More brilliant scientists admitting they really have no clue

[littlebeast13]

Don't come crying to me if an old man shows up at your door toting a huge pushbroom.....

lb13

[earendel]

Personally, I believe in anti-creationism. As in, I'm sweeping this huge mess you guys created into the cosmic dustbin!

And if I see another post in this thread, my broom will be glad to teach you about the Big Bang Theory...

Bring it on, broom boy!

[earendel]

Oh, we're GOING to get 100 posts in this thread.

I'm sure, in fact, we might be able to set a record for this Bored, if we only keep repeating the same cherished beliefs often enough.....

Nothing like a dead horse to bring out the floggers.

[Rexer25]

And if I see another post in this thread, my broom will be glad to teach you about the Big Bang Theory...

I sense a challenge...

[mrkelley23]

Yeah -- notice how the posting rate in this thread jumped significantly within the last 5 minutes?

I thinking we should make this thread like the Alabama Tiger's floating house party in the Travis McGee novels.

[minimetoo26]

Don't come crying to me if an old man shows up at your door toting a huge pushbroom.....

lb13

I will put him to work! And Erin loves him...

I have to find all my obnoxious goodies all over again! They are all in Netscape format, and my Netscape is totally dead. Won't even open. So unless I can open them with IE, I'll have to go hunting....

[BackInTex]

I also believe in a God who inspires writers to tell stories like those in Genesis not as scientific treatises but as mythic tales to point to the glory of the Creator.

"mythic tales"?

I completely stunned. So you don't hold any belief in the Bible? Other than perhaps the morals, similar to Aesops stories? I guess you and Travis are pretty close in your religious views.

I'm not meaning that as an insult, I just thought you more conventional.

[earendel]

I also believe in a God who inspires writers to tell stories like those in Genesis not as scientific treatises but as mythic tales to point to the glory of the Creator.

"mythic tales"?

I completely stunned. So you don't hold any belief in the Bible? Other than perhaps the morals, similar to Aesops stories? I guess you and Travis are pretty close in your religious views.

I'm not meaning that as an insult, I just thought you more conventional.

Mythic doesn't equate with fable nor with fairy tale. A myth is a story designed to explain the origin of something. Often it may contain a kernal of truth amid the poetic language used to convey it. You should read Genesis 1 in Hebrew - it is marvelous poetry, and, as with every poem, its truth is enveloped by the language.

[MarleysGh0st]

"mythic tales"?

I completely stunned.

I've been trying to stay mostly out of this thread, Bit, so as not to appear insulting, but I've been tempted past my limit.

But this is the centerpoint of the argument here.

You and Cal are holding to a book that you say holds literal truth. Science builds up a careful case that contradicts that story, but you dismiss it, not by a scientific rebuttal, but simply by pointing to that book again.

Cal raised the explanation of "appearances" to answer these arguments, and the rebuttal was that all these false and misleading appearances would be a terrible deception and why would a deity do that? Now you answer that it's not deception? Why? You're pointing to that book, again.

Way back in the beginning of this thread, you linked to an article about astrophysics. You have no scientific criticisms of the data or conclusions of any of the points in that article.

You just have a book.

[eyégor]

Sheesh! Stay off the bored a few days and look what you miss.

and, before I forget....

You Cannot Petition The Lord With Prayer !!

Back to the subject at hand, am I the only person who thinks that both sides in this debate are 'right'?

My take on all of this is pretty simple....Man is. Simple, I mean.

(In the following I mean no disrespect to anyone's belief, and am trivializing several beliefs to make a point) Think about it for a second. You have a being, all powerful and knowing. Among his many talents is the ability to create. Not just build or transform, but actually CREATE.

So he (note: I am using the unpopular gender neutral masculine here) goes and does just that. He creates. Whoa, baby does he! First with the light, followed by celestial bodies, (No, not Grendel's mom) plants, critters & all the rest.

How do we know this? Well, we have a record, right there in Genesis 1. Of course, it is rather difficult to ascertain who was the actual witness to these events, since Man was pretty far down the to do list. Maybe another all powerful being moonlighted as a court reporter. Who knows? I haven't seen an inventory of what plants or creatures were created or squeezed into the ark. Is there any reference in the Bible to their being EXACTLY as they are today?

Well, you could refer to the old created in his own image thing. But, as I look around, I see lots of people who look different. Is one of these people THE ONE? the person who actually looks like God? Is it BiT? SSS? Skippy? Marley? One thing I know, if it is my boss, then there had better be an all powerful plastic surgeon around.

Other than this beginning narrative, we are pretty sure that the Bible was written by humans, like you & me. Tell me, does anybody know a flawless individual who never gets things wrong? I didn't think so. So who is to say that these scribes didn't get a few details wrong? Parting a sea, stopping the sun, do we really think these events would be reported precisely by people who knew not the workings behind them (regardless of what those workings might be).

You see, our abilities aren't even on the same page as the Almighty. They aren't even on the same page. So, even if the Bible were dictated verbatim by The Lord, I don't believe we got the unabridged version. We didn't even get the Reader's Digest version. Our is printed on really thick cardboard so we won't tear out the pages while we look at it.

Yup, A simple book for (relatively) simple minds. Add to that the translation difficulties, transcription errors and 'improvements' over the centuries and we are hard pressed to even guess what God's actual word is. I seriously doubt that God would micromanage the content of the Bible to keep up with man's growing language, especially since he hasn't yet.

I'm not even going to get into the pre-Christ active God, post Christ passive God thing. (mono? Not enough sleep? worn out by the grandkids?)

I equate the entire 'I know what God is really thinking' mindset to the Crucifiction, the trial of Galileo, The flat Earth theory, the World Ice theory, today's global warming hysteria.

We don't know what God is thinking. We aren't even capable of of such knowledge. All we know is that we should be moving toward that capability by whater means we choose, be it faith, science or whatever.

All of this isn't meant to imply I think the Bible is outdated or hopelessly flawed. Scripture IS important. It is the closest thing to 'God's word' that we are going to get, and so, should be treated as such. But literal?

Not so much.

Now, back to work.

And sweepie? as Pea would say....Bite Me!!

[BackInTex]

But this is the centerpoint of the argument here.

You and Cal are holding to a book that you say holds literal truth. Science builds up a careful case that contradicts that story, but you dismiss it, not by a scientific rebuttal, but simply by pointing to that book again.

Exactly. The Father is no different that your father, my father, or our kids' fathers in that the most authoritative support for an issue is "Because I said so."

Cal raised the explanation of "appearances" to answer these arguments, and the rebuttal was that all these false and misleading appearances would be a terrible deception and why would a deity do that? Now you answer that it's not deception? Why? You're pointing to that book, again.

Tribe had a problem with this, too. Let me re-analogize it. When you're at the Animal Kingdom at WDW it appears you are in Africa with some well worn looking buildings, old beat up trucks, etc. But Disney is not trying to decieve you. They know you understand that it is not as it seems. God does not want to decieve us so he gave us Genesis in the Bible, dictated to Moses. Earth wouldn't be a very nice place if it were all new. Small sapplings unable to bear fruit, bird eggs with no mothers to sit on them to keep them warm so they could hatch, rocks still too hot to touch, dry riverbeds and lakes because the the rains from the source have not had time to flow down the watersheds completely, not to mention the smell from the new carpet and paint. So he created it already aged. And so we would understand it is not really as old as it seems, he told us.

Way back in the beginning of this thread, you linked to an article about astrophysics. You have no scientific criticisms of the data or conclusions of any of the points in that article.

You just have a book.

No, I have 66 Books, written/inspired by Someone all knowing who won't be superceded and corrected by 'new and improved' technological understandings.

[earendel]

Tribe had a problem with this, too. Let me re-analogize it. When you're at the Animal Kingdom at WDW it appears you are in Africa with some well worn looking buildings, old beat up trucks, etc. But Disney is not trying to decieve you. They know you understand that it is not as it seems. God does not want to decieve us so he gave us Genesis in the Bible, dictated to Moses. Earth wouldn't be a very nice place if it were all new. Small sapplings unable to bear fruit, bird eggs with no mothers to sit on them to keep them warm so they could hatch, rocks still too hot to touch, dry riverbeds and lakes because the the rains from the source have not had time to flow down the watersheds completely, not to mention the smell from the new carpet and paint. So he created it already aged. And so we would understand it is not really as old as it seems, he told us.

It would certainly make sense for God to create the world "old" because of the things you describe. But that doesn't explain why scientific evidence abounds regarding an age of the earth that is much greater than that necessary to avoid "small sapplings [sic]...dry riverbeds" and so forth. Rather than focusing on the "how", the focus should be on the "who" and the "why". The Bible is not a scientific textbook. It was never intended to be. Its purpose is to point to the One greater than ourselves, show us the way to that One and how to live with one another.

Oh, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere in the Bible that says Moses wrote Genesis. That's the presumption of the translators of the KJV, who put "The First Book of Moses" at the beginning, but that's not the same as Holy Writ itself.

No, I have 66 Books, written/inspired by Someone all knowing who won't be superceded and corrected by 'new and improved' technological understandings.

"Inspired", yes. "Written" - not so much. But that's a separate issue.

[ToLiveIsToFly]

But there should always be the caveat, clearly stated, that these are theories and are just as likely to be wrong as they are to be right because we really don't know.

There's a huge difference between "we don't really know" and "just as likely to be wrong as they are to be right".

We really DON'T know. Then again, YOU don't know either.

They're much more likely to be right than they are to be wrong.

[MarleysGh0st]

Exactly. The Father is no different that your father, my father, or our kids' fathers in that the most authoritative support for an issue is "Because I said so."

I'm glad you put a smiley on that, because you know there comes a point in every child's maturity when that argument no longer works.

Tribe had a problem with this, too. Let me re-analogize it. When you're at the Animal Kingdom at WDW it appears you are in Africa with some well worn looking buildings, old beat up trucks, etc. But Disney is not trying to decieve you.
...
No, I have 66 Books, written/inspired by Someone all knowing who won't be superceded and corrected by 'new and improved' technological understandings.

The proof of which (and similar disproofs for all the other books by/for the thousands of different deities that you would dismiss as fictitious in an instant) would require another thread as long as this one.

But for now, if your books are the ultimate answer for literal scientific knowledge, then it should be impossible to supercede or correct that with any scientific inquiry. And that means that said scientific research should fully support your books, not that you simply go "La la la, I'm not listening!" when it doesn't.

To use your Animal Kingdom analogy, let us assume one enters the park with the faith and innocence of a child, not the cynicism of an adult. This child would still be able to discover, on closer examination, that the Tree of Life is really steel and fiberglass, not a living thing. And, should he wander from the tour bus to pet the lions, secure in the belief that a Disney lion would never harm him, we would not be surprised if he ended up as lunch.

So, here we are, in "4.5 Billion-year-old Evolution World".

The line for the roller coaster starts to your left.

[Bob78164]

Yeah -- notice how the posting rate in this thread jumped significantly within the last 5 minutes?

I thinking we should make this thread like the Alabama Tiger's floating house party in the Travis McGee novels.

Didn't that party finally end in the last book? --Bob

[silvercamaro]

HD deleted a post before I could quote it, but I wish him good luck in his delusions for the future.

[Appa23]

HD deleted a post before I could quote it, but I wish him good luck in his delusions for the future.

Thank you.

Of course, one man's delusion is another man's reality.

[silvercamaro]

HD deleted a post before I could quote it, but I wish him good luck in his delusions for the future.

Thank you.

Of course, one man's delusion is another man's reality.

I hope this group is still in touch in 20 or 30 years, so you can come back and let us know how that's working out for you.

[Appa23]

HD deleted a post before I could quote it, but I wish him good luck in his delusions for the future.

Thank you.

Of course, one man's delusion is another man's reality.

I hope this group is still in touch in 20 or 30 years, so you can come back and let us know how that's working out for you.

Heck, the results will be back in 10 years or so.

As for me, I have faith in my wife's ability.

[MarleysGh0st]

HD deleted a post before I could quote it, but I wish him good luck in his delusions for the future.

Now I'm wishing I saw what Appa deleted.

[Flybrick]

"Tree of Life" fake?

Lions real?


THANKS for ruining my Disney vacation.............




Oh, sorry, wrong thread.........

[Appa23]

HD deleted a post before I could quote it, but I wish him good luck in his delusions for the future.

Now I'm wishing I saw what Appa deleted.

Well, since ShinyCar and I have conversed on it, I imagine that it only would be polite to note what I said.

I had posted that it appears that you (Marley) seem to think that a parent might need to provide a reason for a decision other than "Because I said so [as the parental authority in our relationship.]"

I decided to delete it b/c I did not want to take away from the main firestorm that was this thread.

Keep in mind that I am not saying that a parent should not give a reason beyond "I said so". I am saying that a child, merely by virtue of his age, does not have the inherent right for a reason beyond "I said so."

YMMV.

[MarleysGh0st]

I decided to delete it b/c I did not want to take away from the main firestorm that was this thread.

Fine. Let the main firestorm continue.

Brimstone is optional.

[wbtravis007]

BiT wrote:

No, I have 66 Books, written/inspired by Someone all knowing who won't be superceded and corrected by 'new and improved' technological understandings.

I'm reminded of this line:

"When you understand why you don't believe in all those other gods, you'll understand why I don't believe in yours."

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

Once again, everybody repeat after me.

Natural Selection is a Theory,
Evolution is a fact.