Well, that seems a bit severe, in that in this case, the Bible was being used as a historical document reference, and not as data to support any position. That was one of the misunderstandings I think. I do not know if someone can reconcile a belief in God and an Objectivist phlosophy, or possibly make some arrangement. I know several in here who are religious of one form or another, but do not impose it on others. I would not seek to ban anyone for a personal belief. If someone tries to force the issue, I will try to reason and make a factual discussion until it gets to the point of repetition. It is not just religion though that causes friction, I have seen some good people get into discussions and some just vehemently disagree to the point of hounding. That is as bad. Respect for all views should be just a social standard.

Thank you, that was well put.

Indeed, surprisingly there are a lot of old muslim scientists and historians that used the bible to refer to events, and then investigate various items from it in weather, history and geography. They also "translated" (interpreted) various books much as Flavius must have, and would agree/disagree or offer altering views. The point you make is indeed what I was driving at in regards to the Flood story, as well as a huge number of other cultural icons such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, various ancient Egyptian texts and books, Peruvian stories and Mayan stories. There is a whole lot in the Bible that requires their faith to believe in, and even then, there is probably some other explanation, just nothing any scientist has seen fit to explore. Ezekiel's chariot is one I know some have tried to reproduce. Doesn't means you have to approve, or disapprove of the religious aspect to inquire as to whether a specific portion is true or not. It also is an issue with having real data to support your conclusions.

See: suspicious0bservers.org and the work they have done there. Think, Grand Maunder Minimum, a 400 year cycle and the shame of being lead into thinking the opposite is happening; the lack of preparation and increased food prices to come.
Also see Davids work at adapt2030 on youtube.

Ok, that is fine. Thank you for the debate. Goodnight.

No clue where this is going any longer. Enjoy your comet talk. It's past my bedtime.
I'm going to stick to commenting on thing that discuss philosophy and politics in the future.

Indeed, your opinion, which I respect. However, I do not know of one mainstream scientist who will acknowledge that a worldwide flood occurred and that the source is clearly identified. Just the same as in the China story, where a myth that people believed in as a real event, was never taken seriously. The fact that religious texts carry a lot of these myths and are incorporated in them is a separate issue, in that the discussion was just to point out that myths, as such, not as religious fables, most probably have a basis in fact. One of the largest myths is the great flood. There is now scientific proof to support it. I do agree with you about the use of religion as a manipulative tool, as well as a way to influence behavior where it is slanted for a specific result. I do not begrudge anyone their religion, because that is their personal choice, that I do not have to endorse or subscribe to. I do care about facts and history, as well as the implications of such facts. What if the Younger Dryas comet is only part of a stream of material from a bigger comet that broke up? What if today we are subject to a similar sized impact? The results are much easier modeled today with the data gathered from the YD impact, as well as to ask is anyone looking to see if something is out there? Besides the Youtube gang.

There has been zero dispute in modern science that sea levels have fluctuated greatly throughout earth's history.
The China flood seems like it may have happened (one person doing research isn't proof and even he doesn't say for sure), but the most important thing we should take from this is what people have done with these myths. They have used them and their supposed divine origin to justify horrendous atrocities against people. Much of Chinese government and the view of people's subservience to it is based on this myth and that theor ruler is the one that makes them safe and prosperous. Much of the Christian view of government seems to revolve around making their ruler happy, or he will smite us, like in Noah's flood.

I don't see this as more than a passing curiosity. A very big flood seems to have happened in China due to an earthquake that made a temporary damn that broke. Interesting story.

Also, true historians have always claimed that our myths and fables were likely dramatizations of natural occurrences. Few make the claim that all are 100% fiction. We should not really care as much about the actual historical event that inspired the myth (apart from using that evidence to support the lack of divine intervention) as we care about what people say we should do about such myths. That is what truly affects us on a day to day basis. If someone concludes that we must always live in fear of a vengeful deity and do our best to please Him to prevent such occurrences, then that person is a lunatic. But if we conclude that we should be on the lookout for rivers that get accidentally damned up and attempt to prevent sudden massive flooding, then that is being rational.

No one mentioned religion. A lot of Flood myths have no connection to religion per se. If you have not read the scientific data for the Younger Dryas impact, you should. In addition, you keep twisitng and turning this discussion into someanti religion rant. The point was just to show how myths can be as good a source of dtaa (i.e. there was once a big ass flood) and fact (by golly here is the proof). It dovetails into the greater story of the global flood in the same way, with the data from the Younger Dryas impact and the consequent flood, and sea level rise. No one has tried to sell you on a story about a little noah dude in a boat full of animal dung. The only point was that the overall flood myths have a basis in fact and reflect a real event. No one mentioned God, retribution or any other causality. If you are not willing to read the data, and consider the hypothesis and make a reasoned, rational discussive response, then don't.

I do not see where anyone in this whole thread has tried to make conclusions or define the causes beyond what is scientific fact. Provable causaulity defined by evidence and scientific examination. No preaching, no pontificating.

Just look back at some of the videos from the flooding in Georgia a year or 2 ago, where the fish were swimming up the street. But I was making one point: don't dismiss any source of information, and that does include myths, legends and folklore. There is almost always some truth and facts buried in them. This case shows that data, new discoveries and information can either validate or help interpret what was being said. They are not always just stories.

Do not confuse the point here, it is not about the myths themselves, or the validity of any religion, it is simply saying that do not dismiss ANY source of data, whether religious, factual, written, carved or spoken. There is a huge value in history, and historical records mainstream science ignores because they say "it ain't true" As an Objectivist, facts and truth are what is sought. Don't dismiss the source out of prejudice. That is what the article is saying.

Nope, you are still missing the point. The Chinese always said their particular Flood story was a myth, (for this particular period and leader), and damn if it isn't true! Amazing. Something dismissed for centuries as fantasy, made up stories, is actually true, and there is scientific data to support it. The Noah Flood, the Gilgamesh Flood, the whole bundle of Flood myths are true. Did god tell him to build an ark? I don't know, and that is not what is being said here. Just the fact that a one time, in 10,800 BC (+/- 150 years) there was a huge flood where a huge amount of meltwater raised sea level maybe 50-100 feet, then the earth fell into another ice age, which was then ended at 9600 BC by yet anther flood, which also raised sea levels towards current levels today. So any where where todays ocean depths are less than about 300 feet, was dry land. That is an awful lot of ground.

No one said that this was an earth environmental event that was like the ancient seabeds rising up over millennia and leaving deposits, etc. This was a short term event, and when people who (logically) lived along the coasts, found their living rooms full of water, they naturally (and correctly) said "crap". There were survivors, and they then had to find a way to tell the story beyond "We got a lot of rain yesterday". They put it into their own framework, which includes a lot of cultures of blaming god for whatever goes wrong, and also had to explain why it happened. Since they did not know a big friggin comet chunk smacked the earth 1000 miles north, they relate it with what they can see and say: Loud booms, fire and brimstone, ash, black mud rain, great heat, and floods. These are the fundamental elements in a lot of Flood myths.You do not have to go far, go look up studies on witnesses and their reliability, you will find if you take 10 people, and show them the same thing, and keep them separate, then ask them to describe what they saw and heard, you will get 10 different variations on the same basic story. That is why witness testimony is inherently unreliable evidence for conviction.

Indeed AJ, that is fact. However, John is being a real devils advocate inthe discussion which is a necessary part of any debate. Thanks for the point you make, as it is pertinent to the point I am trying to make: The Flood myth appears in over 300 cultures as a foundational myth (Graham Hancock) making it one of the most common myths found. There are variations and differences, different people, different vehicles (boats boxes, rafts, trees) used, but they all relate to a great flood, some survivors and recovery. The fact they are "myths" does not imbue them as "primitives". Primitives do not move 300 ton stone blocks around, and shape and cut them from living rock. There are many layers of "sea coverage" and not all relate to the Great Flood. The cliffs of Dover, England are an excellent example of how a Flood can eat away at a soft source, and erode large amounts the rock to leave such cliffs, and that is an accepted explanation for how they were created. There was a land bridge to France there and it went away in the Flood. There are organic village remains under the surface on both sides that have been dated back to 3rd and 4 millennium BC. The problem with that dating is, as Graham Hancock points out, unless you can absolutely say the source was undisturbed since the time laid down, you can get a false C14 reading from the intrusion of younger material. The point is a group of 300 cultures worldwide saying "Oh crap we are all gong to die, and there was this frigging big flood" goes beyond a small group on the coast looking at a tsunami that is loacalized. It is a big problem for everyone, and needed a big cause to induce. That has been the excuse mainstream science has denied the validity of myth as fact, no cause could be found. It also is why there is still resistance in the face of overwhelming data to support the Younger Dryas impact, because it means the myths are not only true, and have an element of truth, but they now have a date far older than anyone wants to accept. That means (just as in the story above), mainstream science has to adapt to new data, and people have to stop dismissing myths as "primitive fantasy".

Speculation is fun, sure. But the facts are still facts, and Lord of the Rings is closer to actual reality than Noah's Flood.

True, but sea life could appear in new areas when those areas were submerged and the sea creatures were trapped and breeding until the water was no more.

I don't really think a point was to be made by posting the article. Its just interesting to speculate, particularly when there is geological evidence and folklore involved.

A sudden global flood wouldn't cause sea life to appear in new areas. Floods are far too short-lived for animal and plant life to grow in new areas. Continental movements and gradual rising and falling sea levels account for it much better. Of course the earth has gone through many times of higher and lower sea levels due to many causes, no one disputes that. I do t get what the pint. If this discussion actually is. It seems to dance around halfway suggesting Noah's flood was real and that arguing against global warming (which I support, but fail to see how this article relates).

Perhaps, but it is possible that it took variable times for the water to recede based on different depths, accounting for the differences in time (and sentiment in the geology). There is also the possibility that a meteor struck the earth, vaporizing a large amount of ocean, opening up fissures in the Earths crust, causing massive tidal waves, and causing a global down pour.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science...

As for cultures, there are always exceptions, some cultures didn't write either. But I would respect China and India over those exceptions based on their population sizes and because of the ages of their cultures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

The drive between Phoenix and Tucson, which I do a few times every year, looks far more like an ocean bottom that a desert. I've found seashells, small ones in large numbers, in the desert. I found fossils of shells in the forest in upstate NY.

CO2 is a linear molecule and thus not particularly good at absorbing and emitting radiation compared to H2O which is a polar molecule. Water vapor is several percent, say 3%, of the atmosphere while CO2 is about one molecule to 2500 molecules in the atmosphere or about 0.04% which is about 1/75 of the stronger absorbent molecule and most of the solar radiation that CO2 would have absorbed is absorbed by the H2O, much of it in breaking the hydrogen bonds of liquid water. Then there is the problem as to how the atmosphere is heated since the non-greenhouse gases (O2, N2, and Ar) do not absorb except at short wavelength and very long wavelengths, so the heating of the atmosphere must be mainly through exchange of energy between those molecules making up about 97% or so of the atmosphere from the greenhouse gases. Not much to radiate to the ground to cause extra temperature rise. The greenhouse gases main job beside heating the rest of the atmosphere is to remove heat from the atmosphere by colliding with those non-greenhouse gases gaining energy and radiating it to space at the top of the troposphere.
There is no known acceptable reason for much of the somewhat periodic changes of the climates of the Earth. I phrase it that way because each area of the Earth has its own climate which is somewhat periodic and over long time periods can vary. It is a long stretch of the imagination to average the climates or in the usual way average the temperatures and claim that an average is an actual existing thing which is a metric for the imaginary climate of the Earth.

Thats the problem Nickursis separating the basis of fact from the myth. The preconceived dismissal of old historical tales as ridiculous or fiction often misses good historical descriptions.Thanks for this post.