Dan,

"Maybe ther're happy sitting back watching atheists discuss a "fable"...."

If it's a fable, why have you taken the time to explain to me that Noah, biological scientist extraordinaire, needed only a certain number of species as "representation of kinds" on the ark?.... not to mention that these representations, being suited to to specific environments, must have thrived so well bobbing about in a wooden ship.

Did neanderthals come before or after the flood - or are they a fable too?

How would any small family manage to build a wooden ship larger than any that has been able to be built since. Wood does not have the strength to support it's own weight at that size.

If it was made from a magic "Gopher wood" then don;t you think Noah would have take a few seeds with him on the ark rather than leave such a wonderful asset to become extinct.

So many impossibilities, so few answers !

Poirot,
I don’t think it is a fable. I would have thought that my comment would be interpreted as placing that word through the perspective of the atheist. To make it especially clear, I put the word between inverted commas to show that this was not my perspective.

I’m sorry if that was not clear, but I think others would have picked that up.

Dug,
In your second last post, you seem to be offering the argument that if most people agree with a position, then it is probably true. I hope you realise how easy that argument is to counter. And I’m surprised by now that you haven’t realised that I’m happy to defend a minority position.

And the argument is not really about who has the evidence. All have the same evidence available to them. We’re all looking at the same evidence, and it comes down to which position best incorporates the totality of the evidence.

When you speak of blindfolds, I think you’re getting nearer the mark. Everyone looks at the evidence through a certain perspective. How people view the evidence is driven by their worldview, perspective or presuppositions. For example, from an atheist perspective, some form of naturalistic evolution must be true. It is the only acceptable game in town. Philosophy drives the investigation.

For all your decades of investigating these issues, I think (similar to how you are accusing me) that you should take the blindfold off, or look at it through different glasses or different viewpoint.

DSdM

>> The diversification of fish into salt and fresh water varieties can be explained by the processes of adaptation, especially in the new ecological niches and environments created by the post flood conditions. <<

So close to evolution... and yet so far away....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEWVt6xyjLU&feature=relmfu

So before the flood, there was no diversification - because that would lead to evolution, but AFTER the flood (for which there is no evidence) creatures adapted to the new environments.

And where did all that water go?

Dan

look at the evidence

Nothing else just the overwhelming, massively overwhelming weight of evidence.

People used to believe in the flood story untill evidence showed it was impossible.

if you have evidence to show it was possible then I would consider it. I have looked at both sides and there is no comparison in the sheer overwhelming weight of evidence.

Any scientist or researcher that could publish sound reliable repeatable evidence for a world wide flood would be hailed and published world wide with lectures in every country and programs on every TV station.

This has not happened has it. A few people cling to an outdated belief because of faith not facts.

Jimmy Jones,

I don’t know that I’m comfortable with the “expert” label when talking about creationist knowledge. The word “creationism”, for me, tends to conjure-up thoughts of terms more along the lines of “delusional”, “comatose” or “lobotomised”.

Stepping back into my old Christian shoes, for your first question I would probably have given you the standard, lazy, “Things are happening in a fairly random way - just as they would without a God, but because I'm emotionally dependant on the comforting belief in a cosmic father figure and eternal life due to my death anxiety, then I'm just going to make-up any old crap to excuse that which doesn't rationally fit my beliefs” response and simply say:

God works in mysterious ways.

But it wasn’t just Noah’s sons who were bad people. Noah himself was a pretty rotten person too. Consider the curse of Ham. Ham spots his father lying in a tent drunk and naked with soiled scrunched-up tissues scattered around him and a stone tablet that had a carving of a naked woman on it in his left hand (okay, I made-up the part about the tissues and the tablet but I think it’s obvious what he was supposed to have been doing), then curses Ham’s son for what his father accidentally saw.

That’s even more irrational than Jesus’ behavior with the moneychangers.

For your second question, I probably would have reminded you that the rainbow served as a promise from god to us - not as a reminder to himself - that he would never behave quite so much like the irrational, genocidal, bloodthirsty, sadistic and downright evil god that he is.

Come to think of it, we always hear about “the problem of evil”, but considering the universe and everything in it was supposedly created by undoubtedly the most evil being in all existence, I think “the problem of good” should be a bigger concern for Christians.

Where does good come from if everything was made by something so evil?