Random God Rant

I don't think your argument is as strong as you think.I could easily see a Muslim co-opting similar reasoning to argue that the Bible imperfectly presents concepts that find their true fruition in the Koran.Also, your argument depends on the assumption that the Babylonian and Biblical concept of the cosmos represents reality. To say that this goes well beyond even YEC is to engage in substantial understatement.

Faith, do you understand that the Hebrews/Jews/Yhawists, did not exist before Babylone?Do you understand that? They do not exist. There were no such people as the Jews till much later in history. Do you understand this?The hebrews don't start showing up as a distinct group of people till about 12-1300 BCE. The Babylonian/Summerian culture goes back to 3500BCE! Meaning, that the stories in genesis predate the bible authors by about 2000 years!Infact, the Epic of Gilgamesh was writen about 2500 BCE, and that's where one version of the flood story shows up. It also mentions the god El among other characters.Gilgamesh is one of the oldest writtings known, and it predates the Hebrews by 17-1800 years!Now, if the Hebrews didn't exist at the time of Babylon/Sumeria, how in the heck could they be the ones who have the more "right" version?Further, how is the bible inerrant if their view of the cosomos was so utterly, absurdly, 100% wrong?

Well, let's see what they can do with it. Give us some facts that apply. Anybody can try anything, but the fact is that we have two separate strands of information, the Bible stories and the Babylonian stories, and they enhance each other, and especially enhance the Biblical version. Not at all. It is strictly a logical point that the one's predating the other proves nothing whatever about the authenticity of either.From there, starting from my belief in the Bible's authenticity, yes, it is easy to then make the point that the other myths do not falsify it but in fact confirm it. Nonsense.

So, deal with their cosmological perspective then. If the bible is inerrant, how come they were so wrong?

ABRAHAM was the first of the Israelites, Yaro, what is your confusion here? He was chosen by God from among the Babylonians, or the Chaldeans. From Abraham came the Hebrews/Jews/Yahwists. I have no problem with the history and I don't understand what problem you are having with it. "Show up" where? From the Bible accounts Abraham left Ur around 1900 BC. The people that descended from him entered Canaan hundreds of years later. Is that when they "show up?"The Babylonian culture was one of the first to develop after the Flood, yes. So? What IS your point? Don't YOU get that Abraham and his family CAME OUT OF THE SAME CULTURE that produced the Babylonian stories? So what? I KNOW all this. I do not accept the dating of the scholars however, but the dating of the traditional understanding of the Bible's chronology. But everything else is not in dispute. Abraham came from a line of ancestors back to Noah just as the Chaldeans/Babylonians did. Abraham's ancestor Shem, Noah's son, who had been on the ark, was still living during his lifetime, lived another 200 years or more after Abraham's birth if I calculated correctly. Whatever Noah knew was passed on through his sons. All the peoples in Abraham's time came from Noah. All of them would have had some version of those stories.But only Abraham was chosen by God to head a people to be God's very own and to learn His ways. Moses authored Genesis more than 400 years later. What were his sources? At least all the stories passed down to him, all the stories known to the surrounding cultures, which he would have known, plus he was a prophet and heard from God directly. The form of the cosmos that was given at the Creation was lost at the Flood if not also to some extent at the Fall. We have no idea what it was like at the Creation except for the Biblical account. There is no source of information other than the Bible and Babylonian stories for the idea of the waters above and below etc. Science's uniformitarianism would have it that such a drastic alteration in the cosmos has not occurred. The Bible says otherwise. What we have now is not what existed then.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-23-2005 12:13 AM

How were they wrong? 1) We don't know what waters above and below and windows in the heavens mean. The windows may be metaphorical, however -- though some may have taken them literally as that illustration suggests. But this state of things, which describes the situation at the Creation, no longer describes it after the Flood in any case.And 2) The Bible doesn't speak of "pillars of the earth" as far as I recall, but I could be wrong. It doesn't describe what is seen in that picture. The picture can't be put on a par with the Bible, although to visualize the continents as so deep and surrounded by sea strikes me as at least as sophisticated a vision of geology as the much more recent Medieval maps of the world were of geography.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-23-2005 12:26 AM

This much , per se, is probably sound, but... Is circular reasoning. If the similarity of the Babylonian myths has no value in disproving the veracity of the Biblical account, neither can it have any probative value in validating a preconceived assertion.I see from your other post that you are not going to defend the literal veracity of the Babylonian/Biblical cosmology. A wise move on your part IMO, but a tacit admission that Biblical inerrancy as you conceive it must admit of metaphorical interpretations when external evidence renders a literal interpretation absurd.Which opens you up to being a little more flexible on the YEC issue, should you ever feel the need...

Interesting. I used an almost identicle statement in high school-It was something like this - "The fact that Tim's term paper is identical to mine is a GREAT confirmation that my term paper is accurate."Unfortunately, they still considered it copying

Nonsense. This is a matter of starting from a premise. If you take the Bible at face value, as the communication from God it clearly presents itself to be, then the existence of similar stories from the surrounding cultures enhances its claim. Syllogism, not circular reasoning. But of course it validates it. It claims to be God's own communication, and logically it makes sense that such myths would exist in the neighborhood of the writing of such a communication. I'm merely not defending the cosmology as it is presented in the drawing, because who knows what "windows of heaven" literally physically refers to, or "waters above and below." The drawing is a schematic or symbolic or literalized vision of it, but there are many other possibilities for representing it. I certainly never read "windows in heaven" as anything but a poetic expression of the release of rain -- or "the waters above" -- onto the earth, not a description of physical openings of some sort. Somebody's drawing of what the Bible suggests to him is not the Bible itself. But I do accept what the Bible SAYS though not the drawing, if you get the difference here. Except that you are not distinguishing between what the Bible says and the drawing, which is merely somebody's representation of the same cosmology as is described in the Bible but may not be an accurate representation.

How can you "copy" your own cultural creation story that's been handed down from your forefathers?

Things like justice, love, wrath etc derive from God. Rather than them being universal conventions to which he must adhere it can be taken that he IS these things. We love because were made in his image and likeness; we're plugged in, if you like, to his characteristic. But saying "God circumvent justice" would be the same as saying "God, circumvent yourself". That "God can do anything" doesn't mean God can contradict himself. He IS just and cannot not be just. He IS love he cannot not be love. He IS wrath, he cannot not be wrath.Consider a tennis ball lying on the ground. Various laws of nature operate on it. The law of gravity wants to pull the tennis ball to the centre of the earth but can't because the laws holding the surface of the earths atoms together is stronger. Both forces; "gravity" and "holding-atoms-together" are 'under tension' due to the resistance exerted on them by the other. In balancing each other out they are at equilibrium. But they are not at rest, they are not 'satisfied' due to being under this tension from the each other. Gravity cannot have the tennis ball where it wants, the earths surface can't 'relax' because it is being strained due to gravities effect on the ballConsider God being just, love, wrath as laws of (his) nature. At the moment these things are under tension, he isn't loving as fully as he must, he isn't expressing his wrath as fully as he must. He isn't judging as he must. At equilibrium maybe - but not satisfied. One day this will change. All these things will be totally satisfied. No more tension due to each aspect being resisted by another. All will come to total relaxation. Fully expressed and fully satisfied.Jesus on the cross was God's way of satisfying his love/justice/wrath completely - without any of the requirements of each of them being circumvented.Why circumvent when you can resolve.... We are doomed alright. We were born sinners and cannot but sin. We sin in fact because we are sinners. We were born on a default path to hell. But Adam and Eve weren't so shackled. You need to address why God knowing the choice they would make influences the choice they made. Will you ponder that and come back on it? Consider:Lotto numbers will be pulled on Saturday evening in Ireland. If you could see the future would it affect the numbers that are pulled or are you just seeing it happen before it happens - without affecting it in the least? Or have you just run down the shop to buy a lotto ticket We need to concentrate on choice and there being one or not to progress further here I think The question is a serious one. You say the dice was loaded against us by God. But it must work both ways. If they had chosen the 'right' choice because they in fact had no choice then our loving God (instead of hating him) would have been an automatic, a given. Automatons whichever way you look at it. But what love can be expressed to automatons. What wrath can be expressed to automatons.This makes no sense...

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

Your forefathers heard other people (babylonians / greeks / etc) talking about creation, they thought their story sounded good and adapted it as their own. What's so strange or unusual about that ?

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

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But, like Giordi LaForge says, you don't have to take my word for it...

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Levar Burton says that, not Geordi LaForge, silly.But don't you love Reading Rainbow?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-23-2005 08:16 AM

Crashfrog

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Why be SO detached?

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For some of us, an uncomfortable truth is preferable to a comforting lie.