Why worry about global warming? (2)

[serenity2517]

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[Chalnoth]

We do not have to think about it.

Thank you for so accurately and succinctly summarizing the creationist position.

Because, you know, if you did think, for just two seconds, you'd realize it was nonsensical.

 

[Saving Hawaii]

We know now that Noah's flood was a local flood. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates river floods often and there could be a flood there right now.

I always liked the phrase said by some old Catholic priest who remarked that "The Bible is true and some of it actually happened." In some quixotic quest to make sure that all of the Bible literally happened, at least in some way vaguely resembling the actual stories, you're destroying the message and the truth. What, if any, of the lessons from the story of the flood do we still have if it turns out that the Great Flood was just some lame overflow in the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin? You destroy the Truth of the Bible in some vain attempt to claim that everything actually happened kinda sorta.

 

[Jazer]

Because, you know, if you did think, for just two seconds, you'd realize it was nonsensical.

I am sure that your version of creationism is nonsense. That is why you do not represent God. Good He is able to make it clear who represents Him and who does not represent the Living God. Because the Bible makes one thing very clear: You will be without excuse.

 

[Jazer]

You destroy the Truth of the Bible in some vain attempt to claim that everything actually happened kinda sorta.

Not me, science. You destroy the truth when you cling to the traditions of man. Jesus warns us about people like you. If you want to say there is a conflict between science and the Bible that is up to you. If you still believe in a world wide flood then you have not studied and you have not done your homework.

Let us start with JUST the pacific islands. Each island has it's own biodiversity. Did Noah go to every one of those islands pick up those animals and then take them back after the flood? No, that is not possible and neither is a world wide flood. The kangaroos were in Australia before the flood and they were there after the flood. You have to look at the natural fossil record that God gives us.

Do you even know the year of Noah's flood? Do you know anything about the history of the world during that period of time? Have you done any research or study on this at all? Or are you just going to say science is a liar without even looking into it and checking the facts and putting it to the test.

the Great Flood was just some lame overflow

You have a long, long, long way to go before you understand your Bible and what the flood was all about.

 

[Juvenal]

What, if any, of the lessons from the story of the flood do we still have if it turns out that the Great Flood was just some lame overflow in the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin?

I can sympathize with a Christian wishing to save their part of the flood story, but not at the expense of everyone else's. In its time, it has told a lesson about overpopulation to the Mesopotamians, about following covenantal laws to the Jews, and about worshiping one God alone without partners to the Muslims.

And then there's the story it tells to the secular audience, of myths — in the exact sense of the word — carefully preserved and written down, borrowed, retold, repurposed, revised, and reinvorgorated by successive societies. It informs historians and religious studies scholars, and adds its richness to the humanities.

We have all of this if the flood was just "some lame overflow."

Sounds like a bargain to me.

As ever, Jesse

 

[Juvenal]

Because the Bible makes one thing very clear: You will be without excuse.

Actually, that's Paul, writing to the Romans.

It's the same Paul who told the Galatians that even if he was contradicted by an angel sent down from heaven to do so, they should continue to believe him.

Paul had a tendency to engage in histrionics.

As ever, Jesse

 

[Jazer]

I can sympathize with a Christian wishing to save their part of the flood story,

The problem is that there is a huge, huge, huge amount of evidence that the Flood was NOT a world wide flood. We are not talking about a tiny little discrepancy here. At first the evidence comes from people who were Christians trying to prove there was a world wide flood. They found out that Noah's flood was not a world wide flood.

If there was a world wide flood, then everyone alive today would be an ancestor of Noah and that is just not the case. The evidence that God gives us in the DNA indicates otherwise.

 

[Juvenal]

The problem is that there is a huge, huge, huge amount of evidence that the Flood was NOT a world wide flood. We are not talking about a tiny little discrepancy here. At first the evidence comes from people who were Christians trying to prove there was a world wide flood. They found out that Noah's flood was not a world wide flood.

History of the Collapse of "Flood Geology" and a Young Earth

From the mid-seventeenth (c. 1650 AD) to the mid-eighteenth century (c. 1750 AD), a range of British mathematicians, naturalists, and clerics from the Church of England attempted to demonstrate that belief in a global biblical deluge was perfectly compatible with extrabiblical knowledge and the latest theoretical developments in mechanistic science. They maintained that the fact that such a deluge had occurred could now be established not only on the basis of biblical authority but also on mathematical and scientific grounds. Their various theories reflected different conceptions of natural theology, the roles of science and theology, and the bearing of Scripture on the interpretation of nature. Their diluvial cosmogonies provided a mainstream scientific paradigm that stimulated hard thought, biblical exegesis, widespread geological observation, and some of the earliest geological experiments.​

If there was a world wide flood, then everyone alive today would be an ancestor of Noah and that is just not the case. The evidence that God gives us in the DNA indicates otherwise.

I've checked out anthropology books from the turn of the 20th century, serious tomes that mixed carefully measured physical anthropology with maps overlaid with the respective spreading out of the Hamite, Semite, and Japhethite branches of humanity.

Everyone took biblical anthropology seriously back then. They didn't have The Genographic Project to tell them otherwise. They had only their reading of the Bible to inform them, and they did their best to make it fit. Likewise, the biblical authors had the Mesopotamian flood mythology to accommodate. This was as close as early Iron I Canaanites could come to real history.

As ever, Jesse

 

[Self Improvement]

I am sure that your version of creationism is nonsense. That is why you do not represent the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Good He is able to make it clear who represents Him and who does not represent the Living Flying Spaghetti Monster. Because the Flying Spaghetti Monster makes one thing very clear: You will be without Pasta.

Fixed it for you.

 

[Chalnoth]

I am sure that your version of creationism is nonsense. That is why you do not represent God. Good He is able to make it clear who represents Him and who does not represent the Living God. Because the Bible makes one thing very clear: You will be without excuse.

Hey, thanks for the threat of eternal torture! Really appreciate it...

 

[Chalnoth]

I can sympathize with a Christian wishing to save their part of the flood story, but not at the expense of everyone else's. In its time, it has told a lesson about overpopulation to the Mesopotamians, about following covenantal laws to the Jews, and about worshiping one God alone without partners to the Muslims.

I don't see how it was a message about overpopulation. Always seemed more to me to be a message about how Yahweh is a jerk who will kill you if you step out of line.

 

[Ration]

I don't see how it was a message about overpopulation. Always seemed more to me to be a message about how Yahweh is a jerk who will kill you if you step out of line.

*Cough* Wrath *Cough*

 

[mzungu]

We do not have to think about it.

Thank you for proving my point!

 

[Juvenal]

I don't see how it was a message about overpopulation. Always seemed more to me to be a message about how Yahweh is a jerk who will kill you if you step out of line.

The flood story is far older than Yahweh, who emerged with the other West Semitic deities in Iron I. It traces back through the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Akkadians to the Sumerians. In its earliest form in the Epic of Ziusudra the rationale for the flood is lost due to poor preservation of the tablets, but even then the tale was associated with a creation story and a list of patriarchs.

One Akkadian tale features the hero Atra-Hasis, who appears on one version of the Sumerian King List as the last ruler of Shurrupak before the flood. In this version, the flood is used as a measure of population control, to quiet the din of voices in the land. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood hero is named Utnapishtim, who was granted immortality. The focus of this flood story is on Gilgamesh's failed quest for immortality.

The biblical counterpart has its own focus, but the loss of life can't so dismissively be laid at Yahweh's feet. It was likely part of the story for two thousand years before finding its way into the Bible, and not an element the biblical authors were free to abandon.

As ever, Jesse

 

[Chalnoth]

The biblical counterpart has its own focus, but the loss of life can't so dismissively be laid at Yahweh's feet. It was likely part of the story for two thousand years before finding its way into the Bible, and not an element the biblical authors were free to abandon.

Why? It isn't like they had to put the story in there in the first place. Nor did they have to explicitly say that it was because of "man's wickedness" (as if that were a valid excuse to kill almost everybody). This supposed lesson is also very consistent with what we see elsewhere in the Bible.

 

[RickG]

This thread was split automatically after 1000 replies and this thread has been automatically created.
The old thread automatically closed is here: "Why worry about global warming?"

Ok! So now maybe we can get back on topic and actually discuss "Why worry about global warming". What about it folks? Let's start discussing the topic.

Why worry? Let's look at the science.

Melting of Arctic lakes leading methane bubbling (Walter 2007)
Leakage of methane from the East Siberian Shelf seabed sediments (Shakhova 2008)
Escape of methane gas from the seabed along the West Spitsbergen continental margin (Westbrook 2009)
Rainforests releasing CO2 as regions become drier (Saleska 2009)
Oxygen poor ocean zones are growing (Stramma 2008, Shaffer 2009)
Decline in global phytoplankton (Boyce 2010)
Decline in global net primary production - the amount of carbon absorbed by plants (Zhao 2010)
Substantial negative impacts to marine ecosystems (Orr 2005, Fabry 2008, Kroeker 2010)
Inhibiting plankton development, disruption of carbon cycle (Turley 2005)
Increased mortalities of sea urchins (Miles 2007)
Threat to fish populations (Munday 2010)
Contribution to rising sea levels (Pfeffer 2008, Vermeer 2009)
Hundreds of millions displaced within this century (Dasgupta 2009)

 

[mzungu]

Ok! So now maybe we can get back on topic and actually discuss "Why worry about global warming". What about it folks? Let's start discussing the topic.

Why worry? Let's look at the science.

Melting of Arctic lakes leading methane bubbling (Walter 2007)
Leakage of methane from the East Siberian Shelf seabed sediments (Shakhova 2008)
Escape of methane gas from the seabed along the West Spitsbergen continental margin (Westbrook 2009)
Rainforests releasing CO2 as regions become drier (Saleska 2009)
Oxygen poor ocean zones are growing (Stramma 2008, Shaffer 2009)
Decline in global phytoplankton (Boyce 2010)
Decline in global net primary production - the amount of carbon absorbed by plants (Zhao 2010)
Substantial negative impacts to marine ecosystems (Orr 2005, Fabry 2008, Kroeker 2010)
Inhibiting plankton development, disruption of carbon cycle (Turley 2005)
Increased mortalities of sea urchins (Miles 2007)
Threat to fish populations (Munday 2010)
Contribution to rising sea levels (Pfeffer 2008, Vermeer 2009)
Hundreds of millions displaced within this century (Dasgupta 2009)

That pretty much covers it!

 

[RickG]

One thing most people don't realize that accompanies climate change is not only the migration of climatic zones, but the acidification of the oceans. At the bottom of the food chain are plankton and foraminifera which have chitonous exoskeletons. Lowering of the oceans pH is dissolving these exoskeletons making it more difficult for them to survive. The same is true for the larger shelled organisms.

 

[Jazer]

Hey, thanks for the threat of eternal torture! Really appreciate it...

I never said anything about "eternal torture". Do you always read things in that are not there? I believe God is a God of absolute Justice. He scales are perfectly balanced. Some people believe that our suffering is right here in this life. There are hospitals and prisons full of people who suffer. They use to believe that to be sick was to be out of balance with nature. Even there are people that believe in Karma. What comes around goes around. They believe there are universal laws that are a part of nature and the universe we live in. Paul in the Bible talks about sowing and reaping. The seeds you sow are what your going to harvest.