Posted on 07/11/2002 9:44:50 AM PDT by ZGuy
Likewise, the bible reads as if at least one of the calamities which separates our own age from past ages, the flood at the time of Noah, was a punishment visited upon the world by God for man's sins whereas a careful reading of the source material for the bible (Midrashim) along with other ancient works, indicates that those kinds of events and, in general, all major harm in this world, are things which occur in the physical realm and over which God, in his spiritual realm, has little if any control over.
It is a dogma of establishment science that the tale of the biblical flood is a fairytale or, at most, an aggrandized tale of some local or regional flood. That, however, does not jibe with the facts of the historical record. The flood turns out to hae been part and parcel of some larger, solar-system-wide calamity.
In particular, the seven days just prior to the flood are mentioned twice within a short space:
Gen. 7:4 "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights;...These were seven days of intense light, generated by some major cosmic event within our system. The Old Testament contains one other reference to these seven days, i.e. Isaiah 30:26:Gen. 7:10 "And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth."
"...Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days..."
Most interpret this as meaning cramming seven days worth of light into one day. That is wrong; the reference is to the seven days prior to the flood. The reference apparently got translated out of a language which doesn't use articles. It should read "as the light of THE seven days".
It turns out, that the bible claims that Methuselah died in the year of the flood. It may not say so directly (if it does, I don't know where), but the ages given in Genesis 5 along with the note that the flood began in the 600'th year of Noah's life (Genesis 7:11) add up that way:
Gen. 5:25 ->"And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years and begat Lamech. And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years.
<i.e. he lived 969 - 187 = 782 years after Lamech's birth>
And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years and begat a son. And he called his name Noah...
<182 + 600 = 782 also...>
Thus we have Methusaleh dying in the year of the flood; actually seven days prior to the flood...
Louis Ginzburg's seven-volume "Legends of the Jews", the largest body of Midrashim ever translated into German and English to my knowledge, expands upon the laconic tales of the OT. Midrashim amounts to the full body of rabbinical literature, and often can flesh out the laconic stories of the OT.
From Ginzburg's Legends of the Jews, Vol V, page 175:
...however, Lekah, Gen. 7.4) BR 3.6 (in the week of mourning for Methuselah, God caused the primordial light to shine).... God did not wish Methuselah to die at the same time as the sinners...
The reference is, again, to Gen. 7.4, which reads:
"For yet seven days, and I shall cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights..."
The week of "God causing the primordial lights to shine" was the week of intense light before the flood.
What the old books are actually telling us is that there was a stellar blowout of some sort either close to or within our own system at the time of the flood. The blowout was followed by seven days of intense light and radiation, and then the flood itself. Moreover, the signs of the impending disaster were obvious enough for at least one guy, Noah, to take extraordinary precautions.
The ancient (but historical) world knew a number of seven-day light festivals, Hanukkah, the Roman Saturnalia etc. Velikovsky claimed that all were ultimately derived from the memory of the seven days prior to the flood.
If this entire deal is a made-up story, then here is a case of the storyteller (isaiah) making extra work for himself with no possible benefit, the detail of the seven days of light being supposedly known amongst the population, and never included in the OT story directly.
.
This is the specific mechanism of your denial -- to 'rename' adaption.
The changes that occur in species due to natural selection is called 'evolution'. You don't like the word, for reasons you're not entirely sure of, so you play with the words until you've gotten rid of the threatening word 'evolution'. You agree with the specifics of the theory, but don't like one specific application of the theory, so try and discredit the entire theory.
But you can't ignore the truth. Adaption changes the species fundamentally. And enough small changes to a thing, and you will have a fundamentally different thing.
You say you don't believe in 'evolution', but do believe in natural selection.
What an amazing self-contradiction.
So it logically follows that if you believe in gravity that you are a creationist!
(Natural selection sarcasm mode)
Longing for the good ol' days when you could just kill someone who holds a different view, huh? I've kind of always suspected you had a little Torquemada in you.
If you use MS Windows long enough, even after all the crashes, and fatal errors, it will not become UNIX.
is like saying,
"I believe in honesty, but there's nothing wrong with stealing".
Logical contradiction.
Adaption is actually changing something fundamental about the species -- like increased resistance to a specific bug spray.
And if you change Windows enough, patch it enough, you do end up with a fundamentally different piece of software.
In fact, software is a perfect example of 'adaption'. Software like Windows has 'evolved' thru many, many small adaptions.
Your example proves my point.
The only difference is you do believe in one, but not the other - even tho they're the same thing. Your entire defense is to rename it away from the scary word.
The only difference is in your congnitive dissonance.
Like saying, "I believe in being honest, but that it's okay to steal".
This is no "jump"...any more than it is surmising that if I push a ball up the stairs, the ball will bounce up to the top.
Evolution...the big jump--bounce---LEAP!
Exactly -- why can't 'evolution' or 'natural selection' (if you prefer) just be god's method of making the creatures he wants? It's certainly possible.
Evolution doesn't speak to who created it all, or the possibility of a being having made up these rules.
You're not aruging against 'evolution'.
That's not true. Darwin made legitimate observations with reasonable data that led to extremely far-reaching supposition. I have no problem with his basic conclusions about adaptation/natural selection. But his ultimate conclusion, namely that simple matter becomes complex organisms, is faulty. Even modern science acknowledges that since he had no concept of DNA or the details of biology as we know them today, he made serious errors.
Even you must agree that his suppositions about evolution are not provable. Based on the data he gathered, he could not effectively demonstrate that species ever changed one to another or that new species evolved from lesser ones.
Seems to me that we are at an impasse. That being - you insist that adaptation = micro = macroevolution, they are all one and the same, and therefore, in your mind, I pick and choose according to my belief system. I insist that adaptation = micro, which does NOT = macro, and therefore cannot convince you that my opinion has any merit.
Like I said before, no matter how much time you add to it, there is simply no evidence of one species changing to another. Not in the fossil record, and not observable presently. That is the issue.
If you believe that many small changes eventually make big ones, and that minor internal changes will eventually change the species altogether, point me to evidence of that. It must be out there somewhere, right? If not, please tell me why it isn't readily available, if not trumpeted.
Darwin himself said “Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?”
:-D
Assuming you *are* kidding.
You can't have misunderstood what was said that much!
Then we are at an impasse.
But it seems clear, you don't object to the theories of Darwin, except where those theories make predictions that contradict your faith.
So much so that you're left arguing that millions of little changes don't lead to a changed creature -- an obvious error that contradicts observed reality.
And that makes ya'lls position on Darwin and Evolution *very* contradictory.
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