paximperium
Penultimate Amazing
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Why yes. The evolution of the Volvocine Algae is a classic example:
http://eebweb.arizona.edu/Michod/Downloads/Darwins Eye.pdf
The Deluge
- Thread starter David Henson
- Start date
http://eebweb.arizona.edu/Michod/Downloads/Darwins Eye.pdf
Where is your dating?
Paul
It's been established already by science, I am using what they are using, it's also obvious since the last layers laid down according to how old the scientist say they are, it's common sense?
I’m not talking about sand stone or shale, I am talking about those layers that are still sand.
Loose not compressed, into rock.
The closest to the top of the column, I showed you movies and pictures, heck I showed you pictures of geologists digging in those layers, do you not see where they are digging?
You need to go out and look for yourself.
They are three layers down, in the black mat, the next one down is loose too, the next mat layer. As you go down it gets older.
Two extictions during the mammal age.
Ladewig
I lost an avatar bet.
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I have to withdraw this claim. While I can find lots of information on radiocarbon dating the Giza Pryamids, I have been unable to find radiocarbon dates for other pyramids and structures. There are still scores of problems with Mr. Henson's timeline and therefore no reason to believe in a recent worldwide flood.
Paulhoff
You can't expect perfection.
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Where are you test, common sense has nothig to do with testing. Common sense says time doesn't slow down with speed.
Paul
Paulhoff
You can't expect perfection.
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Oh, and what does that have to do with a flood, and that was large mammal extictions, and not everywhere in the world. Seems like there are still elephants, hippos, giraffes etc.
Paul
Shalamar
Dark Lord of the JREF
Ok... Lets look at this purely scientifically.. At least as best we can.
We have a premise: The Earth was affected with a massive flood that covered all the land a few thousand years ago.
Let us consider the major point of evidence:
The Bible says this happened.
Evidence that the Bible is true?: The Bible says it is true.
This doesn't really hold up, but lets take the premise as true: There was a global Flood.
From this premise, we can make some testable, observable hypotheses:
Hypothesis: The flood would have caused a major silt layer in recent geologic history. This silt layer would also potentially contain the remains of animals and people killed in the flood.
Test: No silt layer in geologic history is present.
Hypothesis: The result of such a flood, with a small number of surviving animals and people would point to a genetic bottleneck. Not just in humans, but in animals as well, all pointing to the same recent timeframe.
Test: No such bottleneck exists.
Hypothesis: The spread of all animals (At least terrestrial ones) from one very specific point on the globe to all others in very short time frame would be observed through both animal remains (Kangaroos in the middle east, for example), or through observations of the local peoples that may have been recorded.
Test: No such observations exist.
Hypothesis: All ancient civilizations would have abruptly ended at the time of the flood.
Test: While many ancient civilizations did end.. They seem to have all ended at different timeframes. And none at a purported flood.
Hypothesis: Many civilizations have a story of a great flood.
Test: This is true! Many civilizations do have stories of massive flooding! But there are many that also do not. As well, since early settlements occurred in flood plains for the richness of the soil, this would not be unheard of.
Conclusion: Uncertain. The evidence points rather strongly at there NOT having been a global flood covering the entire earth, but what is more likely are were local floods that may well have looked like the entire region was covered. As time went on, these stories could have been expanded, and increased to the modern flood story we now have.
In short: You should not use just one source to prove a point. In this case, the bible. If the flood story were true, there would be more evidence than just the writing. And in fact, there are likely many more testable hypothesis that one can use to test that accuracy, and I encourage anyone to do so. That is what science is, after all. Don't take it for face value. Go out and do the work yourself, if possible!
We have a premise: The Earth was affected with a massive flood that covered all the land a few thousand years ago.
Let us consider the major point of evidence:
The Bible says this happened.
Evidence that the Bible is true?: The Bible says it is true.
This doesn't really hold up, but lets take the premise as true: There was a global Flood.
From this premise, we can make some testable, observable hypotheses:
Hypothesis: The flood would have caused a major silt layer in recent geologic history. This silt layer would also potentially contain the remains of animals and people killed in the flood.
Test: No silt layer in geologic history is present.
Hypothesis: The result of such a flood, with a small number of surviving animals and people would point to a genetic bottleneck. Not just in humans, but in animals as well, all pointing to the same recent timeframe.
Test: No such bottleneck exists.
Hypothesis: The spread of all animals (At least terrestrial ones) from one very specific point on the globe to all others in very short time frame would be observed through both animal remains (Kangaroos in the middle east, for example), or through observations of the local peoples that may have been recorded.
Test: No such observations exist.
Hypothesis: All ancient civilizations would have abruptly ended at the time of the flood.
Test: While many ancient civilizations did end.. They seem to have all ended at different timeframes. And none at a purported flood.
Hypothesis: Many civilizations have a story of a great flood.
Test: This is true! Many civilizations do have stories of massive flooding! But there are many that also do not. As well, since early settlements occurred in flood plains for the richness of the soil, this would not be unheard of.
Conclusion: Uncertain. The evidence points rather strongly at there NOT having been a global flood covering the entire earth, but what is more likely are were local floods that may well have looked like the entire region was covered. As time went on, these stories could have been expanded, and increased to the modern flood story we now have.
In short: You should not use just one source to prove a point. In this case, the bible. If the flood story were true, there would be more evidence than just the writing. And in fact, there are likely many more testable hypothesis that one can use to test that accuracy, and I encourage anyone to do so. That is what science is, after all. Don't take it for face value. Go out and do the work yourself, if possible!
Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
Some others do, like the Vikings. Some creationists & flood myth believers actually use this as the basis for a claim that ALL cultures have a flood myth, but some don't. Amazingly, the ones that do come from places that have big rivers that occasionally and unpredictably flood.
Well, since dinosaurs are pretty clearly not reptiles, it would be silly to count them as such. That would be worse than counting platypuses as a type of monkey. If you really need to include dinosaurs in this thing somewhere, it makes more sense to have them account for some of those 74 kinds of "birds" and figure that the word we're now translating as "birds", from whatever language, actually originally included other kinds of dinosaurs as well as birds. Dinosaurs aren't all birds either, but at least they're closer (and birds are dinosaurs), and 74 "kinds" for birds alone seems a bit excessive given how little diversity there is in birds compared to some other groups. (Mammals have more present diversity but fewer "kinds" in this scheme; where did these numbers come from?)
But the Biblical idea of "kinds" creates some more trouble. Let's just focus on the mammals for now. There are 29 orders, so the Biblical kinds can contain one or two orders apiece. Some orders contain only one species, but others contain a bunch. One order contains all canines (including bears), felines, weaseles/martens/badgers/minks/mongooses/ferrets/wolverines, raccoons, pandas, otters, and seals & sea lions & walruses; another order contains the horses and all horse-like critters plus tapirs and rhinoceroses; and another order contains deer, antelope including giraffes, cattle, sheep/goats, pigs/boars, camels, pigs, peccaries, and hippopotamuses. (It could be argued that it should also include whales, porpoises, and dolphins, but not manatees, but I'll leave them out for now.)
OK, so that last list of animals I made all came from one kind, consisting of two (or possibly seven, depending on which Bible verse you accept and which one you discard) individuals a few thousand years ago. That's the amount of diversity that can come from such a small group in such a short time. That leads to some really odd things, though:
1. The rate of evolution that you're telling us must have happened there is EXTREMELY fast, but has now stopped, because we can see that it's not happening at anything like that rate now. Actually, it had already stopped by a few centuries ago, when reliable records of the exact, detailed traits of different species of a wide variety of animal groups started getting recorded. So, why did evolution go so fast at first (producing both pigs and giraffes from a single source in a few thousand years), and then freeze, all over the world?
2. Why did some of the kinds on the Ark, including us, not evolve so much right afterward while others did?
3. Some of these species were mentioned as separate entities from each other, before the flood, in the Bible. Abel is described as raising and sacrificing sheep, not something that would later evolve into cattle and sheep and pigs and so on. Noah is described as taking "cattle" aboard, not something that would later evolve into cattle and sheep and pigs and so on. And he has slightly different instructions for "ritually clean" and "ritually unclean" species, even though clean and unclean species (such as cattle and pigs) descend from what was just one kind back then. Also, ravens and doves are two distinct species aboard the ship. How is it possible to have different species counted and handled separately like this, when they were not yet actually separate kinds of animals from each other? How could the people even have had concepts and names for them when they didn't even exist as separate things yet?
4. Similarly, Genesis describes some human cultures existing before the flood in a way that indicates that those cultures are familiar to the book's post-flood readers. (Jabal was the ancestor of the "herdsmen who live in tents"; Jubal was the ancestor of "those who play the harp and pipe".) But these cultures had no representatives aboard the ship. How did the same cultures, separate from each other and from the culture whose book this was, exist both before and after a flood that wiped out all but one family?
Actually, those numbers are all less than half of their counterparts for the Titanic: 882.75×175×92 (269.1×53.3×28). And you calculation of volume depends on the ship being pretty nearly a rectangular prism, which the Bible doesn't say it was. Yes, boat sizes are often described in terms of length, width, and height, but that doesn't make them rectangular-prismatic in shape; it just means those are the length, width, and height of a boat-shaped object. And if we stick to boat-shaped objects, then having half of the length, width, and height would mean having somewhere around an eighth of the volume.
TraneWreck
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I honestly don't understand this argument being presented to us.
It's a random hodge-podge of science-y sounding things when that bad science seems to support a strained interpretation of a shepherd-tribe's iron age myths.
But when people explain the actual science, it's either ignored or dismissed with more bad science.
Bold David has simply decided that the Bible will be the ultimate arbitrer of what is good science and what isn't, which makes me wonder why he even goes through the effort. Contorting the facts to fit a pre-decided conclusion is as anti-science as one can get, but he wants to use just enough of it so he doesn't sound like a toothless Pentecostal babbling in tongues.
This is a waste of our time, not that I don't appreciate reading the thoughtful posts.
It's a random hodge-podge of science-y sounding things when that bad science seems to support a strained interpretation of a shepherd-tribe's iron age myths.
But when people explain the actual science, it's either ignored or dismissed with more bad science.
Bold David has simply decided that the Bible will be the ultimate arbitrer of what is good science and what isn't, which makes me wonder why he even goes through the effort. Contorting the facts to fit a pre-decided conclusion is as anti-science as one can get, but he wants to use just enough of it so he doesn't sound like a toothless Pentecostal babbling in tongues.
This is a waste of our time, not that I don't appreciate reading the thoughtful posts.
I Ratant
Penultimate Amazing
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It's possible to test one of the stories in the bible right now.
Venus is in its Evening Star position... appearing in the west just as the sun sets, and setting in the west not long after sunset.
One might position oneself to observer Venus just as it touches the horizon, and mark the location, and travel to that location to see which particular dwelling, say, was marked by Venus at the time.
The next evening, starting at the first identified location, do the same, and take care to note that Venus is now marking a location quite to the west of the first.
MOF, were one capable of moving west keeping Venus directly on the horizon at the same rate the earth is rotating, a careful observer might see that -every- setting point for Venus scribes a circle around the surface of the earth, there being no point at which Venus could be said to be hovering, marking a specific dwelling or manger.
Or, instead of chasing Venus, just move north or south from the first night's observing location, and watch the planet set, and mark that location.
Wanna bet it won't be the same?
Science looks at biblical scientific illiteracy.
Venus is in its Evening Star position... appearing in the west just as the sun sets, and setting in the west not long after sunset.
One might position oneself to observer Venus just as it touches the horizon, and mark the location, and travel to that location to see which particular dwelling, say, was marked by Venus at the time.
The next evening, starting at the first identified location, do the same, and take care to note that Venus is now marking a location quite to the west of the first.
MOF, were one capable of moving west keeping Venus directly on the horizon at the same rate the earth is rotating, a careful observer might see that -every- setting point for Venus scribes a circle around the surface of the earth, there being no point at which Venus could be said to be hovering, marking a specific dwelling or manger.
Or, instead of chasing Venus, just move north or south from the first night's observing location, and watch the planet set, and mark that location.
Wanna bet it won't be the same?
Science looks at biblical scientific illiteracy.
Olowkow
Philosopher
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In my humble opinion, some things just are not worth arguing, no matter how tempting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9R-cQ_A_6w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9R-cQ_A_6w
Last edited:
David Henson
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It's possible to test one of the stories in the bible right now.
Venus is in its Evening Star position... appearing in the west just as the sun sets, and setting in the west not long after sunset.
One might position oneself to observer Venus just as it touches the horizon, and mark the location, and travel to that location to see which particular dwelling, say, was marked by Venus at the time.
The next evening, starting at the first identified location, do the same, and take care to note that Venus is now marking a location quite to the west of the first.
MOF, were one capable of moving west keeping Venus directly on the horizon at the same rate the earth is rotating, a careful observer might see that -every- setting point for Venus scribes a circle around the surface of the earth, there being no point at which Venus could be said to be hovering, marking a specific dwelling or manger.
Or, instead of chasing Venus, just move north or south from the first night's observing location, and watch the planet set, and mark that location.
Wanna bet it won't be the same?
Science looks at biblical scientific illiteracy.
EXCELLENT! Now you (Here I tend to use the collective you, meaning the atheists here in general) are thinking!
The star on the beloved Xmas tree of millions of Christians led the astrologers (wise men etc. is a mistranslation) first to Herod, who wanted to kill Jesus by following them, and then to Jesus who, by that time wasn't living in a manger as a baby but was at least 2 years old living in a house . . . that "star" wasn't a star at all, it was Satan leading the astrologers to Herod and then Jesus in order to kill him. That Xmas star is Satan trying to kill Jesus as an infant . . . that how stupid modern day Christianity is.
Nonpareil
The Terrible Trivium
So no response to the long, dedicated posts, then? Thought not.
paximperium
Penultimate Amazing
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The cherry picker is giving cherries a bad name.
dafydd
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What more do you need? There was no flood.
David Henson
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Yours is, as far as I am aware, one of a few thoughtful posts. You really have expressed what a lot of people here seem to be thinking and I don't really want to do this, but I think that I sould start up a new thread in response to this because it isn't specific to this discussion. The New thread will be called "Science, Religion And The Bible."
Simon39759
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And you base that on what part of the Bible? The Matthew account certainly does not give me this impression.
TraneWreck
Philosopher
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You can start all the posts you want, but you're never going to find actual science supporting anything but the most trivial of Biblical claims.
That's not to say you have to give up your faith, but why do you insist on using science when it suits you (sort of) and ignoring it when it doesn't?
Science is a process, not a set of conclusions, like the Bible. That process is applied universally and the results are as they are. You can't decide that certain things gained from that process are ok and others aren't.
Sun Countess
Appearance of intelligence
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I may agree that modern day Christianity is stupid, but your particular bible interpretations aren't any less stupid than those that are generally preached/accepted by other christians.
It must really suck to live in a world where you can ignore all the reality around you in favor of believing that all of this visible world is unimportant in the grand scheme of some invisible supernatural battle between good and evil. Where you're constantly wondering whether something is really the sign of satan or god, having to interpret and reinterpret an ancient book, and search for obscure word origins that just might make something mean something else if you twist and squeeze it precisely. Your whole purpose for living is tied into some weird fantasy realm that you've stitched together from the strings of ancient myth and the whole cloth of your own imagination.
I Ratant
Penultimate Amazing
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.
Your disconnect with reality is both amusing and appalling!
I Ratant
Penultimate Amazing
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No, please, spare us from more of your uneducated stuff.