Hi Vivi-O2, My reason for believing in things like the Flood, Adam and Eve etc is that they are actually true.
Sadly, I must start with the disclaimer that I am NOT a YEC. I am an evolutionist full out. I, and maybe 5 other geologists, might be the only evolutionists working the creation/evolution area who believes that Adam, Eve and Eden and the Flood are real. I find the rejection of these core philosophical supports for the Christian plan of salvation to be a bit appalling, since it is Christians rejecting them. It galls me that on Biologos no one will ever point someone like you to a place like my blog, with a different viewpoint than theirs. Their view point is always that the story is historically false but full of philosophical truth. I yawn at that description
. You must realize that your question is directed to people who know NO geology and spent NO time looking for oil. That is why you don’t get good answers about the existence of a geological event! You are asking Theological experts, language experts, missionaries, Doctors, and everyone else who has probably never read a college textgeology book. Sadly, Christian geologists have failed us by failing to actually search hard, with all their souls for a solution to the question you ask. A 30-m search on google won’t hack it.
Right now I am on hospice and desperately trying to put my blog into a more organized book form defending what you just asked about. Why do I defend now those doctrines? Because I now know they are historically true from scientific/geophysical data. You have helped me write my conclusion. Thank you.
I was an oil company geophysicist who has traveled the world, and in a 47 year career became a pretty good geoscientist–not the best, I know others better than I. My jobs included Mgr of geophysics for the Western US, Mgr. of geophysics for the Gulf of Mexico, Mgr of subsurface technology for the North Sea. Dir. of Technology for Kerr McGee Oil and Gas, and I retired as Director of Exploration for China. Then I went out to become a geophysical consultant working the Gulf of Mexico and New Foundland. I also invented a new way of doing seismic inversion and was successful at that endeavor as well. Not a bad career. Here is why I know those things are true–simply, scientific data now supports them. But lets go back a bit.
1- In 1996 I realized that the largest local flood in geological history was the Zanclean flood (look it up on Wiki) matched precisely the biblical description of the flood of Noah! Six million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea got cut off from the Atlantic inflow of water, and the Mediterranean dried up in a few thousand years. This set the stage for the catastrophic refilling of the basin. I wrote that up and eventually got it published in the PSCF a journal of the American Scientific Affiliation. The Zanclean and Noachian floods (being one and the same in my mind) lasted about a year, covered mountains 12,000 feet high, killed everything on that land. etc.
The cause of the refilling was the breaching of the Gibraltar Dam, which had stopped up the flow of water into the Mediterranean Basin. But when the dam breached, it was the best description of the fountains of the deep I have ever heard. In Hebrew, the ‘Deep’ is almost always meant as the ocean. When that dam broke, the water gushed in at 220 miles per hour, but even then it took a long time to fill the empty basin. Below is a numerical computation of that inflow of water.
2- Then this year, in March, I obtained high quality seismic data in the form of research articles published in 2019, describing the Messinian sediments which were deposited while the basin was dry.**I want to emphasize that it was NOT I who did this work, but it is the work of other geologists who failed to see the theological connection… Thus, I want you to know that the actual work was not biased by me. I just read the articles. ** And there were the four Rivers of Eden, the Gihon, the Pison, the Tigris and the Euphrates, dumping their sediments into the empty basin. This said to me, that Eden was a real place that occurred at a real time, around 5.4 myr ago with the flood at 5.3 myr ago. Both were in the same place. The hydrology described for Eden had to have occurred in a deep basin. Indeed, loads of scientific facts fall into place under this hypothesis, which is why I came back to get one of my previous post.Here is an outline of how the theory fits together given the time frame of when Adam and Eve lived. By placing Noah’s flood where I do, in the dry Mediterranean basin, at the one time those rivers all poured into that basin,it is clear that there is a time and place where Eden’s geography was REAL! You will see this picture a lot because it shows in yellow brown, blue and green, the sediments which were actually deposited from four Edenic Rivers at that time. In other words, these rivers left physical evidence that they once existed, and interacted on the floor of the desiccated Mediterranean Basin, in exactly the way the Bible suggests–some will disagree but we have been round that tree so many time with them, I won’t go there again. I don’t like Herodean questions, meaning he didn’t care what answer I gave, he was against it.
All these sediments are of Messinian geologic age, which is important. You can chase the references if you wish to. I have shown my work to other geologists and all of them so far have been quit amazed at this result. These rivers have matched the Bible’s description of Eden’s Rivers 5.3 myr ago. Since this knowledge was unobtainable until after 1970, the question is how did it get into the Bible? Was it dumb luck or divine inspiration? I say divine inspiration–a phenomenon seriously out of popularity because in general, Christians don’t like God messing in their world of science.
3- The Hydrology described for Eden can only happen in deep deep basin (artesean flow). Eden describes a world where river mouths split into multiple rivers and artesean mists arise from the ground. It happens like this: Rain falls on the land, flows through the porous and permeable rock to the continental shelf edge and then disgorges it self as shown by the water droplets. It isn’t hard, it is science.
Rivers only split as described when the land is very flat. A picture of the Sudd in southern Sudan shows this happening:
4- On the surface, it would appear that God gave Adam and Eve two different curses. But he didn’t. He gave them the same curse with two effects… Both curses come from one cause–a small brained hominid getting a bigger brain. Big brained babies can’t go through birth canal causing pain in childbirth. This big brain must also be kept cool with sweat of the brow or the brain will cook and the man will die. One curse; two problems.
If you don’t read my post on the 2 curses, then you will never know the details of that interesting factoid–one curse, two effects. One for man and one for woman.
If God gave the curses to a Neolithic man and woman, it wouldn’t matter. Eve’s mother already had pain in childbirth and Adam’s father already had sweat on his brow. Bit deal!. It is lack of attention to this kind of detail that makes Christian apologetics such a mess. Everyone just grabs whatever seems good to them without looking at the consequences or results, and they do that in my area of geology lacking all knowledge of the field. FYI, I read 10 years of stuff in Anthropology to know what I know. I read 10 years in geology–nothing but geology books–not even a novel. I probably spent six years reading nothing but biology and genetics, resulting in 2 DNA articles for me, one in Journal of Theoretical Biology and one in the Journal of Statistics and Planning. I tell you this not to brag but to show how much work must be put into apologetics. One can’t get to what God did with a 14-minute slick and polish on scientific information. God is so far more complex and interconnected with data than we are, we must do our best to try to keep up. Knowing only one area of expertise means we are sure to fail!
5- Genetics says we can’t have a primal pair anytime after about 5 myr ago. If Adam and Eve are not at that time, then they didn’t exist. There is a book by Scott McKnight and Dennis Venema, arguing that Adam and Eve never existed. It is called Adam and the Genome. This book is causing big named Christian leaders to give up on Adam and Even as fables. They base this on the idea that Adam and Eve lived 200,000 years ago. If Adam and Eve lived at that time, then yes, genetics means Adam and Eve couldn’t have existed scientifically. But what if they lived much longer ago than that? In that case, genetics can’t rule out us having a single pair of humans with which to form the human race.
Venema, McKnight and others who wish to place Adam and Eve around 200,000 years ago, are depending on mitochondrial DNA to be the marker for when Humans came into being. that is ridiculous and has been known to be so for decades. Alan Templeton has been pointing out that while the time to the most recent common ancestor of haploid DNA, like mitochondrial DNA might be in the 200,000 year range, for the diploid DNA in our nucleus, the time to the most recent common ancestor, is 4-9 times as long. This means that we should expect any original pair to exist not at 200,000 years but at 800,000 to 1.8 myr ago! These geneticists should know that, but they don’t emphasize it meaning many Christians trust them and then dismiss Adam and Eve from the Bible!.Below is a chart showing the ages determined for haploid DNA, like the x-chromosome or mitochondria, compared to the ages of autosomal DNA which is entirely diploid. The average age for an autosomal Gene is about 1 million years. but interestingly, the oldest dated genes we have in humanity are getting close to the time of the Zanclean/Noachian flood!. Here are a couple of genes older than what is shown in the chart below.
gene age of the gene reference
green opsin >5,500,000 Ayala et al, 1994
HERVs ~5,000,000 Johnson and Coffin 1999
Again you can follow the link, but this fits with the age of the oldest genes Humanity has.
6- Not only that, this fits with the fact that 5.3 myr ago, was the time of some of the earliest hominids to appear on earth. Ardepithecus was around at that time. Look it up on Wiki. Yes, indeed, look it up in Wiki and note that there are some who say hominin (our group) origins are in the Mediterranean region.
“In 2017, a reanalysis of Graecopithecus fossils from Greece and Bulgaria, previously associated with Ouranopithecus, concluded that the species was in fact a hominin dating to just after the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees (about 7.2 million years ago).[10] The authors suggested that the origins of the human lineage were therefore in the Mediterranean, not Africa. Others are sceptical of their claims”
And of course some are skeptical of the claims. That is fine, but if homnids were in the area, God could have used any one of them to make us.
Remember section 4? That is the section I pointed you to the fact that the curses are only curses if they are given to a small brained hominid who is about to get a bigger brain and both Adam and Eve would suffer those consequences, but they are different consequences depending upon which sex we are speaking of…
So many things fall into place. Thank you for taking a look at this view–A Christianity without Adam and Eve, the Fall and Eden, has lost the reason for atonement, in my opinion (I am sure others will disagree here).
None of the information above could have been known by a Hebrew Neolithic writer. Much of this information–about the genetics could have been known by someone living earlier than the 20th century and the fact that the Mediterranean was a dry empty basin was not discovered until 1970 or so. Thus the question is: How is it possible that the Bible had this information up to 5,000 years ago? Was it blind chance or divine inspiration?.
All of these events fall around the same time, 5.3 myr ago. If true, these facts require an older evolutionary Adam and Eve, and require foreknowledge of modern science–only God, not aliens could do that.
The Alternative view is put everything in Mesopotamia, a bad place for all things.
7- This will get people liking me and my ideas less, but it is a fact that Genesis 2:6 says 'for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth! Everyone wants everything biblical to occur in Mesopotamia. Except Mesopotamia gets lots of rain. Geologically, I know of no time it didn’t get rain. This phrase is a hint again that this land was 1. a new land, and that it might have been in a deep basin. Think of Death Valley and the Dead Sea. While they get rain, they are narrow, with mountains on each side so rising air can cool, condense and cause rain. But the dried out Mediterranean sea covered almost 1 million sq km, and deep basins don’t get much rain because of the rain shadow.
It is quite well known in both meteorology and sailing that the lee side of an island gets less rain, and sometimes less wind. This dried out Mediterranean basin would be on the leeward side in all directions, meaning this could be a new land which had never received rain.
So, think about the effect of no rain. No rainbow. This makes the rainbow something special when Noah and company emerge from the Ark. Had the rainbow existed prior to this flood, what would be remarkable about it? Nothing. So, again, placing Eden where I do, makes everything fit together. I place it next to a basin that was flooded in a manner similar to Noah’s flood, which was deep enough to avoid almost all rain, and not make rainbows.
8- Gen 2:5 also says" and there was not a man to till the ground . I think this is a hint that the events occurred PRE-AGRIGULTURAL. Others will disagree but I have four posts showing why Noah and company were neither farmers nor metal workers. If Adam was a Neolithic farmer, then there were many men to till the ground. Below is why I don’t think the technology of the post flood world is true.
Genesis 4 Technology of Eden, Cain and Abel Tech pt 1, Tents & Music Tech pt 2, Tubalcain Tech pt 3, The Migrant Mind: Was Noah a Farmer?
9- It was full of wildlife.
10- The actual land was destroyed as Martin Luther suggested long ago. We have an empty basin with the rivers of Eden flowing into the eastern basin floor, other rivers flowed into the basin further west, one off of Libya and a couple off of France, but they are far to the west of where I say Eden was. But way to the west, at the Strait of Gibraltar, the clock was ticking. Water was seeping over the top of the dam at Gibraltar, slowly eating away the dam, and maybe seeping through the rock itself, destroying its cohesion. But, 120 years prior to the dam’s failure, God spoke to a righteous man.Gen 6:13:
" And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth "
It says God will destroy the land along with the man. Mesopotamian flooding didn’t destroy the land. Mesopotamia still exists. Even in the global flood, the ‘land’ was not destroyed; it was just re-arranged. The Mediterranean Flood destroyed a large land, which has never been seen as land again. This view is consistent with what many scholars have said of Eden, that it is utterly destroyed. Martin Luther said,
" Hence my opinion…is, first, that paradise was closed to man by sin, and secondly, that it was utterly destroyed and annihilated by the Flood, so that no trace of it is visible any longer—For the entire surface of the earth was changed." 22
Martin Luther was correct–that land of Noah and Eden was utterly destroyed and is now out of our reach, even if we know where it was.
I want to point out that many critics claim that the ‘windows of heaven’ refer to the supposed windows in the raqiya. These are critics who have not even kept up with Wikipedia. Wikipedia has an entry which talks about this modern myth of the flat earth and solid dome. See also my Days of Proclamation post for why the entire idea of a solid dome is unsupported by historical data. More to the point, the word here for heavens, samayim, means sky, as in atmosphere. It is a euphemism like we say cloud burst, when the clouds do nothing of the kind.
11 -The direction of the ark. Let’s put the ark in Mesopotamia with the Tigris and Euphrates. Both rivers are flowing south, into the Persian Gulf and then into the Indian Ocean. Can someone tell me how on earth the ark then ends up in Turkey? The ancient writers were not so stupid as to make such a mistake. They used canoes all the time. There were no tall mountains which could be covered by the flood. Cover the Zagros mountains to the east and one has created a world wide flood. Indeed cover the Judean hills to the west and one has gone a long way towards a global flood.
One question I always want to ask is why do well educated people suddenly violate the laws of physics by having the Mesopotamian flood waters flow uphill? Water doesn’t flow up hill, but many evangelical flood theories do have water flowing uphill.
But place the ark in Eden where I say it is, and the ark merely has to rise like a ducky in a bathtub to land on the Mountains of Ararat–it is a simple thing and we don’t have to make a 3 year circum-navigation of Africa to do it. This theory matches physics but is rejected. The Mesopotamian flood idea violates so much physics but is thought of as an erudite theory. I will never understand this.
Finally, I think the wind is what drove the Ark to ground on the Taurus mountain range, see map above. The Taurus Mountain Range is the Range running Through Turkey. A careful observation of the Upper Miocene paleogeography on that map shows that the ark might have been able to land on what became the kingdom of Uratu.
Finding Eden, where the four Edenic rivers interacted, is a major step forward in knowing that these events are real, contrary to the constant naysayers of modern Christianity. My views might not be the only way to make Scripture concord with modern science, but it is a way forward. God bless all, see you on the other sid