Sorry I haven't replied in a while; I was originally going to bring it back up myself on Sunday, but I also wanted to post responces to both this and the "Bible Contradictions!" thread at once, so I wouldn't have to go back and forth with it later. I was occupied during the week and on Saturday, never had much time either, so Sunday was the day to write. I got to writing a reply here, but never finishing the other one, on the count that I started writing it at about 11:00 p.m. Then I worked all during last week and finally got to writing again today.
So I apologize you haven't received anything yet. I've now written both replies and I hope we can both enjoy the excitement of this discussion, which I'm sure after you've read this one, will not want to continue.
This thread has seemed to have gone to the dogs since I left. Now it's just ramblings and pointless posts. Thank God I returned before it was too late.
heavycola wrote:That's not what i said, Val. Don't put words in my mouth - and don't accuse me of not reading your posts when you haven't read mine.
If I quote every last word of yours in my post, then I've read it. And yes, that's what you said. You might want to edit your post.
heavycola wrote:I said - either this book of absolute truth is all absolutely true, OR you need to admit that these are merely your own interpretations ( I like that in the chapter of Job beiung discussed, the flat earth stuff - i.e. the stuff that can be easily disproved these days - are the only metaphors, and everything else is fact).
Let's refresh Cola's memory. You said,
"Either it is all literal - as you take genesis to be - or it isn't..."
I'm sorry if you want to believe you posted something else when you didn't, but there's still time to edit your post. Come on now. Shame Truman for once.
heavycola wrote:But you don't seem able to do that. All you seem capable of doing is callign anyone who disagrees with you an idiot.
I never said that, and you can quote me all you want; you'll never find one place where I've written this. I know more than you on this subject; in other words,
I'm smarter. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but that's just the way it is. I'm not saying you're an idiot, but I'm just saying I've studied much about this subject, I know a lot about it, and saying that I'm not thinking something else is totally irrelevant. You've never once asked yourself that I could be right, and you are wrong. This is what it is about you. You can never admit that I have a point that you cannot get by except saying, "Other people would probably say..." Who cares? If they do, show me their claims. I'll look into them; that's what I do. I learn, unlike you, who must always stay true to your own faith. Trust in evolution or else you're stupid. Give me a break, Cola.
heavycola wrote:I am not going to discuss every verse you quote because then i end up with a massive post.
Has that ever stopped me from answering you, ever?
heavycola wrote:But here's one that made you 'laugh out loud':
The verse 'springs of the sea' - water comes from springs. The sea is full of water. It seems a logical step for a writer to imagine that the sea might be filled by springs. Now you tell me that is an impossible reading.
It certainly is an impossible reading, since you yet again prove yourself incapable to read the scripture or my statement. The alteration of just one word in a quote can make it translate to something entirely different. There is no question that saying that "springs of the sea" is up to interpretation. But this isn't what the text says, however. It says, "Springs
in the sea," not "of" the sea. Now, you can easily see how that would translate to meaning what we found in 1977. We still call them "springs in the sea" when being brief, when they're underwater volcanos that create hot springs in certain patches of water in the ocean, which you cannot feel when swimming if they erupted way down under. But they are, by definition, "springs in the sea."
If the text said "springs
of the sea" we'd have an entirely new meaning that wouldn't even be a constant one. It could mean, like what you said, an ocean full of springs, which is an ocean. It could also mean springs from near the ocean, springs on islands, or not even springs but rather the Mediterranean Sea itself, since it is so warm almost the entire year. But as you can see, that is not what it says.
heavycola wrote:Remember: You Could Be Wrong. Try saying it.
Have you ever considered that I might not be wrong? That's never crossed your mind at all since you know that the Bible doesn't make any predictions regarding natural phenomena or anything intelligent about the weather. I've studied this; you haven't. So maybe my translations are accurate and your doubts are just from a skeptical mind who cannot ever question his own belief, but only question others.
You are not using critical thinking.
heavycola wrote:And here it's the same story. The bible discusses slavery and how it should be conducted: "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money” (Exodus 21:20-21).
You're forgetting who the Old Testament slaves were. They were mostly POWs from wicked, sinful nations who were delivered to Israel because of their immorality. First off, if the slave doesn't like his master he can run away and get a new one (Deuteronomy 23:15-16). But suppose he chose to steal from his master, destroy his equipment, and destory hs crops as well? How would you stop him? Senior Research Editor of RBC Ministries Herb Vander Lugt answered this almost perfectly:
"Then, too, no matter how well the slaves were treated, some might have been rebellious and defiant. Forgetting that they were alive because they were taken as war captives instead of being executed, they might have blamed their master for their slave status. They might have shown their resentment by destroying property, abusing fellow slaves, or refusing to work. The master may have had no other way to bring his slave in line than to use physical punishment."
To us today, it seems very harsh. But slavery was a part of life back then. God did not oppose it because it was His way of punishing the wicked people who went against Him. The punishment of the slave mentioned here was to protect the slave. What would you do if your slave stole and vandalized your stuff, and then destroyed your fields that you toiled over? Would you not beat him for punishment? The mear fear of punishment kept the slave safe. As long as he obeyed, he would be treated fairly. It's like if a child misbehaves, you spank him. The fear of the spanking keeps him obedient.
Beating the slave to death is wrong. He does not deserve death for anything bad he did, unless it is serious, like murder.
Of course, this scripture has nothing to do with how the slave should be treated, just what should be done if he misbehaves (I'd use a stronger word but I cannot think of any right now). God directing what should be done is what God does here, and being a just God He punishes those who are against Him in any way. The slaves were wicked people who were conquered by Israel in war, not taken captive like the Africans for the reason of property only (which happened because of the doctrine of evolution; I'd love to get into that discussion).
heavycola wrote:It condones it. And that's a pretty fucked up thing for a perfect, moral being to do. Slavery is immoral - luckily we have managed to arrive at this conclusion despite the bible's absence of condemnation.
Limiting your vocabulary to four-letter words just concludes you talk trash commonly around others, which is extremely rude and idiotic.
To the point, slavery in that passage does nothing to support your idea of God supporting it. And it does not condone it either; it only prevents beating the slave to death. The general idea of slavery is not even addressed in the passage and yet you use it. This, in my opinion, is an example of poor debate. If you want to debate about slavery in the Bible, I'm up for it. But don't pull scriptures out of the air that only have to do with particular ways of treating and punishing the slave.
heavycola wrote:Not saying slavery is good is not the same as saying it is bad, as you well know.
I have no idea how this relates at all to the discussion; can you please evaluate your statement?
I agree, but what does this have to do with anything?
heavycola wrote:1) Morality comes from god
2) The bible - i.e. god - discusses slavery and rules to abide by for slave owners without condemning it as a horrific, dehumanising practice
3) therefore: slavery is not immoral.
Now here's where I'm baffled. First you say that if you don't say anything about slavery being good, it isn't the same as saying it's bad. Remember that. Engrain that into your cranium.
Now in this statement you turn right around to say that
because God didn't say how it's bad, this concludes that God says slavery isn't immoral.
This is a direct contradiction that follows what you just said, and flawed logic is added in as well.
What if I were to explain accurately how a standard clock works? You'd agree. What if I were to take another step in saying all clocks tell time? You'd probably agree again (I hope). Now here's where I can totally throw off all logic and assume anything about the clock. I've explained how regular clocks work, and I've also explained they all tell time. Therefore, this concludes that clocks are never digital. Wait, what? I'll explain.
First, I'm assuming all clocks are clocks with hands. Then, with the premise that they tell time, I can assume the clock to be whatever clock I want it to be. Saying "all clocks tell time" cannot possibly prove that digital clocks do not exist, but I have reverted the conversation to standard clocks with hands only. This is what you are doing. You assume, that since the Bible never mentions how slavery is cruel and bad, this concludes God thinks slavery isn't wrong.
Well for one thing, as I explained before, the slaves that Israel had were in their positions because it was God's punishment against them for being immoral themselves. When Israel turned their backs on God they were put into bondage by the Egyptians for 400 years, as punishment. After God delivered them through Moses, Moses led them through the parted Red Sea created by God, which stunned the Israelites, and yet they still turned their backs on Him by worshipping a golden calf. Their punishment then was 3,000 were exectuted, even after they saw themselves the power of the God that delivered them. Then Moses disobeyed God and they ended up wandering in the desert for 40 years and finally reached Canaan, Moses never entered.
You must understand how God hates sin, and is a just God who punishes those who disobey Him. He isn't a funny old grandpa charicature of a man who sets you on his knee and tells you the story of Hansel and Gretel. He's God; and until you get that into your skull you might just understand why God permitted slavery to the people He punished through it.
heavycola wrote:And LOL i can;t believe you used Carl Baugh and Robert Gentry as examples. Both have been discredited - especially "Dr" Baugh, whose ideas are rejected as unscientific even by mainstream creationists. Try again.
Wow, would you like me to list Dr. Baugh's credentials? Dr. Baugh has a doctor of theology and philosophy in education, a masters in archeology, a bachelor of arts, and a graduate in theology. Baugh has written several books concerning creation, has spoken in a large number of lectures, and has been accompanied by scientists of NASA on his archeological digs in Colorado on 4 occasions.
Now, when I say I've been around, I mean it; and I know you'll bring up how "many experts" say his credentials are questionable. You'll most likely refer me to "TalkOrgins.com" about how Baugh's PhD is questionable. Here's the link if you want it (I've visited talkorigins many times):
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.htmlI love the explanation the evolutionists give for his find of the fossilized human finger in the "Cretacious" rock they dated. (To get there, click "small museum" and then click "fossilized human finger.") This is such a narrow-minded statement I couldn't believe my eyes:
"This fossil is obviously human in its appearance, both inside and out. But it was found in Cretaceous rock, which according to tradition was laid down about a hundred-million years ago. This forces us to one of three conclusions. Either dinosaurs had humanlike fingers, or a prehistoric shellfish developed internal and external structures identical with a human finger, or humans were present during Cretaceous times."
Only three conclusions? Come now, why don't they question their dating methods, or perhaps think outside the box. Maybe there was no Cretaceous period, and man lived all along? They just can't think outside the box; they must run it down to only evolutionary conclusions and nothing else. No one dares question evolution.
Anyway, back to the subject. They claim Baugh's degrees are unaccredited, bogus, and unathorized. In other words, they claim he never got real degrees. Now I'd love to ask why they conclude such a thing? Is it because the college he went to and the degrees he worked very hard for aren't legitimate because he didn't get them from the schools they want him to attend? See, the evolution scientists base this on the claim that anyone who does not believe evolution is not a scientist. If he claims he has degrees, they must assume they're unaccredited because no real scientist would ever question evolutionary theory.
They basically go by the premise that all good colleges are secular ones. They say, "If you question evolution it's because you don't understand it. The people in those Christian colleges have no real education about it." Actually, it's the opposite. The Christian colleges get a better education about it than a secular one does, because the Christian colleges examine the theory instead of dogmatically accepting it. The secular colleges assume it is true already and never question it at all, which is why most people like you today think evolution is proven. Give me one evidence they claim proves evolution and I can refute it in one snap. I've answered practically everything about it.
Another thing they always come to mention (and you can bet $1,000,000 they'll say this), "The most recent research indicates..." Now wait a second. Show me some evidences that have stood the test of time. You can't. Vestigals is one of them, and Vtmarik refuses to debate anymore about it because he cannot see 2 things. First, if there's such a thing as a vestigal organ or part of the body, this is the opposite of evolution. "Yes boys and girls, we're slowly losing everything and that's how we got it all."
Talk about science... Secondly, he refuses to regard the facts about each "vestigal" as being significant in refuting his point. The claim he makes is, "If you can survive without it, you don't need it." Yeah, you can survive without your fingernails, one kidney, and an eye. So what's the deal with evolving two eyes and two kidneys? They'll say, "It's more efficient." Well, I thought you said if you could survive without it you don't need it? Efficiency is a far cry from evolution, and yet "complex" things like wooden boxes with nails in them couldn't possibly arrive by chance, but th extremely complex eye could?
I hate the statement Zarvinny made:
"a. The Evolutionist Theory is supported by most scientists."
This is a flat out
lie...in America at least. According to the Washington Times (August 31, 1998) 55% of U.S. natural scientists in the U.S. believe in Darwinian evolution; just over half. This is basically the accepted theory of evolution by natural selection by almost all atheistic evolutionists like yourself. (By the way, Darwin later rejected his own idea of natural selection in the evolutionary perspective and switched to Lamarkism.)
So if anyone says, "Most scientists in America believe evolution," this is simply a lie; I'm sorry, but you'll have to live with that.
Back on topic again and over to Robert Gentry. Nuclear physicist Robert Gentry has written in many mainstream secular scientific journals including Science, Nature, Geophysical Research Letters, Annual Review of Nuclear Science, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, and others. Why would such a renowned scientist like Gentry lose his job? The reason: radio polonium halos. I'll explain what he discovered and you can go cry to your mommy for a few minutes and then try to find a "reutation" somewhere. Most likely you'll find one on TalkOrigins.com (there, I just gave an example for you, kid). Don't worry, I've read every refutation and I've got my replies ready.
Anyway, radio polonium halos: what makes them so significant? Well, when polonium halos decay, pieces fly off; like a hand grenade going off underwater. The pieces will all fly a certain distance, depending upon what element is breaking apart. Polonium has a very short half-life: from around 3 minutes all the way down to .164 seconds (164 thousandths of a second). Very miniscule. This means that within a few minutes, all of it is going to be gone. If you exploded a hand grenade underwater, the fragments will fly out into a sphere, then crumble in just a moment, and the sphere disappears. Now, explode a grenade underwater in a lake and then freeze the lake so fast that you'll preserve the sphere. Impossible, I know, but if you could you'd have a ring of the grenade fragments.
This is what we have with polonium. These halos have a short half-life. The problem is, they're found in granite which proves against the evolutionary theory that the earth was ever a hot, molten mass. If it were, the halos wouldn't be there, they would have disappeared. This heartily supports the Bible since the Bible says the earth was a sphere of water when creation began with it (which was cold by definition if it was water).
This is why evolutionists cut Gentry's funding for his research: he was creationist, he proved creation, and he disproved evolution. Gentry has discovered even more, but yet again the evolutionary dogmatists must suppress it and keep the rebuttal off of them. This censorship of his work began recently in 2001. According to an article I read,
"...Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel deleted his ten scientific papers on cosmology and astrophysics from their U. S. government sponsored e-print archive, prior to their scheduled release on the Internet on the evenings of 2/28/01 and 3/5/01. Continued suppression of these papers, now by Cornell University, stems both from the resistance of evolutionists to the implications of his discovery that the universe possesses a nearby universal Center -- which overthrows big-bang cosmology with its crucial assumption of a no-center universe -- and from his discovery of GENESIS, a new astrophysical model of the cosmos which affirms that the literal six-day Genesis record includes the creation of the visible universe."
Is this not discrimination? I'll get more into the discrimination problem in the "Bible Contradictions!" thread. Evolutionists are discriminators, dogmatists, liers (about their evidences), and prejudiced against Christians. Evolutionists are against science, not for it (which I'd also love to get into more).
So far, your insults and vague statements about who said what according to your views blatantly reveal your prejudice against Christians, which would probably abhor many evolutionists who would be ashamed to ever think about the discrimination you place around Christians. You also fail to write anything of value concerning this topic, but would rather try to revert the argument over to the Bible-believing side. Your standpoint is, "Yeah, you claim evolution is faulty, but why don't we talk about how dumb your belief is?" This is called
shifting the burden of proof. It's a very nifty thing for atheistic people like you to do.
Here's an example: I claim that watermelons are blue on the inside until you cut the skin. Prove me wrong!
See, I can keep you busy for the rest of your life with statements like this. This topic is called "Evolutionary Contradictions" and yet it has become a Bible topic, since you totally fail to answer anything I've said about vestigals, and instead create your own argument about the Bible. This is called a "Red Herring" if you study logic. This is what you've done many times in your statements and it makes me shake my head when people start to answer anything you say against them which actually takes the burden off your own defence and puts it onto the other, which changes the subject entirely and loses the original proponent of the discussion.
You have flawed logic and it makes me mad with rage and gleeful with laughter simultaneously.
1. Cola has failed to state his position.
2. Cola has failed to create a rational argument which has to do with the original topic.
3. Cola has failed to keep his facts straight by misquoting many scriptures.
4. Cola has failed to think outside his fantasy world and to actually consider I might be right, and he might be wrong, although he has stated likewise when I have done so.
5. Cola has failed this debate altogether.
EDIT: heavycola wrote:OK - now take fundamentalist christianity and its belief in creationism. The only people arguing against the overwhelming mass of scientific data in favour of evolutionary theory are... fundamentalist christians.
Again, I remind you that according to the Washington Times, 55% of U.S. scientists believe darwinian evolution. There are thousands of scientists that I can list (and believe me, I have the list ready) that are indeed creationists. To say that anyone who rejects evolution is a Christian fundimentalist is baloney. There are many many people who aren't Christians who reject evolution because of every fallacy it contains. And saying that people are "hurting" our environment proves nothing on your side. Gosh, I've read so much about how we hurt the environment a small fraction, and that maybe 98.8% is not our fault, but rather the natural elements.
Evironmentalists are getting too out of hand with this. Sure, the icecaps melt in the summer, but they do that every year and they freeze dramtically in the winter. There is no global warming, and the lie that humans hurt the environment is complete exaggeration. I can think of a few books you can get on this. Try
The Greening by Larry Abraham, which totally exposes the dark secrets behind this whole idiotic conspiracy; there is no global warming. Or you can check out
Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media by Patrick J. Michaels; there is no global warming.
Try looking up something before repeating what you hear. And I stand by my guns on the quote I posted earlier. The British scientists you speak of is actually called the "British Association for Advancement of Science." The former president of this Association, Ambrose Flemming, said,
"Evolution is baseless and quite incredible."
Good day...