Evidence for God from Science

Calum wrote:I am going to address some errors I spotted, but not the whole thing because I'm rather busy at the moment.

This passage, on face, appears to be a series of “just so” stories: it is the tale of how snakes came to crawl on the ground without legs (what the Bible colorfully calls ‘eating dust’); why childbirth is painful; and how come men have to do all the hard work. Don’t these passages seem exactly the same as “How The Zebra Got Its Stripes?” and the like?

Ha ha - no, God does not pronounce the Curse on the serpent. Serpents have been around for millions of years before Adam and Eve. He was pronouncing the curse on Satan so he could live like a snake. The Bible also says that Eve's pain in childbirth was greatly MULTIPLIED, not to say there was no pain there.
In order for Adam to live, he would have to work after being cast out of the Garden. That's the simple and obvious result that would ensue.

And the Bible is literally full of “just so” stories like this. Genesis 9:13 purports to explain how the rainbow came to be — are we really to believe that light did not refract prior to Noah’s flood? Similarly, Genesis 11 (the well-known Tower of Babel story) purports to tell us how come so many people speak different languages. How is any of this any different than, for example, the story of Prometheus bringing fire to mankind?

Okay... where did you get the idea that there wouldn't have been rainbows prior to the Genesis Flood?
The passage merely states that God has placed his rainbow in the clouds as a sign of the covenant. Nowhere does it say he created it. Just because Jesus is accompanied by signs and symbolisms of lambs and bread and wine does not mean there were no lambs or bread or wine prior to Jesus.
Genesis 9:13 just says that the rainbow was to be a sign/symbol of the covenant.
As for the tower of Babel, it's obvious that English, Spanish, Chinese, Algonquin, Latin, Greek, and all other languages spoken today are not original proto-languages of Babel. God split the languages of Babel to separate the people from each other. All the languages seen today developed after Babel, not during it.

ii. Talking Animals
In general, when you see talking snakes and donkeys (Num. 22:21-30), people living for hundreds of years (Gen. 5), stars somehow falling to the earth (Matt. 24:29) (or, alternatively, fighting in battles alongside humans! (Judges 5:20)), you know you’re reading fiction. When Matthew 27:51-54 tells us that a horde of zombies went on a rampage throughout downtown Jerusalem after Jesus’s death, we should probably recognize that as a legend. We know that people don’t generally take up residence inside fish (even “great” ones!), and we’re a little bit suspicious that eight people could gather together and cram all those animals on a big wooden boat. And so on.

First, it wasn't "the snake" that was talking. Satan was either talking through the snake. It really is obvious. The donkey was obviously a supernatural event: "28 Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?"
As for your 'star' problem:
"29 “Immediately after the distress of those days (end times of Revelation) the sun will be darkened (probably as a result of the 'stars' falling from the sky throwing up huge ash clouds) and the moon will not give its light (same reason - also mentions eclipses later on) the stars will fall from the sky, (interesting to note that shooting stars were classified as 'the stars of the sky'. Planets were as well) and the heavenly bodies will be shaken."
Matthew was a reference to the very cataclysmic astronomical events that would take place on Earth. Is this a possible future solar system bombardment from the Oort cloud?

As for your 'zombie' problem:
Matthew 27:51-54 says nothing of the kind:
"51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. 54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”

It is clearly a supernatural event. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. Doesn't say anything about a rampage, or them being half-dead as would define a zombie. As you can see, the centurion and other people could now clearly see He was the Son of God. It would take a miracle to get these people to realize this. To dismiss any miraculous event that is so obviously brought forth by divine intervention in the Bible (and the Bible is full of them) is just bad reasoning. The Bible makes it clear that these are miracles and are plainly unnatural, and should not be described as 'legend' as God did it.

"We know that people don’t generally take up residence inside fish (even “great” ones!)"

Uh, right...
To deny the event is to deny the supernatural. God prepared the fish, the Bible says.

and we’re a little bit suspicious that eight people could gather together and cram all those animals on a big wooden boat.

Perhaps you should visit the Home site of this forum. I think 90% of the people on this forum believe the Genesis Flood was local, and there's a lot of evidence to back that position up.

To be clear: my argument is not that it is impossible for there to have been zombies...

What zombies?

big boats full of animals,

Of course it's not impossible. Noah had a hundred years to build the ark. Besides, the Flood was not global in extent and Noah did not take aboard all animals, only those in his region.

people living inside fish,

Supernatural intervention. God 'prepared' the fish prior to swallowing Jonah, anyway.

talking snakes

Satan was talking through the snake. You gotta know the story before trying to make it sound ridiculous.

virgin mommies,

Wow..
Another example of something called "Divine intervention". It is so obvious it's a miracle it's not even funny.

or any of that stuff. Anything’s possible, I guess.

Even more likely when there's Divine intervention.

My argument is only that those sorts of things, coupled with the “just so” morality tales we see in the Bible, give off the unmistakable whiff of myth.

Or divine intervention, as the Bible clearly tells us.

Historians generally believe that there was no exodus of Jewish slaves out of Egypt as described in the Bible, or in fact, any of the subsequent conquest events described in Exodus.

Ever hear of the Hyksos people?
I would suggest viewing 'the Exodus Decoded'. They have it on youtube. It's obvious that history has Exodus written all over it.

We know that Asa could not possibly have mustered an army of 580,000 Israelites and then used that army to slaughter a million Cushites (as described in 2 Chronicles 14); Bronze Age goatherders and desert warriors could not plausibly have maintained lines of supply for armies that big. (By contrast, for example, the Athenian invasion of Sicily — occurring nearly a thousand years later — was less than 1% of the size of the fantastic numbers frequently claimed in the Bible!) For this and other reasons, it is not surprising that none of these hundred-thousand-person battles attested to in the Bible are corroborated by any other source.

Asa prayed prior to the battle. Guess what:
"12 The LORD struck down the Cushites before Asa and Judah. The Cushites fled, 13 and Asa and his army pursued them as far as Gerar. Such a great number of Cushites fell that they could not recover; they were crushed before the Lord and his forces."

This is so obviously an act of Divine intervention that you must have skipped right over the passage, or not read it at all.
The Athenians nor the Sicilians did not have God on their side.

Similarly, although the historian Josephus chronicles the life and reign of Herod the Great in agonizing detail, he somehow never sees fit to mention the supposed slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod described in Matthew 2:16-18. Is it more reasonable to believe that Josephus simply forgot to describe what would have been one of the worst atrocities in history — or that the passage in Matthew is a reworking of (and allegory to) Pharoah’s slaughter of the Jewish innocents described in Exodus 1:22-2:1?

Josephus says that Herod murdered a vast number of people, and was so cruel to those he didn't kill that the living considered the dead to be fortunate. Thus, indirectly, Josephus tells us that there were many atrocities that Herod committed that he does not mention in his histories - and it is probable that authorizing the killing of the presumably few male infants in the vicinity of Bethlehem was a minuscule blot of the blackness that was the reign of Herod.

Being that the events of the reign of Herod involved practically one atrocity after another - it is observed by one writer, with a minimum of hyperbole, that hardly a day in his 36-year reign passed when someone wasn't sentenced to death - why should any one event in particular have touched off a rebellion, when others in particular, including those recorded by Josephus, did not?

Herod probably died in March or April of 4 BC; the Slaughter would therefore have occurred during one of his last two years on earth, and it is unreasonable to say that the things he did in the previous 34 years - equally, if not more so, a time of political unrest among the Jews - was insufficient to incite rebellion, whereas killing a few male infants in a backwater suburb would be sufficient in comparison. It is doubtful that Josephus recorded EVERY atrocity performed by Herod; if he had, his works would be rather significantly larger.

(http://www.tektonics.org/qt/slaughtinn.html)

In other words: when we review a Bible, we see that the historical events described therein are best categorized today as “historical fiction” — that is, real events embellished for literary and other reasons, and fictional events that are told in a historical setting but with garbled details, persons, and so forth.

Just because we do not have evidence for a single battle, or a single war, taking place 3,000-2,000 years ago doesn't support the notion that the entire Bible is false. There already is a LOT of archaeological evidence for the Bible:
http://www.christiananswers.net/archaeology/
So we would not expect EVERY record of battles in the Bible to survive time.

The cosmology is all wrong; the writers repeatedly depict a fixed firmament to which stars — alternatively described as either small bits of fire or living beings (see above) — are affixed.

I would have to see the specific verses in order to come to a conclusion.

The geology is all wrong; the Earth is described as a flat disc (Is. 40:22) that God lives “above”

Actually, your interpretation of Scripture is wrong. The Hebrew word used for 'circle' is 'chuwg', which incidentally means BOTH "Circle" and "Sphere." The fact that is uses Chuwg at all to describe a round shape gives more scientific support for the bible.

and from which it is possible to see “all the kingdoms of the world” if you just climb a mountain tall enough. (Matt. 4:8 and Luke 4:5, respectively.)

"Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
--Matt 4:8
In order to get the full picture of what was happening, we will have to look at Luke as well:
"The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world."
So in a single instant, all the kingdoms of the world were seen.
Supernatural entities in the Bible fit the description of extra-dimensional creations. 4 dimensional, or even 5 dimensional. One of these dimensions would be time. We know they exist outside of time, so it's reasonable to conclude that Satan was taking Jesus to a high point to better see all the nations (we don't know how this fourth dimension would work, so I don't know why he was taken to the high mountain) from an extra dimensional perspective, and during this single 'instant' he was taken outside of time to see all the nations of the world.
This is what happens when you try binding supernatural things to earthly things. You don't really get the whole picture.

The reason why today we use phrases like, “I feel sorrow in my heart” as figures of speech stems from the fact that the people who wrote the Bible believed it to be literally true; they did not understand that the brain was the source of thought.

Or perhaps that figure of speech stemmed from an earlier meaning. Basically worldwide, 'heart' is used to refer to temptation, love, and hatred. "The brain is subject to temptation" just sounds awkward compared to "The heart is subject to temptation". 'heart' refers to will or emotion.

Ask yourself: how could God have conversed and inspired the authorship of the Bible, and not corrected basic misconceptions about the world — obvious things like the moon not being a “lesser light” in the sky,

Actually, the moon is a lesser light in the sky. It's not a source of light, but it's still a light. There's no reason to think God would give away the secrets of the universe to us. That's not the point of the Bible, and God wants us to explore Nature ourselves.

or the shape of the earth,

Gives a bit more evidence for it, really.

or the fact that the sun does not revolve around the earth, and so on?

Or perhaps this was a poetic reference to the obvious way the sun related to humans. Still today, we say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

Have you even visited the Home site? Here's a link I found:
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetic ... avens.html

I found several more large errors in your post, and I'll probably address them another time - I'm slightly busy right now.

This passage, on face, appears to be a series of “just so” stories: it is the tale of how snakes came to crawl on the ground without legs (what the Bible colorfully calls ‘eating dust’); why childbirth is painful; and how come men have to do all the hard work. Don’t these passages seem exactly the same as “How The Zebra Got Its Stripes?” and the like?

And the Bible is literally full of “just so” stories like this. Genesis 9:13 purports to explain how the rainbow came to be — are we really to believe that light did not refract prior to Noah’s flood? Similarly, Genesis 11 (the well-known Tower of Babel story) purports to tell us how come so many people speak different languages. How is any of this any different than, for example, the story of Prometheus bringing fire to mankind?

ii. Talking Animals
In general, when you see talking snakes and donkeys (Num. 22:21-30), people living for hundreds of years (Gen. 5), stars somehow falling to the earth (Matt. 24:29) (or, alternatively, fighting in battles alongside humans! (Judges 5:20)), you know you’re reading fiction. When Matthew 27:51-54 tells us that a horde of zombies went on a rampage throughout downtown Jerusalem after Jesus’s death, we should probably recognize that as a legend. We know that people don’t generally take up residence inside fish (even “great” ones!), and we’re a little bit suspicious that eight people could gather together and cram all those animals on a big wooden boat. And so on.

and we’re a little bit suspicious that eight people could gather together and cram all those animals on a big wooden boat.

To be clear: my argument is not that it is impossible for there to have been zombies...

big boats full of animals,

people living inside fish,

talking snakes

virgin mommies,

or any of that stuff. Anything’s possible, I guess.

My argument is only that those sorts of things, coupled with the “just so” morality tales we see in the Bible, give off the unmistakable whiff of myth.

Historians generally believe that there was no exodus of Jewish slaves out of Egypt as described in the Bible, or in fact, any of the subsequent conquest events described in Exodus.

We know that Asa could not possibly have mustered an army of 580,000 Israelites and then used that army to slaughter a million Cushites (as described in 2 Chronicles 14); Bronze Age goatherders and desert warriors could not plausibly have maintained lines of supply for armies that big. (By contrast, for example, the Athenian invasion of Sicily — occurring nearly a thousand years later — was less than 1% of the size of the fantastic numbers frequently claimed in the Bible!) For this and other reasons, it is not surprising that none of these hundred-thousand-person battles attested to in the Bible are corroborated by any other source.

Similarly, although the historian Josephus chronicles the life and reign of Herod the Great in agonizing detail, he somehow never sees fit to mention the supposed slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod described in Matthew 2:16-18. Is it more reasonable to believe that Josephus simply forgot to describe what would have been one of the worst atrocities in history — or that the passage in Matthew is a reworking of (and allegory to) Pharoah’s slaughter of the Jewish innocents described in Exodus 1:22-2:1?

In other words: when we review a Bible, we see that the historical events described therein are best categorized today as “historical fiction” — that is, real events embellished for literary and other reasons, and fictional events that are told in a historical setting but with garbled details, persons, and so forth.

The cosmology is all wrong; the writers repeatedly depict a fixed firmament to which stars — alternatively described as either small bits of fire or living beings (see above) — are affixed.

The geology is all wrong; the Earth is described as a flat disc (Is. 40:22) that God lives “above”

and from which it is possible to see “all the kingdoms of the world” if you just climb a mountain tall enough. (Matt. 4:8 and Luke 4:5, respectively.)

The reason why today we use phrases like, “I feel sorrow in my heart” as figures of speech stems from the fact that the people who wrote the Bible believed it to be literally true; they did not understand that the brain was the source of thought.

Ask yourself: how could God have conversed and inspired the authorship of the Bible, and not corrected basic misconceptions about the world — obvious things like the moon not being a “lesser light” in the sky,

or the shape of the earth,

or the fact that the sun does not revolve around the earth, and so on?

This passage, on face, appears to be a series of “just so” stories: it is the tale of how snakes came to crawl on the ground without legs (what the Bible colorfully calls ‘eating dust’); why childbirth is painful; and how come men have to do all the hard work. Don’t these passages seem exactly the same as “How The Zebra Got Its Stripes?” and the like?

And the Bible is literally full of “just so” stories like this. Genesis 9:13 purports to explain how the rainbow came to be — are we really to believe that light did not refract prior to Noah’s flood? Similarly, Genesis 11 (the well-known Tower of Babel story) purports to tell us how come so many people speak different languages. How is any of this any different than, for example, the story of Prometheus bringing fire to mankind?

ii. Talking Animals
In general, when you see talking snakes and donkeys (Num. 22:21-30), people living for hundreds of years (Gen. 5), stars somehow falling to the earth (Matt. 24:29) (or, alternatively, fighting in battles alongside humans! (Judges 5:20)), you know you’re reading fiction. When Matthew 27:51-54 tells us that a horde of zombies went on a rampage throughout downtown Jerusalem after Jesus’s death, we should probably recognize that as a legend. We know that people don’t generally take up residence inside fish (even “great” ones!), and we’re a little bit suspicious that eight people could gather together and cram all those animals on a big wooden boat. And so on.

and we’re a little bit suspicious that eight people could gather together and cram all those animals on a big wooden boat.

To be clear: my argument is not that it is impossible for there to have been zombies...

big boats full of animals,

people living inside fish,

talking snakes

virgin mommies,

or any of that stuff. Anything’s possible, I guess.

My argument is only that those sorts of things, coupled with the “just so” morality tales we see in the Bible, give off the unmistakable whiff of myth.

Historians generally believe that there was no exodus of Jewish slaves out of Egypt as described in the Bible, or in fact, any of the subsequent conquest events described in Exodus.

We know that Asa could not possibly have mustered an army of 580,000 Israelites and then used that army to slaughter a million Cushites (as described in 2 Chronicles 14); Bronze Age goatherders and desert warriors could not plausibly have maintained lines of supply for armies that big. (By contrast, for example, the Athenian invasion of Sicily — occurring nearly a thousand years later — was less than 1% of the size of the fantastic numbers frequently claimed in the Bible!) For this and other reasons, it is not surprising that none of these hundred-thousand-person battles attested to in the Bible are corroborated by any other source.

Similarly, although the historian Josephus chronicles the life and reign of Herod the Great in agonizing detail, he somehow never sees fit to mention the supposed slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod described in Matthew 2:16-18. Is it more reasonable to believe that Josephus simply forgot to describe what would have been one of the worst atrocities in history — or that the passage in Matthew is a reworking of (and allegory to) Pharoah’s slaughter of the Jewish innocents described in Exodus 1:22-2:1?

In other words: when we review a Bible, we see that the historical events described therein are best categorized today as “historical fiction” — that is, real events embellished for literary and other reasons, and fictional events that are told in a historical setting but with garbled details, persons, and so forth.

The cosmology is all wrong; the writers repeatedly depict a fixed firmament to which stars — alternatively described as either small bits of fire or living beings (see above) — are affixed.

The geology is all wrong; the Earth is described as a flat disc (Is. 40:22) that God lives “above”

and from which it is possible to see “all the kingdoms of the world” if you just climb a mountain tall enough. (Matt. 4:8 and Luke 4:5, respectively.)

The reason why today we use phrases like, “I feel sorrow in my heart” as figures of speech stems from the fact that the people who wrote the Bible believed it to be literally true; they did not understand that the brain was the source of thought.

Ask yourself: how could God have conversed and inspired the authorship of the Bible, and not corrected basic misconceptions about the world — obvious things like the moon not being a “lesser light” in the sky,

or the shape of the earth,

or the fact that the sun does not revolve around the earth, and so on?

Calum wrote:Have you even visited the Home site? Here's a link I found:
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetic ... avens.html

sandy_mcd wrote:

Calum wrote:Have you even visited the Home site? Here's a link I found:
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetic ... avens.html

Why isn't there a link to the home page http://www.godandscience.org/ from where i start http://discussions.godandscience.org/index.php ?

Danieltwotwenty wrote:Top right hand corner, says home site.

sandy_mcd wrote:

Danieltwotwenty wrote:Top right hand corner, says home site.

Not on my safari browser. I get different options depending on whether i am logged in, but even logged in i get in upper right
search, search, font size change, advanced search, faq minichat,members,logout - even fewer when not logged in.
upper left is evidence for god from science but it only goes to discussion home page, not main home page.


[edit] Found it, on the left side - but only when i am logged in. i usually read this as guest unless i am commenting, so that is why i don't see it.
thanks for the pointer.

Calum wrote:what the heck happened?
I tried editing it and it came out all messed up.

Stone wrote:About the year of creation?

-The Bible said:
*** The universe was created in 46,026 BCE. (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/interp/universe.html)
*** The earth: 42,000 years old (?) (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/interp/universe.html)
*** Adam: Adam was created in the year 4026 B.C.E., (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/interp/adam.html)

-The Science said: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... ry_of_life)

***The Universe 13.8 billion years old
***The Earth: 4.6 billion years old
***Modern human: 200,000 years old

Which is true?