Alternative Creations

What? I always assumed that God in the states was generally pictured by people in the same as it was in the UK - of an old man sitting on a cloud? Is this not the case?If you asked the average man in the street to describe the appearance of god, you would not go far wrong with the following: This message has been edited by CK, 11-Sep-2005 07:23 PMThis message has been edited by CK, 11-Sep-2005 07:23 PMThis message has been edited by CK, 11-Sep-2005 07:33 PM

LOL, cute. Alas, if only art could show what eternal, infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful would look like, that sure would be neat!

Very well. I will restate.Why add the silly idea of an infinite, eternal, all-knowing and all-powerful being?

Yes, it is the case. A lot of Christians don't like to admit it, but it is true.

Thanks very much for your tips re. writing style.Yes, what I gave you was from a summary, which I thought we could address point by point, there is more info for the assertions, but I'm finding that getting a view of the big picture first, may help reduce misunderstandings later, and give us a framework to go by, instead of establishing the beginnings of the discussion by exchanging isolated comments here and there, which, at this site, seem to go all over the place.In answer to your first question -Your point you mentioned before, that the Akkadian that the Epic is based on predates the Hebrew that Genesis is based on, is the reason why few scholars would agree with the first scenario.
To keep these posts short and sweet, I will leave the next point for my next post.

Indeed, why add that? Unless of course, it's true!

You are admirably glib, however that is not really an answer. Given that there are myriad creation myths, none of which have any factual support, why believe in any of them?Those who have faith do so because it makes them feel good. It does that in many ways, but to think that a comforting story is real simply because it is comforting is not the act og a reasonable mind.Think deeply. Why do you believe in a divine creation when the facts as they have been discovered do not support it?

Or even more importantly, why believe one particular myth over any other given myth? What makes the other myths wrong?

Habit, indoctrination, peer pressure?

I don't know why you think that the notion that there has been a worldwide flood would ever be conceived of as a comforting thought!!!! It never ceases to amaze me how evolutionists always say they want proof, and when you show them writings all pointing to some event, in various degrees of accuracy, they poo poo it, then the next minute they are confidently espousings things that happened millions of years ago that nobody has ever witnessed...and they say creationists aren't being reasonable??? If there was a worldwide flood, you would expect that story to be a part of the historical record all over the place! No doubt if there wasn't any, no doubt, evolutionists would say, how come no one's ever written about that if it did happen?? I think it's more a case of people finding comfort that there wont be any divine judgment for sin, the old 'I'm ok, You're ok' philosophy, that I think some folks are looking for comfort in evolutionary theory.

By the way, I do believe the facts support divine creation. I'm not saying there aren't unanswered questions but then, honest evolutionists admit they have unanswered questions too, you just have to read the small print in their books to find that out.

As I said, the common sense that comes from knowing right and wrong, good and evil, is written on our consciousness. Something that is written requires a writer.I'm just interested in the truth no matter where I find it, and I don't find it necessary to mock the faith of those who have come to different conclusions about what is truth.This message has been edited by GDR, 09-11-2005 10:08 PM

Here's the problem Steve, what you are offering up as proof has some serious trouble.First, not all writings date from the same period, nor do they describe the same event. There is a flood in Babylonia myth, and flooding in Egyptian myth, but the Egyptian flooding is the regular annual flooding of the Nile, not a world wide destructive event. And those two cultures are extremely close in both time and geography.Just because multiple myths contain water doesn't mean that they speak of the same actual event.Water as a symbol is very universal. It's incredibly important for life, it's frequently a symbol for rebirth (I would suggest this has alot to do with the natural processes of birth). As such, it makes sense that stories about rebirth would contain water. The Great Flood is one such rebirth story.The second problem is this idea that the stories have "varying degrees of accuracy".Other than coming from a foundation that presumes that the Biblical Flood story is factual, how would you figure out the "accuracy" of other flood myths. It seems to me that you are judging accuracy as "how similiar this myth is to the one in the Bible."But couldn't you just as easily say that the Biblical story is very inaccurate because it deviates a great deal from the Navajo Flood story?The myths themselves do not offer us "proof" of an event. If they did the Earth would be riding on the back of a giant Turtle and there would be a river on which we could row into Hades.Additionally, many many fields of science (geology, linguistics, biology, radiology, astronomy, paleontology, archaeology, etc, etc) tell us that the Earth has been around much longer than six thousand years.So, even if all the myths in the world were extremely similiar in their story (which frankly they aren't), we'd still have a great deal of trouble discarding all the evidence accumulated over centuries of research which tells us that the six thousand year deadline is very suspect. No one is suggesting that because the Flood story is not literally true, therefore there is no God. Far from it. Many (most?) scientists believe in God. Many (most?) religious leaders will tell you that the "truth" of the Flood story is in the meaning of the story as a spiritual account, not as a historical record.Please remember that no scientist is out there trying to disprove God. First, because we can't do that. God is not "disprovable" and is therefore immune to science. Second because we really have no interest in trying to do that.Philosophers on the other hand... watch you're back around those guys.

There are always unanswered questions in science. It's the most important part of science.Remember also, that evolutionists aren't concerned with "creation". The Theory of Evolution is very hands off as to how the ball got started.It's completely compatable to say "God started life on Earth through some divine spark. That life then evolved through many forms over vast amounts of time until we reach today."Some people may disagree with it, but ToE doesn't care.Evolutionists only get skittish when people start saying that T-Rex and the turkey were created on the same day.

Aren't right and wrong / good and evil a matter of perspective?Was the Inquisition right or wrong? Good or evil? How about the Crusades? How about the Muslims who fought against the Crusaders? I'm sure both sides of that conflict were absolutely convinced they were the good guys and fighting evil.It may be that humanity is the only species where an individual can put himself in the shoes of another. In this case, we have a profound ability to judge the "fairness" of an action. But this tremendous feat of imagination doesn't necessarily imply a deity.I think our ideas of morality, of good and evil, come from our ability to look at a position from different perspectives. People generally agree that there are evil people in the world (Dahlmer for example) and we agree to this because they take actions with no regard to the harm they cause others. They act without putting themselves in the others shoes.It's simplistic, but I think reasonable, to infer all of human morality as arrising from that perspective.