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The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7 |
As per usual, when the person speaking for the majority voice of the forum gets cornered, the posse in agreement with him congregates a mass circle-jerk of pot-shots cuz' their afraid of being proven wrong.
And I find that rewarding. Bringing out the defensive nature in everyone means……Well…. I WIN!!
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r3x29yz4a said:
okay, I was making a point about old civilizations. But following your flood theory then it only proves my point.
Those people weren't christians and most likely had laws and a moral structure.
The first civilization may not have been Judeo/Christian, but they most assuredly retained belief in the God from those religions. However, later down the line, they stopped caring and were proven to be exactly the opposite of what you assert. Body’s that were dug up from Deluge strata, as well as pre-Deluge strata, have shown evidence of mass amounts of sexual deviance (including incestuous pedophilia), cannibalism, and brutality. They definitely didn’t have morals. Whether or not they had laws is irrelevant in light of their behavior. If their actions were those laws, then your argument that implies lawful civilization is junked. What they were doing was neither spiritually nor secularly reasonable to be considered at all logically lawful.
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Laws by design are based on accepted morals in society.
Ever seen the movie "Vlad"? Laws are created to hold up society. They're not necessarily ground in morals. They can be, but that's not universally true. Egypt is one of the best examples here.
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Certain events have coroborating evidence that they happened, but no proof as to cause or individuals.
The only account of the flood, which we know happened, came from the Old Testament. The flood killed everyone except for a few people and every single species of land animal on earth. The only way they could have survived was with a really huge boat. Noe was documented as having a really huge boat. Coincidence? I think not.
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the Crusades.
No. It wasn't. The Crusades was a retaliatory war on the part of the Europeans. Scripture wasn't used to reason the logic of a war.
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actually during the middle ages Jews were better treated in Muslim cities than Christian. The Muslims allowed them to live and practice their religions as long as they didn't mess with or insult the Muslim faith.
It occurs to me that you're trying to create a standard that doesn't exist. We weren't talking about Muslims and you suddenly just bring them up in comparison to Christians. Apparently you just hate Christianity. I mean, you could have simply said 'Christians did such and such', not 'Muslims weren't as bad as Christians'. Anyway, if you had any semblence of credibility left, it's gone now.
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In Christian cities the Jews were forced to convert, hide as "secret" Jews, or were exiled.
Before I respond to that case in particular, is it the only one that you feel makes a case for "mainly" Christians being the one's to persecute Jews over the past few millenia?
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Jim Jones....Reverand Moon...David Karesh...L. Ron Hubbard.
But how are the proposed end results of their respective movements consequential in every circumstance. They were catering to a certain crowd. They wouldn't have been able to convince everyone on the planet. A secularist movement knows to gain momentum through a secular populace just as a social predator knows to recruit lonely depressed people for his or her cult.
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magicjay said:
[Of course you realize that Pariah is full of shit! There may have been world wide floods, several in fact. But they happened a hell of a lot longer than 8000 years ago, the point at which Pariah claims the world began!
I can imagine MJ’s first glance response before writing this: “Oh, he is so full of shit—There was no flood! But just in case he isn’t and he actually does have scientific proof to back up what he says, which I haven’t actually looked up on myself, I’d better say that their was a flood—Several in fact!”
Actually, I believe the world began around 17,000 years ago. Not 8000; that’s just absurd.
Additionally, there wasn’t multiple floods. If that were the case, we’d find multiple flood-strata in different sedimentary layers below the Deluge layer, and we haven’t. Furthermore, please don’t try to pretend to know anything about what I’m talking about. Carbon-14 tests performed at Jericho show beyond the shadow of a doubt that the flood happened around the time of 7800-6200 BC—The date is more specific than that though.
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And I suppose you can point me in the direction of major journals in those fields that are not funded by or affiliated with the creationist movement that will confirm the truth of that statement.
The discoveries are corresponded by secularist scientists if that’s what you mean. Even if they weren’t though, what would that matter as long as the creationist scientist has all the credentials needed to examine the sites of historical value? If anything, evolutionist secularists have done more over the past few centuries to warrant suspicion since their “findings” have permanently tainted the scientific community and high school biology books. I mean, evolution itself wasn’t able to properly lift off the ground without the exploit of Piltdown Man and Embryonic Recapitulation. They cemented evolution’s fame for more than half a century—And continue to do so. Because of the lack of vehemence on the part of evolutionist scientists to admit their fallacy in proclaiming ER, Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Australopithecus, etc. as legitimate proof of evolution over the past 60 years, they haven’t actually been dethroned of their place in modern scientific knowledge. You walk up to any person on the street and ask them, “What proves evolution?” 9 times outta 10, you’re gonna hear “Neanderthal” or “Lucy”. Evolutionists have corrupted science way more than you imply Christians have.
Anyway, regarding Sodom and Gommorah, that’s long since been proven. However, I find a rather humorous impediment in the fact that secularist scientists refuse to acknowledge the evidence of the fashion in which the cities were destroyed. I’m sorry to say, I can’t find many secular sites that cover the matter for your peace of mind. The ones I’ve chosen, however, have much credibility on the matter. If you see any objections with what they say, you just point out the inconsistency and quote your own source that speaks against mine’s conclusions:
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Evidence of Sodom and Gommorah
The ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah have been discovered southeast of the Dead Sea. The modern names are Bab edh-Dhra, thought to be Sodom, and Numeira, thought to be Gomorrah. Both places were destroyed at the same time by an enormous conflagration. The destruction debris was about three feet thick. What brought about this awful calamity? Startling discoveries in the cemetery at Bab edh-Dhra revealed the cause. Archaeologists found that buildings used to bury the dead were burned by a fire that started on the roof.
What would cause every structure in the cemetery to be destroyed in this way? The answer to the mystery is found in the Bible. "Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah -- from the Lord out of the heavens" (Genesis 19:24). The only conceivable explanation for this unique discovery in the annals of archaeology is that burning debris fell on the buildings from the air. But how could such a thing happen?
There is ample evidence of subterranean deposits of a petroleum-based substance called bitumen, similar to asphalt, in the region south of the Dead Sea. Such material normally contains a high percentage of sulfur. It has been postulated by geologist Frederick Clapp that pressure from an earthquake could have caused the bitumen deposits to be forced out of the earth through a fault line. As it gushed out of the earth it could have been ignited by a spark or surface fire. It would then fall to earth as a burning, fiery mass.
It was only after Clapp formulated this theory that Sodom and Gomorrah were found. It turns out that the sites are located exactly on a fault line along the eastern side of a plain south of the Dead Sea, so Clapp's theory is entirely plausible. There is some evidence for this scenario from the Bible itself. Abraham viewed the destruction from a vantage point west of the Dead Sea. The Bible records what Abraham saw: "He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace" (Genesis 19:28). Dense smoke suggests smoke from a petroleum-based fire. Smoke rising like smoke from a furnace indicates a forced draft, such as would be expected from subterranean deposits being forced out of the ground under pressure.
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah became an example in the Bible of how God judges sin. "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before Me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen" (Ezekiel 16:49-50).
Not included in this article, since it didn’t really cover the destruction of the cities, was the discovery of a salt deposit found outside of them. I’m sure we’re all aware of what happened to Lot’s wife and how it retains a relationship with the deposit. The salt content was acknowledged by a secularist group of scientists:
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Sodom and Gommorah=”Powerful Myths”
Two geologists think they know how the infamous biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. Graham Harris and Tony Beardow argue in the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology that the land near the Dead Sea on which the cities may have stood literally liquefied in an earthquake, swallowing them up ca. 1900 B.C. A similar event, in which loosely packed, waterlogged soils liquefy under seismic force, destroyed an area of nearly 30,000 square miles in China in 1920. Harris and Beardow admit that the "analysis of a past earthquake event, especially one for which there is a lack of data, or even credible eyewitness accounts, is difficult," particularly "when the event is speculative and occurred in the dawn of history." But they suggest that a tidal wave caused by the earthquake might have stranded a large block of salt on shore, inspiring the tale that Lot's wife, ignoring God's command not to look back at the burning cities, was turned into a pillar of salt. Few scholars are likely to believe this hypothesis. "This is Noah's Ark stuff," says ARCHAEOLOGY Contributing Editor Neil Asher Silberman. "The real challenge for biblical archaeologists today is not to search for long-lost cities, but to understand why the ancient Israelites formulated these powerful myths."
The problem with their hypothesis, that the salt was lifted onto land by a tidal wave, is that it’s long since been proven, post discovery of the charred material, that it wasn’t an earthquake that leveled S&G, not to mention the question as to why the salt concentration would be so surmountable in only one area that’s not even 30 ft in radius. Suffice to say, such arguments have been shown to be rationalized fiction.
As for the great Deluge: Quite simply, there’s no denying it happened. Through both a consistent pause in civilization for just about every continent on the world as well as that pause’s conjunction with the location of the Deluge sediment layer, it’s shown to have happened.
There’s even an extraordinarily likely scenario of how the water got their in the first place based on conclusive geological findings. The great authorities of geology published their evidence, at the beginning of the century, which shows that a multiple-mile thick block of ice, from the Ice Age, sank beneath the ocean 9000 years ago. Numerous fossil discovery backs coordinates to this claim: a) Drowning of whole herds of Woolly Mammoth along the shores of the Arctic Ocean, b) Tropical vegetation and bones of animals from the warm regions found with the mammoths, c) The sandy deserts such as the Sahara and Kalahari deserts of Africa. d) The salt deposits on the high plateau of Iran, 5000 ft above the plain of Mesopotamia; and the inland salt lakes, such as the Caspian Sea, Dead Sea, Lake Baikal, etc., which have no outlet to the sea. e) Additionally, regarding the Plateau of Iran, there was found great salt boulders indiginous to the Plateau of Iran; elementary logic suggests they were carried there when the scouring effect of a flood hit the Plateau, f) Deep deposits of mud left in places like caves and the sides of hills where it’s prevented from being carried into the ocean. And this isn't even mentioning the excavations.
I’ll cover the exploits at Jericho first:
Trying to find a secular site that goes over the archeological digs in Jericho is like finding a needle in a hay stack. I find the fact that there aren’t at least a dozen secular counter-sites for the other numerous ones centered around religion, who go over Jericho, kinda funny though. If any of the facts that the Christian sites out are flawed, I’d figure secularist essay-whores would be all over exposing their fallacy. In any case, the only one I could find that was made by a non-Christian was this site. Obviously they don’t arrive to the same conclusion as to what exactly knocked down the walls of Jericho, but they do agree on when the wall fell: 1400 BC, the time Josue’s conquest was noted in the Bible.
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But then came Dr Kathleen Kenyon, who claimed that Garstang had wrongly identified these walls. She excavated from 1952 to 1956 and wrote, "We have nowhere been able to prove the survival of walls of the Late Bronze Age, that is to say, of the period of Joshua. This is at variance with Professor's Garstang's conclusions. He ascribed two of the lines of walls which encircle the summit to the Late Bronze Age, but everywhere that we examined them it was clear that they must belong to the Early Bronze Age and have been buried beneath a massive scarp belonging to the Middle Bronze Age." Digging Up jericho, p.46
The latest excavations at Jericho support this conclusion. "A 19m long north-south strip of Early Bronze Age city wall H was exposed in the excavations of the tel strata. The city wall . . . was built of brown bricks laid on two stone courses. The bottom part of the east face of the city wall was built of narrower bricks. The destruction of the upper part of the wall can be distinguished in the south section of the excavation area." ESI 15 p. 69
With these latest identifications we are in agreement. It was undoubtedly the Early Bronze walls that collapsed, but with their dating we would disagree. The Early Bronze period is usually considered to have ended about 2000 BC, but we would agree with Dr Courville that the Early Bronze period ended about 1400 BC, which was when the Israelites conquered Jericho. That would be when the wall "fell down flat".
Shit, I’ve drifted off tangent. Sorry. The point of bringing up Jericho wasn’t about the wall, but the fact that it’s a proven pre-flood establishment rebuilt by the new adversary inhabitants of Jericho in post-flood 1400 BC. The excavations at Telles, in Jericho, revealed a walled city, which was dated by Carbon-14, with samples from both post-flood and pre-flood strata, to have been struck by the Deluge at the time of 7000 BC. This much was discovered by Garstang, Kenyon, and Wood. Garstang, heading the first excavation was the first one to discover that the bottom constructed layers of Telles were made from much more sophisticated material than the higher layers, which were C-14 dated to be thousands of years apart from each other. What’s more, the lower, and more ancient, half was previously destroyed by water. This same multiple millennia pause in historical continuity was found in other sites in Europe and Africa.
Moving on to the Plateau of Iran:
The water that reached the Plateau of Iran had to have risen above, as well as maintained, a height of 5000 ft. The fact that there are no mountain ranges or high hills between the Arctic Ocean or the plains of Europe and Iran proves that bodies of water connected to the Arctic Ocean covered the Plateau of Iran and Europe. Also, past analysis by credible sources coming from both paleontology and geology have shown evidence that the Plateau of Iran was not only enveloped by the Arctic, but also surrounded by it around 9000 years ago. The areas such as the Caspian Sea, Dead Sea, and Lake Baikal were covered by huge bodies of water that, with time, evaporated due to little or lack of water supply. In the case of excavations, there’s also evidence that gives credence to a world-wide flood. They showed that the plateau did not escape the disaster that caused a break in civilization, which happened in Mesopotamia, Europe, and Africa; they also shed light on the manner of man before the Deluge that was evidenced through near-flawless pottery and hammered copper objects. These objects and pottery have been identified not only on the Plateau, but also in the previously submerged towns on the plains of Europe—The same designs and style. What’s more, a certain shell consistently found in the excavations, which were apparently worn by the Iranian women for decoration, belong to a species of animal found 600 miles away from the Plateau. Paramount proof of this being a post-flood interaction is the discovery of these things within pre-flood strata on the plains of Europe.
There was a final very notable case at Tepe Gawra where a pre-flood constructed building had been inhabited and abandoned repeatedly over a period of thousands of years. Each new inhabitant built a new level on the erection. As the building got higher, the technology got more primitive—However, at the lower levels of the building, the technology was shown to be the most advanced by centuries. This segment on the column was covered with a salt deposit.
Lemme try to sum things up with everything that both creationists and secularists alike agree upon.
1) The great flood occurred at the end of the Ice Age at about 7000 BC and that it covered a great part of the Northern Hemisphere including Europe, Africa, a great part of Asia and of North America.
2) All of the members of the human race that existed at the time of the flood were located in the area that was covered by the flood (and all of the domestic animals as well) unless those that might have taken refuge in a large ship with provisions for several months. Up to the time of the flood, the great bulk of the human race was confined within the relatively small area called the “Fertile Crescent”, which includes Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Iran, and the territory around the Caspian Sea. Furthermore, the inhabitants of this area built numerous towns and cities in which they carried on various simple industries, tilled the grounds and kept domestic animals whilst the remainder of the human race, which was in Europe, Africa, and the part of Asia west of the Himalaya Mountains did none of these things and simply sheltered in caves and lived off the flesh of wild animals.
3) No certain trace of any human inhabitant has been found anywhere in India or China or in any country east of the Himalaya Mountains before 7000 BC, which is the approximate date of the Deluge.
4) Excavations show that Mesopotamia was the first country to be occupied after the flood, that it was in Mesopotamia that the firs system of writing was invented, which was brought to Egypt, to China, and to America where it is still used by the Indians.
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