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Originally posted by Seventil I see your point of reasoning. Let me clarify mine. Dinosaurs. I don't "assume" that dinosaurs were roaming this planet at one time. You don't either. I assume that they were roaming around mainly in the pre-flood earth (4004-2400 BC approx) - you assume they were roaming around from 250 Million BC to 65 Million BC (approximations). Let me ask you this: Do any of your testing methods - any of them - not rely on assumptions? Let's say you use radio-active isotope dating to date the age of a rock, and come up with 2 Billion years. You have "assumed": The characteristics of said isotope have been the same for 2 billion years, allowing for accurate testing. You have no way of ever proving this, unless a time machine is invented.

Okay, I think I understand your reasoning, so allow me to clarify mine:

I’ll go with your argument that dating is an “assumption”. By this logic then we must conclude that there is a possibility of invalidity, though however small. However, literally EVERYTHING we do in our lives is based on this definition of “assumptions”, and validity is based on the accuracy of those assumptions. In science, an “assumption” is not equated to something that is “untested” or “unproven”, as creationists like to call it. Quite the contrary, by your definition of “assumption”, science does everything in its power to test the validity of such “assumptions”. But by testing the validity of those “assumptions”, and finding those tests giving reliable and predictable results, does that “assumption” somehow get transformed into a scientific “fact”?

The answer is a resounding “no”. You must understand that if we go by this definition of “assumption” that you are utilizing, then we must also conclude that there are no “facts”, no matter how many tests give reliable and predictable results on those given assumptions. Rather than a stated “fact”, we have strong evidence that best explains a given “assumption” that occurs. Would it be logical to rely on such “assumptions” if those tests on those assumptions were unreliable or resulted in random results? Of course not, which is exactly how science works. Instead, science relies on those “assumptions” that have been tested, retested, retested again and again which give the same, reliable results, and with a strong reliability, those “assumptions” have much more validity. These “assumptions” are then utilized to test or predict other “assumptions”, and those “assumptions” are further tested, retested, again and again to understand their validity. And so it goes.

But this maxim certainly does not end there. The beauty of science is its ability to adapt and advance with more knowledge and technology. This knowledge and technology is utilized over and over on those “assumptions” to test their reliability and validity. If for some reason those “assumptions” are proven unreliable by present day or future standards, that then shifts the understanding of those “assumptions” towards a more reliable understanding.

Now replace the word “assumption” with “natural event” or “phenomena”, and you’ll have a better understanding of how science works. This is the universal understanding for all sciences, including physics, astronomy, biology, etc. etc. And here’s the catch – evolution is no different. Modern day standards and technology has tested and retested those natural evolutionary events that were believed to have occurred by scientists 20 yrs. ago, 40 yrs. ago, 100 yrs. ago, up to the point of Darwin. Now, does that mean that evolutionary theory has remained unchanged since the time of Darwin? Absolutely not, which is what I was alluding to when I referred to modern day knowledge reshaping past understanding. This has certainly occurred with the onset of genetics, cell and molecular biology, and other phenomena such as punctuated equilibrium. However, these events have merely strengthened the notion of our understanding of evolutionary theory, because they have confirmed with validity (testing, retesting, again and again those “assumptions”) what occurs naturally through hundreds of millions of years with life on earth.

Now in regards to your specific question on dating, I feel Occ has done a nice job answering your questions, but for some reason you seem compelled to continue asking the same question. It’s not my strong point, but I’ll try for some more clarity:
The word "assumption" often implies "unchecked", which is certainly not true in radioisotope dating. I prefer to call them premises.

There are four major premises involved in radioisotope dating (not all methods require all four to be true, as discussed below). In your particular language, you may call these “assumptions”:

1. Co-genetic. If multiple samples are involved, they came from the same source. This is easily verified in the cases where the samples come from different parts of the same rock. (Several invalid creationist criticisms have, apparently purposefully, used non-co-genetic samples that could easily have been detected as such when they were collected).

2. Known initial daughter. We know how much of the isotope that is produced by radioactive decay was present at solidification. (Actually, it's a bit more complex than just "solidification", but solidification is close enough for jazz).

3. Closed system. No significant amounts of the isotopes of interest enter or leave the samples after solidification.

4. Constant radioactive decay. The half-life of the radioactive isotope(s) involved has not changed.

Premise 4 is common to all radioisotope dating methods, and nobody has ever come up with a method that checks it within the context of radioisotope dating. Outside that context, physicists have checked it six ways from Sunday:
•Observations of nuclear reactions in distant stars and distant galaxies (for which the reactions took place thousands or millions of years ago).
•Inferences about nuclear processes in the very early universe before galaxy formation.
•Cross checking of dates against other non-radiometric dating methods.
•Cross checking of radically different radiometric methods.
•Study of residues from the Oklo natural nuclear reactor, active nearly two billion years ago.
•Theory of quantum mechanics, which is itself one of the most precisely studied and tested models in physics. Radioactive decay is a process that is well understood. We know a great deal about the relevant forces and the structure of atoms, and how and why they decay. In fact, I would say radioactive decay is substantially better understood than gravity. This illustrates the principal that confidence in scientific models is related also to how well the underlying principals are understood.
•Testing of a range of conditions in which decay might vary. If decay rates have varied, then can we reproduce the conditions under which this occurs? In some cases, yes; and none of them make any difference to dating techniques.

So, what about premises 1-3?

The vast majority of methods in use today are what Dalrymple calls "age-diagnostic" methods, meaning that the provide an age and diagnose the validity of that age. The two major classes of age-diagnostic methods are isochron methods (subsuming many different radioisotope systems) and concordia-discordia methods (used only with the U-Th-Pb system, which is an especially rich one because of the many isotopes involved). The Ar-Ar method is an isochron method that uses that same K-Ar system that the K-Ar dating system uses; almost all creationist criticisms of dating focus on K-Ar dating and ignore others.

"Simple" K-Ar dating is not age-diagnostic. The major possibility of a problem is that we have no information about the initial daughter except the fact that it's a gas under terrestrial conditions. We assume that the gas all "bubbled out" before solidification and the initial daughter was zero. This is mostly a good and valid assumption, but there are many known cases in which it is false (and the argon that was present at solidification is called "excess argon"). "Simple" K-Ar dating is still done because it is indeed simple and low-cost, but you don't see a lot of "simple" K-Ar dates published unless they are confirmed by something else. However, the vast majority of "simple" K-Ar dates have been confirmed by other methods.

Isochron methods require multiple co-genetic samples. The analysis results can be plotted on a simple graph and, if the analysis is valid, will form a straight line. Typically 6-7 samples are taken and plotted, and the analysts are very picky about the fit; typically it's impossible to show any gap between the plotted points and the fit line in published data (because the graph's too small) and if the gap shows the data doesn't get published. If premises 1 or 3 are false, it is virtually certain that the data points will not lie on a straight line. Isochron methods do not require premise 2 (known initial daughter), which is one reason for their popularity. The Y-intercept of the line is the initial daughter. IOW, using an isochron method, we don't have to have any idea of how much daughter there was at solidification! The fact that the initial daughter amount is a result of the method provides a further cross-check; analyses of very different rocks from widely separated areas that result in about the same age should, and indeed regularly do, give about the same Y-intercept.

A dramatic confirmation of the validity of such methods is 40Ar/39Ar Dating into the Historical Realm: Calibration Against Pliny the Younger. This used the K-Ar system, and there was excess argon (non-zero initial daughter) present; but they hit the known age of almost 2,000 year old lava within seven years!

Concordia-discordia methods are probably the most widely used methods. They are the most precise, partly because the half-life of uranium is known to noticeably higher precision than any other element (bombs, you know). These methods require that there be zero initial daughter, so they don't check premise 2 internally. They are only used on minerals that strongly reject lead at solidification, so it's basically impossible to have non-zero daughter at solidification. (Actually a tiny tad can be there, and is, but its effect can be compensated for as long as it's fairly small). Zircons meet this requirement and are found all over the place, so they're the ones most commonly used.

Essentially you do two different analyses, one involving U-238 -> Pb-206 and the other involving U-235 -> Pb207. In practice, multiple samples are used (although sometimes they are not required). You plot the results on a diagram (there's a couple of different versions of the diagram). If premises 1 and 3 are true, the plotted point(s) will fall on a predetermined curve called "Concordia" at a point that determines the age. If premise 1 is true but premise 3 is not true and the plotted points lie on a straight line (called the "Discordia" line), then the age is the upper intercept of that line with the Concordia curve. This is another reason that concordia-discordia dating is widely used; it often gives us a valid result even if material has been leached (or whatever) out of the system. If the plotted points do not fall on the Concordia curve and do not form a straight line, premise 1 is false or premise 3 is false in a manner that precludes us getting a result (e.g. material was added to the system). Straight Discordia lines are fairly common, because episodic lead loss is the most common alteration of the mineral, but geochronologists today are working hard on sample location, selection, and measurement techniques that give concordant (on the Concordia curve) dates, because those are slightly more trustworthy.

Now, any of these methods can give us a wrong answer once in a while, by pure chance. There are also processes known (e.g. mixing of two sources of different isotopic composition) that can give us a wrong answer, but other diagnostics exist to detect any reasonably probably scenario of this kind. Dates are routinely confirmed by other radioisotope and non-radiometric methods. Any one date could possibly be wrong; it's not possible that all, or even a significant number, of radioisotope dates are significantly in error. Either the rocks are old or some incredibly powerful agent deliberately inserted isotopes in the rocks to make them appear old. Many people, both Christian and non-Christian, find the latter possibility repugnant. I hope you do not adhere this.

Now I suppose this may not be your reasoning in regards to dating – you might be reasoning along the lines of fossil sorting in the strata (relative dating) correlating with the dating methodology utilized in stratigraphy (absolute dating – that which I depicted above). The creationist argument here (Morris does this quite well) is that evolutionists use circular reasoning in order to make their case for fossil dating. If this is your argument, let me know and I’ll discuss this as well. For the sake of brevity I’ll leave this thought with you on this particular line of creationist reasoning – if this is what you truly believe, I really hope you do not become a geologist for the oil industries. They rely very heavily on biostratigraphy when trying to find the “hot spots” for oil. If an oil company learns that petroleum is found in buried reefs of the Silurian Age, for example, its geologists searches for reefs of Silurian age elsewhere. Indeed, an “assumption” takes place here, right? But once again, that assumption is tested and retested over and over, because by following this strategy, more petroleum is found than if drilling is done on a random basis. It’s highly unlikely that the major oil and petroleum companies today are continually being fooled, don’t you? I suppose you could take it up with a geologist for BP, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict he’ll tell you that fossilization and modern day biostratigraphy are highly reliable. If you do not believe me, however, I suggest you ask that geologist from BP to adhere to the Noachian beliefs of biostratiphaphy, and let’s see just how successful BP becomes.

I have a slight notion that the latter approach won’t sit too well with them, or any oil industry for that matter.

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It's like taking one picture of you during your lifetime - say, with your family and child at the dinner table in your mid 30's. Any outside viewer would like at this and think: 1. You are a middle aged adult with a wife and children. 2. You are eating dinner with them. 3. You are having steak, potatoes and kool-aid for dinner. I assume this all. It seems probable, does it not? When the actual truth is: 1. You are a middle aged adult with a wife and children. 2. You are eating dinner with your mistress and your estranged child. 3. You are having steak, potatoes and kool-aid for dinner. I don't know if that analogy really worked. My point is you can't take a snapshot of the world - like we are doing now - and assume it's been the same forever. That's ignorant and naive.

The problem with your analogy here is that evolution relies on forensics for corroborating evidence from multiple sciences to shape the entire theory as a whole. In actuality your analogy SHOULD be geared towards creationism. Let me give you a counterexample –

I just killed your mother. I have a knife with blood on it, broken glass on my jacket from the window I crawled through, a fingernail is missing from your mother and is found in my neck, and a shoeprint in the house matches the type of shoes I wear. DNA evidence from the blood on the knife and the fingernail matches your mother’s DNA with an extremely high probability (1 in 90 billion for ex). Bloody handprints with my fingerprints match to me with high probability as well. She told me she loved me and we were having an affair because your father is a mean drunk and he beats her, but then she refused to leave him and I became enraged (as depicted by testimony by my best friend whom I consulted with). DNA tests also showed that there was some of my skin underneath her fingernails, which matches quite well to the scratches on my face. However, there were no witnesses to the murder. Your father was passed out in his shed out back.

Oh yeah, and I specifically told my best friend as I was leaving the house with a big knife, whom I thought I could trust, not to tell anyone that I’m going to kill her.

But you go and arrest your father for the murder. He’s a bad drunk, he’s talked about killing your mother at times, esp. when he’s drunk, he was drunk the night she was murdered, and it just seems like he should be the one behind bars. The bloody fingerprints do not match his fingers, the bloody shoeprints do not match any of his shoes, no DNA evidence whatsoever points toward him whatsoever, but it just feels like he is the one.

What’s the judge and jury going to decide? Unless you have a great Simpson lawyer, chances are they are going to throw the “assumptions” that your father did it out the window. Chances are the DA will want to build a case on me instead. Why? Because the corroborating evidence strongly suggests that I am the culprit.

Does it mean that, shy of a complete confession on my part, that the evidence is 100% accurate? Nope. Does it mean that there’s a slight possibility that it was someone else? Sure, but there has to be strong evidence to support such a notion.

Now we’re back to reality (I apologize for that morbid thought, I’m simply trying to make a strong point here). Evolution is widely accepted as the “culprit” because all the evidence strongly suggests that there is an old earth of around 4.5 billion yrs or so, and that life changed over time via random mutation and natural selection. If there is an alternative story, or an alternative “culprit” that did it, so be it. The problem, however, is that without evoking supernatural phenomena, there is no supporting evidence to an alternative story, such as the one creationism attempts to depict. Until there is, scientists are going to embrace evolution in the same manner that they embrace any other theory that explains natural phenomena, such as gravity, germ theory, quantum mechanics, and so on.

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Now I see your point of view - and I know what the logic is - Even if things were different way back, they wouldn't be so different as to merit a 250 million year difference. Dating methods can't be THAT far off - maybe 10-50%, but it would still rule creation out. Correct? I agree with that statement. However, you assume they were not that different. I assume they were very different - one that could be explained by the creation of our world, a different world to live in for 1600 years, then a worldwide flood that completely reshaped the world's climate, geography - everything. There are so many unknowns in something like that happening (because we could never recreate it, or observe it) that it could explain ANY current scientific method being completely and utterly wrong.

To support your assumptions you need evidence. As of yet you have supplied none. So far your only evidence offered is an attempt to debunk evolution. I have done what I can to refute your attempts, but even if there was a possibility of an alternative theory, what makes you believe it would only be creationism? Again I ask, why do you readily dismiss alternative cultural creationist stories? By simply trying to refute evolution does not in any way give credence to your version of creationism - this is a logical fallacy of duality – unless you positive, verifiable evidence of your version of life evolving over time, you cannot conclude by performing false negatives that your version of creationism is true.
By this logic, my God, the Great Cookie Monster from the Planet Zoinks! who created all the different forms of life by sneezing chocolate chip pieces out his nose, is just as valid a theory as yours. What’s the difference?

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Now, I'll give you that some of the "science" behind evolution is convincing - if you take my one rule out. You have to always, always remember that science makes a lot of assumptions (especially in the "dating" category") - that the universe and our little corner of it has always been the same.

Nothing has been the same over time, but how on earth would this reconcile your argument in the first place?

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I agree. All theories were created using methodological naturalism. And they did most of them brilliantly. Yet they failed to follow my only rule - and have drastically lost perspective of everything.

Your rule is highly invalid. Testing, retesting, again and again, and corroborating those tests with other tests and methods have given highly reliable results.

That’s scientific methodology. Get over it already.

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You're putting quite a lot of faith in the fact you think everything has been the same, always. I'll just beat that into the ground. You are blindly believing that everything has always been the way it is, all laws are constant, and your beloved science is solid. It might be - I'm not ruling that out - but I don't believe it is. So, fellow person of faith, I salute you for your crusade for your religion. You're a tough customer.

Show me how a scientific “law” has not been constant. (BTW, I hate that term “law” – it really is a misnomer of older science textbooks).

Everything has not always been constant, but certain events and natural phenomena have. That’s nature – it is quite predictable once you understand it a little better. Without invoking supernatural events (which can neither be tested or proven reliable), show me how a natural event has been shown to be “not constant”. Though this is an entirely different argument than the one you quoted me here, I’d like some strong supporting evidence of what you are referring to here.

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I respect your right to not take the Bible as a strong account of events. That's your free will.

Yes, but it’s solely based on supporting evidence that does not run parallel to Biblical events. That does not entail that I believe everything in the Bible should be undermined, however. I feel religion, though it has the potential to do great harm, has intentions to the contrary. Although I feel the debate about absolute vs. relative morality is best served in another thread, I will not diminish the fact that there are some powerful and worthy messages of morality and spirituality depicted in the Bible. To me this is what it’s primary purpose is for.

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My only morality issue with evolutionary theory is that it's stated as fact when it's clearly just that, a theory. Are we (as a people) so high and mighty, so all-knowing in our scientific pursuits, so damn right about everything that we've learned in the last century? If we step off our high seats of self-proclaimed power and realize that we believe in a theory based on assumptions, we might realize that it was all just a fairy tale to begin with.

Only if those assumptions are invalid to begin with. You have a problem with those initial “assumptions” being invalid, I suggest you talk to a statistician. To date those “assumptions” you keep referring to are extraordinarily valid with supporting evidence. A theory is not based on “assumptions” unless those “assumptions” have been tested ad nausium. This is true for any science, and once again, this is true for evolutionary theory. Get over it.

Now, do me the honors and show me the validity of your beliefs.

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I'll give you a scientific fact - we don't know everything, and we don't know how everything was. That is empirical, falsifiable and logical.

True, but we have a pretty good explanation of the past based on strong, statistical, corroborating evidence. I tend to want to believe evidence in front of me, rather than rely on faulty evidence depicted in the many different translations of a story with little or no evidence to support it.

That is empirical, falsifiable, and logical.

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That, Father Opus, is a fact. Creation and Evolution out the window, that single and solidifying fact makes both of our theories that of faith.

Forgive me, but you did a rather poor job at depicting evolution as a faith. Try again.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

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Ooo, I love the "EE" thing. I think it's cool, no matter who is right. The fact that tablets were found in the ruins of a library brings out the Indiana Jones adventurer part of me. Anyway, here is what a "creation-biased" site has to say about it: In some skeptical circles, it is still fashionable to make the claim that the creation account of Genesis was in some sense borrowed from the Babylonian creation account, Enuma Elish (hereafter EE; those who hold this view are hereafter "EE proponents"). I have used a turn of phrase suggesting that the argument isn't held in all skeptical circles -- the latest fad in this regard is to attribute most of the borrowing from Egyptian sources, as Greenberg does in 101 Myths of the Bible (though he posits some Babylonian influence on stories like the Flood and Cain and Abel). Still, you will now and then run into a skeptic still in the Dark Ages intellectually, and it is thus a good idea to run through some of the arguments. (My own perception is that we would expect some similiarities in EE and Genesis -- and in other creation accounts as well -- if they all derived from a common source.) Some of the differences in the accounts are basic -- EE records "successive generations of gods and goddesses" who are subject to typical weaknesses such as hunger, thirst, and sex drive; Genesis records but one God, though He had company of unspecified nature (Gen. 1:26), with no such weaknesses. The EE is a creation account to some extent, but most of it is devoted to describing a battle between the god Marduk (the "creator" as such) and Tiamat the goddess (who ends up being the raw material of creation), and to other non-creation issues, so that after tally, only about a third of it is on the subject of creation. EE played a political and cultic role in the Babylonian religion and explained Marduk's rise to chief god of Babylon; Genesis does not mention Israel, Jerusalem, or the Temple, and served no cultic function [Sarna, Understanding Genesis, 9; I would suggest that this points to the Genesis account being more original]. But, let us move to detail. Our foundational source for this essay is Alexander Heidel's classic work, The Babylonian Genesis. (U. of Chicago Press, 1942) We will address relevant points in outline form, following the order of Genesis as required. Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. All stories must start somewhere, and the ways in which Genesis differs from EE at the very beginning is quite significant. Genesis starts us "in the beginning", at a time-point which suggests nothing before. But EE and other Babylonian creation accounts start with words like, "on the day that" or "when" -- which do not specify a beginning. The Hebrew word here means "at the first" (Numbers 15:20 "Ye shall offer up a cake of the first of your dough for an heave offering..."); the matching Hebrew word for the Babylonian record is not what is used. This feature "finds no paralells in the cosmogonies" of Babylon. 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. EE also supposes a watery chaos in place, and this is where EE proponents had their biggest party. The word for "deep" here is tehowm, and EE proponents leapt upon the similarity of this word to the name of the Babylonia goddess Tiamat. In the EE, Tiamat was the water-goddess who was slain by Marduk and used to make the watery chaos. It was supposed that tehom was linguistically derived from Tiamat, thus proving borrowing. Substantial differences, first of all, render this unlikely. Tiamat was only one of two water-deities involved in this story; the other was the water-god Apsu. Tiamat was salty water; Apsu was fresh water. Apsu, at any rate, has no parallel in Genesis at all, and the tehom is inanimate. Of more import, the linguistic connection supposed by the critics could, if anything, only have gone in the opposite direction. The words are indeed from the same root (as are indeed, as Heidel points out, the German word for "blessed" (selig) and the English word "silly"!), but Heidel demonstrates at length that for tehowm to be derived from Tiamat is "grammatically impossible" based on the rules of Hebrew as we know them. The Hebrew tehowm has a masculine ending; Tiamat is feminine. A loan word from Babylonian to Hebrew would retain the feminine; we would not expect tehowm but tiama or teama. Hebrew would also not add the H unless it were found in the original word (i.e., it would have to have been Tihamat). Heidel's conclusion is that the two words probably go back to "a common Semitic form," rather than that one was derived from the other [100]. I can mention an observation of my own here. If Genesis was an effort to "clean up" the Babylonian myth for Hebrews, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to use a word with such a clear linguistic connection to the name of a Babylonian goddess. Genesis could simply have referred to the "waters" as it does later on. It is also worth mentioning a special connection that was made by EE proponents who suggested that the EE represented a symbolic form of the rainy season and flood cycle and Babylon, and that this was proof of borrowing by the Hebrews, because they kept this form in spite of living in arid Judea. Heidel responds by noting that the EE proponents hadn't studied Babylonian climate very well -- the rainy season and the flood season there come at entirely different times of the year; if indeed there is a "rainy season" as the area gets only about 6 inches of precipitation a year. [98] 1:3-5 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night... Like EE, Genesis says that light was around even before the creation of the luminaries. A difference here is that in EE, the light was an attribute of deity, whereas here, it is a creation of the deity. 1:6-10 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. The dividing of substances is a commonality in several creation accounts across cultures -- it is found in Egypt, Phoenicia, and India as well, though the elements in question may differ (water, an egg, etc.)[114-115]. The point being, that it makes better sense to postulate an ancient common source than to suggest borrowing. 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so....(1:19-25) This, and the creation of animals, has no parallel known in the EE. It is possible that the creation of vegetation and animals was recorded on a part of the EE that was lost; Heidel reports a gap in the record, but doesn't suppose that there was much room for such a report, which would have to fall between astronomical data and a plea from the gods [117]. I would suggest that it is easier to imagine the Babylonians dropping this element rather than Genesis adding it. 1:14-18 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. Both EE and Genesis record the creation of the luminaries, and in both cases say that they were for light and time-keeping purposes -- no surprise, since all cultures worldwide use the luminaries for the same purpose. The Babylonian account does take a more "astrological" view, however, as it makes a point of the creation of the zodiac and the partitioning of constellations within. Genesis also reports the creation of luminaries in the reverse order of the EE (which lists the stars first). Genesis is also missing EE's reference to gates at the east and the west of the sky through which the sun and moon pass [116]. One is constrained to ask how critics, who suppose the Hebrews to believe in a solid sky and a flat earth, think that this little tidbit was left out of a copycat story. 1:26-30 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. With this we come to perhaps the most significant difference between EE and Genesis. The creation of man at first blush seems very similar -- God creates man from dust, and imputes with life with His breath or spirit; Marduk gives Ea (another god) a plan to create man, leading Ea to go and kill Kingu (another god yet) and mix his blood with dirt to make man. The basic principles of dirt and divine substance appears in both accounts, but few would deny that Genesis is more sophisticated -- leaving us again to wonder whether positing a "clean up" job is more plausible. A larger difference, however, emerges in terms of man's purpose. In the EE, man is created because Marduk was prompted in his heart to "create ingeious things" -- man was an ego trip for Marduk! Once that is done, man's purpose is to serve the gods, build their temples, and make sacrifices to them. Men are the gods' boot-polishers. But in Genesis, man is not a servant to God; he is God's agent. (For more on this, particularly image-language, see Chapter 1 of my book, The Mormon Defenders. There is great significance in the point that in other societies than Israel, the "image" language is applied only to rulers! Socially it is more likely that this designation was taken from all men by selfish, power-hungry rulers than that it was expanded by the Hebrews to include all men.) Finally: Genesis 2:2-3 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. The gods of the EE "rested" also, after a fashion -- they threw a big party, one that takes up almost two tablets of the EE out of seven, in which Marduk is honored. In that context it is worth noting that some saw a connection between Genesis' 7 days and the EE's 7 tablets, but as noted, the creation takes up only four of EE's tablets, and the EE does not lay out a seven-day pattern of creation. Our summary conclusion: The views of EE proponents simply do not correspond with the data -- and thus it is not surprising that borrowing-proponents have sought their parallels, as Greenberg has, elsewhere. http://www.tektonics.org/babgenesis.html

I believe you have missed my point in regards to referring to Genesis vs. Enuma Elish. I have no problems conceding the fundamental differences in two stories. It is a creation myth; and like any creation myth in any culture, the primary aim is to establish a kind of cosmological framework for making sense of the current existing relationships and conditions for humanity, the world, and the gods.

The basic purpose of the first chapter of Genesis is most likely to defend monotheism in the face of surrounding polythesitic cultures. The carefully structured arrangement of events has noticable parallels with other creation accounts of the time. For example, parallels with the Balylonian Enuma Elish have been noted by a number of scholars. The distinctions are stark; and this is the key to understanding why the account exists. In the first chapter of Genesis, what appear as gods in other cultures are listed and subordinated to the one great God of Hebrew theology.

Ancient readers, prior to the rise of science, did tend to take these accounts as "true", but this was basically a consequence of the fact that there were no alternatives, and no concept of a distinct and independent scientific investigation of events in the past. The application has always been for the sake of theological parallels and lessons which remain untouched by the development of scientific modes of investigation.
The second and third chapter of Genesis (the second creation story) has a quite different focus. Here the focus is on the problems of evil, and pain, and moral responsibility; again expressed as a creation story.

Discarding Enuma Elish because it fails to match Genesis verbatum is simply a failure to see what both stories are all about. It is expressing theological principles, expressed using the device of creation stories, using (of course!) the cosmology known at the time to the readers and the writers. The cosmology is the background; not the focus or the intended lesson.

However, what is also well known is that cultural religions have a high tendency to borrow other aspects of other cultural religions and merge certain beliefs into their own. This is most certainly true of conquering cultures over other cultures and civilizations, but is not necessarily exclusive to that aspect. I mention the story of Enuma Elish as an example of this borrowing, I could go further and mention that the second Genesis creation story borrows from a Mesopotamian story about the Sumerian gods making a divine garden for themselves, and the god Enki fathering a gardener to tend it. Or we could talk about many other aspects such as the Noah and the Great Flood, virgin birth, the trinity, the resurection, heaven, the soul, the Sabbath Day, etc. etc. Most religious scholars readity acknowledge this, even some of the most devout Christian scholars, and logically so. Many of these concepts predate the Christian or Judaist concepts by hundreds and even thousands of years. Combined that with the concept of religious cultural borrowing of fundamental beliefs, I feel it’s much more plausible to believe certain aspects of the Bible have done the same.


Now, on a different but related concept, I’d like to argue over the Biblical historical account of events. One of the fundamental problems with the historical record as depicted in Genesis is the translation of ages. As an example of the unreliability of these ages, here are the ages from Adam to Noah in three early biblical texts; The Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint.

MT first: (AM = Anno Mundi)
Adam 1-930 AM
Seth 130- 1042 AM
Enosh 235-1140 AM
Kenan 325-1235 AM
Mahalalel 395-1290 AM
Jared 460-1422 AM
Enoch 622-987 AM
Methuselah 687-1656 AM
Lamech 874-1652 AM
Noah 1056- 2006 AM

MT gives date of the Flood as 1656 AM

Now the Samaritan Pentateuch:
Adam 1-930 AM
Seth 130- 1042 AM
Enosh 235-1140 AM
Kenan 325-1235 AM
Mahalalel 395-1290 AM
Jared 460-1307 AM
Enoch 522-887 AM
Methuselah 587-1307 AM
Lamech 654 - 1307 AM
Noah 707- 1657 AM

The SP gives the date of the Flood as 1307 AM

The same people in the Septuagint
Adam 1-930 AM
Seth 230- 1142 AM
Enosh 435-1340 AM
Kenan 625-1535 AM
Mahalalel 795-1690 AM
Jared 960-1922 AM
Enoch 1122-1487 AM
Methuselah 1287-2256 AM
Lamech 1454-2207 AM
Noah 1642- 2592 AM

The LXX gives the date of the Flood as 2242 AM.

To take the argument further, research on the Qumran scrolls and their comparison to current texts also show some major discrepancies (Cave 4). But what’s worse, it wasn’t that mistakes were made, but deliberate textual changes seemed to have taken place as well:

quote:

The Jeremiah Dilemma Farrell Till Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known manuscripts of the Old Testament dated from 895 A.D., a fact that raised significant questions about the integrity of the Masoretic text. Since tradition assigned the authorship of some Old Testament books to writers who lived as long ago as the 15th century B.C., faith in Bible inerrancy required one to believe that uninspired scribes had somehow copied these books for more than 2,000 years without infusing significant error into the texts. That being too much for some to accept, the inerrancy doctrine lost a lot of followers. Liberal minded Christians began to think of the Bible as a sacred book whose ideas had been divinely inspired but not necessarily the very words, not even the words in the long defunct "original autographs" that inerrancy spokesmen like to talk about. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, believers in the inerrancy doctrine thought they had found cause to rejoice. In Cave One at Qumran was found a manuscript of the book of Isaiah containing all 66 chapters except for only a few words that were missing where edges of the scroll had crumbled. Although many spelling variations were found in the text, the content of the Qumran scroll was found to be remarkably parallel to the Masoretic text of 895 A. D. Translators of the Revised Standard Version in 1952 found only 13 textual differences in the manuscript that they considered important enough to affect their translation of Isaiah. When scholars dated the manuscript at circa 100 B.C., Bible fundamentalists believed they had found in the Qumran text of Isaiah indisputable proof that through the long, silent centuries Jewish scribes had been scrupulously faithful in transmitting their sacred books. After all, if a thousand years had brought no significant changes to the text of Isaiah, couldn't we believe that the same was true of the other Old Testament books? This would make an impressive argument were it not for subsequent discoveries that were made at Qumran, which Bible inerrantists have been very reluctant to talk about. In commenting on these other discoveries, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, professor emeritus of New Testament at The Catholic University of America, dashed cold water onto the hopes of those who had hastily concluded too much from the Qumran text of Isaiah: In Cave 4, 157 fragmentary biblical texts were retrieved, among which is every book of the Hebrew canon, save Esther (and Nehemiah, which at that time was considered as one book with Ezra). Eventually, these Cave 4 fragments revealed a different story about the copying and transmission of Old Testament writings. In some cases, especially 1-2 Samuel, Jeremiah, and Exodus, the fragments brought to light forms or recensions of biblical books that differed from the medieval Masoretic tradition. For instance, one text turned out to be a shorter Hebrew form of Jeremiah, previously known only in its Greek version in the Septuagint. It now seems that the fuller form of Masoretic tradition represents a Palestinian rewording of the book. Another from Cave 4, written in paleo-Hebrew script and dated from the early second century B.C., contains the repetitious expanded form of Exodus previously known only in Samaritan writings, ("The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible: After Forty Years," America, October 31, 1987, p. 302, emphasis added). This "different story" told by the discoveries in Cave Four at Qumran is a story that Bible inerrantists have been conspicuously silent about, probably because it puts to rest all notions of scrupulously meticulous ancient scribes who counted all the letters in the copies they made to be sure that no mistakes had occurred. The Cave Four discoveries tell us that mistakes were not only made but that textual changes were also made with probable deliberation. A single article can't review all parts of the "different story" told by the Cave Four discoveries, but an analysis of the Jeremiah manuscript will be sufficient to refute the claim that we can be reasonably sure the present day text of the Bible is essentially the same as what was in the "original autographs." Scholars had long known before the Cave Four discoveries at Qumran that the Masoretic text of Jeremiah differed substantially from the Greek version found in the Septuagint. Some sections of the Masoretic text were missing entirely from the Septuagint, and other sections were organized differently. Jeremiah 27:19-22; 33:14-26; 39:3-14; and 48: 45-47 are sections in the Masoretic and various English texts that were not in the Septuagint version. The organizational restructuring is too complex to discuss in detail, but some thirty changes in organization have been identified in the Septuagint version. Chapter 25:15-38 of the Masoretic text appears as chapter 32 in the Septuagint, 27:1-19 is chapter 34, 33:1-14 is chapter 40, and so on through more than thirty other changes in organization. To explain the problem posed by these variations in the Septuagint version of Jeremiah, proponents of the inerrancy doctrine once attributed the deviations from the Masoretic text to poor translation, but after the discoveries in Cave Four, this "explanation" became hard, if not impossible, to defend. Work on the Septuagint version began in Alexandria around 285 B.C., and the Jeremiah manuscript found at Qumran, like the Isaiah scroll, was dated in the early second century B. C. Since the Qumran text of Jeremiah was parallel in content and organization to the Septuagint version, here was tangible evidence that at one time, for at least two centuries, a shorter, differently arranged version of the book existed. Hence, variations from the Masoretic text in the Septuagint version of Jeremiah resulted not from careless translation but from a radically different Hebrew text that the translators had before them. More interested in scholarship than the defense of pet theories, Fitzmyer said this about the Cave Four discoveries: Such ancient recensional forms of Old Testament books bear witness to an unsuspected textual diversity that once existed; these texts merit far greater study and attention than they have been accorded till now. Thus, the differences in the Septuagint are no longer considered the result of a poor or endentious attempt to translate the Hebrew into the Greek; rather they testify to a different pre-Christian form of the Hebrew text, (Ibid., p. 302, emphasis added). Because of the damage these facts inflict on the inerrancy doctrine, Bible fundamentalists will, of course, resist the obvious conclusion that they lead to, but until the inerrantists can produce a Masoretic copy of Jeremiah that antedates the Septuagint, they will find it hard to defend their claim that the Bible text we now have is essentially the same as what was written in the "original autographs." The sections missing from the Septuagint and Qumran versions of Jeremiah clearly testify to what Fitzmyer called "a Palestinian reworking of the book." Let's consider, for example, the following omission: Behold, the days come, saith Yahweh, that I will perform that good word which I have spoken concerning the house of Israel and concerning the house of Judah. In those days, and at that time, will I cause a Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely; and this is the name whereby she shall be called: Yahweh our righteousness. For thus saith Yahweh: David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel; neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before me to offer burnt offerings, and to burn meal-offerings, and to do sacrifice continually. And the word of Yahweh came unto Jeremiah, saying, Thus saith yahweh: If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, so that there shall not be day and night in their season; then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he shall not have a son to reign upon his throne; and with the Levites the priests, my ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured; so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me. And the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah, saying, Considerest thou not what this people have spoken, saying, The two families which Yahweh did choose, he hath cast them off? thus do they despise my people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith Yahweh: If my covenant of day and night stand not, if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I also cast away the seed of Jacob, and of David my servant, so that I will not take of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and will have mercy on them, (33:14-26, ASV with Yahweh substituted for Jehovah). Obviously intended as a repetition of Yahweh's promise to establish an eternal, perpetual throne of David over the house of Israel, which promise was first proclaimed in II Samuel 7:12-17, this passage, and ones like it, have proved embarrassing to God's people ever since the vagaries of history reduced the Yahwistic promises of an everlasting Israelite kingdom to mere ethnocentric wishes that didn't materialize. To protect the inerrancy doctrine, Bible fundamentalists have been forced to read figurative meaning into these statements, so rather than a literal promise to establish David's throne forever, they see this passage, and others like it, as a Messianic prophecy that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Either way, the passage concerns a central biblical theme and must therefore be considered important, yet it was in neither the Septuagint version nor the Jeremiah scroll found at Qumran. These omissions have grave implications for the inerrancy doctrine, because they suggest that significant editing occurred in at least one Old Testament book after completion of the original manuscript. So what exactly are we to conclude from this? After verbally inspiring Jeremiah to write his manuscript, did Yahweh decide he could improve on the original and then direct someone to reorganize the material and insert the passages that weren't available to the Septuagint translators or to the scribe who made the Qumran copy? If so, what does this say about the omniscience of Yahweh that we hear so much about? Or if the changes didn't happen under Yahweh's direction, did some scribe or committee of scribes just take it upon themselves to do the editing? Either way again, the proponents of Bible inerrancy have a serious problem on their hands. They preach a doctrine that simply cannot be squared with known facts. Questions raised by the Qumran discoveries pose still other problems for the inerrancy doctrine. A principle of lower criticism states that the older a manuscript is, the more likely its content will parallel the original version. If this is so, now that we have the Quamran version, which is a thousand years older than the Masoretic text, to confirm the probable accuracy of the Septuagint version, what should be done about the book of Jeremiah? Should we scrap the version that has been published for centuries in English Bibles and substitute the Septuagint version? If so, what should be done about the past mistake of publishing a corrupted version of one of God's inspired books? Should Bible fundamentalists simply say, "Oops, sorry about that," and go on proclaiming the inerrancy doctrine as if nothing had happened? Or should they just keep the problem swept under the rug and pretend that it doesn't exist? Since they have now had 40 years to react to the discovery and have done nothing, I suspect they will choose to keep it swept under the rug. After all, what ignorant pulpit audiences, who probably have never even heard of Qumran, don't know won't hurt them. Even without the discovery of the Jeremiah scroll at Qumran, the variations between the Septuagint version of Jeremiah and the Masoretic text posed problems that Bible inerrantists should have addressed long ago. The New Testament writers, who were presumably guided by the Holy Spirit in what they wrote, frequently quoted the Septuagint translation when citing Old Testament scriptures. If these writers were indeed guided by the Holy Spirit as they composed the New Testament, one would assume that their use of the Septuagint for scripture references was done not only by the approval of the Holy Spirit but by his explicit direction. To say the least, then, this would appear to put a stamp of divine approval on the Septuagint Bible. Why then have Bible inerrantists said little or nothing about the variations between the divinely approved Septuagint version of Jeremiah and the longer, differently organized version in the Bibles that they preach their sermons from? Surely this was an incongruity important enough to warrant an explanation. The reliance of New Testament writers on the Septuagint scriptures poses still another problem that goes far beyond variations in the Jeremiah text. That problem concerns the quality of the Septuagint translation in general. The discovery of the Qumran text of Jeremiah may have quelled notions that variations from the masoretic text in the Septuagint version of Jeremiah were primarily due to poor translation, but scholars nevertheless agree that many sections of the Septuagint were carelessly translated. My own copy of the Septuagint says this in the introduction: The variety of the translators is proved by the unequal character of the version: some books show that the translators were by no means competent to the task, while others, on the contrary, exhibit on the whole a careful translation. The Pentateuch is considered to be the part the best executed, while the book of Isaiah appears to be the very worst, (The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, Zondervan Publishing House: 1970, p. iii). The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary gives a similar assessment of translation accuracy in the Septuagint: Examination of the text, however, indicates a combination of numerous versions both literal and free and marked by considerable variance in style, interpretation of the Hebrew, and even order and contents; the latter suggests a variety of underlying Hebrew texts. The Greek-speaking authors of the New Testament quoted from the LXX (Septuagint) rather than the Hebrew text, and the LXX became their authoritative scriptures. Its use by Christians for proselytizing and in anti-Jewish polemics, as well as the growing Jewish dissatisfaction with the LXX for being too loose a translation and not based on the current authoritative text (it varied also from the order of the Hebrew canon), led to the more literal translations of Aquila (A. D. 130), Theodotion, and the Ebionite Christian Symmachus, (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987, p. 154, emphasis added). As indicated in an early edition of Scribner's Dictionary of the Bible, the problems of poor translation in the Septuagint and significant variations from the Masoretic text in manuscripts that the translators had to work with were generally known even before the Qumran discoveries: The second fact that comes to light from a comparison of G (Septuagint) and M (Masoretic) is that there is a great difference between particular books or sets of books in the OT. This arises partly from the circumstances that all the books are not due to the same translators, but still more from the different character of the text lying before them. That Isaiah, for instance, found an interpreter not worthy of this book, was remarked long ago by Swingli; the translator of Job, says Swete, p. 316, was perhaps more familiar with Greek pagan literature than with Semitic poetry.... But more important is the fact that already the Hebrew texts used by the translators differed in varying degrees from the Massoretic text, (1923, Vol. IV, p. 449, emphasis added). Incompetent translation and significant variations from the allegedly inspired Masoretic text--these are serious charges against the Septuagint version that must be resolved if we are to believe that the Holy Spirit guided the writers of the New Testament to quote the Septuagint whenever scripture citations were deemed necessary. Anyone can easily verify the divergent readings between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts by merely using a reference Bible that will identify the sources of quotations used by the New Testament writers. In Matthew 15:8-9, for example, Isaiah 29:13 was quoted from the Septuagint Bible: "This people honoreth me with their lips; But their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men." This has been an often quoted statement in Church-of-Christ sermons aimed at establishing the need of scriptural authority for the structure of Christian worship. The only problem is that the statement, although faithful to Isaiah 29:13 in the Septuagint version, is barely recognizable in the Masoretic text. This is readily apparent in the following juxtaposition of the two versions: And the Lord has said, This people draw nigh to me with their mouth, and they honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me: but in vain do they worship me, teaching the commandments and doctrines of men, (Septuagint). And the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw nigh unto me, and with their mouth and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men which hath been taught them... (Masoretic). There are similarities in the first half of each text, but the last halves are markedly different. Nothing is said in the Masoretic text (which inerrantists say is so close to the "original autographs" as to make variations irrelevant) about the vanity of worship that is taught after the commandments and doctrines of men. If this was not in the Masoretic (original?) text, why did the Holy Spirit guide Matthew to quote it this way? Inerrantists need to explain this. Another variant reading, among many that I could cite, is the quotation of Psalm 40:6-8 in Hebrews 10:5-7: "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, But a body didst thou prepare for me; In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hadst no pleasure: Then said I, Lo, I am come (In the roll of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God." This quotation is very parallel to the Septuagint rendering: Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not; but a body hast thou prepared me: whole-burnt-offering and sacrifice for sin thou didst not require. Then I said, Behold, I come: in the volume of the book it is written concerning me, I desired to do thy will, O my God...." There is a significant difference, however, in the Masoretic text: Sacrifice and offering thou hast no delight in; Mine ears hast thou opened: Burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I am come; In the roll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do thy will, O my God.... What happened to the body that was prepared in the Septuagint account quoted by the Hebrew writer? It isn't in the Masoretic text, yet we are supposed to believe that the Masoretic text and the "original autographs" are essentially one and the same. If the two are indeed essentially the same, why did the Holy Spirit guide the Hebrew writer to quote a corrupted version of this particular Psalm? These are legitimate questions to ask in view of the Hebrew writer's application of the statement present in the Septuagint but missing from the Masoretic text. The reference to the "body [that] thou didst prepare for me" (v:5) is obviously crucial to his point in verse ten about Christians having "been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all," but, as already noted, that statement is not in the Masoretic text. So if the Masoretic text and the "original autographs" are essentially the same, as the inerrantists claim, then the "inspired" psalmist never said what the Hebrew writer said that he said. Anyone who can't see the problem this poses for the inerrancy doctrine doesn't want to see it. In a real sense, then, the Jeremiah dilemma is actually (See JEREMIAH, p. 12) the Septuagint dilemma, for what is true of the Septuagint version of Jeremiah is generally true of its versions of the other Old Testament books. They are characterized by faulty translation and significant variations from the Masoretic text. Skeptics of the inerrancy doctrine have every right, then, to ask its believers to explain why the Holy Spirit chose a flawed version of the Old Testament as his primary source of scripture quotations in the writing of the New Testament. And what should be our position relative to significant variations between the Septuagint and Masoretic texts, as in the examples cited above? Are we to believe that the Septuagint was verbally inspired and the Masoretic wasn't? Or should we believe the Masoretic was inspired and the Septuagint wasn't? Either choice poses major problems for inerrancy proponents. If they go with the Holy Spirit and choose the Septuagint as the "verbally inspired" version, they must explain why they have relied for so long on the Masoretic as their primary textual source. If, on the other hand, they choose the Masoretic, then they return us to where we started. How do they explain why the Holy Spirit directed New Testament writers to quote the uninspired Septuagint? These are questions begging for answers. Perhaps some enterprising inerrantist among our readers can give us the answers. http://www.infidels.org/library/mag...4/4jerem90.html

So I ask with all sincerity to the literalist, how do you reconcile these discrepancies?

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Last edited by MisterOpus1 on Jul-27-2004 at 18:28

quote:

Originally posted by ::TranceVanDyk:: how do i not believe in dinosaurs?? what i meant was, humans were created with the world all in a very short period of time. i didnt mean they were there to witness the creation of it all. im saying, man was there when everything had just been created. so man had witnessed the beginning of all creations, not the creation of all creations.

According to Christian belief, Moses wrote the first books of the Bible, but he certainly was not there from the beginning, was he? So are you stating that Adam somehow wrote down the beginning?

But truly now, can you give me a convincing argument with supporting evidence, outside of the Bible (to avoid circular reasoning) that Moses was the author in the first place? Actually, let me take that one step further - how about giving evidence that Moses even lived?

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 According to Christian belief, Moses wrote the first books of the Bible, but he certainly was not there from the beginning, was he? So are you stating that Adam somehow wrote down the beginning? But truly now, can you give me a convincing argument with supporting evidence, outside of the Bible (to avoid circular reasoning) that Moses was the author in the first place? Actually, let me take that one step further - how about giving evidence that Moses even lived?

Moses edited Genesis, he didn't write it. It is said to have 10 different authors (Adam, Noah, etc) that were eye-witnesses to the events.

About proving that Moses lived, other than the Biblical texts that refrence him often, I'll try and dig something up for curiousities sake.

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 According to Christian belief, Moses wrote the first books of the Bible, but he certainly was not there from the beginning, was he? So are you stating that Adam somehow wrote down the beginning? But truly now, can you give me a convincing argument with supporting evidence, outside of the Bible (to avoid circular reasoning) that Moses was the author in the first place? Actually, let me take that one step further - how about giving evidence that Moses even lived?

http://www.grudge-match.com/History...s.shtml#results

^ That says it all... :P

Anyway, about validity of the bible... I've found some interesting stuff.

"If I were to prove the Bible to be the Word of God (which I DO believe), I would look for prophecies contained therein and whether they came true or not for starters. After all, we do believe that God is TRUTH and cannot/willnot lie so therefore, if there were any false prophecies contained within the Bible, then I would be inclined to believe it to be nothing more than the product of wishful thinking on the part of man. However, all prophecies especially concerning Jesus, (a Messiah to come) HAVE come true and Jesus' teachings and life, and manner of death can also be historically verified outside of the Bible. How is that for starters?"

EDIT: It cut off the second half of my response, sorry.

We could discuss the validity of the Bible topic all day. The dates the 4 gospels were written, Red Sea scrolls, all that stuff. It's kind of a mute point really, isn't it? The scrolls have been dated (using your techniques) and even the most hardcore evolutionists can't deny the fact that the people and events (at least the historical ones) of the Bible actually did exist.

But, I don't think your stating that you don't think the Bible was ever written. You're asking if the stuff that it's written about is true.

So, I believe we are on even ground, are we not?

I believe the Bible is true.

And you believe all the assumptions that modern science uses to prove evolution.

Once again, I'd say that makes us both brothers in faith, does it not?

Last edited by Seventil on Jul-28-2004 at 00:35

i belive in the creation

i think that the evolution is just the way to god to creat this world

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by occrider Sorry I've been rather busy as of late to address your dating arguments from my last reply. But now that I see your opposition come up again, I feel the need to address this topic once again. You continually state that everything we know about dating is due to the "snapshot" we have of some 50-100 years that we've experienced this technology. However that is untrue as I've thought I've addressed in my previous post. First, one must believe that if the decay properties of said dating element does not hold true perpetually, than ALL elements do not hold true. This is clearly false for the simple reason that ALL the half lives for ALL elements would have to be changing in sync with one another. Even IF such a thing were to occur one would have to assume that such a change would have not been noticeable in the past 100 years of dating. However, those 100 years are approximately 5% of the time since christ's passing. This is not some insignificant percentage. Essentially, one must assume that radioactive decay for ALL elements increased exponentially and suddenly decreased some time in the past 100 years to escape our notice. Furthermore, even if one were to adopt such rediculous theories, that still doesn't discount the constant decay observed by astronomers of elements millions of light years in distance and therfore million of years in the past. Each observation of various ages is consistent with current decay rates. Therefore allow me to present a better analogy to suit your skepticism: I don't believe that Abraham Lincoln ever existed. Why? Because someone with the motive made up his existence, included historical forgeries, faked photos, bribed people to believe he existed, etc. Certainly one could assign a probability of .00001% that he never existed, but for all intents and purposes he EXISTED. Empirically, one could make a far better case for radiometric dating than the existence of Jesus.

Occrider: Good response... what do you think about the following article?:
http://www.rae.org/radiodat.html

quote:

I will attempt to give you a few answers to your questions concerning radiometric dating. If you want to study what creationists say about radiometric dating in depth, I recommend three books, The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods and Studies in Flood Geology, both by John Woodmorappe and Creation's Tiny Mystery by Robert Gentry. John Woodmorappe's books are advertised elsewhere on my web site. These books contain an exhaustive study of radiometric dates that do not fit the results evolutionists expect. There is also an exhaustive ongoing study of this subject called the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) Group, a team of six scientists who are investigating the subject in depth, and have published the first of several studies. There are several methods of radiometric dating. Carbon-14 dating has limited value for evolution because its half-life is too short. The method assumes that the production of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere from nitrogen is a process that is in equilibrium, and it is not. The other methods deal with dating igneous rocks. Sedimentary rocks normally cannot be dated with radiometric methods (there are a few exceptions) because they do not have crystals that were consolidated at the time the rock was formed. Therefore, since sedimentary rock is the only kind of rock that bears fossils, a relative date is estimated by the position of a sedimentary rock in relation to an igneous outflow. There is a discussion of a few examples of radiometric methods with sedimentary rocks in Mythology of Modern Dating Methods. Creationists believe that the assumptions of radiometric dating are invalid and cannot be proven. These assumptions are: (1) the radioactive element decays at a constant rate (2) the rock crystal being analyzed is not contaminated by infusion of excess end product (3) the rock crystal contained no end product when it was formed (4) leaching of the parent element out of the rock sample did not occur. The Potassium-Argon dating method suffers from both leaching and contamination problems. Rubidium-Strontium and Uranium-Lead also has problems of the same kind. Potassium, Rubidium and Uranium salts are highly soluble. Leaching of the parent element out of the rock would increase the age of a K-Ar sample. One way to test this would be to analyze the sample before and after soaking it under pouring water. This would reduce the concentration of the potassium ions to the point that it would increase the date of the rock dramatically. I have heard that this experiment has been done, demonstrating this effect (I am searching for the reference). Recent studies of Mt. St. Helens rock known to have come from the 1980 eruption (Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, see www.christiananswers.net) yielded erroneous dates in the millions of years. Similar studies at the Grand Canyon found volcanic rocks dated at the top of the canyon older than those found in the bottom. Something's wrong here. One of the tests that has not been done on the method is to subject it to a double blind study. That is where the sample of interest is tested along with several others of the same rock type, but from different areas. Check out Dr. Walt Brown's book on-line at The Center for Scientific Creation. My link to it is on www.rae.org/revevlnk.html. On page 64 of his book he describes the double blind test needed to establish credibility for radiometric dating. We believe that since evolutionists expect certain rocks to yield dates that agree with their theory, no laboratory will publish dates that are wildly out of whack, or they wouldn't get paid for producing a result that would be hotly contested as experimental error. Woodmorappe shows that even the published results are enough to render the method as unreliable. In any event, radiometric dating doesn't disprove the Bible. It never will unless somehow you could go back in time and observe the process from the formation of the rocks to the present and verify the assumptions to be true.

Also adding:

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Dr. Eugene Chaffin, editor of the Creation Research Society Quarterly and professor at Bluefield College in Virginia, led off a series of three physics presentations with, "A Study of the Variation in the Neutron Resonance and Effective Capture Cross Section of Samarium for the Oklo Natural Reactor." The Oklo natural reactor is a fissionable deposit of uranium which accumulated in a sandstone layer in Africa and was apparently active during Earth history. By looking at residual daughter elements, Dr. Chaffin has attempted to show that the natural reaction would be consistent with a young Earth, but not one which is billions of years old. If an accelerated decay event occurred, the concern is that the ore in the Oklo natural reactor would not be present in the measured amounts. In this presentation, Dr. Chaffin calls into question the treatment of the calculated cross section of the samarium isotopes which act as "poisons" in the reactor to slow down the process. He suggests that several variables in the calculation of nuclear cross section could change by orders of magnitude under conditions of an accelerated decay rate.

A tad bit off your topic, but interesting when relating to radioisotope dating.

As for the astronomy + radioisotope dating = old earth thing, I'm refrencing this article: http://www.icr.org/research/sa/sa-r03.htm

^Great article, I suggest reading it - it's extremely non-biased toward creation or evolution.

Here we go!

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The last problem that we will discuss is probably the single biggest problem that recent creationists face today: the light travel time. Simply stated, if the universe is billions of light years in size, then how did the light from most objects get here in a few thousand years? Several answers have been proposed. One is that light travels in a non-Euclidean geometry. This was suggested more than 40 years ago by a couple of non-creationist physicists to address a different problem. Though still mentioned from time to time, few take it seriously anymore [3]. There is a prediction about close binary stars that the model makes, and the predicted effect is not observed, but this apparently has not been published. Setterfield, who showed that the measured speed of light had decreased since the first measurement was made three centuries ago, proposed a second answer. Extrapolating the much higher speed of light into the past could produce a speed that was near infinite in the early universe and would permit the light from the most distant objects to have reached us. In the past 15 years there has been much debate among creationists over this issue, with some insisting that the effect is real and others convinced that it is not. A mini-symposium on this topic appeared in the Creation Research Society Quarterly a few years ago. The early measurements provide the greatest evidence, but are also subject to the greatest error. It is most curious that the decrease seemed to end about 1960. There are some theoretical problems as well. The speed of light is not a constant that can be arbitrarily changed. It depends upon some fundamental constants that have an effect on the structure of matter. If the speed of light is changed much, the structure of matter will be dramatically changed. Most creationists have adopted the concept of a fully functioning universe as the best explanation for the light travel time problem. In the garden Adam would have been a particularly healthy male. If we could go back in a time machine and examine him we might have concluded that he was 20 to 30 years old. Of course we would have been wrong, because Adam was created only a few days before. In other words, creation implies some sort of apparent history. It is argued that in like fashion, for the stars to serve their intended purpose (for the marking of time and seasons) their light must have reached earth in time for Adam to see them two days later. Thus God must have created the light in transit. But did Adam bear the scars of past history, such as injuries that never happened? When the fossilized remains of large extinct and previously unknown creatures were unearthed over a century ago, some Christians responded that the fossils were created in the rocks and that the creatures never existed; they just appeared to have existed. Most people would reject this as absurd. Yet the creation of starlight in transit raises a similar philosophical point. In the spring of 1987 a superdeca was observed in a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Since that time the progress of the explosion and its aftermath have been carefully observed. We have been able to piece together many fine details of what happened. But if the notion of light created in transit is correct, then none of the observed events happened. How is this different from God creating fossils in the ground? This idea also has no predictive power like the other two suggestions above, which relegates it more to a philosophical idea rather than a scientific one. On the other hand the white hole cosmogony of Humphreys [29], [30] is a very detailed scientific model that seeks to answer the light travel time question. As with the big bang or steady state theories, this model assumes modern relativity theory, but with a different set of initial conditions for the universe. One of the big differences is that the universe started as a white hole. Humphreys assumes that the matter of the universe is bounded. He had chosen to call his model a white hole cosmology, because he perceives that the initial condition is similar to what is called a white hole. Most people have heard of black holes: regions of space where matter and light are falling inward and cannot escape. Most people are not aware that the same theory predicts the possibility of white holes, regions of space very similar to black holes except matter and light are streaming outward. Such a condition is unstable, and so unlike black holes which may exist forever once they form, white holes exist for a relatively short time before ceasing to exist. That is one reason why white holes largely have been largely ignored. Another reason they have been ignored is that we have a theory of how black holes can form naturally at this time in the universe, but not white holes. Any primordial white holes should have ceased to exist by now. The Humphreys cosmology assumes that the universe began as a white hole. Sometime during late in the creation week the white hole ceased to exist, giving us our present universe. The particle horizon swept past the distant stars on day four when the starlight reached the earth on that day. The important point is that through relativistic effects, time proceeds at very different rates in different parts of the universe. While only a few thousand years elapsed near and on the earth, billions of years could have elapsed elsewhere. This would allow light to travel millions or billions of light years to reach the earth while only a few thousand years occurred on the earth. This all happens because of the different rate at which time passes in different reference frames in general relativity. Not only does this cosmogony purport to answer the light travel time problem, it also provides creationists with a Biblically based cosmology as well. However, several questions remain. For instance, why does the solar system, which is not the product of stellar nucleosynthesis, and the rest of the universe, which has undergone stellar nucleosynthesis, have the same basic composition? As mentioned earlier, most creationists reject stellar evolution, but the Humphreys cosmology seems to demand that it has occurred. The Humphreys cosmology also demands that the universe is indeed Gyr’s old, though only a few thousand years has elapsed since the beginning of creation in the reference frame of the earth. It would seem those indicators of a young universe, such as sprial structure in galaxies, the break up of clusters of galaxies, and the ages of SNR’s cannot be reconciled to the Humphreys cosmogony. While only six days occurred on or near the earth, exactly when in those six days did the creation of the stars take place? If the particle horizon swept past the distant stars on the fourth day so that the stars first became visible on the earth, then how is that different from those who argue the same thing (that stars were created earlier, but only became visible on the surface of the earth on day four), but that the cause was a clearing of the atmosphere? While the Humphreys cosmogony met with little discussion or opposition at first, the level of debate has increased tremendously. Several critical papers have been written [11], [13], and Humphreys has responded [32]. Humphreys' critics have charged that he has either misunderstood or improperly applied general relativity in his model. Byl [11] has argued that while time dilation effects are real, the sense of time corrections are always in the wrong direction and/or are too small to solve the light travel time. Byl, along with Connor and Page [13], concludes that the approach that Humphreys is attempting would more properly describe the time difference between an observer in the universe to one outside of the universe. If this is true, then the Humphreys model certainly does not succeed in addressing the question as framed. This criticism has led the editorial staff of the ICC to conclude that there was a failure in the peer review process of Humphreys' 1994 paper [29] in which he first publicly presented his model. Humphreys is convinced that his model is still viable and is continuing to correct and refine his model. Whether this model survives or not, we should applaud this very serious effort that Humphreys has made. So what is the state of creationist astronomy? We have seen that it has some good points to make. We have also seen that there have been some false starts and some problems. We must go beyond arguing what is wrong with evolutionary models. What is needed is an overall model or paradigm to describe the universe. A formation and history of the solar system must be explored. A particularly important question to address here is when and how the cratering that we see in the solar system occurred. Did the cratering occur during creation, at the fall, during the flood, or at some other time? A few authors have begun work on this question [25], [39]. If we are not satisfied with stellar evolution, then we must provide physical arguments against it and supply our alternative. For the universe as a whole we must explain the light travel time in a plausible way. Some progress has been made in creationist astronomy, but there is much work to be done. Older arguments must be continually reevaluated and expanded. The words of the late George Mulfinger in his early review are just as true today as they were 25 years ago [38]: "…much work remains to be done the in the area of creationist astronomy. Christians who have sufficient background in the field who have strong enough convictions to take a good stand on the issues involved should be encouraged to write." It is hoped that this discussion has inspired some who are already competent in the field to pursue these matters or encouraged bright young people to enter the field for this purpose.

Great read... I think I'm going for my astrophysics PhD after I finish my Theology one...

I just wanted to say, wow. This is a long post. I honestly haven't read a single post. Just wow.



Continue.

your a smart guy misteropus. thats beyond my knowledge. you'de have to ask a scholar that question.

___________________

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Okay, I think I understand your reasoning, so allow me to clarify mine: I’ll go with your argument that dating is an “assumption”.

Yay! I win.

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By this logic then we must conclude that there is a possibility of invalidity, though however small. However, literally EVERYTHING we do in our lives is based on this definition of “assumptions”, and validity is based on the accuracy of those assumptions. In science, an “assumption” is not equated to something that is “untested” or “unproven”, as creationists like to call it. Quite the contrary, by your definition of “assumption”, science does everything in its power to test the validity of such “assumptions”. But by testing the validity of those “assumptions”, and finding those tests giving reliable and predictable results, does that “assumption” somehow get transformed into a scientific “fact”?

I see where you are coming and going with this. I'm not trying to take a "Chicken Little" sort of approach.

I disagree with you that the possibility of your scientific assumptions having a small possibility of invalidity.

I agree with the rest of your statements on this matter, but they dodge the fact that the probability (in my mind) that they are invalid is indeed high.

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"The answer is a resounding “no”. You must understand that if we go by this definition of “assumption” that you are utilizing, then we must also conclude that there are no “facts”, no matter how many tests give reliable and predictable results on those given assumptions. Rather than a stated “fact”, we have strong evidence that best explains a given “assumption” that occurs. Would it be logical to rely on such “assumptions” if those tests on those assumptions were unreliable or resulted in random results? Of course not, which is exactly how science works. Instead, science relies on those “assumptions” that have been tested, retested, retested again and again which give the same, reliable results, and with a strong reliability, those “assumptions” have much more validity. These “assumptions” are then utilized to test or predict other “assumptions”, and those “assumptions” are further tested, retested, again and again to understand their validity. And so it goes.

Now you're getting the picture! Assumptions to prove assumptions.

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But this maxim certainly does not end there. The beauty of science is its ability to adapt and advance with more knowledge and technology. This knowledge and technology is utilized over and over on those “assumptions” to test their reliability and validity. If for some reason those “assumptions” are proven unreliable by present day or future standards, that then shifts the understanding of those “assumptions” towards a more reliable understanding.

Until our beautiful science and technology invents a time machine, I'm afraid we're both out of luck.

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Now replace the word “assumption” with “natural event” or “phenomena”, and you’ll have a better understanding of how science works. This is the universal understanding for all sciences, including physics, astronomy, biology, etc. etc. And here’s the catch – evolution is no different. Modern day standards and technology has tested and retested those natural evolutionary events that were believed to have occurred by scientists 20 yrs. ago, 40 yrs. ago, 100 yrs. ago, up to the point of Darwin. Now, does that mean that evolutionary theory has remained unchanged since the time of Darwin? Absolutely not, which is what I was alluding to when I referred to modern day knowledge reshaping past understanding. This has certainly occurred with the onset of genetics, cell and molecular biology, and other phenomena such as punctuated equilibrium. However, these events have merely strengthened the notion of our understanding of evolutionary theory, because they have confirmed with validity (testing, retesting, again and again those “assumptions”) what occurs naturally through hundreds of millions of years with life on earth.

Well, I'll make sure all the scientists are available for the next Fall of Man or Flood. We'd get some serious data-farming there.

I agree that science has been constantly working at trying to understand our world and how it came to be. The problem IS the assumptions however - and not having the open-minds to try and view the world without evolutionary-biased thinking.

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Now in regards to your specific question on dating, I feel Occ has done a nice job answering your questions, but for some reason you seem compelled to continue asking the same question. It’s not my strong point, but I’ll try for some more clarity: The word "assumption" often implies "unchecked", which is certainly not true in radioisotope dating. I prefer to call them premises. There are four major premises involved in radioisotope dating (not all methods require all four to be true, as discussed below). In your particular language, you may call these “assumptions”: 1. Co-genetic. If multiple samples are involved, they came from the same source. This is easily verified in the cases where the samples come from different parts of the same rock. (Several invalid creationist criticisms have, apparently purposefully, used non-co-genetic samples that could easily have been detected as such when they were collected). 2. Known initial daughter. We know how much of the isotope that is produced by radioactive decay was present at solidification. (Actually, it's a bit more complex than just "solidification", but solidification is close enough for jazz). 3. Closed system. No significant amounts of the isotopes of interest enter or leave the samples after solidification. 4. Constant radioactive decay. The half-life of the radioactive isotope(s) involved has not changed. Premise 4 is common to all radioisotope dating methods, and nobody has ever come up with a method that checks it within the context of radioisotope dating. Outside that context, physicists have checked it six ways from Sunday: •Observations of nuclear reactions in distant stars and distant galaxies (for which the reactions took place thousands or millions of years ago). •Inferences about nuclear processes in the very early universe before galaxy formation. •Cross checking of dates against other non-radiometric dating methods. •Cross checking of radically different radiometric methods. •Study of residues from the Oklo natural nuclear reactor, active nearly two billion years ago. •Theory of quantum mechanics, which is itself one of the most precisely studied and tested models in physics. Radioactive decay is a process that is well understood. We know a great deal about the relevant forces and the structure of atoms, and how and why they decay. In fact, I would say radioactive decay is substantially better understood than gravity. This illustrates the principal that confidence in scientific models is related also to how well the underlying principals are understood. •Testing of a range of conditions in which decay might vary. If decay rates have varied, then can we reproduce the conditions under which this occurs? In some cases, yes; and none of them make any difference to dating techniques. So, what about premises 1-3?

Well, you did hit the weak spot of creation science (astronomy) - but look above for the Apple-Orange-Coconut analogy and I think it's a viable solution in a well-neglected field.

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-113.htm - Radiometric dating using isochrons

The following is taken from http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-b/btg-104b.htm

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Assumption One: The radioisotope decay rates have been constant throughout the past. We know that some elements decay over time into another element, i.e., uranium (parent) changes into lead (daughter).

Since these decay rates are now very stable, this has seemed to be a reasonable assumption. However, there are several clues that past rates have changed, or that some other process dominated.

For example, the existence of short half-life polonium halos in rock have been used by many to argue for rapid formation (i.e., creation) of host rocks. Even evolutionists admit that the halos are a mystery. Yet nearby a full uranium halo might be found which would take a long period of time to form. These two 'mutually-exclusive' facts convince one that something has been overlooked.

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Assumption Two: No parent or daughter material has been added to or taken from the specimen.

We know of many ways in which the materials can be made mobile, most particularly through ground water leaching. But even when questionable specimens are rejected, many results are still unusable, and explained away by contamination.

Furthermore, since the dynamic Flood of Noah's day covered the entire globe, what rock could have escaped its effects?

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Assumption Three: No daughter material was present at the start.

Only rocks and minerals which formerly were in a hot molten condition (like lava) can be dated. But what if the original melt already had some radiogenic lead? The resulting rock would inherit a deceivingly "old" date. In recent years, the "isochron" method has been derived to differentiate between inherited material and true daughter material. Unfortunately, even this has now come into disfavor. Many "pseudo-isochrons" have now been published which yield bizarre, useless dates.

This assumption actually denies the possibility of creation, for God may have created an array of radioisotopes which, if analyzed with false assumptions, could be misinterpreted as age.

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Either the rocks are old or some incredibly powerful agent deliberately inserted isotopes in the rocks to make them appear old. Many people, both Christian and non-Christian, find the latter possibility repugnant. I hope you do not adhere this.

Yep - the Debil did it!

I don't see a diabolical scheme here, same as you.

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I really hope you do not become a geologist for the oil industries.

Only if my ninja gig doesn't work out.

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They rely very heavily on biostratigraphy when trying to find the “hot spots” for oil. If an oil company learns that petroleum is found in buried reefs of the Silurian Age, for example, its geologists searches for reefs of Silurian age elsewhere. Indeed, an “assumption” takes place here, right? But once again, that assumption is tested and retested over and over, because by following this strategy, more petroleum is found than if drilling is done on a random basis. It’s highly unlikely that the major oil and petroleum companies today are continually being fooled, don’t you? I suppose you could take it up with a geologist for BP, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict he’ll tell you that fossilization and modern day biostratigraphy are highly reliable. If you do not believe me, however, I suggest you ask that geologist from BP to adhere to the Noachian beliefs of biostratiphaphy, and let’s see just how successful BP becomes. I have a slight notion that the latter approach won’t sit too well with them, or any oil industry for that matter.

Do the geologists really care if said oil is 4000 or 400 million years old? Is oil like wine, better with age? The system, the science, works for the system they apply it to.

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The problem with your analogy here is that evolution relies on forensics for corroborating evidence from multiple sciences to shape the entire theory as a whole. In actuality your analogy SHOULD be geared towards creationism. Let me give you a counterexample – I just killed your mother. I have a knife with blood on it, broken glass on my jacket from the window I crawled through, a fingernail is missing from your mother and is found in my neck, and a shoeprint in the house matches the type of shoes I wear. DNA evidence from the blood on the knife and the fingernail matches your mother’s DNA with an extremely high probability (1 in 90 billion for ex). Bloody handprints with my fingerprints match to me with high probability as well. She told me she loved me and we were having an affair because your father is a mean drunk and he beats her, but then she refused to leave him and I became enraged (as depicted by testimony by my best friend whom I consulted with). DNA tests also showed that there was some of my skin underneath her fingernails, which matches quite well to the scratches on my face. However, there were no witnesses to the murder. Your father was passed out in his shed out back. Oh yeah, and I specifically told my best friend as I was leaving the house with a big knife, whom I thought I could trust, not to tell anyone that I’m going to kill her. But you go and arrest your father for the murder. He’s a bad drunk, he’s talked about killing your mother at times, esp. when he’s drunk, he was drunk the night she was murdered, and it just seems like he should be the one behind bars. The bloody fingerprints do not match his fingers, the bloody shoeprints do not match any of his shoes, no DNA evidence whatsoever points toward him whatsoever, but it just feels like he is the one. What’s the judge and jury going to decide? Unless you have a great Simpson lawyer, chances are they are going to throw the “assumptions” that your father did it out the window. Chances are the DA will want to build a case on me instead. Why? Because the corroborating evidence strongly suggests that I am the culprit. Does it mean that, shy of a complete confession on my part, that the evidence is 100% accurate? Nope. Does it mean that there’s a slight possibility that it was someone else? Sure, but there has to be strong evidence to support such a notion.

The evidence you stated for this scene does not accurately portray evidence toward evolution, in my opinion.

Let me edit to be more of a evolution vs. creation type evidence.

The crime happened a really long time ago.
The evidence at the scene seems to point toward the husband.
100 people saw you commit the crime and wrote a book about it. Millions have read it. It states that the husband came in and tried to stop you, in the process leaving blood and other incriminating evidence at the crime scene.

Ignoring the book, isn't it easy to convict the husband? Without the book, it seems to make sense. Add personal witness in there, and a book written about the said events, and it makes a lot more sense.

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Now we’re back to reality (I apologize for that morbid thought, I’m simply trying to make a strong point here). Evolution is widely accepted as the “culprit” because all the evidence strongly suggests that there is an old earth of around 4.5 billion yrs or so, and that life changed over time via random mutation and natural selection. If there is an alternative story, or an alternative “culprit” that did it, so be it. The problem, however, is that without evoking supernatural phenomena, there is no supporting evidence to an alternative story, such as the one creationism attempts to depict. Until there is, scientists are going to embrace evolution in the same manner that they embrace any other theory that explains natural phenomena, such as gravity, germ theory, quantum mechanics, and so on.

Well, that's one way to not have to follow rules.

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To support your assumptions you need evidence. As of yet you have supplied none. So far your only evidence offered is an attempt to debunk evolution. I have done what I can to refute your attempts, but even if there was a possibility of an alternative theory, what makes you believe it would only be creationism? Again I ask, why do you readily dismiss alternative cultural creationist stories?

I don't dismiss them. I'm not intimately familiar with them. I also happen to believe my current one. Educate me on some of them, or perhaps I will, but I think we have enough fuel for the fire on this one currently.

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By simply trying to refute evolution does not in any way give credence to your version of creationism - this is a logical fallacy of duality – unless you positive, verifiable evidence of your version of life evolving over time, you cannot conclude by performing false negatives that your version of creationism is true. By this logic, my God, the Great Cookie Monster from the Planet Zoinks! who created all the different forms of life by sneezing chocolate chip pieces out his nose, is just as valid a theory as yours. What’s the difference?

There isn't a well documented account of it throughout history.

I challenge you to give me postitive, verifiable evidence of evolution (I think they've all been refuted, haven't they?) - don't some of the creationist guys offer like a half a million dollars for one anyway? Just because a lot of people believe something doesn't mean it's right. That could go for both of our causes, couldn't it?

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Nothing has been the same over time, but how on earth would this reconcile your argument in the first place?

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Your rule is highly invalid. Testing, retesting, again and again, and corroborating those tests with other tests and methods have given highly reliable results. That’s scientific methodology. Get over it already.

Once again, ignoring the fact that you are making assumptions about the past. I don't doubt the ability of modern scientists - I doubt their logic by not considering the simple fact of Creation. Call it a .0000001% chance if you will, I call it a 100% chance.

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Show me how a scientific “law” has not been constant. (BTW, I hate that term “law” – it really is a misnomer of older science textbooks).

Carbon-14 fluxations in the atmosphere, magnetic field weakening, speed of light being faster when first measured - the list goes on and on - some that you yourself have mentioned. Science thought the earth was flat and that the earth was the center of the universe once - is it that unplausible that some scientific constants will be disproven before the end of our lifetimes?

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Everything has not always been constant, but certain events and natural phenomena have. That’s nature – it is quite predictable once you understand it a little better. Without invoking supernatural events (which can neither be tested or proven reliable), show me how a natural event has been shown to be “not constant”. Though this is an entirely different argument than the one you quoted me here, I’d like some strong supporting evidence of what you are referring to here.

You should have been a meteorologist - understand enough of the system and you'll be able to predict it for sure, right?

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Although I feel the debate about absolute vs. relative morality is best served in another thread, I will not diminish the fact that there are some powerful and worthy messages of morality and spirituality depicted in the Bible. To me this is what it’s primary purpose is for.

The only difference between me and you is that I strive to live by it, and you use it for a tale of morals and ethics. Not that far off, I guess.

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Only if those assumptions are invalid to begin with. You have a problem with those initial “assumptions” being invalid, I suggest you talk to a statistician. To date those “assumptions” you keep referring to are extraordinarily valid with supporting evidence. A theory is not based on “assumptions” unless those “assumptions” have been tested ad nausium. This is true for any science, and once again, this is true for evolutionary theory. Get over it.

There are three types of lies; a lie, a damned lie, and a statistic.
-- "Mark Twain"

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I tend to want to believe evidence in front of me, rather than rely on faulty evidence depicted in the many different translations of a story with little or no evidence to support it.

Those ingorant of the past will be ignorant of the future, as well.

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Forgive me, but you did a rather poor job at depicting evolution as a faith. Try again.

Go back up and look at your first comment. You admitted it there, whether you wanted to or not, that you take belief on faith.

So, Father Opus, Preacher of Evolution, our eternal battle continues. I do look forward to your next reply.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 According to Christian belief, Moses wrote the first books of the Bible, but he certainly was not there from the beginning, was he? So are you stating that Adam somehow wrote down the beginning? But truly now, can you give me a convincing argument with supporting evidence, outside of the Bible (to avoid circular reasoning) that Moses was the author in the first place? Actually, let me take that one step further - how about giving evidence that Moses even lived?

Let me ask you - 500 years from now, how would someone give evidence that you lived? Records, personal accounts(stories), pictures, and historical documentation. Unfortunately Moses and his generations didn't have access to the technology we have today, so tracking him down is a bit harder.

I don't understand your logic here - it would be like me saying:

Prove evolution without using science.