King James Or New International

For all those who say the King James Bible is more popular:
I did a search on Google Trends for the King James and New International Versions of the Bible. Pretty interesting.

The Exodus Decoded

The Exodus Decoded aired in Canada this past Sunday on the Discovery Channel and will be broadcast in the US soon. It is produced by James Cameron and narrated and directed by Simcha Jacobovich. A disclaimer at the beginning says the opinion is the producer's and not necessarily Dicovery's.

The first piece of evidence that the Exodus happened is the Ahmose Stele dated from 1500 B.C. The stone describes a catastrophic event, a great storm, and that is was created by one God. The pharoah that is believed to be the one that released the Israelites was Ahmose, which in Herbrew is brother of Moses. Ahmose's father had a crushed skull suggesting he died from a battle.

Next evidence is Avartis, the city of slaves, which Egyptians force archaelogists to cover it up every year. They have found Egpytian seals with a Hebrew name on it. They have found evidence on Alphabetic inscriptions on walls in Sinai area.

There was a major volcanic eruption of Santorini, near Greece, around this time. Pumice was found in the Nile Delta and the Stele and the Bible describe large earthquake storms.

The first plague was from underwater gas leaks that caused the Nile to turn red. Similar events happened at two lakes in Cameroon about twenty years ago. This would cause the frog, lice, flies and bacteria infestions. The boils were also caused by the carbon dioxide gas as they did in Cameroon. The hail of ice and fire was caused by the Santorini eruption. This would keep the locusts down at ground level and cause darkness for several days.

The tenth plague was from the release of the toxic gas coming from the water and form in mist-like fog. Because Egyptian first-born slept on low-levelled beds, they died while the other Egpytians slept higher up and the Israelites were celebrating the Passover. A similar incident happened at Cameroon as people and animals died from the toxic gases. A mass grave of only male plague victims was found and Ahmose's son died at the age of tweleve.

The Yam Suf or Sea of Reeds is found at Lake El Bah. Several hieroglyphics in a museum tell of the Exodus. It is believed that salt collapsing in the Mediterrean Sea from seismic tremors caused the area to be drained and a tsunami flooded the lake again. Some Israelites may have gone to Greece because Greeks were trade partners.

The traditional Mount Sinai, Mt. Catherine, is not the mountain because it has no large plateau, a holy mountain or place where sheep/goats can graze. The mountain is 14-day journey from Egpyt, about 45 km from the grazing site Timea and a 11-day journey from Kadesh Barnea. The mountain is Mt. Hasham El Tarif, which has a large cleft, rock grave site on the summit and had a natural spring as mentioned in the Bible.

The final piece of evidence is the Ark of the Covenant. They found a small artifact in the Egpytian museum where they found the hieroglyphics. It seems to depict the ark as described in the Bible. The conclusion says the only question is that did this happen from nature or divine intervention.

Naked Archaeologist

I was watching a four-episode marathon of The Naked Archaeologist the other day. The episodes dealt with Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus' early years, the story of David and St. John the Baptist.

There has been only one piece of evidence found of a Roman crucifixion, that the Romans did not invent crucifixions and there were different ways of crucixion. It was noted at the end, the reason why we cannot find more evidence of crucifixions is that family would take the nailed hands or feet and keep them as lucky charms like a rabbit's foot.

In the early years episode, it is noted that nativity is different is the Gospels, there are two Bethelems, one in Judea - the traditional one, and one in Galilee.

In the David episode, many believe that the size of Goliath is exaggerated but there is disputation in the size of David's kingdom.

In the St. John the Baptist episode, they mention of several sects in Christianity that believe that John was bigger than Jesus and Da Vinci painted John more often Jesus.

Jesus' Crucifixion May Be Wrong

From Yahoo News

According to Britain's prestigious Royal Society of Medicine, the crucifixion may be quite erroneous because there is no evidence to prove Jesus was crucified in this manner.

Around the world, Jesus Christ is seen nailed to the cross by his hands and feet, with his head upwards and arms outstretched. But RSM says this image has never been substantiated in fact. Christ could have been crucified in any one of many ways, all of which would have affected the causes of his death.

"The evidence available demonstrates that people were crucified in different postures and affixed to crosses using a variety of means," said Piers Mitchell of Imperial College London. "Victims were not necessarily positioned head up and nailed through the feet from front to back, as is the imagery in Christian churches."

The authors do not express any doubt on the act of Jesus' crucifixion itself, but note that the few eyewitness descriptions available today of crucifixions in the 1st century AD show the Romans had a broad and cruel imagination. Their crucifixion methods probably evolved over time and depended on the social status of the victim and on the crime allegedly committed.

The cross could be erected "in any one of a range of orientations", with the victim sometimes head-up, sometimes head-down or in different postures. Sometimes he was nailed to the cross by his genitals, sometimes the hands and feet were attached to the side of the cross and not the front, or affixed with cords rather than nails.

Crucifixion was widely practised by the Romans to punish criminals and rebels, but if the empire ever circulated instructions for the soldiers who carried out the gruesome task, none has survived today. Nor is there any detailed account of the method of Jesus' crucifixion in the four Gospels of the Bible.

Only one piece of archaeological evidence has ever been found about a crucifixion, mainly because crucified people were not formally buried but left on a rubbish dump to be eaten by wild dogs and hyenas. The clue to his demise comes from an 11.5-centimetre (4.8-inch) iron nail that had been hammered through one of his heels, attaching it to the side of the cross. But there are no signs of any nail holes in the bones of the wrist or the forearm.

Over the past 150 years, there have been at least 10 books and studies to try to understand the physical causes of Jesus' death, and one US attempt, in 2005, even featured a "humane re-enactment" in which volunteers were attached to a cross in safe and temporary way, using gloves and belts.

These explorations have yielded a wide range of hypotheses, from heart failure and pulmonary embolism to asphyxia and shock induced by falling blood pressure. Excruciating pain endured over the six hours between crucifixion and death, loss of blood, dehydration and the weight of the body on the lungs are cited as contributing factors.

But these efforts have all been prejudiced by the automatic assumption, derived from religious images, that Jesus was crucified head-up. Given the uncertainty as to exactly how he was crucified, the answer may only ever come if some new archaeological evidence or piece of writing emerges from the shadows of the past.

The Truth Of Kent Hovind's Age Of The Earth

Kent Hovind is the founder of the Creation Science Evangelism and has conducted seminars on evolution and creationism. I watched a DVD called Age Of The Earth produced by the CSE and it is full of inaccuracies of evolution, creation and the Big Bang.

For some reason, Kent Hovind starts off by talking about his family and saying how pride he is to have a "beautiful" family. Isn't pride one of the seven deadly sins?

Kent Hovind says that evolution is a dumb religion and says that if evolution is true then humans are worthless. However, according to evolution, humans are unique to other animals. We walk on our hind legs and we have large brains unlike any animal.

He claims to be not against science and says that evolution says humans came from rocks, slime and frogs. This is incorrect as it is known we evolved from a prehistoric ape-like creature and the evolution scale does not include rocks and slime and that we did not evolve from frogs (not our grandfather as Hovind puts it). He says that a wolf, a coyote and a dog all come from the same animal and that they are different from a banana. Is not this the same that a human, a gorilla and a chimpanzee are different from a banana?

Hovind states that science books say that the big bang came from nothingness and this is unbelievable. Yet, can he answer where God from? In his PowerPoint presentation, matter (mater) and humanism (hunanist manifesto) is misspelled.

Hovind uses the angular momentum law, in which planets and moons should rotate clockwise, to debunk the big bang theory. This is part of the Coriolis effect, where water in the northern hemisphere flows counterclockwise and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. Also, there is the uncertainty principle, which the position and velocity of a particle cannot simultaneously be measured with exactness.

Hovind states the evolution is the cause for rise in premarital sex, STDs, out of wedlock births, unmarried couples, divorce, violent crime, teen suicide and lower SATs. Some of these stats are only to 1995 and 1985 (unwed girls). The presentation was recorded in 2002. Also, the rises did not occur until 1970 and several have declined, particularly violent crime. Overall, all these stats have nothing to with evolution and thus they are cause-and-effect fallacies.

Hovind blames evolution for the Columbine massacre because one of the killers’ dad was a geologist, one wore a T-shirt that said “natural selection” and they killed two people because they were black and Christian. Yet, the killers were believers of Nazism that has links to Christian fundamentalists, white supremacy and hatred of the Jews. Although, social Darwinism has some connection to fascism, its immediate roots were in certain irrational, socialist, and nationalist tendencies of the turn of the century that combined in a protest against the liberal ideas in Western Europe.

Hovind states that scientists were wrong about planets revolving around the earth, big objects falling faster than smaller ones and bloodletting and scientists are wrong about evolution. Yet, it was Christian doctrine that accepted these things as facts, as in the Middle Ages, European barbers performed bloodletting tasks and Galileo was condemned to life imprisonment for “vehement suspicion of heresy.”

Hovind says that books now use BCE (Before Common Era) instead of BC (Before Christ) for dating. Yet, the Christian calendar borrowed the old pagan calendar and uses the names of several months that are named after Roman gods. He claims that Noah took baby dinosaurs on the ark, because taking adults would be too large and that dinosaurs could still exist citing the Loch Ness monster, which has been found to be a hoax.

In part 2, Kent Hovind compares the question of who was Cain’s and Seth’s wives to the Big Bang theory. He claims that they had sexual relationships with their sisters and it was not a problem for God until Moses (Letivicus). He claims that Adam was alive when his 7 great grandson was born and Shem was alive when Joseph was born. According to the record, Noah was not born until 1056 years after the creation and Adam lived 930 years. Shem died at 2056, 30 years before Jacob, Joseph’s father, was born.

There is no date in the Bible to suggest when Joseph was born and when Jacob died. Also, the word "father" or begat in this part of the Bible probably means ancestor.

Hovind claims that evolutionists say that we live in limited space and some people want to lower the population. There are many places that are unlivable for humans whether it is too hot (deserts), too cold (Antarctica), too mountainous or the oceans. He claims that the population can live comfortably in a small district of Florida. With over 6 billion people in a small area, there would be poor sanitation. According to 20/20’s Myths, Lies and Straight Talk, the world’s population would live better in an area the size of Texas.

Hovind states that one person, who carves walking sticks from trees, told him when he cuts a tree that he planted seven years ago, the rings numbered around eleven. Yet, typically, we plant tree samplings that are around four years old. So, when you cut a tree seven years later, the tree would have been around eleven years old.

Hovind claims that only a flood could explain why petrified trees can found in different layers underground, but a glacier can do the same. He was told that annual glacier rings tell the age of the earth. While the rings do reflect the warm and cold periods and not a yearly basis, the rings provide the age of the glacier not the earth.

Hovind states the stars were created at the time of creation and cloud galaxies may not exist. But how can light from galaxies and stars that are over million light-years away reach Earth?

Hovind says that the moon would be close to earth based on that it is moving away from the Earth. What he fails to mention is that the moon has come closer towards Earth and the theories of the moon formation. He says that Pangaea is a dumb theory and questions where central America is, which was formed by the mountain ranges rising from the water. If Pangaea did not happen, how did animals get to the Americas and Australia? How did the dodo (a non-flying bird) get to the Mauritius Island? How did the kangaroo get to Australia? How did the tree sloth get to the central American rainforest?

Dr. Hovind seems to make a lot of lies. More examples can be found at No Answers In Genesis, 300 Creationist Lies and Talk Origins. It is obvious he lives by the Hitler quote he uses at the beginning of the DVD to denounce evolution. "If you tell a lie long enough, loud enough, and often enough, the people will believe it."

Creationist Claims Part 2

Evolution hasn't been proven.

Fallacies include argument from ignorance, equivocation and slothful induction

This claim is true, but it doesn't go far enough. No scientific theory can be "proved"; this is because in science, you can never be 100% certain you you've identified all of the relevant axioms and principles. The best you can hope for is that a theory is well-supported by empirical evidence, and evolution is extremely well-supported.

Evolution cannot be proven, but it has been observed. When scientists took a sample of Nereis Acuminata, separated it, and exposed them to three different environments, they were unsuccessful in their attempts to cross them, which is one of the many evidences for natural selection and evolution.

Evolution could be disproved. Many have attempted to disprove it; all of them have failed. This means that it is probably true.

Evolution can't be replicated.

This is a four term fallacy (science, replication of experiments, evolution, replication of evolution)

How often has Creationism been replicated? This one example of a Creationist argument which would be at least as damaging to creationism as it could be to real science. Science can be based on observation & deduction. Falsifiability is probably a better criterion for determining science. Evolution and common descent are both falsifiable.

Humans have created (evolved) thousands of breeds of domesticated plants and animals. Bacteria evolving resistances to antibiotics or insects evolving resistances to insecticides happen again and again. The beaks of "Darwin's Finches" evolve again and again with climate changes. No, we can't re-run millions of years of history in the lab to re-create a particular evolutionary history; however, we can replicate fossil finds to confirm previous results and run genetic comparison experiments again and again.

Science requires that experiments can be replicated (assuming that it is possible to replicate the experimental conditions). Evolution is a theory, not an experiment.
Many sciences are not replicable by the above logic, including astronomy, archaeology, and history. Is the study of Ancient Rome not a science because we cannot replicate the Roman Empire? What is important is that observations of the evidence can be made repeatedly and consistently and that experiments based on those theories produce replicable results, not that events themselves can be replicated.
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens can not be replicated but its consequences and causes can be studied scientifically.

Evolution is only a theory.

Fallacies contained in this claim include slothful induction, equivocation and too broad.

The germ theory of disease is "only a theory" and so is atomic theory, as well as the special and general theories of relativity, and, indeed, every scientific concept that has ever been confirmed by empirical evidence. If "it's only a theory" is a valid reason to dismiss the theory of evolution, it is, equally, a valid reason to dismiss all of science. It is a measure of how utterly weak the Creationist position is, that Creationists must resort to arguments which would, if valid, nuke the entirety of scientific endeavor.

Theory is used to mean an idea that may or may not be true; a scientist would refer to this as a hypothesis. When a scientist uses the word theory, s/he means a hypothesis which has been tested and has so far passed all of its tests.

Experiments confirming or disproving scientific theories are being conducted every day. Evolution, as a "theory", has stood the test of time - dismissing it as a wild guess or based on no experimental evidence blatantly ignores the last few centuries of research and proof of its validity. In the spectrum of valid theories: [Evolution : ID :: Gravity : Astrology]

Evidence for evolution has not been observed.

This a slothful induction fallacy.

In science, "evidence" usually only has meaning when related to a hypothesis. We compare data to the predictions of a hypothesis. If the data agrees with the predictions, it becomes evidence for the hypothesis, otherwise it becomes evidence against. In a way this might be referred to as interpreting evidence to fit the hypothesis, but the process isn't so subjective as the word "interpretation" implies. All of the sciences work in this manner, so criticizing evolution for it is hypocritical.

Science is about explaining the makeup of the natural world, not interpreting it to fit a preconceived belief. If a theory explains the natural world properly, interpretation is not an issue. Evolution does precisely that, and Creationism does not.

Recapitulation theory is not supported

This is an equivocation fallacy.

While recapitulation of the sort propounded by Haeckel is no longer supported, homology of embryonic developmental stages can and does provide support for the theory of evolution.

Lucy's knee was found far from the rest of the skeleton

This is a false rumour. Johanson was discussing another A. afarensis knee and NOT that of Lucy that had been discovered in 1973.

There are flood myths from all over the world

Most cultures have been located near bodies of water prone to regular flooding, it is unclear why anyone should think that the prevalence of flood-type myths is a mystery that requires any explanation at all, let alone a Divine "explanation".

Most ancient cultures had only a very limited understanding of the size of planet earth. To them, their little land was the "world", and if it was flooded, this was, quite literally, "the end of the world". Common flood-mythology does not indicate a single shared past experience. It is possible that flood-event experiences propagated among cultures from one source. Common shared experiences of floods in no way mean said flood was of divine origin or covered the entire world.

Examination of flood myths indicates they can vary extremely, from world-destruction to world-creation, from localized to encompassing the entire planet. If there was one primal flood, more consistency would be expected.

Very few of the world-destroying flood myths describe humanity escaping in a boat. Some speak of people avoiding the flood by hiding within giant trees, escaping to higher ground, and in some cases, the myths speak of how the entire world was completely destroyed or how the flood was stopped before any devastion was caused.

Other myths appear amongst many cultures. Numerous cultures recognize creatures that live off of stolen human blood, frequently identified as unnaturally prolonging their lives after death. Nearly every culture has myths of humans who can change shapes into animals, either at will or under some imposed circumstance. Does the prevelance of these myths indicate that vampires and werewolves actually exist? The average creationist would certainly reject the idea that there are many gods, despite the fact that belief in Pantheons occurs worldwide.

Many myths represent the experience of the populace writ large. People who live in regions with large reptiles tell stories of gigantic reptiles. People who live in areas prone to forest fires tell of the fire big enough to destroy the world. People who live near glaciers have myths of when the world was consumed by ice. The prevalence of flood myths needs no explanation except that humans like to live near water and water sources have a tendency to flood periodically.

Given that all but Noah et al perished in the Biblical flood myth where then do the stories from other cultures come from? These groups of people would have to be descendants of Noah's family repopulating the world and therefore wouldn't they have the same story?

What is the point of reporting the other flood myths in that often the myths are severe contradictions to the Genesis version. If Genesis is literally true, then these other myths must be false, and if they are false how do they add weight to the Genesis account? And, of course, why aren't these other versions of myth more believable than the Genesis version thereby directly proving Genesis wrong?

Failure or shortcomings in experiments involving the application of evolutionary theory to the production or use of computer hardware of software demonstrates that evolution can not work elsewhere.

Fallacies contained in this claim include argument from ignorance, false analogy, straw man and fallacy fallacy.

Computerized evolutionary models have proven effective. An analysis of the Avida software and it's results indicates that computer models can be used to demonstrate evolutionary theory.

The criticisms about evolutionary models are often directed at a Brandeis experiment in evolving concepts for machines via simulation of the evolutionary process. These are better viewed not as a simulation of evolution, but an application of evolutionary concepts to producing mechanical design. Though useful and interesting in that it did produce surprisingly sophisticated mechanisms, it was not a full-bore testing of evolutionary theory in the vein of the Avida software.

There are programs that use computer-simulated evolution to solve certain tasks. One amusing and rather simple example of this is breveWalker, where an animal made out of blocks uses evolution to learn how to walk.

Genesis 1 got the order of events right.

This is a begging the question fallacy.

The odds are nothing more than a combinatorial expansion of 10!. Counting "in the beginning, there was a beginning" isn't a valid stage. At the very least, the count should be 9! or 1 in 362,880. Other events also simply cannot be in any other order (land plants cannot be before land, etc.) and so reduce the unlikelihood still further.

Some of the steps are not clearly derived from the Bible at all. Point two has Earth "...enshrouded in heavy gases..." not because anything in Genesis suggests this, but as part of an effort to save the order by asserting sunlight wouldn't have been visible during the early stages of Genesis. Adding elements to save the order rather injures the argument that the accuracy of the order is amazing.

The order proposes that land plants existed for a significant fraction of time before the sun could be seen from earth. The idea that plants existed for any length of time without access to direct sunlight is contrary to science and common sense.
And by any reasonable definition, "tame beasts" had to await the arrival of man to even have any meaningful notion of "tame". By most genomic studies a dog is still a wolf in an arrested state of development due to the artificial selection by man. Did dogs really exist before man? And if so, wouldn't their wild beast variants have quickly either killed them or reverted them back to "wild"?

Since there is no mention of animals before, then did the pollinators arrive to keep land plants (#6) reproducing? or perhaps were the first land plants not flowering (as the science shows) and that later "evolved" when the pollinators arrived in #8?

While one may believe that mainstream science is wrong, doing so would negate the test of the Bible's accuracy that this order supposedly entails.

Scientists lie if they talk about an old earth and evolution.

This is an abusive ad hominem fallacy.

Lying implies that the person knows better. Even if creationists were right, scientists could just be mistaken. Lying also implies that evolution and old earth are false, for which there is no evidence. See all the failed attempts at proving evolution false. If all scientists who accept evolution were lying, this would be a world-wide conspiracy with thousands of members, which is not believable. To accept that you need to be paranoid. How do we know that all creationists are not the ones who are actually lying? How can we be sure that even all teachers of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or any other religion is lying?

Creationism and evolution are the only 2 models.

This is a false dilemma fallacy.

Creation and evolution are both broad categories. Each contains a potentially infinite set of actual models. Furthermore, the two sets overlap (Theistic Evolution). Fred Hoyle's idea of a universe that has always existed is a third model.

The Christian model of creation is currently the single most popular, but by far not the only creation story. Many other religions had or still have their own creation story. Additionally, there are parodies of creationism, such as Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, that work just as well. No shread of objective scientific evidence credits one above all others.

Evolution excludes the existence of a creator.

Evolution functions on the principle of methodological naturalism. This principle states briefly that natural causes are the only things that can be objectively identified. As a result, science functions on the principle that science itself is incapable of elucidating a supernatural cause.

Many creationists conflate methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism states that the natural universe is all that exists, and this position does exclude the possibility of a creator. However, methodological naturalism does not exclude the possibility of a creator, nor does belief in evolution require disbelief in a creator. Indeed, there are a great many theistic evolutionists and the Clergy Letter Project shows that at least 7000 clergy see no conflict between evolution and faith.

Questions That Creationists Cannot Answer

Who was Cain’s wife? This question was asked to William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial by Charles Darrow. Also, creationists do not know who was Seth’s wife. Creationist Kent Hovind claims that Cain’s and Seth’s wives were their sisters and that God allowed this kind of sexual relationship until Moses.

Did Adam live to 930 years old? How come humans cannot live that long?

What did Adam and Eve look like, what was their colour of their skin, did they have a vertical forehead, large brain and limb bones similar to us?

How old are the fossils that are found by scientists? Is the dating system accurate and if not, do creationists have a better system?

How could a large wooden boat float, would it not be prone to leaks without a steel frame?

How could Adam and Noah be giants and smarter than humans now? There is no evidence given by creationists to suggest that were giants and these humans must have been meat eaters to have big brains and be smarter, creationists believe they were vegetarians.

Where Is Mount Sinai

I was watching a program called The Naked Archaeologist on Wednesday on Vision TV. They were trying to find the real Mount Sinai. They first went to Mount Katrina, the traditional place where it is believed that Moses received the Ten Commandments. They do not believe it is Mount Sinai because there is no plateau for the thousands of people to stay, there is no water source, it is too steep for Moses to climb and it is too far away from Israel. They believe that the Hebrews would have taken a central route because going to the north would lead into enemy territory and going south would be long and difficult.

They would told to look at Sin Bisher which is a three-day walk from Egypt. But the mountain is not a holy mountain because in the Bible it says that Mount Sinai was the mountain of God.

Mount Kharkom was suggested because there are many religious relics and drawings on it. However, they found it was too far away for the Hebrews to travel to in 50 days.

By using measurements to find where Mount Sinai might be, they narrowed the area down. They believe the final key is the grazing goats that the Hebrews had. The second part will air on March 1.