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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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 Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 8:23 am Post subject: |
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| The moveable type press was invented in 1448 (appologies to Koreans). |
Wrong. The Chinese invented the printing press centuries before. And wrong as regards movable type: the Chinese invented this earlier too:
| Quote: |
| Claiming that technological innovation stemmed from dissemination of one book is simply fallacious |
Most of the great scientists in history were men who believed in the Bible as the inspired Word of God and did not see a contradiction between science and the Bible.In fact, many of the great scientific discoveries were actually inspired by the Word of God. How many examples would you like?
I'll agree that Gutenbergs printing facilitated the dissemination of the bible. Which just goes to prove my point  : many scientific discoveries followed this, not to mention the progress that came about generally as Protestant christianity spread.
Although little is known about the life of Guttenberg, its hardly coincidental that the first book he printed was the bible, and most of his printing revolved around getting scripture past the catholic church who wanted to oversee and limit what he was doing. Yes: they regarded his printing of scripture as sacrilegous.
http://www.thegutenbergpress.com/Facts.html |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:12 am Post subject: |
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| mithridates wrote: |
400 billion stars per galaxy.
240 billion galaxies.
At least 100 major astronomical bodies per star.
Who knows what else in the space between.
15 billion years.
Total of (very approximate) 144,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years of total time on the combined number of bodies in the universe to work with.
One cup has a million grains of sand, and there are 4.22675282 �� 10^12 cups in a cubic kilometre, and our planet has a total of 1340 million km�� of oceans. That means that if every grain of sand represented a year on some body somewhere in the universe, we would need the space of 25 million oceans to show it all. Or in other words, 25 cups of sand where each grain represents the oceans of the Earth full of sand where a single grain is a year... |
Viva Carl Sagan! |
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jaganath69
Joined: 17 Jul 2003
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| Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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| rapier wrote: |
| Quote: |
| The moveable type press was invented in 1448 (appologies to Koreans). |
Wrong. The Chinese invented the printing press centuries before. And wrong as regards movable type: the Chinese invented this earlier too:
| Quote: |
| Claiming that technological innovation stemmed from dissemination of one book is simply fallacious |
Most of the great scientists in history were men who believed in the Bible as the inspired Word of God and did not see a contradiction between science and the Bible.In fact, many of the great scientific discoveries were actually inspired by the Word of God. How many examples would you like?
I'll agree that Gutenbergs printing facilitated the dissemination of the bible. Which just goes to prove my point : many scientific discoveries followed this, not to mention the progress that came about generally as Protestant christianity spread.
Although little is known about the life of Guttenberg, its hardly coincidental that the first book he printed was the bible, and most of his printing revolved around getting scripture past the catholic church who wanted to oversee and limit what he was doing. Yes: they regarded his printing of scripture as sacrilegous.
http://www.thegutenbergpress.com/Facts.html |
Chinese invented moveable type yes, but their invention never filtered back towards Europe. For the purposes of this debate that fact is nothing more than a red herring.
Your argument originally stated that the bible was the source of most technological advancement in the middle of the last millenium. I'll even take divine inspiration at a pinch, but come one. One could also (wrongly) argue that the majority of them were western or aryan and that (again not my argument for the idiot pc crowd here) their superior genetics allowed them to do this. Yours is an untestable claim and one that falls back on faith again. Moreover, you neglect to mention the basis of much of this new discovery, Arab mathamatics (albeit a lot of that was recycled from the Greeks). Also, you fail to note the great number of Jewish, Hindu and Chinese inventors, the majority of who would never have been near a bible. Again, people's faith inspire them to do some wonderful things, but don't go giving props to something and turning individual achievement into something so wretchedly deterministic. It flies in the face of all that science, rationality and humanism is. |
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jinglejangle
Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Location: Far far far away.
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| Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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It's nice to see that this originally somewhat interesting thread has been so thoroughly hijacked.
Rapier: At what point does the Bible suggest that man is alone in the universe? I haven't noticed anything that suggested that to me. |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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| mithridates wrote: |
400 billion stars per galaxy.
240 billion galaxies.
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Before the invention of the telescope, man actually believed that the stars could be numbered. The great Ptolemy gave the number as 1,056. Tycho Brahe cataloged 777 and Kepler counted 1,006. The astronomers of those days were certain that they could count the number of stars. Since the invention of the telescope by Galileo in 1608, we now know that the number of stars are limitless.
But long before the telescope was invented, the Bible had put forth the notion that the stars are countless in number. God spoke to Abraham that his descendants would be "as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the grains of sand on the seashore" (Genesis 22:17). Jeremiah 33:22 states: "The host of heaven cannot be numbered." |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 2:19 am Post subject: |
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[quote="jaganath69"]
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| I'll even take divine inspiration at a pinch, but come on |
Let me quote from my ealier link here:
Men also speculated on the earth's foundation and how it was supported in space. At one point, it was believed that space was filled with a hypothetical substance like ether. Today, gravity is used to explain certain phenomena, but the world still appears to be hung on nothing, as is evident from our space travels. Again, this concept is not new from the viewpoint of the Bible. Job 26:7 mentions that God "hangs the earth upon nothing."
For ages, scientists believed in a geocentric view of the universe. The differences between night and day were believed to be caused by the sun revolving around the earth. Today, we know that the earth's rotation on its axis is responsible for the sun's rising and setting. But 4,000 or more years ago, it was written, "Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? It is changed (turned) like clay under the seal" (Job 38:12, 14). The picture here is of a vessel of clay being turned or rotated upon the potter's wheel - an accurate analogy of the earth's rotation.
For centuries, man believed that the earth was flat. Christopher Columbus was criticized for his proposition that he could reach the Indies by sailing west. When he sailed out of the harbor, many expected Columbus to sail off the edge of the earth. But few of us realize that Columbus received his inspiration and motivation from the Bible.
He once wrote in his diary: "It was the Lord who put it into my mind - I could feel his hand upon me - the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies ... All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me ... There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures... For the execution of the journey to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics, or maps. It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah had prophesied."
The Bible is the first source to mention that the earth is spherical. The prophet, speaking in Isaiah 40:22, mentions that God "sits above the circle on the face of the deep." The word circle in Hebrew, khug, is best translated in terms of sphericity or roundness. The Bible had refuted the flat earth theory long before scientists actually disproved it.
The Bible has also accurately described the water cycle, which includes precipitation, subsequent evaporation, and transpiration followed by condensation in the clouds (see Job 36:27-29). Science later documented the direction of wind currents and wind paths. This was unknown in previous centuries, but Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:6, "The wind blows to the south and goes round to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits with wind returns."
Solomon also mentions about the movement of water in verse 7: "All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again." Matthew Maury (1806-1873), who is known as "the Pathfinder of the Seas," was the founder of modern oceanography and hydrography. Maury firmly believed in and was inspired by Psalm 8:8, which mentions "whatever passes along the paths of the sea." Maury believed that if the Bible wrote about "paths in the seas" then there must truly be paths in the sea. He dedicated his life to find and document these paths God had mentioned. Maury spent part of his career with the U.S. Navy charting the winds and currents of the Atlantic which were not known before his documentation.
Great Scientists Who Knew the Creator
Most of the great scientists in history were men who believed in the Bible as the inspired Word of God and did not see a contradiction between science and the Bible. In fact, many of the great scientific discoveries were actually inspired by the Word of God. Sir Isaac Newton is famous for his discovery of the law of gravity, the development of calculus into a comprehensive branch of mathematics, and the construction of the first reflecting telescope. He believed that the Bible was God's Word and said: "We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever."
William Thompson, known as Lord Kelvin, was a physical scientist of the same stature as Newton. He held the chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 54 years. Kelvin established the scale of absolute temperatures so that such temperatures are today given in so many "degrees Kelvin." He also established thermodynamics as a formal scientific discipline and formulated the first and second laws in precise terminology. Despite his 21 honorary doctorates, Kelvin remained a humble Christian, firmly believing the Bible. In a famous testimony given in 1903, Lord Kelvin stated that, "with regard to the origin of life, science positively affirms creative power."
Samuel Morse is famous for his invention of the telegraph. The first message he ever sent over the wire was "What God hath wrought!" (Numbers 23:23). Morse, who graduated from Yale in 1810, wrote these words four years before he died: "The nearer I approach the end of my pilgrimage, the clearer is the evidence of the divine origin of the Bible. The grandeur and sublimity of God's remedy for fallen man are more appreciated and the future is illuminated with hope and joy."
Werner von Braun, who was primarily responsible for America's guided missile and space flight program, was the Director of NASA's Space Flight Center. Dr. von Braun was an active Christian and gave this testimony: "Manned space flight is an amazing achievement, but is has opened for mankind thus far only a tiny door for viewing the awesome reaches of space. An outlook through this peep hole at the vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator. I find it difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe."
Dr. James Simpson, born in 1811, was responsible for the discovery of chloroform's anesthetic qualities. His discovery and use of chloroform eliminated pain, and it was produced on a large scale worldwide for use as a medical anesthetic. He also laid a solid foundation for gynecology and predicted the discovery of the X-Ray. Dr. Simpson was president of the Royal Medical Society and was appointed Royal Physician to the Queen, the highest medical position of his day. He once stated, "Christianity works because it is supremely true and therefore supremely livable. There is nothing incompatible between religion and science."
All of science points to the Omnipotent Creator of the universe. As we have seen throughout history, science has time and time again bowed its knees to the Author of the laws of the universe. As Owen Barfield said, "There will be a revival of Christianity when it becomes impossible to write a popular manual of science without referring to the incarnation of the Word."
When asked what his greatest discovery was, Dr. Simpson replied: "It was not chloroform. It was to know I am a sinner and that I could be saved by the grace of God. A man has missed the whole meaning of life if he has not entered into an active, living relationship with God through Christ." The greatest discovery in history has not been the law of gravity, calculus, telescopes or the telegraph. The greatest discovery an individual could ever make is finding Jesus Christ and making Him both Lord and Savior.
| Quote: |
| Yours is an untestable claim and one that falls back on faith again. |
If you ask any successful self-made millionaire, world class athlete, whatever- they will tell you they had faith and belief which led to their accomplishments. Faith, the belief in the unseen before it has yet happened or been proven, is what distinguish successful people from the rest. As the bible says..it is impossible to please, or find God without faith. That leap of the imagination, faith is what resulted in scientific discovery and invention. "All things are possible to those who have faith". So, if you believe that man could one day fly, walk on mars, or travel in time, then you are most likely to be the one to find the way to do so. |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 2:36 am Post subject: |
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| jinglejangle wrote: |
Rapier: At what point does the Bible suggest that man is alone in the universe? I haven't noticed anything that suggested that to me. |
It is hard to reconcile the bible with any kind of extra terrestrial life. First up, God would've mentioned it if there was. Also, Man was made in the image of God. Man was made at the centre of creation, having dominion over all else. And the timeline of God's judgement- and final recalling of the malfunctioning universe before creating a new version- is closely tied to the choices and actions of men. Thus, if he'd created whole sets of other lifeforms elsewhere, it'd seem strange that their fate was dependent on our actions in a different galaxy.
Lastly, the reason for the creation of stars, planets etc was already stated. they were for signs and seasons. ie, to transmit information to people on earth, and measure time. Although the 3 wise men travelled from afar to find the hidden location of the nativity by following the stars, the practise of astrology is a perversion of their original use...
Also the vastness of the heavens was simply to reflect the glory of God. ie, so that nobody on earth marvelling at it could deny the mastery of the creator. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:55 am Post subject: |
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| rapier wrote: |
| First up, God would've mentioned it if there was. |
But he did.
To me.
Join my church and all shall be revealed.
I'll tell you about the the golden plate I dug up in my back yard, exactly where the Angel Gabriel said it would be.
It tells of Jesus' travels after finishing God's work in America, his travels through the galaxy, and his eventual ressurection among the xpli'ioad people of Andromeda, who fly bwetween stars in spaceships that look exactly like Airbus 480s.
The govt doesn't want to you to know this, and that's why they killed David Koresh.
There's more, but first you have to buy my bible ($777.77 USD) and attend services until you reach the junior-elder level.
At that time all will be made clear, my son. |
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endofthewor1d
Joined: 01 Apr 2003
Location: the end of the wor1d.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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| rapier wrote: |
| First up, God would've mentioned it if there was. |
wow. you two must be close. seems there's probably one or two other things he forgot to 'mention'. from what i recall of the old testament, he used to be a rather chatty guy. he's been pretty quiet lately. i hope he's okay.
| rapier wrote: |
Also, Man was made in the image of God. Man was made at the centre of creation, having dominion over all else. And the timeline of God's judgement- and final recalling of the malfunctioning universe before creating a new version- is closely tied to the choices and actions of men. Thus, if he'd created whole sets of other lifeforms elsewhere, it'd seem strange that their fate was dependent on our actions in a different galaxy.
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blah blah blah... 'it'd seem strange'?? that's the best you can do? there aren't already a lot of things about this god guy and the way he does things that seem strange to you? for example:
| rapier wrote: |
Lastly, the reason for the creation of stars, planets etc was already stated. they were for signs and seasons. ie, to transmit information to people on earth, and measure time. Although the 3 wise men travelled from afar to find the hidden location of the nativity by following the stars, the practise of astrology is a perversion of their original use... |
this doesn't seem like a strange way to build a time measuring system to you? a nice little circle of stars in the sky close to home would have done nicely. or hell... just a clock right here on earth. but instead he opts for a haphazard array of 'stars', some of which are not stars at all, but planets, comets, galaxies, etc... which, frankly, is a major pain in the ass for time measurement and navigation.
| rapier wrote: |
| Also the vastness of the heavens was simply to reflect the glory of God. ie, so that nobody on earth marvelling at it could deny the mastery of the creator. |
i deny the mastery of the creator. well well... i guess that little plan of his didn't work out as well as he thought it would.
| rapier wrote: |
| It is hard to reconcile the bible with any kind of extra terrestrial life. |
i have absolutely no doubt that when the time comes, you will be the first person to reconcile it. i can see it now...
| endofthewor1d's fictional bible excerpt wrote: |
Matthew 14:67 Jesus said "Hi" to a stranger. |
| rapier wrote: |
| of course there is extraterrestrial life! the ancient greek word for 'stranger' was also commonly used to mean 'blood sucking slug monster from alpha centauri'. |
i've got a good idea. when we do make interstellar contact, we'll send you as our first ambassador. you can tell them that god said we have dominion over them. if they buy that, fine. if they vaporize you with their ray guns, we'll send someone else to say we were just kidding, and that's a little joke we earthlings like to play when we meet someone new. |
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