Posted by OneGlove [OneGlove] on November 18, 1999 at 14:05:56 {KEdmzBXaT6ddh6ih/xtgVOGhhkwG5g}:
In Reply to: **Carl Sagan posted by DaJahVeu on November 18, 1999 at 13:00:58:
1. The creation.
Where do you get off calling it the creation? Tell me, what was created exactly? There is as much evidence for evolution as there is that the earth moves around the sun.
If you don't believe me, consider just one small detail I picked off the top of my head. In all cultures, human beings sneer. You've probably done it yourself. When some person you don't like walks into the room, your lip curls almost involuntarily. What is the reason for this? It is quite simple really. Our cousins, the apes demonstrate it quite well - though we are not descended from them, our branches split millions of years ago. Apes sneer in order to reveal their large canines. Long ago, our ancestors lost the over-sized canines, but kept the sneer.
Now beyond that, for questions of how matter or the rest of the universe got here, postulating a God makes the question of how something came from nothing no easier.
2. Bible Record
And what is wrong with the Rig Veda exactly? But that aside, what about the unhistorical account of Genesis? (6-day creation. Flood. Mandrakes. God afraid of sky-scrapers. God walks about in the Garden. God argues with Abraham and changes his opinion. Pharoh gets off on Sarah even though she's more than a century old.) What about judges? (Re-read the part about Samson and the jaw-bone.) What about God's insistence that he punishes sons for the errors of their fathers. The verse in Deutoronomy about how an illegitamite offspring cannot come into the congregation for 10 generations. (Might be Exodus.) There are several examples of historical accuracy in the Bible. But there are examples of historical accuracy in every religious book. Real people wrote them. Real people who were alive back then. But the inaccuracies are far more important than the details they managed to get right.
Oh, and just a little evidence that absolutely disproves a global flood: Icecore samples from Greenland and the Antarctic. They are deposited yearly, and show to abnormal rainfall patterns for the possible years give by the Bible for the flood.
3. Records of other Historians
Why is it that no historians around the time of Christ noted that the sun darkened as the Gospels claim? We have compilations of supernatural celestial phenomonae from the first century that curiously neglect to mention this prominent fact. Even though one important compilation does record such details as a small waning of the sun when Augustus died. Even if the darkening only occured in Judea, we can expect it would make a big enough impression that SOME non-Christian would write it down. Why no Chinese or Babylonian records of the Sun standing still in Joshua's time? We have copius records of astrological events from that time period. No one noticed the Sun standing still? How come no one noticed the patriarchs in Egypt? Either Moses going or Joseph coming? Egypt had plenty of historians. We still have their works.
Sure, some Bible historians got some things right because they were alive at that time. The inaccuracies are more important though.
4. My faith.
Oh. I don't suppose that has any connection with what your parents drummed into you when you were little does it? No, couldn't be.
5. Irrefutable evidence by eyewitnesses.
What makes it 'Irrefutable' exactly. People claim to be eyewitnesses all the time. For instance: Elvis sightings. Unless you believe Elvis has been raised from the dead.
What would you call someone who believed whatever someone else told him was true? Even if these people swore up and down it was so. Even if these people personally testified about themselves as to thier wonderful record of honesty.
Gullible, right?
I am not cliaming Jesus never existed, he probably did. But there isn't a great deal of evidence that he was raised from the dead, or even performed miracles.
If you think that the evidence that Lincoln existed is comprable to the evidence that Jesus performed miracles, you are sadly mistaken. I can't even begin to reason with that.
--OneGlove