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→Adaptation and evolution
:::: "''I’d like to know the scientific background to this bold claim and would like to see and understand the scientific theory that attempts to explain the actual age of the earth.''": See [http://www.creationontheweb.com/ here]. I wouldn't normally direct you to an entire web-site for an answer to a specific question, but in your case, you are trying to argue against ideas (creationism, the accuracy of the Bible, etc.) that you know next to nothing about, and the right and proper thing is to actually do some study and learn about the subject before you go around criticising it. Okay? I trust that you won't return here with more arguments until you have actually learnt a reasonable amount about the subject.
:::: "''I’d like to know the scientific background to this bold claim and would like to see and understand the scientific theory that attempts to explain the actual age of the earth.''": See [http://www.creationontheweb.com/ here]. I wouldn't normally direct you to an entire web-site for an answer to a specific question, but in your case, you are trying to argue against ideas (creationism, the accuracy of the Bible, etc.) that you know next to nothing about, and the right and proper thing is to actually do some study and learn about the subject before you go around criticising it. Okay? I trust that you won't return here with more arguments until you have actually learnt a reasonable amount about the subject.
:::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 22:34, 1 February 2008 (EST)
:::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 22:34, 1 February 2008 (EST)
:::::Admittedly I thought I was clearer at the start in saying that despite being brought up as a Christian, I do not follow the Religion in any institutionalized sense. I would like to point out that it was not a case of me consciously practising [[liberal deceit]]. I was brought up a Christian and I do believe that to deny the true nature of the universe is to take something away from the idea of God. I do believe in what the Bible has to say about loving your brother, equality among all men and many of the other important lessons which are put together into stories. My point here was to ask you to examine your own beliefs and for me to examine my own. As [[Socrates]] once said ‘a life unexamined is a life not worth living.’
:::::From what I have read, ‘the experts’ generally agree very little on the true nature of Genesis, and for a large part it depends on their religious orientation. Many understand the main creation story literally, but others don’t. A small group of Christians, apparently known as '[[Progressive Creationists]]' have spoken to me about the 6-days of creation existing in a metaphorical sense, and this is where much of my confusion arises; if one group of Christians says it means one thing and then another tells me that without doubt it means another, then I’m confused before I get to reading the first page. What I can gather is that to some it is a literal text peppered with metaphors and parables; just to cover all eventualities! I can understand the points in the [[Creation Week]] link, as long as you take what is written in the Bible as the perfect word of God, but my point is about the writing down of the Bible; it may be just my curious nature to question everything, but I would question; would Moses understand anything conveyed to him by a perfect and omnipotent being? Would God have had the same concept of a day as we do? With regards to the reference to morning and evening; if Moses understood the days as God told him to be 24 hours, did he try to clarify this to the next reader by adding the reference? And even though it is partially covered in the [[Creation Week]] link, could it not still have been poetic? After all, much contemporary poetry does not follow implicit rules and often with revelatory texts, seeks to break with tradition.
:::::You may believe that God spoke to you through the Bible and I may believe that he has, but I may also believe that Buddha has passed on some of his enlightened wisdom in his texts when he says; ‘do not believe on the faith of Sages of the past’. My point was that Moses (and others) traditionally wrote much of the Old Testament, and Moses was a man. Men often create or imagine figures of God or ideas of Spirituality in order to persuade themselves that they are inspired by a higher power. They also create ideas in order to manipulate groups of people into abiding by their will. Men are also often wrong. Therefore, my point is that you cannot be sure that what Moses said and wrote is the word of God, even if you believe that the Bible is exactly what Moses (etc.) said and wrote. As you well know, the first five books of the Old Testament are known as the "Pentateuch". Tradition states these books to have been written by Moses. This is improbable, since these books speak of Moses in the third person throughout and also more conclusively, they tell of the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 34:5. I find that while many Christians are quick to accept archaeological data that verifies a piece of Biblical history, and are quick to accept scholars' conclusions on the questionable nature of scriptures of other religions, they downplay a critical study of their own scripture, the Bible.
:::::My small point about translation (your Strike 1, 2 & 3) was questioning – as you point out the language is quite loose; ‘isn’t it conceivable that…over thousands of years’ etc. If you read the King James Version, it is most likely that you have as accurate version as possible. As historians (or part-time historians), we cannot know what has happened in the past, we can only critically examine the evidence we have to create an idea of what has or might have happened, that is what history is. To claim that anything in the past is definite is to speak outside of your authority whether you are a historian, scientist, philosopher or anything, so even one translation to English could have been changed in some ways.
:::::''Nonsense. If you want to argue that when God said that He created the world in six days, that that is just an interpretation of what He said, then you are basically claiming that words have no meaning and language is useless. In which case I can claim that you're not really saying that "Roman scholars may well have changed the Bible"; rather that is just my interpretation of what you said. See how the argument is nonsense?'' Please let me demonstrate how my argument was fairly sound, but yours is a logical fallacy. I wrote, directly from me, that ‘Roman scholars may well have changed the Bible.’ You could only use this argument if I had said it to another person, who had then written it down and conveyed it to you. As I am saying it directly to you, there is less scope for my meaning to be lost. If I said it to an acquaintance of mine, who then thought about it and then passed it on to you, he may not convey my entire message. He may give you the gist of it, but not all of the intricate details, he may wish to elaborate on it, or even change some of the ideas if he couldn’t understand them, or he may even include his own ideas. So you see the difference I’m trying to establish; if God spoke to you in the same way he did Moses, then you would know that what he had said to you was the authentic Word of God, although there’s a fair chance you’d be called a maniac for preaching it. If God says something to Moses, who then writes it into stories and commentaries, or passes them on through generations of oral story telling as is argued by some scholars, then some of His meaning might be lost, confused, misinterpreted etc.
:::::''The differences between carnivores and herbivores are huge.” Another assertion ignoring the evidence I offered to the contrary… What you are hinting at is that it's harder to eat vegetable matter than meat… …Which means that the biblical account of going from herbivory to carnivory does not present any great problems, although the contrary change would.”'' Firstly, it isn’t an assertion because I offered some evidence. I provided a brief summation of characteristics usually associated with herbivores, I didn’t mean to over-generalize because obviously there are some exceptions, but many dinosaur fossils found display the same attributes, for example, as elephants do, for grinding the plant's digestible protoplasm out of its cellulose-walled cells. There are also obvious examples of dinosaurs whose physiology is generally geared towards hunting. Secondly, theoretically this is so, but moreover I was trying to examine the differences there can be between herbivores and carnivores. I don’t think a dinosaur with flat, blunt teeth, a long neck and weak jaws would have been very good at hunting, so it would have had to have changed in order to suit a carnivorous diet.
:::::''On the basis of scientific evidence, dinosaurs existed millions of years ago…” : No, that's on the basis of the evolutionary theory, not the scientific evidence…” …this idea is rejected by Creationists, who claim the science is wrong.: No, they claim that the philosophy underlying evolution is wrong, not the science.”'' I’m sorry but that is pure ignorance. It is not proved or disproved on the basis of the evolutionary theory; it is on the basis of fossil evidence and dating methods. If you can give me your scientific opposition to the various methods of dating, which have been used to accurately measure the ages of various buildings and relics around the world then please, let me know, but don’t try and discredit what I’m saying by using the evolutionary theory argument, because that is not relevant here. Christians often use carbon or radiometric dating as evidence that events occurred at a time in-keeping with that in the Bible, as seen [http://www.s8int.com/edom.html /here], however when it is used to prove the age of the dinosaurs is millions of years, it is repudiated, often citing that dinosaur bones are ‘too old to be accurately dated’ or ‘the methods are inaccurate’, though most leading scientists maintain that these claims are [http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html /unfounded]. Please don’t say tell me that carbon dating cannot date anything beyond 70,000 years, because I know. It is the dating techniques using ‘rubidium/strontium, thorium/lead, potassium/argon, argon/argon, or uranium/lead, all of which have very long half-lives, ranging from 0.7 to 48.6 billion years’ to which I am referring.
:::::'' Proposed size? Are you so ignorant of the idea that you dismiss so readily that you are not even aware that the Bible records the size of the ark?''
No I’m not that ignorant, to be honest I didn’t really know what a ‘cubit’ was and I admit I could have phrased the question better. 300 x 50 x 30 cubits could have meant anything to me; I thought maybe you could provide me with a useful answer of how big that would be in terms of commonly used measurements today, rather than attack the wording and theory of my question. Please also do not accuse me of readily dismissing anything; it is with some consideration and a desire for truth that I look beyond what I have been taught. Having researched it further it seems that, contrary to my earlier claim, that Noah’s ark may well have been of the size required to carry all of the kinds of creatures, not species, that are on the earth today. That is, as long as such a large vessel could have been constructed (one would not have been seen again until the 19th Century). And of course as long as there weren’t hundreds of 50ft lizards marauding through the corridors at night!
:::::''You don't know how big the ark was, you haven't got any figures on how many animals would need to have been on it, yet you can conclude that it's not big enough...'' Being English I love a good bit of sarcasm and that was pretty tasty! It was a sweeping generalization admittedly, but the reason for the ambiguity in figures is that as you can see above, I had no idea how big the stated size of the ark actually meant it was, and also because there is often confusion as to whether the reference to ‘each kind’ in the Bible is referring to each individual species to the smallest variation, or a more general division.
:::::''I trust that you won't return here with more arguments until you have actually learnt a reasonable amount about the subject.'' Please don't accuse me of knowing next to nothing about a subject you only understand from one point of view. I can accept that some of the things I have written are probably wrong, and others have been phrased badly. I hope you can as well. My original post here had no real agenda, and this has developed very much into a two person discusion of providing counter-arguments for each other without much original input. Whilst I have found it useful and also very interesting, I had hoped to find more of a discussion with a lot more theoretical and philosophical musings. I find it very frustrating that we, as humans, unconditionally rely on unproven science and theoretical history to prove our own points, whilst dismissing other science because it is only theoretical. That is the very point of science, and the very nature of it since Aristotle first set out a logical way of thinking. You observe, predict, then experiment and adjust; it is an ongoing process of refining and defining. Once you have created a theory, as a scientist the very first thing you should do is to examine it under the conditions it is most likely to be proved false. That is science; it doesn’t claim to know the ultimate answers, just guide you towards what’s right. While this is completely off-topic again, I found it very [http://members.aol.com/projbin/plerdyn.htm /interesting]. I hope you don't find my points or arguments offensive because they aren't meant to be. As I have said before, my purpose here is understanding, hoping both to be understood and to understand. [[User:Entheogenicorder|Entheogenicorder]] 15:57, 5 February 2008 (BWT)
== Dinosaurs are not Reptiles ==
== Dinosaurs are not Reptiles ==