Is the Bible the Word of God II?

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:

"But one of em,Doctor Zelner i believe,a canadian anthropologist explained in a printed article that there was good reason to use holy books as historical references,since many of them do contain a number of confirmed historical events."
--They sure do.

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BUT that of itself does NOT make them accurate or objectively true.For every virtuos religous leader there are five who see it as
a way of gaining earthly power for themselves ... look at the
middle east today.

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:

"But at the same time,he was warning against using just one or too few references,as most of them are given a tolerence of about 20-40% as a rule when used alone."
--I could agree on these possibilities, (though ofcourse I havent encountered a problem with biblical dating, that is, on events).

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Would you care to give us some examples of accurate biblical dating
of an independently verified event?Biblical dating puts the Flood 500 years after the establishment
of pharoahs in Egypt ... and they have an unbroken genaology which
lasts a bit longer than 500 years.

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:

"About the study of Sumer now...aside from the Sumerian clay tablets,which historians all accept as the first writen language FOR THE TIME BEING(this was stressed several times by him),there is precious little direct information about the Sumerians."
--I guess the first written language goes hand and glove in who were the first cultures in the first place.

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True. But the oldest found writings do not.

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:
"At this time Adam, Eve and Cain should have been the only humans on earth (Abel was slain by Cain). So where did Cain's wife come from? God does not explain that he made more humans. Did he leave this part out? If so, why?"
--They Simply do not mention other people that were born, as you can see it is perfectly compatable, and also if this is a real problem, than there would only be a couple hundred people by the time of Noah. The bible simply does not mention Cain's wife.

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Exactly the point.There are NOT enough people in existence in Genesis for the
populations that are implied in later chapters.Whether they are mentioned or not, where did they come from ?How old was Cain when he killed Abel and left his mother and
father for the Land of Nod ?Seth was born when Adam was 130, and this appears to be
just after Abel's murder. We are not told how old Adam
was when Cain and Abel were born.Not mentioning other people that were born is insufficient.
Everyone else (even the genealogy of Cain) is mentioned ... so
why leave some out?I can see that this discussion is not going anywhere if we
get stuck on the detail.The conclusion is that the Bible does NOT tell us everything
that happened in those early days.If it omits that, what else is omitted, abridged, or glossed
over ?It IS an inconsistency because it is NOT explained in the Bible.Your assertion that it was just not mentioned, leads me to
wonder why you reject evolution. After all we just haven't
found all the evidence yet.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

Your notion that the Bible is merely "an interpretation of the divine" made by primitive people, is at odds with plenty of valid historical and empirical information. To cite one proof, primitives were incapable of producing the linguistic phenomenon known as ELS (equidistant letter sequences)that is displayed throughout the Old Testament. Modern people, even with the aid of computers, cannot produce a phenomenon like that. In consideration of the notoriously Messianic passage of Isaiah 53:10, for example, beginning with the second Hebrew letter that appears in the phrase "he shall prolong," and counting forward in use of every 20th letter thereafter, the additional phrase "Yeshua [Jesus] is my name" appears. The probability of this combination occuring by random chance is one chance in 50 quadrillion. Thousands of this sort of example appear in the Bible. Man-inspired (secular) works do not display this, so it isn't as if any text of substancial letter content would work. This is the merest fraction of like-impressive and like-undeniable data that the legitimacy of the Bible rests upon.

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While I'm still finding out about ELS in the Hebrew Bible, I have
a question which you may have already come across an answer to (
save me some time perhaps).The ELS that you mention can only be found in the Masoretic text
upon which the King James bible was based. This version on
the bible is considered the LEAST accurate by biblical scholars,
and has evidence of the genealogical data in genesis being changed
for some unknown reason.[See the 'Where did the Egyptians come from ?' thread for another
poster's description of this problem].Should ELS proove the Masoretic text to be THE text for the bible,
my incredulity over the time taken from the flood to a pharoah
led culture in Egypt still needs answering.If ELS is borne out it may proove that some higher intellect
designed the text of the bible, but it also makes it increasingly
likly that the message contained within the bible is NOT an
accurate history of humanity.Another contention within the ELS literature is that it would
be impossible for a human to embed this type of information.Is that based upon the assumption that the ELS appeared on
FIRST writing ?How would that be affected by the possibility of taking a
written text, and maniulating it to embed ELS after the fact ?Admittedly the prominent Rabbi thing is intriguing.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

But if you mean that evolutionists (people who accept by blind faith that NOTHING really did cause physical existence to come into being)

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I don't know anyone who believes by blind faith that nothing caused
physical existence to come into being.I know plenty of people who beleive by blind faith that
God brought existence into being.And I know plenty of people who accept the interpretation of
observable phenomena and evidences as compelling support for
the theory of evolution.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

know more about ultimate origins than creationists, such as those who wrote the Bible, then I disagree with you. The creationist advantage is that the physical and empirical evidences support their beliefs to a greater degree than they (the physical evidences)can be manipulated to support your beliefs.

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Please elaborate this, by, for instance, stating how, without
manipulation, the fossil record directly supports genesis.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:
Please elaborate this, by, for instance, stating how, without
manipulation, the fossil record directly supports genesis.
______________________
For whatever reason, the above is the only part of your message that came with my "reply quote" request, so I'll just discuss without.

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I get that too sometimes ... I think it's to do with nested
quotes.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

I'll use fossil dinosaurs. If dinosaurs evolved during a period of about 150 million years, beginning with an ordinary kind of reptile, then thousands of intermediate creatures must have existed. If creation is true, each kind of dinosaur would appear fully formed right from the start, with no intermediate type of fossil to suggest that these dinosaurs had evolved from a common ancestor. The fossil record of the dinosaur shows that every one of the different kinds of dinosaurs appears fully formed.

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If we consider the fossil record as a sample (in the digital sense)
of the dinosaur population, then we have to consider at what
rate would we require fossils to be preserved in order to fully
reconstruct the evolutionary pattern.I know this may sound convoluted, but consider a continous sine
wave with frequency of 100 Hz. In order to obtain sufficient
sampled data to correctly reconstruct that sine wave, we have to
sample it at a minimum of 200 Hz (i.e. minimum twice as fast), and even then we actually miss a lot of the real data. It works because
a sine wave is a uniform, predictable pattern.If we view the fossil record as a set of sampled data points into
a species, we would require a large (can't even figure out how
large to be honest) number of individuals from each and every
generation to be fossilised to see the sorts of transitions that
you require. This doesn't happen, because fossilisation is a
reasonably rare event.I know that sounds like side-stepping ... but I think the logic
of the argument is sound enough ... and makes either of our
interprerations feasible (unfortunately).There are trends, though, which can be interpreted as 'family'
relationships throughout the fossil record. But, yes, the
fossil record is incomplete.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

From the Flood to a pharaoh led Egypt problem.
--how much time do you say existed between these events?

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According to the Massoretic text (in which ELS appear) there is
367 years.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

Good question about whether ELS is based on first writing. I would think it has to be based on a first writing. I think the idea is that, for instance, the Dead Sea Scrolls would have them. On the other hand, if an ancient copy of the Bible only had the phrase "Behol my name is yeshua" instead of "Behold my name is yeshua" and there was evidence of an interpolation that could be corrected to add the "d" to "Behold" without changing the meaning of the original passage, I'd still be impressed.

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I was thinking more in terms of having a verse, and changing the
order or numbers (hebrew numbers are letters too) or such, so that
the ELS could be incorporated ... I wondered whether Brad might
be embedding ELS into his replies

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

Hawking has mythologized that the reverse of the black hole phenomenon was responsible for the appearance of our universe. Just as the collapsing star shrinks into a singularity of zero size, our universe expanded from such a "point." He spiffed it up a bit in order to get rid of the singularity phenomenon requiring a beginning, but you do, perhaps, see my point. I think this adequately addresses your comment that you don't know anybody who believes that the universe popped into existence from nothing.

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Is a singularity (even of zero size) nothing ?

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

People who believe by blind faith that God did it? It is by faith, but God made it easy on us in that the Bible is so consistent with the observable aspects of reality that lend themselves to comparison with the divinely inspired text.

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So are the Peanuts comic strips, but I don't see anyone claiming
them to be true.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

We agree that "trends in the fossil record" CAN BE INTERPRETED AS "family" relationships, and yes, that the fossil record is incomplete. But I don't think that there is a real problem with the fossil record. There's a problem with the fossil record for evolutionist's because the bones don't match their theory. That's why there's so many problems with their metaphysical philosophy. That's why there's arguments among them about these imaginary evolutionary processes. What, for instance, evolved into wings on a non-flying insect? If we could find even one single transitional form, we would be able to know, immediately, what structures on the non-flying insect evolved into wings. But not one single transitional form has ever been found. There are many fossils of non-flying isects, and there are many fossils of flying insects, but there are no fossils of something in between the two. The same point can be made about flying reptiles (and about countless other creatures). Countless related mutations, then the elimination of those previous populations that had the "fingers" continuing to grow, countless struggles for existence, fingers getting ever longer and killing off the shorter fingered creatures--and at the same time, the series of additional related genetic mistakes generating the wing membrane, the flight muscles growing over the bones that keep suit with this process, teeth and jaws turning into toothless beaks (in the case of Pteranodon, for example), bones becoming hollow in order to make them lighter for flight, etc. I don't have that kind of faith (for the conjecture, not theory, of evolutionism) to account for the absence of evidence.

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It's interesting, though, that if counted as 'limbs' insects
have ten the same as arthropods like crabs and lobsters ...
isn't it ?Maybe the non-winged came from the winged ... or they both came
from something else ... one had limb supression the other
had limb specialisation ... but the point is, yes, the fossil
record is not complete.It IS difficult to imagine (sometimes), but that doesn't make
much of an argument. I find it difficult to imagine that the
whole of mainstream science is wirng about the age of the
earth ... others seem to find that acceptable.I'm sure I've read somewhere about birds missing an enzyme that
would cause teeth if it were present though.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

Let's use the figure of 367 years. Just to be absolutely clear, are you saying that beginning with three couples (Noah's three sons and their wives), and given their "multiple hundreds of years" life spans, amid their commission from God to begin another "be fruitful and multiply" epoch, that the multiplication possibilities implied could not produce a sufficient population for "a Pharaoh culture" within the suggested time frame?

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It's not entirely about populations, but that comes into it.It's a whole philosophy shift into a 'kinghship' based culture
with no belief in Noah's one God (for whom he and his sons had
direct evidence).All of those directly involved folk should still be alive too.There's a thread on this in the biblical inerrancy section.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

Wouldn't your point about the ELS in your latter reply also be applicable, at least in principle, to what I said originally? Who's Brad?

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Well ... I have to agree it IS still impressive!!Check one of Brad McFall's posts

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:

In the sense that "singularity" is a word, and therefore "something," you may be correct. (But how did it get there? Is it physical? If so, you must be saying you believe that physical matter existed throughout the infinite past. Do you believe that?)

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Hmmm .... same argument as 'Where did God come from?' but without
the easy 'Well He's eternal.' get out ... see what you mean.I've heard a friend of mine who lectures in particle physics
talk about particles appearing and disappearing, and about
matter-energy equilibrium ... but it's outside my main interest
I have to confess.

The question I posed is not entirely about population
growth, although that is an important factor.By considering 3rd-world cultures and population dynamics
we might get some general ideas about possible growth,
but I'm sure we can all come up with a set of assumptions
that would appear to back our positions.We cannot know how hard it would have been just to survive
post-Flood.Another factor is about cultural development. Is 367 years
sufficient to move from a clan-based, possibly nomadic
culture to Egypt with pharoah ?Which line did this culture come from ?If we look at population growth as well, then the cultural
development of Egypt took much less than 367 years. That's
just the time from the waters receding to Abraham in the presence
of Pharoah.We also need time for the clans of Shem, Ham, and Japheth to
develop and split apart to form sub-cultures. There would need to
be sufficient population of each clan before a split was feasible.The first grandchildren of Noah were born about 30 years after
the Flood, and so we have to knock 367 to 337 years of cultural
development. We can knock another 30 (min) off this for raising
the grandchildren until they ahd kids. Now we are down to 307
years (approx.) And we would still be splitting a small
population to start a new thread of cultural development.Say Shem's line ultimately lead to Egypt (just for arguments
sake not suggesting it was), and Shem had 10 children
in between year 30 after the flood (AF) and 40AF. That's
not sufficient population to split off I would have thought,
but to give maximum time, say 5 and 5 split. That's two couples
to found Egypt within 300 years.You are unlikely to get kingships until population sizes increase
to a size where government is required. So the start of
the Egyptian court would be delayed for another 50 years
minimum. Long enough for at least one more generation to get
a foot hold. Down to about 250 years now.With many more people, the basic elements of English government
haven't changed that much in the last 250 years. Sure technology
has changed (a lot), but the basic governmental systems
haven't ... and they are rooted in traditions that can be traced
back over a thousand years.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:
Reply:
Since we're responding to the biblical scenario, we have to take into account the fact of longer life spans after the Flood, life spans that gradually tapered down. The range of years in which a woman could bear children could've been far more extensive than what is thought of as normal today. And it is significant that far more children could have been born to people than the comparitively few that are mentioned in the scriptures. As I indicated in another discussion, Cain married an unmentioned someone (his sister) after he was exiled from the region of Adam's homeland.

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In remembrance that only Jesus must be reckoned with . . . (martinkoszegi@yahoo.com)

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--Marty

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I think the longer life-spans add to the problem in this case.The founders of the radically different Egyptian culture would
have near-direct knowledge of the one God through their still-living
clan elders (i.e. Shem, Ham, Japheth, and possibly even Noah).Also, even the isrealites at the time of Moses, fell back to worshipping their 'old' Gods (or at least worshipping in the
old manner), which suggests a religion prior
to the worship of the one God ... but after Noah why would
those old God's be mentioned at all (by people) ?

That's more or less the point, but with Egypt in particular
we have biblical evidence of a very short time for the culture
to arise.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:
QUOTE:
I think the longer life-spans add to the problem in this case.

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The founders of the radically different Egyptian culture would
have near-direct knowledge of the one God through their still-living
clan elders (i.e. Shem, Ham, Japheth, and possibly even Noah).

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Reply:
I don't believe that this indicates a problem other than the tendency of Fallen creatures to reject the ways of the true God. And very early groups could've branched out to begin in new areas that became alienated from the influence of Noah.

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But how many generations do you think would be required for
the influence of Noah and Sons to wane ?I know this is supposition (on both sides), but we are talking
credibility here.Even the grandchildren of Shem etc. would have been raised with
the stories of first hand experience of God.

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:
QUOTE:
Quote:
Also, even the isrealites at the time of Moses, fell back to worshipping their 'old' Gods (or at least worshipping in the
old manner), which suggests a religion prior
to the worship of the one God ...

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Reply:
Prior to the time of Moses and the ten commandments, i.e., the time of their several hundred year exposure to the pagan Egyptian practices, but not the ORIGINAL practice.

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So you are saying that the Pagan God's worshipped by the israelites
were Egyptian in origin ?

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Originally posted by Martin J. Koszegi:
QUOTE:
Quote:
. . . but after Noah why would
those old God's be mentioned at all (by people)?

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Reply:
As a historical backdrop to God's plan of redemption, it seems reasonable to include, among other things, the ongoing tendency of rebellious man to embrace pagan ways, rather than humbly accept the truth and be delivered.

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What I was really meaning is this ... after the Flood any theistic
tradition that is NOT centred on the one God had to have been
made-up by someone, from scratch.Therefore, this would not be considered as an OLD god, but
as a new God who is better to worship than Noah's God.

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Originally posted by RedVento:
What about cultures outside Northern Africa and the Middle East? Chinese culture has been around since before the flood and has remained, with no evidence of Jewish interference. How does this get explained by the flood?

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A thought just occurred to me on this ... that is that this year is
the year 4699 in the Chinese calander, and they basically have
one year for each of ours ... so the YEC interpretation of a flood
at 4500 years ago is clearly incorrect.