Samwise

The directory to which I refer is at 

https://www.yahoo.com/everything/ 

Answers is now ignoring one of the Preferences settings. It emails me whenever someone else answers a question I also answered, even though I have that option unchecked. What gives?

That is, the argument by Young Earth Creationists that early humans (in their chronology, just after the earth was created 6,000 years ago) were very large. 70-foot heights have been mentioned.

Please don't bother "answering" to tell me it's not true. I'm trying to figure out the basis for thinking it's true, and I can't find any in scripture, which is where I'd expect them to be looking.

he is an actual person asking questions, and not just a computer program appending random text to the same opening phrase?

Yesterday I was "challenged" to view an online video claiming that many aspects of the Jesus story were based on the Egyptian mythological figure of Horus. One of the major hooks was the claim that the mother of Horus, Isis, was a virgin when she gave birth to him.

I took the time to read a bit of Egyptian mythology, and discovered that Isis was not a virgin. The story leaves no doubt about that, because she uses her powers as a goddess to re-animate the body of her husband, Osiris, after he's killed, specifically for the purpose of making love to him. The murder of Osiris (and therefore hereditary enemy of Horus), Set, makes sure she doesn't produce any more offspring that way by chopping up Osiris' body and scattering the pieces. (She gets all of them back except for one--ahem!--crucial part.)

Although the others are harder to look up, I doubt any of the Middle-Eastern or Indo-European gods cited in that video were virgin births, because the fertility religions are all about connecting human sexuality and agricultural production. A virgin birth runs counter to the entire concept.

I'm not saying the maker of the video was necessarily lying. Maybe he learned Egyptian mythology as a 10-year-old, from someone who was too embarrassed to put in the sexual content and substituted the Christian virgin birth story to clean it up.

But this stuff is easy to check, and yet these claims keep coming back here. Why doesn't anyone--especially those who seem so proud of their credentials as skeptics--ever check them out first?

This question claims the Bible justifies these things, among others:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Au256...

I'm interested in seeing the references for these claims. I can't think of any examples at all justifying rape, and the closest I can come for murder of children involve adult progeny specifically treating parents in a hostile manner.

I am not sure what "murder of women for minor offenses" means, either, but it might depend on what one considers minor. The one case I can find in my notes is falsely representing oneself as a virgin when marrying.

References supporting any of these would be helpful.

The Forum reported that eliminating following spaces would permit plus signs to appear. Another questioner has demonstrated that doesn't work, at least when the items separated by the plus sign are words.

So here are some further trials:

(1) 2 2 = 4 (two plus two equals four)

(2) following punctuation: 2 (a - b)

(3) mixing numbers and words: 1 two = 3

(4) Pythagorean triples: a² b² = c²

(5) some more punctuation: a {b [c (d e)]}

(6) some C language operators: i (that's the double plus) and a = b (the plus-followed-by-equal-sign combination)

If any of these show the plus signs, those will be usable cases.

I see they show up just fine until I actually submit the form.