Random Responses 2 of 2

Due to length I broke this up into two pieces, look back one to find the beginning and explanation. (question for first response in italicts) *Author's note* I just realized that when I published this is put two of my posts of my 'previous' list and into the archives. So if this is a new blog for any one reading this you can now find "wrongful...life?", my first post, in the archives list. My popular 'sick days' is found there as well. :)

C) Every day, I find a news story about someone in an education or government position, who is being arrested for child related sex crimes. I've talked to Louise about this, and you know, even though for the most part I consider myself liberal, I'm starting to think that the problem is with the media, television and movies that seem to be 'glamorizing' the sexuality of the very young. And parents seem to be losing their compass on what is 'acceptable' behavior by their children.. allowing them to wear clothing that is extremely revealing or just plain sexual (thongs for 8 yr old girls!). I have theorized that this may be a 'fallback' to how we viewed sexuality/eligibility for marriage when most of society was agricultural .. when at 14 you were as educated as you needed and started looking for a good partnership..I know a few hundred years isn't enough time to 'evolve' that type of thinking out of our culture, but I don't understand why it seems to only be a problem for such a small segment of our society..
Traditionally, in nearly all societies, women are considered adult and marriageable material when they reach sexual maturity, in other words when the period kicks in between 12-17. In nearly all society men have not been considered adult until quite a bit later, 20-30. Its perfectly natural for an older man to find a pubescent woman attractive or a possible wife. In nearly any society, however, prepubescent have always been off limits (the Asian, both Chinese and Japanese have always had a cultural thing for prepubescent girls). It is not normal, healthy, or moral to find prepubescent or younger girls or boys sexual. While the media helps sexual these children, and certainly parents are largely to blame for allowing it as well, it is quite a bit more than that. The media is just a reflection of the cutting edge wants of the people. And when I say cutting edge i mean the most vulgar, liberal (no offense meant), amoral and even anti-moral, outspoken parts of the society. For the last 2 generations or so there has been a constant push to distance sex from the concept of marriage, procreation, and love. its been drilled into our minds from every conceivable secular angle that sex is nothing more than pleasure. The point of sex is to bind two people into one flesh, when you take that away and make it only about sexual gratification you lose the moral footing to say certain forms of sexual gratification are wrong. Social conscious looses its compass and it's distilled down to 'what you want'. While it is possible to hold personal 'preference morals' without a base there is no way to restrain society when you degrade right and wrong to personal preference. While it can take only moments for personal right and wrong preferences to change it takes longer for society as a whole to do so, and it's very gradual. At one point in time fornication was scandalous, totally disgraceful, but when enough people started practicing it, and more importantly, when enough people started fully believing that sex was just about pleasure it became less important, nearly acceptable, eventually it became expected. The liberal edge of society helped push the envelope by inundating the youth with the message that it was normal and okay and by telling the adults there was no way to prevent people, regardless of age, from doing it so we might as well get used to it. They made people believe that it would be better to accept it because then they'd have a chance to make it safer, if they refused it as 'wrong' all they would do is damn those who were going to do it anyway to have no help with the consequences, no where to turn if they got in trouble. The more you accept a thing, however, the more it happens, it's a perfect plan. If you convince one group its okay, the other group that its going to happen anyway you effectively neuter any resistance and make it socially acceptable. Adultery followed closely on the heels of fornication, since everyone was doing 'it' and people might grow out of gratification with one person and want to seek it elsewhere why should people be condemned to a lifetime with only one choice? No fault divorce allowed people to make and break connections so adultery became fornication and marriage just because a good idea as far as taxes go. Next comes a feminist rush, now I'm not talking about the women that fought to get a vote and equal treatment under the law in the 20s and 30s I'm talking about today's breed that splits into two main groups, those that say women is so far superior to man that all we need men for is procreation, and those that believe that there is no difference between the sexes, that male and female are as immaterial to the person as hair color. They both help push society away from marriage but more importantly they both help usher in the next main step in the 'sexual revolution' that degrades sex to just amoral pleasure. Since sex has been distanced from procreation the first group has no reason to keep men in their lives to fulfill their pleasure since sexual gratification doesn't have anything to do with the need to procreate. The second group doesn't see any difference between the sexes, coupled with the distances of procreation from sex, so it doesn't matter to them where you get the pleasure. The male backlash from the first agreed that females were so incredibly different than man that it was pointless to try to force the issue, although obviously disagreeing with the female superiority thing. The second side is as appealing to men as to women. Taken together it is a huge social push towards accepting homosexuality. The same thing happened, the revolution leaders convinced one group that it was okay and convinced the other group that it was inevitable. They downgraded same sex attraction from a deviant predilection to a completely normal preference, threw in a few false statistics and hinted that it might not even be their choice and then shouted for all they were worth. It took about the same amount of time to make homosexuality 'okay' and acceptable as it took to make fornication and adultery. The next planned push it to make bisexuality and polygamy legal in the same push, since they overlap for legal reasons. Since we've bought the first two bluffs, and now believe that sex is nothing more than a pleasurable encounter there is no socially acceptable reason to continue to 'withhold' the 'right' to a person's preferred form of pleasure. While you didn't want to believe me the other day when I said eventually pedophilia will be legalized what you see if the start of that movement, waiting in the wings until its time for its showing. Already it's started to creep forward, just like other areas of the 'sexual revolution' crept forward long before they started shouting for attention. The bisexual legal groups have agreed to wait until the homosexual legal issues have been resolved so as not to push too much on the public at once. These are written agreements between large groups, not just supposition, understand that this is a worldwide push not just in the US so you have to look outside of the US to see the whole picture. Meanwhile, the legal ramifications for pedophilia are being chipped away at, mostly in CA within the US but in Canada, Europe, and Asia as well. Laws requiring doctors to report underage sex and molestation are being revoked, instead of getting years for child molestation or child rape people get a few months, or even less sometimes. The legal and medical societies push to get it defined as an 'illness' or an 'inborn preference' the same steps it took towards homosexuality and bisexuality and 'polysexuality' before classifying it as a 'alternate lifestyle'. Children are sexualized in the media and literature and adult/child relationships are featured in a good light in literature and 'successful' adult/child relationships are celebrated, they get movie and book deals and are flaunted by the media. Exactly the same steps taken for making deviant behavior acceptable that has been used before. If you tell people that sex is just pleasure enough times they'll eventually believe it. Once they do they have no reason to deny that to a 'certain minority' of the population. You might not believe me but history backs me up. The Greco-Roman empire did the exact same things, in more or less the exact same way, and with the same results. The UNICEF, one of the foremost 'child rights' advocates in the world is dedicated to 'the reproductive and sexual rights of all children' and include in their list of rights the right 'to abortion and the choice of their sexual partners' in other words the 'leading' world wide child advocates approves of childhood sex. Meanwhile children who would otherwise have nothing to do with sexuality are being pushed into it by the media telling them that everyone's doing it, its okay and normal, and giving them positive examples of it. Children as young as kindergarten have been caught mimicking sex and its now considered a status symbol to a lot of middle schooler and even elementary kids to have 'made it' with a high schooler. In most places proms, which used to be upper classmen only, are now open not only to 'lower classmen' but also to dates from the local middle school. Elementary schools are staring to have dances. Probably within your lifetime, and likely within mine, it will become 'biased' to say that pedophilia is wrong. And already its considered old fashioned to prosecute for statutory rape and even grade schoolers can be given birth control and condoms without their parents knowledge or permission. Once a society starts down the proverbial 'slippery slope' it will keep going all the way to the bottom. Eventually all conceivable forms of 'sex' will be legally allowable and a 'protected right'. You note that its "such a small segment of our society" but there is about the same percent of acknowleged pedophiles that there are homosexuals, not only that but its an extremely overlapping group. the vocal minority is perfectly capable of changing the silent majorities mind, or failing that, overriding them.

D) In the beginning was God. He created everything in 6 real days and then rested on the 7th, setting up the 7 day week we still hold to today. He put the moon and stars in place to mark the seasons and the sun to mark the day. He created the physical universe with life on Earth. He created a host of heavenly beings, Angels. Adam was created perfect without sin and in a perfect relationship with God. He, and all humans after him, were created for the specific purpose to have a love relationship with God, a meaningful, willing relation of praise and love and companionship. Adam turned from God and fell into sin staining every human to come from him with both the knowlegde of good and evil and a sin nature. Because God is perfect, which means just, His law had to be fulfilled. Man is incapable of fullfilling it because we all fall short of the mark of perfection. The very word 'sin' is an archery term meaning to not hit the bullseye. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Because of this we are eternally separated from God and spiritually dead in our sin nature. Meanwhile, sometime before Adam turned from God, Lucifer, one of God's highest angels, rebelled from God, saying that he 'would be like the Most High'. 1/3 of the angels followed him in his rebellion and God cast them down from heaven and from His grace. We call them demons or fallen angels. Because Adam, who had dominion over the physical creation and creatures there of, fell and entered into a sin nature the whole creation was affected and death, decay, pain, and a general winding down entered into the universe at that time as well. Death is not natural. The reason our very being cries out against it is because it is the enemy, we were not created to die and our hearts of heart cries out against the intrustion upon life, mourns for the lost it knows is unnatural. But God is as merciful as He is just. He wishes that no one die. Hell was made for the angels that rebelled against Him, it was not meant for man. So God created a way for the payment for our sin to be paid by another, by Him as Jesus. While US justice system does not allow for another to take the punishment in lue of the offender most systems do. God redeems us by paying the price, the punishment, for our sin for us. He came to earth, lived with temptation but never sinned, and yet died, sacrifying Himself in our place. All we need do is accept His sacrifice. If we refuse God will not force Himself upon us while we are on Earth and we will remain in a damned state and we will have to pay for our own sins with both a physical death and eternal spiritual death, separation from God. If we accept His sacrifice in our place we are redeemed, which means a debt to be paid in full, and enter freely into His presence for eternity and have a relationship with Him while still on Earth. While the eternity waiting for those redeemed, or Christ-followers or Christians, is far better than this current life we are called to live for Christ to represent His light to a fallen world, to follow the Great Commission 'go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit'. Ultimately there is nothing better on this Earth than to see another come to Christ. It says the Angels in heaven rejoice for those that are saved, that they marvel at the Redemption, and the newly alive Christian certianly does. As one of my favorite songs says 'for His favorite song of all, is the song of the redeemed, when lost sinners now made clean, lift their voices loud in song. When those purchased by His blood, lift to Him a song of love..'. Meanwhile to really state fully answers to our mini-debate:God is perfect, that means perfectly good, just, righteous. And His law is perfect. Anything outside His law is not-good, bad, evil. Humans are intrisically evil because we brake God's law. There is ultimate right and wrong because there is an ultimate Law Giver. And He has carefully explained His law to us both in nature, for nature not only screams a creator but the Creator, and in His Word, a love letter and warning letter to all humanity in which the fullness of the Godhead is explained as well as is possible before Heaven 'for now I see in a mirror dimly, but then, face to face'. The Bible is simple, God's law is fair, simple, and easy to understand, and written in the hearts of ALL men so that no one is without blame. Absolutes exist. Demons are evil because they broke/brake God's law. Angels, both fallen and not, can manifest physically and effect the physical. Since angels are only used for very precise purposes, and never contracdict God anything not human which makes an apparence for other than those purposes or contradicts God is a demon. Whether it takes the form of a faerie, an alien, a ghost, or just a dark presence it just demons mascerading as something more believable to the person its appearing to. Demons aren't afraid to lie after all.'ghosts' as we think of them, as in departed spirits of the dead who come back to converse with the living, do not exist. Necomancy, or any attempt to contact the dead, is stictly forbidden by the Bible. In one instance God allowed contact with a deceased only for the purpose of rebuking the person who was trying to contact him. (I think its in II Kings) 'it is given once for a man to live and after that the judgement' spirits of the dead are not able to wander about. They are either in Heaven or in sheol (which is also hell just not the ultimate hell that will last forever after Lucifer has been judged) waiting for hell. Any aparition of a 'ghost' is nothing more than a demon who is pretending to be the dead for purposes of lying to the living. I am unafraid of anything you may call a ghost for 'greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world' demons can not touch a Christian and must flee before the name of Jesus.Ultimately 'every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord' But meeting God wrapped in His grace and His righteousness is far better than meeting Him in only your own sin.I 'believe' in the Christian God because it has been proven to me irrevocable and unequivically spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. I first believed out of a leap of faith that it was simply what I had to do given the knowledge of my own sin nature. When you are confronted by your own sin and by the absolute righteousness of God you either abase yourself and accept His Lordship or you turn forever away from Him. But since no one can ever know when that choice has been truly made (its called blasphem against the Spirit and is the 'unforgivable sin' because it is the complete and willing rejection of salvation) there is always an overwhelming push, a drive, to try to introduce all those you love to the Creator of the universe as a personal Savior

E)(Forgive some anthropomorphizing) A potter makes a beautiful clay box, the pride of his collection. He made it for a very specific purpose, to hold his most valuable possession. He loves this beautiful box so much he makes a special place just so it can live safely and in comfort for all its days. But once he has placed it in its place and laid his prized possession inside of it, the box rebels and refuses to hold the possession. Repeatedly the box refuses to hold the possession.“I have created you solely for this purpose,” Says the potter. “Since you have refused your purpose I could destroy you. But I love you, you are my most beautiful creation, the pride of my collection. I will keep you, and give you an opportunity to accept your purpose until you are destroyed naturally. But you may no longer inhabit this perfect place I made for you.” And the potter took the box down and put it on a shelf, and used it to hold whatever may need a place. Every day the potter would attempt to place his most prized possession back into the box, admonishing it that if it would but accept it then it could return to its honored place. But the box continued to refuse. Eventually the box crumbled from old age, not only could it not fulfill its created purpose it was no longer able even to hold the simplest of things. The potter was very heartbroken that his favorite piece had been destroyed without returning to its place of honor, but there was nothing more he could do. The potter swept up the broken pieces sadly and placed it in the rubbish heap with the rest of the broken pottery.God is the potter, and we are the pot. It is not that you, or anyone, lives a life without purpose, it is that you live a life without the purpose you were created for. God created humanity, you, me, everyone, to be a receptacle of His love. We were meant to live in a close, personal relationship with Him, both treasured and treasuring. We were meant to walk with God in perfection, to talk with Him, to learn and converse with Him without pain, without death, without evil. He created us with the knowledge required to choose to love and accept Him, for if we did not have a choice it would not be love. The angels worship Him, but only humanity was created with the unique ability to have a loving relationship with Him. Such a thing cannot be forced, it must be accepted. Like the box in the parable we have rejected the purpose we were created for. We have turned away from our creator and followed after our own hearts “There are none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; there is none who seek God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable, there is none who does good, no, not one.” In this fallen state it is impossible to live the life our Creator intended for us. But God loves us, He loves His creation and contends for our love “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” But His law has been broken, and to appease His perfect justice God created a way for us. “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” And “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” If we but accept His free gift to settle His justice our sin is wiped out, not just forgiven, but forgotten. God says He puts our sins away from us ‘as far as the east is from the west’. We are washed utterly clean and allowed to reenter the life our Creator made us for, the sweet purpose better than anything else we could possibly want for ourselves. God does not ask us to do something we cannot; we do have to be perfect, nor even good to accept His gift. “But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were still sinner, Christ, died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” In response to this wonderful gift we are called to His service, knowing full well that He knows us better and has a better plan for our life than we could ever do ourselves. For “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether… For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well… Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” You do not give up your free will when you give yourself to God, instead you understand that His will is far superior to your own and it would be foolishness to reject it. You still have every choice to turn and follow their own path but, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Reasonable service, its nothing above and beyond what He has right and reason to ask us. He seeks only in love to draw us away from the fallen and return us to grace. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”It is utterly good to submit your will to God. It will not obliterate your free will, but rather release all the goodness that God wills for you. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy ad where thieves break in and steal; But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” And “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Only He can truly fulfill us, for only He created us. “But those who wait for God will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not be weary. They will walk and not faint.” There is nothing worthwhile outside of God’s will in comparison to what is within God’s will! He will give you His Spirit, which will guide us through this life. Instead of: “the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissention, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like:” we are given: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” What a far greater way to live!

Random Responses 1 of 2

So I haven't had any time recently to make a post, nor any one thing that has stuck out and demanded my attention to be written about. Most of this is my fault, I've been glued to my story and have a backlog of new articles from the last month or three sitting in my email box. But that doesn't mean I've been silent either. Here are a few random answers to questions or mini-debates that I have had recently. When appropriated the questions have been left before my answer in italitcs. But not all.
A) Amount of animals: First off, and I mean this as politely as i can :) millions of animals is a knee-jerk reaction to the millions of individual animals we have today. The Bible talks about 'kinds' which is kind of like a species but not fully. A kind is anything that can interbreed. Anything below that is variation within a kind that has happened since then. For instance all the species of wolves, cyotes, wild dogs, domesticated dogs, and possibly even foxes *people i've read go back and forth on the foxes one* are all from a single created kind, and probably represented by a single breeding pair. For the feline groups there were probably two created kinds, one for the small wild/domesticated cats and one great cat, within those groups everything can interbreed. Horses/donkeys/zebras/burrows/ponies were likely one created kind. Ect for other grouping of animals. Including extinct animals kinds there are only about 8000 different kinds of animals, making just over 1600 individual animals, clean kinds of animals, of which there are only a few, had seven pairs. The average size of an animal is about the size of a rat *the average size of the dinasours is only the size of a chicken* with about 11% of the animals over the size of a sheep. For those animal kinds, like the really big dinasaurs or even cattle there is nothing saying the animals had to be adults, probably adolecents were used, even the largest dinasaur starts out small.> So, the ark only has to hold about 1600 *btw the above quoted figures are all on the libral side on purpose*. > Space: The arks dementions were 300X50X30 cubits, or 459X75X44 feet, with gives a volume of 1.5 million cubic feet. This is the equivalent of 522 railroad box cars. You can fit 240 sheep *this is a shipping standard thing* into a box car. So if we amuse the animals were kept in close quarters like sheep in a box car they would take up less than 7 box cars out of 522! If you assume they were in cages/stables of an average size of 20X20X12 or about 3 square feet would be plenty for the average size of a rat, they would take up only 42,000 cubic feet or 14.4 stock cars. This would leave the rest of the room for food, range room for walking, and for Noah's family. This is assuming the cages were not stacked. If some of the cages were stacked, leaving room for people to walk between them for care, it frees up even more space. Food was likely dried and concentrated, like packed alphafa, grains, and dried fruits. Common calculations for total food requirements for the animals and humans use up about 15% of the total space, or 225, 000 cubic feet of space. Water would take up an additional 9.5% or so, or 142,500 cubic feet of space. Water requirment could be much less if Noah started the trip with little water and piped in rainwater as needed or to fill up space left open by food consuption. All of that could be stacked to keep as much floor space as possible open. So, if eveything is taken together, 42,000+225,000+142,500=209,500 leaving 1,290,500 cubic feet as free space that could be living quarters for Noah and his family and exercise areas for the animals, or growing space for some of the larger animals. The Arc had three floors, One floor could have been used completely for all the animals, food, and water leaving two full floors for everything else. > Upkeep:> All those cages and all those animals produced waste, but that is not a large problem. Deep bedding of sawdust, woodshavings *both of which Noah would have had in abundance* or peat moss can last a full year without being changed. Any waste that needed to be disposed of> could have been composted, which would have provided worms as a food source as an added bonus plus a great amount of heat to help keep the arc, which was probably mostly below water, warm, or could be flushed overboad by use of slanted floors and water, which could have been draw and did not need to be carried with them. Also, many animals might have been in a state of hibernation. warm close quarters with minimal day light, rich food on demand, and no need for hunting/foraging/traveling would put many animals into a lathargic or even hibernative mode. Also, its possible that God put them in a hibernation but since that's not specifically mentioned no explaination should hang on that.> Bringing the animals together: First off, nearly all of the animals that we consider indemic are only indemic NOW. Things like kangaroos were once found in many parts of the world, including the middle east. There are very few creatures who are not found in the fossil record spread all over. Specifially nearly all animals kinds are represented in the fossil records or historic records around the cresent valley, which is where Noah landed and disembarked. Since a represenative from ALL animal kinds was initially created in the garden and then spread out *God populated the whole earth but everything was created in the garden as well so it would make sense that the area surounding that would still hold a higher degree of variation that a far flung area.* Noah did not gather the animals, God did, the animals arrived at the arc without Noah or his family gathering them up. Certainly God is able to tell them where to go. As far as traveling over water or to remote areas the Bible tells us that both the waters and the dry land were gathered together. There was likely only a single continent so no need to make a long water journey to collect species indemic to a specific island, because there were no indemic species and no islands. Even if one does assume that some kinds had traveled so far out of the area as to not be readily availible to Noah's location, which is fair given 8000 different kinds. Noah had instructions to build the arc about 70 years before the animals arrived. Given that, God also had 70 years to have animals from far flung areas, if needed, to start their migration towards the arc to arrive in time to be loaded up. Once the animals were all there it only would have taken about 5 hours for them to board the arc. The same applies to food sources. If specific food items were needed then they would have been in the local area for Noah and his family to gather during their 70 years of making the arc. More to the point, however, is there was likely no need. Creatures like the koala, which only eat a single item, were almost certianly not created that way but rather lost the ability to eat other things over the years. For instance the panda is a member of the bear kind yet it eats b> amboo, which other bears would find quite unapatising. The orginal bear creature would have had the required stomach to eat the bamboo but as they gene pool thinned out from interbreeding among populations that were distanced from each other things were lost from some groups and became more frequent in others. Lets note that this is variation within a kind and only using the existing genetic material. For instance, boxers, my favorite dog breed, can't burp, they throw up instead. They lost the genetic material necessary for their bodies to do that. All bears but the Panda have lost the genetic matieral necessary to digest bamboo, on the other hand the panda has lost a huge amount of genetic material due to inbreeding amoung a fairly small group in addition to an environment that was only interested in a single trait. The likelihood that Noah would have had to pander to any dietary restriction on the arc are very low but even if he did need to, it would have been easy for him to gather and store those items needed. For the record, pretty much anything we consider carnivorous or omnivourious can actually subsist healthily on a v> egatarian diet. Given that many plants did not survive the flood probably some plants that didn't make it would have provided the nutrients now only found in meat, otherwise there really won't have been any reason for God to give permission for people to eat meat, something necessary for a fully vegatarian diet was lost which would have kept those few animals that can't currently subsist on a vegatarian diet healthy. Btw, I am unaware of any carnivor that has no documented occurances of subsiting only on a vegatarian diet.> Where did the water come from?: Where did all the water come from to cover the whole earth? First off, nearly all the mountains seen today can be traced to the flood or early post flood period. before the flood the land was much flater. If the earth was flatted out, that is the ocean beds raised and the mountains lowered till the earth was smooth we'd be coved with 1.7 miles of water. There is more than enough water on the earth to cover us during a flood. So why did it flood then but not before or after? There are a couple of theories but the key is the term 'the great deeps'. we hear a lot about plate techtonics, some of it probably, most of it unproven, and some of it clearly ridiculious, but one thing is obvious from both the mountains and current natural phenominons. The dry land of the pre-flood earth likely floated on a cushion of water. When God ripped open the fountains of the great deep water, pushed on by the weight of the dry land, rushed out and far into the atmosphere, most of it would have fallen as a torential rain, blanketing the earth very quickly, but while the waters rushed out from the rupture the earth retreated from it, caving in where the water rushed out and crashing into itself, causing some areas to lift quickly, delaying their flooding for a short period of time. As pressure releaved itself the rupture would stop driving water into the upper atmosphere and start gushing out like an undersea vent, which it would have been by that time. meanwhile the nealy ripped plate of dry land continued to buckle, shift, and run into itself, slowly causing land masses to rise and oceans to sink. Part of this buckling and shifting would have captured pockets of the water still under the earth, causing the phenomenoms we see today, such as the fact that 70% of what comes out of a valcano is actually water! and huge underground hotsprings that are still under pressure, undersea vents venting hot mineral water, and giant salt caverns underground from pockets that have dried out. I have a really good book that goes into this indepth if you want.> Where did the water go?: First off, coodos to you for thinking of this. Where did the water come from is, truthfully, not overly important as we have enough water visible on the planet to flood it. The real question is why are we still not flooded. Building on my last point, as the water retreated from underground the earth crumpled and folded, as liquid earth moved about by the flood water parts were pushed up and parts were pushed down. for every down the water ran down, for every up the waters receded futher from that point. We know that even the highest mountains were once under water because we've found marine fossils on pretty much all of them *including everest*. Eventually the waters receded enough for the arc to rest upon one and after a while longer the earth had enough valleys and mountains for there to be enough dry land for plants and trees to start their growth and the animals were let out of the arc. In actuality only the realtive tops of mountains stick up out of the water as 70% of the earths surface is covered in water.> Dispersal:> After the flood the animals were told to dispers. Since I have little time left today i'll answer this a bit abruptly. A disperal from the cresent valley to all ends of the earth has the same problems as an evolutionary desperal to all ends of the earth. Since nearly all the different kinds of animals are represented in either fossil or history around the cresent valle> y, which is considered the 'cradle of civilization' even from a secular perpective, it makes perfectly logical sense that it started from there and moved out, it also agrees with both the fossil record and the cultural history of the people groups. if you want i can expound upon this point more tomorrow/or monday, or answer any questions you have.

B) *continuation of above.*Since I haven't written my debate on time yet the majority of your objections are fairly reasonable, and I will do my best to answer them fully, as they are answerable. Since i've got to change computers at 9 I am just sending the first part of this. I will answer each question, or objection. but since that will take time I'll sent them in sections. But first, back to the arc...Wood: First off, while 20th century ships *1900s*, which were/are much smaller *althought larger do exist*, had metal framewook 19th century ships, 1800s, were made entirely out of wood. there is a famous poem 'clipperships and captains' that contain one of my favorite lines in a poem, "when the ships were wooden ships, but the men were iron men" Its mostly bemoaning the shift from wooden ships to iron ships. More to the point, the Romans and Greeks made huge vessels, capable of holding hundreds of men intirely out of wood. Pliny, an ancient historian, acounts of ships with up to 40 tiers of oars! In Ussher's account of the Aegean Sea battle in 280 b.c. he has this to say about the larger ships used in that battle "In his navy, ships were sent from Heraclea in Pontus, some of six, some of five tiers of oars. These kinds of ships were called 'Aphracta'. The largest ship of all had eight tiers of oars and was called the Leontifera. She was admired by all for her large size and exquisite construction. In her were a hundred oars per tier, so that on each side there were eight hundred rowers which made 1600 in all. On the upper deck or hatches there were 1200 fighting men who were under two special commanders. When the battle began, Ceraunus won and Antigonus was forced to flee with all his navy. In this fight, the ships from Heraclea performed the best and among them the Leontifera did the best of all" Given what we know about smaller galleys a ship to hold that many would have been 400-500 feet long and capable of carrying not only its 3000 men but supplies for several days at sea! Plutarch discribes a fleet build about 294 b.c. that each had 15 or 16 tiers of rowers! But, the largest we have a decent discription of is from Athenaeus built by Ptolemy Philopater * 244-205 b.c* it was 420 feet long, 57 feet wide, and 72 feet high to the top of her gunwale. From the top of its sternpost to the water line was 79.5 feet. It had four steering oars 45 feet long. It had 40 tiers of oars. The oars on the uppermost tier were 57 feet long. The oars were counter-balanced with lead to make them easier to handle. It had a double bow and a double stern and carried seven rams, of which one was the leader and the others were of gradually reducing size. It had 12 under-girders 900 feet long. The ship was manned by 400 sailors to handle the rigging and the sails, 4,000 rowers and 2,850 men in arms for a total of 7,250 men. (it should be noted at this is thought to be an ordament for his fleet and too big to be of much help in a fight) Think of how huge that was! And all made out of wood.That being said, yes, a standard ship of that size holding that kind of cargo on those seas, certainly VERY choppy, would probably capsize if not break up. But the arc wasn't a sailing ship. It never had to be launched, or dry docked, or worry about navigating up channels, or even being loaded or unloaded while afloat. Check out this http://www.answersingenesis.com/creation/v21/i1/ark.asp picture about a paragraph down for a very likely model of the arc and http://www.answersingenesis.com/tj/v8/i1/noah.asp if you want a semi-technical expose on how it would have worked just fine in the flood waters. Since it never had to be dry docked or launched the arc would need no keel, but could have been build flat and simply floated as the flood waters rose. What we call the first submarines were similar. In the civil war iron submarines were made with flat bottoms and just their tops, with the cannon ports, floated above the water, the arc would have worked likewise. The arc, in all its box-like glory would have faired quite well and was quiet within the size paramaters, if at the large end, of historically undisputed ships. Evidence: Of course a global flood would leave huge evidence! And we have it in abundance. Secular science CAN NOT acknowledge it because
evolution and an old earth CAN NOT accept a worldwide flood. Many things that evolutionists either can't explain or explain extremely poorly are beautiful evidence of a worldwide flood, and many scientists and geologists do see exactly that. Other than natural structures such as canyons *think Grand Canyon*, mountains *I'll talk about them later*, huge reservoirs, and tectonics, the strongest evidence for a global flood is the fossil record. Fossils, almost by definition, require very fast burial. While whole books have been written about the fossil evidence for the flood I'll list some of my favorites.
1) Jellyfish: These soft-bodied animals with no bones do not fossilize even in 'normal' fast burial situations. Yet in a Wisconsin sandstone quarry we find hundreds of perfectly fossilized jellyfish incased in about 12 feet (vertical) of rock! These jellyfish were quickly buried in multiple layers and sealed in sand, which normally is not a good agent for fossilization due to how porous it is. While I have the article at home with very nice pictures I'll try to give you the highlights here.
The jellyfish were not beached but underwater when this happened. Ripples from the sand they were buried in are preserved by what covered them, which wouldn't happen in a normal storm or in just random sea swells. This is because they have to be covered by a completely different
substance, in this case by finer sand mixed with red oxidized mud. There are about 7 layers of jellyfish, each with distinctive ripples where they were covered by different sediment. Reasonably the only thing that could cause that would be a huge flood that was carrying sediment from elsewhere, and not just a normal local flood or the sediments would have quickly dispersed when the floodwaters hit the ocean waters. No this must have been a cataclysmic flood with enough force to make literal rivers of mud and silt that were born through waters, and swirled and tossed to and fro repeatedly. The jellyfish were not beached by a high
tide and then covered, say by river sediment, as jellyfish inflate their bells when they are beached and these fossils do not have that trait. There were no scavenger marks on the jellyfish, so they could not have lay exposed after being washed up already dead and wait for a local,
'normal' flood to cover them in sediment. There is no evidence of burrowing, such as earthworms in the sediment, either between the 7 layers of jellyfish or in the whole block of sediment, so the entire thing must not only have been laid down A) while under conditions to keep worms away, such as underwater B) all at one time or regardless of where it was
burrowing would have been evidenced and C) the whole thing buried by even further sediment to seal out air to form the fossils and to keep it trapped from burrowing after it all solidified. It is hard to imagine a localized event with the ability to sustain enough flood sediment to
bury and preserve this bed of fossils, in fact, the best answer evolutionists give is several huge tropical storms that buried each of the seven layers over a span of about 1 million years, but they can not account for how the ripples were preserved, why the bell wasn't expanded, and
the lack of burrowing evidence. In addition to all of this evolutions date the lowest of these fossils at the Lower Cambrian, supposedly 510 million years old. Yet these are the largest jellyfish fossils every found, starkly contrasting evolutionists 'little to big' hypothesis, as the huge jellyfish would have to have formed before the smaller, read less complex to an evolutionists, did. In conclusion, I've got a great article on this that I'd be happy to bring in if you want more or this
one. By the way, this is not the only such deposit of jellyfish, but simply the most remarkable.
2)Birth Fossils: While evolutionists are slowly admitting that fossils not only take a short time to form but must be buried either at death or very shortly thereafter to create a fossil any fossil evidence of living animals captured in time like a photograph prove cataclysmic burial
with no time for scavengers, rot, or further disruption. While single fossils could be part of a local deviating event they also fit, even better, with a single worldwide event. My favorite fossils are those that catch animals in the process of birth. I have seen several, perhaps the most vivid of which is of an ichthyosaur giving birth. The infant is part in and part out of the mother! Nearly the entirety of the baby has emerged, with only its beak and part of its head still in the birth
canal. This is a live birth, and if the mother had simply died giving birth the infant wouldn't have had difficulty pulling itself free from the mother and escaping. Only an extremely rapid, heavy burial would not only kill both but also keep them preserved without the baby falling
out as it settled. There is another one, same species, which show the mother with several babies still in her womb and one infant already fully birthed just outside the body. Unfortunately I could find no pictures easily accessibly, but could probably dig some up if you are
interested. 3) Fighting fossils: My second favorite class of fossils are those where predator/prey have been caught in the middle of battle. There is a fish fossil I've seen (pictures of not the actual fossil) from the Green River Formation from Wyoming where the fish is in the middle of eating another, as in one fish is half way out/ half way in the other fishes mouth! There is a dinosaur fossil, I'm afraid I don't remember the particulars, of a predator, raptor of some sort, on the back of its prey biting its neck. 4) Fossil Graveyards: While rapid fossilization is proof of at least local cataclysmic events huge fossil graveyards are proof of a more than local, but rather a near global or global event. These are found both as vegetation, for instance the huge permafrost peat bogs in Russia that contain all kinds of different woods and vegetation preserved from a massive flood by the cold, and as animal fossils, for instance the mass
burial of both whales and land animals in Africa. Here are some specific ones: In the Vyatka River valley near Kotelnich Russia a herd of 300 tetrapods were buried and fossilized while standing with their heads erect! Not only that but the herd was buried while standing on a steep
hill, so any attempt to explain it away due to the animals getting stuck in a swamp, the usual explanation when standing fossils are found, is completely invalid. There are two well-known mass fossil graveyards in the US, one found in Utah, The Dinosaur National Monument, and a less well-known one, (its newer) in Como Bluff Wyoming. There is a huge fossil graveyard in South Africa called the Karroo Formation. There is a whale fossil graveyard in what is now the desert of Peru. A whole herd of mammoths have been found frozen in place while crossing a river! (While not a fossil quickly frozen animals, particularly in such a circumstance, also cannot be explained away by a slow and gradual process. Even an ice age under evolutionary standards could not accomplish this, only the super cooled air, water, and sediment that would result from
the beginnings of a sudden worldwide flood) In Russia fossil graveyards that include tropical, subtropical, temperate, and tundra creatures have been found, my favorite list includes foxes, oxen, mammoths, rabbits, and tigers! Huge mats of vegetable matter, which include tropical
trees, deciduous trees, and even fruit trees with the fruit still on them, have been found in the Artic. In fact, coal veins are nothing more than huge mats of vegetation that was quickly buried and placed under pressure and heat. There is a petrified forest where a whole forest of trees
have been uprooted and fossilized in place, cutting through many different layers of rock. Obviously all those layers of rock were mud at the same time as the trees were uprooted and stuck in them, then they hardened together in place. Fossil conclusion: This could continue for pages and pages. The real question is, since a rapid burial followed by an equally rapid sealing
of the surrounding ground is required for any fossil, where is the fossil evidence for all this slow and gradual that is required for long ages. Realize that either nearly every fossil in existence would be created either directly by a global flood or right after it by the upheaval
caused by it, OR they were nearly all created slowly over millions of years. Both can't be true, there aren't enough fossils for both a global flood, or even multiple near global floods, and long ages. Next
up... Mountains! *the debate ended at this time*