Biblical Flood? Fish, squid, and shrimp fossils in the mountains of Lebanon and Peru

[pakeha]

...I would guess that the change was not deliberate; I've done the same myself, misread a member's name for a long time (in this case, missing the spoonerism).

Too true, zoots.
I had no idea I'd mis-spelled Slackerbabbath's handle!

So.
Back to DOC's OP, then.

 

[John Jones]

Concerning the hilited area: Carbon 14 dating would be irrelevant for a fossil that's 85,000,000 years old....

He knows this. Creationists and ID proponents fall back on the ¹⁴C dating limitations all the time, as if scientists date the age of the fossil record solely by ¹⁴C radiometric dating.

You can repeatedly point-out that ¹⁴C dating is not used to date fossils millions of years old, and they'll still make false appeals to the limitations of ¹⁴C dating. Doc has done so at least a half-dozen times even after being edified.

 

[GeneMachine]

ETA: This was supposed to quote Tricky and reply to his comment regarding the green river formation.

Sounds like a good guess. Looking over it again, the Solnhofen limestone looks more smooth and fine-grained, splitting along a more even plane - it is used for lithography plates for a reason.

I need to get out my rock hammer and chisels and go for a little dig again, one of these days... I am surrounded by jurassic limestones here. I dropped out after a year of geology and went into biochemistry, but still got the itch to poke some rocks every now and then.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I see "somebody" has evacuated this thread.

 

[Dinwar]

I guess you have not noticed the parts I said (actually wrote) they could be primers or inspiration...

Not at all. I think you downplayed the importance of such a thing--particularly when you said:

if it can not fulfill Pato's description, then its not Atlantis.

Something CAN BE Atlantis, and still contradict Plato's description--because Plato could easily have been wrong. He was wrong on a lot of other points, after all.

 

[smartcooky]

But in the case of this thread, the topic is clearly the Biblical flood. Floods that don't fit the Biblical description of a global flood are clearly not the same flood.

The whole point is that they could be. The biblical global flood myth could have been based on a real event, experienced by real people for whom the disaster seemed to affect every part of their world, limited as that world was.

With multiple re-tellings of the story, the story was changed, embellished; parts removed and parts added.

Examining the origins of a myth is every bit as valid as examining the myth itself. Simply hand-waving away any discussion that doesn't fit the precise wording of the myth is tantamount to the suppression of opinion.

To quote Sagan;

"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavour of science."

 

[DOC]

'if the Book of Genesis has been changed from the original scripture, as you yourself have claimed elsewhere in this thread

You must have me confused with someone else.

and if that original scripture is lost to history,

Almost always is the case in ancient documents, which you probably know. And is probably the reason why the only written documentation of Alexander the Great (the man who conquered Jerusalem, Palestine, and much of the known world) comes from a single offhand comment in a letter whereas all the other written documents about his life come from writers writing over 300 years after his death.

then how can you possibly know that the changed 'copies' that we read today are still a trustable source?'

Manuscript Support for the Bible's Reliability by Ron Rhodes

"The Dead Sea Scrolls prove the accuracy of the transmission of the Bible.
In fact, in these scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947, we have Old Testament manuscripts that date about a thousand years earlier (150 B.C.) than the other Old Testament manuscripts then in our possession (which dated to A.D. 900).
The significant thing is that when one compares the two sets of manuscripts, it is clear that they are essentially the same, with very few changes.
The fact that manuscripts separated by a thousand years are essentially the same indicates the incredible accuracy of the Old Testament's manuscript transmission. A full copy of the Book of Isaiah was discovered at Qumran.
Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (A.D. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text." The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling." From manuscript discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Christians have undeniable evidence that today's Old Testament Scripture, for all practical purposes, is exactly the same as it was when originally inspired by God and recorded in the Bible.

http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/Manuscript.html

 

[DOC]

Yes. I confused the lot story with Noah. So much depravity amongst the "good" in the bible, it is hard to keep it straight.

Which is evidence for the truth of the biblical accounts. They report both the good and the bad unlike a ruler or country which minimalizes the bad or simply don't record it at all.

 

[joobz]

Which is evidence for the truth of the biblical accounts. They report both the good and the bad unlike a ruler or country which minimalize the bad or simply don't record it at all.

That's a really really really stupid argument, and it isn't made any better upon
repetition.

God rewards the depraved. nice message.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Which is evidence for the truth of the biblical accounts. They report both the good and the bad unlike a ruler or country which minimalizes the bad or simply don't record it at all.

You really think everything that happened was recorded, bad or good?

 

[RoboTimbo]

DOC, since you've admitted that the flood myth could have been based on exaggerations of local or regional floods, that the entire world wasn't flooded, what was the point of this thread again? Other than your evidence that the Bible isn't inerrant, I mean.

Did you have other questions now that you know that fossils on top of mountains have nothing to do with any flood myths?

 

[Craig B]

<snip misleading nonsense> From manuscript discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Christians have undeniable evidence that today's Old Testament Scripture, for all practical purposes, is exactly the same as it was when originally inspired by God and recorded in the Bible.http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/Manuscript.html

What in this context can "for all practical purposes" possibly mean? Is it exactly the same and thus evidently protected from error by God, or is it not exactly the same and therefore merely transmitted by competent and careful scribes exercising human powers and skills? Answer from your own tendentious texts: it's not exactly the same. Isaiah, for example (as your own post cites) exhibits 5% differences between DSS and the later canonical MT. Here are other observations on the same topic:

The version of the text is generally in agreement with the Masoretic or traditional version codified in medieval codices, such as the Aleppo Codex, but it contains many variant readings, alternative spellings, scribal errors, and corrections.

http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah

Indeed, one of the most important contributions of the scrolls is that they have demonstrated the relative stability of the Masoretic text. Nevertheless, there are differences (some quite significant) between the scrolls and the Masoretic text.

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/.../the-masoretic-text-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls/

While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Language_and_script Very evidently, biblical texts have been preserved and transmitted by unaided human beings.

ETA By the way, your source, Ron Rhodes, is President of Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries.

Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries is a teaching and resource ministry that specializes in defending Christianity against atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the cults, world religions, and any group teaching false doctrine. This ministry produces concise materials that enable Christians to defend their faith.

And here's his tax deductible donations page, in case anyone's interested. http://www.ronrhodes.addr.com/donate.html

 

[smartcooky]

Did you have other questions now that you know that fossils on top of mountains have nothing to do with any flood myths?

Good question, and one that I would also like an answer to!

 

[smartcooky]

It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100. http://www.ronrhodes.addr.com/donate.html

...and that means the Sumerian creation and flood myths, written down on clay tablets in the "Eridu Genesis" excavated from Nippur last century actually pre-date any written account of the OT by about 1700 years, during the first Babylonian dynasty.

It is clear evidence that the biblical account of the flood could have been inspired by earlier accounts of a local flood on the Tigris/Euphrates flood plain.

 

[pakeha]

He knows this. Creationists and ID proponents fall back on the ¹⁴C dating limitations all the time, as if scientists date the age of the fossil record solely by ¹⁴C radiometric dating.

You can repeatedly point-out that ¹⁴C dating is not used to date fossils millions of years old, and they'll still make false appeals to the limitations of ¹⁴C dating. Doc has done so at least a half-dozen times even after being edified.

True.
But the fact is that DOC now appears to be admitting the dating methods used for rocks are actually reliable.

Which is evidence for the truth of the biblical accounts. They report both the good and the bad unlike a ruler or country which minimalizes the bad or simply don't record it at all.

DOC, it's been pointed out Noah's drunkenness and the subsequent curse, especially in light of that earlier Sumerian account I quoted earlier, is just a reworking of that story.
A reworking that justifying the subjugation of Canaan, to boot.
And the enslavement of the descendants of Ham.

What in this context can "for all practical purposes" possibly mean?...

Bookmarked.

... from wiki

...It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100. ...

and that means the Sumerian creation and flood myths, written down on clay tablets in the "Eridu Genesis" excavated from Nippur last century actually pre-date any written account of the OT by about 1700 years, during the first Babylonian dynasty.

It is clear evidence that the biblical account of the flood could have been inspired by earlier accounts of a local flood on the Tigris/Euphrates flood plain.

Too true.
So we're left with what, then, in regards those fossils of the OP and the biblical account of the flood?

I mean, other than that the thread has served to learn, among other things, the meaning of Japhet's name.

And a great deal about how fossils are formed.

 

[DOC]

I'm sure that everyone also remembers that you only introduced the link after deceptively editing Gawdzilla's post to imply that he was talking about carbon dating...

Well this makes about the 15th time (since I've been on this system) someone assumed the worse, and falsely accused me of something . Actually the reason I put {Carbon} dating in there was because I knew a derailing series of joke attempts would ensue if it just said dating.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Well this makes about the 15th time (since I've been on this system) someone assumed the worse, and falsely accused me of something . Actually the reason I put {Carbon} dating in there was because I knew a derailing series of joke attempts would ensue if it just said dating.

Damage control failure. The red herring fail wasn't recovered by the deflection attempt. You expressed poor knowledge of the whole dating methodology.

 

[DOC]

DOC, since you've admitted that the flood myth could have been based on exaggerations of local or regional floods...

Skeptics lose credibility when they continue to misrepresent what I say. Please reply directly to my posts, which you didn't do.

 

[Akhenaten]

Where's that one from, Pharaoh, may your light shine forever upon us? I dug out some fish from the Solnhofen limestones that look very similar, not anatomically, but regarding the underlying rock and the color of the fossil itself.

Looks like the Green River Formation to me. It's famous for its fish fossils.

100% correct (naturally). It's an Eocene herring (Genus: Knightia) from the "18-inch layer" in the Fossil Lake area of the Green River formation.

 

[Akhenaten]

The whole point is that they could be. The biblical global flood myth could have been based on a real event, experienced by real people for whom the disaster seemed to affect every part of their world, limited as that world was.

I rather thought that the whole point is that no story ever told by anyone, anywhere in the ancient world deals with the events that led to the occurrence of fossils of swimmy things in the mountains of Lebanon and Peru, which were already where they are now tens of millions of years before human beings first appeared.