Dear Roymond,
thank you for your response,it is much appreciated!
I see that your understanding differs greatly from mine. t
That is to be expected, as you have a very different worldview to mine, that corresponds to very different interpretations of the text.
I certainly do not accept your explanations, and although they make sense to you, I cannot in all honesty, interpret the original text as I believe it was intended to be understood and arrive at your understanding, it just doesn’t follow.
Do you realise the actual enormous size of the ark?
I am astonished that you appear to think it even a reasonable possibility that the ark even may have been made fully or partially from reeds, that makes no sense to me. I own and operate a very versatile sawmill that I mill lumber for building construction use on my own property here in Australia. The hardwood timber that I work with is very durable and will last hundreds of years in structural situations; local species such as Tallowood, White Mahogany, Red Mahogany, Grey Gum are all common species on my property.
Your claim that the lumber cut would not be structurally sound after fifty years is nonsensical fiction; again you appear to cherry pick assumptions that fit your worldview, thus I can only surmise you assume that the lumber used was a non durable softwood, (or reeds as you have already stated).
It’s extraordinarily clear to me you interpret the creation account through the lens of the ‘deep time’ myth. I understand that seems perfectly reasonable to you, however, I see it differently.
The why an ark was needed at all, is the question you need to answer; ask yourself, if you truly imagine the flood that covered ‘all the land of the entire Earth’ was merely a local flood.
What area extent do you actually believe the ‘local’ flood’ covered at its widest point if you believe it was located some where in the region of present Iraq or Iran? Was it as big as 100 miles across, is that even realistic?
So, why would they need to have an ark to save their lives and save the lives of the animals God brought to the ark, if all Noah had to do was travel for a week or two to higher ground and all God had to do was move the animals to higher ground in another area? The whole concept of just of a ‘local flood’ makes no sense at all!
The purpose of the flood was to obliterate all life from Earth, or LAND if you wish, it makes no difference. If all the life on land is to be drowned, WHY would God just use a ‘local flood’?
The only thing that makes any sense whatsoever, is that God required an ark to be constructed that was huge going from the Biblical dimensions!
Fortunately, a full scale ark has been built in Hong Kong, see the picture below from Google Earth that provides a reality check, that is, a bit of perspective or some sanity to this discussion by way of the sheer proportions of what we are talking about here, an enormous sea going ship!
I’m sorry but your reeds suggestion even as a mere possibility is fanciful nonsense.
Again I am truly sorry, but it really must be said, much of your scriptural exegesis follows in the same vein, and is sheer nonsense.
As I see it,there is no way forward from here, we must agree to disagree!
Dear Tim,
thank you for your considered thoughts on the various parts you have selected of what I have written.
What I see loud and clear is uniformitarian philosophy being applied dogmatically to the geology of the Earth.
Catastrophism doesn’t fit into the uniformitarian view very well if at all,
As you would be aware, the geologic record of past events doesn’t speak for itself, it always has to be interpreted within a framework that of necessity must make many assumptions.
I believe that the creation a very long time ago, that is about six thousand years ago, (though not long at all in comparison to uniformitarian beliefs), and then when the extent of evil reached a point that God could no longer permit to continue, He sent a global flood in judgement that covered the whole Earth, to a depth of fifteen cubits over the high mountains, or if as some prefer, covering all the land under heaven, it makes no difference, is firstly in accord with the Scriptures and secondly makes far better sense of the vast majority of geology across the Earth that I have observed.
Yes I know you can and will cite some discrete ares here and there that fit in with your belief framework and I see you quote some of them, but I am talking about the VAST MAJORITY of sedimentary rock all over the Earth to depths measured in miles!
Then on another note entirely, consider the continental shelf’s of the continents, they generally range in width from about twenty miles to more than one hundred miles.
From the creation model that I believe fits what we observe very well, the stage of the flood that God sent upon the Earth to wipe out all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, saw the ocean basins being pushed down and the continents as we now see them, (the land), being pushed up, within a very short period of time, i.e., less than a year, thus there would have been massive sheets of water pouring off the land and taking with it the enormous volumes of sediment that we now observe as the continental shelf of each continent.
Today, we don’t observe such large volumes of large particle size sediment (that constitute the worlds continental shelf’s) being carried into the oceans and deposited. That is simply a fact.
It is also a plain and simple fact that we don’t see sedimentary strata of the sheer extent and depth of what exists, being laid down ANYWHERE on Earth.
Doesn’t that make you pause even for a second to ask yourself, why don’t we see sediments being deposited at immense continental scales that will harden to sedimentary rock, ANYWHERE on Earth.
Yes there are floods that cause severe personal hardship for many people today, but they are in comparison small floods here and there across the Earth in river valleys flowing from discrete watersheds, but they pale into insignificance in scale when compared to the sedimentary strata that exists all over the Earth!
As I stated previously, from what I have personally observed, the overwhelming vast majority of sedimentary strata do not have evident soil horizons, nor do they have evident bioturbation. That is simply a fact!
The generally sharp crisp boundary between layers suggests rapid deposition.
Of course uniformitarian philosophy will refute that, and the scriptures will be refuted as mythology, such is the state of the world at present as we proceed headlong into a world, “as it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah”.
What I see is someone using “uniformitarian” to abacadabra away offered specific facts that he cannot refute.
Uniformitarian simply means analysis based on observational science. You are projecting an anachronistic idea of geology which is decades out of date. The history of Earth involves several dislocations, extinctions, and catastrophic events such as the Chicxulub impact 65 mya.
Those assumptions represent the conclusions of past observation and analysis. You do not have to start from scratch any more than you have to build a cart before driving a car.
Trained geologists do this for a living, but what do they know?
There has been billions of years of accumulation. How is it that you are missing the very point?
Diametrically the opposite, boundary layers are utterly incompatible with a single high energy flood event.
Dear Ron,
actually what I am saying is that the assumption Earth’s geologic processes in the distant past that formed the enormously vast sheets of sedimentary rock can be determined by extrapolating the current rates of deposition of relatively tiny amounts of sediment over relatively small discrete areas is an invalid assumption that is based on a naturalistic material philosophy.
That’s fine , that is your prerogative!
But I see it differently; in my honest opinion, the Biblical creation model with a catastrophic GLOBAL flood that snuffed out all ‘nephesh’ life is utterly consistent with both an honest straightforward reading of the Bible and it fits the observed field data very well, indeed it makes far more sense to me at least than the billions of years of deep time evolution based model.
There are many indicators that strongly suggest the ‘deep time’ model is seriously flawed and the belief by many willing to ignore the creation itself flies in the face of Romans 1:20.
Sure the creation model has its problems too, there are many unknowns and questions that need answers, but after many, many decades I have learnt to trust God, trust the Scripture as I have seen seemingly intractable problems solved in ways that support good science and Scripture.
Nope, those assumptions are predicated on a strict adherence to the reigning paradigm in academic circles. Of course they are supported by tons of evidence that is likewise interpreted within the SAME paradigm.
But that doesn’t make it correct!
The same evidence interpreted through a Biblical creation lens results a very different conclusion.
Well it all depends upon what the paradigm they were indoctrinated with states that they regurgitated to pass their exams!
No again, I’m certainly not missing any point here, what you are asserting is that uniformitarian philosophy is the correct framework assumption by which we should interpret the data. But what I am stating is that " the VAST MAJORITY of sedimentary rock all over the Earth to depths measured in miles!" was clearly laid down rapidly, and is consistent with being laid down predominantly during the GLOBAL FLOOD of Noah’s day.
Things such as the Helium atoms still present in various minerals and crystal lattices, the soft well preserved dinosaur proteins and structures evident in unpermineralised bone and mineralised bone.
So you say, but I for one don’t buy it.
It is utter nonsense and makes no sense to believe what you claim that! For example amongst a great many other reasons, the simple flume tank research I’ve read papers on indicate that usually three or more layers are rapidly being laid down simultaneously, and guess what, the layers formed have very sharp boundaries, identical with rock strata all over the planet, and the same as the strata that were laid down in a single afternoon at Mount St. Helens when Spirit Lake broke through the mud damming it at one end.
So all those geological surveys, mining grade estimates, hydrology reports, oil reserve studies, and risk evaluations, are performed by people who are clueless as to what they are doing. The thousands of practicing geologists are blindly perpetuating wrong ideas and getting wrong results, all the while oblivious as to just how utterly wrong they are.
As for the rest of your post, that you seem compelled to support your dogma with so much falsehood hardly inspires confidence in your Biblical interpretation.
Dear Ron,
no not at all, because the work they are doing is in the here and now, that is, it is in the present, it can be tested, checked and repeated, i.e., it is REAL operational science. Thus no problem from me.
I worked in real operational science for many decades and I know only too well that belief in evolution and its billions of years, is totally irrelevant to day to day work in the management of natural resources in mining and environmental sustainability and risk assessments.
You are the one being antagonistic here and attempting to put words in my mouth that don’t come from me.
I firmly believe that “those geological surveys, mining grade estimates, hydrology reports, oil reserve studies, and risk evaluations, are performed by people who” on the most part are highly conscientious, intelligent people that conduct very good field assessments and perform very good operational science in the laboratory and in the field, and they generally write reasonably sound and logical reports.
The problems arise when the work being conducted is in the realm of what is known as forensic or historical science when the work being performed is looking at understanding geologic processes that occurred in the distant or very distant past.
Contrary to what it seems you would have us believe, it is virtually impossible to perform rigorous, repeatable operational science to conclusively determine how events in the distant past occurred.
Sure, work is and will be done, using very accurate instruments that will make very precise measurements of all manner of things such as for instance, concentrations of particular elements and compounds in samples in the lab, but those precise results still have to be interpreted within an assumed model, which in most cases is the assumed uniformitarian and materialistic belief systems. Thus the results reflect the ruling paradigm, it’s that simple.
The assumptions that of necessity need to be made to conduct such work mean that the work should not really be called science, historical research would perhaps be a more appropriate term.
If those scientists have been trained as most are in the ruling paradigm, then their thinking, their work and their conclusions will also be in lock step with the ruling paradigm, unless of course they’re an original thinker and can shed the shackles of academia that generally demands strict compliance with materialism and ‘a priori’ excludes the actions of God as inadmissible by decree.
I have many colleagues who are very good at the scientific analysis they do, they are honest hard working people that do their best to break new ground, publish papers, and generally look after their career prospects, and fair enough too, I did the same. But that doesn’t make the historical forensic work performed correct, even though it conforms to the ruling paradigm, I honestly believe that there is far too much assumption and guesswork involved…
It’s regrettable that you appear to be big on making sweeping, empty, blanket statements, but weak on supporting those statements with anything of substance! What falsehood?
The idea that there is a meaningful difference between “operational science” and “historical science” that renders the latter useless because of “assumptions” overlooks one very important fact.
Science has rules.
The rules in question apply to “operational science” and “historical science” alike. Both “operational science” and “historical science” must have accurate and honest measurements. Both “operational science” and “historical science” must be diligent and rigorous in their application of mathematics. Both “operational science” and “historical science” must account for all the evidence that we see in nature and not just a selective handful of apparently favourable results. Both “operational science” and “historical science” must refrain from exaggerating the extent or significance of anomalous results or outliers. Both “operational science” and “historical science” must respect consilience between different results or different interpretations of results. For example, you must not make arguments for a global flood that require it to have been completely violent while making other arguments for the same global flood that also require it to have been completely calm at the same time.
Young earthists make a lot of noise about how science deals with matters that are observable, testable, and repeatable. However, they completely either misunderstand or misrepresent what “observable, testable and repeatable” actually means. When a theory about what happened in the past makes a precise and specific prediction about what kind of evidence we should expect to find, and then we subsequently find it, that is testability. And when two different sets of measurements give the same ages despite their assumptions having been different, that is repeatability. The agreement of radiometric dating in the Hawaiian islands with direct modern-day GPS tracking of continental drift is just one example of repeatability.
Another error that young earthists make is that they view “assumptions” as if they were some kind of magic shibboleth that could automatically dismiss anything and everything that they don’t like. They aren’t. Like everything else in science, assumptions have rules and so too do challenges to those assumptions. In particular, you must provide a coherent explanation as to how those assumptions could have been violated in such a way as to fit your alternative hypothesis while still giving the same end results. Furthermore, your explanation must be capable of drilling down into the precise details to the same extent as the theory you are challenging, to the same numerical precision. For example, to argue that the earth is young, you must explain how radiometric decay could have been accelerated in complete lock-step with continental drift as well as with a whole lot of other processes (e.g. tree rings and ice cores) to give the same level of agreement.
And no, these rules have nothing whatsoever to do with “uniformitarianism” or “materialistic belief systems.” They are the same for everyone, Christians and atheists alike.
That’s also not what it says – it says the water rose fifteen cubits and that covered the high hills.
No, that’s only what you get when you force a modern scientific worldview onto the text and assume that the shift in meaning due to translation from Hebrew to Greek isn’t relevant.
We know that there were humans living in what is now Oregon 7500 years ago when Mount Mazama underwent a catastrophic explosive eruption. Are you going to claim that they were wiped out by a flood for which there is no evidence anywhere in the region and replaced afterwards by humans with DNA that shows them to be descendants of the earlier ones even though they couldn’t have been? And what about the trees whose rings clearly date that eruption – did they hold their breath through that flood that left no evidence and pick up growing where they left off beforehand?
Can’t you see that you’re just piling up justifications for something that is nothing but a human tradition that some people are trying to justify by reading the scriptures through a modern scientific worldview?
The horizontal sedimentary rock layers that make up the upper strata throughout Grand Canyon are Paleozoic rocks, deposited between ~525 and 270 million years (m.y.) ago (between 525 and 270 Ma). (2) The tilted rock layers, exposed selectively in fault blocks and exceptionally well preserved in the eastern Grand Canyon, are Meso-Neoproterozoic sedimentary rocks of the Grand Canyon Supergroup that were deposited between 1255 and 700 Ma. (3) In the depths of Grand Canyon, the oldest rocks are the igneous and metamorphic rocks we call the Vishnu basement rocks (Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite plus the Zoroaster Plutonic Complex). These rocks record the formation and modification of the continental crust of the region in the Paleoproterozoic Era between 1840 and 1660 Ma.
The Turonian interval lasted about 5 m.y. … In early Turonian time, the Western Interior seaway had reached its maximum transgressive phase. The Turonian was the first stage of the Cretaceous during which deposits of highly calcareous muds were produced over a vast area of the eastern part of the seaway…
Doing field assessment is mainly understanding the history of a formation. I have never seen a professional energy sector report that does not extensively discuss geological time, and nothing is more operational than spending millions punching a hole. What do you think a field assessment is?
The following assumptions were made in the calculations I gave:
Our senses give an accurate representation of reality, reality exists, and has objective properties. (required for saying anything at all about anything outside of me at all)
Physiology did not magically change without leaving evidence. (required for saying anything at all about fossils)
Fluid dynamics and physical properties of the materials involved did not magically change without leaving evidence. (if they did, then Noah would have died or rock layers would look absolutely nothing like they do)
Physical constants did not magically change without leaving evidence. (if they did, then the Earth would have turned into a plasma or every atom larger than hydrogen would have fallen apart)
Every assumption that what I said requires is based on evidence, with the exception of the first. The first is simply a prerequisite for science to be possible.
The fact that I have observed exactly 0 geology that is a better fit for a global flood deposition suggests that this is wrong.
It doesn’t really matter that they fit with an old earth, it’s that they are completely incompatible with the model that you are proposing. Claiming to be able to explain the “vast majority” of cases while giving answers that are patently absurd for all of the specific examples tested indicates that this model is somewhere between ludicrously bad and worthless.
Yes; they contain thousands of cubic kilometers of sediment and sedimentary rock and over 10^24 fossils.
That would produce absolutely nothing like continental shelves with flat layers. That would produce massive channels and a jumbled mass of layers with no succession or stratigraphy. As I already said, the following sequence of events happened at one site that I have visited (and across the entire region):
None of those could have happened under a single global flood-model.
Once again, Michael Tuomey, who had looked at more sites than I have:
No, that is a half-truth. As much of the volume of many marine sedimentary rocks is biogenic, we should not expect that material to be getting carried into the ocean directly. However, observed sedimentation rates are more than enough to produce the depths of sedimentary rocks seen.
Yes, we do see them being laid down everywhere on Earth, at immense continental scales. I have seen material dredged from continental shelves, papers describing cores from continental shelves, pictures of material from continental shelves, etc., etc. It looks very similar to sedimentologically-similar marls and sedimentary rocks (with allowances for depth range, climate, terrigenic inflow rates, etc.).
If so, then why can it not explain a single Cenozoic shallow marine deposit?
Then why did geologists suspect that the Earth was at least hundreds of thousands of years old in the 1660s and become certain of that by about 1775?
The minimum duration of a few thousand years for the one layer to be deposited relies on direct measurement of flow rates that would allow for the particles to settle, and direct measurement of ages at death of the animals in it. As it turns out from global planktonic foraminifera, stable isotope ratios, and radiometric dating, the layer took more like 300,000 years.
They are protein and structure remnants in mineralized bone.
An informative explanation, presenting an overview of the technical details, explaining not only that the real, actual ages of rock formations are of critical importance to oil exploration but why the real, actual ages of rock formations are of critical importance to oil exploration. Includes details such as the Arrhenius equation (A level chemistry) and the Time/Temperature Index, and an explanation of what happens if you get the age or thermal history of the formation wrong.
On the other hand, I have this:
No details, no examples, no references or sources, no explanation, no technical details. Just a bald, unsubstantiated assertion.
Why, pray tell, should I uncritically accept a bald, unsubstantiated assertion with no justification or details whatsoever, and in so doing reject a careful explanation to the contrary, backed up with sources, references, technical details, equations, and testable predictions?
But what Augustine meant by that was “all men were … seminally in the loins of Adam when he was condemned.” Kenneth Samples puts it this way: “For Augustine, the whole human race was germinally present in Adam, and therefore actually sinned in him.” Augustine held that we are all guilty of Adam’s sin because we were there in Adam; following this both Calvinists and Lutherans could sing “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all” or “In Adam we have all been one, one huge rebellious man”. It’s a bizarre concept to us but Augustine considered Adam to be all humanity because he held that – to use more modern language – we are all just pieces of Adam who were present and participated in choosing that sin. It’s sometimes compared to a seed and the tree that grows from it; Adam was the seed and so in effect the whole tree is nothing but an expansion of him.
That’s an interesting view; I’m not sure it stands up in light of the Greek verb “ἐποίησεν” (eh-POI-ay-sen) which is an aorist (point action) and thus customarily refers to a single event. It can certainly be used iteratively but there is a specific structure using the particle " ἄν" (ahn) for that, which doesn’t appear here and would be needed to distribute the meaning to all male-female joinings rather than just the one.
There is also an ambiguity with the sentence structure here; “from the beginning” is generally taken as going with “he made them”, but can also be attached to “the one who created”, i.e. “from the beginning” describing the nature of creation, not quite “the from-the-beginning creating one” but close to it. Unfortunately that’s not much help because “creating” is also an aorist, though a participle, which drifts in what in English tends to be called a pluperfect, throwing that meaning into the past. It doesn’t help that the sense of “ἀπό” (ah-POH) (here being elided to ἀπ’) isn’t clear – just to show its range, here’s a list of how it gets translated in the NASB:
after (1), against (4), ago (2), alike* (1), among (2), away (3), away* (1), because (9), before* (1), belonged (1), deserting* (1), distance (1), hereafter* (1), initiative (1), left (1), off (1), once* (1), since (11), since* (3), some (1), way (1)
So if you want to generalize – which we basically have to given the question to which Jesus is responding to – it’s because Jesus is treating Adam as archetype; the grammatical argument is a bit thin.
HALOT – Koehler, Baumgartner? Yeah, I may be remembering a really archaic usage that died out by David’s time, or misremembering from something else – it’s one of my frustrations that my Hebrew vocabulary keep shrinking.
Brown-Driver-Briggs notes “אֱנ֥וֹשׁ” (eh-nowsh) is almost always used collectively; Gesenius says it’s mostly poetical. Since Gesenius considers Aramaic and Chaldean in his lexical efforts, I’m going to conclude I goofed.
I noticed that again last week when re-reading Genesis 6 & 7.
Any more – well, ever since I researched how λόγος (loh-gohs) was used philosophically in the century befor Christ – I prefer to just leave it as Logos and add a footnote.
My first Hebrew professor handed out his own translation on occasion and he always used “addamm”, both to distinguish it from “adam” and to emphasize that the “a” is hard as in “slam” and not an “ah” sound.
Though I don’t think the shift in verse 3 is anything to drop a drink over; it isn’t shocking so much as puzzling, the sort of thing that might make one sit one’s drink down, read again slowly, and make a note or three.
That’s one of those places where the genitive is assumed – “daughter of Zion” is just “daughter Zion” in Isaiah 37:22 – and the phrase can be read as an identity, i.e. “the daughter who is Zion”. The other option is to see Zion and Jerusalem as personified and all the inhabitants treated as a collective female; commentaries split on this.
[Interestingly, the traditional pointing in that verse makes it “daughter of Zion” but “daughter Jerusalem” even though if you take away the pointing both have the same “בַּ֖ת” (baht), “daughter”. For consistency one ought to read both with the understood “who is”, thus “daughter who is Zion” and “daughter who is Jerusalem”.]
Augustine accepted the tradition that we’re both from Adam and in Adam well before he found a creative way to merge them in one literal picture. He wrote early commentaries that dealt with Adam (On Genesis and Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis) before he came up with his seminal theory.
It may be true that the obvious falseness of his theory led the “in Adam” tradition into hard times, but that’s unfortunate. It was never tied to Augustine’s later theory – it’s in 1 Corinthians 15 after all! And, as mentioned earlier, it’s in the Hebrew of Genesis 1 and 5. The point of the tradition isn’t that every person was physically present with Adam, but that Adam’s story tells us what it is to be human. It’s a prophetic word about humanity, not (just?) a history lesson about a man.
“Created them male and female” is a quotation of the Septuagint of Genesis. What is interesting is not the exact form of the verb for create (which I believe simply follows the Septuagint), but how Jesus frames this as happening “from the beginning” rather than using the famous first words of Genesis, “in the beginning.”
Yes, it has a wide range and could in some cases overlap with en. But if someone is quoting Genesis 1 and they say ap’ arche instead of en arche, it’s hard to argue that’s not intentional.
Anyway, thanks for the response! I do appreciate your feedback.
Deposit rates offshore here got screwed up by the introduction of European beach grass to the Oregon coast: sand that used to blow ashore in summer and wash back in winter now gets trapped in the beach grass, building tall dunes unlike what native vegetation did. It would make for an interesting topic for a MS thesis!
Things are similar here: there are multiple layers of sand with bivalve fossils, then a layer with mud and debris and lots of bivalve fossils in the sand just below, then more layers of sand with bivalve fossils, another layer of mud and debris on a roughly 500-year cycle. It used to baffle geologists until it was recognized that these deposits matched the cycle of mega-earthquakes on the Juan de Fuca plate complex. What plainly happens is that bivalves thrive in the sandy bay/estuary with sand layers laid down by floods, then a quake strikes and the bay/estuary is flooded with mud and debris, killing a large portion of the bivalves, then calm conditions prevail and the bay/estuary goes back to accumulating sand layers. This has been tracked back for at least 8k years (as of some research by friend who was a MS student in coastal geology; possibly farther by now) and matched to tree rings in a number of locations plus correlated with native lore.
There is nothing at all in the area’s geology that says there was ever a flood that covered more than the coastal plain (all the way to the foothills), while that deposition and earthquake pattern says there certainly hasn’t been one in the last 8k years.
Like happens here every time the tide goes out and comes in: as the tide goes out, all sorts of fauna leave all sorts of marks, then as the tide comes back in they’re all erased (which is a good thing else clamming would be much more difficult).
Nor are the Himalayas or the Alps or any of the other great uplifted mountain ranges; physical measurements in the lab show that they are all of them at least hundreds of thousands of years old – that doesn’t involved radiological or any such measurements, just physical analysis of the rocks.
Yes – I actually have two worldviews, one the modern scientific one that works in today’s world, and a decent approximation of the biblical worldview – while you only have the first one.
It’s that “as I believe” that is the trouble" – well, that and “the original text”. You interpret the text according to a modern scientific worldview that leads you to treat the text as though it was made of items submitted by a reporter from the last two centuries or so in English. But the original text wasn’t English, or in any literary form known to English, or in culture in the English-speaking world, or written from a modern worldview that stands behind the last couple of centuries in the English-speaking world.
That’s because you’re not actually working from the text, you’re working from a modern scientific worldview. Back at the time, the idea of building any significant watercraft out of wood would have been a total puzzler to everyone; wooden boats don’t start appearing until 2500 BCE – boats of reeds plied the rivers and even the Mediterranean coasts.
“Structural situations” including being treated and used beneath a roof?
I was being generous: in a maritime climate lumber often doesn’t even last forty years unless it’s painted regularly; a wooden Ark would have required a large crew who did nothing but scrape the old pitch coating off and renew it, requiring ever-larger amounts of pitch as your suggested century of building went on.
Nope, I interpret it through the text, nothing else – and from the text, deep time is not a myth, it can be found in Genesis 1.
“Merely a local flood” – that shows you failure to understand what the known world was! The largest flood known in the region covered most of what is today Iraq and a fair portion of what is Syria; it would have been something like 280km across and 900km long.
Dimensions that would have resulted in a vessel that wouldn’t have lasted past the first three days of storms – wood can’t support a structure that size. In fact even in perfectly calm water the hull would leak from hogging since the ends would settle lower than the middle; add even one-meter waves and the hull will start cracking enough that modern electric pumps would have a challenge keeping it afloat – all of which would get worse once a load was put on board.
That’s tradition, not the text.
It’s sad that you think the original language is “fanciful nonsense”.
It will continue to seem that way to you until you stop forcing an erroneous traditional meaning on the text via applying a modern scientific worldview.
Have you ever even taken a college geology sequence? Geology is littered with catastrophes!
Uniformitarianism doesn’t mean that everything has worked in mild fashion, it means that the same laws of physics have been operative all along – which is exactly what would be expected from a God as described in the Old Testament.
Nope – no assumptions needed to establish the minimum age of the Himalayas and other ranges as hundreds of thousands of years at a minimum, just measurements in the lab.
Well, unless you want to call observed characteristics of minerals and the idea that the same natural laws have been operating all this time “assumptions”.
“Vast majority”?
Thanks to oil companies a huge portion of the Earth’s land surface has been not just mapped on th surface but the geological structure underneath to great depth has been examined and measured, and here’s the reality: none of it gives any evidence of a global flood, not one bit.
Oh, there’s evidence of floods that covered thousands, even tens of thousands of square miles, but no single monstrous flood. There have been floods massive enough that the currents tore boulders as big as substantial houses right out of the sold rock, but no single monstrous flood.
So your “vast majority” claim is not only contrary to the original text of Genesis, it’s tragically wrong.
A process that would have involved enough heat to melt the Earth’s crust.
There is far more sediment on the planet than such an event could account for, and it is mostly the wrong kind anyway,
The continental shelves are not made of sediment, they’re part of the continental curst!
We do, all the time. All the rivers on the North American west coast that flow into the ocean are depositing sediments at continental scales pretty much constantly.
Most of the sedimentary strata – the vast majority – are not flood deposits. We know from observation and measurement what flood deposits look like, and very little of the sedimentary strata look that way.
The opposite is true, as anyone who has built dams in a creek should know; rapid deposition gives a mix-up of grain sizes and of debris, whereas periodic deposition results in “crisp boundar[ies] between layers”.
Actually common sense and simple observation refute that. I live in a place where there are eight rivers within bicycling distance and I get to observe floods and deposition regularly, and not a single observation supports what you suggest.
And since the text does not say that, either, I’m not going to believe it on the basis of claims from websites that show the world how not to be Christians because they misrepresent, deceive, and manipulative in just about every paragraph of everything published.
I once believed that evolution and deep time were well established and beyond doubt, I was a Christian then as I am now, and I quite simply thought that evolution is HOW God made the diversity of life on Earth.
I had some misgivings about the contradictions of that belief with the Scriptures. So I prayed about it, and not all that long after I was visited in my relatively isolated home here in Australia by some very old friends from a distant city who were Salvo’s, (Salvation Army), and they left me three early copies of Creation Magazine. I read them, but still held to my beliefs in evolution and deep time that appeared to me to be more than obvious FACT.
I just wished that those creation people would spread the gospel and not sound like nutcases regarding evolution and ‘deeptime’ that everyone including me ‘knew’ were correct, after all, just about every university on Earth teaches them as established scientific fact,they were obviously true, though I took that as a given.
At that point in my life, I had not critically evaluated all the available literature myself, it was mainly because various professors and colleagues with well earned doctorates that I respected believed that evolution and deep time were fact that I believed.
Time went on and I did a lot of reading on evolution and realised the absurdity of it all at just about every level.
I then became acutely aware of how the ‘world’is continuallyreinforcingevolutionateveryopportunityin the mass media and educational institutions.
My eyes were partly opened but I still held to ‘deep time’, as it was absolutely clear to me that the universe was unimaginably ancient!
Some years passed and after considerable reading of the available literature, I had a very good grasp of the reality of the falsehood of evolution, I had a thorough understanding that it just made no sense.
As ‘Natural Selection’ can only select from information that is already written on the genetic code of organisms, I realised the writing of the vast encyclopaedic volumes of new information was not something that natural selection had even the slightest capability of doing.
That only left GENETIC MUTATIONS and TIME, to write the NEW brilliantly designed specified complex information as Dembski described it onto the genetic codes of organisms as life allegedly evolved from simple to more complex organisms right up to man.
I could see that evolution did not explain the diversity of life on Earth, but I still held to ‘deep time’, i.e., the millions and billions of years, and although I agreed with the creationist people about the absurdity of evolution, I truly wished that they wouldn’t keep saying the Earth and the Universe was only about SIX THOUSAND YEARS OLD, that was a bridge too far for me, and plainly nuts!!! And I wrongly believed that would turn people away from Christianity and finding salvation through the Gospel of Jesus.
I truly believed, if you want to commit intellectual suicide, just tell your work colleagues that you think the Earth is only six thousand years old, I ‘knew’ the Earth was billions of years old, and no-one could convince me otherwise.
Some more years passed by and I thought deeply about this discrepancy of time a lot but still held to ‘deep time’.
Then many decades ago I had a Eureka moment, and the lights came on literally.
I could see clearly through all that I had previously believed was established knowledge.
The conventional view, the ruling paradigm, whatever you want to call it was foolishness!
I understood the creation is old, i.e., six thousand years old, but you could say it is young when compared to the astronomical ages of conventional wisdom.
So as I have probably said far too many times already, WE WILL ALL HAVE TO AGREE TO DISAGREE!
May our Loving Lord and Saviour Bless you all,
jon
On of my university roommates was a YECer who went into geology. He managed to still be a YEC after getting his BS degree, though one who held that the foundational rocks of the planet are millions of years old. But being YEC didn’t survive getting his MS in geology because he refused to believe that the thousands of measurements taken in the field by himself and companions were wrong. One big item was that volcanic deposits which can easily be demonstrated to be tens of thousands of years old by physical analysis and dendochronology flowed across surfaces below which there were fossils including ancient soil horizons transformed metamorphically by the heat of the lava – unless God somehow slipped those layers underneath the lava as a joke, or let Satan do it, then life was around tens of thousands of years ago . . . during which there was no flood of any kind.
With ANY high-energy flood event. Every year when it floods here the deposits in the estuaries are visible and they’re always a mess of different grain sizes, dirt clumps, grass, sticks, etc. Nice tidy layers get deposited by calm water.
Except that isn’t biblical, it comes from tradition based on meaning drift due to translation and imposing a modern scientific worldview onto the ancient literature.
Yes – it requires lying about basic measurements . . . which makes it not just unbliblical but anti-biblical.
Where do you think that “reigning paradigm” came from? It was built from observation and measurement, testing and conclusions, much of those contributed by good Christians whose essential belief was (and is) that God does not play games by changing the rules.
Has to start with the fact that the text does not tell of a global flood, it tells of one that wiped out the known world.
“Regurgitating” anything due to a paradigm was never a good way to get good grades in any of the geology sequences I took in university. Claiming that students had to do that impugns a number of good faithful Christians. It specially didn’t fly when writing papers or defending a grad thesis; for those you had to have data including pretty much every form of examination available including photographic, physical, radiological, chemical, and dendochronological – skipping any of those when possible was a guaranteed way to get an entire grade level knocked off your work.
And what you’re being told is that this is false – in fact obviously false.
The minimum ages for the Himalayas as established by physical measurements of hundreds of thousands of years not only can be “tested, checked and repeated” but are every year by geology students around the world (same for the Alps, because rocks from both ranges are easily obtained).
So you have no problem with those minimum ages? They aren’t based on any assumptions, only physical lab measurements, unless you want to assert that believing that the laws of physics are constant is an “assumption”.
Most field geology repeatedly points to at the least millions of years of activity, all with no monstrous flood. Those ages are inescapable given the laws of physics and chemistry.
Um, what??? It’s done over and over, especially these days when finding areas with geological formations that have never been examined is tough (BTW, papers based on re-examining geological formations can be really fun to read). Know what one of the big hopes of every geology graduate student is when re-examining old material? It’s showing that the previous work had errors!
In geology courses all we ever assumed was that the laws of physics and chemistry don’t change. Just those two assumptions – which are what one would expect from a God described as “faithful” – unavoidably lead to hundreds of thousands of years for the age of the Earth.
Yes of course, calm slowly moving water can carry very fine silt and deposit
it as fine neat layers, but so can fast flowing heavily sediment laden water, that is an indisputable fact. Rapid deposition of layered sediment strata with very, fine very sharp neat boundaries between adjoining layers is an easily repeated and easily observed and easily demonstrated FACT.
To say otherwise is simply not true!
If at the location to which you refer there are submarine obstacles that cause much turbulence, then of course the deposition of sediment will be messed up, and unsorted!
You may find it informative to study the article that clearly shows many layers near a beach that were rapidly laid down by flowing water from a dredge here in Australia. This article is at:
A photo of the rapidly deposited sediment from that article is pasted below:
I’ve observed geology all over Oregon plus some of Washington and a bit of California, and so far there is 0 evidence for a monstrous flood.
Indeed erosion rates are such that locally about 1k yards of sand get delivered through the bay and out to the beaches annually here. Some of that goes out to become sediment, most ends up on the sandspit that forms the bay . . . and over time becomes aeolian sediment.
