The Faith & Religion mega Thread

at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death.

While I of course know that "Lord Death is coming for me," He is not here yet, and therefore I am not yet obsessed with His inevitable arrival.

Of course, I already realize that, when He comes for me, my entire life will in due time be reduced to a tombstone, which will eventually become unreadable. "I get that. But I'm not dead yet."

I'm gonna do my best to stick around on this planet until I d ...

Good 6 part astronomical evidence series started on Daystar today. This enables online viewing same episode. I've ordered its book offer.

Major Adjustment

While I find mrmazda's above post and link completely non-scientific as not only is there but there can be no evidence that proves a Divine Creator, I have an apology to deliver.

Apparently the actual scientific evidence that at one time the Earth actually was entirely covered in water is growing, largely from studies on the most ancient rocks known which are in Australia. This is vastly different from proof of The Flood, since WaterWorld Earth was between 3.2 and 4 Billion years ago, and only could have occurred at massively increased temperatures that existed during Earth's Infancy. The evidence is that this water still exists but is locked up mainly in 2 minerals hundreds of kilometers below the Earth's surface. The percentage of water in these minerals is roughly only 2% but because the layer below the very thin crust is hundreds of miles thick, the total volume of water held in these minerals has a total far greater than what exists under the cooler temperatures for the last 3 billion years and has existed on and near the Earth's surface.

The reason I'm apologizing is the beginnings of the evidence supporting this hypothesis began a few years ago, and I never mentioned it. Make no mistake, I wasn't trying to hide anything from myself or anyone else. It was just that it is still theoretical that our home planet was ever a waterworld, but the evidence is growing and I consider it due diligence to report the growing confidence that it is at least possible, albeit so very long ago under such extreme circumstances.

Originally Posted by enorbet Apparently the actual scientific evidence that at one time the Earth actually was entirely covered in water is growing, largely from studies on the most ancient rocks known which are in Australia.

Looking for points of agreement here, I'm glad to see science finally beginning to catch up with the Bible.

Originally Posted by Genesis 1:2 Now the earth was formless and desolate, and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep, and God’s active force was moving about over the surface of the waters.

In case it isn't immediately apparent, the waters covered the entire surface of the earth. Just a few lines further on, we see

Originally Posted by Genesis 1:9-10 [9]Then God said: “Let the waters under the heavens be collected together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. [10] God called the dry land Earth, but the collecting of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

So I won't knock progress in the right direction. And it could even have been more than 4 billion years back. That account is over 3500 years old. Funny how they knew back then, isn't it? Moses had 'all the knowledge of the Egyptians' but this stuff was not in their legends.

I'm fairly certain that there is not enough water now-frozen on this planet to fully cover Mount Everest.

However, I frankly see no point in attempting to align "21st Century understanding" with writings that were made many thousands of years ago. What they recorded was that their world was inundated. (Whether "Mount Ararat" was included is unclear. Nonetheless, it was a catastrophe involving a devastating loss of life.) At the time, they didn't even know that they lived on "a planet." No one did.

They described what they had experienced in the only context that they knew, and I simply advise that we should now take what they wrote at face value. They wrote that "the[ir] entire world" was flooded, and to them, at that time, these words were true. This is "truth" enough.

Today, we know that we live on a planet. We can also calculate how much H2O is on that planet. Armed with this information, we can now "argue" (maybe even "scientifically calculate?") how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

And: "Genesis 1/2" is even more of a myth. Just let the story sit where it lies, and don't poke too much into its foundations.

Well, enorbet will tell you not to argue with science

I'm personally thinking Mount Everest may not have been that tall in the early days. It seeme there was a good bit of water covering earth, because the order of events is

1. Earth being covered with water.[Genesis 1:2]
2. Waters 'above and beneath the expanse' as a water canopy was put in place.[Genesis 1:6-7]
3. Waters collected & dry land appears.[Genesis 1:9-10]

There's also the interesting question of when exactly the earth's crust was fractured into tectonic plates. No other planet that men have explored has tectonic plates. Volcanoes are elsewhere, but not earthquakes. The planetary crusts are one piece. It would also be unlikely that God would declare everything on earth to be "very good" if earthquakes or volcanoes were going to be a continual hazard. [Genesis 1:31]

Originally Posted by Albert Einstein God may be subtle, but he is not malicious.

So it seems more likely to me that these tectonic plates appeared later.

We know there were considerable tectonic disturbances around the time of the Flood. Mount Ararat, incidentally, is immaterial. It wasn't called "Mount Ararat" until the twelfth or thirteenth century. Turkish tourism has simply done a good job selling that notion. The Bible records

Originally Posted by Genesis 8:3-4 [3]Then the waters began to recede progressively from the earth. By the end of 150 days, the waters had subsided. [4] In the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Arʹa·rat.

Today, there known as the Kurdish mountains in Iraq. The Ark has almost certainly vanished long ago, although Josephus somewhere claimed to have seen it. He does mention a specific peak (Section 19). https://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/w...es/apion-1.htm

EDIT: It's good to know Armenia has been one of the most mobile place names in History. It seemed to be a country bordering the Jordan in Moses's day, but moved kind of North-East in an Arc to where it is today. My source is the various online maps which are without fail inaccurate. But Armenia moved.

Sundialsvcs is correct that there is not enough water on and in the Earth's Crust to cover Mt. Everest, and by an extremely large margin. The water discovered that could cover the Earth to such a degree existed before there was plate tectonics and the resulting continents. The upheaval of widespread volcanic activity combined with temperatures exceeding 700 degrees Centigrade just below the surface allowed the water to be free of combination with the minerals that would be subsumed into what would become Earth's Mantle as the Earth cooled. That water makes up only 2 percent of those minerals but the Mantle is vastly more massive, being orders of magnitude thicker than Earth's Crust, thus the massive amount of captured and combined water existing now in the mantle. (Illustration attached below)

Science is by no means "catching up" to any scripture. The Earth was not "formless" and the water did not rain down from "the firmament" since the Earth is not floating in a celestial sea of water, and the Biblical Flood never happened on a global scale. It's physically impossible.

Anyone actually interested in the Science of existence of this evidence for this water and it's profound implications can start here

https://www.newscientist.com/article...ll-the-oceans/

I believe that "earthquakes" have been detected on Mars and maybe also on the Moon.

However, my essential opinion is this: "This is pointless." No one is earning any Brownie Points™ by arguing in this direction. These ancient writings were made from a necessarily ancient perspective. They wrote from the only perspective that they knew.

Today, there is no more practical value in this pursuit than "counting angels on the head of a pin." We have strayed well beyond the limits of our actual abilities to gather practical, objective knowledge. So, we are therefore now merely arguing with ourselves. Pointlessly. It's time to move along to better subjects.

In my very frank opinion, it is nonsensical to "take ancient writings as literal text," and then to seek to "map them literally to '21st Century scientific understanding.'" I personally find no reason to imagine an "Almighty GOD" lurking out there, who "had to be proven right." After all, how could He meaningfully speak to His people from a perspective that they would not come to know for more than two thousand years?

Of course, also with the realization that everything that we now think that we "know" will in due time also be proven to "be completely wrong," three thousand years hence? The thing that "would totally suck" about "being GOD" would simply be that you could never talk to anybody ...

Interesting! Sundialsvcs is correct that quakes have been detected on other worlds but business_kid is correct that we don't yet know of any other worlds that demonstrate tectonic dynamics. I agree with sundialsvcs that scriptures, all of them not just Christian, are valuable and interesting but none of them are scientific in the context of the past 1000 years. It is indeed utter folly to expect literal interpretation, let alone translation, and for many, many reasons.

That belief creates a myopic "proving the book by the book" sort of Confirmation Bias. This is completely visible in the link that nmrmazda posted a few posts above. In it for example, Dr. Hugh Ross, "an old earth creationist" who is also a controversial and convoluted astrophysicist, mentions that it bothered him that the Christian Bible never once used the word "Universe", so he solved that by interpreting "heavens" as "Universe". Problem solved!... if such "Deus Ex Machina" wriggling were actually aligned with the rules of Logic but they aren't. It is precisely assuming the desired Conclusion in the Premise.

I can't help but wonder how any "literal interpretation" Believers draw the lines at where they consult the Bible for valid information and where they stop. There are obviously a vast array of very different belief systems supported by the hundreds of different sects who read very different meanings into the same or very similar words. One example is "Young Earth vs Old Earth" but far more telling are such obviously Bronze Age influenced interpretations such as Earth Centrism, the Firmament, the nature of stars (even that our Sun IS one) and the source of Light let alone the nature of Space.

Sorry, but The "Emperor has no clothes".

In my opinion, the proper answer is very simple: "They wrote them as they saw them." And, very simply, "I don't think that we should try to hold them to any standard higher than that." From their point of view, for example, "the entire world" was(!) flooded. Why isn't that enough?

"Amighty GOD," from His eternal perspective, would not only be able to see the "scientific fallacies" of His ancient people's perspective, but would also be able to see the fallacies of our own points of view. "Another three thousand years" is a long time for us, but presumably not for Him.

How, therefore, could He hope to communicate with anyone? It's entirely impractical. There's an "impedance gap" that must somehow be overcome.

Therefore: "[celestial ...] communications, at that time," were necessarily made "in the context of that time." Because there was no other way to do it. To me, it is nonsensical to superimpose the scientific knowledge(?) of "centuries later" upon the communications of "centuries ago." It's an irrelevant waste of time.

After all ... "if GOD wants to communicate with us, He cannot be denied. He has plenty of rocks, eager to 'cry out.'" (Luke 19:40)

Originally Posted by enorbet It is precisely assuming the desired Conclusion in the Premise.

Precisely describes old earthists and atheists, who conclude in advance that things they cannot repeat at will are impossible to exist or have existed (miracles, God), thus see not what they have already decided cannot be seen, seeing what is obviously evidence to demonstrate only what they wish it to demonstrate. The miracle of life surrounds us, and is us, because we were created by our Creator, as were the light from the heavens and the apparent fundamental forces. That something from nothing, any type of "big bang", had to have come from something is beyond us to fully comprehend, if to comprehend at all. God much better explains a big bang than does nothing, or some super dense thing smaller than a quark. God also explains the design of DNA much better than thousands or millions of years of genetic entropy mal-described as evolution.

I suppose it is only natural that a Young Earth Creationist like yourself, mrmazda, would see things that way, but our definitions of actual evidence are obviously very different. Furthermore, I routinely update my conclusions by following repeatable, falsifiable evidence and we have a rather vast amount of repeatable and repeated evidence anyone with the equipment can check in all things but in reply to your above post, specifically for the age of the planet, Big Bang, and Evolution. You have a 2000+ year old book that includes belief in Earth Centrism, Magic, Ghost Stories, Slavery, Child Sacrifice, and by some interpretations dancing with poisonous snakes. You really need to look up "5 Sigma". It is not logical that "We don't know for certain, so God must have done it". You're welcome to your Faith, but it is self-defeating to imagine it has scientific underpinnings, let alone validity. I seriously doubt if you have ever updated your conclusions based in Faith. You seem "All In".

In fact, here is a description of the reliability scale for scientific conclusions about such things as Big Bang. (Clue: 100,000 to 1 odds pale by comparison)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

I think the only way the Flood is plausible is if all of earth's high mountains were much lower, and I personally have no vision of the mountains we have today being covered.

I actually didn't mention the Flood. Seeing as you guys are raising it, I'll mention that six weeks in, it seems everything was covered and all human life was dead. But they were in the Ark for over a year, according to the account. The rest of the year was spent watching the seas gradually go down, during which process the Ark ran aground. Whether the grounding was the Ark going down or the Ararat mountains coming up, I don't know. I very much suspect the latter. The peak where Josephus says the Ark may have landed is 17, 000 feet up, and they obviously had some distance to descend when they finally emerged. It's also interesting to note that the Atacama desert at about 7000 feet has skeletons of beached whales, sharks and seals, implying a rapid rise there.

I am mixing fact and speculating, but I'm wryly amused to see sundialsvcs call this line of reasoning pointless. After 11,000 posts, it ought to be evident to anyone that this whole thread is pointless.That's why I continually unsubscribe.

The Earth being covered with water, the Flood, and the water vapour canopy might affect the seriousness with which some take aging estimates.

I also can't see the conclusion about the earth under water being factored into the scientific world view, because admitting that would give the Young Earth nutters a field day. It could mean the atmosphere of the present isn't necessarily a guide to the past. It's as I expected - "don't rock the boat."

Originally Posted by business_kid I also can't see the conclusion about the earth under water being factored into the scientific world view, because admitting that would give the Young Earth nutters a field day. It could mean the atmosphere of the present isn't necessarily a guide to the past. It's as I expected - "don't rock the boat."

I don't understand what you mean by "the atmosphere of the present isn't necessarily a guide to the past". Mainstream scientific consensus already supports major changes to atmosphere composition, e.g., the Great Oxidation Event.

As far as I understand, to seriously challenge the mainstream ideas about the age of the Earth, you would need something which modifies radioactive decay rates.

It's quite easy to see where the biblical "waters under the earth" came from. Everyone in the ancient world knew that if you dig a hole deep enough, the bottom will fill with water. This is the water table and I believe it also corresponds to local sea level. Hence all ancient peoples (not only the Jews) saw the earth as a flat raft-like construct floating on primal waters.

They were also familiar with springs, where water comes out of the earth, sometimes with the appearance of being pushed out under pressure. So what could be more natural than to explain a severe flood by a combination of excessive rain and "the fountains of the deep" being opened?