The flood meta-thread (from "A question for Jim Laramore")

[Jack the Bodiless]

I've found the part where Jesus allegedly mentioned the Flood, it's Matthew 24:37-39.

I still haven't found God's alleged post-Flood cleanup.

[Sven]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
I've found the part where Jesus allegedly mentioned the Flood, it's Matthew 24:37-39.

I read it, thanks. These verses not at all suggest that Jesus thought that Noah's flood was global. So, Jim, one point less for you to consider if you think about finally accepting that the flood wasn't global.


I still haven't found God's alleged post-Flood cleanup.
I strongly suspect that this is just another story a creationist made up, and Jim accepted it without looking it up.

[Biff the unclean]

Sorry, but I think I misunderstood you. I knew Jim was talking abut the Paluxy River, but you didn't mention it spedifically. I should have researched this better before posting this.
I mentioned the exact site and gave it's location. That's about as specific as one can get

I think for Jim these things are facts. He simply isn't able (up to now?) to see the world without his "goddit-glasses". But I also think further discussion and education could help him, because he seems to be looking for answers honestly (at least sometimes when he isn't busy dodging questions or making unsupported claims).
I disagree. He is claiming to be honestly looking for answers but he has demonstrated that he will only judge facts in light of his religious conclusion and not the other way around. That's not an honest search for answers when you already have an answer you won't question.
He has also shown that he is not above misdirection such as his claim of his military tracking skills. I too am a combat veteran. In fact I received my American citizenship in Vietnam while serving with the Office of Naval Intelligence. And I know that tracking skills are completely useless in recognizing paleontological frauds or 110 million year old tracks.

Could you (or anyone else) please point me to the post in which Jim says so? Either I've missed it or Biff's memory is faulty.
There is nothing wrong with my memory. The sudden appearance of the geologic column during the Genesis Flood is implicit in Jim's (and all Creationist's) argument. The gradual accumulation of layers is completely antithetical to it as it requires an Earth older than 6000 years and demonstrats the evolution of species.

This worked for you, OK. But not everyone is like you and I think generally others should be treated with more respect.
Not you apparently. You appear to think that is religionists right to be disingenuous to you. And that, while proclamations of faith to Atheists are honkey dory any Atheist sentiment expressed to a Theist is harsh.
You should give yourself more credit and consider yourself equal to them.

Edited to add: It's Biff's memory which is faulty - Jim himself corrected him.
Jim was just doing a little hand waving.
Your family and friends should have told you; but pandering is unattractive.

I read it, thanks. These verses not at all suggest that Jesus thought that Noah's flood was global. So, Jim, one point less for you to consider if you think about finally accepting that the flood wasn't global.
You don't seem to understand the religious problems here. This isn't about trying to find events that were the source of myths. According to Jim these aren't myths. They can't be myths.

Firstly; Jesus couldn't have had a global flood because Jesus' world wasn't a globe. It was a flat Earth covered by a firmament as "hard as beaten brass". This firmament is sitting on the Earth at the horizon. The Genesis flood would have filled this space as though it were the inside of a giant jug.

Secondly; Jesus is God. The same God who flooded the Earth. And as God He confirms the Genesis flood story with it's warnings of impending doom, construction of an impossible boat, all the happy little animals going for a ride.

Jesus/God in the NT confirms what he, Himself, did as Yahweh/God in the OT.

Now to we Atheists that's about the same as Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix confirming something that Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone did. We know for sure that Dumbledore didn't do the magic he claims because not only is there not evidence of it every happening, it's also impossible. (There's no evidence of Dumbledore either-but that's another thread) It's pretty elementary decrement and I doubt that there are any children who don't know that Harry Potter is fiction.

The problem that inspired this whole thread is applying this same (it didn't happen/ it's impossible) elementary decrement to the Genesis Flood. Creationists (most but not all) have moved past the flat Earth. They even try to portray it as something silly that only simple-minded people believed in an attempt to distance themselves from it. Their Apologists swear up and down that the Bible says the Earth is a globe.

But they are stuck with the Jesus/God problem of the Flood. If it didn't happen, if it's impossible for it to have happened then Jesus is not only wrong he isn't God. If it's a myth inspired by some river overflowing it's banks in the rain, or even The Black Sea filling up after the last ice age, then Jesus is just some misinformed guy. No different than all the other misinformed, non-god, guys who thought the same myth was true.

[Asha'man]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
Its part of a MODEL that has been proposed by some creationist to explain some things about the world before the flood.

Ok, Jim, lets think about our models, ok?

The true test of a model is: “how well does it fit the facts that we have observed?” If the model fails that test, then it must be modified or thrown out.

So, let’s take a peek at some pretty solid facts that we have observed, and try to find a model that agrees with those observations:

There are lots of fossils of dinosaurs. There are lots of fossils of large mammals. (I’m sure you won’t disagree with this, right?)

Layers of rock with dinosaur fossils don’t contain large mammal fossils, and visa versa. (Still agree?)

Anytime that radiological dating is used on lava surrounding dinosaur rock (i.e. rock containing dinosaur fossils), this method gives an age older than 65 million years. Anytime this same method is used on lava surrounding mammal rock, the date found is younger than 65 million years. (Radiological dating itself may be flawed, but these are still the results that it gives us.)

At one of the layers of rock that seems to separate mammal fossils from dinosaur fossils, we find a thin layer of Iridium dust. This layer has been found in thousands of locations around the world, and is always dated (using the same radiological method as above) at about 65 million years ago.

Last observation: there are no exceptions to the above observations.

Now, do you have a model that can account for these observations? Can you explain how these fossils never cross the magic line? Can you explain how a fine layer of dust marks the line? Clearly, given the number of fossils involved, this cannot possibly be random, there must be a mechanism to explain it. Assuming that radiological dating of lava is flawed, can you explain why it gives results that are consistently wrong in exactly the same manner every time? If all those sediments were deposited during the flood, how exactly did a fine layer of iridium dust manage to seep through the miles of floodwater and land in such a thin layer?

Do you realize that there are literally thousands of such magic lines? Before the line, we can see one set of creatures. After the line, a different set. What are the odds of sediment from a flood doing that every single time?

We can draw the same lines with plants, btw. Somewhere in the ground is a line for pine trees, for example. They never show up before that line, only after it.


I have a model that explains all these observations. Do you?

[Al Fresco]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
Theres not anthing that can not be approached from a scientific bases however you can't say just because I may involve the metaphysical in explaining something that it isn't valid scientifically.

Jim, you persist in trying to make the case that supernatural explanations should be permitted as part of the scientific process. There are a number of reasons why science restricts itself to explanations that involve only naturalistic causes and effects. In what follows, I briefly discuss three of them in hopes that you will better understand why science insists on this restriction and would be severely handicapped without it.

First - Permitting supernatural, ontological, metaphysical, etc. explanations in the scientific process would have the deleterious effect of stifling further investigation. If supernatural explanations (which cannot be tested or falsified) were to be accepted as meaningful hypotheses, there would be little incentive to continue doing any further scientific research in areas where such an explanation had become the established dictum. Why would a scientist involve himself/herself in the difficult process of trying to uncover naturalistic explanations, if there existed an overarching supernatural explanation that was embraced by the scientific community? A scientist would be further ahead to spend his/her time dreaming up more grandiose supernatural explanations under such circumstances.

Who, under the scheme of “supernatural science,” would decide whether an investigation had simply reached a technical roadblock, or whether the subject in question was completely intractable from a conventional scientific standpoint? Who would make the decision that enough traditional science had been carried out and that a supernatural explanation was now in order? Since Behe has now proclaimed that supernatural intervention was responsible for much of the blood clotting mechanism, should scientists abandon further efforts to determine how the system might have evolved naturally? Studies such as these often yield ancillary benefits that are not envisioned as part of the original research effort. But why should they be continued if the phenomenon under study has been determined to be off-limits to standard scientific inquiry and inexplicable in naturalistic terms?

And then there is the matter of funding. Conventional scientific research is often very expensive and is dependent on grant money for survival. But why waste money funding conventional scientific research when you can concoct an acceptable supernatural solution for free? “Supernatural science” would render an already difficult funding situation much worse, to say the least.

To envision how deleterious such an approach to science would be, consider what the state of the medical sciences would be today if such a scheme had been adopted in the past. The Bible claims that disease is caused by possession with supernatural demons. What if that supernatural explanation had become the guiding principle of the medical sciences and no work had been directed at finding the real cause of infectious diseases? One need look no further than the plague-ridden Dark Ages for an answer to that question.

Second - One of the great advantages of the scientific method is that the theories that it generates are universal in application. Force equals mass times acceleration on the macro scale everywhere on earth (and throughout the universe as far as we know), and any scientist with the proper equipment can test and verify it. The problem with allowing supernatural explanations into the scientific process stems from the fact that anyone can dream one up and nobody can tell for sure if they are anything more than the figment of someone’s imagination. Since supernatural explanations are not amenable to the standard methods of testing and falsification, there is no logical basis for favoring one person’s miracle-based theory over another’s.

If “supernatural science” became a reality, individuals could propose different supernatural hypotheses to explain an observation and there would be no rational way to sort through them to determine the best contender. With “supernatural science,” there would be Hindu sciences, Christian sciences, Scientology sciences, Wiccan sciences, etc. that would be operable only in the particular area where the corresponding supernatural explanations were accepted. Under these circumstances, science would become an unworkable hodgepodge of mutually exclusive theories all competing with one another and with no reasonable way to determine which one of them, if any, was viable. It is likely, under such a system, that spokesmen for the majority religion or belief system in a particular region would be calling most of the shots. The consistency and continuity that are the hallmarks of the scientific method would be completely lost, and it would be virtually impossible for “supernatural scientists” to effectively compare their work and arrive at consensus opinions. Instead, we would have a montage of competing ideologies bickering with one another over whose miracles should be given top billing. (Any resemblance to religion is not purely coincidental.)

Third – An important attribute of science is that it can make useful predictions about how things would be expected to behave in the future based on how they, or related things, have behaved in the past. The reliability of such predictions is dependent on the fact that natural systems behave in a consistent, probabilistic, and ordered manner. If supernatural elements were assumed to intervene, all bets would be off as far as making any meaningful predictions is concerned. If spirits, gods, demons, leprechauns, or whatever were assumed to be able to scramble experimental variables and alter outcomes whenever it suited their fancies, it would be an exercise in futility to anticipate how things might act in the present, let alone in the future. Science works under the assumption that preternatural forces are not operative because, to do otherwise, would make predicting future outcomes a total waste of time. So far, there is every indication that this assumption has been completely justified.


I hope from my brief discussion that you have gained some appreciation for the importance of maintaining science as a purely naturalistic enterprise. If you think that science does not enforce this requirement evenhandedly, then I challenge you to identify one well-established and generally accepted scientific theory that invokes supernatural forces as causative factors. And if you still insist on mixing science with “God did it” explanations, then it is incumbent on you to explain how such an amalgamation will improve the scientific method and render it better able to promote invention and discovery.

Naturalistic methodology was established as an integral part of the scientific process early on by the likes of Newton and Galileo. Above, I have given three reasons why it is necessary continue to employ this approach if science is to remain a viable system for gaining reliable information about the natural world. It is pertinent to emphasize that science does not assert that gods and/or other supernatural entities do not exist. It is not within the bailiwick of science to make authoritative statements about such things. Science simply says that, when formulating scientific theories, hypotheses, etc., causes and effects attributable to supernatural entities are not permitted as part of the explanatory process. Hopefully, the reasons for doing so are somewhat more evident to you now.

[ms tree]

:notworthy WELL SAID, AL!

As a fellow Okie, Jim, you must be aware that you live in a state with a population that is 8% Native American, as opposed to a national population of 0.8%. This is Oklahoma, which means "Land of the Red People".

I bring all this up to point out that here in this state there are MANY people who have & traditionally have totally different models of creation, yet I notice you are choosing to utilize one that originated in the Middle East & have imported it onto a completely different continent with a totally different environment! Not only is the land very different here, but the develpment of human beings & every other creature indiginous to this land is different to some degree -whether it has been around for 6,000 or 6 million years to assume that a religious worldview that sprouted up in a different land, in a different time within different societies created a LONG time ago seems - well, at least a bit over-simplified.

To imagine that a worldview based as such could even be concieved to have application in THIS time & space takes some fancy mental contortions. If one is going to insist on retaining magical thinking it seems much more sensible to utilize one that fits the land at least.

One simple reason the Bible & the religions of the Bible don't work worldwide is simple - the people who created it at the time, & for centuries later, were ignorant of the realities of the earth - the whole earth. I feel confident that had the religion makers been aware of the rest of the world the religion would be very different.

Mormons & Keetoowahs (perhaps not well known but existing band of Cherokees that Jim is surely aware of) notwithstanding (they were both created much later, regardless of their supposed' & truthfully, later-created, 'ancient history'), there is NO evidence that a religion even remotely like the ones later imported EVER existed (or in the case of the 2 specified, created) on this continent - a rather strange & glaring ommision for a religion that supposedly is true no matter where or when! And the ones that MIGHT have a tiny chance of having some relevance in this land have been virtually eliminated by bastardized versions of Xianity that exists today.

I also have no doubt that if a Xian from Oklahoma today were 'time-warped' into a Xian community that existed 1,000 yrs ago not only would it NOT be Oklahoma, but the 2 "Xians" would be unable to talk about their religion in a common religious language. Which begs the question again! Why would a person in the 21st century, on a different continent, worship a god concieved of by a people of a completly different land who had a completly different society? A god so different today that the 2 people of these lands & times could not even recognise each other's conception of god - or the world? (Hopefully the person would NOT end up in a time when the Xians would have burned the individual at the stake for their 'heretical' ideaology!)

But then, perhaps the answer is that it is precisely the fact that the 2 Xians would NOT recognise each other's religion that we can begin to understand that the Xian god was a regional deity that managed, through a tremendous amount of bloodshed spilled by the adherents of that god, to literally 'kill' off the gods of the lands they invaded, by killing the worshippers. Yet, in order for the religion to maintain any adherents at all the religion had to undergo tremendous changes which means that the 'regional god' that fueled the exodus no longer exists, yet Xians in Oklahoma & around the world insist that that god is 'unchanging' & as true today as it was then - when that religion, that god are plainly 'extinct'. The god of Xianity has surely evolved as every other species - religion included.

The models of xian creationism is no more valid that any other model of any time & space & have evolved into their present form & therefore are not 'timeless' at all. By which I can conclude that there is no reason to believe in any incantation as an absolute 'truth' of any kind or I can choose ANY god of any time & & place & it will be just as valid, just as 'truthfull' as any other... especially if I go to all the trouble to 'evolve' it into a deity that fits THIS time & space.

[Sven]

Originally posted by Biff the unclean
I mentioned the exact site and gave it's location. That's about as specific as one can get

You didn't mention "Paluxy", this was my problem. But I already apologized and said I should have researched it better, why do you keep bringing it up?


I disagree. He is claiming to be honestly looking for answers but he has demonstrated that he will only judge facts in light of his religious conclusion and not the other way around. That's not an honest search for answers when you already have an answer you won't question.
He has also shown that he is not above misdirection such as his claim of his military tracking skills. I too am a combat veteran. In fact I received my American citizenship in Vietnam while serving with the Office of Naval Intelligence. And I know that tracking skills are completely useless in recognizing paleontological frauds or 110 million year old tracks.

This only shows that he perhaps isn't honest to himself (the power of self-delusion), not necessarily that he's lying intentionally to us.


There is nothing wrong with my memory. The sudden appearance of the geologic column during the Genesis Flood is implicit in Jim's (and all Creationist's) argument. The gradual accumulation of layers is completely antithetical to it as it requires an Earth older than 6000 years and demonstrats the evolution of species.

The fact that the "sudden appearance of the geologic column during the Genesis Flood is implicit in Jim's argument" is your viewpoint (and mine, too), but Jim thinks otherwise. That his reasoning doesn't work is an entirely irrelevant point to the fact that Jim never said that the geological column were due to the flood.


Not you apparently. You appear to think that is religionists right to be disingenuous to you. And that, while proclamations of faith to Atheists are honkey dory any Atheist sentiment expressed to a Theist is harsh.

If you really don't realize that Jim thinks that he is indeed honest and also don't comprehend the fact that you're much to insulting, then I see no point arguing this further.


You should give yourself more credit and consider yourself equal to them.

I do consider myself equal to them - but that doesn't mean that I have to use an equal amount of insults.

Originally posted by Sven
Edited to add: It's Biff's memory which is faulty - Jim himself corrected him.

Originally posted by Biff the unclean
Jim was just doing a little hand waving.
So what? Doesn't change the fact that you were wrong.


Your family and friends should have told you; but pandering is unattractive.
I really wonder why anyone cares to speak with you if you're always so insulting. Accordingly, this'll be my last answer to you; you are free to rant on as long as you like.

Originally posted by Sven
the flood wasn't global.

Originally posted by Biff the unclean
You don't seem to understand the religious problems here. This isn't about trying to find events that were the source of myths. According to Jim these aren't myths. They can't be myths.

Yes, I understand this well, thanks. I only pointed out that Jesus didn't speak about a global flood - what Jim seems to think. Nothing more, nothing less.

[snipped your biblical problems with the flood]

[Sven]

Asha'man, ms tree, Al Fresco: Very nice posts!!! :)

I also once tried to discuss the implications of using a supernatural explanation in science with Jim, but never got an answer. Jim, if you like to discuss this further now, I suggest that you or Al Fresco continue this in Science&Scepticism because it's off-topic. The same holds true for ms tree's post, although it made several important points, it has nothing to do with the flood.

Sorry, mods, if my posts sounds like if I'm doing your job ;)

[Biff the unclean]

Sven most, if not all, of us on this board are adults. Rating our responses and attempting to control our responses exceeds your authority. Your constant need to control other people isn't flattering towards you.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jet Black
a massive increase in pressure would be catastrophic for bats. the increase in air pressure would increase the speed of sound, and bats would never catch anything. same goes for any other echo locators. Countless airborne species would just drop out of the sky - remember the gravity increases massively too, so the amount of work to be done in order to stay in the air also increases, even taking air pressure into account.

I think this conclusion is presumptious to say the least. One reason I say this is because the speed of sound in H2O is probably twice maybe three times faster than our atmosphere and the echo locators in that environment do fine, i.e. dolphins, killer whales etc.


I think the bats would do fine if it didn't happen all at once and had time to adapt, they probably have adapted the other way to fit the present conditions of atmospherica pressure we have now.:D

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jet Black
hey jim, do you need telling 5 or 6 times that a 10% compression of the earth is physically impossible?

Its not physically impossible and I don't care how many times you tell me. The physics don't say it is, so its possible.

I didn' say I bought into it, but its within the realm of possibilities.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by chapka
b
Only if the Earth were hollow to start with. Otherwise, if you put a layer of water underneath the land, it will displace the land and the volume will stay the same.

Not if the core gases were compressed more to allow for the smaller volume in the intial creation. Theres billions of cubic feet of gases trapped between the granite and the core that has been the result of water leaks thru the crust over the ages. How do you think the gases that cause pyroclastic flows and valcanic explosions were produced.

You geologist can now correct me if I'm wrong which I'm sure theres something here thats not exactly correct. Fire away guys.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jet Black
If you try putting water in the canopy, this doesn't work either. For simplicity, assume that the earth is surrounded by a spherical shell of water, with the centre of the shell incident on the centre of the earth, one might naiively assume that we would feel the gravity pulling us down from both the earth under us, and the water round us. However in assuming this we have forgotten the inverse square law, and in applying this we find actually that the gravitational elements of the shell all cancel one another out - we only feel the gravity from things in the sphere described by all points equal to, or less than our radius from the centre of the earth.

I agree but have you considered the fact that the atmosphere is already a water laden medium as it stands. I read an article from a atmospheric scientist that stated if you took all the water out of the atmosphere and dumped it on the surface we would have about 4 feet of water globally on the surface , This could flood a lot of the local land masses into extinction. If you increase the water saturation by only a few percentages points it destabilizes the whole thing and you have local floods out the kazoo, however with a smaller globe it would probably hold it in suspension as a gas. Our atmosphere would be much taller and you would have a vapor of extremely heavy due as the temps went down essentially watering everything every day. Kinda like whats described in the garden of eden. Speculation yeah for sure.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Asha'man
Yea, I've looked at these studies, and they conclusively say "no detectable difference." Prayer produces no measurable difference in the health or recovery of hospital patients. Whatever website you grabbed that claim from was lying, or citing a faulty study. Since you have failed to cite any references, I'm not going to cite any back.

I'm taking a computer class next week for professional developement for my job and I'm going to gain some skills on how to paste or print articles off the internet onto this forum. The article I read was not a christian source article at all so you couldn't use a creationist lie arguement Asha'man. As a matter of fact it was a physician who sends out a weekly health new letter and it was part of his research articles. This was a study done at some university med school. It was published in a medicle journal I believe.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Sven

My third point is actually a suggestion: Since Biff apparently isn't able to visit the tracks at Paluxy with you, what do you think of presenting images? You certainly have some photos which demonstrate which tracks you think are genuine.

This is reasonable, I'll get to it as soon as I can figure out how to do it on the forum. The ones I took personally were not carved and I also took some of the compressional laminations under the cross sectional cuts, this was even evident uder the toe section cuts. How could that have been faked? The accusation was that they vandalized a dino print , this is not true at all. How could they show lamination under the toes if it was faked?

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
I've found the part where Jesus allegedly mentioned the Flood, it's Matthew 24:37-39.

I still haven't found God's alleged post-Flood cleanup.

I haven't either Jack. I'm really sorry, I was sure I could go right to it. This is a really big red face embarrasement on my part:o Don't mean I won't continue to look in other parts of the Bible though:D

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Sven
I read it, thanks. These verses not at all suggest that Jesus thought that Noah's flood was global. So, Jim, one point less for you to consider if you think about finally accepting that the flood wasn't global.


I strongly suspect that this is just another story a creationist made up, and Jim accepted it without looking it up.

I believe the opperative language in verse 39 says it was global," And knew not until the flood came and took them "ALL" away", meaning every living thing except Noah and his family. If it had said "all of them in that country were destroyed" then you'd have a case but it doesn't say that does it? These were the words of God in human form in the name of Jesus Christ Himself.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by ms tree
:notworthy WELL SAID, AL!

As a fellow Okie, Jim, you must be aware that you live in a state with a population that is 8% Native American, as opposed to a national population of 0.8%. This is Oklahoma, which means "Land of the Red People".

I bring all this up to point out that here in this state there are MANY people who have & traditionally have totally different models of creation, yet I notice you are choosing to utilize one that originated in the Middle East & have imported it onto a completely different continent with a totally different environment! Not only is the land very different here, but the develpment of human beings & every other creature indiginous to this land is different to some degree -whether it has been around for 6,000 or 6 million years to assume that a religious worldview that sprouted up in a different land, in a different time within different societies created a LONG time ago seems - well, at least a bit over-simplified.


I also have no doubt that if a Xian from Oklahoma today were 'time-warped' into a Xian community that existed 1,000 yrs ago not only would it NOT be Oklahoma, but the 2 "Xians" would be unable to talk about their religion in a common religious language. Which begs the question again! Why would a person in the 21st century, on a different continent, worship a god concieved of by a people of a completly different land who had a completly different society? A god so different today that the 2 people of these lands & times could not even recognise each other's conception of god - or the world? (Hopefully the person would NOT end up in a time when the Xians would have burned the individual at the stake for their 'heretical' ideaology!)

The models of xian creationism is no more valid that any other model of any time & space & have evolved into their present form & therefore are not 'timeless' at all. By which I can conclude that there is no reason to believe in any incantation as an absolute 'truth' of any kind or I can choose ANY god of any time & & place & it will be just as valid, just as 'truthfull' as any other... especially if I go to all the trouble to 'evolve' it into a deity that fits THIS time & space.

Sorry for zapping out more than 50% of your post. I just figured the readers got to read it before so....... I'am cherokee not full blood but I'm proud of what I have.

I disagree with your assessment of xians meeting from two different times not being compatible on their beliefs etc.. BTW are you aware the cherokee tribes legends including a global flood? Many of my cherokee brothers believe in the creator of the earth portrayed in the Bible. When I read the Bible and take in the stories of the way man has thought and acted in the ancient past I truely believe we have changed very little over the last 6,000 years in conduct or ideology. If you are a native american like it sounds you are more than likely at least at a point where you believe in some sort of supernatural start to our earth. Correct? If not you are in a minority of most indians I know for sure.

I'm aware of many native american beliefs that are for the most part more like wicha ( ms ) or mother earth based materialistic pantheism etc. . I've been to a few mushroom meetings:D thats probably whats wrong with me and my spelling today.

At any rate its good to talk to you man , if you are a man, I keep getting in trouble with that assumption.;)

[Biff the unclean]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
How could that have been faked? The accusation was that they vandalized a dino print , this is not true at all. How could they show lamination under the toes if it was faked?

Dinosaurs had toes.
There were no humans 110 million years ago to leave the tracks.

If the layer with these dinosaur tracks was made before the Genesis flood why is it still there? The flood would have washed this mud away to form the huge amount of sediments you claim are from the flood. :banghead:

[Biff the unclean]

Since proving that humans and dinosaurs lived together would stand the scientific world on it's ear and guarantee any Paleontologist fame, fortune and a noble prize for sure who could prove it…what do you think their motivation is for laughing at the idea?
Why is all of this "evidence" only visible to members of certain Protestant sects? Why, for instance, do the Jesuit priests who hold scientific degrees all conclude the human/dinosaur Paluxy "evidence" is bogus?

[Amaleq13]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
BTW are you aware the cherokee tribes legends including a global flood?

You mean this one?

Cherokee (Great Lakes area; eastern Tennessee):
Day after day, a dog stood at the river bank and howled piteously. Rebuked by his master, the dog said a flood was coming, and he must build and provision a boat. Furthermore, the dog said, he must throw him, the dog, into the water. For a sign that he spoke the truth, the dog showed the back of his neck, which was raw and bare with flesh and bone showing. The man followed directions, and he and his family survived; from them, the present population is descended. [Gaster, pp. 116-117]

(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html#Cherokee)

Uncanny how "closely" it follows the biblical version.:D

[Al Fresco]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
The article I read was not a christian source article at all so you couldn't use a creationist lie arguement Asha'man. As a matter of fact it was a physician who sends out a weekly health new letter and it was part of his research articles. This was a study done at some university med school. It was published in a medicle journal I believe.

You wouldn't by any chance be referring to the article discussed in this thread (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?threadid=74539) would you? If you are, you are looking for a study in which one of the authors has threatened a lawsuit against someone who has questioned its design. You must know that reputable scientists do not normally do such things, don't you?

[Asha'man]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
I'm taking a computer class next week for professional developement for my job and I'm going to gain some skills on how to paste or print articles off the internet onto this forum. The article I read was not a christian source article at all so you couldn't use a creationist lie arguement Asha'man. As a matter of fact it was a physician who sends out a weekly health new letter and it was part of his research articles. This was a study done at some university med school. It was published in a medicle journal I believe.
Well, you shouldn't paste the whole article here, since that is generally a copyright violation. Pasting a link is pretty easy, just use the "http://" button when editing, or construct your own [ url=<address> ] name of link [ /url ] reference.

For example, here is an M.D. criticising a faulty prayer study: Harris Prayer Study (http://members.aol.com/garypos/Harris_study.html). If you quote this post, you can see exactly how I formed the link.

While creationists often lie to support their claims, they certainly aren't the only ones, and outright lies aren't the only problem. Anytime I see a study that supports the religious views of the author, I look a little more closely at the methodology and the conclusions, since it appears to be very hard to keep religious bias separate from science. Quite often, the evidence simply isn't what is claimed, or it doesn't support the conclusions. (On the other hand, the study might be perfectly good, in which case it should easily survive the extra scrutiny.)

However, the failure of prayer is off topic for this thread.

What I really want to know is how you explain the Magic Line that I asked about in this post earlier in this thread (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1417228#post1417228).

[Asha'man]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
BTW are you aware the cherokee tribes legends including a global flood?
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of old legends concerning floods. Do you know why?

Because, before man learned about irrigation, agriculture was almost exclusively practiced in the flood plane of rivers. (This was also before man leaned about building large dams.) Flooded cities were simply an every day (year) occurrence, and some floods were always larger than others. Imagining a really big flood, and telling campfire stories about it, is so obvious it should be considered inevitable.

[lpetrich]

Also, myths and legends tend to diffuse if they are nice stories.

[Jet Black]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
I think this conclusion is presumptious to say the least. One reason I say this is because the speed of sound in H2O is probably twice maybe three times faster than our atmosphere and the echo locators in that environment do fine, i.e. dolphins, killer whales etc.


it is not presumptuous at all. I did not say that echo location does not work in other environments, but bat echo location does not work in other environments because the whole bat system is set up to calculate distances based on the speed of sound in air.

it's like the bat has a little calculator in it's head that says "this sound took 1 second to get back, so the object is 165m away, since the speed of sound is 330m/s. if we change that, suddently the little bat calculator doesn't know what is going on anymore and the bat starves to death because it cannot work out where the heck it's food is.

[Jet Black]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
Its not physically impossible and I don't care how many times you tell me. The physics don't say it is, so its possible.

I didn' say I bought into it, but its within the realm of possibilities.

the physics do say so. feel free to demonstrate how you can alter the electrical force, charge on the electron and fine structure constant, and not destroy all life and the sun. it is not, in any respect within the realm of possibilities. If you think it is, demonstrate that to be the case.

[Jet Black]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
I agree but have you considered the fact that the atmosphere is already a water laden medium as it stands. I read an article from a atmospheric scientist that stated if you took all the water out of the atmosphere and dumped it on the surface we would have about 4 feet of water globally on the surface , This could flood a lot of the local land masses into extinction. If you increase the water saturation by only a few percentages points it destabilizes the whole thing and you have local floods out the kazoo, however with a smaller globe it would probably hold it in suspension as a gas. Our atmosphere would be much taller and you would have a vapor of extremely heavy due as the temps went down essentially watering everything every day. Kinda like whats described in the garden of eden. Speculation yeah for sure.

why on earth would the atmosphere be much taller, and how do you make the planet much smaller? do tell us, you know the whole of cosmology and every scrap of physics as we know it could be absolutely wrong.

[Sven]

Originally posted by Biff the unclean
Sven most, if not all, of us on this board are adults. Rating our responses and attempting to control our responses exceeds your authority. Your constant need to control other people isn't flattering towards you.

Now we heard Biff's opinion. I think otherwise: If I like a post, I say so; if I don't like it, I also say so. Occassionally, I make some suggestions. If others also think that this is a "constant need to control other people", please feel free to email (Sven.Feuerbacher@pci.uni.heidelberg.de) me. Then I'll rethink what I said here.

But I won't change anything in my posts to this forum simply because one single person-who seems to be offended when his insulting behaviour is pointed out-thinks it "isn't flattering towards [me]".

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jet Black
it is not presumptuous at all. I did not say that echo location does not work in other environments, but bat echo location does not work in other environments because the whole bat system is set up to calculate distances based on the speed of sound in air.

it's like the bat has a little calculator in it's head that says "this sound took 1 second to get back, so the object is 165m away, since the speed of sound is 330m/s. if we change that, suddently the little bat calculator doesn't know what is going on anymore and the bat starves to death because it cannot work out where the heck it's food is.

So do dolphins and killer whales have a little calculator inside their heads too, its called a brain and the associated tissues responsible to find stuff located in murky waters or underneath the sand etc.. If conditions were originally different back then the bat would have obviously been adept at dealing with it. Sure you can say now it wouldn't work the way they are now, butg how can you conclusively say its impossible for them back then? Its like bringing up a deep water fish , if its don rapidly they die because of the extreme pressure change, but if they have time to adapt over time they can handle it. Thats why we see some occasionally near the surface.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jet Black
the physics do say so. feel free to demonstrate how you can alter the electrical force, charge on the electron and fine structure constant, and not destroy all life and the sun. it is not, in any respect within the realm of possibilities. If you think it is, demonstrate that to be the case.

Why are you insisting we'd have to change the energy levels of the electrons on the atom to accomplish this. I'm talking about compressing the existing matter 10% not changing the atomic structure. Good grieve what computer program are you running to build a model on this?

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jet Black
why on earth would the atmosphere be much taller, and how do you make the planet much smaller? do tell us, you know the whole of cosmology and every scrap of physics as we know it could be absolutely wrong.

The taller atmosphere is part of the model and it makes sense if you think about it. The increased atomoshpheric pressure would be the result of more gravity for the slightly smaller surface area. The gas molecules would be more dense near the surface and less as it goes out further from the planet just like it is now. The taller atmosphere would be a result of a higher concentration of water , suposedly before the flood it never rained and so this model would explain a very heavy due each day to water the plants etc.

Like I said I don't buy into this necessarily. Its interesting to see some of the scientific ideas used to explain how it may have been back then.

[Jet Black]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
Why are you insisting we'd have to change the energy levels of the electrons on the atom to accomplish this. I'm talking about compressing the existing matter 10% not changing the atomic structure. Good grieve what computer program are you running to build a model on this?

the only way to compress the existing matter by 10% would be to change the atomic structure and make all the atoms 10% smaller. Unless you have a novel way of compressing solids and liquids by 10%.

please tell us how one would change the volume of the planet by 10%

[Jet Black]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
The taller atmosphere is part of the model and it makes sense if you think about it. The increased atomoshpheric pressure would be the result of more gravity for the slightly smaller surface area. The gas molecules would be more dense near the surface and less as it goes out further from the planet just like it is now. The taller atmosphere would be a result of a higher concentration of water , suposedly before the flood it never rained and so this model would explain a very heavy due each day to water the plants etc.

a decrease in the volume but not the mass of the planet would increase the gravity of the planet massively. there really is no evidence of this sort of thing at all in the fossil record. It might be interesting to see what organisms were around and see if they still work with 20% higher gravity.

what on earth does a higher concentration of water have to do with a taller atmosphere? all the molecules high up would still escape the earth's gravity in the same was that they do now. The only additional tallness would be the extra bit of "height" that you get from making the earth 10% smaller. and I would even question that, because fiddling round with the earth in such way would have incalculable effects on the magnetic field.

Like I said I don't buy into this necessarily. Its interesting to see some of the scientific ideas used to explain how it may have been back then.
sorry, the whole thing is physically nonsensical. you say you don't support it, but then why do you defend it with ad hoc rationalisations? FIrst off, there is no known mechanicm for compressing an entire planet by 10% while retaining the gravity. second of all, if there were, the only way to do this would be by radically altering the atomic structure and electromagnetic forces so that the particles could pack together more tightly. perhaps swap all the electrons for muons or something crazy like that. However doing this would in turn have disasterous consequences for life, since life is highly dependent on chemistry working exactly as it does now, and fiddling around with that would just kill everything and make the sun explode, assuming of course that the sun was affected in the same way.

[NottyImp]

"Its interesting to see some of the scientific ideas used to explain how it may have been back then. "

No it's not interesting, it's just plain daft. Creationists are experts at exptrapolating from a vague bible verse, and then producing ad hoc, hand-waving explanations for "how it may have been back then". This isn't science, it's wishful-thinking.

[Principia]

:banghead:

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jet Black
the only way to compress the existing matter by 10% would be to change the atomic structure and make all the atoms 10% smaller. Unless you have a novel way of compressing solids and liquids by 10%.

please tell us how one would change the volume of the planet by 10%

Liquids don't compress we all know this, most solid material like rocks etc is composed of a loosely connected matrix that could be closer if areas between them was compressed, also theres the huge volume of gases trapped within the planets laminational layers that could undergo compression. Like I said many many times I'm not buying into this model but you can't say its nonsensical when it could have happened at least to some degree. How would you explain the obvious increase in the atmospherica pressure back then? The rocks and amber tells us it was higher?

I0% may be more than whats allowable I don't know, What I feel is that we sometimes shout impossible because we can't see a way of it happening from this vantage point. I don't see anyway for the rachea to exist either based on my scientific knowledge but the Bible says it did. Now I have two decisions to make. I can either dismiss the Bible as a myth like many of you do or I can say that I just don't see how it could have happened based on my limited knowledge of how God works and the way nature was back then.

When we extrapolate and run into a dead end scream MYTH, MYTH because we're to proud to admitt we just don't know. We have all these degrees and computers to tell us what is possible and whats IMPOSSIBLE, yeah right!! What ever:rolleyes:

[Jet Black]

the problem as I see it this. you are taking the biblical account, and then just grabbing anything that could well support that account, regardless of it's physical sensibility or feasibility. That's really the wreong way to go about things. I know you are a sensible chap on the whole, and I do like chatting with you, but I get a bit frustrated at times when ad hoc solutions are put forwards with no explanation at all as to how they might happen. A prime example of this is AIG's claim that radioactive decay rates can be increased by stripping all the electrons from the atoms. This can be trivially demonstrated to be completely insane, since stripping a single electron from one gram of uranium would cause electric fields far stronger than the wildest thunderstorms, over a kilometre away! Extrapolating this to all electrons from all radioactive isotopes would lead to a phenomenal amount of charge of magnitudes that break my calculator. Lots of people then grab onto these ideas, and then even despite being shown the facts and the numbers, they won't let go. I am in a private discussion with a chap on another forum, who, even despite my extensive education in the field of optics and physics, argues with me about things like red shift and angular momentum and tells me I am wrong and Kent Hovind is right. Now I'm not accusing you of being that bad, nowhere near it, but one must always be careful that one does not fall into the trap of supporting any hairbrained idea that supports one's personal theology.

[NottyImp]

Liquids don't compress we all know this, most solid material like rocks etc is composed of a loosely connected matrix that could be closer if areas between them was compressed, also theres the huge volume of gases trapped within the planets laminational layers that could undergo compression.

But Jim, even if it were possible (which I doubt - I'm sure a Geophysicist could show you why), what possible mechanism is there for this happening?

Many, many amazing things are possible in the natural world, but you also need a credible casaul factor, and evidence to present that shows that this happened. Otherwise, all you have is empty speculation. Which, as we'll never tire of telling you is not science.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Originally posted by NottyImp
But Jim, even if it were possible (which I doubt - I'm sure a Geophysicist could show you why), what possible mechanism is there for this happening?
Goddidit.

All you need is one more little miracle.

Sheesh Notty, I'd have thought you knew that by now... ;)

[Oolon Colluphid]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
Liquids don't compress we all know this,
Nonsense. It’s just that it takes a lot of pressure.
www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae15.cfm
most solid material like rocks etc is composed of a loosely connected matrix that could be closer if areas between them was compressed,
If if if if if! Perhaps you can explain how it uncompressed itself to look exactly like it’d never been compressed in the first place?
also theres the huge volume of gases trapped within the planets laminational layers that could undergo compression.
To compress something -- even a liquid -- you need pressure. Whence this pressure, eh Jim?
Like I said many many times I'm not buying into this model
Then why defend it?
but you can't say its nonsensical when it could have happened at least to some degree.
Nope. We can say it’s nonsensical when there’s not a shred of evidence for it, and plenty against it -- and not even a good reason for needing to postulate it.
What I feel is that we sometimes shout impossible because we can't see a way of it happening from this vantage point.
The only reason for proposing the ludicrous is to shore up the otherwise untenable. Maybe it’s impossible, maybe not. But it is a superfluous idea... unless one is trying to claim a myth really happened. None of what you’re saying may be technically impossible, Jim. But it is getting sillier and sillier.

I don't see anyway for the rachea to exist either based on my scientific knowledge but the Bible says it did.

It also says that someone can see all the kingdoms of the earth from a high hill, and that there are / were four-legged flying creeping things, and giants.
Now I have two decisions to make. I can either dismiss the Bible as a myth like many of you do or I can say that I just don't see how it could have happened based on my limited knowledge of how God works and the way nature was back then.
False dichotomy. You could also say that not all of it is exactly, literally true.

And I can only count one decision there. Three (now) choices, but just the one decision.
When we extrapolate and run into a dead end scream MYTH, MYTH because we're to proud to admitt we just don't know.
Nope. We can call it a myth because of the lack of evidence for it, plus things like Gilgamesh. It has all the characteristics of a myth. Your scepticism is misplaced. As Douglas Adams put it, “Even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”
We have all these degrees and computers to tell us what is possible and whats IMPOSSIBLE, yeah right!! What ever:rolleyes:
I said the multiple exclamation marks would put in an appearance...

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Jet Black
the problem as I see it this. you are taking the biblical account, and then just grabbing anything that could well support that account, regardless of it's physical sensibility or feasibility. That's really the wreong way to go about things. I know you are a sensible chap on the whole, and I do like chatting with you, but I get a bit frustrated at times when ad hoc solutions are put forwards with no explanation at all as to how they might happen. Now I'm not accusing you of being that bad, nowhere near it, but one must always be careful that one does not fall into the trap of supporting any hairbrained idea that supports one's personal theology.

Jet,
Aside from the fact that I have said maybe 10 times I don't buy into this model 100% I do believe I have shown at least a degree of feasibility for it to be valid. I haven't grabbed at anything!!!!! I've looked at what they have submitted and basically tried to see if it made any sense at all. I have to admitt most of it shows too many extreme changes to be realistic, but then again we have to account for the empirical evidence of the increased pressure in the rocks and amber we're seeing. Something caused an apparent increase in the atmospheric pressure back then or we wouldn't see evidence of it in the rocks. Modalities anyone????

I will continue to have faith in the Bible until I am shown conclusively in my mind its ALL bogus. The Bible was written by uneducated men who knew little of what we know today. How can we hold such a compilation as this to the close scrutiny we do with regards to science? I believe in the man who was called Jesus Christ. He said there was a flood so until I can say He is a fake and not the son of God I'll wonder why all of the evidence doesn't show conclusively there was a flood. I don't believe the Bible is a myth, its been verified too many times historically by archeologist.

On a empirical note:
Like I said before I don't understand why we're not seeing massive human remains in the stratas. I need to see more evidence of large mammals with the dinos than the pitiful small amount I've been shown so far . I have many questions that are unanswered, however this is nothing new in science. I've heard some say we are approaching all of the knowledge base in the universe, yeah right???? I won't show the arrogance of saying this or that anything we can't fit into our known physcal laws is impossible with God. I would say ok, so we don't know for sure, what the hey, we do this all the time. Try to figure out the way the brain works. Good luck!!!!! however I agree with your assessment on a general note that it appears very unlikely to say the least on this model being valid.

[Sven]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
I will continue to have faith in the Bible until I am shown conclusively in my mind its ALL bogus.

Isn't it possible to believe in the moral teachings of the bible (although there are also great problems...) but to accept that the science in it is totally unreliable?


The Bible was written by uneducated men who knew little of what we know today. How can we hold such a compilation as this to the close scrutiny we do with regards to science?

Here you say it yourself; why do you continue to cling to creation/Noah's flood when these men obviously could have been (and were indeed) wrong?


I believe in the man who was called Jesus Christ. He said there was a flood

It has repeatedly been pointed out to you that there's no way you could know what Jesus said. But you continue to ignore this point.


so until I can say He is a fake and not the son of God

Someone reporting Jesus allegedly saying something has nothing to do with this question.


I'll wonder why all of the evidence doesn't show conclusively there was a flood.

I don't wonder why no evidence shows conclusively that there was a global flood. There isn't any. And lots of against. You still have to explain the order of the fossils; a global flood would have mixed them up totally.


I don't believe the Bible is a myth, its been verified too many times historically by archeologist.

When will you start to back up this assertion? Some time ago, I alread gave you a link to the thread Archeological discoveries prove truth of Bible (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?threadid=74880&perpage=25&pagenumber=3); I haven't seen you there up to now.


however I agree with your assessment on a general note that it appears very unlikely to say the least on this model being valid.
It's the same with all models proposed by creationists: lots of ad hoc and hand waving, but no substance or evidence and contrary to observation. One day, you'll also realize this.

[Al Fresco]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
I need to see more evidence of large mammals with the dinos than the pitiful small amount I've been shown so far .

You should not be so concerned about the fact that the amount of evidence to support the coexistence of large mammals and dinosaurs may be pitifully small. Even one well-documented piece of evidence in support of such a thing would seriously call into question the validity of the theory of evolution as it now stands.

What you should be concerned about is the fact that, what meager evidence there is for their coexistence, comes from such notoriously unreliable sources and is rejected by all mainstream paleontologists who have thoroughly examined it. Dredging up more unsubstantiated claims is not going to help your cause. You need quality, not quantity to make your case.

[Amaleq13]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
...we have to account for the empirical evidence of the increased pressure in the rocks and amber we're seeing. Something caused an apparent increase in the atmospheric pressure back then or we wouldn't see evidence of it in the rocks.

Since this alleged evidence is the reason for Jim's Incredible Shrinking Earth explanation, perhaps it would help if someone could either show this evidence is faulty or that it has another explanation. I don't recall reading the specifics earlier in the thread, though.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Al Fresco
You should not be so concerned about the fact that the amount of evidence to support the coexistence of large mammals and dinosaurs may be pitifully small. Even one well-documented piece of evidence in support of such a thing would seriously call into question the validity of the theory of evolution as it now stands.

What you should be concerned about is the fact that, what meager evidence there is for their coexistence, comes from such notoriously unreliable sources and is rejected by all mainstream paleontologists who have thoroughly examined it. Dredging up more unsubstantiated claims is not going to help your cause. You need quality, not quantity to make your case.

Ok, thats a reasonable statement and I agree, however I've already said I've looked personally at the footprints in the paluxy river. I've examined the laminations in the cross sectional cuts and even the paleontologist say they are real lamination pressure lines. I saw the ones that were obviously faked or carved and I've examined the ones that were'nt. However,all of mainstream science has dismissed the genuine ones as fake too and I believe I know why. There has been found some large beaver fossils and very large cat tracks in cretacous rock or the same sediments that the T.Rex and aconthrasaurus was found in, yet mainstream science dismisses this as impossible, again I think I know why.

Think about this, would it make sense to fake all of this? I'm a christian and I have a strong moral fiber. At least it is now ( we don't want to talk about it years ago :o ) I couldn 't live with myself if I knew I was lying about all this. Don't you think most of the other christians who have made these claims think the same way?

On a more practical note don't you realize the sensationalism of these claims alone would bring in the experts to REALLY SCRUTINIZE the evidence to verify it or to refute it? Now the question is if all these tracks are a fake , how did they do it to fool an old tracker like me? I want to see how they did it on the lamination pressure lines of the toes. BTW, dios have three very large toes not 5 small ones and they don't have a philangies trench either. The ones that got my attention was the partials that most people were't even seeing, this is what got me to believeing it . The large ones everyone was ooohing and aweing over was not what got my attention. Sometimes whats hard to see shows greater evidence than the obvious.

[Mageth]

There has been found some large beaver fossils and very large cat tracks in cretacous rock or the same sediments that the T.Rex and aconthrasaurus was found in, yet mainstream science dismisses this as impossible, again I think I know why.

You've made these claims a couple of times, but AFAIK haven't posted anything to support them. I'm searching for such claims on the Web right now, and am failing to find anything beyond these (in regards to the "beaver" claim"), neither of which pose any problem to evolution ;) :

http://www.eas.purdue.edu/paleo/news1.html

http://www.paleocene-mammals.de/multis.htm

[Al Fresco]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
Think about this, would it make sense to fake all of this? I'm a christian and I have a strong moral fiber. At least it is now ( we don't want to talk about it years ago ) I couldn 't live with myself if I knew I was lying about all this. Don't you think most of the other christians who have made these claims think the same way?


I don't think anyone here is seriously questioning your sincerity or moral fiber. The same cannot be said for other creationists like Kent Hovind, however.

What is in question is your ability to positively identify so-called human footprints in the Paluxy River dinosuar trackways. From what I have read on the subject, many of these alleged human footprints are recognized by experts in the field as being nothing more than partial imprints of dinosaur toes.

In science, individual observations must be evaluated in terms of all the other evidence that is available and is pertinent to that observation. Evidence does not exist in a vacuum. In order for your interpretation to be correct, all the vast amount of evidence that indicates your interpretation is in error, would have to be ignored. Whether or not a particular indentation is a human footprint is somewhat of a subjective call. These impressions, from what I have seen of them in the literature, do not come with labels indicating their exact origin. But what you are asking scientists to do is to abandon the libraries full of evidence that refutes your claim and accept your subjective interpretation as an established fact. I wouldn't hold my breath in anticipation if I were you.

As you have acknowledged, you must also account for the complete lack of authenticated reports of any large mammals and human artifacts being buried with dinosaurs in order to give any credence to your claims about human footprints in dinosaur trackways. You could save yourself a lot of time and effort if you would come to the realization that you are on a wild goose chase. I would think it would be easier for you to live with yourself if you would learn to accept the facts as they are, instead of how you would like them to be.

[Biff the unclean]

Originally posted by Sven
Now we heard Biff's opinion. I think otherwise: If I like a post, I say so; if I don't like it, I also say so. Occassionally, I make some suggestions. If others also think that this is a "constant need to control other people", please feel free to email (Sven.Feuerbacher@pci.uni.heidelberg.de) me. Then I'll rethink what I said here.

But I won't change anything in my posts to this forum simply because one single person-who seems to be offended when his insulting behaviour is pointed out-thinks it "isn't flattering towards [me]".

LMAO, the irony is thick around here. You get to rate everyone else and tell them what they can and cannot think or say...but you yourself are above comment. "It's good to be king." :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Al Fresco
In science, individual observations must be evaluated in terms of all the other evidence that is available and is pertinent to that observation. Evidence does not exist in a vacuum. In order for your interpretation to be correct, all the vast amount of evidence that indicates your interpretation is in error, would have to be ignored. Whether or not a particular indentation is a human footprint is somewhat of a subjective call. These impressions, from what I have seen of them in the literature, do not come with labels indicating their exact origin. But what you are asking scientists to do is to abandon the libraries full of evidence that refutes your claim and accept your subjective interpretation as an established fact. I wouldn't hold my breath in anticipation if I were you.


So basically what your saying if someone makes a call thats against the accepted teleolgy then it won't be taken serious until the establishment says so , right? Seriously? Kinda sounds like the flat earth , or the geocentricity theories to me.:D The accepted theories of the day were all that was accepted back then too , but they were in grave error. Change comes slow and I know this but if you think all of science has it all figured out then you are more gullible than it appears from your writings. I'm an old military tracker and if these things are fake then they have fooled one of the best the military has ever trained. This doesn't look like a bunch of weekenders out making fake tracks to bring in tourists to me. I wasn't born yesterday and I know a little bit more than the average person, especially about tracking. I look for the things that are not obvious in the areas where the tracks are. Its the partials that I look for not the ones that jump out at you.

Don't you think there may be more envolved here than just the supposed truth of the matter? I'm for what makes sense and to be honest I see several holes in the current established knowledge base, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. I'm about common sense and to be honest the things naturalists are advancing don't make much sense to me given the big picture of the universe and our planet. Evidence can be misleading if it is not evalutated from the right perspective. Life itself is much too complicated to have evolved from inanimate material, even in the most primative forms.

If you believe in God or not you must believe in common sense and in emperical evidence. Don't you think the side of darkness has a huge stake in this too to confuse or falsify as much as they can.. ??? Their ( the forces of darkness' ) main job is to deceive and confuse the issue. If your agnostic then your setting around wondering about it all. I for one won't even attempt to believe this ( our world or universe ) is all an accidental freak of natural occurrence from fortuitous accidents of physics and chemistry. It seems the more I learn about the intricacies of nature the more I believe in a God that created it all. Its the only thing that makes sense to me. It actually takes less faith to me to believe in God than it does to believe in the naturalistic theories.

I guess there will always be areas of concern where we question things but when it comes to the supernatural we scientist dismiss the one thing that may explain the quesions that keep popping up and messing with our minds as unexplanable. Many scientist will say well its just a matter of time until we do figure it all out, good luck:D The human mind as powerful as it is , is much to puny to figure it all out, not even given an eternity of time.

[Mageth]

If you believe in God or not you must believe in common sense and in emperical evidence.

I've met plenty of theists around here that don't put much stock in common sense or empirical evidence.

Don't you think the side of darkness has a huge stake in this too to confuse or falsify as much as they can.. ??? Their ( the forces of darkness' ) main job is to deceive and confuse the issue.

So, now, the Forces of Darkness are supposedly behind anything that disagrees with your worldview?

You should realize that, if this is true (that the forces of darkness are confusing or falsifying as much as they can), then everything you count as evidence for your position (including the Bible) may be subject to this same "confusing and falsifying".

If your agnostic then your setting around wondering about it all. I for one won't even attempt to believe this ( our world or universe ) is all an accidental freak of natural occurrence from fortuitous accidents of physics and chemistry.

Good, because I don't believe that the universe is an "accidental freak of natural occurrence from fortuitous accidents of physics and chemistry" either.

It seems the more I learn about the intricacies of nature the more I believe in a God that created it all.

But the forces of darkness could be confusing or falsifying the evidence, remember? Those could be the devil's footprints at the Paluxy river!

[Biff the unclean]

Change comes slow and I know this but if you think all of science has it all figured out then you are more gullible than it appears from your writings.
It's odd that you should go on equating the flat Earth with modern scientific methods while all the time espousing medieval "theories" that have long been disproved.

I'm an old military tracker and if these things are fake then they have fooled one of the best the military has ever trained.
When did the military start giving specialty ratings in paleontology?

This doesn't look like a bunch of weekenders out making fake tracks to bring in tourists to me.
No, they are carved by creationists.

I wasn't born yesterday and I know a little bit more than the average person, especially about tracking. I look for the things that are not obvious in the areas where the tracks are. Its the partials that I look for not the ones that jump out at you.
And yet you don't know a theropod track when you see one. Why Mr Tracker can't you tell a Acrocanthosaurus from a Native American?

I'm about common sense and to be honest the things naturalists are advancing don't make much sense to me given the big picture of the universe and our planet.
You mean they don't make sense when you consider Jesus, don't you?

Evidence can be misleading if it is not evalutated from the right perspective. Life itself is much too complicated to have evolved from inanimate material, even in the most primative forms.
No, it's too complicated not to have evolved

Don't you think the side of darkness has a huge stake in this too to confuse or falsify as much as they can.. ???
It depends on what you consider to be the side of darkness. To me that would be the creationists

Their ( the forces of darkness' ) main job is to deceive and confuse the issue.
The purpose of science is to discover the facts. If your religion isn't supported by the facts you are best off abandoning it
It seems the more I learn about the intricacies of nature the more I believe in a God that created it all.
And yet you continue to ignore the facts of nature because they do not suggest your god exists at all

Its the only thing that makes sense to me. It actually takes less faith to me to believe in God than it does to believe in the naturalistic theories.
Science does not require faith.

The human mind as powerful as it is , is much to puny to figure it all out, not even given an eternity of time.
Attacking human intelligence only suggests that you know that your beliefs are not based on it.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Mageth
You should realize that, if this is true (that the forces of darkness are confusing or falsifying as much as they can), then everything you count as evidence for your position (including the Bible) may be subject to this same "confusing and falsifying".

[b]If your agnostic then your setting around wondering about it all. I for one won't even attempt to believe this ( our world or universe ) is all an accidental freak of natural occurrence from fortuitous accidents of physics and chemistry.

Good, because I don't believe that the universe is an "accidental freak of natural occurrence from fortuitous accidents of physics and chemistry" either.

[But the forces of darkness could be confusing or falsifying the evidence, remember? Those could be the devil's footprints at the Paluxy river!

You're absolutely right Mageth, thats why its critical we weigh all of the evidence in every way we can. Deception by the dark side will on every occasion confuse the issues if possible. We have a collective if you will of evidence to consider, not the least of which is the Bible and all of our God given state of common senses to evaluate all of this. I'm not saying its a piece of cake!!!

The way I see it is there are two forces at work in our universe and unfortunately we are all pons in the game thats being played here. The forces are supernatural of course and they are for good or evil and its just that simple or complex however you want to take it.

Now if you take the Bible and read it as a guide book for the path of salvation we must accept several things not the least of which is the plan of salvation advanced in the person of Jesus Christ. All other ways advanced and proported are contrafeits( ms, man my spelling is bad ) of the true. God is not the source of confusion its the other side of this equation and all of the stuff thats filtered down to us through the ages. We must be very selective as to what is real and what is contrafiet ( ms ). I'll admitt I don't know it all and I get confused too as to what is real and what to believe sometimes, but when it comes to believing in God or not I choose to believe. This is a personal choice I've made based on my knowledge base of what I have observed in my life. It hasn't been easy and I must admit there has been times I thought athestic/agnostic thoughts , but no more.

The way I see if I'm really wrong then in the end it won't matter because I will be like I was before I was born, but if I'm right and I'm betting the farm I am then I have a chance at eternal life with the creator of the universe. We all have the power to choose one or the other. I choose the one that makes sense to me after very long and careful consideration. This hasn't been a snap emotional decision but one of long and contemplative thoughtful reflection. In the end we all have to do this one way or the other.

[Mageth]

Now if you take the Bible and read it as a guide book for the path of salvation we must accept several things not the least of which is the plan of salvation advanced in the person of Jesus Christ. All other ways advanced and proported are contrafeits( ms, man my spelling is bad ) of the true. God is not the source of confusion its the other side of this equation and all of the stuff thats filtered down to us through the ages. We must be very selective as to what is real and what is contrafiet ( ms ).

But the "forces of darkness" could conceivably have "confused and falsified" the Bible, including the plan of salvation. It could be Satan's trick to get you to follow the wrong path.

The way I see if I'm really wrong then in the end it won't matter because I will be like I was before I was born, but if I'm right and I'm betting the farm I am then I have a chance at eternal life with the creator of the universe. We all have the power to choose one or the other.

Pascal's Wager. And there are a lot more than two choices, if one is willing to accept the wager.

[Asha'man]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
The way I see if I'm really wrong then in the end it won't matter because I will be like I was before I was born, but if I'm right and I'm betting the farm I am then I have a chance at eternal life with the creator of the universe.
If you are wrong, then you will have wasted your entire life on a lie, and you only get one life, so you will have wasted everything you ever had.

And you are still ignoring the idea that dark forces, whatever they may be, could have written the Bible itself. Personally, I'd much rather trust the hard physical evidence than an ancient book. Faking trillians of fossils, burried in every rock that can be found, is much harder than getting foolish humans to write down some nonsense.

[Al Fresco]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
So basically what your saying if someone makes a call thats against the accepted teleolgy then it won't be taken serious until the establishment says so , right?

No, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that until someone who makes an unsubstatiated claim that counters accepted theory provides convincing evidence to support that claim, science will not take them seriously. Science is always willing to consider new ideas and concepts, but only if they are backed up with credible evidence. Personal testimony, such as yours, without corroboration and verification simply doesn't meet the criterion for scientific validation.

Kinda sounds like the flat earth , or the geocentricity theories to me. The accepted theories of the day were all that was accepted back then too , but they were in grave error.

Those theories of the day were in grave error largely because they were based on the teachings of the Bible. It was not until people started developing a scientific attitude that grounded their theories in hard evidence instead of religious dogma that progress was made in discovering the truth about such things. If you think future discoveries are not going to further strengthen the theory of evolution, you are deluding yourself.

Don't you think the side of darkness has a huge stake in this too to confuse or falsify as much as they can.. ??? Their ( the forces of darkness' ) main job is to deceive and confuse the issue.

Ah yes, the ever-popular refuge of the scientifically disenfranchised - the old dark forces copout. So, you have finally reached the point where you must blame mischievous evil spirits for faking the evidence to make it look like evolution has occurred? It is sad to see anyone become that desperate to avoid the truth.

[Al Fresco]

I hesitate to post this, but I am wondering - has anyone ever had the sneaking suspicion that perhaps, in the case of Jim, we might be dealing with a rather sophisticated troll who is just trying to egg us on. At first his arguments were semi-reasonable. But as they continue to be shot down, he keeps digging deeper and deeper into the creationists’ long-discredited bag of tricks. Every time it seems he may be coming to his senses, he shifts gears and dredges up an even more ludicrous example of creationist flimflam for us to fume about. His latest incarnation of the evil dark forces argument suggests that he has basically reached the bottom of the bag. Perhaps I am being too skeptical in my appraisal of Jim’s motives, but I can’t help wondering if we are being taken for a ride

[Philosoft]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
The way I see it is there are two forces at work in our universe and unfortunately we are all pons in the game thats being played here.
I disagree. There is good evidence to suggest we are all medulla oblongatas.

[Biff the unclean]

Originally posted by Al Fresco
Perhaps I am being too skeptical in my appraisal of Jim’s motives, but I can’t help wondering if we are being taken for a ride
I can see why you would think that since his profile says that he's a "teacher, bio/chem" yet the persona writing knows almost nothing about either. Something isn't kosher.

[Demigawd]

Originally posted by Biff the unclean
I can see why you would think that since his profile says that he's a "teacher, bio/chem" yet the persona writing knows almost nothing about either. Something isn't kosher.

Well, my brother teaches biology, chemistry, and physics on the high school level, yet he's very much a Christian creationist. One really doesn't have to be all that qualified to teach high school, alas. Just follow the standards set by the city or county office and read the book to the students.

[GodLessWarrior]

You see, the dark side (evil gnomes) are trying to convince everyone that the earth is round. You see in reality the earth is a cube. The dark side (evil gnomes) are simply confusing the masses, altering the evidence, and making it appear as if the earth was a sphere. We don't know how they are capable of all of this but that doesn't matter.... we know it is happening. AND they have a motive: It is their job to confuse people.

Therefore, contrary to the "evidence" of a spherical earth, the earth is actually a cube.


Unfortuanatly for you, Jim Larmore, we can see the falacies in stories like the one above. Can you?
:rolleyes: :banghead:

[Amaleq13]

Originally posted by Demigawd
Well, my brother teaches biology, chemistry, and physics on the high school level, yet he's very much a Christian creationist. One really doesn't have to be all that qualified to teach high school, alas. Just follow the standards set by the city or county office and read the book to the students.

Unfortunately, I can confirm this sad truth. I work in a high school and, until this past year, we had a science teacher who was also a creationist. He even trotted out the old "evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics" nonsense.

[Sven]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
I'm an old military tracker and if these things are fake then they have fooled one of the best the military has ever trained. This doesn't look like a bunch of weekenders out making fake tracks to bring in tourists to me. I wasn't born yesterday and I know a little bit more than the average person, especially about tracking. I look for the things that are not obvious in the areas where the tracks are. Its the partials that I look for not the ones that jump out at you.
[snip]
Life itself is much too complicated to have evolved from inanimate material, even in the most primative forms.

To summarize: You are left with only two "arguments"

(1) Your subjective interpreatation of the Paluxy tracks (it's beyond me why a military training is supposed to be appropriate for identifying tracks which have been subject to erosion for a long time)
(2) Your personal incredulity

Every other "argument" (mostly from creationist websites or even without any reference) from you has been shot down in flames. And you still think that you're right and the whole scientific community has been wrong the past 150 years? The power of self-delusion...


Don't you think there may be more envolved here than just the supposed truth of the matter? I'm for what makes sense and to be honest I see several holes in the current established knowledge base, from the microscopic to the macroscopic.

So you mean gaps (no problem) or real holes? If the latter, we're still waiting for you pointing these out. You repeat this claim again and again, but never present evidence.


I'm about common sense and to be honest the things naturalists are advancing don't make much sense to me given the big picture of the universe and our planet.

Common sense often isn't appropriate in science. See the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. BTW, I remember Jorge claiming that the latter isn't against common sense, but he never explained why he thinks so. Are you still lurking, Jorge? I'm very interested in your explanation!

And I also don't think that billions of years can be grasped with "common sense".


this ( our world or universe ) is all an accidental freak of natural occurrence from fortuitous accidents of physics and chemistry. It seems the more I learn about the intricacies of nature the more I believe in a God that created it all. Its the only thing that makes sense to me. It actually takes less faith to me to believe in God than it does to believe in the naturalistic theories.

Jim, lots of Christians are very happy with theistic evolution. Have you ever thought about it or discussed it with an adherent? You're presenting a false dichotomy: it isn't either all created by god or all by accident (what anyway is a straw man of the respective scientific theories). There are far more possibilities, for example a god which created the universe by the Bing Bang with exactly the right attributes for humans to arrive finally (I don't believe this because of other reasons, but it's nevertheless a possibility which you refuse to acknowledge).


I guess there will always be areas of concern where we question things but when it comes to the supernatural we scientist dismiss the one thing that may explain the quesions that keep popping up and messing with our minds as unexplanable. Many scientist will say well its just a matter of time until we do figure it all out, good luck:D
For the 101th time: Please explain how science should be possible with supernatural explanations. Why don't you answer this question? I'm almost certain that it's because you know it isn't possible. You're refusal to answer this question strongly suggests that you're lying intentionally - either to us or to yourself. I strongly hesitated to write this last sentence since I don't like it at all to call other people liars - but I can not conceive of any other explanation for your continous refusal.

[Ape31]

Originally posted by Al Fresco
I hesitate to post this, but I am wondering - has anyone ever had the sneaking suspicion that perhaps, in the case of Jim, we might be dealing with a rather sophisticated troll who is just trying to egg us on. At first his arguments were semi-reasonable. But as they continue to be shot down, he keeps digging deeper and deeper into the creationists’ long-discredited bag of tricks. Every time it seems he may be coming to his senses, he shifts gears and dredges up an even more ludicrous example of creationist flimflam for us to fume about. His latest incarnation of the evil dark forces argument suggests that he has basically reached the bottom of the bag. Perhaps I am being too skeptical in my appraisal of Jim’s motives, but I can’t help wondering if we are being taken for a ride I was thinking the same thing actually. I started wondering what it must be like to live believing in "dark forces". Does Jim lie in bed at night quaking in fear about what is hiding under his bed? Too ridiculous surely.

r.

[Jet Black]

Originally posted by Al Fresco
I hesitate to post this, but I am wondering - has anyone ever had the sneaking suspicion that perhaps, in the case of Jim, we might be dealing with a rather sophisticated troll who is just trying to egg us on.

no need to be a troll, this is the normal path that creationists take.

[Sven]

Originally posted by Al Fresco
I hesitate to post this, but I am wondering - has anyone ever had the sneaking suspicion that perhaps, in the case of Jim, we might be dealing with a rather sophisticated troll who is just trying to egg us on. At first his arguments were semi-reasonable. But as they continue to be shot down, he keeps digging deeper and deeper into the creationists? long-discredited bag of tricks. Every time it seems he may be coming to his senses, he shifts gears and dredges up an even more ludicrous example of creationist flimflam for us to fume about. His latest incarnation of the evil dark forces argument suggests that he has basically reached the bottom of the bag. Perhaps I am being too skeptical in my appraisal of Jim?s motives, but I can?t help wondering if we are being taken for a ride

I actually hope that you're wrong. :)
But his posting history really points to this as a reasonable explanation...

It would be a pity everyone devoting so much time and nice posts for helping someone "seeing the light" even though there was no need for it.:(

[Jet Black]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
Jet,
Aside from the fact that I have said maybe 10 times I don't buy into this model 100% I do believe I have shown at least a degree of feasibility for it to be valid.

umm, but you haven't though. I pointed out right from the start that it was physically nonsensical.
I haven't grabbed at anything!!!!! I've looked at what they have submitted and basically tried to see if it made any sense at all. I have to admitt most of it shows too many extreme changes to be realistic, but then again we have to account for the empirical evidence of the increased pressure in the rocks and amber we're seeing. Something caused an apparent increase in the atmospheric pressure back then or we wouldn't see evidence of it in the rocks. Modalities anyone????

assuming atmospheric pressure increase seen in the rocks: This is not the explanation for it, since this explanation is physically nonsensical. First one has to discard all the ideas that are abviously stupid, and this is one of them.

I will continue to have faith in the Bible until I am shown conclusively in my mind its ALL bogus.

right, so you will have faith in all of the bible until you are shown that all of it is wrong. can you see how nonsensical this is. what is a bit of it is wrong, does the fact that other bits are right make the wrong bit right too? conversly if a bit is right, does the wrong bit make the right bit wrong?
The Bible was written by uneducated men who knew little of what we know today. How can we hold such a compilation as this to the close scrutiny we do with regards to science? I believe in the man who was called Jesus Christ. He said there was a flood so until I can say He is a fake and not the son of God I'll wonder why all of the evidence doesn't show conclusively there was a flood. I don't believe the Bible is a myth, its been verified too many times historically by archeologist.

Science doesn't work like that jim, you don't stack evidence until all of it disproves a theory. If one bit of evidence disproves a theory, then the theory is wrong. as simple as that.You don't ned to prove every facet of General Relativity to demonstrate that Newtonian Mechanics is wrong, you only need to do one thing, for example show that acceleration doesn't behave like Newton says. are you going to try to argue that Newton must be completely right because we haven't seen a black hole yet?

I've heard some say we are approaching all of the knowledge base in the universe, yeah right????

either whoever said this is completely wrong, or you misinterpreted them.
However I agree with your assessment on a general note that it appears very unlikely to say the least on this model being valid.
good, I am pleased to hear that.

[Sparrow]

Originally posted by GodLessWarrior
You see, the dark side (evil gnomes) are trying to convince everyone that the earth is round. You see in reality the earth is a cube. The dark side (evil gnomes) are simply confusing the masses, altering the evidence, and making it appear as if the earth was a sphere. We don't know how they are capable of all of this but that doesn't matter.... we know it is happening. AND they have a motive: It is their job to confuse people.

Therefore, contrary to the "evidence" of a spherical earth, the earth is actually a cube.



Actually, the earth is not a cube or a sphere. In order to reconcile the "four corners" phrase from one of many holy books, it is clear the earth must be a tetrahedron. The space shuttle had to make many course corrections to avoid hitting the points. Other course corrections were made because all of Euclidean geometry is wrong. :D :D

Sorry for the sarcasm, but it amazes me what lengths some people will go to to cling to a cherished but completely irrational belief.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Originally posted by Sven
I actually hope that you're wrong. :)
But his posting history really points to this as a reasonable explanation...
No, I don’t think Jim’s a troll. Trolls generally tire of their jolly japes after a while, whereas genuine creationists keep on going and going, supported by their reason-impermeable faith. Jim is a typical creationist Duracell bunny.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Asha'man
If you are wrong, then you will have wasted your entire life on a lie, and you only get one life, so you will have wasted everything you ever had.

And you are still ignoring the idea that dark forces, whatever they may be, could have written the Bible itself. Personally, I'd much rather trust the hard physical evidence than an ancient book. Faking trillians of fossils, burried in every rock that can be found, is much harder than getting foolish humans to write down some nonsense.

Asha'man,
If your wrong you have absolutely no chance at all in living eternally. Those fossils you speak of don't mean the Bible was wrong, its only means we may be misinterpreting the evidence. As a trade off if you will ,,,I'd rather believe a lie for a chance at eternal life than to blow it all for some not so convincing evidence full of gaps and holes that don't add up . BTW, if I truely believed God was a lie we wouldn't be having this dialog thats eaten up what 13 or more pages!!!!!

Everyone accuses me of being everything from a sophisticated troll to a misguided crack pot creationist. I am neither, I'm just like most of you. I do believe in creation but it NOT been something I've accepted without some intense study and careful consideration of all I can gather in so far. I've studied much of the available information and this journey in knowledge has for the most part enriched my life. I know theres evidence that I can't fit into the creationist modality but there is evidence the evolutionist can't fit into his modality either. The only difference is I have finally come to the place where I can't accept all of sciences explanations for OOL and for what macro-evolution advances and abandon the other side. It just doesn't make sense, its not logical and quite frankly I have come to the point where I believe it takes more faith to believe the OOL hypothesis and macro-evolution than it does to believe Goddit. Sir Fredrick Hoyle said it well, when he said in his analysis of the OOL and abiogenesis hypothesis, he said " It would much easier for a whirlwind to pass thru a junk yard and assemble a 747 jet liner emerging in flight out the other side than it would for life to have emerged fortuitously." ( that last word is probably not in the statement but this is an accurate paraphrase)

Science has for most of my life made sense to me in explaning nature and the observable biota and the parts of it that didn't make sense were just put in a "we're not sure file area" to work on until we do. Like I have said before there were times in the not to distant past that I believed like all of you do. You guys call theses things gaps , ok, maybe so but some of them are not adding up and I don't believe they ever will. Incredulance? Yeah maybe so I'll keep watching for that pie in the sky startling break through that puts an end to my questions entirely, but until then I'm not going to waste my life believing in something that isn't logical.

The Bible may be an ancient compilation of basically uneducated people but it makes more sense to me than to believe inanimate chemicals started life and macro-evolution finished the job thru mutational changes in the DNA to get where we are today.

One recent comment on the Bible was proposing it possibly being written by the dark side , well good try but its a ludicrous statement at best and a concession at worst. At least in this scenario your advancing a possibility that gives credence to a supernatural entity existing at all. :D If you really study about the history of the Bible its incredible it has survived to be what it is but thats a topic for another board on this forum not this one.

[Ape31]

Jim,

Pascal's Wager, 747 in a junk yard, god of the gaps, personal incredulity, the bible is old. These arguments have all been around a while and there are pretty good counter arguments for each that aren't very hard to track down. I take it you have come across these counter arguments and just don't buy them, is that right?

There was a Pascal's Wager thread involving Jorge a little while ago - did you manage to catch that? Found it: Alleged Bible Discrepancies... (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60093)

r.

[budgie]

Originally posted by Sven

There are far more possibilities, for example a god which created the universe by the Bing Bang with exactly the right attributes for humans to arrive finally . . .

This, I believe, falls more correctly in the field of Crosbyology.

:p

-jim

[Al Fresco]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
I'd rather believe a lie for a chance at eternal life than to blow it all for some not so convincing evidence full of gaps and holes that don't add up .

But what if you are believing the wrong lie? There are essentially an infinite number of lies, but only one version of the truth, so to speak. How do you know you have picked the one lie that is going to guarantee you a ticket to heaven? Of course, if you are believing in a lie, the whole heaven thing is a moot point anyway.

One recent comment on the Bible was proposing it possibly being written by the dark side , well good try but its a ludicrous statement at best and a concession at worst.

If, for the sake or argument, dark supernatural forces are assumed to exist, why is it any more ludicrous to assume they wrote the Bible than it is to assume they tampered with the evidence to make it look like evolution has occurred?

[Plognark]

but until then I'm not going to waste my life believing in something that isn't logical.

The irony contained in here almost made me piss myself I laughed so hard :D

But other than that i'll keep my trouble-making ways out of this prodigious thread ;)

[Sven]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
[snipped all because he keeps ignoring many arguments]


Jim, have you even read what I and many others wrote above? For example my point about the false dichotomy?

You still have to explain why it isn't possible to believe (in a version of) the Christian God and accept "macroevolution" (to use your wording) at the same time. Especially in the light of the fact Even that most Christian don't seem to have a problem with this.

I also don't remember any verse in the bible which says "You'll go straight to hell if you accept the theory of evolution" - do you? I honestly don't understand your problem.

[Biff the unclean]

One recent comment on the Bible was proposing it possibly being written by the dark side , well good try but its a ludicrous statement at best and a concession at worst. At least in this scenario your advancing a possibility that gives credence to a supernatural entity existing at all.

Well I didn't make that comment and I find the "supernatural" to be an asinine idea. I think it is horrifying that a person in the 21st century should consider magic more believable than natural selection…but let's look at this dark side Bible business for a minute. Am I correct in assuming that one way of telling the light side from the dark is the truthfulness of what they say? If so let's look at Genesis and the part that leads up to the flood

1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. (7)
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. (8) And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Now in other places the Bible speaks of mists. This isn't any vapor, the Bible is quite clear about that. This is a firmament, it repeats the word several times so you won't miss it. A firmament is a hard shell. God spends an entire day constructing this shell and putting half the ocean above it…and this was at the beginning of creation week when he was still fresh. And this hard shell is called Heaven by God Himself.
Now we know that Jesus agrees with this because he ascended into Heaven. A crowd watched him float up into the sky. He didn't go into orbit, or to the moon, or disappear to go to some spiritual realm leaving his toga behind. He ascended bodily into Heaven, which is what God calls the firmament. The NT even tells us that during the Rapture Christians will not vanish, leaving their clothes behind like in the paperbacks, but that they too will ascend up into the sky.

So, to get back to the dark side. Is Genesis true…as you have been insisting about Noah…is there a firmament? Is there an ocean above our heads as the OT says?
Or is science providing you with the truth?

[Sven]

Originally posted by budgie
This, I believe, falls more correctly in the field of Crosbyology.
:p
-jim
Hey, another Jim, but one with a sense of humour. :D Point well taken!

[Mageth]

One recent comment on the Bible was proposing it possibly being written by the dark side , well good try but its a ludicrous statement at best and a concession at worst. At least in this scenario your advancing a possibility that gives credence to a supernatural entity existing at all.

No, I was merely following up on your assertion that in your worldview there are "forces of darkness" busily mucking around with things to confuse us. Therefore, in your worldview, you must consider that one of the things those "dark forces" may have mucked around with are the texts you hold so dear.

So I was not making a concession or giving credence to the supernatural. Further, you have not demonstrated why this statement is "ludicrous" beyond apparently believing that it just couldn't be so (indeed, your belief it couldn't be so could itself be a delusion sent by the dark side).

[Jet Black]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
So do dolphins and killer whales have a little calculator inside their heads too, its called a brain and the associated tissues responsible to find stuff located in murky waters or underneath the sand etc.

indeed. but water density does not change like air density anyway. what is your point with the dolphins anyway?
. If conditions were originally different back then the bat would have obviously been adept at dealing with it. Sure you can say now it wouldn't work the way they are now, butg how can you conclusively say its impossible for them back then? Its like bringing up a deep water fish , if its don rapidly they die because of the extreme pressure change, but if they have time to adapt over time they can handle it. Thats why we see some occasionally near the surface.

because when a bat flies into a cave full of swamp gas, it gets lost. It is incapable of coping with drastically different air pressure. this is empirically the case.

[Sven]

Originally posted by Jet Black
indeed. but water density does not change like air density anyway. what is your point with the dolphins anyway?
because when a bat flies into a cave full of swamp gas, it gets lost. It is incapable of coping with drastically different air pressure. this is empirically the case.
I think Jim is trying to make the point that the bats evolved (gasp!) to cope with the reduced air pressure. That according to the flood myth this won't work because the pressure apparently changed within a relative short time (at least in the weird model that Jim presented) is another point, which he apparently suppresses (sorry, I don't know if this is the correct worD)...

[Sparrow]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore

If your wrong you have absolutely no chance at all in living eternally.

This is an unproven conjecture. Many religions or philosophies suggest the possiblity of eternal life, not just yours. Willyou bet on the right one?

I know theres evidence that I can't fit into the creationist modality but there is evidence the evolutionist can't fit into his modality either.

From a volume of evidence perspective, there is no contest. But rather than "explain" it by saying God did it and it's just a mystery, science is forced to reject previous theories in favor of new ones which explain all or at least more of the evidence than the old theory. You instead begin at a revealed absolute truth that cannot be falsified; any errors are not errors of the presumption, but must be errors in interpretation, data collection , analysis, etc.

Sir Fredrick Hoyle said it well, when he said in his analysis of the OOL and abiogenesis hypothesis, he said " It would much easier for a whirlwind to pass thru a junk yard and assemble a 747 jet liner emerging in flight out the other side than it would for life to have emerged fortuitously." ( that last word is probably not in the statement but this is an accurate paraphrase)

This is not, of course, what evolution is nor how it operates. Yet if the result of the whirlwind through the junkyard could self replicate with genetic variation, and was also exposed to selective pressures, expanses of time would seem likely to generate some very interesting machines.

I'm not going to waste my life believing in something that isn't logical.

Yet you believe in a virgin birth, raising of the dead. stopping the rotation of the earth and sundry other illogical allegations too numerous to mention. I'm not sure anyone here can help you further.

[Jim Larmore]

Originally posted by Sven
I think Jim is trying to make the point that the bats evolved (gasp!) to cope with the reduced air pressure. That according to the flood myth this won't work because the pressure apparently changed within a relative short time (at least in the weird model that Jim presented) is another point, which he apparently suppresses (sorry, I don't know if this is the correct worD)...

Sven,
You know I've never had a problem with regular evolution, its macro-evolution I have a problem with. Why did you put the ( gasp)in there? I feel like you are trying to be facitious here.

The bats that rely on eco-location would obviously adapt/evolve to handle a less dense atmosphere after the flood given the time to do so. The fact that the speed of sound would preclude them functioning properly is assuming they were like they are now. We don't know how they were back then. They may have done great with a greater atmospheric pressure back then if it indeed existed . I personally think that there is another explanation for this increased rock pressure.

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by Jim Larmore
Sven,
You know I've never had a problem with regular evolution, its macro-evolution I have a problem with. Why did you put the ( gasp)in there? I feel like you are trying to be facitious here.

Macroevolution is regular evolution.