ONCE AGAIN! Facts in the Bible is supported by archaeology.

[Hotcakes78]

Pontius Pilate’s ring may have been discovered at ancient biblical fortress

Just another nail that keeps appearing again and again.

It's amazing, to me, how the information in the Gospels and letters are supported by facts that are discovered.

That's funny, facts in the bible

 

[PruePhillip]

This is just another instance of you making assertions for which there is no evidence just as you did with your comments about atheists referring to ancient Jews as being dumb.

The only names given to documents in the New Testament
are those on letters (epistles.) There is a modesty in true
Christian thought about self-promotion. The subject of these
men was Jesus, not themselves.
(makes you wonder about these obscenely rich and famous
televangelists, doesn't it?)

There's a few books in the Old Testament that are similar,
like the book of Malachi. But Malachi is simply "messenger."
And people get frustrated with other books because there's
a name, but little else about the author.
Who is the author of Genesis and Exodus? Or Hebrews?

 

[PruePhillip]

Reminds me of this quote:

Yeah, the Old Testament said the Jews would be a blessing to
the whole world, and some of their detractors say they didn't
do anything at all, not a fortress, a manuscript, not even the
bible itself at that stage.
Funny quote though. Though I think being dumb can be bad
for you too.

 

[PruePhillip]

That's funny, facts in the bible

Science is slowly uncovering "facts about the bible"
Mostly back to the 10th Century BC, the time of the
house of David. We find evidence of this house from
ancient extra-biblical sources; some of the prophets
and kings from ancient seals, fragments of scripture
going back 1,000 years before the oldest bible;
excavations of old fortresses; the Gihon spring of
David and Solomon is now a tourist destination; DNA
has confirmed the Jews as a real people as was the
tribe of Levi (priestly class) and so on.

ALL OF THE ABOVE WAS ONCE DISMISSED BY
BIBLICAL 'MINIMALISTS'

There's quite a body of work on this topic. If you are
interested then temper your beliefs by reading about
them.

 

[PruePhillip]

Hello. The origin of life question has not been "settled."

Peace

No, the origin of life in fresh water. We have gone full
circle to Darwin's "little warm pond" idea. Even in
2017 people were saying that life emerged in the
oceans, possibly from the hot vents.
That annoyed me as the bible said first the land and
then the sea. So the bible had it the wrong way round?
But no, the biblical sequence is correct.
heavens
earth (dark and oceanic)
dry land
life on land
life in oceans
man.

 

[Regiomontanus]

No, the origin of life in fresh water. We have gone full
circle to Darwin's "little warm pond" idea. Even in
2017 people were saying that life emerged in the
oceans, possibly from the hot vents.
That annoyed me as the bible said first the land and
then the sea. So the bible had it the wrong way round?
But no, the biblical sequence is correct.
heavens
earth (dark and oceanic)
dry land
life on land
life in oceans
man.

Hello. We do not know how or where life started. It is an unsettled (perhaps unanswerable) question. I would not be surprised if it started elsewhere in our galaxy; we are showered with tons of dust from space every day. We have detected in space many of the amino acids necessary for life as we know it. And we know that bactetia can survive in space. So who knows...

Peace

 

[PruePhillip]

Hello. We do not know how or where life started. It is an unsettled (perhaps unanswerable) question. I would not be surprised if it started elsewhere in our galaxy; we are showered with tons of dust from space every day. We have detected in space many of the amino acids necessary for life as we know it. And we know that bactetia can survive in space. So who knows...
Peace

That's the panspermia theory. It's credible.
What we find in space is the basic organics
and there's yet no evidence of actual life.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yeah, the Old Testament said the Jews would be a blessing to
the whole world, and some of their detractors say they didn't
do anything at all, not a fortress, a manuscript, not even the
bible itself at that stage.
Funny quote though. Though I think being dumb can be bad
for you too.

Cherry picking fallacy.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No, the origin of life in fresh water. We have gone full
circle to Darwin's "little warm pond" idea. Even in
2017 people were saying that life emerged in the
oceans, possibly from the hot vents.
That annoyed me as the bible said first the land and
then the sea. So the bible had it the wrong way round?
But no, the biblical sequence is correct.
heavens
earth (dark and oceanic)
dry land
life on land
life in oceans
man.

What makes you think it is definitive that it formed in fresh water? Also I am not to sure how long it took the oceans to become salty, they would still have been "seas" even if they were fresh.

Never mind, found the paper. This is still rather speculative. I would wait until more evidence comes in before making a definitive statement. The salt in the ocean would have relied upon erosion and I do not know of any models that explain how fast the oceans became rich in sodium.

 

[gnostic]

I love evolution. It's so amazingly simple and clever.
Galileo said that the bible doesn't teach us how the heavens go
but how to go to heaven. Nor does the bible teach us how life
is put together. Or does it?
Just last year scientists settled on an earth based origin for
life (fresh water) as opposed to an ocean origin. That is the
last issue I had with Genesis, ie that it got the sequence of
land vs ocean wrong. It didn't. God didn't create life, the earth
created life. Isn't that amazing?

Sorry, but evolution isn’t about the origin of life. That Abiogenesis.

Evolution about population of life changing time - “time” as in generations - and one of the effects that changes have on distant descendants is speciation, hence evolution has everything to do with biodiversity and common ancestry.

BUT life have to already existed before evolution can occur. Evolution cannot occur from nothing or from no life.

Meaning, there can be no offspring without parent or parents, and no descendants if there are no ancestors.

Abiogenesis differed from evolution in that scientists are attempting to understand the origin of life, by first understanding how non-living matters (ie inorganic matters) can convert into living matters (ie organic matters).

All matters on Earth, whether it be organic or inorganic, are all made of atoms that are bonded together as elements, molecules or compounds.

So basically, Abiogenesis is study on how to go from (A) chemistry to (B) biochemistry.

So far, Abiogenesis has focused their experiments on how organic matters (nucleic acids, eg RNA & DNA, or amino acids, eg which make up proteins), not life or living organisms, can possibly form naturally.

Unlike evolution, Abiogenesis does not focus on biodiversity or speciation, and therefore it doesn’t focus on how genetic traits or common and different morphology, that are passed from one to generation.

In your 1st sentence of your 1st paragraph, you talk of how you “love evolution”, but in your next paragraph, you only focused on “the origin of life”, which is actually “abiogenesis”, not “evolution”.

Evolution is not about the first life or the origin of life.

Most biologists, when they talk of evolution of specific animals, they often compared different living species or subspecies of the same genus or the same clade. These same biologists probably never seen fossils of the ancestral species that the current species are derived from.

To give you example, when biologists study the evolution of polar bears. They (polar bears) were originally from same species as that of the brown bears, which they are descendants from, but during the last Ice Age, some 600,000 years ago, they diverge from the brown bears. It is more than just change in colour in their fur.

Paleontology is a specialised field that study fossil remains, and not all biologists study paleontology (I would actually say majority of biologists are not qualified as “paleontologist”).

Likewise, most people who study geology, would know much on stratigraphy or paleontology.

For instance, I am qualified civil engineer, and one of my first year subject is geology, learning about rocks, rock formation and the minerals, anything that engineers might encounter on the building sites. But the geology I study didn’t touch on anything regarding to should we find fossils or we (as engineers) didn’t need to know how to date rocks or minerals to figure out their ages (eg radiometric techniques or luminescence techniques).

Biologists required knowledge on evolution and the different evolutionary mechanisms, but they are not required to learn about Abiogenesis, since -

1. Evolution is essential in biology, and Abiogenesis isn’t,
2. and Abiogenesis isn’t a “scientific theory” because it required further testings, and therefore learning about the origin of life is only optional for biologists.

Abiogenesis is a work-in-progress type of hypothesis; the evidences for abiogenesis is promising, but biochemists need more to reach scientific consensus: meaning, more evidences, more experiments, more verifiable data.

 

[PruePhillip]

What makes you think it is definitive that it formed in fresh water? Also I am not to sure how long it took the oceans to become salty, they would still have been "seas" even if they were fresh.

Never mind, found the paper. This is still rather speculative. I would wait until more evidence comes in before making a definitive statement. The salt in the ocean would have relied upon erosion and I do not know of any models that explain how fast the oceans became rich in sodium.

Whether it was fresh water seas or salty seas, the bible just says 'seas'
Interestingly, when I was a boy there was this image of earth as molten
lava - no water, no cloud deck. But about 2005 came the first hint that
very early Earth was wet. Saturn's moon Titan showed us a "precursor
Earth" as liquid and cloud covered. And the discovery of "continental
drift" when I was in secondary school helped us understand continents
as things which formed inside the Earth as lighter granite.
Been watching this all my life.
Today I asked two JW ladies about their "Creation" poster. They did
not believe life came out of the sea. They scrambled for their electronic
bibles. I told them this verse is the "orphan verse" as it unnerves both
skeptics and believers.

 

[PruePhillip]

Sorry, but evolution isn’t about the origin of life. That Abiogenesis.

Thanks for that. Quite interesting. I had a religious friend who was a geologist.
I asked him how he squared Genesis (the seven days) and evolution (fossils
he would encounter) with his views. He said he "hadn't thought about it."
I took that as a dishonest answer.
I see evolution in abiogenesis too. Molecules forming primitive replicators
to me is still evolution. But maybe I am splitting hairs.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Whether it was fresh water seas or salty seas, the bible just says 'seas'
Interestingly, when I was a boy there was this image of earth as molten
lava - no water, no cloud deck. But about 2005 came the first hint that
very early Earth was wet. Saturn's moon Titan showed us a "precursor
Earth" as liquid and cloud covered. And the discovery of "continental
drift" when I was in secondary school helped us understand continents
as things which formed inside the Earth as lighter granite.
Been watching this all my life.
Today I asked two JW ladies about their "Creation" poster. They did
not believe life came out of the sea. They scrambled for their electronic
bibles. I told them this verse is the "orphan verse" as it unnerves both
skeptics and believers.

Your history of the Earth is still confused. Yes, the Earth originally was large a molten ball of rock. The earliest that surface water began to appear in significant amounts was about 4.2 billion years ago. That leaves 300 million years of no oceans and a dry surface. You can read more here:

When did oceans form on Earth?

 

[PruePhillip]

Your history of the Earth is still confused. Yes, the Earth originally was large a molten ball of rock. The earliest that surface water began to appear in significant amounts was about 4.2 billion years ago. That leaves 300 million years of no oceans and a dry surface. You can read more here:

When did oceans form on Earth?

I knew I would get a bite out of that. Yes, it was molten, and at an
earlier stage it was a rubble pile and before that just dust and gas.
But for an appreciable amount of the early Earth's evolution was
as an Oceanic and Cloud Planet.
Venus is a cloud planet, so too are the gas giants and Titan.
We thought for a while that Titan would be an ocean world too,
as it is, it's a sea and land world.
I would suppose that we gauge what a planet becomes when it
coalesces out of gas, turns to rubble, melts and cools down -
into something....

Until the first understanding of continents rising above the sea
I simply did not believe Genesis at all. I still see the second
Genesis account of Adam, Eve and the snake as fictional, but
symbolic.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

The only names given to documents in the New Testament
are those on letters (epistles.) There is a modesty in true
Christian thought about self-promotion. The subject of these
men was Jesus, not themselves.
(makes you wonder about these obscenely rich and famous
televangelists, doesn't it?)

There's a few books in the Old Testament that are similar,
like the book of Malachi. But Malachi is simply "messenger."
And people get frustrated with other books because there's
a name, but little else about the author.
Who is the author of Genesis and Exodus? Or Hebrews?

The Gospels aren't named documents? Cool.

 

[gnostic]

Thanks for that. Quite interesting. I had a religious friend who was a geologist.
I asked him how he squared Genesis (the seven days) and evolution (fossils
he would encounter) with his views. He said he "hadn't thought about it."
I took that as a dishonest answer.
I see evolution in abiogenesis too. Molecules forming primitive replicators
to me is still evolution. But maybe I am splitting hairs.

If there are NO PASSING of genes, chromosomes, DNA or RNA from generations to generations, as it is the case for Abiogenesis, then this is not evolution.

All mutations, genetic drift, natural selection, gene flow and genetic hitchhiking, still required genetics to work.

There is no genetic in Abiogenesis, no passing of genetic traits from generations.

Abiogenesis works through purely from chemical reactions.

Even you should understand that.

You do understand students who go medical schools will learn some core subjects that are common for every medical fields, but there are those who specialize in specific fields, which not every students will learn.

You don’t expect a dentist to able to perform neurosurgery or heart surgery.

While biochemists in the field of Abiogenesis are expect to know evolution, biologists don’t require to know Abiogenesis unless they want to join and specialize in this specific field. And the fact is, not everyone would want to do Abiogenesis, since it is a tiny niche, plus it is still hypothesis, not accepted scientific theory...yet.

Just as most biologists don’t become paleontologists or even study paleontology as a minor. Most universities don’t even offer paleontology as a subject, let alone a full course on paleontology.

 

[Polymath257]

If there are NO PASSING of genes, chromosomes, DNA or RNA from generations to generations, as it is the case for Abiogenesis, then this is not evolution.

All mutations, genetic drift, natural selection, gene flow and genetic hitchhiking, still required genetics to work.

There is no genetic in Abiogenesis, no passing of genetic traits from generations.

Abiogenesis works through purely from chemical reactions.

Even you should understand that.

You do understand students who go medical schools will learn some core subjects that are common for every medical fields, but there are those who specialize in specific fields, which not every students will learn.

You don’t expect a dentist to able to perform neurosurgery or heart surgery.

While biochemists in the field of Abiogenesis are expect to know evolution, biologists don’t require to know Abiogenesis unless they want to join and specialize in this specific field. And the fact is, not everyone would want to do Abiogenesis, since it is a tiny niche, plus it is still hypothesis, not accepted scientific theory...yet.

Just as most biologists don’t become paleontologists or even study paleontology as a minor. Most universities don’t even offer paleontology as a subject, let alone a full course on paleontology.

In fact, one of the goals of abiogenesis is to get to the place where we understand how to go from chemistry to genetics. Once that transition is made, we then have evolution and life.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I knew I would get a bite out of that. Yes, it was molten, and at an
earlier stage it was a rubble pile and before that just dust and gas.
But for an appreciable amount of the early Earth's evolution was
as an Oceanic and Cloud Planet.
Venus is a cloud planet, so too are the gas giants and Titan.
We thought for a while that Titan would be an ocean world too,
as it is, it's a sea and land world.
I would suppose that we gauge what a planet becomes when it
coalesces out of gas, turns to rubble, melts and cools down -
into something....

Until the first understanding of continents rising above the sea
I simply did not believe Genesis at all. I still see the second
Genesis account of Adam, Eve and the snake as fictional, but
symbolic.

So the Bible was wrong again, unless one does some massive cherry picking.

How do you deal with the Noah's Ark myth?

 

[ecco]

I see evolution in abiogenesis too. Molecules forming primitive replicators
to me is still evolution. But maybe I am splitting hairs.

Molecules forming primitive replicators is a form of evolution. I have evolved from a child into a man. Neighborhoods evolve.

But there is a difference between evolution and the Theory of Evolution, often shortened to just Evolution. Hence, abiogenesis is not part of Evolution and is a separate field of study.

 

[PruePhillip]

So the Bible was wrong again, unless one does some massive cherry picking.

How do you deal with the Noah's Ark myth?

How can you say it was a myth? Was Hannibal a myth? The Seige
of Troy a myth. Don't know, I wasn't there.

Bible says the whole world was flooded in Noah's time. But the
ancient writers did not know what the world was. In Jesus day
the "whole world was taxed" and then the "world" meant the
Roman Empire (Jews knew about Africans, Parthians and
barbarians.)
The term "world" meant different things to different people. To
tell them that the earth is a planet would have had you laughed
at - a planet was a wandering star.
Our term "universe" has changed in just 20 years.

I suggest Noah saw a flood that engulfed his civilization.