I read this funny flood theory at that homeschoolers forum I go to. Thought everyone here would have a laugh (or at least those with a basic knowledge of geology and astronomy).

quote:Here is a theory of mine:

"Firmament" in Genesis 1 means "solar system." The water above the firmament was the cloud of ice and comets past Neptune. God caused the flood by letting this cloud of ice fall to the sun. This caused floods and craters on the Earth, Mars, the Moon, and other planets and moons. This changed the orbit of Neptune and released Pluto from Neptune's grasp. On the earth, some of the ice melted into some of the water of the flood. A large comet near the earth caused gravitational forces, which shattered the earths crust like the shell of a hard boiled egg. The gravity caused 10,000 foot tides to cover the continents. The ice froze much of the earth. The ice age was the 4500 years since the flood, when all this ice slowly is melting. Greenland is still part of the ice age. Global warming is occurring, because the earth is still warming slowly back to the state of equilibrium.

What do you think?

Here's the link where you can see a few people ask even funnier questions and giving their expert advise based on their extensive knowledge of Genesis: Linky (http://www.homeschoolalumni.org/viewtopic.php?t=2518).

quote:A large comet near the earth caused gravitational forces

My favorite part. Yeah, there's notihng worse than when those darn gravitational forces occur!

By the way - did you ever finish that debate on there, or did you just give up?

Eh, the debate died down a bit. People on there are so ignorant, I pretty much told them there was no point in continuing. Then some guys asked me "what I believe is Truth, just one or two things".

I posted this. Tell me what you think.

quote:Truth with a capital 'T'? How deep are you wanting this to go? I could say I'm uncertain of everything. That I could be a schizophrenic and everything I know to be real is a delusion, or perhaps I'm a figment of someone's imagination, or perhaps I'm a piece of artificial intellegence in a complex program simulating a universe. And in each of these situations there would be no method of finding out if what I experienced as reality was, in fact, "real".

That being said, I believe in truth with a small 't'. I trust my empirical senses based on the fact that if they aren't real, it is irrelevant. Whether I do actually exist, or I am a simulation run on the computer of some advanced super-intelligent being, doesn't matter. What matters is that I do my best to discover truths about myself and my surroundings to the best of my abilities. And if reality truly is as I experience, I have gained truth. If not, I did the best I could with what I was capable of experiencing.

That being said, I believe rationality and logic are key in finding truth. Speculation of what could be a "true reality" that we can't see(as the possibilities of "reality" being a computer program, or me being completely delusional of all things around me) takes a back seat to finding out us much about our given reality (that we are capable of empirically observing and experiencing) as we can.

For instance, applying those alternate possibilities to my experiences do not answer anything, but only provoke more questions. If I'm a piece of AI, who programmed me and why? If I'm a schizophrenic, is anyone ever going to cure me, and what is the world really like?

The same goes for a worldview involving a personal deity. Why did God make me? Why did God make all of this? And what exactly is the realm that God exists in (because it is supposedly apart from our spiritual realm) like?

In a way, you make out physical reality to be a computer simulated reality or a schizophrenic's delusion; that we are not experience the whole of "reality".

It is for these reasons I do not believe in the metaphysical. To suggest there is a "spiritual realm", and that we can see "evidence" of it in the form of unexplained miracles and emotional experiences, is the equivalent to me as Morpheus' explanation that deja vu is caused by glitches in the programming of the Matrix.

To summarize, I believe any truths we derive must be derived empirically. We must also be skeptical and logical in our decisions of what is true, what is probably true, what we do not know, and what sounds absolutely bogus. We must apply this skepticism and logic not only to the outside beliefs of others, but also to our own. Skepticism, logic, and empirical observation are the keys to truth.