Sorry, I don't believe that. I think Mesopotamian stories are more probably reworking of the stories that are collected in the Bible. And also, it may be that the stories are independently done without reworking.
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Is the Bible Allegorical or Literal?
- Thread starter loverofhumanity
- Start date
Some are still being pushed up. Others are not and are only eroding, thus becoming less high: "The Appalachian mountains in the southeast United States are slowly shrinking as weathering erodes them away and plate tectonics no longer is driving them up. " source
That should get a huge audience. I'm looking for a comment on literal versus figurative days of creation.
So the existence of petrochemical deposits in the earth is convincing evidence of a global flood for you? Why would a global flood be needed for that? Even if floods caused these deposits, why do you assume that it is all the result of a single flood, and why does the flood need to be global when the deposits are clustered rather than deposited diffusely and evenly?
You might find this interesting:
"Affirming the consequent is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark"), and invalidly inferring its converse ("The room is dark, so the lamp is broken"), even though that statement may not be true. This arises when a consequent ("the room would be dark") has other possible antecedents (for example, "the lamp is in working order, but is switched off" or "there is no lamp in the room")."
Do you have a reason for believing it other than your belief that God gave those myths to the Hebrews directly?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
That is because you do not understand the concept of scientific evidence. By definition you cannot have scientific evidence for an idea if your concept is not testable.
"Scientific evidence is evidence that serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis,"
Scientific evidence - Wikipedia
If you cannot clearly state at least one reasonable test based upon the predictions of your model that could possibly refute it you do not have evidence. You only have an ad hoc explanation. If you do not like Wikipedia I can find other scientific sources that say the same thing.
Meanwhile your claims are easily refutable. Let's talk about the ice one. There are annual layers of ice. We can see them. We can count them. We can date them by several separate independent means. They all show that the ice has been there hundreds of thousands of years. Those are based upon science where the original idea was testable and it has passed those tests.
Also your claims about sedimentary rocks coming from the flood are refuted with one simple picture, if you cannot figure out why admit it and I will explain to you what this picture shows:
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
It does not matter what yo believe. It matters what you can support with evidence.
Brian2
Veteran Member
Mountains do get bigger or smaller compared to mountains and valleys that surround them. You would agree with that I presume.
Mountains also get bigger of smaller compared to sea level, yes?
Wow, I had no idea! OK, thanks for the insight.
Brian2
Veteran Member
I have already been down that road and quoted most of the scriptures about the Lamb in Revelation which show it is the Lamb which opens the book and is the one who is important (if you want to divide the Lion from the Lamb) and who is identified to be Jesus, the Word and King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Water off a ducks back it seems.
CG Didymus
Veteran Member
I went through it too. The Lamb is the main character in Revelation. The Bab isn't mentioned enough by Baha'is to even think of him as having been a major character even in their religion. His teachings, along with the teachings of all the other religions have been replaced by the teachings of Baha'u'llah. But what still amazes me how the "Three Woes" are made to be Muhammad, the Bab and Baha'u'llah.
Brian2
Veteran Member
All of what they teach amazes me.
There is no reason to assume the great flood event would have caused even deposition of material, if it happened as told in the Bible. And I don't think slow erosion can do the same, because organic material lighter than non organic and is not easily trapped below non organic material in slow pace.
My reason to think so is that I think Bible gives more accurate and reasonable image of events. The others look more like copy, because they don't show as deep understanding.
One test for Biblical flood theory is:
In the flood event lot of organic material sunk and was mixed into sediment layers. If the theory is true, we should find traces of that material. And conveniently we can indeed find such traces, oil, gas and coal.
I can believe we can count layers of ice. But I don't think we can date them accurately. It is possible that those are formed not the same way every year.
The account of the biblical flood contains almost no details, and science contradicts the story.
I had asked, "Do you have a reason for believing [that the "Mesopotamian stories are more probably reworking of the stories that are collected in the Bible] other than your belief that God gave those myths to the Hebrews directly?" So you claim to have reviewed the older myths and decided that they were derivative of one that came later because they don't show as deep an understanding? Of what? They're just stories that don't describe any actual global flood and demonstrate that their authors didn't understand geology. They didn't know where the rain comes from. There's no understanding demonstrated in that myth, just a guess at what happened, and was probably inspired by the discovery of seashells and other marine fossils on the highest mountaintops.
How much organic material do you suppose was collected during those forty days? Not enough to form the world's oil and coal deposits. They represent millions of years of accumulated organic material representing eons of creatures that lived and died, not the few that happened to be living on the earth's surface when a flood occurred.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
No, that is not a test. You are using knowledge that we have had almost forever. The theory needs to be able to make predictions. That was a postdiction.
You are demonstrably wrong. Dates can be checked and verified. Air bubbles have carbon dioxide in them. That can be carbon dated. Layers of volcanic ash can be dated as well..
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Yes, I should have addressed the issues of fossils in general. There would be only one thin layer of fossilized life. Instead we find more life than could have existed at once by orders of magnitude. Marine beds such as limestone tend to be made of animal parts. Corals are animals. When limestone forms it is quite often mostly broken and wave worked coral reefs that make them up.
Chalk beds, like the white cliffs of Dover have to grow in very specific environments. The flood would have killed the organisms almost immediately. And if all of them died that might leave a millimeter of deposition, not a forty meter cliff. Freshman geology refutes the flood.
CG Didymus
Veteran Member
Well, they don't have perfect explanations and interpretations. It leaves so much room to question and doubt what they say. But, to them, those interpretations and explanations make perfect sense and are so obviously true. But to others, they neglect so many things that are important doctrines and beliefs of the other religions. Things that are directly stated in their Scriptures or based on a reasonable interpretation of what is said in their Scriptures.
But for every religion, the Baha'i Faith goes against those beliefs and doctrines, even things clearly stated in the Scriptures of those other religions. So, not only to Christianity, but to Hinduism and Buddhism and the others. My main focus has been on the empty tomb and that Jesus says he has flesh and bone and is not a ghost and that in Acts it says he showed himself to be alive by many proofs. Yet, the Baha'is say "no". All that stuff about the resurrection is symbolic. Jesus did not come back to life physically... only spiritually. But then, what is clearly stated in the gospels is not true. For Baha'is the body of Jesus died, stayed dead and rotted away.
What amazes me is why didn't their prophet just say that all the other religions have some truth in them but all these stories, virgin births and resurrections, and demons and devils is all fable... none of it is true... (Strange that they accept the virgin birth, though).
And since, I think, that's what they do anyway, why not come right out and say it... The Bible and other Scriptures of the older religions have a lot of legend and myth in them and cannot be taken literally.
Real science doesn't, only some "scientific" beliefs may do so.
That can be said about any theory humans have made.
If you believe so.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
No, "real science" does refute it. You probably do not understand the concept.
Please support your claim.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
[/QUOTE]
Not so. There are many examples of proper testing. You made the mistake of using a positive test. And that was not what I asked for. You need a test that could possibly refute your belief. Not finding your fake 'prediction' would not refute your claim because people may not have been looking in the right place.
No, I know so. I can explain how. You lack this knowledge so it looks like only unsupported claims to you. But as you already demonstrated, you do not even understand evidence.
joelr
Well-Known Member
It's people with history degrees who apply it to some part of the Bible. The evidence is studies and a consensus is reached. There is no "anti-Bible" historians. They explain what the evidence presents.
Possibility of the supernatural isnt a factor. Evidence is. There is no evidence of anything supernatural from any religion.
You seem to think if scholars "just believed" the supernatural then the Bible would be true?
Huh? If you assume the Quran is telling true supernatural stories then that it also true?
There are many Exodus stories in the Bible. None are true.
Yes, apologists. And there are Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist and so on, apologists who assume their supernatural stories are true. But there isn't evidence and historias are interested in what can be demonstrated to be true.
The Bible is re-worked myth and theology. Evidence supports that. It isn't supernatural and doesn't appear to be supernatural any more than the Quran is.
No, the historicity field is largely in consensus.
Care about what is true?
Bible Archaeology report -
Old Testament Jericho has been identified in the mound known as Tall Al-Sulṭān (at the source of the copious spring ʿAyn Al-Sulṭān), which rises 70 feet (21 metres) above the surrounding plain. A number of major archaeological expeditions have worked at the site, notably in 1952–58 under Kathleen M. Kenyon, director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem; one of the main objectives has been to establish the date of the town’s destruction by the Israelites—a matter of importance for the chronology of the Israelite entry into Canaan. Most of the town of the period, including the whole circuit of the town walls, has been removed by erosion; enough survives to show only that there was a town of the period. This may have been destroyed in the second half of the 14th century BCE, but evidence is too scanty for precision. The site was then abandoned until the Iron Age. Little trace has been found of the 9th-century-BCE occupation attributed to Hiel, but there was a sizable settlement in the 7th century BCE, ending perhaps at the time of the second Babylonian Exile in 586 BCE. The site was then finally abandoned, and the later Jerichos grew up elsewhere.
Time magazine-
The proof is at Jericho — the real Jericho, not the storied place of the Bible but the historical site, known today as Tell es-Sultan (Hill of the Sultan), located in the modern-day West Bank. Not only the oldest city wall known to us, the ninth-millennium site is also by most estimates the oldest city, full stop.
Freestanding walls do not, however, spring organically out of the rocks and hills. It would seem intuitive that warfare, or something like it, must provide the spur to their construction; yet Jericho demonstrates precisely the opposite. Not only is there no evidence of fighting in the area during the biblical period, there is also nothing to indicate any intense conflict in the ninth millennium BCE either. Excavations of burial sites from the period of the original wall’s construction have shown that male longevity rates were comparatively high at the time, pointing to a period of relative peace. From this seeming paradox has arisen the theory that — contrary to the city’s celebrated place in biblical lore — the original Jericho was something very different from an unwelcoming stronghold.
You are harping on only Biblical website, probably apologetic and completely ignoring archaeologists? To you truth is anything that confirms you beliefs. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
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