I'm conflicted about the Bible. Will you discuss it with me?

Cliffy

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Why don't you point out, Cliffy, that there are two distinct creation myths in Genesis, written at different times by different authors and based on different interpretations of Middle Eastern tales?
There is that too. Most fundies will try to justify it by saying they are the same story but to any objective viewer, it is quite obvious. But belief requires a suspension of objectivity.
 

L Gilbert

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Religion is the favorite subject of both Atheists and religious nuts...(go figure):roll:

And I have yet to see either one change their view in a forum.....

Both keep dancing the same endless dance which seems silly to those of us that take faith as a rather personal thing :smile:
It's a fun dance, though, you curmudgeon. lol

For some reason, visions of Santa Claus are going through my mind now...

The other side of that sheet has a pic of a Playboy centerfold on it.
 

L Gilbert

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It's a belief system. To deny one set of beliefs is to affirm another.
Wrong. It's an opinion system, not a belief system. Disbelief is not belief. Atheism literally means without belief in a god or gods.

I do believe in a creator. I do believe the Bible is more than a compilation of writings. I do believe Christianity transcends all other religions. Life does not begin at birth; why assume that it ends at death.
So if I told you about ithrgakdps flying in and out of people's noses all the time, and wrote a book about them, you'd believe it?
Life doesn't begin at birth, I agree, but it does begin with the joining of cells and their subsequent mitosis into multiple cells. Basically the construction of a body containing organs, bones, etc. Death is basically the deconstruction of it. Why assume there's anything beyond that?

Since only a minor percent of mankind is supposed to survive the judgment does that not fit in 'properly' compared to most agreeing on what it said and then losing that faith just before the end so the ratio can be fulfilled. It would seem to be 'kinder' to have most in confusion and increase that number to fit the final prophecised ratio.


Would saying 'freezing rain at higher elevations' cure the water/gravity conflict in that the 'rain at higher elevations' stayed there for 150 days after the rain stopped? How much fine tuning can 24 passages give to the term 'day of the Lord'?

Ge:7:20:
Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail;
and the mountains were covered.
15 cubits is much shorter than the tops of hills let alone mountains. For that matter there's more than 15 cubits between this house and Kootenay Lake.

You can proceed to work your mathematical wizardry to show that 15 cubits means more than 8850 meters. Even better you can use it to show how 2 of 1.7+ million species, plus nourishment, excrement, etc. can exist for more than a month in a boat that's only 135 meters x 22.5 meters x 13.5 meters.

Even if you took the flood as a parable the information would still have to be there somehow and mankind wasn't keeping records like that 300,000 years ago.
Core analyses of drilling has gone back over a million years into the past in various parts of the planet.

I agree that much of the Bible is picturesque language, but I'm not convinced that all of it is. For instance, an entire linage of people is carefully detailed throughout the Bible. How do we dismiss that? Do we assume the entire lineage is symbolic? And what about all the geography that's mentioned? Even some archeology suggests a literal accuracy regarding many people and places mentioned in the Bible.

I agree that it can't all be literal, but it's hard to assume that it's all symbolic.
I agree. Also, there may be some accurate facts in it regarding historical events and people that may actually have existed. But the original premise it is based upon is still a big "if".

The Bible traces human lineage all the way back to Adam. So, are you saying that the lineage was real or symbolic? Can you understand what I'm asking?
Science traces human lineage back some 4 or 5 million years to a time when the human brain didn't have the capacity to invent anything like sophisticated language let alone names. And even before humans were human ancestors, your basic homonids, that go back to 6 or 7 million years ago. And before that when mammals began appearing some 480 to 530 million years ago.

MHz tries to fit reality into the absurd; others fit the absurd into reality.
Pretty much.
 

MHz

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Why don't you point out, Cliffy, that there are two distinct creation myths in Genesis, written at different times by different authors and based on different interpretations of Middle Eastern tales?
Perhaps Genesis 1 is about the path the dust made and Genesis 2 is the path the breath of life took before they combined to become the first living soul. The version I like better is it is a reference to the New earth which will look just like Ge:2 describes it, 'lifeless' when Adam first arrives and in the new earth he would be the first one out the gate when the living water enters the new earth in Re:22. The new earth isn't an 'add-on' to compensate for changes in the original script.

Isa:51:6:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
and look upon the earth beneath:
for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke,
and the earth shall wax old like a garment,
and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner:
but my salvation shall be for ever,
and my righteousness shall not be abolished.

Isa:66:22:
For as the new heavens and the new earth,
which I will make,
shall remain before me,
saith the LORD,
so shall your seed and your name remain.

I'm not confused at all. You are the one who is twisting things to fit your misguided interpretation of the myth. You are the one who is not only ignoring basic physics, but there is nowhere in the myth that says anything about snow or freezing rain. Be careful you don't hurt yourself twisting your mind into a pretzel with your convoluted thinking processes.
Misguided would mean you have the 'correct one', you never go into any details so I can't comment on the details. You certainly know all the details in my version unless you forget all the verses that have made your eyesight go blurry. in our conversations.

How many mountain tops (Everest is the one most referenced) would ever see rain 12 months out of the year? At least freezing rain and snow are things that we have picture of today. The melt rate seems 'slow' but if you fed it into the right program it could show you just how the receding went over about 7 months time. The Sahara episode of 'How the earth was made' dives into climate change which includes monsoons moving into Northern Africa the the Indian one could move west is you are looking for water today. How much snow would fall on the mountain tops (of Iran)and how much would fall as rain?

If the Bible has to spell everything out in fine detail before you will believe it (saying ice or snow was part of it) then why do you resist when the prophecies are that detailed that speculation is eliminated, surely you tried that method at some point over the years. All you are doing is denying yourself some goalposts to judge if God is at work or not.
 

MHz

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The nice thing about MHz is that he knows it is absurd.
Not really, in this case the truth is stranger than fiction. Here is an example. Just last post I said that Ge;2 could be describing the New Earth and how it looked after that fire from heaven comes down in Re:20. Since New Jerusalem descends to that same place just one chapter later is it safe to assume that it is desolate, tilling the soil is letting the plants and such spread out the same as it does when it reclaims land from a natural disaster so it is not labor intensive, it is time consuming.

Why would connecting the two places. as looking the same when 'one day' passes between the two events, be absurd?

There is that too. Most fundies will try to justify it by saying they are the same story but to any objective viewer, it is quite obvious. But belief requires a suspension of objectivity.
So why does a 'deeper investigation' mean that the whole thing is debunked. If the Garden was in the East of Eden then Genesis 1 could be how life came to exist in all of Eden except one tiny part that was 'reserved as a garden' and Adam was live according to Ge:1 and he saw all the plants and such grow in front of him but all on the day he was born on. If you find one version that is impossible you jump on the wagon that says they all are impossible. So be it, if you don't like my conclusions or that I have to 'water down' the flood that's too bad but it isn't a good enough reason to abandon the 'concept'. As it is, it does get refined, the ice/snow issue is such an attempt, obviously your scientific objections will be noted as soon as you make a few.
 

Dexter Sinister

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I've attempted to offer several sample topics that continue to pose a conflict with my reasoning as a "believer." The creation story, the flood, Hell, Christ, and the typical Christian mindset. I have other conflicts, too, but I threw these out there as conversation starters.
You seem to want answers that'll resolve the conflicts but leave the stories true, and there's just no way to do that.

The creation story, or rather the two different stories given in Genesis that you noted: not true, we know from astronomy, geology, and biology that things happened differently, that's mythology.

The flood story: not true, there are no signs of a global flood in historic times, that's mythology.

Hell as a place of torture for the wicked doesn't appear until toward the end of Old Testament times. The original concept to the early Israelites was a dim and joyless underground place called Sheol, much like the ancient Greek idea of Hades, where all souls went after death, not merely the wicked. During the centuries of domination by outside empires, problems of good and evil, and reward and punishment, became serious theological issues to the Jews, as it was clear that their oppressors were flourishing and they were not. The Book of Job is an example of the kind of controversy that arose. Such oppression is also the source of the apocalyptic passages in Daniel and Isaiah, exhortations to the faithful that all will be well eventually, and reaches its peak in the wholly apocalyptic Revelation that ends the New Testament. As it was inconceivable that god could be unjust, it seemed the injustices of this world would have to be redressed in the next, and that in a nutshell is how the idea of Hell evolved into its current form. In other words, it's a made up explanation for otherwise inexplicable things, a myth.

Christ is problematic. There's no evidence outside the New Testament that he even existed, all we have are a few references to some troublesome followers. The biblical texts that report his activities appear to have been written 40 and more years after the fact, and not by his disciples, and he's one of many divine figures about whom similar claims have been made. Things like being born of a virgin around the winter solstice, performing miracles and wonders, being killed and resurrected, are quite common ideas in mythologies that long predate Christianity, there's no reason to think the Christian story is any more likely to be true than the similar stories of Horus and Mithras. It's plausible that there was a charismatic preacher in the Jewish community at the time who served as the root of the story, later embellished by invention and borrowing from other traditions. No independent confirmation of any of it has come down to us, and in particular there's no record outside the gospels of the dramatic events that attended his death. Hard to believe no contemporary chronicler noticed them, they'd have been pretty startling: darkness descending for half the afternoon, the temple veil being torn in half, earthquakes, rocks splitting, dead people arising from their tombs... Lacks the ring of truth.

The typical Christian mindset... well, I don't know what that means, I've never found that there is one, beyond the core belief that this story is true, a quite extraordinary claim that I'm simply unable to credit.
 

MHz

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15 cubits is much shorter than the tops of hills let alone mountains. For that matter there's more than 15 cubits between this house and Kootenay Lake.

You can proceed to work your mathematical wizardry to show that 15 cubits means more than 8850 meters. Even better you can use it to show how 2 of 1.7+ million species, plus nourishment, excrement, etc. can exist for more than a month in a boat that's only 135 meters x 22.5 meters x 13.5 meters.
So if it started raining today and 40 days later it stopped would the house, the lake, and the mountaintop all get 22ft of rain?
In the winter could the 'rain' fall as rain where you were but as snow or freezing rain only at the higher elevations? What 8850 meters, are you thinking incoming flood and not moisture from the sky type of flood?

Wizardry? the earth is divided into 25% land and 75% water, if water is taken and put on the lad to a depth of 22ft then the water level will drop by 1/4 of that or 5'6". That didn't even dim the lights when I hit 'enter' so basic math is probably a better term.

More like a year if you aren't a bird, coming aboard as babies would help and I'm sure somebody came up with the idea of waste going overboard unless they had a garden on the roof?? Would plants survive better in ice or in water? 22ft of frozen rain would be crystal clear would it not? (except for the house of mirrors effects)
 

Cliffy

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Perhaps Genesis 1 is about the path the dust made and Genesis 2 is the path the breath of life took before they combined to become the first living soul.

The key word here is "perhaps" which is a really big "if".

Misguided would mean you have the 'correct one', you never go into any details so I can't comment on the details. You certainly know all the details in my version unless you forget all the verses that have made your eyesight go blurry. in our conversations.

The correct version would be to view the whole thing as myth. There is no way to scientifically verify a myth, although the article I posted comes close to showing how history becomes myth over time. You ignore the fact that Genesis is mostly a plagiarized version of the Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh written a few thousand years earlier. Just like you ignore the similarities between the stories of Krishna, Buddha, Mithra, Horas and Jesus. Myth is not reality.

The bible is 2000 years old. The Vedas are 5 - 6000 years old. If you think the bible is a true compilation of human history, then you would think the Vedas even more valid.
 

L Gilbert

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So if it started raining today and 40 days later it stopped would the house, the lake, and the mountaintop all get 22ft of rain?
In the winter could the 'rain' fall as rain where you were but as snow or freezing rain only at the higher elevations? What 8850 meters, are you thinking incoming flood and not moisture from the sky type of flood?
Nope. Water follows gravity. If it all turned to ice when it hit, your boat wouldn't float. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/07/28/hms-investigator-arctic.html



Wizardry? the earth is divided into 25% land and 75% water, if water is taken and put on the lad to a depth of 22ft then the water level will drop by 1/4 of that or 5'6". That didn't even dim the lights when I hit 'enter' so basic math is probably a better term.
yes wizardry. How would you expect water to defy gravity?

More like a year if you aren't a bird, coming aboard as babies would help and I'm sure somebody came up with the idea of waste going overboard unless they had a garden on the roof??
lol And two humans are supposed to have kept the predatory ones from eating the rest? All the birds were always flying? Not one pair hatched, birthed, etc. to make more? Two people could shovel that much ****? Good luck getting some sleep.
Would plants survive better in ice or in water?
What? So you think the ark had all the plants thrown overboard into a net or something? Plants can drown, too you know. DUH
22ft of frozen rain would be crystal clear would it not?
Nope. Ever seen floodwater?
 
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JLM

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Nope. Water follows gravity. If it all turned to ice when it hit, your boat wouldn't float.

yes wizardry. How would you expect water to defy gravity?

lol And two humans are supposed to have kept the predatory ones from eating the rest? All the birds were always flying? Not one pair hatched, birthed, etc. to make more? Two people could shovel that much ****? Good luck getting some sleep. What? So you think the ark had all the plants thrown overboard into a net or something? Plants can drown, too you know. DUH Nope. Ever seen floodwater?

That lad might try Hydraulics 101.
 

L Gilbert

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There are more Qs, too:

What about specific animals such as the Koala that eat only fresh Eucalyptus leaves? Or the Everglades Kite that only eats apple snails?

What about all the inbreeding after the flood?

Where is the fossil evidence?

What about freshwater and saltwater fish in a mixed environment?

What about animals that died on the ark? Did they forever become extinct?

Did Noah travel to Australia, the arctic and antarctic, the Americas, etc to get all the animals there? Did he also take them back after the flood?

If the first rainbow occurred after the flood, how did optics work before that?

Where did the animals for the burnt offering come from if there were only two of each still alive?

Did all the other animals (minus two for each species) deserve to die as well as the humans?

What about the stench from all the excrement? Persistent exposure to ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulfide is toxic when inhaled.

Sorry, but the Noah's ark tale flies like a lead pig.
 
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Cliffy

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There are more Qs, too:

What about specific animals such as the Koala that eat only fresh Eucalyptus leaves? Or the Everglades Kite that only eats apple snails?

What about all the inbreeding after the flood?

Where is the fossil evidence?

What about freshwater and saltwater fish in a mixed environment?

What about animals that died on the ark? Did they forever become extinct?

Did Noah travel to Australia, the arctic and antarctic, the Americas, etc to get all the animals there? Did he also take them back after the flood?

If the first rainbow occurred after the flood, how did optics work before that?

Where did the animals for the burnt offering come from if there were only two of each still alive?

Did all the other animals (minus two for each species) deserve to die as well as the humans?

What about the stench from all the excrement? Persistent exposure to ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulfide is toxic when inhaled.

Sorry, but the Noah's ark tale flies like a lead pig.
Oh Boy! Oh Boy! I can't wait to see how he tries to rationalize all this. Should good for a few laughs.