Religions > Atheism > Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
19 Jan 2005 05:27:46 AM |
| Object: |
Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
I'm currently involved in a discussion with someone who thinks that
the fields of archaeology, geology, and linguistics support many of
the things the Bible claims. I've tried to argue with him that scho-
lars think the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the Book of
Revelation are entirely fictional; that there's no evidence of Moses
in Egypt; that there's no archaeological evidence of a group of three
million Israelites spending forty years in the Sinai Peninsula; that
Matthew 1-2 has Jesus born during the life of King Herod, whereas Luke
has Jesus born during a Roman census, of which there's essentially
zero probability of happening before Palestine became a Roman pro-
vince, which didn't happen until ten years after Herod's death; that
there's no geological evidence of Noah's flood that the Bible said co-
vered the tops of the mountains; and that there's no archaeological or
linguistical evidence of the Tower of Babel.
The following depicts his response. My words are preceded with "=>";
his words are preceded with just "=". In the first paragraph I'm try-
ing to convince my colleague that scholars think the Johanine writings
are pure fiction.
=>This is not a retraction. I still fully expect that my
=>statement is true. But it's just from my general experi-
=>ence, my memory of what I have heard media outlets say over
=>my lifetime. The only actual source I was able to give Ma-
=>chaira was Robert Funk et al of the Jesus Seminar.
=
=Yes of course you think it is true. But I hope you will forgive
=rational people if we do not followo you when you cannot show us the
=material that convinced you that it was true. It is true that Robert
=Funk and his crew have convinced many people that virutally the whole
=Bible is a hoax. But then again, they decided for themselves what was
=true by voting in committee and conveniently excluding or simply
=being ignorant of the VAST body of documentary and archaeological
=evidence that directly refutes their opinions - sor t of like the way
=Mormons do.
=
=>But let me also point out that all I had to do was let those
=>media outlets get my suspicions slightly raised, and now
=>every time I read one of the Johanine books it _sounds_ like
=>it's made up, like the Johanine author was simply furthering
=>his agenda, putting words that fit his theology into Jesus'
=>mouth.<
=
=I guess if one is gonna let the media lead one's attention I can see
=why one would think that way. On the other hand, this is an argument
=from ignorance. You see we have an abundance of testimony from a wide
=variety of contemporaneous sources that demonstrate that John
=actually did live, was there and is likely a valid witness to the
=words and actions of the Lord Jesus Christ. The average television
=producer is about as aware of this evidence as I am of the subtleties
=of cell reproduction.
=
=>
=>And how do we know that this wasn't the case? How do
=>_Christians_ know that this wasn't the case? When they de-
=>cided that the Johanine writings belonged among Christian
=>scripture, how did they determine whether God _wanted_ the
=>Johanine writings there?<
=
=History shows that the inclusion of John's texts into the cannon was
=a rather simple process if perhaps a long one. you see John did not
=live in a vaccuum. He started chruches that were filled with people
=who knew him. Those people wrote about him, thus confirming his
=authority as an actual apostle of Jesus Christ. Those who received
=his manuscripts coppied them and thereby preserved distributed and
=preserved them as they believed God wanted them to. When the church
=began compiling the writtings of the apostles -beginning in the late
=1st century and continuing through the 4th- they decided that since
=Christ had directly commissioned these men, that God had chosen them
=as his representatives. Since Christ had made the promise to them
=that the Holy Spirit would guide them in these matters, than they
=most certainly had been so guided. It was quite understandable why
=they would accept the writtings of John himself as valid.
...........<snip>..........
=>=There is sufficeint evidence of the Jews living as slaves
=>=in Egypt that this historical fact is universally accepted.
=>=For example, the Bible tells us that Pharoah at one point
=>=punished the Hebrews by telling them to maintain their
=>=quota of bricks but that they would be made with no straw.
=>=Paralell to this point in history we see that indeed
=>=construction in Egypt was performed with bircks containing
=>=less and less straw.
=>
=>Ah, but no Moses, is there? He was raised by the daughter
=>of Pharoah, and brought ten devastating plagues on the Egyp-
=>tian civilization, but there history makes no mention of him
=>whatsoever.
=
=This is an argument from silence. You are selecting a venue where
=there is no evidence and making claims based on evidecne that is not
=there while ignoring where there IS evidence. I agree with you that
=we could fully expect to see that the Egyptians would have wanted to
=tell their part of the story. But that is from OUR perspective after
=the events. Using hind sight like this, I could, for example, point
=out to you that my hometown newspaper did not contain any stories
=about the Asian tsunami over the last two days therefore it did not
=happen. Meanwhile I am ignoring the sources that DID deal with that
=fact. I would be comitting the rhetorical fallacy of arguing from
=silence.
=
=Similarly, using the same selective hindsight, you can look to where
=there is no evidence and then claim that there is none, while
=refusing to address those places where evidence DOES exist.
=
=I am unaware of any evidence in the Egyptian written record that
=confirms the story of Moses in Genesis. however, as I have already
=pointed out we DO have evidence in the archaeological record that
=just happens to match what the Bible says.
=
=>=>This isn't limited to the Old Testament, either. Besides
=>=the Johanine writings, where is the evidence that a Roman
=>=census occurred affecting Palestine during the reign of King
=>=Herod, who died ten years before Palestine became a Roman
=>=province?<
=>=
=>=Are you perhaps getting your Herods mixed up?
=>
=>I'll give you the same information I gave Machaira. In 1984
=>or 1985 I took a class at the University of Washington
=>called History of the Ancient World, whose textbook had the
=>same title. I don't remember who taught the class and I
=>don't remember who wrote the textbook. But I really doubt
=>the University of Washington would use a history textbook
=>that wasn't written by a bona fide historian.<
=>
=>The chapter on Christianity pointed out that there was es-
=>sentially zero chance that a Roman census, like the one Luke
=>2 described, would have occurred in any territory except a
=>Roman province. And it said that Palestine didn't become a
=>Roman province until ten years after Herod died.<
=>
=>The Herods couldn't have been mixed up because, as Matthew
=>states, the man who was king after Herod was Archelaus, not
=>another Herod. The next king (or leader of some sort) named
=>Herod was the one that was a contemporary of Jesus, and
=>therefore couldn't have been the one that died in Jesus'
=>childhood.<
=
=I am affraid either you have simply confused the facts or else your
=source, despite having written a text book, was unfamiliar with them
=to begin with. ANY conventional, published history will represent the
=universal recognition of the FACT that Herod ruled Palestine from 37
=B.C.E. to 4 B.C.E. This is confirmed by contemporaneous Roman
=historians like Josephus. But Herod had three sons. His son, Herod
=Antipas, is the one who ruled in the Gallilee after he died and this
=is the "Herod" you have confused with the father figure. His other
=sons, Phillip and Archelaeus ruled in Syria and Judea.
...........<snip>..........
=As for the flood, well, I am sure you are aware of the fact that
=literally every continent supports a civilization that has a record
=of a great flood. These are documentary evidence that confirms the
=Biblical account of a great flood. The Mesopotamian "Record fo the
=Kings" is such a doucment. It contains a list of kings that ruled
=until about the time of Noah when the list abruptly stops where a
=great flood is recorded. In addition to many such historical records,
=there is also an abundance of geological evidence that confirms the
=events of a great flood.
=
=Now for the Tower of Babel. While perhaps you are unaware of it, the
=fact is that nearly 30 ziggurats (stepped towers) have been
=discovered by archaeologists in the area of Mesopotamia. Was one of
=these actually THE "Tower of Babel"? I can't say, and I don't think
=anyone can. However we have hard, confirmed and undisputed evidence
=that in the region where THE "Tower of Babel" stood, people WERE most
=definately building such towers.
=
=So you see, we DO have evidence for MANY histocial calims found in
=the Bible.
...........<snip>..........
=Yes there is ABUNDANT evidence taht a flood actually occured that
=covered the tops of mountains. And since we know for a fact that
=great towers were built in the time-frame of the tower of Babel in
=the region described in the Bible, and that these towers were built
=for religious reasons, yes it is indeed reasonable to conclude that
=there was at least one built to reach heaven.
...........<snip>..........
=>BrianH, maybe everything you have said here is true. I
=>don't know. I'm not an expert on Jewish history during the
=>time of Christ. But even if it's all true, does any of it
=>make the Johanine writings factual? Do we know that the
=>things they described actually took place?<
=
=It is reasonable to conclude that they did if one merely adheres to
=the same principles of evidence by which we understand the entire
=ancient world, yes. You see we have the same kinds of evidecne for
=the claims made by John regarding historically verrifyable events
=that we do of all other elements of history from the same period.
I'm kind of ignorant of the things he's talking about, but I know
enough to be skeptical. Can any of you guys on these newsgroups help
me formulate a response to this guy?
---thanks,
Kevin Simonson
.
|
|
| User: "wcb" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
18 Jan 2005 09:52:51 PM |
|
|
wrote:
I'm currently involved in a discussion with someone who thinks that
the fields of archaeology, geology, and linguistics support many of
the things the Bible claims. I've tried to argue with him that scho-
lars think the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the Book of
Revelation are entirely fictional; that there's no evidence of Moses
in Egypt; that there's no archaeological evidence of a group of three
million Israelites spending forty years in the Sinai Peninsula; that
Matthew 1-2 has Jesus born during the life of King Herod, whereas Luke
has Jesus born during a Roman census, of which there's essentially
zero probability of happening before Palestine became a Roman pro-
vince, which didn't happen until ten years after Herod's death; that
there's no geological evidence of Noah's flood that the Bible said co-
vered the tops of the mountains; and that there's no archaeological or
linguistical evidence of the Tower of Babel.
..........<snip>..........
=>=There is sufficeint evidence of the Jews living as slaves
=>=in Egypt that this historical fact is universally accepted.
=>=For example,
It is not true. As Donald Redford, an eyptologoist has noted,
while many names of foreiners are known in Egypt, none of them
are Israelite names, odd considerin the huge number of Israelites
said to have left Egypt.
A number of Canaanite and foreign gods became popular in Egypt, but
there is no mention of Yahweh.
All notable archaeologists have now conluded there was no exodus, no
Egyptian captivity, no bloody Canaanite genocidal campaign by
Moses and Joshua. All the cities supposedly destroyed by
Moses and Joshua turn out to have been destroyed centuries
before they could have been in the area.
the Bible tells us that Pharoah at one point
=>=punished the Hebrews by telling them to maintain their
=>=quota of bricks but that they would be made with no straw.
=>=Paralell to this point in history we see that indeed
=>=construction in Egypt was performed with bircks containing
=>=less and less straw.
Baloney.
=>
=>Ah, but no Moses, is there? He was raised by the daughter
=>of Pharoah, and brought ten devastating plagues on the Egyp-
=>tian civilization, but there history makes no mention of him
=>whatsoever.
=
=This is an argument from silence. You are selecting a venue where
=there is no evidence and making claims based on evidecne that is not
=there while ignoring where there IS evidence. I agree with you that
=we could fully expect to see that the Egyptians would have wanted to
=tell their part of the story. But that is from OUR perspective after
=the events. Using hind sight like this, I could, for example, point
=out to you that my hometown newspaper did not contain any stories
=about the Asian tsunami over the last two days therefore it did not
=happen. Meanwhile I am ignoring the sources that DID deal with that
=fact. I would be comitting the rhetorical fallacy of arguing from
=silence.
There was no story to tell. None of that happened.
The Bible is full of it. For example, the OT tells of Abraham
visitin the him of the Philistines many centuries before Philistines came to
Canaan. Moses is said to have interacted with the kings of Moab and Edom,
centuries before there was a Moab or an Edom as nations, much less with
kings.
Moses supposedly leads the Israelites out from the city of Zoar, Tanis,
which would not be founded until centuries after that time.
This was all made up many centuries after it supposedly happened.
Historians and archeologists know its all baloney.
This is all filled with baloney, anachronisms, rank errors and
fairy tales.
=Similarly, using the same selective hindsight, you can look to where
=there is no evidence and then claim that there is none, while
=refusing to address those places where evidence DOES exist.
There is no evidence for any of the OT being history.
And much evidence against it all.
=I am unaware of any evidence in the Egyptian written record that
=confirms the story of Moses in Genesis. however, as I have already
=pointed out we DO have evidence in the archaeological record that
=just happens to match what the Bible says.
This is false. Totally.
=>=>This isn't limited to the Old Testament, either. Besides
=>=the Johanine writings, where is the evidence that a Roman
=>=census occurred affecting Palestine during the reign of King
=>=Herod, who died ten years before Palestine became a Roman
=>=province?<
This is false.
*******
=>
=>The chapter on Christianity pointed out that there was es-
=>sentially zero chance that a Roman census, like the one Luke
=>2 described, would have occurred in any territory except a
=>Roman province. And it said that Palestine didn't become a
=>Roman province until ten years after Herod died.<
=>
This is still true. And still ignored by christians.
=>The Herods couldn't have been mixed up because, as Matthew
=>states, the man who was king after Herod was Archelaus, not
=>another Herod. The next king (or leader of some sort) named
=>Herod was the one that was a contemporary of Jesus, and
=>therefore couldn't have been the one that died in Jesus'
=>childhood.<
Check Matthew and Luke. Both their tall tales contradict each other
fatally. Was Nazareth the original home of Jesus or not?
Both tall tales disagree.
Any xian babbling at me that didn't notice THAT has nothing to tell me.
***********
..........<snip>..........
=As for the flood, well, I am sure you are aware of the fact that
=literally every continent supports a civilization that has a record
=of a great flood. These are documentary evidence that confirms the
=Biblical account of a great flood. The Mesopotamian "Record fo the
=Kings" is such a doucment. It contains a list of kings that ruled
=until about the time of Noah when the list abruptly stops where a
=great flood is recorded. In addition to many such historical records,
=there is also an abundance of geological evidence that confirms the
=events of a great flood.
=
There are no records of a universal great flood and less hard evidence
for any real sort of flood. Believeing Noah's ark is the mark of true
ignorance.
--
Cheerful Charlie
.
|
|
|
| User: "robocoastie" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the ChristmasStories |
27 Jan 2005 01:46:55 AM |
|
|
There are no records of a universal great flood and less hard evidence
for any real sort of flood. Believeing Noah's ark is the mark of true
ignorance.
The Gilgamesh story written over a 1000 years before the bible has a
flood story
all the way down to the gods warning a man about it, building an ark
with animals, sending out a dove, landing on a mountain and a promise
not to do it again. It's obvious that the biblical flood account merely
borrowed this much older legend.
.
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "Al Klein" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
19 Jan 2005 10:02:18 PM |
|
|
On 18 Jan 2005 21:27:46 -0800, said in
alt.atheism:
=>Ah, but no Moses, is there?
At least not one who led an exodus of 600,000 men.
Let's do a little, *very* conservative calculation.
600,000 men. That would mean pretty close 600,000 wives. Add only 3
children/family (very conservative for Hebrews in those days), and
we'd have 3 million human souls.
Even claiming that they took no animals with them:
3 million people excrete approximately 1.5 million pounds (that's
7,500 TONS of excretion) EVERY DAY!
Desert? There wouldn't be any room for the sand if there were over a
TRILLION TONS of coprolites scattered around the desert. And there's
not a single trace of a really large area of coprolites anywhere near
where this was supposed to have taken place.
So no one led 600,000 men, their wives and children onto the desert
for 40 years.
=I am unaware of any evidence in the Egyptian written record that
=confirms the story of Moses in Genesis. however, as I have already
=pointed out we DO have evidence in the archaeological record that
=just happens to match what the Bible says.
Actually what we have in the archaeological record directly
contradicts most of the bible.
=I am affraid either you have simply confused the facts or else your
=source, despite having written a text book, was unfamiliar with them
=to begin with. ANY conventional, published history will represent the
=universal recognition of the FACT that Herod ruled Palestine from 37
=B.C.E. to 4 B.C.E. This is confirmed by contemporaneous Roman
=historians like Josephus.
Josephus wasn't born until Herod was long dead, so he wasn't
contemporaneous with Herod.
Aside from quoting a known liar as a source ...
=As for the flood
As for the flood, yes.
There has NEVER been enough H2O on this planet to flood ALL THE LAND
(that's what the bible claims) to a height of even 1 inch (that would
require a flood of more than 29,000 feet), let alone 15 cubits.
But let's see what would have happened if:
a) the water had come from under the earth. It would have run right
back down again. Water seeks its own level. If there was an outlet
for subterranean water to rise up, the same outlet would have allowed
it to flow back down. Almost immediately, not after a year.
b) the water had come down in rain. 29,000 feet (ALL the world means
the top of the highest mountain and, yes, Everest was there many
thousands of years before man started living in the middle east)
falling in 40 days and nights? That's 725 feet/day. Or 30 feet/hour.
Or 6 inches of rainfall - on every single square millimeter on Earth -
per minute. I guess it would have been possible to breathe - for the
first minute or so, anyway - if one had been deep in a cave. But
there are large waterfalls that don't have that much water falling -
and that's over a MUCH smaller area. And just try breathing while
standing directly under Niagara Falls.
Oh, and falling water gives off heat. How much heat? 6 inches of
rainfall/minute for 40 days and nights would have made the surface of
Venus seem positively Arctic. Life on the surface of the planet (and
for quite a distance under the surface of the seas) would have been
boiled to death. ALL of it. Maybe some life clustered around smokers
at the bottom of some of the deepest parts of the Pacific would have
survived.
And how about lethal monohosted bacteria? Things like Ebola? They
kill their hosts, and in a lot less than a year. And some of them can
only survive in ONE species. Did Noah take a few thousand of some
species on board to act as sacrificial hosts?
How did the whales survive? (Whales can't survive in fresh water for
too long.) If the seas remained salt (which, in itself, would be a
miracle), how did all the fresh water species that can't survive in
salt water survive?
How did all the plants survive? The bible writers didn't know it, but
plants have to breathe.
= well, I am sure you are aware of the fact that
=literally every continent supports a civilization that has a record
=of a great flood. These are documentary evidence that confirms the
=Biblical account of a great flood.
The biblical account isn't of a great flood, it's of a world-wide
flood. The geological evidence says that no such flood has occurred
since long before there was a human species.
=Now for the Tower of Babel. While perhaps you are unaware of it, the
=fact is that nearly 30 ziggurats (stepped towers) have been
=discovered by archaeologists in the area of Mesopotamia. Was one of
=these actually THE "Tower of Babel"? I can't say, and I don't think
=anyone can. However
However, the entire reason for the story doesn't exist. There are
THOUSANDS of buildings taller than any ziggurat ever was, and we can
all understand each other, even if we need translators. "Heaven"
doesn't exist a few hundred feet up - we've been there and beyond, so
we know.
= we have hard, confirmed and undisputed evidence
=that in the region where THE "Tower of Babel" stood, people WERE most
=definately building such towers.
=So you see, we DO have evidence for MANY histocial calims found in
=the Bible.
The existence of a tower is NOT evidence that some god caused us to
all speak different languages.
The fact that almost EVERY language can be shown to have roots in
common with some other language is evidence that language evolves, and
THAT'S why there are so many languages.
=Yes there is ABUNDANT evidence taht a flood actually occured that
=covered the tops of mountains.
But not the biblical flood. There's ironclad evidence that the
biblical flood not only didn't happen, but COULDN'T happen. (Never
been enough water, in any form.) That the tops of some small hills
were covered by a small local flood has nothing to do with a
world-wide flood that lasted for a year.
=>BrianH, maybe everything you have said here is true. I
=>don't know. I'm not an expert on Jewish history during the
=>time of Christ. But even if it's all true, does any of it
=>make the Johanine writings factual? Do we know that the
=>things they described actually took place?<
=It is reasonable to conclude that they did if one merely adheres to
=the same principles of evidence by which we understand the entire
=ancient world, yes.
Actually, no. We insist on objective evidence, contemporary writings,
etc.
There's NO objective evidence of any biblical Jesus. The EARLIEST
SCRAP of NT we have is from 125 years after the fact, and it's only
part of one sentence - nothing contemporary. The anal Romans, who
left written records of the must inane little thing, left no written
record of the biblical Jesus. (At this point you'll get - if you're
speaking with a knowledgeable Christian - talk about all those who
wrote about Jesus. The writings are either a) hearsay, b) suspect, c)
not really evidentiary or you'll find some other problem that's caused
them to have been refuted long ago.)
= You see we have the same kinds of evidecne for
=the claims made by John regarding historically verrifyable events
=that we do of all other elements of history from the same period.
We have the same kind of evidence for the claims in Superman comics of
WWII as we have for the existence of Superman. That John made some
claims that we can verify doesn't mean that the ones we can't verify
are true.
BTW, some of the claims of Christianity - like the one that Jesus came
from Nazareth - are patently false. At the time in question there WAS
NO town of Nazareth in that area. So their claims that the bible is
true because some of the verifiable claims are true is countered by
the claim that it's false because some of the verifiable claims are
false.
Here are a few links for you to study:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:uixufIXBg1YJ:www.mnatheists.org/pdf/silence_about_jesus.pdf+%22saul+of+tarsus%22+%22earl+doherty%22&hl=en
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/jesusrefutation.html
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/
And that's only ONE subject.
--
"Christianity has already had the chance to govern
the world according to its own ethical standards.
It was called the "Dark Ages".
- Bill, The Avender
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at verizon dot net
.
|
|
|
| User: "" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
22 Jan 2005 12:54:42 AM |
|
|
Charlie and Al,
You two seem to have touched on most of the topics I brought up
with my fellow poster. Noah's Flood, the Tower of Babel, Jews in
Egypt, 3 million Israelites in the Sinai for forty years, the contra-
dictions between Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, and the creative Johanine
writings. If I respond to him asking him for documentation on his
claims that all these things are scientifically supportable, can I get
you two (and whoever else wants to contribute) to back me up?
I'm hoping you can get back to me before Sunday afternoon, be-
cause I'd like to respond to his post Sunday afternoon or Sunday eve-
ning. Thanks!
---Kevin Simonson
"You'll never get to heaven, or even to LA,
if you don't believe there's a way."
from _Why Not_
.
|
|
|
| User: "Al Klein" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
22 Jan 2005 03:44:34 AM |
|
|
On 21 Jan 2005 16:54:42 -0800, said in
alt.atheism:
Charlie and Al,
You two seem to have touched on most of the topics I brought up
with my fellow poster. Noah's Flood, the Tower of Babel, Jews in
Egypt, 3 million Israelites in the Sinai for forty years, the contra-
dictions between Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, and the creative Johanine
writings. If I respond to him asking him for documentation on his
claims that all these things are scientifically supportable, can I get
you two (and whoever else wants to contribute) to back me up?
If you mean to refute whatever nonsense he comes up with, I'll do my
best.
BTW, please leave (or add) my name or 'rukbat' (without the quotes)
in/to the post - I respond to posts in threads I'm participating in
first, and use my address to find those.
--
"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is
a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the
crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due
to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious
indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility
corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of
nature and of our own being."
- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, from article by
Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at verizon dot net
.
|
|
|
| User: "" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
24 Jan 2005 05:30:56 AM |
|
|
Al Klein (rukbat) wrote:
=> If I respond to him asking him for documentation on his
=>claims that all these things are scientifically supportable, can I
get
=>you two (and whoever else wants to contribute) to back me up?
=
=If you mean to refute whatever nonsense he comes up with, I'll do my
=best.
Thanks; this was what I was looking for. I know I said I was going to
try to post by this evening, but I'm still waiting for e-mail back
from a supervisor of moderators on the forum. I run the risk of get-
ting censored if I don't play by the rules, and she's going to specify
(I hope) how I can carry on this discussion and still follow the fo-
rum's rules.
---Kevin Simonson
"You'll never get to heaven, or even to LA,
if you don't believe there's a way."
from _Why Not_
.
|
|
|
| User: "Al Klein" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
24 Jan 2005 06:38:09 AM |
|
|
On 23 Jan 2005 21:30:56 -0800, said in
alt.atheism:
Thanks; this was what I was looking for. I know I said I was going to
try to post by this evening, but I'm still waiting for e-mail back
from a supervisor of moderators on the forum. I run the risk of get-
ting censored if I don't play by the rules, and she's going to specify
(I hope) how I can carry on this discussion and still follow the fo-
rum's rules.
Hint: you can always move it to email if he agrees.
--
There are three kinds of men:
The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence.
- (Will Rogers)
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at verizon dot net
.
|
|
|
| User: "" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
26 Jan 2005 05:44:35 PM |
|
|
Al Klein (rukbat) wrote:
=>Thanks; this was what I was looking for. I know I said I was going
to
=>try to post by this evening, but I'm still waiting for e-mail back
=>from a supervisor of moderators on the forum. I run the risk of get-
=>ting censored if I don't play by the rules, and she's going to
specify
=>(I hope) how I can carry on this discussion and still follow the fo-
=>rum's rules.
=
=Hint: you can always move it to email if he agrees.
Good advice.
FYI, I finally got tired of waiting for the supervisor to answer my
e-mail and just went ahead and posted my article. If it gets censored
then I'll follow your advice and e-mail the guy the article I wrote.
I'll let you know as soon as I get a response.
---Kevin Simonson
"You'll never get to heaven, or even to LA,
if you don't believe there's a way."
from _Why Not_
.
|
|
|
| User: "Al Klein" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
26 Jan 2005 08:24:30 PM |
|
|
On 26 Jan 2005 09:44:35 -0800, said in
alt.atheism:
FYI, I finally got tired of waiting for the supervisor to answer my
e-mail and just went ahead and posted my article. If it gets censored
then I'll follow your advice and e-mail the guy the article I wrote.
I'll let you know as soon as I get a response.
Gotcha. And thanks for putting my name in the post.
--
"If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his father, mother, wife, brothers, and sisters and even himself, he cannot be my disciple."
Luke 14:26
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at verizon dot net
.
|
|
|
| User: "" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
05 Feb 2005 03:34:37 AM |
|
|
Al Klein (rukbat) wrote:
=>FYI, I finally got tired of waiting for the supervisor to answer my
=>e-mail and just went ahead and posted my article. If it gets
censored
=>then I'll follow your advice and e-mail the guy the article I wrote.
=>I'll let you know as soon as I get a response.
=
=Gotcha. And thanks for putting my name in the post.
Okay, here is BrianH's response to my post. Let me know what you
think of it.
In the first bit I tried to deal with the question of whether any of
the so-called Johanine Writings (John's Gospel, the three epistles at-
tributed to John, and Revelation) had any basis in fact.
=K>Are "the texts written by ... John's own students that con-
=firm the gosp[el] was written by him," documented somewhere
=where my colleagues on the atheism-related newsgroups can
=read them?<
=
=There is no one book down to the local Barne's and Nobel that I am
=aware of, no. There is, however, an entire library of early church
=history contained in the collected writings and studies on the
=ante-Nicaean Christian texts. I highly reccommend the 14-volume
="Early Chruch Fathers" which is something of a standard reference. It
=also happens to be available in full-text on-line at http://ccel.org/
=And while such a body of scholarship may be unfamiliar to Mormons it
=has been well known among Christian scholars for centuries. The body
=of study done on these early writings is vast and sometimes
=complicated, but the fact that the earliest church recognized the
=validity of John's writings is not subject to serious questioning.
In this second bit I was looking for evidence that the Israelites ever
were slaves in Egypt. As you can see, BrianH stops short of saying
that researchers know for certain that Israelites were the slave class
he mentions, but he does say that those slaves started using signifi-
cantly less straw in their bricks about the time the Bible says Pha-
raoh cut off their straw supply.
==>Brian, could you let me know how I'd find out about the ar-
==>chaeological record that confirms that Jews in Egypt did in
==>deed start using less straw in their bricks? I'd also be
==>interested in hearing about archaeological evidence that
==>Jews _even were_ slaves in Egypt.
==
=
=BH>=Sure.
==
==Rosalie David wrote a book entitled, "The Pyramid Builders
==of Ancient Egypt" which was published in 1986. She based
==much of her research on the work of pioneering
==archaeologist, Sir Flinders Petrie who explored the
==pyramids of the 12th dynasty in 1889. I also refer you to
==Petrie's own work "Ten Years Digging In Egypt" in which he
==points out that the builders of the pyramids were, at the
==very least, foreigners of a slave class. David and others
==have expanded on Pietrie's works and confirmed his findings
==with additional field-work which has produced such noteable
==finds as non-Egyptian pottery, and the straw depletion I
==described. I will have to look that up again though, as I
==cannot remember exactly where I read it. But I will be
==happy to provide more detail if you need, though it may
==take a while.<
=>
=K>Yes, please look it up again. Take your time. I'm trying
=to get to the bottom of this, and by the nature of such an
=investigation I understand I need to be patient.<
=
=OK. But you can start by looking into the two books I have already
=cited.
I'm assuming by two books he's referring to _The Pyramid Builders of
Ancient Egypt_ and _Ten Years Digging In Egypt_.
In this third bit I asked for evidence that roughly three million Is-
raelites spent forty years wandering through the Sinai Peninsula.
=Now unless you can tell me what evidence nomads roaming the dessert
=some 5 to 6 thousand years ago SHOULD have left, your request that I
=produce such unidentified evidence is highly disingenuous.
In this fourth bit I tried to point out a contradiction between the
Christmas stories related in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, by saying that
the census Luke records could not have taken place until Palestine be-
came a Roman province, and that that didn't happen until ten years af-
ter the Herod Matthew talks about died. BrianH responded by saying
that _Syria_ was a Roman province during the relevant Herod's life-
time, and that Judea was at that time a part of the Syrian province.
Is this a valid reconciliation of Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2?
=BH=You continue to miss the point. You are confusing Herods.
==It was not THAT Herod who ordered the census recorded in
==Luke. In fact, it was not from ANY Herod - the decree came
==from Cesar and if you will bother to actually R E A D Luke
==2 you will see that the tax/census was firt made when
==Cyrenius was governor of Syria which WAS a Roman province
==at that time. At that time Judea, while not a Roman
==province WAS part of Syria.
=>
=K>Well, the relevant question is whether _Nazareth_ was part
=of a Roman province while the relevant Herod was still
=alive. Brian, do you have documentation of that somewhere
=that my colleagues could read?
=
=Why is Nazareth relevant? Bethlehem was in Judaea. Christ was born in
=Bethlehem not Nazareth. And yes, there is a large volume of books
=addressing the history of the Middle East. ANY reliable world history
=text that spends any time on the Roman Empire, its times and in
=particular the presence of Roman rule in the Levant will confirm that
=Roman law was administered in Judea and in what we today call Syria.
=But no, I am not going to do your homework or that of your
=colleagues.
In this fifth bit I asked for geological evidence of the flood men-
tioned in Genesis.
=BH=Sure. Go to literally ANY book on Mesopotamian history or
==even any good encyclopedia and look up the Record of Kings
==where you will find a parallel history of the flood. Look
==into the creation-evolution debates where you should easily
==find records of anomolioes such as whales suspended
==virtically in multiple layers of geological stratta.
=>
=K>Brian, are you talking about the "creation-evolution de-
=bates" _on CARM_, or somewhere else? I guess I'm trying to
=figure out where to point my colleagues so they can go check
=them out. Is this "abundance of geological evidence" found
=anywhere in book form?<
=
=Again, there is an overwhelming volume of material that will easily
=confirm the fact that the flood (or at least SOME very devastating
=flood) is a commonly recognized event in world history. I have
=already pointed you to the Mesopotamian "Record of the Kings". This
=is what is rightly called a "parallel history" that accounts for the
=same events as recorded in the Bible.
=
=There is also a similar abundance of archaeological findings that are
=consistent with a global catastrophe, such as mammoths frozen solid
=with plant-food still in their mouths near what is now the northern
=polar region. I am not referring to debates on CARM. I am referring
=to materials I have read and explored over many years. But again, you
=are going to have to do your own homework.
In this sixth bit I asked for linguistical evidence of the confusion
of languages Genesis describes at the Tower of Babel.
==>=Mesopotamia. Was one of these actually THE "Tower of Babel"?
==>=I can't say, and I don't think anyone can. However we have
==>=hard, confirmed and undisputed evidence that in the region
==>=where THE "Tower of Babel" stood, people WERE most
==>=definately building such towers.
==>
==>What does the linguistical evidence show? Does it show that
==>all languages originated from Mesopotamia?
=>
==BH>I don't know about "ALL" languages, but yes, at the very
==least the Semitic and Syrian languages originate in that
==region and to the South East of Mesopotamia.
=>
=K>So, Brian, are you saying that you _don't know_ whether the
=linguistical evidence shows that all languages originated
=from Mesopotamia, as the Biblical record says?
=
=Nope. I do not know. But I do know that at least SOME of the
=languages originated there, including the Biblical languages.
And that's it. BrianH seems to be backpedaling a little bit, at least
in regards to Noah's flood. He originally said there was geological
evidence for the Biblical account, but as you can see above he's now
just claiming evidence that "at least SOME very devastating flood" or
"a global catastrophe" of some kind occurred.
But at any rate I'm eager to hear what you (or any other posters to
these three newsgroups) have to say about BrianH's assertions.
---Kevin Simonson
"You'll never get to heaven, or even to LA,
if you don't believe there's a way."
from _Why Not_
.
|
|
|
| User: "Al Klein" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
05 Feb 2005 05:43:52 AM |
|
|
On 4 Feb 2005 19:34:37 -0800, said in
alt.atheism:
Al Klein (rukbat) wrote:
=>FYI, I finally got tired of waiting for the supervisor to answer my
=>e-mail and just went ahead and posted my article. If it gets
censored
=>then I'll follow your advice and e-mail the guy the article I wrote.
=>I'll let you know as soon as I get a response.
=
=Gotcha. And thanks for putting my name in the post.
Okay, here is BrianH's response to my post. Let me know what you
think of it.
In the first bit I tried to deal with the question of whether any of
the so-called Johanine Writings (John's Gospel, the three epistles at-
tributed to John, and Revelation) had any basis in fact.
=K>Are "the texts written by ... John's own students that con-
=firm the gosp[el] was written by him," documented somewhere
=where my colleagues on the atheism-related newsgroups can
=read them?<
=
=There is no one book down to the local Barne's and Nobel that I am
=aware of, no. There is, however, an entire library of early church
=history contained in the collected writings and studies on the
=ante-Nicaean Christian texts.
Just how "ante"? The earliest scrap of manuscript we have of the NT
dates to 125 AD, and that's only part of one sentence. Almost 100
years after the fact. Hardly convincing. There's not one scrap of
contemporaneous mention of the biblical Jesus. (That's something
written at the time he was supposedly alive, not something written by
someone who was born after the supposed crucifixion.)
In this second bit I was looking for evidence that the Israelites ever
were slaves in Egypt. As you can see, BrianH stops short of saying
that researchers know for certain that Israelites were the slave class
he mentions, but he does say that those slaves started using signifi-
cantly less straw in their bricks about the time the Bible says Pha-
raoh cut off their straw supply.
==>Brian, could you let me know how I'd find out about the ar-
==>chaeological record that confirms that Jews in Egypt did in
==>deed start using less straw in their bricks? I'd also be
==>interested in hearing about archaeological evidence that
==>Jews _even were_ slaves in Egypt.
==
=
=BH>=Sure.
==
==Rosalie David wrote a book entitled, "The Pyramid Builders
==of Ancient Egypt" which was published in 1986. She based
==much of her research on the work of pioneering
==archaeologist, Sir Flinders Petrie who explored the
==pyramids of the 12th dynasty in 1889.
LONG before there was any accurate means of dating anything.
== I also refer you to
==Petrie's own work "Ten Years Digging In Egypt" in which he
==points out that the builders of the pyramids were, at the
==very least, foreigners of a slave class.
Claims. Any actual evidence? No.
== David and others
==have expanded on Pietrie's works and confirmed his findings
==with additional field-work which has produced such noteable
==finds as non-Egyptian pottery
Since the Egyptians conducted extensive trade with the known world,
this only proves that ... err ... they conducted extensive trade with
the known world.
== and the straw depletion I described.
"Claimed" isn't "described", let alone "presented objective evidence
of".
== I will have to look that up again though, as I
==cannot remember exactly where I read it.
So we wait. For more assertions from a book or for actual evidence?
In this third bit I asked for evidence that roughly three million Is-
raelites spent forty years wandering through the Sinai Peninsula.
=Now unless you can tell me what evidence nomads roaming the dessert
=some 5 to 6 thousand years ago SHOULD have left, your request that I
=produce such unidentified evidence is highly disingenuous.
600,000 men. That means about 600,000 women (Hebrew men were
required, by their god, to marry and father children) and
approximately 1.5 million children (2-1/2 per family is an extremely
low estimate. It's probably closer to 6). Along with sheep, goats,
dogs, etc. That would be about 20 MILLION TONS of coprolites,
minimum. They aren't there. Not 20 million tons, not 2 million tons,
not even 1 million tons. We've done radar searches. (That looks
below the sand.) No one home.
(Coprolite = fossilized excrement)
Think about this. You have an encampment of almost 3 million people
and their animals. Encamped where? Around an oasis? There isn't an
oasis in the world large enough to support that many people for 24
hours, let alone 40 years. (It would have to supply AT LEAST 30,000
TONS of water every 24 hours, just for the people. That's 3 million
quarts or 750,000 gallons. Every day.
Oases usually provide water measured in tens of gallons at most. And
they don't get refilled every day.
They had to move every day. (They couldn't stop long enough for bread
to leaven, remember? That starts in 15 minutes, so they were really
on the move.) How do you get 3 million people moving on the same day,
let alone get them all moving from one day to the next? Even with
modern technology that's probably impossible. (Ever try to get 3
young kids into the car at once?)
=Why is Nazareth relevant? Bethlehem was in Judaea. Christ was born in
=Bethlehem not Nazareth. And yes, there is a large volume of books
=addressing the history of the Middle East. ANY reliable world history
=text that spends any time on the Roman Empire, its times and in
=particular the presence of Roman rule in the Levant will confirm that
=Roman law was administered in Judea and in what we today call Syria.
=But no, I am not going to do your homework or that of your
=colleagues.
The spot on which Nazareth currently sits was, 2,000 years ago, a
cemetery. Jews don't live on or near cemeteries.
"Jesus of Nazareth" is a mistranslation of "Jesus the Nazarite", which
means, simply, "Jesus who vows to grow long hair and serve god". See
Judges 13.5. "Matthew" simply substitutes "Nazarene" ('resident of
Nazareth') for "Nazarite" in a transparent attempt to give his hero a
home town. (There was no "Nazareth" until 135 AD, so Matthew was
probably written after that. Hardly a primary source.)
In this fifth bit I asked for geological evidence of the flood men-
tioned in Genesis.
=BH=Sure. Go to literally ANY book on Mesopotamian history or
==even any good encyclopedia and look up the Record of Kings
==where you will find a parallel history of the flood.
Myths aren't geological evidence.
== Look
==into the creation-evolution debates where you should easily
==find records of anomolioes such as whales suspended
==virtically in multiple layers of geological stratta.
There are geological explanations for this type of thing (see the 2nd
link at the end), but they don't depend on floods.
=Again, there is an overwhelming volume of material that will easily
=confirm the fact that the flood (or at least SOME very devastating
=flood)
Sorry, the bible claims a flood that covered ALL THE LAND, not just
some devastating LOCAL flood. (Which did occur circa 7900 BC, if
memory serves, and which could very well have been the basis for
Gilgamesh, from which the biblical flood story was 'adapted'.)
== is a commonly recognized event in world history.
Local floods are. A flood that covered ALL the land never occurred.
The geological record shows this beyond any possibility of doubt.
= I have
=already pointed you to the Mesopotamian "Record of the Kings". This
=is what is rightly called a "parallel history" that accounts for the
=same events as recorded in the Bible.
One myth copied from another myth isn't evidence, let alone geological
evidence.
=There is also a similar abundance of archaeological findings that are
=consistent with a global catastrophe, such as mammoths frozen solid
=with plant-food still in their mouths near what is now the northern
=polar region.
That has nothing to do with any flood. Floods are LIQUID water - they
don't cause flash freezing. And the flood isn't claimed to have
occurred 35,000-40,000 years ago, which is when these mammoths were
frozen. (See the 6th link at the end.)
In this sixth bit I asked for linguistical evidence of the confusion
of languages Genesis describes at the Tower of Babel.
==>=Mesopotamia. Was one of these actually THE "Tower of Babel"?
==>=I can't say, and I don't think anyone can. However we have
==>=hard, confirmed and undisputed evidence that in the region
==>=where THE "Tower of Babel" stood, people WERE most
==>=definately building such towers.
==>What does the linguistical evidence show? Does it show that
==>all languages originated from Mesopotamia?
==BH>I don't know about "ALL" languages, but yes, at the very
==least the Semitic and Syrian languages originate in that
==region and to the South East of Mesopotamia.
=K>So, Brian, are you saying that you _don't know_ whether the
=linguistical evidence shows that all languages originated
=from Mesopotamia, as the Biblical record says?
=
=Nope. I do not know. But I do know that at least SOME of the
=languages originated there, including the Biblical languages.
Their god would cause confusion to stop them from building a 30 story
tower (that's about as high as you can go in stone) but doesn't do a
thing when we build "towers" more than twice that tall? Or send
things out of the Solar system?
Has heaven moved up since those days?
And that's it. BrianH seems to be backpedaling a little bit, at least
in regards to Noah's flood.
There are some more problems with the flood:
If the flood was fresh water all the marine mammals would have died.
If the flood was salt water all the fresh water species would have
died. Tanks for whales? Tanks for thousands of species of fresh
water life?
How did all the plants survive? We know they have to breathe, even
though the people who wrote the bible didn't know.
There are bacteria known as monohosted bacteria. They can only live
in ONE species as a host. They kill the host in a short time. How
would Noah have kept them alive? How did e keep Ebola alive? (Did it
*evolve* from another species in the few thousand years since the
flood? But mankind couldn't have evolved from slime mold in 4 BILLION
YEARS?)
The flood itself. Where did all the water come from? The fountains
of the deep? That works if you think that the Earth is flat, covered
by "the dome of heaven" and floating in a limitless ocean of water.
We know that's not so, so forget that source.
Rain? Let's look at some basic physics. Things that fall give off
heat. (Not through friction. Potential energy is converted to
kinetic energy. In any energy conversion there's a loss that appears
as heat.) How much water? Mt. Everest is almost 30,000 feet high,
and the flood covered it (it covered ALL the land, remember) to a
depth of 15 cubits. That's 30,000 feet of rain in 40 days and 40
nights. Or 750 feet/day. Or 31 feet/hour. Or a little over SIX
INCHES/MINUTE! That's not rain, it's not even a large waterfall.
That's enough heat to turn the surface of the planet to lava, and the
falling rain to superheated steam. Since there's life on Earth, it
never happened.
So where did the water come from?
Assuming, for the moment, that it came somehow, why is there dry land
now? What would cause the water to disappear? Adding all the liquid
water, water vapor, snow and ice on the planet, it's not enough to
even start up Mt. Everest, let alone cover it.
Oh, and yes, Mt. Everest has been around 30,000 feet tall since there
have been modern human beings.
How did a ship that long not break up in open seas? We still don't
have the technology to build such a ship.
Noah took 2 of each species on board? (Forget "kind". No theist will
ever even attempt a cogent definition of the word.) There are
MILLIONS of species (most of them unknown to the bible writers). They
never would have fit. Their food and water never would have fit.
(Use the water from the flood? That would mean tanks for all the
different marine mammal species, remember?) And, of course, the bible
contradicts itself by later saying that Noah was told to take 7 of
each clean "kind" on board. (That was for sacrifice.)
He originally said there was geological
evidence for the Biblical account, but as you can see above he's now
just claiming evidence that "at least SOME very devastating flood" or
"a global catastrophe" of some kind occurred.
Because there's NO geological evidence that ANY flood EVER occurred
ALL OVER the world at the same time since, at least, Gondwanaland
broke up. And that was long before man walked the Earth.
We have Egyptian and Chinese records of the time of the supposed
flood, never mentioning that everyone died. It seems to have escaped
their notice.
But at any rate I'm eager to hear what you (or any other posters to
these three newsgroups) have to say about BrianH's assertions.
Just a few FAQs about the flood and related issues.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodmorappe-review.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/canopy.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/lewis-overthrust.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mammoths.html
--
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but
not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings."
-A. Einstein (1929 -- Einstein Archive 33-272)
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at verizon dot net
.
|
|
|
| User: "" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
05 Mar 2005 04:43:12 AM |
|
|
Al Klein (aka rukbat),
I just wanted to let you know that the poster I was corresponding
with on the Christian discussion board on this subject decided he
didn't want to carry on a debate with you using me as a middleman, and
I decided to respect his wishes, so that thread kind of died. I did
ask him, though, how someone like me could ever find out the truth
about Noah's Flood if someone like him didn't square off with someone
like you to debate the issues. I made that post two or three weeks
ago and he hasn't responded.
Anyhow, thanks for helping me out with the thread for as long as
it lasted.
---Kevin Simonson
"You'll never get to heaven, or even to LA,
if you don't believe there's a way."
from _Why Not_
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "wcb" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
05 Feb 2005 06:54:43 PM |
|
|
Al Klein wrote:
On 4 Feb 2005 19:34:37 -0800, said in
alt.atheism:
Al Klein (rukbat) wrote: collected writings and studies on the
=ante-Nicaean Christian texts.
12th dynasty in 1889.
*************************************************
== I also refer you to
==Petrie's own work "Ten Years Digging In Egypt" in which he
==points out that the builders of the pyramids were, at the
==very least, foreigners of a slave class.
Claims. Any actual evidence? No.
== David and others
==have expanded on Pietrie's works and confirmed his findings
==with additional field-work which has produced such noteable
==finds as non-Egyptian pottery
Since the Egyptians conducted extensive trade with the known world,
this only proves that ... err ... they conducted extensive trade with
the known world.
Basically, Egypt did in fact trade widely for goods.
And many goods, were transported in pottery.
Wine, and olive oil especially.
Now remember,the Israelites suposedly started with 70
goat herds who went to Egypt. Its not like they had
a distinctive pottery style. Its not like there was
a distinctive Israelite pottery style you could spot in Egypt.
In fact, as the real Israelites spread across hilltop
sites in iron age Samaria and Judea, their pottery was typical
Canaanite in style. Only gradualy did their pottery start to
differentiate. Not until the 10th century can you start speaking
of a distinctive Israelite pottery.
What we have here is an argument of the species handwave argument.
== and the straw depletion I described.
"Claimed" isn't "described", let alone "presented objective evidence
of".
== I will have to look that up again though, as I
==cannot remember exactly where I read it.
So we wait. For more assertions from a book or for actual evidence?
In this third bit I asked for evidence that roughly three million Is-
raelites spent forty years wandering through the Sinai Peninsula.
=Now unless you can tell me what evidence nomads roaming the dessert
=some 5 to 6 thousand years ago SHOULD have left, your request that I
=produce such unidentified evidence is highly disingenuous.
600,000 men. That means about 600,000 women (Hebrew men were
required, by their god, to marry and father children) and
approximately 1.5 million children (2-1/2 per family is an extremely
low estimate. It's probably closer to 6). Along with sheep, goats,
dogs, etc. That would be about 20 MILLION TONS of coprolites,
minimum. They aren't there. Not 20 million tons, not 2 million tons,
not even 1 million tons. We've done radar searches. (That looks
below the sand.) No one home.
(Coprolite = fossilized excrement)
Think about this. You have an encampment of almost 3 million people
and their animals. Encamped where? Around an oasis? There isn't an
oasis in the world large enough to support that many people for 24
hours, let alone 40 years. (It would have to supply AT LEAST 30,000
TONS of water every 24 hours, just for the people. That's 3 million
quarts or 750,000 gallons. Every day.
Oases usually provide water measured in tens of gallons at most. And
they don't get refilled every day.
They had to move every day. (They couldn't stop long enough for bread
to leaven, remember? That starts in 15 minutes, so they were really
on the move.) How do you get 3 million people moving on the same day,
let alone get them all moving from one day to the next? Even with
modern technology that's probably impossible. (Ever try to get 3
young kids into the car at once?)
=Why is Nazareth relevant? Bethlehem was in Judaea. Christ was born in
=Bethlehem not Nazareth. And yes, there is a large volume of books
=addressing the history of the Middle East. ANY reliable world history
=text that spends any time on the Roman Empire, its times and in
=particular the presence of Roman rule in the Levant will confirm that
=Roman law was administered in Judea and in what we today call Syria.
=But no, I am not going to do your homework or that of your
=colleagues.
The spot on which Nazareth currently sits was, 2,000 years ago, a
cemetery. Jews don't live on or near cemeteries.
"Jesus of Nazareth" is a mistranslation of "Jesus the Nazarite", which
means, simply, "Jesus who vows to grow long hair and serve god". See
Judges 13.5. "Matthew" simply substitutes "Nazarene" ('resident of
Nazareth') for "Nazarite" in a transparent attempt to give his hero a
home town. (There was no "Nazareth" until 135 AD, so Matthew was
probably written after that. Hardly a primary source.)
In this fifth bit I asked for geological evidence of the flood men-
tioned in Genesis.
=BH=Sure. Go to literally ANY book on Mesopotamian history or
==even any good encyclopedia and look up the Record of Kings
==where you will find a parallel history of the flood.
Myths aren't geological evidence.
== Look
==into the creation-evolution debates where you should easily
==find records of anomolioes such as whales suspended
==virtically in multiple layers of geological stratta.
There are geological explanations for this type of thing (see the 2nd
link at the end), but they don't depend on floods.
=Again, there is an overwhelming volume of material that will easily
=confirm the fact that the flood (or at least SOME very devastating
=flood)
Sorry, the bible claims a flood that covered ALL THE LAND, not just
some devastating LOCAL flood. (Which did occur circa 7900 BC, if
memory serves, and which could very well have been the basis for
Gilgamesh, from which the biblical flood story was 'adapted'.)
== is a commonly recognized event in world history.
Local floods are. A flood that covered ALL the land never occurred.
The geological record shows this beyond any possibility of doubt.
= I have
=already pointed you to the Mesopotamian "Record of the Kings". This
=is what is rightly called a "parallel history" that accounts for the
=same events as recorded in the Bible.
One myth copied from another myth isn't evidence, let alone geological
evidence.
=There is also a similar abundance of archaeological findings that are
=consistent with a global catastrophe, such as mammoths frozen solid
=with plant-food still in their mouths near what is now the northern
=polar region.
That has nothing to do with any flood. Floods are LIQUID water - they
don't cause flash freezing. And the flood isn't claimed to have
occurred 35,000-40,000 years ago, which is when these mammoths were
frozen. (See the 6th link at the end.)
In this sixth bit I asked for linguistical evidence of the confusion
of languages Genesis describes at the Tower of Babel.
==>=Mesopotamia. Was one of these actually THE "Tower of Babel"?
==>=I can't say, and I don't think anyone can. However we have
==>=hard, confirmed and undisputed evidence that in the region
==>=where THE "Tower of Babel" stood, people WERE most
==>=definately building such towers.
==>What does the linguistical evidence show? Does it show that
==>all languages originated from Mesopotamia?
==BH>I don't know about "ALL" languages, but yes, at the very
==least the Semitic and Syrian languages originate in that
==region and to the South East of Mesopotamia.
=K>So, Brian, are you saying that you _don't know_ whether the
=linguistical evidence shows that all languages originated
=from Mesopotamia, as the Biblical record says?
=
=Nope. I do not know. But I do know that at least SOME of the
=languages originated there, including the Biblical languages.
Their god would cause confusion to stop them from building a 30 story
tower (that's about as high as you can go in stone) but doesn't do a
thing when we build "towers" more than twice that tall? Or send
things out of the Solar system?
Has heaven moved up since those days?
And that's it. BrianH seems to be backpedaling a little bit, at least
in regards to Noah's flood.
There are some more problems with the flood:
If the flood was fresh water all the marine mammals would have died.
If the flood was salt water all the fresh water species would have
died. Tanks for whales? Tanks for thousands of species of fresh
water life?
How did all the plants survive? We know they have to breathe, even
though the people who wrote the bible didn't know.
There are bacteria known as monohosted bacteria. They can only live
in ONE species as a host. They kill the host in a short time. How
would Noah have kept them alive? How did e keep Ebola alive? (Did it
*evolve* from another species in the few thousand years since the
flood? But mankind couldn't have evolved from slime mold in 4 BILLION
YEARS?)
The flood itself. Where did all the water come from? The fountains
of the deep? That works if you think that the Earth is flat, covered
by "the dome of heaven" and floating in a limitless ocean of water.
We know that's not so, so forget that source.
Rain? Let's look at some basic physics. Things that fall give off
heat. (Not through friction. Potential energy is converted to
kinetic energy. In any energy conversion there's a loss that appears
as heat.) How much water? Mt. Everest is almost 30,000 feet high,
and the flood covered it (it covered ALL the land, remember) to a
depth of 15 cubits. That's 30,000 feet of rain in 40 days and 40
nights. Or 750 feet/day. Or 31 feet/hour. Or a little over SIX
INCHES/MINUTE! That's not rain, it's not even a large waterfall.
That's enough heat to turn the surface of the planet to lava, and the
falling rain to superheated steam. Since there's life on Earth, it
never happened.
So where did the water come from?
Assuming, for the moment, that it came somehow, why is there dry land
now? What would cause the water to disappear? Adding all the liquid
water, water vapor, snow and ice on the planet, it's not enough to
even start up Mt. Everest, let alone cover it.
Oh, and yes, Mt. Everest has been around 30,000 feet tall since there
have been modern human beings.
How did a ship that long not break up in open seas? We still don't
have the technology to build such a ship.
Noah took 2 of each species on board? (Forget "kind". No theist will
ever even attempt a cogent definition of the word.) There are
MILLIONS of species (most of them unknown to the bible writers). They
never would have fit. Their food and water never would have fit.
(Use the water from the flood? That would mean tanks for all the
different marine mammal species, remember?) And, of course, the bible
contradicts itself by later saying that Noah was told to take 7 of
each clean "kind" on board. (That was for sacrifice.)
He originally said there was geological
evidence for the Biblical account, but as you can see above he's now
just claiming evidence that "at least SOME very devastating flood" or
"a global catastrophe" of some kind occurred.
Because there's NO geological evidence that ANY flood EVER occurred
ALL OVER the world at the same time since, at least, Gondwanaland
broke up. And that was long before man walked the Earth.
We have Egyptian and Chinese records of the time of the supposed
flood, never mentioning that everyone died. It seems to have escaped
their notice.
But at any rate I'm eager to hear what you (or any other posters to
these three newsgroups) have to say about BrianH's assertions.
Just a few FAQs about the flood and related issues.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodmorappe-review.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/canopy.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/lewis-overthrust.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mammoths.html
--
Cheerful Charlie
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "Silichip" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the ChristmasStories |
02 Feb 2005 11:58:52 PM |
|
|
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT FLOOD
By Louis W. Cable
Modern investigative scholarship has shown the Genesis accounts (there
are two of them) of the “Great Flood” and its hero, Noah, to be pure
fiction. Much of it was plagiarized from older cultures such as Sumaria
and Babylonia. To accept this story as fact flies in the face of
practically all of the archaeological, historical, literary, and
geological research ever conducted in the middle east. Yet, in spite of
all the evidence to the contrary many Christians, both clergy and lay
people, do just that. They insist on the historical accuracy of this
story. So let us briefly review some of the more obvious reasons to
regard the Biblical story of the Great Flood simply as another myth.
In Sumerian clay tablets dating from the third millennium BCE there is
an account of a great flood whose hero is called Ziusudra. There is also
a flood story in the second millennium BCE Babylonian legend of
Gilgamish. In the Babylonian legend, preserved in much greater detail
than that of Sumeria, the hero is named Utnapishtim. It is interesting
that elements of these two flood stories appear almost verbatim in the
Genesis account of the Noachan flood. In these stories the heroes
receive a divine warning of an impending flood. It seems that god was
displeased with man and wanted to start afresh. They were told to build
an ark and take aboard it living creatures in pairs. In the Sumerian and
Babylonian accounts birds were sent out after the rains ceased. In all
stories the ark landed in mountainous areas and sacrifices were made to
their gods for a safe landing. Fragments of the Babylonian flood story
were found in excavations at Megiddo at the fourteenth century BCE
level. So the Great Flood legend was already firmly established in the
middle east long before there was an Israelite kingdom or a Bible.
Archaeological research has also made other discoveries regarding the
origin of the flood myth. For example, there is ample evidence that in
the distant past the Tigris and Euphrates rivers periodically overflowed
their banks causing great damage. Excavations clearly show silt layers,
sometimes as much as seven feet thick, overlying civilization and over
all of that, civilization begins again. So devastating, but natural,
floods did occur in that region in the past and could have provided the
inspiration for the myth. However, this type of natural flooding would
never have occurred in Israel because the Jordan, the only river of any
consequence in that region, flows for most of its length below sea
level. So, here we have a borrowed tale.
As one examines the biblical version of this story, conflicting elements
become clear. The most obvious concerns the numbers of creatures Noah is
to bring with him. In Gen. 6:19-20 God tells Noah to bring one pair of
"every living thing including birds." But in Gen.7:2-3 God gives a
different set of instructions. Here he tells Noah to bring with him
seven pairs of “clean” animals and only one pair of the unclean. He also
tells Noah to bring seven pairs of all birds. Why this discrepancy in
numbers? Well, the truth is that the flood story in the Bible is a
composite of two separate stories each with different origins2. The
earliest account (J) was probably written during the time of King
Solomon (10th cent. BCE). The later one (P) is believed to have been
written in the sixth century BCE. In J seven pairs of clean animals are
taken aboard so there will be some for sacrifices. But P, more concerned
with covenants than with sacrifices, specifies that pairs of animals be
brought with no exception made for clean animals or birds. The flood
story, as we have it in Genesis, is the result of the combining the J
and P stories so as to reads as a single continuous tail. The combining
of these two separate sources is the result of a clever cut and paste
job performed during the Babylonian exile (597 BCE to 538 BCE) under the
direction of the high priest, Ezra.
At the end of the story there is a covenant wherein God promises never
again to flood the entire earth. Because he tended to be somewhat
forgetful, God puts a "bow in the clouds" to remind him of this promise
(Gen. 9:16). Is the Bible saying that there were no rainbows before that
time? Did the atmospheric laws of refraction, which have operated for
millions of years, suddenly change on that day? Not likely.
There are no waters above the earth and none below as stated in Genesis
1:7. This myth stems from the biblical assertion that the earth is a
flat disk covered by a rigid hemispherical dome3. All ancient near
eastern creation myths are based on this primitive astronomical concept.
The flat earth and its dome-shaped covering are said to exist as an
enclosed bubble of air suspended in a universe filled with water. So
when God feels like it, all he has to do is to open the windows of
heaven and/or unplug the fountains of the deep and the water pours into
this little saucer-shaped planet. Such assertions can only be construed
as more biblical nonsense.
The Ark, so decreed that great naval architect in the sky, was to be
built entirely of Gopher wood, and its dimensions were to be 300 cubits
long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits height (Gen. 6:14-15.) Based on 18
inches per cubit, that translates into 450x75x45 feet. This presented
our farmer-turned-ship-builder with a daunting problem because the Ark
would have broken apart with the first wave. According to Robert A.
Moore (Creation/Evolution XI, vol 4, no. 1, pages. 4-5) there is an
upper limit, in the region of 300 feet, on the length of a wooden ship.
Beyond this a wooden ship is subjected to great stress and the hull
cannot be maintained watertight. This is the major reason why the naval
industry turned from wood construction to iron and steel in the 1850s.
In that regard, the largest wooden ship ever built, the six-masted
schooner U.S.S. Wyoming, measured 329 feet in overall length. It
required diagonal iron strapping for support and leaked so badly that it
had to be pumped constantly. It was declared unseaworthy and too long
for wood construction. Yet the ark was deemed to be over 100 feet longer.
As far back as the seventeenth century Sir Walter Raleigh realized that
even at its great size, the ark could not have held the cargo of animals
assigned to it. Also, where did they get the food and fresh water needed
to sustain all of those animals? Who cleaned up their mess? These
important questions are conveniently ignored in the Genesis accounts.
Another real-world problem for those believing this story is
meteorology. Genesis 7:19-20 state that all earth was covered by 15
cubits (approximately 25 feet) of water. In order to cover Mt. Everest
by 25 feet--over 29,000 feet above sea level--over a span of 10 months
(Gen. 8:5)-- it would have had to rain an average of 6 inches per minute
for the entire time. The record for rainfall for any one-minute at any
one location is 1.5 inches. Also, if all that vapor was in the air
before the rain started, the air pressure at sea level would be an
astounding 13,000 psi instead of the normal 14.5 psi.
In the literature of ancient Egypt, the most powerful and most advanced
nation in the world at the alleged time of the Great Flood, there is no
mention of a catastrophic flood of world wide proportions. If such a
flood had occurred, all of the Egyptians would have been drowned. That
obviously didn't happen.
However, the most devastating problem facing believers in the flood myth
surfaces in Numbers 13:33. Here the Israelites encounter the sons of
Anak. The Anakites came from the Nephilim (giants) who, according to
Genesis 6:2-4, originated in pre-flood times as a result of the sexual
union of male angels (sons of God) and the daughters of men. Therefore
the presence in post-flood Canaan of Anakites, the descendants of the
Nephilim, would mean that not all who lived on earth, other than Noah
and his immediate family, were killed in the flood. This stands as a
direct contradiction of Genesis 6:17 where God vows to, . . . bring a
flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the
breath of life, from under heaven; every thing that is in the earth
shall die.
One thing that should be expected, even demanded, of any one in
authority, such as the Christian clergy, is intellectual honesty. They
must not only strive to overcome bias, they must refrain from
deliberately concealing any uncertainties, controversies, conflicts, or
other questionable aspects existing in their field of expertise. They
must never mislead or deceive those who trust and rely upon them as
experts. Those in places of authority who do deliberately deceive their
followers are nothing less than unethical frauds and charlatans. To take
it upon themselves to decide among complex and conflicting views just
exactly where the truth lies is to be paternalistic and patronizing thus
violating the first principle of good teaching. The competent teacher,
after exposing his or her followers to all views, encourages them to
form their own independent conclusions. In that regard, can the clergy
be trusted? Quite to the contrary it is impossible to conceive of a
profession more in violation of the virtues of intellectual honesty. The
story of the Great Flood is a good example.
http://home.inu.net/skeptic/flood.html
.
|
|
|
| User: "Al Klein" |
|
| Title: Re: Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel, Johanine Fiction, and the Christmas Stories |
03 Feb 2005 05:36:03 AM |
|
|
On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 23:58:52 GMT, Silichip <Silichip@mailblocks.com>
said in alt.atheism:
Another real-world problem for those believing this story is
meteorology. Genesis 7:19-20 state that all earth was covered by 15
cubits (approximately 25 feet) of water. In order to cover Mt. Everest
by 25 feet--over 29,000 feet above sea level--over a span of 10 months
(Gen. 8:5)-- it would have had to rain an average of 6 inches per minute
for the entire time. The record for rainfall for any one-minute at any
one location is 1.5 inches. Also, if all that vapor was in the air
before the rain started, the air pressure at sea level would be an
astounding 13,000 psi instead of the normal 14.5 psi.
And that's not accounting for the ENORMOUS amount of heat that would
be given off by that much water falling for that long a time. Throw
another planet on the barbi.
--
"A truly unselfish act would be a Christian volunteering to have his soul take your
soul's place in hell, so yours could go to Heaven. Don't hold your breath."
- John Popelish
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at verizon dot net
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
