Survey about creationism

[MRT144]

aparently boris has never watched water world

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by MRT144
aparently boris has never watched water world

I am, after all, a man of good taste.

[Jaguar]

When you take into account that the "flood story" probably originated somewhere in the ME, it's not ridiculous to assume that water covered a small but low area and the people who survived thought that most of the world had been covered. After years of spreading the tale, it became exaggerated into the whole world being covered.


Summary: I don't take the Bible seriously, but I don't think that it is a work of fiction.

[Shi Huangdi]

I thought the latest estimates for the universes' age is about 13.7 billion

[Robert]

I'll be a good creationist and answer to these question,
ready to take all your insults. Promise me one thing, make sure the insults and the name callings are creative and not the usual general predictable boring stuff. Entertain me, and I'll entertain you

1. How old is the Universe?
I have no clue. The Bible doesn't answer that question.
I'll wait with following the scientific age as soon as they have calculated the final age.

2. How old is the Earth?
Same answer as to 1.


3. How old is life?
about 6000 years + the period before the fall.
(could be billions of years )

4. Was there a Flood? If there was, when?
around 5000 years ago.

5. Was there one Ice Age or more? When?
Nope.

UR or PH added two questions (I always confuse them with each other. I'm sorry)

1. Where did the water come from?
The classic theory is that all the water was kept in the athmosphere as some kind of a belt around the world, resulting in a very different climate than the current climate.

2. Where did it all go?
Into the oceans and under the land.

[Ben Kenobi]

Tingkai:

Do Christians' have to write the LORD's name in all caps? Is it the same thing with GOD? And why don't they write THE LORD, or at least The LORD, instead of just The Lord? And will I go to hell if I use all lower case when writing the lord, or god?

Good question, I'm glad you asked.

The Lord = Christ
The LORD = YHWH

This is the reason for the naming convention used by the NIV to distinguish between terms.

If you read the original languages, there will be no need to distinguish between Lord and LORD because there will be two different words.

How do they know it was more than 20 feet? Maybe it was only more than 15, or more than 50. Was Noah out there doing scientific measurements?

The same way they used to do soundings before we had sonar, by attaching a weight to rope, and letting the rope go until you hit bottom. Wind up the rope, and there you go, a sounding measurement for the depth of the water.

[Ben Kenobi]

Thanks Cybershy for responding to Boris' questions.


Frogman:

So close, now how about Gen 6:4 and Num 13:33? There were survivors of the Flood in that area. Certainly people and animals around the Globe survived whatever happened in Noah's part of the world.

Genesis 6:4

"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days-and also afterward-when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown."

Before the flood they existed, but what of after?

In context:

Numbers 31-33

"But the men who had gone up with him said, 'We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are.' And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." '

Did the Nephilim survive the flood? No. The people of great size resembled the Nephilim in stature. The scouts reported falsely out of fear and lack of trust in God. Their sin caused Israel to wander in the desert for 40 years rather than entering Canaan.

Strict creationists just boggle my mind. Yeah, the world is full of evil when everyone's a vegetarian.

Why not? Isn't eating meat delicious?

And what, God's pissed he made a mistake? What kind of omnipotent, omniscient God is that?

Man sinned, prompting God to grieve and consider the complete destruction of humanity. Do you blame God for creating man in the first place Frogman?

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by skywalker
I'll sum my answers up in one sentence: Creationism is blatantly false, and the existance of God is subject to Occam's Razor: whether or not it is true has no discernable effect, and therefore can be said to be untrue.

Occam's Razor doesn't work on that level. It is more for the case when you have two theories which both perfectly well explain the data: the theory with 2 parameters is more likely to be true than the one with 10.

But in more complex cases you get into trouble with 'simpler'.

For example, then model building in particle physics, it is much much much simpler to assume that the couplings in the theory are real numbers (rather than complex numbers). Usually these models are pretty good at describing physics at the modern generation of particle colliders (with some exceptions). But real parameters means no CP-violation, so the number of anti-particles is conserved and you can't explain why the universe is made up of matter rather than antimatter.

The same flaw holds for supersymmetry. The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model is a lot more complicated than the non-sypersymmetric one, but most physicists think the world is supersymmetric. One could argue that supersymmetry is 'simpler' since it is more aesthetically pleasing to some., but then we are really questioning the definition of 'simpler'.

I would, in the same spirit, claim that a universe with God is 'simpler' than one without, so by Occam's Razor, God must exist.

A flawed argument I think.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
there's no repeated stories of global fires... there are, however, repeated stories of global floods.

Is that true? I heard it said many times, but is it really true?

I know of some Chinese stories that involve floods, but no legends of any great flood that covered all of the land. Mind you, I don't know a lot of the Chinese legends.

Are there other cultures that have legends about a great flood similar to the bible's flood?

[Robert]

Are there other cultures that have legends about a great flood similar to the bible's flood?

http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/titania.htm

http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/puck.htm

While the differences are not always trivial, the common essence of the stories is instructive as compiled below:

Is there a favored family? 88%
Were they forewarned? 66%
Is flood due to wickedness of man? 66%
Is catastrophe only a flood? 95%
Was flood global? 95%
Is survival due to a boat? 70%
Were animals also saved? 67%
Did animals play any part? 73%
Did survivors land on a mountain? 57%
Was the geography local? 82%
Were birds sent out? 35%
Was the rainbow mentioned? 7%
Did survivors offer a sacrifice? 13%
Were specifically eight persons saved? 9%

http://www.icr.org/newsletters/drjohn/drjohnsept01.html

[-=Vagrant=-]

Originally posted by CyberShy
5. Was there one Ice Age or more? When?
Nope.

So, you disagree with Answers in Genesis and ICR websites about the fact of an Ice Age? Interesting. You're the first one say anything like this.

[Robert]

apparently

[Lincoln]

I am a cross between CyperShy and Rogan Josh (see his first post on page one). As far as a flood goes there is ample evidence for it. When it occured I do not know but the logistics are no problem. The God of the Bible is a God of the supernatural. Asking where the water went or came from is absurd in that context. He claims to be the creator so the question is irrelevant. But if you study the grand canyon you will find ample evidence of large amounts of water and the erosion it caused for example.

[Frogman]

from obiwan

Did the Nephilim survive the flood? No. The people of great size resembled the Nephilim in stature. The scouts reported falsely out of fear and lack of trust in God. Their sin caused Israel to wander in the desert for 40 years rather than entering Canaan.

What part of "We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). " leads you to say that? You are ignoring the plain statement and twisting it to meet your own understanding. Your interpretation has no Biblical basis. Many scholars have looked at this, and it is not so easy to dismiss. Thats why its usually ignored.

Man sinned, prompting God to grieve and consider the complete destruction of humanity. Do you blame God for creating man in the first place Frogman?

I don't blame God for anything. Its just a pathetic vision of God. He creates all the beauty of the universe, and the earth, and the balance of nature, and he tops it off with mankind only to be disappointed in the end? Of all the people on the earth I can't believe Noah and his family were the only decent people. Noah was prone to getting drunk, he wasn't perfect. Plus it didn't fix anything. People are just as sinful later. This God of yours needs some therapy.

Why not? Isn't eating meat delicious?

Yeah, laugh it off. Thats the only way you can anwer this ridiculous belief that we were all vegetarian before Noah.

[Robert]

Originally posted by Lincoln
I am a cross between CyperShy and Rogan Josh

What I didn't say is that the '6000 years' on my side is not a dogma.
I can easily see how it can have been billions of years, since God is not dependant on time. And I can see that the people who wrote the OT have made mistakes on this as well.

But as long as there's no reason for me to doubt the OT, I'll stick to it.

And no, scientists are no good reason to doubt, since they're as human as the writers of the OT.
In that case I prefer to listen to the eye-witnesses.