Disproving the Bible

[Silver]

Can you tell me why this article is scientifically wrong or does not match the facts?

http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics

It is as simple as creation science not being real science. It masquerades as science when it is mere poppycock.

[Bibliofagus]

Since I am not a scientist and it is not one of my hobbies, I can't judge the content of some of the articles I read. Can you tell me why this article is scientifically wrong or does not match the facts?

http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics

Neither can I. So I'll just ask if the people at 'creation.com' ever made a scientific breakthrough - while using creation science - that allowed us to, let's say, cure any disease? Any fucking single one of them?

[FatAndFaithless]

While the myth of the flood is common around the world there was no global flood in the history of the real world. There might have been flood myths in your particular tradition, but we are concerned with the history of the real world. And in such context there was no Noah, no ark, no flood. Ignoring the fact that the myth is borrowed, almost verbatim, from earlier myths (such as the epic of Gilgamesh, which predates the earliest dating of the bible by over one thousand years) the idea of it happening is absurd and impossible. It does not require the non-existence of God to say this. God may or may not still exist and the accuracy of a flood myth would have no bearing on that.

Also population genetics do cast the idea of two people being the source of humanity into serious doubt, and that's a generous way of phrasing it. The idea of a virgin birth is ridiculous for similar reasons, in that a woman by herself does not have the genetic material to make a baby. This was understandably not know at the time the gospels were composed, but there is little excuse today.

As to walking on water, maybe Jesus was the Flash. But I doubt it. The Flash had a cooler suit

Since I am not a scientist and it is not one of my hobbies, I can't judge the content of some of the articles I read. Can you tell me why this article is scientifically wrong or does not match the facts?

http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics

Literally a 30 second google search will give you the answer. If the only articles you're reading on genetics are coming from a site that starts with the conclusion that creationism is true and then tries to warp the circle peg of science to fit into the square hole that they've created for themselves, there's your problem. There's a reason that creationism is universally disbelieved by the scientific community.

Simply linking an article and saying "tell me why this is wrong" is the worst way to go about garnering knowledge. Do the searching for yourself.

[The Grand Nudger]

In all seriousness, do you want to go over that article line by line? You'll have to do some work too. You don't need to be a scientist.

[Jenny A]

The Book of Mormon is doing pretty well, and it's of recent vintage.

Yeeees, because none of us think Joseph Smith was cuckoo-batshit-crazy.

MM

hock: Why yes, and some of think he was a conman. And yet here are all those Mormons.

[Minimalist]

What I meant to say is that of books that eventually comprise what we call the OT have been copied for centuries or even millennium. The fact that we don't have a copy that old does not mean that older copies didn't exist.

You are big into self-delusion, I see. Okay, so now that you admit that there is no record of this crap in written form it is time to face the reality that all we have are later traditions claimed by the Letter of Aristeas which is now regarded as merely much later apologetic nonsense.

This is the reality of the first millennium BC:

There was no glorious Davidic empire. It never existed. It is no more real than King Arthur's Camelot.

The northern kingdom became a minor regional power between 900 and 722 when the Assyrians got serious.

The southern kingdom with nothing worth defending went over to the Assyrians and did quite well as a vassal state on the growth of the Arabian trade which Assyria controlled. Hezekiah rebelled when Sargon II died but got the shit kicked out of him by Sennacharib. After that, they went back to being loyal vassals and recovered until the Babylonians rebelled against the Assyrians and the shit hit the fan.

Apparently choosing the wrong side in that war, Jerusalem was sacked and burned by the Babylonians who moved their administrative center up the road to Mizpah.

Until this time, there is no indication whatsoever of monotheistic religion in the southern kingdom. (Read William Dever's "Did God Have A Wife" if you think your 'faith' can stand the shock.)

Judah was back to being an impoverished shithole when the Persians overran Babylon and suddenly found themselves with a whole Western Empire. Unlike the Babylonians the Persians extended it by taking Egypt.

Coincidentally, or not, monotheism suddenly begins when the monotheistic Persians (good Zoroastrians that they were!) took over. The over-hyped "return from exile" in your bible seems to have involved somewhere between 400 people (Finkelstein) to 1,000 people (O. Lipshits) based on the archaeology of the Persian urban renewal project in Jerusalem.

The province of Yehud, as the Persians called it, remained loyal until Alexander the Great came rolling through the area in 332 or so. Varous Greek-based kingdoms controlled for the next two centuries and finally a successful revolt threw off the last Greek kingdom, the Seleucids c 140 BC. From 140 BC until 63 BC there was an independent, "Jewish" kingdom... although for the last 20 years or so it was riddled with dynastic strife and multiple claimants to the throne until the Romans came through and mercifully put it out of its misery.

So, you have at most an 80 year period when the propagandistic horseshit which is the OT would have made some sense to the powers-that-be. Before and after that time the region was under the control of
foreign powers.

That is reality.

[Esquilax]

Can you tell me what other types of things might exist that don't fall in these categories?

My point is that just because you don't know of other categories, doesn't mean that there are only two. This is the problem when you're building a positive case based on deeming things as "necessary" rather than using evidence; without evidence you have no basis for assuming that your "necessary" case is all encompassing.

God would fall into the category of "in the necessity by its own nature". Any being worthy of the title of God would have to have the property of always existing.

Which still doesn't show us that the category "things that exist necessarily" actually contains a god in it. It could, in fact, be an empty category. Merely demonstrating that the category exists- which is what this premise was about to begin with- doesn't place a god inside of it.

Okay, are you saying that the universe has no cause or there are other possible causes for the universe? If your position is that there are other causes for the universe, don't you have the problem if just moving back the causal chain one step (or a million). Or do you think some sort of universe generator existed into the infinite past?

To answer your first question: I'm not saying either of those things. I'm saying that I don't know how the universe began, or even if that phrase makes sense. The evidence is insufficient yet, though at the moment the strongest case is for a big bang, and I'm not willing to indulge hypothetical arguments about necessity or whatnot in order to conclude that there's a god. I'll do that when there's evidence for one.

I will point out, though, that your second question also applies to you too: if you think god is the cause, haven't you just pushed back the causal chain one step? What created god? And if you say that nothing created him, he exists necessarily, then clearly you don't think everything requires a cause, and is there any reason you can produce why the universe itself couldn't be the uncaused, necessarily existing thing?

Mind you, this is all still attempting to apply a temporal framework of cause and effect to a pre-big bang model of the universe, where such concerns might not even apply. Maybe cause and effect run backwards before the big bang. Wouldn't it be surprising if, when our universe runs down to heat death it begins a Big Crunch that in turn spawns a universe where time runs in reverse, and that universe goes from big crunch all the way back to a big bang like state, where it expands back into a universe of normal time?

Is there any reason to believe in god over that symmetrical crunch/bang cycle?

Since I am not a scientist and it is not one of my hobbies, I can't judge the content of some of the articles I read. Can you tell me why this article is scientifically wrong or does not match the facts?

http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics

Yes mate, I can tell you exactly why that article is scientifically wrong, but you have to go to another page on the same website to see it: Here you go.

"Creation science" sites always have a page of required beliefs on them, which is a big strike we'll get to in a moment. Frankly, the entire thing is completely damning, but we'll focus on a single line that we see, verbatim, in a lot of the big hitters in this field:

By definition, therefore, no interpretation of facts in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.

Do those sound like the words of someone interested in the facts, to you? Or do they sound like the words of someone wanting to twist the facts to fit their conclusion?

The reason anything from creation.com is scientifically wrong is held in that statement of belief: the whole point of science is to follow the evidence, to test it rigorously, and use it to form tentative conclusions that will change the moment new evidence comes to light that contradicts them. Creation.com, on the other hand, proudly states from the outset that they'll ignore, twist, and redefine any evidence that doesn't fit with their predrawn conclusion, regardless of how much of it there is.

What you are looking at, with the above quote, is a group admitting that what they're doing is literally the opposite of science, and calling it science. That is why it's scientifically wrong.

[Minimalist]

Bravo, Esq.

[Jackalope]

While the myth of the flood is common around the world there was no global flood in the history of the real world. There might have been flood myths in your particular tradition, but we are concerned with the history of the real world. And in such context there was no Noah, no ark, no flood. Ignoring the fact that the myth is borrowed, almost verbatim, from earlier myths (such as the epic of Gilgamesh, which predates the earliest dating of the bible by over one thousand years) the idea of it happening is absurd and impossible. It does not require the non-existence of God to say this. God may or may not still exist and the accuracy of a flood myth would have no bearing on that.

Also population genetics do cast the idea of two people being the source of humanity into serious doubt, and that's a generous way of phrasing it. The idea of a virgin birth is ridiculous for similar reasons, in that a woman by herself does not have the genetic material to make a baby. This was understandably not know at the time the gospels were composed, but there is little excuse today.

As to walking on water, maybe Jesus was the Flash. But I doubt it. The Flash had a cooler suit

Since I am not a scientist and it is not one of my hobbies, I can't judge the content of some of the articles I read. Can you tell me why this article is scientifically wrong or does not match the facts?

http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics

Yeah, the lies start in the first goddamned sentence.

Get better sources.

[Minimalist]

Honestly, Steve, has it never occurred to you that something titled CREATION MINISTRIES might....just might, mind you, have a built in bias?