(1)
1. The biblical description of the creation of the earth and origin of life.
2. Timeframes for the above.
3. A worldwide flood.
4. The Tower of Babel.
5. Presence of Israelites in Egypt, and an "exodus" from Egypt
That should do for starters.
Sorry I haven't gotten back to you...busy at work for the most part and Internet at home was down last night.
1. You ask the wrong questions. You asked me to provide evidence of the above events. The problem is not in providing evidence, but in providing suffienct evidence to form a correct deduction.
Incorrect. The problem is most certainly in providing evidence. That is the burden of proof for someone taking the affirmative position. And, for the first four items above, the evidence will have to be extraordinary. WHy? Because they claims are absolutely fantastic; and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Lack of evidence in an event does not imply it did not happen.
Wrong, for at least two reasons:
1. In this case, you are taking the affirmative position that these events did not happen. If you are arguing your point from the view that the event in question happened, but there is simply no evidence available to support it, then you cannot establish the affirmative truth of a claim in that fashion. Moreover, you are sticking an I.O.U. into the "evidence pot", and asking your audience to just trust you on it. You can't get away with that in a courtroom; and it also doesn't work to establish the truth of any scientific or historical claim.
2. Second (and more to the point) there is an abundance of contradictory evidence (i.e., evidence which could not exist, if your alleged events had taken place). So in that case, a lack of evidence, combined with contradictory evidence, most certainly does mean that the event(s) in question did not take place.
In addition, not having the evidence yet (we just haven't advanced enough or gathered enough information to formulate that theory) also does not imply it did not happen...just that we can't PROVE or DISPROVE it happened.
Yes it does. See the above.
I might also point out that, given your extremely loose and flexible guidelines, we could never rule *anything* out. "The world was created by a giant dodo egg that cracked and the universe came spilling out. No, I don't have evidence, but that's not a problem - I'm sure it's out there, we just haven't found it yet. As soon as we do, we'll be able to formulate a theory." Or, "Napoleon Bonaparte was really a space invader from Alpha Centauri. I haven't got evidence right now, here today, you understand, but I'm sure that I'll be able to find it sometime in the future." Obviously both claims are nonsense. But under your guidelines, scientists and historians would be required to treat such preposterous nonsense with the same respect as skilled research and peer-reviewed material. There is a point where we can say that a particular claim is so full of BS that it should be soundly rejected.
2. The same goes for the Hyrax you suggested. The entire premise behind the II argument is that we know every animal that inhabited that area. That is simply impossible to determine by the very spotty fossil record and other sources.
Well, in the first place, no one except you (and some other fundamentalists) are suggesting that this animal is extinct. The animal in question, the hyrax (shaphan), has been indentified as a hyrax and continues to exist today. Here is a picture:
http://www.awf.org/wildlives/142
The fact that the hyrax is the named animal in Leviticus is made clear even in Britannica:
HYRAX
also called DASSIE, any of the small hoofed mammals of the order Hyracoidea. Both hyraxes and the unrelated pikas (order Lagomorpha) are also sometimes called rock rabbits; the term is misleading for hyraxes, which are neither rabbits nor exclusively rock dwellers. The term cony (coney) in the Bible actually refers not to the true cony (also a lagomorph) but to the hyrax.
Everyone is satisfied that this animal is a hyrax, and that the hyrax exists. The only reason you are suggesting a hypothetical extinct animal that no one has ever found any evidence for, is to rescue this verse from being labeled as incorrect.
So if you think that this Hebrew word means some never-before-discovered extinct animal, then you need to show:
1. some linguistic proof that it refers to an extinct animal;
2. proof that the extinct animal ever lived - and the "spottiness" of the fossil record is not a defense for you here, since the animal would have been alive during historic times in Israel and the surrounding areas, so there would be references in written texts of Israel and other surrounding nations;
3. if "shaphan" does refer to this hypothetical extinct animal, then the Hebrew word for "hyrax" must be something else besides shaphan, so you'll have to find that other Hebrew word and produce it for me as well
Good luck.
[ March 28, 2002, 04:07 PM: Message edited by: Big John Trapper ]
Lay it on us...