AronRa
Administrator
Once again, I'm forwarding private messages for posterity.
Hi!
First, good job blasting Peter Kreeft. I'd say you were wasting your time except that it's how I found you.
I did here something pretty preposterous here:
"We *know* that Genesis 1 and 2 ... are plagiarized elder mythology from Epic of Gilgamesh, [etc.]"
So how does https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/flood-legends/flood-gilgamesh-epic/introduction/ ?
Sincerely,
Terry
AnswersinGenesis always gives the same excuse, that you have to believe because you have to believe. They can't even understand how dishonest that is, and how their style of 'make-believe' is literally just pretend.
Thank you very much for your reply.My original message seems to be missing the link where I quoted you. I don't think that was my fault, but sorry, I certainly meant for it to be there:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQT-ab8mSRY&t=43m53sI was hoping for a longer answer. I certainly acknowledge Answers In Genesis' "we make no apologies about the fact that our origins or historical science actually is based upon the Biblical account of origins."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&t=20m20sOf course, I'm the sort of person who needs more than that or I probably wouldn't have sent you a message in the first place, right? The precedence of the Epic of Gilgamesh was something that bothered me the moment I discovered it. The Answers In Genesis page that I linked you to (well, the entire series; my link is only to the introduction) satisfied me that the account of Genesis was not based on the Epic of Gilgamesh despite the obvious fact that the pen met the paper much, much earlier in the case of Gilgamesh. (And this we probably agree on: Don't you wish you could just click on the "View history" link in the upper right hand corner of such ancient scrolls like you can on Wikipedia?) Some of this comes from the relative engineering of the Ark in each writing, 150*25*15 metres in the case of the Noah's Ark, proportions which are realistic, vs. 60*60*60 metres for Utnapishtim's vessel, which would be extremely uncomfortable at best.And there's this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&t=1h10m54sHere, Bill Nye compares the Ark to the more modern (and much smaller) Wyoming, and I noted no mention by him of the Epic of Gilgamesh at all during the entire debate. If Genesis really were plagiarized from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and we knew that for sure, wouldn't it be a far, far stronger point of argument, instead of comparing the Ark to the Wyoming, to go back to the original Utnapishtim vessel that Noah's Ark must therefore be based upon and point out the truly laughable nature of *that* vessel instead? Bill Nye doesn't do that, and I think there are three likely possibilities as to why:1. He is ignorant of Epic of Gilgamesh vs. Genesis precedence and related issues2. As I, he personally disagrees with the idea that Genesis is based on Epic of Gilgamesh3. He agrees with you, but avoids it because Ken Ham might have still mopped the floor with him on the basis of Osanai's papers. (I find this one the least likely of the three because, assuming he wouldn't have warned Ken Ham in advance, it is not very likely that Ken Ham would have been able to pull an argument together from Osanai's work that quickly and therefore it wouldn't have been very risky.)That isn't to say there aren't more possible reasons why Bill Nye hung his hat on the canonical design built by Noah instead of the supposedly even more canonical design built by Utnapishtim, but I'm 99% certain that if we got him involved in this conversation, it would fall to one of these three.Hopefully, that greases the wheels for a more complete answer to my original question: If you know for certain that Genesis 6-9 is based on Epic of Gilgamesh, how does Nozomi Osanai https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/flood-legends/flood-gilgamesh-epic/introduction/ ?That is, how does all this work by Answers In Genesis fail to refute your certainty that the Flood account is based on Gilgamesh, and remain "literally just pretend"?Sincerely,Terry
I don't know what's up with YouTube. Your second message isn't showing up in this forum, but I guess it doesn't matter since it was shared privately. First off, the Genesis account isn't based on Giglamesh, but rather the event that is now recorded in Gilgamesh, and which is also mentioned in the Sumerian King List and the Epic of Atrahasis and so on. Within the area of the Iraqui flood plain, the stories are virtually identical. Beyond that, in Greece and other areas, flood stories are wildly diverse and irreconcilable with any interpretation of the Bible. For example, in the Chinese version, a defeated warrior climbs to the top of a mountain and hurls his spear into the sky, cracking the firmament so that the waters above it flood the earth. Then the naga-goddes Nu-kua has to come and clean up the mess. Archaeologists and geologists have confirmed a devastating flood in the area of Shurippak at the end of the Jemdat-Nasr period around 2900 BCE. The depth of the flood is estimated at 22 feet, which equates to 15 cubits. Nothing but tree tops would have been visible as far as the eye could see, and it is said to have lasted about a week. In short, the account which was later included in the Epic of Gilgamesh is considered accurate with regard to all measurable details of that event, especially with reference to the bodies damming up the receding water ways. No part of the Biblical is possible at all. It isn't supported by anything, and is contested every relevant piece of data. The reason Bill Nye didn't reference Gilgamesh is because it wouldn't have mattered that there were earlier accounts that were more accurate, or that the actual event was obviously exaggerated way beyond any realm of possibility. Nye's point was that we know for certain that the global flood did not happen and could not have, and he explained just a handful of a vast array of reasons why. I apologize if I haven't given adequate time for the kind of response you wanted, but time is an issue for me these days. Once upon a time, I had intended to do a series of videos on how anthropology disproves the flood, how archaeology disproves the flood, how meteorology disproves the flood, how zoology disproves the flood, and even mythology disproves the flood. I chose not to do that because I didn't think that so many people could seriously believe that ever actually happened. Now I lament never having made that series, and I probably will do it sometime in the next few months.If you want a really short and easily digestible explanation of one small piece of that, I'll refer you to the videos of anthropologist, Dr Alice Roberts. The whole series is excellent, but watch just this one, and try to reconcile how any of this could possibly be true if the whole world was flooded around 4500 BCE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQARCTxjf74Utimately though, we know that AnswersinGenesis openly admits that they will automatically and thoughtlessly reject any and all evidence that might ever be discovered -should it conflict with their interpretations of Bronze-age folklore. They have many times bragged about their confirmation bias and they've repeatedly said that they must never admit when they're shown to be wrong, because it is make-believe. According to their own explanation, the only way they can maintain belief in salvation in the back half of the book is to believe all the impossible nonsense in the front half of the book too. So them the truth is both irrelevant and inconvenient.
Youtube and its bugs, yeah. It just ate a draft and seems to be eating up all our carriage returns so our messages are going to be monolithic blobs of text whether we like it or not. The one year anniversary of my last comment on Youtube is just around the corner - I can't even vote on comments anymore. I sure wish there was a better alternative, but every time I look, I always find that, despite how bad Youtube is, everyone else sucks even worse (especially ...wait for it, lol!... http://www.godtube.com/)> The depth of the flood is estimated at 22 feet, which equates to 15 cubits.That isn't enough to float Utnapishtim's vessel. Just an observation.I suppose with the Alice Roberts long vid and series, I feel like returning the favour. This Walter Veith has a lot of stuff on Youtube, but fortunately for your viewing pleasure, very, very few of them matter to an apistevist. This might be the only one:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leeS3I_jNGo> Once upon a time, I had intended to do a series of videos on how
anthropology disproves the flood, how archaeology disproves the flood,
how meteorology disproves the flood, how zoology disproves the flood,
and even mythology disproves the flood.I'm looking forward to it (please add one for Mars if you can, since global flooding there is so visually obvious that "Noachian" is on official maps made since 1971.) I'd capitalize Flood for the same reason I capitalize Evolution when distinguishing those aspects of philosophical naturalism from observable genetics and documented experimental science regarding evolution. "Evolution", the grand scheme vs. "evolution", what we can accomplish on the farm or in the lab. "Flood", the global catastrophe that wiped out everything vs. "flood", what happened to Calgary since I moved away (it might also be convenient to distinguish and compare Genesis 6-9 from other accounts that are probably of local floods.)> they've repeatedly said that they must never admit when they're shown to be wrong, because it is make-believe.While I agree with all the stuff around it, I've never observed this particular trait of Answers In Genesis. (I know of the "if 2+2=5, or Jonah swallowed the fish were in the Bible..." stuff that is so facepalm-worthy I won't even source it.)> [T]o them the truth is both irrelevant and inconvenient.I've noticed that this is true of most people: Christian, atheist, YECs, the Collective Assemblies of Et Cetera
A spectacular example is NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, just so you don't mistake it for a typo.) Even after it was obvious that the Shuttle was dangerous and extremely uneconomical, costing two orders of magnitude more than its 1970s sales pitches claimed; even after it had killed fifteen people (a guy walked into the tail for a breath of fresh GN2 during the first launch attempt on 1981 April 10), they still operated it for nine years. These people are generally smarter than those at Answers in Genesis.> the only way they can maintain belief in salvation in the back half of
the book is to believe all the impossible nonsense in the front half of
the book too."Half" isn't a particularly good term, because most of what is being debated is just the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and the New Testament and Gospels (a few Christians make a distinction) is actually just the last quarter of the entire Bible.Also, Ken Ham didn't put it the way you just did while he was debating Bill Nye:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&t=1h32m45s"Yeah, there's a lot of Christians out there that believe in millions of years, but I'd say they have a problem. I'm not saying they're not Christians..."He uses here the same tone and words he uses when he brings up an issue contemporary evidence has with deep-time (i.e. "...but when, you're talking about the past, we have a problem. Let me give you an example [14C-45,000 year wood embedded and mixed with 40K-45,000,000 year basalt.]") As Gene Kranz would say, "Let's solve the problem. Let's not make things worse by guessing." during Apollo 13 (that's the actual tape, Ed Harris who played him in the 1997 Ron Howard movie said "Let's work the problem...") Of course, both sides have handy fallback positions if they don't want to be swayed: The apistevist doesn't need to believe anything he has a problem with, while the creationist believes in an all-powerful genie that can do anything He bloody well pleases to produce evidence that looks like Evolution without unhinging Genesis.Let me introduce you to a way I challenge, and often piss off, a great many Christians. Typical statements of faith in Evangelical Christianity (you don't have to click on them to see my point):https://answersingenesis.org/about/faith/"The 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God." - Answers In Genesishttp://www.pinpointevangelism.com/whatwebelieve.html"We believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, authoritative, and inerrant Word of God." - Pinpoint Evangelismhttps://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+1%3A1&version=KJV"In the beginning [i.e. before the book was invented] was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." - The Bible (John 1:1, King James Version).Oops.Sincerely,Terry
Having watched the video you linked, I don't find it compelling from a Creation/Evolution standpoint in either direction. 14C dating is very unreliable, and I'd expect it to be even more so for artifacts produced during the Ice Age since reading Chilling Stars by Svensmark and Calder:http://www.amazon.com/dp/1840468661The authors do appear to believe in Evolution, using their theory to correlate climate events linked to cosmic events and solar events via the interaction of cosmic rays with our atmosphere in both contemporary and deep time (especially the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum.)As you probably know, 14C is incorporated into organic chemistry on Earth after being generated by interactions between cosmic rays and atmospheric 14N (nitrogen-14). Most radiocarbon dating assumes that the production of 14C in the atmosphere is constant, and when more realistic models of 14C production from known cosmic ray patterns are incorporated, it tends to dial 14C dates down. A famous example of the evidence that 14C production rates vary is when King Tut tested younger than his son.Because of this variability, the radiocarbon dates given in the documentary between 11000-12000BC are essentially simultaneous and can't speak even to the relative order of events with any degree of reliability. The inland route described faces another problem brought up by Bill Nye in Nye vs. Ham, although not in this context: Lake Missoula is in the way. No matter which route you choose, you're going to need boats, a feat which the young-earthers should smile upon because the Ark would be a relatively recent memory (we can cite both of them in Nye vs. Ham to argue that, if the Flood scenario is correct, these guys kick ass at making boats!)But the 14C dates are a problem for young-earthers here: Geneology arithmetic brings the Flood to 2344BC, which is ballpark 9000 years after the radiocarbon dates, and the layers these fossils are found in are obviously post-Flood. Even worse, the same cosmic rays which cause the Ice Age would increase 14C production in the atmosphere, which should cause 14C dates to low-ball (these artifacts should be older than standard 14C reckoning, possibly by thousands of years.) Another interesting side effect is that the ice would recede because the cosmic ray flux is going down, also reducing 14C production. The result would flatten the 14C proportions of the north-to-south, west-to-east migration patterns described in the documentary so that similar conventional reckoning 14C dates would result across a migration that may have lasted hundreds, or even thousands of years in the 16000-11000BC time frame. What do you think?I also have an argument from the young-earth perspective that accounts for this. Interested?TerryP.S.: I just finished reading a paper on the thermal performance of the Planck telescope, whose HFI FPU is the coldest thing ever launched into space at 0.1K. While cosmic rays, via cloud formation, make the Earth colder, their tiny amounts of energy are significant when you get down to 0.1K: Planck's HFI bolometers can actually be too warm as a result of direct cosmic ray heating! Cool, huh?
Since you hadn't noticed where every creationist organization there is admits that they will automatically and thoughtless reject any and all evidence that will be brought against them, I suggest you look up the 'statement of faith' for each of these organizations. Here are some examples I've collected: "[this school]....stresses the Word of God as the only source of truth in our world."[/i]-Canyon Creek Christian Academy"...the autographs of the 66 canonical books of the Bible are objectively inspired, infallible and the inerrant Word of God in all of their parts and in all matters of which they speak (history, theology, science, etc.)."-'Creation Moments.com"The Bible is the divinely inspired written Word of God. Because it is inspired throughout, it is completely free from error-scientifically, historically, theologically, and morally. Thus it is the absolute authority in all matters of truth, faith, and conduct. The final guide to the interpretation of the Bible is the Bible itself. God's world must always agree with God's Word, because the Creator of the one is the Author of the other. Thus, where physical evidences from the creation may be used to confirm the Bible, these evidences must never be used to correct or interpret the Bible. The written Word must take priority in the event of any apparent conflict."--Greater Houston Creation Association"Revealed truth: That which is revealed in Scripture, whether or not man has scientifically proved it. If it is in the Bible, it is already true without requiring additional proof....Fallacy: that which contradicts God's revealed truth, no matter how scientific, how commonly believed, or how apparently workable or logical it may seem."--Bob Jones University, Biology Student Text (3rd ed. 2 vol.)"Any so-called "truth" in conflict with God's Truth is no truth at all; it is a lie, a manifestation of the one great Lie that tells us the God of the Bible is not the one God and King over all. The war between the Truth and "truths" is really the war between Truth and the Lie. But the Lie doesn't come to us openly announcing, "I'm false, I'm deceptive." It comes to us pretending it is true."[Apply Occam's razor to that.]--Campus Crusade for ChristNo scientific organization would participate in anything so dishonest or intentionally biased as this. And if truth actually mattered more than whatever these creationists preferred to believe, then these statements of faith wouldn't even exist. These are not something to be proud of, they should be ashamed that they think like this.
Regarding the video on human migration into the Americas, it seems that you you're comfortable always discrediting any date provided by C14 just because it violates a preposterous event that we know for certain did not happen and could not have. How then do you account for the fact that we have all these other lines of concordant evidence, including DNA from the people there now matching that of their ancient ancestors -all indicating that the ancestors of today's native American, Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Dravidian and Australian peoples were already living on all over the world centuries before the earliest date imagined for the flood? We also have substantial evidence that they were already speaking wildly diverse languages many centuries before Hammurabi ever began construction of the tower of Babel too. You should also know that I'm associated with Robert Price, Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald, and now D.M. Morgan, who will be a guest on my podcast next month. All of them are historians and scriptural experts with additional expertise in comparative religions, and all of them are quite confident that Moses never even existed. In fact even Rabbinical scholars now admit a consensus among archaeologists that "the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all." I want you to understand that, if you give me specific references for all of your alleged erroneous dates on C14, I will look up the original literature and show you that that's not what it really said. I've already done that several times with loud mouth evangelists, and I'll do that for you too. But in addition to that, you have to understand that there are insurmountable volumes of disproof against the global flood from every relevant field of study, and not one iota of support for it anywhere. All there is are the apologetic of snake oil salesmen acting on faith alone who openly admit that they will never ever admit when they're wrong. Is there any way anything could be less honest than creationism is? Think about that.
Since you hadn't noticed where every creationist organization there is admits...I don't think you read my entire post earlier. Try using Ctrl-F to find the search term "piss off" in my message in the sentence "Let me introduce you to a way I challenge, and often piss off, a great many Christians." TL;DR: I show that these statements of faith regarding the Bible contradict the Bible itself. Have fun!An interesting thing I noticed while reading the Statements of Faith in your message is being surprised at which ones you were quoting. Some are actually so similar that it can be hard to tell the difference. Your quote for creationmoments.com is very similar to mine from Pinpoint Evangelism. Your quote for Canyon Creek Christian Academy is so close to mine for Answers In Genesis that for a moment resulting from Youtube's removal of all our carriage returns, I thought you had carated me. They probably cut-and-paste these things to each other. In 1998 (approx.) I signed on as a member of First Assembly (legally known as the Pentecostal Tabernacle of Calgary) the first of the twelve religious assemblies I attended in that city I referred to earlier and now regret having ever put my signature on one of these absurd statements (I never did so again.)Hopefully, that settles that. Please let me know if you're interested in what my actual perspective on the Bible is. It seems likely that it might surprise you.
If we are to continue this discussion, I suggest we move it to another location that won't crunch or delete our posts. This is the sort of thing that I would like to have available for public viewing -for posterity. I would like to post it on the league of reason forums, where I post most of my other discussions of this type. I'll show you a sample: http://www.leagueofreason.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12079
Great idea. I'll head over and sign up. Can we start by re-posting our PMs, aside from these two that got us set up?
Done.
Hi!
First, good job blasting Peter Kreeft. I'd say you were wasting your time except that it's how I found you.
I did here something pretty preposterous here:
"We *know* that Genesis 1 and 2 ... are plagiarized elder mythology from Epic of Gilgamesh, [etc.]"
So how does https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/flood-legends/flood-gilgamesh-epic/introduction/ ?
Sincerely,
Terry
AnswersinGenesis always gives the same excuse, that you have to believe because you have to believe. They can't even understand how dishonest that is, and how their style of 'make-believe' is literally just pretend.
Thank you very much for your reply.My original message seems to be missing the link where I quoted you. I don't think that was my fault, but sorry, I certainly meant for it to be there:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQT-ab8mSRY&t=43m53sI was hoping for a longer answer. I certainly acknowledge Answers In Genesis' "we make no apologies about the fact that our origins or historical science actually is based upon the Biblical account of origins."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&t=20m20sOf course, I'm the sort of person who needs more than that or I probably wouldn't have sent you a message in the first place, right? The precedence of the Epic of Gilgamesh was something that bothered me the moment I discovered it. The Answers In Genesis page that I linked you to (well, the entire series; my link is only to the introduction) satisfied me that the account of Genesis was not based on the Epic of Gilgamesh despite the obvious fact that the pen met the paper much, much earlier in the case of Gilgamesh. (And this we probably agree on: Don't you wish you could just click on the "View history" link in the upper right hand corner of such ancient scrolls like you can on Wikipedia?) Some of this comes from the relative engineering of the Ark in each writing, 150*25*15 metres in the case of the Noah's Ark, proportions which are realistic, vs. 60*60*60 metres for Utnapishtim's vessel, which would be extremely uncomfortable at best.And there's this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&t=1h10m54sHere, Bill Nye compares the Ark to the more modern (and much smaller) Wyoming, and I noted no mention by him of the Epic of Gilgamesh at all during the entire debate. If Genesis really were plagiarized from the Epic of Gilgamesh, and we knew that for sure, wouldn't it be a far, far stronger point of argument, instead of comparing the Ark to the Wyoming, to go back to the original Utnapishtim vessel that Noah's Ark must therefore be based upon and point out the truly laughable nature of *that* vessel instead? Bill Nye doesn't do that, and I think there are three likely possibilities as to why:1. He is ignorant of Epic of Gilgamesh vs. Genesis precedence and related issues2. As I, he personally disagrees with the idea that Genesis is based on Epic of Gilgamesh3. He agrees with you, but avoids it because Ken Ham might have still mopped the floor with him on the basis of Osanai's papers. (I find this one the least likely of the three because, assuming he wouldn't have warned Ken Ham in advance, it is not very likely that Ken Ham would have been able to pull an argument together from Osanai's work that quickly and therefore it wouldn't have been very risky.)That isn't to say there aren't more possible reasons why Bill Nye hung his hat on the canonical design built by Noah instead of the supposedly even more canonical design built by Utnapishtim, but I'm 99% certain that if we got him involved in this conversation, it would fall to one of these three.Hopefully, that greases the wheels for a more complete answer to my original question: If you know for certain that Genesis 6-9 is based on Epic of Gilgamesh, how does Nozomi Osanai https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/flood-legends/flood-gilgamesh-epic/introduction/ ?That is, how does all this work by Answers In Genesis fail to refute your certainty that the Flood account is based on Gilgamesh, and remain "literally just pretend"?Sincerely,Terry
I don't know what's up with YouTube. Your second message isn't showing up in this forum, but I guess it doesn't matter since it was shared privately. First off, the Genesis account isn't based on Giglamesh, but rather the event that is now recorded in Gilgamesh, and which is also mentioned in the Sumerian King List and the Epic of Atrahasis and so on. Within the area of the Iraqui flood plain, the stories are virtually identical. Beyond that, in Greece and other areas, flood stories are wildly diverse and irreconcilable with any interpretation of the Bible. For example, in the Chinese version, a defeated warrior climbs to the top of a mountain and hurls his spear into the sky, cracking the firmament so that the waters above it flood the earth. Then the naga-goddes Nu-kua has to come and clean up the mess. Archaeologists and geologists have confirmed a devastating flood in the area of Shurippak at the end of the Jemdat-Nasr period around 2900 BCE. The depth of the flood is estimated at 22 feet, which equates to 15 cubits. Nothing but tree tops would have been visible as far as the eye could see, and it is said to have lasted about a week. In short, the account which was later included in the Epic of Gilgamesh is considered accurate with regard to all measurable details of that event, especially with reference to the bodies damming up the receding water ways. No part of the Biblical is possible at all. It isn't supported by anything, and is contested every relevant piece of data. The reason Bill Nye didn't reference Gilgamesh is because it wouldn't have mattered that there were earlier accounts that were more accurate, or that the actual event was obviously exaggerated way beyond any realm of possibility. Nye's point was that we know for certain that the global flood did not happen and could not have, and he explained just a handful of a vast array of reasons why. I apologize if I haven't given adequate time for the kind of response you wanted, but time is an issue for me these days. Once upon a time, I had intended to do a series of videos on how anthropology disproves the flood, how archaeology disproves the flood, how meteorology disproves the flood, how zoology disproves the flood, and even mythology disproves the flood. I chose not to do that because I didn't think that so many people could seriously believe that ever actually happened. Now I lament never having made that series, and I probably will do it sometime in the next few months.If you want a really short and easily digestible explanation of one small piece of that, I'll refer you to the videos of anthropologist, Dr Alice Roberts. The whole series is excellent, but watch just this one, and try to reconcile how any of this could possibly be true if the whole world was flooded around 4500 BCE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQARCTxjf74Utimately though, we know that AnswersinGenesis openly admits that they will automatically and thoughtlessly reject any and all evidence that might ever be discovered -should it conflict with their interpretations of Bronze-age folklore. They have many times bragged about their confirmation bias and they've repeatedly said that they must never admit when they're shown to be wrong, because it is make-believe. According to their own explanation, the only way they can maintain belief in salvation in the back half of the book is to believe all the impossible nonsense in the front half of the book too. So them the truth is both irrelevant and inconvenient.
Youtube and its bugs, yeah. It just ate a draft and seems to be eating up all our carriage returns so our messages are going to be monolithic blobs of text whether we like it or not. The one year anniversary of my last comment on Youtube is just around the corner - I can't even vote on comments anymore. I sure wish there was a better alternative, but every time I look, I always find that, despite how bad Youtube is, everyone else sucks even worse (especially ...wait for it, lol!... http://www.godtube.com/)> The depth of the flood is estimated at 22 feet, which equates to 15 cubits.That isn't enough to float Utnapishtim's vessel. Just an observation.I suppose with the Alice Roberts long vid and series, I feel like returning the favour. This Walter Veith has a lot of stuff on Youtube, but fortunately for your viewing pleasure, very, very few of them matter to an apistevist. This might be the only one:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leeS3I_jNGo> Once upon a time, I had intended to do a series of videos on how
anthropology disproves the flood, how archaeology disproves the flood,
how meteorology disproves the flood, how zoology disproves the flood,
and even mythology disproves the flood.I'm looking forward to it (please add one for Mars if you can, since global flooding there is so visually obvious that "Noachian" is on official maps made since 1971.) I'd capitalize Flood for the same reason I capitalize Evolution when distinguishing those aspects of philosophical naturalism from observable genetics and documented experimental science regarding evolution. "Evolution", the grand scheme vs. "evolution", what we can accomplish on the farm or in the lab. "Flood", the global catastrophe that wiped out everything vs. "flood", what happened to Calgary since I moved away (it might also be convenient to distinguish and compare Genesis 6-9 from other accounts that are probably of local floods.)> they've repeatedly said that they must never admit when they're shown to be wrong, because it is make-believe.While I agree with all the stuff around it, I've never observed this particular trait of Answers In Genesis. (I know of the "if 2+2=5, or Jonah swallowed the fish were in the Bible..." stuff that is so facepalm-worthy I won't even source it.)> [T]o them the truth is both irrelevant and inconvenient.I've noticed that this is true of most people: Christian, atheist, YECs, the Collective Assemblies of Et Cetera
A spectacular example is NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, just so you don't mistake it for a typo.) Even after it was obvious that the Shuttle was dangerous and extremely uneconomical, costing two orders of magnitude more than its 1970s sales pitches claimed; even after it had killed fifteen people (a guy walked into the tail for a breath of fresh GN2 during the first launch attempt on 1981 April 10), they still operated it for nine years. These people are generally smarter than those at Answers in Genesis.> the only way they can maintain belief in salvation in the back half ofthe book is to believe all the impossible nonsense in the front half of
the book too."Half" isn't a particularly good term, because most of what is being debated is just the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and the New Testament and Gospels (a few Christians make a distinction) is actually just the last quarter of the entire Bible.Also, Ken Ham didn't put it the way you just did while he was debating Bill Nye:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&t=1h32m45s"Yeah, there's a lot of Christians out there that believe in millions of years, but I'd say they have a problem. I'm not saying they're not Christians..."He uses here the same tone and words he uses when he brings up an issue contemporary evidence has with deep-time (i.e. "...but when, you're talking about the past, we have a problem. Let me give you an example [14C-45,000 year wood embedded and mixed with 40K-45,000,000 year basalt.]") As Gene Kranz would say, "Let's solve the problem. Let's not make things worse by guessing." during Apollo 13 (that's the actual tape, Ed Harris who played him in the 1997 Ron Howard movie said "Let's work the problem...") Of course, both sides have handy fallback positions if they don't want to be swayed: The apistevist doesn't need to believe anything he has a problem with, while the creationist believes in an all-powerful genie that can do anything He bloody well pleases to produce evidence that looks like Evolution without unhinging Genesis.Let me introduce you to a way I challenge, and often piss off, a great many Christians. Typical statements of faith in Evangelical Christianity (you don't have to click on them to see my point):https://answersingenesis.org/about/faith/"The 66 books of the Bible are the written Word of God." - Answers In Genesishttp://www.pinpointevangelism.com/whatwebelieve.html"We believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, authoritative, and inerrant Word of God." - Pinpoint Evangelismhttps://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+1%3A1&version=KJV"In the beginning [i.e. before the book was invented] was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." - The Bible (John 1:1, King James Version).Oops.Sincerely,Terry
Having watched the video you linked, I don't find it compelling from a Creation/Evolution standpoint in either direction. 14C dating is very unreliable, and I'd expect it to be even more so for artifacts produced during the Ice Age since reading Chilling Stars by Svensmark and Calder:http://www.amazon.com/dp/1840468661The authors do appear to believe in Evolution, using their theory to correlate climate events linked to cosmic events and solar events via the interaction of cosmic rays with our atmosphere in both contemporary and deep time (especially the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum.)As you probably know, 14C is incorporated into organic chemistry on Earth after being generated by interactions between cosmic rays and atmospheric 14N (nitrogen-14). Most radiocarbon dating assumes that the production of 14C in the atmosphere is constant, and when more realistic models of 14C production from known cosmic ray patterns are incorporated, it tends to dial 14C dates down. A famous example of the evidence that 14C production rates vary is when King Tut tested younger than his son.Because of this variability, the radiocarbon dates given in the documentary between 11000-12000BC are essentially simultaneous and can't speak even to the relative order of events with any degree of reliability. The inland route described faces another problem brought up by Bill Nye in Nye vs. Ham, although not in this context: Lake Missoula is in the way. No matter which route you choose, you're going to need boats, a feat which the young-earthers should smile upon because the Ark would be a relatively recent memory (we can cite both of them in Nye vs. Ham to argue that, if the Flood scenario is correct, these guys kick ass at making boats!)But the 14C dates are a problem for young-earthers here: Geneology arithmetic brings the Flood to 2344BC, which is ballpark 9000 years after the radiocarbon dates, and the layers these fossils are found in are obviously post-Flood. Even worse, the same cosmic rays which cause the Ice Age would increase 14C production in the atmosphere, which should cause 14C dates to low-ball (these artifacts should be older than standard 14C reckoning, possibly by thousands of years.) Another interesting side effect is that the ice would recede because the cosmic ray flux is going down, also reducing 14C production. The result would flatten the 14C proportions of the north-to-south, west-to-east migration patterns described in the documentary so that similar conventional reckoning 14C dates would result across a migration that may have lasted hundreds, or even thousands of years in the 16000-11000BC time frame. What do you think?I also have an argument from the young-earth perspective that accounts for this. Interested?TerryP.S.: I just finished reading a paper on the thermal performance of the Planck telescope, whose HFI FPU is the coldest thing ever launched into space at 0.1K. While cosmic rays, via cloud formation, make the Earth colder, their tiny amounts of energy are significant when you get down to 0.1K: Planck's HFI bolometers can actually be too warm as a result of direct cosmic ray heating! Cool, huh?
Since you hadn't noticed where every creationist organization there is admits that they will automatically and thoughtless reject any and all evidence that will be brought against them, I suggest you look up the 'statement of faith' for each of these organizations. Here are some examples I've collected: "[this school]....stresses the Word of God as the only source of truth in our world."[/i]-Canyon Creek Christian Academy"...the autographs of the 66 canonical books of the Bible are objectively inspired, infallible and the inerrant Word of God in all of their parts and in all matters of which they speak (history, theology, science, etc.)."-'Creation Moments.com"The Bible is the divinely inspired written Word of God. Because it is inspired throughout, it is completely free from error-scientifically, historically, theologically, and morally. Thus it is the absolute authority in all matters of truth, faith, and conduct. The final guide to the interpretation of the Bible is the Bible itself. God's world must always agree with God's Word, because the Creator of the one is the Author of the other. Thus, where physical evidences from the creation may be used to confirm the Bible, these evidences must never be used to correct or interpret the Bible. The written Word must take priority in the event of any apparent conflict."--Greater Houston Creation Association"Revealed truth: That which is revealed in Scripture, whether or not man has scientifically proved it. If it is in the Bible, it is already true without requiring additional proof....Fallacy: that which contradicts God's revealed truth, no matter how scientific, how commonly believed, or how apparently workable or logical it may seem."--Bob Jones University, Biology Student Text (3rd ed. 2 vol.)"Any so-called "truth" in conflict with God's Truth is no truth at all; it is a lie, a manifestation of the one great Lie that tells us the God of the Bible is not the one God and King over all. The war between the Truth and "truths" is really the war between Truth and the Lie. But the Lie doesn't come to us openly announcing, "I'm false, I'm deceptive." It comes to us pretending it is true."[Apply Occam's razor to that.]--Campus Crusade for ChristNo scientific organization would participate in anything so dishonest or intentionally biased as this. And if truth actually mattered more than whatever these creationists preferred to believe, then these statements of faith wouldn't even exist. These are not something to be proud of, they should be ashamed that they think like this.
Regarding the video on human migration into the Americas, it seems that you you're comfortable always discrediting any date provided by C14 just because it violates a preposterous event that we know for certain did not happen and could not have. How then do you account for the fact that we have all these other lines of concordant evidence, including DNA from the people there now matching that of their ancient ancestors -all indicating that the ancestors of today's native American, Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Dravidian and Australian peoples were already living on all over the world centuries before the earliest date imagined for the flood? We also have substantial evidence that they were already speaking wildly diverse languages many centuries before Hammurabi ever began construction of the tower of Babel too. You should also know that I'm associated with Robert Price, Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald, and now D.M. Morgan, who will be a guest on my podcast next month. All of them are historians and scriptural experts with additional expertise in comparative religions, and all of them are quite confident that Moses never even existed. In fact even Rabbinical scholars now admit a consensus among archaeologists that "the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all." I want you to understand that, if you give me specific references for all of your alleged erroneous dates on C14, I will look up the original literature and show you that that's not what it really said. I've already done that several times with loud mouth evangelists, and I'll do that for you too. But in addition to that, you have to understand that there are insurmountable volumes of disproof against the global flood from every relevant field of study, and not one iota of support for it anywhere. All there is are the apologetic of snake oil salesmen acting on faith alone who openly admit that they will never ever admit when they're wrong. Is there any way anything could be less honest than creationism is? Think about that.
Since you hadn't noticed where every creationist organization there is admits...I don't think you read my entire post earlier. Try using Ctrl-F to find the search term "piss off" in my message in the sentence "Let me introduce you to a way I challenge, and often piss off, a great many Christians." TL;DR: I show that these statements of faith regarding the Bible contradict the Bible itself. Have fun!An interesting thing I noticed while reading the Statements of Faith in your message is being surprised at which ones you were quoting. Some are actually so similar that it can be hard to tell the difference. Your quote for creationmoments.com is very similar to mine from Pinpoint Evangelism. Your quote for Canyon Creek Christian Academy is so close to mine for Answers In Genesis that for a moment resulting from Youtube's removal of all our carriage returns, I thought you had carated me. They probably cut-and-paste these things to each other. In 1998 (approx.) I signed on as a member of First Assembly (legally known as the Pentecostal Tabernacle of Calgary) the first of the twelve religious assemblies I attended in that city I referred to earlier and now regret having ever put my signature on one of these absurd statements (I never did so again.)Hopefully, that settles that. Please let me know if you're interested in what my actual perspective on the Bible is. It seems likely that it might surprise you.
If we are to continue this discussion, I suggest we move it to another location that won't crunch or delete our posts. This is the sort of thing that I would like to have available for public viewing -for posterity. I would like to post it on the league of reason forums, where I post most of my other discussions of this type. I'll show you a sample: http://www.leagueofreason.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12079
Great idea. I'll head over and sign up. Can we start by re-posting our PMs, aside from these two that got us set up?
Done.
