripples aren't erased is underwater. Also, the only way the impression of a ripple can be fossilized is by another layer of fine silt coming to rest on top of it. This also can only happen rapidly.....underwater.
It's almost impossible for a jellyfish to fossilized. The evolutionary theory is given one final blow when we point out that the jellyfish were preserved in coarse sand--which would have allowed more time for sun and air exposure (thus causing further decay). The jellyfish are found in multiple different layers, thus causing the evolutionists to say that they must have been fossilized in different tropical storms over thousands of years. They're saying that the impossible happened seven times to create seven layers of jellyfish?? It's just that, impossible! It must be under exactly the right conditions: rapidly and underwater. Because of these factors, to say these jellyfish might have fossilized several times is unreasonable. The evolutionary model just doesn't fit the facts. But it does perfectly support the creation model--that they were all buried in a catastrophic, worldwide flood that quickly laid down the layers of sediment and fossilized the jellyfish underwater.
(as a side note, it's interesting how jellyfish don't seem to have changed much over 500-odd million years....while it seems that humans evolved from primitive to more sophisticated during that time.)

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"Nature screams "Creator!" wherever we turn. The amazing detail of a leaf, a cell, a tree, an insect" ···

and a plague rat; a vampire bat; a malarial mosquito; a rabid dog; a dear old friend with Alzheimers or dementia...

Thanks, Iona ~~ you can stuff your Creator where he won't see too much of his 'Creation'!


"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12)
When Adam sinned against God, the world became a corrupt place, and man has been 'degenerating' since then. We are all suffering because of the fall of man. When God created the world, it was "Very good". But it's not that way any more. There is still beauty, but everything is now tainted by sin, nothing escaped. God gave the commandment to Adam and Eve that they would "surely die" if they ate the forbidden fruit. When they listened to the devil and chose to ignore God's command, He followed through with His punishment, and the world continues to die, both spiritually and physically. This is a curse, but it is also a blessing, in that death also brought God's chosen people into redemption by the death atonement of Christ on the cross. If an individual is regenerate by the ransom of Christ's blood, then death for them is the final enemy, and they are delivered up to the merciful reward of the Lord, in Heaven.
But I know that the 'problem of evil' is going to be brought up when I post this, so let me address it proactively.
The 'problem of evil' is this:
"If God exists, why does He allow His creation to suffer physical and moral evil? He either must not be powerful enough to deal with evil, or else He does not care enough to deal with it."
This 'problem' was first phrased by David Hume, a Scottish philosopher in the 18th century. But it's not a new question. Almost all humans ask it at one point or another: "How could a good and loving God allow evil in the world? Is He not powerful enough to eradicate it? Or is he not good at all?" They wonder how Christians can believe in a God who is all-good but also all-powerful, and yet there still be evil in the world.
This argument boils down to three points.
1. God is completely good.
2. God is completely powerful.
3. Evil exists/happens.

Premises 1 and 2 are not contradictory to each other until we combine them with premise 3. It is crucial to the athiest/unbeliever's case against Christianity to assert that there is evil in the world and to be able to point to something and have the right to evaluate it as an instance of evil. But first, you must define evil. Define good!
So, what do you define as good? What is good? Majority opinion? Majority benefit? What is your foundation for believing in goodness--or in evil? What is evil, anyway, from an atheistic viewpoint?
I can answer the problem of evil, but for the atheist there is no such thing, because there is no evil, and there is no good. The fact that you are even in this argument proves my point. I will elaborate more on that later, after I get a few responses.
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A pastor friend of mine once commented, "Some hard-charging evangelists have their minds so set on getting themselves, and everybody they can harass into Heaven that they, themselves, are no earthly good for anything."

Iona, Pete, look up Matthew, 25:35-40.

Read it carefully.

Study it.

Then, go live it.

And stop pestering people until you learn to live as Jesus says you should live (see above Scripture).

Don Firth

Don, you are so right. One of the things that I absolutely abhor about the so-called "Christian" culture in America (and in other places) is that so many people call the name....and then live lives that clearly state that they don't care. They preach, but don't act. They don't live out the faith they claim to have. This is a tragedy, it is heresy, and they are misrepresenting Christ by calling themselves by His name and yet not obeying His commandments. The Bible says "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost it's savor....it shall be good for nothing but to be trodden under the foot of men". (Matthew 5:15). If Christians do not live out their profession and obey the commands of Scripture, they are good for nothing. They give Christianity a dirty name and a horrible reputation. Most people who call themselves Christians aren't Christians at all. (See explanation here )


But I disagree when you propose that a true Christian will not take a stand for what they believe. You say that I ought to read Matthew 25 carefully and then live it. I agree with that.
But the Bible also says to be "Ready to give an answer for the hope that is within you" (1 Peter 13:5). A Christian will live out their faith, and that includes being able and ready to answer the claims of opposing worldviews such as evolution. It would not be right for a Christian to go about whamming people over issues like evolution, and yet not live out the love of Christ, but it *would* be acceptable for a Christian, who ministers to their fellow men with kindness and a servant's heart, to stand up and make a testimony that the Bible is exactly as it says it is, and that the world was created just as the Bible says, in six literal days, created by the word of the Lord.
I'm not trying to harass anybody into heaven. I can't get anyone into heaven, period. Only God can do that. I can only give testimony to Him and His word, and He must do the rest. Your eternal destiny is ultimately between you and the Almighty, but that doesn't mean that Christians ought to be silent about the gospel, in fact they are commanded *not* to be.
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For example, here is the complete transition from a dog-like (actually more pig-like) ancestor to modern cetaceans in 11 small steps. Iona will surely point out that his means there are 10 missing links.

http://evolutionfun.com/images/whales/caldogram.gif


This is a drawing. Are there fossils to support these drawings? I'd love to see pictures of them. You see, Evolutionists often will draw pictures of what evolution *should* look like, but they're just pictures--artist's reproductions of what ought to be found in the fossil record, but aren't. If there were, our museums would be have them on huge displays with neon lights flashing above them. But they haven't found any. And it's my contention that there's a reason for that.
When we look into the average high school textbook, we see drawings like Haeckle's embryo drawings. But the theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny was dreamed up by Haeckle before modern technology like ultrasound, and now we know that his theory is completely bogus. But they still publish it in textbooks! And the concept that humans aren't really humans until such-and-such a stage has lead to many horrific things that devalue human life.
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Well, since its been raised again I went to the the trouble of discovering whether psalm 22 is a perfect description of a crucifixion of anybody years before crucifixion had been invented: the answer is no, in my view. There is nothing at all to suggest crucifixion - just a much more general torture that applies to crucifixion plus dozens of other imaginative schemes to inflict pain on some victim......Hardly the sign of someone who insists on the literal translation of the original, I would say, and not a good demonstration that the original psalm referenced crucifixion.

I didn't reference that part of the chapter. I was talking about the whole chapter. Let me compare the gospels to Psalm 22.
   
All who see me mock me;they hurl insults,
shaking their heads: "He trusts in the Lord;
let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him." (Psalm 22:7-8)

"And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads,
and saying, Ah, thou that destroyest the temple,
and buildest it in three days, Save thyself,
and come down from the cross. (Mark 15:29-30)

And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also
with them derided him, saying, He saved others;
let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God. (Luke 23 :35)
And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.

Dogs have surrounded me; [Roman Soldiers, perhaps?]
a band of evil men has encircled me,[two thieves crucified with
Jesus; one on the right hand, one on the left] (Psalm 22:16a)
"And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith,
And he was numbered with the transgressors."(Mark 15:28)

I can count all my bones; [bones are broken during crucifixion, typically] (Psalm 22:17)

They divide my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing. (Psalm 22:18)
And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments,
casting lots upon them, what every man should take.(Mark 15:24)

That's simply comparing a few verses of Psalm 22 with the gospels--and I left out the 'they pierced my hands and feet' because I don't have the time at the moment to go look up the original Greek. Seems to me that there are a few too many 'coincidences' here to not be fulfillment of prophesy--and that's only one of dozens of fulfilled prophesy in Scripture.

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Your statement: " But there are very few actual documents/parchments copied from the originals. Those are the true word of God, and the 'translations' are only the word of God insofar as they are true (verbal plenary) to the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. The "Other books" so called are perhaps interesting accounts, but they are not the inspired Word of God as the Bible is. The Bible alone is perfect, it is the ultimate authority, and, as I've said before, an ultimate authority can't be judged by something else or else it isn't ultimate--whatever it is judged by is!

IS a perfect example of that circular reasoning where your 'proof' is assumed by your very statement! You are defending your **belief** in the Bible by assuming that you can't be wrong...because the Bible can't be wrong.--- and round & round we go.

So there are no absolutes, is that what you are saying? If there are absolutes, then there must be an ultimate authority to validate them. I have one--the God of the Bible. He is the ultimate authority.
BUT, evolutionists don't have an ultimate, that I know of. The human mind, maybe? Humanists/evolutionists/athiests have to borrow from the Christian worldview in order to even have a foundation for reasoning. Without borrowing Christian presuppositions, you have no basis for argument. After all, how do you know that there is truth? What is eternal? How can you trust your mind? How do you know that the future will be like the past?

I don't understand in order to believe: I believe in order to understand. Yes, I have faith, I have belief--but it's a reasonable faith.Without my faith, I could not understand anything, I could not carry on a conversation, I could not experiment with science.
A person will interpret evidence by what their presuppositions are. I look at a fossil site and see evidence for the flood--evolutionists look at the same fossil site and see evidence for evolution. "A person's worldview clues him as to the nature, structure and origin of reality. It tells him what are the limits of possibility. It involves a view of the nature, sources and limits of human knowledge. It includes fundamental convictions about right and wrong. One's worldview says something about who man is, his place in the universe, and the meaning of life, etc. Worldviews determine our acceptance and understanding of events in human experience, and thus they play the crucial role in our interpreting of evidence or in disputes over conflicting fundamental beliefs." (Greg Bahnsen)
One of the biggest proofs of the Christian faith is that if Christianity isn't true, you can't prove anything at all. To put that in more philosophical terms "Christianity is the transcendental precondition of intelligibility".

Materialistic Atheists don't believe in God, don't believe that man has a soul, and don't believe in an afterlife. If those premises are true, then you couldn't know that it was true. You couldn't prove anything at all. Let me be clear:
All science rests on inductive inference. I mean all science--biology, math, astronomy, physiology, everything! Inductive inference could also be phrased "the future will be like the past". You get up in the middle of the night and walk around. You stub your toe. You feel pain. So tonight when you get up to walk around, you will take care not to stub your toe because you believe that it will hurt again like it did last night. That's an inductive inference. You make speculations on the future because of occurrences in the past. But for an atheist, you can't know that if you stub your toe tonight it will hurt! You have no way of knowing that. You have the past, but you can't rely on the past because an atheist says that we live in a random universe. Just because the observable past has produced pain when you stubbed your toe does not mean that tonight it will hurt--in the future a stubbed toe may produce the thrill of a lifetime. You can't know! An atheist has no foundation to conduct science, to reason, or to speculate, because they have absolutely no assurance that A will proceed B tomorrow. A might proceed B today, but tomorrow A might proceed G8zy. I repeat: You have no foundation of your own to believe that the future will be like the past. You have no foundation to understand our world. You have no foundation to go to the science lab today and conduct scientific experiments, because past knowledge is useless to the future, and the future is completely unpredictable. Only when you borrow from the Christian worldview of the uniformity of nature (that the future will be like the past) can you make any progress in anything.
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It IS possible to accept 'what is' without assuming 'intelligent design'... I do it every day!

See my last response. Yes, you can accept 'what is', but you do so only on borrowed terms. You have no foundation of your own. You have no reason to rely on inductive inference, because you have no basis for it!

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nowhere is there a requirement to assume anything in particular about an 'original cause'-- that is merely an abstract concept. We DO NOT KNOW where or how "causes start", and deciding that something must be named "God" is simply a personal opinion...

So you have no basis of faith, that's what you're saying. You're basically saying "There is no proof that there was no cause, but I refuse to believe that the God of the Bible was the uncaused cause. Instead I'd rather believe in an unknown cause"

"Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too {l} superstitious.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands" (Acts 17:22-24)

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Well, Iona, careful who you choose to befriend. Pete pounces in triumphant accord on snippets of your daft post but let me tell you he doesn't know what he's on about. He refuses to read Origin yet he jumps in with you on the "transitional forms" nonsense. To be honest, your crackpot notions simply reveal that there is insufficient between you and anyone who has even the faintest regard for science to have a constructive conversation. I once saw a drawing of a bear that was the exact intermediate between Yogi and Boo-boo, so that proves you're wrong. That's about the highest intellectual level you could manage, I suppose. Let's drop God and talk Jellystone.

I haven't said anything to Pete or about Pete. I haven't even acknowledged his presence until now, because what good would it do? I'm not out to 'join forces' and gang up on anybody. I'm just here to give an explanation for what I believe and why I believe it. Pete can do the same if he wishes, and if he chooses to use some of my writings as a springboard, that's his business.
But I wish you would stop the stream of insults (that are not taken) and actually discuss the evidence with me. Let's drop the slurs and talk epistemology. Your resorting to trying to make me mad with all your name calling and insults suggests that you don't have any way to answer my arguments!

___________________________________________________________

Unlike religion, we don't have any direct evidence that telepathy is impossible. But virgin birth? Raising the dead? Son of God? Turning water into wine? Splitting the Red Sea? Creating the earth in seven days? Creating the earth at all?? The list goes on and on.

Precisely why they are called 'miracles'. Supernatural. Of course it's impossible--humanly speaking. "For with God nothing shall be impossible." (Luke 1:37)

_____________________________________________________________

Raising the dead? (Medical trick)

Doctors do that NOW, thousands of times a day.

Son of God?

Assuming there is a God, the Son ain't much of a leap.

Turning water into wine? (chemistry trick)

A bit of kool aid and 100 proof vodka would have easily fooled a wedding guest of 2000 years ago.

Splitting the Red Sea? (meteorology trick)

Moses times the escape for a windy day with just the right wind.

Creating the earth in seven days?

Define day.

"Rasing the dead? Doctors do that now, thousands of times a day".
By definition (in the Bible), death occurs when the soul departs the body. These everyday 'raisings' are not miracles like what we see in Scripture. In Scripture we're talking souls that were already in heaven or @#!*% (we don't know what the spiritual state of many of the biblical subjects were), being brought back into the bodies. What we see today is just appearance of death, and then being revived. We don't see (as we do in the Bible) men being in the grave and dead for four days, then being called forth and actively walking out of the grave.

"Turning water into wine? Chemistry trick. A bit of kool aid and 100 proof vodka would have easily fooled a wedding guest of 2000 years ago."
But the Bible (John 2) gives no indication that Jesus ever even laid hands on the jars. He simply told the servants (who were present the entire time) to fill the containers with water and to carry them out to the wedding feast. Plus, He didn't exactly have about twelve cases of Vodka at his disposal (and Kool Aid didn't even exist yet) to slyly empty into the water. The Scripture says that "They have no wine". There was no alcohol present at the time of the miracle.


"Splitting the Red Sea? (meteorology trick) Moses times the escape for a windy day with just the right wind."
Do you really mean to say that a nice little wind could part the Red sea and provide dry ground for the Israelites to walk on, as the Bible says happened?

"Creating the earth in seven days? Define 'day'"
'day' in Hebrew is the word 'Yom'. It can mean a literal 24 hour day, or it can mean a period of time. But in Genesis, whenever the word 'yom' is used along with the words "evening and morning" or 'third day', etc. it always means a literal twenty four hour day. Anything else would have been destructive to the life that God had just created. Just think, if the 'days' of Creation Week had been long periods of time, then there would have been long periods of darkness. Once the plants were created, they would have quickly died because of lack of photosynthesis for food! Only a literal 24 hour day fits into the creation account.

But you as an atheist have no basis for calling anything impossible. For since we live in a random universe, you can't know that tomorrow is going to be like today. For all you know, the miracles of the Bible were just random acts of the universe. They shouldn't even be a problem for you!
_________________________________________________________________


Well, at least I got an answer: I find it absolutely mind-boggling, but it's an answer.

"If a friend of yours told you that his mule had just spoken to him, and given him a message from God, what would you think, and how would you reply?
I would respond by going to the Bible and seeing if what the donkey said was in accordance with the Scriptures. If not, then it was not a message from God, but it could have a number of different explanations.

If a friend of yours told you that his plans for the day included killing his child, because God told him to, what would you think, and how would you respond?

See my response above."
Yes, that is my answer. Well, It's a very simplified version of my answer. Taking the child-killing scenario, it's a 99% chance that the 'word from God' was not a word from God at all. Lots of people get counseled today by their 'pastors' to have an abortion, and there have been many times when a 'pastor' has told a mother that 'God told him' that she ought to kill her baby. Now that is an obvious breach of the Bible, because it's very clear that "Thou shalt not murder"(Deuteronomy 5:17). So I'd very very VERY likely find that 'word from God' to be not a 'word of God' at all. For instance, Jephthah in Judges 11:30-36 told God that he would sacrifice whatever or whoever first came to meet him if God would give him victory over the Ammonites. God did, and who came to meet Jephthah? His only child. But instead of obeying God's law of 'thou shalt not murder', he chose to keep his word. He held his promise in more importance than the law of God. And that was sin. I don't condone what he did.
_____________________________________________________________________

You're outnumbered, the pair of you. In the meantime, you are doing a disservice to the vast majority of people comfortable to be called Christians, as their use of god as a metaphor is debased by idiots intent on clinging to the bible as an instrument to play their fantasy on. Sorry that reality isn't good enough for you, but you know, one of you can be laughed at, a few of you can be tolerated but an international commune?

I don't think you have much of an argument here. Again, your resorting to insults suggests that you can't do any other!
My being outnumbered is not a problem to my argument. After all, there was a point in time when the majority believed that the planets all revolved around the earth, and that didn't make it true.
"You're doing a disservice to the vast majority of people comfortable to be called Christians, as their use of god as a metaphor is debased by idiots intent on clinging to the bible as an instrument to play their fantasy on."
Oh? Barring the fact that I have yet to meet a true Christian who calls God a metaphor, how is my defending the truth of the Scriptures a disservice to Christianity? You seem to be implying that I can believe what I want, but I should keep my trap shut and let people criticize it and try to tear it down. If that's the case, then why don't you do the same? Why do you find it worthwhile to type on this forum? I have a reason to believe what I do. But you don't. you don't even have a reason to believe--anything! For the atheist, there is no such thing as reason unless you borrow from the Christian worldview.....but I shall address that in another post. Tell me, are there absolutes? Is there such a thing as good and bad, and if so, how do you define them?

_________________________________________________________

Iona - all you have to do to silence the doubters is find a fossil in the wrong place. Find the fossil of a horse in Cretaceous deposits; find a bony fish in the Burgess Shale, find a monkey in the Solnhofen limestone, find a rhino amongst the dinosaurs. Find the bones and silence the doubters. Find body fossils that prove you are right.

Scientists have found so much evidence for Creation that I couldn't fit it all in this forum. Look at the jellyfish, up there towards the top of my post. That's one.

There have been trees found in multiple layers of sediment, that is, one tree going through several different layers, each one supposedly having been laid down over millions of years. How does that work?

"Find a rhino amongst the dinosaurs".

How about people? Would you accept creationism if we had evidence that men lived alongside of dinosaurs? Forget something as trivial as a rhino with the dinosaurs, I think we ought to go straight to the evolutionary impossible--that of coexistence between humans and giant sauropods.

Aha, but we do have evidence of just such a thing.

The word "dinosaur" wasn't invented until 1842, coined by Sir Richard Owen. It means "terrible reptile" in Latin. The Chinese do not have a word like 'dinosaur', but they do have a word "kong long" which means 'terrible dragon'. They'd been using this word for years before people dug up a dinosaur bone in Europe. We read a lot of old stories in many cultures about terrible dragons--could it be that 'dragons' and 'dinosaurs' are really the same thing?

Ancient legends about dragons and men's encounters with them are found all over the world. So have images of creatures resembling dinosaurs/dragons. For instance, there are images of dragons have been found on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ethiopian sketches, on Viking ships, in Aztec temples, on cliffs above the Mississippi river, and on bones carved by the native Inuit peoples of Alaska. The Welsh flag still bears the bold design of a dragon. China is very well known for it's use of dragons in its cultural art. So it's not just a local theory that dragons existed, it's a widespread history. The book of Job in the Bible talks of several different kinds of 'dragons', both on land (Behemoth) and in the sea (Leviathan).

A few things to look up and see for yourself are the the Natural Bridges Monument in Utah (underneath one of the rock bridges is a drawing that appears to be a dinosaur, drawn most likely by natives between 400 A.D. to 1300 A.D.), Hava supai Canyon in Arizona (where there is a picture of an animal standing on its hind legs--resembling a dinosaur), San Rafael Reef in Utah (where there is a large carving of something that resembles a Pterosaur. About 200 miles away from that canyon, fossil tracks that may have been made by a Pterosaur, have been discovered), and some figurines from Acambaro, Mexico. Over 33 thousand ceramic figures were found there, and many look like what today we would call dinosaurs.

Just because we don't find dinosaurs fossilized in the same locality as humans doesn't prove anything. If you lived at the same time as dinosaurs, would you want to live in the same neighborhood? If we're going to take Beowulf's word for it, no. And neither did people before and after the flood. Just because humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time doesn't mean that they lived close to each other. Evolutionary scientists date geologic layers in which we find dinosaur bones by the time period in which that dinosaur supposedly lived (well, that's what many scientists say--and then they turn around and say that we can tell the age of the bones by the rocks in which they are found. Rather circular if you ask me). And then they date other layers differently just because we find human fossils (like 'Neanderthal' ). I say that it's not that they lived millions of years apart, they just lived in different parts of the world when the flood occurred.
__________________________________________________________________________

How do you surmise that a dead cowboys leg petrified in his boot is a fossil?

"Fossil: mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) of animals, plants, and other organisms." --Wikipedia glossary of geological terms
Fossilization is when something is buried quickly by lots of mud and water with just the right cementing agent. Over a little time, the minerals in the mud substance will replace the minerals in the decaying bone. Eventually only rock, in the perfect shape of the bones, will be left.
Generally when we speak of 'fossils' today, we think 'old'--whether 'old' is thousands of years or millions of years. But fossilization is simply the occurrence of petrification.

____________________________________________________________________________

There's plenty of evidence of wear and tear on fossils, and plenty have been eroded out of one age of sediment and redeposited; the are called 'reworked' fossils. There is one case where we think a Jurassic ammonite was fossilised, weathered out and was then eaten by a dinosaur for use as a gastrolith, and after the dinosaur died or coughed it back up it was reburied in the later sediments. Wonderful!
While I haven't studied that particular case, I do know that seeing a little wear and tear on a few fossil wouldn't completely destroy my worldview. The flood was a long and very chaotic event--Noah and his family were in the ark for over a year, so that gives a lot of time for the fossil bones to have been tossed about, shifted and replaced into a different layer of sediment. It could have happened after the flood, for that matter. No problem for the Creationist worldview.


♣Iona

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Mr Happy
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 05:00 AM

Iona,

Thanks for your reply to my query.

How do you surmise that a dead cowboys leg petrified in his boot is a fossil?

"Fossil: mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) of animals, plants, and other organisms." --Wikipedia glossary of geological terms
Fossilization is when something is buried quickly by lots of mud and water with just the right cementing agent. Over a little time, the minerals in the mud substance will replace the minerals in the decaying bone. Eventually only rock, in the perfect shape of the bones, will be left.
Generally when we speak of 'fossils' today, we think 'old'--whether 'old' is thousands of years or millions of years. But fossilization is simply the occurrence of petrification.
************


However your extract from WikiP doesn't give the full picture, see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil


'Fossils (from Latin fossus, literally "having been dug up") are the preserved remains or traces of animals (also known as zoolites), plants, and other organisms from the remote past.'

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 06:07 AM

I didn't reference that part of the chapter. I was talking about the whole chapter. Let me compare the gospels to Psalm 22.

Maybe that's what you thought you were doing, Iona, but what you actually said was 'Psalm 22 is a perfect description of the crucifixion of Christ. The odd thing?
Crucifixion hadn't even been invented yet when David wrote the Psalms. I know that because the Romans invented crucifixion a thousand years later. So here's David, writing a description of a death that he never witnessed in his life, but that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.'

So I focussed on the crucifixion claim, and specifically said that was something testable, which the rest of the psalm isn't for various reasons I won't bore you with. And I concluded there is no evidence that the psalm deals with crucifixion rather than any other kind of death, in my opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Musket
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 06:08 AM

Iona, I don't resort to insults because I don't have an argument. I insult you because pity is more insulting than taking the piss.

All of what you say relies on the bible as being more than a set of translations of translations of stories. (A bit like Gunther unt Heidi, as translated from Topsy & Tim.)

As the bible is no more than an interesting portal into a superstitious past, your arguments wither away with the credibility of it. It being a man made convenient set of population control measures. Jam tomorrow and all that.

I prefer jam today. And clotted cream. And beer. And pork. And prior to getting married, sex with girlfriends.

Oh, and getting married in a hotel is much much better than a church. They aren't drafty and they have a bar. You see, I have no problem with your Sunday club, as I have no problem with the buffs, the masons or the local flower arranging group. Live & let live. Just don't assume we all want to grunt at each other / use secret hand shakes / put petunias alongside darker carnations.

The Bishop dude in York said the other day that government shouldn't contradict the bible. Sorry mate, but your and your club get more irrelevant each day and loose cannons like him just make disestablishment nearer and nearer. And that would be a shame, because if your wonderful old buildings had to rely on what practicing Christians can raise, (less than 1% of the UK population) it would have to be St Pauls Offices to rent, Westminster Abbey branch of Starbucks. And I for one like the tradition if not the dangerous claptrap lurking behind it.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 06:23 AM

But I wish you would stop the stream of insults (that are not taken) and actually discuss the evidence with me.

You insult thousands of hard-working scientists constantly with your blindfolded attempts to refute the truth of evolution. I could spend a lifetime discussing my evidence with you, but not a single second discussing yours, because you simply haven't got any. You have hearsay, tradition, brainwashing, fear of demurral, incomplete and frequently suspect ancient documents, many of those containing myths and stories, and, at times, some very questionable interpretation of them, not to speak of that tendentious branch of extrapolation fondly known as theology. You rely on belief in an impossible supernatural being and strings of miracles that defy the laws of nature. But what you don't have is evidence.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 06:24 AM

Sorry, for the second time I screwed up my italics. Grrr...

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 06:28 AM

Still and all, Iona ~~ has to be

α++

for effort.

no assessment currently available for achievement, due to lack of motivation actually to read it all in detail

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 06:36 AM

Mr Happy is quite right about fossils. Mineralisation is but one method of fossilisation. Some creatures, such as shelled molluscs, already have mineralised parts, and all they need is protection from crushing and weathering. There are imprint fossils such as dinosaur footprints and imprints of shells and leaves. Actual tissue such as wood, seeds, leaves, spores and pollen grains can be preserved in peat. Just off the coast where I live in Cornwall there a submerged forest about 8,000 years old, inundated by the sea when sea levels rose. Insects can be preserved in resin (amber) which oozed from tree bark. Mammoths have been preserved in ice. It's a wonderful world.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 07:24 AM

Right, Iona, let's go back over, what we Brits call, 'the bleeding obvious' again.

- There are gaps in our scientific knowledge and no scientist would claim otherwise. But Science is not a dogmatic assertion of faith and 'absolute truth' but a method for exploring and understanding the Universe, based on experiment and evidence. Gleefully jumping on gaps in our knowledge and exclaiming: "aha! That means that God must have done it!", is a response which infantile, illogical and stupid (let's not beat about the bush).

- All of your 'arguments' are based on myths and anecdotes contained in an ancient text of dubious provenance. Just try telling a Tibetan Buddhist or an Amazonian Shaman that the Bible represents absolute truth. For that matter, just in the last few years, astronomers have discovered around 700 exo-planets outside of our Solar System. It's not outside the bounds of possibility that, in the near future, an intelligent species might be detected living on an exo-planet; it's highly unlikely that the Bible will mean much to such a species.

- Attributing life on Earth to God just begs the question: Who, or what is God - and where and how did He originate?

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Stu
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 07:27 AM

"Most fossils we find today are from hard-boned creatures, because bones fossilize easily. But jellyfish are so very soft that it's nearly impossible to fossilize one."

Soft tissue preservation is not uncommon in the fossil record but the Krukowski Quarry jellyfish are not body fossils, but ichnofossils or trace fossils and they represent the impressions of stranded jellyfish, not the animals themselves. As for the depositional conditions the time of burial of these impressions they could have been buried very quickly but that's got bog all to do with a mythical flood, and lots to do with any number of events from the neocatastrophic to the mundane.

"Waves create ripples as they come into shore. But when the waves go back out, they erase the ripples."

Now she's a sedimentologist. You've never walked on a beach then? Ripples everywhere on the sand after the tide has gone out. This statement is one of the most ignorant I've ever read from a creationist, and that is saying something.


"Aha, but we do have evidence of just such a thing."

Not one jot of the 'evidence' you've posted is evidence; it's based on the subjective interpretation of ancient petroglyphs for which you have zero cultural reference and even the local tribes have no ability to interpret. I saw petroglyphs in situ in Utah and Nevada last October (looking for dinosaur footprints with the SVP) and there is no consensus of opinion on their meaning, but plenty of speculation. The Welsh flag as evidence of dinosaurs and man living together? Twll dy din di (one of my Great-Grandmothers favourite sayings). That's no more than pretty ill-informed speculation and luckily, the history of the dragon in Welsh culture is far more fascinating than any meaning imposed by non-native religion.

"Just because we don't find dinosaurs fossilized in the same locality as humans doesn't prove anything. If you lived at the same time as dinosaurs, would you want to live in the same neighbourhood?"

The old 'absence of evidence' argument? A tired old creationist tactic that simply doesn't hold any water. Give us a break and let's concentrate on solid evidence and not hearsay, the re-interpretation of ancient myths and cod-archaeology. By the way, it's worth noting that we do live in the same neighbourhood as dinosaurs, as birds are dinosaurs. In the meantime, get looking for those fossils - put up or shut up and stop ducking the argument.

Iona presents her arguments in an articulate and entertaining (and verbose) manner but there's little substance to them, and they're often error-ridden and play fast and loose with the facts by making tenuous connections and misrepresenting evidence to fit her arguments. She is also ignorant of her subject and this makes it not worth arguing any more. I'll keep an eye on the scientific literature so when she finds a whale or a bony fish in the Edicarian biota and turns the world of palaeontology on its head I can email her congratulations, as it would be pretty bloody exciting. Until then, it's safe to assume that like most creationists she is talking the talk but not walking the walk by getting out there and offering solid, testable and reproducible evidence to back up her inane, superstitious creationist claptrap.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 08:27 AM

Oh, and by the way since you say "I left out the 'they pierced my hands and feet' because I don't have the time at the moment to go look up the original Greek" - by which of course, we know you meant Hebrew, not Greek - here's a link to Wiki on the subject to save you time;
They have pierced....

I have looked at other sites, not just Wiki, but the first paragraph summarises pretty well what the Hebrew text says, and how people have knowingly used other interpretations in the attempt of making sense of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: TheSnail
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 09:21 AM

Shimrod

But Science is not a dogmatic assertion of faith and 'absolute truth' but a method for exploring and understanding the Universe, based on experiment and evidence.

Indeed so. Could you explain that to Steve Shaw who stiil comes out with lines like "the truth of evolution".

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: akenaton
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 09:28 AM

Can humans "devolve" as well as "evolve"? I think I must be devolving.....I've started agreeing with Snail.....:0(

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 09:39 AM

"I'd love to see pictures of them."

You have just sinned in telling a lie.
No you wouldn't.
If you would really love to see pictures of them, you could have found them already.
The pictures are widely available.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 10:19 AM

Thanks, Snail. Up to now I've avoided getting into argumenrs with SS because I don't think that it's helpful for us (more or less) rationalists to start splitting along sectarian lines!

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: TheSnail
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 10:33 AM

Sorry Shimrod, But I disagree. Arguing with the likes of Iona is completely pointless. She isn't actually thinking, just regurgitating garbage from creationist websites. She really isn't of the slightest importance.

On the other hand, people with a scientific education talking the way SS does open up science to being described as just another belief system alongside religion.

(Don't worry Ake, there is still plenty we will never agree on.)

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 11:32 AM

" Arguing with the likes of Iona is completely pointless."

Like *I* said before.... surrender, guys.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 12:16 PM

". . . a true Christian will not take a stand for what they believe. "

Iona, I did NOT say that!

Doesn't misrepresenting what I say constitude "false witness?"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Penny S.
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 12:32 PM

As she said, evidence will not change her world view.

So I won't mention the Coal Measures (successions of buried soils and fully grown trees with their roots), or William Smith (who discovered the layers of rock and their contained fossils which she states do not exist and laid the foundations of geology).

I will, however, warn her that if she does leave the computer to go out and look at geology in situ, she should bear in mind that burial can occur quite quickly, even in the absence of Flood, and she should check on tides, avoid the bases of cliffs, and be careful to keep away from places where there might be flash floods or mud slides.

But I don't think she will. It's as likely as her making any converts on this board.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Penny S.
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 12:35 PM

I'm just wondering whether there are sites which search for references to this issue so their advocates can turn up and start preaching. I exclude Pete, because he is a singer who has other reasons to be here.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 01:09 PM

Dear Lord, save and protect me from your mindless followers.

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 01:32 PM

Amen!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: frogprince
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 01:51 PM

"Taking the child-killing scenario, it's a 99% chance that the 'word from God' was not a word from God at all. Lots of people get counseled today by their 'pastors' to have an abortion, and there have been many times when a 'pastor' has told a mother that 'God told him' that she ought to kill her baby. Now that is an obvious breach of the Bible, because it's very clear that "Thou shalt not murder"(Deuteronomy 5:17). So I'd very very VERY likely find that 'word from God' to be not a 'word of God' at all."

And I would say that it is, to say the least, a 99% chance that God did not instruct Abraham to kill Isaac as a sacrifice. Of course the story plays out with God letting Abraham off the hook, and providing an animal substitute. But Abraham is lauded and rewarded because he would have butchered his child if God had stuck to the demand, and he has been generally lauded by the church since it's inception as a superlative example of faith in God. As a believer in the literal truth of the Bible, how do you react to that. And what do you think God's reaction would have been if Abraham has simply said, "God, I'm not going to do that; it would be totally evil, and you are a #%&*@ for telling me to do it."

Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Feb 12 - 03:47 PM

That post by Iona (GUEST,Iona - PM Date: 02 Feb 12 - 03:58 AM ) really must be some kind of record for a post - more especially one that isn't pretty well wholly made up of cut and pasted material. Quite fun really - but...

I find it really weird that anyone should think that this creationist stuff is significant either to being a Christian or not being a Christian.