They claim that the rock layers are folded without fracturing. This claim is demonstrably untrue – there are other photographs both on the USGS website and on Answers in Genesis itself that show the rock fold in question as being clearly fractured. In fact, if you look closely at the AIG photo, you’ll see it has people in it, standing right in front of the most prominent fractures.
I examined the claim (and the photographs) here:
For what it’s worth, how hard rock layers have to be in order to deform like that is strongly dependent on scale. At that size (about 30 metres tall) they would have to be much, much harder than toffee (and deformed over a much longer timescale), otherwise you would see considerable slumping. Deformations that form when rocks are still soft and plastic are less than a metre in height.
@jammycakes I don’t know if you noticed it but in the Ken Ham blog you mentioned in your blog there is a great photo of Dr. Snelling and off to his right is a clearly visible crack in what appears to be the hinge of the fold he is standing on. You would think he might notice a crack that is not supposed to exist. I guess it shows how your worldview blinds you to the evidence.
This means that we should distinguish between the sharp beginnings of Humanity marked by God’s intervention to make Image Bearers (Genesis 1:27, 5:1-2, 9:6) who are called to love God and behave according to the Golden Rule, and the beginnings of evolving taxa (Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo habilis) which are arbitrarily defined and therefore necessarily fuzzy.
As you very well say as Image Bearers
Accordingly to establish when the first Image Bearers appeared on earth we should search for evidence demonstrating sense of responsibility and accountability.
That is one of the more disappointing things about this larger debate: there are those who are not interested in an honest debate. Well meaning and good people will find encouragement in these creationist websites, but what they end up repeating, unwittingly, is a lot of dishonest science. When you have people purposefully standing in front of inconvenient evidence so that others won’t see it . . what do you do with that?
Over the years, the psychology of YEC leaders has come to fascinate me more than it probably should. It’s on par with my fascination with con artists and how they can even fool themselves into believing their own con. Anyway, I probably shouldn’t drag this too far into the weeds, so I will leave it there.
George, you are a believer in miracles as well, for instance the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, as you have claimed in this previous post:
It seems to me also from previous posts that you don’t exclude an explanation of Genesis Global Flood as a miraculously event.
Then my proposal to explaining the Noah’s Flood with two parallel worlds (in line with Fatima’s miracle of the Sun) is fitting: One world is that of Noah and the people around him in Sumer. The second one is the world outside Sumer, which was populated by Non-Image-Bearers. After the miracle (like in Fatima) the two worlds merge again and no record of the miracle remains other than the report of those who experienced the miracle.
Consequently nothing in the present world where we live in allow us to prove by physical or geological means either Fatima’s miracle of the Sun or Noah’s Flood: Such miraculous events are neither repeatable nor demonstrable on the basis of observable data other than the reports of witnesses.
By contrast evolution although not repeatable is demonstrable on the basis of observations as you very well state:
The point of that statement was that I was not arguing a point to challenge the resurrection.
This sentence is not the same as saying, I think Jesus went up to heaven on a cloud.
I’ve always favored something along the lines of the The Passover Plot.
As for the great Flood, I have gone on record as holding the story of a Global Flood as even less believable than the all life being created 6,000 years ago!
I have made it clear that I am a Unitarian Universalist … from the merging of two fine New England protestant denominations. But as the need arises, I try to speak the language of Catholics and Presbyterians as well.
From your claims I get the impression that you hold the stories of a Global Flood, the Ascension of Jesus Christ to heaven, and his Resurrection from the dead, “as even less believable than the all life being created 6,000 years ago!”
Am I right?
I would like to be sure I interpret well your thinking before answering.
I haven’t read “The Passover Plot” myself, but having looked at the synopsis on Wikipedia, it seems very far fetched to me. The problem with its central thesis – that Jesus planned and orchestrated all the events up to and including the Crucifixion and the Resurrection – is that He would have been doing so against a backdrop of a whole lot of known and unknown unknowns. There are just too many ways a plan such as that could have gone wrong. Like, for example, ending up being stoned rather than crucified, or hauled off into slavery on the other side of the Roman Empire, or one of his co-conspirators being obstructed in carrying out their part of the plan, or someone blowing the gaff on it all, or the general population simply not reacting the way He expected them to.
The other thing you have to bear in mind is the little detail of the “blood and water” coming out from Jesus’s side when He was pierced. Apparently that means that the pericardium must have been ruptured, so it seems that was a pretty conclusive indication that He was definitely, indisputably dead.
There are various nuances to the Passover Plot. I am inclined to believe that getting poked with the spear was not anticipated. There are those who think Therapeutae practitioners might have been able to save him.
Interestingly, if not mysteriously, Josephus specifically mentions three men suffering crucifixion, with one of them surviving … It does tempt one to speculate…
Josephus says: "I was sent by Titus Caesar with Ceralius and a thousand riders to a certain town by the name of Thecoa to find out whether a camp could be set up at this place. On my return I saw many prisoners who had been crucified, and recognized three of them as my former companions. I was inwardly very sad about this and went with tears in my eyes to Titus and told him about them. He at once gave the order that they should be taken down and given the best treatment so they could get better. However two of them died while being attended to by the doctor; the third recovered.” tombofjesus.com/core/majorplayers/crucifixion/crucifixion-p1.htm14
Yes, but did any of them have a spear thrust into their sides to the extent that blood and water/separated out blood plasma came gushing out?
As I said, the other big problem with the Passover Plot – as with any other conspiracy theory – is the question of how fail-safe such a plot could have been made. It seems to me that there are simply too many weak links in the chain. It would just take the wrong person getting an attack of the runs at the wrong time for it to all come apart at the seams.
Sorry – just approaching this with a software developer’s mindset here. When you’ve been programming computers for thirty years you’re all too aware that things can all too easily go wrong in ways that you simply hadn’t anticipated. If it’s hard enough orchestrating everything to allow for these cases with the exact logic of computers, so how much harder do you think it’s going to be when you’re dealing with the vagaries of humans and other living creatures?
Call me sceptical, but I still say the Passover Plot ranks somewhere alongside chemtrails, NASA faking the moon landings, and NOAA covering up the existence of mermaids.
In the light of today’s quantum physics one should acknowledge that there are NO “inexorable and immutable laws of nature” but only descriptions according to probabilistic rules. Accordingly one has to distinguish two levels of phenomena:
I.- Ordinary phenomena happening according regularities we can grasp through mathematical equations, as for instance the sun following the usual trajectory predicted by Newton’s equations.
II. - Extraordinary phenomena that are highly improbable and unpredictable.
Theologically this means:
Ordinarily God shapes the world for us according to regularities.
No equation can fits all phenomena contained in God’s mind; extraordinary phenomena are beyond our operational capabilities.
The statement “life begun 4.28 billions years ago” falls into the descriptions referring to ordinary phenomena of level I. The “six days of Genesis” can very well be interpreted as a parable. For instance Augustine and other Fathers of the Church considered the term ‘day’ as referring to time in angelic minds since the angels collaborated with God in performing the creation of the world.
By contrast the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead with a glorified body, the Ascension into heaven, the Transfiguration, Noah’s Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are MIRACLES.
Certain miracles are perceived only by a number of observers at a certain place in a definite moment, and are inaccessible to the senses of other observers. We believe in them because of trustworthy eyewitnesses.
I think Noah’s Flood is one of these miracles: It is global from the perspective of Noah and his family, but it is regional from our perspective today.
Accordingly: The claim that the “Passover Plot” is a plausible explanation for extraordinary phenomena like Resurrection and Ascension, is as fallacious as the YEC’s claim that “days of 24 hours” may explain ordinary phenomena like the origins and evolution of planet Earth and Life.