- Anything Else -

I'd noticed.

Posted by: Gideon Hallett ( UK ) on November 19, 1999 at 14:42:55:

In Reply to: I'm back posted by Robert on November 18, 1999 at 19:08:48:

: : Which is what I said in my original challenge; and what no-one has yet even come close to disputing; belief in God is alogical, since any God worthy of the name is not bound by logic. Thus you cannot use logical terms like "proof" and "evidence" and try applying them to belief in God.

: There is a difference between an attempt at "proving" God on the one hand, and merely trying to demonstrate that the text of the Bible is true to exactly what it says it is.

This relies on there being a "correct" way to interpret the Bible.

Let's take the example of Isiah 40:22; which you used to try and justify a circular Earth. It has in fact been used for the last 1800 years to justify a flat disc-like Earth. In the 3rd Century A.D., Lactantius (a senior churchman) used that very passage to justify his treatise that the Earth was flat and not spherical.

In fact, if you examine the history books, the first person to advance a reasoned explanation of the spherical Earth was Aristarchus of Samos around the year 230 B.C. Aristarchus did more than just theorize; he conducted the famous experiment concerning the length of the shadow of the midday Sun at Syene and Alexandria; and thus he provided the world's first experimental proof of the Earth's sphere-like nature.

He was followed by Seleucus, who in 150 B.C. said that tides were due to the interaction of the Earth and the Moon and the rotation of the Earth.

And Lucretius Carus wrote in De Rerum Natura in 55 B.C. that matter was composed of atoms in particular patterns; that favourable configurations of atoms survived from father to son and thus became widespread; the theory of evolution.

Evolution, the Earth's roundness and the Earth's rotation were all known scientific theories before Christ's time, Robert; and they were all developed by the Greeks and Romans.

Does that make the Graeco-Roman pantheon the real one, Robert?

Or is your method of using carefully selected bits of the Bible to back up your claims a fundamentally unsound one?

: I nor anyone else could ever "prove" God, or he wouldn't be God.

Which means that any article advanced as proof is ultimately useless; since it cannot provide that proof. That means the Bible, the Universe and life in general. You can't prove God.

: However, to show that these remarkable Biblical passages (scientific and otherwise), facts unknown to ancient man at the time

Except that it all depends on how you read it and some of the ideas *were* known to people of the time.

: are indeed now shown to demonstratably true by modern science is in itself a testimony to the power of Bible.

Hogwash. It merely means that the Bible is so vague and obscure that you can justify whatever you want to argue out of it by careful editing.

: NOW belief comes in. God had to tell him these remarkable things. The Bible couldn't be a man-made product.

If the Bible isn't a man-made product, then it provides proof of God. Since you've already said God can't be proved, you are contradicting yourself. Either the Bible is not proof of God, or God doesn't exist. Your choice.

: A little stray from the course. Which came first protiens or amino acids?

Amino acids, since it is highly likely that amino acids exist in interstellar space.

Ethanoic acid and ammonia have both been detected in interstellar space; and when combined they form glycine; the simplest of the amino acids; thus it is highly likely that there are amino acids to be found in the Galactic core and young nebulae. Amino acids have already been found in meteorites and lunar dust.

Other simple organic compounds like formic acid have also been found in space this year. Which goes to show that comparatively complex molecules can assemble themselves in space, given the energy.

Gideon.


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