Survey about creationism

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
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.

That's not possibly true. Suppose this god is nothing (0), you still get a universe the same before.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by CyberShy
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.

Lets say there should be enough water to raise the water table by 8900 metres. Now, the mean radius of the earth is 6371 km, so a simple caculation (volume of a sphere is 4/3 * pi * r³) yields 4545875135 km³ of water hanging in the atmosphere somewhere.

Consider that when you go dive 10 meters (33 ft), the pressure increases by 1 ATM. Lets say this water was hanging out in the really high altitude atmosphere, so that it was only 5000 metres thick. That adds about 500 ATM pressure to the surface.

You're right, the climate would be very different. In fact, all lifeforms would have been crushed.

Originally posted by CyberShy
2. Where did it all go?
Into the oceans and under the land.

Show me how to hide 4545875135 km³ of water.

[Frogman]

Originally posted by obiwan18

You have to look at the context of any statement before you can see where it is coming from. Should we trust the scouts looking at Canaan, when their actions cause Israel to wander in the desert for forty years?

The scouts didn't write this, Moses did. So, he was wrong?

Now, cite a source please that has a different interpretation than mine. This is no different than what my church teaches on this point.

The Oxford Bible Companion, by Bruce Metzger, "it is not clear why or how the nephilim survived the flood to become the original Canaanites."

Yeah, God is so pathetic that he created mankind with all their flaws. Would you prefer sinless automatons? Noah doesn't have to be sinless to find favour in the eyes of God.

Its not a question of being sinless, its about God accepting his creation as he made it without getting so pissed off. If he found Noah to be OK, surely there would have been others. Forget the science of the flood, just look at what your making God out to be.

But not as sinful, sin has lessened since the flood. God made a covenant with Noah, and later with Abraham, all encouraging the growth of those who do follow his ways. I'm amazed that God still loves people despite our sinfulness.

Sin lessened since the flood? Its amazing how you can speak with such certainty about things you can't prove.

That's a different point from before. Before you said that the bible taught vegetarianism is the root of all evil.

The passage in question:

Genesis 1:29

Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.


Why is this interpretation ridiculous? Can't people survive on a vegetarian diet?

People can, but lions and tigers and alligators probably not. Again, you may not believe this, but many literalists do. The problem with creationists is that many of them take a much more extreme view than people would imagine.

I don't think evolution explains it all. I don't mind teaching the possibility that God's hand guided the creation of species, but I don't want kids being told dinosaurs were on the ark and T-Rex was a vegetarian.

[Ben Kenobi]

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So God destroys an entire planet-worth of wildlife and fauna, as well as innocents (the babies and children), to test a family? How nice.

No. The test is not in the flood, the test is in the building of the ark. Noah could have chosen to ignore God, and not build the ark, but instead, he trusted God, and his family was saved.

And why is God constantly testing people through subjecting them to misery? Is he horribly insecure, sadistic, or both?

Is it sadistic for Noah to build an ark? No.

You'll notice I was referring to large localized floods as not being miraculous (i.e. the Black Sea flood). You do tend to take a lot of things out of context in these arguments...

Should have been clearer. Which interpretation do you feel fits the biblical quotes better, a localised flood or a worldwide flood?

[Ben Kenobi]

The scouts didn't write this, Moses did. So, he was wrong?

Moses got the quote right, in that the scouts really did testify that they saw what they believed to be the Nephilim. Whether the scouts were correct in their assessment is another question entirely.

Its not a question of being sinless, its about God accepting his creation as he made it without getting so pissed off. If he found Noah to be OK, surely there would have been others.

Could there have been? One family out of the entire world who obeys God? I don't think you understand the enormity of the problem God faced before the flood with humanity's sin.

Sin lessened since the flood? Its amazing how you can speak with such certainty about things you can't prove.

Again, people do not think only evil thoughts, as testified before the flood. Therefore, I conclude that sin is less today than before the flood.

I don't think evolution explains it all. I don't mind teaching the possibility that God's hand guided the creation of species, but I don't want kids being told dinosaurs were on the ark and T-Rex was a vegetarian.

Okay. I'm fine with that. I think that the passage is restricted to human beings eating the plants instead of animals.

The Oxford Bible Companion, by Bruce Metzger, "it is not clear why or how the nephilim survived the flood to become the original Canaanites."

Good point. Now lets see what some others say about this difficult passage.

"And so that word “Nephilim” is describing them. Later on, when the spies went into the land and they came back to report what they had seen, they simply said, “There are Nephilim there.” They didn’t mean that they were the children of Nephilim, as if they were a race. “Nephilim,” because of its usage here, was sort of a word that they all knew was in the scripture and they knew that it referred to giants. And so when they came back and wanted to report that essentially the Canaanites were unconquerable, they simply said, “They’re Nephilim.” They just took that word in its generic sense-in its general meaning-rather than having it refer to some race."

http://www.biblebb.com/files/macqa/70-20-3.htm

No difference from what I said earlier.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Kontiki


Please share some of this "ample evidence" with us.

He's likely referring to Austin's work, which has already been shown to be false by the experts. He follows the typical Creationist line of finding a few minor things "unreasonable" (in his opinion) with the prevailing scientific theory, posits a new theory that is wildly unreasonable and full of outright mistakes/misinformation, and then concludes that since his theory is "possible," for some reason we should accept it over the prevailing scientific theory, which is actually, to any rational person, far superior.

Obiwan:

You're hairsplitting. If the test was just so Noah would build a big boat and follow God's commands, and for that God created the impossible worldwide flood and slaughtered millions, how does that make any more sense? Couldn't God have tested Noah sans requiring such feats of miraculousness?

As for my opinion of the flood (which should be pretty obvious), I gave it that post: flood myths in many cultures in the ME could be based on the large Black Sea flood of about 10,000 years ago, or another such event coming off the end of an ice age. But there was certainly no world-wide flood that covered everything as the Bible describes (if taken literally).

Speaking of the Ark...just how did Noah build a vessel that big? Since a wooden ship that big wouldn't even be possible, and since during the length of time required to build it, the wood would rot into crap faster than he could build it, there are some big logical holes there as well. Not to mention cramming 2 (or 7?) of "everything that creepeth" into it.

Oh wait, God just worked more miracles...right...

[Ben Kenobi]

You're hairsplitting. If the test was just so Noah would build a big boat and follow God's commands, and for that God created the impossible worldwide flood and slaughtered millions, how does that make any more sense? Couldn't God have tested Noah sans requiring such feats of miraculousness?

Not if he wants to do both, to test Noah before the Flood.

But there was certainly no world-wide flood that covered everything as the Bible describes (if taken literally).

Just making sure that I have your position correct. Do you believe that these passages are to be interpreted literally?

Speaking of the Ark...just how did Noah build a vessel that big? Since a wooden ship that big wouldn't even be possible, and since during the length of time required to build it, the wood would rot into crap faster than he could build it, there are some big logical holes there as well. Not to mention cramming 2 (or 7?) of "everything that creepeth" into it.

Here's the exact quote you are striving to recall.

Genesis 7:2-3

Take with you seven [1] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

Secondly, would the wood rot unless exposed to water?
I don't think the wood would rot over the course of building the ark.

Third, How large was the ark?

Genesis 6:14-15

So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.

How is this impossible to build? Difficult, but not impossible.

[Frogman]

"the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim"

Thats not a description of size, its a statement of geneology. I looked at the site Obiwan posted and its the best attempt to twist an differing interpretation I've seen so far. Not entirely convincing to me, but I don't believe the flood was worldwide anyway.

[Ben Kenobi]

Do you want me to quote others?

I don't mind.
Constable says precisely the same thing that I do, that the testimony of the spies, regarding the size of the Canaanites is untrustworthy.

That's two people who 'twist' the passage for their own intent.

Thats not a description of size, its a statement of geneology.

No, that's a statement of size. "I saw the descendents of Anak. They were Nephilim." That is what this passage is saying.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Not if he wants to do both, to test Noah before the Flood.

Which still does not explain why God, Mr. Omnipotence, would choose such a ridiculously convoluted method of wiping out evil people/testing Noah. Surely he could have devised a way to test Noah that didn't require God to violate every law he himself supposedly created, and didn't require him (for whatever inexplicable reason) to cover up this event. How about a plague that kills everyone, except Noah, to whom God has clued in on an medical cure/preventative? Any number of things that don't require God to go through the hoops he does for a worldwide flood.

Just making sure that I have your position correct. Do you believe that these passages are to be interpreted literally?

For pete's sake, I've been holding the position that you can't take the Bible literally all along!

Here's the exact quote you are striving to recall.

Genesis 7:2-3

Take with you seven [1] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

Don't forget Genesis 7:8, which says "everything that creepeth on the ground." That includes insects. Indeed, insects would have to have been aboard the Ark as well to survive a global flood. On top of that, He had to take every species that was alive at the time, which would be more than today, due to extinctions. Young-earth creationists would also have to account for the Dinosaurs.

Right...now I ask you, how many animals are there in the world, and how many could fit in a ship that is, as you say, 450 X 75 X 45? Now, we are also talking thousands of species of insects, too. A very generous low-end figure would probably be around 30,000 animals. Now, on a boat 450 feet long?

Secondly, would the wood rot unless exposed to water?
I don't think the wood would rot over the course of building the ark.

Absolutely it would. The wood would be exposed to water just by being in the open air, and it took Noah 90-120 years to build the Ark. You try and build a ship in that time and see how well the wood holds up over contruction without modern treatment methods.

Third, How large was the ark?

Genesis 6:14-15

So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.

How is this impossible to build? Difficult, but not impossible.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#building

"Wood is not the best material for shipbuilding. It is not enough that a ship be built to hold together; it must also be sturdy enough that the changing stresses don't open gaps in its hull. Wood is simply not strong enough to prevent separation between the joints, especially in the heavy seas that the Ark would have encountered. The longest wooden ships in modern seas are about 300 feet, and these require reinforcing with iron straps and leak so badly they must be constantly pumped. The ark was 450 feet long [ Gen. 6:15]. Could an ark that size be made seaworthy?"

Considering they didn't have modern shipbuilding methods, I'd say building the Ark was pretty near impossible. On top of that, the sheer force required of the deluge to add that much water in 40 days would have easily annhilated the Ark and everything else. It would have crumbled mountains.

None this even touches, of course, on the geological problems of the flood (i.e., how come there are varying ages of mountains? Why aren't the Sierra Nevadas as eroded as the Appalachians?)

[Lincoln]

Someone (I forgot who) asked about some of the evidence in the Grand Canyon. Here is some of it:

The Grand Canyon limestones contain grains of quartz sand, which can't be dissolved from calm water, and sand-size or larger shell fragments. These larger grains imply the influence of moving water, not the placid shallow seas envisioned by uniformitarians. The Redwall Limestone of Nautiloid Canyon, a side tributary of Grand Canyon, contains many fossils of nautiloids, large marine mollusks having straight cigar-shaped shells up to two feet long. These were not deposited randomly, but are oriented in alignment with each other... this alignment shows they were deposited within water that was moving rapidly -- another argument against the placid epeiric seas proposed by uniformitarians.

... Dr. Leonard Brand performed detailed experiments to verify how the Coconino Sandstone's quadruped footprint trackways may have been produced. Brand's conclusion was that, almost certainly, these were made by newt-like animals walking under water and being pushed sideways by a current. The most common belief of uniformitarian geologists, that of the sand having been lithified from desert sand dunes, was ruled out completely. Geology Professor Glen Visher (not a creationist) showed that these sands must have been from underwater "sand waves." Both of these conclusions fit the Great Flood model better than the uniformitarian model.

...argument against the evolutionist's Geologic Column explanation for Grand Canyon is the sequence of strata that are easily visible. The entire Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras are completely missing. The top several formations are classified as of Permian age (about 250 million years). The usual expectation of geologists would call for Pennsylvanian to be below that, but this too is completely missing. Next down is the Redstone Limestone, which is classed as Mississippian age (345-325 million years old). Below that should come Devonian, then Silurian, then Ordovician (totalling over 150 million years), but they are completely missing except for a few small lenses of Devonian resembling Karst topography. Instead, the Redwall is resting directly on the Muav Limestone, which has many trilobites and other Cambrian fossils. And, what is worse, on the north side of the Canyon there are several alternating layers of Cambrian Muav interspersed between layers of Mississippian Redstone. This interbedding of two periods widely separated in supposed age cannot be explained by the uniformitarian geologist...

==========================

Unfortunately I do not have time to thoroughly debate this now.

[Ben Kenobi]

Surely he could have devised a way to test Noah that didn't require God to violate every law he himself supposedly created,

Violate every law?
Hardly.

Violate one or two?
Perhaps.

I would like to see you try coming up with an alternative scenario, that accomplishes the same things.

For pete's sake, I've been holding the position that you can't take the Bible literally all along!

So it's a local flood then. Why do you hold this portion of the bible to a literal interpretation?

Right...now I ask you, how many animals are there in the world, and how many could fit in a ship that is, as you say, 450 X 75 X 45? Now, we are also talking thousands of species of insects, too. A very generous low-end figure would probably be around 30,000 animals. Now, on a boat 450 feet long?

What is the average size of these animals?

Doing the math of 30,000 animals, I'd bet the average size would be less than 1 cubic foot.

The total volume of the ark would be 1,518,750 cubic feet.

This would give 50.625 cubic feet on average for each animal. Plenty of room.

Absolutely it would. The wood would be exposed to water just by being in the open air, and it took Noah 90-120 years to build the Ark. You try and build a ship in that time and see how well the wood holds up over contruction without modern treatment methods.

There are a few problems Boris, with the Biblical account. First off, not much information is provided about the type of wood used for the boat. This plays a huge factor as to whether or not the wood will rot and how fast this will occur.

Secondly, we don't know the contents of the word translated as 'pitch' to treat the wood. It is entirely reasonable for the people of these times to coat the wood with a substance that will withstand rot.

Thirdly, we do not know whether Iron reinforced the hull or not. There is nothing in the biblical account that confirms or denies this addition.

On top of that, the sheer force required of the deluge to add that much water in 40 days would have easily annhilated the Ark and everything else. It would have crumbled mountains.

Dispersed over the entire surface area of the earth? You have to take this into account.

Sure wish we had the purported 'Book of Noah,' now lost. I'll bet that we would have better answers to some of your questions.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by obiwan18

What is the average size of these animals?

Doing the math of 30,000 animals, I'd bet the average size would be less than 1 cubic foot.

The total volume of the ark would be 1,518,750 cubic feet.

This would give 50.625 cubic feet on average for each animal. Plenty of room.

What did the animals eat? Air?

Elephants consume quite a lot. Cows, buffaloes, giant pandas, shrews have to eat voraciously (even though small), anteaters, yada yada yada. I'm sorry, obiwan, but the flood story as literal truth is just plain silly.

As a folk memory of the Black Sea, or the Mediterranean basin filling up, possibly. But a worldwide flood? Also- if god could test Job without resorting to slaying the rest of humanity, why not do the same with Noah?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Lincoln
The Grand Canyon limestones contain grains of quartz sand, which can't be dissolved from calm water, and sand-size or larger shell fragments. These larger grains imply the influence of moving water, not the placid shallow seas envisioned by uniformitarians.

Did we have a total moron writing this stuff here? After all, rivers carry stuff into the seas. Even an eight year old knows.

Originally posted by Lincoln
The Redwall Limestone of Nautiloid Canyon, a side tributary of Grand Canyon, contains many fossils of nautiloids, large marine mollusks having straight cigar-shaped shells up to two feet long. These were not deposited randomly, but are oriented in alignment with each other... this alignment shows they were deposited within water that was moving rapidly -- another argument against the placid epeiric seas proposed by uniformitarians.

Cite? Images?

The funny thing is the writer didn't know Grand Canyon isn't a river. Only rivers have tributaries. That mistake is big enough to discredit the rest of this whole drivel.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Lets say there should be enough water to raise the water table by 8900 metres. Now, the mean radius of the earth is 6371 km, so a simple caculation (volume of a sphere is 4/3 * pi * r³) yields 4545875135 km³ of water hanging in the atmosphere somewhere.

Consider that when you go dive 10 meters (33 ft), the pressure increases by 1 ATM. Lets say this water was hanging out in the really high altitude atmosphere, so that it was only 5000 metres thick. That adds about 500 ATM pressure to the surface.

You're right, the climate would be very different. In fact, all lifeforms would have been crushed.

Show me how to hide 4545875135 km³ of water.

Lincoln, obiwan, could you kindly resolve these nagging problems with regards to a global flood?