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This is more straightforward:
++”Science Digest states: “Evolutionary revisionists believe mutations in key regulatory genes may be just the genetic jackhammers their quantum-leap theory requires.” However, the magazine also quotes British zoologist Colin Patterson as stating: “Speculation is free. We know nothing about these regulatory master genes.” (February 1982, p. 92) In other words, there is no evidence to support the theory.
Duh! May be = speculation “no evidence” What imbecile would credit this as being any point at all?
Stuart
David re scientist creationism your question has a possible answer here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution
The US Gallup poll has questions that don't seem to cover the field of possibilities but creationism runs at about 5% in the community of scientists – and remember this is in the US where a sort of cultural theocracy makes extremists like Ted Haggard look like establishment figures, 26% of the population are deluded enough to believe in witches, and there are implications for the careers or some who would otherwise declare themselves agnostic.
About 15 years ago I vaguely remember that 4% was a value determined for scientists in another part of the world. In my experience most of those 4% are not biologists and while they have plenty of prejudice, have little understanding of evolution.
Stuart
David, why do you go on about human-designed and made meat grinders and cars and houses?
Living things are not manufactured, and not designed, so the analogy only begs the question.
And I defy you to tell me that there is any more order in the universe that that brought about by electrostatics, gravity and nuclear fusion.You have not “walked into a room to find exactly-fitting clothes”. The “clothes fit” because your species evolved to fit them.
Stuart
Quote (kejonn @ Aug. 08 2007,15:19) Hey, does A.C.L.U stand for “Anti Christ Lives in Us?”
Good point. I never thought of it like that. I encourage you to create a new topic about your thought.
Peace/
Hi Stu.
Quote (Stu @ Aug. 07 2007,21:55) What do you observe in the universe t8?
The universe creates the human eye, and humans with intelligence and billions of dollars of research cannot even come close to what so-called non-intelligence can do.This is of course a very small example.
Look at anything in creation and man cannot match it.
Do our planes fly as well as a dragonfly?
Do our robots walk as well as a small child?
Do our search engines answer questions as well as humans can?It seems that non-intelligence kicks our butt.
However that is what you must think if you believe creation is not the result of an intelligent designer.
So you think non-intelligence is better at technology than intelligence. There in lies the foolishness of denying the creator.
Quote David, why do you go on about human-designed and made meat grinders and cars and houses? Living things are not manufactured, and not designed,
Um, I am suggesting that living things are largely designed. That is my argument and that is what I am suggesting. Hence, the illustrations and comparisons. So for you to say that the argument is null and void because living things are not designed makes no sense. That is in fact what I am arguing.
I'm arguing that if you can see design is something like a meat grinder made up of 15 parts, you should perhaps also see design in something that has millions of parts that all work together and that are infinitely more complex.
I'm arguing that if natural law would never put together anything like a meat grinder, (which is utterly simple) what reason have we to believe it would do something far more complex, far less likely?Often, the problem lies in what people THINK the Bible says and what people THINK science has established as fact. The Bible is not a science textbook. Yet, when the Bible does refer to natural phenomena, it is consistently accurate.
Biblical comments:
(1) harmonize with scientific facts;
(2) reflect knowledge that was beyond the available human knowledge at the time they were written; and
(3) are completely free from the mistaken views held at the time.HANGING EARTH ON NOTHING
Some believed that the earth was supported by four elephants standing on a big sea turtle. Yet rather than reflect the fanciful, unscientific views existing at its time of writing, the Bible simply stated:
“[God] is stretching out the north over the empty place, hanging the earth upon nothing.” (Job 26:7)
Over 3,000 years ago the Bible correctly noted that the earth has no visible support. How did Job know this?
In view of the knowledge available in 1600 B.C.E., roughly when those words were spoken, it would have taken a remarkable man to assert that a solid object can remain suspended in space without any physical support. Aristotle himself rejected the concept of a void, and he lived over 1,200 years later!CIRCLE OF THE EARTH
The Encyclopedia Americana says: “The earliest known image that men had of the earth was that it was a flat, rigid platform at the center of the universe. . . . The concept of a spherical earth was not widely accepted until the Renaissance.”
2,700 years ago, the Bible said: “There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers.” (Isaiah 40:22)
The Hebrew word chugh, translated “circle,” can also mean “sphere,” as such reference works as Davidson’s Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon show. Other translations, therefore, say “the globe of the earth” (Douay Version), and “the round earth.” (Moffatt) Thus the Bible was not influenced by the erroneous, flat-earth view prevalent when it was written. It was accurate.
The picture conveyed of a round earth ‘hanging upon nothing’ in “the empty place” reminds us strongly of the photographs taken by astronauts of the sphere of the earth floating in empty space.WATER CYCLE
Humans have long noted that the rivers flow into the seas and oceans and yet these do not increase in depth. Some believed, until it was learned that the earth is spherical, that this was because an equal amount of water was spilling off the ends of the earth. Later it was learned that the sun “pumps” up thousands of millions of gallons of water from the seas every second in the form of water vapor. This produces clouds that are moved by the wind over land areas where the moisture falls as rain and snow. Water then runs into the rivers and flows again into the seas. The oldest surviving non-Biblical references to this cycle are from the fourth century B.C.E. This marvelous cycle, although generally unknown in ancient times, is spoken about in the Bible in the 11th century B.C.E: “Every river flows into the sea, but the sea is not yet full. The water returns to where the rivers began, and starts all over again.”—Ecclesiastes 1:7, Today’s English Version. (Also Job 36:27)
Likewise, about 800 B.C.E. the prophet Amos, a humble shepherd and farmworker, wrote that Jehovah is “the One calling for the waters of the sea, that he may pour them out upon the surface of the earth.” (Amos 5:8)
Without using complex, technical language, both Solomon and Amos accurately described the water cycle, each from a slightly different perspective.MOUNTAINS
the Bible’s insight into the history of mountains. Here is what a textbook on geology says: “From Pre-Cambrian times down to the present, the perpetual process of building and destroying mountains has continued. . . . Not only have mountains originated from the bottom of vanished seas, but they have often been submerged long after their formation, and then re-elevated.”
Compare this with the poetic language of the psalmist: “With a watery deep just like a garment you covered [the earth]. The waters were standing above the very mountains. Mountains proceeded to ascend, valley plains proceeded to descend—to the place that you have founded for them.”—Psalm 104:6, 8.UNIVERSE HAD A BEGINNING
Many scientists asserted that the universe had no beginning.
Recently, it was discovered that it did.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
Astronomer Robert Jastrow:
“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same.”
What has been the reaction to such discoveries?
“Astronomers are curiously upset,” Jastrow writes. “Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind—supposedly a very objective mind—when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.”
Jastrow writes: “Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset.” He quotes some of the reactions over the idea of an expanding universe. Albert Einstein: “This circumstance irritates me.” British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington: “The notion of a beginning is repugnant to me . . . it leaves me cold.” Phillip Morrison of MIT: “I would like to reject it.” Allan Sandage of Palomar Observatory: “It cannot really be true.”ORDER OF CREATION
The Bible gives the stages of creation in the very order science now confirms, a fact hard to explain if the Bible were simply of human origin.
Geologist Wallace Pratt commented:
“If I as a geologist were called upon to explain briefly our modern ideas of the origin of the earth and the development of life on it to a simple, pastoral people, such as the tribes to whom the Book of Genesis was addressed, I could hardly do better than follow rather closely much of the language of the first chapter of Genesis.”FLOOD
In the days of Noah, the Bible says, a great flood covered earth’s highest mountains and destroyed all human life that was outside the huge ark that Noah built. (Genesis 7:1-24) Many have scoffed at this account. Yet seashells are found on high mountains. And further evidence that a flood of immense proportions occurred in the not-too-distant past is the great number of fossils and carcasses deposited in icy, mucky dumps. The Saturday Evening Post noted: “Many of these animals were perfectly fresh, whole and undamaged, and still either standing or at least kneeling upright. . . . Here is a really shocking—to our previous way of thinking—picture. Vast herds of enormous, well-fed beasts not specifically designed for extreme cold, placidly feeding in sunny pastures . . . Suddenly they were all killed without any visible sign of violence and before they could so much as swallow a last mouthful of food, and then were quick-frozen so rapidly that every cell of their bodies is perfectly preserved.”
This fits in with what happened in the great Flood. The Bible describes it in these words: “All the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” The downpour “overwhelmed the earth,” being accompanied no doubt by freezing winds in the polar regions. (Genesis 1:6-8; 7:11, 19) There, the temperature change would be the most rapid and drastic. Various forms of life were thus engulfed and preserved in frozen muck. One such may have been the mammoth that w
as uncovered by excavators in Siberia and that is seen in the accompanying illustration. Vegetation was still in its mouth and stomach, and its flesh was even edible when thawed out.HEALTH
Many superstitions are still believed by large numbers of people such as, that a buckeye in the pocket will prevent rheumatism; that handling toads will cause warts; that wearing red flannel around the neck will cure a sore throat, etc. No such statements are found in the Bible. Why?
The Mosaic Law (16th century B.C.E.) reflected awareness of disease germs thousands of years before Pasteur.Excrement:
At the time of Moses it was the custom in Egypt to use human or animal excrement as a remedy for certain ailments. Furthermore, Moses was raised in Egypt and was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” (Acts 7:22) But the comments he wrote at Deuteronomy 23:12, 13 are completely free from the mistaken—in fact, harmful—medical practices of Egypt. According to these words, in ancient Israel human excrement was to be considered unclean, to be buried away from populated areas and water supplies. As you know, modern medical science agrees.
The Papyrus Ebers, a medical document of the ancient Egyptians, prescribed the use of excrement to treat various conditions. It directed that human excrement mixed with fresh milk be applied as a poultice to lesions that remain after scabs fall off. And a remedy for drawing out splinters reads: “Worms’ blood, cook and crush in oil; mole, kill, cook, and drain in oil; ass’s dung, mix in fresh milk. Apply to the opening.”
What does the Bible say about excrement? It directed: “When you squat outside, you must also dig a hole with [a digging instrument] and turn and cover your excrement.” (Deuteronomy 23:13)
So, far from prescribing excrement in medical treatment, the Bible directed the safe disposal of sewage. Up until the present century the danger of leaving excrement exposed to flies was generally not known. This resulted in the spread of serious fly-borne diseases and the death of many people. Yet the simple remedy was on record in the Bible all the time, and it was followed by the Israelites over 3,000 years ago.Dead bodies:
During the last century medical personnel would go directly from handling the dead in the dissecting room to conducting examinations in the maternity ward, and they would not even wash their hands. Infection was thus transferred from the dead, and many others died. Even when the value of hand washing was demonstrated, many in the medical community resisted such hygienic measures. Doubtless unknown to them, they were rejecting the wisdom in the Bible, since Jehovah’s law to the Israelites decreed that anyone touching a dead person became unclean and must wash himself and his garments.—Numbers 19:11-22.health and sanitation.
If an Israelite had a skin blemish suspected of being leprosy, he was put in isolation. “All the days that the plague is in him he will be unclean. He is unclean. He should dwell isolated. Outside the camp is his dwelling place.” (Leviticus 13:46) Even infected garments were burned. (Leviticus 13:52)WHY CIRCUMCISION ON EIGHT DAY?:
As a sign of a covenant with Abraham, Jehovah God said: “Every male of yours eight days old must be circumcised.” Later this requirement was repeated to the nation of Israel. (Genesis 17:12; Leviticus 12:2, 3) No explanation was given why the eighth day was specified, but now we understand. Medical research has discovered that the blood-clotting element vitamin K rises to an adequate level only by then. Another essential clotting element, prothrombin, seems to be higher on the eighth day than at any other time during a child’s life. Based on this evidence, Dr. S. I. McMillen concluded: “The perfect day to perform a circumcision is the eighth day.”
Was this mere coincidence?Attitudes and Emotions affect health:
Another discovery of modern science is the degree to which mental attitude and emotions affect health. An encyclopedia explains: “Since 1940 it has become more and more apparent that the physiologic function of organs and the organs systems are closely allied to the state of mind of the individual and that even tissue changes may occur in an organ so affected.”
However, this close connection between mental attitude and physical health was long ago referred to in the Bible. For instance, it says: “A calm heart is the life of the fleshly organism, but jealousy is rottenness to the bones.”—Proverbs 14:30; 17:22
The Bible, therefore, directs people away from damaging emotions and attitudes. (Romans 13:13; Ephesians 4:31, 32)
The Bible even recommends love and loving your enemies. Some may scoff at this, but science has learned that lack of love is a major factor in many mental ills and other problems. The British medical journal Lancet once noted: “By far the most significant discovery of mental science is the power of love to protect and to restore the mind.” a noted stress specialist, Dr. Hans Selye, said: “It is not the hated person or the frustrating boss who will get ulcers, hypertensions, and heart disease. It is the one who hates or the one who permits himself to be frustrated. ‘Love thy neighbor’ is one of the sagest bits of medical advice ever given.”
As Dr. James T. Fisher once wrote: “If you were to take the sum total of all the authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene—if you were to combine them, and refine them, and cleave out the excess verbiage—if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount.”Circulation of blood:
A thousand years before Christ, Solomon wrote about the circulation of the blood; medical science had to wait until the 17th century to learn about it.
(Ecclesiastes 12:6)Genetic code:
Psalm 139:16 reflected knowledge of the genetic code: “Your eyes saw even the embryo of me, and in your book all its parts were down in writing, as regards the days when they were formed and there was not yet one among them.”E=MC2
Where did all the mass come from? It seems a whole lot of energy. The universe must have involved a transformation of energy and matter. Astrophysicist Josip Kleczek stated: “Most and possibly all elementary particles may be created by materialization of energy.”
There is scientific evidence that a source of limitless energy would have the raw material to create the substance of the universe.
ISAIAH 40:26
““Raise YOUR eyes high up and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who is bringing forth the army of them even by number, all of whom he calls even by name. Due to the abundance of dynamic energy, he also being vigorous in power, not one [of them] is missing.”
What brought about this moment of creation remains a mystery to scientists.ACCORDING TO IT’S KIND
Science, the official magazine for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also spiked Gould’s argument: “Species do indeed have a capacity to undergo minor modifications in the physical and other characteristics, but this is limited and with a longer perspective it is reflected in an oscillation about a mean [a position about midway between extremes].” In both plants and animals, variations within a species will oscillate or move about like pellets shaken in a glass jar—the variations are held within the boundaries of the species just as the pellets are confined within the jar. Just as the Bible’s account of creation says, a plant or an animal may vary, yet it is restricted to reproduce “according to its kind.”—Genesis 1:12, 21, 24, 25.
Did God create all the millions of varieties of organisms that exist on earth
today? Genesis chapter 1 says simply that God created each “according to its kind.” (Gen. 1:12, 21, 24, 25) In preparation for the global Flood in Noah’s day, God directed that representative members of each “kind” of land animal and flying creature be taken into the ark. (Gen. 7:2, 3, 14) Each “kind” has the genetic potential for great variety. Thus there are reportedly more than 400 different breeds of dogs and upwards of 250 breeds and types of horses. All interfertile varieties of any animal are just one Genesis “kind.” Similarly, all varieties of humans—Oriental, African, Caucasian, those as tall as the seven-foot Dinka in the Sudan and as short as the four-foot-four-inch Pygmies—stem from the one original pair, Adam and Eve.—Gen. 1:27, 28; 3:20.NATURAL LAW
The universe is governed by laws, such as the law of gravity. The earliest known non-Biblical reference to physical laws was made by Pythagoras, who believed that the universe could be explained by numbers. Two thousand years later, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton finally proved that matter is governed by rational laws.
About 1600 B.C.E., God asked Job: “Have you come to know the statutes [or, laws] of the heavens?” (Job 38:33) Recorded in the seventh century B.C.E., the book of Jeremiah refers to Jehovah as the Creator of “the statutes of the moon and the stars” and “the statutes of heaven and earth.” (Jeremiah 31:35; 33:25)
In view of these statements, Bible commentator G. Rawlinson observed: “The general prevalence of law in the material world is quite as strongly asserted by the sacred writers as by modern science.”
If we use Pythagoras as a point of reference, the statement in Job was about a thousand years ahead of its time.I wanted to add much more. I am just so rushed on time right now.
david
Hi t8
++”The universe creates the human eye, and humans with intelligence and billions of dollars of research cannot even come close to what so-called non-intelligence can do.
This is of course a very small example.
Look at anything in creation and man cannot match it.
Do our planes fly as well as a dragonfly?
Do our robots walk as well as a small child?
Do our search engines answer questions as well as humans can?
It seems that non-intelligence kicks our butt.
However that is what you must think if you believe creation is not the result of an intelligent designer.
So you think non-intelligence is better at technology than intelligence. There in lies the foolishness of denying the creator.I’ve had to think long and hard about this one. The temptation is to replace “non-intelligence” with “natural selection” in your post, but it’s not quite that simple.
Looking specifically at life, if we pretend for a minute that it is designed, then it is pretty obvious that it is a very different kind of designing process from that which humans use. Humans are distinguished from other animals by an ability to anticipate the future and we can set goals. Human design is the process of fulfilling a future goal of some kind. We pride ourselves on the efficiency and simplicity of a design and we admire the depth of thought and foresight that went into producing the designed thing.
By contrast, living things have strange bits left over from past “designs”, the instructions for building a new one are not for a carpenter or surgeon, they are for ribosomes to make protein – ie: to grow the wood before making the cricket bat. The DNA design “plans” include pages and pages of utter gibberish. The “designer” has not ordered the materials ready to put together, but has used a recipe book of left-over scrap bits of instructions that will recycle parts that will do the job, some better than others, some recycled parts doing entirely new jobs. The total effect is more like hopeful cooking than construction. Living things bear all the hallmarks of a designer that could look no further ahead than the present.
We can’t make an eye. The details of the cell chemistry and assembly are not achievable with our current technology. But, give a good engineer the human lower back and she could probably produce a much better design than the one we evolved. We also have much science able to repair the results of what you might call poor design, such as statins for lowering cholesterol or reconstructive surgery for cleft palate.
It is really important to understand that the process by which living things come into existence is very different from that which we use to make things. I match your claim of foolish denial with a counter-claim: those who claim that natural selection cannot produce the illusion of design do not understand natural selection.
Stuart
Hi David
++”Um, I am suggesting that living things are largely designed.
So how do you link “design” of things that can reproduce themselves with the design of those that are manufactured as parts and assembled by humans?
What possible relationship is there between a thing that makes itself from a set of inherited instructions that can go “wrong” and produce a variation of effects which in turn can be passed on, with an object that would be produced once and if imperfect, thrown away by its manufacturer.
How do you explain the incompetent design of the lower back, the appendix, the dangerous windpipe entrance, the bizarre cranial nerve wiring, the poor communication between the neocortex and reptilian brains or overproduction of cholesterol in fully-grown adults?
Unless the creator is not really that good a tissue engineer. Or is a very poor DNA coder. Or is cruel (Darwin’s example of creating a parasite whose chief activity is to eat a wasp larva alive from the inside).++”That is my argument and that is what I am suggesting. Hence, the illustrations and comparisons. So for you to say that the argument is null and void because living things are not designed makes no sense. That is in fact what I am arguing.
The problem is you cannot describe the kind of living thing you would expect to get from your creator. Whatever we see, that’s it! But, if you are made in the image of your creator then we might expect to find s/he has used the same kind of processes humans use. Living things do not look anything like the kinds of things that humans produce. Please also see my reply to t8 above. Newly discovered species always conform to the predictions make by natural selection. Show me one that hasn’t!
++”I'm arguing that if you can see design is something like a meat grinder made up of 15 parts, you should perhaps also see design in something that has millions of parts that all work together and that are infinitely more complex. I'm arguing that if natural law would never put together anything like a meat grinder, (which is utterly simple) what reason have we to believe it would do something far more complex, far less likely?
Complexity is more than adequately explained by natural selection.
Stuart
David enough!
++”HANGING EARTH ON NOTHING…
Over 3,000 years ago the Bible correctly noted that the earth has no visible support. How did Job know this?A very good question. How did he know?
++”CIRCLE OF THE EARTH
…
2,700 years ago, the Bible said: “There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers.” (Isaiah 40:22)
The Hebrew word chugh, translated “circle,” can also mean “sphere,” as such reference works as Davidson’s Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon show.It can also be translated as circle, which is wrong. It does not explicitly say sphere. Science does, explicitly.
++”WATER CYCLE
…
Without using complex, technical language, both Solomon and Amos accurately described the water cycle, each from a slightly different perspective.Not accurately. Not particularly insightfully. SO WHAT??
++”MOUNTAINS
… “With a watery deep just like a garment you covered [the earth]. The waters were standing above the very mountains. Mountains proceeded to ascend, valley plains proceeded to descend—to the place that you have founded for them.”—Psalm 104:6, 8.Except that modern plate tectonics disposes of this pretty well. There is nothing “founded” about the features of the earth. I don’t think modern science says anywhere that the water covered the entire surface of the earth at any stage. The bible does earlier though.
++”UNIVERSE HAD A BEGINNING
Many scientists asserted that the universe had no beginning.
Recently, it was discovered that it did.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
Astronomer Robert Jastrow:
“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same.”The Big Bang is a theory. There is always a small chance that it is wrong. An important quality of science is that ideas are only even given provisional assent. The bible is permanently “right” or “wrong”. It may be “right” about the event of a beginning, but there is no detail. If the Big Bang is demonstrated wrong, then the bible is wrong. It was wrong about the origins of humans, even though many scientists believed it to be true until Darwin.
++”FLOOD
In the days of Noah, the Bible says, a great flood covered earth’s highest mountains and destroyed all human life that was outside the huge ark that Noah built. (Genesis 7:1-24) Many have scoffed at this account.How did the Kiwi walk from Mt. Ararat to New Zealand?
How did the “kinds” accelerate the rate of evolution required to produce all the species now known over a few thousand years?
How did Noah accommodate the massive variety of very specialist diets?The story is a myth and a ridiculous one.
++”HEALTH
Your list of health issues is an example of ancient people codifying their SCIENCE. In fact, it outlines a battle against natural selection pretty well. There is certainly no need for divine inspiration here – hominids were burying their dead long before Judeo-Christian mythology was invented.
++”WHY CIRCUMCISION ON EIGHT DAY?:
Why circumcision AT ALL?
++”Circulation of blood:
A thousand years before Christ, Solomon wrote about the circulation of the blood; medical science had to wait until the 17th century to learn about it.
(Ecclesiastes 12:6)It reads: 12:6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
? Circulation? Heart? Arteries? Veins? Pulmonary oxygen exchange?++”E=MC2
…What brought about this moment of creation remains a mystery to scientists.
What creation mystery??
++”ACCORDING TO IT’S KIND
…
all varieties of humans—Oriental, African, Caucasian, those as tall as the seven-foot Dinka in the Sudan and as short as the four-foot-four-inch Pygmies—stem from the one original pair, Adam and Eve.—Gen. 1:27, 28; 3:20.And science says this is wrong too.
++”NATURAL LAW
The universe is governed by laws, such as the law of gravity. The earliest known non-Biblical reference to physical laws was made by Pythagoras, who believed that the universe could be explained by numbers. Two thousand years later, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton finally proved that matter is governed by rational laws.
About 1600 B.C.E., God asked Job: “Have you come to know the statutes [or, laws] of the heavens?” (Job 38:33) Recorded in the seventh century B.C.E., the book of Jeremiah refers to Jehovah as the Creator of “the statutes of the moon and the stars” and “the statutes of heaven and earth.” (Jeremiah 31:35; 33:25)
In view of these statements, Bible commentator G. Rawlinson observed: “The general prevalence of law in the material world is quite as strongly asserted by the sacred writers as by modern science.” If we use Pythagoras as a point of reference, the statement in Job was about a thousand years ahead of its time.So Job and Jeremiah achieved the same as Galileo (finally forgiven by the Catholic church a few years ago – big of them!), Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Kepler, Copernicus, Rutherford, Curie, Feynman, Darwin, Boyle, Hawking, Pauling and Democritus, did he?
The history of religion is utterly appalling on this subject. At every turn scientific advancement has been cruelly put down as it still is today, by a medieval religious mindset that is anti-science.
From heliocentrism to stem-cell research many of the religious oppose from a point of ignorance while still enjoying the benefits of the science they mistrust or despise. Ironically creationists crave the opportunity to “debate” in public with real scienctists, because they desperately want the reflected glory to which they have no claim whatever.++”I wanted to add much more. I am just so rushed on time right now.
I’m so glad you didn’t download more of this rubbish to “share” with us. Please give us something original. The internet is saturated with this nonsense which is based on prejudice and distortion of mythology.
Stuart
A potted summary of the scientific view of the Genesis Flood Myth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology
Stuart
Quote all varieties of humans—Oriental, African, Caucasian, those as tall as the seven-foot Dinka in the Sudan and as short as the four-foot-four-inch Pygmies—stem from the one original pair, Adam and Eve.—Gen. 1:27, 28; 3:20. And science says this is wrong too.
I didnt know science felt this way.
“Science now corroborates what most great religions have long been preaching: Human beings of all races are . . . descended from the same first man.”—Heredity in Humans (Philadelphia and New York, 1972), Amram Scheinfeld, p. 238.
“The Bible story of Adam and Eve, father and mother of the whole human race, told centuries ago the same truth that science has shown today: that all the peoples of the earth are a single family and have a common origin.”—The Races of Mankind (New York, 1978), Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, p. 3.
Science is rather flip floppy. That is what is great about it. It is constantly trying to improve and become more accurate. Does science now believe that we aren't “descended from the same first man.”
Quote How did the “kinds” accelerate the rate of evolution required to produce all the species now known over a few thousand years? Recently, a group was studying foxes. (for what purpose I don't remember) They kept mating the tamer foxes together. The result was that they had completely tame foxes. It only took 10 years to the surprise of everyone!
Quote ++”HEALTH Your list of health issues is an example of ancient people codifying their SCIENCE. In fact, it outlines a battle against natural selection pretty well. There is certainly no need for divine inspiration here
You're right. It doesnt prove divine inspiration any more than Job somehow knowing that the earth is hanging upon nothing proves it. It just proves that FOR SOME REASON the Biblical comments don't reflect the gross ignorance of how science works that those surrounding the Bible writers did.
No such statements are found in the Bible. Why?
The Mosaic Law (16th century B.C.E.) reflected awareness of disease germs thousands of years before Pasteur. Why?Quote ++”NATURAL LAW
The universe is governed by laws, such as the law of gravity. The earliest known non-Biblical reference to physical laws was made by Pythagoras, who believed that the universe could be explained by numbers. Two thousand years later, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton finally proved that matter is governed by rational laws.
About 1600 B.C.E., God asked Job: “Have you come to know the statutes [or, laws] of the heavens?” (Job 38:33) Recorded in the seventh century B.C.E., the book of Jeremiah refers to Jehovah as the Creator of “the statutes of the moon and the stars” and “the statutes of heaven and earth.” (Jeremiah 31:35; 33:25)
In view of these statements, Bible commentator G. Rawlinson observed: “The general prevalence of law in the material world is quite as strongly asserted by the sacred writers as by modern science.” If we use Pythagoras as a point of reference, the statement in Job was about a thousand years ahead of its time.So Job and Jeremiah achieved the same as Galileo (finally forgiven by the Catholic church a few years ago – big of them!), Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Kepler, Copernicus, Rutherford, Curie, Feynman, Darwin, Boyle, Hawking, Pauling and Democritus, did he?
The history of religion is utterly appalling on this subject. At every turn scientific advancement has been cruelly put down as it still is today, by a medieval religious mindset that is anti-science.
Remember my opening comments–How it is what people THINK or how they misrepresent the Bible that is often at odds with science. The history of religion is utterly appalling, on this subject and others, as Christ himself fortold. But what does this have to do with what the Bible says?
Quote A potted summary of the scientific view of the Genesis Flood Myth: Most of this seems to be arguing against the Young earth creationists, those that seem to miss that one definition of day “epoch” and also miss that all those days were lumped into one “day” at Gen 2:4 I believe.
Science is rather flip floppy. That is what is great about it. It is constantly trying to improve and become more accurate. Does science now believe that we aren't “descended from the same first man.”
We aren't all descended from one pair of humans. That is ridiculous too.
Stuart
David
++”Most of this seems to be arguing against the Young earth creationists, those that seem to miss that one definition of day “epoch” and also miss that all those days were lumped into one “day” at Gen 2:4 I believe.
Genesis doesn't say epoch. It says day. It records the passing of mornings and evenings. If that is allegory, then you can interpret Genesis in any way you want. The fact is that it is mythology based on other Middle Eastern mythologies. If it coincides with a scientific account on a tiny percentage of points then that is only to be expected by coincidence. It has as much scientific use as psychics have in a police investigation – they may stumble across the body, but they have no particularly special knowledge, just blind luck.
Stuart
++”Remember my opening comments–How it is what people THINK or how they misrepresent the Bible that is often at odds with science.
David you have searched the internet for the most convoluted distortions made by fundamentalist apologists who on one hand want the biblical account to match observations, and on the other reject the straighforward conclusions that science draws from those observations. Counting angels dancing on the point of a pin springs to mind.
Stuart
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