Re: [RC] [ RC ] Perplexed in the Pre-Paleolithic

[David R. Block]

Title: ORourke54.htm

You had me going with you until the last paragraph or so. It is not at all obvious to me that the "Mesopotamian original" should be scripture. David "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."--P. J. O'Rourke On 6/19/2011 10:21 PM, bil...@aol.com wrote: Well, we can guess. But,  yeah, how did 90 % of the world's cultures end up with Flood stories ? Some can be accounted for by means of diffusion, it is a good story and could have been retold many times. But who told it to Native Americans or Polynesians or Australian Aborigines ?   That is one mystery. I don't have a good answer.   But , for sure, there would be post-Flood effects. Like salt deposits where there should not be any, when all that water evaporated. OK, where are they ?  Bonneville can be explained by the evaporation of old Lake Bonneville.  A global ocean should have had similar effects, at least in scattered locations besides those like Bonneville. I've never heard of any.   You'd think that some salt water fish would end up in places where they don't belong, either. Of course, they'd die, but even one salt water fish found in Minnesota or Colorado would do the trick. Don't know of any, either.   Or how about a few salt water lakes ( not evaporates like Bonneville ) in Wisconsin or Tennessee ?   Or a fresh water fish found in the middle of  Timor or in the Falklands. Not an introduced species, but one that was there long before humans.   What about before the Flood ?  How did ( now extinct )  DoDo birds, flightless, found only in the Seychelles, get to the ark ?  Or the flightless Moas from NZ ? Clearly the  Flood, ca 3500 BC,  did not kill off the moas or dodos. How'd they get to the ark ?  How'd they get back ?   But let's say that the story is completely true. It is also completely derivative of almost the exact same story from Mesopotamia, which predates the Bible by a minimum of 1000 years.   Obviously, therefore, seems to me, the Mesopotamian original is sacred and deserves to be regarded as scripture.  Right ?   You can see the problems   Billy   ============================================     message dated 6/19/2011 7:56:09 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, david.r.bl...@verizon.net writes: The only problem is, that if the flood of Noah was really worldwide (and most cultures, even without the Bible, have a flood story) is that we don't know what the subterranean (or underwater) results of that would be. David   "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."--P. J. O'Rourke On 6/19/2011 12:05 AM, bil...@aol.com wrote: One Summer I was a tour guide at the Grand Canyon ; did a lot of reading about historical geology. But my best  "textbook" was open before me every day. A dozen  miles wide and over a mile deep.   I love the Bible, have spent decades in study of the book. But , yes, its not a science encyclopedia.   What squares for me, in terms of science, while I am not so sure that the figures that geologists use for really old strata are necessarily, say, 1.5 billion years, maybe it is 1.3 billion or 1.8 billion, or maybe someone really miscalculated and new zilchtron equipment will make it necessary to recalibrate to 1 .1 billion years, seems to me that the scientists have it basically right.   All the strata, layers, with consistent fossils evidence in each, just where the theory says they should be, simpler life forms at the bottom, more complex the closer to the top you get, well, it all adds up. Plus it all fits nicely with plate techtonics and the enormous periods of time it takes to move continents ( at a race driver's speed of 3 inches per year ) and uplift mountain ranges, we are talking ages  --epochs--  not days. Then there are the volcano intrusions below and known rates of erosion of basalts, which is really solid data, and you start your math with a 100,000 years( + or -)  nailed down tight.   So we get, current best estimate, a million year old canyon exposing incredibly more ancient strata,  and right away, "ages" means tens of millions or hundreds of millions of  years. Don't see any problem with that.   My take.   Billy   --------------------------------------------------------------------------       message dated 6/18/2011 8:42:05 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, david.r.bl...@verizon.net writes: Well, despite all of the negative articles on Rand (coming from the usual suspects that would have an axe to grind against libertarian and conservatives ANYWAY), I'm still of the view that those particular economists would do a better job than the Keynesian "epic fail" that we are currently experiencing. Only I don't see a WW 2 in the offing to ride to Obama's rescue like it saved FDRs bacon. (Although if he keeps trying to screw over Israel, he might get one.) According to Wikipedia (I know), there was a great spike in unemployment in 1937 (the recession of 1937) that took WW 2 to bring down. While I have creationist sympathies, I'm fairly sure that the Bible is not a science textbook, nor do I believe that everything that happened in creation is necessarily in the Genesis account. The creationists seem to ignore that the Hebrew word for "day" in Genesis 1 has more possible meanings than "day," including "age." But I think that creation could be done in a week once you have God in the equation. David "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."--P. J. O'Rourke On 6/18/2011 9:36 PM, bil...@aol.com wrote: You sound like a Radical Centrist. Are you sure you're all right ? I worry about you sometimes.   Billy      ==============================================       message dated 6/18/2011 7:20:11 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, david.r.bl...@verizon.net writes: Welcome to my world, except in reverse. Mention that one is a Christian, and one is immediately thought to be in league with 4000 BC creationists (give or take a few years, must go recheck my Scofield notes for the real year). However, I find that the "reality based community" has less of a grip on reality than they claim. since Bush knew about 09/11 in advance and Bristol Palin is the REAL mother of Trig. And they criticize Obama "Birthers?" o_0 "Pot meet Kettle, yeah, you're both black. David "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."--P. J. O'Rourke On 6/18/2011 1:29 PM, bil...@aol.com wrote: Centroids : It is clear that I have been spoiled by this group. Just concluded a series of e-mail exchanges with Ray Adams, the founder and director of the site, American Traditions magazine  /  American Traditions.org.   Originally got in touch with him inasmuch as his views on the issue of homosexuality are very similar to my own. Indeed, I have found that my views on this subject are similar to those of many other "fundamentalist" Christians. Alas, there the story seems to end. Actually not quite, but in general terms.   My assumptions , this exchange of opinions has made it clear twice over, are Radical Centrist in character, up and down the line. This is good but it also is bad since I also tend to assume that RC truths are so obvious that they are universal, when , obviously, this is not the case.   Adams made my blood boil, to be candid about it. For him it necessarily is the case that the entire Right-wing set of values is right and any other perspective on events is dead wrong and, worse, that all other viewpoints are reducible to secular Leftism. Apparently this includes all other forms of Christian faith. As well as all other religions, minus the exception of Islam ( we also basically agree on that issue ), also become, magically, the same thing, denominations of Heathenism.   Where we really got into a fight ( gentlemanly, but a fight nonetheless ) was on the issue of evolution. I had not realized, although I should have known better, that there still were any pure anti-evolutionists  " out there."   The Left also is anti-evolution, but with a different take, those people object to sociobiological implications, essentially, since this new science says that natural equality is a fiction. Which the evidence clearly shows is the case. But to accept this view it becomes necessary to question "enlightenment" philosophy, which the Left refuses to do. So the Left more-or-less can live with animal evolution at a very basic level but only as long as it is kept separate from actual thought and is primarily used as a club with which to beat up on Christian rightists.   Adams, a lawyer by training, defends Intelligent Design tooth and nail. He insists on associating it with opposition to homosexuality and to Islam as if, if you are an evolutionist, you necessarily must also be pro-homosexual and pro-Islam, since that is the paradigm of the Left. Or the only paradigm that the hard Right recognizes.  Similarly all the Heathens must, by his logic, all feel the same way , and evidence that, for example, Buddhists are anti-abortion and critical of homosexuality, simply does not register. It doesn't fit the model that Adams and other Rightist Christians assume is the only way to conceive the world.   Pat Robertson, in comparison, is a Liberal Christian out in Left field. Granted, 'ol Pat is everyone's crazy uncle, but usually the man is stable and usually does his homework, or some homework anyway.   Adams went to lengths to "disprove" evolution, all of his opinions reflecting a view of evolution that, far as I know, no-one maintains. By this view new species arise via species interbreeding. Actually the process involves population isolation over an extended period of time, and environmental stress which demands  ( or rewards ) adaptation.   Then there is "Snowball Earth," the now well-established fact that until about 650 million BC our planet was frozen over, everywhere. This had lasted millions of years and when it was done, what life had survived did so, it seems, only in the vicinity of probably 13 geothermal hotspots, undersea volcanoes. So, when the ice broke apart and the Big Melt was under way, these 13 populations had the run of the planet and the result, after a few million more years, was the Cambrian Explosion. Speciation on steroids, like nothing before or since.   But to Adams, the Snowball Earth never existed --he had not even heard of the concept before I brought it up--  and the Cambrian Explosion therefore is an example of Intelligent Design in nature as God, ex nihilo, invented scores of exotic species the way that Picasso created his paintings. For the hellovit, because they look pretty, or whatever.   It will take a while for my brain to recover. This is faeryland stuff, the Mad Hatter and Alice-in-Wonderland, but actually believed-in by a professing Christian.   One useful lesson, as bad as the Left often is, once more, after a good number of years and many transitions in life, comes a reminder that there are reasons for the disdain of the Left for the lunatic Right. Which is tragic since that same Right, on some issues, is absolutely right. But why in hell don't they understand science ?  They just don't. They are clueless. Consequently they look like idiots to everyone else.   Bits and pieces of my run-in with Adams have leaked into some of my comments here in past days. Now you know the full story.   Billy                       -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org