"The Creation Story!"

Your honor, in the case of Pennsylvania v The Dover Board of Education, the Coomonwealth rests its case based upon the above testimony of "REX THE WONDER SQUIRREL" We remind the court that this, if the present adjutication should favor the defendants, is what we will be passing off as science in our biology, earth sciences, history,and civics.

Rex, I guess the concept of the rise of hominids over a "longer period of time" doesnt find favor with you?

The Holy Bible; Nerd's internet version (NIV)
By The AntiBuddha. Part 1.

In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth (and other bad foreign films).

And the evening and the morning were the first day. Noon however was last thurday, the Afternoon was yesterday and Night got confused and ended up somewhere in the year three thousand.

Heeding the consultant of his decorator who suggested some greenery could help increase property values, he made some plants as well. He spent some time wondering why they wouldn't grow but gave up when he realised he was behind schedule, he quickly moved onto the next item on the list and constructed the sun. When the plants suddenly started growing he put two and two together and scratched a little reminder notice next time to make the sun first before anything that relies on photosynthesis to live.

God then moved on to life, by late afternoon, having finally finished all 30,000 species of beetle and half way through insects and bacteria he decided he'd better hurry. He gave up on his half-finished dinosaurs even though he thought they looked pretty cool, and dumped the frameworks that he'd allready created onto the
Earth. Burying them a little so that his creations would never find them.

So finally, he moved through a whole bunch of species as quickly as he could, pausing only to laugh at the three-toed sloth and platypus. He finally got to humans, he peered at the setting sun and thought despairingly "make them in my own image, I'll get way behind schedule that way. Oh well I'll just copy most of the genetics from chimpanzees, no-one will be able to notice anyway."

Having made the humans he put them out of the way, telling them, "look all this is yours, you can eat anything you like. Though just between you and me, you might not want to eat those red berries over there or you'll really be seeing God." He wondered briefly about whether he should mention his special magical trees but thought, "nah, I don't want to confuse these poor creatures. Next time I really should make the brain a little bigger."

And having finished in record time by going without sleep for 6 days straight he crawled off into bed, declaring the day to be a public holiday during which no banks should be open.

The two humans wandered about, looking for something to do. Finally, having finished a few laps of the garden, Eve felt something tap her on the shoulder. She turned around and saw Quetzacoatl, the winged snake flying alongside her,
"Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you eat some of that fruit over there, it's quite tasty." The snake said. Eve turned and shook Adam's arm,
"Adam, look. It's a talking snake. Oh sorry mister serpent. You were saying?" The snake rolled its eyes.
"I said you should try eating some of that tree's fruit" it repeated, feeling a little impatient.
"Oh no, we're not allowed to eat that fruit. God forbade it in Genesis 2:17" Eve said, then Adam tapped her on the shoulder,
"Wait a minute, didn't he say we could eat the fruit of every tree in Genesis 1:29" he said, "but, if we eat it God said we'd die. Oh yeah and he said it's evil too." Eve looked confused,
"What's evil?" she asked. Adam looked a bit confused and they stared at each other for a few moments before they were interrupted by the snake sighing again.
"Look, you won't die. He just doesn't want you to eat from the trees because they'll make you his equal, what you didn't realise he was jealous? Haven't you read Isaih yet?"

Theologists having not yet invented the dualistic concept of Satan, much less applied it out of context to the serpent, Adam and Eve decided to believe the
snake. They each had a bite of the fruit and suddenly gasped at each other as they realised the market niche for a fashion industry. They set to work designing clothing labels, forgetting all about the other tree despite the snake making pointed suggestions over and over again until he fluttered away in annoyance, chasing after a butterfly. Then they heard a buzzing from inside the house and realised that it was God's alarm clock going off. They gasped and quickly hid themselves.

God wandered out calling out,
"Adam, where are you?" then muttering to himself "damn I really should have radio-tagged those two so I could find them again for later research." He finally spotted them underneath a shrubbery and spotted the clothes they had made for themselves thinking,
"Damn, I was enjoying looking at them naked. Who spilled the beans to them?" then his eye fell onto the soggy fruit-core still in Adam's hand. Adam blushed and quickly shoved it into Eve's hands.
"It was her fault boss, I had nothing to do with it." Eve, anxiously looked around for someone to blame and spotted the snake still flying furiously after a big butterfly.
"The snake told me to do it, I'm innocent I tell you." The snake heard that and tried to getting away, flapping hard to get higher and higher. But God moved in a mysterious way, grabbed the snake by the tail and ripped it's wings off, dropping it onto the ground.
"Eat dust, baby." God said, momentarily channeling the spirit of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He momentarily considered forgiving his creations, after all, he did make them the way they were and they couldn't have known what they were doing was wrong because they had no knowledge of Good or Evil.
"nah, frag it" he thought and used the evil eye on everything in sight.
"You're cursed with crawling on the ground, you're cursed with childbirth, you're cursed with farming, the grounds cursed with thorns and and and...." God ranted then spluttered to a halt finishing with "and get out of my damn garden."

And so Adam and Eve wandered out of the garden, leaving the snake wriggling on the ground trying to get the hang of moving without arms or legs. They looked back over their shoulder at the Garden's new angelic security guard,
"Don't suppose you've got some fake ID on you?" Adam asked Eve.
"Fake ID? I don't even have pockets" She said sighing "we're doomed, you heard what God said, we'll die sometime today because we ate the fruit. Oh well, might as well go out with a blast. Want a screw?"

So Adam and Eve knew eachother... As in "knew", you know, "knew" as in hubba hubba, nudge nudge, wink wink... oh forget it, they had sex. They finally went to sleep, panicked and fearful of their impending death. As the "greater light" rose over the horizon and they woke up Adam and Eve glanced at one another, startled at still being alive.
"What, God told us we'd die today?" Eve said.
"Maybe he lied?" Adam suggested.
"How can you even suggest that? He's omnibenevolent."
"Mistaken?" Adam said meekly.
"Omniscient" She responded absently.
"Ummm, operating outside of normal human reference and foreshadowing our impending death caused by our new-found mortality?" Adam said even quieter.
"What was that?" she said, still looking wistfully back at the garden and security guard.
"never mind." Adam sighed.

Then there was this flood and yadda yadda .

Not particularly.


Now back to these "Genesis fallacies." You probably shouldn't be so quick to use them in your arguments, farmerman.



Wrong again.

In the midst of all the biblical and scientific evidence for a young earth/universe, skeptics often turn to the question about light reaching the earth as an excuse, or try to explain it in ways that will prove the Bible wrong.

First of all, it is important for us to let the language of God's Word speak to us. If we come to Genesis 1 without any outside influences, as is easily shown, each of the six days of creation appears with the Hebrew yom qualified by a number, and the phrase "evening and morning." The first three days are written the same as the next three. So if we let the language speak to us, all six days were ordinary earth days.

Second of all, the sun is not needed for day and night! What is needed is light and a rotating earth. On the first day of creation, God made light (Gen. 1:3). The phrase "evening and morning" certainly implies a rotating earth. Thus if we have light from one direction, and a spinning earth, there can be day and night.

Now about the travel of light taking "millions of years"...

One explanation used in the past was rather complex, involving light traveling along Riemannian surfaces (an abstract mathematical form of space). Apart from being hard to understand, it appears that such an explanation is not valid, since it would mean that we should see duplicates of everything.

Perhaps the most commonly used explanation is that God created light "on its way," so that Adam could see the stars immediately without having to wait years for the light from even the closest ones to reach the earth. But there are numerous problems with this theory (which I will spare you of typing out at the moment, but will at your request if you'd like), and isn't an acceptable explanation either.

An obvious solution would be a higher speed of light in the past, allowing light to cover the same distance more quickly. This seemed at first glance a too-convenient ad hoc explanation. Then some years ago, Australian Barry Setterfield raised the possibility to a high profile by showing that there seemed to be a decreasing trend in the historical observations of the speed of light (c) over the past 300 years or so. Setterfield (and his later co-author, Trevor Norman) produced much evidence in favor of the theory. They believe it would have affected radiometric dating results, and even have caused the red-shifting of light from distant galaxies, although this idea was later overtuned, and other modifications were made also.

Nevertheless, the c decay theory stimulated much thinking about the issues. Creationist physicist Dr. Russell Humphreys says that he spent a year on and off trying to get the declining c theory to work, but without success. However, in the process, he was inspired to develop a new creationist cosmology which appears to solve the problem of the apparent conflict with the Bible's clear, authoritative teaching of a recent creation.

Before I continue, I should probably address this issue-- this sort of development, in which one creationist theory (c decay) is overtaken by another, in a healthy aspect of science. The basic biblical framework is non-negotiable, as opposed to the changing views and models of us fallible people seeking to explain the data within that framework (evolutionists also often change their ideas on exactly how things have made themselves, but never whether they did).

Okay, now, let us briefly give a hint as to how the new cosmology seems to solve the starlight problem before explaining some preliminary items in a little more detail. Consider that the time taken for something to travel a given distance is the distance divided by the speed it is traveling. That is:

Time=Distance (divided by) Speed

When this is applied to light from distant stars, the time calculates out to millions of years. Some have sought to challenge the distances, but this is a very unlikely answer (Many billions of stars exist, many just like our own sun, according to the analysis of the light coming from them. Such numbers of stars have to be distributed through a huge volume of space, otherwise we would all be fried.) Astronomers use many different methods to measure the distances, and no informed creationist astronomer would claim that any errors would be so vast that billions of light years could be reduced to thousands, for example. There is good evidence that our own Milky Way is 100,000 light across itself.

If the speed of light (c) has not changed, the only thing left untouched in the equation is time itself. Ta da! Einstein's relativity theories have been telling the world for decades that time is not a constant.

Two things are believed (with experimental support) to distort time in relativity theory-- one is speed and the other is gravity. Einstein's general theory of relativity, the best theory of gravity we have at present, indicates that gravity distorts time. This effect has been measured experimentally, many times. Clocks at the top of tall buildings, where gravity is slightly less, run faster than those at the bottom, just as predicted by the equations of general relativity (GR).

When the concentration of matter is very large or dense enough, the gravitational distortion can be so immense that even light cannot escape (a black hole). The equations of GR show that at the invisible boundary surrounding such a concentration of matter (called the event horizon of a black hole, the point at which light rays trying to escape the enormous pull of gravity bend back on themselves), time literally stands still.

The universe has a boundary-- in other words, it has a center and an edge, and if you were to travel off into space, you would eventually come to a place beyond which there was no more matter. In this cosmology, the earth is near the center, as it appears to be as we look out into space. This might sound like common sense, as indeed it is, but all modern secular ("big bang") cosmologies deny this. That is, they make the arbitrary assumption (without any scientific necessity) that the universe has no boundaries-- no edge and no center. In this assumed universe, every galaxy would be surrounded by galaxies spread evenly in all directions (on a large enough scale), and so therefore all the net gravitational forces cancel out.

However, if the universe has boundaries, then there is a net gravitational effect toward the center. Clocks at the edge would be running at different rates to clocks on the earth. In other words, it is no longer enough to say God made the universe in six days. He certainly did, but six days by which clock? If we say "God's time" we miss the point that He is outside of time, seeing the end from the beginning. (Gen. 1:1, Eccles. 3:11, Isa. 26:4, Rom. 1:20, 1 Tim. 1:17, Heb. 11:3)

There appears to be observational evidence that the universe has expanded in the past, supported by the many phrases God uses in the Bible to tell us that at creation he "stretched out" (other verses say "spread out") the heavens (Isa. 42:5, Jer. 10:12, Zech. 12:1). If the universe is not much bigger than we can observe, and if it was only 50 times smaller in the past than it is now, then scientific deduction based on GR means it has to have expanded out of a previous state in which it was surrounded by an event horizon (a condition known technically as a "white hole"-- a black hole running in reverse, something permitted by the equations of GR).

As matter passed out of this event horizon, the horizon itself had to shrink-- eventually to nothing. Therefore, at one point this earth (relative to a point far away from it) would have been virtually frozen in time. An observer on earth would not in any way "feel different." "Billions of years" would be available (in the frame of reference within which it is travelling in deep space) for light to reach the earth, for stars to age, etc. -- while less than one ordinary day is passing on earth. This massive gravitational time dilation would seem to be a scientific inevitability if a bounded universe expanded significantly.

In one sense, if observers on earth at that particular time could have looked out and "seen" the speed with which light was moving toward them out in space, it would have appeared as if it were traveling many times faster than c. (Galaxies would also appear to be rotating faster.) However, if an observer in deep space was out there measuring the speed of light, to him it would still only be travelling at c.

It is fortunate that creationists did not invent such concepts such as gravitational time dilation, black and white holes, event horizons and so on, or we would likely be accused of manipulating the data to solve the problem. The interesting thing about this cosmology is that it is based upon mathematics and physics totally accepted by all cosmologists (general relativity), and it accepts (along with virtually all physicists) that there has been expansion in the past (though not from some imaginary tiny point). It requires no "massaging" -- the results "fall out" so long as one abandons the arbitrary starting point which the big bangers use (the unbounded cosmos idea, which could be called "what the experts don't tell you about the 'big bang'").

This new cosmology seems to explain in one swoop all of the observations used to support the "big bang," including progressive red-shift and the cosmic microwave background radiation, without compromising the data or the biblical record of a young earth. Oh yeah, and it also answers that "fallacy" about light in Genesis.

There is more detail of this new cosmology, at layman's level, in the book by Dr. Humphreys, Starlight and Time, which also includes reprints of his technical papers showing the equations.

On the fourth day the luminaries came into existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going to say that the things produced on Earth came from the stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds came into existence before stars. For what comes into existence later cannot cause what is prior to it."



Again, wrong. And this one is quite easy to explain, as opposed to the one above.

The world before the Fall had no death, disease, or suffering, as God proclaimed the finished creation "very good" (Genesis 1:31). Consistent with this, God gave plants to the animals to eat (Genesis 1:29-30).

Then Adam sinned, and death came into the world. Only then did plants become poisonous to kill animals [before then they had no reason to, because they were all good to eat, and God appropriately described His creation as "very good" (Genesis 1:31)].

Also, just to address this before someone else brings it up, the eating of a plant was not considered "death." The Bible makes a clear distinction between the status of plants and animals. People and animals are described in Genesis as having, or being, nephesh (Hebrew). See Genesis 1:20-21, 24 where nephesh chayyah is translated "living creatures," and Genesis 2:7 where Adam became a "living soul" (nephesh chayyah). Nephesh conveys the basic idea of a "breathing creature." It is also used widely in the Old Testament, in combination with other words, to convey ideas of emotions, feelings, etc. Perhaps nephesh refers to life with a certain level of consciousness. Plants do not have such nephesh, and so Adam eating a carrot did not involve death in the biblical sense.



Except that, you know, God told them not to eat of the tree or they would surely die.



That's like saying Remington is ultimately responsible for all of the deaths at the hands of murderers that use their guns improperly. Or that Ford is ultimately responsible for all of the drunk-driving deaths at the hands of irresponsible people that drive their cars. Very, very unrealistic-- God gave Adam and Eve freedom, and they abused that freedom, and they are ultimately responsible for the Fall. The serpent can take some blame as well, but it was Adam and Eve's choice to follow his deception.



Think you could elaborate on these? I'm not really seeing how they contradict Genesis.

He's just showing how silly the whole thing is. You did a pretty good job of that yourself

Making it look silly? You mean showing that it's factual

You're not kidding are you. Wow. Ok....

I'm just curious, if you had to start from scratch, and someone asked you to determine the age of the Earth, how would you go about it? Just the general process you would use, you don't need to go into detail.

Rex, we dont have to resort to some exogenous action upon the earth to determine its age, we can measure deep time by action of the earth itself. All the factors of chemistry and physics cluster around specific common ages for post Hadean time, Archeozoic, PreCambrian, And so on. To employ "Time dilation" do you realize that your correction factor alone would be in the 99th percentile of the entire calculations that standard deep time calculations provide? Doesnt the illogical nature of that proposition even give you concern?You know how many constants that wed have to change by greater than 100%?
How can you deny that readioactive decay, structural movement of plates, geomagnetic stratigraphy, plus standard tools as sedimentation/erosion rates , isostasy etc all seem to cluster. Even if you pick "millions of years" instead of "Billions" your own functions for "similitude would be larger than the functions themselves. If that were the case, all science would abandon gravity, magnetics, rad decay , Uniformitarianism, and most common sense.
You seem to need to "create" special conditions of science just to have your "events" merge, we dont.
Im curious, you seem very well attuned to this very discussion. How old do you believe the earth is?

PS Im quite familiar with the variable c work as it would effect rad decay. However, that assumes that theres only a few rad decay methodologies. Theres actually close to a hundrd different techniques from igneous and metamorphic rocks from all different strata , ages, and emplacement. To have the Jurassic from the Deccans agree with the Jurassic from New Jersey by totally different isotope ratios is some pretty good QA. Then we have magnetostratigraphy that can locate which reversal cycle the data was collected and this data agrees with even more spots about the planet. There seems to be no evidence of significant time dilation in the time since the PreCAmbrian and the only reason there isnt more earlier data is that theyre only slowlyl finding relict Archean sites that havent been remobilized by anatexis and higher levels of Metamorphism.

Actually that's just part one, I've written about five of those so far. That one was the first one I wrote several years ago (and probably the least funny). A few days ago I wrote my first new testament one, but yeah, point is I've actually got one retelling the flood story. I think it's probably the funniest one I've written.

You're not kidding are you. Wow. Ok....[/quote]

I prefer to think of it as kidding without realising it.



Firstly the photosynthetic nature of plants is not a point of evolution. Evolution doesn't care if they're fungii or run around on little legs eating smaller plants. It's a point of science that plants survive off of light. But of course since evolution is correct and scientific you'd perceive them as the same thing, wouldn't you?

Since sunlight only exists after plants in creationist mythology it only supports the creation philosophy if it supports the creation philosophy. Why am I not surprised to see a christian using circular logic?



I love you.

Thankyou for the image of a lion grazing on grass while Adam eats the apple. Suddenly this divine ray of light strikes the lion and it begins shuddering as it twists and distorts. Its teeth grows longer, it's digestive system shifts itself to adapt for meat. It suddenly gains the muscular strenght, speed, hunting instincts and thousands of other factors it didn't need as a herbivore. The ray of light releases it and it turns and eats the gazelle grazing next to it.

See, without christians I wouldn't have this kind of amusing image. So thankyou. (oooh... I should include that in my creation story).


Yes, because Remington is omniscient.

Squirrel

Amazing.
So the serpent speaks Hebrew.
And it eats dust.
Ok.

But why did the serpent offered the fruit to Eva? I feel there was some kind of animosity of the hebrew serpent against that other fellow, God or Javeh. When did they become enemies? Before the creation of after creation? And why?
And why an apple? Why not a watermelon or a banana?

I think you must complete your cenario.

Another thing. I know serpents that don't eat dust. At least they eat other things - like rats. I don't know if they speak hebrew because no serpent talked to me until now (it doesn't surprise me, since I don't know hebrew)
but I am sure they eat more than dust. Does that means that there was commutation of the sentence?
You see, in order to produce a good plot, you must be attentive to those little details.

What I'm curious about is how the serpent got around before it "slithered on its belly" did it fly? have legs? weird.

Antibuddha

Good point.
Squirrel doesn't clear that for us.
And why did it give the apple to Eva? It could have sold the apple. I don't know if Got had created money yet, but at least the serpent could have used sex as price for the apple.
Of course, if it was a gay serpent the all story would be different. Adam would be the one to eat the apple.

Watermelons don't grow on trees silly

They don't? And then why is there the watermelon tree?

Snakes are one more disproof of evolution. The very first step in becoming a snake (given the standard idea that snakes had to have evolved from lizards) is to be mutated and born as a quadraplegic.

Now, in real life, quadraplegics amongst humans are kept alive by charity and government programs; those things do not exist in the natural order. In real life when any animal loses any part of its ability to move and get around, it gets picked off by some predator within the hour.

A proto-snake, on the other hand, would have go start off being mutated as a quadraplegic and then survive in such a hopeless condition for many thousands of generations until it devised the ability to slither and kill prey in the manner of snakes, and do every other sort of snake thing. Pretty ridiculous, isn't it?

Then Jesus is a myth? Or, what is the book of history which holds for you the truth about him?

Your comprehension thereof is.

Learn evolution before you attempt to debate it. Since you just talked about single step evolution you clearly don't have a clue about the evolution process nor how it relates to snakes.

Had you known what you were talking about you would realise that a lizard is capable of using slithering motions to help their ambulatory motion and that many lizards don't lift their belly off the ground whilst walking. A gradually reduction of the usage of legs and increasing the slithering would not in any way be inconceivable.

I obviously understand evolution a lot better than you do.

There are four things the average person needs to know about evolution:

1. It's junk science, which has been massively disproven over the last century.

2. As junk science goes, it's dangerous junk science. It was the major philosophical corner stone of naziism, communism, and the various eugenics programs in western countries.

3. It is utterly incompatible with Christianity or any other meaningful religion.

4. It is part and parcel of certain agendas which may or may not be of any use to you; individual mileage may vary.

[sarcasm]Oh yes and Creationism is such a wonderful science[/sarcasm]