Existence of God (split from old thread)

[Berzerker]

So now your claim is that Eden is under the Persian Gulf, and this paradise existed during an ice age?

My claim is and has been Eden may be located under the Persian Gulf and the river valley there was exposed during ice ages.

How far back are you claiming for the origin of farming? Note that if you claim 200,000 years and/or 6 days after the world was supposedly created, I will post as many smileys as the forum allows. Because that's is so far beyond ridiculous as to be ... basically indescribably ridiculous.

Well, in that case perhaps you could wait and let me speak for myself before attributing your indescribably ridiculous arguments to me. Many, even most of our ice age settlements are under water. So any evidence of farming might be hard to come by, but Genesis says God planted the Garden, not Adam.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23290-farming-has-deep-roots-in-chinese-ice-age/

If the Flood is related to the seas rising after the ice age then Noah planted a vineyard and got drunk 12-14kya.

I'm all agog, just waiting for Saturn's rings pointing at Pluto to come into this. You're still just peddling your fantasies from the last thread where you trotted out your mythology that masquerades as real science and real history.

Saturn's rings do point to Pluto near its perihelion, thats just basic math. But I didn't bring that up either, you did. For somebody who doesn't want to rehash old debates, you sure are doing the opposite while blaming me.

I remember that thread well, I was just piling on some ridicule

You two have a lot in common, but at least she tries to discuss the subject.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

My claim is and has been Eden may be located under the Persian Gulf and the river valley there was exposed during ice ages.

Let's see some links to support your claim.

Well, in that case perhaps you could wait and let me speak for myself before attributing your indescribably ridiculous arguments to me. Many, even most of our ice age settlements are under water. So any evidence of farming might be hard to come by, but Genesis says God planted the Garden, not Adam.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23290-farming-has-deep-roots-in-chinese-ice-age/

If the Flood is related to the seas rising after the ice age then Noah planted a vineyard and got drunk 12-14kya.

1. I do not care what Genesis says, because Genesis is fiction. It therefore doesn't matter which fictitious character planted a fictitious garden in a fictitious place.

2.There is not a single shred of evidence to prove the existence of Noah or his ark, and you are never going to convince me that animals that are non-native to the Middle East and don't migrate there could have made it there, spent a year on the ark, gone home again, and repopulate their species from just two individuals.

That is ridiculous.

 

[Angst]

The world was made from the limbs, bones and organs of a jotun.

 

[onejayhawk]

I do not care what Genesis says, because Genesis is fiction. There is not a single shred of evidence to prove the existence of Noah or his ark, and you are never going to convince me that animals that are non-native to the Middle East and don't migrate there could have made it there, spent a year on the ark, gone home again, and repopulate their species from just two individuals.

That is ridiculous.

Even if that were true, not a given, fiction has facts interwoven with story. Schliemann discovered Troy because of information in the Iliad. Many think that the story of Noah (and Gilgamesh) derive from an oral tradition of the flooding of the Black Sea basin circa 5600 BC. Some of the ten plagues have documented natural occurrences, eg frogs after the Mt St Helens eruption. Indeed, it is not difficult to read all ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea as effects of a single extended volcanic episode.

J

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Even if that were true, not a given, fiction has facts interwoven with story. Schliemann discovered Troy because of information in the Iliad. Many think that the story of Noah (and Gilgamesh) derive from an oral tradition of the flooding of the Black Sea basin circa 5600 BC. Some of the ten plagues have documented natural occurrences, eg frogs after the Mt St Helens eruption. Indeed, it is not difficult to read all ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea as effects of a single extended volcanic episode.

J

Schliemann discovered a city that is one of many on that site (over half a dozen). It's debatable if he discovered THE Troy of The Iliad. The artifacts he found are largely worthless, since he basically looted the site instead of having everything properly documented in situ.

 

[Berzerker]

The first living being formed in the primeval chaos known as Ginnungagap was a giant of monumental size, called Ymir. When the icy mists of Niflheimr met with the heat of Múspellsheimr Ymir was born out of the joining of these two extreme forces from either world in the great void. Contained within Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning, Ymir's creation is recounted:

Just as from Niflheim there arose coldness and all things grim, so what was facing close to Muspell was hot and bright, but Ginnungagap was as mild as a windless sky. And when the rime and the blowing of the warmth met so that it thawed and dripped, there was a quickening from these flowing drops due to the power of the source of the heat, and it became the form of a man, and he was given the name Ymir.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jötunn

"From Ymir's flesh the earth was formed, and the rocks from out of his bones; the sky from the skull of the ice-cold giant, and the sea from his blood."

Fascinating myth, in Mesopotamia it was Tiamat who was carved up to form Heaven and Earth. But the Norse version describes the location where Ymir formed, where heat met cold to produce water. When the Earth formed that location was the asteroid belt at the frost line of the solar system.

Tiamat was also located at the asteroid belt, she was the 4th planet from the Sun and covered by water...our water.

 

[warpus]

Of course some parts of religious texts are going to be true, no matter from which religion they are from. It's not like all religions are made up 100%. There needs to be some truth there so that people don't dismiss it out of hand and can relate to it.

This of course means that if you find something that is true that doesn't mean that the whole religion is true. The Bible is a collection of a lot of different books after all, not just one continuous story. Even if it was, if we once day found Jesus' favourite hat or whatever, that's just one piece of the puzzle.

 

[Berzerker]

Let's see some links to support your claim.

http://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-beneath-persian-gulf.html
http://ldolphin.org/eden/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Zarins

1. I do not care what Genesis says, because Genesis is fiction. It therefore doesn't matter which fictitious character planted a fictitious garden in a fictitious place.

2.There is not a single shred of evidence to prove the existence of Noah or his ark, and you are never going to convince me that animals that are non-native to the Middle East and don't migrate there could have made it there, spent a year on the ark, gone home again, and repopulate their species from just two individuals.

That is ridiculous.

I didn't mention anything about animals. Didn't I just ask you to let me make my own arguments?

@Lex - religions all over the world teach beings from another world came here and made us in their image. I know thats a source of great hilarity for you, it was for me too at one time. But its possible, who am I to say otherwise? You've given me no reason to believe you instead, on the contrary.

 

[Berzerker]

Even if that were true, not a given, fiction has facts interwoven with story. Schliemann discovered Troy because of information in the Iliad. Many think that the story of Noah (and Gilgamesh) derive from an oral tradition of the flooding of the Black Sea basin circa 5600 BC. Some of the ten plagues have documented natural occurrences, eg frogs after the Mt St Helens eruption. Indeed, it is not difficult to read all ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea as effects of a single extended volcanic episode.

J

There's a problem with the Black Sea flood, people all over the world already had a flood myth. That kinda rules out more recent local floods. And the Black Sea flood happened after seas around the world had risen over 300 ft in a relatively short amount of time. Btw, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake as it was a basin for run off from glaciers and rivers blocked to the north by ice sheets. Some of those floods from Russia were catastrophic too.

We cant say for sure when the great flood happened given all the possible causes. But we do have some sources placing it around the end of the most recent ice age. The Tlingit say it happened 14kya and they would have been living close to the Pacific back then and witnessed the Bering land bridge disappear from sight. The Atlantis myth might involve the flood and Solon placed it ~9600 BC. People living on and around the Sunda Shelf would have seen a massive landmass submerged back then too.

 

[Hygro]

Are there any cultures that didn't have at least one myth of every primordial macro disaster?

 

[Berzerker]

are you talking about flood or creation myths?

I'm sure there must have been people far from oceans and seas for whom the great flood was little more than a change in climate, but they would have heard what happened from others.

creation myths can come in several forms, like the dismembering of a monster or giant, but they typically have some common features... Like water... The water preceded creation. The water preceded life. And it looks like it really did... The Earth >4bya may have been covered by water, it may have been covered even before the impact that may have formed the Moon ~4.5 bya.

 

[Hygro]

I'm saying that every culture is going to have myths of calamities, and the more basic and oldschool the calamity, the more likely a culture has one for that one, and one for that one, and that one.... floods, raining fire rocks, disease, etc, I would imagine most cultures have most/all of them.

 

[Agent327]

But anatomically 'modern' humans are not

Anatomically modern humans are called homo sapiens sapiens, I am told.That's not really relevant though, as both are human.

Now whats interesting is these earlier peoples (neandertal/erectus) were replaced, they didn't evolve into us. We have evidence of both long after anatomically modern humans appear in Africa.

Yes, and there are genetic traces of Neanderthals in modern humans. so you might say we 'merged'.

Eden might be located under the Persian Gulf which was an exposed river valley during ice ages. As for one language, linguists are debating the notion of a mother tongue but if it existed, we'd find it as the language of the people living 200kya in Ethiopia before they migrated away. The dating of the earliest farming keeps getting pushed back, but according to Genesis God planted the Garden and assigned the Adam to till it. Once the Adam was expelled his food supply became much more difficult to acquire. As I said, we dont know how much time passed between the 6th day people and the Garden story, but if the Persian Gulf is its location, then the events happened during an ice age.

Again, Eden might be 'located' anywhere. It's as likely to be 'found' as Noah's ark. I'm not sure what Genesis has to do with humans discovering farming, which occurred at various places at various times. In Genesis God tells Adam to 'take care of the garden', so that would make him a gardener. There's no mention either in Genesis of an ice age - most likely because it's authors had no knowledge of such an event. If you want to make sense of mythical stories, you'd probably do best to study some mythology, instead of trying to take things literally. Neither Genesis or Exodus are counted among the biblical historical books. You may find a creation story among every religion on Earth. None of which makes any one of them factual.

 

[onejayhawk]

Schliemann discovered a city that is one of many on that site (over half a dozen). It's debatable if he discovered THE Troy of The Iliad. The artifacts he found are largely worthless, since he basically looted the site instead of having everything properly documented in situ.

What's your point? No one else was looking for a fictional city.

There's a problem with the Black Sea flood, people all over the world already had a flood myth. That kinda rules out more recent local floods. And the Black Sea flood happened after seas around the world had risen over 300 ft in a relatively short amount of time. Btw, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake as it was a basin for run off from glaciers and rivers blocked to the north by ice sheets. Some of those floods from Russia were catastrophic too.

We cant say for sure when the great flood happened given all the possible causes. But we do have some sources placing it around the end of the most recent ice age. The Tlingit say it happened 14kya and they would have been living close to the Pacific back then and witnessed the Bering land bridge disappear from sight. The Atlantis myth might involve the flood and Solon placed it ~9600 BC. People living on and around the Sunda Shelf would have seen a massive landmass submerged back then too.

The freshwater lake did not take the whole valley. The water could have supported a large population, constituting the world of the day. A similar flood occurred between the Arab Sea and the Red Sea several millenia further back. That would have been a river based culture, not unlike the later Nile civilizations. Both could also be the origin of Atlantis.

J

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The first living being formed in the primeval chaos known as Ginnungagap was a giant of monumental size, called Ymir. When the icy mists of Niflheimr met with the heat of Múspellsheimr Ymir was born out of the joining of these two extreme forces from either world in the great void. Contained within Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning, Ymir's creation is recounted:

Just as from Niflheim there arose coldness and all things grim, so what was facing close to Muspell was hot and bright, but Ginnungagap was as mild as a windless sky. And when the rime and the blowing of the warmth met so that it thawed and dripped, there was a quickening from these flowing drops due to the power of the source of the heat, and it became the form of a man, and he was given the name Ymir.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jötunn

"From Ymir's flesh the earth was formed, and the rocks from out of his bones; the sky from the skull of the ice-cold giant, and the sea from his blood."

Fascinating myth, in Mesopotamia it was Tiamat who was carved up to form Heaven and Earth. But the Norse version describes the location where Ymir formed, where heat met cold to produce water. When the Earth formed that location was the asteroid belt at the frost line of the solar system.

Tiamat was also located at the asteroid belt, she was the 4th planet from the Sun and covered by water...our water.

Now how did I know you were going to go back to this nonsense? Nobody at the other forum believed you, and only timtofly supports your notions on this one, albeit in a really bizarre form.

Giants: Myth.

Tiamat: Myth.

Norse content: Myth (and I say this as someone whose ancestors believed that stuff)

Earth/asteroid belt: Unproven, and your link is still worthless. And no, I'm still not going to ask "my pal Lori" to come here and post; I repeat: his coming here was his own decision. I didn't ask him to do that.

http://www.livescience.com/10340-lost-civilization-existed-beneath-persian-gulf.html
http://ldolphin.org/eden/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Zarins



I didn't mention anything about animals. Didn't I just ask you to let me make my own arguments?

You mentioned Noah. The story of Noah includes animals.

Your first link leads to an article that talks more about Paleolithic people than modern humans. It adds up to "Maybe. We need to excavate underwater." So nothing is conclusive in this article.

Second link: Interesting, but it's 30 years old. The note at the bottom of the article makes me giggle:

Note added 8/14/07: The Flood of Noah was likely such a huge world-wide catastrophe that the site of the Garden of Eden may presently be buried under miles of sediments. If the earth originally had one continent, and the continents split apart during or after the Flood, then the location of the Garden in the land of Eden is even more uncertain. In recent years several documentary films have been made which explore the Mesopotamian region for the possible location of Eden.

I can't take this seriously. This is ridiculous.

Third link: The article is extremely short, and needs more citations.

There's a problem with the Black Sea flood, people all over the world already had a flood myth. That kinda rules out more recent local floods. And the Black Sea flood happened after seas around the world had risen over 300 ft in a relatively short amount of time. Btw, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake as it was a basin for run off from glaciers and rivers blocked to the north by ice sheets. Some of those floods from Russia were catastrophic too.

We cant say for sure when the great flood happened given all the possible causes. But we do have some sources placing it around the end of the most recent ice age. The Tlingit say it happened 14kya and they would have been living close to the Pacific back then and witnessed the Bering land bridge disappear from sight. The Atlantis myth might involve the flood and Solon placed it ~9600 BC. People living on and around the Sunda Shelf would have seen a massive landmass submerged back then too.

Y'know, climate change doesn't make things suddenly go POOF! and it's gone, at least not usually. Admittedly, things are pretty dire in parts of the Canadian Arctic, with some settlements that were built on permafrost now in danger of sinking. But nowadays we've got help from human-influenced climate change. That wasn't the case back then.

If you're going to bring Atlantis into this, why not PM the "Ask an Atlanteologist" poster and get him back? I've still got questions from those videos he told me to watch, but didn't stick around long enough to answer them.

What's your point? No one else was looking for a fictional city.

My point is that Schleimann went looking for Troy and found a city that may or may not have been the Troy of Homer's story. There were more than half a dozen cities built there over the centuries. Since he looted the site instead of properly documenting it, this has made the job of archaeologists much more difficult.

Archaeology isn't like Indiana Jones or the old Relic Hunter TV show. You don't just find a site or object, stuff it in your pocket, and run off with it.

Archaeologists have searched for Sodom and Gomorrah... but haven't found anything that they can point to and say, "This is definitely it."

 

[Perfection]

so why is your account decent or perfectly scientific?

because it's consistent with the scientific understanding of our world.

 

[El_Machinae]

Even if that were true, not a given, fiction has facts interwoven with story. Schliemann discovered Troy because of information in the Iliad. Many think that the story of Noah (and Gilgamesh) derive from an oral tradition of the flooding of the Black Sea basin circa 5600 BC. Some of the ten plagues have documented natural occurrences, eg frogs after the Mt St Helens eruption. Indeed, it is not difficult to read all ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea as effects of a single extended volcanic episode.

J

If even remotely true, that's a heck of a leap to use those stories, modified heavily, to narrate regarding the character of God.

I mean, the nature of God is known once we realize that foals die in forest fires. But the Christians go on to add additional stories regarding intent and murder and genocide, and then read into the character of God more than is deserved.

One thing we know about God, He certainly doesn't mind if people commit and believe egregious libel about It.

 

[warpus]

Honestly, if an all-powerful God existed and cared about what we think about him, there would be only one religion on the planet and most of us would be members.

 

[civver_764]

Short video that you guys might find interesting.


Link to video.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Honestly, if an all-powerful God existed and cared about what we think about him, there would be only one religion on the planet and most of us would be members.

But where would be the fun in that? Besides all-powerful means also to allow room for foolishness and weakness. I read: God plays a fool in season; Man plays a fool in season and out of season - that is the only difference. Also God may care about what the humans think of it yet there may be much more important realities beyond mind and thinking. And lastly if God would be so keen on everybody being in the same club I dont think the multiplicity in the universe and many-sided natural evolution would make much sense.