TEs/OECs interpretation of The Flood

[Jorge]

So, the problem i have with this is that most of it's circular; i'll try to point out how below.

But the POV you're arguing for is exactly that - its conclusion is that the earth is young, there was a flood, etc. regardless of the evidence. Outside that POV, there's no reason for thinking any of that. And that's precisely what the hypothetical Buddhist's question was getting at - why should your particular POV be privileged as science? So it appears that you're attempting to answer the question by reiterating the question.


I know this has been dealt with by others, and you don't accept that, but the weight of the evidence is against that - absent belief in a biblical account (which a Buddhist wouldn't have), there'd be nothing he could examine that would be evidence of a universal flood.

It's not like we can't find evidence of really big floods - see the ones resulting from glacial lake Missoula, for one example. But those point out two major issues: they have well defined boundaries, so we can see where the flood wasn't. And the evidence that there was a flood across the Washington Scablands is not present over most of the rest of the earth.


But if you define "ideology" as anything that might impinge on biblical accounts (which you appear to be doing), then you are creating Christian and non-Christian science. There's a POV that's biblical, and then there's everybody else.

As for your example of measuring density vs. the origin of life, i don't find it compelling. Measuring the density is all those things above, but it's also trivial. The origin of life issue - could life have formed naturally? - is what i'd call a compound question. It's built of many sub-questions involving geology, chemistry, etc. etc. Any one of these are equally as trivial as the density measurement. Can such-and-such chemical form under the following conditions? Each one of those is repeatable, testable, etc.

The process of science isn't repeating density measurements. It's building larger frameworks of understanding on top of these trivial things. So that, when we do things like get images of Pluto we can take what we know about the density of water and nitrogen ice, and conclude there is heat driven circulation of nitrogen ices in Sputnik Planum, that there is a chance that there's liquid water 250km under Pluto's crust, etc. etc.

What you're trying to compare therefore seems to me to be incommensurate.

You're applying two completely different standards of "evidence" on Biblical Creationists as on TEs/OECs. The evidence is indeed there and is plentiful - I recently posted (to O-Mudd) on that point. To wit: a link that I posted showed over 4,000 results to the search: "Evidence for a worldwide Flood". Contrary to your claim above, this evidence does not require belief in the Bible (as your Buddhist friend would not have). Look for yourself - even if you throw away 90% of those results that will still leave over 360 items to consider many presented by PhDs in their field. Hardly "no evidence".

https://answersingenesis.org/search/...dence+of+Flood



If you're going to continue on this, you need to do so on a level playing field. Otherwise, I can tell you right now what the outcome will be: you will end up "disproving" the Biblical Creationist position on the Flood. And just in case, don't try to turn the tables on me here. I accept that under Materialistic assumptions the observations provide supporting evidence against a worldwide Flood. The dishonesty is in those that will not grant the same honesty. They cannot and will not do this - the "Holy Foot" of Biblical Creationism cannot be allowed into the door.

No, ideology is not "anything that will impinge on biblical accounts" as you state above. Ideology is anything that goes into the formation - including interpretations - of a person's worldview. The example I gave is actually a very good one - you just haven't reflected on it deeply enough. Just as the average Atheist would not be seeking to prove the existence of Elves as the ones that created life, they are also and for the same reason not seeking God as the Creator of life. God is excluded a priori. Similarly, I would not waste my time and efforts seeking a natural OOL because my faith says that that wasn't how it happened PLUS my IIS supports that belief. There is, you may know, a Law of Biogenesis that has never once been refuted or counter-exampled. Yet, in spite of no evidence to the contrary, the Law of Biogenesis is unacceptable to Materialists. Care to guess why? It is entirely ideological - not scientific.

In the final analysis it always comes down to "Who will you choose to believe?"

Jorge

[oxmixmudd]

"Derogatory things that I've been calling you"

Since when is speaking the TRUTH "derogatory"?

Two conditions, both of which are not met:

1) "Speaking the truth" - not even close
2) "truth can't be derogatory" - Of course it can! You can ask if you are overweight and I can say,
a) well, yes, according to the standard definition your weight is x and overweight starts at .8x

OR

b) well of course you are overweight you fat slob, even an idiot can tell that.

You tend toward the (b) side of things no matter what you are saying. And the scripture does say "speaking the truth in love ...", those last two words are there for a reason - one you've managed NOT to come to grips with so far by the way.

You cleverly (and dishonestly) try to change the subject above, to shift the spotlight away from yourself. You had stated that "There is no scientific evidence for a worldwide flood." In one brief post with one link I conclusively proved that your claim amounts to (1) total ignorance or (2) a lie - there is no other option. So which is it?

Neither. I'll stand by my statement. The '4030 evidences' is not even close to 'conclusive proof'. First, those were >4000 hits on a website search. As if any 8 year old doesn't comprehend that those hits become dubious the farther down you go in the list (repeats, off topic stuff). Even on this search at the AIG site there are adds for books and other types of off topic 'hits'.

But regardless of the 'really big number' syndrome, those are hits on AIG's website - not actual science articles supporting a global flood! The 'evidences' they present ARE NOT EVIDENCE OF A GLOBAL FLOOD. They are misrepresentation of data, half-truths and out and out lies that try to do an end run around the fact that over a hundred years ago any chance of fitting the geological evidence into the idea of a global "Universal Flood" was lost. The evidence, when objectively analyzed, simply does not support that hypothesis.

What you found was a large number of FAKE evidences for a global flood. That does not count. Any more than you betting me you can get a Rolex for $150 is proven by waking up to a street vendor and buying a FAKE Rolex from him for $150. (and just like the street vendor, the AIG 'evidences for a Flood' are in fact nothing more than a con job)

You can certainly choose to interpret the observations so as to fit your preconceived beliefs (in the same way as you re-interpret God's Holy Word to do the same), but that doesn't mean that the evidence supporting a worldwide Flood isn't there.

The only people 'interpreting the observations to fit their preconceived beliefs' are you and the folks at AIG (and ICR etc). And it is so easy to prove. We've already begun the process here. All we have to do is examine the AIG faux-flood-evidences and see if they are in fact real. And they usually are not even fully factual in the limited data the present. Let alone the issue of ignoring/hiding the mounds of evidence that force whatever it is they are talking about to be invalid from the POV they represent.

We hit on one already. The Coconino sandstone. This was formed over eons of time by winds on a sandy desert. The AIG proposal is wishful thinking that ignores key evidence not the least of which are footprints in the various sand layers. The REAL science of analyzing these formations doesn't overlook elements like embedded footprints, and the REAL scientists don't have to 'conveniently' not mention the fact such things exist.

What you people (dishonestly) do is try to make the evidence vanish using smoke, mirrors and a magic wand. Then, after that dishonest display of pseudo-intellectual wizardry, you go out and make the claim, "There is no evidence".

WOW - it's the kind of thing that has to be seen to be believed.

Jorge

So you say I'm dishonest Jorge? Let's see. I'm the one talking about the actual data. Can you talk about the actual data Jorge? Can you discuss these faux AIG flood 'evidences' and talk about all the facts they leave out of their little articles? Can you talk about how the cherry picked items they drag out half cloaked actually fit in with other pieces of data that don't come close to being consistent with a global flood?

As I mentioned before. The difference between REAL science and this mock stuff you posted links to is that it cross correlates with other data consistently. So I don't have to make up fake motives for you, and I don't have to call you names, and I don't have to worry about whether or not someone will find some piece of data I wasn't aware of as I discuss these issues like you do. And that is because I'm

1) committed to the truth
2) following the data to where it leads.

You and your cohorts at AIG are simply not smart enough to invent a coherent, self-consistent alternate history for the data that matches your preconceived notions. And because of that, I can discuss the data with confidence and without the need for your boorish little debate tactics. Come to think of it, I don't even have to be as smart as you or your guys at AIG. Because the data is already fully self-consistent with its own real history. All I have to do is talk about the facts and what they mean - follow the data where is REALLY leads - and the little house of cards AIG has built and that you hide yourself in comes crashing down.

Boom! (Oh my - was that an Asteroid!)


Jim

[Kbertsche]

"No Jorge. There is no scientific evidence that supports the idea of a worldwide flood."

...

I, of course, knew from the git-go that O-Mudd had to be on a really bad batch of LSD to have written that there is "no scientific evidence". Just for the heck of it - I hadn't done so in a while - I went to just one site (The AiG site) and searched "evidence for the Flood".

Jorge

(Emphasis mine above)

You guys are talking past each other. Jim is talking about real SCIENCE, and Jorge is trying to reply with PSEUDOscience or science FICTION. AiG is not a science website!

Jim is right. There is no PHYSICAL scientific evidence that supports the idea of a worldwide flood. The closest that you can get is anthropological evidence (the near-universality of flood myths). But this evidence supports a "universal" local or regional flood just as much as it does a "global" flood.

(Note: a "global" flood is a worldwide flood which covered the entire planet. A "universal" flood is a large local or regional flood which occurred early enough in human history to affect all mankind, before mankind spread across the globe.)

[logician bones]

Hello, everybody. I've been kind of trying to avoid this forum division although this is my main area of focus... I've seen a lot of bluster... some of it maybe warranted as referring back to past conversations (on both sides), and not much to hope this discussion can be useful... but I guess it was inevitable one of these topics would pique my interest... I have some questions for both sides... And some thoughts in general, that might clarify things for some of you. Sorry I think I need to do a fuller reply for this one, so it'll get very long.

I guess I'll go with my normal rule of using quote marks instead of tags since I'm late to the topic for now, and switch to tags later if further discussion happens and if I can keep up. I've read through once and taken notes before typing this reply.


Jorge:

"TEs/OECs most often do not believe/accept the exceedingly-clear biblical text of a Universal (worldwide) Flood (UF)."
I do think in some cases this is true... However, frankly, the case for it being crystal clear is not strong... depending on just how "local" people want to define that as. I think there is biblical room for distant mountaintops (hilltops?) peeking above the waters throughout the whole flood, that Noah did not see, but that no humans survived on. However, I also don't see what good it would do to insist on this.

As for the view that it was only local in the normal sense, and the views that just dismiss the Bible outright, there's a lot more room for interesting debate... but the case for those becomes much more difficult.

Main reason to doubt that (from the text) is that there is some evidence in the immediate context that God's omniscient POV is available, as would be normal for biblical inspiration and expected of Noah (as well as Moses, especially). God's personal thoughts are described earlier, prior to his speaking to Noah directly. However, if God didn't care about whether it was technically global or not, this wouldn't prove anything.


Something else we can rule out is that there have never been huge, catastrophic floods. Some of the geologic evidence is clear that there were, and unfortunately anti-global-flood bias seems to be making many afraid to admit this. That said, these don't necessarily prove the global Flood either; even atheistic evolutionists really have no reason to think large-scale but not global floods couldn't have happened, and they do believe in some lesser ones.


"1. Why does the narrative (Genesis 6-9) so many times use terms like "all" and "every" (instead of "some") thereby emphasizing the universal (not local) nature of the Flood?"

I do find that one difficult to square with local. The argument that "all doesn't always mean all" doesn't seem to address this, which is about the repetition and saying it so many ways (and some of the cases refer to poetry or known figures of speech -- that said, even historical narrative like this can and does use figures of speech, so if this is one for "as far as Noah could see, and this amazed him" or the like, it may work).


"2. The UF killed all but eight people (2 Peter 2:5)."

I'm not convinced this is a good argument. CMI has recently said (maybe they've said all along but I only recently saw it?) that humans could have spread throughout the whole Earth prior to the Flood... while we can't rule that out, we don't have proof of it either as far as I know. It doesn't have to be technically global to kill all people.

And let's go ahead and bring this in here -- how do we know "all" means all literally in even this case? Do we know that?

I see no particular reason to doubt it, but we should be careful. There is some genetic evidence, though; we have one main Y-chromosome line (male), and three major mitichondrial lines (female), perfectly fitting this scenario. (And being one of the strongest evidences against any other view, including especially AE, although not absolute proof. The people of the time could not have faked happening to get this right; it took modern global genetic surveys to test it.)


"God's purpose was to destroy ALL other land animals"

I disagree with this one. Animals are mentioned but if any use of "all" isn't literal in the account, it's this one. Humans were the point here. However, under the "a few hilltops" scenario, having any of the major land animals survive is tricky anyways, so it's possible literally all did die, even without a technically global Flood.


"3. ALL the high mountains were covered by 15 cubits (Genesis 7:19-20). How could a LOCAL flood do this?"

This is one I've pointed out for years -- the specific measurement could easily be a way for Noah to record (or Moses to later write down) that he did depth measurements and this simply refers to the shallowest measurement he got. Or it could mean he believed that was the depth beyond which he wouldn't be able to see anything, or (since I didn't bother to actually do the math on this part) maybe it's just how low the ark rested in the water and he means it never bumped anything.

Yes, that requires a nonliteral "all", but that has been seen in historical narrative. However, the use of God's perspective in the immediate context does put a huge question mark on any such interpretation.


"4. If the Flood was going to be only LOCAL, why didn't God simply tell Noah to MOVE with his family?"

This is one of the strongest arguments. I think it can probably be explained away... but the Ockham's razor explanation is there was nowhere to go.


"5.God promised to never send another UF to cleanse the earth (Genesis 9:8-17). Yet there have been many - thousands! - LOCAL floods since Noah's days. There is only one way for God to have spoken truth and that is if the UF was universal (worldwide), not local. Isn't that right?"

No, why would it be? As long as there's been no Flood LIKE it, this is satisfied.

Still, a global Flood, or nearly so, would be the easiest way to satisfy that.





Wally:

"What Jorge has succeeded in doing, is to formulate an argument that the Old Testament is false.

If you can't construct an interpretation that doesn't conflict with reality, then it must be false."

This kind of argument is iffy... it works to an extent, but be careful not to resort to illogically denying when things legitimately are testable. Jesus pointed to evidence and logic as why we should believe. How far that extends is not stated, so we shouldn't assume. And there is a lotevidence that even MORE possibilities for this may be found in the future... and we have physics principles that can be easily understood for how God could miraculously do it. "Evidence versus the Bible" is a very big misnomer, and a dangerous one. I'm not sure you intended to create that impression... but at least to me you did. Accepting a miracle does not mean seeing no evidence.

2) Extension of the above.

3) Nothing about the account says what the means were. It WAS aided... we just don't know how. And we were told that God did the aiding.

4) This is a big pet peeve for me. People need to be way, way more careful with the wine miracle. Wine in that day was heavily diluted, and the thickest parts of it could have settled, and not been disturbed by ladling it out, but would be disturbed by pouring new water in. Jesus had access to perfect knowledge here, but did not necessarily need a transmutation miracle. And there's an in-text reason to think he might not have wanted to use one, since it was "not his time yet". The only real difficulty is positing servants too ignorant to know they could do that... unless of course wine didn't settle that way and so forth which I admit I don't know for sure. Depends on how well it was made.

At the very least, an atheist could assume he tossed in some undiluted "ingredient wine" (which would be seen as barbaric to drink, but had to be produced to get the end product) when nobody was looking.

5) We have plenty of scientific knowledge of what would need to be done to cure blindness. This is evidence for the miracle being understandable/possible.

6) Same here.

7) We have evidence for matter and energy conversion being possible, though no clue how to do controlled conversion (vs. a nuke, heh). (This one especially shows the need to clarify how you mean evidence. Evidence this is a miracle? Yes! But we can't say there's no evidence it is possible, and some wilder atheists would try to say it is impossible.)

8) Same as blindness.

9) This one's very loose, as whether we have evidence for demons beyond the biblical evidence is unclear, but the concept of a created being unable to disobey when issued a direct order is seen in computers. Though mine is clearly demon-possessed. [/obligatory]

10) Big problem with "just a command" here. This goes to a pet peeve I have with both fundy creationists and fundy anticreationists who say Genesis 1 says God "puffed" the universe into existence by "merely" talking (yeah, the guy on here, if he's reading this, who actually put it that way recently knows who he is...). My problem may be a nitpick if they don't mean it literally... but it implies that no "physics" means were used to make it happen, like God thought/said it and it just happened by coincidence. Clearly he intended to do it, expressed that intent, and then used the physics means of his nature as omnipresent, onnipotent, omniscient God to do it.

As far as evidence, well, our ability to do what we say we will do factors here, and as far as weather control goes, it's a common idea in sci-fi; energy fields moving in the right places might do it. God could do the equivalent rapidly; no logical reason to see this as "unevidenced". Just as not happening right now. :P


"That's just a few of the miracles that are also to be understood "WOODENLY LITERALLY"."

Most of those are indeed described in literal terms as far as I recall, but you must have a very different idea of what "wooden" literalism means... To me that means the belief that things "must" be interpreted literally, like what fundy atheists typically use. Biblical creationists like AiG and CMI do not accept wooden literalism. It's puzzling to see you start off with a CMI reference but then say this... CMI's argument is much stronger; it is that the scientific and hermeneutic evidence agree that the historical narrative portions describe a literally young Earth that is actually true, and a global Flood (likeisay, not so sure I'd be totally for that part, but close to it). Because we do NOT seek a literal interpretation eisegetically, we are free to see the sound hermeneutic support for metaphor in one place, literal in another -- and there is clear hermeneutic support for at least a six-day creation, and probably a near-global Flood.


"You accept ONLY those miraculous events"

I think the biblical criterion for belief in a specific miracle is mainly whether the Bible describes it as such. While God may be working miracles (in the sense of direct intervention) today, it's more difficult to be sure versus when the being working the miracle actually tells us that's what he did... and the same applies in the Bible too.

Keep in mind that from God's perspective there is nothing difficult about domino effect methods versus directly knocking over one domino. Being omniscient, he can do something even more impressive to us; set up the universe to begin with to "domino-out" largely the way he wants (factoring for the times when for other reasons like to demonstrate credentials of a biblical author, or Jesus, he needed to use DI miracles as signs). To him, both are equally easy. And there's a lot of language in the Bible that I see as probably describing (often intensely) this process, especially for example the rewards/consequences section of the Mosaic covenant (if you care about consequences of sin so you obey God, you probably also care about consequences of good crop management so you're more likely to be responsible, versus pagans just seeking after pleasure all the time probably being lousy workers), and possibly the Hebrew belief in casting lots telling God's will.

Modern emotionalist reactions to either of these are irrelevant, so we should be careful not to fall for a fallacious trap either way there.




"You accept ONLY those miraculous events that do not interfere with your prized-above-all-beliefs (Evolutionism and Giga-Years)"

Jorge, I don't accept an old earth, or the main usage of "evolutionism" (what I call upvolution; we observe "outvolution" and "downvolution", as well as neutral change; ask if curious what I mean), but I do not necessarily accept some things as miracles that it is popular to claim or assume are. Your depiction of the options here is a little narrow...



"Golly gee wiz, had I known that Bill Clinton was going to be joining us, I would have rolled out the red carpet and sported my best tuxedo!"

Sigh.

I've actually been expecting this jab for years now... :P

Clinton may have been (I'm not sure... I didn't follow that whole thing all that closely TBH) trying to misapply a sound hermeneutic principle, but that doesn't mean that all uses are misapplications... It is indisputable fact that words do not always have the same meaning. "Is" is actually one of the prime examples; in formal syllogistic logic, it actually is not the same word as in standard English. It's basically short for "is in a category".

And although in normal usage, "is" virtually always means the same things, plenty of other things don't. Especially "all", and most of the examples rogue raised there are good examples of that in both Hebrew and English.

[logician bones]

Kbertshe:

"Scripture says that humans did not spread out until Babel, when God forced them to do so by confusing their language. So humans would have been grouped together at the time of the Flood, and a local inundation was sufficient."

Nowhere does it say this happened before the Flood.

"The ark was a "type" of Christ and salvation. If Noah had moved, it would have destroyed the typology. God wasn't after the "easiest" solution, He was trying to set up a type."

Why couldn't moving because he believed God be a type as well, like Abraham? The safe location would then fulfill the same role as the ark in typology.




Rogue:

"So, if God had instructed Noah to just migrate away from the flood area, the people would not have been warned of the impending judgment and that they were without excuse in their rebellion against God."

This is a good argument, though it's not exactly boolean. He still could have done that for a time, just not so visibly and he would have had to leave well before the event he predicted.




ox:

"Buried river channels at multiple sedimentary levels"

When I made my notes I was going to ask you to clarify this... it seems you did a little in your other topic, but it just needs even more clarification as it looks like you might have meant you thought the Flood would somehow have no features between layers; all flat. I'm hoping you didn't mean that, but it's unclear how else you could see channels as evidence againstseems to say one thing, but the Bible seems to say another, it can give us a red flag that the populist scientists may be misunderstanding the evidence and can inspire further research that then finds sound support for the biblical answer, whereas the populists had emotional reasons to give into bias for the status quo. Of course, there's danger for the alternative here, especially when the Bible is being popularly misinterpreted.

(Answer's simple there -- accept nothing that isn't soundly supported... not even emotionally "obvious" things like water to wine being "clearly" transmutation... Maybe it is, but that isn't clear when you bother to look into it!)

I could go on and on, but this is already extremely long... [And now forced by the software to be split into two...]

[rogue06]

The only people 'interpreting the observations to fit their preconceived beliefs' are you and the folks at AIG (and ICR etc). And it is so easy to prove. We've already begun the process here. All we have to do is examine the AIG faux-flood-evidences and see if they are in fact real. And they usually are not even fully factual in the limited data the present. Let alone the issue of ignoring/hiding the mounds of evidence that force whatever it is they are talking about to be invalid from the POV they represent.

We hit on one already. The Coconino sandstone. This was formed over eons of time by winds on a sandy desert. The AIG proposal is wishful thinking that ignores key evidence not the least of which are footprints in the various sand layers. The REAL science of analyzing these formations doesn't overlook elements like embedded footprints, and the REAL scientists don't have to 'conveniently' not mention the fact such things exist.

Post #43.

[TheLurch]

You're applying two completely different standards of "evidence" on Biblical Creationists as on TEs/OECs.
...
If you're going to continue on this, you need to do so on a level playing field.

No, i'm not. Since the flood is your example, let's look at this from again, a Buddhist's perspective: he or she knows there's not enough water on earth to produce a global flood. We are so ludicrously short of enough water that there would be no reason for said Buddhist to ever even consider it if it weren't for the holy book of a faith that he/she doesn't believe in. How short is ludicrously short? Let's ballpark it. If i Google earth's radius, i get 6,371 km. ∏r^3 gives me over 800 billion cubic km. now, add 9km to the radius (roughly the height of Everest), and do the same calculation, then subtract the difference. I come up with 3.4 billion cubic km of water. That's nearly 3x the volume currently present in our oceans.

(And the whole "fountains of the deep" thing doesn't help, because then the earths' radius would have to contract by some large fraction of 3.4 billion cubic km, which would be rather catastrophic.)

So, under normal circumstances, nobody would ever consider the idea of a universal flood. It would not even enter a scientific discussion, and we'd never bother going into the questionable nature of the supposed evidence you can find on AiG.

Now, you could say that a miracle occurred, but then you're not doing science, because science has no method for evaluating the probability of miracles (more on that below). Or you can argue that your holy book should be taken as a science text, but then you're creating a distinctly Christian form of science, one that would have no appeal for anyone who's non-Christian which is what you were trying to argue you're not doing.

This is all derived from a single, fundamental standard of science: is the idea consistent with reality as we know it? There are no double standards involved. The field is level.

I accept that under Materialistic assumptions the observations provide supporting evidence against a worldwide Flood.

So, here we have it. You want to bring miracles into science, and you want specifically to bring miracles consonant with your particular reading of the Bible. Buddhists etc. not welcome.

That's all I was trying to get at here.

No, ideology is not "anything that will impinge on biblical accounts" as you state above. Ideology is anything that goes into the formation - including interpretations - of a person's worldview.

So, by that definition, the BBC World Service is an ideology. I'm not sure it's a useful definition, and it's certainly not how the word is normally used.

In the final analysis it always comes down to "Who will you choose to believe?"

No, it really doesn't. Who i choose to believe doesn't have anything to do with the amount of water in the oceans, and the amount of land that would need to be covered by a global flood.

[Roy]

You cleverly (and dishonestly) try to change the subject above, to shift the spotlight away from yourself. You had stated that "There is no scientific evidence for a worldwide flood." In one brief post with one link I conclusively proved that your claim amounts to (1) total ignorance or (2) a lie - there is no other option. So which is it?

Option 3: You haven't conclusively proven anything. All you did was link to a site full of lies, and (as usual) refuse to defend or even discuss the contents.

You didn't even cite any of the articles there. All you did was a basic search for articles containing "evidence" and "Flood". You didn't even put quotes around your search string, so any article containing both words, no matter how disassociated, would have been included. Even an article stating "There is a lack evidence for a global flood" would qualify. Based on your technique Google provides evidence for bigfoot, leprechauns, Pegasus and even purple manticores*.

You haven't conclusively proven that there is evidence for a global flood. You haven't even proven that AiG claim there is evidence for a global flood. All you've proven is that people who write for AiG sometimes use both the words 'flood' and 'evidence'.

In short, your claim that Jim is ignorant or lying is itself ignorance or lying.

Roy

*Google searches for 'evidence for [x]' - separate words, as per the welcher's search, produce many thousands of hits.

[Roy]

You're applying two completely different standards of "evidence" on Biblical Creationists as on TEs/OECs. The evidence is indeed there and is plentiful - I recently posted (to O-Mudd) on that point. To wit: a link that I posted showed over 4,000 results to the search: "Evidence for a worldwide Flood".

Lying again Jorge? You actually searched for

(i) Evidence for the Flood
(ii) Evidence of Flood

both times without quotes, and not including worldwide/universal/global.

On neither occasion did you search for "Evidence for a worldwide Flood" That search produces no results at all.

0results.jpg

[Roy]

Dear logician bones (may I call you LG)?

There is a great deal of stuff here, so I'll only reply to a few points, but there seems to be a common pattern that I'll refer to at the end.

"There is no sign in the genetic record of any massive genetic bottleneck that must be present in all species if they descended from only a few individuals who survived on the Ark only 4500 years ago."

Actually, for the ones that would leave clear traces of this, humans, that's exactly what we do have.

Surely there would be even clearer traces of genetic bottlenecks in large animals, since they would have been descended from a single breeding pair, not a family of eight?

We know what the effects of genetic bottlenecks are because some species have undergone severe bottlenecks in historical times (wisent, elephant seals, golden hamsters). We can infer genetic bottlenecks in a few species based on their observed diversity (cheetahs 10kya, pandas 40kya), but if there was a universal bottleneck in all fauna 5kya it would be obvious in the increasing amount of genetic data that is available, and it is not. There certainly is nothing in the genetic data to indicate genetic bottlenecks across multiple species 5kya, as would be the case if, say, all extant big cats were descendants of two individuals on the ark.

"The geologic column can be dated by the radiometric decay of the materials"

This is one of the main topics of any creationist organization with qualified scientists behind it like CMI, Beagle; this looks like ignorance of the arguments that have been used against this.

Beagle has been following creationism for nearly as long as I have - he is very familiar both with the arguments CMI etc use, and the problems with them. Several other people here, including rogue, rwatts and Sylas, also have decades of experience in investigating the claims of creationists.

2) Most of the ones that are interpreted as evidence for old ages are in volcanic layers, and heat is known to speed up radioactive decay.

Do you have a reference for that last claim? Most of the experiments on the effect of temperature on decay rate show no interdependence. The few that do find a possible effect all show that the change in decay rate is at most a few % even for extreme temperature differences. Even if there is an acceleration of decay at higher temperatures, the heat required to account for a time difference of millions-of-years to thousands-of-years would be enough to completely vaporise the planet.

"the Coconino formation consists of desert sands dunes containing animal tracks"

There are features in the formation of the tracks inconsistent with dry formation and fitting real-world experimentation underwater. The "dunes" are not seen as dry desert dunes but underwater dunes.

Sand comes in a wide variety of forms, and the features of both the individual grains and the bedding structure they are found in offer clues to the sand's origin.

Sand deposited in air can be differentiated from sand deposited in water because the water cushions the impacts between grains; in subaerial deposits the grain surfaces become frosted and pitted from the fast impacts, whereas submarine deposited grains are smoother and more polished. Furthermore the Coconino sandstone exhibits other features consistent with subaerial deposition. There are none of the seashell or coral fragments that are typically found in beach sand. The ripple marks and cross-bedding in the planes match those of desert dunes rather than coastal or underwater dunes, and the structure of features within the sandstone has been compared to and experimentally confirmed as being similar to structure found in the desert dunes of North America.

The research on tracks you refer to is not as cut-and-dried as you make out; replies and comments have highlighted alternative possibilities that the original researchers neglected. Also, even if the tracks were made by amphibians in shallow water that doesn't rescue the flood hypothesis since the tracks are not level (ever seen a sloping flood?), are in multiple strata and are in the middle of the supposed flood deposits.

Everything you have written suggests that you are very familiar with the arguments proposed by the YEC organisations such as ICR/CMI/AiG, but not nearly as familiar with either the points against their arguments or the underlying science. AiG etc rely on their readers not following up the original research or investigating the science independently. When you do, as myself and others do, you quickly find that creationist arguments are almost always untenable, and that they not only frequently distort, misrepresent, cherry-pick or even invent the research they cite, but that such shenanigans are immediately obvious when the comparison is made - quotes are misattributed, taken out of context, mangled or even non-existent*; data is misrepresented as being something it isn't; liberties are taken with images and graphs; details and credentials are exaggerated; inconvenient details and contrary facts are glossed-over or ignored.

If you have never followed up a creationist claim to its sources, I highly recommend you do so. Two or three such investigations may change your views dramatically. If nothing else, you will discover that there is far, far more information available than the creationist organisations ever admit to. I suggest starting with the claim about heat affecting decay rates.

[Roy]

On neither occasion did you search for "Evidence for a worldwide Flood" That search produces no results at all.

I should probably qualify that if you search for "Evidence for a worldwide Flood" without the quotes, you do get some results, and some variations of the phrase also get results - but there are nowhere near the 4,000 hits welcher Jorge claimed to get.

[oxmixmudd]

ox:

"Buried river channels at multiple sedimentary levels"

When I made my notes I was going to ask you to clarify this... it seems you did a little in your other topic, but it just needs even more clarification as it looks like you might have meant you thought the Flood would somehow have no features between layers; all flat. I'm hoping you didn't mean that, but it's unclear how else you could see channels as evidence against a global or near-global Flood.

"boring sea creatures active at all times during the flood"

Again, unclear what your argument is here. It sounds like something we would expect in a global Flood.


[Since your vague statement about pollen here was clarified later, I'll reply there.]


"termite mounds built during flood activity"

This one I definitely remember. It's one of the strongest anti-Flood arguments IMO, but it is not yet clear at least to me whether we have legitimate examples that actually work as arguments. Hypothetically, if the Flood didn't happen, we might expect some that would either falsify it or come very close, but the actual examples we have need to be proven to meet several criteria. Mainly, two mounds, one directly atop the other, clearly unable to be cemented prior to moving (that one is especially problematic in light of recent evidence for rapid cementation of sediment in Flood action), large enough to be impossible to have been made during ebbs in activity in the first stage. Examples we have may be interpreted as later in time due to being in different layers, but actually be very geographically separated (unsure), for example.

This may also work as evidence for one of the major arguments against old-earther interpretations, incidentally, depending on what depth it's found at, since it shows that animals disturbing the layers while soft did exist at the time.





ox:


"inverted river channels or pollen from different species in different layers at yearly intervals."

Could you clarify "inverted"?

The other part answers my earlier question. Whether this really fits a yearly pattern, though, I'd like to see proven. This one looks better answered with some direct research.

(Different species would not be surprising, though. But clear annual layers matching present observations would be a stronger argument. However, it may turn out to be like the debunked ice cores argument; perhaps there is a layered sorting effect due to small disturbances than that. Unsure.)


"the massive chalk layers like the cliffs of Dover. Yet these are made of up of trillions of exo-skeletons from very small life-forms. You just don't get concentrations of those creatures at those levels over a 1 year period Jorge. It takes a lot longer than that for enough of them to grow and die and make the chalk itself."

This is an amount-based argument rather than a feature evidence, so it's difficult to judge. How can we be sure there wouldn't have been enough, or that the material was not made to be moved/deposited prior to the Flood too? (Maybe you have good answers, but just curious. :)) At first glance it sounds better as evidence for the Flood than against, as large masses of material collected would be expected in it, and not over millions of years.

Also, not sure offhand about your exoskeleton claim. I'd need to see that proven to be 100% or close to it; gotta be careful of the Pat Robertson "all the oil is from dead dinos!11!" mistake.


"Ecosystems don't sort in layers in a single flood"

Actually, they may; one of the main arguments is that we observe the layers just happening to be in the same order we'd expect from the Flood due to geographic proximity to coastlines; deep ocean first, then shallow, then coastal land, then inland. While this does make sense with the current incarnation of evolution, and it makes sense for evolution to start in the deep ocean, the biblical scenario wasn't free to adapt the view to the evidence on this, and the evidence happens to fit it, and the evolution view COULD be adapted.

I'm not sure how much it has been; I have seen some early material that makes it sound like life started in ponds on land, but that might have just been promotional / laymen misunderstandings.



"asteroid impacts do to the whole thing, since all these strata that are supposedly layed down during the flood are penetrated to the bedrock below them - implying most of the large impacts occurred during or after this same massive flood!!! I don't remember the Bible talking about decades of impact ejecta and stratospheric dust induced super-cold winters. I think it mentions Noah emerging after 1 year."

Well, I'm not sure whether those are asteroid impacts (some may be volcanic?), but there is evidence for a one-time system-wide impact event on multiple bodies like our moon. This could have triggered the Flood, and Noah wouldn't necessarily see the actual falling. (Or, it's possible it feeds into the word choice of the figure of speech of floodgates of the heavens, though it need not.)

But if indeed asteroid impacts didn't trigger the Flood, this is one of the stronger arguments. (Unless it happened at the same time... possible but confusing... Uuuunless of course impacts happened a lot more back then, which would make sense... still...)

As for the supposed decades of aftereffects, well, that could feed into the Ice Age happening after the Flood, but that may also be exaggerated. (Warm oceans may be enough for that.) There have been noticeable strikes in modern times without any of that happening. I'm sure there's something to the risk of that, but some of the popular conception of it might be influenced by the desire to see asteroids as wiping out the dinosaurs.

So this is a good bit to respond to, and I notice you've not yet responded to the others that have addressed some of your comments. So when I see you responding I might take a bit more time with this. However, I can offer a few quick comments. The first is that the sorting we see is far more precise than just some broad brush that paints life originating in the seas and migrating to land. There are a large number of fossils (called 'index fossils') that ONLY occur in very limited ranges of sediment and always in a specific order bottom to top (or layer to layer, sequences of layer can get pushed around a bit, even inverted, due to tectonic forces and motions). The reason for this (from an evolutionary perspective) is that they existed for relatively short periods of time over a specific history.

These life forms that make up the index fossils have no intrisic physical properties that would ALWAYS cause them to sort in the orders they do - except for the time in which they lived. So to explain this in a flood model, you will need a very fine-grained explanation for why these index fossils ALWAYS sort as they do in the sediments.

(One reason time is the accepted solution is that no solution based on properties other than time could be expected to produce the observed sediment<->fossil relationship worldwide)


On the Asteroid impacts. This is a major problem for flood geology. I have a thread here on the Chesapeake Bay Impact. Feel free to look it over. See if some of the issues it presents make any sense in a flood scenario. (of course, my thread points more at the issue of IS it an asteroid impact). But think about what this kind of thing means to civilization pre or post flood. This is by no means the smallest such impact. But when an event like this occurs, it excavates hundreds of cubic miles of rock and water. This material goes into the stratosphere and produces first an extended and massive cooling event. The hot ejecta can cause continent-wide, even world wide fires (non-flood).

So let's assume for a moment they all happened late in the flood, after the sediments were laid down, but before Noah emerged from the ark (this would present the least impact on Noah and his family -though by no means a trivial impact, there is also the problem of no record of any of the large events in human history)

1) Impacts like these would produce 1000 foot tidal waves that - without land to stop them - would circle the world in a flood environment. There are serious phyisical strength issues with the capacity of the wooden Ark to be seaworthy under normal conditions, let alone in an environment with waves of hundreds or thousands of feet in height.

2) There would still be massive climactic effects. heat and cold depending on location and time after the impacts.

3) If Noah et all were anywhere near the impact site, they would be suffocated by the poisonous gasses associated with the vaporzation of cubic miles of seawater, if not vaporized by the heat, or demolished by the shock waves.

4) further out, the ark must survive being pummeled by hot ejecta and extended blast waves and tsunamis (already mentioned) (this sort of requires, given where the impacts are, that the ark and the impacts be at 'goldilocks like positioning and timing so the ark is always far enough away no to be destroyed by the immediate side effects of the impact)

5) the afore mentioned extended 'winter' of years duration (a nice way to produce an ice age perhaps - but how does Noah et al get the plants to grow for farming and for the animals to eat when there is no summer for years)?

6) how do such large scars get reburied and eroded if they occurred near enough the end of the flood to account for the sediment they penetrated?

7)How do the LARGEST ones become the most obscure, while the SMALLEST ones are the most pristine? In the evolutionary scenario, this is because it takes the LONGEST to wipe the big one, but they are also the LEAST frequent, and the little ones happen more often an thus keep happening and so are the YOUNGEST. With the flood the major actor, the forces to take the largest ones to where they are would completely eliminate the smallest ones.


I know this is not complete and there is a lot of detail I'm leaving out. But these are some broad brush strokes at the kinds of problems bring the impacts near the end or after the flood.

HINT: Since it is believed the K-T boundary producing impact would have led to a 95% extinction level event, and there are even larger impacts, think about what it would mean to have that and two even larger impacts, plus another 15 or so producing craters of at least 20km diameters happening in such a short period of time)


Jim

[Jorge]

No, i'm not. Since the flood is your example, let's look at this from again, a Buddhist's perspective: he or she knows there's not enough water on earth to produce a global flood. We are so ludicrously short of enough water that there would be no reason for said Buddhist to ever even consider it if it weren't for the holy book of a faith that he/she doesn't believe in. How short is ludicrously short? Let's ballpark it. If i Google earth's radius, i get 6,371 km. ∏r^3 gives me over 800 billion cubic km. now, add 9km to the radius (roughly the height of Everest), and do the same calculation, then subtract the difference. I come up with 3.4 billion cubic km of water. That's nearly 3x the volume currently present in our oceans.

(And the whole "fountains of the deep" thing doesn't help, because then the earths' radius would have to contract by some large fraction of 3.4 billion cubic km, which would be rather catastrophic.)

So, under normal circumstances, nobody would ever consider the idea of a universal flood. It would not even enter a scientific discussion, and we'd never bother going into the questionable nature of the supposed evidence you can find on AiG.

I'm done quibbling about this and also trying to educate you and others here. Seems like you're quite content believing as you do so I'll leave you happy in your ignorance. To wit: do you really believe that the matter you bring up here (about the amount of water) hasn't been explored in depth and fully answered? See, this is an example where you et al. demonstrate being willingly and blissfully ignorant. Neither I nor anyone can fight that attitude.

Now, you could say that a miracle occurred, but then you're not doing science, because science has no method for evaluating the probability of miracles (more on that below). Or you can argue that your holy book should be taken as a science text, but then you're creating a distinctly Christian form of science, one that would have no appeal for anyone who's non-Christian which is what you were trying to argue you're not doing.

This is all derived from a single, fundamental standard of science: is the idea consistent with reality as we know it? There are no double standards involved. The field is level.

Remain happy, Lurch.

So, here we have it. You want to bring miracles into science, and you want specifically to bring miracles consonant with your particular reading of the Bible. Buddhists etc. not welcome.

DITTO. Let me add that you seem to have no problems with the 'miracles' that Materialism brings into "science". IOW, it's not the 'miracles' that bother you and those like-minded, it's the source of the 'miracles' that bothers you. To wit: if a Naturalistic 'miracle' is invoked (such as life and consciousness popping-out of inert matter) then you're perfectly good with that - that's "science". But if the 'miracle' is Bible-based then you cry, "NOT SCIENCE!"

That is intellectual dishonesty and that is what I mean by a playing field that is NOT level.
You need to acquire some integrity and own up to facts such as that.

That's all I was trying to get at here.

And now you know what I was getting at.

So, by that definition, the BBC World Service is an ideology. I'm not sure it's a useful definition, and it's certainly not how the word is normally used.

Don't try to make me as philosophically superficial as you and your ideological comrades appear to be.

No, it really doesn't. Who i choose to believe doesn't have anything to do with the amount of water in the oceans, and the amount of land that would need to be covered by a global flood.

Yes it does but the fact that you appear unable and/or unwilling to accept this makes further discussions pointless.

Jorge

[Jorge]

I should probably qualify that if you search for "Evidence for a worldwide Flood" without the quotes, you do get some results, and some variations of the phrase also get results - but there are nowhere near the 4,000 hits welcher Jorge claimed to get.

Hmmm - really?

Maybe I was wrong ... let me go see for myself ('coz I sure ain't trusting Roy!!!) ...

So I go to the Answers in Genesis website. It was 8:08 AM on Wednesday, 13 July 2016.
I entered Evidence for worldwide Flood in their Search box and here's what popped up:

4,360 results found

https://answersingenesis.org/search/...e+of+the+Flood

Granted, some may be repeats. Also granted that the number seems to change over time (I don't know why). But the number that I stated is CONFIRMED and Roy is once again proven to be a pathetic slanderer / dishonesty personified.

Where the sun don't shine, Roy ... where the sun don't shine.

EDITED TO ADD:

I wasted a few more precious minutes of my time and tried variations of "Evidence for a worldwide Flood" (e.g., leaving out "worldwide", leaving out "evidence" ... etc.). Results numbers were different depending on the entry. Obvious question: what "Flood" do you thing AiG would be talking about? Go get a life, Roy !!!

Jorge

[rogue06]

Hmmm - really?

Maybe I was wrong ... let me go see for myself ('coz I sure ain't trusting Roy!!!) ...

So I go to the Answers in Genesis website. It was 8:08 AM on Wednesday, 13 July 2016.
I entered Evidence for worldwide Flood in their Search box and here's what popped up:

4,360 results found

https://answersingenesis.org/search/...e+of+the+Flood

Granted, some may be repeats. Also granted that the number seems to change over time (I don't know why). But the number that I stated is CONFIRMED and Roy is once again proven to be a pathetic slanderer / dishonesty personified.

Where the sun don't shine, Roy ... where the sun don't shine.

EDITED TO ADD:

I wasted a few more precious minutes of my time and tried variations of "Evidence for a worldwide Flood" (e.g., leaving out "worldwide", leaving out "evidence" ... etc.). Results numbers were different depending on the entry. Obvious question: what "Flood" do you thing AiG would be talking about? Go get a life, Roy !!!

Jorge

When I clicked the link it showed what was being searched for was "evidence of the Flood" and not "Evidence for worldwide Flood."

When I entered "Evidence for worldwide Flood" in the AiG search function I got 573 hits