[Zatoichi]

This might seem like I was lying in wait, but ... well okay I was.

I consider The Three In One in this way:

God the Father: What essentially makes God God
God the Son: That by which we are redeemed. Does not take true form until the arrival of Jesus in which an amount of God's divinity was placed on Earth for a time.
God the Holy Spirit: Allowed for humans to create great works and do great things. Also allowed for humans to have longer lifespans. Only ever bestowed upon the followers of God. Can be bestowed upon multiple followers at the same time. It can also be revoked at any time, usually after the job was done.

I do not believe that God was split in any way shape or form before Adam and Eve were forced to leave the Garden of Eden. Unless of course it took slivers of God's divinity to create things and could never regain them after losing them. This could actually make sense if I had a better argument that I have thought of, but it would explain why no one else could create only change the world around them (more specifically, the other immortals) It could also explain why it seems that God does less and less, if in doing so lessens His power. A great amount would've had to been used in the case of Jesus.

Thank God I can rely on faith and not just guesses and logic. (said for my own sake, in no way intended as an insult)

Now I'm getting rambly

[Jordan]

Cool posts, zatochi. I'm drifting bad so it's good for me to read them.

[Zatoichi]

Thanks

Actually, I just accidentally flipped to the first page of Genesis and glanced at thatsomething stood out. Starting at Genesis 1:26 and ending at 2:3 can be used to prove a couple of my theories if taken in a certain sense.

This post has been edited by Zatoichi: 18 October 2005 - 09:29 AM

[Slade]

Well, technically, given how the Bible is written, it can prove nearly anything, though some stuff is quite a bit of a stretch.

There's a problem with your flood theory: I couldn't have been "contained", as many other religions speak of one that pre-date or have no connection with Judaism or Christianity, such as some Native American tribes.

And the Tower of Babel has always sounded like the fire and brimstone due to arrogant humanity approach to "why there are different languages."

Given the culture of those who told the stories that were put into the Bible, God was rather archaic and didn't mind raining death and destruction for quite a while. Normally it would seem that it was mostly guilty parties being anihilated, but guilty sometimes just meant following a different god, and no mention is given of how the other society was really doing anything wrong besides not stroking God's ego with worship. If they said that due to not worshiping God, their false idol let them go around raping women, stealing from one another, etc., it would make a little more sense. Value clash and all that...

[civilian_number_two]

There's a problem with your flood theory: I couldn't have been "contained", as many other religions speak of one that pre-date or have no connection with Judaism or Christianity, such as some Native American tribes.

And the Tower of Babel has always sounded like the fire and brimstone due to arrogant humanity approach to "why there are different languages."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Floods are pretty common natural phenomena. Loads of cultures will have flood stories, but this doesn't mean that one upon a time the Earth was buried in awter over the tops of the highest mountains. That's nuts. Please remember these are prehistoric peoples with an oral tradition and no real sense of history. Also note: when a story is successful, it gets copied. Various international Flood stories is no more remarkable than all the ripoffs of Die Hard.

I like to think that at some time in human memory the gap between Spain and Morocco was closed, and that a cataclysm caused the ocean to rush in. I think this is probably not what happened (and Pangaea theories and maps refute it universally) , but I like to think it.

And yeah, I agree about Babel: we can actually measure and trace the evolution of languages around the world. No need to go making up weird stories about towers that challenged God. How tall was that thing, anyway? Taller than the WTC? Did it reach higher than the Space Shuttle?

[Spoon Poetic]

Actually, the Tower of Babel exists. The ruins are still around, and there is documentation of it from both Herodotus and Nebudchadnezzar, among others.

Fossils of sea creatures found at the tops of hig mountains... in more than one place in the world. I'd say there's a good chance there was a flood that covered the earth. Many secular scientists agree. After the Ice Age, everything melted--water covered the Earth. Or something like that. There are several theories, but the issue is usually to explain why water covered the earth, not if it did, because it's been pretty much established that it did.

[Zatoichi]

And the Tower of Babel has always sounded like the fire and brimstone due to arrogant humanity approach to "why there are different languages."

Given the culture of those who told the stories that were put into the Bible, God was rather archaic and didn't mind raining death and destruction for quite a while. Normally it would seem that it was mostly guilty parties being anihilated, but guilty sometimes just meant following a different god, and no mention is given of how the other society was really doing anything wrong besides not stroking God's ego with worship. If they said that due to not worshiping God, their false idol let them go around raping women, stealing from one another, etc., it would make a little more sense. Value clash and all that...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ahem, I said those who knew (aka should have been worhipping or something) of God, not everyone. It could account for various dialects.

I will do some rereading, but I am pretty sure He rained death and destruction on anyone who treated the Jews like shit. Also, it usually happened to be the Jewish army that was doing the killing. The Jewish army happened to be invincible whenever they had God's favor. I believe that they happened to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They were especially unhappy with the followers of Bhal(?) and one other god.

[Spoon Poetic]

He "rained death and destruction" on the Israelites, too...

and as "Baal" is the Canaanite word for "Lord," there is a possibility that the name refers to any other (false) god that people worshipped that was not the God of the Israelites.

[Zatoichi]

By that smiley, I think you knew what I meant. Besides, it was just my response to Slade concerning people other than the Isrealites. In their case though, they always deserved it.

Thanks for the name correction for Baal.

[Marky]

I thought Cliff Simon was Baal?

[Slade]

I'd like to throw in a drum hit or two, but the reference is lost to me.

[civilian_number_two]

Actually, the Tower of Babel exists.  The ruins are still around, and there is documentation of it from both Herodotus and Nebudchadnezzar, among others.

Fossils of sea creatures found at the tops of hig mountains...  in more than one place in the world.  I'd say there's a good chance there was a flood that covered the earth.  Many secular scientists agree.  After the Ice Age, everything melted--water covered the Earth.  Or something like that.  There are several theories, but the issue is usually to explain why water covered the earth, not if it did, because it's been pretty much established that it did.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How do they know it's the Tower of Babel? Is this like the ruins of Troy, the search for Noah's Ark, or the quest fo rthe Holy Grail? Because if it is, it's archaeology being belittled to support myth, nothing more. I'd like to read about this documentation about the time that folks all spontaneously started speaking differnt languages and were forced to abandon a construction project. I mean, documentation outside the story in Genesis. I looked up the Herodotus and he talks about the ruins of a tower tower, but attributes to it no linguistic magic.

Fossils of sea creatures at the tops of high mountains: the surfaces of all high mountains were at one time at sea level. Read up on how mountains are formed. The Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy dictates that if there were enough water in the system to cover the tops of the mountains, it would still be here. This is a closed system, so either that water left the Earth or it converted to another form. I'm curious to hear your theory on that. Glaciers float, so they displace their volume in water. So for the record, that ain't it. The Waterworld idea falls apart when you realize it's only landlocked glaciers that will have any effect, and there aren't enough of them to cover Whistler (a local mountain), let alone Everest. Also, anyone wishing to get started on the story of how Noah got every species on the planet, in twos and sevens, into the Ark and then redistributed them afterward, had best not.

[Zatoichi]

Civilian You may want to see if you can find studies on how planets like our own get their water in the first place. It is a really interesting theory that I first saw in a national geographic magazine (Unsure of exactly how the theory went). It would make much more sense that both of these events occured in contained areas. Surely not everyone in the world participated in the construction of the tower. If the flood was in a contained area, then it could be reasoned that only animals in that area needed to be collected. Where might the water have gone? Perhaps, the gigantic sheets of ice that cover Antartica. The continent was once a landmass, not covered by ice. That may be stretching it a little, but I am trying to explain the context of things outside of faith. Within faith the bounds are limitless.

[Slade]

Within faith the bounds are limitless.

Which kinda poses a problem for anyone placing limits on things...

Civ: If anything, I would say that the archaeology merely says there there is the possibility that such a tower did exist at one time, and its myth was added to explain the phenomenon of different languages like other myths and folk tails. I think you're making that jump to God scattering languages, not the Spoon in this case. I can't see that jump as a legitimate act by a deity in the sense that God is concieved these days either, which lowers the speculative plausibility as well.

Editorioum: Botched my quote code.

This post has been edited by Slade: 19 October 2005 - 01:37 PM

[civilian_number_two]

If the flood was in a contained area, then it could be reasoned that only animals in that area needed to be collected.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sure. I can live with that. Of course, if the Flood were in a contained area, then it'a not the story from the Bible, and if the Flood were ina contained area, that contained area still encompassed the Urartian mountains, some 17000 feet above the plains with glacial caps. What "contained " this mass of water is anyone's guess, but I suppose if the weater didn't reach the tops of the mountains, then we're getting close to a working second-guess of the mythology, "history" perverted to incorporate folk tales, not unlike the "history" of the city of Troy.

Another thing that comes to mind: if the Flood were in some contained area, why bring animals on board at all? Why not just accept the losses of a few hundred species in favour of all the others on the planet? Wouldn't transplanting these species in the habitats of other animals pretty much ensure the extinctions of the majority of them anyway?

Slade: I think you may be talking over my head. I wanted to understand the last two sentences of your post; really I did.