OK, so the mods do actually care about abusive and inflammatory terms. The word “atheist” is not one of them. This ring-around-the-rosy game is officially done, @Patrick (and others). Move on to something else. If you’re worried about your personal safety, maybe a google-accessible forum is not the right place to post.
Any further comments about this will be deleted.
The similarities with Babylonian epics like Enuma Elish are probably a better comparison than the Greek Pandora story, given the closer geographic, cultural, and linguistic proximity of Enuma Elish to Genesis. But your overall point is well-taken.
Actually, scientists have revived bacteria trapped in salt deposits for 250 million years. The right environment can preserve DNA for very, very long times. This is extraordinarily rare (e.g., amber deposits), but it does happen.
It’s also worth noting that scientists did not sequence the entire genome of a dinosaur; they only managed to recover a strand of 130 base pairs (i.e., that coded for ~32 amino acids).
@DougK, @jlock, @GJDS, @Eddie @Christy @Patrick
Hello, I’m following your discussion, which shows clearly your sincere involvement. I have been looking for suitable answers since early spring 1944, when, due to the war situation, I was forbidden to leave our house and garden. Being bored I started reading all the books of my parents. In time I solved many riddles, composed fitting answer and stayed looking for proof.
Here is the most recent piece of proof: Filed to: paleontology9/22/15 10:30am
“The nearly intact fossil of a 4-million-year old whale has been unearthed at a construction site in Santa Cruz County. Discovered well above sea level, the bones made their way to the mountains through the shifting of tectonic plates. “
The whale was beached there still alive when one of the many previous Floods lost its momentum. The explanation that shifting of tectonic plates transported the bones upwards on the mountain is pure nonsense. The remains would not have been undamaged and neatly arranged.
The whale remained almost completely undamaged because the usual scavengers and birds had been killed by the Flood.
I’m waiting for the day that a prehistoric railroad tunnel is discovered, including a train and the remains of the driver.
Back to your discussion,
I think the point is that normal scientific evidence would indicate that bacteria, animal tissues, and animal dna could not survive that long. That is the point. When someone says it survived for 250 million years, they are postulating something much more unbelievable than a miracle. It is like the dead coming back to life. It is unscientific. Even plant seeds, which are designed to be preserved and then come to life many years later, would not be expected to be viable after 1000 years, or one million years, nevermind 250 million yrs.
Sure you are engrossed in the story. But to what purpose? If I told you a story about myself, that I was 100 years old, formerly a state governor, having lived in Trinidad, Banghor, Siberia, and Kwala Lampoor, working mostly for the CIA before I was state governor and having numerous escapades, adventures, and harrowing escapes from death, you might be engrossed. But when you find out the story is completely false, it will not be perceived by you as having the same context nor validity.
I don’t think the bible is a history book, just as my diary is not a history book. Yet, like my diary, what the bible says about history either gives validity to the rest of the story if is true, or detracts from the validity of the story if it is false. Did he really meet the president… or did he just wish he did… or did he see him from a distance or on tv, or just a picture in the paper… Imagine a habitual liar trying to teach theology to you (and teach you to tell the truth); it would be like a drug addict trying to show you how to get off drugs, or a three time divorcee trying to explain how to stay married. You just wouldn’t learn the lessons, because the lessons would be contradictory. The idea of walking the talk, instead of just talking, is hard, when you don’t really know what the talk is.
As I understand it, Eddie, it would not take miraculous rates of reproduction to get to those population levels.
But for much of the rest of this post of yours, I am not with you. There is no evidence a snake did not speak, although I will grant you that this would be miraculous. There is no evidence that these trees in the garden did not exist… whether they are necessary or not is rather beside the point. I think searching for ark remnants is beside the point; remnants would be hard to prove, and their absence does not prove that the ark never existed. But your idea or my idea of a waste of time ought not to be imposed on others in this case. Many may feel that most of the discussions on biologos are a waste of time, but yet we feel called to participate.
If Genesis was told like a fable, I could understand your point. But it isn’t. It is written as real, continuous, progressive, factual, relevant, prescriptive, determinative. The lessons derive from its authenticity, and lose value if not authentic. When Jesus told parables, everyone knew they were parables. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the parables had an actual news story behind it; yet the parable is based on the authenticity of believability; ie. if the parable was impossible, the parable would lose its value and credibility.
When science or history causes us to wonder about our theology that may be a problem. But if it causes us to change our cosmology, that may be a different thing. Whether the earth is flat or round or stands still or rotates simply does not affect our theology does it? I think it is good that the earth is not center of the universe, because God should be the center of everything, not man. But I don’t think science has really affected that. A mountain and a valley are both parts of God’s creation and have their own beauty; this is also true of Sun, moon, earth, planets, even though they are all greatly different. When we discover their differences (which some call science) does this somehow change our theology?
So your statement of
would have to be more specific.
Something I always wondered about the Noah story was Noah’s parents. They are not mentioned, were they wicked people? They did raise Noah to be a fine moral man, but he didn’t make a place for them on the Ark. It seems to me a good man would make sure his parents were on board. Maybe they died. But what about his wife’s parents? where they wicked also? But I can see Noah not wanting to take his mother-in-law on board but his wife would surely object.
Maybe they died young, you know, at 450 years old or so.
Maybe they did, but I would think that Noah would at least build a room for them during the construction phase. They were his parents. They loved him and worked very hard to raise him to be a good moral man. They also loved their grandchildren and it must have been hard on the grandchildren to see their grandparents drown like that. Pretty traumatic on a 200 year old.
@Patrick It might not have been exactly the same back in those days, but I know in my old neighborhood, the building codes did not allow “mother-in-law” apartments in new house construction.
They might have gotten eaten by one of the dinosaurs, has anyone considered that option?
I hear that they were juvenile dinosaurs which take up a lot less space. But the high metabolism of juvenile dinosaurs would need tons of mammal meat to keep them healthy and growing for the year long journey.
As for the building codes back then, they were very lax. AiG is finding out the hard way of how many toilets are required by Kentucky building code for a stationary structure that large.
What’s your views on the Samaritan and Septuagint texts the give slightly different accounts on the numbers?
I’ve always thought it interesting how Methuselah dies in the exact year of the Flood. Is it because of some unrelated event that happened in that year or because of the Flood?
-Tim
Thinking normally is sometimes the enemy of good science.
Normal scientific evidence would indicate that a wave cannot travel without propagating through a medium:
So light waves must propagate through some tangible medium, scientists thought in the late 19th century. Thus they postulated ether. It took a very clever experiment by Michelson and Morley in 1887 with advanced instruments to show that light does not propagate through luminescent ether.
Normal scientific evidence indicates that space and time provide an absolute frame of reference.
This is our normal experience. Yet we now understand, as a result of Einstein’s theories and innovative experiments, that space is curved, there is no such thing as an absolute frame of reference, and time runs at different speeds depending on the velocity of the object which is measuring time.
Likewise, our normal experience with decay does not prepare us for what can happen with unusual creatures in an unusual state, fossilized in an unusual way.
The unusual creatures are bacteria, and they can exist in an unusual state as endospores. Botulism spores can survive for hours in boiling water, which is why you can get very sick from eating canned vegetables from the wrong garden. Very few organisms can do the same thing; boil one of my cells for 5 minutes, and little if any DNA would remain intact. So we have to think differently about decay when we’re dealing with bacterial spores.
Secondly, the spores were preserved in amber, which provides a protective “cocoon” against the typical forces of decay. For example, a carnivorous fungus of a species which long ago went extinct was remarkably preserved in amber for 100 million years, according to this National Geographic report.
God made a big, big universe, John, and when we use advanced technology like radiometric dating and genomic analysis to examine phenomena that are not part of our daily experience, we are going to be surprised at many turns. So I want to encourage you to read this article about reviving 25-40 million year old bacteria spores; let yourself be surprised. Enjoy the feeling of wonder!
P.S. The links to the articles about 250 million year old spores no longer worked, so I dug up the account of ~32 million year old bacteria spores instead.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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