Athetotheist wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 9:28 pm
I think what it refers to was nobody understood what the flood would be like. It was totally beyond anybody's guess of how catastrophic it was.
You have nothing but thin air from which to pull that conclusion. In the context of their continued eating, drinking, marrying, reveling and [by extension] baby-making, they don't suspect a thing.
I presented multiple additional translations to also support it. And how would they know how catastrophic the flood would be? Even we don't fully know after the fact.
That's because, as with the case of the flood, there's so much evidence against it.
No. It's because of the bias against anything that remotely comes close to the Bible.
otseng wrote: ↑Sat Aug 15, 2009 10:13 am
When Bertz theorized a cataclysmic flood to explain the Scablands, geologists automatically rejected it, even though he had plenty of evidence for it. No geologist was going to accept anything that would confirm the Bible. It was only until Pardee came along and proposed an ice dam as the cause did geologists accept a local flood explanation of the Scablands. However, Bertz had much more evidence for the flood than did Pardee for an ice dam. It was only until a non-Biblical explanation could be offered would it be accepted.
The very word "Catastrophism" was heinous in the ears of geologists. To
think in terms of massive, precipitous changes (beyond the occasional
earthquake or volcano) was unacceptable, and the very idea of a sudden,
colossal flood smacked too much of Biblical thinking, of a return to
Noah, the ark, and the fifteen cubit depth (22.5 feet) of water which
drowned the world (Genesis 7:20). It was a step backwards, a betrayal
of all that geological science had fought to gain.
It was heresy of the worst order.
http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/t_or ... tz_re.html
What's supposed to be the same is right there in the text: the eating, the drinking, the marrying, the reveling.....the general disbelief in the warning.
Yes, they didn't believe in the warning.
Would anyone with that attitude be able to warn their week-old baby of anything just before it happened?
I thought we just agreed babies cannot be "warned".
What I claim God is like is what is described in the Bible and no more. Anything beyond that is either speculation or a strawman.
Why can't a Muslim claim the same thing about how the Quran describes Allah just as legitimately?
Muslims can claim whatever they want. But this thread is not to discuss Islam or any other religion.
The issue is what skeptics of the Bible claim. I would assert the vast majority of arguments skeptics bring up against the Bible are based on either inerrancy or omnipotence. And I've argued, they are to be rejected:
*
Is it necessary for the Bible to be inerrant?
*
Is the Christian God omnipotent?
Now, I don't fault the skeptics for assuming these things. These are commonly believed and asserted by Christians. But after diving deeply into the Bible for the past few years through translating the Bible and debating on the forum for 20 years, I'm convinced of my position and willing to challenge these commonly held assumptions.
What issue have you brought up that I haven't addressed?
You don't address any of my issues by deflecting to "skeptics". That's the point I was making.
If I've eventually been addressing your issues, even if I talk about skeptics, it doesn't nullify me having addressed your issues.
"Jusification" of objective morality is irrelevant. If everyone has objective morality, then everyone's morality is just as objective as yours.
Some philosophical musings first...
If anybody claims they have objective morality and they have no viable justification for it, then it's a faith claim. How is it any different than a Christian claiming the Bible is the word of God and then fail to provide any justification for it?
Though I claim all people have objective morality, it does not mean everyone's morals are fully identical. It means we all have an intuitive sense of right and wrong and how people ought to act, even if we cannot fully articulate it. We have a sense that killing babies is wrong. We have a sense that justice should happen. We have a sense people should be good. We even have a sense that subjective morality is wrong.
Though we have objective morality, ethics is still a complicated subject. It even has its own branch of study in philosophy and people specialize in the study of ethics.
I don't think moral philosophy can ever fully explain our internal sense of objective morality. Rather, it is more our internal objective morality is the foundational basis for moral philosophy.
OK, back to what you're getting at...
Though I claim all people have objective morality, it does not mean whatever moral judgments people make are all equally valid. Though we can agree in the generals, we can have disagreements in the specifics. We all agree people should be good, but there can be disagreement on what is good.
The contradiction is when you accuse skeptics----and non-biblical theists like myself----of having "no justification" for our objective morality and then use that as an excuse to dismiss our objectively moral findings as just our "opinion".
What I'm highlighting is the inconsistency of a worldview, not arguing people do not have objective moral values. Any religion that believes in a creator God that instills in humans the image of God has a rational basis for objective morality. Other than that, no other viable justification has been offered. To be rationally consistent, if one claims to have objective morality, then one should believe in a God as described in the Bible.
You're going to have to paint a picture for me as to how a global deluge would be necessary for the advent of our modern appliances.
I'd be glad to sometime, but we are getting really off track from the discussion on morality.
I don't believe in Ussher's dates
His dates are the Bible's dates.
Though Ussher is the one most commonly cited, there are actually many others that have also calculated the date of creation.
and I don't see how that figure was calculated.
Ussher began his calculation by adding the ages of the twenty-one generations of people of the Hebrew-derived Old Testament, beginning with Adam and Eve.
I'm talking about the "14 million+ people" figure. But again, it's irrelevant since it doesn't matter if it was 14 thousand or 14 billion people.
But whatever number was the population is a moot point since nobody believed that there would be any impending danger.
But wasn't everyone supposed to be warned so everyone could repent?
As I've argued, I believe they were warned. Though an argument can be made if they were sufficiently warned. Just because someone builds a giant billboard saying the world will end in 2024 doesn't prove it will actually happen.
The bribe of letting babies into heaven after unjustly drowning them.
Where was this bribe stated?
You stated it.
otseng wrote:And when the babies did die, since they were not sinful, they'd go to heaven.
I did not state it was a "bribe".
The only ones not "spinning" it are those who are right. Can we know for sure who they are?
A major theme of the Bible is sin and judgment. So, the narrative of the Canaanite conquest is consistent with this. And as I've pointed out, even the Israelites suffered extinction because of their sins.
Because I don't vex myself to define God, you assume that your morality is more objective than mine? Only otseng's concept of God can be the correct one?
I don't claim anyone's morality is more objective than another's.
What I am pointing out is whatever worldview you have, it has less explanatory power than mine in regards to morality.
"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
---Andre Gide
To be clear, I do not claim to have the truth. But I do claim to have found the source of truth.
Can you then turn around and say that atheists don't have souls because they have no "justification" for having souls?
Do atheists claim they have souls?
It's also possible that the proliferation of flood stories came from an originating story rather than from an originating event.
I disagree, but want to get back to morality instead of the flood. As I've pointed out, I have many threads on the flood and people can go through those.
