The basis of the disagreement between Neo-X and myself here is that I believe that the natural world, if studied through science, and the bible, agree on what they say, and Neo-x does not. In fact, Neo-x always shows up whenever I post anything that dares to suggest that what is written in Genesis and what science now shows are one and the same. This is especially true about the first chapter of Genesis about the progression from what this planet started out like to what it finally became by the time people showed up, and also about that whole flood and Noah thing and the genetic evidence that supports the existence of Noah (and the earlier Eve). Also, Neo-x does not seem to believe that the bible says that we even should bother expecting that such should be true, despite the very clear Rom 1:20 (it even uses that word). One wonders why Neo-x likes to frequent a site called God and Science dot org, if he does not believe that there is any connection between God and science?
And the "argument" is usually kind of like the one on Monty Python, seen here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM . I post something that says that this part of the bible agrees with science of some type (say, evidence that Genesis the first chapter is scientifically factual about the cosmology of earth), and I post links to science supporting that, and perhaps an appropriate quote from that source, and then Neo-x comes along and says "no it isn't", usually with simple unsupported statements without any links or quotes, and sometimes with arguments that are against science, even basic science like chemistry and biology. He then says "Legatus won't have it any other way except his", to which I answer, you are right, I wont have it anyway but my way, and the scientific method way, and the way that agrees with the known physical evidence, and chemistry, and biology, and cosmology, and geology, and the bible as it was written (the specific words in that specific order). I might be willing to change my mind IF I saw any EVIDENCE to support what Neo-x states, however, what I generally see is only bald statements without any evidence to back them up, and vague generalities about what the bible actually says without ever actually saying how those specific words, in that specific order, can mean anything other than what they say. I will show below specific examples of this.
It started when I dared to suggest that the physical evidence from genetics supports the idea of an actual woman called Eve (mitochondrial Eve), and of a later man called Noah (incorrectly named y-chromosonal Adam). Neo-x posted some of what scientist believe (providing some links and quotes, a good thing), I then show the scientific problem with that, that if what "scientists believe" (since when did belief become science?) is true, that there were also many others besides the earlier Eve and the later Noah, that left problems with science (specifically, why don't we have genetic evidence of these others?) such that the proposed solutions to that problem (to avoid admitting the one obvious possibility, that the reason we only have evidence of that one is because there was only one) are described as "farfetched"
http://www.dubage.com/API/ThePolymath/1 ... 1ebam.html .
He then asks the question, do I believe that Genesis 1 says that God also created dinosaurs, probably because Neo-x does not seem to believe that Gen 1 has any connection with scientific fact, and does not see the word dinosaur in Genesis (Hebrew doesn't have a word for dinosaurs anyway, that is a recent invention along with the recent inventions of science and the study of fossils). I assume therefore that he hoped to show that, since Genesis does not mention dinosaurs, that therefore Genesis is not factual ( I assume that because he immediately attacked my idea that Genesis does say dinosaurs, if indirectly). I then point out that it does mention birds, created at an earlier stage than other land animals, and that most scientists believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Despite the fact that Neo-x'es profile says he believes in "theistic evolution", he immediately attacks that idea, which is a little strange... Apparently, he simply wishes to bring up any idea which can discredit the idea that Genesis and science are in agreement, regardless of whether he agrees with that idea himself or not. I then point out that Job includes a description by God to Job Job 40:15 of what is exactly like a Sauropoda (brontosaurus type critter)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauropoda, Neo-x then says that Job could only know about a Sauropoda if Job had seen one, I point out that there are a number of things in Job that Job could not have known about personally, such as when God first created the earth Job 38:3, when the sea first came into existence Job 38:8 (as water/steam in a cloud at first Job 38:9, producing "thick darkness" written of in Gen 1:2, and later condensing on the surface as in Gen 1:7, followed by the cooling crust starting to wrinkle and dry land hump up out of the water as seen in Gen 1:9 and Job 38:10 and Job 38:11) , as well as other things Job could not know about, like the bottom of the sea Job 38:16, and even gives a reason why Job could not know about these things Job 38:21, because Job would have to have been billions, or at least many millions, of years old to know of them. Therefore, it is clear that some things written in Job are things Job could not have ever personally experienced, and thus a dinosaur could be another thing he had not personally experienced.
Neo-x then challenges the idea that Rom 1:20, which says that we can know about God from the evidence of the natural world going all the way back to it's creation spoken of in Genesis, is talking about the same creation, by basically saying that Genesis is not factual, as shown by his saying that a large ocean could not have existed as written there:
Yes, this certainly means creation but not what is written in Genesis 1. If Gen 1:2 holds true than this was before Gen1:2 happened. Because the water, the vast ocean was already present on earth. Also on or earlier debate about oxygen, this much water could not be present on earth without abundant oxygen, which the earth lacked.
This is the old "gap" argument, which says that there was some kind of earth created in Gen 1:1 and then destroyed and remade in between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2, and then he goes back to the old argument that there could not be an ocean if there was not free oxygen. The gap argument is first, unsupported by any physical evidence at all, or by any biblical evidence, supposedly existing between two verses, and denied by 1 Cor 15:45 Luke 3:38 which says Adam was the first man, and the first man to sin 1 Cor 15:22 Rom 5:14. If Adam was the first man, and the first man to sin, then there was no man before Adam, who could have or did sin and thus result in God destroying some imaginary (unsupported by any evidence) earth because of some people's wickedness. If you say that the ones who sinned before that were not people, then we have intelligent, sentient non-humans on earth, essentially, aliens. There is no physical evidence of them, there is physical evidence of "hominids", specifically Neanderthals, who had brains as big (actually slightly bigger on average) than our brains today, had fire, cooked food with it, had burial customs (which suggests belief in an afterlife), constructed tools and sophisticated traps, constructed complex structures, skinned animals, had language (one would have to have language to be able to tell the kid to go get firewood, to be able to plan ahead and know that you will need firewood later, and to teach how to do all this stuff to others, making fire aint easy, try it sometime) and even made jewelry and pigments. Since the bible gives no dates for Adam, or Noah, it is quite possible that Neanderthals are pre flood type humans (humans who could live the hundreds of years the pre flood humans did, who are thus seen to be genetically different than us today), or were an offshoot of pre flood humans who existed after the flood (there being a rather small localized human population pre flood, shown by the fact that one flood could get them all, we may not have any fossils of them)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior. (If you want to go into the old "Neanderthals are animals argument, I suggest a new thread, this one is about Noah and whether the bible contains scientific fact)
Neo-x then goes into his argument, which is basically that the early earth could not have had an ocean until such time as it had life, which is used to attack the idea that Genesis contains any scientific fact
The Bible was not intended as a primitive science manual that presented rudimentary scientific facts that would be verifiable at a later date when science caught up.
(an argument he gives without any support other than his say so). In this way he says that since an ocean could not have existed before life in Gen 1:11, that therefore Genesis is not scientifically factual, and that therefore the whole Noah thing is also not factual. There are so many huge scientific problems with this idea that water in ocean sized quantities did not exist on earth before life that the idea is completely impossible. The first is the actual physical evidence, seen here
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/early-earth-05e.html ""Rocks formed as a result of the thermal energy from meteorite impacts would be bone dry and melt at greater than 900 degrees Celsius," said Harrison. "In contrast, our study has found that Hadean rocks melted at a consistent average temperature of 690 degrees Celsius. Water, which is a very powerful catalyst, must have been present in very large amounts for rocks to melt at such a relatively low temperature." Note, what they discovered, that of the couple of hundred zircon crystals they could date at over 4.2 billions years, ALL of then were of the type that could only form in the presence of liquid water, which means that wherever they formed, no matter where it was, there was liquid water, which says that the earth was largely or even completely covered with liquid water ("in very large amounts"). Don't know about you, but that sounds completely different than Neo-x'es completely unsupported statement "Water could only be present in small shallow ponds", some shallow ponds would have meant that at least some of those zircon crystals would have formed in the absence of water, yet ALL of them formed in the presence of water, hence, a lot more than a few shallow ponds.
Then there is chemistry and biology, which are completely against this idea. First, to have free oxygen released by microorganisms, you must first have unfree oxygen, organisms cannot create oxygen, only use what they find. And where do they find oxygen, FROM WATER
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria "Cyanobacteria utilize the energy of sunlight to drive photosynthesis, a process where the energy of light is used to split water molecules into oxygen, protons, and electrons." Thus, if you say that water in these quantities can only come from free oxygen combining with hydrogen, the free oxygen first came from water, result, use water, create water, no net gain in water. There is no mention of these early microorganisms being able to eat rock with oxygen in them and then release that as free oxygen, and that would not work anyway since that free oxygen would then simply be absorbed back into the rocks again. There is also the fact that many of the early microorganisms could only live IN water, and thus cannot even exist without plenty of water to live in.
And all this assumes that when we break down water to make free oxygen, we can use all that oxygen to make water, however, see this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event
The most widely accepted chronology of the Great Oxygenation Event suggests that oxygen began to be produced by photosynthesis by organisms (prokaryotic, then eukaryotic) that emitted oxygen as a waste product. These organisms lived long before the GOE,[2] perhaps as early as 3,500 million years ago. The oxygen they produced would have quickly been removed from the atmosphere by the weathering of reduced minerals, most notably iron. This 'mass rusting' led to the deposition of banded-iron formations, shown for example in sediments in Minnesota
Thus we see that before there was free oxygen in the atmosphere, there were large amounts of oxygen being released from water by microorganisms and then absorbed by iron and other minerals. We therefore have a very long time period when we not only are not creating water from free oxygen, we are breaking down water and turning it's oxygen into rust, result, a great long term net loss of water, which means you have to START with a LOT of water to begin with to create enough free oxygen to make all that rust (and other oxides) and still have any water left over.
Then there is the Great Oxygenation Event, where finally all the iron and suchlike oxides are oxidized, and we can finally build up some free oxygen in the atmosphere to create that water Neo-x is looking for. And in fact, this did happen, oxygen released combines with the methane present in the atmosphere and created water and carbon dioxide. Finally we are at least creating water, however, since we are creating it from free oxygen liberated from water, we use water to get water, result, no net gain in water.
And then there is the idea that somehow, the early earth started with little water, even though Neo-x admits that water must exist in large quantities in the universe before the earth formed. How, then, are you to keep this water from arriving at where the earth is starting to form from space rocks, when we can see that comets and asteroids are seen to often contain water ice? Were there some sort of space cops out there, pulling over any water containing rocks or ice crystal clouds and telling them that it is illegal to join with the other stuff in forming the earth, that it has been declared a water free zone? I mean, if all that water is out there, as Neo-x admits, how do you keep it out? And then there is this "although many comets are covered and/or filled with ice, but if it does enter earth (which we have no prof of) most of that would burn off in entrance into the atmosphere". Burn off, that means the water is somehow destroyed, disintegrated or something? What happens when you heat water, answer, steam, which is just another form of water, thus if a comet or smaller icy body arrives at earth it will turn to steam which is water which would then be part of the early earths atmosphere (clouds, later rain). And then there is the simple fact that if said comet or smaller icy body arrives early enough, there will be little or no atmosphere to begin with, it will simply plunk down, and then be covered by the rocks and comets and suchlike that arrive later, and then when the earth gets big enough and hot enough, turn to steam and be released up out of the ground as seen in Job 38:8, and form a thick dark cloud as seen in Job 38:9 and Gen 1:2 ending (to some extent) at Gen 1:7. The bible supports this latter idea especially, which makes sense, once all the space stuff comes together to form the earth, there would be less comets and other icy stuff left over to arrive later.
Conclusion, on one side we have Neo-x'es unsupported word for a low water early earth as evidence that the bible is not scientifically factual (not one shred of evidence has been given or linked to or quoted or even suggested to support this), on the other, physical evidence of 4.2 year old and older zircon crystals that ALL must have formed in the presence of water wherever they formed, plus chemistry and biology which says that it takes water for life to make free oxygen from and thus to make water from the free oxygen results in no net gain of water, plus geology and chemistry which says that for a very long time any free oxygen made ended up as rust and other non water oxides, plus the simple idea that there is, in fact, a lot of water out there in that big universe and there is no way to keep it out when the earth is first forming. The conclusion is that for Neo-x to go against all this evidence he must really WANT Genesis to be non factual. The question then is, why?
And the final point of contention is that Neo-x says that I am interpreting the bible wrong, especially Rom 1:20, which states in no uncertain terms that we have no excuse to say that there is no God and that therefore it is ok to suppress the truth about God and to sin (that is the context). He has yet to deal with the actual words, the definition of those words and the order that they are in, and show how those sentences can mean anything other than exactly what they say, that what can be known about God is plain, since the creation of the world (spoken of in Genesis the first chapter, and Job the 38th chapter), and that these show Gods invisible qualities, that they are clearly seen by what has been made, i.e. the created world, since it's first creation, spoken of in Genesis. Simply saying "your wrong" without offering WHY that "interpretation" is wrong doesn't cut it, just making some vague generalities that it must not mean what it actually says doesn't cut it, to say that it means something else you must give a REASON why, and that has not been done. In fact, not once has there even been mentioned what this alternative interpretation even is, I am just supposed to accept that my interpretation is wrong even though no "right" interpretation has been stated.
I can only guess that the method Neo-x and others are using for "interpretation" is the deconstruction or higher criticism way, where you decide what the authors "intent" was, and then paper what you call the intent over what it actually says, allowing you to basically make it say whatever you want, since you no longer need to actually consider the actual words used, and the order they are used in, only some "intent" that you have made up and substituted for those words. The higher criticism types also like to invent authors of the bible for which there is not a shred of evidence for who author things like "J documents" where there is not even one single example around to show that it ever existed. They also like to deny things like that Moses wrote Genesis, despite Jesus and his apostles saying different (and even seeing Moses once), and they also like to make up authors for the rest of the bible also, and to say that it was not made when those authors lived, but made up later out of tales or folklore or the tales gradually developed over time, thus avoiding the need to say that they are accurate. They continue to do this even when they have been caught out many times when archeology shows that it is in fact accurate. They also like to label it "myth" and "fable" and "literature" (in other words, fiction), all to claim that it is not factual, doing so to allow them to weaken it and thus allow them to substitute their own ideas for "what really happened". For instance, if it looks like Genesis is talking science, they label it "poetry", even if it was not written in the style of Jewish poetry (like Psalms was, for instance). They like to use the fact that many have heard it in the King James Version, which sounds more poetical in English, despite the fact that the original was not written in English and that therefore this argument has no weight at all.
Here is an example of higher criticism or deconstruction type "interpretation". The phrase to be interpreted is "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water". We first decide that this is not a factual statement about actual people, actual hills, and actual water (usually because it is saying something we don't want to believe). We decide arbitrarily that it is actually talking about 'spiritual stuff". In the bible, the only way we could say that we know the "intent of the author" (the stated author, such as Moses, having usually been deconstructed out of existence) would be to show that we had a working time machine, used it to go back in time to that author, and was able to use our powers of mind reading to tell what the actual intent of the author was. Failing that, the only real way to tell what the intent of the author was is THE ACTUAL WORDS THEY WROTE, however, we would never want to do that! Having decided, without a shred of actual evidence of any kind, that we know what the "real" intent of the author was, we now decide that the above phrase really means that Jack and Jill, who were of course not actually themselves but representative of all of us, had a spiritually uplifting experience and received the water which represents a cleansing and renewing of the spirit. In this way we have papered over the actual words written by the original author with an idea so foreign to it that I doubt the original author would even know what we are talking about (assuming that even we do).
If this is not an example of how to "interpreter" say, Rom 1:20, then, pray tell, how DO you interpreter it? Be specific, showing exactly why it should be interpreted in any other way than using the actual words it was written in. If you say the "intent of the author" was to say something or other, provide evidence of some kind to show that that is the actual intent, and tell us how you know this. Otherwise, having NO reason to do otherwise, I must say that the actual words written in Rom 1:20 say beyond the shadow of a doubt that God says that the evidence of the natural world (that which is seen), even all the way back to the creation of the world written of in Genesis, shows us "clearly" of Gods invisible qualities, so that we have no excuse to say that there is no God and that we know of at least some of his qualities.
In short, until Neo-x actually gives a REASON for why he says I am wrong, and what is actually right AND a reason for that as well, I see no reason why I should change my mind. I would need to see actual facts, not just personal opinion. I would need to see an actual "interpretation", and why that interpretation is the correct one, not just "your interpretation is wrong", without saying why it is or offering any alternative to it at all. In other words, I won't have it any other way except mine (and that of cosmologists, and chemists, and biologists, and geologists, and archeologists, and Hebrew and Greek scholars, and the actual physical evidence) until such time as I have been given a fact based reason to do so. So far, all I see is unsupported personal opinion.
I repeated some of my earlier arguments because I thought some of my earlier posts here, especially the one just before this one, wee a little muddy and hard to understand.
No body's stalking you...You have a right to post and I have the right to do the same. 
Stop whining, if you can't take criticism better not post, if you can, why complain, just saying that my criticism is false because i am unscientific and I do not give links to Wikipedia articles, does not makes my criticism wrong. You have brewed this to some kind of weird personal vendetta, which I have no intention of, yet you persist on saying that it is the case, that I show up whenever you post something. What makes you think like this. I can post wherever I want. I and Jilay for example, seldom agree but that doesn't mean we are after each other just for the sake of proving wrong one and another.