HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ds0007@buhao (Dale Skiba)
Subject: Re: Differing accounts of creation in Genesis
Organization: Medtronic, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 03:21:06 GMT

starpath@bard.MIT.EDU (David E. Hollingsworth) writes:
: In article <1992Sep24.151622.7188@medtron.medtronic.com> ds0007@buhao  
: (Dale Skiba) writes:
: > I think the second account can be viewed like when you ask
: > a kid "what did you do today".  The kid probably will answer
: > things in a fairly random order.
: 
: 	God speaks like a child?  (Even understanding that, thousands of  
: years later, people would still be looking at the words, proclaiming that  
: 'It's in His book, it must be true, just as it states it!'?)
: 

Of course not.  But the writers of this book were a nomadic tribe
that may appear to write quite childlike compared with today's
standards.  And thousands of years later, the people who blindly
proclaim 'It's in His book, it must be true, just as it (literally)
states it!' appear even more childish.

I sometimes see an order of events hinted in the second account,
but because the wording is so vauge, I give it the benefit of the
doubt.  We seem to be grasping at straws to prove that this is a
real contradiction.  This seems to be the case for most "Biblical
contradictions".  However, I do admit that there are a few truely
nasty ones.  (for example the death of Judas Iscariot.  No
Fundamentalist has given me a good answer for that one.)

--
Dale Skiba
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu (trygve lode)
Subject: Re: Real issues for Antti
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 23:32:04 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.155024.14018@cs.joensuu.fi> asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen) writes:
>kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub) writes:
>>  Now math, is that Empirical or not?  None of the concepts expressed in math
>>allows any kind of direct observation until it is applied to the real world.  On
>>the other hand, mathematics is probably the only field where one can prove
>>things in the strictest sense of the word prove.
>
>	You answered your own question. If I have one apple and then another,
>	that makes two apples, mathematically 1 + 1 = 2. The rest of math is
>	just applications of this rule. Very empiric. 

Terrific!  Could you demonstrate empirically the truth or falsehood of
the continuum hypothesis?
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: On the documentary hypothesis
Date: 5 Oct 92 15:16:01 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)

In article <1992Oct4.162629@IASTATE.EDU>, kv07@IASTATE (Warren Vonroeschlaub) writes:
>  The hypothesis was entirely based on the observation that the
>Penteauch alternates between 4 distinct writing styles.

It is based on more than that.  The styles correlate pretty strongly
with different aspects of the historical books.

>The only people who argue about it are the people who never bothered
>to look at the evidence.

That is simply false.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Here we go again (answer
Date: 29 Sep 92 02:20:09 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <717648991.1@iphase.fidonet.org> Ken.Stuckas@f2020.n112.z1.fidonet.org (Ken Stuckas) writes:
|Since you seem to be in touch with the subject, I have a question. I just
|read seven books on evolution/creationism and two were biographies of Darwin.
|  In the books there is constant talk about how Darwin's  5-year voyage
|produced specimens that were periodically shipped back to England.  The
|scientists of the early 1800's were able to look at preserved specimens and
|determine that they were or were not the same species.  I thought that the
|test for species is whether or not two mammals, for instance could reproduce
|and have fertile offspring.  ...
|How did these scientists determine species?

1. This is the *modern* definition.  It had not been fully developed in the
early 1800's  (though the precursers of it were already being considered).

2. An expert in a particular group quickly learns to the typical sorts of
variability within the group, and can thus make very accurate estimates
as to whether two forms could be part of the same species.  (This is only
estimation, and is not 100% reliable).
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: "Hydrological sorting"
Date: 2 Oct 92 19:44:09 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque


From: macrae@pandora.geo.ucalgary.ca (R. Andrew MacRae)

In article <1992Sep28.223933.9207@alc.com> stassen@alc.com (Chris  
>>Stassen) writes: 

>>>Lionel Tun writes:
>Lionel Tun writes:    

>>> All [the fossil record] shows is that different forms of life
>>>appear in the fossil record at different _layers_!

>>This is at least different from Lionel's original claim, which was
>>that the fossil record was merely a figment of "evolutionists'"
>>imaginations.  Is this a half-hearted admission of error, Mr. Tun?            

   

>No. The two statements are entirely compatible. To say that     

>fossils appear in various layers is one thing. But to piece     

>together assorted layers from round the world and assemble
>a supposed historical timescale is entirely another.
   

	The layers are not pieced together haphazardly, they are put  
together using the principles of superposition and cross-cutting  
relationships.  You can use these principles to interconnect the  
sequence of events world-wide - totally independent of fossils.  This  
was done for a long time (18th century), before people realized that  
when you put the sequence of geologic events together, you see the  
same sequence of fossils within the rocks worldwide (there are gaps,  
but the _order_ was not mixed up - you do not find dinosaurs before  
fish).  It was only at this point that people realized fossils could  
be used to indicate time (i.e. William Smith - biostratigraphy).  In  
fact, William Smith first applied this idea to the rocks in southern  
England.  You should take a look some time.  Of course, even  
biostratigraphy does not depend upon evolutionary theory to be a  
valid technique.  The order of first appearance of fossils is an  
empircal observation, that has been tested using the principles of  
superposition and cross-cutting relationships many many times.
	Creation "scientists" have proposed "hydrological sorting" as  
a theory, but the order it predicts (dense, large at bottom, smaller,  
lighter at top) is _wrong_.  Even if this theory were correct, the  
sequence of fossils in the rocks would still indicate time (although  
it would be time during the "Flood" :-).  So have creation  
"scientists" come up with a detailed "Flood chronology" yet?

	-Andrew
From: isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)
Subject: Re: pi=3 (was Re: Abuse By t.o Regulars
Summary: only if you're a creationist.
Reply-To: isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)
Organization: The Aurora Group
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 18:25:54 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.165653.12051@lsil.com> gascan@dcst16.dc writes:
>Show me a circle ten units across with a circumfrence of
>30 units and I'll accept creationism.

The answer to this one is easy, and it is actually evidence _against_
creationism, not for it.

Simply draw the circle with a very dull pen, and measure it with a ruler
with extremely poor precision.

Your mistake in analyzing the Chronicles passage is to assume that it is
using well-defined mathematical terms, not the fuzzy speech of people
who don't care much about the details in the first place.  Just like
Genesis isn't meant to be a science textbook.  Of course, if you are a
Creationist who believes that Genesis is accurate in all the details,
then, to be consistent, you must accept that pi = 3 as well.
-- 
Mark Isaak           "Every generation thinks it has the answers, and every
isaak@aurora.com      generation is humbled by nature." - Philip Lubin
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Re: Favorite astronomer jokes (time to visit the funny farm)
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 02:25:53 GMT

And I thought Gary Stollman was insane :-)

-- 
------          Join the Pythagorean Reform Church!               .
\    /        Repent of your evil irrational numbers             . .
 \  /   and bean eating ways. Accept 10 into your heart!        . . .
  \/   Call the Pythagorean Reform Church BBS at 508-793-9568  . . . .
From: lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Observations
Date: 30 Sep 92 12:08:31 GMT
Organization: City University, London

In article <1992Sep29.062741.4401@desire.wright.edu> sbishop@desire.wright.edu writes:
>> You just need to be at the right place at the right time. There
>> are numerous examples of withered arms and legs being grown back
>> or re-created by God. Check out one of these maybe.
>> 
>
>After many years of attending fundamental churches I NEVER saw anything
>that could be considered a miracle.  I DID see things that people claimed
>were miracles, none of them were.  Including the 'miraculous' (or so claimed)
>healing of my own mother.  (Who died two weeks later from the 'cured' cancer.)
>I never saw the blind see, or any withered arm or leg being grown back or
>even anyone able to toss their glasses away.  
>Have YOU actually seen someone grow an arm or leg back?  I don't think so.
>These type of claims are always a long distance away and totally unknown
>people.  Sorta like World Weekly News claims of Elvis Sightings or babies
>born from alien fathers.

At the Stoneleigh Bible Week in Stoneleigh, Coventry, England in
August this year, there were numerous miracles. There were about
10,000 christians gathered for a week. Mahesh Chavda amongst
others preached and asked people to come to the front to be
healed. He described the people and their symptoms. We are waiting
for all the details to come in, because it was suggested that
written testimonies were handed in, backed up by the person's
elders that a healind did in fact take place. To avoid just the
sort of problems you mention.
I can report on this more if you are interested and if I get more
details.
BTW Mahesh has an international ministry, and said that miracles
tended to happen more in 3rd world countries where faith is
simpler. However he said God is going to do it in UK and the USA
and other technological countries real soon now. Stay tuned.


>Sue


--
Lionel Tun   (lionel@cs.city.ac.uk)
Vision Group, City University, London, EC1V 0HB. 071-477 8000 x 3889
From: markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Question for Creationists
Date: 29 Sep 92 15:09:54 GMT
Organization: ESL Inc., Sunnyvale, CA

In article <1992Sep28.170643.14110@st-andrews.ac.uk>
mrl@st-andrews.ac.uk (  Michael Ladomery) writes:

>In article <1457@esl.ESL.COM>
>markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen) writes:

>>Circular arguments do exist for a majority of people; I have not
>>contradicted myself or sidestepped the issue.  I've clarified my
>>position that many people have "faith" in science and the scientist
>>much like many people have faith in religious leaders.

>I have trouble understanding your analogy. I thought, BTW, that
>religious people had faith in God, in the scriptures etc etc, not
>necessarily in the "religious leaders."

What is the difference between faith in the scriptures and faith in
religious leaders?  The scriptures were written by religious leaders
who are now dead and we have some that are alive now.  I see no
difference.  Faith in God requires one to do some independant research
to find out if God exists, otherwise one has faith in a religious
leader that said that God exists.

>What are the "shrines" of science? The "temples" of science? In what
>way does science claim to deal with the spiritual, whatever the
>spiritual is? It doesn't. Therefore I really think we have a problem
>of incommensurability here.

Religion is not the same as science.  Religion is an organized forum
for performing specific acts.  Science does not claim to deal with the
spiritual, but to describe the Universe.  God created this Universe
and thus Science seeks to understand what God did.

>>Look around at all the people who take science on faith.  They
>>have no understanding at all of the scientific process and yet they
>>believe what they are told by scientists.  This is no different than
>>most religions.  The key is to ground yourself with basic principles
>>of science or religion so that you don't have to work off of blind
>>faith.

>As a worker in science, you are encouraged throughout training to be
>ultra-skeptical, and you certainly don't or shouldn't base your work
>on blind faith. In religion, I understand that a priest must have a
>strong faith. It's a different matter; I'm not denigrating faith but
>I do insist that we're dealing with incommensurable things here.

Exactly: you should not base you Scientific research on "blind faith"
and likewise your Study of God on "blind faith."

Mark
-- 
   We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
   -- Wernher von Braun
From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: A brief tirade
Date: 28 Sep 92 15:50:19 GMT
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Ken Stuckas (Ken.Stuckas@f2020.n112.z1.fidonet.org) wrote:

: Or another question I have never gotten any response to -
: 
: "If God created Adam and then Eve and they had (among others) two kids named Cain and Abel, and Cain slew Abel and was kicked out of town whereupon he found himself a wife and married her, who the hell did he marry???"


	I brought my James Montgomery Boice "Genesis:  An Expositional
Commentary" in to work for fun today.  Here's HIS answer:

	"Where _did_ Cain get his wife?  Well, if you turn over the page
of the Bible to chapter 5, you find in verse 4 that "after Seth was born,
Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters."  Could Cain marry
his own sister?  Yes, he could -- in those early days when the race
had not yet suffered the pollution of the succeeding centuries.  If you 
were going to drink directly from the Hudson River, would you not rather
drink from it up in the Adirondack Mountains where it is fresh and pure"
	-- after treating it for Giordia, of course --
"than down in New York City after it has picked up the pollution of the
scores of cities along its banks?  It is the same with the human race.
Today close interbreeding brings out harmful genes"
	-- knows about genes --
"and results in lower IQ's, among other things.  But in the early days
it was not so.  Abram married his half-sister Sarah, and before that
Cain married HIS FULL SISTER as did the others born in those days."

	Hey, you wanted an answer, right?  I actually think he hurts his
case here.  Cain didn't have to marry a full sister -- he could have
waited a few generations while he was wandering and married a second 
cousin or something.
	This is absurd extensionalism, but hey, now you've got an answer.

	Jim Acker
	jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
From: ran@cbnews.cb.att.com (Robert A. Neinast)
Subject: New Evidence for Creation!
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 13:50:43 GMT


A new scientific study has now given us the data to show that the
creation certainly occurred after 33,000 BC and strong evidence
shows that it probably occurred in 5386 BC.

In the "Journal of the American Medical Association", Philip Mackowiak has
recently measured the average human body temperature (he's at the University
of Maryland).  His result is 98.2 degrees F.  There is significance to these
new findings, since the 1868 study of Carl Wunderlich showed that,
in humans, the average body temperature at that time was 98.6 degrees F.  He
collected the data using OVER ONE MILLION PEOPLE.  This pretty well points
to the fact that, just as maximum lifespan of humans has been declining
since the Fall (c.g. Methuselah--Gen 5:27), so has average body temperature.

A least-squares fit to this data yields the following precise equation
for body temperate vs. time:

	Temperature = -0.0032258064 * Year + 104.6258063552   .

Surely, body temperature could never have been above the boiling
point of water.  This equation shows that body temperature would
of been 212 degrees in 33286 BC, so it is clear that the creation must
of occurred after that date.  We can better pin down the date
for creation by considering the perfection of God.  What better
evidence of the flawlessness of his Plan than to create humans with
body temperature exactly midway between the boiling and freezing
points of water: 122 degrees F.  The above equation shows that
this occurred in 5386 BC, in remarkable agreement with other estimates
for the time of the Fall.

Maybe this will finally silence the unbelievers.

-- 
                                                                  _
". . . and shun the frumious Bandersnatch."                 Nipetlahuini.
Robert Neinast (ran@cblpo.att.com)
AT&T-Bell Labs
From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Holden and probability
Summary: clearly, Rose (and Holden) have an inaccurate model
Date: 01 Oct 92 23:39:12 GMT

:: From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
: From: prl@csis.dit.csiro.au (Peter Lamb)
: Message-ID: <1992Sep29.231009.15371@csis.dit.csiro.au>
::  I'd love to see Ted support the 1/64 figure with the assumptions and
::  calculations he (Rose) uses to arrive at it.  )
: I can give you Rose's "calculations".
:      [...] same as having either all tails or all
:            heads on seven consecutive tosses of a coin [...]

Ah, I see I had groked Rose's rationale correctly.  I've already
rebutted him in detail, but let me be clear here: Rose *correctly*
calculates the odds of throwing seven coins and having the result
that all show the same side.  Where he goes wrong is in supposing
that this accurately models the situation of "randomly" placing
the continents.  Again, the model is wrong, because:

      - hemispheres are not discrete
      - there is time for more than one "throw" 
      - continental drift is not random
      - the model of continents as points is too simplistic

In fact, using the actual theory of convection currents in the
mantle driving continental drift, a supercontinent cycle is,
far from improbable, essentially impossible to avoid.
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw
From: Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: dog pile on Stan 8-)
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Sep 21 1992
Date: 26 Sep 92  01:17:00

 > From: mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon)
 > Message-ID: 1992Sep23.014442.25144@cbnewsm.cb.att.com

 > The "real" question is whether we think that practical biology
 > is best suited by allowing "special" notice to some lines that
 > would otherwise by cladistic rules not be given seprate
 > taxonomic status -- someone mentioned birds, for example.

 > What we *actually* do with birds, and with mammals, is to watch
 > the branching amniote tree and all of a sudden arbitrarily declare
 > a new top-level category for something that is WAY the hell down
 > the tree structure.

What do you suggest?

Superclass Amniote
  Class Reptile
    Subclass Therapsid
      Superorder Mammal

That's kind of straining the capacity of the traditional system.

How about we keep the traditional system for laypeople and non bio majors, and 
introduce a new dewey style system, using numeric strings punctuated with
decimal points at each significant branch point.


+--------------------------+--------------------------------------+
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---
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Differing accounts of creation in Genesis
Date: 30 Sep 92 19:53:19 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: maguire@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Bill Maguire)

In article <MAGUIRE.92Sep25141819@signal.clarkson.edu>, maguire@sun (Bill Maguire) writes:
>With all of these problems translating the Bible, how can
>fundamentalist christians read the bible literally?

By lying.  Orthodox Judaism, the most "fundamentalist" form of Judaism,
has always (or at least for two millennia of extant commentaries) denied
the primacy of literal meaning in the Bible.  The Rambam, one of the
most universally respected figures in Jewish learning, centuries before
Darwin described the literal account of Genesis as being given for the
sake of the common folk.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Observations
Date: 4 Oct 92 02:57:55 GMT
Organization: sgi

In article <BvJx1o.2EA@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca>, jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep30.114457.24720@city.cs>, lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) writes:
|> > 
|> > Pick up a copy of `Only Love Can Make A Miracle' by
|> > Mahesh Chavda, published by Kingsway. There are cases
|> > of people with _no eyeballs_ having their sight
|> > restored. There is also a picture of the signed death
|> > certificate of a boy who died and whom God restored to
|> > life.
|> 
|> 	OOOOOOO, a signed death certificate! I have a set of
|> paperwork from a local hospital listing me as dead: miracle,
|> or clerical error?

I think we may all be missing very slick trick Mr Tun pulled
here.   An error on a piece of paper is just an error whether 
it's an error about you being alive or dead, or an error 
about you having blue eyes rather brown. He got our attention
by saying it was an error about whether someone was alive or 
dead.  Something makes that error seem more serious and spooky
than other errors, even though, like the others, it's just a
set of marks on a sheet of paper.    When we notice that someone's
passport mis-states their eye colour, we don't assume that it
was their eyes that changed, but somehow, when it's their life
and death that's involved, we can be conned into at least
considering the possibility that they died and came back to
life.    Wierd, isn't it.

Incidentally, did anyone catch the story in the paper today
about the Court computer that declared a whole town to be
dead?    The computer was supposed to create lists of jurors,
but they had an idiot for a programmer who decided that town
names are seven characters long at most, and when it came to 
Hartford, the trailing 'd' got printed in column 8, which
apparently meant that the selected juror was deceased.   Of
course, few people actually want to serve on juries, so this
error went un-noticed for years.

Or so it says in the paper.    At least they had the decency
not to claim that the townspeople had been brought back to
life in a mass miracle.

jon. 
Newsgroups: talk.origins