Not interested in what '... those who believe in special creation' have to say, I am only interested in YOUR opinion as I am not going to battle your church. Same for the age of the universe. You know exactly what I think so why are you hesitant to tell me what you yourself actually think. Lula you don't 'deduce' anything in science as a first step, you study first and become an expert then you formulate a hypothesis to support your 'understanding'. This is a time consuming process that can take decades and even lifetimes to accomplish and nothing can be accepted scientifically until the resulting theory is scrutinized in minute detail by their peers all of whom would dearly love to prove it wrong somehow. They deduce gaps simply because there is nothing to fill them with, yet, but there has never been a deduced scientific theory, ever.

Ok I'll bite, what do you plan on using to disprove 'stellar evolution' as you put it, with a petition? If the RCC were to be so foolish as to do this, it would mark their immediate downfall instead of a slow demise ... but you would be happy anyway. Beyond a creditable doubt certainly ... I consider errors by factors in the millions to be totally un-credible. I could cut the time I would need for evolution to 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/100th or even 1/100,000th and at each consession I make you will present the exact same arguement you make here. I consider myself flexable and am willing to 'play the game', but untill I cut my timeline down to 6,000 years you will conceed nothing whatsoever and probably not even then. Who is trying to be realistic, is willing to offer concessions and wiggle room, is willing to actually discuss this mundane scientific stuff that you feel is so unimportant? And who is 100% inflexible on every point, in any discussion, in any venue be it religious (not just Christian) or not? Who has found some inexplicable way of telling the good science from the bad science (you know those things that are just nonsensical fictions made up of stuff that just doesn't work etc.)? I will leave you with this question: Why should I as an atheist accept your word now when nobody besides clergy has ever had anything at all to do with what is in the bible"? 'We' were not solicited before the bible was written and 'we' were not allowed to participate in the deception at any point in history? So now after all these centuries I am (we are) expected to capitulate to something that 'we' were never privy to ... not so much as one vote for or against your religious dogma, from then to the present. Why should I even find this atractive being just as voiceless as ever after all, it is all said and done with now as far as you are concerned?

It is your book and your theology and your bag of worms. But just applying a little common sense here (were I one of the writers) a good question would be why weren't they included in god's book about god? Surely you don't blame the atheist for this omission, surely? Seemingly they were deemed unimportant enough by the church probably because they made him look too human for their liking. If they were written indeed, then that would make them just as special as the rest ... because they were written down by someone, go figure. The bible was written in the 4th century (50 copies) as you well know so what is this nonsense about 15 centuries. Nothing was in wide spread print until the printing press but this has nothing to do with when the bible was written. Most common people throughout this time period were to busy just trying to survive and were illiterate because there wasn't much for them to read or time or resources to learn.

The age of the Earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%). This age is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples. What do you offer to this discussion besides it just cannot be true?

The age of the universe is the time elapsed since the Big Bang. The best current estimate of the age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years (4.339 ± 0.035 ×1017 seconds) within the Lambda-CDM concordance model. The uncertainty of 0.11 billion years has been obtained by the agreement of a number of scientific research projects, such as microwave background radiation measurements by Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and other probes. Measurements of the cosmic background radiation give the cooling time of the universe since the Big Bang, and measurements of the expansion rate of the universe can be used to calculate its approximate age by extrapolating (not guessing) backwards in time. Ditto? What discussion of time do you suggest we peruse here? I can take some wiggle room here, but to be off by factors in the millions is not a liberty I or any sane person would take. You on the other hand are off by a factor of 2,291,666.7 here and that is just ludicrous.

Jythier is correct. Genesis 1 and 2 have no contradictions.

 

I suppose if one reads them through the eyes of skepticism, one will surely find the contradictions he expects to find. 

Actually, the narratives on the creation of man in Gen. 2 supplement that in Gen. 1. Gen. 1 relates the creation of man in order of time, whereas Gen. 2 relates them in order of significance. 

Both give an authentic account, but not a scientific account.  

 

I only have a problem with the word 'authentic' … authentic to whom, surely not to me.  Your authenticity starts with hundreds if not thousands of years of error free folk lore. Then they became the error free traditions for who knows how many centuries. Then they actually became intelligent enough to learn how to write so they did and without a single error too (geese) right? The only authenticity you have is an un-authored book with stuff in it that you plagiarize every time you speak through them and not as yourself. You can question NOTHING because your church told you that you couldn’t.

Take whatever scientific venture you like and I can produce a pedigree from the inception of an idea to the formulation and testing of hypothesis and the painstaking time consuming research and provide a chronological list of major accomplishments and contributors throughout development to the formalization of the theory.  Names, places, dates and whatever you want. That is what I consider authentic and many of our best minds are still here to actually talk to. There is plenty of stuff in the sciences that are even now highly debated but as far as the PhD-less are concerned there is no controversy period. Evolution is a FACT and your time scale is but a dot on mine and you are just wrong, period. Leave your bible in church, pick up a real encyclopedia and then debate me on facts instead of your superstitions.

Please don't tell me you care about what BO has to say about anything now and how is his reelection the fault of atheists for goodness sake. You just have to find someone else to blame because you consider your dogma perfect in all respects but you can try to at least be realistic. Just as you have your 'Answers in Genesis' and we have our 'Problems with Genesis' so we can bandy that nonsense back and forth and accomplish nothing as usual or you could just admit you were wrong and we could continue on to something more important than trying to make a flat earth work somehow.

If you actually believe there are NO contradictions in say the first 6 books of the bible then you are just fooling yourself and nobody else and nothing could be gained from further discussion on the subject. You do this of course with everything you say and that is just screwed up. If you want to teach Sunday school then I guess it is ok, but nobody can debate anything if one side gets to make all the rules and then proclaims that their every word is divine and unquestionably true, neither concept in which I agree with on both sides. This is the starting point of all your arguments and I for one am not going to allow you to put me on the defensive with this tactic anymore. I have not told you one lie and yet because of your dogma you have accused me of fabricating and lying about everything just because you don't even want to try to understand it. 

You act like you have never heard of any arguments against scripture yet you use the very same excuses that have been used for thousands of years so stop grandstanding. I for one would appreciate it if you ditch most of your code words like 'atheistic humanism' and other such qualifiers particularly if you are talking to me (as opposed to at me). I don't call you anything (intentionally) besides a Christian or a Catholic so get rid of the 'group' talk and start being real and talking to me, not about me by placing me in one of the GROUPINGS of your choice. I am no more responsible for any another atheist than you are for any other Christian. I have one vote just like you so that makes us equally complicit in who gets elected (~1/100,000,000 each).

So my question is this "What in the world do you want to talk to me for?" because you are not looking for any answers or insight and you dismiss everything I say out of hand with 'it just doesn't work' or ‘it is all based on lies’  etc. We cannot realistically talk about anything as long as you persist that the bible is the inerrant word of your god. My guess is that everyone gets 'things' wrong from time to time except for you that is [most try to fix it if they can (like reading a different book)]. You don't ever miss a trick or get anything wrong and that seems pretty darn ‘inhuman' to me.

Sorry to have taken so long in replying. We had mucho problems downloading my files and I'm just now back in biz.

Re: the highlighted. The simple answer to your question because God created man and woman to populate the earth, and they did which is a fascinating thing to ponder. God created living matter...He impressed complex information onto cells which can reproduce and pass on that information to the next generation via secondary causes. Rather than continually intervene thereafter, God chose to employ secondary causes through which life forms would propagate each new generation. The laws of nature govern the way that matter performs and autonomy was granted to life forms so that they could effectively act as partners with God in the creation of offspring.

 

In Genesis 9, verse 1 God blessed Noe and his sons and said "Increase and multiply and fill the earth." And that they did.   Verse 18-19, "And the sons of Noe who came out of the Ark were Sem, Cham, and Japheth: and Cham is the father of Chanaan. 19These three are the sons of Noe: and from these all mankind spread over the whole earth."

I'll get to the numbers next post.

Right now, dinner is calling.

 

I see that and I'll get to that in a bit, but first things first..I'd like to follow through on the points I introduced earlier. 

Genesis 5 gives the genealogy of Adam to Noe and that helps with the basis of the timeline. Given the dates of the antediluvian patriarch's births and various events, the Church Fathers are in general agreement as to the date of the Noe and the Great Flood. Julius Africanus (260AD) records 5536 for the date of the creation of Adam and explains that from Adam to Noe and the Flood was 2262 years. Clement of Alexandria specified the length of time from Adam to Noe was 2148 years and 4 days.  

Now, from Noe we get to Abraham and beyond Abraham we have a precise chronology of human history.  

  

 

There is a reasonable explanation why the world was repopulated from Noe's 3 sons....Sem (aka Shem), Cham,(aka Ham) and Japheth  and Science figures in.

 

 

Genesis 10 is sometimes called the table of nations, for it describes the generations of Japheth, Cham and Shem after the Flood. They formed nations with 3 distinct lineages. St.Augustine taught that there were 72 such nations...26 from Shem, 31 from Cham, (Ham), and 15 from Japheth.

 

Abram (which God changed to Abraham) was a descendent of Shem through Eber 10:21 and Peleg 10:25; 11:16. Eber was the 4th in line of Shem and the father of Peleg who was the great, great grandfather of Abram and in 10:21 is given special mention. St. Augustine taught that's why  the people of Israel call themselves Hebrews after Eber and the original Hebrew language was their exclusive property.   

Archeological and paleontgology discoveries indicate that the cradle of civilization stems for what is known as modern day Turkey which is where postdiluvian people got started as according to Genesis 8:4, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Genesis 11:2 says they descended from the mountains and migrated to the plains of Shinar.

So all was dispersed from there. Japheth's descendents went north and westward to Europe and Russia. Some headed southeast to Iran and India. Josephus, the Jewish historian lists the nations they founded.

 

 

Genesis 10:6-20 lists the nations descended from Cham (Ham).  "And Cham's (Ham's) sons: Chus (Cush-the ancient Ethiopians), and Mesram (Mizraim-the ancient Egyptian people) and Phuth (Put-the ancient Libyan people) and Chanaan (the ancient Phoenicians) "

Josephus confirm this and say that 150 years after the Flood, Cham's (Ham) generations built cities (Babylon where the Tower of Babel, Nineva, Assyria, etc.) and using the natural resources established civilizations...then Sumer, now Iraq. Those who were dispersed far from Mesopotamia where natural resources were scarce adopted barbarous ways of living. In breeding in small tribes produced distinct racial and tribal features.  The so-called Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age are not true historical periods, but rather evolutionists inventions who believe that mankind gradually gained skills with these natural resources. Not true. Actual archaeological evidence indicates bronze and iron were used in Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations,  and the stone implements were used by those who didn't have access to those metals.

  

 

 

It was in Peleg's time that the population of the earth was scattered (10:32) in consequence of the building of the Tower of Babel which we read about in the next chapter followed by the genealogy of Shem.  In 11:26 are the generations of Terah who fathered Abram. So there is nothing astonishing when we consider that 11 generations had elapsed since the Flood and that at that time it was estimated that every marriage had an average of 8 to 10 children, which meant something like over 12 million couples...as Keil and Delitzsch put it in their "Commentary of the Old Testament Pentateuch, "the eleventh generation would contain 146,484, 375 pairs, or 292,968,750 individuals.

Lula I don't care why I care how. There is no doubt that you can 'make' the bible work for you because I did and still could if I were prone to lie. But you cannot make it work for me because it is all physically impossible and ridiculously simple minded for people who knew everything direct from their god who could not know less. If all you can do is scripturally excuse the bible (no explanation of how in the real world) by using other parts of the same book, well there is a conflict of interest with that and it is called dogmatism or blind faith. Not a problem for the churches and their sheeple but completely meaningless to everyone else ... I am one of the 'everyone else’. This means that no matter how many times you recite your scripture, it is not going to be more meaningful to me than it is now because the universe is not 6,000 years old period and this one fact makes genesis a religious fantasy and the rest of the bible useless because it is predicated on this lie. Until you can prove it is that young in some meaningful worldly way (not under the absolute auspices of your clergy) you are just blowing theological smoke. Genesis doesn’t require the bible to work but the bible sure requires it if it is to have any Christian meaning or purpose.

If you want to play with statistics I am game, but just as with the rest of the bible, I will not allow you to just throw numbers out as if they are meaningful especially without the math to back them up. Those were just real people living real lives in the ‘there and then (RIGHT) just as we do today as we always have … because it is our only reality. So it had to work then just as it does now (all created in its present form) and by following the evidence and the rules we have come to understand about our real world we have an overwhelming and compelling argument to make. The difference is that I have worldwide facts, figures and support available and you have a first century book that comes to us without one lick of support besides “… and it was so”. Modern population statistics are accompanied by data that explains how the statistics have been compiled and adjusted to compensate for any collection issues. You provide a few numbers without any explanation and probably under perfect rabbit breading conditions.

If you are going to discuss the timeframe of genesis, then I would have to discuss some of the Cultures that existed on the real earth when your ‘first two’ humans were being poofed from dirt. Like the Badari culture on the Nile (c. 4400–4000 BC), Comb Ceramic culture (also endured the 6th, 4th), Maykop culture, Yangshao culture, Merimde culture on the Nile (c. 4570–4250 BC), Predynastic Egypt, and Proto-Austronesian culture is based on the south coast of China. They combine extensive maritime technology, fishing hooks, nets and gardening. (c. 5000 BC), Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture, Lengyel culture in eastern Europe, Ubaid culture, Cycladic culture—a distinctive Neolithic culture amalgamating Anatolian and mainland Greek elements arose in the western Aegean before 4000 BC, Vinča culture (also endured the 6th, 4th, and 3rd millennia) and Yumuktepe and Gözlükule cultures in south Anatolia. But we aren’t going to go there are we? How am I supposed to even discuss genesis with you???

You are discussing Genesis with me. Every one of these cultures came from the descendents of the sons of Noe.

 

 

Do you (somehow) feel yourself proficient with the ‘scientific process’ to such degree (cross-disciplines mind you) that YOU can pick and choose what science are to be believe or not? Just out of curiosity, which of the sciences do you think are good … bet you cannot name one? What Catholic literature can you produce that says which sciences are good or bad … ANY at all … and if you cannot …? Or are you telling me that anything that YOU think disagrees with the bible must be false and therefore YOU don’t have to prove anything … as always? As I said before I am not going to play with the RCC (your job) and you are not going to get away hiding behind your RCC-C which has nothing to do with what was written in the bible. What prey tell do the Constitution and DOI espouse that is so religiously profound or as you said “…to the point of being some of their most crucial expressions.”? Inquiring minds want to know? At least you agree that the bible is not science but any book with the audacity to claim to make the world from nothing and populate it with both flora and fauna is infringing on reality not the other way around. Reality such as it is, is the only one we have so any variances from the reality are the exceptions to that reality. If you insist on bringing magic into everything we discuss, well there won’t be much for me to participate in will there. We could discuss cool things like ice core samples that range back to some 400,000 years ago (no magic required). We could discuss how a stand of trees can be 80,000 years old or a Pine called Prometheus which was measured by ring count at 4,862 years old when it was felled in 1964 (no science required). How about the immortal jellyfish, it is known to be the longest living creature which could live on forever (because of evolution) without dying of old age (but can be killed). But your only goal is to make the earth less than 6,000 years old and that takes all the fun out of it for me. Evolutionary theory doesn’t and cannot be applied to genesis so we will have to discuss them separately. Besides as you said man wasn’t there when the world was created (something else we can agree on) so how do you know then (your favorite attack on evolution) sooo right back at you? You are clueless as to what a scientific theory means because I have explained it several times … so what is it supposed to grow into then, evolutionary Law? Simply stated we are discovering new species still today but they had to come from somewhere didn’t they, unless you think they are just poofing into existence now.  It is evolutionary  theory because we don’t have it all worked out yet (so many gaps and variables to consider) and we never will, that is just the beauty of science, they don’t give up … they just keep on looking for more or for something else. And disregarding the lineages of a few people written in a first century book, how do you scientifically calculate the age of the earth then? What are they supposed to teach in school considering that both Creationism and its modern clone ID are proved to be nothing but religious dogma and they are not allowed to be taught in public schools? If so ordered, I am sure they would find some way to include it in the curriculum, but until that time you don’t have a leg to stand on with this excuse. Evolutionists (what silly circles you create) don’t make up names; there is no Department of Evolution. Names are made by the paleontologists, geologists, chemists, biologists, geneticists, physicists, astronomers and astrophysicists etc. who discovered(s) them.  The first large scale fauna catalog, Aristotle's History of Animals was published around 343 BC so even evolutionary principles had been in play for 2,000 years before we received Darwin’s ‘gift from the devil’ but the church wasn’t having any of that competitive nonsense then or now.

“The way evolutionists date things is like a dog chasing its tail. I offer the work of two scientists. Guy Berthault, a member of the French Academy of Sciences who around 1988 proved beyond little doubt that Charles Lyell's theory of the geologic column (i.e. that layers of sediment were formed over millions of years) is false. Geological Society of France, 1993, and Julien Lan and Guy Berthault, "Experiments of Stratification of heterogeneous sand mistures, " CEN Technical Journal 8 (1):3750, 1994; Guy Berthault, "Experiments on laminations of sediments," CEN Technical Journal 3:2529, 1988”.

Not my field of likes so I will have to research these claims and get back to you. I hope that isn’t going to be a waste of time again though.

French young Earth creationist Guy Berthault claims to have discovered sedimentation properties that dispute several stratigraphic and relative dating principles used by modern field geologists through numerous laboratory studies. Berthault's knowledge of the sedimentology literature and stratigraphic field methods are decades or even centuries out of date (just as with Wells). Because of his lack of knowledge (honesty), Berthault's experiments often involved "reinventing the wheel". When compared with Berthault, YEC Steve Austin (1994, chapter 2 only) has a better understanding of these fundamental principles. And now knowing that Julien Y. Lan is also a YEC and close friend of YEC Guy Berthault; so what would you expect them to say when they profess up front that GOD is the ultimate authority on everything, give this nonsense a brake please. Besides as usual, you are after Darwin and now his friends like Charles Lyell who was born in 1791 for goodness sake. Berthault's "Stratigraphy" was simply his rediscovering what geologists already knew and have moved beyond. This is not an appealing subject for me, are you sure you want to go here?

I should have known better …

Lula don’t you ever just want to discuss something, it would be nice? The only reason you are compelled to look at everything as an attack on Christianity is because everything you cannot reconcile into your mystical world you self-define it as an attack to the very last person and word. This is just all screwed up and reason is all you need to see it. First of all the world exists and always has as far as mankind is concerned and that makes everything we find in it REAL. We have real science that deals with real evidence because we are not privy to magic so it never enters the equations.  Simply, science only deals with reality for the sole purpose of becoming more knowledgeable about ‘nature’. No arguments are ever made against magic because it is not involved in this process. Magic cannot be measured, monitored, detected or quantified therefore it is magic or it is not. If anything is responsible for this conundrum it is your idol whose absolute privacy from exposure from ALL its would-be-subjects could only be self-arranged as it planted the evidence for an aged universe. You have your book which ignores everything in reality excusing ALL science as inconsequential (without any proof for that choice) besides an archaic (non-scientific) book that doesn’t do anything besides defend itself … just like every book written ... told you so. Surely you can grasp the concept that everything was not included in your bible. But pray tell what possible incentive could there have been to include ANYTHING remotely controversial (in their 1st century minds anyway) after hundreds of years of weeding through it? Nevertheless we ‘free thinkers’ have science (and quite a few Christians do too) who educate themselves in the actual workings of our universe; not devote their lives to the destruction of the very concept. We are quite inquisitive and constructive by nature and are amassing an actual REAL history based on science and math and needless to say without any magic. As far as I am concerned, until such time as you folk can prove something magical, you are the world’s would-be-usurpers and would force your mysticism on everyone else destroying their gods (or none) and their free will in the process. We are aggressing nothing here nor are we trying to destroy pipe dreams … just moving forward working under the limitations we must comply with. Lula it doesn’t matter how strongly you feel about your religion, you cannot force it on others without a sword and you are being ultra-naïve just to think you can without one lick of proof. Your complete world is controlled by your clergy and you are forbidden to question or challenge ANY OF IT. I am under no such constraints and am free to discover life as I choose and I for one will never capitulate to any person or organization that would force me to see life through a barbaric 1st century worldview. Just my opinions so don’t get your panties in a knot. The problem with Christianity (as a story) is that most Christians are so unlike their chosen idol in most respects besides the idol worship parts anyway. If you choose to live your life as if you were born in sin so grave that you must make penance (TO THE CHURCH oh in the name of GOD who doesn’t need it) for the rest of your ever so real life even considering you had nothing to do with anything, that is your choice. I am as free and as compassionate as I can be and I am not burdened by anything besides reality (more than enough of a problem). If you take the magic out of the bible you have no theology (just a more pointless book). That means that it is just the magic you covet so you can pretend to defy reality. Theology is just the support system conjured up to try and justify said magic as best they could back in the day. We however are NOT back in the day and nobody should pretend otherwise or want it to be so. You are not going to have your mystical world and science (which is pointless without evolutionary theory) but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you because you have already decided that they are just disdainful and blasphemous enterprises.  But I cannot even visualize a world without science let alone desire to live under those conditions … again.

PS - If you think that was an insult you had better never set foot in a bar; live with it because I don't care how you choose to interpret it. OK, if that is just so terrible I will, but when have you ever showed ANY compassion, concern or thoughtfulness concerning anything (everything) I say or believe but that is to be expected from YEC's. I don’t actually want to discuss geological stratification, and who in their right mind would (but I will if I have to) of free choice?

I wish you had the magic of paragraph breaks.

 

You're a woman?