Slashdot Mirror
Researchers To Climb Ararat To Seek Noah's Ark
fudgefactor7 writes "CNN/AP has a story about researchers that plan on ascending Mt. Ararat in search of the Ark of Noah. My favorite quote: ''We are not excavating it. We are not taking any artifacts. We're going to photograph it and, God willing, you're all going to see it,' McGivern said.' As if pictures can't be doctored and are absolute proof...."
10 to 1 they're going to bring back pictures. 100 to 1 says that others will try and find what they've taken pictures of but it will have "mysteriously disappeared" ...
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
I don't know which is the bigger scam - attempting to "photograph" this Ark, or the "fact" that is actually exists
A picture of a chunk of an arc and the text "we got it" isn't absolute proof either.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Kangaroos in Australia? Did they just swim there?
I'd rather read an arkful of Chick tracts than be force-fed this kind of tripe from CNN.
I have been pwned because my
I think they need to photoshop a young Harrison Ford into their dig photos, to complete the whole farce of it.
Dude, where's my packet?
I'll be heading an exciting expedition into the bogs of Ireland to search for the little people.
Should give those "did we really go to the moon" people something else to talk about I guess - they've probably already got the TV programme all signed up :)
Wow, whats next, some one searching for Santa's sleigh?
"Noah wuz here" - Spraypaint
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Finding a boat at that altitude would raise some significant questions as to how it got there.
What?
I'm a pastor. I'm an evangelical. I really believe all the "Jesus Stuff." Noah is a myth, it's a GREAT myth and we can learn so much from it; stuff like this just makes people look stupid...
Clearly their expedition will fail... they're going after a find of "tremendous historical significance," particularly to Biblical studies, and they're not bringing along Indiana Jones?! What were they thinking?
Pictures were enough proof for, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, and that the moon is made of cheese.
You go Beavis!!!
These explorers will reveal once and for all that the B arc crashed on this planet and we are all ancestors of the Golgafinchan.
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
So, as a scientific discovery, this will accomplish...what exactly? The authenticity of the Bible? Or merely that most mythologies have some basis in history.
You can't spell LOLCATZPURR without TROLL.
I'll wait to see what they turn up rather than discounting any of their finding before they've gone.
Plus, does this mean that Turkey is finally letting people back on Ararat?
clifgriffin > blog
I wouldn't want to take any artifacts from the ark either, given that most of it would probably consist of thousands of different kinds of coprolites.
Hrm? I'm ready to believe that there genuinely exists a boat roughly the dimensions specified that the myth was based off of. Now, that this boat was used to ensure the survival of all the creatures of Earth during a giant flood -- maybe not. But that there exists a really damn big boat with an even bigger myth surrounding it? If there's reasonable evidence, I have no trouble with it.
Honestly -- would you have a problem with an expidition set off to find a really old boat if it weren't for that boat being part of Christian mythology?
And when they reach this structure high on the mountain one of three things will occur.
1) It is not Noah's ark, we will go on with our regular lives, and the people who believe in it will say that it doesn't prove anything, they simply have not found it yet.
2) We don't know if its Noah's ark, we will go on with our regular lives, and still argue the existance of such a thing.
3) It is Noah's ark, we will go on with our regular lives, and the scientists say "Umm... can we have a closer look at that book of yours?"
But in the end... regardless of what happens, I'll go back to playing World of Warcraft.
This is not a sig.
I love how he assumes that he is going to find a large boat, and he assumes that any large boat he happens to find is going to be the one and only Noah's Ark. In his mind, "It" is Noah's Ark. He isn't looking for evidence that whatever it is on top of Mt. Ararat is Noah's Ark, he is already firmly convinced that it is.
Compare this with an arcaeologist excavating a tomb of someone. Who? I don't know, anyone: "Well, we're going to go inside the tomb, and hopefully we will find stuff. We hope we will find things that can prove who this person was, and what thier daily life was like, and maybe what their beliefs were; and maybe we'll find something really cool."
See the difference? This guy is no archaeologist. He is a christian on a quest for the 21st century holy grail.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Both Arafat and Sharon took their last name from geographical locations that have historical connotations for their respective peoples.
But I agree, it'd be quite difficult to climb Arafat ...
The Raven
...NASA is preparing a deep-space mission to the planet Magrathea, to take pictures of Slartibartfast.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
HAHA, the rebublicans trolled you.
Wouldn't the ark be visible on various satellite pictures of the earth? I know you can see things as small as cars (try Mapquest aerial photos).
The story as I heard it includes the assertion that the neighboring countries (turkey and one other I believe) were opposed to the idea because of the foreseable influence on their state religions.
Personally - I think there is a good deal about the Bible which is clearly historical. (I belong to the "Jesus save me from your followers" camp of distant believers.) And as I understand it - some story about a flood exists as lore in most cultures.
It would be a great disappointment I think if we were to prove that Noah's ark doesn't exists - as the largest benefit of religions as it applies to this life - are the metaphors and the lessons taken. (I am agnostic on the theory that wars are all religious). I think also that much good has been done in the name of religion - but even that must be seperated from how religion informs our secular thinking today.
Civil rights is based on the presumption (for example) that God created all men - er and women - equal.
AIK
I think we need to mod this story Flamebait and be done with it. I'd be surprised if we can garner 5 posts that don't offend somebody.
G
Ironically, people thought that Troy were just figments of the imagination 150 years ago, and now they have pretty good proof of where it is.
I don't think that everybody should be so closed-minded about such things, just because a religious text mentions it.
If they do find real proof, that's pretty cool. If not, no big deal. I mean, there was and are millions of hours of research that pretty much amount to nothing, yet I wouldn't call that all wasted time. Science should not be afraid to explore, period.
Hey! There are parts of the bible I like, and parts I don't like!
sic transit gloria mundi
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "Noah's Ark is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have occurred by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, 'Well That About Wraps It Up for God.'
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot
then tell me who here has used DeCSS. Not software that claims to use DeCSS, DeCSS in the stand-alone, propagated form. Or DeDRMS, for that matter.
Code can be faked, there is no proof until it is run. Have you run it?
Not finding the ark could be the peak of his career
If it was there it would have been found by now. You have millions of christians all over the world who have everything to gain by finding it. Many people have trekked up the mountain and flown around it and nobody has found anything yet.
even if they found it there it would not mean anything. I don't think there is any doubt there was a huge flood in the are. There is geologic evidence for it, every single culture records it, and there is even a pretty solid theory as to how it came about (hint it was not due to 40 days and nights of rain). All it proves is that there was a flood (we already knew that) and that some boat floated in the flood and got lodged somewhere on the mountain.
None of that proves that there was a boat containing two of every single creature on earth and a handful of people who then proceeded to populate the entire earth. That story is ridiculus on the face of it.
evil is as evil does
I've done a lot of research for school into the search for Noah's ark, and I think this mission is doomed to fail. Every documented mission to find the ark has failed. Three major factors have kept searchers from looking on Mt. Ararat-- #1. The frigid weather, #2. The Turkish Government (security concerns, blah blah blah) #3.Kurdish people who have the nasty habit of killing people who want to go up the mountain. I find it amazing that nobody has been able to check out this 'anomaly' on the mountain that has been documented by the CIA and was classified for 50 years, especially in the day and age of technology that we live in-- able to get to the moon, but not to a mountain. Personally, and go ahead and mod me down for this, but I believe God has kept people from checking out the location. Cool stuff, to me.
Like "Why would someone build a boat at this altitiude?"
I'm not even going to bother. Those of you with a bit of logic and reasoning skills can already figure the impossibility of the whole idea.
So, for a some more fun, check out this cute rebuttal of the scientific arguments against the story. It boggles the mind how people can accept this as truth.
So it he does find something, its a big deal, for one reason or another. Why not just keep an open mind about it until he gets back? My understanding is that its his buck. No hurry to write the guy off. Maybe he really did see something, be it the ark or no, that bears investigating.
Step 1: purchase the Ark of the Covenant on eBay
Step 2: travel up Ararat with your purchase
Step 3: Seek the power of the Ark to find the Ark
Step 4: use the Ark to ask for another flood in which you use the other Ark to live (repaired) provided the first Ark works and you find the Ark with the Ark in the first place.
Ark Ark Ark
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
I sense the /. crowd's skepticism, but think about it: just because it's described in the Bible, doesn't mean there isn't some truth behind the story, and some physical evidence of thet may still exist.
The problem with the stories in the Bible is, they have been used, abused, overused by Hollywood for adventure and horror movies. So much so that the contemporary man has this reflex of dismissing everything in the Bible as a figment of someone's imagination. And yet, it doesn't necessarily have to be so. Some of the events described there might have happened, in some form.
Sigged!
If they find a boat then that prooves what.... that people knew how to build boats?
If they find it at 17,000 feet that proves people knew how to build flying boats...
No, you blasphemer! It proves that EVERY WORD IN THE BIBLE IS TRUE!!! And if you don't accept THIS CLEAR PROOF OF THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH OF THE WORD OF GOD, then clearly you are an ATHEIST SATANIST GOD-HATING AMERICA-HATING TERRORIST COMMUNIST
<wipes froth off mouth>
Oops, I must have been channeling Jack Chick for a moment. Anyway
Seriously, of course, "people knew how to build boats" is exactly what it proves, and all it proves. But that won't stop the fundies from reacting as above. A while back, someone -- wish I could remember who it was (maybe I should pray harder?) -- came up with the best answer I've ever heard to the absurd claims made by ideologues masquerading as archaeologists in regards to "proof"-by-artifact of a literal interpretation of the Bible. It goes roughly like this:
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
C'mon folks, what's wrong with using satellite imagery or flying over with a light aircraft.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In the past there have been quite a number of similar investigations:
1. It was said for many years Pontius Pilate never existed, until digs started turning up roman coins & carvings with his name on them.
2. It was said that Ur never existed, until they found it a few years ago.
Up to now, bibilical texts have proven to be a remarkably good resource, and every bit as reliable as other texts from the periods in question. I'm really very interested to see what, if anything this investigation turns up. Biblically the Ark should be less than ten thousand years old, and even myths often start with some grain of truth.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
If you want to help people buy books like this on tape, and than lock them in a car and drive around till they realize how foolish it is to believe that their are dinosaurs at the bottom of lakes and secret nazi occult space temples on the dark side of the moon.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
"All this is going to turn into is a religious flame war."
I suspect It made the front page specifically for that reason. What's slashdot if we can't snipe religious people on one hand for believing in things without/contrary to the evidence and then on the other for looking for evidence?
I don't see what everyone is getting so pissy about, it seems pretty cool to me. I mean, so what if he wants to go search for Noah's ark? He is free to do that if he wishes to. If he does find what happens to be a large boat, that doesn't prove anything about God or the universe, but I think it would be an important historical discovery. It could give clues as to whether something like a flood did occur in that area, and when. I dunno, it just seems to me that this could be a great scientific/historical discovery if anything is found, but everyone just seems to be spouting out things like "Arrr, them chistians is at it again!" Get a grip guys.
Um, are the tops of mountains in Turkey littered with large boats?
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
...made out of wood, isn't it? And if it's made out of wood, how would it have lasted for 3000+ years, even if it is somehow in the unlikely position of being on top of a snowy/cold mountain?
Sea level has never been that high since humans have been around.
What?
...they may find the lost first page of the Bible.
The one where's written this text:
"All the characters and facts explained in this book are fictive."
Iraq: war to save the U
As long as they're not going to mess up Cthulhu's summer home let 'em go get some exercise and snap some pics. But who am I to say anything? The kid in me is still rooting for the possibility of someone getting a real photo of Nessie.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Geesh...any other scientific expedition would have Slashdotters agog at the future possibilities and clamoring to give their right arm to tag along. But a trip to find Noah's ark and (possibly) prove a Biblical story correct? Woah, can't have that now, can we?
Now if they do find something, wouldn't that mess up your preconceptions...
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Interesting, the idea of a cleansing flood is pretty much a world-wide thing. The Babylonians had the Epic of Gilgamesh with a flood, the jews with the story of Noah, there are even stories in east Asia and in Central and South America among the Incans and Aztecs and the other local civilizations. Such a widespread story probably means it has some historical basis in the distant pass; perhaps a brief but intense period of global warming, melting the ice caps for just a few years? As for the expedition, well, I'm not a religious fellow, but I am interested in the outcome.
If we assume for the moment a literal biblical flood, its highly likely that any real ark would have been dismantled for shelter and fuel.
Now lets be realistic for a minute, if we assume an existence of an ark, and a 'widely' held regional flood (mebbe a glacial lake broke, or something) it certainly dates back to prehistory. A wooden structure surviving in what would become a glacial environment is clearly fantasy.
In any case, if they do manage to find anything up there, we have carbon dating to find out whats going on.
I think this story is most liklely bunk, there certainly is nothing particularly compelling about the "evidence" that there's anything to be found where they're looking... but the snark about faking photographs seems gratuitous and sort of stupid.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
If I remember correctly, the Turkish government has been fairly hostile in the past to the idea of anyone from outside the country exploring for the ark, plus they've refused to go searching for it themselves. The government allowing a team in to do this is pretty significant.
Considering that everyone in Slashdot said the iPod and other things would suck and fail, this will be a success, eh?
Atlantis?
Been there, done that.
Nice place to visit, excellent seafood restaurants, pleasant friendly people, beautiful women (if a little bit scaly).
Eventually, it was the little things that got me down and made me come back home: Not being able to put my base unit under the desk due to the water level, the constant wading, the never-ending drone of UFO's coming in to land at the Pythagorus Intergalaxy space port. I suppose the last is my own fault for renting a crib right under the flightpath, but it seemed cheap at the time.
Happy days, but I'm glad I left when the contract was ended. The boss offered me a permanent position, but if I was to stay I'd have to go through the whole getting-gills-implanted thing and vowing to "forsake dry land forever" at the citizenship ceremony. At the time, with Josh (my brother) having smashed his car up and Dad losing his job, I simply didn't need the extra hassle.
T&K.
Political language
As if pictures can't be doctored and are absolute proof....
And what, pray tell, would be the purpose of faking pictures? It's not like they'd take pictures and then no one would bother to go up and check out their story. At most, a lie would end up with a temporary surge in interest towards Christianity, with a huge drop off in interest once people think they've been lied to. Not exactly the best strategy for a 2000 year old religion to take.
I'm agnostic, btw, so I'm not being a mindless zealot, blindly defending my religion. The poster, on the other hand..
Alexander the Great sacrificed at Troy when he invaded Asia in 335 BCE. It was no secret where Troy was. Heinrich Schliemann gets credit for figuring out which of many lumps of dirt in that neighborhood contained an ancient city, but the "Troy" he excavated was far too old to have been the site of a Trojan War. So no one thought "Troy" was a figment of anyone's imagination, and we still dont have any reason to believe the historicity of the war that Homer describes.
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
> then that prooves what
One thing it proves is that you have the literacy skills of a 6 year old.
consistent with archaeological evidence. Nothing in the Bible has ever been disproven based on ancient findings by any reputable scientific investigation.
/. there is such open hatred for Judeo-Christian beliefs when just about anything else goes? If this were an Egyptian dig, no one here would denigrate it. If this were Mayan or Aztec, or Hindu or ancient Sumerian, it would be taken at face value. Why the hatred, then, for what has been shown time and time again to be the most accurate and most studied ancient historical text in the world?
Supposing that Noah's ark actually exists (which I believe is the case), its sheer size and climatological conditions would suggest that there should be at least some respectable quantity of wood left above the timber line of some mountain in the Ararat range that could be identifiable as being (1) about 4300 years old; (2) quite probably above the timberline; and (3) showing signs of having been worked with tools.
Why is it, therefore, here at
Was I the only one that read that "Researchers to climb 'Arafat' to Seek Noah's Ark"
Lead Scientist - "Lets get a move on. We're only at the armpit and I hear Israeli helicopters coming!"
I really need more sleep.
Matt
About 4000 years ago, not too long after the world was created, God looked down at the people and was a little disappointed. They were mostly doing their own thing and not paying much attention to doing God's will (they played a lot of D&D and listened to rock music mostly). Among the people was a family headed up by Noah that was trying to be good and follow God's laws.
So God said to Himself, "Well, it looks like all of humanity except for this Noah cat seems to be completely fucked up. I think I'll just wipe everyone out and start over." That wasn't the end of it, he then proceeded to test Noah's faith by giving him boils and killing off most of his flocks (not that bad, most everything died later anyway).
Then God said to Noah, "You go and build an Arky Arky." And Noah said to God, "WTF is an Arky Arky?" To which God replied, "Build a big ass wooden box and paint it black. If anyone asks you what you're doing, tell them to fuck off because they had their chance to please me and they blew it. I'm only saving you and your family Noah."
So Noah, realizing that he was dealing with a kind and merciful God, went ahead chopping down trees and eating his lunch and going to the lavatry. He built a big-ass wooden box using only his forearms as measuring devices and '3' as the value of pi when calculating circular arcs for the corners so that no one accidentally stubbed their toe on anything sharp.
This was important because God then said to Noah, "Take your kids, Ham, Shemp, and Japheth, and their wives and your wife and a shitload of animals with you on the Ark."
"A shitload, huh? Is that the offical term?"
"Okay, okay. Take 2 of every animal except for animals not found in this area. Oh, and for some animals take 7. You'll probably get hungry later."
So Noah went and gathered up all known animals because we all know that at that time the great Diaspora hadn't happened yet and some animals hadn't appeared in far away places that couldn't possibly have been reachable from the Mideast.
Once Noah was done doing all these jobs, he pulled up the door to the Ark and sealed everyone in for a long passage. God, for His part, started rain. It should be noted that until this story occured, rain didn't exist. The plants were watered by a very light mist that arose every morning.
And the rain started, and it continued raining for 40 days and 40 nights. The windows on the ark were sealed too, so it must have smelled really nice inside.
After 40 days, Noah's kids started complaining about the elephants and rhinos crapping all over the place and decided to open a window. They cracked one of the windows open and saw that they were surrounded by water on all sides. An eagle also took the opportunity to get the fuck out of there. The eagle never returned. It's thought he went over the mountain and married a nice girl eagle on the other side.
Later, the kids decided that they'd send a pigeon out to survey the area because pigeons always fly home. It flew off and came back with a branch from an olive tree. Apparently, the water was everywhere but only a few feet deep.
Next thing they know, they crash onto Mount Arafat and everyone slowly disembarked into their new home, just like their old home.
God realized that maybe killing everyone and everything with water was a pretty shitty thing to do and made a covenant with Noah that He wouldn't do it again. Next time the world would end with fire. To seal the deal, He made a nice rainbow and everyone who saw it automatically realized how good God was and stuff.
From these four families (Noah and his three sons), all of us are derived. Following our family tree back up, we can all trace our lineage back to one of these four families.
Praise the Lord!
I have been pwned because my
The small percentage of the world that are atheist or agnostic
About 14%.
What?
Just for clarity -
Do you mean that from your perspective - Civil Rights are natural and inherent - or in the context of English speaking nations (the presumptive context of Slashdot) they are natural.
My reading of the preamble say "endowed by their creator with . . . rights"
And thus I suggest that the means to our collective compromise visa-vi Civil Rights has come through our understanding of the Bible - which like the Constitution (derived in no small part from a sect of protestanism) informes the English speaking cultures disporportionately.
AIK
all nerds are Atheists.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
...was to send an expedition to build a bridge between the two peaks... [Obscure Python Referenced Linked Here] http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode09.htm#3
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Canadian scientists have announced an expedition to the North Pole in search of Santa's Workshop (TM).
http://skepdic.com/noahsark.html
Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark is the boat built by the Biblical character Noah. At the command of God, according to the story, Noah was to build a boat that could accommodate his extended family, about 50,000 species of animals, and about one million species of insects. The craft had to be constructed to endure a divinely planned universal flood aimed at destroying every other person and animal on earth (except, I suppose, those animals whose habitat is liquid). This was no problem, according to Dr. Max D. Younce, who says by his calculations from Genesis 6:15 that the ark was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet deep. He says this is equivalent to "522 standard stock cars or 8 freight trains of 65 cars each." By some divine calculation he figures that all the insect species and the worms could fit in 21 box cars. He could be right, though Dr. Younce does not address the issue of how the big boxcar filled with its cargo rose with the rainwater level instead of staying put beneath the floodwaters.
Those not familiar with the story might wonder why God would destroy nearly all the descendants of all of the creatures he had created. The story is that God was displeased with all of his human creations, except for Noah and his family. Annihilating those one is displeased with has become a familiar tactic of the followers of this and many other gods.
Despite the bad example God set for Noah's descendants--imagine a human parent drowning his or her children because they were "not righteous"--the story remains a favorite among children. God likes good people. He lets them ride on a boat with a bunch of friendly animals. He shows them a great rainbow after the storm. And they all live happily ever after. Even adults like the story, though they might see it as an allegory with some sort of spiritual message, such as God is all-powerful and we owe everything, even our very existence to the Creator. Furthermore, the Creator expects us to behave ourselves. But there are many who take the story literally.
According to the story told in chapter 7 of Genesis, Noah, his crew, and the animals lived together for more than 6 months before the floodwaters receded. There are a few minor logistical problems with this arrangement, but before getting to them, there is one other thing that needs commenting on. It is obvious that floods are no laughing matter. The destruction of life and property caused by floods has plagued many animals, not just humans, from time immemorial. To watch one's family or home swept away in floodwaters must be a terrible spectacle. To see one's children drown, one's life and dreams washed away in an instant, must be a devastating experience. But if one were to discover that the flood was not a whimsical effect of chance natural events, not unplanned and purposeless, but rather the malicious and willful act of a conscious being, one might add rage to the feelings of devastation. I suppose one could argue that it is God's world; he created it, so he can destroy it if he feels like it. But such an attitude seems inappropriate for an All-Good, Loving God.
the "finding" of the Ark
Yet, as preposterous as this story seems, there are people in the twentieth century who claim they have found Noah's ark. They call themselves "arkeologists." Yes, they say that when the flood receded, Noah and his zoo were perched upon the top of Mt. Ararat in Turkey. Presumably, at that time, all the animals dispersed to the far recesses of the earth. How the animals got to the different continents, we are not told. Perhaps they floated there on debris. More problematic is how so many species survived when they had been reduced to just one pair or seven pairs of creatures. Also, you would think that the successful species that had the furthest to travel, would have left a trail of offspring along the way. What evidence is there that all species originated in Turkey? That's what the record should look like if the ark landed on Mt. Ararat.
Still, none of t
It's pseudo-science because there's no evidence to support a global flood, and tons of evidence against it. There's this thing called geology that studies (among other things) rock layers around the world. Ever heard of it?
If you're trying to do science you don't get to make plausible claims just because you want to believe them. You need credible evidence, and in this case you'd need an enormous amount of evidence to explain why there's absolutely no evidence of a global flood several thousand years ago. These people have NONE of that. I saw the satelite photos on the history channel, and they're FAR less believeable than even the face on Mars pictures. (And that at least resembled a face). Do you believe in a flat earth too because the bible mentions the four corners of the earth?
Obviously the bible mentions things that actually happened. That gives no credence to the truth of fairly tales like Noah and the Ark and Adam and Eve.
It's like the comedian Harry Anderson said. The idea is to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.
AccountKiller
Seeing as you mentioned Atlantis - this ran on Yahoo news today:
Hunt for Atlantis Leads Researcher to Cyprus - Yahoo news
Sometimes my arms bend back.
>Science should not be afraid to explore, period.
Science doesn't explore; people do. Science is just a method, and sometimes people use it to refer to the body of knowledge that we currently hold to be true that was acquired via the scientific method. Scientists also peer-review each others' work, unless somebody is trying to hide something. That might mean that the researchers know their work won't hold up under scrutiny, or it might mean that the reviewers have an interest in the status quo and are trying to silence the new research. After all, if the work is bogus, it's a lot more powerful to bring it out in the open and point out all of the things that are wrong with it, than to say "nope, can't be true, lalalalalalala." Just because somebody thinks that the expedition won't find anything doesn't stop the people from going, provided somebody is willing to fund it and they can get whatever permits are necessary to go explore their target site.
When things get ugly is when someone claims to have performed an experiment that proves something new, and no respected scientific journals will publish it for whatever reason. Then you get cries of "conspiracy" which may or may not be true (it certainly has been true in the past). Sometimes the experiment is extremely badly designed and obviously can't prove anything, or maybe the researchers are pulling some kind of scam and don't want to subject themselves to scrutiny, but sometimes it's just plain resistance to change on the part of the science establishment.
Better than photos of something they claim to be the ark would be photos plus carbon dating results (and the results from a few other accepted dating techniques) a precise location of what they found. "It's up there somewhere; it was a miracle we found it" doesn't count.
Now that you mention it-
From the story text;
As if pictures can't be doctored and are absolute proof....
If that is not a "troll" I do not know what is. What if they do come back with pictures, does that automatically make them liars?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Something that I think gets lost frequently in the Noah's ark discussion is the fact that most relegions have a flood myth in one form or another. Off the top of my head I can recall a Roman myth, a Norse myth, a Chinese myth and a Native (or whatever the politically correct term is) myth that involve the Earth's destruction by a flood followed by a re-building by a man-woman team. Therefore any finding of a boat proves that something majorly wrong involving water and a boat happened early on in human history. We already knew that from geological surveys of the areas where early humans resided, any proof for or against the presence of the ark answers nothing one way or the other for or against the Judeo-Christian point of view.
I would never want to discourage anyone from such an endevour, whether it is about something from the Bible or studying creatures in the Galapagos.
Who knows, maybe they'll find something totally unrelated...oh that's "never" happened.
Acutally there was a Nova on this. Around 3000 years ago there was a huge flood creating the black sea. this flood would have created a wall of water high enough to place a boat on top of mt. ararat. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/fram e.html
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
If I'm not mistaken, I believe the same goofballs who claimed to first find Noah's ark on Mt. Ararat are the same guys who claimed to have found a chariot wheel in the red sea. Strangely, no such wheel is available for observation, and no one apparently knows where it's at.
How strange. Or not, considering the claims.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
>He also prepared other fake wood by frying a piece of California pine on his kitchen stove in a mix of wine, iodine, sweet-and-sour and teriyaki sauces
I think my mum used to make that!
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Haha. This is kinda like climbing mount Olympus to find Zeus.
if the ark exists, and is on this mountain.. a scientific archaeological expedition to examine the remains, not a religious pilgrimage. The great flood, if I recall, is a theme in a lot of cultural traditions, not just the Judeo-Christian one... and a discovery of a vessel with a connection to the historical analog of that legendary event would be an important one. Not to mention any artifact of the supposed age of the great flood (what, around 6000 years, give or take, right?) would be of immense value... if that is indeed what it is. The point is: we won't know until we perform the proper tests, and a "Go and revere!" pilgrimage does not qualify.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
Come again?
"...in search of the Ark of Noah... We're going to photograph it"
Sounds a bit like a setup to me.
Question everything
So, to summarize: Noah probably existed. The guy had a big boat. Yes, it had lots of animals on it, along with food, and other supplies. Yes, there was a severe flood, which the guy manages to survive. And that's about the end of the facts. The story gets passed down a few generations and embelished just a *bit* and you end up with today's story of Noah's Ark.
1. Finding the object, discovering exactly what it is and honestly reporting the findings and...
2. Not using any public/tax money to do so, unless there was evidence this is a historically interesting object, not a rock or a pile of trees.
I am agnostic, but if there is a huge ancient boat on top of the mountain with comprehensive animal DNA samples, I say research every atom of it. And if there is real scientific evidence for God (as opposed to "this couldn't possibly evolve...") I will listen. I will decide separately where he/she/they are still alive and weather they should be worshiped, critisized or just studied as a scientific fact.
You are falling for the god of the gaps fallacy.
You claim that someplace or something isnt known then it must be the work of the gods. This argument keeps getting killed everytime a rational/scientific explanation comes about for such things as the weather, evolution, gravity, etc.
Now your just taking the god of the gaps to a friggin mountain. Not terribly convicing.
So today its a mountain, will your grandchildren be telling us that its in a far off galaxy (just interpret the ark as being a spaceship) when this is debunked/explained? When will the "gappers" stand-down and not take some ancient script as fact, but as interpration of events through the eyes of highly religious and uneducated peoples?
During the Ice Age, Ryan and Pitman argue, the Black Sea was an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland. ? About 12,000 years ago, toward the end of the Ice Age, Earth began growing warmer. Vast sheets of ice that sprawled over the Northern Hemisphere began to melt. Oceans and seas grew deeper as a result. ? About 7,000 years ago the Mediterranean Sea swelled. Seawater pushed northward, slicing through what is now Turkey. ? Funneled through the narrow Bosporus, the water hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Each day the Black Sea rose about six inches (15 centimeters), and coastal farms were flooded. ? Seared into the memories of terrified survivors, the tale of the flood was passed down through the generations and eventually became the Noah story. from: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/fram e.html
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
What are we searching for you may wonder? We will be searching for the cross that Jesus was pinned to like a butterfly.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Once again, stupid people in search of fantasy because they can't handle reality.
Where did all the water go to?
How did Noah and family manage to get all the animals from the Western Hemisphere?
How come Noah save fleas and ticks?
How come Noah save poisonous snakes and man eating tigers?
How many Bigfoots were there on the Ark?
How large was it and for how long did they sail and if there were only 2 of each animal did any of the animals die and then did they just die out?
If we ignore science, anything is possible.
I have this vague recollection of some Discovery or History Channel show which pointed out that what is today called "Ararat" is not the same mountain as the one the Bible refers to.
But it's all moot anyway, since the biblical flood is just an adaptation of the Gilgamesh story.
of course it means nothing to non-believers. It shouldn't really mean anything to believers anyway. Wow, a boat. Now there's proof that god exists! QED!
And don't tell people to keep their beliefs to themselves either, that's what we call religious oppression. I will talk down whoever I want to talk down. I am sure that you would have no problems talking down things that you find strange, like Tibetan Animistic beliefs or voodoo, yet these are just as valid (or invalid!) as Christian beliefs. Don't pretend that because you are Christian you are a) special or b) always right.
Bah, religion. It's all a waste of time!
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
What you must realize is that the same scientific way of determining age has been questioned about how accurate it is due to known ages being way off during tests.
In reality, science is just theory, it if works, it works, but, if your core test for the theory is flawed, then so is all your other proof.
I don't think that writer of the CNN article has --ahem-- RTFB. (Sorry bout that.) In Genesis 8:4 it says that the ark "rested upon the mountains of Ararat." (NASB) Ergo, it did not necessarily rest upon the particular peak that we call "Mount Ararat", but rather upon one of the peaks in that region.
I'll take you to the ball, Barbara Manitee!!!
Huge numbers of people believe rather unusual things. These beliefs cause them to take actions that can and will affect you. It's important to understand and discuss those actions, and I salute the editors for posting this story.
An expedition to Mt. Ararat seems harmless, in its own way. But it's symptomatic of mankind's need to depend on "faith" for guidance. When "faith" crosses the line to creed-driven violence, one begins to see how dangerous it can be.
Is there no room for rational discussion of these topics? I say there is. Slashdot is a perfect place to have the discussion.
if so, you'd think he would have stepped on those two mosquitoes and saved the world of all their trouble, wouldn't you?
The space.com have the satellite image of the object that they suspect the Noah Ark. The enlarge imagecan be seen here.
It Would be Funnier than Hell if they found an Ark and proof that the version in the Epic of Gilgamesh was the true story instead of the Noah version.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Of this, a couple of years ago:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/21/jesus.It was pretty thoroughly and harshly debunked within a few months afterwards by most experts in dating, and deemed a forgery to some extent, but there are still people who refuse to accept that explanation.
They have been debating the "dark splotches" in photos on top of that mountain for years now. I'm fairly certain at one point they even dated samples, and it wasn't old enough, but I'm not positive on that. I know there have been many, many photo expeditions there before.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
You couldn't be more correct. Finally, someone with a BRAIN and some logic. Our kind are rare indeed ;)
...and why is it we believe stories from their era? Why? There's no PROOF. Someone could easily say "disprove it", but that's where the illusion comes into play. I could claim that a floating spirit named "Asspump" lives under the Rocky Mountains. You might laugh and think I'm kidding, but guess what? DISPROVE IT! You can't. No one can. Does that mean it's true?
But in all seriousness, our current day and age allows us to document such things as history. Back then, they didn't have anything like that. People were also stupid and believed pretty much anything you told them. How many thousands of years did the Greeks believe that a God named Apollo flew his chariot (that big bright ball of flame in the sky)? Hell, back then, people didn't even know the earth was ROUND. More than half the f'n earth was unexplored..
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Maybe he was busy killing all the other more annoying bugs that we don't see today.
---Lane
Surely, if they created a tower that reaches to heaven, there ought to be some rocks lying around.
There are rocks lying around. Ever heard of a ziggurat?
"People thousands of years ago lacked [intelligence]..."
And Da Vinci had intelligence 'before his time' which shows that intelligence is not related to the timeframe at all.
So, lets see some empirical proof instead of blowing hot air. I mean, links to multiple, documented studies that explicitly disprove the findings of the Bible. Because, since you are all so "educated," should be easy to find.
I think you are confused between Noah's Ark (a boat) and the Ark of the Covenent (a box). Or perhaps they mean Noah's arc welder.
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
The "core test" for which theory precisely is flawed? You mean the "theory" that the earth is more than 5,000 years old? There is a heck of a lot more evidence than just carbon dating for that, bud.
Unfortunately, Marcus Brody is dead.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Yeah, I don't care what you say. All I know is that right now, there is a man all alone up there in the sky driving his chariot around .. and the flame wheels give us LIGHT during the day. You can disprove that with your "there's a 'sun' made of hydrogen and helium, and we're on earth and we rotate around it" all you want, but, Buddy, I BELIEVE in the flame wagon driver. YOU ARE WRONG.
What would he think if he heard you talking like that? WWAD. What would Apollo do?
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
How about the tower of babel? Surely, if they created a tower that reaches to heaven, there ought to be some rocks lying around.
Don't you know that the mental picture that most people have of the Tower of Babel comes from some Renaissance painting, which has no relationship whatsoever with the architecture of the ancient near east? Most likely, said tower was more of a zigurat type structure and even if they were trying to literally reach heaven, all you'd find was a partially built, broken down zigurat, and people probably wouldn't think to make any connections with the Babel story. For all we know, one of those structures is what remains of the attempt to build said tower.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
That's one interpretation of The Bible, which is most certainly not held by everyone who believes the Bible to be the Word of God.
PS: If anyone has a copy of this please post a link. I love to collect these things. I've seen it myself of course but I have no TiVo or VCR :-(.
> Ironically, people thought that Troy were just figments of the imagination 150 years ago, and now they have pretty good proof of where it is.
What you overlook is that nobody believes any of the impossible stuff related in the story about it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Darn right. If they come back with the pictures, they're liars - the pictures were made before they left. If the come back with film and take it to Walmart to get it developed, they might have something.
1. This is assuming The Bible is the end-all historical book of religion. So does this mean that Buddhists, Hindus, Islams, etc... are wrong? Well, according to The Bible, non-believers go to hell (or aren't saved, same thing) *rolls eyes*
I dunno which bible you're reading, but the Torah (first five Books of Moses) does not say that you will go to Hell if you're a so-called non-believer. Christians started all that to keep converts.
2. This boat will have to be big enough to hold TWO of each and every animal ever. The story took place.. what, tens of thousands of years ago? Started off that God told some man that he was gonna flood the earth out and to take each and every animal and protect it on a boat? Hahaha, right. Not gonna happen!
OK, so why rant about it? Are these researchers taking your money? Are they trying to turn you into a bible-thumping, Jesus-Joseph-an'-Mary-loving Christian? Ever few years some "researcher" claims to have discovered the Ark of Noah...
(note: this happens in Genesis 8:19,20).
3. Reality check: people thousands of years ago lacked scientific explanations for things that happened. You could easily convince your neighbor that the stars in the sky were the eyes of the gods staring at you, or that the hot fire that causes pain is the home of the big bad devil that will eat your soul if you're not a good person! Basically, a man-made tool used to keep people civil. No, I don't have proof, but come on, think outside of the box for once.
How more obvious could this assertion be? I agree with you 100%, but here's a question: why be so dead-set against religion? A healthier attitude (or at least what I think a healthier attitude) would be: "Do you have proof? Then please show it!". Let these researchers find their proof. Is it going to affect your life in any way? Probably not. But it's better than ranting like someone out of Billy Joel's "Angry Young Man".
Roey
Most of the Flood stories either are refering to the end of the Ice Age and the remeberence of that was carried on for generations until it was recorded, which isn't all that far fetched, the stories Homer wrote down had been carried on that way, or they refer to the flooding of the Persian Gulf (Biblical), which had been just an extension of the river valley until later, I want to say 6.5-8,000 BCE. Many of the early Biblical figures like Abraham from the Old Testement came from the Basra to Bahrain coast there, perhaps as far south as the UAE.
...i think this is really a huge rorschach test in disguise. some people look at the aerial photographs and see an ark. me, i see a gigantic vagina.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I'm glad this article was labelled "Science", and has a picture of Einstein next to it. I hear Einstein himself was funding a trip to Mt. Ararat to follow up on his successes in finding Atlantis and the Abominable Snowman before he was captured by a UFO.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
The Bible is not a science textbook. That said, it isn't inaccurate on scientific matters.
There are plenty of fossils buried in silt deposits in Nevada at altitudes where no river could possibly have been, in areas where the average rainfall is a mere fraction of an inch each year. Geology, right?
The Sphinx in Egypt shows signs of water erosion, again in an area where annual rainfall is negligible. More geology.
Meanwhile, any dead tree matter (read: wood) from an ark that existed 4500 years ago is probably long gone. This expedition will prove nothing.
On another note, I was under the impression that the "four corners of the Earth" referred to compass points. True, compasses haven't been around that long, but the concept of North, South, East, and West have been around for millenia.
Meanwhile, the prophet Isaiah speaks of "One dwelling above the circle of the Earth." The Hebrew word translated as "circle" can also mean "ball" or "sphere". Note that a sphere is the only shape that looks like a circle from any angle. And for all you folks out there that wish to nitpick, yes, the Earth is actually an oblate spheroid, being slightly flattened at the poles. It still looks round from space... and Isaiah didn't need to go there to find that out. Isaiah's writings date back to approximately 800 to 850 B.C.E., by the way.
that I, for one, welcome our new Ark-tic Overlords.
I wasn't sure what your point #3 was about anyway (in relation to the topic), but I thought it worth pointing out where it didn't hold up to my line of reasoning.
Some have speculated that Noah actually had DNA samples of the Earth's creatures. Now, that idea is certainly crazy in itself but it's something to consider . . .
harmonious design
That being said, i think the chances of them finding anything are at least 100 to 1 *against*. So I wouldn't get too worked up about it.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Jesus (pun intended), it'd take one hell of a boat to have two of every animal.
Don't you suppose that the money spent on finding the ark might be better spent feeding someone who is starving? Hell, they are going all the way to Turkey. It's just about as far to some starving kids in Africa.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Here's exactly where faith (falsely) defeats logic.
You state the obvious: "I find it amazing that nobody has been able to check out this 'anomaly'... especially in the day and age of technology we live in..."
I agree. And instead of believing that a supernatural being has been involved in keeping people away from a boat that carried the entirety of the world animal population four thousand years ago, I'm going to assume that the boat doesn't exist.
You can prove me wrong. Just provide the documents the CIA has. And tell the researchers to bring back a piece of the boat and multiple pictures with screenshots of their gps location so I can check it out for myself.
why be so dead-set against religion
Most of what's wrong in this world stems from religions. Not the beliefs that state "be kind/loving/generous to your fellow man", but the zealots who blindly follow, believe, and misinterpret everything that they've been told/read.
I know 100% for a fact this will fail, but that won't stop people from bringing up counter-arguments against it.. and how that these events really took place, yadda yadda.
No, they aren't taking my money, but they're definitely taking someone else's money. Not only that, but I have to live in a world and witness things turn to shit due to religion.
For example, President GWB doesn't want Gay Marriages because... *gasp* religion says it's bad. I'm not gay, but if that isn't some closed minded thinking, I don't know what is. Any extremist (terrorists in particular).. it seems that most of the closed minded events that take place in this world are driven by misinterpreted religions, but religions nonetheless.
Spouting off about it on a "Researchers look for Noah's Ark" is probably not the best of places for it, but I like to speak my mind when given the slightest opportunity to do so.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
http://www.loch-ness.org/files/surfacephotographs. html
The other day on Discovery there was a special on this. But they had a different theory of what happened instead floating north to Ararat it floated south into the Mediterranean just their theory. They did find a lot more proof to support their theory than the Ararat one. Also they guessed the flood was just in the Middle East because an entire flood of the earth would have so much moisture in the air you would drown breathing. Just different theories I thought were interesting.
...shows that dinosaurs ruled the earth for millions of years before the first humans showed up.
Tales of dinosaurs or dinosaur-like creatures are common in most ancient civilisations. Ever hear of dragons?
It is possible that dinosaurs are referred to in the book of Job (As Behemoths and Leviathans).
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Is is a 'clean' animal or an 'unclean' animal I wonder?
Inevitable quote, sorry...
"What do you want to give him a balm for? It might bite him!"
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Not findings, "claims". The bible makes claims.
Some claims can be easily falsified, however, most cannot be. When a claim is scientifically absurd it's fair to say it's not true.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
ehhhhhhhhhh, I *really* ought to let this one go, but it's hard to, coming from one supposedly as intelligent as Bruce Perens (Bruce? Is that you??).
Ya, there's some savage stuff in the Bible (like stoning), but you should try to interpret it relative to its time.
Stoning for disrespecting your elders wasn't a matter of talking back to Mom and Pop, it was for letting them *starve* when they were elderly.
"Eye for an eye" was a rational justice system, considering that if you pissed off a ruler, he'd just remove your head. It was a way of *limiting* punishments.
(Stoning for adultery I don't quite have a handle on yet, but I'm thinking there may be more than meets the eye there.)
Drowning boatloads of people who believe differently from you ain't in the bible atall.
Is it possible that the hate and ignorance you're thinking of came from somewhere besides the bible?
John.
OK, here is an excellent site that systematically weighs the scientific evidence regarding just about every biblical claim having to do with geological and biological origins, including the age of the earth, and the world-wide flood of Genesis. I highly, highly recommend this site to anyone who doesn't want to just "take the scientists' word for it." Their several essays which carefully explain evolutionary theory--so horribly butchered by the media and most lay people--is especially remarkable.
So lets forget for a second that the story of Noah's Ark obviously follows the traditions of older stories, and forget about the all of the technical problems with building (not to mention loading) a boat with two of every species of animal. Let's forget about that for just a moment and think about the possibility of atually finding that boat high in a mountain after all this time (assuming the oral tradition even tells us to the right place to look). If the boat was left to the elements it would have rotted in a few years if not months. Assuming it managed to survive under a sheet of ice it still wouldn't be there. Ice doesn't stay put on a mountain side, there's a very slow but steady stream of ice constantly flowing down the mountain. Anything that used to be up there would have been shifted down the mountain and spit out in a few hundred years. So in summary even if the story is totally true and they're looking in the right place, it still won't be there. But hey, don't let me be a killjoy, afterall, looking's most of the fun.
Don't mess with the bunny, outsideworld.org
It's a myth
Look at a real glacial flood. To bad the time line isn't anywhere near 40 days.t our// IceShe ets/description_lake_missoula.html
http://www.glaciallakemissoula.org/virtual
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/Glaciers
Mt. Ararat is in historic Armenia. Its funny that the Turkish historians are travelling on Mt. Ararat even though there are probably many more qualified Armenian historians. Mt. Ararat (and Masis, right next to it) is still the subject of famous Armenian poems, songs, and stories. The land was inhabited (and ruled!) by Armenians for thousands of years before the Ottoman Government committed genocide against Armenians in present-day Eastern Turkey in the late 1800's and in 1915.
Ah well. At least we'll find out if the darn ark is there or not!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How about providing some links to multiple documented studies that explicitly prove the Bible? Without proof there is no reason to believe.
The Bible is not a science textbook. That said, it isn't inaccurate on scientific matters.
I think that's exactly what I'm trying to say. The problem is many people think it is, and are time and time again shown to be fools. The Catholic church made the same mistake about the sun revolving around the earth, and they later got their ass handed to them.
There are plenty of fossils buried in silt deposits in Nevada at altitudes where no river could possibly have been, in areas where the average rainfall is a mere fraction of an inch each year. Geology, right?
Plate tectonics. There's a ton of evidence discovered in just the last 40 years or so that the surface of the earth consists of a series of plates floating on magma. The plates move around very slowly and are the primary source of earthquakes. The land we now call Nevada had an entirely different climate a hundred million years ago because it was in a different place in relation to the equator. The mountains surrounding Nevada weren't there either and have been build up by colliding tectonic plates. It doesn't have anything to do with global floods.
AccountKiller
1- If it really happened, wouldn't all river fishes be dead, since they cannot live in sea?
Creationists do not disagree with the concept of microevolution, so the likely answer would be that 5,000 or however many years ago, there wasn't the distinction between freshwater and saltwater fish, but that over the last 5,000 years of natural selection, you ended up with fish that can only survive in fresh water and fish that can only survive in salt water.
2- Wouldn't we expect to find amazing evidences like whales, dolphins and sharks skeletons in the most unusual places, from the animals trapped in some valley when the water came back to the normal levels?
We would expect to find instances like those you mentioned if the current topography is similar to the topography 5,000 years ago. The argument is that the the seismic activity that led to the breakup of the continents and the formation of the large mountain ranges took place at the end of the flood, by the point where the water was receding (the argument is that it was these great continental shifts and the subsequent deepening of the ocean as the continents moved apart is what provided the space for the flood waters to go). So, based on the explanations given, you wouldn't expect to find large creatures like whales in unusual places, but you might expect to find smaller ocean creatures in odd places, and they have in fact found fossilized fish in places you wouldn't expect.
Anyway, that's the argument, and I doubt I really gave it justice since it's been a while since I've read any of those explanations.
I don't expect anybody to find remnants of Noah's ark, because the odds that wood artifacts survived this long aren't very good. But, if they do find evidence of a boat on top of Ararat, it would be of archeological significance, no matter who's boat it was. Just to make it clear, slashdotters, creationists don't 'not believe' in radio carbon dating. What they question is the accuracy of the dating method when you're dealing with objects that are much older than any of the calibration objects.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
Not to say that this Bible story is wrong or Evolution is wrong but can you really say that "two of every single creature on earth and a handful of people who then proceeded to populate the entire earth" is less probable than Evolution? Would you also say that Evolution is "ridiculous on the face of it"? Different people find different things ridiculous. Think about other things that you may not find ridiculous that could be to others - possibly with some good, although maybe questionable, reason.
...lest I be taken for a complete lunatic like some of these other folk: the story of Noah's ark is *allegory*, myth, symbolic. The story has value, but we're not going to find the ark on Mt. Ararat.
John.
You're right. A god would be able to do this - break all natural laws and put a boat on Ararat. A god could also pull the sun across the sky and shift the waves in the ocean to make tides. The problem is that they don't make good explanations for natural phenomenon. Explaining anything (an event, why the sun rises, why we exist etc..) by inventing a god is a weak answer because anyone can make it up and it shifts the question from 'how did the boat get there?' to 'how do you know that your version of god is correct?' which is a harder question to answer. Fortunately the scientific method is able to do that and has proved itself over and over again with countless examples.
You mistake your terms, my good man.
An engineer gathers facts about a problem and then comes up with a solution to that problem.
A lawyer picks a desired solution to a problem and then gathers the facts that back that solution up.
Frankly, one of the reasons I'm leary about possibly studying law.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
NGage...
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
*sigh*
It's pretty hard to reconcile the bible with the abundance of archaeoligcal evidence that shows that dinosaurs ruled the earth for millions of years before the first humans showed up.
Reading and believing in the Bible doesn't require the reader to take it literally. Some random and eclectic examples of people who don't read the Bible literally.
These fairy tales don't fly on slashdot because the people here are educated enough to know better.
No, they really aren't; I read views on Christianity and other religions that are chock full of misconceptions or misunderstandings all the time.
There's a major tendency by various posters on Slashdot to overgeneralize American Protestant fundamentalism into Christian orthodoxy. If you don't know the differences between fundamentalism and orthodoxy, realize that your knowledge of Christianity ranks fairly low. (Which is to say that people can't be experts on everything. Even on Slashdot.)
My opinion, having been a Slash reader since the site's infancy, is that there's actually a fairly low level of religious knowledge amongst the learned Slashdot crowd. This tends to [unfortunately] manifest itself in haughty arrogance. QED indeed.
Disclaimer: IASGIC (I am still growing in Christ).
Excluding those of the animals which were sacrificed or eaten of course . ;-)
That's why, according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Lord had Noah and his family bring more pairs of "clean" animals than "dirty" animals onto the Holy Cruise Liner (Genesis 7:2-3).
Exactly. I've always asked people why they're so all fired up to find Noah's Ark.
Wouldn't it be much easier to just go find Jerusalem?
The finds are exactly equal in their significance.
KFG
I'll be heading an exciting expedition into the bogs of Ireland to search for the little people.
Bring along many a bottle o' good Irish whiskey, this will encourage the little people to show themselves.
-kgj
-kgj
The answer is clearly "university students", so the real question is "Which fraternity pulled off this prank of the millenium?"
**Different people find different things ridiculous. Think about other things that you may not find ridiculous that could be to others**
Yeah, like this 'magic box' infront of me.
It's a trick....get an axe.
There is an enormous amount of evidence for creation
Please back that claim up...last time I checked just about every discipline of modern science can be used to disprove biblical creationism.
I heard there were crazy Arabs on the mountain with Ozzies that would kill you
Did you need to bring the Osbournes into this?
Is epilepsy caused by the devil? (Luke 9:39)
When you're sick, do you pray, or do you go to a doctor? The bible says you should pray. (James 5:14)
Can a human live for three days in the stomach of a fish or whale? (Hopefully I don't have to point you to the part of the bible with the story of Jonah.)
There aren't any Christians in the world. Christ walked around healing people with no earthly posessions. He preached love and tolerance, and told people that the meek would inherit the earth.
Christians of today drive cars and have jobs. If their main job happens to involve Christ, they ask for donations to "keep the church going." They talk about "living in victory." It seems the ruler of the universe needs my twenty bucks to keep his miracles alive.
Meanwhile, people are suffering all over the world. They're being raped, killed, tortured, and I'm sure they all ask for God's help. Perhaps you could explain to me why he doesn't answer.
Any "Scientist" that takes Evolution and the Big Bang as fact are idiots. QED.
No good scientist would take evolution and the big bang as absoulte fact, anyway. Scientists who really do take them as absolute fact are quacks. Regardless, taking Genesis literally still is in the domain of the mentally-challenged.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
I know that young-earth creationists like to do things like apply carbon-14 dating to things that are older than 6000 years or so. Or they might apply it to things like ancient sealife which are known not to participate in quite the same carbon cycle as land based life. Basically, let's use the test in a way no trained biologist would and then claim that proves the test doesn't work. Other forms of radioisotope dating can also be selectively misapplied. I suspect young-earthers don't like uranium-lead dating much either since it covers even larger timescales. Pick the wrong type of rock anyone?
Old-earth creationism might...just MIGHT...have a leg to stand on. Young-earth Bibilical literalism just isn't worth taking seriously. For the young-earth point of view to prevail, extreme violence must be done to more than just the life sciences. Chemistry, physics, geology, cosmology and others must all be severely twisted if literalism is to be viable. ALL of those disciplines show that the earth and the universe in general is much older than young-earthers can tolerate. What's funny is that even though literalists would destroy science in their triumph, they love to sound scientific.
In reality, young-earthers admit their literalist beliefs must be paramount in any discussion. Their take on the Bible is said to be "inerrant". If any scientific finding counterdicts that interpretation of the Bible then something must be wrong with it. It also follows that biological evolution is what offends them the most but it isn't the only thing that offends them. A political triumph by young-earthers would result in Lysenko style scientific absurdities.
Trust is built from a person's knowledge and experience with someone else. (Your parents, friends, teachers, etc.) Faith, on the otherhand, is at best only second-hand trust for most people. You trust in the bible, God, Allah, Jesus, because someone else that you trust has said they trust in it. It's very hard to evaluate and build that trust first-hand yourself. With the different translations and interpretations of the bible, even RTFB doesn't always build trust. Trying to somehow "verify" the Bible with science is so sought after because people trust science more than they actually trust the bible (their faith may prevent them from admitting this though).
I have to say that it more than bugs me when I see the bible refer to pi as 3.0. This one mistake really blows my trust, but not my faith. Seeing more and more contradictions really makes me start to question how my parents reconciled these discrepencies. After reading enough of them it really makes me question my faith.
I don't pretend to give answers. But I recently started to read one of the best "intellectual examinations" on the Jewish version of the Old Testament. It's called God, A Biography and it's "agenda" is to explain God as an evolving character in a book. Quite deservedly, it won the pulitzer prize in biography because its quirky title is more than just a marketing effort. It really does try to be a good biography of God.
It doesn't try to explain away contradictions in the bible other than saying that God can change just as man can (and yes, I know some people who will find that fact alone to be sacrilege). The author doesn't seem to push either a pro or anti religious agenda. God is just a character. If you want, you can read it like you'd read the Cliff's Notes version of Hamlet strictly for a deeper understanding of the character portrayed in this book whether you "beleive" the book is the truth or not.
Having been nastily betrayed by two life long friends in the name of Christianity, I still don't feel that I'm ready to accept most churches as anything other than as organized political organizations. But I still have theological questions myself and this biography has been able to make more sense of the Bible and God. No clue where this will lead me in my spiritual journey (heck, I may even go back to agnosticism or athiesm), but it was a very helpful read.
No expeditions to Mt. Arrarat or carbon datings of the pollen found in the shroud of Turin is really going to come up with as satisfactory an answer. My apologies in advance if this is considered off-topic.
I'm not sure the political enviroment would have allowed it to be found untill now. The area controling the land were it is thought to be sin't a christian nation and you need permision from that government to conduct you search and excavation for it. there has been photo graph taken durring ww2 bombing runs claiming to have it in there. i was told (by a science channel or somethign) that locating it again and actually going there has been a problem because of politics in the area.
You must learn to distinguish between the Art Bell oddity chasers and discriminating researchers. There are responsible Bible researchers, and there are demonstrably kooky Bible researchers. (Please, no snide remarks from the atheist peanut gallery. :^) This is an intra-Christian issue.) Don't be so quick to put your trust in people just because they are Christians. They can still be wrong about things, and the evidence indicates that these Christians are wrong in this case.
Let me back up a bit... They may not be kooks or hucksters. They may be good, sincere believers. I don't want to defame them since I don't know them. But don't be so hasty to assume they're right about this. It would be wonderful if they found the ark, but the evidence at this point is not at all in their favor.
First off, I find it funny that any time someone takes a picture of something that's anti-mainstream, such as this, it's obviously a doctored or misleading photo. Second off, it would prove more than "people knew how to build boats." The Christian Bible said Noah's Ark landed there. It's a pretty safe bet that if they find ruins of a large boat (the size of Noah's Ark) or similar evidence, it's probably evidence that Noah's ark existed. Of course, the "h4rdk0r3 atheists" will argue otherwise.
Okay, I'll do my best. I'll admit I did find some links that mentioned there have been some research trips to the ark, but there are just as many like these:
joined with me in applying to the Turkish government for permission to excavate the boat-shaped formation. The Turkish authorities declined to give us a permit at that time. We got the same reply after a second request. We were stymied. source
Want to go look for yourself? It's not easy. Although guided treks up Mount Ararat were allowed during the 1970s, after several grim incidents the government forbade them because of very real danger from smugglers and other outlaws, Kurdish terrorists, severe weather and wild beasts. source
The Turkish government in Ankara would not give them permission to climb or fly around Mount Ararat. The government authorities "claimed" that they had received 100's of permit applications to climb Mount Ararat, and they believed most of them were bogus applications sent by the PKK. Most people believed this was a poor excuse to keep people off the mountain. But why? Is there a geniune concern for public safety? Tourism? Or does the Turkish government know something? Like where the ark is located? source
The Great Mount of Ararat which had been a favorite for climbers until 1980 was closed for climbing purposes. Then in 2001 it was reopened to visitors since the security in the area was reestablished. Nevertheless, to ensure continuance of security, visits to Mount Ararat are now under strict government control. source
Judge for yourself.
A few reasons. First, these gentlemen, as far as I can tell, are doing this in an attempt to prove Christianity. They are not out to learn anything they do not already know, and if they are, they are not intending to share it with the rest of the world by any verifiable means (pictures, are as the story points out, weak as evidence for anything). Their ultimate purpose is to deliver a conclusion, not facts. Your typical archaelogist visits a location to learn more about an unknown culture, not to offer conclusions, but simply to offer knowledge and let the information speak.
Do you see the subtle distinction here? On one hand, we have the scientist that assumes something to be true then goes looking only for evidence that supports it. On the other hand, we have the scientist that that explores and records only what is observed and lets the facts speak for themselves. Which of these categories is likely to get the most cynical reaction? Which category do you think these guys fall into?
There is also a negative reaction from many rational people to the heavy-weight evangelistic nature of Christianity. Rational people usually want evidence to back up claims, evidence which is often not offered by evangelism. This can put people at odds against an idealogy. Would you dislike it if people of other religions came thumping you with their religious beliefs using threats of punishment and slander? Would it make you uncomfortable? Also, many active religions today (key point to remember with your claim--many ancient religions of noteworthy attention are no longer practiced) use fear and coersion to recruit new members. Fear of eternal suffering or punishment is commen. Religions often do this at great financial benefit to themselves.
I could go on and on, but I digress. Nevertheless, I think when you look at all this, you find that there is a great deal of cause for people to express hostility towards religion. Perhaps you should take these things into consideration before you feel like you or your belief system are being picked on.
Join Tor today!
I can also find out about how we evolved from Clams, or that pictures of a face on the surface of Mars proves that we were put here by aliens. I suppose the ark will fit right in.
Satellite-Imagery
More...
Here's some historical background on the Ark and how it relates to Iraq which should concern us today... Iraq and Noah's Ark
Get into God's Word people, you won't regret it.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
I am a biblical (short-age) creationist and I believe fully in a literal, recent (c5000ya), global flood, but I do not think they are going to find Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat (or anywhere).
The problem as I see it:
The ark was massive, and a bountiful supply of top-class timber. Do you really think Noah and family (who were building cities in a generation) would have just left it there to rot? Noah himself built a vineyard quite soon after the flood - he could have used it to grow his grapes on at least!
Secondly (but less importantly), is Ararat as described in Genesis the same Ararat as we now know? Names change and get reused all the time. Just a thought.
Like I said, I believe in the flood. There is enough evidence around for it without the ark. And even if the ark was found, if you don't want to believe, you won't (scripture references provided on request).
> They laughed at Galileo, and Copernicus.
No.
"They" censored Galileo and killed Bruno. Copernicus published on his deathbed in fear.
"They" were the Catholic Church.
The good thing is that now that adults are more or less in charge the worst we can do is laugh at them. There is no secular police that will kill these men for being heretics and its thanks to the pioneers, western enlightenment, etc who went AGAINST the grain and fought for human rights that we are allowed to live in a secular state.
>popular thoughts of the society of the day.
What "popular thoughts" are you talking about? Most Americans believe in a creation and in various biblical myths. These people are the status quo defending "popular thoughts" not rugged individualists like the great minds of the past.
Who says that what is recorded in the Bible as Ararat is the same mountain we know of today as Ararat?
An interesting aproach I have heard about this is were there were a hole lot less animals at the time of the flood and the arc. The amount animals we see today are greater because of evolution and migration. This might have made it possible for somethign like this to happen and even support an evolution therory in the process.
I personally think it is something that could have happened if the boat wasn't so big. The wieght of the boat at that size for that time would have caused it to split down the middle without somethign stronger then wood holding it together.
The "theory du jour" in the scientific community and in our education system is, and has been for many years, that the Earth is many millions of years old and that Man evolved from amoebas. This theory has yet to be proven accurate. Unfortunately, our schools teach macro-evolution as if it were a proven fact, rather than a theory.
If you truly seek answers, i suggest that you begin by studying the "science" behind macro-evolution and determine for yourself whether or not it is a plausible theory.
Once you've done this, then you might want to study the "truth" behind the Biblical account of creation and determine for yourself whether or not it is worth further consideration.
The presence or absence of evidence regarding the ark is of little consequence when you get right down to it.
What matters is our acceptance or rejection of God's offer of salvation.
I'd like to take small exception to your assumptions about flooding in the area. Non-literialist biblical researchers had long thought that flooding in Mesopotamia led to the story of the Flood, as a major flood is recorded in the Summerian Epic Of Gilgamesh. More recently, a case has been made that the flooding of the Black Sea basin, which previously held a smaller fresh water lake, would have provided the seed for the story.
Compare this localized 1000 foot (300m) flood with the 17000 foot (5000m) global flood posited by the biblical story. Now, before someone lays into me for discounting the power of the Lord, consider how scientific research approaches this.
1. make observations of nature.
2. based on those observations, make an informed guess about why something came to be what was observed.
3. develop series of tests that might support your assertion, tests that other people can make independently.
4. collate data collected from many such tests, and see if the results support the theory.
For a localized Black Sea flood, there is previously collected evidence that due to the end of the last ice age, ice sheet melt flooded the eastern Med area, and what is now the Bosporus strait was breached about 7000 years ago. Salt water added 300m to the level of the Black Sea within a matter of months, drowning hundreds of square miles of land. Recent archeological dives along this now submerged land seem to show paleolithic human settlements. Further research is needed before strong conclusions can be drawn.
For a global 5000m+ flood, the very first thing we need to account for is the lack of suitable debris that would have washed ashore at high elevations as the waters subsided. If the Ark survived, some of the other wood left floating around might be expected to. The next thing would be to account for the volume of the ocean being doubled, and then halved, all in the course of a few months. Where did it come from, and where did it go?
As a biblical literalist, if your answer is basically that the Lord gave, and the Lord took away, then you've provided faith as evidence. While one's faith can be tested, it can't be independently checked and verified. The scientific method of investigating the works of the Lord assumes - baring evidence to the contrary - that the Lord maintains His creation in a consistent state: hot air rises, the sun sets, gravity sucks. If He doesn't, then the method will need to adjust.
So far, however, the method has proved useful at measuring the nature of Nature, such that we can reliably do things based on many of the conclusions we've drawn so far.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Is this from somewhere? If not, you're a witty writer, T&K.
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
You know, the Jews and I think the moslems (sp?) believe in Noah also. Also, in your post if you replaced christians with Jews, Gays, Blacks or some other group you would sound like a complete idiot/racist. Good thing no one notices when you say christian.
-James
There is plenty of evidence of Noah's Ark if one chooses to look in the proper places.
l
s s/evidences 2/08ark.html
d n-c013.ht ml
Scientific Evidence:
http://www.nwcreation.net/noahsark.htm
Historical Evidence:
http://www.grmi.org/renewal/Richard_Ri
Archaeological Evidence:
http://www.baseinstitute.org/noah.html
Evidence the Ark was large enough:
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/e
A review of the christian literature on the matter would undoubtedly uncover many more scholarly works.
This is the trouble with most biblical stories. Not the story itself, but the interpretation. They usually are from, say a renaissance painting like you said, instead of an understanding of the culture and history of the people that the bible is talking about. This also wouldn't be that much of a problem, except most people are kind of stupid. Especially many of the religious types. If I said in church (yes, I go there most sundays) that Noah's flood did not cover all of the land on the planet, I would be gaurenteed an argument despite tons of geologic evidence to the contrary. Most religious people equate their ignorant interpretation of the bible with 'the way it happened' and take any attempt to correct their ignorance as an attempt to disprove the bible.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
What if they have a Polaroid camera?
..and if an omnipotent God exists why would he bother when he could just remake them all anyway?
There are many very good empirical reasons for accepting the Big Bang theory. Sure there are problems with it, but the more we figure out about the cosmic background radiation and quantum gravity, the better it fits the rest of our conceptual models. Which can hardly be said of the Old Testament.
[atheist or agnostic]... About 14%
From the above link I see that:
67% of the world's population are doomed to spend their afterlife in the Christian hell.
78% of the world's population are doomed to spend their afterlife in the Islamic hell.
97% of the world's population are doomed to spend their afterlife in the "Other" hell.
-kgj
-kgj
perhaps because someone wanted to build a monument to it, art, likes... doesn't even need to be a recent scam by creationists, it could have been a symbolic representation of it by some jewish/babylonian/etc people, like the giant jesus statue on the mountain in either south america or spain, i can't remember which
> Yeah, I don't care what you say. All I know is that right now, there is a man all alone up there in the sky driving his chariot around [...] What would Apollo do?
At least the "What Would Appolo Drive" variant makes sense...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Um, which laws of physics need to be re-written?
:-)
A few assumptions, perhaps, (like whether the universe has a size), but the same laws that allow for a "big bang" also allow for a white hole - in which case some parts of the universe could be billions of years old, while others (nearer the middle-ish" would be much younger due to that "time" being spent under immense gravity and therefore very slow.
Or do you mean the "law" of evolution? Last time I checked, that was a theory, not a law.
Or the notion that fossils must be millions of years old to be burried (undisturbed) under so many layers? Arguably these are only possible as result of tremendous turbulance and much matter moving rapidly. Perhaps due to, say, a global flood?
Or the law that "I'll do and believe whatever I want to, regardless" - I can see that one remaining as long as humans are capable of choosing.
Or perhaps the law of "anyone on who writes on slashdot will find someone disagrees with them". I don't think that one will be negated either
Just my 2c worth of flamebait...
-- All your bass are below two Hz
Well, I don't think you can mix those metaphors - the 6000 or so odd years the ark story allows isn't enough time for evolution to do much. Really, you can't have your science and eat it to :-)
I suppose if they want to go and prove it to themselves, that's one thing. But if they are trying to go and prove it to the world, they are totally messed up about the way human beings really think and this expedition is a waste of time and other resources that could be better spent puruing more productive goals.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Uhmmm... I'd think the muslims would have just as much reason to be interested, Islam being as much Judeo-Christian as Judeism or Christianity. They all worship the same god and have the same stories
The finding of artifacts and validatign history will altumatly help us understand why and were we are today. Even if this insn't considered to be noahs arc, the findings will be a treasure in understanding and validateing other aspecs of history. Maybe even help us unnderstand inconsistancies withing our own history or geological perception.
Imagine if this boat did indecate a flood at that hight but from an earlier time then we expect. also imagine if this boat used more advance construction materials then were availible at the time it was made. There could be an entire section of history we are missing out on. What if the earth and mankind are older and were more advanced then originally expected or the missing link to prove evolution is actually high in the mountains instead way down were we are today? Or what if we find that it was made from a type of wood not known to us, that is stronger then steel? There are all kinds of benefits from it outside the possability of it being biblically oriented.
If you actually read the bible you will find that the great flood happened in Genesis. You should also know that Islam and Christianity split from Judaism long after Genesis was recorded so the flood story is sacred to all three of the large monotheistic religions.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
First of all, there are fossils on top of mountains all over the world. I have seen Ordivician fossils in the Rockies, and been to the Burgess Shale, both localites over 1500m above sea level. Gee, funny, at one time these places were UNDERNEATH the sea! Gasp! And in the miles of sandstone on the west coast of south america... hmm, whale fossils! Rock moves - get over it.
Meanwhile, the Sphinx shows water erosion because IT's ACTUALLY RAINED THERE BEFORE!! Wow!!! Unbelievable! You know, climate doesn't stay the same forever! The Nazca lines are only 300 - 400 years old, and even they have water damage. Average annual rainfall in Nazca: 0! I would suggest looking up some studies on the egyptian climate.
Additionally, wood can exist for many thousands of years. Peat bogs, isomorphism, replacement and even volcanic flows (especially a tuff or nuees ardente) can all preserve wood for long periods of time. In an anoxic environment wood will be preserved indefinitely.
Geology, biology, chemistry and anthropology has time and again proved the bible wrong. It will continue to do so, because religion was developed as a defensive mechanism for the things that people could not understand.
I would highly suggest reading a book called "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA NOAH'S ARK FINDS YOU.
other than that, a religious article on this forum, kinda screams flamebait to me regardless of content. Still, it's been a while now even if they do find something atop a "Mount" ararat... without any physical evidence for dating there's no way to tell if the artifacts are indeed of the age in question.
Also, if there aren't any surrounding materials dated there's no way to tell if some eccentric in the past 50 years didn't just put it up there as his/her final joke on the world.
The obvious problem being proof or lack of proof will be disputed by both theologians and scientists seeing as how many see theology as truth, and others see science as truth.
Also, for those seeking a flooding of the earth, there are shark remains in the mountains near my home... albeit they are far more ancient than the big book of B dates a flooding of the earth, still...
>Pseudo-science? Just because the Bible mentions it?
>Ironically, people thought that Troy were just figments of the imagination 150 years ago, and now they have pretty good proof of where it is.
Actually, that's a pretty good point. There are many parallels between Homer's stories and the bible. Both are collections of stories that are largely mythical. That's not to say there isn't truth in them, but no one claimed Homer's stories were 100% historical fact, unlike the flood story in the bible. Clearly no one is out looking for the cyclops race in the mediteranean islands. Homer's stories were set in a place that actually existed, but that doesn't make the stories true.
What these folks are claiming is not that the place existed, but that the story is true as well. I doubt anyone disclaims the existence of mount Ararat. If the "Noah's Flood" story were not in a religious text, do you think anyone, anywhere would regard the story itself as fact? I doubt it.
What makes this potentially pseudo-science is the use of religion to twist a myth into fact, then in turn twisting all available evidence to make it support that "fact". If they find a piece of gnarled wood, suddenly it's a piece of the ark... etc.
That said, they're welcome to use the scientific method to prove that the ark story is true. If the evidence were sound, it would be the find of the century.
Brilliant! Anything they'd show to anyone else would be digital anyway - either from a digital camera or the scanned Polaroids. Those can't be faked.
Disclaimer: Staunch athei-ostic (I don't believe in religion).
"If one believes in God, Christ, and The Holy Spirit then one has to believe that The Bible is the Word of God."
Now this is an obvious logical fallacy. Even working from an assumption that God, Christ, et al are true deities there is no assertion that they have ensured the validity of the bible.
I think the standard response by believers is "do you know the mind of God?". Implying that God could have written a pile of crap as a test or some-such...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Your last two sentences make very little sense to me, but perhaps I'm reading them wrong. Could you please expalin what you mean there a little better (the part about Job)?
I wasn't referring to the scientific process in my post. Obviously a lot of har-har's can be had by all who share the viewpoint of the original poster, as well as some round-robin back-patting. But would such a zinger in there encourage those with an opposing viewpoint to weigh in with their own thoughts? This is what I referred to when I said, "nothing good" would come of it. You're not encouraging the reaching of any sort of consensus there, you're weighting the topic in favor of one position from the get-go.
But then, if I was looking for fair and unbiased discussion of news stories, I wouldn't be here on Slashdot, now would I?
--
warn "Just Another Perl User" if $anyone_cares;
...this looks like a boat how?
That's right. All your base.
Gilgamesh has a flood story in it as well.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
I know we are supposed to respect everyone's beliefs, but in this case I have to ask, why. These people are traveling to the other side of the planet and hiking up a mountain. At the summit of this mountain they expect to find what? A boat which once housed two members of every single species in the world. Each of these two animals is supposed to have spawned an entire species.
If a group of people firmly believe in something so utterly stupid (replace with "very implausible" if you like) as this, am I not justified in ridiculing them? Is it at least PC to kindly notify them that *some* of their beliefs are logically unsound, contrary to most evidence, and thoroughly un-fucking-possible? Is it kosher to suggest that someone who professes to believe such things either has not closely examined their beliefs, is lying, has a totally arbitrary system for choosing what he/she believes, or is mentally unsound?
If it *is* acceptable to believe things like this and doing so, to be *beyond criticism*, I would like to let you all know something. I believe in Megaman. No, really. I talk to him all the time. He exists. You want me to send you some photographs? Okay, but my digital camera is pretty cheap, so they might seem a little pixelated...
Are you honestly suggesting you could create a tower reaching to heaven? Or that heaven even exists in a plane of existence that is perceptible to men? That's just plain blasphemous, if you ask me, and a dimunition of God's power.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
...when in 2004 life is found on mars, and Noah's body is found in his ark. DNA tests link Noah to the life on mars, but not human's on earth.
Error: Id10t detected
> On another note, I was under the impression that the "four corners of the Earth" referred to compass points. True, compasses haven't been around that long, but the concept of North, South, East, and West have been around for millenia. Meanwhile, the prophet Isaiah speaks of "One dwelling above the circle of the Earth." The Hebrew word translated as "circle" can also mean "ball" or "sphere".
Let's see if I've got this right. The bible is to be interpreted figuratively when it talks about corners, but literally when it talks about a circle? Except on ly figuratively literally, since it really means sphere instead of circle?
I don't think I'm smart enough to be a theologian. Or at least not flexible enough to jump through the necessary hoops.
> Note that a sphere is the only shape that looks like a circle from any angle.
I thought you already said the word meant "ball" or "sphere". Do you really need to CYA both ways?
> and Isaiah didn't need to go there to find that out. Isaiah's writings date back to approximately 800 to 850 B.C.E., by the way.
Why did God tease us with cryptic info about the shape of the earth, and not bother telling us about germs and stuff?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As an atheist, I challenge this notion. I am not religious because I hold no beliefs on the matter. I make no claims about God, one way or the other.
Small correction: You're an agnostic not an atheist.
That makes no sense. "Facts" in science are just well-supported, well-established theories. Creationists like to bitch about how science can't give you truth, and they are right about that. What they don't understand, however, is that its pretty much logically impossible for humans to get absolute truth, which is by now a pretty well-established metaphysical principle.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I don't think the parent poster was arguing against the Bible itself, but specifically against the grand-parent poster, who was offering a very literalist interpretation of it.
Now the interesting part is that Christianity is predicated on the assumption that the Bible is the infallible word of God. By comprimising on that infallibility, aren't you compromising the religion itself?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You're missing the point. It's not a troll. The burden of proof lies on them. What would make others believe that it is truthful? Pictures can be doctored easily and even video clips. So how would one prove it? I can think of a few things. For one, bring back DNA samples (as someone else already mentioned) and bring back part -- or better yet, all -- of the boat (eventually).
When are they going to the North Pole to take pictures of Santa's House?
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
We're not far enough along in time yet for everyone to accept free thinking. People shouldn't push their beliefs on others no matter which side they stand on the issue.
Look what's happened to Jerusalem. Look at what's already happening to the mountain and there's no widely known proof (maybe the locals know something) of anything being there.
If it is found, "science" (not all Science is close minded to anything and everything that science can't explain) is going to have a fun time trying to continue rejecting the notion that somebody or something exists that isn't bound by the laws of physics and that caused such an event to occur.
That'll be the safe part of it. The deadly part is the people who are going to start making claims on it and going to war with other groups.
In this day and age, this really isn't going to change anything.
People who believe in God don't need an Ark to know he exists. It's not like there's a shortage of proof unless you're a close minded skeptic that simply can't believe in anything supernatural.
The Shroud of Turin is getting much more attention now that the Carbon 14 dating done a few decades ago was shown to be horribly flawed and the piece of cloth used to wrap the head has been found.
It's nice that these things exist but the typical net result is fanatics who make idols out of objects and lose sight of what's actually important.
Unbelievers are going to be shitting their pants if the Ark is found. Believers are just going to say "the Bible told you so." And continue doing what they've been doing.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
you don't need a tin foil hat to know that the govt has mega-bitchin' satellites with which they can see, in all their gory detail, the very zits on your nose. perhaps they cannot release any really, really, really hi-res photos of the ararat site for security reasons?
im not a christian and i can tell you that the story of noah's ark is not limited to western religions. The same story occurs in hinduism as well (back of agiant fish though). In fact it is one of the few stories i am quite sure must be based on truth simply due to so many accounts of the event.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Anybody have a link to these so called satellite images? If they're so good they're sparking all this interest, I'd sure like to see them myself.
Bryan
More than half the f'n earth was unexplored.. you mean - by europeans - the native americans (descentands of mongolians actually IIRC - came across a land bridge during one of the lesser ice ages) had colonized the Americas - we stole it from them
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Amy
As if pictures can't be doctored and are absolute proof....
An important part of the scientific method is building credibility as a scientist. If these guys are serious achaeologists, they'll be risking their credibility, and their careers as academics, to falsify their results. otoh, if they're just out to make a quick buck, sell movie and book rights, etc, then I guess anything goes.
As opposed to idle speculation of the 'these guys are kooks' vein, can anyone supply any a priori evidence that they're for real (or not..)?
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
er, yes there is enough water, if you assume the mountains weren't as high and were raised up afterwards.
With so much water falling from the sky (rain for 40 days) and covering everything, all land features would have been destroyed by the erosion. And as the water settled, there would have been huge layers of silt deposited.
Then as the water left the surface and collected in oceans again there would have been even more rapid erosion (in small areas) creating huge canyons and valleys.
Hang on wouldn't this be evident everywhere then?
When was the last time you looked at a pidly little steam in the bottom of a huge valley / gorge / canyon whatever and questioned how it could have formed slowly?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
As all the Tim Powers fans engage in a collective shudder...
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Short version, the order of things occuring in genisis is the same as modern theory. "in the beginning the earth was void and without form" big cloud of dust (aka pre-planetary ring of dust around the forming star) anyone? "let there be light" the sun finally lit, before the dust cloud obscured all the other stars etc. Now there was light, but all you could see was thick dust (think dense fog, where is the sun?) "and god divided the light from the darkness" the solar wind started to blow away the dust and you could tell when the sun was up, but not yet see the sun distinctly. etc. Even "and the earth brought forth grass ... " etc describes the evolution of life very well. you can fill in the rest, I do not have time. Modern theory and genisis are describing the exact same event. Any differences are due to 1) misunderstanding the bible, and 2) incomplete understanding of the formation of the earth. Mostly 1 and not 2 anymore. Oh, and most 'christians' are still stuck on the old greek ideas of 'ex nihilo' (god made the world 'out of nothing') or 'poof, and then there was ...'
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
that the rightwing government is behind global warming, all in an effort to uncover the ark from it's icy tomb. Take your tinfoil hat off people, all it accomplishes is an increase the amount of sunlight reflected to the atmosphere thus increasing the greenhouse effect.
. . .also imagine if this boat used more advance construction materials then were availible at the time it was made.
.a type of wood not known to us, that is stronger then steel?
This is an inherent impossibility.
. .
We already know of such woods. That would, in fact, be most of them, taken on a pound for pound basis.
There are all kinds of benefits from it outside the possability of it being biblically oriented.
Which was the only point in question and the only one I addressed. Archeologically any old boat ( and "old," when discussing boats, means anything more than 100 years or so) is of interest, because building them was an oral tradition of trade secrets, and boats simply don't last very long without unusual circumstances, such as that surrounding the Vasa, those found in tombs, bogs, etc.
The secret of the Trireme is still one of the most perplexing in archeology, because there are no, and never were, any blueprints or working drawings, nor any known surviving examples. Warships have an even shorter lifespan than the average boat, since they are used, inherently, in war.
How may Japanese Zero fighters were made? How many are left?
And they're metal.
How many Fokker EIIIs are left?
KFG
I hate to be a nitpicker, but Arafat is not, and has never been a leader of Hamas. After all, he is still alive.
God bless Ian Plimer. http://www.skeptics.com.au/features/news/ip-home.h tm
Imagine the inbreeding. It'd be worse than Alabama, where I live!
If you're going to use an ancient text to launch an expedition like this, you should understand what you are reading. The genre of the first 11 chapters of Genesis is myth. It is best read within the context of neo-Babylonian mythology, in which humanity is created as an afterthought and destroyed in a flood because they were making too much noise and annoying the gods. In the Genesis account, however, mankind is the pinnacle of creation and companion of God. When man fails to live up to his potential and is thoroughly evil and violent, creation is uncreated then recreated so humanity has a chance to start again.
Note that calling the story a myth is not the same as calling it fiction. It is the genre of literature. My point is that it does not have to be historical in order to be true. (In fact, an argument about historicity would have been puzzling to the Jewish community living in exile in Babylon that gave us the story in its current form.) OK, so you've decided that the story of Noah is in fact historical, or at least there is enough of a possibility that it is worth trying to find the ark? Read the text more closely: "the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (Gen. 8.4). The Hebrew text is definitely plural. When the waters of chaos recede, the ark would naturally come to rest on high ground, such as the mountainous region of Urartu (called Ararat in Hebrew) to the north, rather than the plains of Mesopotamia. Mount Ararat is one mountain in the range, but the ancient text does not specify a particular mountain.
He who reflects on another man`s want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself --Julius Caesar, per Plutarch
Actually, much bigger than "modern day" Armenia. Modern Armenia is only that part of Armenia which Russia controlled until 1991, and is but a small fraction of ancient Armenia. Ancient Armenia included most of what is now eastern Turkey and some of northern Iran, northern Iraq, and western Azerbaijan. The center of ancient Armenia was the region around Lake Van, in Turkey.
Wow .. some hope!
"Cats like plain crisps"
But also - remember the quote "Extraodinary claims require extraodinary proof".
I've seen no proof, even ordinary "proof" for the existance of a god, therefore I'm disinclined to believe in it.
Not to nit-pick, but "people back then", or at least the educated portions of the Greek population, were aware that the earth was round, and had even estimated its circumference with reasonable accuracy, given the limitations of the instruments available at the time. Eratosthenes of Cyrene (historical info), third librarian at Alexandria, conducted this experiment, using nothing more than a stick and a working knowledge of geometry.
There's even an "Eratosthenes Experiment" website for schools/students interested in repeating this classic experiment and comparing their results with other participants.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
"Not to say that this Bible story is wrong or Evolution is wrong but can you really say that "two of every single creature on earth and a handful of people who then proceeded to populate the entire earth" is less probable than Evolution?"
Yes I would. There is tons of evidence for evolution. On the other hand there is no evidence for the biblical story. Not only that but there is evidence that goes against it. For example people can now trace genes tens of thousands of years in the past. They can determine how widespread a species was at a given time by looking at the genes. No study done indicates that there were only two of each creature. For example at one time it is estimated that there were only around ten thousand human beings on the planet (way before the flood happened BTW) but never two.
"Would you also say that Evolution is "ridiculous on the face of it"? Different people find different things ridiculous."
Of course they do. Some people believe that there is a face on mars. Some people believe that aliens come down and abduct them. Some people believe that the earth is flat. Some people believe that we never landed on the moon.
Not every belief is equal. Some things have evidence for them other don't.
evil is as evil does
How do the terrestrial plants survive the flood? Did Noah plant a forest on his ark?
Holy shit. There is no end to the weird stuff on the internet is there.
evil is as evil does
in things other than biological processes.
The birth, death, and assimilation of nations and cultures. The lineages of language and writing forms. Breedign of domesticated animals. Erosion of landmass, and tectonic activity.
Genetic algorithms.
The world is ever changing. Those who do not see that have deluded themselves. I find the idea of shoving a bunch of animals onto a boat quite ludicrous compared to the obvious fluid nature of reality, of which evolution is a obvious conclusion.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The point is, you don't prove religion. At least, you shouldn't. Religious people try it all the time, but anyone with an ounce of objectivity can easily disprove a literal interpretation of the bible. Just think about it--a very literal interpretation of the bible tells us that the world is only five thousand or so years old. If you want to believe this, fine. But in doing so, you disconnect yourself from silly concepts like "evidence" and "reality." So what if there's a boat on the mountain? So what if it's X cubits long and Y cubits wide? (Have they even agreed on what a cubit is?) So what if there's traces of animal DNA found? Even with the most powerful proof imaginable (short of god himself just hanging around smoking a cig--"What, that? Oh yeah, that's the ark."), it's still STUPID to say that you've found Noah's ark. Pictures or not, it's still not Noah's ark. You can't fit all the animals on earth in such a small space. You ESPECIALLY can't do it without them killing each other (or you.) It becomes even harder if you take into account every animal that has ever existed in the fossil record (or even merely a large fraction of them.) If you want to talk about evidence of a great flood (and there is a lot of evidence that there was a great flood, probably after the last ice age), cool. If you want to talk about how cool it is that we found this old boat way up on the mountain, cool. But this isn't proof. I haven't seen it, and I can still say it isn't proof because the very CONCEPT flies in the face of everything I know. Similarly, just because my neice comes home with sparkles in her hair does not mean I believe that she was playing with the garden fairies all day long. What if tomorrow a scientist said that the earth could *conceivably* only be 5000 years old, according to some weird new theory? Would that suddenly prove the fundementalist Christian argument? Of COURSE not. The contradictions involved in the 5000 year old earth theory aren't just geological--they're historically, evolutionarily, and cosmologically wrong. "Wrong", as in, "does not in any way fit the universe which we perceive", not religiously "wrong". I'm not attacking religion in any way, shape or form, but if people put forth a religious idea as FACT, they deserve to be scoffed at if it is, indeed, a ridiculous idea (scientifically speaking.) Noah's Ark is ridiculous, and people who claim to bring back pictures of it deserve to be scoffed at and even viewed with suspicion, as the blurb says. They are attempting to prove something that anyone with a shred of common sense realizes cannot be proved--they might come back with pictures, but why should I even believe those, when they are obviously somewhat delusional in the first place?
Lots of the comments revolve around a few themes
:)
1. the bible is all made up
2. there's no way $situation could happen
3. this wont prove anything
To which i have a few short responses. Please give them some consideration before flaming me
1. This is a hard argument to make. The bible talks about lots of different things. Some of these things have been verified via archalogical evidence. Insofar as a recording of ancient history, the bible is surprisingly accurate in all of the things it depicts which are verifiable
Note that this is sort of the same as me writing a book with 100 pages, and on 3 randomly distributed pages, i describe newtonian physics, and the other 97 pages contain stuff that doesn't make sense to anybody, and can't be proven or disproven using any known technique
From a scientific perspective, my book isn't very interesting.
Until somebody figure's out page 4. And then in another 50 years, maybe someone figures out what page 5 means. And so on.
There's lots of stuff described in the bible that has been shown to be historically consistant. Much more than has shown to be historically inconsistant.
2. This won't be a very satisfying answer, but here goes.
the bible is sort of axiomatic. If you beleive
- that god is all powerful
- always does what is right
- is smarter than you
- the bible is the inerrant word of god as transcribed via people divinely inspired to do so
then a lot of what happens in the bible can be swallowed. Still, some things are hard to beleive. It's hard to beleive that somebody could part a body of water so that people could walk through it unharmed. It's hard to beleive because we've never seen anything like it, and because we cant explain how it would work.
There are lots of things in the bible that we have a hard time buying for those reasons - we've never experienced it, and we can't understand/explain how it would work.
The first "Reason" isn't a reason at all. We never experienced the creation of planet earth, but we know it happened. None of us were alive when president lincoln was shot, but most of us know it happened. The issue of never experiencing something personaly is really not an effective argument against unbeleivable things depicted in the bible.
The more interesting and common argument is the second one - there's no way that could happen. This usually revolves around some scientific argument, or rather, some lack of a scientific explanation for how it _could_ have happened. Parting seas, turning water into blood, feeding thousands with just a little food, healing blindless/leprosy/etc.
This is where the axiomatic nature of things comes into play.
If you buy that God is all powerful, then god can do whatever he wants to, certainly any of the above mentioned things.
The part is what people _Really_ dont like to hear. Just because _you_ cant explain something, doesn't mean god doesn't know how it works. Your inability to come up with a thoery or explanation for how something could have happened isn't standing in the way of an all powerful smarter-than-you god in the slightest.
So, if you buy the basic axioms of god, the rest sort of comes out in the wash. It's nice when science or achaeology catches up with what the bible has already described, but its not necessary.
3. Of course not. The point isn't to prove god exists. You either think he does or you don't. If it was factually obvious that god existed then you having a choice in the matter of wether to beleive or not wouldn't be very useful, now would it ?
I'm frankly not sure what the point of this trip is, but it won't prove god does or doesn't exist. People that refuse to beleive in god will read the results of this journey how they want to. People that refuse to beleive in anyting but god will read the results of this journey how they want to.
But there's the ever important swing vote.
W
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Researchers To Explore North Pole In Search Of Santa Claus.
LOL. You are not supposed to ask those things.
The lord moves in mysterious ways.
evil is as evil does
I'm going to safely assume you are not a zoologist or botanist.
What do you think is the first thing the lions would do when they left the ark?
EAT THE MEASLEY TWO GAZELLES. Oops, no more gazelles.
You can argue it all you want, but the gestation period of any 3 generations of gazelles, zebras, or whatever required to even begin feeding the a single generation of lions or other carnivores would mean a lot of carnivores would go hungry if everyone started with a PAIR at the same time.
You can't just "start up" the food chain like that. Ever do a "rabbit and foxes" related rates problem in diff eq? The stable state is impossible to achieve with a deficit of prey in the initial conditions.
A little thought is dangerous.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Then as the rediculous story is retold and travels across the land somebody overhears it and takes it as absolute truth. Writes it down and it becomes gospel.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Polaroid cameras can also be used to produce misleading images.
such as so-called "auras"
and Kirlian images.
There are also the morons and dopes who aim the cameras at the sun, causing images of the paper packing to be imprinted on the film. They then interpret the light leakage and letter images as some kind of divine message. Or, after the paper is ejected, they see "images" emanating from the sun.
Polaroid film is a complicated chemical and mechanical system, with crude optics in consumer-grade cameras. It is a technological wonder to be able to have a color photograph develop reasonably well in a user-friendly package with any kind of shelf life and color consistency. It should be easily understood that the process is delicate enough that it can be disturbed in any number of ways, and that a disturbance will typically reveal itself in a picture that differs from the actual scene that one tried to record.
Yet, particularly credulous people are willing to accept supernatural explanations for the malfunctions of a complicated technology stressed beyond its normal limits, rather than believe that the technology could malfunction. Sort of turns the nature of faith on its head, doesn't it?
Just as particularly credulous people will take a vaguely boat shaped object (my pet theory is a stone temple) in an inaccessible location as proof that the Noah story as told in the Hebrew scriptures is literally true, although that leads immediately to the most bizarre predictions in geology, anthropology, history, botany, zoology, and countless other fields of science, none of which are actually observed. They accept totally anything science-like that supports their preconceived notions, without accepting any burden at all of reasoning from these notions to all the additional scientific facts that would also be true in their version of reality.
Then I think he has better things to do than hiding his toy boat from us. If that's how he truly occupies his time, then I am glad that I do not worship such a sadistic being. I'm real! Forget all the contradictions in the Bible, I'm real! Forget all the contradictions with reality, I'm real! If you don't believe I'm real, I'm going to let you suffer forever in hell! But I'm never going to give you any proof, and I'll KILL anyone who tries to find it. Fuck, man... seriously, how can you worship someone/someTHING that behaves like that? He gives us a mind that no animal even comes close to equalling, then he punishes us for using it. I don't say for sure that there isn't a god (I'm not that arrogant), but if there is, I really hope that he doesn't pull this kind of shit. Note to mods: If the Judeo/Christian/Islamic god isn't real, then my objections are spot on. If he is, then I'm going to burn in hell forever and guys like the parent are getting into heaven--in that case, hey, couldn't I at least get a little /. karma before my eternal punishment starts?
Seriously, there are already enough pictures of it out there. Don't these guys check the web before making sure it hasn't already been done?
I for one welcome our new... oh... wait, nevermind.
Now, lets get back to doing some real research, like how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop.
faith is complete belief in something without question with NO EVIDENCE.
Um.... no.
Hebrews 11:1
Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.
Much like the wind, "evident demonstration" is given and expectations assured by observing the effects.
Also, I looked at the quiz. What a pile of uneducated crap. Thats an understatement. So many things twisted and mutilated to make it sound as if Gods own commandments are evil. Symbolism taken as reality, and reality taken as symbolism. Several of the "answers" are just plain wrong. As an example, the writer had the audacity to say that Jeph'thah had his daughter sacrificed on the alter, when clearly if you read the passage further you would find that she lived a good long life, and that the daughters of the land would commend her for her devotion from "year to year". She was given to God to serve him. This was the same thing that Han'nah did with her son, Samuel.
(1 Samuel 1:9-28) Imagine that! A *Woman* having the authority to give her son as a servant of God! With all the crap that "Quiz" has about the bible saying that women should be treated as dirt, even...
Maybe the author should have read Proverbs 31:10-31 where it talks about a "Capable Wife". You wouldn't believe the things that these so-called repressed women were allowed to do!
They owned land!
They did business!
They were teachers!
And More!
Maybe if they read Mathew 19:3-9 they would find out that the provisions the Jews had for marrying more then one wife, divorce, etc. was "out of regard for [their] hardheartedness". I could go on and on.
Wow... I can't believe I've read and studied the bible all these years and I haven't come to the conclusion that God is a barbaric, inhumane, sonofabitch...
I think I'll read it again to make sure I'm not missing something...
You want to make up your own morals instead of following God's? You want to be able to say "I don't believe that!" when someone points out something you are doing wrong? FINE! But don't think for one minute that you can take the example of all the people who have committed atrocities in Gods name, or misapplied scripture, or twisted it to fit their own agenda (and there are millions of them, including the author of that "Quiz"), and use them to dismiss the bibles message, as if it's God's fault. Talk about uneducated.
It makes me sick...
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
The evidence of finding water damage in places that are "obviously dry" is only significant to supporting the flood if you also believe that the Earth's geology and climate hasn't changed since it was created, or not at least until right afterward.
These beliefs tend to appear in concert. This "evidence of the Great Flood" begs the question that the earth is unchanging.
An attribute of which I would stake a King's ransom against.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Come on, this wouldn't be /. if there weren't any commentary in the article summaries.
-David
Meanwhile, the prophet Isaiah speaks of "One dwelling above the circle of the Earth." The Hebrew word translated as "circle" can also mean "ball" or "sphere". Note that a sphere is the only shape that looks like a circle from any angle. And for all you folks out there that wish to nitpick, yes, the Earth is actually an oblate spheroid, being slightly flattened at the poles. It still looks round from space... and Isaiah didn't need to go there to find that out. Isaiah's writings date back to approximately 800 to 850 B.C.E., by the way.
A pizza is also a circle, yet it's flat. In the bible, it talks about someone (David?) having a dream where he climbs the highest tree in the world and sees the entire world at once. Also, Jesus and the devil go to the tallest mountain and the devil shows him all the kingdoms of the world at once. You can't do that with a sphere no matter how far away you are. The only way you can see the entire earth at once from a high vantage point is if it's flat.
The bible also talks about the earth being on pillars, and that those pillars shake when there's an earthquake.
Oh, and speaking of writings that go back... check out what Buddha said and did some 800 years before Jesus was around, and then what Jesus supposedly said and did 800 years after Buddha. Who copied whom?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
As if pictures can't be doctored and are absolute proof....
Wow, they haven't started and it's already a big conspiracy cover-up!
*Puts on a tinfoil hat*
Thought I'd join in on the fun. We're all in the matrix!
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
As long as they won't thaw the telephone sanitizers...
Unfortunately, neither I nor (I STRONGLY suspect) you have the science background for me to convincingly push the case for the big bang, but that's not what the parent said now was it? The site he linked claimed that the ark could hold the equivalent of 522 railroad cars worth of stuff. That's pretty huge figure--and where did it come from, exactly? (Did they finally decide on the length of a "cubit"?) How long did Noah have to build this sucker, exactly? For one man working with primative tools, even if he had help from his family, this is a decades-long project at best (and impossible at worst.) The crap about the animals is BS, too. You can't keep all of those animals alive for that long. You just can't. Many animals will die if they don't get very specific food or if it's just a little too cold or just a little too hot. No matter how huge and spiffy that boat was, I'll lay odds that it didn't have sophiticated climate control and foodstores containing plants from halfway 'round the world. If you accept it literally, the ark story is completely impossible, and yes it IS boggling to most minds when people try to defend it with such crappy "evidence."
You still don't get it. If what I have, which the bible defines as faith, is different then what an online dictionary says it is, then maybe the online dictionary should change it's definition. I'm pretty sure the bible defined it first.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Find Noah's Ark items at low prices.
With over 5 million items for sale every...
Didn't anybody RTFA? Why go on a month long trek up a mountain even a Cessna could have flown around in an hour to see if anything was there, when the ark has obviously already moved to eBay?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
well actually it is enough time to do alot. left alone with no preditors an animal can take any form. what we see today is basically because the enviroment allows it to. but as you see i don't really belive the arc existed because the size wouldn't have survived the weight of the structure using the materials thay had at that time.
When ever I want my head to really start hurting I get out a few of my old textbooks and start going over this stuff. Wait till you start digging up "H", "J" and all that fun. It's truly a mind bending exercise especially if you were raised Christian or Jewish.
I'm getting a headache just now, but this thread is the most beneficial off topic thread I've seen on this board in a long time.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
This is basically the same conclusion that Godels theorem comes to: one of those unprovable statements in an axiomatic system. And God is used as sort of this "catch all" that can be twisted to support any conclusion (like those maths "proofs" that demonstrate how 0 = 1 or whatever)
The Bible is full of "axioms" and not everyone agrees on which ones should be treated thus. We have no standard, other than precedence (which can be tainted by those who wish to uphold the status quo).
You can't reasonably expect to apply logic to it, and if you want to stake important decisions on it, well that's your problem.
That is why persons such as myself eschew all of it in favor of simpler systems of belief (or none at all).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
However, I have pieced together pretty good circumstantial evidence over the years for a flood in ancient times, just as described all over the world by people who had no (or very little) contact with each other.
About 11,400 years ago, we know from glacial core samples that the earth's mean temperature raised anywhere from 5-7 degrees in just a few decades (though some paleoclimatologists say as much as 10 degrees in just a few years). Before the glacial evidence, scientists believed that the temperature changed very slightly over a long period of time, a theory known as steady state earth which is increasingly being discarded in the paleoclimatological community.
Furthermore, as I said earlier, people all over the world have recounted stories of a great flood, the native americans had such a myth, the natives of the mid-atlantic ridge had such a myth, the natives of Australia had a myth, etc.
This global pervasiveness of the flood myth scientists have long explained as a "racial memory", with little or no evidence to support this assertion, because steady-state earth held that such things a global floods could not happen.
We now know that Earth goes through cataclysms periodically, such as the one which wiped out the dinosaurs, and that sometimes really scary global things happen. Scientists have yet to outright admit that there was a great flood, but have begund to tacitly admit it.
For example, we know for certain that before 11,400 years ago, the level of the ocean was 300-500 feet lower than it is today. Accepted wisdom holds that this changed gradually, but this theory may not last now that we know the mean temperature changed so drastically so rapidly.
Given the proclivity of humans to band around the coast, such a rapid rise would lead to massive casualties the likes of which are unknown to us today. It might indeed seem as though the whole earth flooded. Furthermore, quite interesting archaeological finds are likely to be buried underwater.
Well, here comes the circumstantial evidence I mentioned in the start of the post. Plato said that Atlantis sank about 9000 years before his time. It just so happens that he lived about 2400 years ago. Add up those two numbers, and you get 11,400.
It's quite a coincidence, and it's true.
There is a chain of mountains in the middle of the atlantic ocean called the "Mid-Atlantic-Ridge". If you examine a contour map, you'll see that if the sea were lowered about 300-500 feet, it would be a huge chunk of land, not quite as big as a continent, but not quite as small as what we call an island either.
To my knowledge, I am the only person to put this data together in this way. Those scientists who consider Atlantis to be a possibility place it in the mediteranean ocean.
I'm not saying there were telepathic pyramid building Atlanteans, but I think it is very possible Atlantis existed, and traces will be discovered under the ocean.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
The new testaments were originally written in Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek. From there they were translated into Latin and remained so for many centuries. The English King James had a group of scholars translate it into English (one of them reputedly Shakespeare - good arguments both for and against). The KJV is the translation that's used across much of the english speaking Christian world.
Both biblical Greek and Hebrew are very expressive (someone studying them would say vague) languages, written passages can be vastly open to interpretation (much like Arabic). That's why many biblical scholars study the biblical languages, so they can look up their favourite passages and translate them themselves.
So for the purest stream of the testaments, you must read them in their original language. The Greek(Attic), Latin, and English translations are simpler expressions of the original. That's not heretical - go to any seminary or serious bible college and you'll see that's what's what biblical research is all about. The original poster was still being particially correct when he sarcastically called it an interpretation, because it IS an interpretation, of a relative few translators who were highly religious, though probably very educated for their time.
I'd say there's no need to rush out and buy the "First Hebrew Primer" grammar book or anything. It mostly checks out to the KJV with some notable exceptions. But I had to study Biblical Hebrew for my majors and can say it's not very hard to learn. The first year basically just teaches some pronunciation, aleph-bet(alphabet), grammar, and how to use a dictionary. That's all anyone needs to read the Hebrew Bible.
If it means nothing, then what would this gain you mentioned be ?
So you're saying that the sea level rose several kilometers in one, and only one, area ? Here's a little hint: water flows.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
in the anime "Spriggan" scientists found the ark at Mount Ararat, and it blew up in their faces..
The two were also the first to circle the world on a modern bicycle, and the book describes the grueling Asia portion of their trip. (Someone really should repeat their trip.) There's more about the book at:
http://www.inklingbooks.com/bike/bike.htm
On the mountain, they saw nothing that resembled the ark, but they were also so poorly equipped and inexperienced that it's a wonder they survived.
Despite the implications of the CNN story, if you're in shape, climbing Mt Ararat is no big deal and it is an exceptional mountain to visit. Unlike most mountains of its size, except for Little Ararat alongside it, it stands alone on a wide plain. Those who'd like to go, might check out the guides at Middle Earth Travel in Turkey:
http://www.middleearthtravel.com/us.htm
Also, Space.com has some pictures of the "Ararat Anomaly" that is the focus of this expedition at:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/ noahs_ark_010823-1.html
--Mike Perry, Seattle
http://www.InklingBooks.com/inklingblog
If you don't believe that the earth is only 5000 years old, then you should realize that a literal interpretation of the bible (in this case, all of its "begats") should not be the basis of a scientific theory. If you do, then all I say is please stay out of our way. Some of us do use our eyes and ears and our minds, and we choose to believe objective reality over subjective dogma.
Right on, in fact it completely restored my dwindling faith in the mods when I saw that this post had a Score 5 (I thought, at first, they were being partial toward the 'Bible is a conspiracy' posts, which would have dealt a major blow to that stance more than anything). Kudos guys.
Anyway yeah, the way the article was written just wreaks of 'oh shit, my beliefs that the bible is false are being stunted by logic and science - we're all going to die! Say something mindlessly and avoidingly sarcastic, quick!' and all the other such babble. The 'history is false' beliefs just don't hold up against archeology, and the journalist (now there's a loose term) here seems to have wet his pants in fear of it.
As if pictures can't be doctored and are absolute proof....
Ever hear somebody say 'crap, they're gonna prove me wrong' so elegantly? Even I could have covered it better than that. Try harder.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Other accounts of the flood? How about the story of Gilgamesh where many scholars think the flood story from the Bible comes from? Of course, I don't think those two sources can't agree on an even approximate date....
I have no problem supporting the Bible as a source of history, but just as modern history books have their inaccuracies so will ancient, and based on what has been proven true or false in the bible so far I'd tend to say that the Good Book plays it a little fast and loose with the facts. The bible is also good literature from its time, but that doesn't mean anything special. Personally, I believe that in general has excellent messages as to how to live our lives (minus some out-of-date "stone the whore", "sacrifice your son" type things). However, I chose not to believe the majority of the Bible is much more than myth with some buried and distorted historical facts.
Right, slashdotters aren't talking about what most christians believe, just a minority. It's not "us" who are nutbags, it's those fundamentalists over there. No matter how it comes accross to you, what people are criticizing is belief in the supernatural. Without the supernatural, you are making the agnostics argument. Belief in god is not just a philosophy, even to non-fundamentalist. I doubt most people would care one way or the other if christians just felt that the Bible should be read as philosophy. That, however, is not the case.
Here is a quote from one of your links:
"There is something about people who are in touch with the sacred that can be felt by those around them; it evokes awe and amazement and impresses people with the feeling of another world."
What does that mean? I don't find it to be true, I find people "in touch with the sacred" to be either annoying or in need of help. Define "in touch with the sacred". Describe how you measure how someone is "in touch with the sacred". The point of course is that "being in touch with the sacred" is a fairy tale no different than the fundamentalist fairy tales. From my experience, religious "scholars" avoid discussion through meta-argument, that is, arguing about arguing. The issue isn't literal vs non-literal, it's that you ascribe anything to the bible at all other than a collection of stories. If you bother to respond, explain please what value you think one should get from a specific quote from the bible and why one needs to read the bible and have a christian viewpoint in order to hold that value.
plurvert
http://www.1st-4-dating.com/1/accuracy-carbon-dati ng.html
Creative Demolition
Which would you rather such a person be:
Christian, or Athiest?
Next question... who would you rather have in your company if that were the case?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Anyone who believes that Noah actually managed to build a hugeass boat and keep all of those animals alive (with VASTLY different food and climate requirements, some so delicate that even now we have a hard time keeping them alive in captivity)for 40 days is such a literally-interpreting fundementalist. Only a fundementalist would interpret a boat being found on a mountain as being proof of such a patiently absurd story.
Most of us are just too polite to reply in jest or are worried about our "precious karma"
::cat calls::
I could care less.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
to reach that elevation?
Jeoin
How easy we forget!
In greek times there was memories of severals floods, three thousand years after, we have to rediscover that almost every tradition remember at least a major destruction by flood or fire.
It seems that each day we learn something, we also forget something. Hope not to forget what our ancestors believe it was so important to have to be passed to future generations, formerly that humans have barely managed to survive major environment destructions.
Just think how many times we use to say 'let's not forget' (ej. 9/11) and how fragile and selectives our memories are!
What's in a sig?
What's in a sig?
Here is a cool NASA photo that shows the peak.
If you look really close, you can see the shuffleboard court on the aft promenade deck.
Would be funnier than hell if they get all the way up there and find only a rusty jet-ski with Noah's name on the side.
Table-ized A.I.
The one quite similar in many details to the Babylonian polytheistic flood myth and which God's motives seem almost schizophrenic
Please note that both biblical accounts are quite vicious and horrible. If you're only recollection of the flood is of a noble Noah picking all the animals and the glory of the dove and the promise of the rainbow, then you probably read (or were read) a sanitized version of the story that's "safe" for kids. If the flood story were made into a movie today, it'd be more accurately made by Quentin Tarintino than Disney.
I think that finding a boat *on top of a mountain* from around the time suggested in a meticulously preserved historical document is at least an interesting coincidence.
People could obviously build boats, but why would they build a boat 3/4s up a mountain in Turkey?
>bible defines as faith
There are other religious books than just the Bible. Other religious traditions.
M-W.com is just that. Its not Jesus.M-W.com.
I have been reading this thread and my eyes just roll. Well I really thought your post showed REAL insight that I never really thought about.
You can argue however you want to argue, but the fact that lions, tigers, wolfs need to eat does underscore a gaping inconsistency.
The rebuttal is that Noah in all his wisdom loaded enough "food" for the animals. Well, to get back to your three generations issues that means loading up at least 100 gazelles to keep the lions, tigers, wolfs fed. At that point I am sure somebody would have made some notes to the effect, "Well Noah, got the 100 gazelles, 100 elk?"
The interesting bit here is that you end up with a combinatorial explosion of actual numbers of animals that had to be put into the boat.
hmmm.....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Seeing as mosquitoes have the ability to fly they don't really need an Ark to survive a flood.
Do you people realize you are acting like religious zealots, in dismissing the findings of an expedition that hasn't started yet?
Mount Ararat is named in the Bible as the resting place of the Ark. That section of the Bible was written more than 2000 years ago. Scientific principles absolutely demand that someone must go up there and search for it.
If they find what looks like the remnants of a big wooden ship then whoopee, we get to debate what it really is and launch further expeditions and employ other technology and analysis to see if this is true.
If they find nothing, Someone will claim that they looked in the wrong place and try again. (Ararat is a big mountain)
If they die trying; tough luck. That happens sometimes to people trying to test an important theory.
At the very least searching for the Arc on Ararat is more important than going back to the Moon or climbing Everest again. It is roughly on par with searching for signs of life on Mars and the SETI program. I.e. Published and authenticated success would revolutionize thinking.
For the record There were many attempts to launch such an expedition in the 20th century, They all suffered political trauma. I.e. Ararat, sat on a border between enemies. The political climate has changed and former enemies are now tolerant neighbors.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
this one
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Mostly because traditon has ascribed the place the Mt. Ararat. The traditions could certainly be wrong, of course, but where else are you going to look? If it isn't there, you aren't going to find it anywhere unless you just happen to trip over it. In point of fact, that's probably true even if it is there. Most reputable scholars agree with the rectangular box theory. The boat-shaped indentations theory was heavily influenced by fanciful, and rather ridiculous, Mediaeval and early modern artwork.
Boat + really big hot air balloon = how the hell did THAT get up there?
That for which there is an evidental relationship relating observation to hypothesis is scientific. And to the degree that the observations determine the hypothesis, we say that the hypothesis is based on evidence and not faith. If you are defining "faith" such that is falls under this usage of "evidence", then faith simply is evidence and there is nothing that distigushes it from scientific practice. But, this also means that the search for empirical basis of our faith, which would be implied here, would simply be science. So that which cannot be studied by science wouldn't be evidence or faith, if they were similar in such a way. And this would make the faith unjustified, so far as it is not scientific.
So you can accept things on faith with ignorance to or denial of evidence, or you can simply say that faith is empirically justified, in which case you must defer to science to tell you that which you should take on faith.
Anyone who believes that there was a major rise in ocean levels anytime in the past 10,000 years does not know the first thing about coastal glaciation patterns.
If there was any evidence at all that such a flood occured in the recent glacier movements, the creationists would be all over it.
Accepting the plain-as-day proof of Geology is the first step to seeing Genesis as either the religious metaphor or myth that it is.
I find the level of debate in this thread really disheartening. People seem to have a strangely outdated view of christianity and religion as well as a lack of understanding about the basic tenets of christianity. You can't speak against fundamentalist christianity _and_ try to take apart the bible by interpreting it literally. If you want to argue with christians you should really find out what they believe first.
Take: "But such an attitude seems inappropriate for an All-Good, Loving God."
This may have _something_ to do with the fact that the story was written _before_ Jesus lived and spread the message about the all-good loving god. Jeez.
Try to consider the immediate context in which the story of the ark takes place in the bible, and it's meaning. The story is intended to illustrate a watershed (pun intended) in the relationship between man and god (the new covenant) whereby he promises not to wreak havoc on humans again.
Secondly, there's also the broader context of the old testament to consider. The whole idea of christianity is encapsulated in the new testament. The old testament (first half of the bible) is the historical background. Old testament, before Jesus: old relationship with god. New testment, after Jesus: new relationship with god.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Which version of the Biblical flood myth are you referring? There are two in the Bible.
uhh... One account of the flood is in Genesis 6 & 7. Where exactly is the other account located?
You can check it out here.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can look at Mount Ararat for yourself. Happy ark hunting!
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Oh, I see, so all of it must be true then! Or maybe it's simply because none of it happened?
Why is it, therefore, here atPersonally I find religion (any religion) and religious people scary! And more so each day. Some say people are afraid of thing they don't understand, and that's probably it in this case. I can't for the world of me fathom how people can believe these fairy tales, and let them decide how they should live their lives? Perhaps someone could explain this to me?
I do know this though, religion kills more people than anything else does! Why? Because people want to make sure other people believe theirs. Two words: holy war.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Head on over to the Talk.Origins FAQ archive.
This is definitely my second or third post on Slashdot. After not commenting for a long time, I think I'll step in for a bit. So what is this tolerance stuff that I keep hearing about? As in, tolerate gay marriage. Tolerate all religions. Tolerate points of view that are different from your own. And yet when I come on Slashdot and read this article, and all the (I read at +4) comments, my face turns sour because of the horrendous amount of crap that I see from people here. Look, you don't believe Christianity, fine. You think the ark idea is crap, and that science proves yadda yadda yadda, fine. At least have the guts to refrain from bashing those who do. It takes a mature individual to let people have their say without exploding in anger or cracking up in laughter. You have to understand that most people have developed for themselves a framework for how they view life. Most /. readers, I'm guessing, are scientifically minded. So they believe in all the things that science has accomplished. Good work. Hooray for you. Then there are those who believe that a God exists and has made everything we see, and created laws that science is discovering and utilizing. Good work, hooray for you. If you were really tolerant, and if you were really following what you believe you should be doing, then you'd have a solid discussion with them based on the facts, based on what you've seen, etc. etc. But... no. All we see are lousy jokes and other definitive statements - "the Bible is crap," "the Bible has contradictions," etc. etc.
I just don't understand how some /. readers can force Christians onto a pedestal ("You have to be perfect, you Christian moron, and aren't you supposed to LOVE everybody?!") and cannot subject themselves to any sort of standards.
If you're going to argue that the Bible has bad teachings, or that it has contradictions, read the Bible yourself before you make a decision. Actually, don't do just that - be a real student and go and find commentaries from Christian writers. Find commentaries from non-Christian writers. (Why commentaries? Have you ever really been able to explore a book without seeing what lots of people thought about it?) Read it with an unbiased eye. If you think you've found a contradiction, then see what the other side has to say. Read it for yourself. If you end up unconvinced the Bible is true, then great. If you don't find contradictions, then great too. Decide for yourself what you want to believe.
What astounds me is how FEW people actually take that offer. Personally, I don't know of anyone who has. Why? Because they're lazy. Too lazy to go and find out things for themselves. In the meantime, they (non-Christians AND Christians) rely on a few lousy articles and information (which are debunked by different people, depending on who you ask), and then post knowingly uninformed, uneducated entries on /. to the approval (and subsequent positive moderation) of their knowingly uninformed, uneducated peers.
Watch people read this comment and ask, "Is the author of this comment a Christian?" If the answer is yes, they immediately go and trash it because suddenly none of my arguments and comments make any sense. "Those moronic Christians, what a bunch of idiots, they must not believe in science..." right?
So maybe I am, or maybe I'm not. I will say that I HAVE taken up my own challenge. That should be enough for you.
Copyright (unreadable) All rights reserved Duplication and distribution for any use other than personal use is forbidden. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, whether living or dead, is purely coincidental. Please be kind... rewind.
Firstly, at the time of writing an ark the size described would have been impossible to build due to the building materials available. Only wood was used and an ark of biblical proportions would simply fall apart. Secondly, there's not enough water on the planet to cover the entire earth, especially to the height of a mountain!!! It has been found that noah was infact just a trader and that the 'flood that covered the earth' was simply the local river flooding. The story has been basically dramatised for the bible. What a waste of time trying to find the thing...
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
I will be leading an expedition to climb both peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro.
I'm hoping that we'll be successful in our quest to build a bridge between the two peaks.
Any takers?
This expedition has about as much credibility as an expedition to the North Pole for Santa's Workshop.
On the other hand, *MY* religion is the 100% truth. My cat, Queen Maeve, created the universe with the appearance of age Last Thursday. You can wave your "scientific method" or "Bible" around but it won't change the Truth and I dare anyone to prove she didn't.
Absent a rebuttal, you must convert to the Church of Last Thursday or face an afterlife in the Eternal Litterbox!
Money for idiot expenses from tax-payers.
Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
Clearly their expedition will fail... they're going after a find of "tremendous historical significance," particularly to Biblical studies, and they're not bringing along Indiana Jones?! What were they thinking?
Quite a few people have claimed that the Arc's remains are on the mountin and that they have seen it. That doesn't mean that they will find the Arc, but if they are lucky they will find what those other people found, and thought to be the Arc.
Most likely the legend of Noah's Arc is just that, a folklore story that was popular at the time the old testament was written, and simply got written into it, because it was thought to be apropriate to include it, at the time.
The expedition will likely find some rock formations that resemble the remains of a huge ship and belivers will claim that's God's way of preserving the Arc, while logical thinking people will dismiss it as "Rock formation". Everybody get's what they wanted and nothing has changed..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
The difference is the fact that the New Testament pretty much rewrites the rules from the Old Testament.
If you take the Old Testament by itself, the rule would be "the wages of Sin are death." Not very pleasant, as any little sin you commit would automatically condemn you.
In the New Testament we have Jesus, who died for our sins. This basically means that He took upon himself all of our sins when He died upon the cross, so now we aren't automatically condemned for all time when we commit a sin.
This isn't supposed to give you licence to commit sins indescriminately, however...
I'm glad somebody out there has taken note of the above.
What do I have to do to get a sig around here?! www.bearscanfly.org
I was thinking of e-mailing that M.D. my own rebuttals to his rebuttals... like for #16, how then does he explain that different fossils are thousands of years apart in age.
Or how in #7 he says that the animals could have migrated to Noah... but then the very next thing he says in #8 is that there's a "very real possibility" that the animals were not full grown. How do little tiny babay birds who can't fly and whose legs are maybe an inch long traverse halfway across the Earth to some boat.
Also... at several points he just plain resorts to saying that God can do anything. Why not just do the simple thing and give this as an explanation for ALL the opposition to this fable? At least it's consistent.
There are also some problems in his calculations I think... such as 35,000 animals. I'm not sure what 'clean' and 'unclean' animals means, or how that ratio breaks down among the total animal population... but apparently 1 pair of 'unclean' and 7 pairs of 'clean' animals were kept. I just checked real quick on wikipedia for biodiversity and they mention "Estimates of global species diversity vary from 2 million to 100 million species, with a best estimate of somewhere near 10 million."
Of course it's possible that new species evolved... but that would take longer than I believe the timeframe we're talking about since the flood allegedly occurred... and this guy probably doesn't accept evolution as valid science anyway (always a good warning sign in my opinion that someone simply does not know good science from bad).
My personal favorite is just #15... just for the strange attitude:
Nice.
Therefore more modern forms of homosexuality must have been based on influences from those reading the sacred texts about homosexuality. So homosexuality must be a way to express devotion to God?
Of course, no religion on earth would side with this interpretation
And the political leaders can claim that gay people aren't excluded from getting married today, as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex and are miserable for the rest of their lives -- an eternal hell no doubt.
Actually I think it is you who are trying to play semantic games. Let's check a worthwhile dictionary. Oxford English Dictionary says for faith:
I. Belief, trust, confidence
1. a. Confidence, reliance, trust (in the ability, goodness, etc., of a person; in the efficacy or worth of a thing; or in the truth of a statement or doctrine). Const. in, of. In early use, only with reference to religious objects; this is still the prevalent application, and often colours the wider use.
b. Belief proceeding from reliance on testimony or authority.
3. Theol. in various specific applications. a. Belief in the truths of religion; belief in the authenticity of divine revelation (whether viewed as contained in Holy Scripture or in the teaching of the Church), and acceptance of the revealed doctrines. b. That kind of faith (distinctively called saving or justifying faith) by which, in the teaching of the N.T., a sinner is justified in the sight of God. This is very variously defined by theologians (see quots.), but there is general agreement in regarding it as a conviction practically operative on the character and will, and thus opposed to the mere intellectual assent to religious truth (sometimes called speculative faith). c. The spiritual apprehension of divine truths, or of realities beyond the reach of sensible experience or logical proof. By Christian writers often identified with the preceding; but not exclusively confined to Christian use. Often viewed as the exercise of a special faculty in the soul of man, or as the result of supernatural illumination.
4. That which is or should be believed. a. A system of religious belief, e.g. the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc., faith. Also, confession, rule of faith, for which see those words.
Followed by about 40 more definitions and nuances.
If you know Latin or Greek, which I doubt you do, else you wouldn't have made such an ignorant post, you'll understand why your definition is, at best, woefully incomplete and at worse wrong.
I've never understood why people feel the need to go bash the beliefs of others such as you are doing--so the poster is religious and has faith--big deal, what makes you have the need to belittle that?
Let me know if they find a fossilised Babelfish.
This is not a sig
because they'd probably find dinosaur bones.
#1: "what's this Ted? it looks like somekind of dinosaur bone"
#2: "Throw it away Bill, its just another test from God of our faith"
#3: "I've found some wood!!!!"
#2: "Yes! it's all true! quick call bush and ask for more money. And tell him he can probably ask forgiveness for the middle east thing"
Was Noah's Ark more than 40,000 years ago? If not, then why don't we hear about that crap from Aboriginies - who have been around in Oz for at least that long? Sure, they don't have written languages, but you'd think there'd be some similarities or references there in their Dream Time stories. Same with Kangaroos - why do they only exist in Oz?
Also, how does it explain people with different coloured skin?
I'm sorry, but it just all doesn't add up. Actually, I'm not sorry at all - I pity the fool who gets suckered by this crap.
There's no shortage of really horrific barbaric passages in the Bible, but I don't think the story of Onan fits that lot. It's traditionally been (very badly) misinterpreted by Christians to condemn masturbation or even homosexuality, yes, but if you read the thing that's clearly not what it was about.
Onans brother married, but died before he could produce offspring. Under Hebrew law, Onan therefore became guardian of this property, including his wife. Under Hebrew law, however, he was supposed to impregnate that wife, and then his offspring through her were to be treated as his brothers offspring - to preserve his brothers name and line, which were very important things. Only in the event that the woman were sterile and no offspring could be reproduced was Onans line to retain his brothers property.
But Onan deliberately withdrew at the last moment, deliberately trying to avoid getting her pregnant, out of greed so he could keep what was his brothers. He was trying to keep the letter of the law but defeat its purpose, and in the context of the Hebrew law at the time, he was attempting to destroy his own brothers line and name in order to take his land. This was his sin.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Considering all the efforts to discover whether such thing ever existed or not with this high risk, what could be the outcome?!
The legend of the Ark is not solely a Christian tradition! Refer to Surah 11 of the Qu'ran
011.040 (Thus it was) till, when Our commandment came to pass and the oven gushed forth water, We said: Load therein two of every kind, a pair (the male and female), and thy household, save him against whom the word hath gone forth already, and those who believe. And but a few were they who believed with him.
011.041 And he said: Embark therein! In the name of Allah be its course and its mooring. Lo! my Lord is Forgiving, Merciful.
011.042 And it sailed with them amid waves like mountains, and Noah cried unto his son - and he was standing aloof - O my son! Come ride with us, and be not with the disbelievers.
011.043 He said: I shall betake me to some mountain that will save me from the water. (Noah) said: This day there is none that saveth from the commandment of Allah save him on whom He hath had mercy. And the wave came in between them, so he was among the drowned.
011.044 And it was said: O earth! Swallow thy water and, O sky! be cleared of clouds! And the water was made to subside. And the commandment was fulfilled. And it (the ship) came to rest upon (the mount) Al-Judi and it was said: A far removal for wrongdoing folk!
Link for further reading: Surah 11 at Islam.tc
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Christianity relies on the accuracy of the Bible. If you start doubting certain passages and disregarding others, the entire deck of cards comes crashing down. How can the word of God be inaccurate? If you can ignore certain parts, why not all of it?
This is what drove Thomas Paine to write The Age of Reason, a thorough debunking of this have-your-cake-and-eat-it approach to religion.
The only religious positions that have *any* solid philosophical or logical foundations are deism, atheism and agnosticism. Everything else has as much credulity as me saying "last night while I was watching TV an angel appeared and told me the word of God!!!!!!! Check out my rough draft of what it said on my AOL homepage!! Praise Ungdor who died for us while orbiting the moon bathed in the blood of his enemies!!"
- HOORAY!
Back then, they didn't have anything like that. People were also stupid and believed pretty much anything you told them.
The same is still true of today. Your stance is naive, to say the least, and arrogant to say the worst.
Modern life is as precariously balanced on the precipice of the void as it was in the times of clay pots and scrolls. Our digital 'media' hasn't saved anything, at all.
Yet.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
What happens if they Find The Ark the same Day they find life on Mars ? Would we all come to the conculsion that God has a sence of humor ?
Sloths are actually pretty good swimmers.
I know roos are quite good too though....anyone raced them?
Mount Ararat is not actually part of the mountains of Ararat. They're quite seperate. Quite distantly seperate even.
However, this does not diminish their chances of a genuine find even slightly.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
As one of my favorite college professors used to say, "On a scale of trustworthiness, Biblical Archaeologists rank right under used-car salesmen."
yeah ... i read 'arafat' too, but in my mind i saw them scaling that big piling huge hulk of turd^H^H^H^Hfat that is Ariel Sharon... god, what a fatass that man is ...
...
Honestly, it should be illegal for politicians to gorge themselves on fat and blubber as much as it is obvious Sharon has
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I hate those guys.
If that is not a "troll" I do not know what is. What if they do come back with pictures, does that automatically make them liars?
I guess... We have a guy in Russia (presumably he is a qualified ophthalmologist), who visited Tibet and brought pictures from the caves, where Atlants lie in somati sleep for millions of years. The findings were presented as fact in the largest national newspaper (which happens to be a yellow pulp shit). Before he showed the pictures he could have been considered a crazy retarded nut. By showing them he proved without doubt that he is an immoral liar.
Christians have been discredited often enough that we have reasons to believe Noah's Ark did not really exist and in any case it is not sitting on Ararat. Christians also have a long history of lying. Witness how Russian Orthodox church officially claims that the annual fire in Jerusalem on some religious holiday is miraculous. So if a christian shows some proof of some miracle (or a religious artefact), Mr. Occam tells that the evidence was likely doctored (or just plain fake).
And don't forget the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs". Which accidentally would explain why a lot of christians would immediately believe everything he claims he finds.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The myth clearly states that Noahs sons got to bring their wives along for the joyride...
And what a trip it must have been. 40 days worth of animal crap, no windows, one small skylight and a door that could only be opened when the tub was grounded...
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
it would be better if they killed each other and left the rest of us alone.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I mean, you'd have to be some kind of God to create that much ra - oh, never mind.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
why else would a boat be up there?
Maybe if there used to be a lake up the mountain?
No matter what evidence I show you that God exists
HAR HAR, "Evidence", Ha ha ha... lollerskates. Come on guy, the Bible is a good guidebook for living morally and relatively sensibly (based on your interpretation of it), but I've noticed most Christians have a huge difficulty when trying to grasp the lashings of metaphore and poetic expression used in Genesis.
You also have to remember that the Bible was translated into English and translated haphazardly, probably re-interpreted several times along the way. As with any translation, some meaning is lost in the process: In Matthew 19:24, Jesus proclaims "is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God", The "Needle's Eye" was a narrow gate in jerusalem. The mistranslation caused dumb ideas about the surrealist stuffing of camels through needle eyes.
I don't think that everybody should be so closed-minded about such things, just because a religious text mentions it.
*sigh* We're not being closeminded about it. We just know the truth, that's all. The truth is really very simple.
God came to Noah and said "I want you to build an ark, and in this ark I want you to put ... (lists criteria). This will be the B-ark, and I'm going to flood the world and destroy everyone and then you're going to get to have the world all to yourself. *snicker*"
I think we can probably take a pretty good guess at where Noah's Ark actually went...
Like what I said? You might like my music
In Soviet Russia, athiesm chooses scientists.
there is a church is Brighton, England thats supposed to be the exact dimensions of the ark. Its big and square. Though i can't see 2 of every animal fitting in it.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
What I didn't like about atlantis was that people were constantly saying "Yousa shouldn't be here. Yousa no belongen."
A shitty place, if you ask me. People eat with their tongues there, like frogs, man! Frogs! Then they tried to convince me that the "speediest way to your home is through the planet core". I said "But the core is molten rock, with lots of uranium and fission and crap going on! I'd never survive!" But the king or chief or whatever that fat guy was was insistent. "Out with you," he said. "Yousa no bother, wesa going to speeds yous away." I ran like hell and got out of there.
On a more serious note, Atlantis is actually proven true, to an extent. Plato's writings indicate that a volcanic eruption caused the island to split into three parts, and geologic evidence points to an island in the Aegean that suffered a volcanic eruption and split into three parts, with two of them falling into the sea. The third, iirc, was found to contain ruins of an advanced civilization, complete with plumbing and crap. Advanced compared to the greeks, of course. Interesting stuff.
Of course, it's not as fun as thinking there might be an entire continent sunk beneath the ocean where the people have adapted to underwater living and so forth. That's just pure fun, and there's no other justification needed for the belief. :) The nice thing about believing stupid things just for fun is that there's no reason to take the belief seriously and try to demand respect for it. Try it, it's well worth it.
Like what I said? You might like my music
I know he's putting on a bit of weight because the Israelis don't let him go out much, but I didn't realise he'd got so big that people were actually climbing him looking for beached arks.
If faith is "the evidence of things not seen", then there is infinite evidence of things not seen. I can have faith that my toaster oven flies around at night and sprinkles toast-crumbs all over my TV. I can have faith that my toes are recepticles of divine power. I can have faith that I am God, or that slashcode is God. I can have faith in Vishnu, Buddha, Allah, or that Pat Buchanan is Gandhi reincarnated. I can have faith in absolutely anything, but that doesn't make that anything one iota closer to being true.
//END DIATRIBE
I don't see a major contradiction in the Heb. definition and the dictionary definition - ie belief without evidence. The Heb. definition is romantisizing the same concept.
People have done much stranger things in the name of religion than feed themselves to lions - are they all correct? You assume the existence of a creator - through faith (see above). All science is concerned with is "finding the truth"- odd how science will always be opposed to faith. A lot of people have "looked", and "found" nothing. Others have looked, and found, then realized it was all BS. Others like you, found, or were found - and stayed there their entire lives. I hope you realize that religion is NOT compatible with science. It always comes down to an issue of faith - and as I hope I've shown above - belief by faith alone is unreasonable. Probably the real reason that you stay religious though is because your close friends and family are religious. That is the world you are used to, and that worldview is reinforced every day. If it makes you happy though, enjoy yourself.
an arcaeologist excavating a tomb has already decided that it's a tomb, expects that there may be something inside etc...
It'd be a bit crap if they said, "I know lets start diging here, I don't have a fucking clue what I may find, if anything, but I'll dig."
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
That's a pretty arrogant statement in itself, don't you think?
You mean to tell me that lack of religious knowledge makes people arrogant? Arrogant against people with religious beliefs perhaps, but absolutely not generally!
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Turkey is a *largely* Islamic country, but that wouldn't account for the govt. keeping people off of Ararat. The Koran mentions the Ark, and Islamic tradition doesn't consider Noah a Jew. The "first" Jew (or Arab, depending on who you talk to) was Abraham from what's now Iraq, and who post-dates the biblical flood by a wide margin.
Luke, help me take this mask off
The real question is: what is the volume of reason that would be needed to propperly catylize a self sustaining reaction in such a pool? And how large is this pool really? What's the SI unit for reason?
> The concept and idea of God has evolved over the ages,
I challenge the use of 'evolved' in this sentence. Changed perhaps, but 'evolved' implies improvement.
Changed it certainly has. It is now used to mean some sort of magic space pixie, though of course there are uses in recent times that are more accurate. Hirohito was a God until the allies made him stop being one. Chin was a God, most of the Roman emperors became one.
Probably the best way to explain what a 'god' actually was in past times is to use an example: The term Bael (or Baal) is much like the term Lord as used in Britain in the middle ages, ie the Lord of the Manor. A person who owned the land and everything on it and expected taxes or offering to be paid to support him and his armies. Lords or Baels had the power of life or death over those within the manor but would also listen to requests or prayers made to them. They were Gods, attributed with magical powers to be able to know everything that happened, and to cause it, to be the 'father' of everyone, to be their protector, but also to cause fear in the subjects.
These titles were territorial and dynastic, so there were many Baels, each in their own region. One well known one was Bael Zebub. Literally Lord of the Manor, it would be Bael Zebul to be Lord of the Flies.
When a new God, or Lord (actually a new dynasty), took over the old lords were derided. Bael Zebub became the devil when the new Jehovah took over the teritory and claimed that he was the only god that must be obeyed.
I have no doubt that when Moses led a group out of Egypt around 1500BC he met with the current Jehovah, or his agent, and formed a contract, the covenant, in which the jews could occupy a parcel of land as long as they recognised Jehovah and obeyed a set of laws.
The point being is that if were to be around today then Jehovah would be regarded as a warlord, just as the Baels were. They, like many warlords in recent times, regarded themselves as 'gods' and gave themselves powers and attributes above and beyond those of ordinary humans, they required obedience to the point of absolute sacrifice. I am sure that most could recognise that many leaders today or of late that have attracted the same sort of fanatical reverence that could lead to godification: Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Stalin, Kim Jong, even Hitler, but also Ghandi.
I have no doubt that most of the gods of the ancients actually did exist, just as Chin and Hirohito did, they just weren't supernatural.
In much the same way there really was a real Saint Nicolas yet he too has become godified as an eternal gift giver with magical powers to fly from his mythical toy factory in excess of the speed of light while being all seeing and all knowing. He was deified a as mechanism of social control (only good children get gifts from Santa).
> The God of Genesis is not the God of Exodus, or of Kings, even less that of Isaiah.
Exactly. And the Queen of England today is not the Queen of England of 1600, for exactly the same reason.
Everything that you say is entirely correct, but I suspect that when you use the term 'god' you have a mental image much like a North Korean peasant has for Kim Jong, while I also conjure an image of much the same type of person but from quite a different standpoint.
Fuckin' idiots didn't even click the link. Can I get a +1 Troll mod for trolling the moderators? ;)
Like what I said? You might like my music
I never quite figured out the very first chapter of Genesis until somewhat recently when I read it very carefully - there is a firmament that seperates the waters below the firmament from the waters above the firmament, or something along those lines.
But then, the waters below the firmament get seperated out, or split up, by landmasses. So I just never quite "got" it until I thought about it a little bit.
The "firmament" is not the land, like I thought it was, the "firmament" is heaven? (I think). Heaven (the firmament) is like a checkpoint or something, something you pass through as you are leaving or entering the "waters" below the firmament, which are now seperated by land masses. Above, or on the other side of that firmament, are the waters "above" the firmament. My hunch is that these "waters" on the other side of heaven (the firmament) are moving away from us at the speed of light, quite possibly with heaven itself trailing close behind these waters. This might help explain why heaven is only 4000 years old while our universe as we know it is some 14 billion or so.
So in any case, there are "waters" on the other side of the firmament, which have nothing to do with anything in our universe as we know it. I never quite "got" that. Back then, or perhaps even now, who is to say that a dream is any less real than "reality". What is reality? Perhaps there are mountains in heaven? Perhaps Noah rose above. Our physical bodies, and our physical reality, is not the only thing that has significance, you know. Obviously, Noah did go on a journey; there was a flood. That everything else died while Noah was on this journey, that may carry some significance. Part of what happened from Noah is still with us today, so that's significant. It's a beautiful thing. Noah, and those he brought with him, experienced this journey. The others, they did not experience the journey. If you are alive today, then your DNA has experienced that journey. Even if that journey was a dream. Call it a theory if it makes you more comfortable. I like to call it a dream, or a dream world. It gives your imagination more freedom and brings the whole thing into perspective. Although it may not necessarily be a "dream", that's just what I feel comfortable calling it, and that's what helps me relate to it better.
I think what happens is that we look at the dream world and it acts like a mirror of ourselves, we see ourselves, not the dream world. We "see" science, and we fail to see Noah and his journey. I have a feeling this might be an issue for those individuals who are climing this mountain, because their faith has led them to a point where they are literally searching for remnants of a dream. Now, if they were climing the mountain to try to find the Lord God, that would be an entirely different story. That would be a worthwhile endeavor. They won't find the ark; it's highly unlikely. Although, to some extent, anything is possible. But maybe, perhaps, they just might find the Lord God. Now that would be cool.
Well, if there IS satellite evidence of a huge ship where every single animal - and its mate - were collected by an old man, his family and his colleagues, what else remains there to be said? Mulder, are you there?
Not surprising...
They fail to mention what makes it a man-made structure. It looks like rocks to me? Did they shine a beam on it from outer space to determine it's wood or something?
If I believed in little gray men from Mars, I would certainly jump on this image of the Face on Mars as proof too.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I think you're looking for the OPPISITE of a priori, emperical (a postori? spelling anyone?) evidence.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
.. there are these things called
[hold onto your hats]
miracles!
I think they should search for the arch in the mountain like they looked for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, just nuke the place!
... is how much faith and trust many people put into what is called science.
I guess that most theories were not made to find the reasons behind a certain thing but were made to proove a certain believe. At the beginning was not a question without an answer but there was an answer without a question. And most times the reason behind the answer was: "There is no god".
It is like the gartner group coming up with the results of a survey which was paid by Microsoft. You probably know the outcome. Microsoft is better than *n[ui]x. And if you love Microsoft, you believe the results of the survey. If you're an Open Source enthusiast, you rebut the results.
On which side you stand is defined by what you want to believe.
And now, try to find _real__proofs_ for your favoured where-do-we-come-from theorie. You'll be amazed how much unproven theories there are and how much power people invest to defend these theories instead of trying to proove/disproove them.
Strange enough.
Noah's Ark was built to the specifications outlined in the Bible. If what they find has the same dimensions and uses the same type of wood, can there be that much doubt?
And to determine if it's a burial boat or not, all they have to do is look inside.
give me evidence that there is no God, and I'll listen.
That's just steps 1-5. Then sell pieces of the Ark on eBay until someone notices enough gopher wood has been sold to build 10 arks (much like Roman Catholics have bought enough pieces of the cross over the last 1500 years to build a four track railroad from Chicago to New Orleans)
The title as "researchers are to cilmb arafat to seek noahs ark" and wondered why he never noticed a boat on him and would he object to a team of people climbing over him.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
GWB finding "nucular" weapons in Baghdad.
-ted
They're in the majority in the UK.
It's a myth. There's a larger truth going on that trancends geological proofs. You either believe it or you don't.
It's scientifically impossible for someone to turn water into wine or raise the dead, but you don't see people spouting off technical explanations about why it can't be done. Everyone agrees it's impossible. It has to be -- shit, if the bible said "Noah then took his dog Patches and went to the beach for 40 minutes," what would be the sense in that?
Yes, it's impossible. Obviously. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
c-hack.com |
I can guess which side of the religious debate read this post first!
As an paid up member of agnostics anonymous, I'd be interested in your evidence that there is a god. It's up to you to convince me there is a god - not the other way around.
I think that's listed under "Reasons you don't get to worship anyone else." I suppose that's easily explained by revisions and mistranslations, but it's a little odd.
So God allows suffering because it causes us to turn to him? That's really not a healthy relationship, not even in a parent-child context. That's like secretly burning your kid's homework at the last minute so he has to beg you for help.
And why do we need to turn to him? Because believing in him is the only way to stay out of Hell. Why is Hell there? He allowed it to be there, and apprently he tossed some asshole in to be the DM, so he must have a reason for it. Whoever this devil fellow is, he seems to get a kick out of his job, so it doesn't sound like much of a punishment. But maybe it is, what do I know. The result is that a God who claims to love us and can run the show just about any way he wants to was directly involved in the creation of a place of such evil, pain, and eternal horror that it would be morally wrong of him NOT to fill the world with cancer, man-eating tigers, and asteroids that crush dogs, just so we have to to pray to him for mercy.
Why does disbelief in God warrant eternal suffering? Because he's smarter than me, and I wouldn't understand? You know, I consider myself to be more loving and merciful than most, but I'm certainly not up there with any God worth praying to for any but the most selfish and calculated reasons, and -I- think that's fucking extreme. He's God. If he REALLY wants to keep someone from crashing Heaven's parties and spiking the bunch, he's got Ultimate RBL power. As a last resort, just erase the poor bastards.
When a rottweiler eats a child, you don't put it on life support and torture it for ten years, you put it to sleep.
And you don't let a rottweiler eat a child now and then just so the rest have to beg you to keep them leashed.
I would hope they are careful not to disturb the footprints of all the animals disembarking 2 by 2. They may not be very fresh after 5000 years, but it would be a shame to loose that important scientific evidence forever.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Heh, seems funny but one time I saw a priest hold up something and say it was a piece from the actual cross. I almost jumped out of the pew demanding to put that under armed guard since some commoner shouldn't be walking around with that, but yeah I'm sure some street vendor in Rome suckered him into it. Hope he didn't pay too much.
Here are few articles from icr.org that may provide some insight:
Did Noah's Flood Cover the Himalayan Mountains?
COMPUTER MODELING OF THE LARGE-SCALE TECTONICS ASSOCIATED WITH THE GENESIS FLOOD
HOW COULD ALL THE ANIMALS GET ON BOARD NOAH'S ARK?
Borrow money from a pessimist - they don't expect it back.
Its interesting that there are a number of civilizations that have stories of the "big flood" as part of their histories. These have been passed down for generations. Most of them are non judeo-christian. They have common themes among them about man being saved by a boat.... Some have theorized that the flood was the opening of the Dardenells between what is now the med and the black sea. Bob Ballard has found what looks to be a campsite down in the black sea below where modern water levels would have dropped. Not sure of the research on that one. I've also heard theories put forth that there used to be a great vapour cloud that encircled the earth. Something that allowed for the long lives of people in early history. Protection from UV rays, etc might have provided the 400+ year life spans that are mentioned in the early bible (ie, Genisis).
Whatever floats your boat..
Every time you play an mp3 you make Jesus cry. - RIAA
my blood pressure is going through the roof because of the extreme lack of COMMON SENSE of the people who are supporting this expidition. some argue that there's no way that the waters could rise that much, others say there's no way he could have gotten around the world to get all of the animals. but damnit, how the hell did the animals get back to where they were from? oh yes... MAGIC. god damn son of a als;kdjfjksadfl;j heart attack... bbl
Uhhh, my cat disagrees with your so-called "Queen" Maeve's assertion.
I have it on good authority that MY cat created the universe last TUESDAY.
I seem to remember that the flood legend in the bible was 3rd or 4th hand. So if by some odd twist of fate, it is real, just what culture did it come from anyway ? Nothing that says it had to float either to do the job. For all anyone knows it was a barn up on the side of the mountain waiting for some flash flood 12,000-18,000 years ago. No one will really know. But the truth is many times stranger than fiction. Remember, the City of Troy was once considered to be nothing but a legend.
Canada built a space needle, it has as far as I can tell no practicle purpose what-so-ever, but they built it to have a really tall building I think.
That'd be wrong.
"Defining the Toronto skyline, the CN Tower is Canada's most recognizable and celebrated icon. At a height of 553.33m (1,815 ft., 5 inches), it is the World's Tallest Building, an important telecommunications hub, and the centre of tourism in Toronto."
"Although the CN Tower inspires a sense of pride and inspiration for Canadians and a sense of awe for tourists, its origins are firmly rooted in practicality. The construction boom in Toronto in the 1960's transformed the skyline characterized by relatively low buildings into one dotted with skyscrapers. These new buildings caused serious communication problems. With its microwave receptors at 338 m (1,109 ft.) and 553.33m (1,815 ft., 5 inches) antenna, the CN Tower swiftly solved the communication problems with room to spare. As a result people living in the Toronto area now enjoy some of the clearest reception in North America."
Information from the official CN Tower website.
This may be slightly OT but there is an absolutely fantastic book called Declare, by Tim Powers that combines the ararat object mentioned in the article with a cold war spy story and other mysterious forces. It is one of the greatest modern fantasy books (if fantasy is the correct term) and I strongly recommend it to anyone.
The story of "Noah" (probably not his real name) may have had some basis in fact. This is my best (and probably the best you'll ever hear) theory on what really happened.
/.
a pril/28_ marshes.html
/.AC, the Least Reverend Unbeliever
I hope it doesn't get moderated into oblivion simply because I don't have an account at
In Reality, "Noah's Ark" was probably nothing more than a reed raft built or used to evacuate farm animals, family, etc. from the middle of the Tigris/Euphrates river.
The Noah mentioned in the various religious texts most probably belonged to the Madan or "Marsh Arab" tribe, which then and to this day are a group of river people living among the reeds that grow near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq.
See:
http://www.iraqfoundation.org/news/2003/d
The Madan build their shelters, rafts, etc., from local materials, which consisted mainly of tall reeds. Their entire village probably consisted of one or more floating reed mats, held in place by reeds still attached to the river bottom.
Any extended period of rain *upriver* would cause flooding in the Madan village, even if no rain occurred locally. If seasonal (how long - 40 days?) rains were expected, the resultant flooding could be predicted. It would certainly cause some to consider moving out of the river to higher, safer, ground.
According to the story, Noah decided in favor of safety, even though few if any other villagers made the same decision. The other villagers may have felt that it was more important to remain in the village working to prevent it from being uprooted and washed downstream.
As for "Noah's Ark" being found on a 17,000 ft. high mountain, here's some simple math:
Taking most of the biblical story at face value, "Noah's Ark" could actually have come to rest on almost any land area with an elevation of around 960 ft. above Noah's original elevation.
A very heavy rainfall would be in the area of 4+ inches of accumulation per hour. Assuming 12 inches/hour for 40 days+nights:
12*24*40 = 11520 inches
11520/12 = 960 feet.
So you don't really need a big mountain to beach your craft. Many smaller hills will do.
Signed,
.... you have no idea about Christianity.
No offense intended but that was a load of tosh.
Christians that have understood anything about their religion are tolerant and although preach the virtues of their religion (as perceived by then) would never force or encourage conversion. That is a perversion of the religion since nowhere iit is demanded to gain access to Paradise.
I am an atheist btw. but was raised as a Christian in a havy Christian environment...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That's one of the best answers I've seen to religious (and anti-religious) certainty I've read.
;))
When people are argue about God / religion in general, they often seem to be starting on completely different "idea maps" of the world.
As you say, if you start with a belief in an omniscient, omnipowerful, omnipresent, eternally existing God (or even in The Force) then even the most otherwise unbelievable things can be plausibly explained as emanating from God (or whatever object of faith). The explanation might end at "and then a miracle occurred," but that becomes an acceptable answer if (axiom time, I know) you believe in a higher power capable of miracles.
Arguing the specifics of religious beliefs doesn't make much sense to me (would God like this green tie better? Or the blue stripey one?), because the existence or non-existence pretty much trumps the detail, at least if you're talking monotheism with a 'friendly' God. (I see plenty of holes in that statement, but don't feel like typing enough to get into all of them
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
What next, an out pouring of support for expeditions to find dinosaurs in the Amazon?
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
... because religion was developed as a defensive mechanism for the things that people could not understand.
I think that's part of it, but I think, much like we see the "mad mullahs" of Islam today, as well as the Jim Jones' and David Koreshes of Christianity, it's more about control than anything else.
And no, I'm not an atheist, but neither do I believe in literal translations from the bible. I find movies like "Stigmata" and "What Dreams May Come" to be more informative... no, that's the wrong word... more thought provoking than anything in the bible.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Oh, someone else posted a satellite image :)
Satellite photo Zoomed out
Pfft, doesn't really look like part of a boat to me, nor big enough to hold two of every animal...
Of course, not all Christians believe the Bible is so literal, but I find it amazing how many people actually believe that Noah built a boat large enough to hold two of every animal on the planet, collected them on the boat, kept them alive, and survived a flood that put the entire globe under water. And just 5(6?) thousand years later, there is absolutely no trace of the flood, the boat, the near mass extinctions, and the whole planet is thriving with life again.
To the parent poster to which I'm responding... What is your take on that?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Good to see that religious fundmanetalists are cornered to semantics to defend the indefensible...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Jesus was a rebel child who traveled to India. He learned yoga and spiritual discipline. (Why do you think so many elements of Christianity mirror elements of Hinduism and Buddhism?)
He traveled back to the Middle-East and began spreading teachings about an enlightened life. The Man (government) did not want him teaching such rebellion-inspiring ideas so charges were trumped up and he was executed. But not before producing a child with Mary Magdalene.
The Council of Nicea, 321 AD, decided to raise him to the level of divinity as a tool to distract the public from his original teachings. (It's hard to focus on the message when you are in the presence of God's agent. Time to bow, scrape, and perform other devotions!
The Source of anything is a very simple Event. Man then proceeds to fuck things up because of ego, desire, and lust-for-power.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
As an paid up member of agnostics anonymous, I'd be interested in your evidence that there is a god. It's up to you to convince me there is a god - not the other way around.
Why? I'm on your side, but both sides fail the argument when they say "prove the contrary" when they can't prove their own point. That's why this argument will never go away.
Interestingly, what I like to use on religious people (being somewhat agnostic myself), is the story of Moses. So they tell me that in order to be "saved", I must unconditionally and without proof, believe in God. But Moses, one of the greatest biblical figures, didn't believe until God presented himself. Then Moses, given divine powers (or channeling divine powers) gave proof to those he led (at least proof of a greater power, if not God).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Some take the bible
For what it's worth
When it says that the meek
Shall inherit the Earth
Well, I heard that some sheik
Has bought New Jersey last week
'N you suckers ain't gettin' nothin'
Is Hare Rama really wrong ...
If you wander around
With a napkin on
With a bell on a stick
An' your hair is all gone
(The geek shall inherit nothin')
You say yer life's a bum deal ...
'N yer up against the wall
Well, people, you ain't even got no kinda
Deal at all
'Cause what they do
In Washington
They just takes care of NUMBER ONE
An' NUMBER ONE ain't YOU
You ain't even NUMBER TWO
Those Jesus Freaks ...
Well, they're friendly but
The shit they believe
Has got their minds all shut
An' they don't even care
When the church takes a cut
Ain't it bleak when you got so much nothin'
(So whaddya do? Hey!)
Eat that pork
Eat that ham
Laugh till ya choke
On Billy Graham
Moses, Aaron 'n Abraham
They're all a waste of time
'N it's your ass that's on the line
(IT'S YOUR ASS THAT'S ON THE LINE)
Do what you wanna ... ...
Do what you will
Just don't mess up
Your neighbor's thrill
'N when you pay the bill
Kindly leave a little tip
And help the next poor sucker
On his one way trip
SOME TAKE THE BIBLE
(Aw gimme a half a dozen for the hotel room!)
Religion is fine until people insist there is a basis in reality. If I asked you to believe in a computer program that speeds up dialup connections 1000x what would you say? "Show me the code". Yet way, way too many accept religion with zero physical proof. Guess what kids: they won't find Noah's Ark because there is no Noah's Ark.
Look at what religion has done to the the US: Bush has wrapped himself in the bible and the flag and see what mess he's gotten us in. Without his money, flag and bible he'd be washing dishes at Dennys. I'll die fighting to support one's right to pray to whatever God or Gods they wish but please don't try to make me believe in your shared hallucinations.
And remember to kindly leave a little tip to help that next poor sucker on his one way trip ...
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
...their lack of faith disturbing.
Thank you for observing all safety precautions.
Nothing like indisputable photographic evidence to perpetuate the dangerous modern myth called Christianity.
Need help finding the flow? http://www.myspace.com/naturalismandbalance
Why did God tease us with cryptic info about the shape of the earth, and not bother telling us about germs and stuff?
No, see, you just don't get it. Germs are the work of Satan, see, and they only harm bad people. That's why everyone gets a cold every now and then, because no one is perfect. And allergies are punishment for... uh, well, AIDS is punishment for having sex. I mean, God made us, and he made our bodies be the only species on the planet (besides one type of monkey) that doesn't have a pubic bone. So he made sex feel good to motiviate us to have sex, but only to procreate...
And so God made syphillus and AIDS and other VDs to punish us and encourage us to only have one partner and only have sex to procreate!
No, wait, only Satan could have created diseases like that, God wouldn't do such a thing, so Satan punishes us for violating the word of God, and encourages us to follow it because then he gets more souls... no, wait, that doesn't work either.
It must be the former, since God created all living creatures, right? So why didn't he just wipe out the planet and start over again?
And so God created tumors and cancer and Lukemia, especially to "challenge" the children who are afflicted, because he's a loving, wise God, and obviously those children did something bad, we just don't know what it is.
Q.E.D., God must exist.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Now onto the fun. If you go ahead and actually read Genesis 7, instead of listening to what your minister/priest told you, you'll find two complete stories completey interwoven with different details. It is believed that there were two main authors of Genesis, one from Judea in the south, and one from Israel in the north. Convienently, they used different names for God (Yahweh and Elohim). The King James Version, thankfully, keeps these names separate by referring them to as "the Lord" and "God". Which makes separating the two flood stories a little easier.
In one version, "God" asks for two of every animal, and they go on the ark two by two. So far so good, right? But it then says the rains kept up for 150 days. And what kind of bird brings back the olive branch proving the land is appearing again? A raven.
The next version, with "the Lord", fills in the gaps we're all used to. In this version, seven pairs of animals are to be loaded up (!?). But it then rains for the familiar 40 days and 40 nights. And then Noah sends out a dove, which returns with the branch.
So the version we learn is a simple hybrid of the two stories that were almost certainly written by different authors at different times.
Sure, one of the stories could be true, but it is most likely based on an older flood myth. From what I've heard, many religions have a flood story, so some people believe there was a great flood, but we just don't have enough evidence.
We didn't build the CN tower with no reason what so ever. It's main purpose is a microwave tower. They needed a tall ass building to see over all the other tall ass buildings. Also it is used somewhat in the study of weather, and more specifically the study of lightning. Plus it is also a nice little tourist attraction with a nice resturaunt. Also the bottom floor in the sphere area of the tower has a plexi glass floor, so it's good for when you're tripping out.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
"If he finds a very large boat stuck on top of a mountain, there are very few possibilities as to which boat it might be"
That part of the world was part of (or at least very close to) a very devout Armenian Orthodox culture for over a thousand years during the Byzantine era and, to a geographically lesser extent, to today. Even if they found a boat shaped object who is to say that it wasn't put there as a religious pilgrimage site by the Armenians or Byzantines? Medieval Europe was full of bogus relics of the saints and so-called pieces of the true cross. If they do find a boat they sure had better carbon date it back about 5-6 thousands years to when biblical scholars usually put Noah's flood not to mention it having to be made of wood native to Noah's homeland and not NE Turkey.
I won't even get into the need to show geological signs of flooding on the mountain from the same era.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The aim of the excellent article was to put to rest any rational hope any person may have that the Ark history has any shed of truth.
The few "gafs" (as you see them) are immaterial and do little to undermine the main point of the article.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The Weekly World News found Noah's Ark a couple of years ago. And they had photographic proof.
Ok...the vikings and others had shipburials. Due to the immense differences in practicality between:
I) hauling a ship out of water onto land and into a pre-dug hole, and
II) hauling a ship out of water and thousands of meters up a mountainside, I'd assume most people here (moderators included) would consider the above post less than insightful.
Before anyone even considers the "What if it was built on-site, for this particular purpose?"-nonsense, it appears that this would be well above the tree-line, even in nice'n'hot Turkey, and it's not the sort of altitude that people would like to do hard work in.
To further debunk your middle-of-England analogy: The middle of England is never too far from navigable rivers. Viking ships had very shallow keels, allowing them to navigate many of them.
Furthermore, viking shipbuilding skills were wide-spread after conquests to the East, West and South. Any rich fuck could commision a few people knowledgeable in the art to chop down some lumber and make a boat on-site.
Your argument has no relevance to the matter at hand. Sorry if mine has a sort of neurotic twist to it...the coffee got to me hours ago.
In one of the God themed episodes of the Simpsons, the Flanders family sings "God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody". So I looked it up, and it turns out that this is a real Christian rock song.
: |
---
Rise and Shine
God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody
God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody
Get those children out of the muddy muddy
Children of the Lord
CHORUS:
So rise and shine
And give God your glory, glory.
Rise and shine
And give God your glory, glory
Rise and shine and HEY!!
Children of the Lord
So Noah he built him he built him an arky arky
Noah he built him he built him an arky
Made it out of hickory barky barky
CHORUS
The animals they came on came on by twoosies twoosies
Animals they came on came on by twoosies twoosies
Elephants and Kangaroosies-roosies,
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
It rained and poured for forty daysies daysies
Rained and poured for forty daysies daysies
Drove those animals nearly crazy crazy
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
The sun came out and dried up the landy landy
Sun came out and dried up the landy landy
Everything was fine and dandy dandy
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
Noah he sent out sent out a dovey dovey
Noah he sent out sent out a dovey dovey
Everything was peace and lovey lovey
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
The animals they came out came out by threesies threesies
Animals they came out came out by threesies threesies
Must have been those birds and beesees beesees
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
This is the end of end of the story story
This is the end of end of the story story
Everything was hunky dory dory
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
---
I remember those awful "In Search Of" shows with Leonard Nimoy and the pseudo-documentaries by the tag team of schlock, Golan and Globus.
I especially remember their "Search for Noah's Ark" and Bigfoot shows where they spent 99% of the show showing them talking about what they will find, how excited they are, getting the equipment there, getting through red tape, then in the last 5 minutes finding nothing of consequence and coming home empty handed; end of movie.
Even as a little kid I thought they were crap.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The only Zen you find at the top of a mountain is the Zen you bring with you.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Could it be that you do nor remember clearly the story of "Jonah" and the whale?
If you are interested or curious you can find out a LOT of interesting information at my Uncle's site. He has a country place that no one knows about!
Here
Uncle B has been on several expeditions to "the mountains of Ararat" and has co-authored a book on the subject.
Many of the "facts" that have been presented on Slashdot are... well... this is Slashdot!
For open minded individuals, the abusive distortion of facts by ANY dogmatic belief (creation, evolution, humanism, christianity, islam, ufos, atheism, whatever!) is pathetic.
Facts are facts. The problem is always interpretation. As Rush said, "you can twist perceptions, reality won't budge." The problem is that many people accept the interpretation of data as FACT and that's just as dogmatic and foolish as someone who doesn't question the beliefs (or total lack thereof) that were imparted to them.
I find it interesting that the most "open minded" people turn out to be the most zealously dogmatic when confronted with something that is contrary to their opinion and beliefs, because let's face it: it is all a system of belief. Every factual interpretation is based on assumptions. Those assumptions probably seemed reasonable at the time. But they were wrong. It turns out that the Earth orbits the Sun, not the other way around!
As a Christian, I'm classified by a lot of people as ignorant or simple. The truth is that I choose to believe in Christ for one simple reason: if you want to know what it is, you can read my reply to this message. If you don't want to know, I won't proselytize. I give you the choice to read it or not.
I'm sorry, we like to call those Jesus Horses now.
(Thanks Onion)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Actually, Ron Wyatt had pictures several years ago.
Ron is dead now but he found what is left of the ark.
You can see pictures at http://wyattmuseum.com.
If you were not expecting to find a ship there, you would not know what you are looking at.
It is pretty disintegrated.
I will let you decide.
DanH
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
I was having a discussion about Noah's ark and the flood and all that with a Jehovah's Witness who came to the door one day. His explanation was that prior to the flood, the Earth was surrounded by clouds and that every morning, a mist would descend to water the land. Then came the great flood, when God purged the land of the evil people and animals (but not ducks or fish, apparently), where it rained and rained and rained and rained and indeed the whole Earth was covered with water. That's why you find fossils of sea creatures up mountains, you see. Then, vast underground caverns opened up, the water drained in and formed the pattern of land and seas that we are familiar with today.
Rrrrrrright...
It's a more logical argument than I'd heard before - I don't know if it's recorded anywhere, or this guy concocted it to support his own beliefs. It did kinda leave me on my doorstep waving my finger and opening and closing my mouth unable to find any words for a moment.
The point is that finding a boat at that altitude doesn't provide evidence that it unique to the story of the ark, there are a million other reasons why that boat could be there and no reason to choose christianity's version above anyone elses.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
It's very true that using the Bible to back scientific claims is pretty unscientific. For us Christians, the Bible is only a reliable source of spiritual truths, not scientific ones.
But! I seriously disagree with your use of the lake-draining story as some sort of argument to disprove the land getting all ripply after the flood. The flood model involves plate tectonics, which is obviously absent in the draining of a lake.
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
Ahh.... the ever present grammar troll.... either unwilling or unable to make an actuall point....
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
But we've already found it! And yes, I've been there.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
The reason nobody can find it is because it's probably not there. The modern mountains in Turkey were named from the account in the Bible as people thought that was the place, but in actuality the real location isn't known for sure. It's just the "traditional" site. Just like Mount Sinai is actually just across the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. But anyway, that's just my opinion, for some interesting research look at:
/ /www.noahsarksearch.com/iran.htm
http://www.ldolphin.org/franz-sinai.html
http:
http://www.vintagelibrary.com/pd.cfm?pcode=indy04
Actually, I've found the Indiana Jones series of novels more entertaining than (dare I say) the Star Wars series of novels.
"What's the point of absolute power if you don't intend to abuse it?"
"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions." -- G. K. Chesterton
What if this *does* turn out to be the Ark, putting asside all the arguments for why it isn't possible and what not. Wouldn't that just be the wildest thing. I mean a story (that I personally took as just a tale) suddenly becomes true. I mean holy shit, thats pretty mind blowing if you ask me.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
Yep. The Ark's in a warehouse. Everyone knows that. Duh.
W = (-president)^1/2
Nope. That's the Ark of the Covenant. Saw the documentary. Harrison Ford was great.
That which does not kill her only prolongs my agony.
God said to Noah
... On the Arky Arky
There's going to be a Floody Floody!
Down came the rain
It started to get Muddy Muddy
Get Those Animals...
*clap*
This is a public reply to those who called bullshit on my comment about Jesus going to India where he learned yoga and most of his spiritual beliefs.
Perform a simple Google search and the Truth shall be revealed.
Some people, you grab their neck and force their face into a book, and they still won't open their eyes!
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
"As an example, the writer had the audacity to say that Jeph'thah had his daughter sacrificed on the alter, when clearly if you read the passage further you would find that she lived a good long life, and that the daughters of the land would commend her for her devotion from "year to year". She was given to God to serve him. This was the same thing that Han'nah did with her son, Samuel."
This is completely false. This is a story I know better than almost any other; I'm a choral music director and there have been more oratorios written on this story than almost any other. Please look at the entirety of the last verses of Judges 11:
35: And when he saw her, he rent his clothes, and said, "Alas, my daughter! you have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me; for I have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot take back my vow." 36: And she said to him, "My father, if you have opened your mouth to the LORD, do to me according to what has gone forth from your mouth, now that the LORD has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites." 37: And she said to her father, "Let this thing be done for me; let me alone two months, that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my companions." 38: And he said, "Go." And he sent her away for two months; and she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. 39: And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had made. She had never known a man. And it became a custom in Israel 40: that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.
End of chapter. Jepthah's daughter is not mentioned from there onward. Jephthah's vow was:
30: And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD, and said, "If thou wilt give the Ammonites into my hand, 31: then whoever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the LORD's, and I will offer him up for a burnt offering."
I used the Revised Standard Version for the quotes above. It's a harsh story, I admit, but Jephthah's daughter died. And of course, if you have any biblical documentation to back up what you said, I definitely want to read it; I am big enough to admit that I was wrong if you can show me the evidence.
modern choral music...
No person can function without a belief-system however.
I think this is false. As I said, I am Agnostic, which isn't really a specific belief system. I'll agree that this may be true of most people, because most people are ignorant and gullible, but there are people who can hold more than one thought in in their head without it exploding, or who can accept the probability that life is pointless from any spiritual point of view without jumping off the nearest building. You can look at biological systems to understand that the purpose of life is survival and nothing more. Anything additional is what we ignorantly impose.
"For every credibility gap, there's a gullibility fill."
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Built ships on mountaintops?
If the ship existed in the dimensions described, it is most likely Noah's ark. They will have matched the mountain and the dimensions. There is simply no other reasonable explanation.
Their seems to be this implication that a discovery made by a Christian which affirms the Bible is somehow less objective, or perhaps suspect. But if an atheistic scientist discovers something which purportedly affirms evolution, the discovery is treated as gospel truth. There seems to be a double-standard of proof for Christians.
But as much as unbelievers might claim, proof is not the issue, but a distraction. Those who resist believing in God do so not because they need proof that there's a God, but rather because they are uncomfortable of the implications of such. No ship on Mount Ararat is going to change this.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The written history of the Jews (which Christians call the Old Testament) was compiled during their exile in Babylon, with the intent of solidifying the Jewish identity against absorbtion by the Babylonians. As such, it made many exagerated claims about Israel's military prowess, to instill a sense of nationalistic pride. But no one has ever found any evidence of great wars or the exodus. In this case, lack of evidence is evidence--as one Biblical archeologist put it, "If it had actually happened, we would have found something." So the vast conquests probably amounted to a few tribal skirmishes. But hell, the Trojan war was a tribal skirmish. The rest is myth. We do know that the Jewish tribes probably originated in Egypt (though probably not as slaves), because most of the myths in the Old Testament are almost exact copies of older Egyptian myths (as is Christianity.)
Judaism is not and never has been a triumphalist religion. It does not proseletize and has no interest in converting others unless they become affiliated by marriage. It is first and formost a tribal religion providing an ancestral memory. To this end, it has been wildly successful, and has avoided most of the excesses of the triumphalist religions, Islam and Christianity.
As for Noah's Ark, this too is a much older myth predating Judaism (Atlantis is one version of it.) The story of the flood may have a historical basis; at the end of the last ice age, the melting of European glaciers flooded the Mediterranean Sea until a natural barrier collapsed. The water flooded the Black Sea in a massive rush, with water levels rising hundreds of feet in a matter of months. There is evidence that this displaced a lot of people living on the shores of the Black Sea. The flood myth may have originated with this event.
"My opinion, having been a Slash reader since the site's infancy, is that there's actually a fairly low level of religious knowledge amongst the learned Slashdot crowd. This tends to [unfortunately] manifest itself in haughty arrogance."
My opinion, having been a Slash reader long before you were, is that you are haughtily arrogant.
Put the gun down -- you still have one foot left!
Show me a smart, intelligent person that has researched Christianity, and concluded that it's true, and I'll show you another smart, intelligent person that has concluded that it's not true.
The facts are that there are very smart people that "switch sides" every day. And in the cases of some of the people that I know, I am not surprised by it in the least, in fact, I would almost say that they were pre-disposed to it for a number of different reasons (although they always quickly deny it).
My conclusion is that belief (or disbelief) in religion hangs on something else beyond simple logic or faith. I don't claim to know what this is, but I've seen too many people switch back and forth to be able to believe the claim that anyone's conclusions about religion are purely logical (or purely based on faith).
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
The Noah legend was oral legend that probably grew from other legends, posssibly the flood tale in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
>...please, check your ad hominem attacks at the door.
His statement wasn't an ad hominem attack. He stated that if your theory was correct, then it must follow that something impossible happened in the formation of Earth, but that's invalidating your theory, not attacking it by attacking you. "You're an idiot, so your theory is wrong" is ad hominem, "laws of physics work this way, so your theory is wrong" is not. Saying you're wrong does not constitute an ad hominem attack unless he uses something about you (that's not related to the theory) to say you're wrong.
Virg
"''We are not excavating it. We are not taking any artifacts. We're going to photograph it and, God willing, you're all going to see it,' McGivern said.' As if pictures can't be doctored and are absolute proof...."
They're certain they're going to see it; you're certain they're not. You're both two sides of the same irrational coin. Me? I'm a real scientist. I believe anything is possible, and, realizing many ancient stories are based upon a real, however romanticized, person or event, I try not to have presuppositions. And when I may have a presupposition, I don't gloat it as a source of pride.
My opinion, having been a Slashdot reader since before the site was even called Slashdot, is that this site is overrun with religious nutcases. Just look at the number of comments stating "I believe in a literal interpretation of the Ark story" that are moderated to +5. Slashdot is very sympathetic towards pro-religious speech.
Interestingly enough, there is an unusually high percentage of religious "faithful" in the IT industry. Much higher than in other hard science or mathematical fields. Also interestingly enough there is an unusually high percentage of AUTISTIC people in the IT industry. I don't think those two facts are unrelated.
Actually, they ARE searching for Atlantis next. Info here
/. story and how much money and time these researchers are wasting.
Was watching CNN Headline news as I was working out this morning and it scrolled across the bottom that researchers are planning to look under Cyprus for Atlantis.
I immediately thought of this
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Re-read the post you are replying too. Your statement that Christianity is predicated on the infallibility of the Bible shows your lack of knowledge of Christianity.
I can't tell you how long I've been waiting to use the IAAT tag :)
So here's the deal folks, I've got a B.Theology with majors in systematic theology and biblical studies, I read/write biblical greek and ecclesiastical latin and I'm a soon-to-be candidate for ordination. I have some Christian street-cred.
Also, look at my /. user ID number, and compare it to your own. I'm a professional software developer and I've worked with some of the biggest names in the industry.
Also, for the record, I love science and see no conflict between it and religion, just as long as they keep out of each others hair. If science tries to tell me the meaning of my existance or if religion tries to tell me the true value of Pi, I yell bullshit and bitch-slap 'em back where they came from.
So what I want to say, and hopefully my short intro is enough to make some of you pause for a moment to listen, is that many people here seem to have an innacurate idea of what Christianity is all about.
I come from the Catholic tradition, and about 1 in 5 people on this planet identify themselves as Catholic so I think I'm safe in saying that official Catholic doctrine would be a safe place to start if we are looking at 'what do Christians believe?' I'll let the smaller denominations speak for themselves rather than attempt to cover their views too, but here is the official Catholic view on whether we should take the bible literally.
The following quotes come from the document, Verbum Dei (Latin, "The Word of God") which has the status of being an 'Apostolic Constitution' of the Second Vatican Council. Basically, it doesn't come any more official than this folks - All Catholics are required to adhere to these guidelines or otherwise get out of dodge, so this is what a numerical majority of Christians on the planet believe.
Is the bible history?
Sorry if your neighbourhood or country is full of Christians who are sure that the true value of pi is 3.0 because that's the figure that the bible gives, but you can be rest assured that the vast majority of Christians do not hold anything like that view.
Noah's Ark is clearly a literary form (flood story) that is documented to have existed all over the ancient world. The official methodology that Catholics would use to understand this story involves looking at the ways in which the Jewish version is different from say, the Sumerian version, thereby gaining some insight into what the Old Testament authors thought was important about it. Also, we'd look at it to see if it can shed any light on our understanding of the New testament too, because, well shucks, we're Christians not Jews and we like to see eveything in terms of Christ - even the Old Testament.
But you won't find any Catholic theologians freezing their ass off on top of
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
if there was anything in the bible that was uncontestably false, nobody would beleive in the bible anymore.
there are many well known _objections_ to some things in the bible, but i'm not aware of anything that is universally understood to be simply incorrect. are you ? if so, please point said inconsistancies out to me.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The problem with this project from its initial motion is glaring: the followers will believe anything and the skeptics will doubt everything. The only way to prove anything about Noah's ark, Moses' parting of the Red Sea, Jesus' rising on the third day, or God's will and power as the creative force behind all that is ... is to go about your business, be a good person in whatever way makes the best sense to you, stop looking for God as if you need proof to believe (or disbelieve), and wait for God himself to appear and prove himself to you.
This is the long version of the George Carlin Corollary to the Ten Commandments (that's what I call it): "Thou shalt keep they religion to thyself."
Life would be better for everyone if we were good for goodness' sake rather than for some deity(ies) or creative power that may not even exist.
The real miracle is that most of those bible-thumping engineers actually do a pretty good job. You hardly ever hear them say "I can't understand why that bridge collapsed. I prayed every day I worked on its design." or "Air bags? God is our protector!"
Christ's message of forgiveness and grace is the only one that rings true to me.
All other religions place the responsibility of salvation with the actions of man. For example: "You must sacrifice the unblemished lamb.", "You must travel the wheel until you reach enlightenment.", "There is no God, you are alone in the universe. Do whatever you want. Might as well kill yourself, though, it's all for nothing.", "You can only get to paradise, with it's eternal virgins for you to deflower, by killing yourself in a violent attack on unbelievers."
Christ's message was different: "I am sent by God to pay the price for your sins. All you have to do is believe in my salvation and accept me for who I am and you will be saved."
I just deleted a rambling diatribe on the various major beliefs (including those that say they DON'T believe anything...). I'm not qualified to really discuss this, so I recommend you read C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity for starters. There are lots of other apologetics available, but suffice it to say that for ME, Christ's message is the only one that "feels" right.
Dude... line-breaks!
Those of us that skim comments for key points and ideas can't locate transitions and segues and, well, I skipped the last 75% of your post.
Maybe it is the 5 century BC failed Noah's ark amusement park? -Sean
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
I dunno which bible you're reading, but the Torah (first five Books of Moses) does not say that you will go to Hell if you're a so-called non-believer. Christians started all that to keep converts.
Well, Hell is mentioned in Ch 32.
And it is more about rebellion than belief, but how would you react if something you created turned around and denied your existence?
Even after you went ahead and re-established the relationship by meeting with many of them personally?
This is not equally plausible by a long shot.
Exploring the North Pole in search of Santa Claus would be fruitless, since the North Pole is not solid -- there's nothing but Arctic Ocean and large fragments of ice up there. (I say "up there" -- damn maps have me brainwashed!)
On the other hand, exploring Mt. Ararat for Noah's Ark, while seemingly equally as implausible as searching the North Pole for Santa Claus, is at least a tiny bit more credible simply because we know Mt. Ararat exists, we can pinpoint it on a map, and we can physically go there and climb it.
Further, just as with the historical "Santa Claus", we can accept that perhaps a man called "Noah" (or at least a man that we will call Noah from this vantagepoint in time) once existed and built an ark, kidnapped a few thousands animals, and got the boat stuck in the mountains when the Euphrates flooded some 6000+ years ago.
All those "Great Flood" myths came from somewhere, and while we cannot with any certainty address the (non)involvement of any divine hand, we can with limited certainty address the historical significance and (in)accuracy of what we do know for sure.
Closing thought: maybe we've got the wrong mountain.
i don't want to insult anyone's intelligence, but. am i the only person who thinks that it would have to be really big to contain the number of animals it is claimed (two of all animals on earth at the time) plus for for all for 40 days. given that one man built this makes it a bit more unlikely. why are people even looking. take one of our largets ship today. can it reasonably hold two of every animal on land and food for 40 days? if so, how much effor would it take for one or a few individuals to build such a ship (out of wood no less) and loading it? people have to start thinking. if a few stories shouldn't be taking literally, then shouldn't all of them? and if they are not literal, then they didn't happen and what they actually mean is probably lost.
Maybe we have the wrong mountain. :-)
p.s.-- Your sig at the bottom of that post made it even funnier.
Nothing in the Bible has ever been disproven based on ancient findings by any reputable scientific investigation.
How about this one:
Numbers 22:30: God speaks through Balaam's ass.
It's a proven fact that jackasses don't have the vocal cord required to render speach.
Scientifically you can shred the Bible because it is a book of Myths. It just happens to be the collection of Myths that was chosen by the cultures that dominate our European culture.
Scientifically a global flood is impossible. Scientifically a man can live in the belly of a whale.
Scientifically a being with no tangible features can't inseminate a virgin.
The Bible is torn to shreds when exposed by science and technology. It's only human nature to think that we are something more than a product of evolution. It's far easier to accept that you come from the greatest power in the Universe than it is to come to the realization that your existence is due to nothing more than near perfect primordial conditions.
Gotta love Slashdot moderation!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Since the Bible is a book of religion and not a history book, and since some of the stories like "Adam and Eve" and "Noah and the Ark" could have been handed down for eons before they were ever transcribed to writing, these early Bible stories may be hundreds of thousands of years older than recorded history. The actual water depth, and mountain height could be wrong, and even the name of the mountain could be wrong. However, a flood event is recorded in many cultures other than just the bible. So, perhaps something happened that is not outside the laws of nature, but still is within the events of the Bible as a book of religion. There may be an ark on some mountain, and there may be an "Ark of the Covenant" somewhere. The existance or non-existance of either will not explain nor disprove any parts of a "book of religion". Discovery of something, like the remnants of an ark, will give historians and scientists something to talk about. Being able to date parts of a boat back to about 1-5 million years would really give some credulance to the flood story, regardless of how it happened, yet it would not change the "miracle" event as recorded in the Bible. It's easy to believe in science. It's hard to believe in miracles.
Science, is that what this is? I thoght it was more along the lines of quackery. And Researchers I didn't see anything about researchers in the cnn post. The article says ...A joint U.S.-Turkish team of 10 explorers plans to make the arduous trek up... these are explorers. Explorers may be scientists and/or researchers but they are not necessarily so.
And what about the sponsors "Daniel P. McGivern, president of Shamrock- The Trinity Corporation" Hm... Shamrock, Trinity Corparation. This sounded like a Christian organization to me. So I did some quick checking.
Here is an interesting quote of Mr McGivern "There is value in suffering. We need only look to Christ's death for proof." Read more here
If you are not yet convinced of Mr McGivern's religious leanings check this page where he attacked the movie Dogma because it "openly blasphemes God, defames all organized religion, and particularly mocks Catholic teachings" What's wrong with this guy? Hey it's only a movie right?
Haven't had enough yet; two more links that show Mr McGivern's religious leanings. One at Christian Answers and one at Priests For Life.
I find it very disappionting that a major media outlet like CNN is covering this bullshit. Also, I know it's Tuesday but aren't there better stories to post on ./ :~)
But you should judge for yourself whether any of this is enough proof of false affirmations in the Bible. The point of skepticism is that there is nothing "uncontestable" in human knowledge. Undeniable beliefs are, and always will be, the realm of religion. Of course, if you start with an all-powerful God (so powerful that can even make logical contradictions become true) as an axiom, the outcomes can be wide indeed. But I wouldn't call them rigorous.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Here's a clue.
The goal: to enter what they believe to be a mammoth structure some 45 feet high, 75 feet wide and up to 450 feet long that was exposed in part by last summer's heat wave in Europe.
There sure are a lot of God-haters here on /. We gots ourselves a regular ol' S & G right here.
checking for libvirus... no
ERROR, libvirus.so not found, terminating
[javac] 100 errors
"I'll take this baboons head that I find over here....and place it on this humans body I find over heeeeeeeeere....and BEHOLD... HOMO SHAQULLIS!! Notice the primate sinus cavities!"
"Or that reforesting the Earth would have taken hundreds of thousands, if not million of years."
Well tress can live underwater for many years, because of the oxygen in the water.
Salt water might be a different story though.
TruePunk | Games
Did you have in mind "facts" like "the Earth is the center of the solar system", or "pi is equal to three"?
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
So feel free to take what I've said as you will. I can assure you, though, that the translation "it is finished" is at least as valid as "the debt is paid" if not a more accepted translation of what Jesus says.
By the way, all this comes by means of analysis from myself, a second year Greek student at the University of Illinois, so you could probably ask most people who know Greek and they could confirm what I have written here.
Words change their meaning over time. Sometimes quickly sometimes globally and especially locally. Ask a Brit what a fag is and he will tell you something completely different than an American. Only 40 years ago gay only meant happy, yet today its usage overwhelmingly means homosexual. Your understanding of ancient Greek cannot be trusted to be accurate. I don't think anyone's can, especially not for the hairs you are splitting. To deny this obvious truth would be to embrace intellectual dishonesty.
I find it disturbing that so many humans are infected with this incredible hubris that leads them to believe there's a being that knows everything down to the spin and location of every sub atomic particle but is intimately concerned with these relatively microscopic humans on this sand grain of a planet. You elevate your status unduly.
Have some perspective.
Now the interesting part is that Christianity is predicated on the assumption that the Bible is the infallible word of God.
No, it isn't; that's a [common] myth. Christianity is predicated on the assumption that the Bible is the inspired Word of God - the Word of God that contains a core of essential, timeless truth (transcendent, objective truth) that is not found anywhere else.
While it's true that there are some groups that do believe the Bible is the infallible Word of God (primarily American Protestant fundamentalists, it seems), that's a pretty tough position to defend, as there are a few notable contradictions, disputes in geneologies and histories, etc. in the text.
What's important to Christianity is not that every word of every page is accurate but rather that the essential claims of the Bible are true - namely that there is a God who created the world (whatever form that creation actually took), that there was a man in first century Palestine named Jesus who was a fully-human, fully-God man who was without sin and was crucified and resurrected, etc. And it is those claims that Christianity asserts that the Bible is correct in. The Bible would be correct in these even if you think (as some modern scholars do) that the stories of Jesus in the Gospels are more of a narrative construction than a historical depiction (as long as you maintain that the narrative constructions still have a historical basis!). N. T. Wright, who is widely regarded as one of the top scholars on the New Testament, has written a number of books on this topic.
There are wildly different ways to read the Bible, and it's not essential to orthodoxy that you accept the Bible as the infallible Word of God. I think that few of the Church Fathers would have held a view of infallibility, and thus I don't think that the truth of Christianity is either predicated on or compromised by the denial of that position.
Until the Mt. St. Helen eruption, geologists didn't seriously consider that sedimentation layers could be formed almost instantly.
Where is that fact published?
In the bible?
There are several examples of "quick" sedimentation. Lahars are just one of them. And there are several mapped (i.e., identified and recorded) Mt. St. Helens lahars. All of them were mapped DECADES before the 1980 eruption.
Fundementalist Christianity: Pounding falsehoods into pseudoscience.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
> It never ceases to amaze me how emotional people get when someone sets out to prove or disprove some aspect of religious history - it's almost as if their egos need it not to be true...
Or need it to be true. The biggest problem I have with this is in extrapolation. There is a horde of folks who will look at pictures of a boat found on Ararat and say that it's proof positive that the Bible is correct, in everything. If you think that's not true, I say that it's already happened. I can't tell you how many people looked at the discovery of Nineveh and stated that the existence of the city meant that all of the Biblical stories about it were true, when the discovery of the city did nothing to provide direct proof of those stories. Discovering the Ark of Noah will trigger just as much furor, without proving anything at all. I don't really have a problem with folks going to Ararat and looking for a boat. I have a problem when those people purport to be doing "good science" when in reality they seem to have a strong religious agenda, because all they'll do is muddy the water even more than it already is. If they find nothing, it'll prove nothing, and if they find something that could be proof, then it'll just polarize opinion. Heck, look at how much controversy still surrounds the Shroud of Turin.
Virg
Many, but certainly not all.
Einstein was a practicing, orthodox Jew. His verbally stated goals, as a scientist (to paraphrase), were to "understand the mind of G-d".
Arthur C. Clarke seems to share this to a large degree.
Just a couple of interesting examples.
mindslip
Christianity relies on the accuracy of the Bible. If you start doubting certain passages and disregarding others, the entire deck of cards comes crashing down. How can the word of God be inaccurate? If you can ignore certain parts, why not all of it?
It's an incorrect assumption that "doubting certain passages and disregarding others" causes the deck of cards of Christianity to fail. That view seems to implicitly depend on Christianity drawing its truth claims solely from Scripture, which is does not and never has. Orthodox Christianity has always relied on a balance of Scripture, theology, and philosophy to make its truth claims.
It's entirely possible to doubt certain passages while not doubting others. One passage being erroneous doesn't imply at all that any others are erroneous or invalid - that would be a slippery slope. Christianity does not stand on the one leg of the Bible any more than physics stands on the one leg of the laws of thermodynamics.
What people often mean by questions like, "If you can ignore certain parts, why not all of it?" is usually something like, "If you disbelieve that the story of Noah is a historical fact, why should the story of Jesus be any different?" And to answer that question, we turn to a variety of sources in textual criticism, archaeology, ancient history, and so forth, which have demonstrated the validity of the New Testament texts beyond [I think] what is required to meet the criteria of the 'principle of sufficient reason.' (Whew - that's a mouthful!)
Put more simply, what I'm getting at is this: Christianity relies on the Truth - not the accuracy - of the Bible. Truth in this context is defined as "the revelation of God to humanity through the Scriptures." Truth so defined includes things like the revelation of Jesus Christ, the revelation of the creation of the world by God (irregardless of the specific method employed for that creation), and so forth. Christianity does depend on that Truth, but thus far (2000 years into in) there have been no silver bullets to disprove Christianity's claims on these points.
What I am suggesting is that I think it's erroneous and fallacious to assert that Christianity's validity is somehow contingent on the accuracy of the Bible. You are, of course, free to disagree.
reference: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12 977,1073305,00.html
"During the first three years of the project some 210,000 species of marine life have been noted, including 600 new species of fish."
It is said that we have only explored 10% of our oceans, meaning that 210,000 species is pretty small number.
Double that to 420,000 numbers of species for male and female pair, assuming most are not a sexual, and take into account the amount of water and space each species would need to surive, and not taking into consideration the technology needed to keep many of these species alive (pressure, clean water etc), How could this be done?
Reference: http://www.sp2000.org/
Someone explain to me how this could have been done, and Ill start beliving your faith, until then its nothing but false truths, lies, and a form of control, nothing more.
TruePunk | Games
What flamebait.
The whole point of the ancient ziggurat, was to put the person who climbed it closer to heaven. I suggest you do a Google search and read about the history of the ziggurat.
And in the future, read the comments before reading their responses. It may make the responses more understandable.
Atheism simply means without belief in god. Agnosticism is a belief that knowledge of god is inherently unattainable. Everyone is either a theist or an atheist. You either have a belief in god or gods or you don't. Knowledge does not equal belief. If you are an agnostic then you are either an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist.
People commonly like to think that atheism only means an active disbelief in god, the insistence that there cannot be one. People who insist on such usage typically have a bias against the word atheism and wish to position themselves on some sort of mythical middle ground that only exists by misusing the words atheism and agnosticism.
see http://about.atheism.com
the skeptics bible is hardly shutting the door on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the bible :)
.h tml
i'll take the first point from each of those links, and offer a naive rebuttal:
bad science, 1:
The Genesis 1 account also conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In this account the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. From science, we know the true order of events was just the opposite. 1:1-2:3
The problem here is two fold. One, it is assuming that our idea of science accurately reflects reality. Science is always the "current best idea" about something, until a better idea comes along. The stated assumption here is that science is "true", which is in itself completely incorrect.
In any case, I understand methods by which the age of things on earth is estimated (U235/U238 ratios, carbon dating, etc) and find no fundamental problem with those methods.
based on the techniques we have for dating things, it would appear that this account is inconsistant with our own measurements.
On the other hand, this account says that each of these events took place on successive days.
Why be willing to buy that this account is literally accurate and the creation of fossil evidence or uranium deposits in earth are beyond gods control, but that he can make planets and stars willy nilly in just a matter of "days" ?
Indeed, from the skeptics bible you see this link: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/stars _made.html
which they interpret as meaning that the stars came before the earth.
i guess my point here is that genesis is an account of when god got around to making things. its clearly on a timeline that only makes sense to god (making/filling the earth took longer than making the sun and all the stars, for instance), and there's nothing that says "i made the earth to look 1 day older than the sun", it just says "made the earth". Perhaps part of creating the earth and the stars was to make them with explicit age indicators, so that our ideas about science and the elements and what not could be properly developed. Ultimately, its not my problem to solve.
IOW, why is the use of uranium dating or star aging a reason to dispute a story that says "it took me 1 day to make all the stars in the universe"
Link 2:
on the subject of how many people jesus appeared to:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/ 11_or _12.html
This doesn't seem contradictory to me.
Where it says "the twelve", presume that it is referring to "the disciples" as a name, not as a count of bodies. Perhaps it could have just as easily been written as "the disciples".
With that interpretation, the "ten" case just says "thomas, called didymus, was not with them"
There is no explicit of a number in that case.
In the "11" scenarios, it says "the eleven" in all three corroborating versions.
For the "12" scenario, it just says "the 12", which one can interpret as meaning "the disciples", again, not by reading it as a literal value, but as a name for the group. There is no mention that "all of the 12" or "the complete set of 12" or "all people whom were disciples".
Keep in mind that there are 5 separate accounts being compared here. 3 of them agree literally. The other 2 of them can be made to agree if you use "the disciples" and "the 12" interchangably, as i beleive is often done in the bible.
Link 3:
God says that if Adam eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then the day that he does so, he will die. But later Adam eats the forbidden fruit (3:6) and yet lives for another 930 years (5:5). 2:17
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/day
An easy interpretation of this is that his death was spiritual. More accurately, i think the reading of this that specifies that he ha
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
First, how can I pass up suggesting that Justin Timberlake is the greatest evil that currently exists!?
There's no doubt that "religion" has been blamed for more deaths than smallpox. If you don't believe me, ask the Jews in Auschwitz. The truth is somewhat different. The real culprit is cultural differences and the fundamentally evil nature of all mankind. Christ never ordered his followers to kill non-believers. God ordered the Israelites to slaughter people on several occasions. On other occasions, God allowed his chosen people to be slaughtered and enslaved. It's hard for men to understand that. Especially when they've been "given over to pleasure-seeking, immorality, perversion, idleness". If you are referring to "belief in some kind of afterlife" when you refer to religion, then how CAN you define evil? If there is no afterlife and this life is all there is why would you bother defining evil? If there is nothing after death, then ultimately everything you do will be totally futile.
If there is nothing after this life, why would you try to "improve" your existence? Ultimately your efforts will be futile and you will grow old, feeble and die, if you don't check out sooner! No matter how much you accomplish, what diseases you cure, what programs you write, how many girlies you shag (or whatever it is that you shag...) ultimately it won't matter at all. Why don't you just kill everyone that bothers you... or just kill everyone period? It won't matter, nothing will last and after you're dead you won't care...
......Or could it be that deep down inside, you know there's actually something afterwards and you're just being an immature, rebellious child? I once heard a pastor tell someone who had stopped going to church because "it was full of hypocrites" to "come on in, we can always use one more!"
Christ loves all mankind, even scum like me! He died for my sins so that I won't be banished from the presence of God for all time. He did it from obedience and love. His greatest agony was being separated from God on the cross.
Go see the Passion of the Christ. Sure it's a movie, and sure Mel Gibson doesn't get it all exactly right, but it's a deeply moving film about the love Christ expressed for all of us!
NB: We don't get 70 eternal virgins to deflower continuously when we die, even if we do sacrifice ourself by killing infidels.
> Then they tried to convince me that the "speediest way to your home is through the planet core". I said "But the core is molten rock, with lots of uranium and fission and crap going on! I'd never survive!"
A little imagination, please! There are spots all over anyplace on Earth named "Crying Falls" or "Ladderback Ridge" or "The Devil's Left Nipple" or some nonsense. Is it so hard to believe there's a big, deep underwater cave on Naboo named "The Planet Core" that turns out to go under some intervening land mass such that the fastest way from the Gungan city to the capital (by watercraft) is through said-same cave?
Think, people, think. If we don't plug the holes in George Lucas's plots, who will?
Virg
i certainly didn't mean to point anyone at the idea of religious relativism :)
my comments basically revolve around people's objections, based on their own limited understanding, to events depicted in the bible.
one of the other axioms under evaluation is that the bible is inerrant. if one buys that, there's not a lot of room for religious relatavism.
furthermore, there's the self-referential aspect of this in the bible. the bible says its the unaltered word of god. If you beleive anything in the bible, it's hard to ignore the part where it says "part of beleeiving this book is beleiving that its been unaltered"
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
This will be technically offtopic, but so is almost half of the postings here (not that I mind - lots of fun to be found).
Here's some gristle for you religionists out there -- I'm not calling you Christians, for its rather silly to give southern American fundamentists the impression that they represent THE Christianity.
Here we have the story of das Boot that survived the wrath of god about a dozen generations after the earth was created.
Apparently god, a supernatural superpowerful spirit that refers to itself in the plural, decides that the entire world, except for this one family, was too "evil". He decides to kill every last thing on the plate (not planet - its flat), while Noah races against time before the god kills him along with everything else before the deadline. Fair's fair; if Noah is too slow, EVERYTHING dies. The god is a bit of a sportsman here. Move it or lose it, human!
Now, here's the thing. This god apparently wants more than anything else to be flattered. To be begged, cajoled, importuned, deferred to,have animals sliced up and charcoaled (a bit of a Texan). People just aren't properly on their knees (both meanings intended).
The angry god kills everyone. Noah and his terrified and emotionally destroyed brood find dry land and tell the god that they will do what he wants, please don't hurt us.
The now appeased god promises never to do it again.
Now, what is the difference between a Luciferian embodiment of all evil and this murdering psychotic all-powerful spirit?
If I lived in a world controlled by such a lunatic power, I'd deny its divinity and work to take the motherfucker DOWN every minute of my life!
The true measure of a god is to compare its actions with that of a good man.
What kind of man would murder a plate of people and animals because they weren't paying attention to him?
A man who ain't no god, that for sure. And I expect better behavior from all-powerful Yahweh -- or it's just an evil demonic power, to be opposed at all costs.
"This may be why many scientist are athiests..."
For someone who classifies himself as a scientist, using a undefined, quasi-statistic such as "many scientists are athiests" without any support for the claim seems somewhat in appropriate. Science and Religion are unrelated, which is many many scientists aren't athiests. I know for certain that your statistic does not hold true for my test sample of one.
I apologize for the politically incorrect usage of "himself" when I do not know your gender. I am only using a default male gender; I am not assuming that since you claim to be a scientist that you are a man.
sure it does. Unless you wrote every whitepaper ever, you're *believing* what the scientists tell you. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but the fact is unless you did all the research and experimentation yourself you are believing the word of somebody else. And any real scientist would be the first to tell you science is far from infallible.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Anyone have the GPS coordinates for Noah's Ark? I'm looking for a new geocache to hit.
The Great Flood was inspired by the creation of the Black Sea. Before 5600BC, it used to be a much, much smaller lake below sea level. In short order, the Mediterranean broke through and flooded vast amounts of farmland. This is the kind of event that could trigger enough content for an epic. Unfortunately, the best reference I can find on this at the moment is this amazon link.
There have been similar studies done on other events, such as how Moses parted the Red Sea. It was on Discover or one of those shows, where some university was attempting to explain how a specific combination of high winds and tidal forces combined with the shape of the bottom of the Red Sea could have possibly temporarily cleared a wide channel/sandbar across the way. Sounds a bit more tenuous, and I can't find an online reference, but it seems plausible that someone with mastery of astronomical calendaring back then could have predicted an extremely low tide and used to to pull off such a feat.
The Bible was certainly written over interesting times... back when books were made by hand of expensive materials (vellum doesn't come cheap, back at a time when wealth was expressed in livestock). Having something written down in a book laborously by monks was just as well as having it carved in stone -- it had enough proofreading and checking to have been taken as the ultimate truth. There was a time when judges used to literally carry around The Book of The Law, and pass judgements based strictly on what was written.
After inventions like the Gutenberg press made books, journals, and newspapers a commodity, did people realize that what was written was not always true, and begin to look at such things critically as they should.
For some reason, the religious communities have managed to shield their sacred texts from the same sort of transformation in the way we deal with sources of information. But it's doing what they're good at, aligning and organizing people along some lines of belief to accomplish some goal that they probably wouldn't have attained on their own or if they were liberals :P
I like the way Neal Stephenson presents this kind of idea in Snow Crash. A bit exaggerated and fantastical, but altogether tangible and chilling.
Beyond the issue that scientific "facts" are constantly being revised as we improve our understanding, no one can ever really "prove" anything about the physical universe - if anything in the universe is absolute, we'll never know it for sure.
In other words, if you theorize a universal law of gravity, you cannot prove that it applies universally. What are you going to do, test every particle of mass in the universe? You could take it on faith (believe) that it applies universally, but that's not necessary. You can just *assume* that it applies universally, unless some evidence shows otherwise. Maybe the theory is right, or maybe not. If it's the best we've got, then that's what we use.
[javac] 100 errors
The Shakers believed that the only people who had a first hand relationship with the divine were those who had what appeared to be epileptic seizures. Some scholars believe that St. John was a very pious man but with a respect for an era he did not live and a particular taste for strange mushrooms which created his perception of a first hand relationship with God.
I have enormous respect for the work of Harry Houdini, though I don't think I will ever have a first hand relationship with him. (Even though he has said he will try to contact this world from the afterlife). I think that many people mistake total respect for their beliefs and the beliefs of their parents as faith or even a first hand relationship with a divine power.
This isn't even including the superstar phenomenon. Many people (as evidenced by the weekly world news and national enquirer) feel they encounter a superstar in their supermarket or laundromat. It may not even really be the person they think it is, but suddenly because they think they encountered Harry Connick Jr, Ginger Lynn, or Tony Randall they become this person's biggest fan espousing the brilliance of the superstar's work even if they were oblivious to the person's work previously.
What's even more deceptive (and I really only see this in religion, politics, and tv infomercials) are those people who can't build the trust in something for themselves so they try to convince everyone else of the veracity even though they don't believe it themselves. After they've convinced enough people, they may start believing what they are so heavily evangelizing themselves even though they have no more reason to believe it other than all these other people do.
While I believe that you may have a significant faith in Jesus Christ. You may trust in the beliefs of your parents. You may even dream or meditate or feel you've been touched by Jesus. You won't build a first hand relationship with Jesus unless Jesus is able to speak to you the same way your milkman does. And barring your being the wandering jew or this being the start of the apocolypse, that isn't going to happen.
All I'm saying is that it's much easier to trust in science since I can verify geometric proofs and repeat many of the foundation experiments with a chemistry set, wheels, inclined planes, and so forth. As I get older, I can go back and verify some of the foundational assumptions that our teachers handed to us on faith. True, I personally haven't seen the veracity of the double slit experiment or of measuring mercury's odd orbit, but it's much easier to put my faith in a group of independent people who've reached similar results than it is something like the Bible which seems to undermine its own truth the further along one reads.
I'm not a religion hater. As I said before, I know that science doesn't attempt to answer the same questions as theology. But I find a theology that can't adapt to reality (explanations of the earth's surface, ratio of a circle's diameter to circumference, and understanding of people's bodily functions) to be incompatible with reality and no more relevant to my personal theological questions than the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
But I hear people say that if religion is taken to be so fluid that there is no unwavering foundation like the Bible or God that the whole just falls apart. That's true if you are trying to manipulate people and subjugate them, but it's not true if you are trying to find answers (and heck sometimes even the questions) in theology. Where do we start to look for truth if the Bible has errors? That's probably the first question to ask ourselves.
This is exactly like what happens on Discovery channel these days. When it comes to biblical myth or about the pyramid shit, they make a postulation and then go about proving it by any stretch of the imagination. Get real guys. Bible is just a creation of some imaginative mind. There ain't no god who came down and wrote it. Isn't that what the western world imbibed about Indian civilization ??
It bothers me because the unit of measure was a cubit. This is a measure that they are comfortable working with and I believe stating approximate half or quarter values of a cubit. I can see understand that they may not have said the fountain was 31.4 units in diameter but it's harder to overlook a measurement rounding of 31 instead of 31 and 1/2 cubits. It's even more silly that they were off by almost 1.4 units.
And it's not just because they are ancient. The Greeks had a value of pi to at least five decimal places. Of course they understood what pi was. The writers of the bible were just trying to observe reality.
I appreciate your willingness to overlook such errors when trying to rationalize these discrepencies, but I'm not as patient. This is the same compilation of ancient scrollwork that says we should kill homosexuals, that we should mutilate our genitals, that we should burn animal sacrifices, that we should kill rather than understand each other. If such a basic truth as trying to observe a temple that was built is in error, I have much more grave reservations about the less verifiable truths that I'm supposed to accept without question.
But I only started with pi because this is a geeky board. There are so many other places in the Bible which just scream out to me that it's either inconsistent with my understanding of reality or it's inconsitent with itself. But without going into another long, off-topic, and unwelcome diatribe on all of these things that hit me personally as "why does this seem wrong?"
It's from me, and one of the rare occasions when someone else smiles(?) at my humor.
T'aint such a good thing to be witty on
Keep putting in the hard yards,
T&K.
Political language
Arafat is the leader of Fatah, a terrorist organization which contains several smaller terrorist organizations like the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade (Tanzim). Hamas is a competing terrorist organization that Arafat only wishes he could control.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
And how do you know that kangaroos came from Australia in the first place? I'm seeing too much of this type of logic in this discussion. Don't assume that things are now like they were before the flood. We don't assume that science is now like it was before the dark ages. Let me give you a circular argument that is perfectly true. When things change, things change.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
It says it on the internet, so it must be true. also, the author of that page says "I believe", not "it is certain". The very fact that there needs to be a webpage explaining the camel and needle thing is evidence for my original point that it is open to interpretation and is certainly not meant to be considered fact.
I do, however, back down. I accept that it is unlikely that bad translation is an issue, but I do forward that reading the original text (provided that one can understand it) would be more exact than reading a translation where someone has had to phrase things appropriately for the target language.
I just posted this in response to another similar comment but same thing applies Atleast in the bible I have it says fish, it's just a common thought to link it to a whale Jonah 1:17 - Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. www.bible.com to look it up.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
.
No, they aren't taking my money, but they're definitely taking someone else's money. Not only that, but I have to live in a world and witness things turn to shit due to religion.
I believe that theism is actually a barrier to our continued existance. Theism prevents people from assuming responsibiltiy for themselves, their actions and their communities. Most theists have an 'afterlife myth' of some sort, this afterlife becomes the goal. The hear and now -- this world -- becomes a means to an ends. No longer are theists concerned with the responsibilities they have here, but how do they use the "here" to get to $afterlife.
Theism is a barrier to human progress and our continued existance, only rational people can address reality and participate in constructing a sustainable future. The theists capable of wild flights of fancy (obviously), they cannot be "depended on", singularily or collectively.
If you dont realize that "Religion is a mere matter of Geography" than what manner of predictable (read: reasonable) behaviour can we depend on you to manifest? What *unreasonable* behaviour? Stoneing Heretics? $witch Hunts? Crusades? Sacrifices? Terrorism? Oppression?
Ack... heh I misread and posted a comment to something you weren't even talking about... ya... Jonah, I'm an idiot, I apologize =(
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
The shroud of Turin was carbon dated, twice with controls. The controls were pieces of fabric from different centuries. The controls dated as expected. Plus the shroud dated to the 14th century.
However there still is lots of spin of how the carbon dating method could have failed, or succeeded. There seems to be a new TV special practically every year rehashing the old arguments and adding the new.
Its the whole "God willing" thing that gets me. If they don't find anything, they'll say God wanted it to remain hidden, thus proving absolutely nothing.
You are assuming people in biblical times had a sense of humour. Judging from the Bible, they don't!
So why was this such a surprise to God who supposedly is omniscient?
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
Sorry, I did mean to put line breaks in. Here's the real deal, though I guess it's too late already.
/. readers, I'm guessing, are scientifically minded. So they believe in all the things that science has accomplished. Good work. Hooray for you. Then there are those who believe that a God exists and has made everything we see, and created laws that science is discovering and utilizing. Good work, hooray for you. If you were really tolerant, and if you were really following what you believe you should be doing, then you'd have a solid discussion with them based on the facts, based on what you've seen, etc. etc. But NOOO, all we see are lousy jokes and other definitive statements - "the Bible is crap," "the Bible has contradictions," etc. etc.
/. readers can force Christians onto a pedestal ("You have to be perfect, you Christian moron, and aren't you supposed to LOVE everybody?!") and cannot subject themselves to any sort of standards.
/. to the approval (and subsequent positive moderation) of their knowingly uninformed, uneducated peers.
This is definitely my second or third post on Slashdot. After not commenting for a long time, I think I'll step in for a bit.
So what is this tolerance stuff that I keep hearing about? As in, tolerate gay marriage. Tolerate all religions. Tolerate points of view that are different from your own. And yet when I come on Slashdot and read this article, and all the (I read at +4) comments, my face turns sour because of the horrendous amount of crap that I see from people here.
Look, you don't believe Christianity, fine. You think the ark idea is crap, and that science proves yadda yadda yadda, fine. At least have the guts to refrain from bashing those who do. It takes a mature individual to let people have their say without exploding in anger or cracking up in laughter. You have to understand that most people have developed for themselves a framework for how they view life. Most
I just don't understand how some
If you're going to argue that the Bible has bad teachings, or that it has contradictions, read the Bible yourself before you make a decision. Actually, don't do just that - be a real student and go and find commentaries from Christian writers. Find commentaries from non-Christian writers. (Why commentaries? Have you ever really been able to explore a book without seeing what lots of people thought about it?) Read it with an unbiased eye. If you think you've found a contradiction, then see what the other side has to say. Read it for yourself. If you end up unconvinced the Bible is true, then great. If you don't find contradictions, then great too. Decide for yourself what you want to believe.
What astounds me is how FEW people actually take that offer. Personally, I don't know of anyone who has. Why? Because they're lazy. Too lazy to go and find out things for themselves. In the meantime, they (non-Christians AND Christians) rely on a few lousy articles and information (which are debunked by different people, depending on who you ask), and then post knowingly uninformed, uneducated entries on
Watch people read this comment and ask, "Is the author of this comment a Christian?" If the answer is yes, they immediately go and trash it because suddenly none of my arguments and comments make any sense. "Those moronic Christians, what a bunch of idiots, they must not believe in science..." right?
So maybe I am, or maybe I'm not. I will say that I've taken up my own challenge. That should be enough for you.
"If it comes from a source that I think is credible,"
then you believe it. The word "belief" doesn't automatically invoke religion. I believe that when I go out into the parking lot my car will be sitting there because the battery is dead. I have no *proof* of this, my car could have been towed or stolen or destroyed. But I believe that it will be in the parking lot when I walk out the door. So far I'm batting 1000.
"A scientist *thinks* that the earth is round, because somebody else explained it and it makes sense."
OK, now I see the problem. You have a semantic hangup with the word "believe". Fine, use the word "think". It's the same thing. If you *think* something is true, then you believe it to be true. And if you believe something to be true, it's because you think that it's true. Christians *think* the Bible makes sense, this is the same thing as saying they believe it.
And let's not forget that the actual scientist thinks that the Earth is round because of measurements and observations he's made. You, having heard the scientist and found him credible, choose to *believe* what he is saying, since you didn't make these measurements and observations and have no first-hand scientific knowledge that would lead you to that conclusion independantly.
Face it man, a vast portion of who you are is what you've been told. When you were five, did you not cross the street without looking both ways because you had personally experimented and obtained unfavorable results - or did you *believe* your mother when she told you it was a bad idea? Did you personally try talking to the nice stranger in the trenchcoat with the candy and find out through personal experimentation that he was a child molestor - or did you *believe* your parents and teachers when they told you he was a sicko? We all hold that murder is wrong (hopefully) not because we've tried it and been dissatisfied with the results, but because other people who have been involved with actual murders tell us it tends to not work out too well, and we choose to *believe* them. We subscribe to the theory of relativity not because we've proved it ourselves - we *believe* Einstein.
There are two sources of knowledge in the world - what you prove yourself to be true and what you accept from others to be true.
That's why, when asked a question to which one might not definately know the answer but is pretty sure, a common response is "I believe so", or "I believe not". Those are not inherently religious statements.
Anybody who tells anybody anything is either believed, disbelieved, or held in reserve judgement. (assuming they speak the same language, have the same mental capacity, blah blah blah).
Don't like the word? Don't use it. But it has a well-established meaning completely divorced from faith or religion. But hey, look it up yourself, don't *believe* me...
They will never stop until somebody makes the
That's a very revisionist reading of the Bible. Now, I don't think that their is anything wrong with revisionism, but it would seem to me that religion of any sort would not be amenable to revision, given that they are predicated on the in-faith belief of unverifiable 'truths.' In truth, modern Christianity as embraced by the Western world is more of a moral philosophy than a religion per-se.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Also check out the definitive list of creationist claims, especially "CH400-CH599: Flood" for good answers to the most common creationist claims about the flood.
Going back to the "Major Problems" article, take for example "6. Implications of a Flood," where the author mentions:
- How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?
- Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?
- How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.
- Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?
- Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]
And many, many more reasonable questions that should be answered by anyone claiming that sometime within the past 10k years a global flood covered the entire earth.On the flip side- one can certainly do a thought experiment of what would happen if a "space ark" landed on a planet otherwise empty of land life. After 10k years- what would one expect to see on this planet?
- The "diversity gradient" of land animals should start near the landing site and fade out from there.
- Even the largest continents- if disconnected from the landing zone- would show signs of "Island Biogeography". That is, there'd be far less diversity of animals relative to the "landing zone continent." A larger percentage of mammals on the disconnected continents would be flying or swimming mammals, or the descendents of tiny mammals that could have arrived on vegetative rafts.
- While non-swimming/flying animals could be brought by humans, one would expect a paucity of non-edible animals. The polynesians brought domesticated animals from island to island: they for some reason didn't bring tigers or Komodo dragons.
Our planet does not look at all like this hypothetical "all life came from one ark" planet. And in our history, the paradigm of "life spread out from a single garden or ark" was severely cracked long before Darwin. Biologists/explorers of the time (almost all creationists) strongly wanted the distribution of animals to match Genesis: it didn't, no matter how hard they tried.In the case of the scientist believing that the world is round, the scientist is not taking this fact on faith - it's an explanation that makes sense and that meshes well with everything else that the scientist has seen and learned about the world around him. The scientist accepts it as true and works from there, until he learns otherwise. In the case of a religous person believing in the bible, believing that God dumped a miraculous amount of water on the planet requires absolute faith. It requires believing in something that *cannot* be tested, that is outside of the bounds of the observable universe. That's a very different kind of belief, and I would argue that it's not a very useful tool for living in the universe.
In my previous post I was purposely using a narrow definition of the word in order to make my point, but I suppose that just makes my point confusing.
You say that all knowledge comes from yourself or from others, which I agree with. You also say that anything you hear from others is either believed or not believed. This statement I either agree with or disagree with, depending on which definition of "believe" you are using.
It's the difference between "I believe that's a storm blowing in." and "I believe in ghosts." You hear people make the claim that everything requires belief, but they don't qualify what kind of belief they're talking about. I assume they mean the second (I believe in ghosts) kind of belief, in which case they're wrong. I can apply the scientific method and easily come up with evidence that such and such a scientific article is "believable." I highly doubt that any amount of effort could produce scientific evidence of ghosts. If it did, then ghosts would be outside of the realm of the second-kind-of-belief (see above), and faith would no longer be required to "believe" in them. In other words, nothing that is actually real (interacts with the universe) requires second-kind-of-belief for justification.
Now you see why I like to use only one of the definitions of "believe!" Maybe we need another word... in fact, we probably already have one. Maybe there's a better way to put it?
[javac] 100 errors
Why, it seems to be one of the least trollish posts in this discussion. What is your reasoning. (I'll assume you have a rationale, otherwise you'd be the troll.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
It's kind of funny and sad reading threads like this. One side tries to use something like this to demonstrate that God exists. The other side uses whatever is found (or not) to demonstrate that the believers are a bunch of kooks.
Think of it this way. My 12-year-old son knows I exist. I see him on a regular basis. We talk and do things together.
Someone may try to prove (or disprove) my existence by searching for the old 1961 Dodge Lancer that I drove in college. (that was the coolest car!) They would likely find the records of the car, and may even find the rusted out shell in a junkyard.
To my son, this would be foolishness. He knows me. He doesn't have to lean on second-hand evidence to prove or disprove my existence.
It's the same with God. He can be known directly. I know Him. He's awesome. He's changed my life.
So, if you want to prove I exist, don't go looking for that old Lancer. It's the same with God.
No matter what the expedition finds (or doesn't find) my relationship with God isn't impacted. I know He's real, because I know him
means to base an argument on a assumption that is entangled with the conclusion.
The evidence is abundantly clear that in the last 6,000 years the world has seen dramatic climatic change due to a waning ice age. Moreover tectonic action has moved continents around and exposed land to various conditions (aquatic, stormy, dry, etc.) over much longer periods of time which some choose to explain by "flood" of more recent time.
The use of erosion evidence to support the flood conclusion presupposes that these natural processes cannot be the more likely explanation. Rather, that the earth really is 6,000 years young, and the land could not have seen these changes in that period of time, which they have derived from the Bible. But the truth of the Bible is the conclusion of the flood argument. That is, if evidence can be found of a flood, then you have "demonstrated" that the Bible must also be true.
But that is a circular argument. That the Bible holds the absolute truth was presupposed, hence "begging the question".
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I debated adding this additional point... Thanks. I didn't want to beat it to death.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
because you couldn't even begin to explain how lions subsisted on plants with their digestive systems and teeth wholly unsuited for consuming it. So what, did they start out with those attributes and then slowly evolve into carnivores, all at the same time?
Oh wait, I thought evolution was bunk.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
7 lions, 7 gazelle. Same problem.
20 lions, 20 gazelle. Same problem.
A lion can eat a gazelle a day.
Of course, the whole "not eating" part isn't mentioned. Seems kind of important to note, in retrospect, don't you think?
The purpose of natural science is to determine the "best model" for the world, wherein this best model is best at predicting events in the past and future yet unknown, while also valuing the simplest of all equivalent choices to a certain degree.
Who cares if you're in the Matrix, if you can't get out? You'd better learn the rules of the game. Hence, science and philosophy.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
My opinions on freewill and evil do not come from strictly a perspective of philosophy or theology, but instead a combination of both. In theology freewill can be broken down into either choosing God's way in a decision or choosing Satan's. Satan is a fallen angel that was banished to Earth when he tried to go against God's will. In theology, Satan is seen to tempt people to choose actions that serve anything except God's will. In this framework God is all good while Satan is all evil. For me personally the problem of evil and freewill rely on other question, why did God create human beings at all? I think that the purpose of human existence is to create a challenge for humans which we must overcome to be worthy of the afterlife. A philosopher named John Hick calls this process of earned worth "the vale of soul-making". Many philosophers, including the great Confucian scholar Xunzi, believe that humankind is inherently evil. In life it seems easier to do "evil" than "good." It is easier to destroy something (today it takes just one bomb!) than create it. It is easier to be selfish than selfless. It is easier to take than to give. I would argue that humanity is not inherently evil based on this empirical evidence. We are just, speaking in the terms of theology, in the cage of God's enemy and we are therefore more inclined/oriented to do evil. In this reasoning, evil is maintained to challenge us as humans to overcome the easier existence of evil. The purpose is best explained by Plato and the allegory of the cave. We are born within a cave (or cage) where shadows of what is real (the shadows are evil) are easy to see and accept as truth. For Plato and myself, the purpose of life is to crawl out of the cave (or cage), an option created by free choice, and find the real truth (as in good or God). Freewill allows humanity to reject God and his path, while God used his/her omnipotence to prevent limits his/her power to over come this choice.
Many philosophers who work on the problem of evil seek to prove that there is a better possible world, one where we are all perfectly good and one where goodness comes naturally. In theology, this reality already occurred in heaven, a place that is all good and a place that has perfectly good beings called angles. Many consider this to be the logically best existence. Yet, it was philosophically perfect world that lead to the creation of the greatest evil, Satan. Satan was allowed to continue to exist on the Earth, yet was never to be let back in heaven. Humans are imperfect creatures in a world of all evil, controlled by the devil. If the same rules apply as in the case with Satan (i.e. the perfect good created the greatest evil) than our existence is to become the greatest good and ascend to heaven in the opposite way that Satan descended. Many philosophers such as JL Mackie who analyze the existence
Open Source Sushi
Was your uncles place by chance a farm before the motor law?
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot
Actually, most scientific theories of the flood are dated around 5,000 B.C. The two I can remember: one says a large buildup of methane under the ocean floor burst, and one says a large lake of today was a vally but a river broke through and flooded it. There was no language with which to pass anything down until 30,000-50,000 B.C.
ResidntGeek
Wow, it's amazing how quickly people will jump on religion and those who believe it.
/. audience.
For some reason, science and religion are seen as mutally exclusive. In reality, one seeks to explain the world around us and the other seeks to explain it's purpose. I, for one, find a life (or a universe for that matter) without purpose to be unsatisfying to say the least.
The shame of it all is that the single greatest proof of God can only be experience by those who seek Him. Only those who have truly opened their minds to the Word can appreciate the impact that it has on their lives.
Sadly, this post, like the few others which proclaim their faith, will be ridiculed and laughed at by most of the
Well, perhaps there was no language we are aware of. And maybe the flood in the scientific theories is not the only one. Not disputing the facts we know, just considering that there are a few hundred thousand years we don't know. Consider what we know about the Aztecs in Central America.
Although I agree with you, I would like to nitpick your sentence here. We do not have the original texts. We probably have exact ancient copies, but we can't tell for certain unless an original is found and identified. No one I have ever heard of has made that claim.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The real point is not whether you call scientific evidence "belief". The real point is that theories that don't have "evidence" have to be taken on faith, even in scientific circles until we can find some evidence. Somethings cannot be explained by science as we know it. Are you sure that your brain or some other part of you does not communicate to others? Can one explain what causes some twins to do things at the same time even when they have no direct communication? Point is that there is lots we don't know and cannot explain.
I don't agree with what I think your saying, but here's the spelling anyway. A profit (prah - fit) is what businesses try to make. A prophet (prah - fet) is one who speaks for God.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
You're both wrong. My cat created your cat months ago.
For more discussions about atheism, check out my journal
Noah's Ark
"The Bible does not say the ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat, but on the mountain range of Ararat. That is exactly where we find this boat shaped object, it is located about fifteen miles south of Mt. Ararat.The names of the surrounding places are interestingly associated with the Biblical account of the flood. The valley is called 'The Valley of Eight', in reference to the eight survivors of the flood, Noah and his wife, their three sons and their wives. A village in the valley translates to 'The Village of Eight',where several giant anchor stones can be found thousands of feet above sea level and hundreds of kilometers from the nearest sea."
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
... between Noah's Ark and Joan of Arc?
Noah's Ark was made of wood; Joan of Arc was Maid of Orleans.
There's a new book out about Krakatoa. Now that was an impressive flood. When the volcano blew up, the resulting wave carried a ship several miles inland. There are pictures. Nobody survived, though.
In the same day, we get an article about people making an expedition to find the Ark, and a new batch of pictures from Titan.
We're bitching that the pictures of anything Ark-related could be doctored, but no one's questionning the pictures from NASA.
Worship the Fish... or DIE!!!
- The Bible does not say the ark landed on Mt. Ararat rather the "mountains of Ararat" (plural, implying somewhere in a mountain range). Genesis 8:4
- Mt. Ararat is a volcano. Volcanic activity likely is harmful to wooden boats (if it were there). Mt. Ararat, Turkey
Those two reasons alone are enough to make a thinking person question either competence or the integrity/motive of these, so called, researchers.Now there are many scoffers of the Bible in this
Furthermore, there is ample evidence that there was indeed a world wide flood if you are honest with yourself. It is that intelectual honesty that most of us have trouble with. As a test of your intelectual honesty I ask you to consider, if you will, whether you hold "scientific" explanations to matters such as the apparent age of the earth, possibility of a world wide flood, etc. to the same level of "proof and evidence" as you do Biblical explanations. When ever you read in your science journal that the age of the universe is 13 billion to 14 billion years old do question the assumptions made or the methods used to determine this? Do you even know what those assumtions and methods are? Are the even resonable? Do they contridict other assumptions or even know facts? Or do you simply point at it and say something along the lines of "See, the Bible would age the Earth at about 6,000 years...but science has proven that it is millions or billions of years old. The Bible is just a myth." (This whole thread has many examples if you are wondering)
I think the honest amoung us would have to say that we never seriously question the science crowd. Oh, we might sometime see if someone else in the scientific community agrees. But even then we will generally dismiss even other scientists if they don't agree with the theory we enspouse. Come on now
Well here is the challenge
This is not a challenge to the squimish amoung you because when you discover the Truth
I expect this will be mod'ed down into obscurity. But maybe not.
Have an Excellent day!
Danny
I know a lot of people who have faith in a creator. Many people have claimed to have had revelations by many creators. Which one do I believe? How many of those "prophets" hear things from their creator for human reasons (eg epilepsy, psychological issues, wealth/power/fraud, social indoctrination/brainwashing)? Many people had complete faith in a creator and then lost it, due to whatever reason. Shouldn't those be just as likely to have had something revealed to them?
Many people have died for their faith- from many different faiths. Which one is right? The one with the largest number of martyrs?
Faith is incompatible with science. That is, faith defined as belief without evidence. Anyone can have faith in the truth. Trouble is, truth is subjective. Science only cares about objective truth. Science supports the theories best backed by evidence. Blind faith loses to evidence every time.
The creation pointing to the creator is circular logic. Assuming the universe is a creation leads to the belief in a creator, which "shows" that the universe is a creation. A creation implies a creator, as long as you're sure about the "creation" part. Also, assuming the universe was created still does not reveal any characteristics of the creator (eg the Christian God, Allah, Visnu, Yaldabaoth).
When are people just going to accept that the Bible is just like the Daily Sport from 2,000 years ago? It's a collection of reports on events, written by people of the time, for people of the time.
There's every possibility that the reports are going to be exaggerated, so a large lake flooding gets reported as God flooding the earth. Don't forget that back then, they didn't have aeroplanes to zip across to the other side of the planet and see all the unaffected land down below. Hell, even now, the reports by Iraqi locals are grossly exaggerated -- just look at Comical Ali!
The funniest argument I've heard from a religious zealout was that God must have existed, otherwise who created the Earth? By the same argument, who existed to created God? And who existed to create whoever created God? Ad infinitum....
James Tait, Programmer and Free Software Advocate
JID: jayteeuk@wyrddreams.org
In what way is this insightful? It's a joke. I know. I posted it!
Does the person that moderated this insightful share a concern that scientists will somehow be able to determine that a Walrus floundered off the beast barge after the Thomson's Gazelles?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
When you believe or think something is true, then you stop considering it. There are NO unimpeachable facts. Every person must work from assumptions to get anything done. I believe in gravity.
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
> Raiders of the Lost Ark isn't a documentary
Note to self: check other films in my collection. Especially "Temple of Doom" which may, as it now turns out, not be about a real temple.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Especially since science is not at all about finding an absolute truth and is forever seeking to discredit its own work as a means to either strengthen the position, or destroy it by replacing it with a new, stronger idea. After all, at one time, Ether was a good explanation for the gap between heavenly bodies. Now, we know better. But, we have things like dark matter that are just kind of stop gap solutions to problems we haven't solved yet. It's a pretty good bet that will be debunked eventually and replaced with a better explanation for extra gravity.
Science doesn't require anymore faith than you have in humanity anyway. The fact is, any goober with a degree in some "scientific" field can come out with a wild theory. That's why other scientists set out to discredit it. If they can't discredit it, you have a pretty good reason to believe it... for now.
The difference between real science and psuedo-science or religion, of course, is that those two things require you to simply have faith in the "truth" that an individual is speaking. Whereas science says, "here, I believe this and I can back it up! Come and get me!", religion says "Uh... here... I believe this, but you just have to believe me, because there's no way to prove what I'm saying".
Big difference in the type of faith science requires and the type of faith religion requires.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
If one could directly observe God, then it would be foolish to doubt God's existance. But if God were there, and could be felt by one of the 5 senses, or even via an additional sense, then why doesn't everyone feel God? I certainly do not feel God. And if I'm handicapped, if I'm third eye blind, then God can kiss my shiny metal ass.
Eat at Joe's.
Assuming something is true for practical purposes, or hoping that something is true because it seems like it *should* be true, are not the same as being absolutely convinced that it is true. We must always remain skeptical of even the most well tested theories, not to mention the ones that don't even have any evidence!
No, I am not sure that my brain doesn't communicate with others via some undiscovered phenomenon. However, it would be stupid of me to assume that it *does* do so, without a good explanation.
As you say, there are lots we don't know and cannot explain. The point of science is to know and explain as much as we can. We shouldn't expect to be able to explain everything, and we also shouldn't go around believing in things that don't have an explanation.
[javac] 100 errors
I wondered if anyone caught that!
I think that's a Geddy Lee lyric, but I can't remember off the top of my head which of 'da boyz' wrote it... the last time I bought a Rush album was on cassette (Superconductor???) and I don't even have a cassette player any more...
This is exactly the problem. People consider the Bible to be, through and through, an authoritative historical document. This is understandable, as the Bible is self-reflexive, instructing its readers to consider its statements to be utter fact, the specific WORD OF GOD. Much of the Old Testament of the Bible is a collection of Semitic MYTHS - and Jews are not the only Semites. There were also Akkadians, Babylonians, Ugarites, Hittites and Sumerians. These myths existed as oral traditions centuries before they were transcribed to print. Fundamentalist believers also don't consider the fact that these MANY different groups of people in the area, all Semitic, might have drawn upon the SAME myths as their neighbors, changing them a little to suit their own people. Anthropologists have provided mountains of academic text on myth-sharing, especially amongst the tribes of North and Central America - (i.e., the pervasive appearance of Coyote and Raven in Aboriginal American myths all over the continent) It wasn't until over a 1,000 years later that these myths were compiled and transcribed to a single volume by a splinter group of Hebrews, the Deuteronomic scholars, who interpreted the myths as being the absolute word of God. Upon completion of the project, entitled the TORAH, the Deuteronomists required that copies of their transcription be reproduced EXACTLY and be implemented as authoritative. The Torah was not only spiritual, but societal LAW. Now, if you go through and actually STUDY OTHER WORKS, my fine Biblical fundamentalists, you may find that similar versions of the Ark Myth appear in Akkadian and Babylonian legends, which in turn draw theirs from Sumerian legends - the oldest of the Semitic civilizations. You'll find the Ark Myth in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which in turns refers to that particular legend as being MUCH older. Here's where the problem lies, my friends and neighbors. People are going to search for Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat because the Bible says it's there. Should we go climbing the mountain ranges of Sweden and Norway looking for the Bifrost Bridge to Valhalla because Norse myths say THEY'RE there somewhere too? They said that Valhalla would be destroyed when the world ended, and you know what? Doesn't look like it's ended yet, so Valhalla MUST be there, right? You know, a huge pile of ancient splinters and fragments of timber may even BE there on Mount Ararat. A more logical explanation beyond the Ark Myth would answer that: the boat, if it exists, was built or put there by people sometime in the past who want to kindle faith in their religion by providing a concrete artifact. If it exists, it'd more likely be the Semitic equivalent of the Shroud of Turin. Because fundamentalists don't want to consider their beliefs to be myths, their arguments become self-reflexive and thus, fallacies of logic. The essence of the monologue we receive from our fundamentalist friends proceeds thusly: "Everything this book says is true. I know this because the book says everything in it is true. It also says the moon is made of green cheese. How do I know the moon is made of green cheese? Because the book says it's made of green cheese, and it also says everything it says is true." -Mekkis (ALSO a Semitic word, thank you! Bonus brownie points go to my fellow Anthro-Nerds who can tell my name's definition the Semitic group who claimed it as their guiding principle.)
I disgree with you when you say "religion says "Uh... here... I believe this, but you just have to believe me, because there's no way to prove what I'm saying". I disagree that religon can't be proven. A person can find out what religion or faith is, the only thing is you can not prove it others. and to know the religion is just soo damn hard that only few people like Mother Theresa are able to find out what religion is. Only sad thing is that you can't know religion from other experiences.. you have to try it your own.... so when you ready .. try to follow what Mother Theresa did .. and I can bet you will know what faith or religion is. Until then .. at least don't say no one knows what religion is.
I really hate that whole line about "Many cultures have stories about a flood".
No shit? A story about a powerful force of nature, huh? Wow. What a coincidence. Because all cultures don't also have stories about the Sun, Moon, wind, earthquakes, drought, thunder, lightning, etc., etc., etc.
The best evidence I've heard to support the Noah flood is proof of a lake flooding pretty quickly. A recent National Geographic had pictures of ~2000 year old houses under the water.
You're talking about the concept of a personal proof. You can convince yourself that looking straight at the sun is healthy just because you say so and you've satisfied the burden of personal proof without satisfying any other proofs. I'm not talking about that. Personal proofs only matter to the person who has them, not to anyone else. Religions don't get confined to a single person, so the concept of personal proof is irrelevant when discussing religion not targetted at oneself.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
In your original post you said that Mary had done the preserving. Although I still find this hard to believe, it makes a lot more sense than the first version. I don't want to offend, but accuracy in posting is key if you want to be taken seriously.
I will agree, though, that there have likely been scriptures lost throughout the ages. There are also plenty of false text that have been written. Choosing extra biblical text to believe must be done with great care (and inspiration of the Lord).
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I am not saying religions is just confined to one person , but the truth is in the eye of beholder.
Good debate, here. But two problems, that I can see.
First, I question the idea that there are two kinds (or more) of "belief". "Belief" is essentially a matter of confidence in the accuracy of your perceptions, and/or conclusions about the world (or "reality") outside of your mind. It is not much different than the "confidence level" we commonly use in statistical analysis in scientific work. Which leads to the second problem: the idea that science involves a qualitatively different kind of "belief". That's simply not true. Same brains, same perceptual apparatus, same cognitive functions. Difference is, "science" is a methodology we've developed to improve on the use of our perceptual and cognitive organs and processes in our attempt to discern "reality" and assign a confidence level to our perceptions and conclusions about it.
Science is only a more systematized approach to observation and forming conclusions about our shared reality, generally relying upon mathematics and accurate measurement. What we call the "scientific method" is not much more than a protocol for such observations and measurements, and for drawing conclusions. Most, but not all, people in the world now generally accept the scientific method as more accurate and reliable, and tend to "believe" in scientific conclusions and statements about reality than other methodologies or personal informal methods.
An under current in this discussion seems to be that "religious beliefs" are somehow different, or less reasonable. That, I think, is simply a misunderstanding of what "belief" is, or simple prejudice. Everyone, even scientists, build their beliefs on a worldview which may be pre-formed or influenced by religion, cultural inheritances, and personal experience. Modern western science, and its most recent cosmology and beliefs about the physical world, is just one such belief system.
Einstein would not likely have developed his theories of relativity had he not already held a Judeo-Christian worldview about the universality of the physical universe throughout time and space. A belief, any belief, depends upon a large number of factors, and must be contextually coherent or consistent with the larger universe of a person's other beliefs. Ward Hunt Goodenough, a cultural anthropologist, used to liken the changing of one idea like flipping a light switch that was connected to hundreds of others that also had to change or be at least neutralized for that first change to occur.
If a person's beliefs include spirits, ghosts, and shamanism, such things will totally influence their behavior, even to the point of becoming weapons against enemies, or the cause of their own death. Can you say that your reality is more "real" or effective than that? If a person believes in the Christian way, and that the Bible is perfectly, or nearly, 100% true, and scientists admit they cannot prove them wrong, is that set of beliefs "wrong" or inferior? You might "believe" so, but cannot prove it however much you might be able to persuade yourself or your friends.
Similarly, if one scientist believes in the Big Bang cosmology, and another believes in a "brane" cosmology, and another believes in a (Christian God) "Creationist" cosmology, which is better or inferior? All are beyond observation, or proof, and none can disprove the other. Each scientist has a lot of "evidence" and supporting beliefs to sustain his/her own theory/theology, and can even take the latest in scientific evidence and interpret it to support their own cosmology.
Here's my point: belief is not fact, but a decision as to what is fact, and the strength of one's belief is a measure of his/her confidence in that decision. Everyone acquires their beliefs in the same way, just not by the same method or from the same experiences and observations.
Alcaide's Cafe,
My point? If most cultures have the same or a very similar story, then something must have happened. We don't know what - just something. Everyone can have some explanation, either God sent or natural catastrophy, but something still happened. If it happened long before recorded language as we know it, then it got altered as generations passed. At that point you have only word of mouth evidence, but we are still left with the simple fact that something happened.
It is rumoured that a the remains of the Ark were found by a biplane flying over mount Ararat at the end of World War I. The remains were supposedly removed by the American government (and hidden in Area 51, no doubt).
Dude, did the WB's hire you to write the script for the Matrix: Revolutions?
Shinsengumi de gozaru
there is no way you can be "saved" without proof of deity
Flamebait? Perhaps I was right, then.
My point was that just because two people say they saw a wreck, it doesn't mean they saw the same one.