And yet, DNA along with RNA and proteins, etc, *are* alive even though they are made from only 'dead elements'.
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The Stories of Genesis: Myth or Literally True
- Thread starter Dawnofhope
- Start date
And yet, DNA along with RNA and proteins, etc, *are* alive even though they are made from only 'dead elements'.
Except that they *are*. Which means your biases against 'dead elements' are shown to be wrong.
Remember that the *default* 200 years ago was that there is a difference between the chemistry of living things and the chemistry of other things. That has been shown to be wrong. EVERY process that defines life is ultimately a chemical process. And those chemical processes ultimatelly involve only the elements of the periodic table.
This isn't dogmatism. This is the result of a couple of hundred years of accumulated knowledge. Pick up *any* book on biochemistry and you can find out for yourself what has been learned.
The red-shifts show expansion. They follow the pattern predicted ahead of time via general relativity. If you follow the velocities backward from those red-shifts, you get tp a hot dense state.
The abundances of the elements also show a previous hot dense state that where nuclear reactions happened. Furthermore, those nuclear reactions were cut off before they had a chance to reach equilibrium. Again, this is as predicted by thermodynamics combined with general relativity.
The cosmic background radiation has, contained in its distribution of temperatures, the evidence showing the specifics of the early universe. This is one of the reasons cosmology has become a precision science in the last 20 years.
So your denials just don't hold water. All you are doing is holding your hands over your ears and claiming "that's not evidence!" when it isn't just evidence, it is conclusive evidence.
Yes, it is a label. But that label doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. In this context, a scientific theory is one that has been demonstrated multiple times in a variety of situations. We verify special relativity every single day at particle accelerators. General relativity is accurate enough to predict the difference in how fast time flows in different stories of a building because of gravity.
Do you really not understand that the statements are brief descriptions of the evidence? You refuse to learn enough to understand the evidence. You refuse to look at the actual journal articles with the evidence. And you deny any claims made in these forums as 'not evidence'.
Yes, It *seems* to you that must be the case. How much biochemistry have you studied? Do you know *anything* at all about the chemistry of DNA? Do you know what it is made from? Do you know how it interacts with the other chemicals of life?
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
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gnostic
The Lost One
The level of omega2xx's ignorance and dishonesty is staggering.
Annihilate? The language is too strong. Christianity is being redefined by revolutions in science, theology, and modernity. It is a process thats been happening for well over two hundred years.
The old narrative that has worked so well for so many centuries, no longer works. It no longer works because it is no longer plausible. The old must die eventually, as the young grows and flourishes.
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
Matthew 7:24-27
Thank you for encouraging me to explore genesis. It is the low hanging fruit and almost too easy. Atheists are my friends. They are better Christians than the Christians.
I do like Clint Eastwood movies. Enjoy the music.
First of all, allegories have the roots in actual literal events. That is the definition of allegory. Second, how do you explain the universe?
Of course God being able does no mean he did, but hen how did the universe, and all it contains. come into being, especially life
For some it will be to late. That is the tragedy of all false religions.
No matter how you twist it, lief can't have it source from what is lifeless.
All good sees have a life in them but it can't be found. It needs something outside of itself to generate the life in it. The same thing is true of lifeless elements. The also need a source outside of themselves to come to life.
No theory has ever been demonstrated several times and remains as theory. Once tey have been demonstrated, they graduate to a law. That is one reason evolution is still a theory.
Life *is* a complex collection of chemical reactions. None of the basic elements involved in the chemistry of life is alive. So you are wrong.
You realize your dogmatic statements are not evidence nor proof?
That is false. Scientists are no longer inclined to use the word 'law' in regards to science because they are fully aware that new evidence can require changes in the basic understanding (even if they preserve much of the overall picture).
So, for example, Newton's 'law' of gravity is now known to be *wrong* in detail. It is still good enough for most jobs, but fails when high levels of accuracy are required. The replacement, the general 'theory' of relativity, is much more accurate and no observations have gone against it.
Similarly, Newton's three 'laws' of motion are now known to be only approximations. They have been replaced by either the 'theory' of relativity or quantum 'theory'. Both of these give much more accurate descriptions of the world than Newton's 'laws'.
In current scientific terminology, a 'theory' is a well-established collection of scientific ideas that has passed multiple tests. A 'hypothesis' is closer to what you think of as a theory, but even that has more content than what you seem to give a theory.
It does not show an expansion., It shows the light as 'shifted' towards the red part of the spectrum. A
Again not true, and again not evidence. HOW does the number of elements indicate a previous anything, let along a hot dense state. The number of elements also does not show a nuclear reaction Thermodynamics doe snot predict that.
And what are the known reasons for such to happen?
Yes, actually, it does, in the context of general relativity. And yes, the abundances of the light elements *does* show that there was a stage of nuclear reactions at one stage of the early universe. That is why we have hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and lithium from that time period and nothing past that. The details involve the reaction cross sections of the various reactions.
sealchan
Well-Known Member
That is a centuries old cultural attitude bred from further centuries of a religion that has been corrupted with political power and internal conflict. Since literal truth is "stronger" than literary-mythic-metaphorical truth, everyone has become used to the position that the Bible is literally true even if that flies in the face of what scientists are discovering about the world that God created. Changing one's mind in those medieval attitudes was tantamount to admitting defeat.
CG Didymus
Veteran Member
No they won't be annihilated. They'll just keep on believing. Very similar to what Judaism did. The Christians came up with symbolic passages in the Jewish Scriptures to prove Jesus is the Messiah and, with an added bonus, he's God also. They use verses to show how Satan fell. They go back to Genesis and make the poor talking serpent Satan, or at least used by Satan.
Now the Baha'i Faith says there is no Satan and Jesus is not God. But you have your own symbolic interpretations. However, there is one that I need some more clarification... the explanation about the supposed longevity of the people in Genesis. It was something about the "reign" of Noah's dispensation that was 950 years and not his actual lifespan? Sorry, that still sounds like a weird explanation to me. Is that an "official" Baha'i teaching from one of your infallible sources?
Have you always been blessed with freedom of thought unfettered by tradition and culture, or did you need to free yourself?
There is no evidence to support the belief that 950 years was Noah's dispensation. It certainly wasn't His age:
"The years of Noah are not years as we count them, and as our teachings do not state that this reference to years means His dispensation, we cannot interpret it this way."
(From a letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer, November 25, 1950; quoted in Lights of Guidance, no. 1659)
"Then the Master asked Esmael: "How old was Moses?"
"One hundred and twenty years," he replied. "But the patriarchs, such as Noah and others lived many hundreds of years."
"The Master said: "The age of those ancient prophets as recorded in the Old Testament is symbolic. It has a spiritual interpretation. Wert thou informed of the science of anatomy thou wouldst realize that this human mechanism and these material organs cannot last more than one hundred and twenty years.""
(Attributed to 'Abdu'l-Baha, Star of the West, volume 13, issue 6, p. 152)
This tablet might be of interest:
Tablet of Wisdom Questions and Answers
I see no reason why a myth or story needs to be literally true to be used as an allegory.
Here's a definition of an allegory:
a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
There is nothing about the story needing to be literally true.
God's motive for bringing the creation into being is essentially twofold. The first is love: "I loved thy creation, hence I created thee" (Bahá'u'lláh, Hidden Words, p. 6). This love is a bountiful outpouring that has always existed and will never cease. ‘Abdu'l-Bahá affirms: "Love is the cause of God's revelation unto man, the vital bond inherent, in accordance with divine creation, in the realities of all things" (Selections, p. 27). The second motive, which has already been mentioned, is God's desire to reveal Himself and to be known.
Creation
It is a Divine mystery that science is entitled to probe.
I do not reject the supernatural. However I use science ot better understand God's purpose and design.
You probably didn't notice but in my arguments I simply examined the logistics of the story of Noah's Ark from a perspective of reason and science. I didn't go near evolution. Had our discussions continued I would have next considered geology, fossils and the science behind determining the how old they are.
As a Baha'i using an argument based on Darwinian evolution to disprove God is of no interest.
The criteria is when science has irrefutably determined that tradition to be untrue.
We are agreed about the existence of an Omnipotent God. How that Omnipotent God has gone about creating the universe is another story.
Jesus said by their fruits ye shall know them. Best not to judge a Faith by our own human standards.
Then you donm't udnerstand allegory/
Here's a more accurate definition written by Milton Terry on all of the in his book "Biblical Hermen-eutics", explaining all of the different types of figurative language found in the Bible:
Allegory contains its explanation within itself and the thing signified is identified with the image. The allegory is the figurative use and application of some supposed fact or history. Allegory is continually using word in a metaphorical sense.
For example in a parable "seed" wold be taken literally, In an allegory, it would represent something other than a seed.
Here is a definition from "The American College Encyclopedia Dictionary": Figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another' a presentation of an abstract or spiritual meaning under concrete or material forms.
Only one thing in the Bible is called an allegory. The story of Sarah and Hagar and we know they were literal, historical characters. .
I might tweek that a little bit, but I certainly think that is very close to Christians theology/
Creation
Since we have an omnipotent Creator, I see no mystery---God did it. Science do not have the ap;ility to prove spiritual truths.
I do not reject the supernatural. However I use science ot better understand God's purpose and design.[/QUOTE]
Science will not explain God's purpose, and evolution is not based on science.
Science can't refute the flood, and Maybe you don't have enough informationto declare it is not possible.
I didn't go near evolution. Had our discussions continued I would have next considered geology, fossils and the science behind determining the how old they are.[/QUOTE]
The author of "the Genesis Flood." has a PhD in hydraulics. math and Geology. IMO, he is better qualified than you are in the matter of the flood being possible. You can't explain it from the fossil record because you have no intermediate fossils. You can't say it did not happen from the age,k because you have nothing to date that came from the flood. Beside, all dating methods except C14 hare based on some assumption that make them unreliable.