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The Problem of a Different Past

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dad

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dad

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Just for my own satisfaction, could dad (or anybody else) point me to a Bible passage in which a different past is mentioned?

I'm trying to work out whether it's actually Biblically supported or if it's just Creationist ad hockery.
Can you show us where Adam could live forever today? How about even a thousand years? Can a flood happen with water from above, without too much heat to fry all men from the sheer physics?? These, and many other things tell us that the past of the bible was as different as the future of the bible.
 
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RedAndy

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But you have spoken frequently of a "split" when the old, "different" universe became the modern universe with its modern "physical only" laws. Surely an event as big as this would be documented in the Bible? Only I can't seem to find it.
 
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Valkhorn

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These, and many other things tell us that the past of the bible was as different as the future of the bible.

Only if you must accept the bible as literally true. At least you admit you have to stretch an awful lot of reality to make a literal bible work.
Of course this should tell you something but it hasn't yet. Just think about it for a while...
 
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dad

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A "different future" is described but the "different past" you describe is purely your imagination.
Well, the different future alone rules out so much of so called science, the rest is a pushover! Adam was to live forever, that is different. Period.

There is no evidence of this and even so, like all of your blather it actually explains nothing.
You are no evidence jockey, as we can see. You have nothing on offer for the same past myth. You therefore have no evidence against the waters coming up, as the bible says. So, ......?


Saying no problem and actually explaining something are different things. It is the later that you have totally failed to do.
Blah blah.


It couldn't make sense. It is just another example of your total absurdity. The earth was less densely packed. LOL. The fun thing about debating with is that your never fail to top an absurdity with something even more absurd.
OK, so we'll record the response as 'no inteligent response'. Fine.

Which still completely fails to explain how water somehow percolating through the earth could bring pure salt to the surface and deposit it.
Fails in a PO sense, cause it don't happen now. The state of matter allowed it then.

Each given set of rocks has sets of different daughter elements that date the rocks in agreement with each other. This makes NO SENSE if there was no radioactive decay before your mythical split.
The daughter elements do not date anything. Their presence indicates that the now daughter material was here already. Different rocks had different amounts of different things. What did you expect, some uniform spread of sameness in all rocks of the same materials????

From me "We have evidence that physical laws have been consistent and we have discussed it. You have no evidence that they were different. None. You have it backwards as usual bizarro dad. "
At least I have it.

Perhaps you are not impressed because you are too ignorant of science to understand the evidence or perhaps you are just too lost in your delusions to see how thoroughly your nonsense has been refuted.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Says who? Sounds more like in split.

Why should I consider surrender when you have lost so badly?
OK, fine, be bloody but unbowed.

What others?
Your assumption is just as baseless as mine. Do not pretend otherwise. -wiccanchild
 
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dad

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Only if you must accept the bible as literally true. At least you admit you have to stretch an awful lot of reality to make a literal bible work.
Of course this should tell you something but it hasn't yet. Just think about it for a while...
When Frumy said this

A "different future" is described but the "different past" you describe is purely your imagination.
He refered to the bible. As for stretching this present reality, that wasn't me, I just reported it.
 
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dad

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But you have spoken frequently of a "split" when the old, "different" universe became the modern universe with its modern "physical only" laws. Surely an event as big as this would be documented in the Bible? Only I can't seem to find it.
The great dividing was in the days of Peleg.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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Take notes, Frumy, see, admitting things isn't so hard.
I cannot admit what I have always freely stated.

All known observations were in the known present universe,
Yes, that is the point. We can only experiance this 'known universe'.

try to focus here.
What's to focus on? I am reading the ramblings of a child who seems to have no grasp of independant thought, conventional definitions and the application thereof, or even basic logic.

That is a funny bit of uncoherant babble.
Correction:
2) It is a logical assumption because it is the most probable, thanks to it's supporting evidence, its parsimony, etc.

It is complicated as ***, that's why it takes a life time almost to learn, and even then, most of what they learn is no longer valid with the changes!
Nonsense. All humans are born with instincts that are based on the assumption that the physical laws aren't going to up and change on them. It does not take 'years to learn'. I'd wager that it is your assumption that takes years to grasp (if 'goddidit' is indeed grasping a concept)

After the flood, you mean, or, more specifically after the split. I agree.
Good. Now, tell me why we should discount the conclusion drawn from this?

Try stuffing the universe in a magic hat for us, forget a microscopic speck. Even if you do that, I will believe.
Why? The assumption is that the physical laws are immutable. Why is this impossible?

Not lately, it is too well proven.
Nonsense. It is but one religion among many, with no redeeming features or particularily unique ideologies. It is in no way 'proven'.

Intuition now, is how far you have fallen back in a desperate attempt to paint the same past myth as somewhat scientific! Amazing.
You forget:
Counter-intuitiveness does not constitute counter evidence, but intuitiveness does constitute supporting evidence.

Well, you certainly have berated our beliefs, and the bible, and God, etc, as if you were better. Don't you remember somewhere, saying, for example, that you were better than God??
Indeed. Under my moral code, I am magnificently better than your god and/or the god of the Bible. However, we are not talking about me, we are talking about an assumption.
Tell me how the assumption is sanctimonious.

It is belief based, but no a belief in God.
It is neither. It is an assumption based on human experiance. It is not a faith statement. It makes no mention of theology, so it is unreligious.

"Mythology, mythography, or folkloristics. In these academic fields, a myth (mythos) is a sacred story concerning the origins of the world or how the world and the creatures in it came to have their present form. The active beings in myths are generally gods and heroes. Myths often are said to take place before recorded history begins. "
"A myth, in popular use, is something that is widely believed but false"
"Something that is mythic is thought to contain story elements similar to mythology."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth
The shoe fits. Wear it.[/quote]
Did you even read your own definitions? The last one is simply a etymological tautology, the second requires it to be false (something you have not yet demonstrated, or indeed demonstrable), and it does not a 'sacred story' detailing the origin(s) of the world and/or the creatures therein.

Now you are getting silly.
No, I am merely criticising your statements. You said: [The 'same past' assumption'] is an impossible ... myth based on pure assumption.
It is a first-degree assumption, a fundamentally supported but intrinsically unprovable premise.

The same past is assumed.
I just pray to whatever god is listening that you have the same definition of 'assumption' as me; lord knows you have radical definitions of 'spiritual', 'physical', 'science', 'scientific', and 'evidence'.

Although one could probably list some assumptions like that there was no creator in there somewhere.
The 'same past' assumption may conflict with your personal theology, but it most certainly does not reject all theologies.

In your dreams.
I'm sorry? That is the best retort you can come up with? I simply stated the definition of 'scientifically valid':
It is scientifically valid, since it passes the scientific method.

I don't reject the supposed ancestors of yours. I simply pointed out that my billions of actual, intelligent, real people witnesses were better than your army of worms and other organisms as witnesses!
You have no witnesses, let alone billions! Show me one other person who assumes that the physical laws are mutable and/or have been changed. Show me your billions.

It's wrong. God interacts and angels, and the departed believers. They are seperate from the physical world at the moment. I kid you not.
You heard it here first, folks. Dad, along with his god, trump logic, reason, and de dicto necessary truths. Go back to kindergarten.

No, it has to do with the non physical. I have to tell you this???
OK, so you define the spiritual as 'non-physical'. What, then, do you define as 'physical'?

Either way you shake it, you have no proof and admit it.
And neither do you. Jeez.

What else counts??
Logical probability. Occam's Razor posits that we assume the more probable of two otherwise identicle theories.

Guess you missed it. Whooosh.
No.
I said:
No such thing. The Bible is a religious set of documents of questionable validity. It is is not a 'case', great or otherwise.
You said:
Let me straighten you out there, despite your inabilty to realize it is a case, and the best case on earth. That is the case.

Where, exactly, have you straightened me out? Or, perhaps your idea of correction is to simply state your claim again and again?

How many recorded observations are there from before the split?? None. That negates your point.
Nonsense, it is exactly my point. All we have are observations under unchanging physical laws. The only reason you assume the past operated under some different physical laws is because it is the onoly way to keep your Bible from being disproved. The Bible cannot be literally true under our current physical laws, so you simply reject them.

No, we are the forever crowd, that is set free from the box of death.
Quite.

Fair enough, In Israel, God's people, in the old testament,
Way to reject your own sacred text there, dad. All of the Old Testament was written by/for your god's people. Should we reject it then, since it's not for us?

Did they gallop all over creation killing pagan sodomites as well?? No.
Not the point. The Bible explicitly states that practicing homosexuals should be killed. It does not say, 'Oh, this only applies to the Israeli Jew, and is negated once Emmanuel is born'.

Does that old stuff apply after Jesus? No.
Why not? Are you saying that the Bible negates itself?

Nope. It was about a 100 years after that in the days of Peleg, when the earth was divided. You are close, though.
And how do you know that? Also, if it wasn't the flood that changed the laws of physics, then what did?

We cannot have a reasonable discussion about anything in your 'different past' scenario, so I'll stop here.

He resorted to a flood, because man was so bad, they had to be stopped. That was a good thing. He also saved the men and animals, so we could start all over.
No, I meant, why a flood? Why not just pop all the bad and naughty men out of existance?

It can be, and often is.
Show me one common assumption that is unscientific (not the 'same past' assumption; it goes without saying, but I wouldn't put it past you to use it).

Ok, thanks.

Your assumption is just as baseless as mine. Do not pretend otherwise.
--you
You have, once again, missed the point. Oh well.

Tell me why you have no science to support a same past?
If you refuse to answer my questions, I refuse to answer yours.

You think that baseless => unscientific. Why?
 
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Contracelsus

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Same past guessing the past isn't science. The fact remains that the different past and future are much simpler. Much much. Very much.

I am guessing you, like me and many others, don't really know what counts as science anyway.


4400 years, and the bible supports it at 100 years after the flood. The earth was divided, or split in the days of Peleg, the same time as Babel. What support do you have?

Ya see, Dad, this is called making a supportable argument from a philosophical stance. You have a good philosophical stance which you refuse to adhere to. You have the clear stance of the unknowable past. A fine, honorable, empiricism. But you don't really understand your own argument so you don't adhere to it in a form that is internally consistent. You want the cake and to eat it too. You either have to provide the scientists here (and this is clearly not me and you) with evidence for why they should:

1. throw away all the obvious data they have for a same-past going back millions of years

2. throw away a parsimonious explanation in favor of a more convoluted explanation supported only by the Bible (which itself is of unknown origin)


Trying to sillify the different past doesn't work. We know the state of the pastfor many many centuries. We know lifespans, and growth rates, and light, and etc etc. You can't wish all these things, including history away.

Sillifying the "Different Past" is the last thing I am doing, I am merely pointing out that it is equally supportable. We have evidence going back more than 4400BC of things being the same as today. If I recall there are even some Sumerian or other societies with records going back more than that!

So what I have done here is to point out that the strict empiricism you insist on dosing the scientists telling them their assumptions are as unsupported as yours is that your assumptions also must suffer when put to the similar test.

Sure all assumptions about an unknowable past are unsupported, but why does that make one hypothesis equal to any other? Some hypotheses are more supported than others! In this case the unknowable past is more supported....

hey! Why am I doing this? You aren't going to change your stance and the scientists can throw data at you all day!

I'm going back to my 165 year old earth hypothesis! I hope you will ultimately see the truth and join me here. Until then let's just agree that you are off by an order of magnitude or two and call it a win for my Ultra-Young-Earth!
 
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RedAndy

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The great dividing was in the days of Peleg.
I'm sorry, dad. You appear to have misunderstood me. Let me rephrase my request:

You have repeatedly asserted that you have Biblical evidence for the "split" that separates the past from the "physical-only" present. Can you give me a Bible quote that refers to this split?
 
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dad

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I am guessing you, like me and many others, don't really know what counts as science anyway.
It isn't a big mystery. If something is really unsupported you cab bet it it not good science.




...You have the clear stance of the unknowable past. A fine, honorable, empiricism. But you don't really understand your own argument so you don't adhere to it in a form that is internally consistent. You want the cake and to eat it too.
The past is knowable. The far past is not knowable by PO science. The last several thousand years are.

You either have to provide the scientists here (and this is clearly not me and you) with evidence for why they should:

1. throw away all the obvious data they have for a same-past going back millions of years
They have none actually, they only assumed they did. Zero.

2. throw away a parsimonious explanation in favor of a more convoluted explanation supported only by the Bible (which itself is of unknown origin)
God wrote it by proxy, it is of very well known origin. In fact, probably more well known than any other book on earth.
The bible account is simple enough for a child to understand. Your complicated, constantly changing, creation challenging, clever, contrived, convoluted, contrary, collection of crafty claims can't convince me.


Good, dig a little deeper, and see what the dates are based on.

So what I have done here is to point out that the strict empiricism you insist on dosing the scientists telling them their assumptions are as unsupported as yours is that your assumptions also must suffer when put to the similar test.
Science supports neither a same or different past, sorry that is news to you. Remain ignorant of the future and past, or look elsewhere, I guess, is the best advice I can give to help you there.

hey! Why am I doing this? You aren't going to change your stance and the scientists can throw data at you all day!
Not about a same past they can't, any more than you can, get over it.
 
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dad

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dad

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See above.
 
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dad

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The Lady Kate

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Gen 10:25 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided;

"to divide, split
  1. (Niphal) to be split, be divided
  2. (Piel)
    1. to split, cleave
    2. to divide
http://www.studylight.org/isb/view.cgi?number=06385

And you think this refers to your Physical/Spiritual "split" because...?

It seems that something which so fundamentally and phenomonally changed the nature of the universe deserves more than a single verse, vaguely mentioning it in passing... were the Bible authors poor writers?
 
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Contracelsus

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The past is knowable. The far past is not knowable by PO science. The last several thousand years are.

As I stated before you have a really good core argument here, but you don't seem to really understand it, so you keep dropping the ball here on it...


God wrote it by proxy, it is of very well known origin. In fact, probably more well known than any other book on earth.


Dad, this simply is not true. We have no idea who wrote much of it, it appears to have been written by several different authors in the Pentateuch alone. As for the Torah it wasn't codified until after/during the Babylonian exile. There is precious little evidence for a united Davidic/Solomonic Israel, let alone the Exodus or even an Israelite coordinated invasion of Canaan. Much of what we "know" before 1 and 2 Kings is possibly "myth". The book of Deuteronomy was probably the book that was "mysteriously found" in the Temple during Josiah's reign, which means we really don't know who wrote it but it probably wasn't even written around the purported time of Moses (and we have no real evidence for an historical Moses, let alone Abraham!)

So indeed we don't really know much about where the Bible came from.

As for the New Testament, well the earliest manuscript we have is a fragment of Galatians which is dated to the SECOND CENTURY AD. We only _think_ the earliest Gospel (Mark) was written about 70 AD. There are numerous alterations to the text of the Bible as it was copied and re-copied and re-re-copied (evidence which has been discussed ad nauseam on this forum), so no we don't really know where the Bible came from, or who penned it or who changed it. We have countless apocryphal texts which were decided on centuries later.

If you want to count this as firm evidence for a scientific discussion of any sort, you clearly are even less aware of what counts as science than I am, which is pretty weak.

The bible account is simple enough for a child to understand. Your complicated, constantly changing, creation challenging, clever, contrived, convoluted, contrary, collection of crafty claims can't convince me.

Are you really Jesse Jackson? You're alarming alacrity of alliterative accusations astounds me!

Science supports neither a same or different past, sorry that is news to you. Remain ignorant of the future and past, or look elsewhere, I guess, is the best advice I can give to help you there.

Dad, no one can get help from you. Your starting down the road of Empiricism. It is a noble effort trod by a geat philosopher who came before you. However you need to work a little harder on this.

Even the most brilliant philosophers had the humility to learn. Your argument is a good one, but you have to take it all the way. I can't do that for you. Only _you_ can commit to your own argument.


Not about a same past they can't, any more than you can, get over it.

I don't want to get over it. I find this version of "debate" entertaining and fun in a prurient fashion.

Your peurile debating skills usually result in some of the most interesting posts on here and lots of fun to read.

Your constant claim of "distant" past as somehow different from "somewhat less than distant" past is fascinating. You have taken philosophy and stood it upon its head and kicked it in the face. Bravo. Few would so proudly defend the wholly indefensible as fiercely as you and for that you should be commended.

So, no I'm not going to "get over it". I, and most others on here, will gladly hammer into your posts a modicum of logic every so often. Ultimately you may learn something.

There are many here from whom you can learn. I think there are many people here who are very smart and can teach you a thing or two. You just need to open your ears and listen to the still-small voice. I'd quote Anselm : "I hold it to be a failure in duty if after we have become steadfast in our faith we do not strive to understand what we believe."

But I bet you'll call him a "Big Zero" and a "whiner" as you did with Origen earlier. But do try googling St. Anselm, he really is important in the christian faith. I know you won't or can't but I bet he could teach you something too!
 
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Contracelsus

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Lady K has you here as well. Granted it could be read this way, but we are talking fundamental and important. But further, WHO wrote about Peleg and the Split? Was it J,E,P, or R? Who were these people? Why do you believe them? How do you KNOW they were inspired by God?

Unsupportable baseless claims, Dad. Be careful of these.

Remember Anselm again:

"I hold it to be a failure in duty if after we have become steadfast in our faith we do not strive to understand what we believe."
 
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dad

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Because a lot of things happened around that time. The languages were divided, and that is a symptom of a lack of the spiritual. In Acts, when the spirit was added, all men in a crowd understood in their own tongue. Also, the tower of Babel, they apparently was being built up to the spiritual level, so it must have been close at hand. After this it is seperate. Then there was the 120 year dire warning straight from the mouth of the Almighty that something big was going to happen. That was 120 years before this time as well.
The warning was right after the verses talking about angels marrying the sons of god, by the way, showing clear as a bell it was pre split.

Then, with science, we know the continents seperated as well, where else can we place that but pre split, where the heat won't kill all men? And the flood canopy, rings, partial canopy, or whatever it was, same story, impossible in today's post split world. Same with getting water off the planet after the flood, and some things like this.

The, we look at the bible saying that a new heavens is coming, so we know the arrangement is temporary.
 
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