Oh Lord, where Ark thou?

[Melchizedek = Michael]

I'm always amused by people who demand that we accept literally the words of the Bible either in support of or in opposition to anything.

If we assume that the folks who felt the inspired word of God were actually in communication with an Entity or Entities that understood the mysteries of the cosmos, we are also presented with other understandings.

First and foremost, the Humans with whom the Entities were communicating to relay Biblical stories of creation were stone age shepherds on the threshold between Hunter Gatherers and Shepherds.

They understood NOTHING about anything beyond not starving today.

ANYTHING they heard would be interpreted within their own understandings. Then that understanding was passed down as an oral tradition for centuries until written down in their native language.

Then those writings would need to be translated from one language to the next and, very likely, "improved" as the thoughts were passed from one language to the next and one generation to the next.

Finally, we see a guy like "Bill Nye, the Science Guy", noted charlatan and moron, asserting that this parable is a scientific recounting of an actual event.

We know with absolute certainty that the fossil record contains evidence of "choke points" in evolution revealing mass extinction events.

If told of mass extinction events by an Entity with great knowledge, what might a stone age shepherd build in to his understanding? Perhaps a flood? Seems reasonable.

There is also the probable reality of sea level rise after the last Ice Age that caused entire currently existing seas to fill abruptly as the ocean waters crested over natural dams like the Straights of Gibraltar.

Floods wiping out entire civilizations would have been likely given that sort of sea level rise. The legends of great floods and great cities simply disappearing are pretty common. Real events to inspire them seem likely.

You don't know how high the water was BEFORE the flood!
The Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, so it doesn't matter how primitive the people were,that God chose to tell his story thru.

[Melchizedek = Michael]

I am going to place greater weight on what the Jewish Rabbinic tradition says about it. Genesis is Jewish scripture and written by Jews, not by christians.

Obviously there wasn't any Christians before Jesus!
But there were prophesy of the coming of Jesus.

[Melchizedek = Michael]

Agreed, but in general, people fall under the bell curve despite some of them thinking they are Ted Kaczynski.

The Dali Lama's entire life was devoted to a religion. He was home schooled.

You're not near as smart as you assume you are!

[Doc Dutch]

You're not near as smart as you assume you are!

Of course not....if I was, I'd truly be dangerous!

[Code1211]

Agreed. Most Bible literalists/Creationists are delusional morons. Most of them on the backside of the IQ Bell Curve.

As the study below and others prove; the more intelligent and/or educated, the less "religious", meaning strictly following dogma. I firmly believe there is more to existence than what we experience as mortals, but do not adhere to religious dogma such as not eating hotdogs or avoiding sex with a menstruating woman (Thank God for large shower stalls!!!)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23921675/
A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from -.20 to -.25 (mean r = -.24). Three possible interpretations were discussed. First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices.

You present this study as if specific beliefs reveal innate intelligence.

Less conformity, more analytical review and greater self control. I would argue that the opposite is true of most of the folks that are self identifying non-religious.

Litmus testing is common for all political party affiliation. That is conformity. Really no different in any appreciable way from one party to the next..

Refusing to critically discuss "accepted science" is an identifying mark of some advocates. They seem to disregard that science, even if "accepted" is STILL open to question and challenge. Refusing to review is dogma, not science.

One entire political party's dogma is based on the inability of their constituents to exercise ANY sort of self control whether it's not looting, not paying back loans they agreed to pay back or not having unprotected sex out of wedlock.

Politics aside, there are LITERALLY billions of people on the planet that will tell you with absolute confidence that their lives were changed by the welcomed intervention of a higher power that is not a physical being.

I am one of them.

I find it interesting that so many seem to find satisfaction in demonstrating that they are superior to others and use religion as one of the cudgels to beat down those that they hope to demean. This is demonstrated by both the religious and the non-religious.

On a different topic, 95% of the universe, say our scientists, is comprised of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Only the puny 5% of the Universe left over is what we can see or experience in any way.

It seems, based on those numbers, that it more likely that life would exist in the 95% of the universe that we cannot see than in the 5% of the universe that we CAN see.

That unseen and indefinable life could be what we call "spiritual". I'm not claiming that it is- just being open to the idea.

Our scientists also say that Dark Matter and Dark Energy existed BEFORE the Big Bang. The existence of stuff and energy that we can't see or experience physically is a scientific reality. You know, ACCEPTED SCIENCE.

Dark Matter and Dark Energy is everywhere. It is around you, in you and moving through you. It's between your eyes and the screen you are reading right now. It existed before the Big Bang and guided the arrangement of Galaxies in space.

Does this sound at all like the descriptions of God asserted by the religious?

It could be that when the supposed "intelligent folks" have closed completely their minds to certain possibilities that closure of minds is the thing that allows them to be non-religious. Is a closed mind an intelligent mind?

Closed minds are not as non-conforming, analytical or self actualizing as you may assert them to be. They are simply closed and clinging bitterly to the dogma they have chosen.

[Doc Dutch]

You present this study as if "intelligence" provides the things that are presented as showing intelligence.

Less conformity, more analytical and greater self control. I would argue that the opposite is true of most of the folks that are self identifying non-religious....

....95% of the universe, say our scientists, is comprised of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Only the puny 5% of the Universe left over is what we can see or experience in any way.

You're free to argue that the Earth is flat, dude. Without facts, I'm unlikely to be persuaded by your argument.

Everyone on JPP is free to pull an opinion out of their ass and paste it all over the forum. Everyone else is free to dispute it with more assholish opinions, with simple facts or any combination of their choice.

Example: The Universe is thought to be 27% Dark Matter, 68% Dark Energy and the 5% you mentioned of the matter we know. While you are free to speculate that the unknown is filled with spirits, dragons, whatever, the fact remains no one knows. The NASA link below gives some prevailing theories, none of which include spooks or magical beings.

https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysic...is-dark-energy

But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.

[Code1211]

Don't say this stuff out loud in the typical fundie Xtian church. They'd agree with you about Nye, but burn you at the stake for the refusal to accept the Bible as the literal and infallible word of god.

Once upon a time in America there was no public conflict between science (particularly evolutionary science) and the Bible. Almost all Christians accepted the stories in the OT as allegory rather than as literal events. The evangelical RWers changed that, to the point where they *still* agitate to have creationism taught in public school science classes.

Just correct what seems to be a mistaken belief that you hold, my bother in law has voted Democrat in every election he could and will do so until he dies.

Since he's a dyed in the wool Democrat, he'll likely vote Democrat AFTER he's dead as well. Chicago voting records are the strongest evidence of life after death in this country.

He is also a literal fundamentalist who strongly believes in and asserts with passion and zeal the literal and complete accuracy of Biblical Scripture.

People believe what they believe. I've discussed this sort of stuff with fundamentalist Christians, my brother in law being one, and they are really pretty understanding of what I'm saying.

The disagreement they express is more along the lines of serene understanding seeming to express that "the truth" is available, but I just haven't found it yet. The violence you predict is completely absent from their words, attitude and actions.

Why did you edit away so much of my thought on this?

[ThatOwlWoman]

Why did you edit away so much of my thought on this?

Brevity.

Your b.i.l. is an outlier then. Very few evangelicals vote for (D) candidates. Abortion is their biggest issue, trailing behind things like SSM, "forced acceptance" of LGBTQ ppl, legalized pot, and other things they see as sinful.

[Code1211]

Some points of contention: you wrote, "...
Finally, we see a guy like "Bill Nye, the Science Guy", noted charlatan and moron, asserting that this parable is a scientific recounting of an actual event."

FYI: Nye has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cornell. He also has six honorary doctorate degrees, including Ph.D.s in science from Goucher College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was on the team at the NASA and California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to design and create the MarsDial, a sundial and camera calibrator attached to the Mars Exploration Rover. So he's not a theologian nor an archeologist by training. But despite his TV flamboyance, he's hardly as you described, and his simple analysis of the topic at hand could NOT be discarded or refuted.

And you must remember, the current acceptance is that Moses existed during the Bronze Age .... about the same time as it's believed the pyramids of Egypt were constructed.

But I agree with you regarding local phenomena being interpreted as a "world" event.

Bill Nye has credentials. I have no doubt about that.

His credentials don't make the stupid stuff he says any less stupid. He is a passionate advocate of AGW Science and AGW Science is shown repeatedly to be erroneous and vaguely misleading.

With regard to science, whether we are talking about the Stone Age or the Bronze Age, your average man on the street was not in possession of the sort of educational foundation that would allow critical review of modern day astrophysics.

Assuming that Moses was "told" the story of creation, it is likely that his understandings would have influenced the transcription of of whatever it was he may have been told.

Even assuming that Moses was among the most educated in Egypt, the level of understanding of the cosmos at that point in Egypt was as much religious as scientific.

Anyway, the point is that the Book of Genesis, to me is interesting in how much it got right even though it got a whole bunch wrong.

As I understand it, the brightest light ever produced was the light that occurred in the moments following the Big Bang. I could be wrong.

As I watch lecture series on TV now that I'm retired, it is interesting how much is coming to light that seemed to me to be impossible, and yet, it is what it is.

Water, as one example, was "locked" in rocks that formed in the cooling from a molten blob blob orbiting the Sun that became Earth. The land and the sea were LITERALLY one, but were separated by the processes that formed the planet.

The Earth rotates and the night and day occurred. Plants grew and producing oxygen and then animals and then us.

Imagine telling a fourth grader the entire story of the creation of life on Earth starting from the Big Bang and working forward. No written power points or notes allowed.

What would be the take aways understood by that fourth grader? How would t hat fourth grader describe what he heard?

If you ever watched Tim Taylor trying to relay what he heard Wilson telling him as he revealed his new understandings to his long suffering Friends and family, the possibility of inaccurate interpretation is well demonstrated.

However, being wrong on the exact details does not make the entire message worthless. Things can be less than exact, but still be directionally helpful.

[Code1211]

You don't know how high the water was BEFORE the flood!
The Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, so it doesn't matter how primitive the people were,that God chose to tell his story thru.

Exactly. It was INSPIRED, not dictated and then transcribed.

Regarding the sea level, folks who seem to know do have a pretty good handle on what the sea level has been across the years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_...sea_level_rise

Sea level seems to have risen by about 140 meters since the maximum glaciation about 20 or 30 thousand years ago. Interestingly, it seems to be stable or receding lately.

A 140 meter rise is around 450 feet. About the height of a 40 story building. This is about the height of a short skyscraper.

Geologists say that when Ice Dams broke during the end of the Northern Hemispere's Glaciation, massive floods occurred.

Assuming that devastation occurred in various places due to this flooding does not seem to be a great leap in thinking. Legends would certainly grow from the retelling of the disappearances of entire cities.

[Doc Dutch]

Exactly. It was INSPIRED, not dictated and then transcribed.

Regarding the sea level, folks who seem to know do have a pretty good handle on what the sea level has been across the years.

Sea level change since the Last Glacial Maximum.

Agreed about science based monitoring of sea level changes.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...12821X98001988

The eustatic component of relative sea-level change provides a measure of the amount of ice transferred between the continents and oceans during glacial cycles. This has been quantified for the period since the Last Glacial Maximum by correcting observed sea-level change for the glacio-hydro-isostatic contributions using realistic ice distribution and earth models. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) the eustatic sea level was 125±5 m lower than the present day, equivalent to a land-based ice volume of (4.6–4.9)×107 km3. Evidence for a non-uniform rise in eustatic sea level from the LGM to the end of the deglaciation is examined. The initial rate of rise from ca. 21 to 17 ka was relatively slow with an average rate of ca. 6 m ka−1, followed by an average rate of ca. 10 m ka−1 for the next 10 ka. Significant departures from these average rates may have occurred at the time of the Younger Dryas and possibly also around 14 ka. Most of the decay of the large ice sheets was completed by 7 ka, but 3–5 m of water has been added to the oceans since that time.

https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/gl...ea-level-rise/

[Mason Michaels]

Agreed about science based monitoring of sea level changes.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...12821X98001988



https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/gl...ea-level-rise/

How would 40 days and 40 nights of rain,and the subterranean waters come forth effect sea levels?

[Doc Dutch]

How would 40 days and 40 nights of rain,and the subterranean waters come forth effect sea levels?

Very little. It's not called a Water Cycle for nuthin'. LOL

Same for the 331 days of rain in Maui:
https://theconversation.com/whats-th...topping-167869
In the U.S., the longest periods of daily rain have occurred in Hawaii, where easterly trade winds blow toward the mountains. An incredible 331 consecutive days of measurable rainfall were recorded at Manuawili Ranch, Maui, in 1939-40.

https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/water-cycle

[Mason Michaels]

Very little. It's not called a Water Cycle for nuthin'. LOL

Same for the 331 days of rain in Maui:
https://theconversation.com/whats-th...topping-167869
In the U.S., the longest periods of daily rain have occurred in Hawaii, where easterly trade winds blow toward the mountains. An incredible 331 consecutive days of measurable rainfall were recorded at Manuawili Ranch, Maui, in 1939-40.

https://gpm.nasa.gov/education/water-cycle

Except! Ashes of a hydrogen fire is water,it's why water won't burn.
So what if a weapon was made that could set fire to hydrogen in the atmosphere.
You could creat more water raising sea levels along with subterranean waters being released.
And if the hydrogen fire burned 40 days,you would have 40 days of rain.

[Doc Dutch]

Except! Ashes of a hydrogen fire is water,it's why water won't burn.
So what if a weapon was made that could set fire to hydrogen in the atmosphere.
You could creat more water raising sea levels along with subterranean waters being released.
And if the hydrogen fire burned 40 days,you would have 40 days of rain.

Ummm....I'd have to see the science behind that idea. Why doesn't California use that idea to stop the drought?