THE DELUGE

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. 9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. 10 And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. 13 And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16 Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and set the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17 For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. 19 And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. 20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you, to keep them alive. 21 Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them." 22 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. (Gen 6)

Okie dokie. Now with the thought in mind that Bill Cosby began his career with this vignette, we must of course demur as to the accuracy of Genesis 6. I mean it is a fun story. But come on!!!

Oh DD, you are wasting our time. Who believes in such nonsense? Well let me tell you all something.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFdmG-TRxzE  First listen to Izzy and then listen to one of the dumbest people you could ever find yourself listening to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svOCD5jKb5A

I mean the second guy has a LAB COAT on while he spills out his nonsense about how fossils PROVE that there was a world wide flood.

And yet why am I more likely to believe the English guy dressed in drag?

Oooooooooooh, but DD (I will tell you that this is the first time I have spoken to myself since I got on the internet) NOBODY REALLY BELIEVES THIS GUY IN A LAB COAT. He represents some small portion of our electorate and he really is not representative of the right wing nut evangelical literalists.

Brownbeck, Huckabee and Tancredo stated in front of god and the American people that they do not believe in Evolution.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4Cc8t3Zd5E

Oh but believing in evolution and believing that the world is 6000 years old are two different things.

Yeah sure, they are apples and apples, Winesap and Delicious. BULLSHIT

There is a site that spouts a 'geologist' in its midst that publishes all sorts of blather read by millions in this country:

The idiot finds that there are dinosaur teeth in a geological layer that should be 140 million years old even though no dinosaurs would show up until 110 million years ago.

So naturally there is only one thing to conclude:

There never was an "era of smaller T-rex dinosaurs," but there was an unimaginably massive Flood that wiped out whole environments, layering and sorting sediments and fossilizing the creatures buried therein. http://www.icr.org/article/4779/

You can see the problem here. The logic goes something like this.

Geologists surely are at least 30 million years off with regard to dinosaur teeth which means they are most probably 4.5 billion years off in their estimate for the age of the earth and 13.5 billion years as far as the universe..........ergo.......the earth is 6000 years old and there was a mighty flood that killed all the dinosaurs.

These same idiots say it only took 400 years to carve out the Grand Canyon...well really 40 days and 40 nites  (or 180 days if you find the contradiction in times in Bereshit). http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-science.html#icr-claims

And, of course 'they' have their own museum http://creationmuseum.org/about/

WHERE DOES THIS CRAP COME FROM ANYWAY?

In 1650 AD, the Archbishop of Armagh, James Usher, calculated that 4004 BC was the date of the creation year. Usher's 4004 BC date has become the most widely quoted for people who hold to a young earth. The reliability of Usher's timeline came into doubt when it was revealed that he failed to include a year zero. http://www.raptureready.com/rr-planet.html

Gilgamesh was an historical king of Uruk in Babylonia, on the River Euphrates in modern Iraq; he lived about 2700 B.C. Although historians (and your textbook) tend to emphasize Hammurabi and his code of law, the civilizations of the Tigris-Euphrates area, among the first civilizations, focus rather on Gilgamesh and the legends accruing around him to explain, as it were, themselves. Many stories and myths were written about Gilgamesh, some of which were written down about 2000 B.C. in the Sumerian language on clay tablets which still survive; the Sumerian language, as far as we know, bears no relation to any other human language we know about. These Sumerian Gilgamesh stories were integrated into a longer poem, versions of which survive not only in Akkadian (the Semitic language, related to Hebrew, spoken by the Babylonians) but also on tablets written in Hurrian and Hittite (an Indo-European language, a family of languages which includes Greek and English, spoken in Asia Minor). All the above languages were written in the script known as cuneiform, which means "wedge-shaped." The fullest surviving version, from which the summary here is taken, is derived from twelve stone tablets, in the Akkadian language, found in the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria 669-633 B.C., at Nineveh. The library was destroyed by the Persians in 612 B.C., and all the tablets are damaged. The tablets actually name an author, which is extremely rare in the ancient world, for this particular version of the story: Shin-eqi-unninni. You are being introduced here to the oldest known human author we can name by name! http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/GILG.HTM

He advised the walls of Utnapishtim's house to build a great boat, its length as great as its breadth, to cover the boat, and to bring all living things into the boat. Utnapishtim gets straight to work and finishes the great boat by the new year. Utnapishtim then loads the boat with gold, silver, and all the living things of the earth, and launches the boat. Ea orders him into the boat and commands him to close the door behind him. The black clouds arrive, with the thunder god Adad rumbling within them; the earth splits like an earthenware pot, and all the light turns to darkness. The Flood is so great that even the gods are frightened:

The gods shook like beaten dogs, hiding in the far corners of heaven,
Ishtar screamed and wailed:
"The days of old have turned to stone:
We have decided evil things in our Assembly!
Why did we decide those evil things in our Assembly?
Why did we decide to destroy our people?
We have only just now created our beloved humans;
We now destroy them in the sea!"
All the gods wept and wailed along with her,
All the gods sat trembling, and wept.

   The Flood lasts for seven days and seven nights, and finally light returns to the earth. Utnapishtim opens a window and the entire earth has been turned into a flat ocean; all humans have been turned to stone. Utnapishtim then falls to his knees and weeps.

   Utnapishtim's boat comes to rest on the top of Mount Nimush; the boat lodges firmly on the mountain peak just below the surface of the ocean and remains there for seven days. On the seventh day:

I [Utnapishtim] released a dove from the boat,
It flew off, but circled around and returned,
For it could find no perch.
I then released a swallow from the boat,
It flew off, but circled around and returned,
For it could find no perch.
I then released a raven from the boat,
It flew off, and the waters had receded:
It eats, it scratches the ground, but it does not circle around and return.
I then sent out all the living things in every direction and sacrificed a sheep on that very spot.

Now compare this clip from Gilgamesh to Bereshit:

15 They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. 16 And they that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the LORD shut him in. 17 The flood continued forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; 20 the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. 21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; 22 everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days. (Gen 7)

....And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. 6 At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, 7 and sent forth a raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; 9 but the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put forth his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. 10 He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; 11 and the dove came back to him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. 12 Then he waited another seven days, and sent forth the dove; and she did not return to him any more. 13 In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. 14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. 15 Then God said to Noah, 16 "Go forth from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. 17 Bring forth with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh--birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth--that they may breed abundantly on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply upon the earth." 18 So Noah went forth, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. 19 And every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves upon the earth, went forth by families out of the ark. 20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. (Genesis 8)

Gilgamesh was written (first drafts anyway, 4800 years ago).

ts really not possible to know the age of most texts, including Bible texts.  Much easier is to know, from paleographic, radiocarbon, and stratigraphic evidence, the age of the oldest manuscripts.  That's because while text is an abstract thing, manuscripts are physical and can be put to the test.  The oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest copies of biblical books, are from the third century B.C.  There are several scrolls of the Torah or Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) among these manuscripts that date from the third century B.C. through the first century B.C.

It has been fashionable for Bible scholars to say that the Torah was put into its final shape in post-exilic times, i.e., following the return of some of the Jews from Babylon in the fifth century B.C., so that's where the 450 B.C. date comes from.  Several recent discoveries have made it difficult to maintain that view.  The most important of these is the discovery, in an ancient tomb on the outskirts of Jerusalem, of two small silver scrolls that have quotes from Numbers 6 (the priestly blessing) and another brief passage from (I believe) Deuteronomy.  The paleography and the archaeology of the tomb suggest that the scrolls are from ca. 600 B.C.  This clearly suggests that the Torah, or at least part of it, was already in existence just before the Babylonian exile.

I hasten to add that, prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (mostly during 1947-52, though some came later), the oldest manuscripts containing the Torah were from the tenth century A.D.  A text containing an Aramaic translation of Psalm 20 (though written in Egyptian demotic script) dates to the fourth century B.C.  (Aramaic is related to Hebrew and is the language the Jews adopted during the Babylonian exile.)  The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls pushed the date of the oldest biblical manuscripts back by 13 centuries.  The silver scrolls have pushed at least part of the Torah back nearly four centuries more.  In my opinion, we should not be surprised if even older manuscripts are found, but we should also not expect it, since archaeology is such a serendipitous venture. http://en.allexperts.com/q/Bible-Studies-1654/Genesis-age.htm

2450 years is about the earliest age claimed for the written Genesis according to this 'biblical scholar'

Me, I have more interest in the story written 4800 years ago. And let us not forget Hesiod who is writing about 750BC collecting poems or songs sung for centuries before.

So we have Christians who claim to not just follow the old time religion but claim to be scholars of the real old time religion--that of the Jews.  These people are NOT JUST CLAIMING THAT EVOLUTION IS HOGWASH. These people are claiming the earth is 6000 years old. WHICH MEANS THE FIRST STORY OF THE FLOOD IS WRITTEN ONLY 1200 YEARS AFTER ADAM AND EVE. And they sure the fuck never read Gilgamesh.

So I calm down. So I breath in and out slowly. And so I say Oooooooooooaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhm over an hour or so.

What kind of sites are available out there?

http://www.godsaidmansaid.com/topic3.asp?Cat2=262&ItemID=668

http://www.missiontoamerica.org/genesis/six-thousand-years.html

https://store.creation.com/us/product_info.php?products_id=802&gclid=CKebltPg3ZsCFRKAxgodSyakbA   They are selling books on this crap and making Money.

Half of America believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2680/nearly-half-the-u-s-population-believes-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old

Oh and we have politicians, elected politicians who agree with this drivel:  http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/08/az-state-senate-earth-6000/

MEDIA ADVISORY, Aug. 14 /Christian Newswire/ -- ChristiaNet.com, the world's largest Christian portal with twelve million monthly page loads, conducted a recent poll asking, "Is the Earth billions of years old?" Regardless the selection of "Yes", "No" or "Unsure", these Christian voters agreed that, "In the beginning God created..." "A point of confusion seems to be whether there is a gap of time between the beginning of universe and the creation of Adam", stated Bill Cooper, President of ChristiaNet.

Out of 797 polled, 43% believed the Earth is less than billions of years old. The vast majority of this group felt the Earth is between 6,000 and 12,000 years old. Using the Bible as their reference, many Believers cited the genealogies listed in the Old Testament as evidence. One person said, "The years of generations between Adam and Jesus equal about 4,000." While others pointed out in Genesis that "God created all things in six days" and many believed these days are six literal 24 hour periods. Some took a more scientific approach such as using population growth studies and analyzing Biblical timelines to arrive at an age of less than a billion years.  http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/5143890.html

CONCLUSION?

1.   There is a SIGNIFICANT percentage of voting Americans who believe in  fairy   tales.

2.    Even if you blame the fairy tales on Persians

3.    There is a significant political force in this country that is using these polls to do evil.

4.    You cannot argue with walls or with people who believe in fairy tales

5.     I am going to run out of tobacco in the next week and what am I to do then?

6.     THE MEDIA IS SCARED TO DEATH OF THIS SHIT.

7.     These people wish to teach our children and grandchildren fairy tales written by Persians as science.

8.      Brownbeck, Huckabee and Tancredo are idiots

9.      Damn, I knew I was smelling smoke again, frickin cigs, I gotta learn how to roll them better.

I was watching Rachel last nite and I am going to tie all this into C-Street the place where all this fun fornication is going on. I just have no room for it right now. 

I HOPE TO GOD YOU ARE ALL TAKING NOTES

THERE WILL BE A TEST