h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry it took a couple of days to respond.... one of the piles shifted and I've been trapped under 10 years of Astronomy magazine back issues, winter clothes from 1996, and a collection of albums, (mostly Barry Manilow). Were it not for some halloween candy from a couple of years ago, I don't think I would have had the strength to free myself.

In the US, students at university (there aren't many true colleges left-- usually they have to be under a certain number of students to keep "college" after their name) generally room with one other person of the same gender in dorms. Sometimes dorms are typed to what the people in them are interested in-- at Radford, I applied for rooming in the Honors dorm (which is special and by invitation only, though invitation doesn't guarentee you get a room) and in the Performing Arts dorm. Also, sometimes there's women only dorms. It's just student preference. Also at Radford (sorry, a bit of advertising for my school-to-be), they have something called "suites", which are made of two rooms connected by a semi private bathroom. (ie, four girls share one bathroom). It's a nice perk of that school.

At Leeds uni, there's very few shared rooms, though I do seem to know quite a few people who shared. I don't know about elsewhere really, though I'd imagine it's similar.

*tries to remember how we got onto THIS tangent...*

spoilsport

I suppose if we must get back on track, I would be interested to hear the response of people who are for a local as opposed to global flood. How would you then interpret the comment made about the water-level being above the tallest mountain. I think that's Genesis 17:20 or thereabouts.

anything?

Erm... I'll have to look that up, but I would say that "the tallest mountain" doesn't necessarily mean Everest; there's nothing to say that the writer of Genisis knew that Everest even existed.

Yes, but even the tallest mountain known at the time would require a tremendous amount of water to cover.

Oh, gone a bit quiet.

Well, seeing as I don't know how big the flood was, I might be arguing it down more than I need to, but if the biblical account was Noah's personal observation (which it wasn't; it was written many generations later) then how did he know about mountains dozens of miles away? More likely he'd have gone by mountains he would have been able to see.

There are multiple mountains in the area that are three thousand feet or more in height. Mt. Sinai, which Moses is said to have visited, may be over 7,000 feet tall.

Hmm. Well, I still feel I've vindicated the suggestion that the flood didn't cover the whole world, just a lot of it.

I've just been reading Philip Yancey's book "What's so amazing about grace?" and it in it says that he once read that proportionally the surface of the earth is smoother than a billiard ball!!

He says "The heights of Mount Everest and the troughs of the Pacific Ocean are very impressive to those of that live here on Earth. From Andromeda or Mars however the differences are trivial!!"

I know it doesn't help in the flood dilemma but it kind of makes you wonder about God's perspective doesn't it?

Well, if you compare it with the white ball at a pub I played in recently, you could say the same for a dodecahedron.

I take your point, though, but don't forget how small Earth itself is compared to the rest of the cosmos. Or even the rest of the solar system; it's said that Jupiter's red spot is twice the size of this planet for a start.

Hmmm - so what you're sayimg is that ... even if I played billiards with a white ball as big as the earth I'd still stand a good chance of potting the white into the hole that is the red spot on Jupiter!!!

I always new I was doomed to fail at this game!!

Erm... Have you been watching too much Red Dwarf recently?

Getting back on topic, and to try to spur Clive back into the discussion....... Well, Clive and I have chatted about this once or twice, but I thought I'd toss in my two cents worth:

Many, many posts and a few dots ago, someone said something about just talking to God as if he was there even if you didn't believe in him.

I've heard of many agnostics who, in a state of desperation to know for sure if there truly was a God, if he really did exist, and was not just the figment of the collective imaginations of a lot of people - they would talk to him in terms of "God, *if* you're really there......" Another way I've heard of to approach this is going a bit further "..... this is driving me crazy, I really need to know if you exist, I'd like to believe, but I just can't on my own, I need proof, sorry, I just can't do it on my own." I've never known him to ignore an honest quest to know the truth. ( I can attest to just how true that is, first hand experience here)

As far as putting God in a box, yeah, until you realize we don't have any concept of just how big He is, we don't think he's capable of a lot of stuff, or at least think "god doesn't work like that any more" (in my experience, he seems to delight in prooving that statement wrong). Even when we try to make sure we don't put him back in that box, the way he constantly surprises us still shows that we're still thinking in terms of limitations, which there are none of with God. I mean, face it this is a god who can take the horror and evil the world has to offer and turn it completely on it's head to bring about good.(the best example I can think of is the cruelty of the crucifixion of an innocent man - his own Son, no less - to bring about the salvation of sinners)

Other topics: Free will vs. predestination. Yeah, pretty much what you guys said, although I never read any of those books, it was just explained to me using just a couple of verses:

" Romans 8:29-30 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified."

The point of all that being that even though we were pre-destined to believe - meaning God knew from the beginning that we would believe, he also called us, meaning that we still had to make the decision about whether or not to believe on our own. Contrast this with :

"Matthew 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen".

Meaning that many more will be called to believe than there are who will actually accept the call to believe. Therefore the "chosen" are those predistined by God's foreknowlege that they will eventually decide to believe - not that those who do not believe were never given a chance, but that they still chose not to believe in spite of everything. If you read the account of Pharoh and Moses, you see that God showed his power many times over - every time Moses would leave Pharoh's presence he would announce to him that when the next plague came, he would see God's power - Pharoh still chose not to believe. Even where it says God hardened pharoh's heart, what I see is that God knew that a reasonable person would have believed when he saw all these signs, but since pharoh was determined not to believe, each sign only made him strengthen his determination not to believe.

So when it says in "2 Peter 1:10 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure..." this would help to explain how we can be both called (implying that we had to choose whether to believe) and yet be elected to the position of believer, meaning it had nothing to do with us, it was predestination - the two views mesh in the concept that we have a choice to make but God knows who will make which choice.

(I'd suggest looking these up in a modern translation - nothing against the beauty of the king james version, but it is written in archaic english - I've quoted it because as far as I know it's the only translation that is not under any kind of copyright protection, but I much prefer the straightforwardness of the modern translations)

About Noah's flood: If you're assuming that the earth was in the exact form it is in now, it might be hard to swallow, but if you look at the tectonic plates and consider things like super-tsunamis which would have been brought about by gigantic shifts in those plates at the same time ("Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month--on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened".), there is every possibilty that the water did indeed cover all the world - perhaps we did indeed have only one continent before the flood, but shifts in those plates at the time of the flood created continents, moutain ranges, and such. There are also saltwater lakes in the world today, Salt Lake City, Utah being one example..... (and the Dead Sea also? I can't remember - but I think so) There is even a salt lake near a mountain top in southwest Va - called Mountain Lake... how did that salt get up there if not from the salty sea? I'm sure a skeptic could come up with some other kind of explanation, but still these are anomalies that make one feel there must be something to the story of Noah, especially since these inland salt lakes are scattered around the globe. Personally I have to wonder if the flood was such a time of physical upheaval of the landform(s) on the face of the earth that the water was sloshing around sort of like after a cannonball dive into a small pool - the" springs of the great deep burst forth", they didnt' just bubble up a little and slowly rise to cover the mountains as the rain fell those 40 days.

(and now I'm thinking about how seasick Noah and his family must have felt..... I think I've said quite enough for one day.....).

heehee that's the longest post I've read in a while

You're Amy and Shorty's mother, correct? Nice to make your aquaintance.

I would love to respond to all that, but as I've procrastinated a bit too much already, I'll just say that I agree, cuz I do.

(Anyone up for a quest to find Noah's Ark? It's in Turkey you know)

still here.

Still thinking.

still writing that dissertation he mentioned in post # 1

Ah, yes... Mom: Ddombrow (Dan). Ddombrow: Mom.

Wow, Lady Scott knows her stuff! Food for thought. Especially the salt lakes. I never really gave much thought to those before. Hmmm ...

My mom's so smart it's almost frightening. *proud*