And the dimension 10 is apparently outside diameter, including the edge of the "sea". And 30 is apparently the inside circumference. By these two dimension we an calculate that the thickness of the edge was about 0,71. So, no, Bible doesn't have an error in this.
I think you did your thickness calculation incorrectly. You need for the two numbers to give a ratio of about 3.14. Calling one an inner dimension and the other an outer one was a good start. We need to know what inner diameter corresponds to a ratio of 3.14 when compared to 30, so we divide 30 / 3.14 = 9.554, so we need to shorten the 10 by 0.445 units, therefore, that was obviously the thickness of the perimeter.
No one has demonstrated [what the Bible says about a global flood] to be wrong. I don't think you can provide any reasonable argument against the Bible story
Disagree, but we can still stipulate to the point, since it doesn't need to be disproved to be disregarded.
Do I understand correctly, if someone claims Bible is demonstrably wrong, he should prove his claim is correct?
Yes, but only if he wants to be believed, and we are assuming that the student is sufficiently prepared to understand the argument and is willing to be convinced by a compelling one. There's no burden of proof where is no possibility of proving.
I have not decided. I think it is possible [Thor] existed.
Do you think that's credible? Do you think anybody believes you believe that that is possible? This you giving homage to a system of thought that you don't actually respect. That's what a critical thinker says. He doesn't believe Thor exists, but he knows what it takes to say that it is impossible, and knowing the limits of knowledge available to man, doesn't make that claim.
But that's not how a creationist thinks. Yet, he wants to be respected for having a rational and empirical basis for his beliefs anyway. That's what creationist apologetics is for - to give the creationist the sense that these things support his beliefs, too, and so he begins talking about the limits of what microevolution can accomplish, how entropy prevents evolution, what cannot be observed or reproduced in a laboratory, and other sciency-sounding subjects, like 747s assembling in junkyards under the direction of tornadoes and the fine tuning of the universe.
Evidence for the great flood would be:
1. Oil, gas and coal fields
2. Massive sedimentary formations
3. Modern continents
4. Marine fossils on high mountains
5. Ice age and great glaciers
6. Stories about it all over the world
I think [4] explains why the flood myth appears in the Bible, which depicts the creator in an unflattering way. It blames its creation for not being what it wants them to be, murders most of them and most other terrestrial life in a cruel manner, and then uses the same breeding stock to repopulate the earth. Why put that story in the book? Because from their ancient perspective, it seemed like it must be true. How else did those shells and other marine fossils get up there except for an act of an angry god?
if vast amount of organic material sunk, it would obviously have caused very large gas, oil and coal formations.
Why would that have happened? Those deposits represent millennia of deposition, not forty days worth of biomass.
Unless one is a hypocrite or charlatan, or has a wicked view of God, then without theism the world would be just as the animal kingdom - dog-eat-dog, looking out for number one, the survival of the physically fittest, kill or be killed, with absolutely no remorse when an injustice is committed.
"Atheist are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you're trying to argue from a position of moral superiority." - Amanda Marcotte
theism always leads to morality
Perhaps you should look at the American news. It's theism on steroids, and people will die because of it.
Both you and Steven Weinberg are referring to the misguided, exploitive and/or insincere.
Yes, they are. That's what the church is churning out and depositing into the neighborhoods. Look at their white evangelicals. They vote for the likes of sexual predators like Moore and Trump in droves.
there is no such concept or significance to morality if God does not exist.
The Abrahamic god fails to meet the humanist standard for moral behavior.
since when does anyone define a religious system based on the position of the interpreters?
For as long as people have been evaluating such systems. I posted this a few months back:
"This is one of the huge benefits of participating here for me. We can generate a spectrum for each worldview and compare them all. Secular humanism is generating the highest frequency of intelligent, educated, decent people. Theistic humanists (they don't call themselves that, but they are essentially indistinguishable from the atheistic variety apart from a god belief that doesn't cause them to abandon reason and innate decency), dharmics (like you, who might also be considered a theistic humanist), and many pagans/LHP do very well also, with few reprehensible opinions expressed. And it goes downhill from there. My conclusion? The less religion one has, the better off he is. Look at the other end of the spectrum, where faith and submission to doctrine dominate thought. This is where America's white evangelicals fall - Trump's people."
We do that by looking at the adherents, not their books. We do that by evaluating their actions, not their words. They say, "our Bible teaches to love one another." No it doesn't. It just says that in a few places. What it teaches is what its adherents are learning, not what a few passages in the book giving lip service to an idea that doesn't resemble how such people actually treat one another.
God is the author of morality - a concept incomprehensible to the secular realm.
Incomprehensible? You flatter yourself. Nothing you believe is incomprehensible to critical thinkers except why you think that they would believe it, too.
Only Jesus defines what Christianity is
Not for me. I do that.
You are surprised that God destroyed the world - what reasonable and insightful person would ever think that humans don't deserve that?
This is one of the most objectionable tenets of the Abrahamic religions, which depends on people believing that a just god would destroy them. If you read my treatment of the flood myth, I referred to that idea that anything bad happening in the world is God punishing man because he needs another cosmic beating. Why did God drown the earth? Sinful humans. The had it coming. Same reason he threw them out of paradise and gave them mutually unintelligible languages. It's why Sodom and Gomorrah needed destroying. And it's why you and I need Jesus. Because we were born deserving being swatted with a rolled up magazine just for being human, and it's amazing grace that provides the loophole, PBUH. The whole notion is off-putting to a humanist, and why he doesn't think much of this moral framework.
I believe that you have an inflated view of yourself, and your species.
More of this abominable worldview, which depends on depicting man as helpless and totally dependent on a god for a deity to be saved from himself, which saved a once-lost wretch like me. Man has a hereditary disease, and only Jesus holds the cure. Enough with that. Man is the only hope of improving the human condition, which he has done quite well since putting gods away.
you're not appreciating how corrupt that we all are.
Another gift of this beautiful worldview. You're not appreciating that we are not all corrupt. I'm not, nor are most of the people I know.
do you think that there's a single atheist on this forum who would possibly understand what I said?
Do you think that there is one who couldn't? Why do you keep implying that your thoughts are difficult to understand? Because they are roundly rejected? That's how I know that they ARE being understood.
start to appreciate your own wretchedness
More of this beautiful worldview. That's where the wretchedness is found. Could it be any more anti-human? Imagine extraterrestrials talking about man the way Christians do: "You're all corrupt and wretched." Those are enemies of man.
anyone who claims that they're in good moral standing, hasn't got a single clue.
Only you have a clue, right? Only you are qualified to decide these matters, right?
You worship a bigoted god, so you have nothing to teach the humanist about morality. My moral status is unrelated to archaic, irrational, religious moral codes.
when we are faced with two seemingly contradictory precepts, the art of exegesis requires harmonizing the two and not having one supersede the other, like you appeared to do.
There's the difference between our two traditions - empiricism and religious apologetics. The first answer in this post was to a motivated reasoner, which is somebody doing what you describe - attempting to reconcile scripture with scholarship - or harmonizing, as you call it - by showing how 30/10= 3.14 using creative accounting. My response was me doing the other - attempting to replace a bad idea with a better one, or supersede it as you say.
It's extremely spurious to listen to God haters scream for justice, when most of them are gratuitously aggressive and definitively mean-spirited.
More of this beautiful worldview, which depicts skeptics as mean-spirited, gratuitously aggressive God haters - a perfect description of your own posting behavior if we change God-haters to freethinkers. It's you running around the thread with your hair on fire gratuitously emotional and with malice for skeptics. You don't like them, do you? Bad atheists. Sinful atheists. Get that rolled-up newspaper out again. It's time to smite for righteousness' sake.
