Where's the water?

[RANDOR]

<--------------------Giving thanks to the Lord....for not caring one bit where the water came from..........
YeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...thank you Jesus.

 

[Secondhand Lion]

River,

Are you a part time circus contortionist also or is it just limited to forum board posts?

SL

 

[River Jordan]

Are you always this evasive and non-responsive, or is it just limited to discussions with non- fundamentalists?

 

[RANDOR]

LIOn..............will you pleazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz show River Jordan where the water is..Pleeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzz.
and when you show her.......................make her drink it

 

[FellowYellow]

The present day society in bondage to the fallen angels is a programming radio station of doubt. It's hard to believe in miracles. But when you begin to walk on water you will find that it holds. This can be very surprising.

It is truly surprising when you just actually do what you are told to do, and live by faith. The "old man" hates it, and dies because of faith. But what I have always found is this, "the Bible is the literal truth."

It is the truth whether the stance of "spirituality" or "science" is taken. This leads to a further realisation, "science and spirituality are only one thing." There is no division between "spirit" and "matter."

 

[Secondhand Lion]

Are you always this evasive and non-responsive, or is it just limited to discussions with non- fundamentalists?

Generally yes. Generally no.

 

[UppsalaDragby]

???????? It proves my point, i.e., that water always runs back to its lowest point. Specific to what you're citing, does the water from the blow hole flood the land? No, it does exactly what you said...runs back down to it's lowest point.

Exactly, it proves my point. If you on the other hand can prove that water at its lowest point has always been there then I guess it would prove your point.

Come on River, quit just making stuff up off the top of your head without thinking it through first.

You must read the Bible as we do and believe what we say uncritically."

I can't see anywhere where Wormwoood encouraged anyone to do that. So what's your little game?

The world around us also serves as God's revelation, and it simply does not show anything supportive of this young-earth flood geology....at all. For example, consider big oil companies and how they search for new sources of oil. They don't care one bit about ideology or loyalty to any group. All they care about is the most efficient means of making money. And guess what? Not one of them utilizes a young-earth or flood geology framework in their surveys. Now don't you think if the entire earth really was flooded just a few thousand years ago, a framework built around that would prove to be much more accurate and useful to them? And don't you think they'd drop their current framework in a heartbeat?

But they don't, do they? The reason is simple..it's no atheist conspiracy or plot...it's just the basic fact that the old-earth, non-flood framework works.

????????????????????

The day you demonstrate that scientists interpretation of the natural world is equivalent to "God's revelation" then let me know!

In the meantime, I'm not realy sure how your comment above proves or disproves a global flood. So what exactly is your point? According to scientists, all of the oil and gas we use today began as microscopic plants and animals living "in the ocean"... in other words.. water. And you are saying that since they are drilling for oil for financial benefits that it is evidence AGAINST a global flood???

Then why isn't it flooded now? If there's enough water on the earth to flood it entirely for a year, why isn't that water flooding it now?

You don't seem to get it River... if the topology of the earth today differs from what it was during the flood then why should it be flooded now? You tell me..

We don't know who wrote the flood story, and we have extremely good evidence that the Hebrews borrowed it from the Babylonians and put their own spin on it.

No we don't! That is an assumption that you cannot defend. If you disagree, where is the "extremely" good evidence?

As far as we know, the Babylonians gave an account of a historical event, just as Moses did. Is that extremetly good evidence that Moses copied the babylonian account???

The flood advocates here are trying to make the case that this flood model is accurate, which means the current one used by geologists and oil companies is not only wrong, but really, really wrong. Yet no one in those fields seems to have noticed.

I thought you said that oil companies were mainly interested in earning money.. now suddenly they are the litmus test to indicate whether or not there was a global flood! They don't care about that, do they?

Perhaps you need to explain that to those here who are trying to argue that the flood is completely explainable in natural terms.

Such as????

I think that those here who advocate a biblical flood are merely trying to argue that 1) such an event occured and 2) that there is physical evidence that it did.

We have a planet covered in sediments, fossils scattered all over the planet including on all the highest mountains ranges around the globe, HUGE oil deposits, HUGE deposits of coal, fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures that indicate drowning, accounts given by ancient cultures describing a flood ... and many other evidences that testify that the biblical account was correct.

The scientific evidence leans heavily against you River.

 

[Wormwood]

I'm sorry, is anyone trying to argue that the resurrection is scientifically defensible and explainable from a purely natural standpoint?

I'm just trying to understand your position. You seem to want to discount a universal flood in order to "give credence to science." Am I mistaken here? My point is simply that one cannot be a Christian if their primary goal is to give credence to science as it does not allow for divine intervention that works against natural law (the resurrection being one example of this).

We don't know who wrote the flood story, and we have extremely good evidence that the Hebrews borrowed it from the Babylonians and put their own spin on it. Cultures do that all the time, so there's no reason to think the Hebrews were immune

.
I think this a dangerous road to walk down. Maybe Moses' ten commandments were borrowed from the Code of Hammurabi? At what point do we say the Israelites just made up stories based on other myths to make their national deity better than other national deities? It seems you are arguing that "truth" is that which is ultimately pragmatic (leads people the right direction) rather than that which corresponds to reality. If this is your position, I would argue that it is a faulty one. Isnt it possible that the Babylonian accounts of the flood (as well as other cultures) are there because it really happened and the story of such a flood was passed down through their generations? So, if the Bible truly is divine revelation, then perhaps, although the Hebrew story appears to not be as old, maybe it is still the accurate one. In any event, I think if we claim the stories of the Bible often do not correspond to reality, then we really have to question the legitimacy of its trustworthiness in every area. After all, if we cannot trust the Bible with regards to the things we can see, how can we trust it with regards to the things we cannot see?

I put young-earth as a prefix to make sure we're all talking about the same thing...the entire earth being flooded for a year, about 4,000 years ago, and everything dying except what was on the ark.

There are plenty of people who believe in a universal deluge who do not hold to a 6,000 year old earth. One may have to believe in a worldwide flood to be a young earth creationist, but one does not have to be a young-earth creationist to believe in a worldwide flood.

And as I've explained, that carries necessary consequences that basically render the earth uninhabitable. That's my point here...Christians are making up these absurd scenarios that are so easily shown to be untenable, anyone with a basic understanding of physics and math can do it, with the end result being a lot of people laughing at Christians.

Christians aren't the only one making up "absurd" scenarios (scientifically and mathematically speaking). Others claim that the world was a molten rock that cooled 6 billion years ago, then rain fell on the cooled rocks which turned into prebiotic ooze which morphed into protozoa when then became multicell and then evolved into creatures crawling around on the land..and some when back into the see and grew tails and so on and so forth. Scientifically speaking, all the theories on the origins of life and the situation of the earth border on the absurd (which is why people like Richard Dawkins believes that life was seeded on this planet by aliens...and he's revered among those in scientific circles).

I think if your concern is being laughed at, then you should abandon your hope in a crucified peasant who walked out of the grave which resulted in reconciliation and forgiveness before a holy God for all who call on him. Such a belief is the height of absurdity and has always been mocked by rationalists. So in light of the absurdity of the cross, why do you care if people laugh at Christians about water and animals on a boat?

 

[HammerStone]

I feel like I somewhat have the ability to weigh in here with a little knowledge gleaned from my time in college given that critical interpretation is a piece of my English BA.

Number one, just be careful of tightly associating your faith with the latest scientific discoveries. Any good scientist knows that our comprehension of the world through science tends to grow over time and is refined. I hear a number of scholars of the Bible make the comment about knowing just enough Greek or Hebrew to be dangerous, and I see where the same applies across disciplines. I just bring this forward as a caution, one way or another; if you're basing religious arguments on the latest discovery - well that discovery is, in all likelihood, going to morph a bit.

The first issue I see here is one of deconstructionist rendering.

We have a tendency in our area to deconstruct what we read. By this I mean that every text is read with the idea to tear it apart and see how it works, trying to critically out-think it. This is probably more of a modern phenomenon.

It's a great way to learn about a text, but it's terribly individualized and often based upon the worldview of the critic. I had a great time working in absurd deconstructionist arguments just because the whole perspective has its flaws.

We don't know who wrote the flood story, and we have extremely good evidence that the Hebrews borrowed it from the Babylonians and put their own spin on it. Cultures do that all the time, so there's no reason to think the Hebrews were immune.

With all due respect - and much is due here because of your knowledge in certain areas - this is a bit of a fallacious argument. Cross out "good" and replace it with "circumstantial." Following a secular worldview, it is likely that this is what happened because the extant tests are simply older. In other words, we can only study what we find and what still exists. Makes sense, right?

I would submit an alternate hypothesis that primarily oral cultures would have passed this down long before the Akkadian myth. As a point of reference, this would be consistent with verses such as Enoch (Genesis 22:24) who walked with God and was no more. We don't have the body of writings for Enoch. Chances are his walking with God fulfilled some form of prophet or priest role for the culture, but you get the point. The New Testament addresses him 3 times. There is an apocryphal book attributed to Enoch as well. Obviously something came down about this man from somewhere.

There are certainly precedents for oral culture, and obviously those peoples didn't leave writing behind that survived nor are descendants alive who can explain this to us.

Another example would be the North American tribes that occupied our own lands 10,000 years ago. We have atlatl points and other artifacts, but we know almost nothing about entire tribes of people because they largely did not leave much behind in terms of writing, pictographs, etc.

Even a second hypothesis could be that certain forms of writing - pictures, colors, whatever - perhaps existed prior but simply rotted away with time. Now, we know from other things like technology that this is not terribly likely, but you get my point.

Now, to close this out, we can have a discussion about myths and teachings and how they might have been employed. I am okay with that as I tend not to hold to a YEC view. (Personally, I don't think you have to read Genesis 100% literally to be a Christian...) However, I see this argument embroiled with popular level scientific arguments in the same posts, and I don't fine that to be a wise way to hash out the issue.

With that said, I need to put my Administrator hat on for a moment and remind all of us to stick to the issue and not drop back to insulting the proponent or messenger. We can all come up with witty, customized insults, but is that profitable in any worldview?

 

[Arnie Manitoba]

River Jordan .... ask evolutionary scientists where all our water came from after "the big bang"

I would like to hear the answer

 

[Secondhand Lion]

Hammerstone,

Are you trying to imply that it is some kind of "absurd deconstructionist" view to say (per that article) that the argument has to cease that there is not enough water on earth to cover everything?

or

Are you keeping that statement to what people are doing with the bible?

Sorry, don't mean to try to deconstruct what you are saying...but I can't tell what you are saying.

SL

 

[Wormwood]

SL,

HammerStone probably knows more about this concept than I do, but the concept has to do with implications about the role of literature over and above the author's actual intent. For instance, the story of the flood by some would be seen not simply as a literal depicting of specific events, but the role of how the literature works to shape culture presently. What matters ultimately, according to deconstructionists, is the shaping function of the literature on its readers and not how specifically the events in the literature relate to historical events. For instance, if a General tells a story to amp his soldiers up for battle, the question is not whether or not the story is true that the General told. The issue is the way the story affected the soldiers to help them perform in battle. I think the idea is that we can never really have a one-to-one relation between words and specific objects or authors intentions. We can only understand the impact of the story. Of course these philosophical concepts are far more complex than this little summary, but I think that is the issue HammerStone is addressing.

 

[ChristianJuggarnaut]

So, the bible is just stories told to have an effect on the reader. The truth of the story is immaterial.

We get it. The concept is understood. Now, the question is, and wormwood has actually mentioned this above (blind squirrel meet nut) what, pray tell, is true in scripture, and what is not?

Hammerstone and Wormwood have done an excellent job of pointing out the absurdities in River's undying devotion to destroy scripture. Don't ruin it by bowing to the anti fundie goddess.

SL's point is simple. This new finding should put to rest the "not enough water" argument. He made no other claim.

 

[shturt678]

I've never heard that before. Where'd you get it from?

Thank you for your response!

At the University of Hawaii, Hamilton Hall, use to almost live in there decades ago, bumped into this article where they found the tops of Palm Trees in the Artic when they were making the Pipe Line. He wrote the article because the atheist, and etc. around him, ie, he was one of the engineers, didn't want to discuss it and was wondering what the threat was as he too was an atheist till found out Noah was real and became a Peacher in California somewhere - saying what I know so someone familiar with the Internet (I'm a dummy) could google the articles up? Or maybe he was the one that designed SuperTankers in Alaska as there were a couple of articles as he too became a Christian if I recall? All confirmed with their research plenty of water and earth axis did a 45 degree routine plus more evidence.

The 6 twenty-four hour days from me contextually.

Old Jack needing help again.

 

[Arnie Manitoba]

We don't know who wrote the flood story, and we have extremely good evidence that the Hebrews borrowed it from the Babylonians and put their own spin on it. Cultures do that all the time, so there's no reason to think the Hebrews were immune.

It would be completely understandable that for quite a few years after the flood , a lot of people would have remembered the flood and passed the stories down.

I would expect that Genesis was inspired scripture because there is so much bulletproof information in it that has stood the test of time

I do not know of any Babylonian comparisons , not saying they dont exist , just never seen them

 

[River Jordan]

Exactly, it proves my point. If you on the other hand can prove that water at its lowest point has always been there then I guess it would prove your point.

If you take water from its lowest point and move it, it tends to return back to its lowest point. As I explained, if you try and use the water described in the OP to flood the surface of the earth, the space that the water took up either has to be replaced by something else, or the water will just run right back to its original location.

What you guys are trying to do here is cover a cobblestone on a plate with only the water on the plate, even though every time you try and move the water over the rock, it just runs right back down to the plate.

The day you demonstrate that scientists interpretation of the natural world is equivalent to "God's revelation" then let me know!

In the meantime, I'm not realy sure how your comment above proves or disproves a global flood. So what exactly is your point? According to scientists, all of the oil and gas we use today began as microscopic plants and animals living "in the ocean"... in other words.. water. And you are saying that since they are drilling for oil for financial benefits that it is evidence AGAINST a global flood???

It is extremely good evidence against flood geology. Entire professional fields who have no allegiance one way or the other to any particular model, never, ever, ever use Biblical flood geology to discover and explore new sources of energy. Never. Instead they specifically use standard, mainstream, old earth, non-Biblical flood geology. If creationists truly think their model is better, why aren't they presenting them to these companies?

You don't seem to get it River... if the topology of the earth today differs from what it was during the flood then why should it be flooded now? You tell me..

Because you can't significantly change the topology without necessary consequences, the main one being the generation of enough heat to boil off the oceans and atmosphere. Even some YEC's admit that.

No we don't! That is an assumption that you cannot defend. If you disagree, where is the "extremely" good evidence?

As far as we know, the Babylonians gave an account of a historical event, just as Moses did. Is that extremetly good evidence that Moses copied the babylonian account???

The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh pre-dates the Hebrew flood story. And if you want to argue that the Babylonian story is the historical one, I suggest you read it first.

Such as????

I think that those here who advocate a biblical flood are merely trying to argue that 1) such an event occured and 2) that there is physical evidence that it did.

So yes or no...do you believe the Biblical flood is explainable in purely natural terms?

We have a planet covered in sediments, fossils scattered all over the planet including on all the highest mountains ranges around the globe, HUGE oil deposits, HUGE deposits of coal, fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures that indicate drowning, accounts given by ancient cultures describing a flood ... and many other evidences that testify that the biblical account was correct.

The scientific evidence leans heavily against you River.

How do you know what the scientific evidence is or isn't? Have you studied the science behind it? If so, what did you study? Because when I look through the scientific literature, go to conferences, talk to scientists, and do field work, I don't see any indication at all that your claim is correct. In fact, I see the exact opposite.

So maybe you can help me out here. If the scientific evidence is against me, as you say, can you please cite a scientific source for this claim?

 

[Arnie Manitoba]

Thank you for your response!

At the University of Hawaii, Hamilton Hall, use to almost live in there decades ago, bumped into this article where they found the tops of Palm Trees in the Artic when they were making the Pipe Line. He wrote the article because the atheist, and etc. around him, ie, he was one of the engineers, didn't want to discuss it and was wondering what the threat was as he too was an atheist till found out Noah was real and became a Peacher in California somewhere - saying what I know so someone familiar with the Internet (I'm a dummy) could google the articles up? Or maybe he was the one that designed SuperTankers in Alaska as there were a couple of articles as he too became a Christian if I recall? All confirmed with their research plenty of water and earth axis did a 45 degree routine plus more evidence.

The 6 twenty-four hour days from me contextually.

Old Jack needing help again.

Correct , in our Canadian arctic permafrost we have found frozen-in-place Mammoths with partly chewed buttercup flowers in their mouths

It is like they were fast frozen standing on their feet

To this day scientists dont know how it could have happened so fast

It is like God used liquid nitrogen to fast freeze them

He invented liquid nitrogen , so I guess he can use it whenever he wants

Some scientists think they invented liquid nitrogen but all they did was discover it.

 

[River Jordan]

I'm just trying to understand your position. You seem to want to discount a universal flood in order to "give credence to science." Am I mistaken here? My point is simply that one cannot be a Christian if their primary goal is to give credence to science as it does not allow for divine intervention that works against natural law (the resurrection being one example of this).

Yes, you are mistaken. The Biblical global flood as presented by creationists is not only not supported by the evidence, it is directly contradicted by it on a number of levels (geology, paleontology, biology, genetics). I know it's convenient to explain the fact that the consensus among scientists is against the flood via some sort of conspiracy and/or anti-God agenda, but that's just intellectually lazy IMO. Reality is much, much more basic. And by going around making the sorts of ridiculous arguments like we've seen in this thread (vapor canopies, jet setting continental plates) under the banner of Christianity, we're unnecessarily giving our faith a bad reputation.
.

I think this a dangerous road to walk down. Maybe Moses' ten commandments were borrowed from the Code of Hammurabi? At what point do we say the Israelites just made up stories based on other myths to make their national deity better than other national deities? It seems you are arguing that "truth" is that which is ultimately pragmatic (leads people the right direction) rather than that which corresponds to reality. If this is your position, I would argue that it is a faulty one. Isnt it possible that the Babylonian accounts of the flood (as well as other cultures) are there because it really happened and the story of such a flood was passed down through their generations? So, if the Bible truly is divine revelation, then perhaps, although the Hebrew story appears to not be as old, maybe it is still the accurate one. In any event, I think if we claim the stories of the Bible often do not correspond to reality, then we really have to question the legitimacy of its trustworthiness in every area. After all, if we cannot trust the Bible with regards to the things we can see, how can we trust it with regards to the things we cannot see?

I guess it gets back to the fundamental question of where you derive your faith. I've come to realize that fundamentalists get much of their faith from a very strict reading of the Bible, where if you take even one bit of it away, it all collapses. Other Christians derive their faith from prayer, fellowship, and a daily walk with Christ. So if the Hebrews borrowed the flood story from the Babylonians, that doesn't affect my faith one bit, whereas with fundamentalists it could be devastating.

CJ demonstrates this very well when he describes my posts as part of my "undying devotion to destroy scripture".

Christians aren't the only one making up "absurd" scenarios (scientifically and mathematically speaking). Others claim that the world was a molten rock that cooled 6 billion years ago, then rain fell on the cooled rocks which turned into prebiotic ooze which morphed into protozoa when then became multicell and then evolved into creatures crawling around on the land..and some when back into the see and grew tails and so on and so forth. Scientifically speaking, all the theories on the origins of life and the situation of the earth border on the absurd (which is why people like Richard Dawkins believes that life was seeded on this planet by aliens...and he's revered among those in scientific circles).

How do you know what is or isn't scientifically absurd? Do you regularly read exobiology papers in journals or something?

I think if your concern is being laughed at, then you should abandon your hope in a crucified peasant who walked out of the grave which resulted in reconciliation and forgiveness before a holy God for all who call on him. Such a belief is the height of absurdity and has always been mocked by rationalists. So in light of the absurdity of the cross, why do you care if people laugh at Christians about water and animals on a boat?

There's a difference between being laughed at over a fundamental tenet of your faith, and being laughed at unnecessarily. Even if you believe in a global flood, there's no reason to propose and defend things like vapor canopies and jet setting continental plates.

With all due respect - and much is due here because of your knowledge in certain areas - this is a bit of a fallacious argument. Cross out "good" and replace it with "circumstantial." Following a secular worldview, it is likely that this is what happened because the extant tests are simply older. In other words, we can only study what we find and what still exists. Makes sense, right?

It's not just that it is older. It is also that the appearance of the Hebrew story coincides with their captivity and emergence from Babylon, plus the specific similarities between the stories. There's a reason why it seems obvious that Spanish and Portugese are closer relatives than either is to Urdu.

River Jordan .... ask evolutionary scientists where all our water came from after "the big bang"

I would like to hear the answer

Why would I ask an evolutionary biologist a question about cosmology?

 

[Secondhand Lion]

SL,

HammerStone probably knows more about this concept than I do, but the concept has to do with implications about the role of literature over and above the author's actual intent. For instance, the story of the flood by some would be seen not simply as a literal depicting of specific events, but the role of how the literature works to shape culture presently. What matters ultimately, according to deconstructionists, is the shaping function of the literature on its readers and not how specifically the events in the literature relate to historical events. For instance, if a General tells a story to amp his soldiers up for battle, the question is not whether or not the story is true that the General told. The issue is the way the story affected the soldiers to help them perform in battle. I think the idea is that we can never really have a one-to-one relation between words and specific objects or authors intentions. We can only understand the impact of the story. Of course these philosophical concepts are far more complex than this little summary, but I think that is the issue HammerStone is addressing.

Thank you for the explanation of what you think he is saying and I hope to agree with you once he weighs in; however it appears he is lumping a simple reading and conclusion of the posted article into "absurdity". I will wait for his response to know for sure.

I just can't help but notice the perfect irony in the deconstruction of the "deconstructionist viewpoint" in his dissection of what we are saying and not saying.

Maybe he was only referring to the path this thread has taken, not the original post. I can not tell from the wording in the first part of his post, he could be lumping it all together. Again, I will wait for his response.

SL

 

[ChristianJuggarnaut]

"Why would I ask an evolutionary biologist a question about cosmology?"


Well, as a second year biology grad student, you seem to know everything. So why not?