J-man said:
I'm having a difficult time thinking up a response, so i suppose i will say what's on my mind. I read it, and it makes sense according to what context it falls under. For instance, the book of Psalms is obviously poetic. Romans falls under instruction in faith. The Gospels follow the life of Jesus our lord and savior, so it would fall under the category of historical content First and Second Kings follow the lines of the kings of Israel and Judah, so it would make sense that they would be Historical. Genesis is an account of the beginning of the Earth, so it would be historical.
J-man said:
I don't think you're getting my question. What makes Psalms obviously poetic? What do you mean by "poetic;" is it simply facts stated in a lyrical way or metaphorical statements? What standards or methodical reasoning do you apply to determine whether Psalms is an actual listing of historical meaning or poetic, and what purpose does the poetry serve? Why would a holy book include poetry? Yet Genesis cannot be poetic. God says "let there be light!" but there is no mechanism provided as to how to, such as when God gives specific instructions with measurements to precise cubits on building large structures, yet the mechanisms of the creation of heaven, earth, light, plants, animals, night, day, the sun, the moon, the stars, man, and woman remain, in my view, a poetic mystery. There aren't cold hard dates in the Bible, and you said yourself that when the words "1,000 years" appears it is a kind of figurative language.
J-man said:
My friend, you don't get what the Bible is about. The Bible is one giant historical book that accounts the many times where man is continually rescued by God, eventually leading up to the ultimate act of rescue via the sacrifice of God's only begotten son to serve as a vessel for God's wrath that man deserved by sinning against his creator.
J-man said:
the book of Psalms is obviously poetic
It's a historical book with some poetry. I can easily create a way to view the Bible in a much more metaphorical rather than history textbook way.
J-man said:
No one can keep the law, as the law can not be kept by flesh alone. It can only condemn and show us our sin. In christianity, the law isn't a social guide it is a death sentence.
What is your point? If you're trying to show that the Ten Commandments are not a social guide then you basically proved it.
16 Destruction and misery are in their ways;
17 And the way of peace they have not known.”[f]
18 “ There is no fear of God before their eyes.”[g]
I don't know what you're trying to say by this but it seems that it's giving a justification for following God's laws. Where do we follow them? In society. Capital punishment is part of a social guide. A death sentence is pretty convincing for many people to follow certain rules. Do not covet other things, do not bear false witness, do not kill, yeah it seems pretty damn indisputable that these are definitely instructions on how to live, regardless of what their basis is and what the punishment is. I earnestly don't know what your point is but please explain how the Bible does not give instructions on how to live.
J-man said:
what are you trying to say here?
I'm trying to say that societies which actively endorse killing each other will die off quickly. Societies with members who actively steal from each other rob themselves of materials from those who need it. Societies which are unproductive will not survive. So I deduce that societies with reasons to behave well will survive better than others and thus an ultimate divine God which can actively punish those who commit acts that would not progress the civilization would help to keep people in line. I'm trying to say that it's rather strange that several of the rules imposed by the Judeo-Christian God seem to be those that would help a society progress or "evolve" into a culture which can continue to sustain itself as it has proved to do. In fact the concept of beliefs having such a profound impact on the evolution of societies into those that minimize the natural struggle for survival is rather intriguing to me.
J-man said:
Once again, Mt. Saint Helens is a good example of how geological processes can occur rapidly, which ties into the Flood as a catastrophe that could have caused many geological processes that are assumed to be slow to have occurred rapidly. now, concerning radiometric dating.
If you're referring to the Grand Canyon and similar features, the Grand Canyon was created by a long, long period of erosion due to relatively stable rivers. A gigantic flood would have weathered down far more rock.
J-man said:
Now from what i have read, Radiometric and Radiocarbon dating require these three assumptions (a. a constant half life (b. an isolated system (c. known initial conditions. I would like to know if any of these assumptions can be proven correct or be tested. I would also like to know the credibility of this statement made by Fred Jueneman:
The half lives are assumed constant because for the most part no known external factors affect the rates of decay (there are a few modes of decay which have slight sensitivity to the chemical environment). Isolated systems can be assumed from taking the environment and the sample as a whole, and the initial conditions can be known based on certain signals of evidence such as clamshells which can give the relative amount of oxygen present on a day-to-day basis due to oxygen molecules trapped within daily secreted layers.
Juneman's quote seems a bit extreme to place the extinction of dinosaurs within a man's lifetime. He is trying to play up the very small (.1% or so) influence the sun can play on certain decays as though they are massive fluctuations. They are not. The presence of the error itself is debated within the community NOT RELATED to paleontology and evolution, but strictly radiation science and a paper was published claiming that the error was probably just small mistake and found no correlation.
Relictivity said:
Yes, it is being blindly assumed. How do we know that our legs won't collapse on us and fracture into pieces the first time we walk? We don't. We take a 'step of faith' (literally), and discover, wow, we can walk.
Toddlers do not think about whether their legs are strong enough to support them when they begin moving around. Most of their actions are done objectively or in instinct.
Relictivity said:
Yes, hope is wishful thinking, it is a driver. If you don't have something to PUSH you, you won't do it. If you didn't have a driver for first learning how to use your senses, you wouldn't use them either.
I don't see how wishful thinking is a driver. If you're saying that hope that God exists makes you believe in God, then it can be explained as placebo effect and/or confirmation bias.
foxy_eisenhower said:
To All people trying to use science to disprove religion: Stop it, science is based on observation while religion is based on faith, you'll never logically intersect
To All people trying to use religion to disprove science: Stop it, religion is based on belief while science is based on empirical observation, you'll never convince them
To All people being jerks: Stop it.
We're not trying to disprove science nor religion. What we are trying to do is discuss what is logical and what is illogical. No one is trying to be a jerk to anyone.
The reason the science thing was brought up was because Don McLeroy stated that "evolution is hooey" and some of us are attempting to refute his claims and some are supporting it.
The philosophy thing was a tangent and I'll admit I saw that it was way off topic. XD We probably need a different topic for this.
J-man said:
If i said that i'm gonna get in a space ship and travel the four corners of the Galaxy, would you think that i said that the galaxy is a square/rectangle? [Yes] or [No]
If I said that a verbal snake convinced a woman to eat a fruit of knowledge, would you think I said that snakes can talk? It seems to me like it's simply a personification of the ignorance of humans as part of our inherent and probably permanent imperfection based on the image of snakes as deceitful and cunning. To finally answer your question, no, I would not believe you implied that the universe was a square, as it's a figure of speech. But calling a tricky man a snake in the grass is a figure of speech as well, albeit a modern one.
Relictivity said:
For now, don't consider it conservation of mass, consider it 'conservation of existance'. Meaning, things can be converted, never created, nor destroyed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_photons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle#Energy-time_uncertainty_principle
Things can be created/destroyed for short periods of time. On large scales they don't appear to because the effects quickly die off but on the whole there is no such conservation of existence.