jaywill responds to me:
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Non sequitur. Please try again.
I see no need to try again.
I know. And that is precisely the problem. You refuse to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you might have made an error. How can you claim to have an honest understanding of your analysis if you refuse to consider that you might have made a mistake?
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The serpent lied. Adam and Eve did ”surely die.
No, they didn't. Adam lived for nearly a thousand years afterward. You're forgetting that god didn't just say they would "surely die." Instead, he said they would "surely die" before the sun set on the very day of which they ate.
If I tell you that you will die before sunset today and you don't die, was I telling you the truth?
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It simply says that he would surely die.
Incorrect. Let's take a look at the actual verse, shall we?
Genesis 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
What do you think "in the day that thou eatest thereof" means? It's not talking about some nebulous, vague, will eventually happen within the next thousand years time period. It means, given the Hebrew method of measuring days by sunset to sunset, that it would happen before the sun set. And "surely die" is referring to a physical death, not a spiritual one.
Ergo, "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" means "you will die a physical death before the sun sets on the day you eat."
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It is a fact that from the time we are born we begin to surely die ourselves.
Incorrect. Instead, we spend most of the time during our formative years doing everything except dying. It's only when the body has passed through its full growth that it starts to deteriorate.
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That Adam embarked on a downhill inescapable process in which he must surely die is enough of the indication of the truthfulness of God’s word.
Incorrect. God told him that he'd be dead by the time the sun set. Instead, he lived for another thousand years.
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The Hebrew word for ”day” is the same as is used in Genesis 2:17 - “for in the DAY that you eat of it you shall surely die”.
Indeed. It's referring to a single, 24-hour, literal "day." Remember, Genesis 2 has no connection to Genesis 1. They were written by different people recounting different creation myths. The order in which things happen differs and contradicts. For example, the sequence in Gen 1 is plants, animals, male and female humans together. In Gen 2, it's male human, plants, animals, female human. You cannot use Gen 1 to inform Gen 2.
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Preceeding 2:4 we are told that God made the heaven and the earth not in one day but in six days (Gen. 1:5,8,13,19,23,31).
But we were also told that humans were made at the same time, male and female together, after everything else had been created. Therefore, Gen 2 cannot possibly be referring to anything in Gen 1 because we find that a male human shows up before anything else was created. Remember, according to Gen 2 there were no plants at all:
2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
That's part of the reason that god created Adam: To make the earth green.
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So the usage of the word ”day” in 2:4 is general time span not necessarily one sunrise to sunset span.
Incorrect. It cannot be interpreted any other way.
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My Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary for entry # 3117 - yowm, - is not restricted to this meaning for that Hebrew word, as you would like to have it.
Incorrect. The word, just like English, can be used to refer to individual days as well as to large spans of time, but you have to phrase it the right way in order to do that. Context will tell you. You cannot just choose which one meaning you want because it's convenient for you to do so. "On the day you eat" is a reference to a specific, individual moment in time, not an era.
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Accordingly, you cannot insist that because Adam’s heart did not stop beating before that day’s sunset, therefore the serpent told the truth and God mislead Adam.
Incorrect. It cannot be interpreted any other way.
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It didn't happen. Ergo, god wasn't telling the truth.
I don’t have a interesting logical fallacy term to defind this statement, like “non sequitor.”
It's "non sequitur," with a u. And there is no logical error.
God says Adam would die. The serpent says Adam would not die. God is said to be all knowing.
Adam does not die. Ergo, since god knows everything, it cannot be that god was mistaken or misspoke himself. Therefore, god lied.
Remember, god admits to lying. We shouldn't be surprised to catch him at it.
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You lose the case because you insist that sunrise to sunset could be the only valid usage of yowm.
Incorrect. I don't say that yowm can only mean a literal day. I say that in this particular context, it can only be interpreted as a literal day. Because the word has multiple meanings, you have to look at the rest of the utterance in order to provide information about what is going on. "On the day you eat" is not a reference to a multi-year time span. It's a reference to a specific moment in time.
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Excuse me? We're not talking about spelling mistakes.
I wasn’t refering to spelling mistakes.
Then what, pray tell, did you mean by "copyist errors."? The copyist's job is to make a duplicate of the text, letter by letter. If they make a mistake, it will be in spelling or punctuation or some such.
Unless you're insinuating that entire tracts of text have been accidentally excised from the book? If so, then we can't take any of the work for an accurate statement.
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[ We are ] talking about major continuity errors as well as errors of fact.
Like errors concerning how many horses Solomon really had.
I don't recall mentioning that. Please stick to the argument at hand.
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I think you should consider this passage in the light of how wise it is for you to teach people that God lied and the serpent told the truth.
I have. What makes you think the Bible is a book of god? Wouldn't that be the ultimate coup for the forces of evil? To put out a tract that so clearly shows god to be evil and yet have people still come to insist that the "god" described therein is the embodiment of good? And with so many warnings right in the text!
That would be the ultimate sucker play, wouldn't it?
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I don’t think that most serious Bible readers would not want to admit that there are deep paradoxes in the Bible which are hard to reconcile. For example God as one God yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
See, the Unitarians came up with a solution: The "trinity" is a bunch of hogwash.
That's one of the reasons that Judaism doesn't treat Jesus in the same way as Christians do. According to Judaism, there is only one god. There cannot be a "son of" god. The Messiah is not divine. That's one of the huge points behind the story of Moses: Moses did not perform a single miracle. All the miracles were performed by god. Only god is divine.
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Or perhaps free will and predestination are difficult to reconcile. These matters are difficult to reconcile.
It isn't difficult at all. Free will and predestination are completely incompatible. If you know with absolute certainty, no chance for error, what I am going to do, do I really have any choice in the matter?
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Do you think the writer meant the entire planet?
Of course. The Bible directly says so.
7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
Or does "all the high hills" mean something other than
ALL? Or does "under the whole heaven" mean something other than
WHOLE? But wait, there's an even more direct statement:
8:9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.
Does "the waters were on the face of the whole earth" mean something other than
WHOLE?
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I think he could have meant where all the human beings were living.
That's not what the Bible says. Everything died:
7:21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
7:23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
How does one interpret a statement that
ALL flesh died and
EVERY living substance was destroyed and that
ONLY Noah and the other inhabitants of the ark remained alive to mean that there was some holdout?
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At any rate whatever Moses meant Genesis 1:1
Ahem. Moses didn't write Genesis. The Pentateuch describes the funeral of Moses. How could he possibly have written about his own funeral?
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indicates that it should not be a problem for God to carry out what He wants to do. He created the heavens and the earth. His power has no limit.
Hey, if you want to resort to magic, you go right ahead, but that isn't what the Bible says happened. The water did not magically appear through god zap-poofing it into existence. Instead, it came down as rain and welled up from underground. But there isn't enough water on earth to do that. If all the water suspended in the atmosphere were to condense out as rain right now, you'd get an inch of water which would immediately seek the lowest point in the oceans and start evaporating back into the atmosphere. No flood.
Over 97% of all the earth's water is in the oceans. That puts it at the lowest point. And yet, there is still dry land. Therefore, to flood the entire earth as the Bible says means we can't use any of that water. We need to put new water on top of it.
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I came to believe Genesis indirectly through trusting Jesus Christ.
But that makes no sense. Genesis was written by Jews for Jews and can only be understood in a Jewish context. To accept Jesus is to deny Judaism.
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I guess some who are insistent that a globe wide flood engulfing the whole planet might want to take up a debate on it. I’m not sure what Moses meant.
(*blink!*) You did not just say that, did you?
7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
7:21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
7:23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
8:9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.
What is not to understand?
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All the people and animals were wiped out except for the 8 souls in the ark.
Physically impossible. And even if we could figure out how it happened, that would make you an even more insistent advocate of evolution than evolutionary biologists. The genetic diversity of such a culling of the animals would require every single individual in the first generation to be a new species. No biologist claims that speciation happens that fast.
That said, we still have a problem: As new species, they would be incapable of breeding with any other individual. All life would die due to inability to reproduce.
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I think that is the important point of the record. I don’t know if Moses meant that South America or Australia were under water.
What part of "the waters were on the face of the whole earth" are you having difficulty with?
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The queen of Sheba ”came from the ends of the earth” (Matt.12:42) to hear the wisdom of Solomon. But by modern standards of travel that really wasn’t that far away.
Irrelevant. We can live with colloquialisms. You can drive 100 miles out of town and still have people of the modern age exclaim, "We're in the middle of nowhere!"
But that isn't what we have in the story of the flood. "The waters were on the face of the whole earth." What part of that are you having trouble with? Does "whole earth" mean something other than
WHOLE earth?
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The census of Ceasar Augustus was commanded to go out to all the world (Luke 2:1).
See...here's the problem: They thought they knew the whole world. They were very much mistaken. That's part of the reason that we know the Bible can't be universal. It makes claims about the entire world which are handily proven to be false.
Therefore, if you refuse to accept the Aztec mythos and its proclamations about what happened to the whole world, why do you expect them to accept your mythos?
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I don’t think the writer meant the Chinese were taxed by Ceasar or the American Indians on the North and South American contenient.
Of course not. That's because he didn't know it existed.
But that's just Caesar. He's a man. We don't expect a mere mortal to understand. The story of Noah, however, is inspired by god, is it not? Even if Moses were the one who wrote it, he wasn't there. He was getting the information from god. Surely god would know if everybody died or not. Surely god would know if the entire earth were flooded. Surely god wouldn't lie to Moses.
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One thing does seem pretty clear. The account of a large flood wiping out human populations seems to have surfaced in cultures in many places.
But you will notice that it only happens in places that experience floods. In areas where there are no floods, there is no flood myth.
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I think as the survivors multiplied and spread through the earth, some collective memory carried along embelishments of one kind or another of a great flood story.
You mean like the flood in the Bible. It's cribbed from Gilgamesh and the story of Ut-Napishtim.
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I think this explanation is a conspiracy theory.
So you would expect that the students somehow managed to come up with the exact same paper, character for character, and there was no funny business taking place?
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I am not talking of miracles mentioned in the same story. I am talking about pairs of miracles where each instance appears in a different history.
It's called "common themes." You don't really think the story of Jesus was original, do you? It mirrors the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, and Mithra. Why do you deny them?
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These uncanny pairing seems a deliberate attempt to make sure that we really did get it as to what God was able to do.
No, it seems as if you had people cribbing from the same source. As they say, there are only a dozen or so original plots.
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Conspiracy theories stretched over 1,600 years don’t make plausible explanations of this design to me.
You are assuming that the "originals" have anything to do with the text of the Bible. Don't you think that the redactors and editors and compilers might have had a hand in how it got put together? After all, the Bible contains two distinct and mutually inconsistent versions of the flood. And yet, it tries to tell them both at the same time.
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Calm yourself Rrhain. I lose interest in conversing with people who go from showing off their mastery of logical fallacies to ridiculing laughter.
If you don't like being ridiculed, perhaps you should endeavor to be less ridiculous.
Rrhain
Thank you for your submission to
Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
My original statement which many of the administrators agree on is this one: 
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