bazmeistergen said:
appolose said:
ManusJustus said:
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appolose said:
Most of the stuff in the Bible is miraculous; I don't find the concept too far a stretch of the imagination.
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Consider my earlier post:
If the story of Noah's Flood was true, there would be evidence for a global flood and it would make sense that one man could build a boat and put two of every animal in it, and that somehow fresh or salt water fish could survive such an event and be saved from whatever composition the flood water had. I'm assuming since the flood came with rain that it was mostly fresh water so all sea life would have died.
This is miraculous, as there is a lot of magical things going on. However, if I told you that I have a pet dinosaur that I found in a cave that goes to the bottom of the Earth, that would be equally miraculous and you would easily denounce my story. Whats the difference between the two stories, how can you logically deduce that my story is false and the story of Noah is true? The difference is that one story is older and a lot more people told you it was true. If the story was switched, and I told you that I built a boat and put every animal on it and the Bible had a story about a dinosaur living in a cave that goes to the center of the Earth, you would switch which story you believed in.
Concerning Noah's Flood, it makes much more logical sense to say that it was a myth just like countless other myths going around at that time.
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By absurd, I mean that hundreds of other things are needed to explain the idea (refer to the biologist's quote) in order to keep it internally consistent. Most of the Bible's stories are not in need of that (you just have to decide whether or not God actually exists). As for the flood, I do think that there is global-wide evidence for it (but let's not get into that), and also recognize that I don't know what sealife was like some 4000 years ago and that I do not know what type of water covered the Earth (perhaps it wasn't homogeneous).
In any event, absurdity does not disprove anything, anyways.
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Absurdity does tend to suggest that something is not true when there is a wider, evidenced and more holistic interpretation available.
I wonder why one would choose that particular explanation of creation. There are far older creation stories than the one's found in the Bible. The absurdity of Genesis when faced with a more reasonable, evidenced explanation means it is NOT as true as an actual scientific explanation. How big would an ark have to be to fit on the millions of species of land-based creatures? How did these animals get food? Why didn't some the animals eat each other? Why did god choose to wipe out many sinless animals? Why did birds get away with it? How come we find fossils dated as older than a few thousand years?
Your biologist quote is very nice, but the logic behind the materialistic view presented does not have to be accepted a priori for it to be more sensible. There are many things materialism cannot explain, but to jump into senseless mysticism is farcical. Leaving the questions unanswered and open is a far more radical and dangerous position than simple dogmatic belief. The other thing about the quote is that it seems to forget about the good things science has produced, including longer and healthier life, time-saving devices, energy-creating gizmos and so on.
I don't understand literal interpretations of the bible. It makes god much simpler and a bit stupid. A god that created the infinite beauty of the universe with all its cascading changes through time would be far more magnificent than the idiot redneck view of god of genesis.
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If you've seen The Matrix, you'll understand where I'm coming from more when I say that nothing can be proving, and the complexity of whatever is supposed about reality therefore has no bearing on whether or not it is more likely to be true.
Pardon the short response; I'm trying to summarize myself a bit more quickly and just avoid another long debate.
