Evolution? How?

Yeah, about the Plato bit, it's a dead end. Socrates won't get you far either, he was Plato's imaginary friend.

It was much less a comparison (it's more of a contrast, if anything) or objective point at Socratic-Platonic as any sort of ideal as it was a comparison to the self-righteous nature of Heraclitus/Empedocles. :wink:

Genesis:

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8. AndGod called the firmament Heaven.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Rex:

It appears that water was pre-existent and not created by God forthe 'firmament' or Heaven was created later and earth was created even later. So God didn't create everything according to Genesis.

It seems God is speaking to himself as he seems to make announcements such as "Let there be ..."

Possibilities are that it was an ancient stage play of creation of an exinct culture of Canaan or God was speaking to other gods as Canaanites were polytheistic. Monotheism came to the Jews in their exile to Babylon from the monotheistic Persians.

God could just as well have said "Make it so number 1"

Dunno 'bout the origins of the Abrahamic monotheist concept originating with The Captivity - I'd think that particular more likely to b an artifacct ot the Egyptian Experience - Amon, and all that,

Hi Farmerman,

It's the same thing.

Take a rotating object and invert it. Voila! It's retrograde.

The question is can this retrograde motion in 3 planets have occurred if the planets were all spun out into their orbits as currently postulated by planetary evolution? No, it could not.

Four of the other planets (Earth, Mars, Saturn and Neptune) tilt within a few degrees of each other (23, 25, 25, and 29 degrees respectively). If the debris cloud were randomly inverting and righting itself to produce retrograde planets, it's hard to imagine it staying in the same range long enough to produce 4 planets with axes so similarly aligned. These four are a neatly arranged contrast to the 3 retrograde neighbors.

Hi RL,



Yes.



You answered your own question below...



Pretty much, yes.



Probably not. It's possible that they coalesced with retrograde or skewed orientation due to gravitational eddies or to other disturbances, but not likely within the standard theory.

So what's your theory on why the planets are doing what they are doing? Details please.

You're forgeting, you know-- Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

He created heaven and earth. The earth was without form (like it says in verse 2), yes, but that doesn't mean God didn't create water (you know, the substance 71% of our current earth is covered in) when he created the earth.



Unless you're talking about the Binitarian view.

Or the fact that Hebrew and Arabic both have plurals of respect, where God speaks of Himself in the plural-- and that Elohim (the name for God used in the beginning of the Genesis account in Hebrew) is a plural noun in form, and that the emphasis in Genesis 1:26 is on the plurality in Deity, and in 5:27 on the unity of the divine Substance. And the nature of this word (Elohim) suggests the nature of the Trinity to Trinitarians.

Or unless you're talking about the others who believe that the plural morphology of Hebrew Elohim is a "plural of majesty" or simple sign of respect, analogous to other pseudo-plural usages seen in a number of languages.

Not so cut and dry...



Right. And the Israelites are the Hyksos too, eh?

But why is god talking to himself/herself/itself during creation? Nobody/nothing was there to hear him.

Whoa buddy, who are you asking here? The Binitarians, the Trinitarians, the Christadelphians, the Jewish Monotheists, the Catechists of the Catholic Church, the Oneness Pentecosts...

Like I was demonstrating, it's hardly so cut and dry-- each one of those groups will give you an answer.

There is one individual who is the first born of all creation mentioned in proverbs 8:22, 23. He was "from times earlier than the earth."

At the time earth was created there were many more sentient beings in the universe. Job 38:7 says that at the time of creation "all the sons of God cried out in applause."

rl the equation{{ mvr (sine) theta}} is preserved for all the planets, so the big issue of counterotation when the planes of the axes are so skewed for venus and Uranus, and that pluto is just doing a do si do with its moon. This alone could account for its "retrograde". Venus hasnt even been scanned well enough but we do see some density differences in large sections of the planet. Uranus? It coulda been whacked (or not)
Im afraid your placing too much faith on the obligate teeny percentage of rotational angular momentum to convince me that these nine planets , all of whom orbit the sun the same direction (with the exception of one of Saturns moons I believe) are gestationally unrealated, I say poo poo. By your logic we should also discount the fact that our Solar system is part of this even huger thing called the Milky Way Galaxy which seems to have its parts related by orbital mechanics. Youre not winning any converts or else your not making a compelling argument.



What about the "Decay of the earths magnetic field" are you willing to concede that, because we know so much about polar wandering, pole reversals, and the existence of multipolar planetary magnetism,, that the dipole moment and the field intensity and magnetic declination arent indicating a decline in magnitude but are merely involved in epochal fluctuations? or are you going to obstinately keep up with Dr Barnes (who, as Ive found out today, has been pretty much disowned by the Creationists themselves.) Since the total field has remained constant for over seventy plus years, the conecept of Barnes "exponential decay" based on 100 years of data is kind of been dumped as a myth.

Most of what you seem to believe goew back to Henry Morris and hid "Flood Geology" Even this has been pretty much discounted by the Craetionists themselves (at least the honest ones). They are regrouping and keeping their forces fresh for the battle of the scientific discussions of the origins of life and not whethger the earth is old or young, or whether there was a Noachian Flood, or the veracity of Genesis. Theyve pretty much begun to back off. In fact, thats the whole thesis of Intelligent Design.

What is, of course, the silliest part of "real life's" thesis is that, if he cannot understand how science accounts for a circumstance, cannot understand that scientists relegate certain curiosities to the "interesting but not significant" bin, or that scientists will honestly admit "i dunno"--that he gets to charge in with his imaginary friend . . .

OK, i caught ya, ya can't explain this ! ! ! I'd like you to meet my imaginary friend, God? He's been settin' all this up just to make monkeys out of the lot of ya--so to speak . . .

He is not even talking at all, this is how the creation account is translated into ideas that we can understand...remember, this was an account written down by a person about the beginning. It is a history, not a monologue.

One thing your fairy tales definitely are not is any form of history.

Ok......except the bible is one of the most historically accurate books in the world. My enire first quater of world history was practically taught straight from the bible....I go to a public school.

That's a hell of a piss-poor public school then. I would consider that statement i've highlighted above to be an outright lie, were it not for the pathetic circumstance that you likely believe that to be the truth. There is, however, no historiographically valid basis for such a statement--further, it ignores the extent to which so much of the OT was shamelessly ripped off from other sources by the Hebrews.

Hmmm.

What about the several Biblical passages regarding the Patriarchs that narrate realistic and detailed cultural traits of the 2nd millennium BCE, as corroborated by archeology? (see Ami Mazar) Or the remains of destroyed walls at Jericho found in accord with the depictions in Joshua?

What about the history of the tribes of Judah and Israel in kings? More archeological evidence and chronologies of neighboring countries have corroborated the general picture presented in the Bible of these two kingdoms-- for example, Ahab's participation in the Battle of Karkar is clearly documented in Assyrian chronology, and King Omri of Israel is mentioned in the Mesha Stele. And many later kings who paid tribute to Assyria are mentioned in the Assyrian records.

What about Ezra and Nehemiah, about the return from Persian exile? Are the Persians no more real than the Dunmer, then? Just a fairy tale group, eh?

What about Daniel and the Babylonian kings of Nebuchadnezzar to Cyrus? Not to mention the fact that the most controversial of the kings mentioned in Daniel-- Belshazzar, described as King of Babylon just before the Persian conquest and long considered to be a "fairy tale" character-- has been discovered to be the son and coregent of Nabonidus, the last King of Babylon. Or was the entire Babylonian Empire just fabricated by these silly authors?

And that's just a few points found in some Old Testament books.

If you want to down this road again, Rex, we can do so. I recall that about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, there was a thread in which you sneered at me, asking: "So are we now to believe that you are an expert in interpolations?" I resonded with four or five posts which contained many links to discussions of interpolations. You not only did not respond to that thread again, this is the first time i've seen you since then.

The mere fact that there are biblical references to people who existed historically is no evidence that the Bobble is an historically accurate document. I am not responsible for what you may allege to have been described as fairy tales about Belshazzar. There are any number of loony conspiracy theories which allude to the assassination of John Kennedy. Kennedy, Oswald and Ruby were all people who once existed, which can be historically verified. Do you contend that on so slim a basis one is obliged to accept any crackpot conspiracy theory on Kennedy's assassination which moves the perfervid imagination of some segment of the populace?

You don't make a convincing case.