Summations Only

Hi Rod,Excellent first post, but you'll have to pardon my suspicion of a new member who appears to have a financial stake in the game and who includes links to three websites full of ways to send you money.If you're here to debate, welcome aboard. If you're here to plant links to your websites, well, I just took care of that.

Hi Lone77Star and welcome to EvC! I'm sure you'll find plenty to keep you busy here. I agree with you that a naive literalist position stands falsified. What I don't understand is why you seem so determined to adopt a modified literalistic position rather than just accept that the stories in Genesis are purely mythic. It seems to me that when we see a raft of myths that do not conform to what we know of history then we should be willing to accept that the events described therein were not actual events. What you seem to be doing is trying to find an interpretation that allows you to cling onto them as somehow being real. I don't see the point in that. I also think that you are taking several of these Bible quotes out of context in order to force-fit them into some kind of believable time-line. I'll show you what I mean. I don't think this is describing the creation of man as much as it is describing the family line of Adam - the House of Adam. Indeed in some modern translation this verse simply reads "mankind" where the text has "adam". It is not saying that Adam (which literally means man) was some sort of hermaphrodite. After all, this is much like Gen 1:27; "1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.". There is no hint of any sort of duel gender identity here.You are making this into something it's not. Or maybe they're just tall stories. They sure sound like tall stories. So it's just an inconsistency. What's the big deal? It has no special meaning, it's just an artefact of the Bible being written by disparate authors. Not even an interesting co-incidence. Not even a co-incidence really, given that Cayce was just a random lunatic. Or the story is just not true. You can't discount that possibility if you want to make any claim to being logical. Why does the flood need to symbolise any real-world event? Can't it just be symbolic of the wrath of God? Gen 3 doesn't mention the children of God, I think you mean Gen 6. The usual interpretation of the phrase "sons of God" is that these are angels or some other magical being. No, definitely not. Gen 1:26 describes the creation of man, not the "children of God". Further, it doesn't even begin to suggest what you're proposing. To me it simply reads as saying that God built humankind to look like he did. You are assuming that God is non-physical and solely spiritual. This is not an assumption that the author necessarily shared. He may well have imagined that God was a physical being (at least in part) who looked much as we do. This was a common way for deities to be depicted in the ancient Near East. That may well have been what early Jews believed, but I don't think that you can derive that form the text in the way you're using. The two chapters are written by different authors from slightly different traditions. Trying to mush them together into a single harmonious text is, in my opinion, a big mistake. No. It's the other way around. The "daughters of men" are... well, just that; the daughters of men, i.e. people, humans, Homo sapiens. The "sons of God" are the ones who are some sort of other. Except that this theory can't possibly be true. For a start, the offspring of these unions were likely synonymous with the giants of Gen 6:4. They are, at the least, described as "mighty men". But Neanderthals were not larger than modern humans.In fact we know what the offspring of matings between h. sapiens and H. neanderthalis would look like; they'd look like us. That's because they are us. Modern humans do have Neanderthal heritage. If God's flood was meant to wipe out these hybrids, then he failed miserably. Even if it were sufficient reason, you have the problem that there is no evidence that it actually happened. There is no record of a massive flood around the Mediterranean at that time. What's more, the tow groups - H. sapiens and H. neanderthalis - overlapped each other both chronologically and geographically. To flood one would have been to flood the other. In other words, there would have had to have been a literal ark for that to work, and that would not have been possible with the incredibly primitive technology of the time. Either that or there never was any such crime because the story never took place. I think you need to face facts; regardless of whether the authors intended it to be taken literally or not, the flood story recounted in Genesis never was never a real event.Mutate and Survive

Thanks, Admin. I appreciate the heads up and the welcome.I'm always looking for an intelligent discussion and it looks like this place has a good amount of that. I appreciate the opportunity to share what I've discovered in the last half century.Should I leave off a signature until I'm no longer a newbie? If so, how many posts qualifies? I love playing by the rules and the spirit behind them.

How about no links to advertising websites that want peoples money? How does that work for you? Works best for us.

Hi Lone77Star,There are no explicit rules about signatures. There are a set of Forum Guidelines that serve as a guide for both members and moderators, and moderators deal with every situation, including signatures, on a case-by-case basis. Links to commercial sites are not consistent with this advertising-free website's mission. I left the deactivated URL's in your signature, but I would be more comfortable if they were removed entirely.During discussion, links to pages containing information supporting your position (see Rule 5) that happen to be at a commercial site are fine.Welcome aboard!

Im interested....what have you learned?

Check out Message 375.--Percy

Looks like he learned a lot of woo and pseudoscience crap.Nothing to see here folks, keep moving along.ABEWhats the deal with these woo-meisters and their need for "special" formatting?Edited by Theodoric, : Format thought

Hi, Granny. Thanks for the welcome."Modified literalist position?" Why not "modified metaphorical position?" I could call yours, "modified bigoted position." Do such labels make you feel better? Do they help?Purely mythic? Outstanding. And I suppose you have proof of this. That would save a lot of effort in being able to dismiss the entire book. Wow. Can you share this proof?You pose an approach to myth which is quite well-worn and which has some minor merit, but it isn't "gospel" on the treatment of myth.

Cases in point

• Troy
  
• Minoan Crete
  
• Mycenaean Greece
  
• Amazon warriors
  
• Ulysses's island of Ithaca
  
• Atlantis
  

Some scientists of the past, concluded in advance (not at all the mode of scientific method), that there was nothing to these myths. Five of these have been found to have substantial evidence in support of a past real event and/or location upon which the myth was based.It took an amateur (sloppy one, at that) to scoop on Troy. And an amateur may have scooped scientists on Ithaca, too.

Logical Fallacies and Bias

Deciding that something is unworthy of study before a thorough investigation, is unworthy of science. Yet, regrettably some scientists do this. Far too many skeptics do this, but that is the nature of "skepticism"to remain biased (toward doubt).Not many years ago, the myth of Atlantis was dismissed because there wasn't any evidence of a civilization that far back. But this was an argument to ignorance (logical fallacy). The recent discovery of Gobekli Tepe, Turkey (9500 BC) blows that argument out of the water. My own research of the literature turned up three items that prove an Atlantis-like event occurred right when Plato said the legendary island collapsed into the Atlantic. One of those pieces of scientific evidence is a veritable "smoking gun" in the death of Atlantis. Was Atlantis a reality? I don't think I will be going out on a limb to say, "We don't know, yet." Such restraint and humility trumps skepticism, because they lack the bias that scientific method warns against.Anyone can refuse to look. That's their business. There were a number of so-called scientists who refused to look below the Clovis horizon in North American anthropology; in fact, ridiculing those who did. That's not science. That's dark age egotisma know-it-all attitude that stands in the way of discovery rather than helping to illuminate.No evidence? So very typical of the truly biased: Yes, there is evidence, blatantly overlookedover two hundred myths worldwide that suggest that a worldwide flood might have happened. One of those happens to reside in Genesis. And, oh yes, Homo neanderthalensis disappeared at the same time. I'd call that ~200 pieces of evidence. Do we need something more substantial? You bet we do. But we also need to dispense with unsupported dismissiveness (as you've displayed) and self-indulgent ridicule (that other skeptics have displayed).I appreciate you calling it like you see it. I can't help but return the favor.

@Theodoric, thanks. Sounds good to me.

Thanks, Percy.I understand the policy and concur with the spirit of it. The original signature contained links to no website which explicitly sold anything, though one contained peripheral ads, and one other contained a donate button (giving away all articles for free). I have removed both of these and substituted two others. Now, all 3 links are to "ad-less" websites.And thanks for the welcome!Edited by Lone77Star, : corrected spelling "explicit" to "explicitly"

Well, @Theodoric. Don't hurt yourself with that sharp stick. At least @Granny Magda attempted to tackle specifics.Pseudoscience? Anthropology saying that Homo sapiens is at least 200,000 years old? What books have you been sniffing?And "special" formatting? Do I detect a note of envy-provoked spite? Or is it merely a miserly curmudgeon's bitterness that someone else has a talent? Okay, so I had 20+ years experience as a Hollywood artist. (Maybe you were merely trying to add more gravitus [weightiness] to the delightfully cute avatar you use.)Anyone can work from a hypothesis that there is nothing to a specific myth or legend--that it remains merely a story with no basis in fact. That's one hypothesis. But is it the right one?I happen to have a different hypothesis.Of course, I usually don't like discussing specifics with curmudgeons. Egos are such messy things; I despise my own.

Sure you could. If you want to start being a dick this early into proceedings, then calling me a bigot would be the perfect way to go. Well the stories in Genesis clearly contain a mythic element. They are morality plays, symbols about God and our relationship with him. This is undeniable. The question here is whether you have a shred of proof that the stories are also true accounts on some level. In the absence of such proof, I shall assume that they are merely mythic.You go on to mention Troy. This is in fact a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The remains of Troy are enough to convince us that the city was real and even that some parts of the myth might have been real, but they are not sufficient to convince us that Zeus and Poseidon are real. In a similar way, even if you had archaeological evidence that some of the locations mentioned in Genesis were real, it ought not be enough to convince us that man was made from clay. The supernatural elements of the story require a far greater level of evidence before such unlikely things can be believed.And you don't really have much archaeology for Genesis anyway. I am not being biased. I am merely basing my opinion on the available evidence. I notice that you provide no evidence that the Genesis creation story is true. Meanwhile, there is a vast plethora of evidence showing that it is false. We know how humanity evolved and it was not from clay. Yup. Rightly so. It's still dismissed now and unless you feel like providing us with some evidence that existed (which I notice you do not), then it will continue to be dismissed. That's how things generally work; evidence first, then belief. No evidence, no belief.The topic is not Atlantis, so that topic properly belongs in its own thread. Although I have to say, if you want to convince people you're not a nut, Atlantis may not be the one to choose. That's another topic again. Nothing to do with the flood. And all of them disagree on the specifics. This is evidence against the flood. You have not presented a shred of evidence that places the flood at that date, nor have you addressed the objections that I raised previously. In fact your entire post fails to address my points. The only reason you have to place the flood at this date is a rather dubious number game that you've played. That is puny evidence indeed compared with the obvious lack of a worldwide flood layer in the Earth's geology. A single flood capable of wiping out such a geographically widespread species as H. Neanderthalensis would leave evidence in the rocks. No such evidence exists. End of story. In fact the evidence of interbreeding between us and our Neanderthal cousins suggests a gradual demise for the species, not a sudden catastrophe.Oh, by the way, a cursory check reveals that the youngest definite Neanderthal remains are over 30,000 years old, not 28,000 years old, so you have your figures wrong on that score. What's more, there is evidence that might be interpreted as evidence of Neanderthal activity from well after your flood date. There are also remains of a Cro-Magnon population with extensive Neanderthal traits dating back to 24,000 years. This leaves your hypothesis in tatters I think. If you want to return the favour you might try actually addressing my arguments. I took on your points, you seem to have almost entirely ignored mine and gone off on a side issue.Your posts so far are long on supposition and short of evidence. The nearest thing to evidence you have is a sort of "this could have happened" attitude. Well that's great, but unless you have concrete evidence that it did happen (and can deal the wealth of evidence that shows that it did not) then you really have nothing.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

Hi Lone77Star,Unless you've disabled Javascript you've seen the notice that this thread closes for summations at message 400. There's a "Thread Details" link near the top of the page, and if you click on this you'll see the details about Summation Mode on the right hand side.If you post a copy of your first post to the Proposed New Topics forum I'll promote it into a new thread. If you click on "Edit" or "Peek" you'll be able to see the raw markup for cut-n-pasting.

With no evidence. Therefore pseudoscience. The woo is strong in this one. Provide some sort of rationale for this radical interpretation. Show us the original language and how you foot to that interpretation. What version of the "Bible" are you using for this bizarre interpretation. Do you not think it is a little strange that no one has seriously proposed this before you?Granny touches quite well on other points but I ahve a couple. Please show evidence for the flood in the geological record. Also, what is your mechanism for how th Neanderthals and the hybrid population were wiped out but not Homo Sapiens. I assume you will just present more wild ass conjecture. Hmm, no. Remember this is a science thread. You are reaching a conclusion on based upon wildass conjectures with no evidence to back them up. That makes your conclusions meaningless."crime"? really? You want to bring in moralizing to this thread? Sounds like a psychological issue, get therapy. I love and embrace my ego.But then again depends on what definition of ego you are using. If you are using the Freudian concept, you are a bigger woo-meister than I thought.