I was thrilled with Palin at first -- now I'm somewhat concerned. There are a lot of nuts who are Christians, and a case could be made that Palin is one of them. The last thing that Christianity needs is to have one of them in a prominent position.
But I'm also a solid conservative so no way in heck am I voting for Obama. *Maybe* Bob Barr if I get disturbed enough.
As for experience I'll take Palin's over Obama's any day. Besides being a governor she's chaired the oil and gas commission. With that she should have good input on energy policy. I hear she has also dealt with Russia on fishing issues and Canada for the pipeline, so she has *some* international experience.
I wish she was at the top of the ticket.:) As it is, I'll take what I can get for now and hope Palin is a credible candidate in 2012 or 2016.
As a pro-lifer, I agree with this, I think you stated it well. All these issues are important.
The problem is, what if society generally allowed the killing of babies up to, say, a year old? If that happened, should a civilized culture sit back and say "well we really need to address the underlying issues of why this is happening" -- or would they try to end it ASAP?
If you understand why some of us would take the latter approach with a hypothetical situation of being able to freely kill one year olds, you can understand that we should rightly take the same urgency when society thinks it's OK to kill pre-born humans.
Anyway, it's a tough problem. By all means, let's address the underlying issues, but keep in mind that innocent lives are being lost by the day while we work them out.
> Even amongst Christians, a 6000 year old universe didn't become an article of faith until the rise of radio preachers in the 1920s.
Actually even later than that until it really took hold.
A couple years ago I spoke with an older gentleman who is an engineer for Christian radio. He was telling me that in the 1940s, virtually all educated Christians accepted an old earth.
It was really the publication of Henry Morris' "The Genesis Flood" in the 1960s that spawned the modern young earth movement in earnest.
But there can be pieces of evidence discovered by science that strengthen the case for a designer/creator. If you find things that seem to imply design, then there's nothing wrong with seeing that as scientific evidence for a designer (noting that evidence does not equal proof).
Of course the purely naturalistic zealots will have none of that and will summarily dismiss any such nuggets of evidence.
That is why we need to show the evidence as it really is, and teach critical thinking skills.
Why just 75%? I'm a social conservative also, voted for Bush most times (mainly for Supreme Court reasons, and held my nose for other reasons). I was starting to lean towards Bob Barr -- until today.
Palin is smart, she's fought against her own party and won, she's taken on government corruption and won. She holds a high regard for human life and puts her money where her mouth is. She even hunts moose and plays hockey. And she's cute too. She's freeking Superwoman!
I will now be enthusiastically voting for McCain. Palin for Prez 2012!
I agree, 250GB a month isn't too restrictive. I'm just concerned that they'll use this as a start and steadily lower it from there.
IIRC, the wholesale price of bandwidth is under 10 cents a gigabyte. I'm paying Time Warner quite a bit more than that now, so the way I see it if they impose a limit it should be at least 250GB. Lowering it would just be greedy.
I don't care about being tied to Apache -- I believe it is the only web server I'll ever need.
Not sure what you mean about tying it to a "substandard MPM" -- AFAIK mod_python can run under prefork and worker (the only two that really matter at this point) and maybe others.
The fact that search engines couldn't index Flash was a strong argument against its use for textual content. With that excuse gone, more webmasters might consider using it.
Only problem is, Flash for textual content is HORRIBLE. Totally ruins the consistent experience I want with my web browser. Flash text does not behave like HTML text in several ways.
I really hope this doesn't encourage more Flash content from point-n-drool webmasters...
Much as I would love to see a huge geek co-op raise a new net (Internet III?), I just don't think it is possible anymore.
Of course it's possible, it's just a matter of how much it will take. This is America. We have freedom to innovate, and if that freedom is taken away we have freedom to vote out the bozos and vote in folks who will defend our freedom and get out of the way of this kind of thing.
Daunting task? Absolutely. The bozos are limiting our freedom and most Americans don't give a crap. That has to change.
In terms of creating a national co-op ISP, it's possible, it's just a question of how much money it will take. Is $1 billion enough for a good start? If so can we find a million people who would invest $1k? That should get some good backbone infrastructure and service to at least some areas.
Of course we might need another billion in political campaigning against the bozos in charge.
Actually I think there is a very good answer to this. Modern civilization would be impossible without a large mass of biofuels, which come about by billions of years of biomass!
God wanted us to thrive as a civilization, and that biomass is His gift to us in that regard!
Consider the flood story. You argued that it was local in scope, but that conflicts with direct interpretation of the Bible. A flood that covers the mountain tops must by definition be a global flood. Even if it doesn't cover the tallest mountains, raising the sea level by just 1000 feet would be catastrophic. Instead of repeating all the reasons for this, I'll post a link to an article that does so very well: The Genesis Flood: Why the Bible says it Must be Local
I just reached the point where the elegant and accurate solutions provided by nature trumped the mental gymnastics of trying to defend ancient myths. How are you so sure that they do indeed trump "myths"? Studying nature is great, but it doesn't provide the answers to the big questions of life. No ultimate basis in morality, no purpose for living, etc. And when you study nature itself, I think it clearly points straight to the Creator. IMHO Romans 1:20 has never been more true than it is for our generation.
Final question, where's the demonstrated hole in the chronology? Genesis 11:10 This is the history of the generations of Shem. Shem was one hundred years old and became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood. 11:11 Shem lived five hundred years after he became the father of Arpachshad, and became the father of sons and daughters. 11:12 Arpachshad lived thirty-five years and became the father of Shelah. 11:13 Arpachshad lived four hundred three years after he became the father of Shelah, and became the father of sons and daughters.
Luke 3:35 the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, 3:36 the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech
Cainan is not in Genesis. It is in the Septuagint, but the original manuscripts, not it, are considered the basis for infallibility. But Luke is also infallible. Therefore, "x begat y" can certainly skip generations, and the text does not limit humanity's existence to 6000 years.
Sorry if you think this is just "mental gymnastics". I think it is interesting. I actually have a wide array of reasons for belief in God, including what the Bible says about science. But like I said earlier, most of early Genesis falls into place once you trust God, it likely is not the reason someone would believe.
Your explanations utterly fail Occam's Razor. Occam's razor is useful, but not the be-all-end-all of what is right. I think there is plenty in atheism that fails it.
You made a complex argument about why plant life, which feeds on sunlight, surely could have survived for an epoch prior to the formation of the sun. All of this to justify the order of two sentences. The much simpler (and more correct) answer is that whoever wrote the bible didn't know which order to write those two sentences in, and just guessed wrong. See my reply to the sibling reply to my message.
Babel is another example that we don't really need. I'm not saying we need it. But if the Bible is God's word, we can trust the account of it. I don't believe it is a useful apologetic point, other than (my speculation) the point at which God diversified the gene pool as well as languages.
Why was God who couldn't be reached by any tower so concerned about primitive peoples building a brick tower? The tower wasn't the point. The point was that the people were proud of their accomplishments. They intended to "make a name for themselves", the text said. It was a show of the people trying to demonstrate that they didn't need to worry about God. Furthermore, they were fragrantly violating God's command to spread out and fill the earth. Instead they were staying in the same place.
Further, you've got a very major issue with manpower. According to the bible, Noah only came around about 9 generations before Abraham. The tower of Babel would have been closer to 4 generations I think. So assuming everyone had 5 male children who survived to procreate, which is generous I think, you've got about 650 males (only the men really count in most religious texts) doing the building. Consider the Empire State Building, which took 7,000,000 manhours to build. Building something as large as the Empire State Building would take 5 years of full time employment for this entire population. But we're talking about agrarian societies here. They don't have that much time. They also don't have machines or lightbulbs. I'm not dogmatic as to how big the tower was. Also there is at least one demonstrable gap in the chronology, and I believe there are probably many more. So there could have been several more generations.
Anyway, not sure what the point of discussing this is. Either you're interested in God or you're not. If you're not, you'll always find ways to dismiss all this. If you are, you would look for the ways belief in God makes sense, then Genesis falls into place after that.
All I am trying to do is say why the early chapters of Genesis are plausible. Obviously I can't prove them nor can you disprove them.
Interesting post, although I found this part to be, at the very least, quite a stretch. "Let there be light" is significantly different from "Let there be a cataclysmic planetary collision." Right, but remember that Genesis 1 is not an exhaustive science text. God wanted light, and that was His method of choice.:)
If you want to nitpick, you could also say that the creation of life (if indeed I am correct about verse 2 referring to that) and light hitting the surface are in the wrong order. Big deal? Maybe, maybe not. A couple other things in the chapter also may be in the wrong order. So do a lot of things in the whole Bible -- for example the different Gospels list events in different orders. I think that order wasn't as important to Jews as just the facts.
More importantly, however, is that you did not say anything about the point to which you were referring, which is plants growing before the sun existed. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that? Maybe you didn't understand the post? The sun did exist prior to Day 4, but its light was shrouded by translucent clouds; it was permanently overcast. Also the text could have been referring only to the simplest plant life. The English certainly implies full grown fruit trees, but Hebrew has a very limited vocabulary and the same word could apply to very primitive plants.
Another way of thinking about the "days" is that they were simply the times in which God issued decrees, but not necessarily when they all came to pass.
I'm not sure what the waters above are; Water vapor in atmosphere? Rain clouds?
The Earth very clearly exists before the Sun in this account, and the Sun and Moon are created at the same time. In the English translations it looks that way. However there are a couple things about Day 4.
First it says that God ordered the lights to appear. The word here is Hebrew 'haya', meaning "let there appear". This is NOT the same as ex-nihilo creation, Hebrew 'bara', which is used for the heavens and the earth in verse 1.
The second verse in Day 4 is a parenthetical note that says that God created the sun and moon, and the stars also. The verb there is the other Hebrew word for create, 'asa'. It also is not ex-nihilo creation, but the formation of something from what has previously existed. Also, the tense there is an imperfect past tense, stating that God had accomplished that at some point before the end of Day 4.
Even more noticeable is that plants were on the face of the Earth before the Sun was there to allow them to grow. Yes it was.
So what happened? God created the universe, which expanded and the earth formed by generally accepted planetary formation physics. According to planetary formation theory, the earth should be covered in thick atmosphere, even more so than Venus, and it probably was. It was also covered by water after the initial cooling. Note that both of these conditions are mentioned in Genesis 1:2 -- "darkness was over the face of the deep."
I also believe the phrase "the Spirit hovered over the waters" is a reference to the creation of the first life, widely believed to be in the ocean very early in life's history. The word for 'hovered' is the same Hebrew word used later for God brooding over Israel, protecting her like a hen protects its chicks. Obviously something profound was happening.
Also early on was the collision with the Mars-sized object that ended up creating our moon. This ate up much of the atmosphere causing it to become translucent. Light from the sun was visible on the earth's surface for the first time, hence "let there be light."
As the atmosphere dissipated over the eons, it eventually became transparent in Day 4, when the heavenly bodies were finally visible from the surface. This happened sometime before the Cambrian Explosion, which I think is rather nicely described in Day 5.
Perhaps there's further dilation of time here and "year" actually means 1 tenth of a year. I don't think so. There are conceivable explanations. I admit none can be proven (nor disproven), but speculations as to how it could have worked. First, all humans were said to have been vegetarians in the beginning. This would allow one to be healthier if they had lived hundreds of years. Second, there may have been less cosmic radiation early on (one or more supernovae have occurred since man came to earth). But what I think had to have happened is that God modified human telemeres, which essentially limit our lifespan. Yes, the God I believe in is plenty capable of that, and the Bible says that God ordained our days to be no more than 120. A divine manipulation of telemeres seems to fit the bill here. Also note that other ancient cultures have legends of kings living 1000 years. This is not unique to the Bible.
That, and the fact that the story has the entire human race originating with a single couple. I think again I have to appeal to manipulation by God. Note that at the Tower of Babel God is said to have confused languages. It seems reasonable to me that He would have changed a few genes in the process.
I realize this isn't acceptable to a methodological naturalist. It certainly isn't falsifiable nor provable. To me there are a lot of other factors that make belief in the God of the Bible reasonable, and that belief causes me to accept Genesis.
Round it all off with an impossible flood of the world I believe the Flood was geographically local, but it covered all the areas where humans were living at the time. I think I can even prove that from the Bible itself, which drives young earth fundies nuts.:)
Not sure what there is to rationalize. The tree was there to see if Adam and Eve could follow the one simple instruction God gave them. They could not. And (if you want me to get theological on you) nothing has changed since then. Whatever God says is best, humans tend to rebel against. That is why the Bible says "there is none good, no not one." (Romans 3:10) When God says go right, human nature says go left. They are exact polar opposites. That is, of course, why we need Someone to reconcile us with God. I think you know the rest...
Talking snake? I wasn't there so I can't say exactly what it looked like, but obviously the devil was in some way communicating to Adam and Eve. I'm not dogmatic that it was through a physical literal snake.
I'm not going to continue much on Slashdot, but if you (or anyone reading this) does want to have a hopefully rational discussion on the merits of the Christian faith, feel free to email me. yoderm AT gmail Flames will go to/dev/null, but I'll try to entertain serious questions or discussion points.
Easy. The days in Genesis 1 are long ages of time. In fact Gleason Archer, probably the best Hebrew scholar of modern times, has argued that the way the text is worded rules out the calendar-day theory. Also there are demonstrable gaps in the genealogies, so I have no problem with humans being on earth tens of thousands of years.
When you look at the whole Bible, including everything it says on Creation, it describes Big Bang cosmology fairly accurately (well not the science of the BB itself of course, but the effects of a BB universe).
> Wouldn't it be easier to take it from a new standpoint... look at the world then the book and decide whether or not its needed?
I've done that, and to me the Bible describes reality more consistently than other worldviews.
Well said. I'm a day-age creationist myself, with a fairly conservative view of the Bible, and don't find this discovery particularly disturbing. The concepts of microevolution are well understood and verified, and useful in research such as medicine, etc. But some bacteria gaining the ability to do something new is a far cry from bacteria to humans via natural processes, which is a leap of faith far greater than I'm willing to take.
Just learn PostgreSQL. You'll be happier in the end. Trust me!:-)
FWIW, PG is closer to the SQL standard than MySQL. Although the basics of SQL are roughly the same anywhere, with a PG background you'll have an easier time moving to Oracle or something else one day.
The only thing that's especially tricky in configuration is pg_hba.conf -- but comparison with mysql's user auth shows the complexity to be worthwhile. Amen. User access privileges positively drive me nuts about MySQL. It is completely inane. Different passwords for the same user for different hosts and/or databases? Guuuuh!
PG works exactly as should be expected, with the added benefit of hierarchical roles. It may be good to change the default auth method from ident to md5, though.
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As a solid Christian, I agree with you. :)
I was thrilled with Palin at first -- now I'm somewhat concerned. There are a lot of nuts who are Christians, and a case could be made that Palin is one of them. The last thing that Christianity needs is to have one of them in a prominent position.
But I'm also a solid conservative so no way in heck am I voting for Obama. *Maybe* Bob Barr if I get disturbed enough.
Yeah.
As for experience I'll take Palin's over Obama's any day. Besides being a governor she's chaired the oil and gas commission. With that she should have good input on energy policy. I hear she has also dealt with Russia on fishing issues and Canada for the pipeline, so she has *some* international experience.
I wish she was at the top of the ticket. :) As it is, I'll take what I can get for now and hope Palin is a credible candidate in 2012 or 2016.
Yeah you can. The moment of conception.
That's the only one though. If you don't like the idea that a human life begins at conception, the problem becomes difficult indeed.
As a pro-lifer, I agree with this, I think you stated it well. All these issues are important.
The problem is, what if society generally allowed the killing of babies up to, say, a year old? If that happened, should a civilized culture sit back and say "well we really need to address the underlying issues of why this is happening" -- or would they try to end it ASAP?
If you understand why some of us would take the latter approach with a hypothetical situation of being able to freely kill one year olds, you can understand that we should rightly take the same urgency when society thinks it's OK to kill pre-born humans.
Anyway, it's a tough problem. By all means, let's address the underlying issues, but keep in mind that innocent lives are being lost by the day while we work them out.
> Even amongst Christians, a 6000 year old universe didn't become an article of faith until the rise of radio preachers in the 1920s.
Actually even later than that until it really took hold.
A couple years ago I spoke with an older gentleman who is an engineer for Christian radio. He was telling me that in the 1940s, virtually all educated Christians accepted an old earth.
It was really the publication of Henry Morris' "The Genesis Flood" in the 1960s that spawned the modern young earth movement in earnest.
But there can be pieces of evidence discovered by science that strengthen the case for a designer/creator. If you find things that seem to imply design, then there's nothing wrong with seeing that as scientific evidence for a designer (noting that evidence does not equal proof).
Of course the purely naturalistic zealots will have none of that and will summarily dismiss any such nuggets of evidence.
That is why we need to show the evidence as it really is, and teach critical thinking skills.
Why just 75%? I'm a social conservative also, voted for Bush most times (mainly for Supreme Court reasons, and held my nose for other reasons). I was starting to lean towards Bob Barr -- until today.
Palin is smart, she's fought against her own party and won, she's taken on government corruption and won. She holds a high regard for human life and puts her money where her mouth is. She even hunts moose and plays hockey. And she's cute too. She's freeking Superwoman!
I will now be enthusiastically voting for McCain. Palin for Prez 2012!
(Need to change my sig ...)
But does it need to be viable to be worthy of protection?
Even 6-week old fetuses have the features of a human. They look like tiny humans and have heartbeats, brainwaves, etc.
That's a person to me. And I think it's important for society in general to always err on the side of life.
I agree, 250GB a month isn't too restrictive. I'm just concerned that they'll use this as a start and steadily lower it from there.
IIRC, the wholesale price of bandwidth is under 10 cents a gigabyte. I'm paying Time Warner quite a bit more than that now, so the way I see it if they impose a limit it should be at least 250GB. Lowering it would just be greedy.
> eSata will be the standard by the time they get around to releasing it. I even have a eSata port on my laptop and it's a year old!
I hope you're right, because I agree it rocks. But AFAIK ASUS is still the only laptop manufacturer that puts it in. Where are all the others?
I don't care about being tied to Apache -- I believe it is the only web server I'll ever need.
Not sure what you mean about tying it to a "substandard MPM" -- AFAIK mod_python can run under prefork and worker (the only two that really matter at this point) and maybe others.
Agree with some of your other points though.
Yeah. Even without the frameworks, I like mod_python a whole lot more than PHP. PHP seems like a bunch of nasty hacks to me.
The fact that search engines couldn't index Flash was a strong argument against its use for textual content. With that excuse gone, more webmasters might consider using it.
Only problem is, Flash for textual content is HORRIBLE. Totally ruins the consistent experience I want with my web browser. Flash text does not behave like HTML text in several ways.
I really hope this doesn't encourage more Flash content from point-n-drool webmasters ...
Much as I would love to see a huge geek co-op raise a new net (Internet III?), I just don't think it is possible anymore.
Of course it's possible, it's just a matter of how much it will take. This is America. We have freedom to innovate, and if that freedom is taken away we have freedom to vote out the bozos and vote in folks who will defend our freedom and get out of the way of this kind of thing.Daunting task? Absolutely. The bozos are limiting our freedom and most Americans don't give a crap. That has to change.
In terms of creating a national co-op ISP, it's possible, it's just a question of how much money it will take. Is $1 billion enough for a good start? If so can we find a million people who would invest $1k? That should get some good backbone infrastructure and service to at least some areas.
Of course we might need another billion in political campaigning against the bozos in charge.
Actually I think there is a very good answer to this. Modern civilization would be impossible without a large mass of biofuels, which come about by billions of years of biomass!
God wanted us to thrive as a civilization, and that biomass is His gift to us in that regard!
The Genesis Flood: Why the Bible says it Must be Local I just reached the point where the elegant and accurate solutions provided by nature trumped the mental gymnastics of trying to defend ancient myths. How are you so sure that they do indeed trump "myths"? Studying nature is great, but it doesn't provide the answers to the big questions of life. No ultimate basis in morality, no purpose for living, etc. And when you study nature itself, I think it clearly points straight to the Creator. IMHO Romans 1:20 has never been more true than it is for our generation. Final question, where's the demonstrated hole in the chronology? Genesis 11:10 This is the history of the generations of Shem. Shem was one hundred years old and became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood. 11:11 Shem lived five hundred years after he became the father of Arpachshad, and became the father of sons and daughters. 11:12 Arpachshad lived thirty-five years and became the father of Shelah. 11:13 Arpachshad lived four hundred three years after he became the father of Shelah, and became the father of sons and daughters.
Luke 3:35 the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, 3:36 the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech
Cainan is not in Genesis. It is in the Septuagint, but the original manuscripts, not it, are considered the basis for infallibility. But Luke is also infallible. Therefore, "x begat y" can certainly skip generations, and the text does not limit humanity's existence to 6000 years.
Sorry if you think this is just "mental gymnastics". I think it is interesting. I actually have a wide array of reasons for belief in God, including what the Bible says about science. But like I said earlier, most of early Genesis falls into place once you trust God, it likely is not the reason someone would believe.
Anyway, not sure what the point of discussing this is. Either you're interested in God or you're not. If you're not, you'll always find ways to dismiss all this. If you are, you would look for the ways belief in God makes sense, then Genesis falls into place after that.
All I am trying to do is say why the early chapters of Genesis are plausible. Obviously I can't prove them nor can you disprove them.
If you want to nitpick, you could also say that the creation of life (if indeed I am correct about verse 2 referring to that) and light hitting the surface are in the wrong order. Big deal? Maybe, maybe not. A couple other things in the chapter also may be in the wrong order. So do a lot of things in the whole Bible -- for example the different Gospels list events in different orders. I think that order wasn't as important to Jews as just the facts. More importantly, however, is that you did not say anything about the point to which you were referring, which is plants growing before the sun existed. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that? Maybe you didn't understand the post? The sun did exist prior to Day 4, but its light was shrouded by translucent clouds; it was permanently overcast. Also the text could have been referring only to the simplest plant life. The English certainly implies full grown fruit trees, but Hebrew has a very limited vocabulary and the same word could apply to very primitive plants.
Another way of thinking about the "days" is that they were simply the times in which God issued decrees, but not necessarily when they all came to pass.
First it says that God ordered the lights to appear. The word here is Hebrew 'haya', meaning "let there appear". This is NOT the same as ex-nihilo creation, Hebrew 'bara', which is used for the heavens and the earth in verse 1.
The second verse in Day 4 is a parenthetical note that says that God created the sun and moon, and the stars also. The verb there is the other Hebrew word for create, 'asa'. It also is not ex-nihilo creation, but the formation of something from what has previously existed. Also, the tense there is an imperfect past tense, stating that God had accomplished that at some point before the end of Day 4. Even more noticeable is that plants were on the face of the Earth before the Sun was there to allow them to grow. Yes it was.
So what happened? God created the universe, which expanded and the earth formed by generally accepted planetary formation physics. According to planetary formation theory, the earth should be covered in thick atmosphere, even more so than Venus, and it probably was. It was also covered by water after the initial cooling. Note that both of these conditions are mentioned in Genesis 1:2 -- "darkness was over the face of the deep."
I also believe the phrase "the Spirit hovered over the waters" is a reference to the creation of the first life, widely believed to be in the ocean very early in life's history. The word for 'hovered' is the same Hebrew word used later for God brooding over Israel, protecting her like a hen protects its chicks. Obviously something profound was happening.
Also early on was the collision with the Mars-sized object that ended up creating our moon. This ate up much of the atmosphere causing it to become translucent. Light from the sun was visible on the earth's surface for the first time, hence "let there be light."
As the atmosphere dissipated over the eons, it eventually became transparent in Day 4, when the heavenly bodies were finally visible from the surface. This happened sometime before the Cambrian Explosion, which I think is rather nicely described in Day 5. Perhaps there's further dilation of time here and "year" actually means 1 tenth of a year. I don't think so. There are conceivable explanations. I admit none can be proven (nor disproven), but speculations as to how it could have worked. First, all humans were said to have been vegetarians in the beginning. This would allow one to be healthier if they had lived hundreds of years. Second, there may have been less cosmic radiation early on (one or more supernovae have occurred since man came to earth). But what I think had to have happened is that God modified human telemeres, which essentially limit our lifespan. Yes, the God I believe in is plenty capable of that, and the Bible says that God ordained our days to be no more than 120. A divine manipulation of telemeres seems to fit the bill here. Also note that other ancient cultures have legends of kings living 1000 years. This is not unique to the Bible. That, and the fact that the story has the entire human race originating with a single couple. I think again I have to appeal to manipulation by God. Note that at the Tower of Babel God is said to have confused languages. It seems reasonable to me that He would have changed a few genes in the process.
I realize this isn't acceptable to a methodological naturalist. It certainly isn't falsifiable nor provable. To me there are a lot of other factors that make belief in the God of the Bible reasonable, and that belief causes me to accept Genesis. Round it all off with an impossible flood of the world I believe the Flood was geographically local, but it covered all the areas where humans were living at the time. I think I can even prove that from the Bible itself, which drives young earth fundies nuts.
Not sure what there is to rationalize. The tree was there to see if Adam and Eve could follow the one simple instruction God gave them. They could not. And (if you want me to get theological on you) nothing has changed since then. Whatever God says is best, humans tend to rebel against. That is why the Bible says "there is none good, no not one." (Romans 3:10) When God says go right, human nature says go left. They are exact polar opposites. That is, of course, why we need Someone to reconcile us with God. I think you know the rest ...
/dev/null, but I'll try to entertain serious questions or discussion points.
Talking snake? I wasn't there so I can't say exactly what it looked like, but obviously the devil was in some way communicating to Adam and Eve. I'm not dogmatic that it was through a physical literal snake.
I'm not going to continue much on Slashdot, but if you (or anyone reading this) does want to have a hopefully rational discussion on the merits of the Christian faith, feel free to email me. yoderm AT gmail
Flames will go to
> How do you rationalize the 6000year issue?
... look at the world then the book and decide whether or not its needed?
Easy. The days in Genesis 1 are long ages of time. In fact Gleason Archer, probably the best Hebrew scholar of modern times, has argued that the way the text is worded rules out the calendar-day theory. Also there are demonstrable gaps in the genealogies, so I have no problem with humans being on earth tens of thousands of years.
When you look at the whole Bible, including everything it says on Creation, it describes Big Bang cosmology fairly accurately (well not the science of the BB itself of course, but the effects of a BB universe).
> Wouldn't it be easier to take it from a new standpoint
I've done that, and to me the Bible describes reality more consistently than other worldviews.
Well said. I'm a day-age creationist myself, with a fairly conservative view of the Bible, and don't find this discovery particularly disturbing. The concepts of microevolution are well understood and verified, and useful in research such as medicine, etc. But some bacteria gaining the ability to do something new is a far cry from bacteria to humans via natural processes, which is a leap of faith far greater than I'm willing to take.
Ah yes, RHL 4.1, the same distro that included the proprietary Red Baron web browser!
Just learn PostgreSQL. You'll be happier in the end. Trust me! :-)
FWIW, PG is closer to the SQL standard than MySQL. Although the basics of SQL are roughly the same anywhere, with a PG background you'll have an easier time moving to Oracle or something else one day.
PG works exactly as should be expected, with the added benefit of hierarchical roles. It may be good to change the default auth method from ident to md5, though.