Because I’m a nosy bastard, that’s why. I can’t leave anything alone. As soon as I spot a loose end I’m picking at that thing to see what unravels, and there are a lot of loose ends in theism.
Mum went through a Baptist phase for a while when I was young, so I certainly got the indoctrination, but I wasn’t what you’d call ideal convert material. Sunday school teachers really don’t react well to being informed by a 10 year old that the concept of manna violates the laws of physics (yes, I was that kind of kid and yes, I grew up to be a business analyst). I was one of nature’s science geeks from an early age, and therefore aware that many of the things I’d read in the Bible did not make sense. The older I got, the more I became aware that the Bible was written by someone with a very poor grasp of physics, biology and history. If all people were descended from Adam and Eve, how could there have been enough genetic diversity to produce a viable population? The earth is flat? Are you serious? If the Bible was really written by the Supreme Being it wouldn’t include such obvious rubbish. It simply wasn’t credible.
Ultimately, it wasn’t the logical flaws or the contradictions that really turned me off Christianity. It wasn’t even the ethical implications of a God who tortures sinners for eternity and allows children in famine zones to starve, although those factors were pretty important. It was a question of relevance. I was growing up in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; Christian values weren’t the only set of values I was exposed to. Secular values espoused tolerance and equality, and were much more attractive to me than a culture that treated me like a second class citizen because I happen to have been born without a penis. Not wanting to be a second class citizen, I decided that Christianity could fuck right off.
Of course, Christianity is not the only religion out there. What about all those other brands of theism? I don’t find them any more plausible on a philosophical level, but more importantly I don’t need them. I can do my best to be a decent human being without any religion at all.
Stella
New Zealand
“I can do my best to be a decent human being without any religion at all.”
WELL SAID!
A-Woman!
I’m sorry you have that experience of having inexperienced Sunday School teachers when you were 10. If I was your teacher, I would have explained a Bible verse in Isaiah 40: 22 that states the Earth was not flat, but a circle.
When I was 17, I did two flow charts that explained the origins of the earth – one through an uncreated created, and one from an evolutionary perspective that stated random creation from chemicals that came from …. No source. I chose a Creator as more logical.
As I grew older, my questions about such things as races and about God became less tricky. I discovered that Noah’s flood could explain the sudden preservation of fossils under layers of mud. I discovered that every culture in the world has a flood story in their legends. I discovered that melanin is the only reason for difference in skin colour, and that all the variations that were seen was a result of the gene pool humans have. I discovered that humans migrated around the world after the Tower of Babel according to their unique genetic characteristics. If they were red head and fair skinned, then colder climates suited them, if they had darker skin as a result of higher levels of melanin, then they could tolerate hotter climates and would migrate there through walking, animals such as camels and ship building. I learnt that only evolutionists teach that humans weren’t endowed with intelligence to build for billions of years, but there was no evidence for that since Adam and Eve would have showed a high intelligence from the day they were created (after all, they did name animals as their first task). This seemed reasonable as they were created by a super-intelligent being.
Then I researched whether Jesus really existed, and was happy to find much historical and archaeological evidence.
Therefore, I still believe the Bible was reasonable and didn’t take seriously the humanists and evolutionists who tried to say otherwise during my uni days. I am so glad I didn’t.
Stella from New Zealand, all the best and I hope you find what you are looking for.
Antigodless, “I chose a Creator as more logical.”
We know your relationship with logic is less than tenuous.
Why should it matter what a book of mythology/ficition says? You haven’t demonstrated inerrancy liar and bullshitter.
Who cares what a delusional liar and bullshitter thinks? One who can’t show its imaginary deity exists with solid and conclusive physical evidence. Which makes it a liar and bullshitter if it talks about imaginary things.
Citation to the peer reviewed scientific literature needed liar and bullshitter, otherwise *POOF*, your inane claim is dimissed as the fuckwittery it is.
Citation to the peer reviewed scientific literature needed liar and bullshitter, otherwise *POOF*, your inane claim is dimissed as the fuckwittery it is.
Yep, you are a delusional fool without evidence, just presuppositional OPINION that is meaningless noise. Oh, and PZ will ban your fuckwitted ass if you continue proselytize at every atheist post. He doesn’t think liars and bullshitters like you should impede the rationality and logic of non-presuppositional and highly evidenced thought presented in these posts.
@antigodless
Too bad you didn’t add a 3rd flowchart showing how a Creator came into existence.
Too bad you didn’t take into consideration the improbable transportation of kangaroos to Australia after the “flood”.
If you had been more intellectually honest you might not have wasted your life denying reality and trying to distort the facts to fit your book of vicious bronze age fairy tales.
And I sincerely doubt that you wish Stella the best if you are trying to convince her that she should adopt your nasty, brutish and anti-human dogma.
antigodless:
Of course you did, Sweet Pea. You set up a strawman version of the scientific understanding just so you could choose your creator.
You’ve got some King James-sized blinders on, kiddo. I’d recommend some actual education, rather than what you learned in Sunday School. It’s a helluva lot harder, but a fuckload more rewarding.
Seems to me Stella has long since found what she is “looking for”…
@3
“If I was your teacher, I would have explained a Bible verse in Isaiah 40: 22 that states the Earth was not flat, but a circle”
Gosh antigodless, would that be a flat circle or perhaps a round circle? Is your book clear on this. certainly ’tis a round circle.
Stella from New Zealand, all the best and I hope you find what you are looking for.
Most of what you write, antigodless, is self parodying and not worthy of response, but I think this last bit does capture something important about the sort of mindset that believes the truly absurd things of which you have managed to convince yourself. Stella is not looking for anything. Whether you agree with her or not, she makes it pretty clear that she has come to a firm set of conclusions about the world. You need to believe she has not so you flat out make up a scenario where she is still “searching” for some truth and where the kind of claims you are making haven’t been fully settled in her mind. Its very telling with regard to the ways that delusion fuels your “thinking.”
Huzzah!
___
Antigodless, you are faulty if you think the flood explains more questions than it raises. One thing at a time.
So at 17, you were stupid, and ignorant of science.
And you remain just as stupid and ignorant today.
You have learned nothing. And you actually seem to be proud of that.
Feh.
Since a global flood never happened, it cannot possibly explain anything at all.
Not every culture. And not every culture that has a flood story has one that involves a global flood.
What Tower of Babel?
People did not migrate around the world after a damn fairy-tale building project and a dman fairy-tale just-so origin of languages.
Should I be surprised that your understanding of anthropology and genetics is as weak as your understanding of every other aspect of science, and indeed, of reality?
This is monumentally stupid.
Now you’re just lying. Since there is not historical and archaeological evidence for Jesus existing, you cannot have found any such thing.
Or in other words, you’re so in love with your own indoctrinated stupidity that you’re proud of putting your fingers in your ears and going la-la-la-la when anyone tried to explain how you were wrong.
If you’re so damn happy, why are you here?
I dunno, Owlmirror – they used flowcharts. I’m pretty sure that
still holds, at least for certain specific values of “>”.
@ Owlmirror
You are showing an inability to accept the possibility that the Tower of Babel may have existed, and that there is no Archaeological and historical evidence exist for Jesus. You sound like a child with his eyes closed. Seriously look at Middle Eastern archaeological finds in the last 100 years. Look at the over 500 ancient flood accounts from around the world in countries from as far as Peru, Russia, Hawaii and even China. Look at secular historian accounts about Jesus. Research genetics and the role of melanin in physiology. Read what the Bible really states about origins and human nature. THEN decide whether to pay homage to the Evolutionist and Atheist model you so loyally accept. Don’t stroll through life blindly believing your Science Professors – they may be placing all their eggs in the wrong basket. ( or nest, as your ID is an ‘owl’ in part)
Banhammer cleanup requested on aisles 3 and 17…
Sigh. Not enough caffeine. Aisle 14, of course.
Generallerong, PZ is none too fond of requests for his intervention. In any event, this ones lively, lets give it some line.
Antigodless, what evidence do you propose we consider for the tower of Babel? Your book of inconsistencies? Science starts with the facts and then tries to tell a story that fits them, you start with a story and then try to find facts to support it. One of these ways has produced our technological age, the other has fought it regularly and often very effectively.
Circles are still two-dimensional shapes. As in a disc. And there ain’t no giant turtle with four elephants under this globe/sphere/oblate spheroid. So you, and your mythology would have still been wrong.
Thus showing that logic, combined with no evidence from the real world, works as a thought exercise but not as a way to explain reality.
And you discovered this through even more naval gazing? There were humans in the Americas at least 11,000 years ago, and there is evidence for an even earlier migration. Which is about 6,000 years before your so-called tower.
I know I should not do this, but what evidence (and please respond with links to peer-reviewed papers (not Christian apologetics sites) and a description of what was presented so that we know you actually read the stuff).
Stella:
Wonderful essay. And I agree with other posters: you have found that for which you are looking. Thank you.
You are full of shit. Here is one example of why:
When I was 12 years old, my father took me out of school for two days and we hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. As we passed the Temple Butte Limestone and the Tonto formation (Muav Limestone, Bright Angel Shale and Tapeats Sandstone) we began taking samples of each layer, placing them in my almost empty backpack, and carrying them down to Phantom Ranch. We sampled the Temple Butte (a nice exposure along the Kaibab Trail), the Tonto, the accessible Grand Canyon Group, the Vishnu Schist and the Zoroaster Granite. We also sampled the dikes and sills within the metamorphosed pre-Cambrian formations. By the time we got to the bottom, my pack weighed around 60 pounds. Those rocks came out of the canyon by mule. We repeated the process on the way up, sampling the Redwall Limestone, the Supai Group, the Hermit Shale, Coconino Sandstone, Toroweap Limestone and Kaibab Limestone.
Ordinarily, this would be illegal as all get-out, but my dad was a Park Ranger and we were collecting the rocks for the museum at Yavapai Point. Years later, when I visited the canyon again, I was rather put-out. The large rocks we had hauled up and down the canyon trails had been cut down to samples twice the size of my fist. I carried rocks three times the size, and they cut them down to little bitty pieces. We could have chopped them down to size before lugging them around.
According to more than half of Americans, the Grand Canyon is a monument to Noah’s Flood. The shales, limestones, sandstones, lava flows, block faulting of the Grand Canyon Supergroup, the metamorphic Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite (metamorphosed from sandstone, limestone, shale and lava flows) were deposited during and directly after the Noatic flood. A few days of water draining off of the land (to where?) depositing different types of sediment (sediment from where?) leaving the Grand Canyon. Some Christian Young Earth Creationists see the miracle of God in everything and dismiss naturalistic explanations as being limited, depressing, and heretical.
When I first encountered this view of geology, my thought was, “How limited. How depressing. How boring.” Two billion years of history reduced to a couple of weeks of flood drainage. A kindergartner’s version of earth history. Talk Origins very effectively argues against this rather primitive myth.
The reality is not only based upon evidence, but a much better non-mythical tale.
Between 1.7 billion and 2 billion years ago, ancient (well, hell, at that age, they better be ancient) sediments, the remains of seas, deserts, deltas and volcanic eruptions, were folded into a mountain range that may have been higher than the Rocky Mountains. The pressure and heat at the root of the mountains metamorphosed the sediments creating the Vishnu and Zoroaster formations. Over millions of years, the mountains were eroded by wind, rain, ice and snow, down to their roots to form an expansive plain. Thanks to the changes wrought by metamorphosis, along with the lavas, radiometric dating gives a very accurate age.
This plain creates the Pre-Cambrian uncomformity — a time when no sediment was being deposited. This gap in time represents about 450 million years.
Starting around 1,250 million years ago, a shallow sea flooded the plain laying down the Bass Limestone — the beginnings of the Unkar Group. Over the next 150 million years, the Hakatai Shale, Shinumo Quartzite, Dox Sandstone and Cardenas lavas were successively laid down. Stromatolites and primitive algae fossils are found in the Bass and Dox formations. Again, the lava flows make accurate dating easy.
Another uncomformity, this one of about 50 million years, separates out a sandstone (the Nankoweap formation, found only in the eastern Grand Canyon). After another uncomformity of 50 million years, the Chuar Group was deposited. The Galeros formation (interbedded shale, limestone and sandstone), the shale and mudstone of the Kwagunt, and the sandstone and shale of the Sixtymile formation were laid down between 825 and 1,000 million years ago. One more uncomformity (called the Great Uncomformity), represents a gap of 280 million years (to put things in perspective, that amount of time covers the entire time from before the dinosaurs to today).
Each of these groups, and the unconfomities separating them, represent a quarter-of-a-billion years. They represent seas, oceans, eruptions, deserts, deltas, valleys, plains and mud bogs are from a time when there were no vertebrates, no complex plants, no predators, no prey, no land animals, no land plants, no breathable air. A time when none of the animals supposedly on Noah’s Ark existed.
Following the Great Unconformity is the Tonto Formation (Tonto is Spanish for silly or stupid — and having hiked across the plains of the Tonto Formation many times, I would have to agree). The Tapeats Sandstone was laid down by an ocean and includes fossil trilobites (during the 5 years I lived at Grand Canyon, I never saw a fossil trilobite (always pissed me off)) and brachiopods. One hell of a jump in complexity of life. This 545 million year old wave sorted sandstone is the tan cliff at the top of the inner gorge of the canyon. About 530 million years ago, the Bright Angel Shale was laid down (interspersed with some sandy limestone and sandstone lensing) followed 15 million years later by the Muav Limestone.
Yet another uncomformity of 165 million years separates the Tonto from the Temple Butte formation. This limestone and dolomite fills in creek and river valleys carved into the top of the Bright Angel Shale. This eroded layer is further proof of the incredible time factor involved — the Bright Angel had to solidify before the creeks and rivers created the uneven upper contact.
One of the two most dramatic formations is a brown limestone cliff standing some 400 to 500 feet high. Minerals washed down from above give it a dramatic bright red colour as well as its name: Redwall Limestone. Dating to 335 million years ago, this massive formation of dolomite and limestone includes brachiopods, clams, snails, corals, fish and trilobites.
Above the Redwall is the Supai Formation. This 285 million year old formation consists of shale and mudstones with a little limestone and sandstone mixed in. Iron oxides wash out of the Supai and down the face of the Redwall. This formation, probably a massive river delta (think Louisiana) includes fossils of amphibians, reptiles and terrestrial plants.
The 265 million year old Hermit Shale tops the Supai Formation. This is one of the softer rocks in the canyon. As it erodes, it undercuts the Coconino Sandstone, occasionally sending massive blocks tumbling down the canyon walls, sometimes as far as the Tonto Formation. Fossils include ferns, conifers and other plants, as well as some fossilized tracks of reptiles and amphibians.
The other incredibly dramatic layer in the Grand Canyon is the Coconino Sandstone. This pale yellowish-white sandstone represents a desert environment (no, AIG, it is not an aquatic formation!) and dates to about 260 million years ago. There are no skeletal fossils, but trackways and raindrop fossils are found.
The Toroweap Formation consists of sandy limestone, slightly darker than the Kaibab above, is a 255 million year old. Along with the 5 million year younger Kaibab Limestone, it represents a Triassic sea. Fossils include brachiopods, corals, sea lilies, mollusks, worms and fish teeth. This is the whitish bathtub ring around the top of the Grand Canyon. Younger layers (which can be seen at Arches, Zion, Capital Reef and Cedar Breaks) have been eroded away.
So why describe the layers of the Grand Canyon so minutely? Mostly, to show the abject poverty of the creationists mythology. Within this one vertical slice of earth’s history, we see the roots of a mighty mountain chain in the Pre-Cambrian metamorphic rocks of the inner gorge. We see evidence of erosion, deposition, erosion, deposition, and block faulting and tilting in the Grand Canyon Supergroup. We see the advance and recession, over massive periods of time, of oceans and seas. We see the swamps of deltas, the eroded surface of an undulating plain, a massive desert of sand dunes and small lacertilians, and another ocean. We see the different types of rock, added, folded, changed, erodes, and deposited in many different environments.
And we see fossils. From the stromatolites and algae of the Grand Canyon Supergroup to the brachiopods and trilobites of the Tonto Group, from the snails, corals, fish and trilobites of the Redwall to the ferns and amphibians of the Supai, from the reptiles of the Coconino to the fish, sea lilies and corals of the Kaibab, we see the development of life. From algae to lizards, from trilobites to fish, from ferns to conifers, we see the fossil column match exactly the geological column. We can date the layers accurately either through various radiometric methods or by comparing an ‘undateable’ fossil from the Grand Canyon with a radiometrically dated fossil from elsewhere in the world.
Were the Grand Canyon the result of the Noatic Flood, would all the different dating methods reliably yield the same ages in the same order? the same gaps? Were the Grand Canyon the result of the Noatic Flood, would the fossil column show the development of life from the algae and stromatolites of the Pre-Cambrian through the advanced fishes of the Triassic? In the same order shown elsewhere in the world?
Young Earth Creationism, Biblical Literalism, and Christian Fundamentalism is a severely limiting philosophy. By assuming that the answer to any question is that God Did It, creationists choose to ignore the reality around them. They ignore the evidence left by billions of years of earth’s history. Their version of earth is without evidence. Their version of earth is without proof. Their version of earth is limited, depressing and boring. Their version of earth is a poverty of the human spirit of inquiry, knowledge and truth.
If you prefer the one paragraph version near the top of this post, so be it. Just don’t expect the rest of us to bend over and take it. Two billion years of geologic proof trumps a bunch of self-contradictory bronze age myths. And it does it by studying the evidence. You should try it. Might be a new experience for you.
Fuck. Sorry for the tl;dr
Why should Owlmirror believe in your book of mythology/fiction, if you can’t demonstrate it is inerrant with scientific evidence? Why does anybody have to believe the same delusions you do? They aren’t the truth, they are your perversions of a book of mythology.
Typical godbot doing projection of their lack of mind onto real thinkers, and folks who expect real evidence. You are the child like mind, not us. We are the adults, who have gone beyond childhood myths, like santa claus and jebus.
Gee stupid one, your imaginary flood in the babble left no survivors, being a world-wide-one-time-kill-all-humanity flud. And those reports require survivors. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the difference between local floods and your catastrophic mythlical flud. It only takes removing the presupposition that that babble is inerrant, and then looking at the evidence without blinders of stupidity.
Evolution explains all that without your imaginary deity. Your babble, which many of us here have read cover to cover, is a book of mythology/fiction, and it shows. Reading your babble is a leading cause of atheism, due to the insane imaginary deity who makes a crime lord look like a paragon of morality.
Yeah, those nasty science folks who follow the evidence, and don’t presuppose your imaginary deity, or that your babble is anything other than mythology/fiction. In other words, people who aren’t a delusional fool like you are. You have no TRUTH, you have nothing but delusion.
Babylon had ziggurats, but there is no evidence for anything called a Tower of Babel. And the statement in Genesis 11 that “whole earth was of one language, and of one speech” is provably wrong.
There have been localized floods almost *EVERYWHERE*. It’s not surprising that there are myths about floods. But there has never been a global flood. Archeology shows fossils deposited over hundereds of millions of years.
The bible clearly state the world is flat, immovable, and has edges. Circles are two-dimensional (flat) objects. The bible nowhere says the earth is a spheroid.
If all modern humans are the product of incest between Noah’s eight children, where are the marks of the genetic bottleneck and inbreeding?
Some fossils can indeed form in just a few thousand years, but not the petrified fossils because they need an amount of pressure that increases slowly over time.
Also, how could the Sun have stopped in the sky (Joshua 10:12–13)considering that the Sun does not move?
Don’t you dare apologize for that post, Ogvorbis. It was a thing of wonder.
Antigodless, please explain the following. If there had been a Tower of Babel, & we all spoke the same language then, & this happened in historical times, then how the heck could languages as different as Mandarin & English have evolved in such a short time? If, however, the Tower of Babel was prehistoric, where is the evidence for it?
I honestly think the commentaries on stuff like antigodless’ story are unnecessary.
This is a person who has been lied to by someone, probably a whole community. There isn’t even a coherent argument in that story. You should feel sympathy for someone like that, not just derision.
Your not dealing with a sophisticated theological, you’re dealing with someone who has been taught not to think outside of a very small box. If I thought it would help, I would pray for this person; as it is, I just hope they don’t hurt themselves or anyone else when reason and doubt start to creep into their mind.
antigodless,
How tall was the Tower of Babel? The Burj Khalifa is 825 metres high; There’s no sign of El up there. Mt Everest is 8848 metres tall; there’s been no reports of El up there either.
The Book of Jubilees places it at about 2,484 metres.
Gregory of Tours thought it was as big as mountain; where did the material to build such a large structure come from?
@antigodless
We are not the ones with closed eyes. We are the ones with eyes wide open, ever looking, ever seeking, ever discovering. YOU are the one who refuses to entertain the notion that your precious “Holy Bible” may be just a sack of shit.
Silly csmiller, of course you can’t see god from Everest. He only hangs around in awful, worthless, dried-out deserts.
We could, if he hadn’t bothered to post his idiocy at our blog to attempt to refute science and atheism. Your concern is noted and rejected.
Now, why don’t you do something constructive, and help antigodless to do the smart thing, and shut the fuck up?
There’s a wee little problem with the Tower of Babel story: Genesis 10:1-5 and 10:31 tell us that Noah’s grandsons were separated, every one according to his language. Then, in the very next chapter, we are told that “the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech” (Gen. 11:1).
I wonder if our Bible-thumping friend has ever actually noticed this, or any of the other hundreds of contradictions and outrages in this so-called holy book, in all of his pious skimming of it.
antidelusionless,
Both the Egyptians and Chinese were keeping good records (in completely different languages and types of writing) long before your flood was supposed to have happened. These records continued up to the time of the flood and for long afterwards. Why did these folks not notice they’d all been killed in a flood?
“We could, if he hadn’t bothered to post his idiocy at our blog to attempt to refute science and atheism.”
This was not a real attempt to refute to science and atheism.
“The world is round because the bible says it is a circle. God makes sense in a flowchart I made in High School. Skin color isn’t an eveolved response to the environment it’s because they were made to live in those environments.’ I don’t understand the Tower of Babel part at all. “Adam and Eve named all the animals, hence they were too smart to have evolved.”
This person clearly thinks that a different Bible school teacher would’ve corrected all the errors of the secular world. These reaction’s are completely out of whack to the seriousness of the comment.
I think you should be making real attempts to convert these people into thinking human beings, not shouting them down. If antigodless never learns anything, then at least you get a funny story about High School Bible flowchart class.
antigodless:
Which are those, exactly?
I smell that smelly smell of something that smells smell… a Poe!
The world’s not flat, it’s a circle? Seriously?
No way antigodless is for real.
patrick jlandis:
It sure wasn’t.
We’ve been ’round and ’round with antigodless. We’ve tried the sincere approach. Xe refused to even listen or consider our rebuttals, and instead simply continues to post the same assertions over and over, no matter how often those assertions have been dismantled with logic and evidence.
You can only argue with someone like antigodless for so long before the urge to smack them down takes over.
patrick jlandis:
I cannot feel sympathy or even pity for someone who is willfully and stubbornly ignorant, who refuses to engage or learn. Lied to or not, I cannot crack antigodless’s head open and pour the knowledge in, much as I’d like to. Xe must open up xer’s own head.
And when they refuse, and do so continually and smugly, there’s nothing I can do.
I’d like to feel sympathy, I really would. But antigodless is a completely unsympathetic character.
Three cheers for Stella! Great stuff.
@Ogvorbis #20
Beautifully put! I have an amateur interest in geology and have read a few books about the geology of the national parks in the southwest United States – fascinating stuff. I have been fortunate enough to see most parts of the Grand Staircase, although I have yet to visit the Grand Canyon. Your comment has made me want to see it all the more!
Stella, that was a wonderful piece.
@3 antigodless
“Adam and Eve would have showed a high intelligence from the day they were created (after all, they did name animals as their first task).”
actually, genesis 2:15 describes adam’s first task: and the lord god took the man, and put him into the garden of eden to dress it and to keep it. eve haden’t even been created yet, at least in this version of genesis. there are 2 versions you know, one follows the other in genesis. the first version in genesis was made up about 400bce and the second version was made up a few hundred years earlier, about 7oobce
eve wasn’t even in the picture yet.
Perhaps you should read In The Beginning by Isaac Asimov.
patrick jlandis, are you kidding? And miss out on Ogvorbis’ masterpiece? Posts like that are the entire reason for engaging in arguments like this! Most of my education in evolution has come from reading marathon “train wreck” threads on blogs and bulletin boards over the years. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. (Plus, you might want to take into account a commenter’s history. Apparently others here have had more interaction; they might have a better understanding of the situation than yourself.)
Now, if you’re only describing why you, yourself, don’t want to get tangled up in a discussion like this, fine. But then why universalize it as well-meaning (I’m assuming) advice to everyone else on what they should do?
Has anyone read “The End of Biblical Archaeology” by Hector Avalos?
I saw a recorded speech he gave to some Michigan group which was pretty good, but I wonder if the book might be more technical than I care to get into.
The second question would be, is it any good?
When people build large constructions, they leave evidence of having done so — even when the construction itself is later removed.
Archaeologists have found the evidence of the small city built on the plain of Giza in order to support the builders of the pyramids.
Archaeologists have found evidence of the remains of cities because foundations are hard to dig up even when the blocks of the walls are taken to be reused in nearby villages (and those blocks can be found in those villages; they don’t just evaporate).
There’s no evidence for a tower of Babel.
There isn’t evidence for Jesus. Really, there’s none. Zero. Jesus could be completely fictional; a myth.
Says the infantile hypocrite with his eyes closed to science.
And, unsurprisingly, no evidence for Jesus has been in those archaeological finds.
There’s been finds for various places and people in first century Israel/Judaea, but so what?
This may surprise someone as stupid as you, but humans live on a planet that is 75% covered by water, which floods in varying amounts due to storms and other events that can move a lot of water, like earthquakes causing tsunamis, or natural dams giving way and allowing lakes to drain. Of course there are damn “flood accounts”. But they are not all global flood accounts.
But it wouldn’t matter if they were all stories of a global flood — because the evidence of geology trumps human “accounts”.
There was never a global flood, ever, for humans to give an “account” of. The story of Noah’s flood is made up. It is a myth. It is a fiction. It is fucking well false.
There are none.
There are a few possible historical mentions of Christians. But Christians are not Jesus, and are not evidence for Jesus, any more than worshippers of Krishna are evidence for Krishna. There are also pious frauds/scribal interpolations, which are evidence for biased Christian scribes, not for Jesus Christ.
Yes, melanin blocks the degradation of folic acid by UV. That’s why humans evolved to have dark skin in locales with high UV flux.
Evolution, not creation.
The Bible states that YHWH Elohim made a man out of mud, like a small child messing around.
http://www.georgeleonard.com/articles/is-yahweh-a-boy.htm
It’s interesting that you use those phrases — “pay homage” and “loyally accept”.
So your Creationism is just “paying homage” to someone, right? Who?
And would you feel that it’s a betrayal to actually learn what science says?
Because I should stroll through life blindly believing Creationist morons and liars?
The methods of science have provided both the metaphorical “eggs” and the “basket”.
Religion is basically man pretending to be a chicken, pretending to lay eggs, and pretending to put them in a basket — and getting angry when it’s pointed out that there’s nothing there. Buk-buk-bkaaaaw!
That may be overstraining the metaphor, but it’s funny.
@antigodless
“Stella from New Zealand, all the best and I hope you find what you are looking for.”
How magnanimous of you. She sounds like a woman who has found the thing for which she searched. Your very arrogant assumption that her search is not complete until she finds what YOU are looking for (or have illusioned to have found) is very off putting.
Kind sir, I do not wish you the best and I know you will never find what you are looking for. You will find only truth, which seems contradictory to your presumptions.
You are showing an inability to accept the possibility that the Tower of Babel may have existed
I can totally believe it existed. The reason nobody’s found any evidence of it, is that they built Hogwarts on the ruins and cast one of those “you can’t see it unless you need to” spells on it.
I read that in a book, so it must be true.
Sorry. Didn’t realize I was supposed to ignore disingenuous liars. I will take that under advisement.
Tone troll, being “nice” and polite to fuckwits like antigodless doesn’t get their attention. TDhey rre too tied up with their preaching. In fact, they think they are scoring points if we are nice. By getting on their case and mocking them with real evidence and scron, we may actually get their attention. There is anecdotal evidence from some folks who tried the same shtick and were brought up short and mocked, that it caused them to rethink their positions. But being nice only works if they are almost there. Do your homework.
By the by, what the fuck did you think my comment up at #20 was if not an attempt to educate? Or did you read all of the comments before telling me (and others) what to do?
Tone troll? Bullshit.
I often consider my decisions as being something I would like others to do as well and I think that is a pretty good idea. I don’t expect them, nor would I try to force them to do so, but I’m a big proponent for expressing your reasons and trying to convince others of that in which you believe.
I just don’t think the tone of the comments will be effective at either changing antigodless’ opinion or convincing him to go away. I just think a less confrontational attack would probably leave him more room to hang himself or convince him of the futility of preaching on an athiest forum.
Anyway, no more criticism from me. I’ll just post on stuff I’m interested in and you can ignore or not as you please.
Anecdotes are the worst possible evidence, do your own homework fuckwit.
You will not be ignored. We have SIWOTI syndrome, and you appear to suffering from it.
Please read my comment at #20. Then please show me evidence of a confrontational attack.
Fucking Trollodon soni.
So the geologic history of the Grand Canyon is an anecdote? Really?
Ogvorbis, thanks for the geology lesson. Not my field, but it is science and I never get tired of that.
Antigodless, there is none so blind as he who will not see. This is you, but you probably will never recognize that fact. Because you refuse to expand your search parameters beyond sources that confirm your bias.
Do a little research. Read the Bible again, but critically. Take it apart, and don’t ignore the inconsistencies. If you care about truth more than you care about sustaining what you already believe, you might be surprised by what you discover. Once you allow for the fallibility of the Bible (it can’t be infallible, just due to the logical inconsistencies), expand your knowledge about science. Not the parody of science taught by the uber-religious, but real science. Take a college Biology class or two. Hell, study astronomy! If the world is 6000 years old, how can we see stars and galaxies farther than 6000 light years away?
The point is, once you really start learning, you will find that almost every venue of science presents real, tangible evidence that contradicts the strict Biblical version of reality. So what would you rather believe? On one side, you have reality. Measured, tested, repeatedly validated reality. On the other side, you have a bunch of stories written by people who wondered where the sun went at night. It’s not a hard choice, as long as you value truth.
And do you accept the possibility that Horton may have actually heard a Who? If not, why not?
I can feel sympathy for someone who is honestly trying to figure things out.
But someone who has decided that a collection of Middle-Eastern fairy-tales is the true history of the universe — without evidence, and even against all evidence — and is not even willing to discuss matters, let alone learn about them, only deserves derision.
We’ve had arguments with young people who acknowledged that they were indoctrinated as Creationists — but who were willing to at least discuss scientific methodology and findings.
======
What makes you think he wants to think?
How is refuting the nonsense spewed “shouting them down”? Any poster is free to keep posting nonsense; we’re free to refute them.
Unless they annoy PZ enough, of course.
So the concern troll has no evidence to offer us on how to confront the godbot. Typical of concern trolls, that is they short real data to show they are right. And repeated anecdotes do tell stories. Which doesn’t support accommadationism in hard cases like this.
Comment #20 is a good one. Comment #19 is the last one I read before I posted.
@Ogvorbis: Geology rocks!
Don’t ever think that an eloquent and passionate communication of science is a waste of time.
By the way — when you revisited the museum, were the cut-down samples just the ones on display? Maybe they had most of the other material in storage for research?
I guess I’m a complete troll.
I’m not supporting “accommadationism” though. I believe Religion and Science are in direct conflict, and the only way to avoid that is to define Religion as inferior to Science and quarantine it to areas where science doesn’t having anything meaningful to say and reason isn’t valued.
I just don’t think arguing about the Bible is worthwhile; obviously a majority here disagree strongly. The Bible could be deadly accurate about science and history and still it wouldn’t be evidence for anything, just very prescient and lucky and it’s not even close to any of that in real life. Plus, I don’t think people like antigodless came to their conclusions based on evidence and hence I don’t see how it’s going to convince them that they are wrong. They need to learn basic reasoning skills and overcome internal biases. If you consider one massive flood a good explanation for the Grand Canyon then you’re working with a grade-school level of logic that isn’t gonna comprehend something like evolution.
@Ogvorbis:
I, for one, found that fascinating. It runs about 300 words longer than the NIV flood account, but is much better written and far more interesting.
Thank you.
@patrick jlandis #61
But many of the people here HAVE come to their conclusions based on evidence and personal experience. You might as well turn your argument around to antigodless and ask “How do you think that you’re going to convince people (who do not accept anything blindly and have worked toward their current conclusions) armed with nothing but an old book and some high school flowcharts?” If an atheist were trolling a religious blog with the same comments being made here, then you might have some ground to stand on. But antigodless came HERE. Turnabout is fair play.
Dude, you haven’t seen the flowcharts…like, they used colored pencils and everything!
*bong hit*As for evidence, when I originally posted I was thinking about some ideas in “The Believing Brain” by Michael Shermer. He talks about his personal journey from fundamentalist Christian to Dr. Skeptic, but that’s not what I was thinking about. In the book he discusses how the brain almost automatically believes everything and then later, like seconds, assesses whether it’s true or not; the brain has to “believe” something before it can be evaluated. Then he discusses how, once we establish a belief, or non-belief, we get some sort of reward when we buttress that belief with arguments and evidence. So everyone here gets a little buzz from proving god doesn’t exist and the Bible is wrong while antigodless gets a little buzz from refuting those arguments, however feebly from logical POV. Not an opiuate like pleasure buzz, Shermer relates it to dopamine and more of a motivational buzz. He also argues that belief in something supernatural, and the experiences that butress those beliefs, are built into the brain. Our brains have the tendency to anthropomorphize the universe. Anyway, you could probably take some of those arguments and support a full court press against fundamental christian beliefs but I took them as supporting the idea that you pretty much have to get someone to accept science first or at the very least honestly accept the null hypothesis before your gonna have any real change of changing a belief which we’re baised in favor of in the first place.
I’m actually only about 4/5 through “The Believing Brain”, and I may have mangled the explanation but I think the gist came across.
Antigodless has out of hand on another thread rejected all science with a wave of its hand. Now what? How do you get its attention, in order to get it to look at evidence? Show us a better way by doing that here. Otherwise, we will continue to ridicule and mock, which has worked in the past.
Patrick, what makes you think that any of us are all that interested in changing the minds of people like antigodless?
Our mockery is intended for a different audience.
It is not logically impossible for there to have been a global flood (although the question of where the water came from and went to would still need to be answered). Some of the models that flood geologists dream up are possible, although not particularly plausible. But all of them would have left evidence of the events having occurred.
If we actually had such evidence, then we wouldn’t be arguing about the fact of the event — just the cause and interpretation of the event.
I think that if the bible had been prescient enough, it could well have been evidence for… something more than luck, I think.
For example, it could have had accurate predictions, years in advance, for geological and astronomical phenomena. Volcanic eruptions; large earthquakes; tsunamis; novas and meteorite strikes, and other usually unpredictable stuff like that.
But the bible is so useless that it gets stuff wrong that even the more intelligent and observant people of the times of the bible writers could have known better than to write down as it appears in the bible.
I’d be interested — if it were possible.
Given that repeated attempts have failed, the proper inference is that it is not easily possible, or at least, not easily possible in a blog comments thread. p ≪ 0.05
However, I think it’s worthwhile to articulate the arguments and refutations which should pique interest in an open mind (even if all they do is cause cognitive dissonance, denial, and avoidance in a closed creationist mind). Even if they don’t work on the target; even if no lurking creationist (perhaps even one with an open mind!) is reading along — it’s good to have the counterarguments and refutations articulated for yourself, so you can make them again in other circumstances.
I’ll second that. Most of my favorite refutations have come from reading Pharyngula.
It’s not just that though. It is the unrelenting demand for intellectual honesty and critical thinking that keeps me coming back. This blog is an excellent obstacle course for training the mind.
In 1989, they were on display in an exhibit at the small museum at Yavapai Point.
This. Once I started to doubt my previous beliefs, it was precisely the combative and mocking attacks of atheists which knocked me awake. Sagan and Dawkins did their part in showing me the door to freedom, but it was people like PZ Myers who kicked me in the ass and forced me to reckon with the truth.
antigodless may be too far gone to ever see the truth, but ignoring their foolish blathering while patting them on the head will not help them in any way at all.
Ogvorbis #20:
Bravo! I’m saving that to re-read. Several times.
Thank you!
barefootbree #42
Mine, too. After a lifetime of fundamentalist indoctrination (50+ years), I have needed an education in every field of science, especially as it applies to evolution. I save and treasure inspired explanations, such as Ogvorbis’ here, and they’re often in response to utter frustration with the density (or stubborn mendacity) of posters such as antigodless.
Yes, and that is why we need useful idiots like antigoodness: to give meaning to the phrase “witnessing tools”.
This highlights the reason science doesn’t get through to them: it’s not an issue of science, it’s one of philosophy. Very intelligent Protestants tend toward Calvinism and presuppositionalist apologetics as they get more and more boxed in by having their evidentialist tools removed from them; antigoodness will likely follow in a few months or years if he hasn’t yet.
Philosophy is a level below science. What he doesn’t accept isn’t our evidence; he doesn’t accept that we are existentially capable of interpreting it properly, where “properly” is of course “through the lens of my particular kind of Christian theism.”
Unfortunately there is almost no helping these people. Someone well-trained in breaking down presuppositionalism is helpful of course, but the change needs to come from within. He must, as it were, repent before he can be saved (from himself) :)
So, michaellatiolais, not to pry, but what were your beliefs beforehand? Just a general belief in god or were you deep into Christian fantasies? Did you preach, try to convert people?
Is it hard to imagine what you were thinking back then, or does it make sense to you?
I’ve entertained some fuzzy thinking in the past, but mostly paranormal stuff that I figured just hadn’t been explained yet but would eventually or new-agey stuff where I thought the religions of the world were all centered in deep psychological truths.
I abandoned those beliefs mostly from talking to people who believe, not doubters. I wonder if just really thinking about a literal biblical history wouldn’t help disabuse people of the notion. Just imagine Adam and Eve as literal people naming all the animals, the fantastical nature of it has to create creeping doubts.
Deconversion stories is what they should be posting as case studies.
Shout out to a fellow New Zealander. Here’s to values that don’t hinge on what swings beneath your hips.
I see a chewtoy showed up, clearly hungry for some molar action. Naturally, I’m only too pleased to oblige. Antigodless, the cosmos is full of processes. Some of them are launched by intelligent beings, like (most) humans. A great deal more aren’t, and back when there was nothing around with a trace of what might be called intelligence, processes were still happening.
OK. You’re with me so far. What some scientists do is try to understand the processes that were going on at that time. The formation of earth was a process. So was the inception of life. They had triggers, sustainers, and influencers. Fully understanding those processes will enrich us as human beings. Therefore, the pursuit to understand them is more than worthwhile.
By touting your god, you’re saying “No need to do that. My magic Sky Dude, with his extra-strength Harry Potter wand, made it all happen just like that!“. You’re trivializing these remarkable processes and the quest to understand them. A Creator is not a logical explanation because there’s no logical reason for an intelligent omni-powerful being to be there in the first place. You believe that “God made everything” because you’re an intellectually lazy person accepting fairy tales as fact from lazy, dishonest people.
Ogvorbis;
Never worry about tl;dr when you’re giving such a well-detailed butt-kicking! Imparting real knowledge can take time, and when you’re describing science, providing proper detail or even cites to the relevant literature will add even more. That detail is what makes the scientific answer better than “God did it!” – That answer may be a lot shorter, but it’s not nearly as educational.
If people don’t want to take the time to read it, they can skip it with a flick of the finger on the mouse wheel. Some of us don’t mind reading an extra page, chapter, even a whole extra book, if the information it holds is worth reading, and your post @ #20 definitely qualified.
Regarding the (supposed) Noatic flood: I’ve long thought that any god-thing worth its salt, that wanted to start over with its creations, would’ve been much more imaginative than that biblical cantankerous fucker Jehovah. That ridiculous story mirrors would-be human behaviour, (of a psychotic megalomaniac type).
Errrmm….PZ has been posting these deconversion stories, one a day, for months now. In addition to some of them, we have had numerous people claim that being challenged by those who were mocking their beliefs helped them start to question those beliefs.
When a theist comes here and engages honestly, we are not mean to them. Well some of us are. But for the most part when we are engaged honestly, we talk. Antigodless is not engaging honestly.
_____
You know I think the “there are stories of big floods all over the world” is the single stupidest argument for Noah’s flood. It’s not like there has only ever been one flood, for FSM’s sake. Any place near a river (ALL ancient cities) have experienced really big, really dangerous, really destructive, floods.
As for anigodless, when he/she develops some honesty, then we can talk.
“Errrmm….PZ has been posting these deconversion stories, one a day, for months now.”
A lot of these stories involve people who had little faith to lose or weren’t all that invested in their faith to start.
patrick jlandis:
They aren’t really case studies, but PZ’s “Why I Am An Atheist” series is pretty much just that.
I’m with you — I never really believed, though I thought I did as a kid. I always wanted ESP and ghosts and shit to be true, but the more I heard from people who really believe, the more I realized there was nothing to support it. They were drawing conclusions for no reason, simply because they wanted to believe.
That’s not who I wanted to be.
Not to make this all about me. But I’m good at that.
patrick jlandis:
That’s untrue! There have been several from people who really did believe, at least until the teenage years, and a few that deconverted later in life.
You just have to dig in to find them.
“That’s untrue!” I just reread that last 10 or so and most of from non-believers or people who came around to atheism after a period of tepid faith. The focus seems to be more about how they came to accept atheism and embrace a fully secular worldview.
I really enjoy stories of believers being shaken to their core by the loss of their faith because I cannot relate to that at all; while I wasn’t born and raised an atheist, I never fully bought into any religious ideas. It’s kind of a glimpse into what you might feel like if Jesus showed up one day and offered to do whatever it to took to convince you he was real; that would drastically change my life, assuming it wasn’t a symptom of mental illness.
Patrick,
The conversion stories are in there. Some of them are frightening. I am glad that not all WIAAA stories are like this.
Patrick,
You can also look for such stories in the Converts’ Corner at richarddawkins.net.
*joins the standing ovation for Ogvorbis*
Beautiful.
Oggie, I’ve wondered *why* it is illegal to gather and remove fossils from national parks. It’s my understanding that once they have eroded out of their matrix into small collectible bits, that they will shortly be gone – wave-battered or cold-cracked or otherwise eroded away to nothing. It seems like such a waste. Is it just to forestall the idiots with pickaxes?
patrick glandis, I understand that Avalos is pretty good. Also, I recommend The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein & Silberman. Richard Carrier’s blog here would probably also be of interest to you. His is a non-standard historical position, but he is very rigorous with evidence. Also I suggest that you read the standards of this blog.
Alethea:
The National Park Service preserves all resources, natural and cultural, for the enjoyment of future generations. Any collecting of non-renewing objects within national parks is prohibited by federal law. One of the more important reasons for this is to protect fossils that are still embedded — collectors, professional collectors, can do a lot of damage to fossils in situ. Collecting is legal, though, with a permit for scientific purposes. And the NPS tends to err on the side of permission with these.
Without restrictions on collection, national parks would quickly be stripped bare. At Petrified Forest, about 1,200 pounds of petrified wood is confiscated from visitors — both informal collectors and those seeking profit. And that is, mostly, loose stuff lying on the surface. Wouldn’t take all that much time for the easy to get to areas, the areas with the most frequent visitation, to be denuded.
Oh man, late to the party!
Proving, again, that Bronze-Age fairy tales have no place in the present.
The earth is not a circle.
It is not even as sphere.
It is a SPHERIOD. See, if your god was real, then s/h/it would know this and tell the goat herders to write it down. You can do the experiment yourself and come up with the same result: pick a longitude and take gravimetric readings along it, from North Pole to South (make sure to apply the Bouguer corrections). You will reproduce the GRS67—congrats!
So you failed twice: first in your ignorance about evolution (hint: it has nothing to do with the origin of the universe), and second that you assumed to know what “nothing” is. You don’t, sorry.
You have no understanding of basic geology. A flood event would produce a single graded bed, nothing more. Such characteristics as obvious. When your supposed flood occurred, there are no world-wide corresponding sedimentary layers. Fail again.
That’s great. Adam named all those “animals” that lived in the garden of Eden. Especially the ones that only exist thousands of miles from each other. Or those, recently discovered, that have no name. Sorry, according to the bible, god was quite the idiot–he even lost track of Adam and Eve after they ate the apple!
“Archaeological” evidence that Jesus existed? This ought to be good. Do you have bones or coprolites?
I’m not, in fact I feel sorry for you. You don’t know how the world works. You think thunder is god stamping His foot. You think sickness can magically go away if you mumble some words.
Think of all your ancestors whose efforts, blood, sweat and tears cumulated in an ignorant simp like you.
What a pathetic waste.
Well done, guys. A lot of you know about geology, about the dates of the Grand Canyon, and certain other bits of information. SOme of you are asking some questions, which is what a scientist does in discovering new knowledge. Let’s address a couple of you, shall we?
The first: our long-winded and reasonable Ogvorbis. I want to address three quotes from him.
Ogvorbis:
“When I was 12 years old, my father took me out of school for two days and we hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”
I know who and when this gentleman was indoctrinated with evolutionary and it was perhaps his father’s mis-education through evolutionary theories of the time that led him on the current road that Ogvorbis is now.
“And you discovered this through even more naval gazing? There were humans in the Americas at least 11,000 years ago, and there is evidence for an even earlier migrationsp. Which is about 6,000 years before your so-called tower.”
Again, conjecture based on the best estimations of Archaeologists and Anthropologists – probably using the same methods of dating as other disciplines. Dating for Archaeologists and Anthropologists rely on existing data collected in the region, or with comparison of parallel peoples worldwide. If none existed with the same language or historical events, it is an estimation based on evolutionary principles, which may be a flawed premise to begin with.
“We can date the layers accurately either through various radiometric methods or by comparing an ‘undateable’ fossil from the Grand Canyon with a radiometrically dated fossil from elsewhere in the world.”
This made me laugh. Let’s have a look at the Grand Canyon.No geologist can estimate the amount of parent and daughter radioactive data at the time a rock is formed. Scientists have observed in the laboratory the decay rate of radiactive isotopes for around … 100 years. But we all know that the real world is different. Lava flows, for example, have been tested today, and have been found to contain more radioactive isotopes. Lava at Mt St Helens was extracted in 1986, and tested. It was radiometrically dated to see if the higher levels of isotopes would affect radiometric dating. It did! A week old lava was dated at 350,000 years old by the radiometric dating. Same thing happened to lava flows at Mt Ngauruhoe in New Zealand. The locals knew the lava was less than 50 years old. Historians and journalists had recorded it. Local history confirmed it. Yet, when put through a radiometric dating procedure, the age of the lava was up to 3.5 million years. Creepy, huh?
Lava and rocks mix, further contaminating the sample at Mt Ngauruhoe. When it was tested for uranium-lead, the odd 50- year old lava flow in New Zealand was aged to be 3.908 billion years old. Fascinating stuff. Laboratories are pure, but often don’t reflect what happens in the real world. If you date rock in the Grand Canyon that has had lava flows from active volcanoes that assisted its formation (around North rim and Eastern rim), you can get ages varying between 1 million years for potassium and argon isotopes; and up to 2.6 billion years for uranium lead isotopes. And you get the same age for North and East rims, even though the East rim is in layers far below the North rim. Evolutionists would say Eastern ages should be lower, but obviously volcanic lava that is contaminated by other rocks as it flows downwards has higher radioactive isotopes. So much for the accuracy of dating the Grand Canyon, and laboratory observations by scientists!
Let’s answer briefly two more sceptics:
Dick the Damned
” If there had been a Tower of Babel, & we all spoke the same language then, & this happened in historical times, then how the heck could languages as different as Mandarin & English have evolved in such a short time? If, however, the Tower of Babel was prehistoric, where is the evidence for it?”
Do you know that Mandarin as a common language was only introduced in 1932 by the Communists based on the Beijing Dialect? Before that, many kingdoms in China throughout history produced a variety of regional dialects spoken throughout China. Mandarin was introduced to unite the country, pretty much like Bahasa Indonesia was introduced in 1945 as a common language in Indonesian schools to counter the fact that there were over 300 languages and dialects spoken in a variety of regions there. Talk to linguists how a national language can be formed – find one that is most commonly spoken, work out its rules and write down the letters, and introduce it to children in schools. Easy!
The Tower of Babel was probably made of mud brick and was probably a public building typical to the Mesopotamian region a that time. You can check out examples of these public buildings, called ‘ziggurats’- nearly 30 already dug up by Archaeologists around the Mesopotamian region – as early as the 5th Millennium BCE. You can see that mud bricks were commonly used before cities were developed, and that ‘tells’ arose. Tells are communities built upon other communities as mud brick houses decayed after a couple of generations. Babylonian excavations are pretty sketch before 2000 BCE, as the Euphrates River’s water table shifted.However, there is a fascinating reference in Sumerian literature entitled ‘Enmerker and the Lord of Aratta’ where a man called ‘Enmerker’ makes a speech referring to a time when every human had a common language until the king of Sumerian gods confused their languages.’
Anybody talked about Gilgamesh yet? Josephus, an ancient historian referred to him as the Grandson of Ham, Ham the son of Noah. In the Biblical account, Nimrod is the Grandson of Ham. So many say the clay tablets speaking of the Gilgamesh epic is in fact the first ‘atheist’ epic because both Nimrod in the Biblical Account and Gilgamesh had a message that ‘God is dead’ and ‘I am better than God’. And who set up the kingdom of Babel? Nimrod, or Gilgamesh – the one and the same. Where was the tower in question built. Babel …. the ‘tower of Babel’.
A mask in the British Museum refers to Huwawa, (or ‘Humaba’ in the Assyrian version) which is the one who sent the flood on the earth according to the Gilgamesh Epic. The mask is dated to around 6000 BCE. This is similar to the Hebrew rendition of the name of their Creator, and which Christians now follow – ‘YWWH’
Josephus, the historian, stated the reason why Nimrod or ‘Gilgamesh’ built the Tower was to get high enough so God couldn’t take Nimrod/Gilgamesh out with a flood again as Nimrod/Gilgamesh avenged his forefathers for the flood.
Speculation? As speculative as radiometric dating at the Grand Canyon, and the assumptions used by evolution scientists to make the dates of fossils look to be millions, and billions, of years old.
Actually you lie through your teeth Try Potassium-Argon dating, which gets reset every time the rock is melted. Quit lying to yourself, then you can quit lying to us.
Citation needed or *POOF° dismissed as unevidenced lies and bullshit, like your first unevidenced claim.
And this has what to do with the price of beans in Madagascar. Nothing but distraction, as lava, coming from the earth, dates the magma. And uranium, not being volatile, makes a good marker.
So the fuck what? They are the same order of magnitude, and a hell of a lot older than 6,000 years. The K/Ar is probably more accurate. Science isn’t absolute, that is for lying and bullshitting fuckwits who pretend their deity exists without evidence, and their babble is anything other than a book of mythology/fiction, two claims you have made without evidence, which means *POOF*, dismissed as bullshit.
Citation needed or *POOF*, dismissed as lies and bullshit, because evolution says nothing about rocks. Geology says something about rocks. What a category error by a fuckwitted loser.
Except, you are talking about a pre-literate society fuckwitted loser, and no citation, so *POOF*, dismissed as lies and bullshit from a presuppositional loser.
Show engineering calculations that such a structure could reach that height. And no citation, so *POOF*, dismissed as more lies and bullshit from an ignorant presuppositionalist.
No speculation about radiometric dating, or the fossil record in the geological column, as there is no citation for your fuckwitted and presuppositional claim, so *POOF*, claim dismissed as lies and bullshit.
Lets look at the score: AntiIMAGINARYDEITYless: 0; Science: ∞ (untouched by scientific evidence). Your lose AntiIMAINGARYDEITYless loser.
So, Radioactive dating is an international conspiracy to deceive us about the age of the earth? You are crazier than I imagined.
What does the Bible say about Plate Tectonics? Are marsupial fossils in Antartica another conspiracy?
@ Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
“Show engineering calculations that such a structure could reach that height.”
It obviously did as it formed the basis of 30 similar structures found in the Mesopotamian region, most readily around Iraq.
“Citation needed or *POOF° dismissed as unevidenced lies and bullshit, like your first unevidenced claim.
the odd 50- year old lava flow in New Zealand was aged to be 3.908 billion years old.”
Ever heard of Dr Andrew Snelling, a Geologist who did the research? I am not going to cite references unless you are truly interested. Look it up yourself, if you are interested. I am not doing a thesis on this blog, nor a scientific journal. I am just merely pointing out actual research that has been conducted, and findings by qualified Archaeologists and Geologists.
The whole premise of Stella’s reasons stated here for her Atheism is: “The older I got, the more I became aware that the Bible was written by someone with a very poor grasp of physics, biology and history.”
My whole premise is that…. perhaps Atheists have a very poor grasp of physics, biology, history, Archaeology, Anthropology, Lingustics, and the whole methods they use to date the universe and historical events. Why? Because they reject alternative theories and research in lieu of a principle called ‘Evolution’ that keeps researchers in a job.
perhaps Atheists have a very poor grasp of physics, biology, history, Archaeology, Anthropology, Lingustics, and the whole methods they use to date the universe and historical events.
damnit, it escaped TZT before the gate was closed.
I blame PZ.
slackin’ on the job!
“perhaps Atheists have a very poor grasp of physics, biology, history, Archaeology, Anthropology, Lingustics, and the whole methods they use to date the universe and historical events. Why? Because they reject alternative theories and research in lieu of a principle called ‘Evolution’ that keeps researchers in a job.”
Atheist use science, a rational approach based on evidence giving rise to idea that are tested via experiment and assessing new and old evidence. That method isn’t specific to atheism, so I’m not sure what your getting at.
Starting with the Bible as true and looking for proof that is true, is just feeding into everybody’s natural desire to find evidence that confirms what we want to be true. You need to look for true dis-confirming evidence.
As for evolution, what is the motivation to lie and deceive to support such a theory? If you had real evidence it was false you would have a goddamn school named after you. That’s how science works, tearing down other peoples work is a foundational part of the endeavor.
Can you point to anything, that to you, appears to make the Bible false?
Dr Andrew Snelling
oh, not this shit again.
seriously?
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD013.html
Citation needed, or *POOF*, dismissed as lies andbullshit.
No citation, but a category error on your part. The rock in the lava is not new, nor redated like K/Ar due to degassing during melting. What part of you are a stupid fool who doesn’t understand science are you having trouble with?
You must perforce cite the scientific literature for every scientific claim you make. Or, we presume you are citing sources where they specify they must make the babble inerrant, making them unreliable sources due to inherent bias. Science attempts to remove such biases, which is why your babble is shown to be a book of mythology/fiction.
And if your reporting of said results is biased and distorted, which it is, we will have your number as a liar, bullshitter, and quoteminer…
Since atheists tend to be better educated than fuckwitted presuppositional losers like you, you lies and bullshit are being exposed to the world. You presented no scientific evidence. You presented OPINION and PROSELYTIZING OF BULLSHIT.
What alternative SCIENTIFIC THEORIES???? The present scientific theories reject your religious fuckwittery. You have nothing scientific to offer us scientists, as you can’t cite the peer reviewed scientific literature to demonstrate those theories. And if you can’t put up those theories with citations to the peer reviewed scientific literature, or shut the fuck up about them, you tacitly acknowledge yourself to be a liar and bullshitter….
It doesn’t require much grasp of any of the sciences to see that your precious bible, the inerrant word of god, describes the world and the universe in the same primitive, and wrong, terms that ancient peoples believed applied. The world is not flat (and yes, a circle is flat; nice grasp of geometry you have there), does not rest on pillars, the sky is not a dome overhead, holding back water, the stars are not little lights on that dome, and the moon does not shine by its own light.
Also, bats do not lay eggs, insects do not go about on all fours, and mustard seeds are not the smallest in the world.
It also doesn’t take science to notice the bible starts contradicting itself on page two.
Oh, and Antigodless, trying to refute scientific theories with religious ideas (they aren’t theories, just ideas of mythology) does nothing to refute the science. As I said earlier, science is only refuted by more science, and science, even scientific theories, are published in the peer reviewed scientific literature. Your babble can’t touch science without publishing real science…
Many centuries ago, a nameless scribe wrote about a man stopping the sun by shouting at it, thus displaying a very poor grasp of solar system arrangement, gravity, rotation, inertia and heat buildup via friction. You’d have to be a bloody idiot to believe that this actually happened, just because the story is recorded in the Bible.
antigodless said:
I hope misspelling the holy name of god is not a sin in your religion.
talkorigins is a cool website, never heard of it before.
The Dover trial is a really interesting look at the more sophisticated attempts to undermine evolution; Intelligent Design was kind of an afterthought, and it showed at trial. I first read about The Discovery Instutute, and it’s jihad against Naturalistic Materialism, via that trial and it kind of scared me.
Stella, nice post.
Dunno if you should be flattered or annoyed that a godbot latched on to it. :)
—
[meta + OT]
patrick jlandis, your heart may be pure and your feistiness ain’t in doubt, but you are evidently a n00bie here, that you imagined you had as much background as other posters on the troll du jour so you could express your dismay at their responses.
(We’ll see how you go, eh?)
Snelling. Snelling? You’re quoting Snelling?
*tries to hold it in
*fails
bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
*wipes eyes
Snelling.
*shakes head
Just one question. You mention Snelling is a geologist. You think geologists have something to say? Then why would you depend on a geologist who decided he would make more money from idiots than from geology instead of the thousands of geologists who think Snelling is a liar or an idiot (or both)? Never mind. I know your answer. They are all deluded by their atheism. Even the Christian ones. Yep.
Ah, well. If I thought you were honestly just that ignorant and just believed the lies you’ve been told, I’d try to engage, but really? I think you gave up all your honesty so you could worship a book. That is pretty damned sad for you.
Snelling. *chuckle
please someone tell antygodless that
yahweh and jehovah are the same name.
due to grimms law of transmutation.
sounds like antigodles is winning this debate because the atheist is stuck with being reasonable and as honest as possible but antigodles can say just about anything he/she wants to say. just-so stories seem to be his specialty. but he is not limited to reason/logic so the atheist cannot sway the antigodles. if you get in a pissing contest with a skunk you will not win!
otrame:
June 1st, 2012 at 9:12 pm
Ever heard of Dr Andrew Snelling
Snelling. Snelling? You’re quoting Snelling?
*tries to hold it in
*fails
bwahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
*wipes eyes
Snelling.
*shakes head
Just one question. You mention Snelling is a geologist. You think geologists have something to say? Then why would you depend on a geologist who decided he would make more money from idiots than from geology instead of the thousands of geologists who think Snelling is a liar or an idiot (or both)? Never mind. I know your answer. They are all deluded by their atheism. Even the Christian ones. Yep.
”
@ ottram – nice try, kid. You expressed yourself very well. However, have you ever investigated Dr Snelling’s income? Have you asked whether he earned his PhD, or got a mickey mouse ‘honorary’ degree similar to what’s handed out in the USA? Have you asked why Dr Snelling was one of the few Geologists allowed to take rock samples for the purpose of scientific research from the Grand Canyon? Ever worked in a non-profit organisation that has bravely stood against the majority within your profession because something stood.. Not quite right?
Dr Snelling shows courage beyond others within his profession simply because he didn’t sell out his profession for fame, research grants, and peer pressure. Like do many scientists do today?
The Farce is strong with this one.
Given the arguments made so far, I venture to guess antigodless is a Liberty U grad. I expect his brain has been washed, blown dry and spun very thoroughly.
Oh, sweetie, how nice of you. I haven’t been called a kid in more than 30 years.
So my prediction was correct. All those other geologists, even the Christian ones, are just going for the money and fame.
(Notice to real geologists: That was sarcasm. I’m an archaeologist, I KNOW how much you guys make from “research grants” and how famous you all are.)
Do you think all geologist are honest scientists and not presuppositional fuckwits like youself? And distort the evidence because of their fuckwitted delusions???
No, he sold out to fuckwittery and presupposition that an imaginary deity exists, and the babble is something other than mythology fiction. Neither of which you have shown conclusive physical evidence for either making you a proven liar and bullshitter. You lie and bullshit, just like Snelling, or anybody that claims a deity exists.
Citation needed for this bit of libel. And it is libel since you posted it here, and it wasn’t just said somewhere. Either put up or shut the fuck up. Evidence (truth) will be your pass from losing a court case. And any court isn’t interested in your OPINION, and you will need documentation if you don’t want a summary judgement against you…
Nerd, he doesn’t care about honesty. Honesty won’t let him worship his idol.
Dr Snelling shows courage beyond others within his profession simply because he didn’t sell out his profession for fame, research grants, and peer pressure. Like do many scientists do today?
ever read the link I provided that explains the results you are misinterpreting?
you’re just another authoritarian fapwit, ignorant but will totally trust any authority that comes from teh “right” source.
June 1st, 2012 at 9:30 pm
“Oh, sweetie, how nice of you. I haven’t been called a kid in more than 30 years.”
I’m glad I made your day. The truth is – the body may grow older, but you can always be a kid at heart.
@joed – Jewish Scribes would not write the vowels of God lest they said the Lord’s name in vain. One of the ten commandments. Thus, YWHH was what they wrote. It is a guess whether the missing vowels in Hebrew was ‘Yahweh’ or ‘Yehovah’. Most scholar think it is the former.
Regarding winning the debate – don’t want to win a debate. I want to get Stella – and you Atheists – thinking about what you are living your life based on. Is it a premise to base your whole life, the future generations, and the whole wider community you live in?
Honesty could save him if he wants to keep his money in his wallet. Or Josh the geologist with his beret and M-4 (from his weekend job) from his door. Honesty is the best policy. And honesty says he libeled 99% of the geologists out there.
Absolutely.
patrick jlandis @78,
I already wrote about my experience: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2011/10/14/why-i-am-an-atheist-michael/
@Stella – great write up!
@Auntie Godless
You might want to use shorter sentences. The complex ones don’t work.
Nope, and wikipedia redirects him to “Answers in Genesis” (WTF?)
seriously, this “misdating young rocks” lie started with Morris in the 70s, and dishonest fuckwits like Snelling are just repeating it.
last I checked, Snelling hasn’t EVER published anything in the primary geology literature.
does this remind anyone one of someone with a similar background and lack of publishing in the field of biology?
sure does me. Jonathan Wells comes readily to mind.
sorry, but Snelling IS NOT A SCIENTIST. He simply says shit you want to hear, fapwit.
Nope, and wikipedia redirects him to “Answers in Genesis” (WTF?)
because that’s who he works for.
http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/snelling.htm
Compared to your thug of an imaginary deity, and book of mythology/fiction with rules that if followed would have us stone you for wearing an cotton-polyester shirt or pants? Yes definitely. You offer nothing sane or rational to think about. Just fallacious presuppositions and the lies and bullshit that result from believing in fallacious and unevidenced presuppositions.
We can make a sane and rational society based not on slavery, genocide, sexual slavery, killing of children, misogyny, homophobia, etc, but rather equality and cooperation. Your deity is one sick mother fucker…
YO PZ!!</b
Can we get you to use your cattle-prod and shuffle this zombie over to TZT please?
Raj is finally crumbled to dust there, I think, and old antigodless here will provide endless hours of entertainment I think.
antigodless
This wouldn’t happen to be the same Snelling that published a 1990 paper found in the book, “Geology of the Mineral Deposits of Australia and Papua New Guinea”, would it? One where he states:
The Archaean basement consists of domes of granitoids and granitic gneisses (the Nanambu Complex), the nearest outcrop being 5 km to the north. Some of the lowermost overlying Proterozoic metasediments were accreted to these domes during amphibolite grade regional metamorphism (5 to 8 kb and 550° to 630° C) at 1870 to 1800 Myr. Multiple isoclinal recumbent folding accompanied metamorphism.
In case you’re having trouble interpreting that, he was talking about rocks that were 1870 – 1800 MILLION YEARS OLD. Snelling tailored his writing to his audience, and you believed the stuff he saved for the dumber crowd.
@antigodless
The Bible is full of scientific inaccuracy, logical inconsistency, and despicable directions on how to treat people not of the tribe currently in favor with God. Feel free to continue your worship of a being who (according to the Bible) will be the instrument of your own destruction, if you fail to meet its standards. Standards, by the way, it does not abide by itself, nor do many of its spokespeople. I have no intention of neglecting THIS life (by following ridiculous rules and denying myself, my wants and my happiness) for the sake of an improbable afterlife. Spare your pity for yourself – you’re grasping at straws, attempting to hold up the truth of something that you likely internally doubt. I hope that you find what *you’re* looking for.
Dr Snelling and Dr Hyde….
*sigh* Still wrong, but I must admit that the fact that this is a real permutation of the tetragrammaton is a sign of improvement.
Look, it’s very simple, actually: if you remove the vowels from Yahweh, what you get is YHWH, not any other random combination of four letters.
the same Snelling that published a 1990 paper found in the book, “Geology of the Mineral Deposits of Australia and Papua New Guinea”
btw, I do believe that was simply his thesis work while a grad student.
I’m reasonably sure he hasn’t published anything on that topic, or any other topic in geology, in the primary literature, since.
Ichthyic,
Not in the primary literature. I found some papers in some creationist “journals” like CEN Technical Journal and Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal.
He can’t make it in the real world of science, so he published in the pseudo journals creatinists use to be “published”.
Doesn’t the story of the tower of Babylon claim that God got angry because the humans had nearly reached him? Which implies that he lives in the sky and doesn’t like his creations visiting him, for some reason. But since then humans have built skyscrapers, taken hot air ballons and planes up into the atmosphere and even got into space and landed on the moon. God’s wrath has not been in evidence even though we’ve left bits of satellite all over his ‘home’ and he’s not been spotted even with our deep-space probes. What’s up with that? And how could anyone build a building tall enough to ‘reach’ the sky anyway, there’s nothing up there but air. Was it poking into space?
Another link about the lava-dating attempt:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4146
He can’t make it in the real world of science, so he published in the pseudo journals creatinists use to be “published”.
At first, I thought snelling was like Wells; he actually never INTENDED to make it as an established scientist; his goal was always to just get a degree so he could make a living lying to rubes.
but, instead, I see Snelling actually is really a FAILED scientist that simply couldn’t hack it, even working for CSIRO!
I’m sure I could make a living being a scientific “advisor” for AIG/ICR too…
if I had absolutely no scruples or dignity whatsoever.
yegods, I hate these people.
yeah, Snelling is like a less-intelligent version of Dembski.
sad.
There was a series on the Science Channel called Hot Rocks, where they talked about how the available materials limited the architecture of ancient civilizations. All the pillars at Karnak are there because of the poor load bearing capabilities of sandstone, which is what the Egyptians had to work with.
Using mud bricks? Structurally, you would have a really hard time creating anything tall that wasn’t mostly solid brick, with little air space. And by tall, I mean less than 10 stories. Probably way less.
If God felt threatened by that, he wasn’t much of a God.
If God felt threatened by that, he wasn’t much of a God.
something about iron chariots comes to mind too.
Another link about the lava-dating attempt:
yup, much more detailed.
I note in the comments that a lot of people just blithely choose not to accept the reality though.
I’m predicting antigodless is one of those type of authoritarian personalities that simply cannot accept that a trusted source is lying to them.
The thing I don’t understand is why folks like antigodless think their god prefers them to replace reality with myths and fables.
Tis,
The magic words are, with God all things are possible.
I was once debating someone about the age of the universe, and asked “If the universe is 6000 years old, why can we see stars and galaxies farther out then 6000 light years?”
His answer: “Well, maybe God just made it look that way to test our faith.”
Reality is not a limitation for these people. Neither is logic. Instead, such issues like physical proof are easily dismissed because God might have done *this* or *that*, and it is all logically consistent for them again. I just think it is amazing that they try to provide “scientific” proof, when what they proclaim is in no way testable or falsifiable.
The thing I don’t understand is why folks like antigodless think their god prefers them to replace reality with myths and fables.
it’s not their god, it’s their peers.
their god never existed except as a placeholder for projections.
Reality is not a limitation for these people. Neither is logic.
again, these are things observed in and predicted for authoritarian personalities in general.
I’m beginning to think I should make Altemeyer’s book a signature link.
Ichthyic: Well, I did find this one:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0375674283900067
It’s from 1982.
But that’s beside the point. Even if he had dozens of well cited papers in the field it wouldn’t matter unless those papers were about his creationist assertions. It’s perfectly possible to be correct about one aspect of geology and incorrect about another. This is why individual papers are submitted for peer review rather than having authors going through some sort of personal vetting process after which they are allowed to publish.
This is one of the places that science is so vastly superior to theism. Ideas stand and fall on their own and no one gets a free pass because of their past record. It’s also one of the things that confuses religious idiots like antigodless.
It seems that the acceptance of an ultimate authority impairs their ability to understand that authority is only valid when it can prove its assertions. Authority comes from being demonstrably correct, rather that correctness coming from being an authority.
@cybercmdr:
cybercmdr wrote:
“Author: cybercmdr
Comment:
Tis,
The magic words are, with God all things are possible.
I was once debating someone about the age of the universe, and asked “If the universe is 6000 years old, why can we see stars and galaxies farther out then 6000 light years?”
His answer: “Well, maybe God just made it look that way to test our faith.”
”
There there can be two answers that may also be reasonable:
a. How can do millions and galaxies and solar systems just randomly come into being over hundreds of years. Our own experience of life shows order does not come out of disorder. That which is dismembered does not come ordered- unless it has an instinct or program to do so.
b. the person who believes in a Creator who is uncreated and extremely intelligent is at a far greater advantage than one who believes that life comes into being without purpose, and as a result of random chance.
In other words, how can atheists possibly have the sort of faith to say there isn’t a superintelligent being that exists at the controls of an ever-expanding and growing universe. That’s what I call irrational.
His answer: “Well, maybe God just made it look that way to test our faith.”
And it never occurs to them that they might be the ones who are failing the test.
Our own experience of life shows order does not come out of disorder.
incorrect, and parades ignorance about what the words order and disorder even mean.
local order appears out of disorder all the time.
ever watch water freeze?
….
now let’s get back to snelling…
we have shown, unequivocally, that snelling is lying to you.
how does that make you feel?
a: argument from ignorance
b: argument from final consequences
conclusion: fail
collary: antigodless doesn’t know what irrational means.
antigodless doesn’t know what irrational means.
…and yet manages to exemplify it in his every post.
Dunning Kruger?
Dunning Kruger?
A near fatal case I’d say. Is there a cream for that?
Is there a cream for that?
no, I think the cure involves something more along the lines of the procedures in “Clockwork Orange”.
well, perhaps this is the more appropriate link…
Nah, that’s too much like what the fundies would like to do to atheists.
From the abstract to the DK paper:
The real answer is of course education. It’s why homeschooling is so popular with theists.
@antigodless:
First of all, hundreds of years? I hope that was a typo, otherwise you are supremely ignorant.
Second: While subject to random forces, physics will produce order if it leads to an overall reduction in the energy state of the system. Read this if you need a primer on the subject.
The only advantage to believing in a Creator is that it make life easier for the intellectually lazy. Using a crutch is easier if you have a broken leg. That doesn’t mean it is essential to your survival or good for you in the long run.
Nah, that’s too much like what the fundies would like to do to atheists.
that’s the point.
Hundreds of years? Try millions. And they don’t randomly come into being, they come into being through the actions of gravity and the laws of motion.
This has been demonstrated quite nicely in computer simulations – all it takes is the slightest random deviation from absolutely uniform distribution and motion and a flat rotating disk is a common result.
And since your experience of life does not include being one of countless atoms of various elements floating in a vast expanse of space, you really have no basis for judging what came come from that.
Furthermore, who said a galaxy or a solar system has order? Our solar system certainly isn’t orderly. Orbits are not stable, there are literally billions of objects floating around there that just need a slight gravitational wobble in the wrong direction and they’ll come sweeping through and possibly hit something.
Remember Schumacher-Levy 9? Think that’s something you’d see in an orderly system? Look at all the craters on the moon. It’s not order that created those, it was gravity.
In a few billion years, the Andromeda galaxy will collide with ours. Does that sound orderly?
Science doesn’t work on faith, moron. It works on evidence. If enough evidence is gathered that supports an explanation, and no evidence disproves it, we can start to have confidence in that explanation. Not faith, confidence.
That’s why science works so well for understanding the world – it happily takes in all new knowledge, and when needed, it adjusts or replaces its theories. The only loyalty that counts is towards the truth.
And that’s why creationists like you spend so much time and effort flailing around trying to drown out the findings of science – because all you have is faith, and since you’ve put your faith in a fucking stupid interpretation of a fairy tale in an old book, you’re on shakier ground every year.
the person who believes in a Creator who is uncreated and extremely intelligent is at a far greater advantage…
…in his current peer group.
I’m sure that in AG’s mind, this is absolute truth.
in fact, any outside observer of his peer group would make the same conclusion. In THAT peer group, someone who expressed these inane beliefs would indeed be at an advantage.
…which is why I often post THIS as a warning to individuals in such peer groups.
A cool thing I read about corals a while back.
Corals go through, not surprisingly, a daily cycle. This leaves a mark which can be seen if you take a piece of coral, cut it open and put it under a microscope.
Corals also go through a yearly cycle which leaves a mark.
This means you can tell how many days there were in a year when the coral was alive.
This has been quite an interesting thread to follow. And it’s got me thinking about this geologist, Snelling.
but, instead, I see Snelling actually is really a FAILED scientist that simply couldn’t hack it, even working for CSIRO!
Indeed. Looking through a few papers on uranium geochemistry that I’ve retained (topic of a project in my final undergraduate year), I can see that a few of them cite Snelling, though nothing of his written since 1990 (an article he contributed to a book on Australian ore geology). This article would’ve been more recent than a few of his nonsense publications in the 1980s.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more people like him in the Australian mining industry. I’ve met a few already. Speaking from experience as someone who studied metallurgy, these mining related fields tend to attract people interested in making large sums of money without much of an appreciation for the science. The Salem hypothesis also explains the presence of people like this.
It seems that someone else has already linked to one of Snelling’s legitimate publications while I was writing this (comment #140).
Another thing, and I am directing this straight at our creationist pal.
Remember Ogvorbis’ discussion about the Grand Canyon back at #20? Lot’s of people commented on what a cool, and awe-inspiring story it was. Even at this second-hand remove, with no pretty pictures even, we were able to experience a bit of the wonder Ohvorbis felt at seeing and contemplating those many different layers of rock.
But you missed out. You cheated yourself out of all of that wonder, because you were frantically saying “Incorrect! Incorrect!” like an angry Dalek.
You are missing so much.
btw, many hundreds of posts late…
I would have explained a Bible verse in Isaiah 40: 22 that states the Earth was not flat, but a circle.
geometry fail.
a circle is still… flat.
oh, and to Stella:
Ta, fellow Kiwi.
where are you located?
some Pharyngulites go for a pissup down at Kitty’s in Wellington every once in a while, if you’re interested.
Bottom line antigodless,
You have basically, either through your own efforts of through the “help” of your peers, selectively studied those scraps of information, real or fake, that was available on the innertubes and only chose to believe that which confirmed your previous beliefs. Using this same process, you can find validation for using ESP, ancient aliens, or whatever your pet theory is; it’s all out there.
If you value TRUTH, as I said you need to expand your search parameters. If you want to argue science, TAKE SOME REAL SCIENCE CLASSES. If you truly want to refute what science says about reality, you are going to have to actually learn real science.
But you probably won’t do that, because that Tree of Knowledge might endanger your immortal soul. At least, that might be what you tell yourself. Because if you open that window a crack and let some legitimate knowledge in, you might start to doubt. And that scares you shitless.
I so want AG to be the next contestant in the TZT pen.
so much more fun than Raj.
“In other words, how can atheists possibly have the sort of faith to say there isn’t a superintelligent being that exists at the controls of an ever-expanding and growing universe. That’s what I call irrational.” – prodog (aka antigodless)
It’s called a lack of faith. Space aliens, inter-dimensional aliens, humans or aliens traveling back in time from the future…all of these seem more likely to me than an uncreated creator.
As for a Jewish rabbi rising from the dead…he wasn’t dead, he lied or others lied, people were mistaken, or the story was made up after the fact; all eminently more reasonable alternatives.
And how are you so sure your Creator isn’t Zoroaster or Allah or just something that doesn’t give a fuck about you? If you believe in god so strongly, have you considered how many other people believe the same, with even more virulence, yet worship different gods? How can you ever know which religion is true?
I still think arguing with antigodless is probably strengthening his beliefs, but damn if isn’t a lot of fun. It’s kind of like those whack-a-mole arcade games but with a lot more crazy variety.
@ myeckwaters
Myeckwaters comments:
“Hundreds of years? Try millions. And they don’t randomly come into being, they come into being through the actions of gravity and the laws of motion.”
Yes, typo error as evolutionists do believe in billions of years. Yes, yes, science an explain the ‘how’. It can explain the laws. Even Stephen Hawking teamed up with American physicist to try to prove that the law of gravity can suddenly allow objects of equal mass to come together, and exert a gravitational force when they get close to each other. Good try.
So, the two questions. Where did the force of gravity first come into place? Secondly, the particles, gasses or molecules exerting the force had to exist in the first place. Thirdly, Leonard Mlodinow might influence Hawking to say the universe would tend to do it randomly and create itself from nothing, but this is stating that: a) the universe is an organism that can exert will, and b) assumes again that nothing has properties that can be building blocks for gravity to exert a force on.
Continue to dream by excluding a highly intelligent and infinite being called ‘God.’
antigodless:
The lex parsimoniae is attributed to some Franciscan friar, did you but know it.
(Falsity contains the seed of its own destruction)
patrick jlandis:
June 2nd, 2012 at 12:44 am
”
I still think arguing with antigodless is probably strengthening his beliefs, but damn if isn’t a lot of fun. It’s kind of like those whack-a-mole arcade games but with a lot more crazy variety.”
Glad you’re having fun. Better than dodgeball, huh? ;)
Where did the force of gravity first come into place?
I always find it fascinating that people who say they believe in a being that has no causation, want first causes for everything.
so, AG…
I’ve proven that Snelling lied to you.
how does that make you feel?
a trusted authority figure is a proven liar.
How do you, personally, go about dealing with that?
I’m genuinely curious.
OK, look: the first thing you need to understand is that, when you ask this question, you are not talking about evolution. In fact, at no point here has anything you’ve said had anything to do with evolution. This sort of shit:
has nothing to do with evolution or any known science and nothing to do with anything anybody here believes. You are making up stupid shit and telling us we believe it.
If you really enjoy that, you’ll be happier here:
TZT.
It’s a continuing thread with no specific topic, and you should be able to annoy us for weeks or months, even.
God of the gaps, aka the argument from ignorance.
Not a question.
Thirdly? What happened to the two questions?
a) Argument from semantic confusion. (Okay, maybe not a formal logical fallacy, but you* know what I mean)
b) Wut? I can’t parse this especially when you add the two sentences: “…but this is stating that…assumes again that nothing has properties that can be building blocks for gravity to exert a force on.”
What a shambles. With folks like this arguing their side it’s a wonder that anyone ends up a theist.
*And by “you” I mean everyone but antigodless
Ok, girls and boys. I’ve given both you and Stella something to think about. Nice to hear your abuse and your [rather weak] defenses. I still think Andrew Snelling is more honest, sorry icthyic, than you can admit. Stay with your illusions if you like. The closing statement – science should stick to medical and technological breakthroughs. Leave the origins to the experts – theists.
If you define an expert as someone who knows everything about absolutely nothing, then yes, theists are exactly that.
@ feralboy
That would be a good suggestion if the was actually interested in witnessing for YHWH. Looks like xe is more interested in godfapping and trolling. Sad really, I have yet to see an honest defense of the god hypothesis anywhere on FTB.
Me:
antigodless:
Called it.
antigodless
1 June 2012 at 9:42 pm
Might as well, since you’re arguing for the side of losers.
I was born an atheist, like we all are. Like most of us, including Auntiegoodness, the child that I was was told to obey – act and believe – as certain selected Authorities demanded. As an obedient child, I tried to obey, but my mind could not believe anything it was not able to put into any sort of framework. Besides, the Authority of my earliest years demonstrated a distinct, obvious lack of competence at being An Authority, teaching me that Authority is not a firm basis for anything.
I chose a firm foundation for my life, knowing it to be a firm foundation for “the future generations, and the whole wider community you live in”. That foundation is what’s called ‘reality’: the stuff that doesn’t go away when you don’t believe in it (Philip K. Dick, who is not an Authority, just a good writer).
Auntie, go ahead and believe what you’ve been told to believe, by your childhood Authorities. We’ll just continue living in the real world, working to improve our understanding of it, thereby to improve our own lives, those of our progeny, and those of all around us, including you (’cause we actually care about people as people, not just as recruits for our Authorities’ collection plates).
The only boy on this thread is you boy….You are intellectually immature and presuppositional. You have no intellectual point; it is all emotional. You are a delusional fool without cogency.
Defenses against what? You can’t make your case. You have no conclusive evidence for your imaginary deity and your holy book being inerrant. All you have is attitude, arrogance, and stupidity. Where is your conclusive physical evidence, not imaginufactured fuckwittery?
Fixed that for you loser. Your delusions are showing. Without solid and conclusive physical evidence your deity is imaginary. Evidence presented by you, the required equivalent of the eternally burning bush, ZERO. You have no evidence. You have only your presuppositions.
Evolutionsits don’t believe, they conclude based on the evidence. You must believe because you have no evidence, just your delusions in your fallacious presuppositions. Still waiting for you to prove they are right with solid and conclusive physical evidence….
Its a property of mass/energy. No imaginary deity required. Your imaginary deity is a useless thing.
Prove that intelligent being exists outside of your delusional mind. Where’s your evidence??? You have shown none, ergo, there is nothing to see…
You keep dodging the issue. Where is your eternally burning bush???? Talk about a loser proposition, no evidence…
Fixed another lie for you loser. You can’t think.
Why? Since your deity is imaginary, and you holy book nothing but mythology/fiction, two fallacious presuppositions, all theology has is lies based upon lies. As you so aptly show with every arrogant and factually wrong post. Science doesn’t need your imaginary deity. You can’t show your imaginary deity exists with solid and conclusive evidence. Who’s the real fool here? Those who follow the evidence, or those who fallaciously presuppose the answers and never do a reality check on their lies?
antigodless wrote:
The only thing you’ve given us to think about is how someone as comprehensively stupid as you manages to function in today’s society without the necessary cognitive dissonance causing your head to literally explode.
Which theists? There are hundreds of different kinds; how do you know which group has the story correct if you all use exactly the same baseless assertions to support your religious dogma?
Well, i got my answer.
How does an aithoritarian deal with a trusted source turning out to be a liar?
Pure denialism.
With even some projection on top.
Shocker.
Ogvorbis @54
I thought ’twas The Greatest Story Ever Told ! Nice one Oggie !
Auntiegoddess gets a little more desperate with every exchange, doesn’t it?
“Incorrect! Incorrect!”
It would be funny if it wasn’t so humorous.
With all the reading of creationist resources it’s done, you’d think it would have noticed how they don’t do anything but fixate on negating the last 300 years of scientific progress.
Although I guess that shouldn’t surprise me, since it has already demonstrated an almost absurd failure to understand what it reads.
Just one wee point. I am sure that the Hebrew and Aramaic languages had a word for a 3-d ball (sphere, globe) as opposed to a word for a 2-d circle. Without such distinctions, talking about everyday tasks like cooking, pottery and building simple structures and objects would have been frustrating. If the Biblical authors said circle for the shape of the earth, they meant circle- and they were wrong.
2,500 years ago everyone knew the Earth was flat. And the Sun went around the Earth. And that π equaled 3.
Myeckwaters: I don’t think AG is failing to comprehend what has been said, I think xe is terrified that if any of what xe’s had explained to her/him, xe’s no longer gonna be some deity’s little precious flower. I’ve worked with twits of this variety and the feeling that they and they alone are in possession of “The Truth” is quite strong with them. I think it’s a stategy for dealing with the fact that deep down, they know they’re mushwits. I love to get their goat by telling them that being the only one in heaven for eternity is gonna get a bit tedious.
Oops, hit submit instead of preview. And sorry myeck waters for mistyping your nym. Damned computer keeps putting up what I typed not what I meant. To continue, the creationists HAVE to negate the last 3-400 years of science because it pretty much makes the goat herder’s tales look like, well, goat herder’s tales. I recall arguing with a biblical literalist who said and I quote, “If it isn’t in the Bible, it isn’t true”. So I asked if the continent we were standing did or didn’t exist, since the neither North or South America is mentioned anywhere in the book of mid-eastern bullshit. Got bunch of well, uh, it’s in there somewhere. Next time I saw him, I asked again why the mid-eastern myth never mentioned the Americas and got a blast fire-and-brimstone vituperative about how I was going to hell blah blah blah. I asked again and was told “I don’t have time for sinners”. So, don’t expect much substance out of our little chewtoy. Their “theories” are ad hoc, made-up-on-the-spot excuses that when examined are usually self-contradictory. But it is kinda fun in a way to watch them squirm.
Standing ON.
antigodless wrote:
No really. Every argument you have presented here along with your weak or non existent evidence has been dealt with repeatedly on this and other sites.
I had a revelation from god. He explained that the bible and all other sacred texts where created by satan to mislead the human race and cause them misery. Those who follow the confusing and contradictory edicts of the texts are doing the work of satan.
I think this is part of the problem with certain mindsets like AIDL. Science can and does change as the evidence changes. It isn’t “absolute”. It is good enough knowledge, approaching the truth, and it works. Some folks must have “absolute” unchanging knowledge. Learn it once and you’re done. Learning is a scary process to them, so science seems like a scary methodology due to its “tentative” nature.
sundiver #190
So not believing in Biblical literalness is a sin.
Isn’t TZT the place for godfapping idiots ?
The supermegafloucing raj is afterall a prime example of godfapper.
Nerd,
Atheists sometimes claim that religion doesn’t change. This is incorrect. Religion changes all the time. The people doing the changes are denounced by other goddists as heretics, schismatics and apostates. So the “absolute” truth of theists is actually relative.
antigodless says:
Spoken like a true minion of satan. “Shut up and make cool stuff for our benefit. And thank us for allowing you to do so.”
I have an idea, show us how prayer to your god discovers oil deposits.
The science that is used to develop technology is the same in its methods as the one that is used to study origins. Often they even use the very same theories.
By acknowledging that those things works, you’re acknowledging that the methods and theories that were used to study origins are correct.
In more primitive terms :
Our juju has been proven to actually work. Yours has not.
If you think your juju is so powerful, you should stick to prayer if you’re sick and abstain from using computers which were developped with methods and theories you deny.
No prayer involved. Gods created the Koch family.
‘Tis: Yeah, this fundy was one of the biblical innerrancy types, if you think even one word isn’t the direct word of Gawd you’re going to Hell. I’ve always wondered which translation they use, and how they know it’s an accurate translation from Hebrew.
Hebrew ?!?
What are you talking about, some of these are so fucking dumb that they actually think their bible was first written in english.
They “study” linguistics taking only a narrow sample of indo-european languages as a base. I won’t get into how they mangle geology, biology, math and every science in teaching it.
The fundy subculture is a really bizarro world.
The artist Michael Paukner has done a drawing of what the ancient cosmos of YHWH looked like: Link to image. Perhaps most accurately described as a (rough) disk within a sphere.
can be explained. If we accept that some semi-literate building contractor’s assistant was asked to measure the dimensions of a bowl with an edge detail on the lip. The radius is measuring a seperate dimension from the circumference.
Why would someone measure in such a dumbass fashion? I’ve worked long enough on building sites to know they certainly would. They themselves knew just what they where doing. Even if it confused everyone else ever since.
A tape measure can easily measure the outer dimension as a circumference, but the inner more easily as a radius. (Try it.) Why didn’t YHWH inspire the writers to be more clear? Most likely because YHWH does not exist and the writers of the texts were a bit dim.
I see antigodless did a Bagdad Bob routine and left.
He was a fun chew toy.
Wow. Talking to people who don’t accept everything on the AiG website as the Truth for, what, 24 hours? and he’s running already. I really thought he’d have more stamina. You know, maybe he has a chance after all. If just a few hours of reading rebuttals of the crap he’s been shoveling into his poor brain makes him uncomfortable enough to run away, some of it might have gotten through the armor.
antigodless:
You actually answered a few of the questions asked of you here. You have no idea how rare that is. It shows you have a little courage. You have said you are flouncing and I have a feeling you meant it, but please, listen:
You need to answer some of the questions asked, if only to yourself. Go read something other than creationist “science”. If you don’t, if you refuse to educate yourself about this stuff, you are are literally covering your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming la la la I can’t hear you. Meanwhile reality is still out there. Those of us who live there see you blinding and deafening yourself and feel a combination of pity and scorn.
Even if you can’t consider the possibility that your god does not exist, at least accept the fact–and it is a fact– that the Bible cannot be the inerrant inspired word of a god. It is full of ignorance and it contradicts itself. You need to stop worshiping a book instead of your god. If god exists, and created the universe, how do you think he feels about you ignoring the reality he created?
The Bible does have some wisdom in it, even if it wasn’t written by a god. My favorite is: You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
Please check out this video series by Evid3nc3. That young man has some things to say to you. It starts here. Watch the whole series (so far, it is not complete) if I am right, and you do have some courage. Otherwise, if you are going to continue to wallow in ignorance and don’t dare to even listen to another viewpoint, then I do feel pity, but I feel a lot more scorn.
@114
oh who told you that ag?
see you can buffalo most of the other posters but you can’t get me because i know you can not provide anything to show that you are trying be truthful.
no, ag, like i said, if you get into a pissing contest with a skunk you will loose the contest.
ag, you have no incentive to be honest and present evidence of what you say(even with incentive you still could not show evidence, cause there aint none for your bs.
you can say anything and expect posters here to react, which they do. but you cant get me.
hahaha. what do you say to that!
…There’s simply not enough water on the planet to flood the entire earth including most mountains, is there?
Even Milton! Even Milton!
“Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar
Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;
Till at his second bidding darkness fled,
Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.”
ryanwilkinson, you’re forgetting that G*wd has a water bucket that’s +5 for fucking drowning everything because you’re pissed at some people.
He bought it right about the time he decided to blame all of humanity because some distant ancestors, never having been taught the facts of life or knowing the difference between good and evil, took nutritional advice from the wrong species of talking animal.
Let’s see. Mt. Everest is about 29000 feet tall, or about five and a half miles high. To flood the world, God would have needed to drop in an amount of water at least equivalent to all the water on the planet today. This would not magically “drain away” afterwards.
If there had been a global flood of this magnitude, any organic living thing (coral reefs, trees, etc.) would have been at twice the crush depth of a modern nuclear submarine. ANYTHING that could not swim to the surface would have been crushed. There goes most of the ecosystems in the oceans.
Ever raise tropical fish? You have to get the salinity of the water just right, or they die. What happens to all the fish in the ocean if the salinity is cut in half? What happens to the fresh water fish now exposed to salt water? They all die.
So many logical disconnects in the Flood story. How did the polar bears and the kangaroos get on the ark? How did the plant life survive exposure to salt water and being well below crush depth? There are almost a million different species of insect, not to mention over 5000 species of mammals alone. Did they all get on the ark?
Believing in the flood story is like believing in Santa Claus. It makes no sense if you examine it, but some people never outgrow it.
Stop replying to this lackwit. He’s doing this for the jollies. He’s got so little grasp of science or logic or philosophy that it hurts to read.
You’re letting him bait you. This is the classic apologist atctic of “well your worldview doesn’t explain everything 100% so mine MUST be 100% right, ignore all the inconsistencies, YOU’RE ALL GONNA BURN!”
Got news for him: partial answers still awaiting confirmation are better than answers which have been long disproven. You don’t need to prove anything to this asshat; indeed, “where you are, he cannot come.” I motion for Ye Olde Hammer of Banne to be applied.
Azuma Hazuki
But I get my jollies from responding to lackwits. It’s what keeps me from becoming a serial ax murderer. Okay, my personal morality comes into play as well.
Some of us suffer from SIWOTI syndrome.
Stop replying to this lackwit. He’s doing this for the jollies. He’s got so little grasp of science or logic or philosophy that it hurts to read.
I remember this.
I used to say this all the time when I first started hitting the evolution blogs.
standard responses I got, which I now repeat, since they have convinced me over the years:
-things posted in response to creationists are read by and educate others
-sometimes, very rarely, you actually DO manage to convince a creationist something they said was wrong, or that one of their trusted authority figures was really lying to them (yes, even though it’s very obvious, it’s still rare)
-it’s fun to sharpen one’s teeth on dull stones.
-it’s interesting to poke them and see if you can get different responses. The really interesting thing about that is that usually, no, you don’t!
-SIWOTI!!!
…There’s simply not enough water on the planet to flood the entire earth including most mountains, is there?
nope. never has been.
buttttttttt….
that never stopped the rubes from trying to invent some.
read that for some laughs.
rationality and science?
Hells YES!
cybercmdr commented
June 2nd, 2012 at 3:08 pm
”
Let’s see. Mt. Everest is about 29000 feet tall, or about five and a half miles high. To flood the world, God would have needed to drop in an amount of water at least equivalent to all the water on the planet today. This would not magically “drain away” afterwards.
”
I am coming out of silence to answer this one – as this shows great ignorance on the part of cybercmdr.
Answer: the mountains you see today were never there until AFTER the flood. Dr John Morris of ICR explains that the accumulation of sediment, together with the collision of the Indian subcontinent with Asia, formed Mt Everest, the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes and the Appalchians. How can he say that? Because it explains the presence of marine fossils around these mountains. He also argues that these mountains are composed of ocean-bottom sediments, consistent with a global flood.
Tantalizing, huh? A world that had no higher mountains until the Creator, which you deny exists, flooded the world as it was back then.
If you really want to read further, check out this link:
http://www.icr.org/article/did-noahs-flood-cover-himalayan-mountains/
So long, I have a life to live without engaging in months of debate with Atheists who have more time than me, evidently.
@antigodless #215
It makes me laugh when you call people ignorant and claim that a great, global flood was responsible for raising mountain ranges that are at least 70 million years old.
I have to question your motivation for reading and posting here. You’re wanting people here to question what they’re basing their lives on – and I think you’re jealous of the fact that we get to decide exactly what that is. I think that the freedom, happiness, curiosity and wonder that you see here (as evidenced in Ogvorbis’ comment at #20) is something that you want, and that your attempts to convince us are – under the surface – your attempts to convince yourself. In that case, I encourage you to keep reading. Just don’t expect politeness or respect for ignorance.
The great flood story rates for me as one of the greatest propaganda stories of all time. Kids love it. Two of every animal! Well 2 of all the cool animals in the kids version. It makes for some great cartoons and toys. But they tend to brush over the fact that almost EVERYONE DIES. Even when I point out to some adults that the story is about god killing everybody they say ‘oh yeah I never really thought about that’.
If flood myths around the world are evidence that the great flood happened, then why do the myths vary so much? With only a handful of survivors, surely they could have got their story straight.
The last question involved where all the damn water went–where’s your answer to that?
Also, explain how the Indian subcontinent crashing into Asia created the Rockies and the Alps. Or how the same worldwide flood carves out a deep canyon in one area, and deposits high mountains in another.
Other things we’re all ignorant of: how a 450-foot wooden boat can be seaworthy in such a storm. There’s a reason no one has built a wooden boat that size. Or how eight people can spread all around the world in a few years despite all the damage to the land that would be caused by a worldwide flood. Or how they got that many animals on the boat, along with a supply of food, and how they kept them all alive under such conditions. With eight people to take care of them.
Maybe you’ll live to be 900, like Noah. Could happen, right?
I am coming out of silence to answer this one
creationists inevitably suck at the flounce.
it’s also obvious that you are bent over your computer screen, watching everything we post here AG.
don’t project TOO much while you post your inane screeds, eh?
oh, and since Snelling has published papers in peer reviewed science journals directly utilizing an age of earth that is in the billions of years, and got his PhD with same basic facts in his thesis…
you really can’t see how he is lying to you now?
he is, you know.
lying to you, strictly for profit.
Dr John Morris of ICR
another proven liar.
hell, I even started by showing that Morris’ lies are where Snelling got his current ideas to sell you.
are you truly this oblivious to the truth?
If flood myths around the world are evidence that the great flood happened, then why do the myths vary so much?
…and happen thousands of years apart, and happen while other cultures were rolling along just fine all during the supposed “flood”..
even the obvious holes in flood mythology are fucking endless.
think of this, AG:
you think I’m lying to you about your trusted sources lying to you.
OK.
what’s my motivation for lying to you?
I’m pushing 50, have a career, have money. None of which have anything to do with this blog, which I post on just for fun, like some people watch TV.
I have absolutely zero motivation to lie here.
let’s look at Snelling.
Snelling failed as a scientist in OZ working for CSIRO. However, during that time, his work involved dating uranium bearing rocks, and publishing the results. Those results, in his own hand, involved samples that dated to hundreds of millions of years old, and older.
be that as it may, he failed at working for CSIRO. I’m not going to speculate as to why he failed, only that he did.
where did he go next?
straight to AIG, where he knew he could market lies to creationist rubes like yourself.
did he change his story and beliefs to start a new career with AIG? you bet he did.
can you not see that Snelling was entirely motivated by the money he can gain from lying to people under the umbrella of AIG?
so, summary:
my motivations for telling you they are lying to you:
I have no reason for doing so, other than to try to steer you towards reality.
Snelling’s motivation for lying to you:
he gets money and a career out of it.
I know there’s a sucker born every minute, but you can CHOOSE not to be one of them. Others have.
The Alps, Rockies, Andes and Appalachians are not in Asia so the collision of the Indian subcontinent with Asia wouldn’t be involved in raising these mountain ranges.
For the Himalayas to be raised from sea level to over 8,000 meters high in a mere 4,000 years the Indian subcontinent would have to be moving at a speed of several meters per year and then suddenly stop, since such movement is not detected in modern times. The distortion of the Earth would certainly have caused the Himalayas to be volcanic like the much less distorted Andes and Pacific Coastal Range. The Himalayas are not volcanic.
The rock making up the various mountain ranges rimming the Pacific (the so-called Ring of Fire) is not sedimentary.
Aren’t the Himalayas still rising?
*quick google-fu*Why yes, yes they are still rising and so are several other mountain ranges.
The slow, incredibly slow processes that pushed the Himalayas up in the first place, over scores of millions of years, are still pushing them up. We can – and do – measure it.
Also, Continental Drift is a fact. It was first just an idea, then a hypothesis, then a theory, and now it has been measured and demonstrated to be true beyond any reasonable questioning. North America and Europe are slowly moving apart – an inch or two a year – and it has been doing so for millions upon millions of years, which you can see if you look at a map of the floor of the Atlantic.
myeck waters
You’re right. The Indian subcontinent is still moving in and the Himalayas are still rising. It’s just the movement would have to have been very rapid in the past and then slowed down to centimeters per year in the present.
So the large mountain ranges being entirely sedimentary explains the near-mantle igneous/metamorphic inclusions found in them. I see. Quite. Definitely explains ophiolites in what are supposedly completely sedimentary structures. Can we please banhammer this lying creep already? It’s bad theology and worse science!
Can we please banhammer this lying creep already?
we’re awaiting the guy with the key to the gate to shove him in the zombie pit.
[meta]
Old-timers will recall Titanoboa!.
(Shame the comments
are goneare not yet displayed)@Tis Himself
That is a disingenuous reading of the original bullshit. The oher ranges were brought in as being partly sedimentary in origin, not that they experienced uplift from the collision of the Asian and Indian plates.
The original imaginings don’t say why the flood caused the plates to move, or the real question – if they were actually travelling that fast, what happened when they collided? Wouldn’t there have been an earthquake that would have been recorded in the bible and in other contemporary works? Perhaps after a flood that covered the entire planet, anything else was just too boring to mention.
Just to be nice: Why There are no Unicorns Any More. Don’t say I’m not contributing …
Where did all the heat go? If the geologic record was deposited in a year, then the events it records must also have occurred within a year. Some of these events release significant amounts of heat.
Magma. The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 1024 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 1027 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat.
Limestone formation. There are roughly 5 x 1023 grams of limestone in the earth’s sediments [Poldervaart, 1955], and the formation of calcite releases about 11,290 joules/gram [Weast, 1974, p. D63]. If only 10% of the limestone were formed during the Flood, the 5.6 x 1026 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters.
Meteorite impacts. Erosion and crustal movements have erased an unknown number of impact craters on earth, but Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest that cratering to the extent seen on the Moon and Mercury occurred on earth during the year of Noah’s Flood. The heat from just one of the largest lunar impacts released an estimated 3 x 1026 joules; the same sized object falling to earth would release even more energy. [Fezer, pp. 45-46]
Other. Other possibly significant heat sources are radioactive decay (some Creationists claim that radioactive decay rates were much higher during the Flood to account for consistently old radiometric dates); biological decay (think of the heat released in compost piles); and compression of sediments.
5.6 x 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 1027 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.
Aside from losing its atmosphere, Earth can only get rid of heat by radiating it to space, and it can’t radiate significantly more heat than it gets from the sun unless it is a great deal hotter than it is now. (It is very nearly at thermal equilibrium now.) If there weren’t many millions of years to radiate the heat from the above processes, the earth would still be unlivably hot.
As shown in section 5, all the mechanisms proposed for causing the Flood already provide more than enough energy to vaporize it as well. These additional factors only make the heat problem worse.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#georecord
Antigodless – I know you’re looking, even if you don’t “mean to” come back – where is the evidence of the mass extinction event that must have occurred a few thousand years ago, if the Flood is true?
If there’s evidence for the Cretaceous and Permian extinction events, enough for scientists and the general public to seriously discuss them, then there must be fuckloads for the “Flood extinction event” ! Heck, it killed well over 90% of life on earth – even a 10% extinction would have been noticed.
But there’s nothing. Why do you think that is?
Oi, Ichthyic, whatcha got against CSIRO?
There’s good people and good science there. And, to be fair, some crappy management and horrible underfunding. But at least they didn’t keep Snelling.
Will the Asia and America eventually crash into each other, forming one big landmass and a new mountain range?
Alethea, would your new catch phrase be “That’s not a change on allele frequency over time.” (displays beautiful plummage) “THIS, is a change in allele frequency over time!”?
Wait! What? A 235 responce thead to the dailey installation of “Why I am an Atheist?” There must of been something profound said…oh, wait….
…there’s a scripture quoting religious troll infesting the thread. Nevermind…I’ll go back to lurking. :(
Stella, I would have loved to see you telling the Sunday-school teacher that creation of manna violated the laws of physics. Would it tickle you to know that “manna” is basically Hebrew for “whotsit”?
Ogvorbis, thanks for the tour up & down the Grand Canyon. It was fascinating. Owlmirror @60 suggested that the rest of the samples may have been kept behind the scenes for research. I second the notion; perhaps they were even distributed to other locations as well.
John McPhee wrote that near Green River, Wyoming there’s a scene with a few hills that covers a greater depth of time than the whole Grand Canyon. You probably know about it.
Oh antigodless, you came back to answer me? That’s so flattering.
This reminds me of one debate I was having with someone who truly believed in the flood. I asked him, how is it that the first rainbow appeared after the flood? The laws of physics for light diffraction are well known, and couldn’t have been changed drastically without all sorts of other impacts on reality.
He said, well maybe it hadn’t rained before then!
As I said before, physical proof and logic are irrelevant to these people. The mental contortions they go through to try to make this stuff self consistent is almost psychotic in scope.
BTW AG,
You never did address this issues of changes in salinity and the effects on both saltwater and fresh water fish.
Dr? Not a SCIENTIST, since science rejects the babble as being ignorant. Nope, a fuckwitted idjit like your self who believes in imaginary and unevidenced deities (still waiting for your conclusive physical evidence like an eternally burning bush), and that the babble is inerrant (still waiting for evidence from unpresuppositional sources like the peer reviewed scientific literature). So still Antigodless, 0; SCIENCE, ∞, as no evidence in the form of a citation was produced by you, and your word is that of a liar and bullshitter, since you can’t put up the evidence to show you are right, or shut the fuck up like a person of honesty and integrity would do. Loser writ large over another of your posts.
Evidence for evolution abounds. Sometimes kindness helps and people feel wake up and search for answers.
Fellow Pharyngulites,
Please forgive me, as I am no scientist, but this lowly retired high school Latin teacher would like to comment upon the flood question. I taught ancient mythology. In my class, we discussed the volcanic eruption that destroyed ancient Thera (today’s Santorini – the most beautiful place that I have ever visited), and the resulting tsunami that probably destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete and other Greek islands. We also discussed how this was probably the most credible source of Plato’s story about Atlantis.
From there, I discussed with my students a few of the ancient flood myths – Gilgamesh, Deucalion and Pyrrha (The Greek version of Noah and his wife) and some references in Egyptian mythology about a flood (Plato’s source of the story). We discussed the theory that perhaps all of those ancient cultures were telling the story of that one catastrophic event that did indeed change the “world” as those ancient people knew it.
I would then show my students some of the reports of the archaeology that is taking place around the Black Sea. There seems to be more and more proof that the water level was once much lower, and archaeologists are finding that towns and villages seem to have been flooded by a sudden influx of sea water. We would then look at the straits near the site of Ancient Troy, and the students would speculate about this access to the Black Sea possibly being opened by that same catastrophic event.
We would discuss the story of Jason and the Argonauts and I showed them how it has been found that ancient people on the far side of the Black Sea used to use fleece dipped in the river, then dried, to extract gold. The students would be delighted that this was probably the source of “The Golden Fleece”. We would also discuss how The Trojan War was probably begun over this very lucrative trade route, not because of a beautiful woman.
Some of my more intelligent students, who were not too indoctrinated by religion, would put all of this information together and realize that the myth about Noah was just one more myth in this collection.
And so, my friends, this is an argument offered by an Atheist who is a Humanities person. Many of the better-known flood myths were indeed commenting upon one great flood. It did change the world as those ancient peoples knew it, but not the literal world as we know it today.
Oi, Ichthyic, whatcha got against CSIRO?
??
nothing at all.
Antigodless, if our existence requires an explanation, why doesn’t God’s? All the intelligent people I know were not born knowing everything, they had to get knowledge by exploring their environment, trial-and-error, experimenting and learning from others who had been through it before them. Where did God get his knowledge? How could he just have existed forever, knowing everything? What process created him? Where did he get his powers? How is it even possible to be intelligent without a brain?
Also, if the flood happened and everyone was descended from Noah and his family, ours genes would show it. Scientists can trace the matrilineal lines of the human race through mitochodrial DNA, which mutates at a reliable rate. They can see patterns of human migration using this method.
http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD020876.html
You’d also expect the human race to be quite inbred if we came from just one family. All the other animals would also be inbred. You’d expect evidence of what’s called a ‘population bottleneck’ for every species that was on the ark at exactly the same time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck
As far as I know, such genetic evidence has never been found.
magistramarla,
As a fellow Pharyngulite, I note that no-one here disputes that, but that neither is this incompatible with the claim at hand: that there is no such myth which references an actual global flood, but rather local myths that imagine their locality is global in extent.
(Primitives are primitive)
WhiteHatLurker #230
Do you think that someone who believes the world’s mountain ranges were raised from sea level to 8,000+ meters in a few thousand years knows the difference between the Himalayas and the Andes?
AG, I just read the page at your link. Really? Mountains out of sediment deposited in a short period of time?
Take a bucket of mud. Turn it over and dump it. Repeat multiple times. Will this create a tall mound? No, it will pancake out because sediment, especially fresh sediment, lacks internal cohesion. Magnify that by several million times. Would you get a tall mountain? No.
Sediment deposited over long, long periods of time could become load bearing, as the material is compressed to the point that it solidifies into sedimentary rock. But not in any timescale close to what you propose.
Anybody who thinks you can create a mountain like this is absolutely ignorant of science in any form. Not to mention the fact that mountains are predominantly made of rock (or pumice, if they are volcanic in origin).
This self inflicted ignorance you have is really severe. Have it treated sometime soon, OK? Perhaps this will help.
antigodless:
If by tantalizing you mean, “completely contrived and unnecessarily complex.”
Observed facts prove your fairy tale to be illogical, so you re-arrange the facts of the real world until they too are illogical. It’s like you’re trying to twist the observations of reality until they no longer resemble the observations themselves.
Y’know, you should really leave the question of origins to the experts — scientists.
AG, you still out there? I hope so. I wanted to say thanks. I really, really needed a break from my research, and you fit the bill nicely.
Let me leave you with a bit of advice (and to all the lurkers out there who haven’t chosen to engage). That stuff you read about, all those arguments you thought were rock solid? That stuff was not ever meant to change the minds of people with a decent science background and a willingness to be skeptical. No, that stuff was specifically written to convince people like you. People who were already convinced of Biblical veracity, and who were weak in their understanding of science.
Your fatal error was to take those arguments you found so convincing and bring them here. Where people do understand how science works, and who generally have a fairly broad understanding of current scientific knowledge. We have seen the Emperor naked many times, and your trotting out the same arguments doesn’t provide any new clothes. The ONLY way you can possibly impress someone here would be to cite actual research, and present logical arguments. You have been duped. Treat it as a learning experience, and go read some credible scientific sources.
Antigodless, people weren’t asking, “What is the place-name that the Bible attaches to the tower of Babel?” They were asking, “Where are the physical remains of the tower?” If it existed, it had foundations. People built it and they lived somewhere nearby. Stones were cut for it, from quarries that also existed. Where are they? Without supporting evidence, it’s as real as Jack’s beanstalk.
Here’s what can happen (from the “wake up” link at 241):
All that arguing can be educational for the onlookers: A thank-you to talk.origins.
@antigodless said:
“Glad you’re having fun. Better than dodgeball, huh? ;)”
It is fun, but I have to add that I don’t think it’s a game without consequences. I believe it’s deadly serious.
In the marketplace of ideas religion has for too long dominated through violence and intimidation, privileging the archaic ramblings of a bizzare sect of Jews who’s ideas of reality and morality would disgust us if they existed today.
In a marketplace of ideas where free speech is the law, faith in fairy tales, or the Bible as you call it, will slowly but surely give way to reason and the world will be better for it.
@ Brogg
A bit late to the party,but great comment @ # 20.
…
I don’t think we are getting though to . I don’t feel sad about it though. Having people like that on YHWH’s side actually benefits us.
But to the more intelligent goddists out there, who might doubt the aesthetic sensibility intrinsic to science:
(Is there any verse in the bible that can match that short quotation in the sheer awe it inspires?)
@magistramarla
Interesting post. I never realized that the Santorini catastrophe could be a possible explanation for the Flood myths in the Mediterranean basin. I always thought that Noah’s story had been copied from Ziusudra, which was inspired by a river flood around of Shuruppak, Uruk, Kish et al. that have been radiocarbon dated to ca. 2900 BC. (M.E.L. Mallowan, “Noah’s Flood Reconsidered”, Iraq (1964), 26:62–82.)
antigodless (minion of satan) says:
Ogvorbis @ 20? That’s it… hit the re-set button. The big red one. What a tool!
Depends which one you mean – obviously you’re correct for Auntie Godless, but I suspect the original author had some idea of geographical locations.
Thanks for the edit – I didn’t see that a “t” was missed until it was posted.
Very probably. But for every person who is commenting, who knows how many are lurking. Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, we go through this shit so that others may see the difference between a reasoned response with evidence, and a goddist response?
Nevermind. Iththyic said it better.
One of the ‘theories’ put out by apologists is that the earth is actually getting bigger. This explains how animals got from continent to continent. It also explains away all the water — the same water on a smaller globe would be deeper.
Which explains the verses in the book of Wilson singing the praises of water-skiing off the south end of the Indian subcontinent.
I doubt it. These rocks were not chosen with an eye towards research but as ones with the best colour and texture.
No, I didn’t, but that does not surprise me. After all, the rock formations of the Grand Canyon only go up to about 250mya. The Kaibab is late Permian and the next layer up, the missing one, which can be seen at Red Butte south of Tusayan, is Triassic. Actually, it’s kind of neat. The top of the Grand Canyon is just under the bottom of the formations at Zion. And the top of the Zion formations fit just under Bryce Canyon. And Bryce Canyon fits under Cedar Breaks.
Anyway, although the Grand Canyon has a fantastic exposure, I am sure there are a myriad of locales with a greater exposure of time. Hell, it’s not even the deepest canyon in North America.
How can he say that? Because he’s a lying creobot lackwit, like you, that’s how. The notion that the Earth’s major mountain chains came into being in the last few thousand years is way beyond stupid; as others have pointed out, it is quite simply physically impossible. I quote below the passage saguhhoo@231 quoted, but since the “sup” tag deosn’t work here, I’ve used “^” to mean “to the power of”, so for example 10^23 means 10 to the power 23 (that’s 23 10s multiplied together), or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
This is quite sad, really. Antigodlessbutbrainless really believes that we’ll be “tantalized” by such obviously worthless, witless garbage. That we’ve never heard this peabrained nonsense before. That we might throw away the immense breadth and depth of scientific knowledge of the world for a book of mythology, chock-full of ignorance, bigotry and lies.
antigodless,
You and your creationist buddies keep trying to fit science into your ancient religious myths. It doesn’t work. As saguhhoo and KG point out, a more than superficial look at the consequences of your feeble attempts to combine science and creationism show your myths don’t work.
Also remember that “and then a miracle happened” isn’t science because it doesn’t explain anything.
Way too late to do anything more than join in the rout, but just as an aside I did enjoy the spectacle of ag dodging the question about the evolution of such widely differing languages as Mandarin and English. He was presumably hoping nobody would notice – either that or he really is that stupid (deliberate stupidity is such a sorry sight). Ag thinks that pointing out how a single language can be disseminated relatively quickly thanks to a deliberate political effort somehow means he doesn’t have to answer the question of how that rich and complex language evolved in the first place. Basically said “ooh look at my nice red herring” and completely ignored the actual point.
.
So, no surprise there then.
One of the ‘theories’ put out by apologists is that the earth is actually getting bigger. This explains how animals got from continent to continent. It also explains away all the water — the same water on a smaller globe would be deeper.
wow, I thought I’d heard them all.
The growing earth hypothesis is a new one to me.
I can haz source plz?
is this it?
http://www.expanding-earth.org/
ROFLMAO
so… we ignore plate tectonics in favor the “Earth as inflated baloon” theory?
Yes, it’s creepy when creationist frauds present dishonest measurements.
So… Snelling deliberately took unmelted zircon from rock contaminating the lava, and dated it, and presented the lava flow as being dated to the age of that zircon.
That’s as dishonest as taking only minerals that contain no gold from a gold mine, and presenting the mine as being worthless because the tests show no gold.
Real geologists know about contaminants, and strive to eliminate them, because they honestly care about getting to the truth of the matter.
Snelling, like all creationists, hates truth.
Of course, what’s really amusing is the actual dating methods prove an old earth, not a young earth. The contaminating zircon solidified 3.908 billion years ago, which means that the Earth is at least that old.
What happens in the real world is that creationists lie.
No. Austin, like Snelling, was deliberately misleading.
Creationist “geologists” cannot be trusted to be honest and competent.
So much for the honesty of creationist liars.
This does not support the Creationist model of languages.
The bible says “Tower” of Babel, not “Towers” of Babel. Why should any of these mud-brick structures be called the “Tower of Babel”? Even the tallest was no more than a few hundred feet tall — far lower even than nearby hills and mountains.
The existence of ziggurats — plural — no more validates the myth of the Tower in the bible than evidence for local floods validates the myth of a global flood. They explain how the myth might have gotten started, by exaggeration and hyperbole, but do not prove the myth to be true.
Josephus most certainly did not do any such thing. There are very few references to the name “Gilgamesh” from non-cuneiform sources; none of them are by Josephus.
Nonsense.
More nonsense. There’s no evidence for Nimrod outside of the bible, and Gilgamesh was the inheritor of his kingdom, not its founder.
Nonsense. The Gods sent the flood — and specifically Enlil. Humbaba had nothing to do with it.
That’s moronic. Huwawa was a giant monster, mortal enough to be killed by Gilgamesh, not the creator of anything.
Josephus didn’t write anything at all about Gilgamesh.
He did write a myth about Nimrod, but so what?
Confabulation. Nonsensical bullshit.
Radiometric dating is based on facts. Fossils are indeed millions of years old.
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
Calling facts “speculation” is just another creationist lie.
=====
Creationists have no grasp of physics, biology, history, Archaeology, Anthropology, Lingustics, and the methods used to date the universe and historical events. All they have is lies.
Creationist lies are not scientific theories. They’re just lies, which deserve to be rejected.
Snelling shows dishonesty beyond others within his profession. He did in fact sell out for fame and money from Creationists.
Snelling doesn’t publish his dishonest “critiques” of radiometric dating in actual peer-reviewed geological publications, probably because he knows that real geologists will immediately see and reject his dishonesty.
======
What a moronic misrepresentation of cosmology.
What “greater advantage”? You’re bad at writing English. You’re ignorant of science. You managed to twice misspell the four-letter name of your God.
You’re a complete failure.
If God is so smart, why does he need stupid people — or people being stupid — to speak for him?
Why should anyone believe that there is a “superintelligent being” when there’s no evidence for it?
Only stupid people — like you — believe in “superintelligent beings at the controls of the universe” without evidence.
======
You’ve demonstrated clearly that you cannot think. It’s quite a thing to think about those who cannot think.
Why? He’s been proven to be dishonest.
Which illusions would those be?
Creationists are only experts in stupidity and dishonesty.
And what about all the theists who reject at least the stupidity and dishonesty of Creationists?
======
Since there was no global flood, the mountains have nothing to do with it.
Another liar.
Hahaha!
He’s full of shit, and doesn’t care that he’s full of shit.
No, plate tectonics resulting in sea-floor uplift explains marine fossils on mountains.
His argument is full of shit. Any ocean-bottom sediments on mountains is consistent with sea-floor uplift and plate tectonics.
Since there was no global flood, nothing can be “consistent” with it.
It’s not tantalizing. It’s moronic.
Can you stay away?
good, and well detailed, but in the end, can we summarize it thusly for AG?
You’re a complete failure.
because, let’s face it, he is.
2,500 years ago, at least some philosophers were arguing that the Earth was round. It wasn’t a universal view, obviously, but it wasn’t nonexistent, either.
2,500 years ago, geocentrism was the norm. But still, it wasn’t long after that Aristarchus of Samos proposed heliocentrism. A minority of one, sure, but he did at least make the effort.
2,500 years ago, the Egyptians and Babylonians had had better approximations of pi for centuries. So did mathematicians of other nations — including, I suspect, the Judeans and Israelites themselves. It was just that a mathematical incompetent wrote those verses (or copied them).
Sorry, but AG makes complete failures look good. Such is the extent of his failure. I told it on another thread not to cite anything that presupposes its holy is inerrant to prove its holy book, and what does it do? It cites a web cite the presupposes its holy book isn’t mythology/fiction, and is inerrant. Trap set and baited in the presence of the fuckwit, complete with warning signs, and it steps in it anyway. Compared to complete failures, this is deliberate and knowing complete failure…
Zombie sighted.
bring flamethrowers.
I’m glad so many of you guys enjoyed my post as much as I’ve enjoyed reading everybody else’s.
Ogvorbis
Your comment at #20 was awesome. Geology isn’t my forte, and your comment was really educational for me. Thanks for posting it.
Icthyic
Excellent… I’m in Wellington. Piss up ahoy!
Antigodless
I haven’t laughed so much in ages. Thank you – and I genuinely mean that. But… evangelism fail! For the record, it was the bit about the earth being circular that really got me giggling. I have a maths background. And the Tower of Babel stuff! Oh my, that was priceless. Mud brick structures 2000 plus meters high! Heh heh…
Only half accurate, really, as expert liars are not so easily caught out on their lies as creationists almost always are.
Hi Stella!
Hi Chigau!
Excellent… I’m in Wellington. Piss up ahoy!
righto!
email me:
fisheyephotosAThotmailDOTcom
we usually get together at Kitty oShea’s every other friday or so.
(there’s also a skeptics group that I got started that meets there alternate fridays, with invited speakers and whatnot).
I’ll plug you in to both, if you like.
I didn’t write that they were expert at being liars. “Dishonesty” is broader, and I had in mind more that they have a deliberate and cultivated indifference to truth rather than that they have any real skill at concealing the truth.
See also: On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt