mckinley: Fairy tales are usually stories with lessons/messages wrapped into the telling. There is evidence that there was a major flood at some date previous to the story being written. N' at that time people thinking a God controlled much of the worlds weather.. they wanted reassurance the Gods were not wiping out humanity.

.. plus it helped explain Rainbows!!

mckinley: "Some of the ammo athiests use is why do bad things happen if there is a God."

Atheists manufacture their own ammo. First they tell us it's a fairy tale, then they over simplify it by treating it as a fairy tale. See how that works? They don't want us to tell them why bad things happen to good people. They want to tell us that bad things happen to good people and then ask why, as though simply asking the question is enough to answer the question. It doesn't matter how many times you answer their question. They will always ignore your answer, then argue with answers you don't give, and then start all over again by asking the same questions. I watched this cycle go on for a few years at another site, and I'll bet it's happened here as well.

They also manufacture their own inconsistencies when looking for contradictions. Apparently the only rule for them is that there are no rules, and they are free to say or do anything... even if it make no sense to anyone else.

mckinley: "I'm thinking Noah's Ark will be found if it petrified."

It's already been found. Aerial photographs were taken as well as close up pictures. A few chunks of it were taken and analysed. It was very heavy and hard, so they think the wood had been waterproofed in some way. For years bible scholars thought gopher wood was supposed to be a type or species of tree, but what it means is the wood has been treated with some kind of hot oil or heated wood sap. The ark itself has split in half, and some of the inside chambers could be seen.

The evidence however will be disputed, when not ignored, so don't expect to see any atheists to suddenly convert based on the evidence of there being an ark... instead expect to hear it's not there, it didn't happen, etc etc.

I have no problem believing Noah's ark story except that there is a couple of things I don't quite get. How did kangaroos get from Australia to the ark? And then how did they get from the ark back to Australia? I suppose Noah could have done dropoffs. Take a bit of a long ark trip to Australia, drop off kangaroos, dingoes and koalas. Then head over to the Americas and drop off spider monkeys, grizzly bears and moose. Then head back to the old world. If that were the case, Noah discovered America!

Übergeek 바둑이: Noah was a Time Lord and had a TARDIS. That or the original story via oral retelling became a little .. ... exaggerated.

It's a little Gilgameshy in origin... or Atrahasism?? Who knows who first told the tale.

Übergeek 바둑이: Maybe that was back before all the continents split apart?
I suppose there's a chance that there is some historic "truth" to the story, but I assume the Bible exaggerated it a bunch, or something has been lost in the "translation" over the years. But, I'm a bit biased I guess, since I am not a fan of the book.

(V): I wouldn't want sewage and feeding duties on that cruise , not to mention the illnesses and atrophy from standing/sitting in a very small place for weeks and weeks.I don't see it being do-able now, let alone then.

rod03801: I don't recall anyone arguing about there being one large supercontinent at one time. It even has a name. Pangaea, or Pangea.

As for how could all those animals get into one little ark? You could ask an evolutionist about speciation, but if he thinks you are talking about the ark he might forget what speciation is. lol

I wondered about how animals could make it from one continent to another after the continents began separating. Maybe they hadn't started separating yet. Or maybe it has something to do with the continents being much farther apart today than they were when they BEGAN to separate. oops, darn that caps lock button... must have touched it when my fingers weren't looking.

I wasn't trying to start up another recycle of the same old questions, but I suppose the atheists have had more than enough time to forget all about it and start this all over again.

The Col: "I wouldn't want sewage and feeding duties on that cruise , not to mention the illnesses and atrophy from standing/sitting in a very small place for weeks and weeks.I don't see it being do-able now, let alone then."

Not do-able now for sure. The unions wouldn't stand for it, and experts would show up to explain how it couldn't possibly float because the proportons are all wrong. Obama would not sign off on it even if he thought it could work, because it would show a lack of confidence in his administration. How dare anyone for thinking he couldn't keep them all safe and snuggly warm in their own beds. And Michelle would point out that the on board meals are unacceptable, and that only the flys and dung beatles were being properly fed.

So the overwhelming consensus today would be that conditions outside the boat are far better and more suitable to sustaining life. Now that I think about it, that was the consensus back then, but Noah just blew them off and did it anyway.

Iamon lyme: When did Noah's Ark become a USA thing?

The Col: There was an idea worked on that using a special ice (additives mixed in) .. it would be possible to make a large mile plus size object that wouldn't melt. With modern computers and a nuclear power source it is possible..

.. but back then it was an idea for building massive floating bomber carriers.

Not quite right but....

"Project Habakkuk or Habbakuk (spelling varies; see below) was a plan by the British in World War II to construct an aircraft carrier out of pykrete (a mixture of wood pulp and ice), for use against German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic, which were beyond the flight range of land-based planes at that time.

The idea came from Geoffrey Pyke who worked for Combined Operations....

...In early 1942 Pyke and Bernal called in Max Perutz to determine whether an ice floe large enough to withstand Atlantic conditions could be built up fast enough. He pointed out that natural icebergs have too small a surface above water for an airstrip, and are prone to suddenly rolling over. The project would have been abandoned, except for the invention of Pykrete, a mixture of water and woodpulp which frozen together was stronger than plain ice, was slower melting, and of course would not sink. It has been suggested that Pyke was inspired by Inuit sleds reinforced with moss.[1] This is probably apocryphal, as the material was originally described in a paper by Mark and Hohenstein in Brooklyn, NY.[2]

Pykrete could be machined like wood and cast into shapes like metal, and when immersed in water formed an insulating shell of wet wood pulp on its surface which protected its interior from further melting. However, Perutz found a problem: ice slowly flows, in what is known as plastic flow, and his tests showed that a Pykrete ship would slowly sag unless it was cooled to −16 °C (3 °F). To accomplish this, the ship's surface would have to be protected by insulation and it would need a refrigeration plant and a complicated system of ducts.[2]

Iamon lyme: Millions of years of tectonic movement in less than what.. a decade??

.. A genocidal God is now what you worship!!

.. In Job God has a bet with the DeViL that with God's blessing, the 'devil' can test Job and take everything he values on this Earth.

But, the 'DeViL' is not allowed to kill Job. A genocidal God .. .. it doesn't work.

The Col: "When did Noah's Ark become a USA thing?"

When did the USA become a Canadian thing?

Iamon lyme: I fail to see the connection between Noah's Ark and the current President of the USA, if you can, please enlighten me.In regards to the USA being a "Canadian thing" we are your largest trading partner and share borders.If you don't understand that being a significant reason to be concerned with your politics, I suggest you go back to school.

The Col: "I fail to see the connection between Noah's Ark and the current President of the USA"

Think about it for awhile, and it may come to you.

"if you can, please enlighten me."

I don't see it being do-able now, let alone ever.

Iamon lyme: You got nothin

Iamon lyme: I highly doubt the entire Earth was under water, and if so, I doubt God had anything to do with it. I pretty much assume that if there was indeed massive flooding, it was the entire world as THEY knew it.
Dunno.
And I'm NOT an Atheist.

I have my own personal beliefs that I feel no need to share, as I'm not going to (nor do I care to) change anyone else's mind.

Besides, my attitude is that ANY of us could be right. Or None of us could be right.

rod03801: um, my views are 100% correct. So ask me anything.

Übergeek 바둑이: Ha! Good question. Perhaps the flood was local. Water, especially violent flood waters, can be very destructive. I remember studying the young earth view of the flood and didn't find it particularly convincing.

Just sayin... Paul Ryan's speech was awesome. I wish he was the one running for pres.

rod03801: Saying "I dunno" actually puts you ahead of the curve. When I started looking into these things it wasn't from the approach of do I believe it or not. The approach I took was, Was it possible for it to happen. Did it have to be a supernatural event, or was it physically possible for a flood like that to occur, and was it possible to get enough samples of animal life on something the size of the ark to account for all of the animal life we see today. Another question I needed to answer for myself was, Given what we know about the earth early on, and what a one supercontinent land mass might look like, was it even possible for a flood like that to cover the entire land mass... was there enough water, where did it all come from, etc etc. And by the way, the research I did was for myself, I wasn't trying to collect material for persuading anyone else.

To make a long story short, I eventually concluded that yes, it would have been possible for the event to literally occur as the Bible said. Why? Because the topography of the ocean floor and of the land mass back then was likely more uniform than it is today, which means it wouldn't have taken near as much water as it would today to cover every square inch of land mass. And evolutionists can be thanked for showing us how a relatively few samples of animal life could have easily multiplied into all of the species we see today, through what they call speciation. I meant to go find and show you a chart showing how the mastodon branched out into an almost unbelievable number of different species, it was a few years ago but maybe I can find it again. Anyway, seeing as how I found that information on an evolutionist website, I suppose there is no reason to not believe it... they aren't exactly in the business of trying to support the creationist viewpoint, if ya know what I mean.

There is more, but maybe this is enough for you to understand that maybe (I'm just saying maybe) a world wide flood and an ark carrying animals is not as farfetched as it sounds.

Iamon lyme: Right, but since I don't believe it's a "God-caused" thing, I don't see that it matters a whole lot anyway, if it did or didn't happen literally, or if it's been exaggerated. Except for possibly interesting meteorological history.
Anyway. I don't enjoy religious talk. So, most likely I'm going to bow out of it.

rod03801: "I don't enjoy religious talk."

Neither do I. Anywho, I coudn't find the chart I mentioned before, but I did find this one.

rod03801: I'm with you Rod. He hit it out of the ballpark.

mckinley: No. that's not what I meant.

I looked back some years ago on the origin of 'Satan' and the concept thereof and came across this...

In Genesis 2:7, the Bible states that G-d formed (vayyitzer) man. The spelling of this word is unusual: it uses two consecutive Yods instead of the one you would expect. The rabbis inferred that these Yods stand for the word "yetzer," which means impulse, and the existence of two Yods here indicates that humanity was formed with two impulses: a good impulse (the yetzer tov) and an evil impulse (the yetzer ra).

The yetzer tov is the moral conscience, the inner voice that reminds you of G-d's law when you consider doing something that is forbidden. According to some views, it does not enter a person until his 13th birthday, when he becomes responsible for following the commandments. See Bar Mitzvah.

The yetzer ra is more difficult to define, because there are many different ideas about it. It is not a desire to do evil in the way we normally think of it in Western society: a desire to cause senseless harm. Rather, it is usually conceived as the selfish nature, the desire to satisfy personal needs (food, shelter, sex, etc.) without regard for the moral consequences of fulfilling those desires.

The yetzer ra is not a bad thing. It was created by G-d, and all things created by G-d are good. The Talmud notes that without the yetzer ra (the desire to satisfy personal needs), man would not build a house, marry a wife, beget children or conduct business affairs. But the yetzer ra can lead to wrongdoing when it is not controlled by the yetzer tov. There is nothing inherently wrong with hunger, but it can lead you to steal food. There is nothing inherently wrong with sexual desire, but it can lead you to commit rape, adultery, incest or other sexual perversion.

The yetzer ra is generally seen as something internal to a person, not as an external force acting on a person. The idea that "the devil made me do it" is not in line with the majority of thought in Judaism. Although it has been said that Satan and the yetzer ra are one and the same, this is more often understood as meaning that Satan is merely a personification of our own selfish desires, rather than that our selfish desires are caused by some external force.

People have the ability to choose which impulse to follow: the yetzer tov or the yetzer ra. That is the heart of the Jewish understanding of free will. The Talmud notes that all people are descended from Adam, so no one can blame his own wickedness on his ancestry. On the contrary, we all have the ability to make our own choices, and we will all be held responsible for the choices we make.

http://www.jewfaq.org/human.htm

When I say DeViL or devil or 'devil' and the same on Satan .. I mean it in the sense as above.

IMO treating the devil as an actual real entity takes the Bible into being basically a 'Most Haunted' script.

mckinley: Yep religion can be very exhausting even more so if you're doing an Exorcism to drive those little devil's out :)

Artful Dodger:

> Ha! Good question. Perhaps the flood was local. Water, especially violent flood waters, can be very destructive. I remember studying the young earth view of the flood and didn't find it particularly convincing.

There is a theory that tries to explain the origin of the flood myth. I saw it in a documentary some 20 years ago.

The theory is that the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles were blocked. The Bosphorus is the straight narrow passage that connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. The Dardanelles connect the Sea of Marmara to the Mediterranean. These straits are located in modern day Turkey. Because the area was formed of a solid landmass, it was blocked and the waters of the Mediterranean could not enter what is our modern Sea of Marmara. This created a plain that sat below sea level. Then an earthquake happened several thousand years ago and the landmasses of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles collapsed. The waters of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea came pouring in and flooded what today is the Sea of Marmara. The inhabitants in the area perished as their settlements were engulfed by the rushing waters.

Both western and Soviet archaelogists tried to find remnants of settlements under the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. However, no solid evidence was found to support this theory. There were settlements on the shores, but they did not go back far enough in time to prove the theory.

To me it was very interesting. It would show a cataclismic flood that gave origin to the myth, but would also be on a scale that is more logical than what is portrayed in the Old Testament and in other myths outside the Abrahamic religious tradition.

In reality, I think that flood myths are merely a reflection of our fear of water and our fear of the destructive power of nature. Flood myths exist everywhere, not just in the Old Testament.

The Popol Vuh of the Maya Quiche natives of Guatemala has a flood myth too. The Gods had created men made of wood, but these men were mute. They could not speak and thank their Gods for having created them. The Gods became angry and send a great flood that destroyed most of the men of wood. Those that survived ran away into the jungle and became monkeys. This flood myth has no relationship to any of the Old World myths. It merely represents two things: floods sent by the Gods destroy things, thank your Gods or they will send a flood to destroy you. The teaching in the myth is much the same as in the Old Testament. It is meant to have a didactical effect and not to be taken as some fundamental truth of what really happened.

"Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan has come under fire for alleged inaccuracies during his convention debut in Tampa, Florida.

Mr Ryan attacked the president for making cuts to the Medicare healthcare programme, but did not say that his own budget plan includes the same savings. He complained that proposals by a budget commission were not adopted, but did not mention he opposed its report."

Exactly the same as our parties do to each other each election time. A politicians memory is selective to say the least!!

mckinley:  I agree with you on that one.  But it is what it is.  For many, a vote for Mitt is simply a vote against Obama.

Übergeek 바둑이: I think myth stories are facinating. Not that the flood didn't happen or the Biblical account isn't true. But it is interesting that there are so many different accounts. I particularly like the Greek Myths. Man has apparently always tried to figure out the what/why/where/when/how of our existence.

Artful Dodger: Mitt wasn't my first choice by any means. Leans a little lib for me. But I'd probably even vote for (V) if he was the one against Obama


ok, maybe not.

mckinley: Artful Dodger: "Too bad he isn't the nominee."

It doesn't hurt for Ryan to get some White House experience before considering him as a candidate later on down the road. The fact that Romney picked him for VP position says a lot about Romney. There may have been political considerations, but I don't think Romney is playing a strictly political game. He knows as well as the rest of us what that can lead to, and four years of it are more than enough for me to choke on. And if there are times that Ryan looks like the smartest guy in the room, I don't think that would bother Romney. When I look at the contrast between Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden it almost makes me laugh.

So the bottom line for me is I like Ryan too, but a little seasoning can only make him better.

rod03801: Well you managed on finding one person that would be worse for any country than Obama. I didn't think it possible.

rod03801: I'd simplify the tax system and end stupid multi million court cases... but I'd end the 3 strike rule.

I'd also have a viable NO2 dispersal system for riot control.

Well I have to say. I loved Romney's speech! I'm SO excited for November!

(V): LOL.. u DO crack me up

Not very Presidential to ignore the troops in his address to the nation