Evidence for creationism

[Souron]

I suppose. Nothing can ever be proven with 100% certainty. If you look at it philosophically we could all be in a virtual reality machine on an alien world and we are actually aliens from another dimension named X'graxj and Mx'pash. In that world evolution doesnt exist, we were just created by a deity.

Math and logic can be. 1+1=2. p -> q means -q -> -p. Next stand the physical sciences. Then the social sciences, with their varying degrees of certainty and method.

 

[Tacitusitis]

And you just contradicted yourself, first you accuse me of ignoring science (or whatever you meant by "non-science-ness") and then you accuse me of trying to explain Genesis in scientific terms.

In attempting to explain Genesis in scientific terms you are committing the double sin of:

first selectively twisting science to sort-of-fit a predetermined narrative. Which is wrong because the science won't fit. The Bible - and every other Near Eastern creation myth - says a flat earth arose out of a cosmic ocean. The opposite is true, oceans condensed on a cooling spherical earth.

secondly assuming that the author of Genesis thought in scientific terms or that his writing could be explicated as such.

ancient mariners damn well knew they were on a globe

The idea of the earth as a globe does not appear until Plato's time, centuries and centuries after these myths were codified and certainly centuries after the Exodus and writing of the Pentateuch.

You keep on dismissing Genesis' cosmology as metaphorical but this is not true. The ancient Hebrews just like every ancient civilization around them for miles, literally believed in a solid firmament above the earth and a cosmic ocean below and surrounding it. The windows of the heavens were not "metaphorical" nor were the fountains of the deep.

The Hebrews were behind their neighbors in technology (and hence science) well into the Judges era at least (the infamous "iron chariots" that the Hebrew God was powerless against). There is no, zero, zip evidence that they had a mystically advanced understanding of real world cosmology.

You can read cherry-picked details of modern cosmology any number of ways into any number of cherry-picked passages of ancient texts. If that makes you happy as a hobby go for it but it ain't scholarship. The cosmology of Genesis is reaffirmed again and again throughout the Old Testament and there is no hint that they understood the world in any different way, except the tenuous Bible-Code-esque BS you're doing.

 

[Berzerker]

In attempting to explain Genesis in scientific terms you are committing the double sin of:

first selectively twisting science to sort-of-fit a predetermined narrative. Which is wrong because the science won't fit. The Bible - and every other Near Eastern creation myth - says a flat earth arose out of a cosmic ocean. The opposite is true, oceans condensed on a cooling spherical earth.

Where did I twist the science? Thats the second time you accused me of wrongdoing without backing it up, bravo. Genesis doesn't say the flat Earth rose up from the waters, you're adding the word "flat" and it aint in the text. And Genesis aint talking about how the proto-Earth (Tehom, Tiamat) formed, its talking about what happened to it after forming. Before there was "Light", there was the submerged Earth with darkness on the face of the deep - a dark, water covered world existed before creation began. And the result of "creation" was a new world spinning in close proximity to a star with plate tectonics forming the land (Earth) followed by life. Thats what the science tells us, and thats what Genesis tells us...

The idea of the earth as a globe does not appear until Plato's time, centuries and centuries after these myths were codified and certainly centuries after the Exodus and writing of the Pentateuch.

Democritus was the Father of Greek astronomy, not Plato... And Plato dismissed Democritus and his sources who spoke of "atoms" etc... After traveling to Egypt and Mesopotamia, Democritus told his fellow Greeks there are more planets than can be seen with the naked eye (did you look at the cylinder seal?). This notion that ancient mariners like the Phoenicians believed the world was flat is ridiculous. Do you understand that? These people (and many others) were sailing the oceans long before Plato showed up.

You keep on dismissing Genesis' cosmology as metaphorical but this is not true. The ancient Hebrews just like every ancient civilization around them for miles, literally believed in a solid firmament above the earth and a cosmic ocean below and surrounding it. The windows of the heavens were not "metaphorical" nor were the fountains of the deep.

I dismissed your "window" as a metaphor and it doesn't appear in the creation text, and its obviously a metaphor - there is no literal "window" through which rain falls. Jesus, you're calling these ancient peoples ignorant? As for the solidness of the firmament, are there solid things in the sky? Yes... "Heaven" (rakia in Akkadian) is a hammered bracelet marking the location of this celestial battle. And the "fountains of the deep" refers to the oceans or seas rising up to flood the land as in the Deluge... And that also happened as the ice age ended and sea levels rose flooding vast stretches of land.

The Hebrews were behind their neighbors in technology (and hence science) well into the Judges era at least (the infamous "iron chariots" that the Hebrew God was powerless against). There is no, zero, zip evidence that they had a mystically advanced understanding of real world cosmology.

Abra(ha)m was a Sumerian... Born in Ur, the capital of Sumer's 3rd dynasty. Or we could go back even further... Upon entering the "promised land" Joshua tells the people about what to them was ancient history - when their fathers lived in the land of the 2 rivers serving the watchers (gods). The Hebrew calendar is based on the calendar of Nippur which goes back to ~3976 bc. You do understand the creation story in Genesis preceded Judges, or Exodus...?

You can read cherry-picked details of modern cosmology any number of ways into any number of cherry-picked passages of ancient texts. If that makes you happy as a hobby go for it but it ain't scholarship. The cosmology of Genesis is reaffirmed again and again throughout the Old Testament and there is no hint that they understood the world in any different way, except the tenuous Bible-Code-esque BS you're doing.

We're debating the first 10 verses in Genesis and the related science supporting them... Well, I am... You're just polluting the thread with hypocritical insults. Cherry pick that...

 

[Tacitusitis]

Thats the second time you accused me of wrongdoing without backing it up, bravo.

I backed it up right in the next part of that post... of course if you fly off the handle and reply to my post without reading the whole thing then you might miss that...

Democritus was the Father of Greek astronomy, not Plato... And Plato dismissed Democritus and his sources who spoke of "atoms" etc..

You are wrong twice.

1: Democritus believed in a flat earth as attested in Aristotle's On The Heavens.

2: Plato believed in a spherical earth as attested in his dialogues Phaedo and Timaeus. Although Pythagoras had come up with the idea earlier, Plato and his student Aristotle were the main popularizers of the notion that the earth was spherical.

Before this time, in the era in which Genesis was written, the notion of the earth as flat was simply taken as a given. Prove me wrong with a citation from ancient texts or stop talking about what you don't understand.

Genesis doesn't say the flat Earth rose up from the waters

Yes it does. This part of the Genesis narrative comes from the Egyptian creation myth which speaks of a primordial mound, the first dry land, rising out of cosmic waters.

The earth's flatness is clearly implied throughout the narrative by the presence of a domed firmament. If the earth were spherical, half of it would have no sky.

The Egyptians, Hebrews, and Babylonians all believed in this cosmology. There was no competing idea that would have necessitated the author to clarify that he believed in X as opposed to Y. The author saw no more need to make the earth's flatness explicit than he saw a need to make the sky's blueness explicit.

Thats what the science tells us, and thats what Genesis tells us...

Science tells us the opposite of Genesis in nearly every line. Do you really want to analyze the text and compare it to scientific findings?

Let's start with the problematic cosmology. Flat earth, domed vault sky, both wrong.

The dry land arose out of water - wrong.

The sky separates "water from water" - wrong.

The first life was land plants - wrong.

This primordial life included fruit-bearing plants (angiosperms) - VERY wrong.

Stars, sun and moon came a day after plants - VERY wrong.

Waterborne life and birds are coeval - VERY wrong.

Birds came before animals on land - VERY wrong.

You could write each form of life that Genesis specifies on a notecard, and mix those notecards up and draw them at random, and probably get an order that is closer to the observed order of the progression of life forms than the order Genesis specifies.

I dismissed your "window" as a metaphor

Genesis 7:11, Genesis 8:2, Job 37:18.

Once again, this was not a theory or hypothesis among the ancient Hebrews. It was received, standard, accepted, given knowledge, that is referred to tangentially in the same way that the Bible only tangentially confirms that things fall vertically to the ground when not held up by something.

its obviously a metaphor - there is no literal "window" through which rain falls.

This is a circular argument. You know there is no literal firmament, hence the Bible must not literally mean a firmament... because the Bible is scientifically right... then you go on to cite the text to show how much the ancient Hebrews knew

Abra(ha)m was a Sumerian... Born in Ur, the capital of Sumer's 3rd dynasty. Or we could go back even further... Upon entering the "promised land" Joshua tells the people about what to them was ancient history - when their fathers lived in the land of the 2 rivers serving the watchers (gods). The Hebrew calendar is based on the calendar of Nippur which goes back to ~3976 bc. You do understand the creation story in Genesis preceded Judges, or Exodus...?

None of this word salad contests my point.

There is evidence the Hebrews were technologically inferior to neighboring civilizations through the Bronze and Iron Ages. Hence it is a safe inference that their knowledge of science at the very best extended no further than their contemporaries... that inference is then backed up in spades by their version of cosmology evident in the Tanakh.

You claim that Genesis is talking about a spherical earth, planetary collisions, and plate tectonics?

You should stick with less stupid and more believable notions, like the idea that Moses invented the jetski.

 

[El_Machinae]

Or we could go back even further... Upon entering the "promised land" Joshua tells the people about what to them was ancient history

... the story of Joshua is a myth and didn't happen. It's like saying "Hercules passed around the stories of the ancient people"

 

[GoodGame]

30 pages and still not a soul with the tiniest iota of evidence to support creationism. I'm sure no one saw this result coming.

Actually, I expected Zeus to crash the servers with a lightning bolt until we repented.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

This is something that I heard earlier, that scientists at NASA have proven that the Bible is right but won't admit it as they have shown there is some missing time and there is a part of the Bible that deals with time going backwards. I was only told about it briefly, but it involves the Assyrians and the Egyptians trying to take Israel, so the Hebrews were given some extra time to help defend themselves.

 

[Arakhor]

That's hopelessly imprecise, even if it were true. When was this missing time? What Biblical passages mention this? If NASA aren't admitting something, how do people know? And so on.

 

[_random_]

http://snopes.com/religion/lostday.asp

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I don't know what passage, but it was when the Egyptians had put a puppet king in Isreal and 80 years before the Babylonians put there puppet king there.

Apparently it is something the NASA have admitted that there is something wrong with the time, but won't admit that the Bible is right.

 

[_random_]

I don't know what passage, but it was when the Egyptians had put a puppet king in Isreal and 80 years before the Babylonians put there puppet king there.

Apparently it is something the NASA have admitted that there is something wrong with the time, but won't admit that the Bible is right.

Did you read the link?

 

[Arakhor]

Well, that was a fairly comprehensive destruction of said story by Snopes.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

This is something that I heard earlier, that scientists at NASA have proven that the Bible is right but won't admit it as they have shown there is some missing time and there is a part of the Bible that deals with time going backwards. I was only told about it briefly, but it involves the Assyrians and the Egyptians trying to take Israel, so the Hebrews were given some extra time to help defend themselves.

I'm sorry, but why would an agency specifically set up to do research on Space and Aeronitics be going around doing historical and archeological work. Frankly whoever told you this pack of bull droppings is only using NASA due to the fact that there are a lot of conspiracy theories involving NASA out there, e.g. the "faked" moon landings, hiding evidence of terrestrial life, etc.

Anyway the Assyrians did conquer Israel at around 720BC, with Jusdah being conquered by Babylon in around 590BC.

 

[Tacitusitis]

If the earth stopped spinning for a day, the Israelites would have abruptly become a spacefaring civilization.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Did you read the link?

I think it was the second one, as he did mention a king and the shadow moving backwards on a sundial.

It says near the end that even if it did happen, then there would be no way of knowing because there is no frame of reference.

What about the charts that physicists and astronomers use that prove that the Earth did stay still?

 

[Haseri]

Which charts?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I don't know what the charts are, only that they exist.

 

[Haseri]

So you have no proof for these charts. Let me tell you about the dragon in my garage...

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I guess I'm just more of an idiot than before.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I don't know what the charts are, only that they exist.

How can you know whether charts exists if you don't even know what they are? It'd be like me claiming that there is a Continent in the mid-atlantic. and somebody asking me "what's it like?" and me going "dunno, but I read about it in Thomas More's Utopia"