Garden of Eden lays in the Persian Gulf? Not a religious thread.

[Andrespetmonkey]

padib said:

Andrespetmonkey said:

padib said:

Andrespetmonkey said:

padib said:

Andrespetmonkey said:

spurgeonryan said:
There you go everyone the true expert has arrived! Arrivederci! Is that how you spell it?

I wouldn't call him an expert, smart guy sure, but he's saying those things with the idea that it actually happened in the first place, and choosing not to accept the overwhelming evidence agaisnt it. But I've already had this debate with him before xD It got us nowhere in the end. I'm just glad he's a cool guy and didn't go all jesus-freak on me!

I appreciate the complement, but that's not a very nice thing to say.

In my description I was careful to mention that it was a theological perspective to the article. I gave the most neutral opinion I could possibly give. I'd appreciate you not label my post as religiously biased.

In other words, (I really wish you understand what I mean) if what the bible says is true, you have to take everything into account if your going for the biblical Adam and Eve (which is what the article was doing). If you want the Quranic Adam and Eve there would be an entirely different theology to it. I went with the events as stated in the bible and worked my way from there. Given that the garden of Eden is a biblical location, I found it suitable to take that route. Let me know if you have any better way to look at it.

Oh no no no, I didn't mean that you are a "jesus-freak" and I was glad you didn't act like that towards me. I meant I'm glad you AREN'T a "jesus-freak" and you didn't give those "your going to hell comments". Instead you had arguments that you came to logically (in our message debate), and not the ones I'd attribute to "jesus-freaks" like pascals wager and science is a conspiracy etc.  
Sorry for the misunderstanding.

About this thread, I'm not too sure what you mean. Did you assume the bible was literally true for the sake of the article? Or is it what you personally believe? Or something else?

Well, I'm glad you wrote that, and clarified what you meant. If ever I do go Jesus-freak, I won't go ignorant on you (like I guess pascals wager, idk who that is though). If I did, what it would be is I would have an overflow of joy and want to share my faith with everyone around me. If ever that did happen and it made you uncomfortable yeah you would have to tell me, like when the guy touched my elbow I was uncomfortable. :) But in general I am very discrete about it, which is the right way to go.

I really like your two last questions. What I did, to remain neutral, was to describe what geological history would be like if the words of the bible were taken literally. To remain neutral, I pushed aside as much as I could the aspect of whether I believed what I was saying or not, so you could get the most theological and neutral perspective on the matter. So, yeah it would be answer 1: "assume the bible was literally true for the sake of the article".

I appreciate your courtesy. Onus is on me to be able to have more intelligent conversations with you, I really wish I could get across to you last time but I think I didn't express myself properly, and you needed to give your friend some attention. (:

And I appreciate your elbow ;) Let's continue the convosation! But how about we keep it on a small scale so e aren't presenting a few different arguments at once, I tend to do that :S 

What's your stance on Noahs Ark? Do you think it literally happened? Do you think the story is based on a local flood? I'll be glad to talk to you about this, or Adam and Eve etc. Just something specific would be cool :D 

Hahaha :D nice. :) @convo: I'd love to. PM or on this thread? It's pretty dead right now as it is ;/) wanna talk Noah's flood? At least it's closest to the topic.

Just letting you know I'm going for a bite but I'll reply when I get back to my computer. (I'm officially addicted to vgchartz haha)

@Noah, I do think it literally happened. Reason is there are fossils all over the world that appear to have been buried very quickly, as if caught in a mudslide or vortex of water and mud. Some are caught eating other animals, giving birth, it's just a different image than what you normally expect from fossils.

Another thing is that if you take the rate of birth from roughly 4000 years ago to present, give or take certain local catastrophies, the human population on Earth seems reflective of the timeframe. Then, you have the idea that flood origins are core elements of local beliefs in areas around the world, with China's ancient tradition being one very close to that of the Hebrews, it gives you that sense that the world is not really as old as we think, and the beliefs that spread around the world may very well have originated at Noah, and spread not so long ago post-flood and post-babel.

Regarding China's ancient  beliefs, here might be a good resource. (I read part of a book on this, and an extensive linguistic study on ancient chinese that supports it). 

http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/comp/cw03bordersacrifice.htm

And there's much more I have a whole book on it :D

http://castore.creation.com/catalog/faith-fathers-p-1257.html

Here's a critique and rebuttal of the CMI study:

http://creation.com/cmi-misrepresents-ancient-chinese-language

Not at all. The real figure is around 50,000, give or take a few thousand. Not too mention the variation of humans we would need to explain. It would be impossible to have this much variation with 50 people, let alone what? 4? I can't remember how big noahs family was. And they would have to practice insest? 

"A certain minimum number of genetically divergent individuals are needed in a gene pool to maintain a healthy genetic diversity over the generations. For humans it is an estimated 497 individuals (no joke) although 1,000+ is to be preferred. The general rule of thumb is the “50/500″ guideline — that a population founded by 50 genetically diverse humans in isolation would last about 2,000 years before inbreeding did them in, while 500 or more stand a chance of lasting indefinitely so long as all of them reproduce and no major disasters wipe out a significant part of the gene pool during that time (although as with everything else involving genetics, this is a gross oversimplification and varies greatly with the conditions encountered)."

Here's a really good page about the flood: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

Please guys, read it. Read a few arguments from different sections. There are so many reasons why the noahs ark story is impossible, and how we know it never happened.