On Creationism

This is not a creationist claim - despite what the Bible says - but I wanted to explore it anyway. It involves the same mindset of just believing, cherry-picking evidence and giving ad hoc explanations, without consideration for the consequences. Note that this is responding to statements on the Flat Earth Society Wiki. If these guys had a coherent world view, we would expect each page to agree with the rest.That is, of course, not the case. Instead, each page addresses an issue, but its explanation often contradicts the explanation on another page. From here : The Sun is a sphere which revolves above the Earth on a path known as the ecliptic. Its path moves North-South over the year between the Tropic of Capricorn to the Tropic of Cancer. It illuminates a portion of the earth at a time and has daily cycle of one revolution per 24 hours. We learn more here : It has a diameter of 32 miles and is located approximately 3000 miles above the surface of the Earth. ... The Sun...

Satan went though quite an identity change in Biblical times. In Job and Zechariah the satan is a role God assigned to one of his angels. In Job that role is to test the faith of the Jews, in Zechariah the satan is like a prosecutor in a court of law. The satan actually means the adversary, and in fact in the Hebrew the word appears in several other verses, including these: 1 Samuel 29:4 But the commanders of the Philistines were angry with him, and the commanders of the Philistines said to him, "Make the man go back, that he may return to his place where you have assigned him, and do not let him go down to battle with us, or in the battle he may become an adversary to us. For with what could this [man] make himself acceptable to his lord? [Would it] not [be] with the heads of these men? 2 Samuel 19:22 David then said, "What have I to do with you, O sons of Zeruiah, that you should this day be an adversary to me? Should any man be put to death in Israel today? For do I n...

I think we need to be clear at the outset that oral tradition is a wide term that potentially includes gossip, but at the other extreme we see, for example, the oral transmission of the Talmud, which was tightly controlled to preserve it. Thus we can see a distinction between controlled and uncontrolled oral tradition, and indeed a spectrum of possibilities between the extremes. Jesus' Teaching I think an argument can be made that there was a controlled oral tradition among the disciples, and we can see that in the gospel accounts. Mark 3:13 And He *went up on the mountain and *summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him. 14 And He appointed twelve, so that they would be with Him and that He could send them out to preach, 15 and to have authority to cast out the demons. 16 And He appointed the twelve: Mark 6:7 And He *summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits; 8 and He instructed them that they ...

I came across reference to 7Q5 at this blog (originally from here ). 7Q5 is a fragment of a scroll found at Qumran - part of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. If the fragment really is part of Mark, specifically Mark 6:52-53, that would date Mark to around AD 50, significantly earlier than the usual dating of AD 70. From the blog: "A final piece of evidence comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls Cave 7. Jose Callahan discovered a fragment of the Gospel of Mark and dated it to have been written in A.D. 50. He also discovered fragments of Acts and other epistles and dated them to have been written slightly after A.D. 50." This is what the fragment looks like (image is from Wiki commons ), so you can see how small it is and how many letters are present: There is an excellent web pages on this topic at Bible.org , which is a nondenominational Christian web site that appears to be well respected. From the conclusion: First, what is the hard evidence on which O’Callaghan’s ide...

Christianity has claimed a virgin birth for Jesus almost from he start. Almost, but not quite. The very first Christians, including Mark and Paul, saw Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. The Jewish Messiah was prophesied to be a descendant of David, and those later Christians maintain that that is via Joseph by adoption (in Matthew) or via Mary (in Luke). Does that fit with what the Jews of Jesus day thought? This post is more specifically about whether they would accept a messiah whose descent was via a woman, as Christians claim for the genealogy in Luke. Women were not important enough to name In Genesis, Adam and Eve were supposedly the first man and woman, and the whole population of the world is descended from them. They had three sons, Cain, Abel and Seth. Presumably they also had daughters, but the daughters were not important enough to rate a mention. There were four men on Noah's Ark and four women. The men were Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. The women, again, do not rate  a me...