Re: Making money from Java

"Alistair" <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Judson McClendon wrote:
>> "Alistair" <alistair@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > Your starter for ten: If the Bible is correct (as you postulated) then
>> > where did Cain's wife come from? And, as land is defined by its'
>> > occupiers - who created Nod?
>>
>> His sister, of course, or perhaps a neice.
>
> So the Bible advocates incest? I have three nieces and the thought of
> fornication with either of them, or with my sister or mother, turns my
> stomach. Don't take that personally, I know that incest is not
> something that you would advocate.

In the Mosiac Law (see Leviticus 18) sexual activity between a number of
near relatives is forbidden. Before that, when Ham one of Noah's sons, saw
Noah naked asleep in his tent, Noah cursed Canaan, Ham's son (I don't know
why Noah didn't curse Ham directly).

It is my personal opinion that there are may be two different reasons for
the various commands against incest: perversion and genetic defects. As far
as I know, sexual activity between parent/child and with one's parent/child
spouse has always been forbidden. Apparently these, along with all forms of
adultry, are forbidden because God sees them as perversion. I'm sure at
least some the acts forbidden in Leviticus 18 also fall into this category.
On the other hand, Abraham is nowhere that I know of censured for marrying
his half sister. In 2 Samual 13:13 when Amnon had the hots for his half
sister Tamar, she begged Amnon to ask King David for her, saying that she
expected David to permit this. Or, perhaps she was only saying this as a
ploy to keep Amnon from raping her. I don't recall any Biblical injunction
against marrying siblings or close cousins or children of siblings before
the Mosaic law. I suspect that these particular laws may have been for
practical reasons of genetic defects rather than for reason of perversions,
but that is just my opinon. Certainly many of the Mosaic laws about clensing
had a very practical result, whatever God's reasons were for giving them.

>> The Bible covers
>> only the part of history that God wanted to relate to us for His
>> purposes,
>> not the totality of history, even early history. With no birth control,
>> no
>> physical defects, and a healthy sex drive, there is no telling how many
>> children Adam and Eve had, or their children.
>
> With inbreeding there would have been plenty of birth defects.
> Inbreeding doesn't just produce six fingers on each hand. Given a
> lifespan of 930 years then they could have had huge numbers of
> children.

Only if there were genetic defects to begin with. If the Bible account is
accurate, Adam and Eve would have had none.

>> Within a couple of hundred
>> years, there would have been lots of people.
>
> Given the Bible's starting conditions, agreed.
>
>> If people lived almost a
>> thousand years, who cares if your spouse is 50 years younger or older
>> than
>> you?
>
> I'm very fussy, personally.
>
>> They may have kept youthful until near the ends of their lives, for all
>> we know.
>
> Unlikely, but possible if one suspends one's faculty to disbelieve. As
> humans age they develop ailments and diseases often as a result of
> early life incidents. One also loses muscle mass with age (above the
> age of 40 years, humans lose between 0.5 and 2 percent of muscle mass
> per annum) so I suspect the elder ones were probably more akin to stick
> insects in their looks (ie a bag of bones).
>
>>We do know that Abraham married his half sister Sarah. Adam and Eve
>> were created with no physical flaws, including no genetic flaws.
>
> As far as you know. The Bible doesn't detail the health, or lack of, of
> Adam or Eve:
>
> 002:007 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
> breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became
> a living soul.
>
> One may presume, kindly, that God would have created a perfectly
> healthy being despite the above lack.

If the Bible is correct, Adam and Eve were created to live forever, so it
makes sense to assume no defects. But I agree, it is a (reasonable)
assumption. :-)

>> But over
>> time the effects of sin (e.g. drug use) and genetic damage caused by
>> radiation after the flood, when the protective covering over the earth
>> was
>> destroyed (lot of background info here, another discussion), made
>> marrying
>> close relatives more likely to produce genetic defects in children.
>> Social
>> and legal injunctions against marrying siblings and close cousins are
>> relatively recent.
>
> Sin does not necessarily induce genetic defects (But over time the
> effects of sin (e.g. drug use....made marrying close relatives more
> likely to produce genetic defects in children). I know that genetic
> damage can be caused as a result of exposure to narcotics and chemicals
> and even to the dust of the earth (eg asbestos) but that is not sin.
>
> Genetic damage caused by a loss of the ozone layer (the only protective
> covering we have)? I am not aware of anywhere in the Bible that it
> mentions a loss of the ozone layer (what evidence do you have?). Given
> that a flood occured (I could believe in a localised flood but not in
> the global flood that the Bible speaks of, but that has previously been
> discussed elsewhere) then a raise in sea level would naturally mean an
> increased exposure to radiation and, assuming a global flood, then the
> diameter of the earth's surface would have increased and the atmosphere
> would be less deep and less protective. However, genetic defects in
> children are more likely to have been caused by the particular abnormal
> genes becoming more common and more likely to be paired in foetuses due
> to matings amongst siblings and close relatives in closed communities
> rather than to a Biblical flood exposing people to radiation.

I'll just mention this briefly, it is far to involved to get into here, but
the original language descriptions of creation and the flood can be
interpreted as saying that there was a kind of crystaline covering that
covered and protected the earth, and that this covering was destroyed at the
time of the flood. If this is true, it could explain a lack of radiation
caused defects prior to the flood. Also it could explain a higher
atmospheric pressure. Some scientists have surmised that the flying
dinosaurs could not have made it off the ground, and that the larger
dinosaurs could not have even lived, in today's atmosphere.

>> But we know there are fossils of sea creatures
>> even on mountain tops.
>
> Most of which pre-date 4000 BC, give or take a few years.

By current theory. However, it is my understanding that radiological dating
methonds can be extremely unreliable, and they rely on a number of
assumptions that cannot be proved for ancient times. However, I am no
expert.

>> The Noah Flood did not happen simply by lots of rain,
>> there were almost certainly geological shifts involved. Genesis 7:11 says
>> "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up", and in some Bible
>> translations Psalm 104:5 seems to speak of the mountains being lifted up
>> and
>> the valleys being lowered after the flood. I speculate that the geography
>> before the Great Flood may have been much flatter than today, and during
>> the
>> flood the floors of the oceans lifted, lowering the continents, and this
>> may
>> be what was meant by "all the fountains of the great deep were broken
>> up".
>
> I would suggest that this has to be read in the context of the time.
> These people did not understand the structure of the earth nor could
> they have conceived of the geological processes of which we are aware.

Perhaps not, but the Bible clearly describes the process of water
evaporating from the seas, being carried by winds, and coming down as rain
on the mountains, it says God sits above the sphere (or circle, same Hebrew
word) of the earth, and says the earth is "hung upon nothing". Pretty
accurate concepts for such ancient times. :-)

>> After the flood, the continents and mountains were lifted up, and the
>> water
>> mostly ran off. If you examine the Grand Canyon, and compare it to
>> Engineer's Canyon created by Mt. St. Helens in only a few days, the
>> resemblance of the erosion features is striking.
>
> And what of the (lack of) resemblance of the deposition features? The
> mud, the poisoned lakes, the accumulation of dead trees? Are these to
> be found in the Grand Canyon too? I would put it that 6000 years of
> geological processes are insufficient to have swept that evidence away.

Well, I don't know of any non-petrified wood exposed to the weather lasting
6000 years, and any poisioned lakes would have been flushed out hundreds of
times over that period.

>> You also see soil layering
>> in Engineer's Canyon, just as in the Grand Canyon, on a smaller scale.
>> The
>> layering was created by laminar flow (air flow in Engineer's Canyon,
>> probably water flow in the Grand Canyon).
>
> I can not comment on any similarities as I am unfamiliar with
> Engineer's Canyon and have no desire to rectify that deficiency. But
> one tiny point, it is not flow that creates laminar deposits but rather
> a lack of flow (hence the fact that deposits deposit).
>
> I would agree that air and liquid flows do normally produce similar
> effects as they are both examples of fluid flows. However, better
> geologists than myself would be able to discourse at length about the
> differences.

Civil engineers know much more about erosion and such effects than
geologists, because they deal with it in a practical sense every day, and
can get immediate experimental feedback. I think you would enjoy reading a
book by two men, a PhD in theology and PhD in civil engineering, named "The
Genesis Flood". The book was written a while back and needs updating, but
there is a lot of good stuff in there.

>> I have driven around the Hoover
>> Dam area, and the geological features there are clearly those you would
>> expect from rapid erosion on a massive scale, such as piles of huge rocks
>> in
>> waves that go for miles.
>
> Deposition, not erosion. This is similar to the differences between
> osmosis and diffusion which often confuses those who are not
> scientifically trained and allows the media to use such terms
> indiscriminately (even BBC News, who should know better, have referred
> to bacteria as viruses).

Sorry, you are correct. I actually know better.

>> Try this: half fill a large box with sand and
>> gravel, level it, fill the box with water, then knock a hole in the side,
>> and you see the exact same patterns formed on a smaller scale as the
>> water
>> runs off.
>
> I don't have the facility to conduct t his experiment. You will have to
> enlighten me. Are you referring to the fact that outwas sands carry
> further than boulders or are you referring to terminal morraines formed
> by retreating glaciers. Perhaps you mean conglomerates and breccias (at
> last I have been able to put my "O" level Geology to some use!)

I'm saying that if you take an ariel photograph of the Grand Canyon area and
compare it to what the water leaves behind in that box, the similarity is
stunning.

>> Fossils don't form under normal circumstances.
>
> Fossils are an inevitability of happenstance. True, you do need the
> right conditions to exist but given the size of the earth's surface and
> the length of geologic time periods then they are inevitable. A great
> proof of God's existance would have been if there were no fossils at
> all. BTW, the oldest fossils date to around 3.8 billion years ago.

That dating is by extremely indirect means, I think you will have to admit.
For nearly 200 years scientists have been working under an a-priori
assumption of a no-creation, no-flood situation, and all current theories,
including theories about dating, came out of this situation. Had the same
evidence been examined with a mindset toward creation and worldwide flood, I
believe you would be very surprised at how well the evidence would fit.

>> Animals die or are
>> killed, and scavengers scatter the bones. For a fossil to form, the
>> remains
>> must be covered almost immediately.
>
> Not true. There is evidence on some (partial) fossil skeletons to show
> that they have been subject to animal predation and that parts have
> been scattered. Such evidence includes claw and tooth marks.
>
> If the remains are covered immediately (or sooner rather than never)
> then the corpse may be saved from predators/scavengers but the tendency
> of a fossil to be formed is unrelated to how long after death that
> sedimentation covers it.

For an individual bone, perhaps, but not for the entire skeleton. :-)

>> Then why do we see millions of fossils
>> in some local areas?
>
> Already answered. A personal example for you: when I did my degree in
> marine biology, I assisted an Oceanographer friend to map a local sand
> bar in Swansea Bay. As we were tramping through the mud flats I noticed
> the thousands of dead bivalves exposed by wave action. As these were
> lying on or close to the surface of the mud flats it came to my mind
> that these would, in some future time, be discovered in uplifted
> sedimentary rocks as fossils. I had previously encountered similar
> bivalves (actually lamellibranchs but the distinction escapes me) in
> rock strata elsewhere in south Wales.
>
>> If you imagine a Great Flood where the ocean floors
>> rapidly rise, there would be incredibly huge waves flooding over the
>> continents, sweeping everything in their path up against hills and
>> mountains, and into valley floors. This process would leave vast piles of
>> vegetation and animal remains, which would be rapidly covered with silt.
>
> And these vast piles would have been discovered by now. Unless, of
> course, you mean the Burgess Shales?

They have been discovered. We've been mining them as coal for centuries, and
pumping them up as oil for decades. :-)

>> My point here is that the actual
>> evidence we see can be interpreted as consistent with the Bible without
>> doing damage to more than man's theories.
>
> Sorry Judson. I disagree. Now if you said that God had created the
> strata and oil deposits (I expect that George W Bush might swallow
> that) then I could understand how you come to your conclusions. You
> might even have said that God had created the earth and allowed it to
> run on for 4.5 billion years before allowing man on to it's surface and
> I could have understood that too.

Actually, though the Bible is not consistent with evolution (you have to do
damage to one or the other to make a 'fit'), the Bible is not necessarily
inconsistent with an old earth. In Genesis 1:1,2 where it says "In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form,
and void; ...", the two Hebrew words translated "was without form, and void"
appear together only three places in the Bible. In the other two places we
can tell from context that the words mean "was destroyed" or "was laid
waste" as in a battlefield. Some Christians believe that the world is very
old, and the act of Creation described in Genesis 1:2ff is the creation of
man. A cousin of mine subscribes to this interpretation. I don't come down
firmly on either side of this.

However, there is significant evidence that the earth was created
instantaneously, or nearly so. Have you studied the ubiquitous occurrence
and condition of the Polonium residues in granite, and thought about how
they got there? I find the secular explanations for this extremely
contrived.
--
Judson McClendon judmc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."


.

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