Creationists PWNED

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by trev
The water mostly came from undergound aquifers which broke open and burst to the surface, probably due to major earthquakes and added to by rain.

Have you calculated the amount of water necessarily to increase sea level by 2000m at the least? Do you know that water in underground aquifers came from the surface?

Originally posted by trev
There is no other plausible explanation for the many layers of coal seams in Victoria (They can not have been deposited over a long period of time because of the presence of massive numbers of tree trunks which individually penetrate through multiple layers of coal).

A local flood works just as well

Originally posted by trev
Movement of tectonic plates resulting in a deepening of the oceans will have allowed water to drain from the earth's surface, allowing the flood to end.

Tectonic plates do not move downwards, because there's other stuff underneath.

Originally posted by trev
In general today erosive processes occur quicker than sedimentation processes, so only a catastrophic event could account for the amount of sedimentation worldwide

This is decidedly unscientific. Don't you realise that surface conditions change all the time?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
The sea depth increase similarly wouldn't crush the fish, they typically adjust to pressure very nicely (sudden changes can cause lethal damage to the swim bladder, but we are talking sudden changes due to winching specimen collecting nets out of th depths).

An 200 atm increase in 40 days is quite extraordinary. I don't think you'd find any fish ranging 2000m of water in depth.

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
What's utterly ridiculous is that it's not in Biology we find evidence of Divine intervention, but in Physics. Some physicists determined that if certain basic forces were different by 0.1 percent - as in .001 - an earth where life could evolve would never have existed.

Yes, that was brought up by some. Though the Weak Anthropic Principle handles it nicely. IOW, it's meaningless to postulate what would happen if basic forces deviate from their current values.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by beingofone
For the most part I agree but I think it is unfair to exclude Evolutionists. They are almost as guilty. They assert without proper facts and study that there is no God. Atheism as well as classic creationism asserts facts that are not proven at all.

About what you are talking?

Atheism is simply rejection of bald assertions.

Originally posted by beingofone
That is just not true. Have you been keeping up with the latest quantum physics models?

Quantum physics does not lead credence to Creationism.

Originally posted by beingofone
A hypothesis is faith.

That cannot be further from the truth. A hypothesis is subjected to testing, your faith does not.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by beingofone
Proteus_MST

I agree with you and Boris.I am not ready to incorporate science to quickly however.It has been wrong almost as much as religion.

It is usually a problem with translation from ancient to modern language. This may sound like a bogus argument unless you have invested the years in study it takes to make an educated opinion on this paticular subject.

Let me give you an example of a recent translation study of mine.

Authorized Version
"Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men."

Aramaic
All types of tangled behavior, the missing and falling, the rips and tears -- all the ways you cut yourself off, break your connection, or disrupt the pattern -- can and will be mended. Sooner or later, you will be freed from error, your mistakes embraced with emptiness, your arrhythmic action returned to the original beat. But your state cannot be mended or repaired, when you cut yourself off from the Source of all rhythm -- the inhaling, the exhaling of all air, wind, and atmosphere, seen and unseen -- the Holy Breath.

So you see language is an extreem barrier. These writers were not the ignorant nomads of the desert that they have been painted to be, just mistranslated and misunderstood.

When I say I have been in school forever. Does that mean literally I have been in an infinite experience of school? I just can`t seem to graduate
This is what is meant buy " the whole world was covered buy a flood".
It was an expression that the fundies choose to make an issue out of. They choose to make the word "world" the literal earth.
BTW just about every ancient Civilization has a record of the Great Flood that covered the whole Earth. Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian etc.

I think you posted all of the problems, most scientists have with christian fundamentalists (who take the bible literal).
As others already mentioned, most scientists have no Problem with a Belief in God and many of them belief in some kind of supernatural being (and/or other things like soul or reincarnation) for themselves.
What makes it hard for most people to ddeal with fundamentalists is, that they claim to possess the whole truth, which is in their bible (to be more specific only in the translation of the bible they possess [for evangelicals most of the times the King James Bible] as all other translations have been tainted by the hands of Satan)
and that everything which contradicts their translation of the bible must therefore by default be false.
As you already stated it is very difficult to translate the bible and therefore it could be that some things have other meanings than those you can find within the translated versions of the bible.
Well, for a fundamentalist these problems don´t seem to exist. It is written in their translation and therefore true and all other translations are false.
(btw. the literal translation from the aramaic sounds really good, are there any sources where you can find more of them [maybe even the whole bible translated this way?])
As you already said, the account of Noahs flood could also mean that it was "just" an enormous local flood, which was interpreted as global because for the early human tribes their surroundings were the "world" (and maybe it is the same flood all myths of the different cultures point to [because humankind was small enough at this time and not spread all around the earth, so that stories of the flood could reach all humans]).
I think a local flood would be much more acceptable to scientists [and wouldn´t lead to the problems you get if you try to explain a global flood ])

Originally posted by beingofone
They died - that in no way controverts the scriptural account. Just perceived and interjected concepts into the scripture.

Many fundamentalists (like the one I mentioned) seem to think that the dinosaurs died by Noahs flood.
At least this can´t be true as it contradicts the order from God to take a pair of all Land animals onto the arc.
Of course it wouldn´t contradict the bible if they died earlier, but it is strange that the bible hasn´t any entry concerning them, especially as (what most of the creationists claim) they did live at the same time as the early humans.

Originally posted by beingofone
That is not the only conclusion you can come to. For example the Big Bang - in no way controverts the scriptural account of the universe if both are contemplated with an open mind.

Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle, not exclusive of each other. After all the scripture has contributed to the betterment of mankind and so has science.

The hardcore will say that religion has caused wars and all that.
And science caused Hiroshima and Nagasaki so it is a more badder evil - worse even then Thor and Mars.

Well, as I think that all religions point to some eternal truth [but no single religions can claim that it is the sole possessor of the whole eternal truth, although many do it nevertheless] I can only agree with you there.

Both, religion as well as science could be (and was, as history shows) misused by humans to destroy other humans, instead of trying to makle this world a better place for all of them.

Maybe one day all people will recognize, that it doesn´t matter what religion someone adheres to or what colour his skin has, as we are all humans.
Sadly I think this day is far far away, as Religion is still used by all kinds of fundamentalists (of all kinds of religions, be it christians, muslims, jews od hinduists) to claim that their side is the good one and the others are the bad ones.
And science is still used to develop measures to more efficiently kill other people.

[trev]

I have no problems with the idea that water mostly came from underground to flood the earth, and it did not require 9km of water either. Although it is impossible to prove the true geography of the pre-flood world, the few hints given in the biblical account would indicate a very flat world where max elevation above sea level probably did not exceed 100metres, and therefore a metre of water from the sky and 101m from the underground would succeed in flooding the world sufficiently. The formation of mountain ranges etc after the flood would then allow the waters to drain to the oceans easily.
For those who question why I propose a flat world, the lack of rainbows (rainbows require rain droplets to form) and lack of mention of rain prior to the flood suggests rain did not occur prior to the flood. instead the bible states a heavy mist/dew watered the earth. Mountain ranges, because they cause uplift of air masses and precipitation are incompatible with a climate of mists/dew and no rain, and therefore could not have existed in the preflood climate described in the bible. Likewise a heavy blanket of water vapour in the upper atmosphere as described in the bible would limit temperature differentials through its absorption and reradiation of sunlight. This limitation on temperature differentials would prevent the formation of low/high pressure systems, frontal systems and storms. Therefore no rain would occur, but instead perpetual high humidity and nightly dews/mists globally. The whole world climate from pole to equator would be subtropical/tropical under this scenario.
Although my argument so far has been based entirely on reasoning from the bible, surprisingly there is some scientific support for it. This includes evidence from fossil records which show fossils of lush tropical/subtropical species being found from the equator right through to polar latitudes, which is exactly what would be expected from this climate scenario.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by trev
The formation of mountain ranges etc after the flood would then allow the waters to drain to the oceans easily.

And how do you explain the formation of mountain ranges within a geological short time, most of them several kilometers high?
(the mountin range Ararat for example where Noahs arc has landed [according to the translations of the bible] has a height of appr. 3.000 Meters)

[Mr. Harley]

UR - the fish can move around, like another poster mentioned. Did you know that deep sea fish move up and down every day In fact they have criteria for capturing the more delicate ones for release after being tagged.

Tytler & Blaxter (1973)
suggest a 5-hour decompression halt for gadoids for every 50% reduction in external
pressure.

That is only for fish with closed bladders, those with open bladders it's even less of a problem. Remember since they are sometimes coming up from depths of over a mile, your 2000 meter adjustment would take them under ten hours - assuming no vertical movement. Trust me on this one, a univesal open ocean would exterminate most waterborn species, either everything fresh water based, or salt water based, or both with brackish water types only surviving. We are talking a Permian level extinction event here.

By the way, thanks for the posts on that Linux thread. It tells me what to do in the near future when I start my course.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by trev
I have no problems with the idea that water mostly came from underground to flood the earth, and it did not require 9km of water either. Although it is impossible to prove the true geography of the pre-flood world, the few hints given in the biblical account would indicate a very flat world where max elevation above sea level probably did not exceed 100metres, and therefore a metre of water from the sky and 101m from the underground would succeed in flooding the world sufficiently. The formation of mountain ranges etc after the flood would then allow the waters to drain to the oceans easily.

This would seem to raise a slight problem with species whose habitats are confined to high elevations. (Mountain goats are teh gahnkir!)

On a swift browse, I can't seem to find any hints of a lack of mountains or hills in the first few chapters of Genesis. Enlighten me? Moreover, Gen. 7:19 says explicitly that the Flood covered "all high mountains". The following verse tells us the water reached 15 ells above the mountains. Some months later the Ark took land on Mt Ararat. There's nothing to suggest that the mountain was newly-made.

Edit: Sentence fragment removed.

[Whaleboy]

Does trev seriously think his post deserves a serious post?

My only problem with natural selection is that it hasn't yet succeeded in killing off the ignorant.

[SpencerH]

Thats cos not enough scientists are philosophers.

[Heresson]

I do not understand it. Catholic church nor Anglican I think do not have a problem with theory of evolution.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
gahnkir

I'd have never thought I'd see this word again

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Heresson
I do not understand it. Catholic church nor Anglican I think do not have a problem with theory of evolution.

The chief stronghold of creationists (within the West) is among America's Evangelicals, and they are not known for caring what Rome or Canterbury thinks.

Indeed, they're not much fond of thinking at all.

[DarkCloud]

Darkcloud, I don't disagree with your premise. I find the Divine setting the proper constants idea plausible, not definitive. The trillion universe lottery theory is also plausible. I'm never going to know, and the existance of an eternal soul/caring god is something that is moot - if that is not the case, then in dying I won't find out, I'll cease to exist or I will find out, and will discover if He is a merciful God - if he's an angry God, well I'm pwnd anyway

Well shawn- I agree with you here- there is currently no way to know for certain if an infinite number of spontaneously generating universes exist.

I merely stated that fact so as to refute any possible misinterpretations of the creation of the universe that argue via St. Thomas Aquinas' 'proofs' for the existence of god and seem to assume that because of the unlikeliness of a universe such as this existing that ergo, a Deity must exist.

that being said- even in the infinite universe theory, there still 'could' be a god which created the physical rules for spontaneous generation on this imaginary plane. Even though my theory doesn't preclude a god- it also doesn't necessary exclude a god.

[trev]

There is criticism of my suggestion that mountain ranges formed rapidly following Noah's flood, the implication being that mountains could only form slowly. The fact is that if mountains formed at todays rate of plate movements, uplifts etc, erosion would reduce the height of the mountains as quickly as they were formed. The fact that mountains exist is proof that at at some stage in the past plate movements, uplifts of mountains etc was much quicker than at present, why this should be placed at some other time than at the time of Noah's flood is beyond me, that time for major earth movements is as good as any other that may be postulated by evolutionists