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Satellites Expose 8,000 Years of Civilization
ananyo writes "By combining spy-satellite photos obtained in the 1960s with modern multispectral images and digital maps of Earth's surface, researchers have created a new method for mapping large-scale patterns of human settlement. The approach was used to map some 14,000 settlement sites spanning eight millennia in 23,000 square kilometres of northeastern Syria — part of the fertile crescent of the Middle East. Traditional archaeology has focused on the big features such as cities or palaces but the new technique uncovers networks of small settlements, revealing migration patterns and sparking renewed speculation about the importance of water to city development."
Wilkinson & Ur, the ones behind the project, have been doing this for at least 10 years. Check out the CAMEL project on the Oriental institute of the university of Chicago
How are young earthers going to explain this one?
Eight millennia - that's six since creation, and two more into the future.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The same way they explain all the other evidence for a 14 billion years old universe: by ignoring or misunderstanding it.
Right at the most simple: we can triangulate the distance to a star and determine that what we see is as old as the amount of time light takes to get here. If they deny this evidence they either fail basic math or refute relativity: the scientific theory with the best proof track record ever.
Do we need to speculate that human settlements need water?
This sounds like it should be fairly obvious ... you need water for people, livestock, plants ...
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The Barada river area has been settled for at least 11,000, Jericho for at least 11,000, Byblos for at least 9,000.
How are young earthers going to explain this one?
There are all sorts of methods, some more creative and convincing than others(at the low end, if you and your target audience simply don't give a damn about this 'empiricism' nonsense and consider goddidit! to be a valid solution, things of any apparent age are no problem: an omnipotent entity wouldn't have any trouble magic-ing something that looks ten million years old into existence ten seconds ago...).
However, I have heard a number of stories from buddies who got into archaeology and did some fertile crescent digs; that there is an interesting demographic who has a real, visceral attack of this problem:
Your sharper breed of American christian fundamentalists, coming from an area where any evidence of human habitation is either a few hundred years old, max, or fairly subtle and 'radiocarbon dating/the flood/etc/etc. awayed' during their growing up decide that they want to do some biblical archaeology. So, off they go and they find themselves grubbing through masonry that just oozes OLD in a much more immediately dramatic way than some of the subtler isotopic dating results or other inferrential work does. Apparently some of them find it quite traumatic or transformative: The "This wall/building/house/whatever had already been standing for at least a few millenia at the point when God is supposed to have created the earth" thing is much more potent than the "Some scientists say that C14/C12 ratios in cave charcoal suggest timeline... yaddda, yadda..."
While I have been apostate for more than a decade, I can put on my 'Bible Brainwash Hat' (TM) and tell you exactly how they deny it: the light and other EM radiation from those stars was created in mid-'flight' to give the universe the appearance of age. You really can't win arguing science with somebody whose foundation is 'it's magic!' That's why I focus on moral/ethical problems when messing with theists.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Well I'll be... It sounds like the biblical fundamentalists were correct about the ago of the earth, after all.
Its going to be 8000 years before we can send someone to investigate given the current political climate :( /Cynicism
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
I once used the satellite view of Google Maps to look for old train tracks that have been torn up and gone for decades. It's actually pretty interesting. If you go out and visit spots where the tracks used to be, you can't see anything out of the ordinary. But a satellite shot clearly shows the "scars" of where the tracks used to be. Where they cut through forests, the trees are a little shorter. The soil in farm fields is colored differently. Roads bend to intersect the track at a right angle, things like that.
Here's a good example in Washtenaw county. You can see the "ghost tracks" going southwest/northeast. If you follow them northeast, you'll see that a new subdivision was built on an area of land that they used to cut through. Curiously, the developers built no houses where the tracks were. Instead, they added footpaths, gave some houses larger backyards, and left "gaps" where houses could have been built. (I'd love to know why this was done. Any developers in the audience?)
You can follow the tracks southwest as well, but eventually you get to a region where the images were taken with a different satellite at a different time of year and the loss of contrast makes the tracks impossible to follow any further.
You can't make beer without water.
I'll wager not too many YECs, I've seen a few that are probably legit (largely because they were clearly cribbing quotes from ICR and AIG literature). Definitely a few OECs and IDers have posted here.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Who knows... within a few thousand years we might have civilization here in North America too.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Julia Pongratz is the only citation in your listed sources for Gengis Khan's impact on climate. She arrived at this conclusion not through examination of empirical data, but through computer modeling of Khan's actions. It's an interesting hypothesis, but hardly one that can be stated as a certainty.
Right. God, being all powerful, could create all the evidence for an old universe. In fact, the universe could have been created a minute ago with all our memories and everything. Of course, that mean that God was a deceiver, and no different from Satan.
Really, it's all ridiculous bullshit, and if you don't get to children when they are young and vulnerable, you've got a much much harder time making someone believe it.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Look guys, stop messin with my friends. Here's proof:
[root@earth-sim173-265 ~]# uptime
12:17:09 up 2,210,805 days, 20:27, 7,029,298,112 users, load average: 0.90, 0.90, 0.95
[root@earth-sim173-265 ~]#
Now leave me alone, and get back to learning how to be humans/gods without killing each other and destroying the universe.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
easy! Archaeology is one of the many tools of Satan!
Except that the Bible says that God is revealed through his creation as well. This would seem to indicate that God wouldn't make things appear to be a way they are not. (I say this as a Christian who does not believe that young Earth makes any sense. I could possibly see an argument being made that human's have only been around 6000 or so years (I don't personally believe this is necessary or accurate either, but I could at least see grounds for the argument (using the Bible, not science)).) Ultimately, those who claim the Bible says the Earth is only 6000 years old fail at both their own religion and science. The term translated as "day" more closely means age or period. Clearly, without a planet yet, you can't have a 24 hour day, so it doesn't even make sense to assume that the "days" referenced were literal.
AJ Henderson
The Mayans were probably not having a significant impact on their own weather (I smell some green cultist with an agenda). Bad weather/seasons can happen to anybody anywhere and have been a common cause of famine and social disruption in antiquity worldwide.
The reality of the Mayan collapse was based on the confluence of population growth and soil depletion. The Mayans never developed crop rotation, so while their society grew their crop yields shrank, and everything collapsed.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
FTFY.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
"While I have been apostate for more than a decade"
Congratulations on your first decade of sanity.
The promotion of ignorance under the guise of passionate populism... that's fabulous. Your novel approach of 'HEY GAIZ STOP LEARNING AND JOIN CLASS WARFARE!' has earned you a place on my foes list.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Yeah, I'll speak up as a very scientifically minded OEC who thinks the mechanisms of OEC were very likely the big bang and evolution. The order of events matches up closely and it's worth pointing out that the Bible doesn't say humanity was created separately, just Adam and Eve. In fact, it actually lends support to the theory that humanity existed either before or shortly after their creation and of independent lineage. (For those who aren't verst in Genesis, after Cain killed Able (Adam and Eve's sons), he was sent out of the region, but it directly mentions there being other people there and at that time, there were no other descendants mentioned of Adam and Eve.)
You are probably correct that there are very few YECs on Slashdot though as it is a completely unsupportable position (both religiously and scientifically) that is only held to by people that don't know how to do any kind of research or critical reasoning. Just simply looking at the actual language of Genesis indicates that the term for each "day" of creation is the same as the term for age, and until a good part of the way through creation, there would be no actual 24 hour day to begin with. Also, the Bible is beyond clear that time in God's eyes is vastly longer than our eyes.
AJ Henderson
Other than invoking a strange variant of the Adam and Eve story, you sound more like a Theistic Evolutionist to me. Can't really swallow the whole "Adam and Eve were separate creations" bit, but then again, I can't buy the "Jesus rose from the grave after being dead for three days" bit either, so I see no point to get too uptight about it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
basic math Isn't that what them rascals in Gomorrah were doin'?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Yeah, add a foe here, add a foe there. I don't keep friends with your mentailty anyway.
Creationists agree that starlight is billions of years old. They just believe the solar system, what with its young comets and all, is young. Answers in Genesis does a good job of bringing a lot of creationist articles together. And by the way, they don't refute relativity at all. Relativity's gravitational time dilation is one of the theories as to how the universe can be old while the earth is young.
You can see their articles on Astrophysics here. Don't be surprised to see that most believe in old stars:
Astrophysics
If you would like to read what they believe about the age of the earth and why they believe it is young, Answers in Genesis sums it up here:
Young Age Evidence
Rather than continuing to misunderstand about the creationist perspective, read up and see what they believe. Then, if you disagree with them, you can at least stop with the unfounded attacks.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
My step-mother was a complete lunatic and religious fanatic who used to tell everyone that dinosaur bones were put in the ground by Satan to encourage disbelief and heretical interpretations of the Bible. Fun lady.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I believe the point of Genesis is the "who" and not the "how".
Though the Bible does pretty well on the "how" if you ask me:
"let there be light" = big bang
"streched out the heavens" = inflation, continued expansion of universe
land->vegetation->sea creatures->livestock->humans - order agrees with science so far.
How would you word it if you were explaining it to someone thousands of years ago?
P.S. Jesus on a moped is an amusing thought - just be careful who you mock!
Could be, my goal is to resolve my belief that Genesis is likely accurate if properly read and that scientific observations should also match up without convoluted reasoning. I do my best to try to resolve the two and it sometimes comes up with interesting conclusions that I don't know a whole lot of other people who hold, but thus far I have not found anything in way of scientific evidence that can not be incorporated to match a particular understanding of the description given in Genesis. The main area I still have issue resolving is the flood. My most likely explanation would be that for the flood to occur, it would have had to occur immediately prior to plate collisions driving up our current mountain ranges (when land mass would have been relatively flat and therefore there would have been enough water to actually cover the land), however the time scale we observe for the formation of mountains doesn't seem to gel nicely. Prior to that, there are a number of easy time-gaps that can be introduced (for example, man's days are not numbered prior to Genesis 3, so an alternate possibility would be some very very old people as society was developing).
AJ Henderson
What if an all-powerful, evil genius and implanted all senses, memory, and perception into your brain. How do you even know you are a 'self' and not a conglomerate of different input stimuli.
---- Someone better go read Rene Descartes....
Except your forgetting that the sun was created after the vegetation in Genesis, and one has to do some artful footwork to make any of it actually coincide to science. This idea that it's just dumbed down cosmology, geology and biology doesn't really work, because the creative order is incorrect and why couldn't even a Bronze Age individual understand, when things were put in layman's terms, the gist of Big Bang cosmology and evolution?
To my mind, the Genesis story more owes its heritage to Sumero-Akkadian sources than to any Divine Creation for Dummies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Except that the Bible says that God is revealed through his creation as well. This would seem to indicate that God wouldn't make things appear to be a way they are not.
Yeah, it astonishes me that some creationists claim that God planted fossils to fool people.
And of course, would never consider that God could have written a book to fool people.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
refute relativity: the scientific theory with the best proof track record ever.
Eh? That'd be Quantum Mechanics.
I'm guessing that the Atomic Theory of Matter has a pretty good track record too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The Mayans were probably not having a significant impact on their own weather
Or, y'know, they were.
(I smell some green cultist with an agenda).
Or, y'know, scientists.
The reality of the Mayan collapse was based on the confluence of population growth and soil depletion.
Or, y'know, not that. YMMV.
How many young earthers reading Slashdot? Show of hands, please.
The problem is that you can't tell the true believers from the troll bedevilers. It's almost impossible for a troll to tip his hand by being too OTT, on this topic.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
---- Someone better go read Rene Descartes....
That pedantic ol' windbag? I think not.
<POOF!> <crickets>
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Except that the Bible says that God is revealed through his creation as well. This would seem to indicate that God wouldn't make things appear to be a way they are not. (I say this as a Christian who does not believe that young Earth makes any sense. I could possibly see an argument being made that human's have only been around 6000 or so years (I don't personally believe this is necessary or accurate either, but I could at least see grounds for the argument (using the Bible, not science)).)
The evidence of humans dating past 6,000 years is just one more set of parentheses deep... Keep looking, i am sure you can find it!
Unless the sky was hazy akin to Venus up until that point, which is quite likely after continued bombardment and geologic activity. Bacteria and/or vegetation clean up our atmosphere and give oxygen now - it is only reasonable to think they preceded a clear sky. In keeping with explaining to laymen, the narrative is from the perspective of one on the surface of the earth, to whom the sun and moon would become visible at this point.
Where's the artful footwork? Do you not like the Bible's layman's terms?
Studies of mitochondrial DNA suggest that the human race was narrowed down to just several or even one female at a point in our past, possibly around 180,000 years ago. Same narrowing with males appears with the Y-chromosome. I believe the flood of Genesis is telling the story of one or more catastrophic events that nearly killed off the human race and caused the genetic narrowing we can observe today. So I think that "flood" is a metaphor for one of any number of things that could have happened over time.
:wq
My "self" is simply the current pattern of my thoughts. Regardless of what "hardware/wetware" they are running on, my thought patterns and memories are my "self". If some all-powerful entity could re-arrange the atoms in my brain (assuming that's what is really running things in here :-), and replace my thoughts and memories with Rene Descartes, _my_ "self" would cease to exist, and my friends and family would testify to that, though my outward appearance would be unchanged.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Because it isn't for laymen. I go out to the library and get a book on geology and planet formation for laymen, it isn't going to use obviously incorrect language to describe an event. It is going to say "the atmosphere was hazy and the sun was not visible until such-and-such-a-time". You know that I know that.
The Bible's terms, if I take your interpretation, are bad word choices. The sun existed before the planet, and green plants could not have lived in a hazy reducing atmosphere that blocked out a good chunk of the spectra, humans bred domesticated animals (and thus they came AFTER humans), and even a liberal interpretation that includes the wild progenitors of cattle, pigs and the like, well, guess what, they evolved in the Pleistocene just like humans did.
Look, if it somehow helps your faith to believe that Genesis is some sort of a Evolution For Bronze Age Dummies, but I doubt you're going to get much traction not only with miserable non-believers like myself, but even with many theologians, who would find the whole exercise misses the point of Genesis, and only creates an ever increasing number of problems as one goes forward in trying to force the Bible to become a science text.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Also, I am very annoyed that you snookered me into looking at a really long article that had nothing to do with the Mayan collapse on the pretense that it was relevant. Hey, I know, how about some real scholarly work that is, y'know actually relevant?
Here's a relevant bit for people who won't RTFA:
However, analysis of Puuc soils and apparent cropping system indicates that maximal yields would likely have been sustainable for only about 75 y, with significant declines in fertility and yields certainly setting in after about 100 y (74). This duration is coincident with the apogee of most Terminal Classic Puuc centers (ca. 770â"870 CE).
Now scurry off back into whatever hole of ignorance from whence you emerged.
(I will grant, by the way, that diminished soil fertility cannot be blamed on farming practices exclusively, but my original opinion was based on information I stumbled upon more than a dozen years ago. Nonetheless it was at least based on valid research, and I was only offering it in the shortest form as a contradiction, not as an expansive and detailed explanation, which anybody with the most marginal of research skills should be able to do for themselves. Sadly, time and time again people fail to reach even that meager standard.)
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Just to clarify here. From my old days on evolution newsgroups, OECs generally were considered to be people who believed in an old Earth, but believed humans were only a few thousand years old.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Perhaps my parens was confusing. I was pointing out that from a Biblical perspective, one could make an argument than mankind is only 6000 years old or so. You could also use it to point out that there is no problem with humanity being far far older. The context of my original comment was pointing out that there is effectively no way to use the actual way the Bible talks about creation of the world to indicate that the world itself is that young. I do not personally believe that people have only been around 6000 years, nor do I believe that even a literal interpretation of the Bible requires viewing humanity as having only existed for 6000 years.
AJ Henderson
Hmm, that is actually very interesting. I'm not sure how it factors in to my views, but it doesn't seem to disagree any. Is there a particular reason that you don't think there could have been some type of flood, perhaps associated with a plate collision as that seems to be consistent with the description given. I have not had the opportunity to look in to the topic as much as I'd like yet, so I'm truly interested in any evidence either supporting or contradicting.
AJ Henderson
And here I assumed nothing existed before I starting perceiving things...
"misses the point of Genesis" - that was my first point in my first post on this.
Likewise when Jesus is talking about vines and fruit, he isn't giving a horticulture lesson.
The Bible does not purport to be a geology book, for laymen or not, nor do I ascribe it to be such a book. I wouldn't expect a detailed description of the atmosphere as this would only obscure the point that God is behind everything being created. (please forgive my awful word play)
All I'm saying is when you're not picking apart the meaning of the word "livestock" (is the connotation of domestication there in the Hebrew?) the broad outline matches what science says.
I make this point because it removes barriers to faith and reinforces it when you know that the Bible doesn't contradict reason and science. If people are stumbling on this stuff, they'll miss the point... (God is the creator).
I've read the literature and seen the videos from the people who believe the word-for-word literal meaning of Genesis. It just doesn't align with science that we can touch and feel. So that limits the choices.
1. Give up on the science that I can prove.
2. Give up on the religion that I believe.
3. Accept that science is how and the Bible is why.
There's a 4th that some suggest, that God created the Earth as in Genesis as we see it today. That millions of years of plate tectonics and erosion we see were just put there all at once for us.
But the God I believe in is huge and has infinite patience. Spending 14 billion years creating the heavens and the earth is easy for him. Let their be light? How about infinite light and energy in zero space. That's light so intense we can't even describe it mathematically! And science backs that up. We can look at the cosmic microwave background radiation and see God's word in his own handwriting!
Anyways, if one can accept that the Bible is an explanation and a guide on how to live our lives, suddenly it and science start to align in really amazing ways. One of those is that something happened long ago that nearly wiped out the human race. Flood? Maybe. Meteor? We have geologic evidence for that. Volcano? Plague? Solar eruption? It really doesn't matter. All that matters is that God had a reason to start over from one or a very small number of humans, and did it.
So that's my opinion. It helps that both pastors of my church have engineering degrees. I asked one of them about this once. He said, "Did Adam have a belly button"?
:wq
I know we're moving off-topic, but another way to get people to believe it is by being awesome and beautiful. Many fundamentalists are beautiful and successful and kind, and when individuals whose life is not those things can believe that by joining, their lives will improve, they will believe the whole bit.
It's kind of like one of those South Park Mormon episodes.
The problem with a world-wide flood is ... the water.
If all the ice-caps melted, there still would not be enough water to cover the entire surface.
Even if there were that much water... where did it all go?
Is there some drain somewhere that allowed it all to flow away?
Perhaps massive tsunamis could happen that might roll across the planet, but covering the Himalayas is a difficult task.
Localized flooding in any region has definitely happened, but a single flood that covered the entire planet seems a bit... fishy.
Terry Pratchett wrote a brilliant send-up of this, one of his early books -- "Strata". Hilarious. I've been on the lookout for news of a pocket watch in a coal seam ever since.
The Antikythera mechanism comes close ;-)
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I think I may be even more out on a limb -- I'm not sure there was a one-off "Creation" of any type. I think the logical requirement for such a thing is undermined by an anthropomorphic bias, i.e. because we were born, everything has to have been born. The Big Bang, followed by the Heat Death of the Universe, seems like it could have been a cyclical phenomenon (being of a scientific bend, I'm happy to entertain any sort of refutation short of biblical authority-quoting). Local Big Bangs everywhere. The macro Universe, always was.
Of course, our Bronze Age fore bearers had everything right because a bush burned at them :-)
(Smiley inserted to counter Poe's Law reference)
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
There is always a way to ignore reality. http://conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relativity
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Most primitive peoples seem to believe that only **they** are actual humans, all the 'others' are animals that can only become truly human by joining their tribe/religion/whatever. Thus 6,000 years ago the sons of Adam and Eve had no problem finding spouses, even though they were the only 'true' humans. There could have been lots of other people around, but since they belonged to the wrong tribe they weren't deserving of the title 'children of god' or whatever the proto-jews called themselves.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
In the beginning of the Bible, there was nothing. It doesn't say there wasn't something before that, and how blasphemous to say that there wasn't. But since the universe started as a singularity, there's no way, by the confines of our own existence, we can ever know or understand what it might have been. Or not been. I, personally, think we'll all find out some day but it's a one way trip.
About the bronze age fore bearers, God told people what they needed to know when it was important. The last communication was, "Be nice to people". We should do more of that.
Anyways, it's turtles all the way down!
:wq
It's entirely possible that some event happened around 6000 years ago that changed (all or some) of humanity. Perhaps there was a genetic change that made human minds more sensitive, or possibly even a Divine Intervention altering the souls of the then-existing naked apes. This event could have made people "More human".
I am not aware that any physical evidence has turned up to support this hypothesis. Yet.
I18N == Intergalacticization
Even easier to prove, Genesis 2:4 calls the whole creation process one "day".
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
There is not enough water because of the fact we currently have mountains and large underwater trenches. At one point in history, the geography was considerably more flat since most of the trenches and mountains are the result of plate collisions. This is why time-scale and not nature of an event is the problem. There is more than enough water to cover the planet if the land masses were properly shaped at some point in the past.
AJ Henderson
People started building communities; which was a fundamentalism change. It's also when you would start having a static oral history, and gain power from controlling people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I get the feeling we're not necessarily all that different, though I'd challenge that there is an option you haven't considered. It is kind of close to your answer 3 because the Bible was never intended to be a guide to how things work. (My previous arguments agree with your conclusion about #4, which is just silly both scientifically and theologically.)
The point I would bring up is don't be too quick to dismiss the truth of the Bible as accurate. I think similarly in that if I absolutely can't find a resolution, then I must assume that the observations of science have an explanation and that I may be missing the appropriate understanding of scripture, but with very few exceptions, I have not found things that don't conceivably match up between Genesis and scientific observation. What they do challenge is the dogmatic interpretation of a particular understanding of scripture. Going more in to the theological side of things, you can see this with many complex theology topics that are purely philosophical. One example is free will vs divine foreknowledge. There are two major schools of theological thought about this, either that your actions are pre-determined and known or that you have free will. However, there is a very narrow line of reasoning between these that indicates that foreknowledge and even creation in a given state do not preclude free-will and thus while the outcome is known it is still our choice. This enters in to interesting scientific grounds when you consider the fact that without some external factor, the world is simply a complex set of reactions in which no free will would be possible unless some non-deterministic force was introduced. (Which I posit is the free will we posses.)
By defining the two sides of the issue in simple terms, there is a very limited number of possibilities for which both sides are true. I think the same may be able to be said about science and the Bible. While the purpose of these two sources of knowledge are completely different, they both tend to demonstrate things that shed light to the other. In the case of scientific observations of our origins, it gives a lens through which we can refine our look at Genesis and the Biblical creation. It leads to some interesting thoughts such as what I mentioned about Adam and Eve not necessarily being the first man and woman, but rather potentially being the introduction of free will to the system. The Bible does seem to describe categorical differences between the offspring of Adam and Eve and the other humans. This could also potentially relate to the previously mentioned genetic Eve that someone else was pointing out. It gives possible hints as to what the Bible means when it says he created Adam in his image (my guess would be the presence of free will.)
Ultimately I hold hard and fast to two assumptions. First, that God would not conceal himself or use some type of trickery to deceive people about his creation. Second, that the theological basis of scripture is true and that if properly canonized, the content of scripture in general is true as stated, though perhaps not properly interpreted. (There is certainly metaphor and visual, poetic descriptions within scripture, so study has to be approached carefully.) All my study is to try to find the points where the two co-exist happily and see what it can tell me about both. Where I can't figure it out, I simply accept that both are accurate and that I need to keep looking.
AJ Henderson
That is what SOME creationist made up to compensate for there provably wrong belief.
Others have a different set of wackiness to excuse away there monumental flaws in their belief.
OTOH: I'm not sure why I'm responding to someone who clearly doesn't understand what Peter was talking about. Another person twisting poorly interpreted verse into their own bias.
Pathetic, really.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unfortunately those excellent points are of little use in an argument because most religions are only loosely based on their holy book (despite their claims to the contrary), what matters is the dogma - the officially sanctioned interpretation of the "divine" word. When people say "the book says so", what they really mean is "the dude in the temple says so".
".. who thinks the mechanisms of OEC were very likely the big bang and evolution."
clearly not that scientifically minded. I suspect you don't actually know what science is. Like some three year old that thinks adding water to dirt is science.
Adam and eve are clearly an allegory. ITs trivially easy to see that, and interpretation up until a few 100 years ago agreed.
The KJV is a HORRIBLE interpretation. That becomes apparent to anyone who makes an attempt to read the myth in Hebrew.
It's about coming of age. i.e. puberty.
I like to think of it as a prophesy of the coming robotic rise against man! Ha, that paper got me an 'A' AND a frowny face.
Anyways, bunch of myth taken too far.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm with you on most of your other posts (see mine on this topic too) - I think people need to focus on the point of Genesis which is that God made everything and He is the creator.
But I'd have to quote some science to disagree with that last post. Fossil records of humans can only go back to 10 million years ago, and that's if you're stretching the definition of "human" a bit. There's no evidence (and quite a bit to the contrary, e.g. Himalayas) that the land masses of the earth were somehow all flatter sometime within those last 10 million years when people were around.
I hate to kill your idea. The flood is the part that gives me the most trouble as well.
I find it's likely what some others have mentioned - worldwide tsunamis from an asteroid maybe? There certainly was a population bottleneck at some point.
But the fact that Genesis lines up quite well with science seems to me impossible to be a coincidence. I agree with what you said above, particularly your assumptions - I accept both are accurate and have to keep searching (when it comes to the flood at least).
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Where are all the other animals and insects?! No wonder the whole simulation is going to shit ever since a human-only extrimist took over management!
Human civilizations started in several areas on planet Earth
North Eastern Syria is one of them
The Indus River area (India) is another. Other places include the Yang Tze Jiang delta (China), Nile delta (Egypt) and even some ancient civlizations in the Americas
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Studies of mitochondrial DNA suggest that the human race was narrowed down to just several or even one female at a point in our past, possibly around 180,000 years ago.
Uhm... that not what Mitochondrial Eve means. It means that everyone now living shares a common great^n grandmother. It says nothing at all about how many other women were alive at that time.
A genetic bottleneck down to a single female would of course make her the Mito Eve, but the converse is not true.
Same narrowing with males appears with the Y-chromosome. I believe the flood of Genesis is telling the story of one or more catastrophic events that nearly killed off the human race and caused the genetic narrowing we can observe today. So I think that "flood" is a metaphor for one of any number of things that could have happened over time.
There is a genetic bottleneck in human evolution, speculatively attributed to the Mt. Toba supereruption of ~70,000 years ago. But it's not nearly as tight as you would get by reducing the population to less than 8 genotypes. (Less, because the sons' DNA was just a shuffling of Ma's and Pa's DNA, plus a few mutations. So effectively the flood story would require reducing the population to just over 5 exemplars. We'd almost certainly be extinct. Sexually reproducing species require a certain minimal population to sustain themselves.)
Also, every other species would have a similarly sharp genetic bottleneck at exactly the same time. Much worse for "unclean" animals, which were limited to two exemplars, maybe slightly less bad for "clean" animals, which got 7 pairs per species (per one of the two versions of the story).
Genetics is one of the irrefutable arguments against the possibility of the story as told in the Bible.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Could be, my goal is to resolve my belief that Genesis is likely accurate if properly read and that scientific observations should also match up without convoluted reasoning. I do my best to try to resolve the two and it sometimes comes up with interesting conclusions that I don't know a whole lot of other people who hold, but thus far I have not found anything in way of scientific evidence that can not be incorporated to match a particular understanding of the description given in Genesis. The main area I still have issue resolving is the flood. My most likely explanation would be that for the flood to occur, it would have had to occur immediately prior to plate collisions driving up our current mountain ranges (when land mass would have been relatively flat and therefore there would have been enough water to actually cover the land), however the time scale we observe for the formation of mountains doesn't seem to gel nicely.
Also, not all mountain ranges were formed at the same time. Some are being formed today, others far, far in the past. I don't know if there has ever been a mountainless Earth, since the surface cooled enough to be solid.
Prior to that, there are a number of easy time-gaps that can be introduced (for example, man's days are not numbered prior to Genesis 3, so an alternate possibility would be some very very old people as society was developing).
FWIW, one time I worked through the numbers and came up with Methusaleh dying in the year of the flood. If my numbers were correct, it raises the question of whether he was supposed to have drowned in that flood.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I've read the literature and seen the videos from the people who believe the word-for-word literal meaning of Genesis. It just doesn't align with science that we can touch and feel. So that limits the choices.
1. Give up on the science that I can prove.
2. Give up on the religion that I believe.
Sane people give up what the believe, when they can prove things that contradict it.
3. Accept that science is how and the Bible is why.
Except that there's not really a clean distinction between the two concepts. E.g., science tells us why the Earth is (approximately) spherical, and the Bible makes claims about how things happened. (Including things that didn't actually happen...)
There's a 4th that some suggest, that God created the Earth as in Genesis as we see it today. That millions of years of plate tectonics and erosion we see were just put there all at once for us.
Ah, yes. Omphalism: God created Adam and Eve with navals, even though they weren't born. Because, because, because... Well, it would actually have been a stupid thing for God to do, wouldn't it.
Anyways, if one can accept that the Bible is an explanation and a guide on how to live our lives, suddenly it and science start to align in really amazing ways.
But why would you accept that, even if there was nothing contrafactual in it? Why not choose some other culture's sacred precepts for your guide?
One of those is that something happened long ago that nearly wiped out the human race. Flood? Maybe. Meteor? We have geologic evidence for that. Volcano? Plague? Solar eruption? It really doesn't matter.
So if you're going to interpret the Bible as referencing something other that what it actually says, why believe it at all?
Maybe it uses the same technique to "reveal" spiritual principles. I.e., means anything you want it to mean, other than what it says?
All that matters is that God had a reason to start over from one or a very small number of humans, and did it.
Yes, he repented creating such a vile species as ourselves (so much for his purported prescience), and decided to destroy it with a Rube Goldberg mechanism that also drowned all the world's kittens, rather than just magically uncreating the evildooers. And worse, his fix didn't work: we're still as wicked as ever.
Why do you keep trying to rationalize and reinterpret a mythology that's so obviously bogus? Wouldn't it make more sense to just ditch it?
You're showing a loyalty that would be admirable, *if* it was to something that deserved your loyalty. But it's just a stupid cultural tradition, so the misplaced loyalty makes you look foolish.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sane people give up what the believe, when they can prove things that contradict it.
There are more forms of proof than scientific. They may not be scientifically rigorous, but it is incredibly arrogant to assume that just because you can't think of an answer that resolves conclusion A and conclusion B, that the two simply can not both be true. That isn't to say that a burden of proof that my beliefs are wrong couldn't be met, but I've had some very solid experiences to back my beliefs that I believe defy statistical likelihood. If you have an actual mathematical proof that God does not exist, then I am open to your criticism of my assumption that both are somehow true, however when we are talking about the only parts that I don't have a way to match up are things that a) happened far in the past, b) are not particularly disprovable by science and c) fairly lacking in useful detail for scientific verification in the Bible. The key is that I never stop looking for the answers of how they fit. It isn't scientific, I realize that, because I'm going in pursuing a particular answer, but it is not insane and is still a valid pursuit of knowledge using reason. It just isn't purely the scientific method.
3. Accept that science is how and the Bible is why.
You are missing his point here entirely. The point of the Bible was never to be a book explaining how things happened. The details are vague, poetic, non-specific and visual language is frequently used. Metaphor is frequently used. The reason the events are recorded is not to answer people's scientific curiosity, but rather to show details of the character of God and answer the questions of why. It is not a scientific text book and to treat it as one is foolish. You are making the exact mistake that the OP was warning against.
Ah, yes. Omphalism: God created Adam and Eve with navals, even though they weren't born. Because, because, because... Well, it would actually have been a stupid thing for God to do, wouldn't it.
I think this is something that both the OP and I would agree with you on. It's a silly notion that we both find silly as well.
But why would you accept that, even if there was nothing contrafactual in it? Why not choose some other culture's sacred precepts for your guide?
Because, as the OP said, the science starts to align pretty damn well if you take a non-dogmatic approach to analysis. Also, due to personal experience with the religion or even simply objective philosophical consideration of the moral values (for example Pascal's wager). Reasons can vary from individual to individual. For me, a sufficient burden of proof has been met based on my personal experience with Christianity to believe it is correct unless strong empirical evidence can be presented that it is wrong. Thus far, nobody has been able to provide said empirical evidence against since I've been able to resolve (quite nicely in fact) the vast majority of scientific understanding to the Bible.
So if you're going to interpret the Bible as referencing something other that what it actually says, why believe it at all?
Maybe it uses the same technique to "reveal" spiritual principles. I.e., means anything you want it to mean, other than what it says?
This is where I agree with you, but disagree with the OP. If things were not accurately recorded, then it throws a lot more in to question. There are still alternatives in a lot of cases with outliers where something may have been improperly canonized and added after original authorship, though the flood in particular is problematic as it is referenced in both the old and new testaments and makes it hard to use the corrupted cannon argument. Another viable fallback position is that it was a regional event that was recorded by those who experienced it and they recorded it as worldwide when it wasn't. I don't particularly like this fall
AJ Henderson
---- Someone better go read Rene Descartes....
That pedantic ol' windbag? I think not.
<POOF!> <crickets>
Come on, just because his name's "Rene" doesn't make him a poof.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.