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end of ice age sea level rise seems to be a pretty robust theory of the origin of flood myths that stretch all the way to Australia.
Yeah mate I am so uninterested in discussing anything of import with someone who insists on telling me I am “in a tizz” and “jumping up and down and screaming” when the truth is I am as calm as can be.
If you’re that fundamentally wrong about the people you’re engaging with, why would anyone be interested in your bizarre take on the topic under discussion?
Rant all you want; I'll not be engaging further with you.
Define 'fanatical atheist'.But it's OK for you to tell me to take a walk, go outside, log off ...because that's not saying I'm in a tizz, that's different. Magically.
My take is only bizarre to you because you don't agree with it.
Einstein was 100% spot on, again, with this critique of atheists:
“fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics”
Define 'fanatical atheist'.
I just read that interchange of posts. You didn't need to prove the worthiness of your religious belief publicly. But having started, don't be concerned about the effects of robust discussion if the person/s you're engaging with is primarily out to ridicule and embarrass. You should have cancelled the canceller/s before they ridiculously feigned offence and cancelled you. Keep your chin up.I don't think it is wise for me to express my opinions anymore, it upsets too many people.
Read Einstein's God letter for an idea.
Except that’s not what happened at all.I just read that interchange of posts. You didn't need to prove the worthiness of your religious belief publicly. But having started, don't be concerned about the effects of robust discussion if the person/s you're engaging with is primarily out to ridicule and embarrass. You should have cancelled the canceller/s before they ridiculously feigned offence and cancelled you. Keep your chin up.
Don’t complain don’t explain.Except that’s not what happened at all.
Well I don't know if you're referring to the exchanges I had with the poster (there were two of us), but if you are, you have grossly misrepresented me. I did not "ridicule and embarrass", I did not "feign offence" - in fact I made it clear I was not in the least offended - and I did not "cancel" anyone (whatever TF that means anyway.)Don’t complain don’t explain.
I hadn’t read the whole article nor did I offer is as a rebuttal. I was trying to establish an agreed upon point with Total Power about the similarities of the two stories.Yep. Absolutely there was no historical event of a global flood.
Geologists reject any notion of a global flood, because there is no supporting geological evidence that such a flood ever occurred.
Other experts in various scientific feidls have raised further problems. Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. Other scientists have raised the problems of various types of rocks such as chalk deposits, that could not possibly be where they are now, such as the cliffs of Dover - if a Global Flood had occurred 2-3,000 years ago. Molecular scientists studying DNA have disputed whether a Flood that destroyed all human life on earth except Noah, his wife, his three sons and his three daughters-in-law could have happened. Mankind may be all essentially related but DNA analysis shows that it is much further back than 2,348 BC, which is the date arrived at for the flood by the chronology/genealogy in the Book of Genesis.
Stratigraphy, Seriation, Chronological Marking, Dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, geological dating, Potassium-Argon dating, Fission track dating, Obsidian Hydration dating, Thermoluminescence dating, Archaeo- and Paleo-magnetism dating, Oxidized Carbon Ratios are all archaeological methods used to date various historical and pre-historical events.
The evidence that they provide, does NOT support the notion of ONE global flood. No supporting evidence exists
Genetic data also shows no evidence of any human bottleneck as small as two people or eight people: there are simply too many different kinds of genes around for that to be true. There may have been a couple of “bottlenecks” (reduced population sizes) in the history of our species, but the smallest one not involving recent colonization is a bottleneck of roughly 10,000-15,000 individuals that occurred between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. That number could get as low as 2,000 people, but that's the absolute minimum. That’s as small a population as our ancestors had, and—note—it’s not as low as eight individuals.
DNA studies have also confirmed that there are living today millions of descendants, of women believed to lived between 12,000 - 45,000 years ago. If the Flood was to have destroyed all men on earth apart from Noah and his family, how is this accounted for? If we add up the genealogies in the Bible, we have Noah's flood in about the year 2348 B.C. That's in the Fifth Egyptian Dynasty and the Yao Dynasty of China. There’s no record of a Universal Flood in those years, nor could there be, as everyone and everything would have been destroyed. This is clearly not the case.
If so, the archaeological record of about 4-5,000 years ago would be replete with Pompeii-style ruins, the remains of thousands of towns, villages and cities, all wiped out by flood waters, simultaneously. Archaeology would show cultural development with a discontinuity as everything was wiped out and Noah's descendants had to restart. The near annihilation of the human race, if it happened, left no imprint on the archaeological record anywhere.
Clearly the Bible states that all living things were destroyed except for those on the Ark, the humans consisting of the one family of eight people. Clearly many of the earth's people are descended from people other than Noah and for them to exist today those ancestors must have survived the "Flood".
The global flood story requires that only eight people were left alive in 2349 BC. In 2000 BC, only 350 years after the flood, the population of the world was 27 million. To go from a population of eight to a population of 27 million in 350 years would require an average annual population growth rate of 4.4%, which is only slightly short of the highest birth rates in the world today. Birth rate and population growth aren't the same thing, and such a high birth rate implies reasons for people to have lots of children very young. The countries with the highest birth rates today have high rates of infectious disease and death, low life expectancy, and political instability, with a median age of 15 and a population growth rate well below the birth rate. This does not much resemble the society of superhumanly-long-lived fathers of nations claimed to have lived over that interval, but stable societies where children can be reliably expected to reach adulthood tend to have much lower birthrates.
An even more severe problem is that sexually reproducing species reduced to a population of eight individuals often experiences a catastrophic (and almost certainly extinguishing) genetic bottleneck; and the more rapid the re-expansion of this population, the more intense the inbreeding. Genetic studies have actually revealed the presence of a genetic bottleneck in human prehistory but that scenario is about 66,000 years too early and at least 2,000 people too populous for the Flood narrative.
Indeed there's no reason to suggest any flood story from any civilisation is more than the story of a large localised/regional flood, such as the filling of the Persian Gulf after sea waters rose following the last glacial period. Global sea levels were about 120 metres lower around 16,000 BC and rose until 6,000 BC when they reached current levels, which are now an average 40 metres above the floor of the Gulf, which was a huge (800 km × 200 km) low-lying and fertile region in Mesopotamia. Human habitation is thought to have been strong around the Gulf Oasis for 100,000 years. A sudden increase in settlements above the present water level is recorded at around 5,500 BC. Then there's the Black Sea deluge, which suggests catastrophic deluge about 5600 BC from the Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea.
A global flood simply did not occur and there is simply no robust convincing evidence to support that it did.
Quotes from your linked article.
The quotes are absolute rubbish.
Genesis is not a historical work written by Moses. There is no evidence that "Moses" wrote any of the Books of the Bible.
It's possible that the Black Sea deluge MAY have inspired the various Mesopotamian flood stories The oldest Mesopotamian flood story of Atrahasis written sometime between 1800 BC and 1700 BC (which was adapted by the writers of the later Epic of Gilgamesh) and then further altered into the story of Noah, when the Jews wrote Genesis in about the 6th century BC, probably in Babylon.
Two senior scientists from Columbia University have proposed a theory that a massive transfer of water occurred about 5600 BC - over seven and a half millennia ago. They wrote: "Ten cubic miles of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara Falls." "The Bosporus flume roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days." 60,000 square miles of land were inundated. The Black Sea shoreline significantly expanded to the north and east. The lake's its water level was raised many hundreds of feet. It changed from a fresh-water landlocked lake into a salt water lake connected to the world's oceans."
They have drawn on the findings of experts in agriculture, archaeology, genetics, geology, language, development of textiles and pottery, etc. They postulate that this deluge had catastrophic effects on the people living on the shore of the Black Sea. It triggered mass migrations across Europe and into the Near East, Middle East and Egypt. It may have been the source of many flood stories in the area.
The development of the story of Noah in Genesis goes something like this
2700 BC: Calculated time of the figure of Gilgamesh as per dating of walls of Uruk.
2100 BC: Apparent origin of the oldest Gilgamesh epic (Akkadian, AKA Old Babylonian). Alludes to the Flood, but does not specifically mention it.
Before Hammurabi (~1700 BC): Apparent time period of Atrahasis story, oldest Mesopotamian flood story
1830 BC: Oldest Estimated age of "CBM 13532" - also sometimes called the 'Nippur Flood Tablet'
1600 BC: Apparent origin of the known oldest copy of the Atrahasis story (but likely to have been assembled 1800 - 1700 BC)
1400 BC: Standard Babylonian version including all 12 tablets. Flood story complete as copy of Atrahasis.
1170 BC: Youngest Estimated age of "CBM 13532"
668-626 BC: King Assurbanipal of Assyria finds and stores the oldest preserved copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh in his library. Re-discovered in AD 1849
The approximate time of the writing / assembling of the Book of Genesis was between 600-300 BC in Babylonia.
It's clear that Genesis was written over an interval of many centuries by at least five author/editors. The universal flood story was derived from an earlier Babylonian myth by two of these authors. The Genesis flood myth is obviously based on an earlier Babylonian myth; there are many similarities between the two legends. The Babylonian myth appears to be based on an earlier legend that, in turn, might well have been based on dimly remembered memories of the Black Sea catastrophe, for which there is robust archaeoliogical evidence as having actually occurred.
I’m not offering the link as a rebuttal - I’m trying to reach an agreed upon list of similarities between the two stories from which we can proceed to debate.From your link
The Book of Genesis is viewed for the most part as an historical work, even by many liberal scholars, while the Epic of Gilgamesh is viewed as mythological. The One-source Theory must, therefore, lead back to the historical event of the Flood and Noah's Ark.2
This is completely false. One scholar doesn't equal to many. I see only one scholar mentioned in the footnote over and over again. Genesis is not scientific, not historical. There was no global flood. Guys like Howard Vos are not liberal neither is NK Sanders. They are both Christians and none of them are liberal.
Roylion
Well, it depends on what is meant by the ‘end days’. If it’s referring to the ‘reign of Christ’ symbolised as a 1000 year period in Revelation, then, yes, the overwhelming majority do. Of course, there’s not one unified thing that all Christians agree on, save the Trinity, Jesus’s divinity, and His death on the cross.Do Christians think we are in the end of days?
Roylion, Total Power
C’mon. I reread my post to see if I hadn’t been clear but the post couldn’t be more clear. It was very concise in stating that I was seeking an agreed upon list from which we could discuss and debate the matter.
Meanwhile, I’ve logged back onto to see two posts attacking the link’s article - which I never proffered as a rebuttal or signified agreement with.
The oft-cited near-death experience as suggestion of proof of an afterlife took a bit of a hit when it was revealed that test pilots in extreme G-force situations experience very similar sensations. It appears it's purely a reaction created within the body.I tend to take the view of the late KFB Packer, who following a near death experience coined the phrase “Listen Sonny, I’ve been to the other side and let me tell you there’s ******* nothing there”
The oft-cited near-death experience as suggestion of proof of an afterlife took a bit of a hit when it was revealed that test pilots in extreme G-force situations experience very similar sensations. It appears it's purely a reaction created within the body.
What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about the Brain
A close brush can leave a lasting mental legacy—and may tell us about how the mind functions under extreme conditionswww.scientificamerican.com
Debate what exactly?
1. That there was a global flood? Here there is no debate. No external evidence outside the Bible supports such a premise.
2. That the Noah story (written about 300 BC) was derived from some older source or sources? There is significant evidence in support of this, including the similarities between the older Sumerian sources and the younger Genesis account. If you think that is not the case then present your argument. Why don't we start with when Genesis (where the story of Noah appears) was written?
How about you establish your contention and we'll go from there. Mine is clearly outlined.
My contention of course is that the Global Flood of Genesis 6 happened and that it is not a literary fabrication
Your initial two statements are inescapably freighted with contradiction.
How is it that there is no external evidence for a global flood - even textually - outside of the Bible whilst at the same time exisiting a multiplicity of religious texts detailing events of a global flood from which the biblical authors lifted their alleged ‘story’?
My contention of course is that the Global Flood of Genesis 6 happened and that it is not a literary fabrication nor is it an intertextual reference to any earlier accounts of a global or large-scale local flood.
Of course there is debate. What is it that we would engage in now over our disagreements regarding a global flood?
Well I reckon the jury is well and truly out on that one. I grew up in a loving, intensely Christian family. I have deep sympathy and respect and love for many Christians in my family and my life.So much effort gathering and presenting information in the hope of weighing the scale of probability to one side, the way a lawyer typically would. But the basis of religious belief is “relationship” and the balance scale approach is arguably more of a problem than a solution when evaluating relationship.
Rather than putting religion on trial as a lawyer might do, diagnose its effect the way a doctor typically would; if its impact has predominately been beneficial, which it arguably has, then !!!!!!!!!!!!
No, on very whole the jury’s not out at all. Not at all. But your religious belief is your own.Well I reckon the jury is well and truly out on that one. I grew up in a loving, intensely Christian family. I have deep sympathy and respect and love for many Christians in my family and my life.
And the things I've learnt about the horrors committed in the name of all religions, and particularly Christianity as the belief set in which I was raised, have shaken the very foundations of my moral universe.
I have no “religious belief”. Over the course of nearly half a century I have rid myself of religious belief. It’s something I’ve put a great deal of work into.No, on very whole the jury’s not out at all. Not at all. But your religious belief is your own.
What was it you were saying about transference?I have no “religious belief”. Over the course of nearly half a century I have rid myself of religious belief. It’s something I’ve put a great deal of work into.
Used to get shocking headaches too, but rid myself of them through relaxation techniques and a daily targeted stretching routine.
Look, I don’t want to get into stats at ten paces, suffice to say that even the most ardent religious follower will acknowledge the copybook is more than a little blotted.
And before you say “well nobody’s perfect” I’ll say far too many religious believers give the distinct impression they believe they are.
(Or they engage in that oh-so-obvious transference of saying “I’m not perfect, but Christ is”.)