I was under the impression that those comments were in reference to everyone partaking of that particular discussion, I think Albedo was in range of the "smart but so so dumb mallet" too, just for entertaining the idea.

Eh, a paragraph of elegant prose is about my limit, sorry. I have tried to write books, they generally turn out too thin, the whole - stay with one theme and write many words about it - thing gets me every time. I admire those who can do that a great deal.

I wouldn't say it's entirely contrary to other creation myths. In Norse myth the origin of the universe is Ginnungagap; a void bordered in time by Muspell a hot seething hostile environment on one side, and Niflheim a frozen emptiness on the other. In The Australian Aboriginal creation myth the existence of Ungambilkula ('created from nothing') entities guiding the course of the human race's formation from the formless is crucial, The Kojiki myth (Japanese) began in a void with a trinity of deities (sound familiar?). There are multiple creation myths that infer an ex nihilo event, some get quite a bit closer to our scientific understanding of the present universe than Genesis. Even Hindu creation mythology runs parallel with Genesis in describing the original empty void with metaphor pertaining to water, a divine being then divides the void from itself and stepwise from that process springs a universe of life.

I would be prepared to concede people back then would almost certainly have had much knowledge and skills relevant to their way of life, the environment they inhabited, and so on, but most definitely NOT in cosmology, astronomy, the nature of the earth as a whole, the origins and evolution and full variety of life on Earth, through no lack of intrinsic intelligence, but simply because of when they lived. IOW no useful knowledge in coming up with remotely accurate creation myths, and the Genesis stories are a perfect example of this ignorance.

But what happens when these perfect utopias conflict with each other? surely you wouldnt recreate an entirely individual utopian dimension for each and every life form in existence/planet (thus making everything a god >.> )

You realize that would lead to the destruction of... everything... in all existence... for all time... including yourself... right?

Unless you create another magical/omnipotent being >.> then your boned...

so i would advice against giving EVERYONE their own personal utopia

And it does not seem strange to you to judge what knowledge they did claim to possess and be sharing by the very standard of technological advancement which separates our culture from theirs. Well, in contrariness, I think it disingenious to take the most obvious distinction between us and the ancient storytellers, declare it a distinction and then claim something newly substantive has been established by the exercise. Of course they weren't cosmologists, cosmology has since been defined. So that makes their claimed knowledge, not cosmology, but we already knew that myth is the song of a different zeitgeist, so what's been established here but nothing?

Why should ancient man not have a capacity for understanding of the nature of the earth? Natural processes are predominantly recycled analogues of each other. Most anyone can come to realise the nature of earth's processes in the span of a lifetime. And every one of these people will lack the capacity to explicate it in a formal dialect of which they are unaware.  Assuming that the origin of creation myth was the mind of someone who lived on earth, as we both do, then the nature of earth as a whole is not out of reach of that persons awareness, our formalisms are, but the knowledge is not.

This again smacks of calling our distinct yardstick different because it's different. Evolution fits our formal structure of time, it flies under the radar that we invented that time formalism to begin with because it's now so conventional as to be second nature to us, but nevertheless, it's an modern-ish invention and a distinction between our existence and the existence of ancient man. Before we go arguing that the founder of the genesis account claimed 24*6 hrs of creation we'd better first establish that their formal method of divining 'days' even matches ours. One look at Genesis 1 establishes that it doesn't. The separation between light and darkness, and called day and night in Genesis, preceded the addition of galactic objects (sun and moon), which are specifically ordained to be symbolic of the actual conception of day to which they are referring in the previous passages.  Ergo the path of the sun across the sky is not DAY according to Genesis, it is merely a symbol of what Day is.

The specific concept of a 'day' in the genesis account is nothing more than a separation of something from nothing. And this is the formal concept of genesis time. It's nothing at all like our incremented units of equal distance over an imaginary dimension. Genesis units of time are arbitrary divisions, the distance between their units is marked by visual objects, eg seeds/ trees, leaves / berries, not numerical order, and they have conceived of no imaginary dimension at all. In Genesis, time is intrinsic, not independent.  Without a conception of independent or extrinsic time, on what grounds does evolution even apply to a full variety of life on earth?  

In terms of time divided entirely by the locality of objects - plant life- sea life- land life and man is the order of evolution anyway, not that that is a particularly important point. The important point is that Genesis does include it's own formal account of time and it bears no real resemblance to the foundational aspects of ours.

Hi Bob, first, I apologise, my post shouldn't have implied a second time that you were reflecting on the intellect of the conceiver[s] of genesis, that was not my intention with it.

I think our premises in reading the tract are in kind as to:

1. the writer (speaker) was of normal intellect

2. the tract is in direct reference to the writers knowledge of the natural world and its origins (which is at best allegorical in the terms of our zeitgeist)

it is the area beyond this point which I was addressing in my last post.

Where I mean to point out that we part ways is in the following:

Bob-

3. The writer does not demonstrate scientific accuracy.

Eloise-

3. Scientific accuracy is relative to formalism.

4. The writer does not demonstrate any formalism that would ascertain his accuracy by the standards of our scientific norms.

Bob-

4. The writer is data poor.

Eloise -

5. several points - the quality and quantity of the writers data is by and large no different to ours when it is considered that a. both ancient man and modern man are limited in individual access to quantities of data by the span of a life time. and b. the quality of modern data is average in terms of the ratio of falsified and useless data to progressively useful data. In other words, we have a lot of baggage and this affects the quality of our richness in data.

thus 6. our general understanding of nature and the cosmos is not necessarily born of a superior standard of data on the whole.

and I would qualify that with 7. modern man does access superior entailing data from which we extract through suitably entailing formal methods. Ancient man demonstrates no specific faculty for data handling or retrieval and as such are without suitable account for their extrapolations. The account of modern man is provided in the methodology, so modern man is not in need of answering to it's account, while ancient man is. This can be construed as a superior position for modern man to be in. However it does not entail a deficit in the extrapolations of ancient man, a methodological account can demonstrate such a deficit but one is not provided.

In short, we can't outrightly expose any error of methodology in the claims of genesis because there is no method entailed in the claim, so we cannot assume one as a premise.  Of course we can conclude one in retrospect of having read the book and finding an error of accuracy, (and I see that you are doing that and excusing it by virtue of data poverty) but to reach that conclusion we must consider the formalism of the writer (3 and 4 for me), hence my discussing that particular subject in detail.

Oh, get over yourself!

According to my definition of God, I AM God.  So, it's not hypothetical, in my case.  I define God as All that is True in the Universe.  I am a part of All that is True in the Universe; so, that makes me God, along with everything else.

Now, AS God, I would save the baby, if I had the ability to save it.  Why?  Because, I enjoy life; and, I feel like the baby deserves a chance to enjoy more of it than it already has. 

Of course, even though I AM God, my perspective is that of a human.  I can't help that; because, that's what I am, too.

Ah, but what about omnipotence?  If I am God, should I not definitely be able to save the baby?  Not necessarily.  Omnipotence is the ability to do all that can be done.  If it is not possible for it to be done, omnipotence will not help you.  If there is no one around to save the baby, it will drown - and, there is nothing an omnipotent being can do about it; but it can  STILL be omnipotent.

I hardly see the point in your exercise.  A realistic hypothetical scenario, as I just presented,  is far more useful than a hypothetical scenario that could never happen.  My answer was the same as the one you wanted to cram in my mouth - but, for different reasons and from a different perspective (probably one that will only frustrate you, because it isn't the response you wanted to see).

 ..... say the word "god" and so many freak ? Why do I just laugh, to then cry ?

G O D ? , oh shit ......       RRS is AWESOME,  is that not god ?  

If not,  what is god ???