The relevence of Biblical claims to science

Assuming this spike actually occurs, which at this point seems doubtful, you guys just aren't thinking hard enough.In humans vitamin K is produced by intestinal flora, which neonates don't have. Presumably, normal flora colonize their alimentary canal; a process which presumably takes a few days. Vitamin content of breastmilk might too have something to do with it.At any rate, I don't see the big mystery. I certainly haven't been able to find any research that this actually happens.

Science explains this easily, and also explains something your Bible does not - why communications technology has resulted in a decrease in the number of living languages. Also, the Bible doesn't explain why languages can be sorted into the same kind of "evolutionary" trees that inundate biology.The reason that there are different languages is the same reason that there are different species. Just as geographic reality means that a population can't breed with every other population at once, so too can human comminities not remain in constant contact with all other communities. Hence, languages develop and change between isolated communities, until they're almost incomprehensible to each other. Like a kind of language speciation,

The start of what, exactly? People talking to each other? People giving words to new concepts? People migrating?

But, it doesn't. It gives answers that are wrong, or inferior in usefulness to scientific answers. Instead of giving answers that advance knowledge, it gives answers designed to make the asker stop asking impertinent questions. "Why are there so many languages?" "Because God wanted it that way. Now shut up before He hears you."

No. This is the issue with all scientists: how do we find out, to the best of our ability, what the best models of reality are?The Bible, because it is not based on reality, gives rise to models that do not make accurate predictions or explain all observations. It can't even address most of the issues in science, and where it does, it provides explanations that contradict observations we've already made.The Bible doesn't make scientific issues clearer. If it did, creationists wouldn't have abandoned it in the 18th century.

No, but religious believers like you do, and have. Aren't you the guy who just started a thread where atheists like me are called a variety of uncharitable names in the topic title itself? Because it doesn't give rise to accurate models about the universe. Therefore, its input on the nature of the universe is useless. The Bible does not advance knowledge. If it did it wouldn't have been abandoned by creationists in the 18th century. Unfortunately for you we know that isn't true, because that story makes predictions that don't hold up. For instance we know that we've constructed taller towers, or reached greater altitudes, than anything that existed in Biblical times. When Shuttle astronauts approach the "heaven above", they don't come back speaking any other languages than the ones they all went up with.We can reject the Biblical account because it doesn't advance knowledge. The scientific explanation, on the other hand, tells us much about the history of human civilizations, how language operates in the brain, and how humans coin new words for new concepts. These explanations do much to advance our knowledge. Well, I don't. I have no religion. Rather, I use science to find out what is most likely to be true about the universe.We reject the Bible as an unimpeachable authority in science simply because it has been impeached; there's much to be learned about human linguistic history from the Bible, but nothing to be learned at all from taking its claims at face value.The Bible, simply, is wrong. But that's not to say we can't learn things from it, and we do. Just as we learn things from fairy tales and myths.

Close, but not quite right. The challenge is to produce a methodology that produces accurate, predictive models about the universe better than the scientific methodology does. This methodology can combine any sources of knowledge you prefer, but it has to make better predictions, on all subjects, than science does.

Well, that's really been the question for the past couple days, hasn't it? Are creationists going to be held to the same high standards of science, or aren't they?If Maestro wants us to believe that there's a better way than science, then he needs to show us what it is, and prove to us that it can not only meet the high bar already set by science, but exceed it.

So you assert, but the very topic of this thread is to determine if this is so, and what models about the universe can be derived from faith. So, by all means, supply examples. Via the scientific methodology, yes. But you've asserted that the faith methodology is just as good. So let's see the examples. You're reading isn't so good. I've already told you that science isn't a religion, and that I don't "worship" it. I realize that you can't comprehend how someone could have no religion, or not worship anything, but that's a shortcoming you're going to have to work on yourself. I'll thank you to dispense with the insults. I've offered none to you. Is this how you follow your God? By insulting those who treat you with respect? More than you, apparently. Did you even read it before you wrote this nonsense? I doubt it. No, there's actually none at all. Instead, there are a few known hoaxes and some "footprints" that weren't even made by feet. But that's not relevant. Please, address my argument. What predictions about language can be derived from the Babel model? You're the name-caller, remember? Not everybody is like you. Maybe, because it doesn't actually do any of those things? I don't understand the question. Clearly, it advances our knowledge about the world when we find out things about the world. In what way? No, actually, they haven't. You mean glossolalia? The problem with glossolalia is that it isn't actually any human language - just nonsense syllables.Much like your posts, in fact. Oh, apology accepted, goatfucker.

"Behemoth" is not a species of dinosaur.

Er, this describes an elephant, not any species of sauropod. I mean, look at this: The Job author is describing an animal short enough to lay in the shade of a tree, and trees in the middle east aren't all that tall. Furthermore, the animal is not so large that it can't be concealed ("in the covert") by tall grasses and reeds.Clearly, we're not talking about any dinosaur; this obviously refers to an elephant.

Elephants are large. You've simply misunderstood the passage. It doesn't literally refer to the tail. Here's a different translation that should make it a little more obvious:

quote:

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He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together.

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"Stiff like a cedar"? The member that this passage is referring to is the penis, not the tail.This is an elephant. It's the only animal known to the bible authors that would have fit these depictions.

Are you kidding? You don't know anything about dinosaurs, do you?All the sauropod species were larger; that encompasses 9 different families of dinosaur. The majority of the Cerapods (pachycephalosaura, hadrosaura, etc) stood upwards of 20 feet tall. The larger therapods could probably snatch a medium-size elephant up in their jaws, and those would be a few different species each of allosaur, tyrannosaur, carnotaurus, and maybe utahraptor.Brachiosaurus? Seismosaurus? Supersaurus? These names don't ring any bells? These animals stood over 40 feet tall at the neck and weighed up to 80 tons.And you expect us to believe that the Job author was talking about one of these when he described something that could lie in the shade of a cyprus tree and conceal itself in the grass? Please.