Answers to athiest's dum disputes

Keith63,You say you teach biology. Then surely you can explain to me the difference between micro- en macroevolution and, more importantly, propose a biological mechanism that allows microevolution to happen whilst at the same time preventing macroevolution.Cheers,
Parasomnium.P.S. Hello Mr Hambre, it's good to see you again. That goes for all of you old hands here. I got tired of hanging at the end of my strings, so I did a classic Pinocchio and here I am, no strings attached.

I can, but I resist for behavioral reasons I still find green.

Hello Brad,I'm glad to see that you are still your old enigmatic self. I love a good riddle and you're the creme de la creme as riddles go.Talk to you later.

Right and wrong about inerrancy.1) First, let me state a major problem for Irational) inerrancy proponents,... and tgen, the converse in some post to follow.EXAGGERATED NUMBERS OF PEOPLE WANDERING IN THE DESERT FOR FORTY YEARS
According to the Bible the number of people who followed Moses out of Egypt during the Exodus was "about six hundred thousand on foot that were men." (Ex. 12:37) To that number must be added women, children, and a "mixed multitude" of non-Hebrews who followed Moses out of Egypt, raising the total way above the six hundred thousand Hebrew males, and nearer to a grand total of two million men, women and children. That is like the population of New Orleans (or Columbus, Ohio, or San Antonio, Texas), being kept on the move (following "a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night") every day for forty years. The only day of the week they were not moving was the Sabbath day. That's a heap of packing and unpacking -- of setting up "camp" and breaking it down again. Plus we are to believe they also performed necessary sacrificial/sacramental duties for two million people, and the men all walked "outside the camp" (a really huge camp) each time they had to go to the bathroom.The Bible only mentions Aaron and his two sons as being available to conduct all the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings, trespass-offerings, thank-offerings for all of the Israelites. (Num. 3:10) Just the number of pigeons to be brought as sin-offerings for newly born children, would have averaged, based on a multitude of nearly two million, more than 250 a day, not counting all the bulls, sheep, lambs, rams, goats, and turtle doves needing to be sacrificed for reasons too numerous to mention -- and their carcasses having to be ceremonially bled, the fat removed meticulously, the organs burned as an offering to God, and the carcass dragged "outside the camp" to be burned (a camp of perhaps 16 miles in diameter).Miraculously, these two million or so Israelites left no traces of their forty-years in the wilderness. No traces of encampments, tent holes, potshards (or other items discarded during their marches), nor traces of their daily sacrifices -- no evidence of large charred ash deposits nor blackened stones nor bones. (Oddly enough archeologists have discovered the remains of a small fire in the Sinai wilderness that was carbon-dated back to about that time. But one small fire could not have warmed the alleged two million who marched nearly every day for 40 years up and down the Sinai.)So staggering are the problems raised by the exaggerated Biblical number of "600,000 males" (an embarrassingly well attested number, repeated three more times in the Bible -- on each occasion each separate tribe being numbered, the sum of the results making up the whole), that even conservative Christian scholars have admitted that "600,000 men," beside children, women, and the mixed multitude, is an exaggeration on par with many others found in ancient Near Eastern lore.Evangelical Christian, W. M. Flinders Petrie, author of Egypt and Israel (London Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1911) pointed out, "There are. two wholesale checks upon the total numbers. The land of Goshen recently supported 4,000 Bedouin living like the Israelites, or at present holds 12,000 cultivators. To get "600,000 men" with their families out of that district would be utterly impossible. Also on going south the Israelites had almost a drawn battle with the Amalekites of Sinai. The climate of that desert peninsula has not appreciably changed; it will not now support more than a few thousand people, and the former inhabitants cannot have exceeded this amount. How could the Israelites have had any appreciable resistance from a poor desert folk, if they outnumbered them as a hundred to one? Again, we are compelled to suppose that the Israelites were not more than a few thousand altogether. Thus we see that more cannot be got out of Goshen or into Sinai."

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they obviously had to come from a common spider ancestor. What is the reason they can't interbreed? Is it chromosomal differences or an unwilling to breed? In a test tube you may be able to breed a cat and a lion but I highly doubt in nature that the two would breed. That doesn't mean they didn't come from a common cat ancestor. Just think of the mechanical difficulties of breeding a great Dane with a Chihuahua.

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That is exactly my point. They had a common ancestor. Now, how long ago was the flood, supposedly?Trying to assert that evolution occured after the flood to create this many species of each genus just doesn't work. First of all, there wasn't nearly enough time for such a genetic variation to spring from 2 distinct tarantulas that supposedly were brought onto the ark.Also, how the heck did those tarantulas migrate to the new world after the flood? But wait, what did the tarantulas feed on, since all the insects were wiped out?... unless Noah also brought 2 of each species of insects onto his boat. But wait, did he bring a supply of crickets to feed the tarantulas during the 40 days and 40 nights?

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No, you have it wrong again.
Jesus was crucified after passover as Mt.,Mk; and Luke tell us.
all these accounts tell us he was eating the passover so he couldn't have been crucified before.With John it seems he was crucified before,

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um, right.Just like I said.MAtthew, Mark, and Luke have Jesus eating a Passover meal.John has Jesus dead before Passover begins.Contradiction.

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as it speaks of the lambs for passover when when he's on the tree and the jewish leadership didn't want to be defiled,
but those Lambs weren't the Passover meal lambs,they were the passover special offerings that are given the day after the passover meal.They are called hagiga,or special offerings for passover
Num.28:17 On the 15th day of this month shall be a feast,unleavened bread shall be eaten for 7 days.
Num.28:19 You shall present an offering by fire,a burnt offering to Yahveh;two bulls and one ram and 7 male lambs one year old,having them without defect.
also,there were "special" personal offerings of lambs.

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Great, but irrelevant to what the Gospels say about the TIMING of the crucifiction of Jesus.There is a clear contradiction here, and you haven't explained how it isn't by talking about Passover animal sacrifices. At least, I don't understand how those details have anything to do with the timing.

You still didn't answer my question, Des.Since you agree that DNA paternity tests can accurately show the parentage of people, do you also accept that scientists use the exact same techniques to show how closely related different species are to each other?

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When you do research into these other books, you find errors and contradictions. But you don't with the Bible.

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In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus participates in a Passover meal, the Last Supper.In John, however, Jesus is crucified and dead before Passover begins.That's a very clear contradiction, unless you can show me how it isn't.

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Schraf's paradox, as we at EvC like to call it: "The Bible is the inerrant Word of God, since it says in the Bible that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God."

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SWEET!

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I teach biology for a living

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Where did you do your undergrad, BJU?Judging from what you say below, I simply don't believe that you could have studied the same Biology I did.

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and this is the weakest argument people use for macroevolution.

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That's because it isn't an argument for macroevolution.

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This along with peppered moths. All things have genetic variation.

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Right.

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Just liked humans. We all have slight variations that make us different.

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True.

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If you came up with some poison which killed all the people who have allergies then only people without allergies would survive.

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Are all allergies genetic in nature? I didn't think so.

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It's a variation which already exists. What has always baffled me is how you then say this is proof that all things evolved from an earlier organism. That is a huge jump to make.

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It would be a huge jump, but there's much more evidence that supports the idea.Genetic variation plus environmental pressures resulting in changes in the genetic makeup of a population isn't the only evidence we have for common descent.There's also the fossil record, the observed instances of speciation, and the remarkable similarities between morhpologic trees and genetic trees.As a biology teacher, you must know about all of this, don't you? Why are you acting as though you've never heard this stuff before. I heard it all in my freshman Bio 101 class 17 years ago.

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If you really want to show something show me a bacteria evolving into a protist. or a protist evolving into a simple animal, plant or fungus. I'll even take an invertebrate evolving into a vertebrate.

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We've got all of that in the fossil record, dude.Where do you teach Biology, anyway?

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While you are at it I would like to see any evidence of an organism increasing in complexity. That would be great.

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Define "complexity."Thanks.{Fixed 1 quote box - AM}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 04-15-2004]

Hi,Kofh2u,Could I remind you that, in future, it is forum policy for its members to cite where they get their information from.Your information is taken from a post over at theologyweb, it is considered good practise to provide a link, or at least a reference, to where you got the information from.Thanks.AdminBrian.

Hi,A couple of comments: This is incorrect, the Israelites camped at Kadesh-Barnea for 38 of the 40 years before entering Canaan, they did not wander around everyday (except sabbaths) for 40 years. Many archaeologists (e.g. Finklestein: Bible Unearthed) have pointed out that there is no sign of any group (regardless of the size) inhabiting Kadesh-Barnea until long after any of the two given dates for the Exodus.They numbers are greatly exaggerated, the word for thousand 'elef' can be translated as 'tent' or 'family', but regardless of translation, the Exodus, as written inthe Bible, simply didn't happen. There are no archaeologists at all who accept these tales nowadays. According to the Bible God didn't allow anything used by the Israelites to wear out, sill isn't it, and fictional.Brian.

Hi kofh2u,My point was that funkman uses the original bible as an inerrant prerequisite for his beliefs even though he (like everyone else) doesn't know what it says. And yet he can simultaneously discard other scriptures (e.g the Quran, or the Vedas) because of inherent errors and contradictions which he himself admits are also in translated copies of the Bible. Unless funkman is versed in ancient Arabic or Sanskrit, it smacks of double standards to me (hence "doublethink")Your post is about Exodus. I don't see the relevance. I initially thought you'd accidentally addressed it to me, before I saw the title.PE[This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-15-2004]

Yes, I will give attention to this seeming plagurism. In the case you refer to, I neglected to copy the suthor's screen name, and I assumed that a screen name was rather a non entity as regards wttribution.I did copy the post and a few others in order to preface my own and original comments which I have not yet made.Below is another statement I can not attribute other than to say it is going ard' the net, found my email...AWESOME
This is almost overwhelming when you think about it.
You MUST read to the end: (smile)Moses and the people were in the desert, but what was he going to do with them?
They had to be fed, and feeding 2 or 3 million people requires a lot of food.
According to the Quartermaster General in the Army, it is reported that Moses
would have to have had 1500 tons of food each day. Do you know that to bring that much food each day, two freight trains, each at least a mile long would be required!
Besides you must remember, they were out in the desert, so they would have to have firewood to use in cooking the food. This would take 4000 tons of
wood and a few more freight trains, each a mile long, just for one day. And just think, they were forty years in transit.
And Oh yes! They would have to have water. If they only had enough to drink and wash a few dishes, it would take 11,000,000 gallons each day and a freight train with tank cars, 1800 miles long, just to bring water! And then another thing! They had to get across the Red Sea at night. Now, if they went on a
narrow path, double file, the line would be 800 miles long and would require 35 days
and nights to get through. So there had to be a space in the Red Sea, 3 miles wide so that they could walk 5000 abreast to get over in one night.
But then, there is another problem...............each time they camped at the end of the day, a campground two-thirds the size of the state of Rhode Island was required, or a total of 750 square miles long........ think of it! This much space for camping.Do you think Moses figured all this out before he left Egypt? I think not!
You see, Moses believed in God. God took care of these things for him.
Now do you think God has any problem taking care of all your needs?
I asked the Lord to bless you As I prayed for you today. To guide you and protect you as you go along your way.......... His love is always with
you, His promises are true, And when we give Him all our cares, You know He
will see us through.Our God is an Awesome God!!So when the road you're traveling on seems difficult at best, just
remember
I'm praying and God will do the rest.

Hello mr egg,Thanxz for the reply.I posted the re-print of a argument against the Book of Numbers which has had a lot of comment lately on the net. The reason is that the Christians are right AND wrong on this matter of inerrancy.They must get themselves straight on this issue, or they embarrass themselves and besmirch the real point of Bible Inerrancy. They add this mistake to that of the Flood issue and the matter of Creationism.The comments critical of the Book of Numbers poises a problem which they will, in the final analysis, refute only by saying that: the impossible makes sense to them. This makes it difficult to explain the actual meanings of scripture, to them or others. They are setting road blocks to the most useful and most important meanings of scripture by their actions and intranscience.INERRANCY MEANS: "THE BOSS ISN'T ALWAYS RIGHT BUT HE IS ALWAYS THE BOSS."Applying this old adage to the Christian community, this Bible IS the iron rod that rules THEM. It is imerrant FOR them.It is not, and is not intended, to mean it is inerrant to you, or pagans, or non-believers, or Muslims. Between themselves, (once being the entirity of Western Culture, under Universal Catholicism for 1000 years year riegn of Christ), it is inerrantly FOR them, it is their "Boss."NOTE:Rev. 2:27 And he shall rule them with a rod of iron, (an undeniable interpretation of scripture); as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers, (so the verses, as the individual pieces of a massive puzzle, shall they be separated out from one another): even as I received of my Father, (the Word of the Old Testament).