Challenge for all atheists
- Thread starter 5billionof5billion
- Start date
- Status
Who?
And could you guarantee it would still be comprehensible after 5000 years of "telephone"?
A while back I came up with a comedy routine, based on the supposition that the Big Bang theory is true and that the Lord was trying to explain it to Moses when he was first writing the Pentateuch. The voices would be similar to Bill Cosby's "Noah" routine.
Lord: Moses, get some papyrus and a quill. Write all this down.
Moses: You got it, Lord.
Lord: This is the history of the universe. 15 billion years ago, there was no space-time as we understand it. All of space-time was compressed into a singularity.
Moses: Who did what now?
Lord: Space-time. Not. There.
Moses, writing: ... spayed... tithed... not...
Lord: Look, just start over. It was a formless void.
Moses: Okay, got it. How long was this again?
Lord: 15 billion years.
Moses: 15 ba-what?
Lord: Billion.
Moses: Is that more than a furlong?
Lord, getting agitated: Look, it was seven days, okay?
Moses: Okay, got it. Go ahead, Lord.
Lord: Finally, I caused the singularity to expand, releasing radiation.
Moses, writing: ... single... hand... released ... what again?
Lord: I said radiation!
Moses, writing: ... rain flotation... this doesn't make any sense. Should I get Noah in here?
Lord, losing his temper: LOOK, IT WAS LIGHT, OKAY? WRITE THAT DOWN! LIGHT! I LET THERE BE LIGHT!
The point is that the concepts didn't exist. Whether Genesis is literally true or not, the origin story would read just about the same. Same throughout the rest of the Bible. It's clear that the people depicted there were extremely flawed, all of them. And the concepts that (I believe) God would have been putting across would have been oddball — if they existed at all. I can't name a culture back then that could have gotten it right. Heck, I can't name a culture today that is getting it right, which is partly why the world is in this state.
At some point, I have GOT to watch that show. I saw the pilot but it made me think of the x-files and I wasn't in the mood to go through something like that again at that point.
Last edited:
God and aliens both.
Get in line.........
The Gospel of Supernatural.
Metatron tells off God
The Gospel of Supernatural.
Metatron tells off God
With God, anything is possible. I still don't get why it wouldn't be possible. Think about it. There was Cain who obviously had a wife who was a sister. Because there were no genetic defects back then, they could do that. Then there was the third born son Seth who probably had a wife who was a sister. Plus the Bible says Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. Their kids would've had to marry each other. Then their kids' kids could've married each other; and eventually, it would've been second cousins, third cousins, etc.
With all due respect, you should really try to live up to your username and try to be spot on.
God bless, Jason Irelan
The problem is that assumes that "whatever it's all about" can be explained in human terms. It also assumes a God who thinks in human terms ... basically another human who happens to have thunderbolts. You don't want to believe in someone like that? That's fine. Neither do I.
The point of having faith in a higher being is that you expect Him to be a lot wiser than you. The point of believing He's a lot wiser than you carries an expectation that He has godly perspective, total knowledge, and universal insight that you don't have and cannot have.
Even if I had the right to demand He share it with me, I can't imagine being able to understand it. If I tried? Two words: "Irina Spalko." And that wasn't even God.
If you don't want to believe in a being like that, fine. I wouldn't force it on anyone.
But if you don't want to believe in God simply because you define him to be like man — and you can't imagine a man who has all the answers? Of course you're already disappointed. It's still specious reasoning, though.
Says who?
And yet, the very same DNA that god was said to have made, is the genome we're researching now, and it could not have come from such a small source.
Not to have lasted 150,000 years to reach 7.3+ billion people. If the DNA was so fundementally different, then we're a different race altogether from the strange beings made in "Eden".
Not to have lasted 150,000 years to reach 7.3+ billion people. If the DNA was so fundementally different, then we're a different race altogether from the strange beings made in "Eden".
Says who?[/QUOTE]
Says the first chapter in Genesis where it says God made man in His own image, and God is perfect. After a period of time, perhaps centuries or millennia, genetic defects started happening like nearsightedness and who knows what other genetic defects there are; and people started having more genetic defects. With all due respect, I wish people would stop arguing about that point even if you don't accept it.
God bless, Jason Irelan
Says the first chapter in Genesis where it says God made man in His own image, and God is perfect. After a period of time, perhaps centuries or millennia, genetic defects started happening like nearsightedness and who knows what other genetic defects there are; and people started having more genetic defects. With all due respect, I wish people would stop arguing about that point even if you don't accept it.
God bless, Jason Irelan
Well there's the fact that DNA does not start out as a perfect code and just adds only defects over time, we know enough about genetics to dismiss the Eden idea by this point.
And we won't stop arguing it until someone produces something sound in terms of an argument that isn't some empty appeal to any random nonsense they feel like.
And we won't stop arguing it until someone produces something sound in terms of an argument that isn't some empty appeal to any random nonsense they feel like.
Here's a tip: don't start a thread pushing your beliefs on people if you don't want to discuss it with them. Discussion threads on a BBS are (*gasp*) for the purpose of discussion. Funny how that works.
You seem to be assuming that God made Adam to be physically exactly like Him. Did they have the same color of hair?
Whether they had genetic defects in the Garden of Eden is not something the Bible was ever meant to address. Making statements like that is taking liberty with the material.
With all due respect, I wish people would start thinking about these things even if you don't accept it.
Last edited:
How can defects creep into a supposedly perfect structure? Why would God not make sure we were impervious to our surroundings?
Well, no, they couldn't. The very fact you are saying that shows you know nothing about genetics. I'm not in a position to give you a primer here (google is your friend) but suffice to say it has NOTHING to do with existing defects and everything to do with a viable gene pool. Which cannot be maintained with a baseline taken from two people.
This is spot on, it's simple biological fact that you can verify by taking even the most bare bones foundation course. Nor does it rely on faith or my opinion. You don't avoid genetic defects by creating a larger genepool through inbreeding, it just doesn't work. All you are doing is creating more muddy waters. No matter how many children they had they would still be working from the genetic material of two individuals and empirical science has shown us that doesn't work. Period.
We don't avoid incest purely because of religion (although historically the church has acted as avaluable mouthpiece to strengthen the taboo), nor is it because there are too many "genetic defects" in the pool, but because doing it creates those defects. By your model the human race simply couldn't have thrived the way it has.
There's little point me repeating this ad nauseum, either you are willing to do a primer in genetics in which case the answer to your question will be clear, or you aren't and are prepared to accept the word of your minister who I am prepared to bet good money is not a biologist.
Your argument seems to rest on that "with God everything is possible" but you don't seem to grasp the idea that for many of us God is not a given. If you are going to make sweeping statements starting from a premise you have to establish a consensus that said premise is valid, otherwise you are on the road to nowhere.
As I have no evidence for the existence of God nor logical reason to even suspect His existence I see no reason to accept such a statement in denial of hundreds of years of painstakingly careful scientific study. You may believe God makes anything possible, but that is your belief. The fact you believe it does not mean others do, or should.
In this case for instance, if someone does not believe in God (or remains unconvinced), why then would they be impressed by such a statement when all the empirical evidence really does stack up to the contrary. Evolution by natural selection happens. We can recreate it under lab conditions. It happens and by definition requires a large enough genepool to allow for significant genetic variety. Two people is not enough, nor does the literal creation story explain how we happen to share so much of our genetic make up with every other species on the planet. No matter who is offended by that idea and froths at the mouth trying to terrorize you into believing otherwise it is simply true beyond any reasonable facsimile of doubt.
That doesn't preclude God from the story and Darwin was a religious man himself. He saw no conflict between the two and despite my personal misgivings about the Christian church (or any other organised religion) neither in principle do I. If God did create us he had to do so somehow and the evidence suggests that natural selection was it. If so fair play, any intelligent creator would far more likely start life by building the basic principles into His universe than by just dropping two specimens arbitrarily into a world which clearly wasn't compatible with them. (Forbidden fruit? The Serpent? Original sin?)
Bear in mind I have had a fundamentalist upbringing myself, as I said. I'm actually grateful for it, much as I am grateful for the polio and tetanus inoculations I got as a child. It left me as an adult far less likely to be swayed by "arguments" which prey on people's insecurities and fears rather than reason.
Last edited:
But it all circles back around to the fact, that if perfect and all knowing, God should've seen that this wasn't going to get his message out in a manner that would be clear to those who he wanted to communicate with.
And you know this... how? Nothing remotely related is mentioned in the Bible. And you certainly didn't get it from science.
Ziyal
M.Div.
- Status
Similar threads
