Evidence for creationism

[Ziggy Stardust]

I know the answer to that one

 

[Beckfan]

The Bible is all the evidence I need! It is the direst word of God!

Isaiah 5:20 says: Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.

 

[Miles Teg]

The Bible is all the evidence I need! It is the direst word of God!

One little typo adds so much meaning to that sentence. Bravo.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

It's either some one doing a parody account or a really bad sock puppet.

 

[Xanikk999]

The Bible is all the evidence I need! It is the direst word of God!

Isaiah 5:20 says: Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.

No wonder everyone in the United States considers Mississippi to be the most uneducated trash heap of the nation. I know you are serious here.

Your cities are a disgrace and the poverty there is immense. It breeds this kind of thinking. Any federal funds Mississippi receives are well needed to fix your broken schools which are the worst in the nation.

Please get out of here before you make us smarter Americans look worse on the world stage.

 

[Seon]

No wonder everyone in the United States considers Mississippi to be the most uneducated trash heap of the nation. I know you are serious here.

Your cities are a disgrace and the poverty there is immense. It breeds this kind of thinking. Any federal funds Mississippi receives are well needed to fix your broken schools which are the worst in the nation.

That is a bit dangerous sort of generalization, isn't it?

Oh hey, you live in Fairfax. hi!

 

[Berzerker]

If Joshua was a myth, and the exodus was a myth, why would you think that Abraham was real?

I think they likely existed, but whether or not they did, the Bible still attributes those words to Joshua so somebody back then believed the fathers of the Hebrew lived in the land of the 2 rivers. The stories of Abram confirm that much...

You also still haven't proven how modern science at all proves the first ten verses of Genesis 1.

This thread is about evidence (amiright) and thats what I provided... Our science supports Gen 1:1-10, and so far the latest attempt at a rebuttal is from someone who insists on adding the word "flat" to God's description of the "Earth". And here he is...

Berzy, that post didn't contain much. For example instead of citing a source earlier than Plato and Aristotle for the earth as a globe, you just rely on an argument from incredulity. That's not good enough in a debate.

You said it was a "given" that everyone before Plato et al thought the Earth was flat, and my "given" is that ancient mariners, among other learned peoples, knew the world was "round" long before the Greeks showed up. And I gave you a link to a cylinder seal from the 3rd millennium showing 11 globes surrounding a star which matches up with the Enuma Elish.

You continue to contradict key findings of Old Testament scholarship, such as that the Tanakh was written after the Exodus and hence influenced by Egyptian myth (Abraham's nationality is irrelevant as he was already, if he ever existed, a mythic figure when Genesis was written); and that the firmament of Genesis, Job, Ezekial and Isaiah refers to the same cosmological concept - a real, physical, solid firmament - as found in contemporary surrounding myth.

Gen 1:1-10 is older than the Exodus, and I already said "Heaven" was a place in the sky and solid. Now show me these contradictions? You speak of Old Testament scholarship when I can cite umpteen scholars who've linked Genesis to Mesopotamian creation stories? You gotta be kidding... The theory is they got their monotheistic notions from an Egyptian pharaoh, not their creation story. And I wasted my time reading your last links and the scholar you offered up said the Earth in those verses refers to the dry land just as I said. He didn't say it was flat, and thats what you said.

As well, you just keep on going with that "dry land arising out of water = plate tectonics" idea. I think this is the third time I'm repeating this: the scientific finding is the opposite, the oceans condensed on a cooling, molten earth. But you will keep on with "your version" of science because it's the one that you imagine reifies your Biblical worldview.

Genesis does not describe the formation of the proto-Earth, it deals with what happened to the proto-Earth after it was already in existence. Read Gen 1:2, it describes a water covered world "before" God creates Heaven and Earth. I already said that and you ignored it again. And the science does tell us the world had surface water going back at least 4.4 bya, but that world suffered a major impact (or more) around 4 bya - and plate tectonics and life followed that period astronomers call the late heavy bombardment.

Finally by denying a discussion of the rest of the first chapter of Genesis, you're basically admitting you will only defend the text insofar as you can make up a scientific "just-so" story (a story that is itself, apparently unknown to you, riddled with science errors)... and you can't think of anything to excuse the obvious errors of Gen 1:11-31?

I'm not obliged to defend everything in the Bible, thats your strawman. I'm just here to show the scientific evidence we do have for the creation of Heaven and Earth.

Your writing embarrasses both theology and science.

How do theologians feel about adding the word "flat" to God's description of the Earth to discredit Genesis? As for the science, you keep claiming Genesis is wrong because the science tells us the world formed through impacts and the oceans came later and I keep telling you Genesis doesn't describe the formation of Tehom/Tiamat - it already existed when "God" came upon the scene and began creating. Understand that yet, you're talking about what happened 4.6 to 4.5 bya and Genesis is talking about what happened afterward beginning ~4 bya according to the science. Just more insults and strawmen...

 

[Tacitusitis]

No wonder everyone in the United States considers Mississippi to be the most uneducated trash heap of the nation. I know you are serious here. Your cities are a disgrace and the poverty there is immense. It breeds this kind of thinking. Any federal funds Mississippi receives are well needed to fix your broken schools which are the worst in the nation. Please get out of here before you make us smarter Americans look worse on the world stage.

Wow!

So.... how ya doin over there in Virginia?

 

[Xanikk999]

Wow!

So.... how ya doin over there in Virginia?

I live in northern Virginia which is a far cry from rural southern Virginia. Read up on fairfax county it is not a trash heap.

 

[Tacitusitis]

Our science supports Gen 1:1-10

I don't think you've convinced anyone previously unconvinced in this thread of that (feel free to correct me, anyone).

my "given" is that ancient mariners, among other learned peoples, knew the world was "round" long before the Greeks showed up.

That is not a given. That is a supposition.

I have given you ample citations of philosophers before Plato and Pythagoras believing that the earth was flat. I even had to CORRECT your assertion that Democritus was a round-earther.

who insists on adding the word "flat" to God's description of the "Earth".

The flatness of the earth PERMEATES the text. References to the Earth's flatness, to the fact that it floats on a cosmic ocean, and that a solid vaulted sky-roof is supported by pillars above it appear in Genesis 1, Genesis 7 and 8, Exodus 20, Isaiah 40 and 44, Psalms 93 and 136, 1 Samuel 2, Job 26 and 38.

These references are completely tangential: that is, each passage is not about making the point that the earth is flat, but only mentions that idea in passing.

The fact that the text keeps on mentioning a flat earth in casual, passing contexts strongly supports the contention that the earth's flatness was taken as a given because it did not have a competitor as cosmological model. The author of the text saw no need to dogmatize flatness because what other, ridiculous notion were his readers going to believe? That the earth was an oblate spheroid a few thousand miles in diameter?



A secondary point is that all three elements of this cosmology (flat earth, cosmic ocean, vaulted sky) are the same as the contemporary Egyptian cosmology, indicating that the cosmology IS NOT of divine origin but is a retelling of contemporary surrounding myth.

A tertiary point is that prescientific civilizations around the world and out of contact with each other, as far away as Asia and the Americas, have been found to have similar cosmologies. This suggests that conceiving of the earth as flat and the sky as a dome is just the natural way that an uneducated human mind conceives of the world.

Heck, even this point is backed up by optical illusions such as the fact that the moon appears larger when it's closer to the horizon. It's the same size of course, but it appears larger because our minds are programmed to think an object at the horizon is farther away than the SAME sized object at the zenith (directly overhead). In other words, the uneducated human mind is coded to see the sky as a flattened bowl or dome.

 

[Tacitusitis]

BTW, at one point you seem to argue that the presence of a domed firmament in a cosmology does not mean that cosmology necessarily is committing to describing the earth as flat.

I am equally mystified and intrigued.

Please do me, science and Jesus a favor, and draw us a picture of a spherical earth that has a domed firmament sky. Because we'd like to see.

 

[Traitorfish]

BTW, at one point you seem to argue that the presence of a domed firmament in a cosmology does not mean that cosmology necessarily is committing to describing the earth as flat.

I am equally mystified and intrigued.

Please do me, science and Jesus a favor, and draw us a picture of a spherical earth that has a domed firmament sky. Because we'd like to see.

Allow me!

I mean, how else could it work?

 

[Tacitusitis]

A+

 

[Berzerker]

I don't think you've convinced anyone previously unconvinced in this thread of that (feel free to correct me, anyone).

That is not a given. That is a supposition.

Have you convinced them everyone before Plato thought the world was flat?

I have given you ample citations of philosophers before Plato and Pythagoras believing that the earth was flat. I even had to CORRECT your assertion that Democritus was a round-earther.

I dont see any quotes... And I'll ask again, is Kansas flat? Do you understand such language? Dont confuse metaphors - like windows in the sky - and symbolism for literal meanings. Democritus is the father of greek astronomy and was a believer in "atomic" theory but he thought the world was flat? Quote him... And I gave you a link to a cylinder seal showing 11 globes around a star, and that seal matches the "celestial gods" in the Enuma Elish. And you're still ignoring it.

The flatness of the earth PERMEATES the text. References to the Earth's flatness, to the fact that it floats on a cosmic ocean, and that a solid vaulted sky-roof is supported by pillars above it appear in Genesis 1, Genesis 7 and 8, Exodus 20, Isaiah 40 and 44, Psalms 93 and 136, 1 Samuel 2, Job 26 and 38.

You accuse me of cherry picking and all you do is cite - but not quote - verses we aint even debating. Given how you've already added words to Genesis I have NO reason to trust your interpretations of other passages. The word "flat" is not in the creation story; floating in a cosmic ocean (wow, thats intriguing) or a sky roof supported by pillars (and you think that aint a metaphor too?) says nothing about the shape of the world and does not appear in the text either. On the contrary, if the sky is a dome and supported by pillars, the world must be curved too. Oops... Is that how you ended up with a flat dome?

These references are completely tangential: that is, each passage is not about making the point that the earth is flat, but only mentions that idea in passing.

Is Kansas flat? No, but people say it all the time and they know it aint really flat.

The fact that the text keeps on mentioning a flat earth in casual, passing contexts strongly supports the contention that the earth's flatness was taken as a given because it did not have a competitor as cosmological model.

The text does not mention a flat earth or a flat dome supported by pillars.

A secondary point is that all three elements of this cosmology (flat earth, cosmic ocean, vaulted sky) are the same as the contemporary Egyptian cosmology, indicating that the cosmology IS NOT of divine origin but is a retelling of contemporary surrounding myth.

A "mound" is not flat and round objects can 'float', but Genesis goes back to Mesopotamia, not Egypt. "Scholars" have made that connection and written libraries of books on the subject. You do understand that, right?

A tertiary point is that prescientific civilizations around the world and out of contact with each other, as far away as Asia and the Americas, have been found to have similar cosmologies. This suggests that conceiving of the earth as flat and the sky as a dome is just the natural way that an uneducated human mind conceives of the world.

Or it means people have a shared origin for certain myths...

http://www.darkstar1.co.uk/inca.htm

check the Incan "Genesis" (last image on the left), notice the Earth symbolized by 7 dots (7 eyes of Brahma) below the double rainbow - its a globe too. The ellipse is their creator...

In other, smaller words, for your benefit: the human mind thinks the sky is a flattened dome. Many prescientific civilizations encoded this into cosmology. The ancient Hebrews were no exception. They were wrong. The Bible is scientifically wrong. The errors in the Bible militate against the Bible's concurrent claim that the earth has a creator.

A flat dome? It would have to be if actual pillars held it up from a flat world. A flat dome... That makes no sense. I thought you said people believed they could reach the end of the world and touch the sky like the Truman Show. If the "dome" is flat, you cant touch it by reaching the end of the world. In fact, there would be no sky looking toward the horizon if both the world and sky were flat.

BTW, at one point you seem to argue that the presence of a domed firmament in a cosmology does not mean that cosmology necessarily is committing to describing the earth as flat.

I am equally mystified and intrigued.

Please do me, science and Jesus a favor, and draw us a picture of a spherical earth that has a domed firmament sky. Because we'd like to see.

Yer easily mystified, the pic you just gave an A+ would have the dome encircling the world rather than touching it. And who is we? Is somebody else there as easily mystified as you?

 

[Tacitusitis]

I think you have the impression that you "win" if you get in a last angry post because much of that was just you quoting me and saying something snide and substanceless.

A flat dome?

I said FLATTENED as in not perfectly spherical. Also I was talking about the MIND'S conception of the sky as a flattened bowl, explaining the moon size illusion.

The point is that our "mental map" of the sky as dome-shaped explains why the ancients thought there was a firmament.

As for the details of the firmament, gee maybe you should research what the people who wrote your scriptures actually believed before you get into a debate about that topic. Good advice for next time.

Democritus is the father of greek astronomy and was a believer in "atomic" theory but he thought the world was flat? Quote him

Aristotle's On The Heavens Book II Part 13.

Compare with Plato's Phaedo sections 108 to 110.

Yer easily mystified, the pic you just gave an A+ would have the dome encircling the world rather than touching it.

Your ancient Hebrew interlocutor is now slightly confused at what this massive firmamental dome rests on, if not the pillars of heaven?

 

[History_Buff]

I dont see any quotes... And I'll ask again, is Kansas flat? ... Is Kansas flat? No, but people say it all the time and they know it aint really flat.

Not to jump in on your little argument there, but that's a monumentally poor choice of words.

 

[Tacitusitis]

BTW I find your veneration of Democritus and your fixation on that title "Father of Astronomy" a little strange.

I will make my last post in this thread replying to you a quotation of Plato (speaking through Socrates) and implicitly refuting the flat-earth Pre-Socratics.

This man Plato wrote centuries before Paul.
Yet thousands of years AFTER Paul, we have Berzerker.
Can you imagine?

I'm using David Gallop's translation.

"Now (said Socrates) there are many wonderful regions in the earth, and the earth itself is of neither the nature nor the size supposed by those who usually describe it, as someone has convinced me."

Here Simmias said: "What do you mean by that, Socrates? I've heard many things about the earth too, but not these that convince you, so I'd be glad to hear them."

"Well, Simmias, I don't think the skill of Glaucus is needed to relate what they are; although to prove them true does seem to me too hard for the skill of Glaucus - I probably couldn't do it myself, and besides, even if I knew how to, I think the life left me doesn't suffice for the length of the argument. Still, nothing prevents me from telling of what I've been convinced the earth is like in shape, and of its regions."

"Well, even that is enough," said Simmias.

"First then, I've been convinced the earth is round and in the center of the heaven, it needs neither air nor any other such force to prevent its falling, but the uniformity of the heaven in every direction with itself is enough to support it, together with the equilibrium of the earth itself; because a thing in equilibrium placed in the middle of something uniform will be unable to incline either more or less in any direction, but being in a uniform state it will remain without incline. So that's the first thing of which I've been convinced."

"And rightly so," said Simmias.

"And next, that it is of vast size, and that we who dwell between the Phasis River and the Pillars of Heracles [nb: between the Caucasus and the Strait of Gibraltar] only inhabit a small portion of it, living around the sea like ants or frogs around a marsh, and that there are many others living elsewhere in many such places."

"For there are many hollows all over the earth, varying in their shapes and sizes, into which water and mist and air have flowed together. And the earth itself is set in the heaven, a pure thing in pure surroundings, in which the stars are situated, and which most of those who usually describe such things name "ether." It's from this that these elements are the dregs, and continually flow into the hollows of the earth."

"Now we ourselves are unaware that we live in the earth's hollows, and think we live above the earth - just as someone living at the bottom of the ocean were to think he lived above the sea, and seeing the sun and stars through the water, were to imagine that the sea was heaven..."

"...and yet through slowness and weakness had never reached the surface of the sea, nor emerged, stuck his head up out of the sea into this region here, and seen how much purer and fairer it really is than their world, nor nor had heard this from anyone else who had seen it. Now this is just what has happened to us. Living in a hollow of the earth, we think we live above it, and we call the air "heaven," as if this were heaven and the stars moved through it, whereas the truth is just the same - because of our weakness and slowness we are unable to pass through to the summit of the air. For if anyone were to go to its surface, or gain wings and fly aloft, he would stick his head up and see... Just as here the fishes of the sea stick their heads up and see the things here, so he would see the things up there. And if his nature were able to bear the vision, he would realize that this is the true heaven, the genuine light and the true earth..."

"...Indeed, if it is proper to tell a tale, it's worth hearing, Simmias, what the things upon the earth and beneath the heaven are actually like."

"Why yes, Socrates," said Simmias, "We'd be glad to hear this tale."

"Well then, my friend, (said Socrates), first of all the true earth, if one views it from above, is said to look like those twelve-piece leather balls, variegated, a patchwork of colors, of which our colors here are, as it were, samples that painters use. There the whole earth is of such colors, indeed of colors far brighter and purer than these. One portion is purple, marvellous for its beauty, another is golden, and all that is white is whiter than chalk or snow. And the earth is composed of the other colors likewise, indeed of colors more numerous and beautiful than any we have seen. Even its very hollows, full as they are of water and air, give an appearance of color, gleaming among the variety of the other colors, so that its general appearance is of one continuous multi-colored surface."

Pretty amazing imo.

 

[carlosMM]

The Bible is all the evidence I need! It is the direst word of God!

Isaiah 5:20 says: Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.

When someone says that to me in a direct conversation I always take up pen and paper and write:
"This is the word of god, give carlosMM all your money now or rot in hell".

Can you explain why that is less true than your claim?

 

[Haseri]

@carlosMM

Even better if you roll your eyes back and speak in tounges first.

 

[carlosMM]

@carlosMM

Even better if you roll your eyes back and speak in tounges first.

that might work

I find, however, that this approach makes the other person give up on the debate, usually, even JWs.