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Author Topic:   The Impossibility Of The Flood
Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2358 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 67 of 100 (561132)
05-19-2010 1:40 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by Dr Adequate
05-18-2010 12:09 AM


Dr. Adequate writes:
When it comes to things that really exist and have a well-evidenced naturalistic explanation, they insist that the naturalistic explanation is bogus and that God did it by magic. But when it comes to this miraculous flood that the Bible attributes to the will of God, they try to write God out of the picture and seek a purely naturalistic explanation.
It strikes me that this apparent dichotomy is really a thoroughly self-consistent pattern, if you accept a view that the fundie position is essentially nothing more than a denial of science. In effect, the sole point of all fundie assertions is to say that science is wrong, no matter what science happens to be saying.
So when science says, "Based on the evidence, the global flood didn't happen; countless supernatural interventions, contravening all sorts of unbreakable physical laws, would be required in order for the biblical flood story to be an event that actually occurred," the fundie has to respond, "No, we can explain how the flood happened without all that supernatural stuff, without breaking physical laws."
And when science describes the diversity of life, the basic structures of organisms, or any other directly observable aspect of reality in terms that provide a concise account for its provenance through purely natural processes, requiring no purposive supernatural intervention, the fundie must respond, "No, these things could not have come to be the way they are purely by themselves / by chance / by accident, ..." and so on.
This also seems to fit in with the general property that religious belief is founded on various negations: the notion of God serves to explain things that cannot be explained, answer questions that cannot be answered, do things that cannot be done (like take care of you after you're dead, know you before you are born, etc). It all ends up being sort of oxymoronic.

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 44 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-18-2010 12:09 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2358 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 68 of 100 (561134)
05-19-2010 1:53 AM
Reply to: Message 66 by subbie
05-19-2010 12:51 AM


Re: Application Of Natural Events
subbie writes:
So, Germany was an agent of a loving, just god when it slaughtered 6 million jews.
But what's really scary is: that's not even the worst of it, when you follow through on the implications of this sort of "End Times" world-view. If I recall/understand it correctly, I think there's also this part about expecting a global nuclear holocaust -- and even welcoming it -- because that fits some imaginative interpretation of how the bible describes the Second Coming of Christ.
That's got to be the acme for sickness. If these people were just suicidal, that would be sad, but to be looking forward to global annihilation -- that's truly, unspeakably insane.

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 66 by subbie, posted 05-19-2010 12:51 AM subbie has not replied

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