DURING a long
debate with a creationist and literal defender of Genesis, I was asked
to consider several biblical "miracles," especially the "departures
of Enoch and Elijah." Elijah ascended into heaven in a flaming
chariot.
I remembered somebody once on TV saying only Christ
had
ascended.
I also remembered the great miracle, "Sun, Stand Thou
Still!"
This set me trying to locate where various miracles and other notable
passages were.
As I searched, I found many remarkable quotes and finally found, in
John 3:13, that indeed, "no man hath ascended" to heaven
who didn't first come from heaven, including Christ.
Am I urged to "believe" in God's "miracle" with
Elijah, and yet St John himself doesn't believe it or know about it or
misquoted God's words while writing 3:13?
The Bible itself presents evidence against its own claimed miracles;
indeed, against many of its own "words of God"! What the Bible
claims here it denies there; what it upholds there, it condemns here.
The truth shall set you free. No falseness can be holy
nor a virtue no matter how old and sanctified it becomes. Right?
So let's know the truth about the Bible.
The Bible is so contradictory, virtually anything can be defended from
its passages. There may be more biblical contradictions than in any book
ever penned, proving, at least, its writers did not believe one another.
.
And
So, God Parted
the Words
IN
GENESIS are two contradictory stories of creation. In Genesis 1:20
& 21, "every living creature" is brought forth from the waters,
including every winged fowl." But in 2:19 God brings forth "every
beast of the field and every fowl of the air" from dry ground.
In Genesis 1:2, earth comes into existence on the first day, completely
underwater. Only by the 3rd day were waters of the deep
collected,
and dry land formed. But in Genesis 2:4, 5, & 6, earth on the first
day was dry land, unwatered.
The first story has trees made on the 3rd day and man formed 3 days
later (1:12-13 and 26-31). In the second version man was made before trees
(2:7, 9). If chapter 1 is true, then fowls were created before man.
If chapter 2 is true, then they were created after man.
Version one teaches man was created after all beasts.
The second is clear, Adam was created before beasts. (1:25,27 versus 2:7,19).
In version one, man and woman are created simultaneously (1:27) while
in version two (2:7,20-22), man and woman are separate acts
of creation.
.
IN GENESIS,
the long discredited description of the heavens as a "firmament"
is a fundamental contradiction in the Bible of the known realities of astronomy
today. Biblical stars, sun and moon are all embedded "in" this
firmament. (The meaning, during biblical times, of the word
"firmament,"
was a "solid" body or orb, or the solid concentric
domes holding the heavenly bodies ~ Webster's Third
International
Dictionary.) We are told there are waters below the firmament, and
told waters are "above" it, too (1:7).
Really!!
BABYLONIAN
ASTRONOMERSenvisaged earth as a hollow mountain
surrounded
by a vast sea. (Pictured above. The sea is shown much
smaller, the mountain much larger, in order to fit.) Inside
the earth lay the dark, dusty realm of the dead. Arching over earth is
the "circle of the earth" (Isa. 40:22) or the solid
firmament
(Greek: solid body; firm foundation) on which
moved sun, moon, planets and stars, somehow. Held above the firmament was
water (for rain, to come through "windows"), and the firmament
domes were supported by a ring of raised earth set in the midst of the
sea. [In later times, astronomy saw the addition of more firmaments
to better account for the separate motions of the moon, sun and planets.
The firmaments were seen as complex rotating solid concentric domes, one
within another.]
.
Why was the firmament formed in the "midst" of earth's
"waters"(1:6)?
Clearly, this is an image of a dome-like firmament over flat waters of
a flat earth. Had earth commonly been known to be round then, the writers
wouldn't need to have God set the domes in the sea, a notion likely conceived
to keep seas from draining off over the "edges" or "ends"
of the earth.
The Bible's scribes exactly copied the ignorant inventions of Babylonian
firmament astronomy of that time, including its words and concepts
of windows and doors in the firmament for rain!
"Above the firmament" (Gen. 1:7) is where the huge supply
of water needed for the Flood was stored -- more than all earth's clouds
could ever provide. As we read in the account of the Flood, God ended the
rains using Babylonian astronomy again (Gen. 8:2): "the WINDOWS
of heaven were stopped and the rain...restrained." (My emphasis)
Did God speak thus, to be understood and not confuse or mentally upset
those living then? Could it really upset people then to deal
with truthful astronomy -- the same people who were ready to believe
in a virgin birth or a that a woman could be born from a man's rib-bone?
(NOTE: Christian scholar Saint
Augustine
[354-430 A.D.] and Father Lactantius, etc., continued the traditional denial
of the earth's roundness, claiming rain would "fall upward" in
places and that even if upside-down people could live on a globe's bottom,
then they couldn't see the Savior's return in glory.)
.
TWO contrary
Genesis versions suggests at least two writers, both ignorant or unmindful
of each other, and ignorant of the facts of nature and astronomy, not to
mention the age of the earth.
Let any secular writer pen a book with so many contradictions (more
of which will follow), on science, geology, morals or anything, and the
world would plunge, as a vulture on carrion, to heap monumental scorn over
the work.
As "history," the Bible is unique. In First Kings 16:6,8
the king of Israel, Baasha, dies, replaced by his son Elah during the 26th
year of Asa's (King of Judah) reign. But in Second Chronicles l6:1 we read
that Baasha, king of Israel, goes against Judah during Asa's 36th year.
A King dies, is buried, his son becomes King, but after a decade, the
dead king leads a military adventure!
In truthful historical chronicles, dead kings stay dead, but in the
Bible when a king dies, he's merely planning to pick a fight!
In Genesis 9:3: "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat"
for Noah. But Deuteronomy (14:7-21) later gives a list of animals, birds
and fish that must not be eaten.
Circumcision is required (Gen.17:10), and useless (Gal. 5:2).
Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac (Gen.16:15 & 21:3) but
Isaac was Abraham's "only" son? (Gen. 22:2,12 & Heb. 11:17).
In Exodus 33:20, says God, "Thou canst not see my face; for there
shall be no man see me and live." God must have been mistaken, or
changed: For in Genesis 32:30 Jacob sees God "face to face" and
lives. The same for Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and 70 elders, who saw God,
and ate and drank with him (Exodus 24:9-11). But not so, says John
1:18: "No man hath seen God at any time."
How decide? Well, I agree with John.
God dwells "in the light which no man can approach" (1 Tim.
6:l6). But this is not true, as in First Kings 8:12 it says: "The
Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness."
Would literalists say I shouldn't be so "literal"? Is the
"light" in which Jesus dwells "en(light)enment?" Does
God remain in thick darkness but keeps this "light" of enlightenment?
But aren't we opening a Pandora's box of endless "interpretation"
here? Where do we draw the line if we do that?
When the cry (Josh.10:12-13) "Sun, stand thou still" (and
moon too) was uttered and carried out, the sun "stood still"
in the sky, not setting.
But of course, as we all now know about astronomy, a 'setting sun'
is an inaccurate archaic and figurative phrase reflecting only the
illusion of a moving sun. It's created by the actual motion
of a rotating earth around its own axis. In the solar system, the sun is,
of course, already "still" (while the moon isn't).
But, I guess God knew what Joshua "meant," and instead of quibbling
over astronomical facts, He allowed the Bible writings to describe
it inaccurately (using the primitive terminology of the knowledge
of the time). So God magically stilled both the earth and moon (and did
it without cataclysmically throwing our land and continents off into space).
But then, there's that "interpretation" thing again, because
the "word of God" definitely does say the sun
"stoodstill" (implying incorrectly that it had been in
motion)
and not that it "appeared" to, or that the "Earth stood
still." Is the Bible literal or figurative? (See also
Eccl. 1:5, about "the Sun also riseth...." and Chron 16:30;
Psalms 93:1 [Earth is already immovable])
.
MATTHEW quotes
Jesus (19:26), "with God all things are possible." Did Matthew
or Jesus forget something? In the Book of Judges (1:19) God is not almighty,
as he helped rid Judah of inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive
out those in the valley "because they had chariots of iron."
This God of miracles apparently can move the largest body in the solar
system, the Sun (or at least stop planet earth), in order to prolong daylight
for Joshua's military revenge (or to move the sun's shadow 10 degrees backward
[2 Kings 20:10-11 or Isaiah 38:7- 8]). Yet this same mover of heavens is
cowed by mere horses & buggies made of iron?
I wonder what would happen if God decided to attack a
"modern"
1950 Buick?
Exodus 31:I7: Like a man, God rests and can be "refreshed."
Isaiah scorns such contemptible weakness.
In 40:28 he insists God, creator of the "ends of the earth, fainteth
not, neither is weary." An infinite God cannot tire,
nor needs to be - nor can be -- "refreshed."
Again on astronomy, the spectre of "interpretation" rises,
asking us: 'what are these "ends" of the earth' quoted above?
A spherical planet has no "ends." Even a flat plate or the line
of a circle is "endless." The phrase "ends of the earth"
then, was notfigurative: We know the common
belief then was that earth, very literally,
did have "ends." Nowhere in the Bible is
the earth described as "spherical." (See also Rev. 7:1:
"...four
angels standing on the four corners of the earth" & Daniel
4:10-11. Daniel's words here make little sense for a spherical earth)
.
GOD does not
change. James 1:17 says God has "no variableness..." but then,
in Jonah 3:10, God "repented" and changed his mind about smiting
Nineveh's people. So what are we to think of assurances given in Numbers
23:19, which states, "God is not a man...neither the son of man, that
he should repent." Yet this tireless omnipotent God himself volunteers
the striking thought in Jeremiah 15:6, "I am weary with repenting."
How human that confession sounds by a presumably
unchanging
God who 'cannot weary' (as Isaiah wrote above), nor repent.
In Deuteronomy 4:24 "God is a consuming fire, but in John 4:1
"God is love." He's "the God of Peace" in Romans 15:33
but in Exodus 15:3, "the Lord is a man of war." (Called a
"man"
here? Yet not called a man in Numbers 23:19?)
God is "just and right" (Deut.32:4) yet in a mercenary
manner he advises, in the dietary restrictions, that what you can't eat
as unclean may be given "unto the stranger...or thou mayest sell it
unto an alien." Gee, has the Better Business Bureau heard of this
"just and right" commercial behavior? (Deut.l4:21)
God said (Isaiah 45:7) "I make peace and create evil," a
contradiction in one holy breath!! (And we all thought, of our own evil,
it was 'the devil made me do it.')
"Now go and smite Amelek and utterly destroy all that they have,
and spare them not; but slay both man and woman infant and suckling, ox
and sheep, camel and ass" (1 Sam. 15:3). That was Samuel's order for
Saul originating from the Lord. Wrote one Bible commentator, M. J. Gauvin:
"Slay the old man with trembling hands and silvered hair; murder
the mother who shields with her body the life of her child; rifle the cradle,
and plunge the glittering sword of death through the frail form of the
smiling babe ...and know, ye fiends of ruthless slaughter, ye but fulfil
the command of the God whose 'mercy endureth forever'!"
"Love thy neighbor as thyself?" (Lev.l9:l8). Mass murder
is again condoned in Exodus 32:27; in Deut. 2:15-16 and 34-36 and 3:2.
No "just and right" God of true peace or love could command a
massacre of innocents. These are the writings and contradictions in a religious
human-inspired literature coming from the biases and values of an uncivilized
warrior peoples. To call this the "inspired words" of a merciful,
worthy Deity should be a base insult to even the meanest intelligence.
Sacrifices of helpless animals, even human sacrifices, such as of Isaac,
offered by Abraham (but stopped), or of Jeptha's daughter, or the seven
sons of David, are plentiful in the Bible, and are acceptable practices
ordained by the Lord. See also Leviticus 27:28-29 about how humans, lands
and beasts can be sacrificed. Yet elsewhere God condemns it as an abomination
and is "weary to bear them." (Jer.7:22 & Is.1:11-16)
Speaking of abominations, there is the mere handling of pigskin (Lev.ll:7-8).
Woe unto football players!
And woe unto those who curse their parents, for such deserve death
(Lev.20:9). Yet they are enjoined to also hate mom and dad too, in order
to become disciples (Luke 14:26).
Resurrections? Job 7:9 says who "goeth down to the grave shall
come up no more." The Old Testament denies immortality in no
uncertain
terms. The New Testament proclaims it - but as an eternal agony for most
of you.
All these contradictions make biblical words appear as if they are
a departure from sanity - if they were the words of one consistent, unchanging
being.
You'll read that children will suffer for the sins of the parents,
yet elsewhere, read that no one will bear sins other than their own (Ex.20:5
vs Ezek.l8:20).
The Sabbath is required to be kept as holy, but -- each of us can make
up our own minds (Ex.20:8 vs Rom.l4:5)
"Judge not, that ye be not judged' (Matt.7:l), yet others must
be judged? (1Cor. 6:2-4).
There's but one allowed reason (adultery) to divorce your wife, but
elsewhere, divorce can be for any reason (Matt.5:32 vs Deut.2l:l4 &
24:1-3). Note, in this Deuteronomy a divorced woman can safely and sinlessly
marry again, but in Matthew, a divorced woman that remarries is guilty
of adultery, which deserves death of both her and her new husband (Lev.20:10).
Neat sense of fairness, eh?
If Eve was created merely from Adam's rib, it's no wonder that women
are valued less than men, as in Leviticus 27:3-7, where a man's value in
shekels is double that of a woman.
Or: "neither was man created for woman but woman for man"
(lCor. 11:8-9).
This "Just and right" God in Exodus 21:20-21 approves a further
double standard: Whereas adultery or just hitting your parents deserves
death (Ex.2l:l5), a master beating a servant or maid to death
with a rod shall only "be punished" in some non- lethal manner.
In Exodus 21:2I, the master can remain unpunished for
beating servants daily because the servant "is his
money."
Similarly, throughout this chapter, is the sale and possession of human
beings condoned (21:4,7).
'The Boss don't like no back-talk' is clear in Exodus 21:5-6: If a
servant doesn't want to be sent away from his family (owned by the master)
but says he loves them and will not leave, master can "bring him unto
the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through
with an aul; and he shall serve him forever."
"Just and right"? One believer wrote me the Old Testament's
inspired words were meant to "mitigate or regulate" behavior
and raise it to a "more humane level" than usually practiced.
Gimme a break! If the Old testament isn't "static or forever,"
as he wrote, why doesn't he also take the stories of Genesis as equally
not final nor literal factual truth? Why one and not
theother?
Not only is slavery in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament,
too: First Timothy 6:1,8 states those "under the yoke" (i.e.
slaves) shall give "all honour" to their masters, and suggests
in its context we should be grateful for scraps and rags without critique
nor envy.
Again in Ephesians 6:5, obedience to masters by servants is urged to
be just like obedient worship given Christ. Worship the Boss?
However, this backward morality (which is excused as too entrenched
in those times for even God to overthrow completely, God preferring to
moderate it instead), was not too hard for a mere mortal,
Spartacus,
to challenge totally. How can a non-god espouse more
advanced
ideals of freedom, and oppose slavery completely, when the God of all
the universe could only weakly compromise those principles among his subjects?
"No evil shall happen to the just" we're told (Prov.l2:21).
Yet Job, about whom God said no one else on earth was nearly as good and
upright, is nevertheless handed over, by God, to Satan for torture (Job
2:3-7). The fate, also in the modern world, of good Christians and innocents
under the protection of God's proverb, is horrendous.
Moses is the meekest man in the world (Num.l2:3), yet he orders the
butchery of women and children in cold blood and the taking of female children,
who are still virgins, to keep alive "for yourselves" under the
permission of God (Num.31:17)
The Bible speaks well of liquor and also condemns it (Deut. 14:226
vs Prov.20:l).
It says avoid temptation, but welcome it too (Matt.6:l3 vs James 1:12).
The same dichromatics appear for wealth as First Timothy preaches (6:10)
"love of money is the root of all evil," added to by Luke 6:24,
but denied by Proverbs 10:15, and elsewhere there.
Here's more "perfect harmony" of the Bible's words: According
to Luke, Christ ascended in the flesh. Paul says "Flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven" (Luke 24:39-51 vs 1 Cor.15:50).
The evening of Christ's resurrection is the time of ascension for Luke,
but Acts dates it 40 days after, (Luke 24:1-59 vs Acts 1:3 ). After resurrecting,
Jesus was to meet the disciples, says Matthew, in Galilee; but says Luke,
it was to be in Jerusalem -- merely 100 miles apart! (Matt.28:l6-17 vs
Luke 24:33-36).
"I and my Father are One" (John 10:30). But, "My Father
is greater than I" (John 14:28) and "My God, why hast thou forsaken
me? (Math. 27:46). The contradictions seem as infinite as God.
Let your good deeds shine before men "that they may see your good
works." So much for modesty. Then Matthew has Jesus say "Take
heed that ye do not your alms before men to be seen of them." (Matt.
5:l6 vs 6:1)
Many other details of the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension are
disparate. This, of course, is normal when it's different human
witnesses
describing any traumatic event, committing errors such as misquoting, forgetting
what was said exactly or reinterpreting meaning through the biased sieve
of one's own prejudices. For example: Facing Pilate, Christ spoke only
two words, said Matthew. John said Christ gave a speech! (Matt. 27:11 vs
John 18:34-37).
We are told repeatedly, the marvelous works found in nature, or all
the universe, "require" and prove a creator's existence. But
in the ultimate logical inconstancy of the Bible, it says nothing about
why the greatest marvel of all needs no creator.
If God does not need to be created, what did God do before the universe?
Where did God exist? Nowhere in Genesis did God create "time."
Why not? Because so ubiquitous is time to us, it's "only human"
to lose awareness of such a constant sensation (much as we mask out the
sound of an electric fan blowing in our room or the engine's hum when we
drive). Thus its need to be created failed to be recorded by human scribes
who really couldn't conceive (nor notice) that it even needed
to be created. [See Appendix below.]
Did God create himself out of nothingness? I am no Bible scholar, but
I know this is but surface-scratching the tip of the iceberg about Bible
errors and conflicts, and it already proves it a fallible human document
of many inaccuracies, failures of logic, with biases and mixed motives
shown by petty witnesses and superstitious, ignorant drinking buddies.
Maybe they had one too many?
--by Bob Fink (Largely based on M. J. Gauvin
research)
Creationists repeatedly
argue: "Surely, something intelligent must be behind this or that
marvel..."
Not necessarily.
Spiderwebs are complex chemical engineering marvels. Why? Because
spiders
use the least material,
the fewest strands necessary, and cross the shortest distances to produce
a nearly weightless, nearly invisible insect trap - the largest and strongest
known structure, considering: the spider's size, that it builds unaided,
and that it must carry and produce all its own building materials.
Few scientists could ever engineer such a wonder without decades, perhaps
generations, of thought and calculations!
In my backyard, a spider (Charlotte?) nightly made her web across the
pathway leading to my back fence.
Every morning I walked into the web, ruined it, getting all skin-crawly.
Every night spider rebuilt it. One morning I remembered to look before
walking into it. Across my path she set two strands from the nearest bush
branches to the house wall. From these the web was spun and hung. When
I broke one strand, the whole web shrunk one-fifth its width in one direction.
When I broke the second, the web totally collapsed. What ingenious minimum
use of material!! I couldn't help the silly thought: "Does she actually
'figure out' the best way to build it?" Of course not, but it seemed
so, because daily, each web was differently adapted to changed circumstances.
Then I broke off the branches she'd used. New strands must be started
elsewhere. Sure enough, next morning, the re-spun web had a very different
configuration, using tall grass-tops under the branches I broke. They were
now the nearest place to attach new starting strands.
How did spider "know" that? Did she survey, measure, choose?
No, because if she could think at all, the poor retard would've long ago
decided (since I daily wrecked her web), "I'll spin webs far away
from his stupid path." But she has no brains for conscious measurements,
engineering choices, comparing distances or deciding anything. Spider's
no more aware of her genetically programmed actions than I am when I breathe
or scratch an itch while sleeping. Essentially, spider is always "asleep."
So, there's an incredibly "intelligent-looking" marvel: The
glorious web, with fabulously integrated efficiency and adroit re-adaptations
to surrounding changes, yet all produced by a comatose idiot!!
Doesn't that example contradict the rote-like repetitive reliance that
religious creationists show when they endlessly invoke the argument: "Since
the result is so marvelous, there must be intelligence behind it"?
Maybe entomologists know how spider does it, but "thinking"
certainly isn't behind it.
Will creationists claim God spins daily webs for dumb Charlotte? Or
that indeed, Charlotte can think?
Any such claims are "good" if, instead of facts, only faith
is needed to "prove" them. A make-it-up-as-you-go
"science"?
Charlotte finally moved away when I interrupted her night-time re-spinning
activity rather than her web.
If the web is one example of a marvel made by a moron, can't there
be others? What do silkworms "know" of silken beauty? Or songbirds
of lilting music? Or seeds of the geometric wonder and colorful designs
of flowers? Likewise, the sleeping eternal universe "engineered"
us in its ker-zillion years spinning journey.
If the glory of the universe, the marvels of nature, or any marvel
of life "needs" a creator's existence, then why does the greatest
imaginable marvel of them all need no creator? "Who" created
the creator? And who created that creator? Nothingness? The universe is
a glory when it suits creationists; and it's disorderly rubble when that
description is conveniently needed to claim that order (us) cannot come
from rubble.
But if the infinity of an always-existing creator (and with no universe
to live in until it was created by the creator) can be imagined by creationists,
then why can't the plainer infinity be imagined: Of an always existing
and swirling dust, rubble and churning fires which makes up our lawful,
yet blind universe?
-- Bob Fink
APPENDIX
NOTE: The discussion about "time" itself not
being mentioned in the Bible as needing to be created or "brought
forth" on the days of creation -- brings up the issue of not
just what is in Genesis as having been created, but
what is omitted.
We do see detail about what is created on those days: Land,
plants, seeds, herbs, grass, fruit, light, darkness, fowl/birds, beasts,
cattle, Adam, Eve, rain, clouds, seas, heavens, creeping insects, trees,
moon, sun and mountains. Great things like Light and lesser things
like fowl.
All things that can be seen -- [except for God and the
heavenly windows of the firmament which, in the astronomy of that time,
"opened" -- to explain rain from the unseen waters that were
presumed to be above the firmament. That clouds were water seemed
to be unknown by God and human alike]..
But, as we pointed out, time, which is even more unseen was
not mentioned (in the so-called "word of God") as being
created.
Similarly, we can mention that "air" -- which also cannot
be seen -- was omitted. Although fowl is always mentioned as "fowl
of the air," and air thus recognized as a place for fowl to fly, air
was nowhere mentioned as being created.
People of that time understood air as virtually empty space. To create
air would require the creation of emptiness -- difficult for humans
to concieve, but not for an all-seeing God, right?
Further, we can also mention that marvels like the "ice
caps, snow-plains, glaciers, polar bears, seals, penguins" and their
like, were omitted from what was "brought forth" or created in
the 7 days. This limits Creation to things that lived or existed only
in the geographical area of the Bible's writing. (Snow, ice and frost
were known almost solely from local mountain peaks.)
We know time is very taken for granted without thought by humans --
because it is "always" everywhere. You need to see when
something is not there to measure or notice where it is.
"For example, the tree is not here, it is there." If it was
everywhere, could you see it? Likewise, as time is so everywhere,
it is unseen, like empty air -- and so we could understand that any human
who would be writing a Bible easily would overlook the need for time to
be created -- its absence is inconceivable (by mere mortals). How could
it not be everywhere? Especially to a human in an era of such
little knowledge or thought on the more abstract concepts of science and
physics.
But would an all-knowingGod be one to
overlook the need to create time along with light, darkness
and matter itself?
Like time, we would also understand that humans writing a bible would
overlook air, not knowing back then that air is different
from "empty" or outer space, nor that it ends only miles
above us, and surrounds only the earth. But would a God also not know
this? Wouldn't God need to mention to the copyist of His Holy Word that
air too, like the seas and the ground and living things, needed to be "brought
forth" and created?
And like time, would not a God inform the scribes who were copying
His inspired word that ice and snow at the polar caps, and its cold-weather
creatures -- all needed to be created and mentioned in Genesis -- and
that its creatures and the cold they need had to be brought onto the ark??
True, these things are far away from where Bible copyists wrote their
recall of inspired doctrine -- but the heavens and the unseen "windows"
in, and the unseen water above, the heavenly firmament -- are even further
away -- yet they are mentioned.
Or was God, like the mostly untraveled humans of that day, unaware
of these aspects of the earth?
Surely, when the Biblical Flood comes from the rains, why doesn't the
Bible draw upon these ice caps -- a far, far greater source of potential
massive flooding, if they were melted, than rain would be? Could
it be that humans scribes of the Lordly Word didn't know they were
there at the poles? So instead, they wrote of flooding in such quantity
that it was not realistically possible from "rain" alone, requiring
them to suppose the drawing of water from "above the firmament,"
and from far below the sea-bed -- where, other than water molecules perhaps
bonded within the molten chemistry of lava,. no evidence of available
water can nor does exist.
Fallible humans writing the Bible had virtually no experience with
ice, or very limited.
But no almighty God would have been so limited as geography-bound
mortal authors claiming to write the "words of God." There
are only three mentions of "ice" in the Old Testament (2 in Job,
and 1 in Pps.147), none of them in Genesis. Only 4 more appear in
the New Testament. The Bible reflects itself as being a journal of authors
tied to a very warm climate.
These omissions, not to mention the contradictions, all bespeaketh
of a literature penned, not by a Perfect God, but by fallible, scientifically-illiterate
mortals, flawed and foibled, capable of error in the Bible as in every
other written work authored by mere persons.
Some links: Evolution sites & insights on:
musicology,
ancient music, Neanderthal Flute, music's origins, social evolution, history,
evolution of social brain, collective intelligence, etc.:
1997 Essay, Neanderthal Flute plays notes of do, re,
mi scale, internationally reknowned & featured in mags such
as Scientific American. Site is winner of award from "Cool
Site Central."
material,
the fewest strands necessary, and cross the shortest distances to produce
a nearly weightless, nearly invisible insect trap - the largest and strongest
known structure, considering: the spider's size, that it builds unaided,
and that it must carry and produce all its own building materials.