cooper,
I would like to check out the fatima link, but my computer says “URL not found on this server.” Do you have another link?
Just would like to reminds you guys that there are some other religions, some cultures that are not based on the testaments.
Can genesis be a kind of simple explanation for people thousands years ago who did not ready for evolution theory?
cmkeller:
It has been a long time since I read exodus (in any version). Is there a scriptural reference for the number of witnesses at Mt Sinai? That number seems surprisingly large to me, if we begin from teh position that these folk were all slaves who left Egypt (from the vicinity of the capital) en masse.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
The book of Numbers Chapters 1 through 10 can be said to describe the preparation of the Israelites for their march to the promised land. If I am not mistaken, these chapters take place within 70 days of crossing the Red Sea (and are about the same time as the events of Mt. Sinai.)
Ch. 1 v. 46 and Ch. 2 v. 32, use the number 603,550. This was the counting of the able-bodied fighting men age 20 and older. This did not include the Tribe of Levi.
That’s are starting point.
Tinker
oops! That should read “That’s a starting point.”
According to Exodus12:37, KJV:
There would also be a nearly-equal number of women, and they would have had several children per couple.
- Rameses refers here to a city in Egypt, named after the Pharaoh, Rameses II, who some claim is the unnamed Pharaoh who finally let the slaves go, and then changed his mind and sent his army out to bring them back.
I agree with you, that seems like a huge number of people to travel across one of the most inhospitable deserts on Earth. And how was Pharaoh’s army supposed to make them all go back? Surely they were out-numbered by the Israelites?
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
Sorry, I said hmtl instead of html. The correct link is:
http://www.fatima.org/history.html
**
But again, this is little more than a restatement of your earlier position. You say that God made the proteins homologous because the proteins need to serve the same (or a very similar) function, just like human and rat hemoglobin. As I said before, this doesn’t account for vertebrate vs. mollusc lens crystallins, among other things. It isn’t even clear that the proteins in this particular case really need to be homologous- not all actin-binding protein are homologous, for example.
**
I believe I already answered that. No alignment can be produced between vertebrate and molluscan crystallins. I’m not trying to play semantic games with “homologous” here; I’m not claiming that “similar proteins serve similar functions” is wrong by pointing to nonsimilar parts that aren’t involved in the similar task. What I’m saying is that nonsimilar parts acheive similar or identical functions, and highly similar parts can acheive completely different functions.
**
Are you saying, then, that you agree with Phillip Johnson’s position that similar organisms require similar proteins?
Which two are more similar of the following triplets, and why?
turtle, alligator, and bird
cod, lamprey, and human
greater panda, lesser panda, grizzly bear
**
I have alredy given you two examples: lens crystallin and (if memory serves) arginosuccinate lyase, and the domains of gelsolin.
-Ben
One last thing about Deuteronomy: If God dictated the last chapter to Moses before he died, then it would be proof that God knows the future and that we do not truly have free will.
I know, there are other threads here debating that assertion. But maybe one of you will have an answer I haven’t heard yet.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
I mentioned it only in passing, but if you want to speak about problems in the Old Testament, the flood is really one of the biggest. It is absolutely unthinkable that 4, (or in some cases 14) members of each species, even of mammal, could fit onto a single boat - much less a single boat made of wood that was constructed on dry land. I have seen estimates that in order to hold the millions of animals, food and fresh water for 40 days (really closer to 120 days, for the land to begin producing food again, and thats not even considering carnivores) would take a boat several hundred times larger than is known to be possible with conventional techniques. It is not clear we could accomplish such a thing even today, with powerful machines, powerful alloys, and a completely water based operation with thousand of skilled resources. Mind you, this makes no provisions for the fact that 4 animals is not enough to create a viable lineage, that many insects cannot even survive or reproduce with only 4 members - that many animals are dependent on plants that have a cycle of more than nine months ETC ETC ETC.
Another unrelated problem is that Noah did not have access to many of the animals he saved, as they lived exclusively on the australian, north or south american continents and were completely unreachable (most of europe and asia were essentially unknown, but not theoretically unreacheable).
The story of the flood as told is completely and absolutely impossible. I don’t care how many hundreds of pages of commentary you can point to, it flat out cannot be done **as described **. I know your god can do anything he wants, but if he used a series of miracles to build the arc, load the arc, feed the animals etc. then it would have been recorded, just as the miracles that helped lead the Israelites out of Egypt were recorded (even without the primary source, I cannot imagine that such details would be left out of the story). If your scripture is not telling the whole story here (and it cannot be, for as told the story is impossible) then is it just conceivable that the whole story is not being told in the beginning? That maybe the universe took billions of years to create, and humans took millions to evolve? Isn’t that just possible?
I’d heard that the first four books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers) weren’t written down until the time of King David, and that the Book of Deuteronomy was conveniently “discovered” behind an even later king’s throne, supposedly written in the handwriting of Moses.
Unfortunately, I have zilch in the way of evidence or even articles to substantiate the first rumor, and only Carl Sagan’s word in The Demon-Haunted World to substantiate the second. Anybody know of any evidence supporting either claim?
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
jab 1:
you wrote “God knows the future and we do not truly have free will.”
You may have already heard this explanation, but here goes: I decide whether or not I am going to perform a certain act. God can know what I’m going to do in advance, but He doesn’t do anything to influence my decision making. Someone I know once used the analogy of a computer game to explain this idea. There is a computer version of the game Battleship. Before you play you “hide” your ships and then the computer has to find them. Well, when you hide your ships you have to put that information into the computer, but the computer doesn’t use this information when making its guesses about the locations of your ships. Even though it “knows” where your ships are, it plays the game as if it doesn’t.
Ben:
I meant to ask for an example of non-homologous proteins with the same funciton. I’m sorry if I seem like I’m avoiding answering your questions. I could give you an off-the-cuff “Well God did it so there must be a reason” type answer, but that’s not much of an answer. So, if you will bear with me, I will think about your questions and give you the best answer I can.
kiatti:
You asked when Genesis could not be considered a simple explanation for people “not ready for evolution theory?” Why would people not be ready for evolution theory?
Tracer said:
I tell you three times: Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Nobody knows.
Here’s the background:
Traditionalist understanding is that Moses wrote down the entire Torah (less Deut. 34) before dying. Greater share of it was dictated verbatim to him by God. (Special sanctity for the 10 Commandments, written by God himself on those tablets and handed over to Charlton Heston – you’ve seen the pictures!)
Scholarship indicates the following: language use, style, etc. are different in various parts of the Tetrateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers) with three main ingredients: [ul][li]J: Natural storyteller. Uses YHWH to refer to God from the get-go. Likes miracles, theophanies, etc. Focus on Judah and his descendents.[/li][li]E: A bit more naive in style, and with a tendency to look for natural explanations for miraculous events (e.g., where J has Moses raising his hand and parting the waters, E has a mighty wind moving the waters away). Uses Elohim (archaic plural) to refer to God.P: Tendency to fussiness and detail in his writing. Strong focus on ritual, interest in genealogy and how the heroes of Jewish lore tie together by blood. Tends to use YHWH Elohim (rendered “the Lord God” in most English translations) together.[/ul]Most of Deuteronomy appears to be by yet a fourth writer who also wrote, or at least had a hand in, Joshua and Judges.[/li]
By evidence of word use and style, J appears to have written about 950, E shortly after, and D near the end of the kingdoms.
Now, all this is concluded from textual analysis. There is no proof other than the internal textual evidence, either way.
There is a report in II Kings of the priests at the time of King Josiah finding “a new book of the law” which had been hidden in the Temple. There is more than a little suspicious that this book conveniently was found at the time of a reformer king and strongly supports the reforms he was trying to put into place. Stranger things, however, have happened, and a theist must allow for God’s hand at work in that coincidence.
I have my own views on what really happened, on which I have posted at length on other threads. But that’s a pretty quick summary of the opposing views and the genesis of Deuteronomy.
cooper:
You wrote “It is not clear that we could accomplish such a thing even today with powerful machines, powerful alloys and a completely water based operation with thousands of skilled resources.” That was very well put. I could make the very same statement about abiogenesis and evolution. And yet you seem to think that it all happened by accident.
batgirl:
Coper was speaking of the construction of a technolical artifact by human beings. What parallels do you see between that and either abiogenesis or evolution?
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
batgirl:
At least we have repeatable, observable evidence for evolution. There is no evidence for a global flood; in fact, all evidence points to the contrary. You ask kiatta “why would people not be ready for evolutionary theory?” Why, indeed!! You (and others) are obviously not ready now, even with all the facts laid out before you. A simpler civilization with much less scientific background would almost certainly have more trouble accepting that they were not divinely created.
spiritus mundi: I re-read Cooper’s post and I see that what he was specifically referring to the construction of the ark. Still, my point is that I’m puzzled by people who dismiss Biblical accounts as being “impossible” and yet are willing to accept that the entire universe was created by accident.
hardcore,
Would you like to tell me what this “repeatable, observable evidence” for evolution is? IIRC there is quite a bit of debate among the evolutionists about the idea of punctuated equilibrium. If the evidence is as you say, why is there disagreement among the evolutionists?