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Hint: A lab coat doesn't make a chemist an authority on either Evolution, fossils, or theology.
Firstly, there isn't close to enough water on the planet to compeletely inundate the earth's surface. That right there disproves any biblical flood myth right off the bat.
There is no thick calcium/fossil layer in the strata record to show everything died out at the same time, no displaced fossils either, as would happen as the water churned about.
There are also no displaced marine fossils on any mountain tops either.
And you do REALLY believe that millions of animals, birds, fish, insects, and reptiles, plus their food for decades, plus tons and tons of plant seeds, would all fit onto one wooden boat?
It never said how many. And even if it did, why are you so bothered by all of this?
to citizen_kane: Why do we write? Why do you come here to read?
Because man always disagrees, and likes to debate, and likes to get his version of the story, which is always correct, out there, to, you know, correct the illiterate, nonsensical thinking of everyone else.
Perhaps if you don't get that, you should go read the Sunday comics?
BTW, most atheists who bother to post here are deeply concerned about the endless propagation of erroneous ideas, especially into the minds of children or the illiterate. Just look at what religion has fomented via the Taliban, the elders in Iran, and the Isreali idea of freedom by the forceful assimilation of territories they don't own. These folks, all of them, stand a real good chance of getting us ALL killed by their hugely irrational, wickedly fundamentalist and religiously based ideals.
We shouldn't fight against that sort of organized, manipulative coercion? I personally think it's a worthwhile cause. Perhaps you, not so much.
Remember, organized religion does not just leave the world alone. They constantly and actively seek to infect people, often children, with their thinking. This has precious little to do with some God; it has everything to do with power- and fear-mongering in order to control the minds of the largest possible number of people with the fear of holy retribution and hell, or the promise of 72 virgins. In the case of Islam, they've convinced many fine young men and women who didn't stop to think for themselves, to go kill themselves, and a few dozen or hundred others with them.
Quite the noble outcome for religion, wouldn't you agree?
So. If the various Sunday School stories that were implanted in the fundy mind, such as Noah's Ark or Adam and Eve and talking snakes and tame vegan T-erexs and a flat earth can be shown to be the fake nonsense they truly are, perhaps, just possibly, a light will go off in the heads of a few independant and intelligent and less fearful individuals, and they will rightfully turn away from this ancient yet perpetrated silliness, and the world will be a better place.
A much better place.
I must say that the Sunday comics are pretty entertaining. I guess having something pop out of "nothing" is sorta' like reading Green Lantern.
So I guess we DO have something in common. We both like fiction.
You haven't cross checked any ancient history books written by any reliable men. That link I gave was a cross checking with a few reliable sources in the days of the men mentioned.
If the ice on the mountains of Arafat retreated[again, as they have in the past], before you died, and men ascended and made videos of the remains of the petrified Ark [as it was reported to be, in the middle ages, in the link given on the site I linked to], you would still deny it was the Ark, because you are content to believe lies of men and you have no desire for truth, itself, but live in fable-land to assuage your own interests and goals in life; which goals do not include getting to know your Creator, whose breath you use on loan from Him, and whose name you call as you breathe in, and out, for He has stamped His breath on loan to all in who is the breath of life with His own name -"YAH-WeH".
Unfortunately, the facts keep getting in the way here, because wood, especially when it's only 2500 years old, doesn't fossilize (as in: have it's original structure replaced by mineral leaching and replacement. That process requires the item be submerged in sediment or under heavy mud for a long period of time.)
The wishful commentaries about open rooms and wooden crates and cages in th Ararat Ark are just that; pure fantasy. oddly, they had cameras and only brought back pictures that look like a picture o a dishrag in a pile of grey mud, taken out of focus. They then say "as this picture clearly shows..." and go on to fantasize to their hearts' content.
Ever been up at the 15,000 foot level of a snow-covered mountain, YSM? I doubt it, but just look east and imagine a wooden barge perched up on Rainer for 2500 years and remaining intact despite advancing and retreating (and crushing) glaciers and ice falls and debris torrents and snow, sleet and rain. And high UV sunlight.
No chance of it EVER undergoing the slow, delicate process of fossilization which requires it be left alone to simmer in slowly percolating high mineral-content waters, below the surface.
So, it was all magic. The only answer fundamentalist-literalist-denialist-theists can reasonably come up with. And you're not alone. I see another one here. He's next.
When you don't know ZIP about how things really work, its quite easy to imagine ANYTHING. Unfortunately for biblical literacy, the original authors also didn't know as much as any kindergartener (or indeed, many Christian apologists) now do about how the Earth, physics, biology and physics actually function. So they assume a lot of impossible things as regards the bible.
Nope. It could only happen by magic. That gonna be your story from now on? Better be.
citizen_kane: "Something from nothing" you say... How incredibly convenient that theists require exactly the same thing in their version of Genesis as they criticize in biological genesis. They claim the fact (who would know either way) that God has always been there, so it wasn't from nothing. what? Was He sitting there with a Universe full of mud in buckets at His feet?
Doing what, in the vast and empty void, pray tell? Did He create us because He got lonely after a prior infinity of nothing. That would be NOTHING. your word, BTW. The void as described in the bible. God created light, matter, people, all from the void. Also known as"nothing"
At least in our case, given that at least "something" was there in elemental form, those little atoms interacted as we now know they do all on their own, and formed up into simple precursors. Then, if we mix those up in the lab, hey.... looky here! Ever more complex molecules seem to form up. aAdd some electrical jolts and heat and rare organic volcanic gases bubbling through, and BINGO, amino acids. They're quite simple structures, and lo and behold, well the rest is proven history.
DNA. The Lego™ blocks of life. Give them a chance, and some smart hominids arise. And, apparently, some very stubborn ones as well, who see some mystical difference between biblical "nothing" and scientific "nothing".
Remember what Al Capone probably said: "Nuttin' is still nuttin"!
aAnyhow, if you're gonna float a story and declarre that it really happened on this earth, in this life, it more or less ought to be sorta-kinda rational. Vegan tame T-Rex pairs (in and of itself an impossible way to repopulate the Earth)?
you didn't answer my OP question on my thrad abuot the Ark: how many animals did noah have to have on the Ark? Tell me, or shush up.
And then, since it was only 2500 years ago, where, exactly, did those T-Rexs go? We have found intact wooley mammoths in Alaska from 13,000 to 18,000 years ago. Where's the frozen t-Rexs that only date 2500 years old? We have Chinese temples older that that, and oddly they didn't make any notes about T-Rexs, Brontosauri, Stegosaurs, Pterodactlys, etc. wandering harmlessly by. We now have over 5000 different types of dinosaurs, with mor being found every year. That's a lot of dino pairs to barge up, no? Especially since a single pair of anything has essentially ZERO chance of reprocutive success, esp. on a salt-soaked vegetation-free planet, at the 15,000 foot level.
"Disembarking passengers can now exit from the forward gangplank. Please watch out for the sludge, snow, ice fog and mud. Especially you tropical species! Have fun trying to find ANYTHING to eat out here above the tree line. bBut God will provide. It's MAGIC!"
Strange, huh?
So.. you have to do a mucho better job of fantasy. Else we'll just attribute it all to The Flying Spaghetti Monster, which is, BTW, far more believable.
You know sometimes I think all of us atheists should chip in some money and pay for an expedition to the supposed resting place of Noah's Arc and dig away all of the ice and snow that are covering this beloved artifact in order to reveal the reality that it's nothing but a rock formation that doesn't even resemble a wooden vessel.
Firstly, there isn't close to enough water on the planet to compeletely inundate the earth's surface/QUOTE]
Well, ill tell you, God is an awesome God and if he can create the universe i'm sure he can make water double its quantity to accomplish his mission.
As I thought! It's MAGIC. The only answer. Good! I was getting real tired of the attempts at rationalizing this event with pseudo-science and wishful thinking.
It's MAGIC! Why didn't you all just say so in the first place?
(BTW, there's no such thing as magic! It's just an illusion!)
You are wrong.
It doesn't require "time". It only requires the right conditions. I remember reading of petrified, standing, power poles in Canada, which the buried in the ground ends of were found to have petrified because of specific conditions, not because of time. Water, land, and lightning were the elements of that petrification, I think.
Petrified wood has been made in the lab, and I remember years ago that some guys were planning to make flooring of wood, and petrify it to sell it as a durable flooring. I don't know what happened to their plan, but they were petrifying wood in days, not years.
Others have petrified wood in other places in recent times, proving that conditions, not time, is all it that is required.
In a lab, it can be done, or a facsimilie of it, in days. not in nature. And lightning has NOTHING to do with it! Sigh....
Read this excerpt:
Petrified wood is a type of fossil: it consists of fossil wood where all the organic materials have been replaced with minerals (most often a silicate, such as quartz), while retaining the original structure of the wood.
The petrifaction process occurs underground, when wood becomes buried under sediment. Mineral-rich water flowing through the sediment deposits minerals in the plant's cells and as the plant's lignin and cellulose decay away, a stone mould forms in its place. The wood is preserved due to a lack of oxygen.
Elements such as manganese, iron and copper in the water/mud during the petrification process give petrified wood a variety of color ranges. Pure quartz crystals are colorless, but when contaminants are added to the process the crystals take on a yellow, red or other tint.
Following is a list of contaminating elements and related color hues:
You can't create quartz in days, YSM. Sorry. More geological illiteracy. Note, also, the note above about it happening underground, not on the surface. Even Canadian telephone poles didn't fossilize above ground like the position of the Ararat Ark. All above ground, where there is no source of infusing mineralized water. Rain water doesn't cut it; it has to percolate through heavy mineral layers first, then hit the deteriorating wood.
BTW, did you also catch the note above about the necessity for a lack of oxygen? Hardly the case for an Ark resting on top of a mountain, supposedly visible from the air! Yikes!
Finally, some case study in the intensely mineral-rich and hot thermal springs of Yellowstone (which is not at the 15,000 foot level, BTW) doesn't replicate on the frigid and exposed slopes of Mt. Ararat. The thing being fossilized needs to be submerged under quiet mineral rich waters, not laying exposed on a 40? slope, open to constant precipitation, ice erosion, fog, ferocious winds and sleet/rain. Sorry; no fossilization going on there! I mean, YSM, try to be at least scientifically reasonable with your defensive "facts".
Don't expect lab-grade mini-experiments under ideal conditions to carry over to an entirely different and far more harsh climate.
BTW, have you seen those dismal pics of the supposed Ararat Ark? What an obvious hoax!!!
Did you miss my factual post of several months ago where I linked the satellite remote sensing report that categorically determined that the supposed Ark was, in fact, a basalt/limestone rock formation.? All precisely determined by X-Ray fluorescence, which as proven itself beyond the shadow of a doubt. Bombarded with X-Rays, wood and rock give off a vastly different signature.
Unmistakable. It's rock, not wood.
In fact, it's limestone and basalt, and "typical of outcroppings in this area" according to the interpretive geologist specialist, who does nothing but this sort of work. And your accredited geologic specialty? BTW, I used the X-Ray fluorescence process at my alma mater in some landmark studies. So go ahead: refute it.
When I presented this irrefutible NASA info to Campbell34, he said, and I parpaphrase-quote: "I didn't mean THAT Ark. There's another one!"
Nice deflection, because he did , exactly, mean THAT outcrop.
I know; it's tough when you're cornered and don't want to admit you're wrong.
Or, just say "It was MAGIC". That's what we want to hear. Then we'll leave you alone. With your fantasies.
Last edited by rifleman; 09-23-2009 at 06:47 PM..
Reason: typoz
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The Great Goddini! He's here all week!
