Evolution & Creationism Debate at Museum

[11_Panama_]

Mandy, I saw the debate and your skewing it with your personal beliefs. 99% chance that it didn't happen? May I ask where did you get that number? As Mr Ham said "we weren't there" how do we know Noah did not know how to build a boat? As believer, I will add that God being.. well..God, knew how to remedy the problems that a big wooden boat would have in the high seas.

I mean come on Mandy... a blueprint from God. God could also have given Noah the knowledge needed to build the Ark.. if it was necessary.

[Mandalore]

Mandy, I saw the debate and your skewing it with your personal beliefs. 99% chance that it didn't happen? May I ask where did you get that number? As Mr Ham said "we weren't there" how do we know Noah did not know how to build a boat? As believer, I will add that God being.. well..God, knew how to remedy the problems that a big wooden boat would have in the high seas.

I mean come on Mandy... a blueprint from God. God could also have given Noah the knowledge needed to build the Ark.. if it was necessary.

You would think that getting a blueprint directly from God would have made its way into scripture. They certainly aren't stingy about directly invoking his involvement. But the blueprint isn't even the largest problem. Wood simply isn't a strong enough material to hold a ship together that large. Iron and steel are required.

And 99% chances are certainly not out of the question for many things the Bible claims. Just off the top of my head the claim that Jesus is divine. This would make him 1 out of let's be generous and say one hundred billion. Wildly, wildly, wildly improbable! God claims he is the only one when there are literally an infinite amount of Gods. How do you even really quantify these claims though? They're possibilities but creationists could try and fling that math back at others with their origin claim. However, we know for a fact that er, anti-matter, the universe and other instruments in the big bang theory exist. I'm not sure how that's quantified in mathematical equations though so I won't try and get in over my head there lol.

As for more practical ers like the ark there is an overwhelming amount of evidence against it. Not sure if you read my big edited post though. And that's just what a very simple analysis of the situation comes up with. And not to mention the fact that mount arafat has been raped by people looking for the ark for centuries and nothing was ever found.

[Col. Hstar]

Science has already answered your argument on mankind's imperfection. It's called peer review.

And what absolutely boggles my mind Homestar is that you make these claims about mankind's imperfection and yet still make the logical leap that the Bible is God's word when you have no proof of this. You ask whether or not the evidence against the flood is beyond a shadow of a doubt yet don't turn these doubts upon your own beliefs apparently. The only proof you have of anything Biblical is your own faith. Faith is not evidence. Faith is the opposite of evidence.

I have all the proof I need. I've studied the bible, found the explanations for how life came to be satisfactory. I've found the prophecy and history to be accurate. What more evidence do I need. You want more evidence you go find it.

I'm not the one here ridiculing you for not believing in God. Ridiculous as I may feel atheistic beliefs to be, I don't tell you how ignorant and illogical I think you are. I don't come on here telling you what you should believe. I don't start threads about evolution and how flawed it is. I don't start topics about scriptures saying this is how you must view them. These are thing you do.

I defend my beliefs, I don't need to provide you with evidence, it's up to you to find it if you want to.

As far as mans imperfections I never claimed to be perfect in my knowledge. There is alway new things to learn about Jehovah God. It would be arrogant to say otherwise. As arrogant as saying that if science can't prove it then it's impossible.
A couple of scriptures for this point:

Our understanding of spiritual things will continue to grow and be refined
Proverbs 4:18
18 But the path of the righteous is like the bright morning light
That grows brighter and brighter until full daylight.

God will make things clear to us through his faithful slave, when we are ready and able to understand them. Much the way you wouldn't try to explain the law of gravity to a 1 year old. When they're old enough to comprehend you can explain it.
Luke 12:42
42 And the Lord said: “Who really is the faithful steward, the discreet one, whom his master will appoint over his body of attendants to keep giving them their measure of food supplies at the proper time?

Despite how long we live, we will never discover all there is to know about Jehovah God and his works.
Ecclesiastes 3:10, 11
10 I have seen the occupation that God has given to the sons of men to keep them occupied. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has even put eternity in their heart; yet mankind will never find out the work that the true God has made from start to finish.

So no you are wrong. I do apply mans imperfection to everything. The difference between us is I'm satisfied with my faith and the evidence I have to support it. I don't need to make you satisfied.

[Col. Hstar]

You would think that getting a blueprint directly from God would have made its way into scripture.

Genesis 6:14-16
14 Make for yourself an ark from resinous wood. You will make compartments in the ark and cover it with tar inside and outside.15 This is how you will make it: The ark should be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.16 You will make a window for light for the ark, one cubit from the top. You should put the entrance of the ark in its side and make it with a lower deck, a second deck, and a third deck.

I doubt you'll ever get CAD blueprints

[Mandalore]

Those are specifications, not blue prints. If I gave your family the same instructions I have my doubts about your ability to get it done.

[(SWGO)DesertEagle]

I love how you have ignore every legitimate detracting argument hurled at Noah's Ark and continue to stretch the boundaries of what is enumerated within the Bible to conform to what you know can't be true today. Every claim that proves without credible doubt that a Biblical story is metaphorical or fictitious, ex. Dating and tracing the development of language for thousands of years completely nullifies any possibility that there was one world tongue that was mixed up at a single time and place a few thousand years ago (Tower of Babel), you seem to ignore or rationalize - ex. God cannot be both immortal and omnipotent because those characteristics contradict one another (suicide). You say something like "Oh, God does not act within the constraints of what our mind can fathom," and when you do that, you basically say that human logic and God are not always compatible. If I'm willing to buy that, I can then turn around and ask you why you are trying to defend the fact that the flood existed with evidence (that doesn't exist, by the way), if God is so unfathomably great that nothing he does can be explained, that the impossible can be done on a whim. Heck, when the evidence proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that some Biblical accounts are inaccurate, you might turn around and say, "The Devil laid the evidence there to sway our faith." Do you see the never-ending loop?

What about every detracting argument I've thrown at evolution? Did you ignore or counter those?

I am ignoring nothing. Do the math on the internal capacity of the ark. It works in a Creationist perspective.

So if tracing languages nullifies a mixed up world tongue, why is it that we can trace language development back to only a few languages as would make sense?

Omnipotence, omniscience, and immortality are all tied up together. If there is something one does not know, then one is incapable of knowing that without seeking it, and thus is not omnipotent (because they were not capable of knowing that one thing immediately). If one is incapable of existing forever, then that is another thing they cannot do and thus they are not omnipotent. There is no contradiction here as there would be if one attribute existed without the others.

There is evidence for a flood, it's some of the same evidence that you use to say the earth is old. Since you refuse to admit an alternative explanation for it, of course it looks like I have no evidence. Concerning radiometric dating, you have to make several assumptions, namely, that the decay process has been proceeding at a constant rate. Now if you take, say, a giant flood, into account, do you really think the decay process would remain constant? It would cause it to accelerate, making it look like the rocks are older than they are.

Please give me some evidence that "proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that some Biblical accounts are inaccurate." I don't believe you have done that yet except to say that it contradicts some of what you believe.

There is no never ending loop. What you are frustrated with is the fact that I have already determined what I believe and thus interpret everything around me in accordance with that. I refuse to be swayed, but I can modify my theory to better fit my observations.

Now recognize that you do the same.

You would think that getting a blueprint directly from God would have made its way into scripture. They certainly aren't stingy about directly invoking his involvement. But the blueprint isn't even the largest problem. Wood simply isn't a strong enough material to hold a ship together that large. Iron and steel are required.

Wrong, you can build some very large ships out of wood. Go look up how big the wooden ships were during the 1500's-1700s.

And it does give a blueprint of sorts, but it wasn't necessary to go into extensive technical detail because the design was rather simple. It wasn't designed for speed but for safety and capacity.

[Mandalore]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_wooden_ships

Since you can't seem to look it up on your own ;)
The Ark was larger than even the largest of those by about 20-30 meters and all the exclusively wooden ones broke up. And this from the most skilled shipwrights of their day (England and New England respectively) and almost exclusively they all were unseaworthy due to leaking. The first rate ships you speak of were roughly 70-80 meters in length at their height. They tried to build them longer but decided they were unseaworthy especially in stormy conditions as was the reason provided for the sale of the HMS Orlando and Mersey. Just off a bit of research the longest wooden ship that wasn't sunk due to structural deficiencies seems to be the Roanoke which sailed on the Great Lakes. However it was built in 1892 so I'm not sure if they incorporated other materials such as steel. Plus it was a good 25-33% smaller than the Ark would have been in far more placid waters.

Frankly there is a life size replica of the Ark built in the Netherlands if I recall. Would love to see her get underway with as accurate a portrayal of the voyage as possible. Maybe find a gale or two.

Your statement is what's wrong with the view of creationism as a scientific theory. The object of science is to be as objective as possible. That's why we use the scientific method and claims are required to be verified unless they be ridiculed. Scientists don't look at something as "how does this fit into evolution" but "this is this way, where does it fit best?"

I believe what Pepsi was getting at is that if you're immortal you don't have the ability to die, which would technically make you not omnipotent. Interesting angle, never really thought about it in that light. I have always liked Epicurus' little riddle though.

As for the idea of global floods. I haven't really looked into it, but I'm sure there's evidence for extremely large scale floods especially during times of polar shifts and magnetic field changes.

Frankly there are just a lot of things that are in the creation theory that just frankly don't seem plausible with the Ark story being up there. For example just the sheer amount of incest that had to occur seeing as there was only one woman on the face of the earth during the beginning.

Frankly, as I've said before, when you have to go back to your claim to use it as "evidence" you are already not using science. If you asked a biologist how a dog got to be a dog I'm sure they could expound at length about the evidence compiled in the fossil record as well as correlating behaviors from living ancestors. If you asked a creationist priest, all he could say would be "Well, God did it. The Bible tells us so" Then of course you just have the sheer blatant stupidity of functions that renders the idea of intelligent design almost laughable. We're born with an organ whose only purpose is to explode. We were made with a [m'kay] bomb inside us. How intelligent could that be? However, the purpose of the appendix is explained quite nicely through our evolutionary tree as an organ that once helped our ancestors digest things. Just a short list of vestigial features in humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vest ... y#Appendix

[Hobo]

Mandalore, that wiki page sucks. The biggest wooden ship was the Wyoming at 137m

edit: and it sunk due to its length
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_(schooner)

[Mandalore]

You have to click the column button dummy ;) But yes, that page has the Wyoming listed 30 meters lower than it was from the looks of it. The first rates I looked into were correct though.

See! Science! I made a claim, my peer reviewed it, and now I'm adjusting! Yay!

[11_Panama_]

Gee Mandy, you're making it look as if Christians don't believe in science.
This is my last post here. This is just a big joke to you.