Posted on 06/14/2002 7:32:58 AM PDT by aculeus
I don't. I used to be a Christian, and never had any trouble taking Biblical accounts as being metaphorical or allegorical. Such conflicts between science and religion are completely artificial.
I see what I did. Let me start over. Lets assume we have a vessel that measures 30 feet around. Am I making a mistake in calculating the diameter of that vessel to be 9.55 feet (30 feet divided by 3.14 ) ?
Next lets say I desire to put a rim around it so that it makes it easier to slip into the vessel. Lets say I make it 10 feet from rim to rim. Couldn't I do that ?
Remember that Moses was writing down was handed down to him by oral tradition. Inspired by God? Yes, but keep all this in mind.
A: Yes
For a biblical study on dinosaurs in the Old Testament, I would definitely recommend using the Authorized Version (AV)/King James Version (KJV) of the Scriptures which were translated into English from the Masoretic text in 1611 [230 years before the word "dinosaur" was available!]. Using a Strong's Concordance, you will find the Hebrew word "tannin" is used 25 times, and is translated as 'dragon(s),''serpent(s),' 'monster(s)' [and, in the more modern versions, improperly as 'jackal(s)']. The key to remember is to look for Hebrew Lexicon #8577.
CREATION WEEK (~4000 B.C.)
DAY 5--[Gen.1:20-21]--Creation of marine monsters (Hebrew "tannin," includes large marine 'mammals' and 'reptiles') and winged/flying creatures (Hebrew "o(w)ph," includes all feathered and non-feathered flyers--even pterosaurs, the flying reptiles!)
DAY 6--[Gen.1:24-25]--Making of dinosaurs and other land creatures, divided among the cattle (Hebrew "behemah," includes all quadrupedal, hoofed/blunt-toed ungulates), beasts of the earth (bipedal/quadrupedal, talon-toed), and creeping things (quadrupedal/multi-legged ground crawlers).
FLOOD YEAR (~2350 B.C.)
[Gen.6:17,19-20; 7:14-15; 9:17,19]--Juvenile representatives of every terrestrial, air-breathing kind (not species), including dinosaurs and pterosaurs, were directed by God to the Ark.
Those outside the Ark would be left to be scavenged by marine predators or be buried and fossilized quickly.
POST-FLOOD PERIOD
MARINE MONSTERS--[Leviathan (Job 3:8-'mourning'; 41:1-34/Ps.74:14;104:26/ Isa.27:1); see also Lam.4:3 & Amos 9:3].
PTEROSAURS--[esp. the bioluminescent flying reptiles (Isa.14:29 & 30:6)].
DINOSAURS--[see Strong's Concordance(KJV) under "dragon(s);" also Exod. 7:9-10 (#8577, not #5175)].
The best dinosaur passage in the Bible is Job 40:15-24 where God speaks to Job concerning BEHEMOTH ["most excellent beasts"--intensive plural of Day 6 'cattle' ("behemah")], a huge sauropod dinosaur (especially notice verses 17 &19 !!!).
As for your footprints... keep on fantasizing.
Please provide the method of dating for these facts you present (also some sources please). The method had better be in-fallible else your accusations of lucidity will represent you more than anyone.
The canonical definition is, "Change in allele frequency over time."
Did not Darwin claim man, through evolving, has his source from the single living cell?
Whether or not Darwin made that exact claim, it is correct.
Is this not being portrayed as "progressive" by evolutionists?
Not at all. "Progressive" means that it is directed towards some strategic goal. Evolution is all tactics: does this creature live or die? Each step that is taken is merely part of a random walk pattern; it's not going anyplace in particular.
Now, life on Earth has gotten more complex. This is merely the result of the fact that there are more ways in which life can get more complex than there are ways in which life can get simpler. Thus, any sort of random walk pattern will tend to produce more complexity, although certainly not always.
Then progressively, from dinosaurs, there should be the evidence of a continuum of a chain of life which would produce more huge forms of life, yet it does not exist.
Somehow, you've jumped from "more complex" to "bigger". The two are not the same. It simply is not true that there are more ways for a species to get bigger than there are ways for it to get smaller. Furthermore, even if there were, size (or any specific trait) doesn't just change arbitrarily. It will tend to whatever value maximizes survival for that organism, which may or may not be larger than it was in the past.
In the fossil record we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.(Gould )
2. EXPERIMENTATION -The processes would exceed the lifetime of any human experimenter (Dobzhansky )
3. REPRODUCTION impossible to reproduce in the laboratory. (Dobshansky )
4. FALSIFICATION -cannot be refuted thus outside empirical science. (Ehrlich )
You could, but then (if you insisted on using different circles to measure circumference and diameter), you'd probably say that the diameter was 9.55 feet and the circumference was 31.4 feet. This is because the inner diameter (what can I fit inside) and the outer circumference (how big is this thing) are far more useful and meaningful measures than the inner circumference and the outer diameter.
But come, these are Clintonian word games to try to rescue the literal truth of that passage. If the Holy Word of God requires Clinton-speak in order to parse it, you know that your approach to it must be wrong.
Why post what you refuse to defend?
The rate of loss of helium from the atmosphere into space is calculable and small.
Now, the only real source of helium in the world comes from underground deposits where a geologic feature (saltdome/petrol?)managed to trap the helium, preventing its escape into the atmophere and on out of the gravity well.
If such decay took place for billions of years, as alleged by evolutionists, much helium should have found its way into the earth's atmosphere.
You seem to not want to read the actual study as well, I am only giving bullets. If you want to see how the numbers work out read the damn study. Gentry, R. V. et al, "Differential Helium Retention in Zircons: implications for nuclear waste management," Geophys. Res. Lett. 9 (Oct. 1982) 1129-1130.
I asked for scientific evidence, not miracles, faith, etc. I have yet to see any that woman was created from man's rib, that the universe was created in 6 days, that people once lived to be hundreds of years old, etc, etc
That's the real answer. There is nothing more to it than that. But that answer can't suffice from Tai_Chung's perspective. The Bible is supposed to be the Infallible Word of God, literally true in its every particular. What those two verses demonstrate is that if you take such an extreme position, you're left having to believe some pretty silly stuff.
I probably shouldn't mention that the sign hung on Jesus's cross is worded differently in the four Gospels. ;^)
There are many miraculous elements in the Flood. They cannot be explained by human reason. However, if you believe in God commanding thorugh His Word, then it is clear that He commanded the animals and they gathered and entered the ark.
There are many new roses each year "invented" by man. The DNA is already there but not expressed. The same is true of dogs. Therefore I do not have a problem with species expansion after the Flood.
More importantly we are in another era like the pre-Flood time - great technology, plenty of leisure time, and almost complete godlessness. As Jesus said, "When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith?"
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