[PublicAnimalNo9]

I guess it takes the same amount of faith as it does for those evolutionists that think a few chemicals can suddenly spring forth into a life-form that eventually became the large variety of life forms we have today.
And what's even MORE amazing is these chemicals even had the fore-sight to "evolve" into both animal AND plant life. Seems like a pretty "miraculous" transformation to me.

[BartSimpson]

The way I look at it is that the Bible is both a historical record and it contains the revealed wisdom of God...as it was perceived by post-neolithic bronze-age nomads and their descendants. The job is to sort out the things that are self-evident ("Yah, don't murder anyone, eh?") from the things that are subject to interpretation ("Don't eat pork. And we'll agree to call it 'unclean' since you people have no clue what trichinosis is.").
But the historical events depicted in the Bible are batting .1000 for being rooted in fact. The Great Flood story can be attributed to a number of events in the region, the flooding of the Black Sea, the tsunami generated from the collapse of Mt. Etna's eastern flank, and etc. The parting of the Red Sea and even the Jewish Ark are now backed by Egyptian hieroglyphs that speak to their being real (was on History Channel last night!).
Sodom and Gomorrah are now known to have been real places. Jericho was real. And moving from the Bible to other issues of antiquity, Troy used to be considered a fable and then it was proven to be real, the Colossus of Rhodes was considered a fairy tale and then evidence to prove it real was found in the 1800's, and etc.

Discounting the historical record that can be found in the Bible just because you've got a hate on for religion is the very heart of ignorance and bigotry.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Lemmy Lemmy:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

The Bible is an historical document

So is a prehistoric, shit-encrusted piece of ass-wipe. The question is whether it is a useful piece of history or a misleading one. The ass-wipe, for instance, has archaelogical value. It tells us that some of our ancient predecessors wiped their asses. The bible, likewise, has historical value. It tells us that our ancient predecessors wrote fiction.

Not unlike Roman, Egyptian, and other leaders that "wrote their own history" which we blindly accepted and were taught as fact for decades and even centuries?

[poquas]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Discounting the historical record that can be found in the Bible just because you've got a hate on for religion is the very heart of ignorance and bigotry.

Blindly believing in a two thousand year old fairy tale and claiming your particular version of it is the only true way is the very heart of ignorance and bigotry.

[Dayseed]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Even the Australian aboriginees have a "global" flood story that dates back thousands of years before the first missionaries showed up.

Kinda funny how science keeps verifying these Biblical "fairy tales" too.

Science has been smashing religion's balls into the ground. They're certainly not "buddies". The brilliant work by Dr. Richard Lenski et al in the E. Coli long term evolutionary study is pretty much the nail in the coffin for religion as an explanation to life on the planet Earth. Other science experiments have gotten RNA to spontaneously arise and begin replicating itself.

There's a whole "flood" of these sorts of experiments.

Bart, for once you and I agree. I bet there probably was some localized flood that morphed through an oral translation until it became a Biblical account.

[Dayseed]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

But the historical events depicted in the Bible are batting .1000 for being rooted in fact.

Uh, for somebody trying to pump the Bible, you've given them a 10% accuracy record. If a player ever batted .100 for even the first 6 weeks of a season, they'd be kicked to the curb pretty damn fast. Frank Thomas got the boot for batting more than twice that.

[andyt]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

I guess it takes the same amount of faith as it does for those evolutionists that think a few chemicals can suddenly spring forth into a life-form that eventually became the large variety of life forms we have today.
And what's even MORE amazing is these chemicals even had the fore-sight to "evolve" into both animal AND plant life. Seems like a pretty "miraculous" transformation to me.

Oh, shit, just when I thought we saw things from a similar perspective.

Why does it take foresight to evolve into plants and animals? The first organisms would have been plan-like - ie able to generate nutrients from non-living chemicals and an energy source. "Animals" would have come along later, to start grazing on the "plants".

Evolution has nothing to say about the beginning of life, nor does science have any solid evidence for how it happened. But once life is started, evolution seems like the most sensible way to account for the incredible variety of life forms.

You want to say God created life, well no one can really dispute you. (But then you have no objective evidence either.) But you're not seriously saying that God comes down and seeds new species on the earth, fully formed, are you?

[BartSimpson]

Dayseed Dayseed:

Bart, for once you and I agree. I bet there probably was some localized flood that morphed through an oral translation until it became a Biblical account.

Indeed. Like with Sodom and Gomorrah the archaelogical evidence supports that there were two cities that once existed in that part of the Dead Sea and that they were obliterated by some unknown event that involved a lot of heat. Maybe God nuked 'em. Maybe something else happened and people in the time perceived it as God's wrath. But just because someone put a religious spin on what they observed does not mean it didn't happen.

[BartSimpson]

poquas poquas:

Blindly believing in a two thousand year old fairy tale and claiming your particular version of it is the only true way is the very heart of ignorance and bigotry.

So you have issues with anyone who has a religious faith. Oh, you must be a load of fun around the holidays.

[poquas]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Dayseed Dayseed:

Bart, for once you and I agree. I bet there probably was some localized flood that morphed through an oral translation until it became a Biblical account.

Indeed. Like with Sodom and Gomorrah the archaelogical evidence supports that there were two cities that once existed in that part of the Dead Sea and that they were obliterated by some unknown event that involved a lot of heat. Maybe God nuked 'em. Maybe something else happened and people in the time perceived it as God's wrath. But just because someone put a religious spin on what they observed does not mean it didn't happen.

...and of course it doesn't mean it did. The archaeological "experts" that have said that they may have found Sodom and Gomorrah have hinted at anything other than burned timbers. Nothing supernatural.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

So you have issues with anyone who has a religious faith. Oh, you must be a load of fun around the holidays.

Yes, I have serious issues with fundamentalist religious zealots of any kind that push their beliefs on everyone else. You believe? Your problem(s). Kindly keep it to yourself.

…and my holidays don’t require following religious dogma.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

Why does it take foresight to evolve into plants and animals?

When accounting for all of the "coincidences" that make life possible you end up with a chain of events that are wholly improbable.

1. You first need a planet in exactly the right orbit around exactly the right type of stable star to have liquid water.
2. It has to have the right balance of chemicals in the resulting seas to make 'spontaneous' creation of amino acids possible (something that can't be replicated in a laboratory).
3. Then, for some wild reason, the massively complex DNA molecule has to just *pop* into existence.
4. Then, for yet another wild reason, all of the building blocks of a cell have to simultaneously combine with that DNA molecule to make the cell that the DNA molecule was "accidently" designed to create. DNA & cells being a 'chicken and egg' dilemma.
5. Now we have to have complex and specialized structures such as an eye "evolve" from evolutionarily useless transitionary forms - a happenstance that is utterly contraindicated by evolutionary theory. Yet, obviously, that's what happened.
6. and etc.


Having all of the REQUIRED 'accidents' needed to get evolution started and up and running to occur is like flipping a coin and having land on heads....a few billion times in a row. Yes, it can happen, and yes it can possibly happen in nature, but is it rational to say that it is likely?

So myself, I am content to accept that there is a God who got the ball rolling to make life possible. Maybe, perhaps, someday we will know how it all started. But for me, I don't mind thinking that the beauty I see in BC along the Sunshine Coast and etc. is not an accident.

[BartSimpson]

poquas poquas:

Yes, I have serious issues with fundamentalist religious zealots of any kind that push their beliefs on everyone else.

Conversely, I have problems with anti-religious zealots who evangelize their atheism to religious people. If you really don't believe in anything why do you care so much? It really impresses me the faith of the atheists who dedicate their lives to fighting something they say doesn't exist.

I don't believe in the Easter Bunny but I don't go trolling people who do in order to accomplish some meaningless point.

poquas poquas:

You believe? Your problem(s). Kindly keep it to yourself.

You don't have to listen or respond. But if I have a personal belief and someone asks about it, I'll speak to it and you get to suck it up the same way I suck it up when you speak to what you believe.

$1:

…and my holidays don’t require following religious dogma.

Cool. So you work Christmas and Boxing Day without overtime because you stand on your principles?

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

So myself, I am content to accept that there is a God who got the ball rolling to make life possible. Maybe, perhaps, someday we will know how it all started. But for me, I don't mind thinking that the beauty I see in BC along the Sunshine Coast and etc. is not an accident.

By your argument, he got that ball rolling as far as creating fully formed eyes and the creatures that have them. That's quite a bit of ball rolling. If eyes can't evolve from light sensing organs, but need to be arise fully formed, that's not God getting the ball rolling, that's God seeding the earth with extant species. He's one busy mofo that guy.

As for planetary conditions, we are finding more and more earth-like planets - there's so many out there, there are probably others with life on them as well.

If God created everything, why did he create leukemia for little children? Why does he have 4000 children a day die from having only polluted water to drink?

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Dayseed Dayseed:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Even the Australian aboriginees have a "global" flood story that dates back thousands of years before the first missionaries showed up.

Kinda funny how science keeps verifying these Biblical "fairy tales" too.

Science has been smashing religion's balls into the ground. They're certainly not "buddies". The brilliant work by Dr. Richard Lenski et al in the E. Coli long term evolutionary study is pretty much the nail in the coffin for religion as an explanation to life on the planet Earth. Other science experiments have gotten RNA to spontaneously arise and begin replicating itself.

Wow, E-Coli, managed to adapt itself to a different food source. BIG NEWS dude. So a single cell bacterium, remains a single cell bacterium, still under the genus of E-Coli and this is your nail in the coffin? Hell, I can go trap an animal in the wild, take it away from its natural food source and I'll bet it'll find something else to eat all on its own. That's called adaptation. All those E-Coli bacteria did was utilize genetic information that was already available, but latent. I can find nowhere in those studies any claim of NEW genetic information. As for the RNA experiments, the only ones I could come across are rather dated and have since been proven that those results that showed positive were misleading, albeit not intentionally. If you have a link to anything done in the last 5 years I'd greatly appreciate it.

And ok andyt so now you want me to believe that there were two seperate events where life spontaneously evolved, not just one? One for plants and one for animals? And at two distinctly different times?

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

By your argument, he got that ball rolling as far as creating fully formed eyes and the creatures that have them. That's quite a bit of ball rolling. If eyes can't evolve from light sensing organs, but need to be arise fully formed, that's not God getting the ball rolling, that's God seeding the earth with extant species. He's one busy mofo that guy.

I imagine his schedule is a bitch.

andyt andyt:

As for planetary conditions, we are finding more and more earth-like planets - there's so many out there, there are probably others with life on them as well.

So far, not ONE earth-like planet has been positively identified.

andyt andyt:

If God created everything, why did he create leukemia for little children? Why does he have 4000 children a day die from having only polluted water to drink?

Perfection is boring. If the world was risk-free we'd surely take it for granted. I figure God is like a pit boss; he set up the craps table but we get to throw the dice.

And God does not let 4,000 children die every day from unhealthy water.

We do.