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Author Topic:   Glenn Morton hypothesis: The Flood could ONLY have happened 5 million+ years ago
grmorton
Member (Idle past 6197 days)
Posts: 44
From: Houston, TX USA
Joined: 03-25-2007


Message 106 of 130 (392606)
04-01-2007 2:41 PM
Reply to: Message 95 by lao tzu
03-31-2007 5:03 AM


Re: The Flood
Are you the same Jesse with whom I have had the pleasure to discuss things on another forum? Given the Lao tzu name, I strongly suspect it.
Jesse wrote:
I find the arithmetic of his proposed inundation suspect as well, as it seems to imply the ark traveling at an average speed of something less than 7 miles a day on the crest of the inundation (else why would it fetch up against Turkey at all), making such a vessel seem unnecessary to me. They could have walked there faster. 2500 miles from the straits of Gibraltar to Turkey in 365 days. Do the math.
This is an interesting objection but one which won't work. We are not talking about a break in the Gibraltar dam 500 miles wide and 3000 feet deep. At most you are talking something starting small and growing, so the volume of water which came through was small and as the waters spread out from the initial hole, geometric spreading (something one needs to understand), turbulence and other frictional processes would make this appear much more gradual than your objection would seem to indicate. The geometric spreading is the biggest factor. Wave height, and that is what the crest is, diminishes 1/r^2 where r is the distance from the initial perturbation, in this case, Gibraltar. Starting with a 3000 ft tall wall of water at the Gibraltar dam, it would be reduced to less than a foot high after spreading for 2500 miles. Such is the power of geometric spreading when applied to a wave.
Of course, as the area to be inundated was not a concrete-lined channel, the speed of encroachment toward Turkey would vary as the area for expansion increased. I would expect a higher rate of travel for the leading edge of the flood during the earliest stages, and a lower rate toward the end.
The biggest limitation is the size of the collapse, which restricts the volume of water flowing
A more serious criticism arises from the lack of any method to carry the tale across 5 million years, call it 250,000 generations of pre-literacy with no assurance of even the capability of an oral tradition.
This is the point at which I confess, I do something non-scientific. Christians are supposed to believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible. But then, when it is needed in practice, many reject it and use this argument against my view. I have cases of stories of glacial events being handed down 12000 years in a pre-literate society, but, clearly that is much different than asking for 250,000 generations, or 80,000 if one has grand-parent/grandchild interactions.
While, as I discuss below, I believe in divine inspiration for this problem, I can't entirely rule out father-son/mother-daughter transmission. Why? Because I have one example of knowledge being transferred in precisely this manner for 1 million years. Without knowing anthropology you would never know of it.
Many people don't believe that H. erectus had language. I believe they did, but the interesting thing is that with or without language
they transmitted from parent to child, the correct instructions for producing an Acheulean hand ax from their first appearance about 1.5 million years ago until their disappearance and replacement with better technology at around 500,000 years.
"Tools very much like the one I now held had been found in
European sites as young as 500,000 years, as well as in Olduvai
deposits dated at a million and a half."
"Whatever they were used for, clearly the hand axes and other
Acheulean tools were doing it efficiently. Compared to the
longevity of the hand ax, the invention of the automobile-or for
that matter the wheel itself-strikes me as a sort of cultural
whimsy, a fleeting bit of gadgetry. Thousands of generations
separated me from the individual who had knocked this flake of
rock off a boulder and fashioned its shape. But I, a user of
garage-door openers, power saws, and electric blenders, could
instantly recognize it as a tool, potent with human purpose.
Gently, idly, I tapped the blunted point against my palm. For a
moment a few thousand generations didn't seem like much time at
all. I could count them off in less than an hour with gentle
taps of the tool in the palm of my hand--parent to child, parent
to child.
There was something very reassuring, almost liberating
about that thought. I smiled to myself and put the hand ax back
on the ledge where I had found it." ~ Donald Johanson and James
Shreeve, Lucy's Child, (New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc.,
1989), p. 148-149.
So, if material culture can be passed down correctly from preliterate parent to preliterate child for 1 million years, it is hard for me to really discount the possibility that stories could also come along that way.
I would also note that the concept that stones can be chipped into tools has been passed down from parent to child for 2.6 million years. Stone tool-making is not instinctual among humanity.
But, I believe in the Divine inspiration of the Bible, and thus, do not have to claim that such a message can be carried that far. I am surprised as to how many Christians won't allow the Bible to be divinely inspired and thus reject the possiblity (but then, illogically, claim that the theology is inspired).
But the most damning evidence against this theory is the pre-existence of achingly similar predecessors of the biblical flood tale in the excavated writings of the region, tales which incorporate aspects of the flood tale in the bible found nowhere else in the world, indicating a common literary tradition.
When everyone knows that the Jews came from the Semitic world of Babylon, and everyone would agree that if there was a flood, it happened earlier than either Abraham or the Babylonians, I fail to see why this is so damning to the view. Of course the Hebrews got the story from their tribal parents in Babylon. That still doesn't conflict with either inspiration or its possible reality.
There is no need for divine intervention to see this tale carried from the Mesopotamian flood plain ” where we know it existed ” west and south into the region of ancient Israel with no more than the minor variations we see between the other intermediates stretching back from Canaan and Babylonia into ancient Sumeria.
So you are presuming to prove that no Babylonian could have been inspired by God with a true story about a past event? Interesting concept and I would love to see your argument laid out in detail.
Your argument seems to me to be one of merely stating your incredulity, which may be vast, but isn't the judge of what is and isn't the case.
Against this origin, we pit Glenn's Mediterranean (GM5M) flood tale of 5 million years ago (GM5M) and apply the principle of parsimony.
Ask yourself what is the easiest method for this tale to have been incorporated into the Jewish sacred texts. Was it carried along by means of written records from an origin in Mesopotamia over the course of no more than a thousand years? Or was it "remembered" across 250,000 generations by a pre-literate society that sprang up in the wake of a cataclysm, until finally being recorded in a language that did not exist at the time of the earliest written incarnations of the tale.
One of the things that literate people don't realize is the power of human memory. When we quit needing to memorize things we did. There are scientific reports of amazing memory skills among preliterate peoples, things we moderns find hard to believe.
"Although fewer than one in a hundred adults in the West have
this sort of intense imagery, it is quite common in children and
'primitive' people. In a 1960s study in a Nigerian village, a
slide projector was set up and the tribesmen were shown some
pictures for thirty seconds each, ranging from a photograph of a
Nigerian bus stop to scenes from Alice in Wonderland. Over half
the villagers showed some level of photographic memory and about
a fifth had almost perfect recall, being able to do such things
as trace out the license plate number of a car from their memory
of a picture, even though they were unable to read or write. In
one instance, a subject who wrongly stated that the Cheshire cat
from the Alice in Wonderland picture was black was greeted with
cries of scorn from the other eighteen villagers who had watched
the test. All of them were looking at the blank projector screen
as if the picture still lingered there like an after-image from
staring at the sun, and when they were asked how many could see
the original image, fourteen hands shot up.
"These impressive memory feats-- even though the mental pictures
quickly fade-- seem, however, more the sign of an uncluttered
mind than of special powers of memory. Members of the same
tribe, brought up in cities and educated to read and write, show
far less ability, and studies in the West have shown that while
eight in a hundred children appear to have photographic memories,
nearly all loose their ability as they become adults." ~ John
McCrone, The Ape That Spoke, (New York: William Morrow and
Company, 1991), p.98-99
Tribes also do things differently than moderns, like you, conceive of:
"Among modern fisher-gatherer-hunters such partnerships based on
exchange, marriage, and family extend over huge areas. They
involve time being set aside for visiting, feasting, and
competitions such as song contests and poetry recitals. As Leah
Minc has shown, these story tellings not only confer prestige on
an individual but also serve as a repository of survival
information is coded in such oral traditions it is common to find
it sanctified and linked to ritual performances. Unlike ordinary
storytelling this leads to accurate repetition so tht the vital
information is not lost or embellished by the present generation.
Periodic crises in the Arctic may not always happen in an
individual's lifetime, but on a longer timescale they certainly
will. Social communication of this nature represents an extreme
example of how information is stored and survival enhanced
through a group memory. John Pfeiffer has called this the tribal
encyclopedia. Obtaining, updating, and preserving such knowledge
thus involves complex and time consuming social practices
understood to be indispensable for longterm survival." ~ Clive
Gamble, Timewalkers, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994),
p. 119-120
I would also point out that the earliest Venus figurines dates 400,000 years ago-Tan tan Morocco (look it up on the BBC). The youngest are still being made--madonna and child. While the specific belief of who is the child has changed, humanity has had this same motif for that long. Your incredulity may be vast but you have no evidence to show that this hasn't happened. INdeed, I have now given you examples of cultural material being passed down for respectively 50,000 and 20,000 generations respectively. Admittedly, this isn't 250,000 but, it is approaching the 80,000 that a grandparent/grandchild relationship would require.
Glenn has made it his mission to uncover evidence for this 5 Mya hypothesis, and knowing Glenn, I'm sure he'll uncover interesting information. The chances that he will uncover verification for a Mediterranean origin for the flood tale are infinitesimal. There is no means of promulgating this tale across such a span of generations.
While I am in agreement with your assessment of my chances for verification, it actually represents more chance of my views being verified than the existence of the graviton being verified.
The issue turns on what is to be demonstrated. Is it sufficient to explain the inclusion of this tale, or must we also support the accuracy of this tale? In comparison to other similar texts of the region, this last criterion ” accuracy ” is unprecedented. Worse, it is the equivalent of including as evidence what should rightly be investigated as a separate hypothesis. Absent this claim of accuracy, there is nothing remaining to explain. The evidence already exists pointing to a Mesopotamian origin. We have the chain of provenance.
So, you ignore the flood myths of other countries? While we have the provenance for the Biblical tale, that doesn't mean that it is false in light of the rather well known fact that the Hebrews came from Mesopotamia. So, I guess I am rather impressed with the illogic here. My grandfather told me he went to work in 1916 for $25 per month. Thus, now that I have lived in Dallas,TX, Lafayette, LA, Houston, TX, Scotland and China, I can no longer count on this piece of information to be true? Is it because I moved around a bit that I can no longer count on the verity of what my grandfather told me?
Glenn is free to advance alternative explanations for the inclusion of this tale in the Hebrew sacred texts. That is science. He is not free, however, to offer a claim requiring unnecessary assumptions without showing the need to do so. That is the principle of parsimony. We already have an explanation that works. It is sufficient to explain the evidence, that evidence being the inclusion of the Noachian flood tale within the Hebrew sacred texts.
Are you aware that the inhabitants of the Mesopotamian region came from previous populatons who did not live there? There is some evidence that the Sumerians were invaders to the land. So to depend only on one movement of people (Hebrews from Mesopotamia to Palestine) and ignore the movemnt of the Sumerians from wherever they came from, seems, well, limiting the options.
From here, we could continue to ask how this tale came to be. Again, scientific methodology requires we seek out the simplest explanation. It is a tale of a great flood and a boat that survived it. Most legends have roots in fact, and most legends incorporate both embellishment and syncretism.
Now consider the Mesopotamian flood plain, the point of likely origin. Dig anywhere and you'll find evidence of floods. We know of locally catastrophic floods that struck individual cities during the third millenium BCE. Anyone living in these cities would be aware of this. The culture of the time included large scale digging to keep open the system of irrigation canals. The evidence of major flooding evident from the layers of silt must have been widespread. This would be enough to birth flood tales.
This of course, is an understatement of biblical proportions. Dig in any river and you will find evidence of flooding. I would give a big so what to this. And it is not true, contra popular opinion, that the silts from one of the floods is widespread.
“Following its publication in 1929, his Ur of the Chaldees became the most widely read book on archaeology ever printed.
“However, subsequent trenching at Ur, in the neighboring tells that surround Ur, such as Abu Shahrain (biblical Eridu), and in those extending north to other equally ancient settlements, such as Tell el Oueli and Choga Mami, have invariably failed to encounter this same silt layer. After much probing by trench and drill to trace its extent investigators have determined that the surface area of the deposit was localized and perhaps only a single breach in a levee of the Euphrates River, forming what modern hydrologists call a 'paly deposit,'covering at most a few square miles of the lateral floodplain. No archaeologist today considers Woolley’s silt layer at Ur to be any more significant than a thousand other silt layers spewed from the two great rivers during and since the last ice age. None of these local floods apparently had more importance than any other in serving as a major divide in human settlement in Mesopotamia.” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p.55
With no way of dating these layers, there would be nothing to keep these flood tales from growing into one another, until they had became a "great flood" tale. Add in the tale of a local survivor aboard a river barge ” barges are also known to have existed ” and the last bar to a Mesopotamian origin falls away.
Like anything about the past, one can speculate anything away. YOu have presented this speculation of how the flood story came to be as if it is fact. But you have not one shred of actual observational evidence for the scenario that semites digging in the area connected the wrong dots and came up with a world wide flood. Not one document exists to prove the assertion, not one modern example of this process can be cited, yet, we are supposed to believe that this speculation is the most parsimonious explanation?
If one were to equate parsimony in evidence as the type of parsimony of which you speak, then indeed, your view is the most parsimonious, lacking any and all evidence whatsoever. Once you present actual evidence that such a sequence of events took place, then we can discuss it scientifically, so, I would say from this, that your explanation isn't really science, if one defines science as that which is capable of offering observational evidence.
At least, I have examples of long transmissions of information which could, if I wanted them to,be used to support the transmission of the flood story for nearly as long as you want.
Glenn's objection to this explanation is that it does not preserve the accuracy of the Noachian flood tale in the bible.
No, my objection to this is that you have zero evidence that what you suggest actually happened.
Science doesn't care about this presupposition. The Mesopotamian origin is simpler, so it wins.
It wins because it has no evidence? Wow. What a way to win.
That's how science works.
I thought science worked off of observational evidence. Where is yours supporting the concept that the flood story arose from looking at clays in the river? What ancient document tells you this? What physical remains tell you this?
If his theory is to gain traction in the scientific community, it must overcome this deficit.
Now there is no particular reason for Glenn to seek to win his case within the scientific community. But if that is not his aim, he is not engaging in science.
Jesse, is the last sentence supposed to be condemnatory? Science does not constitute the entirety of human experience. Prove that you love your parents. Even worse, prove that you think highly of them. There are lots of things which lie outside of science.
Edited by grmorton, : No reason given.

The Pathway Papers http://home.entouch.net/dmd/path.htm

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 Message 95 by lao tzu, posted 03-31-2007 5:03 AM lao tzu has not replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 107 of 130 (392607)
04-01-2007 2:44 PM
Reply to: Message 105 by mpb1
04-01-2007 2:33 PM


Re: The Flood
I was wondering about that jar...
Are you a Christian?
Yes I am a Christian. You can read some of my belief statements in Columnists Corner.
I know you used the label, "the Christian Cult of Ignorance," so I wasn't sure. If you are a Christian, are you saying that those who believe Genesis 1-11 is meant to be understood literally are ignorant?
Yes, that is kinda what I am saying. At best they are ignorant. There are also many who are liars and a few who are simply deluded.
If so, I guess that means you believe those who read those chapters as allegory are much wiser?
Well, I would not use the term wiser. I would say more honest.
Because of the literal, historical, biographical nature of the text, I believe it is intellectually dishonest to read the text as anything but literal.
If what you say is true, then you also must admit that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 describe two different Gods and that the tales are mutually exclusive. If one is true then the other is false.
Edited by jar, : -d +s

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This message is a reply to:
 Message 105 by mpb1, posted 04-01-2007 2:33 PM mpb1 has replied

Replies to this message:
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mpb1
Member (Idle past 6138 days)
Posts: 66
From: Texas
Joined: 03-24-2007


Message 108 of 130 (392608)
04-01-2007 2:53 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by jar
04-01-2007 2:44 PM


Re: The Flood
I know the admins will stop us from going any further in this direction on this particular thread, but I see it as an overview and then a more detailed story. If the stories appear to be mutually exclusive, then I realize they could have come from different source material or that there could have been errors in the manuscript copying. But your view seems extreme. I DO get your point though. It's worth looking into further, and I will do just that, at some point, anyway...
-

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 Message 107 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 2:44 PM jar has not replied

  
grmorton
Member (Idle past 6197 days)
Posts: 44
From: Houston, TX USA
Joined: 03-25-2007


Message 109 of 130 (392611)
04-01-2007 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 102 by jar
04-01-2007 1:57 PM


Re: The Flood
jar wrote:
Not at all. I simply take what is written in the Bible. The Bible story says it was a world-wide flood.
The ENGLISH says that the 'earth' was flooded. The Hebrew uses both eretz and adamah, to describe that which was flooded.
Adamah means, according to BDB
1) ground, land
1a) ground (as general, tilled, yielding sustenance)
1b) piece of ground, a specific plot of land
1c) earth substance (for building or constructing)
1d) ground as earth’s visible surface
1e) land, territory, country
1f) whole inhabited earth
1g) city in Naphtali
The most problematical word here for my position is 'whole inhabited earth' is not necessarily the same as the whole earth, especially early in humanity's existence.
And when one goes looking at eretz in Genesis, one quickly learns that early genesis didn't use it as planet earth. I note that before and after the flood account eretz is used in a local sense. I am going to illustrate this by translating eretz as 'planet earth' to show how ludicrous it is to read the word as meaning planet earth.
If eretz means planet earth, then here was Abram from?
Gen 12:1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy planet, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a planet that I will show thee:
Was Abram a martian?
Is the Bible a sci fi story? Do we have Planet Havilah, Planet Cush, Planet Nod?
Gen 2:11-13, The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole Planet of Havilah, where there is gold; 12and the gold of that planet is good: . the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole Planet of Cush
Gen 4:16 Cain went . , and dwelt in the Planet of Nod
Gen 10:10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, . , in the Planet of Shinar
Clearly eretz doesn’t mean planet earth. We have examples of the local usage of eretz from Genesis 5 through 12, so when we come to the occurrences where the usage is at issue, Gen 6-9, why do we suddenly assume that it should be used differently?
If we translate the passage consistently with Gen 5 and 12, then the passage says:
And the flood was forty days upon the land
the waters . increased greatly upon the land
all flesh died that moved upon the land
The Bible story says it was during the lifespan of a specific individual.
Oh, now the illogic here can be illustrated by rejecting the burning of Rome because historical accounts say that it occurred during the life time of a specific person--Nero, or that we can reject the Trojan war which occurred in preliterate times, because it is said to have occured during the life of Helen.
The Bible story says that all life on earth except that which was on one specific boat died.
No, it says that all life on the land died. That is quite a different thing. If you insist on your preferred interpretation of what was flooded, then I would conclude that the story can't be correct, but there is still the option that your interpretation of the story is what is really incorrect.
Now if you approach it as you have laid out so far, it seems to me that all you have done is throw out everything in the Bible story.
No, I have gotten rid of English words which don't have the same meaning for us today as the Hebrew words had for the ancient peoples.
Okay.
I don't have a problem with what you are doing.
Enjoy.
But it seems to be totally unrelated to the Bible story anyway.
It has everything to do with the story if one reads it in Hebrew rather than reading a very bad English translation.
As to your three assertions of what you think I think, well, you be wrong on all three of them. LOL
No I am not. Demonstrably you said that the bible teaches the flood was world wide. I interpret that to mean global so on #1 I was indeed correct.

The Pathway Papers http://home.entouch.net/dmd/path.htm

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 1:57 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 110 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 3:28 PM grmorton has replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 110 of 130 (392615)
04-01-2007 3:28 PM
Reply to: Message 109 by grmorton
04-01-2007 3:05 PM


Re: The Flood
Oh, now the illogic here can be illustrated by rejecting the burning of Rome because historical accounts say that it occurred during the life time of a specific person--Nero, or that we can reject the Trojan war which occurred in preliterate times, because it is said to have occured during the life of Helen.
Nonsense Glenn.
What I reject is the incorrect stories.
Glenn, I have no problem with you interpreting the story to be a local flood. There were many such floods in history. But once it gets interpreted as a localized flood as opposed to a world-wide flood, I see no point in going any further.

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 3:05 PM grmorton has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 111 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 4:58 PM jar has replied

  
grmorton
Member (Idle past 6197 days)
Posts: 44
From: Houston, TX USA
Joined: 03-25-2007


Message 111 of 130 (392651)
04-01-2007 4:58 PM
Reply to: Message 110 by jar
04-01-2007 3:28 PM


Re: The Flood
jar writes:
Nonsense Glenn.
What I reject is the incorrect stories.
Which can only be done under the assumption that Hebrew words are irrelevant to what the stories actually say. I am interested to see that you didn't actually address the data I presented, showing why I was wrong. Instead, you are offering the same statement, unamended by anything I said. I guess we have little to say to each other if evidence is not mentioned in any followup.
Glenn, I have no problem with you interpreting the story to be a local flood. There were many such floods in history. But once it gets interpreted as a localized flood as opposed to a world-wide flood, I see no point in going any further.
Here we have to disagree. If we can't discuss the meaning of the Hebrew words, as opposed to the badly chosen English words used in the translation, then clearly there is no point of going further and we are at an impasse.
The reality is, the Bible was written in Hebrew, not English, and it is Hebrew words which determine how much of the geological landscape was affected by the flood.

The Pathway Papers http://home.entouch.net/dmd/path.htm

This message is a reply to:
 Message 110 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 3:28 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 112 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 5:27 PM grmorton has replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 112 of 130 (392658)
04-01-2007 5:27 PM
Reply to: Message 111 by grmorton
04-01-2007 4:58 PM


Re: The Flood
Here we have to disagree. If we can't discuss the meaning of the Hebrew words, as opposed to the badly chosen English words used in the translation, then clearly there is no point of going further and we are at an impasse.
Glenn I simply don't understand what you seem upset about. There is little to discuss because I have no problem if you define the area to be localized. If you want to take one of the definitions that implies something other than the whole world, I have no reason to argue. I can live with those definitions.
Such a regional or local flood could happen anywhere at anytime. So there is not even any reason to go back more than say, thirty years ago, to find a source for the Biblical Flood.
I did not argue with your interpretations because I don't disagree with what you said.
But as I also said, the exercise seems utterly pointless.

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 4:58 PM grmorton has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 113 by mpb1, posted 04-01-2007 6:01 PM jar has not replied
 Message 114 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 8:01 PM jar has replied

  
mpb1
Member (Idle past 6138 days)
Posts: 66
From: Texas
Joined: 03-24-2007


Message 113 of 130 (392668)
04-01-2007 6:01 PM
Reply to: Message 112 by jar
04-01-2007 5:27 PM


Re: The Flood
("dumb joke" post removed.)
Edited by mpb1, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 112 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 5:27 PM jar has not replied

  
grmorton
Member (Idle past 6197 days)
Posts: 44
From: Houston, TX USA
Joined: 03-25-2007


Message 114 of 130 (392704)
04-01-2007 8:01 PM
Reply to: Message 112 by jar
04-01-2007 5:27 PM


Re: The Flood
Jar wrote:
Glenn I simply don't understand what you seem upset about. There is little to discuss because I have no problem if you define the area to be localized. If you want to take one of the definitions that implies something other than the whole world, I have no reason to argue. I can live with those definitions.
I am not upset at all. Just always find it strange when people prefer to express opinions rather than discuss data.
Such a regional or local flood could happen anywhere at anytime. So there is not even any reason to go back more than say, thirty years ago, to find a source for the Biblical Flood.
No, this isn't true. No riverine flood could last a full year and land something floating on the water's surface upon a mountain. Can you name one example of this?
What I see you doing is saying the account is inaccurate so any ole river flood can cause the flood. But that can only be said when ignoring what the Scripture says. Clearly you think the story is false, but you can't claim it is false without noting that the statements in the story don't match observation. And if you pay attention to the statements in the story, then you can't say that a river flood can be the cause of the flood. It seems such a non-sequitur to do what you are doing, which is why I can't go along with the concept that a river flood is the source of the story. If it is, then the story is false--because the statements in the story don't agree with observational reality, not because I don't like the story.
I did not argue with your interpretations because I don't disagree with what you said.
Then I am utterly confused. you seem to reject the story because it supposedly teaches that the flood was world wide. When I show that isn't the case, you still reject the story as false. I am confused totally and can't see your logic.
But as I also said, the exercise seems utterly pointless
It is only pointless if there is no way the story can be historically true, or have some historical content.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 112 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 5:27 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
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jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 115 of 130 (392709)
04-01-2007 8:18 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by grmorton
04-01-2007 8:01 PM


Re: The Flood
Clearly you think the story is false, but you can't claim it is false without noting that the statements in the story don't match observation.
Yup. The statements in the story do not match observation. Period.
The story is simply absurd.
No riverine flood could last a full year and land something floating on the water's surface upon a mountain.
Damn right. In fact it is pretty hard to imagine ANY scenario that would have a local flood that lasts a year and places an Ark on a mountain.
So now there's yet another part of the story you need to tap dance around and explain.
Sorry Glenn, good luck but I still have to wonder why?

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 8:01 PM grmorton has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 11:17 PM jar has replied

  
grmorton
Member (Idle past 6197 days)
Posts: 44
From: Houston, TX USA
Joined: 03-25-2007


Message 116 of 130 (392728)
04-01-2007 11:17 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by jar
04-01-2007 8:18 PM


Re: The Flood
Jar wrote:
Yup. The statements in the story do not match observation. Period.
The story is simply absurd.
No riverine flood could last a full year and land something floating on the water's surface upon a mountain.
Damn right. In fact it is pretty hard to imagine ANY scenario that would have a local flood that lasts a year and places an Ark on a mountain.
Then you haven't been paying much attention to what I am suggesting. The Mediterranean flood can last a year and place an ark upon a mountain--as the basin fills in, the ark lands on the shore 10-15000 feet higher than where it started.
So now there's yet another part of the story you need to tap dance around and explain.
Sorry Glenn, good luck but I still have to wonder why?
Since I am not advocating a riverine flood (something you would know if you read what I have been writing), I don't have to dance about it at all.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 8:18 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 117 by jar, posted 04-01-2007 11:27 PM grmorton has not replied
 Message 118 by Minnemooseus, posted 04-01-2007 11:30 PM grmorton has replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 393 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 117 of 130 (392730)
04-01-2007 11:27 PM
Reply to: Message 116 by grmorton
04-01-2007 11:17 PM


Re: The Flood
Then you haven't been paying much attention to what I am suggesting. The Mediterranean flood can last a year and place an ark upon a mountain--as the basin fills in, the ark lands on the shore 10-15000 feet higher than where it started.
Okay Glenn. Have a good day.

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 11:17 PM grmorton has not replied

  
Minnemooseus
Member
Posts: 3941
From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior)
Joined: 11-11-2001
Member Rating: 10.0


Message 118 of 130 (392731)
04-01-2007 11:30 PM
Reply to: Message 116 by grmorton
04-01-2007 11:17 PM


All animal life (including humanoid) in the Mediterranean basin?
Glenn, your scenario seems to require that all animal life was within the Mediterranean basin. This makes no sense to me. Wasn't the basin environment highly uninviting?
Even if such were the case, why didn't God just have Noah and familiy and animals make the hike to higher ground, rather than blowing a bunch of time building an ark?
Moose

Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U
Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." - Bruce Graham
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith
"I know a little about a lot of things, and a lot about a few things, but I'm highly ignorant about everything." - Moose

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 11:17 PM grmorton has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 119 by grmorton, posted 04-02-2007 7:22 AM Minnemooseus has not replied

  
grmorton
Member (Idle past 6197 days)
Posts: 44
From: Houston, TX USA
Joined: 03-25-2007


Message 119 of 130 (392764)
04-02-2007 7:22 AM
Reply to: Message 118 by Minnemooseus
04-01-2007 11:30 PM


Re: All animal life (including humanoid) in the Mediterranean basin?
Minnemooseus asked:
Glenn, your scenario seems to require that all animal life was within the Mediterranean basin. This makes no sense to me. Wasn't the basin environment highly uninviting?
Your question illustrates why my views gain no traction. The Christian laity want a theory that can be explained in 5 minutes, but nature isn't like that. People who don't know the data that exists in favor of this view decide that there are too many things to be researched and thus give it up. I for one, would rather have something that matches reality rather than a 5 minute theory that doesn't match reality. Here is the evidence for animal life down on the bottom of the Mediterranean during that time.
"And apparently, hippopotami made their way from the Nile to Cyprus. The migratory traffic might have been more frequent if the wanderers had not had to travel across a desert 2,000 to 3,000 meters below sea level." ~ Kenneth J. Hsu, The Mediterranean was a Desert, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 177.
At this time, African animals invaded Spain. They walked there, many of these animals couldn't have swum there.
"The conversion of an inland sea into a dry land also permitted a migration of land animals. The lowering of the water level within the Mediterranean Basin 'created a number of inter-Mediterranean bridges capable of acting as new migration routes'. Suddenly an eastern Mediterranean mammalian fauna invaded the Iberian Peninsula while the older forest type disappeared. Great cohorts of tragoceres, giraffids, Hipparion mediterraneous, gazelles, etc. were grazing on the grasslands of Spain. This 'Pikermian' fauna did not traverse the Pyrenees, but had arrived by the Mediterranean route, and perhaps also across Africa. A sudden appearance of two new genera of rodents from Africa into Spain has also been noted. Northward migration of Gibraltar apes and Hippopotami and southward wandering European hamsters and porcupines across Gibraltar may also have taken place during this desiccating epoch." ~ Kenneth J. Hsu, "The Miocene Desiccation of the Mediterranean and its Climatical and Zoogeographical Implications", Die Naturwissenschaften, 61, April 4, 1974, p. 142.
The Gibraltar apes still live in Spain--from this event. Even during the desciccation event, Mediterranean eels were apparently able to survive down on the deep desert basin
"We were nevertheless intrigued by a recent finding that eels living in rivers draining into the Mediterranean do not join their European and American relatives in the traditional 'breeding ground' for eels under the Sargasso sea. The southern European eels alone choose to breed in the Mediterranean. Did they acquire this habit 6 million years ago, when they could not jump across the Gibraltar Falls? We cannot be certain, of course, but the fact that the Mediterranean dried up permits some unorthodox suggestions to solve problems in biological evolution." ~ Kenneth J. Hsu, The Mediterranean was a Desert, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 178
One slab of rock, which is from that time, but which has since been uplifted to form part of Italy, showed the following forms of life lived on the bottom, including sequoia forests. And it was all wiped out in a geological instant!
“One Sunday afternoon in 1972 an amateur fossil collector dug into a hillside outcrop of gypsum-bearing rock in the Tarano Valley in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. He peered at the inside face of the thinly laminated anhydrite rock that had just split apart with the blow of his hammer and saw a specimen of an ancient eel the outlines of its entire body and fins splendidly preserved. The fossilization in this rock was exceptional because the environment at the time the sediment was laid down had been a briny lagoon whose tranquil bottom waters were devoid of oxygen. No scavengers had been able to tolerate such conditions.
“When the quarried slab was delivered to Carlo Sturani, an articulate and energetic professor of paleontology at the Institute of Geology of the University of Turin, he knew imediately that it was equivalent in age to the Gessoso Solfifera of Sicily and the anhydrite and salt recently discovered by the Globmar Challenger. He visited the cliff to undertake a detailed investigation of a succession of fossil-rich rocks. Along with more eels he found foraminifera, corals, echinoderms, conch, herring, small flounder, dragonflies, leaves, acorns, land turtles, freshwater reeds, and roots of trees still in place. In a three-hundred-foot cliff Sturani could observe a moderately deep former sea that had dried out and become a tidal flat with algae and mud cracks. Then it became a shallow lagoon so concentrated by evaporation that its brine precipitated massive banks of selenite from which the first eel had been discovered. After a while the lagoon turned into a brackish lake, sometimes filled with freshwater. Then the lake withered into a peat bog as the region progressed from marshland to a sequoia forest. Abruptly, in the span of a tenth of an inch of rock, it was once again an open deep sea situated far from land. The transformation from sea to land and back to sea had taken less than half a million years. Except for those privileged to have been on the Glomar Challenger, no one else had ever expected that a major sea such as the Mediterranean could have evaporated so rapidly and refilled so quickly.” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 89-90
The evidence is there that there was abundant life down on the bottom. It would have been like the Okovango delta in the Kalahari desert. you can see this delta from space http://home.entouch.net/dmd/contprofile_okavanga.jpg
The green in the picture shows the tree-lined distributary channels. This river never makes it to the sea, but the waters sink into the desert floor and evaporate away. Where the river waters spread out life flourishes--a veritable garden of Eden. Outside of this region, the land is harsh desert. But in this oasis, elephants, crocodiles, trees, and all sorts of animals live.
When the end came, it left evidence of animals scrambling up the hills.
“Ryan thought for a minute. He then responded, Charles Lyell reported a whole bunch of mammals suddenly appearing out of nowhere on the Mediterranean islands, such as Sicily, Sardinia, and Malta. Maria Cita mentioned this to me on the Glomar Challenger. There are elephants and hippos in Cyprus and Crete. In scrambling to high ground in response to the flood they arrived in places they had never been before.” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 99-100
Since I believe eretz means a local area, I don't have a problem with some animals making it to the hills. Here is more
“More and more suppporting evidence poured in. Bone-hunting paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History in New York discovered some of our very distant African primate ancestors in southern Spain. They had come over from Africa, presumably across the barrier that had cut off the Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean, and had allowed the latter to dry out. On the island of Cyprus, investigators from University College in London excavated the skeletons of elephants and hippopotamuses from graveyards 5.5 million years old. These mammals were not the usual multiton behemoths of East Africa. They were pygmies that you could have picked up and carried around in your arms as pets. Apparently they had wandered down a distributary channel of the Nile and deep into the empty desert basin to inhabit lakeside swamps and neighboring savanna. In the novel ecological setting on the floor of the broiling hot eastern Mediterranean, the elephants and hippopotamuses had evolved through natural selection to a dwarf form that could cope with the hellish conditions. Their skeletons had been fossilized in the deposits of the riverbeds. Later the ongoing collision of the African and Asian continents had uplifted the buried northern rim of a lake, long turned into sedimentary rock and thrust it into the landscape that would one day become the Pentadaktylos mountain range of northern Cyprus.” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 89
Even if such were the case, why didn't God just have Noah and familiy and animals make the hike to higher ground, rather than blowing a bunch of time building an ark?
It seems that Noah was told to be a preacher and stay there. Ask God why.
One other reason to stay, I calculated once how widespread the rain would be (rising air cools, condenses the water vapor and causes rain and water infilling such a large area would cause tremendous rains). I figured that the rain would extend several hundred kilometers around the basin. This basin would have contained 4/1000's of the earth's atmosphere, which when you think about it, is a lot of air to displace.
Edited by grmorton, : No reason given.

The Pathway Papers http://home.entouch.net/dmd/path.htm

This message is a reply to:
 Message 118 by Minnemooseus, posted 04-01-2007 11:30 PM Minnemooseus has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 121 by petrophysics1, posted 04-02-2007 6:31 PM grmorton has replied

  
Equinox
Member (Idle past 5141 days)
Posts: 329
From: Michigan
Joined: 08-18-2006


Message 120 of 130 (392832)
04-02-2007 2:46 PM
Reply to: Message 98 by grmorton
04-01-2007 11:56 AM


Re: Note
But if we think there would be observational evidence resulting from such a flood, then we can't call upon miracle everytime observation fails to support our view of how the flood happens. To do that is to make up miracles for God to perform in the past in order to support our strange ideas in the present. In other words, to make God perform miracles when we lack observational support for our pet flood theory, we are in effect making God dance to our tune.
Making God do our bidding is a bad thing.
Right.
Yes. Along those same lines, I’ve been thinking for a while (when my life calms down in about a month) of writing a short essay and probably starting a thread here asking why Creationists bother. Specifically, with all the supernatural things already admittedly in the story (Such as the YEC’s saying that Noah got divine blueprints & a divine weather forecast, that the animals came at God’s call, that the weather/atmosphere was controlled by God to do his immediate bidding, etc . .), then why do creationist bother to try to cook up physical evidence where there is none? Why not attribute it all - including the present lack of evidence, to a divine miracle? Why bother with all the lying and mental contortionism when the YEC’s have already resorted to the miracle card elsewhere in the story? Perhaps because doing so means that physical measurement of anything then becomes irrelevant, since, as you mentioned, we are making miracles for any observation we don't like, and then science is tossed out the window.
Thanks for your reply. It looks like good stuff for a future thread.
Also, mpb1 - I checked out your website - good stuff. I’ve told many creationists that creationism is the single biggest threat to Christianity, and that it hurts Christianity more than it hurts science education. Maybe, as a fellow Christian, you’ll get more traction with them than I did.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 98 by grmorton, posted 04-01-2007 11:56 AM grmorton has not replied

  
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