quote: I mean, really, why did so many cultures mention dragons in their mythology and art? Because they co-existed with us and Sir George actually DID slay a dragon.
As many people have already noted, the Dragon (or Sea-Dragon) of the St George myth represents the Leviathan, which in turn is represented by Satan. This is the same Leviathan (this time a Sea monster) slain by Perseus to save Andromeda, and the same Leviathan slain by many other earlier and later classical heroes, representing through history that collosal inhabitant of chaos, the Sea Dragon. Of course, since this myth is so horribly collective, it is possible that at one point, people did take note of Kraken and Whales, or perhaps some other impossibley large and frightening sea creature.
But these things are just symbols. Symbols of evil, taken through the ages, changed from myth to myth from story to story.
What's more, the original story of St George, the original myth, did not contain a dragon. St George's story only aquired a dragon after the Christian myth spread across Europe and became combined with the earlier Pagan myths of monster-slaying heroes.
Dragons may have existed thousands of years ago when the first storyteller told this monster-slaying myth, or perhaps they were completely invented by storytellers, or perhaps they evolved from one frightening and strange creature to another. After all, a Dog with Eyes as Big As Saucers, or three heads, or massive spiders aren't likely to have existed but they still frighten us.
Christian or not, the Sea Dragon representative of the Christian Satan or not, it's a myth. It's meant to convey something to the listener through story.
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Crotalus, I'm sure your pharma company has an extensive library on all things pharmacological. When you have a free moment, or over lunch some day, look up the stability of various peptides in differing environments. For example, a closed anaerobic system. You might also want to look up the basics behind stability studies and how they're constructed, noting in particular the percent change over time.
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Crotalus, Sweet. Glad to have ya around! And a Star Trek fan too.
Well, Tom you’re mostly right. It would be earth shaking for them since they have been so insistent that dinosaurs died so many millions of years ago. And it was the anti creation guy who made that statement anyway. And if dinosaurs would have survived in small numbers all around the world what changed then that they died off? Seems almost more logical that if dinosaurs and man co existed that they were unable to survive the environmental changes in the post flood era and slowly died off. How can I explain how evolution to be true when I don’t believe in it? Let them explain their own claims. What would be hard core evidence for you Tom? Heck, I half think if we found Noah’s ark that wouldn’t be enough for you to believe in a world wide flood. That link looks pretty hard core to me, but since it doesn’t fit into the evolutionary model it is dismissed.
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By the way, the dog with eyes the size of saucers isn't nearly as frightening as the dog with eyes the size of the millstones of Copenhagen.
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I couldn't remember which Dog had the biggest eyes. We're thinking of the same story right? with the three dogs on the chests of treasure?
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quote:I'm at work right now and deadlines are looming. Maybe this weekend I can go into some in-depth responses.
I grok that. I also am interested in seeing your response.
And while there are always a few bad eggs, I think that for the most part you'll find that as long as you are respectful, others will treat you respectfully as well.
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quote:find a lot of their bones in the garbage pits of early humans
Larger animals were probably butchered at the kill site, and their bones would not have been brought home to the garbage pit.
On the other hand, we should expect to find large bones made into implements, and we should expect to find man-made markings on butchered bones. We do, but none of the marked bones happen to be dinosaur bones.
The problem with man coexisting with dinosaurs at their peak is that man could never have evolved in the face of the kind of competition that dinosaurs would have presented.
I do think it is possible that isolated pockets of dinosaurs may have survived and had encounters with man.
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So a story teller invented dragons, something that is so similar to dinosaurs that the two are pretty much the same? Plus the stories of dragons across multiple cultures again? I really wish people would look at it with an open mind instead of the evolutionary bias.
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You misunderstand me. I didn't actually touch on whether humans had any contact with dinosaurs, I'm just saying that St George never slew a 'real' dragon .
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"Heck, I half think if we found Noah’s ark that wouldn’t be enough for you to believe in a world wide flood."
No, it absolutely wouldn't. And I hope any intelligent, scientifically-minded person would understand why.
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You may well be intelligent. But if you think finding an ark on a mountainside would prove that there was a global flood, you are not scientifically-minded by definition.
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I'm half tempted to jump into this one, but there's already people here arguing the same thing I would be, and I wouldn't want to clutter things up.
However, there's a point of Jay's about the Bible that no one disputed that I felt should be clarified:
quote: Revision of a revision? Interesting. Sure there are translations into other languages but the original Greek and Hebrew are pretty much set in stone
That is not true. The Bible, like the Koran and others have been revised over time. Everyone from Popes to Kings have revised it. When first writing it down, then later when the first written Bibles were decaying from old age and had to be recompiled to be saved. We know this because bibles and "Books of Hours" (prayer books), have been found that conflict with one another. I'm talking around AD 500, things were still on Hebrew and Latin, and this goes for the old Byzantine Orthodoxy church as well as the Western church.
I don't have the sources on me at the moment, but I can post some up here tomorrow when I've had a chance to round them all up.
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Mormons could have some fun with the following from the book of Ether, chapter 9:
quote:31 And there came forth poisonous serpents also upon the face of the land, and did poison many people. And it came to pass that their flocks began to flee before the poisonous serpents, towards the land southward, which was called by the Nephites Zarahemla.
32 And it came to pass that there were many of them which did perish by the way; nevertheless, there were some which fled into the land southward.
33 And it came to pass that the Lord did cause the serpents that they should pursue them no more, but that they should hedge up the way that the people could not pass, that whoso should attempt to pass might fall by the poisonous serpents.
34 And it came to pass that the people did follow the course of the beasts, and did devour the carcasses of them which fell by the way, until they had devoured them all. Now when the people saw that they must perish they began to repent of their iniquities and cry unto the Lord.
I don't know of any modern poisonous serpents capable of chasing farm animals to another continent or of "hedging up the way."
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Jay, if we found an an arc on a mountain, it wouldn't prove that it was Noah's.
Even if we could prove that it was Noah's, the wouldn't necessarily prove that it was in a flood.
Even if we could prove that Noah built this arc and was in it during a flood, that wouldn't prove that the the entire earth was flooded.
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I'm inclined to agree with Jay (now THAT really hurt to say ) on there having been some sort of great flood. There are too many flood stories from the flood epic in Gilgamesh, to Indian writings, to Celtic writings, African stories passed down, so on and so forth.
But I'm not necesarily willing to give ground that it was some all encompassing flood that killed everything on earth. Or that Noah could actually fit every animal on earth into his ark. Even if he did (it'd have to be the size of the Titanic, that's a whole lotta cubits), two of every animal isn't enough genetic variation for the species to have survived. They would have died off by now.
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quote: So if Noah’s Ark was found what would your scientific explanation be?
First: why do we believe it's Noah's Ark? Is it the same size, shape, and material as described in the Bible? Is it of approximately the right age? Does it show signs of having been densely inhabited for a significant period? Is the word "Noah" written on the mast?
Second: How did the ark, whether it's Noah's or not, get there? Does it appear to have been deposited, dragged, or constructed on the site? If the former, is there any other sign of flood to be found in the immediate area? If so, can we date this flood?
Third: Assuming we can date the flood and have a functional estimate of the height of at least the crest -- based on the ark's present location -- can we estimate what the water level would have been in other locations? If so, do we see geological and archaeological evidence to support this hypothesis?
If so, we can begin to discuss the possibility of a massive -- if not necessarily worldwide -- flood. But those are the preliminary questions.
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As a side note, there is actually ample if not conclusive evidence for a massive Mesopotamian/Mediterranian flood. This is hardly a "worldwide" sample, but it sure would have seemed like it to the various tribes and burgeoning civilizations in that area at the time.
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Noah's flood would not necessarily have to have been a worldwide immersion. We can't account for that much water. Velikovsky postulates that a comet or asteroid may have passed close enough to the earth that it was temporarily captured by the earth's gravity, and that as it orbited the earth, the comet raised a huge tidal wave 1000 feet high that swept around the earth.
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"Velikovsky postulates that a comet or asteroid may have passed close enough to the earth that it was temporarily captured by the earth's gravity, and that as it orbited the earth, the comet raised a huge tidal wave 1000 feet high that swept around the earth."
But then it wouldn't happen to be Noah's flood, would it? It just would have been a really big flood. Noah's flood, after all, was deliberately a destructive act of God; a flood that was the inspiration for Noah's flood is something else altogether.
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quote:But then it wouldn't happen to be Noah's flood, would it? It just would have been a really big flood. [Smile] Noah's flood, after all, was deliberately a destructive act of God; a flood that was the inspiration for Noah's flood is something else altogether.
Why couldn't God have sent the comet? Finding a natural explination for a phenomenon doesn't mean that God didn't have a hand in it.
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After some checking on the comet theory I found this.
quote: In 1950, Macmillan Company published Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, a book which asserts, among many other things, that the planet Venus did not exist until recently. Some 3500 years ago in the guise of a gigantic comet, it grazed Earth a couple of times, after having been ejected from the planet Jupiter some indefinite time earlier, before settling into its current orbit. "Venus was expelled as a comet and then changed to a planet after contact with a number of members of our solar system" (Velikovsky 1972,182).
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"This interesting photograph is of a hammer found in similar strata. It's iron head and wooden handle are solidified in sandstone. Metallurgical studies show that it was constructed of a type of iron that could not have been made under present atmospheric conditions. It is believed that before the flood our atmosphere was compressed to approximately twice its current density, and no ultraviolet radiation."
Oh, boy. That's just funny.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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People, please do not argue that Velikovsky's flood wouldn't be Noah's flood as though Velikovsky actually had some shred of credibility. He is one step above von Daniken and other bottom-crawlers, in that he didn't actually make up any evidence. Actually, that may put him one step below, since he didn't give any evidence, made-up or not.
Now, about the Ark : What if we found one, and there wasn't room for two elephants? Incidentally, why is it called an 'Ark'? What's wrong with the word boat or ship? And does this have any connection to the Ark of the Covenant?
Dragons, as in fire-breathing, winged lizards, are in fact not at all similar to dinosaurs. On the other hand, human DNA is very similar to monkey DNA. Indeed, our making-Vitamin-C gene is broken in precisely the same way across several different primate species. How do you account for that without common descent? Not to mention the ERV insertions.
Skillery, I hope you didn't intend that site as serious evidence? I mean, talk about obvious fakes discredited a hundred times before.
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quote:God becomes an unnecessary complication in the theory
God's primary role was in warning Noah. Either that or Noah said to himself one night while looking through his telescope: "oooh, this one's gonna be close!"
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This would only be an essential role if indeed you could demonstrate that there were no other human survivors. Which would pretty much make a worldwide flood.
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Let me also point out why the hammer thing is so funny:
1) The ore mixture said to be in that hammer is as far as we know impossible to achieve. We could assume that the hammer is indeed an artifact of another "world" or technology, or we could assume that the tests were wrong. The owner conveniently refuses to have it retested.
2) The hammer was found exposed in a cave. Its wood has not fossilized. Its iron has not fully oxidized. And it's covered in sandstone deposits. Is it more likely that it existed in the cave at a considerable depth for millions of years, and was only recently exposed -- or that it was dropped in a cave around 1890 and surrounded by forty years of flowstone? We could carbon date the handle, but again the owner has refused to have the item carbon-dated.
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I'm a little fuzzy on the flood idea, but didn't God send the flood? He doesn't just warn Noah, he actually deliberately destroys everyone else.
Also, the theory I heard was something to do with a high water level and one of the next-to-the-mediterranean basins (the salty one). Noah and his people lived in the basin and when the water came, overflowing from the meditteranean into the dry basin, many people in the area died.
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Erm, no I haven't... I read this in a non-fiction book so it must be a legitimate theory to someone...
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This would only be an essential role if indeed you could demonstrate that there were no other human survivors. Which would pretty much make a worldwide flood.
No, it's not. Whether or not we can demonstrate it does not change what God did or did not do.
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Yes, but it had to involve real water from a real source with a real triggering mechanism. Do you think our resident scientists would give God credit for that? Or do we have some religious fanatics here who claim that God can create water out of nothing and return it to nothingness when He's done?
The real miracle here is that Noah had advance knowledge of the event. Everything else, including loading beasts on a boat can find some reasonable scientific explanation.
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But, AntiCool, if you're going to postulate magic, why look for evidence at all? Unless the water appears and disappears by some known or knowable natural process, there is simply no use in looking for scientific evidence.
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Actually, there's no scientific explanation consistent with both the description of the ark and even a minimal number of animals (by the description) to go on it.
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Is God only limited to the use of unknown and unknowable processes? If all natural processes are known or knowable, does that mean there is no God?
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That's been a problem with some traditional conceptions of God, yes. Read up on the "God of the gaps".
However, there are many nuanced conceptions of God not dependent on any such silly thing.
Showing evolution is correct or that there was no world flood will not disprove the existence of God in either case, nor bring it closer, nor anything close.
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I did not mean evolution would make God go away; I meant that, insofar as any process involves miracles, science cannot deal with it. Science, by definition, deals with the repeatable; miracles, by definition, are not repeatable.
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quote:But, AntiCool, if you're going to postulate magic, why look for evidence at all? Unless the water appears and disappears by some known or knowable natural process, there is simply no use in looking for scientific evidence.
I never postulated that this is how God made the flood. I just said that I believe if He wanted to, He could do that.
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quote:Sure there are translations into other languages but the original Greek and Hebrew are pretty much set in stone
Jay, Lyrhawn spoke about revisions of the Bible in the past 1500 years.
There is also evidence in the Jewish commentary on the OT that it has changed over time, too. One commentary will say "aleph" is the middle letter of the Torah, a later commentary will disagree. Similarly with words, the middle words shift over time.
If the Bible is the word of God, wouldn't it be maintained better without error creeping in?
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) on there having been some sort of great flood. There are too many flood stories from the flood epic in Gilgamesh, to Indian writings, to Celtic writings, African stories passed down, so on and so forth. 
