somewhere else : Answering 11 QQ for Christians · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : AronRa Tried to Answer 11 QQ for Atheists
QQ courtesy (or discourtesy) of Gage Blackwood under a video where AronRa gives answers to 11 Questions by a Christian, one which I am coming back to.
Q.1) Who was Cain's wife?
A.) His sister, or possibly his niece.
Q.2)In the week of creation, how was there an "evening and a morning" for three days when the sun wasn't made until the fourth day?
A.) God created a visible light without any physical light source and made it cover half of earth at a time and made it rotate around earth, like Sun does now.
Q.3) Why is there no evidence for Noah's flood and history continuing uninterrupted around the world at this time?
A.) I am sorry, what was the question again? Er, wait, "history" as in history of civilisations and at the time of the Flood?
Because you are dating the archaeology (and non-Hebrew histories) incorrectly in relation to the Flood.
Q.4) How could people in the bible live 500 - 1000 years when lifespans only reached 70 in the 20th century?
A.) You are confused over two issues, I'd say.
One is potential biological lifespan and average lifespan. In the 20th C child mortality decreased so much that average lifespan increased notably, but this has no bearing on how long one can live biologically, only how protected one is from certain types of premature death. Also, cases of diabetes type 1 are living longer now, not just child mortality.
But the fact remains, we have not evolved so as to have longer biologically possible lifespans.
The other is - starting from a presumed "evolution" to longer lifespans lately, you conclude there was never a devolution to shorter ones, when the Bible says there was and you have no scientific argument whatsover to counter this.
Q.5) Why were they already speaking and writing Chinese in China and Sanskrit in India long before god "mixed up languages" at the Tower of Babel? Why don't all cultures around the world trace their origins to the exact same spot in a Babylonia?
A.) I think Australians, Babylonians, Polynesians all very clearly trace their culture to Göbekli Tepe. If the tower was a failed rocket project rather than a failed architectonic project, the Chinese developing fire crackers would be another case of tracing one's culture back there.
Q.6) Why is there no evidence at all for the presence of millions of Israelite slaves in Egypt and a miraculous "Exodus." Why didn't neighboring empires even notice such a major blow to the area's superpower and loss of its army?
A.) What exact neighbour should have noticed what?
I think the Hyksos, alias Amalekites, definitely did notice there was no Egyptian army, and took advantage of it.
What more do you ask?
Q.7) Why is the Ark of the Covenant missing? How do you know it even existed?
A.) Most objects and people in history are missing, and the Ark was deliberately hidden.
Q.8) How could Jesus claim descent from the royal line of King David if Joseph was not his biological father?
A.) The Blessed Virgin was also of Davidic as well as Aaronitic descent. One person in Luke noted as adoptive father of Joseph or his father was biological father of the Blessed Virgin or of Her father.
Q.9) Why is there not a single contemporary eyewitness to Jesus' ministry OUTSIDE the bible?
A.) You are familiar with how well preserved contemporary eywitnesses to anything back then are? For the span AD 30 to AD 96, not very much at all, unless it was essentially divorceable from contemporary public affairs and history. The Roman historians writing this span now preserved are called ... Matthew, Mark, Luke and Flavius Josephus. None other.
Q.10) Why do good people and innocent children suffer terribly while evil rotten people often live long healthy lives?
A.) It was answered in "Consolation of Philosophy" written by Boethius while he was waiting for execution on a charge he was innocent of. Good and bad things both happen to both good and bad people in this life.
- a) a good thing happens to a good man - a foretaste of Heaven so he doesn't get discouraged.
- b) a bad thing happens to a good man - some punishment, since he won't be punished in Hell.
- c) a good thing happens to a bad man - some reward, since he won't be rewarded in Heaven.
- d) a bad thing hapens to a bad man - a warning, so he gets a chance to repent before getting to Hell.
Q.11) Why did god himself in the bible commit or order the murder of millions of innocent people - especially children. How can you worship such a genocidal mons
A.) Thanks for interrupting the charge.
God is Lord of life and death. He is also absolute arbiter of justice and absolutely aware of where people go after they die.
The reason human judges are not allowed to kill innocent babies along with guilty parents is, we are not any of these.
As to the times when Israelites carried out God's collective death penalties on some, well, God used them as an executioner.
