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Sorry, I meant 2002 paper (Silvestru SAID 2004).
The logic of the YEC claim is that in eg 100 years Everest’s height has reduced by 270 mm or around 10.6 inches. And that reduction has happened for the last 4,300 years as well – this is the uniformitarianism YECs claim to detest and falsely accuse mainstream scientists of being totally wedded promoting geological ‘fraud’ – as you falsely claim on your website.
I did see this – if it is correct it is describing a RECENT phenomenon caused by global warming affecting glaciers (soft snow melts but then freezes):
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2004-09-01/science/27161034_1_mt-everest-meters-global-warming
I don’t know what erosion rates have to do with the age of the earth, but I suspect because of how the earth and planets, stars and sun and such turned out, (by God’s awesome design) he found it important to repeat the fact that mornings and evenings made up the days.
No mornings and evenings in old earth logic?
No days of creation.
“I don’t know what erosion rates have to do with the age of the earth”. Very little.
Hello everyone,
In post 150 above Ashley jumped upon a line from the abstract of the referenced paper on erosion in the Himalayas, in hopes to find evidence that Emil Silvestru, a PhD geologist and world expert in cave-research (karstology):
“deliberately misrepresents the 2004 paper” and that:
“Silvestru is LYING by omission.”
All because he simply cited their own figure! 2.7 mm erosion in the high Himalayas!
While this attack is not deserving of a serious response, the line you pointed out was hard for me to understand as well, though you should have been a lot more circumspect given you don’t understand it either.
I asked a geologist friend of mine what they meant, and he suggested this:
That looks about right. The first line of their abstract states: “…there is much debate about the feedbacks between tectonics, erosion and climate.” Tectonics (causing uplift) responding to erosion (due to decreased weight). We’ve already said both views agree that uplift is occurring.
But if you doubt this, Ashley, then go ahead and rent the whole article, and see if they give evidence that more material is being deposited on top of the mountain, which might give you a way to keep those uplifted sedimentary layers from being eroded away completely three times over per 1 million years. I suspect you’re going to be disappointed. So those strata should not be there, they should have eroded away hundreds of times over by now. Mt. Everest is young.
Now – after a delay – Nicholas is blatantly lying. He and Silvestru claim the Himalaya are eroding away and quote the 2.7mm annual figure. Yet the paper they reference found that “much of the exhumation in the Himalayan mountain chain is now BALANCED by erosion”. Thus the height of the mountain is scarcely changing over time – according to this 2002 paper. It is not eroding away towards ‘nothingness’. Yet earlier in this thread Nicholas falsely claimed “within only 1 million years, the 3,000 feet of fossil-bearing sedimentary layers capping Everest should have been eroded away three times over!”. No.
The Himalaya are around 50 million years old and claims that they should have eroded away long ago if they were formed that long ago are completely untrue.
The Abstract states that the Himalaya are a “rapidly uplifting mountain belt”. Read it. Your talk of the article not mentioning ‘deposition’ (other than snow presumably) is a total red herring. I am not going to accept Nicholas’ attempts to muddy the waters. I accept the erosion figure. But it is BALANCED by uplift and/or exhumation. Please see part 7 here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tectonic_uplift
You point out dishonesty by a YEC and instead of reconsidering their position they dig their heels in and pretend that they were not either mistaken or deliberately lying. I’ve seen this many times before. It fools nobody – except another YEC perhaps.
Dr Brown – if you are considering your own viewpoint, I suggest that old Earth creationists are more truthful than young Earth creationists.
As I understand it, since the very old marine fossils first arrived in surface layers on Everest although some fossil containing layers have eroded away others have then taken their place from below. Having re-read the last two posts, I think Nicholas is trying to say that we know the fossils only extend to a depth of 3,000 ft so they would either all disappear or be eroded to lower levels in the mountain range within few million years. Again, I am unsure of his source (apologies if he quoted a source for the 3,000 ft figure and I missed it). But I am assuming there is still a fresh supply of marine fossils from below – having ascended gradually from below sea level to nearly 29,000 ft. I am also puzzled as to how we could identify marine fossils at considerable depth below the surface of mountains such as Everest ahead of erosion exposing them (assuming they don’t remain hidden by frozen snow or by ice).
If I misunderstood Nicholas’ point in my last post, I apologise. I was a little tired when I read it.
I see that Nicholas mentioned the Qomolangma Formation in post 146.
From the Mt Everest Wikipedia page, under ‘Geology’: “From its summit to the top of the Yellow Band, about 8,600 m (28,000 ft) above sea level, the top of Mount Everest consists of the Qomolangma Formation, which has also been designated as either the Everest Formation or Jolmo Lungama Formation. It consists of grayish to dark gray or white, parallel laminated and bedded, Ordovician limestone inter layered with subordinate beds of recrystallized dolomite with argillaceous laminae and siltstone. Gansser first reported finding microscopic fragments of crinoids in this limestone. Later petrographic analysis of samples of the limestone from near the summit revealed them to be composed of carbonate pellets and finely fragmented remains of trilobites, crinoids, and ostracods. Other samples were so badly sheared and recrystallized that their original constituents could not be determined. A thick, white-weathering thrombolite bed that is 60 m (200 ft) thick comprises the foot of the “Third Step”, and base of the summit pyramid of Everest. This bed, which crops out starting about 70 m (300 ft) below the summit of Mount Everest, consists of sediments trapped, bound, and cemented by the biofilms of micro-organisms, especially cyanobacteria, in shallow marine waters. The Qomolangma Formation is broken up by several high-angle faults that terminate at the low angle thrust fault, the Qomolangma Detachment. This detachment separates it from the underlying Yellow Band. The lower five meters of the Qomolangma Formation overlying this detachment are very highly deformed.”
I saw no mention of fossils extending to a depth of 3,000 ft from today’s surface though realise that somebody, possibly a creationist, may have somehow estimated such a figure (when did the ancient marine fossils first reach surface layers of the highest peaks I wonder).
Thanks for the last two cordial posts Ashley.
Just to clarify (for both of our competing paradigms): the fossils didn’t ‘arrive’ on Mt. Everest, rather those organisms were killed and lithified along with the mud layers (turned into limestone) they are embedded in. Those layers were then uplifted to a terrific height due to the tectonic forces.
A couple terrific photos I found of the summit, including the top fossil-bearing layer and the yellow band below it, here and here.
When I see the fine layers in the Yellow Band, it reminds me of this.
Nicholas
A couple of great photos.
In my post I actually wrote arrived “in surface layers” NOT “on surface layers”. Meaning arrived from below not from above, as you also state. I think other YECs when saying Noah’s Flood ‘explains’ the Himalayan marine fossils need to SPELL out that they are not saying they were brought there from above by floodwater (if that is the case) as I always have assumed that that was their claim.
I’ve also been thinking about the apparent 3,000 ft worth of marine fossils in the topmost layers of Everest (in the sedimentary rocks). Perhaps, given that there is metamorphic marble (with only “the ghosts of recrystallized crinoid ossicles” according to Wikipedia), these are the LAST 3,000 ft of countless feet of marine fossil bearing rocks that have risen up as the mountains gradually formed and rose over millions of years (and then been eroded as happens today)?
I note that Nicholas appears not to be arguing substantively against my most recent posts. I still do not think that the continued presence of as yet uneroded fossil bearing layers on Everest in any way ‘rules out’ millions of years of existence of the mountain range (on a much older planet in any case).
I’ve not read the Juby article, thus do not comment on it.
Ashley
Correction:
My last post should have read “Perhaps, given that there is metamorphic marble below (with only “the ghosts of recrystallized crinoid ossicles” according to Wikipedia)…”.
Hello Ashley and all,
That is a safe assumption to make. But even assuming the sea-bed there originally had a depth of 3 miles of sedimentary layers (which is probably extreme):
3 miles (5,000,000 mm) / 2.7 mm per year =~ 2 million years.
And I would note, we’ve been talking a lot about Mt. Everest, but my original point was not to focus on this one example alone, though it’s illustrative. The overall continents have the same problem, most of them shouldn’t be here anymore after some 10 million years, let’s say 50 for the more resistive areas.
Here’s another case example, Devil’s Tower. It too clearly has a mile or so of sedimentary layers that have been eroded away. In our model, that erosion happened in the recessive stage of the flood (Genesis 8 can be entitled: “The Flood Resides”). There is powerful evidence that the landscapes we see today were formed rapidly in such a manner (and note that the sedimentary layers were still fresh and could easily be eroded away in this process, thus allowing sometimes miles of sedimentary layers to be eroded away rapidly).
Does that sound crazy? Consider that the Missoula flood performed the following:
Cut through 500 feet of basalt in only a few days with just water? But imagine now that a mile deep of water starts running off the continents (once the ocean floors started lowering due to the end of the catastrophic plate tectonics event, according to one of our models (CPT)). Imagine as the depth gets lower, thereby increasing the speed of the sheets of water, going at high speeds, lopping off thereby huge quantities of the freshly laid sedimentary layers.
Where does that figure of 3 miles come from? Everest today is not far off 6 miles high.
When the Himalayan mountains were lower, erosion would have been slower I believe as it would have been less windy and so on.
And now you are claiming (very) ‘rapid’ erosion at a place called Devil’s Tower.
You also mention the Palouse Canyon. According to the Wikipedia page on the Palouse River:
“The Missoula Floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and across the Columbia River Plateau during the Pleistocene epoch carved out the Palouse River Canyon, which is 1,000 feet (300 m) deep in places.
The ancestral Palouse River flowed through the now-dry Washtucna Coulee directly into the Columbia River. The present-day canyon was created when the Missoula Floods overtopped the northern drainage divide of the ancestral Palouse River, diverting it to the current course to the Snake River by eroding a new, deeper channel”.
There were probably numerous floods over many millennia. A bit different to what you are claiming. The Cretaceous era is NOT ‘several days’.
In any case, why should the ‘recessive’ stage of Noah’s Flood have been particularly violent? And where does the Bible indicate that it was? There’s NO mention in Genesis of ocean floors dramatically and rapidly lowering. None.
Are you sure you have not been pleasurably brainwashed about science by young Earth creationist websites and books?
To respond to a few of those statements Ashley:
It’s funny that you took us creationist to task earlier for claiming you guys are uniformitarianists. The fact is, the evolutionary view began that way (with Lyell), and has ever since avoided catastrophist explanations in favor of slow and gradual uniformitarian paradigms. It’s also why they viciously fought against the Missoula flood suggestion in the first place, for decades, shunning the man who suggested it with ridicule and shame. So when the evidence became so overwhelming that they could not deny it anymore, it’s not surprising that they would try then to cram many such floods over the millenia, in hopes of dragging the thing out (make it more uniform and slow).
But see evidence for a single Missoula flood.
Keep in mind that most of the height of the mountain is not from sedimentary or fossil-bearing strata. With that said, I would guess that a postulate of 3 miles of sedimentary layers on the original surface (on the original sea-bed or land surface) is being generous. Feel free though to look up average sedimentary depths, just to get some idea of what you would expect. There are some places that are extremely deep, 10-20 miles deep, but to latch your hope onto those is like postulating Marianna’s trench is representative of the rest of the ocean floor.
So I would guess 3 miles is greater than (if not well over) the average sedimentary thickness we see today, or compared to what was expected 50 million years ago in the evo paradigm. The Grand Canyon is a mile deep. The height of the entire Grand Staircase it is part of is still less than 3 miles (see feet markers on left).
And please keep this in mind: If we had this enormous problem with just one mountain or continent here or there (let’s say: Australia), then perhaps its an anomaly, no problem. But instead, we have this erosion problem everywhere we look.
Ashley, have you even read just the geology section of the one short, layman’s article I asked you to read to better understand our geologic and flood model? I doubt you have. If you would do that, it would answer a lot of your questions!
The text never gives the geological how. As with Genesis 1 where what we now call ‘ocean basins’ were originally created (on day 3), the text does not describe how God did that or exactly what it looked like. But it does tell us that he separated the waters into ‘mikveh-hamaym’ – gatherings of water, separating them from the land-mass. Same with the Flood, it does not tell us really the geology of what was happening, just that it happened: that the oceans kept rapidly and forcefully bursting forth on land. (To exegetically discuss this would take much discussion). That this happened to the point where all the land was covered.
One surprise result that came from the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) model was that if the ocean floors had undergone a runaway subduction event, which is a very real physics possibility (it happened on Venus) and which there is much evidence for, then while the new floor was being generated (formed of lava from the Atlantic ridges), it would have caused the ocean floors to have risen by a few kilometers during this process. John Baumgardner explains:
This would have caused the waters of the oceans to rush upon the continents.
This model is not written in stone, as no model will be, but it seems to explain the physical evidence we see very well in the context of the Genesis Flood catastrophe, which we view to be a real, world-wide devastation of the earth, similar to the global catastrophic events the other planets have undergone. Why are we so crazy then when we say the earth appears to have undergone a global catastrophe as well? Probably because it fits with the biblical account, which speaks of God and his authority, which man, who has rebelled against his kind and goodly rule, doesn’t want to acknowledge.
“Keep in mind that most of the height of the mountain is not from sedimentary or fossil-bearing strata.”
You are talking about the mountain as it is today. Metamorphic rock, by definition, used to be sedimentary or igneous rock. If the mountain range came to exist around 50 million years ago, and has gradually risen before uplift slowed and erosion then balanced it, then there could have been erosion of fossil bearing sedimentary layers for some millions of years (once the fossil bearing rocks first reached the summit as higher layers were eroded away). I was NOT considering the depth of the sedimentary layers as they are today ONLY.
The first couple of paragraphs in your link at post 165 – on the geologic/fossil record – are full of falsehoods and exaggerations (as I’ve already mentioned in passing). For instance the Chicxulub meteorite/comet (not asteroid as they are larger bodies) crater in Mexico has been known about for well over 10 years.
I don’t have the time or energy to read all of your link. If it explains why the receding Genesis flood was violent, please direct me to where it does this. I would of course expect any such explanation to cohere with the book of Genesis – which to me does not hint at a violent end to the flood. Your post 165 acknowledges this truth.
You may also wish to view my review at Amazon.co.uk of the DVD ‘Set in Stone’ – another production that seeks to pretend that mainstream geology is in error because it has allegedly pretended over many long decades that no geological features seen today result from catastrophic short-term events.
I (like some other reviewers) criticised ‘Catastrophic Plate Tectonics’ in my lengthy review of Sarfati’s ‘The Greatest Hoax on Earth?’ at Amazon.com. It is a blatant ‘rescue device’.
You seem to forget that 4,300 years ago humanity was alive and well, if in much smaller numbers than today, on planet Earth. And it was not reduced to just eight persons in any watery worldwide catastrophe. Whatever may not have once happened on Venus or elsewhere in the solar system was NOT survived by the human race. (My understanding is that Venus has experienced a runaway greenhouse effect.)
You don’t get to rewrite human history.
The Bible says nothing about rejecting science (as the dictionary would define it) in order to ‘acknowledge’ God. That is a modern message – from young Earth creationist ideologues. They feel that scientific discoveries are a threat to Bible literalism and Bible authority – so they invent their own ‘creation science’ and seek to undermine real science about the past at every single opportunity.
For Jonathan who implied I didn’t have the nerve to confront Dr. Sarfati, we can all see he didn’t have the nerve to address me directly, but only made comments about me and then disappeared. Sarfati knows very well I can destroy every one of his ridiculous arguments.
Sarfati tried to excuse away the Church’s persecution of Galileo. However we have the words of the Church men to dispute Sarfati’s feeble defense of his religion and its constant persecution of science and scientists. Cardinal Bellarmine repeatedly warned Galileo to stop contradicting Scripture, and even Pope Urban told Galileo to lay off overt heliocentrism. If there had been no Biblical text arguing for a geocentric universe, Galileo would not have been persecuted.
The Bible doesn’t say much about the age of the planet. It does tell us that Jesus and Satan could stand on a mountain and see every nation on the earth. The Book of Daniel tells us about a tree that every person on the planet could see. This is not possible unless the earth is flat as the author of Isaiah clearly describes it. Yes Isaiah tells us that our planet is a flat circle. The author oould have used the Hebrew word for sphere, but this “divinely inspired” author thought the planet was flat as a pancake. And you people wonder why young people can’t be convinced to believe the Bible any more.
Sarfati has a book called “The Greatest Hoax on Earth.” That is ironic since he is promoting the greatest hoax on Earth which is Christianity. Jesus and the disciples never even existed. Neither did Paul. The church invented them all.
Van,
Why should we believe in Van? Why should we trust that the words that appear on this site under the name “Van” are really conceived of by an entity named Van? How do we know that he is all knowing, as he seems to think that he is, or at least that he has thoroughly studied the things he speaks of? How do we know that he has believed people that truly know what is real history and science? How do we know that they learned their history and science from credible sources?
I bet that Van says things like, “The sun rose this morning.” He for sure said, “…he didn’t have the nerve to address me directly…” in his post above. Does he mean that Jonathan does not have a nervous system…or at least the kind of physical nerve that would allow him to answer? I am betting that Jonathan has nerves in his fingers and arms and neck that would allow him to type and answer to you, Van. Should we assume that you do not know what a nerve is, Van?
Van, did Jonathan really “disappear”? Or are you using language in a non-literal way to communicate something to us? Should we take you literally? Is there no such thing as “Jonathan” anymore? If so, then you are probably literally correct to say that he doesn’t “have the nerve” because how can a nonexistent person have any nerve at all?
Van wrote:
“The Bible doesn’t say much about the age of the planet. It does tell us that Jesus and Satan could stand on a mountain and see every nation on the earth…This is not possible unless the earth is flat as the author of Isaiah clearly describes it.”
Hmmmm? What does the passage in question really say?
Luke 4
5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
“…in a moment of time.” A moment of time is not very long to see all the kingdoms of the earth. Did He spin around very fast and fully take in all that He saw? Was it a perfectly cloudless day? Was there no haze whatsoever? How far can the human eye see on a good day? How small would Rome look from a literal mountain that was that high? Van, are you sure that the passage was meant to be completely, literally understood? How long would it take to ascend this mountain in question if it was done physically? Surely it would take more than the few minutes or hours that are involved in the story in Luke…even if that mountain was very close at hand, I might add.
Now Van, how do we know that you are interpreting scripture any better than the Cardinal Bellarmine was? It was the science of the day that the good cardinal was using to interpret scripture. It was Greek philosophy that had informed science. How do we know that what is called science today is not misinformed by philosophy to some degree? How do we know if the Church is misinformed by science to some degree? How do we know that you are not misinformed?
Now we could discuss Daniel and Isaiah if you would like, but I doubt that you would have the stomach for it. I am not literally saying that you do not have a stomach…in case you are wondering 🙂
Shalom
If you’re not afraid to strike out then you just step right up to the plate and discuss whatever you want. Yes I have the stomach for it. I’m not a coward. No one can frighten me into believing a bunch of fairy tales the way you let other people frighten you.
Van,
Do you know the difference between poetry and prose? Do you know the difference between colloquial speech and technical terminology? Between symbolism and literalism? How could you have missed the intent of Daniel and Luke?
Why do use these literary devices and expect that the people that lived and wrote two or three thousand years ago didn’t?
Shalom
Van,
Did you discover these passages that you mentioned yourself or get the idea from a book? And if from a book, why do you believe that book and tell us not to believe our Book?
Shalom
Now THAT is hilarious! You Christians want the Bible to be taken literally except when it becomes so absurd that it cannot be defended. Then we have to take it allegorically. No way. You people just pick and choose what you want to believe about the Bible.
Van,
Me thinks that you are guilty of what you accuse us of. You are picking and choosing what you want to be literal in the Bible, that is obviously not, applying it to something that it does not apply to, and asking us to believe it literally.
We believe that the Bible is true. The Bible contains poetry. Poetry can be true without being literal. The Bible contains symbolism. We believe in what the symbolism stands for…not that skinny cows eat fat cows, etc.
Genesis 41
4 And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.
Where did you get the idea that Christians only believe, or are supposed to believe, every word in the Bible literally? Me thinks that you got that from a book too…a book that does not know what Christians believe and that does not know the difference between symbolism and literalism.
You would do well to take a course in literature and find out what Christians do believe about the Bible instead of only reading their critics that like to use straw men to fight against.
Now concerning Daniel’s tree, that you used to try to prove that the Bible writers believed that the world is flat.
Daniel 4
10 Thus were the visions of mine head in my bed; I saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great.
11 The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth…
18 This dream I king Nebuchadnezzar have seen. Now thou, O Belteshazzar, declare the interpretation thereof, forasmuch as all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known unto me the interpretation: but thou art able; for the spirit of the holy gods is in thee…
20 The tree that thou sawest, which grew, and was strong, whose height reached unto the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth…
22 It is thou, O king, that art grown and become strong: for thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth.
So Daniel had a dream about a tree that could be seen in all the earth…and the interpretation was that the king of Babylon was that tree…and it was his dominion that was over all the earth.
The passage is given as symbolism with an interpretation. You obviously either do not know symbolism when you see it, you read someone’s ignorant words and just repeated it, or you are purposely misrepresenting what you have read. This proves that you are not to be taken seriously in this discussion.
Shalom
That should have been: So the king [not “Daniel”] had a dream
Van,
If you have not actually researched what you have been writing, you should stop regurgitating the info without digesting it. Such words are just like the figure of speech…they are only worth being flushed down the toilet. What ever you do, do not return the stinking mess and eat it again like a dog would.
Shalom
Ooops…that should have been: return to the stinking mess
Van,
OK, I stepped up to your proverbial plate and smacked a home run from your curve ball statement about the tree in Daniel. Yes it was a curve ball as it was not straight…that is not used appropriately. You tried to throw a fast ball right by me, or rather pull a fast one on the readers here, but to no avail.
I still do not understand how someone that uses figures of speech and symbolic language so much cannot see it in the scripture…I wonder if it is because of the very dark sunglasses he is wearing. I’m wondering…do they let any light through? Riddle: What looks like the Lone Rangers mask, but has no eye holes? 8)
If you are ready to discuss things seriously without rhetoric and admit when you have been wrong, I am ready for a real discussion.
Answer honestly. Do you think that the passage in Daniel offers any weight to your assertion that the authors of the Bible thought the world was flat? Where did you get the idea to use that passage?
Shalom
Van, the argument you make in favor of the Bible teaching a flat earth, from the Daniel and Matthew passages, is argued by Paul Seely. This is one of the weakest arguments I’ve heard.
Consider:
(Daniel passage): did the ancients believe that real trees grow up to the height of the sky? i.e. up to and even higher than the clouds? No, of course not. This was a dream, and it had its interpretation. In fact, the interpretation is that a man is the tree! Are men trees? Or was the point that men all across the earth were able to see the top of Nebuchadnezzar’s hair? No. But the dominion he represented would spread world-wide. Everyone world-wide would see, know and feel the effects of his rule.
This is a great example of reading in scientific concerns and questions into a passage that has virtually nothing to do or say about scientific concerns (reading in questions on the geomorphology of the earth into the text!). That’s why this is to me one of the silliest objections. Not all objections are silly, by the way, some I take very seriously, but this is not one of them.
The same exact points apply to the passage on the temptation of Jesus. For instance, did ancient people really believe that if you stand on a high mountain, that you can see to distant kingdoms, with natural vision? that you could see the seven hills of Rome, for instance, from Israel? No, of course not! We have no end of ancient testimonies, and you can be assured that ancient man, including the peoples of the bible, knew that that is not possible. Satan showed him their glory… which shows that this vision transcended physical constraints. Their glory includes their wealth (think treasuries, gold and silver and pompous glory) and their might (think visions of their mighty armies, legions marching, etc), among other things.
Neither of you guys addressed the fact that in Isaiah it describes the earth as being a flat disk. Can you tell how the author of Genesis thought people could build a tower to heaven on a spherical planet? How would a sphere be supported by pillars as the Bible says the earth is? How do you suppose the sun was stopped to make a day longer than any other? Wouldn’t the planet itself have to stop rotating? The Bible also says the earth is motionless and sits on a foundation. I think we can safely assume the Bible is a flat earth book from start to finish. How come every Protestant denomination still held to the belief that the earth is flat until the 19th Century, 200 years after Galileo? Can either of you tell me exactly why the Church persecuted Galileo? Can you tell me why the Church hid the findings of Copernicus for 70 years after he died?
Why would either one of you go to such great lengths to defend the Bible, waste time and effort to try to prove something to me? There are major scientific and historical blunders in the Bible. I don’t see the point in trying to defend them.
Van,
Are you going to admit your error in using the passage in Daniel as a literal statement? Are you going to tell us if you came up with the idea yourself or where your read such ridiculousness?
Hello Van,
As Bo just stated, it looks like you are going to completely ignore the response I just gave you on the Daniel and Matthew passages. The other questions (well some of them) you ask also would be good to be addressed. So much so that I am founding an entire site on addressing such questions. Not, of course, like others have not answered many of these questions before, and in many cases very adequately. Others have not been addressed so adequately to date in my assessment, which is where the need for that arises.
So why give a detailed answer to each of those questions here, if upon answering you will just jump to the next question again?
Also, you seem to presume as an axiom that the Bible is just a bunch of fairy tales. So it’s guilty until proven innocent, right? What could I do to convince you to be a little more open-minded? You say things like Jesus and Paul didn’t even exist, which shows you are making many judgments off of a woeful lack of knowledge on the said topics. I would bet that you have almost no idea of the actual content of the writings of the Hebrews and the writings of the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth (aka ‘the Bible’).
God bless,
Nick
The Hebrew language included NO word for a sphere.
Interesting.
Bo, it doesn’t matter that Daniel dreamed up a tree that could be seen by everyone on the planet. The fact that he thought this was even possible destroys your argument. Strike Three. Now would you mind answering the questions I posed?
Nicolas, The Bible is written in the style of fiction. Historical narratives never record entire conversations. Only fictive narratives do that. Fiction almost always contains references to real people and places. That the Bible does this is of no help to your case. You say the disciples wrote about Jesus in the Bible so that proves something but you’ll have to tell me exactly what that proves. No one knows who wrote the gospels or the letters ascribed to Paul. Outside of he Bible Jesus and the disciples are not mentioned by any historian who was alive when Jesus supposedly lived. The Bible makes some extraordinary claims about Jesus being seen, followed and known by literally thousands of people. I guess we’re all supposed to believe that not even one of these people could write. You’d think the zombie invasion described in Matthew would have been recorded somewhere by someone and had it really occurred. You really should ask yourself why none of the stories in the Bible can be verified by independent sources. The existence of Jesus and Paul cannot be verified so I see no reason that anyone should believe they ever existed.
Van,
You have obviously never had a dream. A persons dreams are not usually literal. Have you ever dreamed of anything that could not possibly happen in reality?
You still are holding to a obtuse point concerning Daniel. The dream that the king had was symbolic and had an interpretation. So the Bible does not indicate that the world is flat in Daniel. As I said before, you are not to be taken seriously.
You do need to take that course in Literature. Not only would you find out about symbolism vs literalism, you would find out that historical narratives were not invented until just a couple of hundred years ago. The Bible is reporting facts.
“Another point is that on that view you would have to regard the accounts of the Man (Jesus) as being legends. Now, as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so. Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues, there are no conversations that I know of in ancient literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence. In the Story of the woman taken in adultery we are told Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has ever based any doctrine on it. And the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is a purely modern art. Surely the only explanation of this passage is that the thing really happened? The author put it in simply because he had seen it.”-CS Lewis, God in the Dock, pgs. 158-159
Ashley, I think the Hebrew word for a sphere is “kadur.” The Hebrew word for a flat circle is “chug.” So it’s very revealing that one of the authors of Isaiah [there were at least three] used the word “chug” or circle when describing the earth. He would have used the word “kadur” if he wasn’t convinced the earth was flat as all of the other biblical writers believed as well. This is really the final nail in the coffin of Christian claims that the Bible doesn’t really say the earth is flat. It most certainly does and the only way you can’t see that is if you are blinded by religion.
Van,
You wrote:
“The existence of Jesus and Paul cannot be verified so I see no reason that anyone should believe they ever existed.”
Well you better start disbelieving in any historical figure from more than about 1000 years ago, then. There is less historical documentation of virtually every other person in ancient history. And let me guess…you do not believe in Adolf Hitler and that the holocaust really happened either…
Bo, stop ignoring my questions or I will simply ignore you.
Van,
You have been ignoring me and may answers from the point you began posting. When will you admit that Daniel asserts no such thing as a flat earth?
Bo,Your argument for a historical Jesus was made a mockery a long time ago:
“We might, say they, as well affect to deny the existence of such an individual as Alexander the Great, or of Napoleon Bonaparte, and so set at defiance the evidence of all facts but such as our senses have attested. It being quite forgotten that the existence of Alexander and Napoleon was not miraculous, and that there never was on earth one other real personage whose existence as a real personage was denied and disclaimed even as soon as ever it was asserted, as was the case with respect to the assumed personality of Christ.” – Robert Taylor
I have to say Bo, I’ve debated a lot of Christians but your arguments are as weak and ludicrous as any I’ve ever seen.
Van,
I have answered your questions. You simply have not understood the answers or you have not really read them. There is no such thing as an historical novel until 200 years ago. Daniel is dealing with symbolism. If you cannot get past those simple points and concede, then there is no use in talking to you anyway.
And if you do decide to ignore me, you will only be doing what you have always done…ignoring truth and proving that your eyes are wide shut…tightly, I might add, very tightly.
Van,
From Wikipedia:
“Reverend Robert Taylor (1784–1844), was an early 19th-century Radical, a clergyman turned freethinker whose “Infidel home missionary tour” was a dramatic incident in Charles Darwin’s education, subsequently leaving Charles Darwin with a horrifying memory of “the Devil’s Chaplain” as a warning of the dangers of dissent from established Church of England doctrine.”
So Taylor was a religious person that was a non-believer. CS Lewis was an atheist that became a believer. Lewis was a brilliant professor of literature and remembered everything he had ever read. I think that he would know more about myths than Taylor.
Van,
So I guess you are going to believe who you want to believe and continue to read the books that comfort you in your belief. You have placed your faith in Darwin and Dawkins, and do not know symbolism from literalism or history from a novel.
I will continue to believe the book that has brought morality and hope to the world.
And in other dreams and dream interpretations of the bible, Pharaoh dreams that 7 healthy cows were swallowed up whole by 7 sickly cows. And sheafs of grain stand up and encircle an individual and bow down to him. The fact that they
clearly shows that the biblical people’s believed cows at one time had extremely large mouths, that could swallow up other cows, and also that cows used to be carnivores (probably with large fangs). It also clearly proves that the ancients believed that plants and vegetables could turn into thinking / feeling men, allowing them to walk about and bow down to other people.
Ashley, you are right, according at least to my informed analysis of this: classical / biblical Hebrew has no direct word for ‘sphere,’ namely no word that clearly distinguishes between 2D and 3D. Hug however has the benefit that it directly emphasizes circularity, while many other roots do not. The word Van references doesn’t suffice. So for instance, you can have words more akin to something like ‘wad up some clay’ or ‘heap up some dirt into a mound’, which although clearly in those cases must be 3D in a sense, that doesn’t mean they would be great words for referring to the sphere of the planet. The most honest, scholarly approach is to say the word alone (with respect to 2D or 3D) is ambiguous. So by the word alone, its up for grabs, the best we can hope for is context. But the ancients loved circles, and they saw the moon daily, as well as the sun. It would not have taken any advanced science for them to believe the earth is round, and there actually is strong evidence from non-biblical peoples for this (for pre-Greek peoples I mean). They were, however, very foggy about the other side of the earth.
If someone was inspired to write about the earth and was used to communicate to humans in a way that they could understand, why would it be wrong, or uninspired, for that person to use words that the target group could understand instead of having to explain in detail what some new word or concept meant. A physicist might know all the mathematical formulas as to why the theory of relativity and gravity work, but what good does it do for him to use such technical words when he is writing to his betrothed a letter letting her know how beautiful the sunrise was this morning. The Creator of the universe may think that is better to communicate with His betrothed on a more personal and poetic level instead of a purely technical atomic level also.
It is also interesting that the earth is called a circle. The shape of the land mass is not circular and there no reason to believe that Isaiah or the people that he was communicating with should have thought of the earth as a circle given the technology of their day. But whether they knew it or not, it is accurate from the perspective of someone describing the appearance of our world from a distance, just as it an accurate for a physicist to write of a sunset from his visual perspective.
And what would be the point of using terms like “the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.” in a very visual symbolic way, but speak of the earth in anything but a congruent way? To try to prove that the Hebrews thought of the earth as a flat disc from this verse, that is poetic analogy from start to finish, would be like saying that they thought that if they looked in a mirror they would appear the same as grasshoppers and that they thought that the sky was really made of cloth hung on a curtain rod and that it was draped over some chairs in the Creator’s living room to make a play tent for His children.
But Van does not know what symbolism and poetry is. He probably thinks that the author of, “Roses are red, violets are blue” doesn’t know that roses can be white or yellow. And that, “The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind” means that there is a piece of paper with the correct number concerning “how many times…” written on it floating along in a breeze somewhere.
Van,
I think that any good umpire would be saying that you have thrown no strike outs and that the score is Bo and Nicholas,7 – Van, ZERO. And you have not even pitched a full inning yet.
Van and Nicholas (posts 186 and 196).
Perhaps I should add that I’m no Hebrew scholar – but I was going by articles such as THIS one:
http://creation.com/is-the-erets-earth-flat
I made the comment at 183 somewhere a week or so ago. It may even have been in this thread. 🙂
Dr Brown
WHY IS MY POST AWAITING MODERATION, PLEASE?
A H-R
Hey guys, I forgot to give the conclusion to my response to Van above.
In conclusion, the error in Van’s statement (“The fact that he thought this was even possible” … ) is that Daniel / Nebuchadnezzar did NOT necessarily think something they dreamed about is physically ‘possible’, in a literal physical (i.e. real-world) sense. I would not begrudge anyone from entertaining that question, that would be fair. But as I already said in previous responses, which Van completely ignored (as he has done repeatedly), people in the ancient world knew that trees do not grow up to the sky (i.e. far above the clouds). No, of course, of course!, they knew that is ‘not possible‘.
So if that is the case, that the straightforward detail of the dream itself is not considered ‘real-world’ by the same ancient peoples, how much more so then should we refrain from deriving further conclusions (even worse: advanced scientific derivations, when geomorphology was not even remotely their concern there) from that detail of the account?
Van,
Roses are red,
Apples are too.
No trees up to heaven,
Everyone knew.
Dreams are symbolic,
Not literally true,
When interpretation
is given to you.
When we pay attention
To context and style,
There are no trees
Growing many a mile.
Now if you are tired
Of my crumby rhyme,
Pay close attention
To context next time.
Shalom