by aChristian 251 Replies latest jw friends
aChristian,
Perhaps this has been discussed and I missed, it but how could the boat the size of Noah's Ark hold all the animals and food necessary for an 11 month trip? There are hundreds of thousands of species requiring large amounts food. Furthermore, how did Noah and his three sons build the Ark and gather all the required food for their sojourn. The numbers and the logistics are staggering. Think about it.
Now, now, don't get your boxers in a wad. I hate the sin not the sinner.
So, mr. smarty apologetic pants, how does the flood story happen w/o chilled to the bone 5 year olds seeing their families drown? That is a very honest, realistic question. Did you really think you could enter into a discussion of this sort without having to broach the reality of these stories? You entered this discussion quite enthusiastically, are you going to bug out when the blood starts splattering? 'Cuz make no mistake, this was not pretty stuff. This was not lethal injection, this was a kid much like my own, being as scared and frightened as any human has ever been. And, I might add, for the sake of clarity, confused. The kids were confused as well as frightened, don't you think, aChristian? I mean, they didn't have a clue what this was all about did they? They didn't know that Mommy and Daddy were evil people, did they?
How do you think kids feel when they hear these stories now days? What do they learn about God?
Perhaps if you were willing to see filth as filth, your beliefs would be different? I know mine changed when I took an honest look at this book.
As to showing respect for others religious beliefs, I think my position in this discussion shows legitimate reasons why I should not have respect for your beliefs. It seems to me that your beliefs hurt people. If your beliefs are moral, defend them as such. Do you have respect for the religious beliefs of suicide bombers? What about people who hold approximately the same beliefs as suicide bombers, but who don't take it to quite as extreme a conclusion? These are the very bible stories that provided a foundation for this extreme religious devotion.
You add the catalyst of "god can resurrect 'em" to the mix, and life gets pretty cheap for yourself, but also for the innocent children of anyone you percieve as your (God's) enemy.
What about the thought process of kids raised on a diet of this stuff? View God as a father figure, and just remember what He has done to kids in the past. Sleep well dear.
Lark,
You wrote: Perhaps this has been discussed and I missed ...
Yes, such things have been discussed already in this thread. You might try reading my second post on page 2. In it you will find that I believe that the Bible describes a flood that was confined to the land of Noah, which was located in what is now southern Iraq. Just about every aspect of this subject matter has been discussed in these six pages of posts already. Some of it has been quite interesting. You may want to read them. Thanks for your interest. Have a nice Christmas.
aChristian,
I was not asking about the size of the flood. I was asking about the size of the Ark and the logistics involved.
Have a Merry Christmas!
Alan,
As DW said, you make some very valid points. Points that I believe should be, and must be, addressed by Christians today if we hope to reach the hearts of all people, including all educated people, with the message of Christ.
Let me say to begin with that I accept the clear testimony of the fossil record just as you have presented it. I believe you have painted a picture of the history of life on earth that is both fair and accurate. As you may know, I believe God used evolution to create all life on earth. And I believe that all life forms on earth evolved in exactly the way God desired and directed them to do so.
You wrote: If, as various Christians claim, the Bible indicates that disease only came into the world after Adam's sin, then the Bible is obviously out to lunch.
As you probably know, the Christians you refer to base their claim largely on their interpretation of one Bible verse, Romans 5:12. There we read, "Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned." Most so-called "fundamentalist" Christians claim that this verse teaches us that death did not exist anywhere on earth, even among animals, until after Adam sinned. Then, they tell us, as a direct result of Adam's sin, death and the diseases which bring about death came to all creatures on earth, animals and humans, for the first time.
But is that really what this verse says? No, it is not. It says that because of sin, "death came to all MEN." It says absolutely nothing about the deaths of animals. I hope we don't here have to discuss "what various Christians claim" the Bible teaches. I hope we can agree that, at least in this area, it is their interpretation of the Bible that is "obviously out to lunch," and not the Bible itself. I assume we can agree on that point. For I have no desire or intention to defend any of the nutty interpretations of the Bible promoted by "fundamentalist" Christians.
After describing very well the "red in tooth and claw" nature of the history of animal life on earth, you asked, "What sort of God would create such a kingdom of life?" I found that to be a very good question. You answered your own question by saying, "Obviously one that didn't care much about pain and suffering on the part of his creation." The answer you gave certainly seems to be a logical one. But just because it seems to be a logical answer does not mean it is the right answer. For, as we all know, things are not always what they seem to be.
The problem I have, as a Christian, in providing you with another answer to your question is that any answer I give to you will amount to little more than my "educated guess." As a Christian, I would like to answer your question by saying, "Well, the Bible says this about that." But, unfortunately, as I am sure you know, the Bible says almost nothing about why God chose to create an animal kingdom which is now filled with much violence and was even more violent in the past.
As I said earlier, I am a Christian who believes that God used evolution as His means of creating all life on earth. I also believe that the Genesis account of creation not only allows for Christians to understand that God created all life in this way but actually strongly implies that He did so. For instance, in Genesis chapter one, verses 12 and 24, we are not told that God directly created "vegetation" and "living creatures," but that "the land produced" them. However, Genesis says nothing about why God chose to create our world in the way that He did. It only tells us, in a very brief way, what He did. It says very little about how He did things. And nothing at all about why He did things in the way that He did.
I long ago asked myself, "From what I know about the God of the Bible, why would He have chosen to create all life on earth, including the human race in this way? Why would He have begun life on earth in an extremely simple way and caused earth's life forms to eventually become much more complex? Why would God have desired that the first organisms on earth possessed very little intelligence and then, later on, caused the land to produce creatures with progressively greater intellectual capacity? Why would God have wanted earth's earliest creatures to have been, for the most part, both extremely violent and highly predatory toward their fellow creatures? Why would God have created the human race, with our great capacity for love, kindness, mercy, gentleness and compassion toward our fellow humans and even toward lower life forms, to appear on earth long after He caused life forms lacking such "higher" qualities to appear on earth? And why would he have caused the human race to actually ascend from lower life forms which lacked such higher qualities?
I believe God may have done so to illustrate some very important lessons. Lessons such as these: Having ascended from lower life forms, human beings should now behave in a way that is far removed from the behavior of animals. The violence and predatory behavior that so filled earth's past, and still largely fills the animal kingdom, should be looked upon as behavior which is now totally inappropriate for our present and our future. By knowing our past and our planet's past, we know where God has brought us from and in what direction He now wants us to go. The Bible indicates that God is now willing to forgive all of our past lives, animalistic as they were, if we will strive to leave them behind. The Bible also tells us that if we will do this, God will bring about in each of us the final step in mankind's evolutionary process. He will do so by miraculously changing us into incorruptible, immortal, sons of God. I think it was probably for reasons such as these that God chose to give the human race an extremely animalistic prehistory.
In any case, I do not believe that we are justified in doubting the goodness of God simply because the history of animal life on earth has long been "red in tooth and claw."
Larc,
The reason I pointed out that I believe the flood was local is that such an understanding immediately eliminates many of the problems which a global flood presents. For such an understanding maintains that Noah would have then brought only representative samples of animals from his land, not "hundreds of thousands of species requiring large amounts food." So far as how, Noah and his three sons could have built such a large ark, I suspect that with what may have been 120 years given to them to do so (Gen. 6:3), they would have been able to accomplish the task, especially with their ability to hire some help.
achristan I am very confused as to what you belive from your insane babalings.Let me get this straight, You belive adam and eve came from homo erectis and that all that junk about eve coming from a rib must be a metaphor about evaloution.Mabey the rib was from a cro-magnam man meaning eve would be the next step in evolution.What if god would have tested neanderthal man in a garden,I bet they would not have eaten the fruit.Wow this must be a new religion in that both evolution and the flood acount are true.Eve most certianly did not come rib,she and adam evolved from lower primates but noah did build a huge rectangular box, loaded it with a bunch of animals and survived a year long flood that covered most of mesopataimia.Tell me , in this new religion of yours dose the donkey and dose the sun stand still.Let me geuss,the donkey dose indeed talk but the sun dose not stand still for a day cause we all know science says it cant do that,its just symblolisim.But the donkey talking is very true.
To D Wiltshire:
: Of coarse these last points you bring out are speculations made by intelligent men.
Not at all. In science, nothing can be absolutely verified in the sense of, say, a purely intellectual excercise such as mathematics. There is always a possibility that an exception will be found that disproves the rule. However, after awhile we develop a confidence level that in practical terms becomes indistinguishable from certainty.
We have beaucoup observations that objects that have 'mass' attract one another with a force proportional to that 'mass' and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. These are direct observations and therefore facts. One supposes that an exception to these observations -- which have been generalized into the so-called "law of gravity" -- might be made one day, but from what we know of the universe so far that is extremely unlikely, except perhaps that a subtle modification of the 'law' might be made. Newton's Laws are of this sort. They simply describe the way things behave. Then we have various theories of gravity. These attempt to go beyond mere description and try to explain a bit more why things behave the way they do. Einstein not only added important corrections to Newtons Laws, but took a good whack at explaining why massive objects behave according to the 'law of gravity'. No good scientist today thinks that Einstein put in the last word on the subject, but that doesn't change any of the fundamental observations.
It's the same with evolution and the fossil record. The fact of evolution has no connection with any particular theory of evolution. The fact of evolution is nothing more than a statement of what is contained in the "record of the rocks". That record shows that earlier life, such as in the Cambrian Period, was comprised of a set of species whose makeup changed over time, such that hardly any of those species exist today. Over time, other species came and went. Over time, the body plans of the "top" species became more "advanced", more and more like what we see today. In other words, "evolution" in this sense is nothing more than a change in the makeup of populations over time, and the fact of this evolution is seen in the gradual change in the fossil record of what sort of life forms are pulled out of various levels of sedimentary rocks. The basic sequence of life -- its relative time scale -- was pretty well determined by about 1830. Everything since has been a filling of gaps and of determining the absolute time scale. And again, this fact of evolution is entirely disconnected from any particular theory of why the observed changes occurred. Darwin proposed the first structured theory, which was modified by about 1940 to incorporate much new data. This in turn has been refined and refined again.
I suggest that you get hold of a solid primer on evolution that describes just what observations are out there. I recommend Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy by Arthur N. Strahler (Prometheus Books, 1987, ISBN 0-87975-414-1), which also shows why a lot of the arguments given by young-earth creationists are nonsense.
: They in time may or may not be verified.
The observations from the fossil record are as solidly verified as anything in science. It is fact that dinosaurs disappeared about 65 million years ago and that mammals then became the dominant animals on earth. Nothing is going to change observations like that.
: I feel that the explanations that christians or others give for evil to be allowed to exist in a just God's universe, are for the most part speculations, that may or may not be true.
I agree. The comments from aChristian, while very good from a certain point of view, illustrate this speculative nature.
: As those teaching evolution they should be more honest in there conclusions, as to how many things are not proven and subject to change with new data.
To certain extent I agree. However, there is a lot more that needs to be said about this. "Evolutionists" are often charged by creationists of various sorts with dishonesty. I don't find these charges to be valid, but more a product of bias. For one thing, you have to distinguish between solid scientific publications and material written for non-scientists. The latter will necessarily be simplified. Also the latter is usually written not by scientists, but by journalists with a technical bent. As with any journalism, oversimplification to the point of misrepresentation sometimes takes place. Thus, conclusions that are tentative in a solid scientific journal like Nature might become more solid-sounding in a popular journal like Discovery. It's not the best situation, but then, you have to look at the audience for which popular material is written. Most people don't understand, and do not want to understand, subtle technical details. However, those of us who do want to understand can always educate ourselves and get the real meaty stuff anytime we want. The point is that anyone who truly understands science knows that all good scientists allow that anything is subject to change if new data comes along. The real question you're considering is therefore (I think), not the allowance for change on the part of scientists, but where a knowledgeable person would draw boundaries between various levels of confidence in the interpretation of the data.
Unfortunately the evolution/creation controversy is often terribly biased by creationists who, deliberately or out of ignorance, confuse the fact of evolution with various theories of how/why it occurred. AChristian here happens to be someone who is pretty clear about the fact of evolution, and maintains one of many theories -- that God directed it. A great many Christians are not nearly as honest or knowledgeable. The JWs, for example, deliberately confuse the difference between "fact" and "theory" and then capitalize on the confusion of their followers to come to the simpleminded and false conclusion that "evolution is false". Young-earth creationists are even worse, because they deliberately misrepresent the basic data, and simply ignore everything they can't misrepresent. Again, DW, it's only by educating yourself about real science that you'll truly understand what I'm trying to tell you.
: I feel the christian has not been totally honest either, in their defense of God's actions. The wiser christians, IMHO, are the ones that can admit to these things and acknowledge the limits of their understanding.
I agree.
AlanF
I thank you Alan for your reply. I know you do a lot of research.
And have a Merry Christmas!
If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?
To aChristian:
I'll respond as I'm able, as we've got lots going on today.
: You wrote: In any civilized society, when a criminal can be isolated it is he and he alone who is punished. ... Who in his right mind would say that killing the entire innocent family of a murderer along with the killer is right? I'm sure you don't. Yet you excuse exactly this kind of conduct on the part of God.
: When people kill people they have no ability to restore the lives of the ones they kill. God does and, according to the scriptures, He will. So, God has never ended anyone's life. He has only interrupted some lives.
Resurrection is irrelevant. No matter who kills someone, according to this argument God can and will resurrect the dead one. Thus murder by anyone is no big deal, because God will set everything right in the end.
Obviously the above line of reasoning is abhorrent to ethical people when it's applied to humans killing humans. How can you argue that it's fine for God to do exactly the same thing he condemns humans for doing? Why should any Christian be concerned with murder at all? Why be concerned with any kind of misconduct against people, since God will make it all right in the end? In other words, what's the point of morality?
: We should also consider the fact that when God interrupted the lives of many innocent children when He flooded the land of Noah He may well have been showing those children great mercy. For if God had ended the lives of their parents and spared the lives of all their children He would have created a lot of very sad orphans. By taking the lives of the parents and children together in Noah's flood, God was, in effect, transporting them both into the future to a time when, I believe, most all of them will live forever together in paradise.
Well then, I assume you would have no objection to U.S. forces going into Afghanistan and wiping out all the orphans there. After all, all they'd be doing is transporting them into the future to a time when, you believe, most all of them will live together forever in paradise.
: I base this belief on the fact that Jesus said, "A time is coming when ALL who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out." (John 5:28) "All" means all. Including those who have died in God's judgments such as the flood. We know this because Jesus said that the people who died when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorra will be resurrected. And I believe he indicated that most of them will be judged with mercy at that time. (Matt. 10:15; 11:23,24) It follows then that the same can be said of the many people, including children, who died in the flood.
The resurrection is a very nice idea that, when you carefully examine its mechanism, creates more problems than it solves. The basic problem is this: for a person to be resurrected, there must be continuity of physical existence from the original person to the resurrected one. If there is no physical continuity -- whether that be in our material realm, or in some postulated "spiritual" realm -- then the resurrected one can never be the original, but only a duplicate, a copy -- no matter how close to perfect. This is easy to see by a thought experiment. Suppose God decided to create two identical copies of the resurrectee. How would anyone decide which one is the original? Keep in mind that, being omipotent, God could do this. The argument that God would not ever do this is not relevant, since we're talking about principle, not practice. I.e., the copy would still be a copy.
According to what I clearly understand the Bible to say, when a person dies he is unconscious, perhaps even completely out of existence. Otherwise what would be the point of scriptures like Job 14:13? "I wish you would hide me with the dead and forget me there until your anger has passed. But mark your calendar to think of me again!" What scriptures can you find that clearly indicate a continuity of physical existence?
Interestingly, the Bahai religion actually acknowledges these problems and has come up with a sort of solution for it: that humans are somehow attached to a sort of unconscious quasi-entity that, when a person dies, is stored away in some sort of warehouse in the "spirit realm" for future resurrection. How they get that out of the Bible rather than their imagination I do not know.
: You wrote: Tell me, aChristian, if God directly told you to kill your family, would you do it? ... How about if he told you to kill a thousand of your neighbors and gave you the weapons to do it? Would you think it right for God to do so?
: Your questions sort of remind me of some others. Like the infamous one, "Are you still beating your wife?" Answering such questions with either a "Yes" or "No" is sure to get a person in trouble. Fortunately, I believe that the proper Christian answer to the questions you asked is neither "Yes or "No."
Your analogy is incorrect. The fallacy of the "are you still beating your wife" thing is that there exists a third alternative that the question does not allow for: that the one questioned has never beaten his wife. My question clearly has only two answers: yes or no. Either you obey God, or disobey. There is no in-between. Therefore, not answering yes or no is sidestepping the question, which I will point out further below.
: My answer is this: I am convinced beyond all doubt that God would never tell me to do such things.
This is the sidestep. My question was, "if God directly told you..." Obviously that means that you must know that it is God talking to you. My question is not about whether you think God would tell you to do such things, but if he did, what you would do.
This is much like asking a Jehovah's Witness, "What would you do if the Society told you to start worshiping Jesus rather than God?" The JW would use every possible maneuver to avoid answering the question. The reply that "the Society would never do such a thing" is simply a means of avoiding answering. We've seen how a formerly staunchly anti-trinitarian religion -- Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God -- can quickly do an about face and teach the trinity and all its trappings, so the question is not just theoretical.
: So, if anyone told me to do such things I would know the person speaking was not God.
How would you know? Remember that my questions was, "if God directly told you..." I deliberately phrased it so as to give you no wiggle room.
: Yes, I am aware of the fact that God once commanded Abraham to kill his son, Isaac. And I am aware of the fact that God once instructed the Israelites to entirely wipe out large communities of people in the land of Canaan. However, I believe God had a purpose in ordering such actions. And I believe that purpose was completely fulfilled thousands of years ago. And because it was, I do not believe God would ever order anyone to do anything like that again.
Why? Do you fully know God's mind? Are you certain that those ancient commands will never be repeated?
: Thus, if anyone ever ordered me to kill my family or my neighbors there is nothing the person or entity who was giving me such instructions could do to convince me they were God.
But my question is obviously about your having established for a fact that you were speaking to God, just like Abraham and other Bible characters did, and then being hit with this doozie.
: Alan, I'll address your concerns in your most recent post late tomorrow. I've gotta get some sleep. And I've got a pretty full day tomorrow. Wasn't life easier when we didn't do holidays? Nah. At least now we don't have to knock on doors.
Now I'll go back to my holiday cheer and eat and drink and be merry! Cheers and Merry Christmas!
AlanF
