"The Flood", and other Creationist ballparks - 08 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says
			the bible has a flood (noah's ark), the Babylonian epic "gilgamesh" has a flood story, african, chinese, indian, natives to australia and north and south america, and the greeks all have flood stories, from around the same period. there is also geographical evidence to this. religions, in my opinion, have a perfect right to exist even if they bring down other religions, because after all, a religion is, to my way of thinking, false explanations for true happenings, it really doesnt matter. its like arguing whether or not to spell "leet" as 1337 or l33t, its not really a word. but when a religion tries to bring down something ELSE, that ISNT a religion, that is, in fact, EVERYTHING EXEPT a religion, i consider that to be inexusable. neither camp can win, because scientists cannot disprove creationism and creationists cannot disprove evolution. just one camp blindly believes, and the other attempts to qualify its beliefs, right? after searching for "ancient flood" i found a website for creationism where they used the bible as proof of their beliefs. well thats nothing new, but they were talking about it as "creationist SCIENCE". here's a link http://www.nwcreation.net/intro.html take a good look. i quote "Modern scientists are adamant that divine creation is not a valid explanation because the community is largely atheistic. Instead they are adamant that natural processes must be responsible for life's origin. It may be shocking to learn that a recent poll of the National Academy of Science found that 95% of biologists are either agnostic or atheists (Nature, Vol. 394, No. 6691, p. 313). As evolution is the biological communities champion theory, a relationship to the rapid progression of atheism in that discipline is rather obvious. Evolution is being taught as an unquestionable fact today, and is being used to explain the origin of life and the evolution of man without God." well let me tear this into peices. first peice "Modern scientists are adamant that divine creation is not a valid explanation because the community is largely atheistic." SINCE WHEN? i bet that if you went around to 100 random homes and knocked on the doors, you would find that the majority is not atheists. agnostic, perhaps, or light on the religion, but if you asked everyone if they believed in some being more powerful than humanity, which influenced or even controlled us, most people would answer yes, i bet. second peice: "Instead they are adamant that natural processes must be responsible for life's origin. It may be shocking to learn that a recent poll of the National Academy of Science found that 95% of biologists are either agnostic or atheists (Nature, Vol. 394, No. 6691, p. 313)." if thats a shock, they musta been out of it for a while, havent they? third peice: "As evolution is the biological communities champion theory, a relationship to the rapid progression of atheism in that discipline is rather obvious." evolution never conflicted with god. they're just too damn stupid to fully realize it. the reason why most scientists are atheists is because THERE'S NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF FOR CREATIONISM, AND THEY'RE SCIENTISTS, RIGHT? "Evolution is being taught as an unquestionable fact today, and is being used to explain the origin of life and the evolution of man without God." dear mr creationist- its not our fault your kids are too stupid to realize that god could have CAUSED evolution to happen, and thus have both happy with eachother. no i dont believe in god. but i DO believe that religion keeps people happy, because even if god wont cause bobby to burn in hell, bobby'll toe the line so god stays happy. but i think creationism, the way its being taught, is nothing short of horrendous.
			Total Topic Karma: 16	- More by this Author

			CamouflageNoise says	+7 Karma
			"no i dont believe in god. but i DO believe that religion keeps people happy, because even if god wont cause bobby to burn in hell, bobby'll toe the line so god stays happy." I don't think anyone has ever argued against the "good" effects of religion. It does have some great positives. But so does believing in Santa Claus. But that doesn't make it logical or right to do so. What scares me are the people who do or think certain things because of what they're religion tells them. Be it the actual message of the religion or some strange perversion of it. 9/11, while not the most catastrophic happenings, it has definitely shaped the landscape of America since it happened. That is the most contemporary event. The past is riddled with these types of outbursts on purely religious merit. To address the actual topic title, people have been making stories based on real events since the dawn of man. Story telling, is probably the backbone and starting point of most religions. "Explain to me why the Sun goes away!" "Well, there is a Sun God Rah who moves it..." and so on, for most religions. When people talk about religion I feel it's important to include ALL religions. Zeus is just as make believe as God is, but people would most likely laugh at you if you said you believed in him and Rah. Christianity and other monotheistic religions seem to be hanging around longer (at least I think they are longer, I don't do too well with numbers) and I think that that fact alone deems it worthy of more in depth research, but I see it as little more than another step until we begin worshipping the next deity that makes more sense to us and explains the world better.
				- 08 February, 2007

			p0ss says	+1 Karma
			I have nothing to add to CamouflageNoise's post except karma.
				- 08 February, 2007

			CamouflageNoise says	+1 Karma
			Daniel Quinn actually brings this idea up in his novel Ishmael. While it is fiction, it is based on many real beliefs and historical events. He mentions the flooding story and said that many cultures and religions have adopted the flood story, because as historical accounts and research has shown us, there was actually a flood that took place near Mesopotamia (I believe that's the region). The book is not so much an argument against religion, more or less an argument against the current path man has set himself on. It argues that man is acting out a story that places man above nature. Something that really got me into the novel was it's mention of the story of Cain and Abel. For those who don't know, Cain and Abel were brothers who were told by God to sacrifice something for him. Cain was a farmer and gave vegetables and fruit, while Abel was a shepherd and gave up a goat. God was less pleased with Cain's gift compared to Abel, so out of anger, Cain murdered Abel. At least that's how I remembered it, let me know if I'm wrong. Anyway, what the novel focuses on is position of these two men. It says that agriculture is the beginning of our decline or wrong path. This is because agriculture lead to over growing of the population, because you could control how much you made and could afford to have more children and people. As population grows, more land is needed. He contextualizes the murder of Abel by Cain as a running theme in the world. Farmers began pushing people the "Abels" of the world of their land for more land. The paradox here is that while we see Cain as the bad guy in the story, most people fall into the category of the Farmer Cain himself. So in a sense, we've been playing the role of the bad guy for so long. This all falls into line with my own belief system. Nature's laws being the supreme ideal to follow, although not a concious or super power of any sorts. Similar to Native Americans who hunted for only what they wanted, and didn't simply harvest the land to the point where they could store food. This is a long post, but it fits here with the Bible stories and other examples, albeit a contemporary one.
				- 08 February, 2007

			p0ss says	+0 Karma
			i don't know if anyone has heard of Velikovski but he wrote some incredibly contreversial books about prehistory, he did extensive research into the ancient stories of tribes from around the planet, and found consistencies between them. He had strange ideas on what had caused these floods though, he claimed that venus was at one point a comet that had ended up orbiting the sun, explaining venuses retrograde motion. he claimed that during its entry into the solar system it passed near the earth, its gravity lifting the seas up to meet it, cracks in the crust releasing magma and fire, hydrocarbons being ripped out venus's atmosphere, apparently becoming fire from heaven, and biblical mana. The wikipedia article denounces him as a nutcase, and having only read one of his books "worlds in collision" and one about him "velikovski vs sagan" i can see their point, but he did make some acurate predictions, particularly about the temperature of the moon, that turned out to be true. there may be some truth amongst his arguements, somewhere hidden in there. I will say this though; when Eistein died, the book sitting open on his desk was by Velikovski.
				- 08 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says	+0 Karma
			still though, does that justify creationism? religious exremism, no matter what form it takes, is still bad, am i not right?
				- 09 February, 2007

			Nadeem says	+0 Karma
			@CamouflageNoise: That sounds like an interesting book, though I'm not sure whether the author has the right idea. I guess I'll have to read it to find out. Until then, I'll refrain from voicing several objections that come to mind.
				- 09 February, 2007

			CamouflageNoise says	+0 Karma
			@Rathmaster No, it doesn't justify creationism at all. In fact, Creationism is one of thoe extremist ideas that is doing more harm than good. "Don't listen to your science teacher or that science book. Earth is only 5000 years old and Jesus loves you." Okay, so now what else has he been lied to about. He's likely to suspect most everything he's told in school, which is good in some ways but mostly negative. It will keep him curious. However, most children follow their parents blindly, and so might that child. Very bad situation when children are being taught over the head of the school, yet still attending the school. @Nadeem You can read his position on the actual website. The site even contains scientific research or essays pertaining to the his own book. Much of it substantiates his claims, while I've seen others that try to refute it. The book itself is fiction, a tale of a man and a gorilla, but it focuses on those themes that I've written above. Definitely worth a read.
				- 09 February, 2007

			Ati says	+1 Karma
			Interesting topic Rathmaster, but I think your preaching to the choir (Seeing as about 90% of Shuzakers are athiests/agnostics anyway). As for my opinion, I think that religeon is currently doing a heck of a lot more harm than good in the world right now. On the one hand, it does cause people to 'toe the line' as you so succinctly put it, and not disobey the good book. On the other hand, it also makes a lot of the think they can kill someone, and say three 'hail mary's' and walk home forgiven. Also, it does cause them to obey the bible (or Koran, or what-have-you), but this book does not neccesarily enforce morality (see Salem witch trials, Crusades, 9-11 attacks, Inquisition, Gay rights, etc.). Religeon would probably be an over-all positive thing if most religeons simply told people to worship their god, and get on with their lives. Unfortunately, they seem to have taken it upon themselves to enforce their own private morality and worldview on the universe at large. Of course, I am referring to the militant religeons, and indeed to the militant religeous people (I have some perfectly pleasant religeous friends, who are completely intelligent people as long as you stay away from religeous debate). I am strictly referring to the more militant organized religeouns (Christianity, Islam, etc.), and within these the idiots who (unfortunately) seem to be pretty numerous and who give bad names to the rational ones.
				- 09 February, 2007

			Ati says	+4 Karma
			Okay, I just watched the video that the addvertisement shows (it might be worth watching, as it whows what soem of the slightly more rational intelligent design guys think). I will now attempt to refute it. It seems to me that the claims they make are as follows: 1. Scientists were unable to create life in a laboratory. Actually, this is false. They did manage to get organic molecules to self assemble into simple, reproducing chains. Also, they did this in a few years, whereas natural self-assembly had about 6,000,000,000. 2. The fossil record shows an absence of transitional forms Wrong again. Check your evidence - there aren't many transitional forms admittedly, but even one (which there certainly is) disproves the creation theory. 3. Scientists were unable to induce evolution in fruit flies Again, the scientists were only trying for about a hundred years, and they did manage to induce some pretty impressive changes. Now let this process repeat for another few billion years, and you've got yourself a plethora of new species. 4. Scientists admit that evolution couldn't have happened That's four, care to try for five? There are virtually no serious scientists who disagree with the basic principals of evolutonary theory. For every one quoted, I can provide a hundred more with better qualifications. 5. The Earth is fine-tuned for life Well, this one commits a logical fallacy, in that if those factors WEREN'T just right, we wouldn't be capable of questioning it, so we can't judge the probability, because our ability to do so depends on it coming out one way. Also, life AS IT CURRENTLY EXISTS couldn't sruvive if these factors were a little off, but different forms that could would have evolved if they were different. 6. The complexity of life couldn't have evolved by random chance Ah, the centential, 'explosion-in-a-clock-factory', anti-evolution fallacy. to it I will say this: Your right. It couldn't simply appear out of nowhere. On the other hand, it could have appeared if a slow chain of gradually more complex and well suited creatures appeared over time, and complexity was rewarded by a greater share in the gene pool, thus causing more of them to be produced, thus causing over-all more complex gene pool of creatures over time. 7. Evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics Well, for starters the second law of thermodynamics (otherwise known as entropy) isn't really a law. It doesn't apply in all cases. it just states what usually happens. Increasing complexity CAN happen in some cases (like organic life). It is also worth thinking about that life may be, in its own way, working to stave off the heat death of the universe by generating more complexity instead of less. 8. The big-bang theory shows a creator Wrong again. All the big bang theory shows is that a large amount of energy came into existance over some period of time many billions of years ago. There may be room for a creator, in that, the split second at which this energy appeared... but I doubt it. I find it more likely that a combination of natural forces inherant to the universe caused this eruption of matter and energy. Well, I think that's about it. That was almost hard. I'm used to debating with people who think the world is only five thousand years old, and every species on earth was put onto a boat by a guy named Noah (to this I tell them: 'Okay. In that case, divided among the seven of them they must have had every human specific disease the currently exists on the earth. Why didn't they drop dead?').
				- 09 February, 2007

			CamouflageNoise says	+1 Karma
			Excellent job. Agree with you, and I'm gonna throw some karma your way.
				- 09 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says	+0 Karma
			@ ati: they could give you a bite of your own medicine, and say the diseases evolved since then. which is probably true, actually. but an exellent job on tearing apart the ad
				- 10 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says	+1 Karma
			and as to your previous comment, ati, i am not a total atheist myself, and i do believe that there was a flood at some point in time. obviously, the stories all come from coastal areas, and obviously, there was no noah, or any other similar figure , but that doesnt rule out the possibility of a large flood. similarly, it was probably amplified greatly in all the stories
				- 10 February, 2007

			Ati says	+0 Karma
			Well, there was almost certainly a flood somewhere, but these people believe that the human race has since been repopulated from one family, and that these people loaded every species on earth into a boat. And they wouldn't give me a 'bite of my own medicine', because they don't belive evolution in virii happen. What's odd is that you can have perfectly ration conversation with these people on virtually every other topic...
				- 10 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says	+0 Karma
			actually, with my grandmother, there is no topic but religion. its frustrating, you start talking about politics and within 3 mins one of us has changed it to evolution and religion.
				- 11 February, 2007

			CamouflageNoise says	+0 Karma
			I think it's generally agreed upon that there was in fact major flooding in the Mesopotamia region (the cradle of life I think is it's nickname) and so many budding cultures were witness to that. It's just interesting to see how each culture/religion has adapted their own version of that tale.
				- 11 February, 2007

			Ati says	+0 Karma
			That would make sense. Most cultures that we would currently define as 'civilized' have some history in that area. News of anything that happened there would get around.
				- 11 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says	+0 Karma
			@ camo i forgot for a second that the old testament was made by the Jews, so yes it makes sense that it would all be in that area.
				- 13 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says	+0 Karma
			now i COULD go far out, and say that maybe some lost race (atlantis, anyone) was causing global warming, and the ice caps melted, thus a flood.
				- 13 February, 2007

			Ati says	+0 Karma
			If there was a large scale (read: worldwide) flood, there would be evidence of it. There is almost none, and what there is (erosion on mountain-tops) can be explained otherwise (mountains rise, and what was below sea level once is now in open air).
				- 13 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says	+0 Karma
			to be entirely honest, ati, neither of us know much about geology so neither of us should lay claim to knowing much about the topic, which is why i put it on here
				- 15 February, 2007

			Ati says	+0 Karma
			I'm not entirely ignorant. I've taken hikes on mountains, noted said formations. I've also done research on the formation of mountains, so my statement above is entirely valid if you care to look up the facts.
				- 15 February, 2007

			CamouflageNoise says	+0 Karma
			As far as I've read or looked into the matter, I've never seen any mention at all about a world wide flood. The closest thing to that being giant glaciers carving canyons or Pangea and the continents separating, which really has nothing to do with flooding. Something to keep in mind when dealing with these creationist/biblical stories is that the majority of the people who read the bible and practice their faiths, are moderates. They look at these stories as more or less just that. It's the faith they carry and devotion to the ideas that make religion important to them. While I disagree with even that, it's something I've come to understand from most people I've talked with. Of course, the extremists make you believe that everyone who's read a bible has taken it literally word for word - and there are people that do. But most moderates tend to realize the tales and stories in the bible are just that: tales.
				- 16 February, 2007

			Rathmaster says	+0 Karma
			i love the ads. i see one for flood barriers
				- 16 February, 2007

			Ati says	+0 Karma
			Camo, I wish I could agree with you, but just about all of the religeous people I know take it literally; perhaps we just have hade opposite trends of luck.
				- 16 February, 2007