Arguing, attempting to persuade each other, or simply to understand each other is very important. The idea that people shouldn't argue, or that nothing good comes from trying to change each other's views is very insidious. Personally, I've learned an awful lot by being wrong in an argument with someone else. I'd still be religious, if not for people trying to change my mind. I'd still be a meat-eater, if not for people trying to change my mind. We'd all still be lots of things if not for people trying to change our minds. We'd all still oppose interracial marriage, we'd all still have all sorts of positions. Argument alone doesn't necessarily change people, and yes people change because they are receptive to change (ie, don't have Faith).

Some things, like spiritual beliefs, are for all anyone can tell, wrong. They can't be "proven wrong", but they are wrong the way anything without any evidence in its favour is wrong. Many people believe in psychics, that their personal experiences prove psychic powers exist, but controlled studies show a lack of any such evidence at all. It is the lack of evidence which is damning for psychics and gods. A wailing silence of probabilities. Psychics and gods are not disproven, they are just ineffably improbable given what we currently know. Some spiritual claims, like the idea that our minds might continue existing outside our brains, are not only improbable, there is considerable evidence to the contrary. And yet everyone has a right - should have a right - to shackle themselves to falsehoods and call them the essentials of their heart and soul and life and breath.

I don't step into people's faces, or churches, and tell them they are wrong. It's not some kind of a mission. But in a venue like this, a debate, that's exactly the purpose: Who is right? Who is wrong? Aside from that, falsehoods tend to have nasty results when applied to or used to interpret a real natural world.

Believers are, almost without a doubt, wrong. The more specific they get about what they believe, the more wrong they get.

That might very well hurt people's feelings to hear, but spiritualists have their own set of retorts that sound, to their ears, very solid - Usually "I have a profound personal experience of God." Well. Yes. So did I. So do psychics have of their "psychic powers." Yes. It's core to one's identity. Fine. There's no rebuttal to that. You win, you've found a fail safe argument: "I'm going to believe this."

But at that point, what are you doing in a debate thread? You have no evidence. You have no stake in debating the matter. You have faith and faith and then faith, you obviously don't need no evidence beyond what you're generating.

At any rate, it hurts my feelings the sort of misanthropic beliefs I hear from some of my warmest, most loving Christian friends. For example, all of them believe humanity is fundamentally sinful and in need of a spiritual redemption. I find that quite a sickening, disempowering idea, especially when I am trying so hard to be a good person, to hear "oh, but your sin is deeper than that, it's collective, it's in us all". I want to vomit when people tell me some loved one I am trying to process the loss of - the actual oblivion of - is watching over me. Nothing is harder and more offensive when I'm grieving than being around religious people who think they're being comforting. There's no right here, that anyone in a debate has, not to be offended by each other. Offense is to some degree unavoidable.

I once had this mandatory "Character Building" class which discuss about spirituality, connection to god, etc. My college teacher has a neutral stance on religion and basically the one that wanted to resolve religious misconceptions and conflicts.

In one of his lecture he basically separate the basic idea of "religion" and "beliefs". He carefully explained that religion is basically consist of: the prayers, the worship, the book, the church/mosque/temple. While the beliefs are the core in which faith is in.
He also stated everyone have the right to believe what they wanted to believe and stuff like that.

Being an agnostic-atheist myself, I asked him if believing the absence of god/goddess/deity could be considered a "belief" and should be respected equally?
To paraphrase, his answer was atheism is not considered a belief since it's not based on faith, but he didn't give any closure since he didn't answer the equality bit...
I do wonder if I worded my question wrong? Are my wordings bad?

And there's the misconception that atheists are communists among almost every classmate I met ever. The young adults know better not to use it as insult, but back in elementary to high school it was really bad since we learn history of communist party trying to take over the country back then.

@kiwi_tea, the message of my post was NOT, "You should never try to change someone's mind". It was simply that there is a thin line between debating about the existence of god and just downright telling people they shouldn't decide to follow in the path of their ancestors. Which, by the way, doesn't affect you at all, and therefore there is no good reason to do so, besides getting a momentary feeling of power/control. If people want to have a shred of hope that there is much more to the planet than we could imagine, who are you to tell them not to believe in their dreams?

I suppose I also felt like very few people were on the side of pro-religion, so I wanted to give them something to defend themselves with.

Example of something that's, in my opinion, a bit unethical: "There is no god, whatsoever. Get over it. Do you have any proof? I didn't think so. Therefore you should change your views before it screws up your brain."
Example of something that's, in my opinion, completely fine: "That reasoning is insufficient to me, I am still standing strongly with my views that there is no god."

It's a touchy subject and we shouldn't try to push it TOO hard. That's all I'm saying. By all means, continue debating.

Last edited by piggypeach : 22nd Aug 2012 at 03:47 AM.

I understand what you're getting at, kiwi, and I think that you and I have had something along this line of conversation before. But when all is said and done, there's a fundamental disconnect between people of faith and people of no faith. For instance, you say a sentence like this one: "They can't be 'proven wrong,' but they are wrong the way anything without any evidence in its favour is wrong." If that is what you truly believe, that believing in something that has no supporting evidence is wrong and can't possibly ever be right despite a lack of evidence, then you're in a position where I willl never, ever be able to change your mind, because I'm a person who has the capacity to believe in some things even though there's no tangible scientific sort evidence of the existence of those things and all the probabilities add up to "not a snowball's chance in hell." That's the disconnect, as the very definition of "faith" is believing without evidence. And it's a perhaps unbridgeable gap when people on either side of it are closed-minded and entrenched.

Some people will still try to bridge the gap, of course, but personally I find little gratification in the act of repeatedly beating my head against a brick wall. It's much the same way, I'm sure, as many atheists feel about many Christians: Why bother? Maybe it's not the best attitude to have, sure...but it is what it is. I find I have better mind-changing debates with fellow (and, IMO, wrong-headed) Christians because at least then there's a common frame of reference and the issues are more specific rather than sweepingly generic. You know? Often, when I DO speak with entrenched atheists about spiritual matters, there's a lot of knee-jerk defensive hostility. And I can understand why, don't get me wrong. I understand why all too well, in fact. But the hostility doesn't make it pleasant, much less easy, to have such a conversation. I don't enjoy being called "stupid" or "ignorant" or "hateful" or much, much worse, which is what I often hear from atheists. (Not you, though, kiwi; you've always been very polite yet challenging, which I enjoy.) Normally, it's not often something that I'm really up for enduring, unless I'm in a masochistic mood. I'm the world's worst, laziest evangelist/apologist, I think.

In any case, in my experience, both in terms of my own life and in terms of dealing with other people, mind-changing happens when there's already a seed of doubt somewhere about whatever the person already believes, whether or not the person knows/acknowledges that the doubt(s) is/are there. I was a professing atheist at one point in my life, although in reality I was probably more agnostic or, more accurately, I just didn't give a flying crap about spirituality and just wanted to be left alone. But then Stuff Happened that made me question what I believed, at the time, to be right, and I found myself more open to the idea of spirituality. So, doubt leads to re-evaluation of one's beliefs. This is why many Christians are so ridiculously terrified of doubting, because they've been fed the line (which they subsequently swallowed hook, line, and sinker) that the absolutely inevitable chain of events is doubt --> re-evaluation --> apostasy --> hell. But, that ain't necessarily so because doubts answered can also strengthen belief, whatever the belief in question.

But I do believe that doubt is essential for mind-changing. A person without doubts about being right (whatever they believe they're right about) is by definition closed-minded. For a benign and non-spiritual example, I believe that the metric system of measurement is infinitely superior to the imperial system, and nothing that anyone can say will ever dissuade me from that stance. So, on that subject, I am very closed-minded. Spiritual matters, though? My mind is always open. It's why I read lots of stuff from all different faiths and from no faith at all or from anti-faith. So, although the word has negative connotations, being closed-minded is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, especially not if the closed-minded person is right. Still, truly closed-minded people of any stripe aren't likely to be swayed by debate of any kind, I fear, for better or worse. And, like I said, not everyone is into trying to change the mind of people whose beliefs are, for whatever reason, engraved in stone.

And, forgive me, but in my own experience the people on the extreme ends, both the insistent "fundamentalist" Christians AND the insistent atheists, are the most close-minded people on the face of the planet. I'm not all that enthusiastic about interacting with either group, to tell you the truth. They're usually both brimming with hostility and hate and I, as a rather empathetic person, prefer not to be around people who have that sort of vibe about them. They harsh my mellow, as they say. If pressed, I'm probably more willing to deal with the militant Christians because being told that I'm going to hell for my heresy rolls off me like water off a duck's back, whereas being told that I'm stupid and ignorant is kind of hurtful, y'know? (Which is partly why I say that Christians aren't the only ones who can be hurtful when it comes to bandying about their beliefs and verbally smacking around those with whom they disagree.)

When all is said and done, I look at it this way: If I feel that something is a prevailing or at least popular attitude in society and I feel that said attitude does damage in some way, I'll argue about it all day. I'll argue against white supremacy, for gay rights, against alcohol, for this, against that, blah, blah, until I turn blue in the face. (Or until my fingers are bleeding, in the case of online discussion.) Granted, some of the things I'm passionate about, for and against, have religious belief behind them or opposed to them...sometimes. But sometimes not. Like with gay rights. I argue with Christians all the time about it, but not with the intent of changing their religion so much as changing their misconceptions about what their religion actually, honest-to-God says as opposed to what they think it says. In other words, the religion isn't always the problem. Often, the problem is that people twist religion in order to bolster their own wrong-headed and usually pre-existing opinions and prejudices. So, I have no problem with people being atheist or Christian or Scientologist or Muslim or Buddhist or pagan or some New Agey cherry-picked fusion of a hundred different belief systems or whatever the hell they feel is right and true, so long as their beliefs don't harm others and/or they don't twist their belief system to suit their prejudices; the latter is usually far more the problem than the actual belief system itself.

Now, to address this:


Although this isn't the Christian discussion thread, and I don't want to turn it into one, I would like to say that Christians can be frighteningly monolithic sometimes. At least that's their public face and God forbid that they ever admit that there are equally-valid differences of opinion. (Because, as I said, to many of them doubt and dissension must inevitably lead to apostasy and loss of salvation.) When you say that all your Christian friends believe that humanity is fundamentally flawed, I do believe what you say because that is indeed an underpinning of Christianity in its usual, standard form. Their attitude boils down to, "You suck, so you need a savior." Most Christians accept the idea of original sin, that humanity is inherently evil. To them, if there is no original sin, then there's no need for Jesus and, for them, down that path lies insanity. But I don't accept the notion of inherent evil and/or original sin. I believe in inherent humanity. In a sense, I see it as a conflict between our ingrained animal nature (relics of our evolutionary past, if you will) and the idealized beings that we would like to be, the kind of people about whom philosophers speak when they're waxing rhapsodically ideal but that we often completely fail to be. The whole Garden of Eden allegory is, to me, obviously all about ideal humanity vs. real humanity. Christians tend to A) Take Genesis far too literally and B) anthropomorphize this inherent imperfect human nature into the whole concept of Satan, a concept I also reject. To me, it's all just a push/pull situation between what we all are and what we all have the capacity to be, no matter what belief system we follow.

So my point is that I don't think that humanity is evil, flawed, etc., and yet I'm still a Christian. And I know for a fact that I'm not the only Christian who feels this way. There probably aren't many of us out here, true, but we're out here. I sympathize with the fact that those around you are apparently more the standard type, but don't paint all of us with the same brush. (At this point, you might ask what I DO accept about standard Christianity, and, honestly, the answer is "Not much." Yet, I still use the word to describe myself because, at its core, the word means to be a follower of Jesus's teachings. Beyond that, everything else is just occasionally interesting but often unimportant details. I can't help it that many people call themselves Christian even though what they do and say is often exactly the opposite of what Jesus did or didn't do, said or didn't say, and advocated or denounced.)

That said, I do hope you realize that people who say that your lost loved one (and my condolences about that; loss is very difficult, and I sympathize) is watching over you are likely trying to be comforting. Many belief systems hold to the idea of some kind of afterlife, be it the Judeo-Christian concept of heaven or the Eastern concept of reincarnation or the pagan concept of some kind of Otherworld where spirits of one's ancestors live or whatever, and many of the people who hold those beliefs seem to be of the opinion that the dead are still sort of interactive and that they can therefore watch over their still-living loved ones. This, after all, is part of the reason why people believe in ghosts or guardian angels or what-have-you. So, by saying that sort of thing, I'm guessing that people are attempting to comfort by appealing to the greatest common denominator, so to speak. I can understand not wanting to hear it if it's not what you believe, but I would at least hope that you might see that the person's heart is likely in the right place. Unless, of course, they know your feelings on the subject, in which case they're just being an asshat.

^ o_o Wow. Keep going and you'll write a novel!!

I'll admit that I was too lazy to read every single paragraph, but from what I saw, you've got good points

Just wanted to address this one particular point.



So, it's actually not necessary to be completely factual in a debate but more logically consistent within one's own argument and providing a more solid "case" for or against some issue. Often times facts are helpful for making that point. In other cases it can backfire if the audience doesn't receive it well.

And that's why you consistently see emotional appeals in most news programmes.

I think you see emotional appeals in news programs because A. real journalism is a dying art and B. the news is there to placate you between advertising.

Something interesting arrested my eyes when looking for bias in the news. Something called Narrative Bias. It's the tendency for journalists to shape their information into a narrative, with a beginning, middle, and conclusion even if there is no clear beginning and the story is ongoing. They take people involved and assign roles for them like a movie, whether or not those involved were that good or bad in reality. Because it's more palatable to have clear heroes and villains.

An emotional appeal is the weakest form of argument or debate in my humble opinion because it can backfire if not carefuly done. I despise it in the news and usually dismiss the appeal as a trite tatic to convince the drunk or easily confused. Debate doesnt always have to end up in consensus, or people convinced of any particular point, it can sometimes be used to see what the thought process is of any person in the debate. My Ex husband and I used to debate things to death at the top of our voices for no other reason than we had each chosen a point and chose to stick to it to the end including making faces at each other and throwing mud or water at each other. We did it because we were bored and it takes the intellect of a flea to drive a tractor which we had both just done to the point of dropping. What killed our marriage was the end of that form of debate.

This description sounds more like traditional debating where two people or teams compete and a winner is decided. And you're trying to do whatever you can to win including emotional appeals.

From reading the Debate Room Rules & Guidelines, this is a different kind of debate. "The Debate Room is supposed to be an opportunity for everyone to come together and discuss things civilly and intelligently, making points, presenting evidence, and listening to what others have to say in a polite and respectful manner, even if you don't agree with them." 'Presenting evidence' is listed again in 'Debate Room Etiquette'.

Edit: Should have added that while there's no evidence that there is a God, as far as I know there isn't any evidence that there isn't a God, so the two sides do have an even playing field.

Last edited by RoseCity : 23rd Aug 2012 at 10:36 AM.

There isn't any evidence that invisible purple gorilla spirits do not inhabit your table, either. All we have, as a basis for knowledge, is evidence which indicates a higher probability of a given proposition being true. Propositions with no (or highly questionable) evidence in their favour may be true, but we have no way to ever know it until evidence surfaces. We are limited by these constraints, humanity's spiritual tendencies having proved over and over again to be totally unreliable. It's only humanity's long tradition of spirituality, and religions' historical importance as emotionally-engaging pre-scientific theories, that keeps "god" from looking less ridiculous to "purple gorilla in my table". Religious claims get a special pass because we're all very accustomed to them, and challenging them hurts our feelings, not because the claims have any particular validity. The claims are false, by anyone's reasonable measure of falsehood. They are, at any rate, as false as purple gorilla spirits in our tables.

The purple gorilla's in the house.
I agree that there is no evidence for the existence of a Christian type god, an entity that created the universe and continues to take an interest in it, including the billions of lives on a planet in one of billions of galaxies.
People's belief isn't based on logic and logic won't convert most of them to atheism. Possible reasons for belief: fear of death, inability to live with ambiguity and not knowing, sense of belonging, need to fill a space perceived as empty.

The absence of evidence for a god is evidence that one doesn't exist. A simple analogy would be looking into a room and seeing that there's no evidence that anyone is in there. You can't see anyone, hear anyone, and so on. In a situation like this it's clear to see that there being no evidence for someone existing is, in itself, clear evidence to the opposite (that there isn't anyone there). Essentially, if evidence should exist if a claim is correct then the lack of that evidence would suggest it isn't correct at all.

If you refer to a specific 'God' character in a religion, then a lot of the time there is indeed evidence against it in other forms. A lot of the time the stories told of these gods are verfiably false.

Nothing presented as "evidence" would convince me one way or the other. From my perspective, and from the same place where my belief resides, God is not provable logically. A different system of thought allows for an understanding of God (gods). But why-oh-why does anyone need to "convince" another? I would never go around telling anyone that they have to believe in my God. Isn't that whole attempt at conversion and persuasion one of the things that atheists actively dislike about the religious? I hate it too, whether it's coming from the super religious or the super atheistic. I realize that conversion is a large part of many religions, but I object to it. It feels disrespectful.

I should have used the word 'proof' rather than 'evidence'. (My apologies to one and all.) And that's a debatable point as well I'm sure, if someone cared to debate it. There's a middle ground where you don't say 'there is' or 'there isn't', but 'I don't know.'

I don't think debating on the internet is in the same vein as people going around asking "have you been saved by Jesus?" or "have you moved on from religion?" (or whatever an atheist converter would say). A lot of people like debate and air opinions they otherwise hold personal when debating. I don't go around trying to convert my friends toward my political stance, but, when debates happen, I'll let on some of my politics. When religious people come to your door to try to convert you, they won't listen to your arguments for your current system of belief. They are set in their perspective and are expecting you to budge yours. Debates tend to involve people set in their own positions, as well, but most intelligent debaters realize that they're not likely to change their opponent's position. It's more a mental exercise than anything else.

Of course. I'm really perplexed as to why you quoted me when you wrote this. I wasn't referring to a debate, but the situation where one person tries to convince another, which they do...often...face to face and online.

I saw this thread and decided to stop by to see what its all about I havent read much into it the one thing that get me is the description above sometimes religion and say politics goes hand and hand (church of Scientology, Illuminati even atheism) please do not troll me for this comment I simply pointed something out

I believe people have the ability to be good toward others, using their own free will and rational thought.
I think pople can be cruel, using their own free will and perhaps not so rational thought (usually motivated by twisted beliefs or selfishness).
I believe that all the bad things happen randomly (tsunamis, etc.) or are a result of cause and effect (do bad things, get bad back, etc.). Why else would bad things happen to good people?
I believe that good things happen randomly (millionaire by lottery, etc.) or are a result of cause and effect (be nice, get nice from others, etc.). Why else would good things happen to bad people?
I don't let any books or texts control my life. Instead, I read them critically and choose whether or not they can add something valuable to my persception of the universe. If not, then they're entertainment.
I believe that we're either alone in the universe, or that there are life on other planets - but so far away that we probably won't be able to meet in any way in my lifetime. There is no invisible entity in the clouds, nor is there an entire paradise with angels playing hide-and-seek. There are only clouds.
I don't believe in an entity playing Sims with my life.
I don't think there's a life after death, because then what is the purpose of this life? This life, here and now, and what I choose to do with it is the meaning of my life. My life is mine alone.

The list could go on and on, but time flies and I have some life to do right now.

Bottom line is: Do I need a religion? No. Does that mean I can't have a full and rich life? No.
My life is what I make of it. I don't need anyone to tell me how I should live my life. I won't say I don't get influenced by other people or other beliefs, but I give it all a critical eye first.

Last edited by simmer22 : 3rd Jan 2013 at 11:29 AM.

For me, I struggle with unreligion. What if the Christian God is real, and he really is THAT bad?

*My church says God created Earth 6k years ago. Science has telescopic evidence of stars forming planets around them. I listen to science, I deserve to be incinerated by God's return.
*SDA church says Adam and Eve were 20 foot tall geniuses and sin made mankind shorter and dumber. Evolution says heritable genes are passed on. Believe evolution and I'm damned.
*Not giving my soul to God is that I'm a shopkeeper who acquired a toy boat and a boy came in and said that he made that boat with all his love, and I refuse to give it back to him.
*The devil creates miracles. He made dinosaur bones, caused disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, and fooled man into accepting the religion of science. Doubt that, I deserve to fry.
*If I refuse to accept Psalms and Ecclesiastes as great works then I must be in league with Satan.
*Rock and Roll is the devil's music.

^^ It's exactly that kind of fear-mongering bullshit that made me leave the fundamentalist Christian religion I grew up in as soon as I could. In many ways, I started pulling away as soon as I started becoming self-aware.

Unfortunately, when you're raised with that shit, as much as you rebel against it, you can't help being affected by it, so it has been a struggle for me too. I've always been more drawn to eastern philosophies, and it took a lot for me to finally become comfortable with that and not worry that I was going to hell for it. The notion that God would consign someone to hell for believing something that turns out to be wrong is absolutely absurd. We're ALL wrong, so either we're all going to hell for being wrong, or there's something else going on here.

I'm still Christian, but I don't limit myself to a particular religion, eastern or western, in my spiritual explorations. Religion seeks to put God in a box so He can be understood, but that's impossible and silly. As long as our brains are locked into time and space, a bare glimpse now and then is all we're going to get. The totality of who God is and what all this is about is more than we can comprehend, at least individually. I believe it's our collective experiences and understanding that matter more anyway.

ETA: I failed to notice I was in the UNreligion thread, so forgive me if my post is inappropriate.

Perhaps if I add this: Christian fundamentalists are absolutely horrified by Atheism, which I find amusing. My husband and I had an atheist friend who'd been to my dad's/stepmom's for dinner a couple of times, but when I let it slip once that he was an atheist, my stepmom blanched several shades lighter, and never invited him again.

Personally, I couldn't care less whether or not someone believes in God, and I don't believe for one second that God is going to punitively punish anyone for not believing, as if He's got this hugely sensitive, easily-bruised ego, or something.

Last edited by Darby : 4th Jan 2013 at 04:23 PM.

I'm just wondering where all the other gods are. I mean, there are gods from norse mythology, greek/roman mythology (roman gods were mostly converted greek gods), egyptian mythology, Christian/Jewish God (who apparently is the same as Allah in Islam, as they all mostly share the old testament), hindu gods, and all the other religions and beliefs I can't remember right now. And what about the "evil" creatures? Are they all having a party in the core of Earth or some such? "God" isn't the only god. There have been probably thousands, maybe even millions throughout the millenia. Even the sun and the moon were considered "gods" once upon a time. Would the Christian/Jew/Islam god punish everyone who believes in the Hindu gods, if s/he happened to exist? Or would the Greek/Roman gods punish the Christians and all the rest if they turned out to be the real ones?

I'm just trying to imagine them all, if they really exist/have ever existed. I mean, where would they be? Earth is overpopulated enough, and there are no 4th/5th dimension proven to exist. They're not in the clouds, nor on the moon. Sure, they could be outside the universe itself - but it would be an awfully long trip, and seriously, why would they bother with tiny Earth then?

I'm thinking they only exist in the minds of the people who believe them - but that's my opinion.

Gods of any kind were the explanation of nature to people in earlier times. Why was there thunder? Thor, the thunder god travelled in his wagon, andw as a bit pissed off. Why were there solar eclipses? The Sun God wanted to punish the people.

Of course, now we know the science behind the nature powers, but the grip of certain religions still hold.

Make anyone who believes the bible explain dinosaur skeletons. According to the bible, Earth was created 6000 years ago (yeah, right...) - so how come the skeletons are several million years old? Carbon dating and the bible don't go so well together. Sure, some people see the bible as moral guidance, and not as truth, but still.

Dinosaur skeletons were works of the devil. The devil wanted to make the smart people all go to hell, so he invented dinosaurs.

Dinosaur skeletons come from the first day of creation, but since there was more carbon back then, it throws off the readings of carbon dating.

The dinosaurs drowned in the flood but because they were bigger and slower, they drowned first so their skeletons are at the bottom of the earth and the water had a lot of carbon to throw off carbon dating.

Carbon dating is not accurate because in a situation reproducable by a labratory, carbon dating didn't work!

Carbon dating is not accurate because when I send a fossil into a science lab, it gives me the wrong date!

^All actual arguments I've heard from YEC fundies.

Although I would like to point out that we don't use carbon dating to judge the date of dino bones. Fossils occur when casts are formed of bones or some other such item. The actual bones rot away pretty quickly and are replaced with minerals, which harden to become fossils. So there really isn't that much carbon in the finished product. However, museums generally put a layer of a substance that includes carbon onto the fossils to protect them, so they may actually get a carbon reading from that (which is wildly inaccurate). Other forms of radiometric dating work much better.

I recommend the book "American Gods" by Neil Gaimen. It's a work of fiction, of course, but has an interesting theory about where all the other gods went.

I think I started reading that book once, but it was at a library, and for a few reasons I couldn't borrow it (even if I wanted to).
Then again, I am reading another book(series) that has a very funny way of describing what happened with the roman/greek gods.



Ah well - I was never much into paleontology and such matters (although I find it interesting, details of it doesn't stick to my mind). Bones wither away, of course, but the print they leave behind and the stone surrounding it can be studied and dated (carbon dating was the first thing that popped into my head - it was somewhere around midnight when I wrote that, and even later now...)



Uh yeah. Right. Some people are brainwashed to the degree where I get seriously shocked. So Noah travelled all around the world, somehow figured out that very heavy, very large (bigger than elephants, mind) animals that would eat up anything they saw if they were hungry enough (probably the elephants, too) was a good idea to bring with him on a boat (herding a couple of hungry T-rex... I see why it wasn't done). No wonder they weren't saved (but what about the lions, tigers, and all the other predators? I bet there wasn't a bunny or sheep left on that boat). And by the way - where did all the water come from? Water vaporates from the ocean and comes back down as rain. If you say ice melting, then where did that come from? The ice age was 10 000 years ago, and floating ice mountains have approximately the same amount of water (weigt) as the bit under the sea level, so a melting ice mountain (or a whole heap of them) wouldn't be able to produce enough water. Sure, if you move a lot of water from one place to another through clouds (which creates local floods) or a tsunami (caused by ripples undersea, usually from an earthquake), you might be able to flood a small bit of a country or a lake. Not the entire world. It NEVER rains in every part of the world, because not every part of the world has clouds at all times. You need clouds for rain.

Of course, someone might have given more credit to the poor guy than he honestly deserved, as he probably managed to save his family, a couple of sheep, some chickens and a couple of cows (and perhaps some more) - but two of all the animals in the world (even if you don't include two hungry T-rex)? I think not. You'd need a much bigger boat than what was possible to make with the tools of the time, especially if your workforce only consists of a few sons and a wife. Besides, if you say "two of every animal", the bluewhales might be offended, perhaps even the eagles, and the frogs, the spiders, the ants, and any other sea animal or land animal - especially the land animals who know what a mountain is (Mount everest is 8848 meters, and if even that was covered - seriously, where did all the water come from??? And are we all descendants of Noah and his wife? Inbreeding, deluxe version? *shudders*)

My guess if there is a hint of truth to that story what so ever is that some lake overflooded and Noah saved his farm animals and his family from a local flood. The dove was probably carrying a letter, not a leaf. One feather becomes five hen. Voila! Gets his biography rewritten into a miracle story.

Sorry - let my imagination run away with me again (like the writers of religious litterature*cough*the bible*cough* probably did).

Last edited by simmer22 : 5th Jan 2013 at 03:55 AM.