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Quote The fact that there are hundreds (not just this one) stories of a worldwide flood (with varying degrees of similarity) strongly indicate that they do have a common source. That they are based on one common thing. Does the fact that most cultures include people who devoutly believe in gods mean that there are gods? The evidence for gods is as non-existent as the evidence for a world-wide flood. Asserting the existence of something that cannot be proved is one thing, but continuing to assert scientific hypotheses that have already been disproved is the preserve of the zealot. The fantasy is just too powerful for reality to have any impact on that mind.
Stuart
Quote (Stu @ April 01 2008,17:18) Quote I just finished watching a nova special on the scablands of the U.S. Forever everyone believed that they were caused by millions of years of slow erosion. It was “heresy” when someone suggested it was caused by water. Decades later, we know it was caused by a lake being damned by a glacier and the lake grew and when it broke, the water created the apparent “evidence” for what the geologists forever believed was millions of years of work. Such “evidence” was caused very quickly. We now know that this process actually happened many times over some 20,000 years or so. But my point is, what was forever believed to have been millions of years of slow erosion, can be created very very quickly, by water. Not in 40 days though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scablands
Stuart
Quote “It was the biggest flood in the world for which there is geological evidence,” writes Norman Maclean in A River Runs Through It. –same site.
And yet, for years the evidence was misunderstood and it was some sort of heresay to say that this was because of water.
No, you're right, not in 40 days. Considerably less time. But it happened again and again, over the course of thousands of years. But each flood lasted very little time. For quite some time they believed it was just one flood (and that flood acted very quickly.) Then, they found the layer of ash. It was clear at that point, this happened more than once.
Why is it 'hearsay' (do you mean heresy?) to say that erosion is caused by water?
Wind, sand and and water (in liquid or solid states) cause almost all erosion.
Are we just trying to make this sound more mysterious?Stuart
Quote I've had the bit about the earth 'being flatter in the past', from a visiting JW. The New Encyclopædia Britannica says: “The average depth of all the seas has been estimated at 3,790 metres (12,430 feet), a figure considerably larger than that of the average elevation of the land above the sea level, which is 840 metres (2,760 feet). If the average depth is multiplied by its respective surface area, the volume of the World Ocean is 11 times the volume of the land above sea level.”
So, if everything were leveled out—if the mountains were flattened and the deep sea basins filled in—the sea would cover the whole earth to a depth of thousands of meters.
For the Flood to have happened, the pre-Flood sea basins would have to have been shallower, and the mountains lower than they are now. Is this possible? Well, one textbook says:
“Where the mountains of the world now tower to dizzy heights, oceans and plains once, millions of years ago, stretched out in flat monotony. . . . The movements of the continental plates cause the land both to rear up to heights where only the hardiest of animals and plants can survive and, at the other extreme, to plunge and lie in hidden splendor deep beneath the surface of the sea.”–Wonders of Nature, edited by Claus Jürgen Frank, 1980, p. 87.“WHALE FOSSILS HIGH IN ANDES SHOW HOW MOUNTAINS ROSE FROM SEA”–New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst….1948260I don't know. Maybe the mountains didn't rise from the seas. Maybe there was just a lot of water up there covering the mountain for some reason.
Quote Wind, sand and and water (in liquid or solid states) cause almost all erosion.
Are we just trying to make this sound more mysterious?No, the nova special I watched today kept saying they considered it “heresy.” They used that word a few times. It was because this whole thing was sounding too much like the flood of noah's day. The other geologists didn't like that. So they labeled this guy crazy for the time being. As it turned out, he made one of the greatest geologic discoveries of all time. But it took years and the help of others to convince everyone.
Quote “WHALE FOSSILS HIGH IN ANDES SHOW HOW MOUNTAINS ROSE FROM SEA”–New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst….1948260I don't know. Maybe the mountains didn't rise from the seas. Maybe there was just a lot of water up there covering the mountain for some reason.
What has this example of a subduction zone and lifting plate edge got to do with the earth being flatter in the past? Evidence?
Stuart
Quote (david @ April 01 2008,18:19) Quote Wind, sand and and water (in liquid or solid states) cause almost all erosion.
Are we just trying to make this sound more mysterious?No, the nova special I watched today kept saying they considered it “heresy.” They used that word a few times. It was because this whole thing was sounding too much like the flood of noah's day. The other geologists didn't like that. So they labeled this guy crazy for the time being. As it turned out, he made one of the greatest geologic discoveries of all time. But it took years and the help of others to convince everyone.
So it is spurious then. Why did you mention it?Stuart
Quote but continuing to assert scientific hypotheses that have already been disproved Just for the record, why don't you tell me what has been disproved.
Quote So it is spurious then. Why did you mention it? I mention it because it apparently is possible for geologists to believe one thing for years, when water was really the cause.
If we grant that a great flood could have happened, why have scientists found no trace of it? Perhaps they have, but they interpret the evidence some other way.
For example, orthodox science teaches that the surface of the earth has been shaped in many places by powerful glaciers during a series of ice ages. But apparent evidence of glacial activity can sometimes be the result of water action. Very likely, then, some of the evidence for the Flood is being misread as evidence of an ice age.“They were finding ice ages at every stage of the geologic history, in keeping with the philosophy of uniformity. Careful reexamination of the evidence in recent years, however, has rejected many of these ice ages; formations once identified as glacial moraines have been reinterpreted as beds laid down by mudflows, submarine landslides and turbidity currents: avalanches of turbid water that carry silt, sand and gravel out over the deep-ocean floor.”–Scientific American, May 1960, page 71
Geology professor John McCampbell once wrote:
“The essential differences between Biblical catastrophism [the Flood] and evolutionary uniformitarianism are not over the factual data of geology but over the interpretations of those data. The interpretation preferred will depend largely upon the background and presuppositions of the individual student.”–The Genesis Flood, John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris
Quote (david @ April 01 2008,18:26) Quote but continuing to assert scientific hypotheses that have already been disproved Just for the record, why don't you tell me what has been disproved.
If there was a global flood as you hypothesise, there would be a layer right around the world's land masses where there was a sudden mass extinction, followed by strata with very few animal species, but increasing in numbers and diversifying at a faster pace than ever before. There isn't.Stuart
I have a question Stu.
How would you explain it then?
All around the world, in locations as far apart as Alaska and the South Sea Islands, there are ancient stories about it. Native, pre-Columbian civilizations of America, as well as Aborigines of Australia, all have stories about the Flood. While some of the accounts differ in detail, the basic fact that the earth was flooded and only a few humans were saved in a man-made vessel comes through in nearly all versions.
Of course, one explanation is that the flood was a historical event.
And of course, that would be one reason why mankind has never forgot it.But I'm curious to know how you think this happened?
Quote (david @ April 01 2008,18:29) Quote So it is spurious then. Why did you mention it? I mention it because it apparently is possible for geologists to believe one thing for years, when water was really the cause.
If we grant that a great flood could have happened, why have scientists found no trace of it? Perhaps they have, but they interpret the evidence some other way.
For example, orthodox science teaches that the surface of the earth has been shaped in many places by powerful glaciers during a series of ice ages. But apparent evidence of glacial activity can sometimes be the result of water action. Very likely, then, some of the evidence for the Flood is being misread as evidence of an ice age.“They were finding ice ages at every stage of the geologic history, in keeping with the philosophy of uniformity. Careful reexamination of the evidence in recent years, however, has rejected many of these ice ages; formations once identified as glacial moraines have been reinterpreted as beds laid down by mudflows, submarine landslides and turbidity currents: avalanches of turbid water that carry silt, sand and gravel out over the deep-ocean floor.”–Scientific American, May 1960, page 71
So what? None of this means a worldwide flood is any more a possibility that we missed. You are extrapolating local events to a global scale.Stuart
Quote (david @ April 01 2008,18:35) I have a question Stu. How would you explain it then?
All around the world, in locations as far apart as Alaska and the South Sea Islands, there are ancient stories about it. Native, pre-Columbian civilizations of America, as well as Aborigines of Australia, all have stories about the Flood. While some of the accounts differ in detail, the basic fact that the earth was flooded and only a few humans were saved in a man-made vessel comes through in nearly all versions.
Of course, one explanation is that the flood was a historical event.
And of course, that would be one reason why mankind has never forgot it.But I'm curious to know how you think this happened?
I have already explained that this happened in the same way that people get to believing in gods.Here is my question for you (repeated I think):
How did the pair of Kiwi birds get from Mt. Ararat to Auckland?
Stuart
Benjamin Sillman, head of geology at Yale wrote:
“Respecting the Deluge there can be but one opinion: geology fully confirms the scriptural history of the event. Whales, sharks, crocodiles, amphibians, mammoths, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, hyenas, tigers, deer, horses, bullpine families are found buried together in deluvian at a greater or lesser depth and in most instances, under circumstances indicating that they were buried by the same catastrophe which destroyed them, namely a sudden and violent deluge.”
(Of course, this was written in the 1800's.)I'm sure geologists have gotten a lot smarter since then.
Quote I have already explained that this happened in the same way that people get to believing in gods. I failed to see any explanation. Where is it?
Quote (david @ April 01 2008,18:45) Quote I have already explained that this happened in the same way that people get to believing in gods. I failed to see any explanation. Where is it?
Um, gullibility, credulity, the selection advantage of developing an oral tradition that people can buy into no matter what it says, a set of fantasy stories to ignite the minds of the youth, chinese whispers starting with a common local flood event.Stuart
Quote chinese whispers starting with a common local flood event. So you're suggesting there was a “common local flood event” and this event became a legend in cultures all over the world. Was this a pretty big flood?
Quote (david @ April 01 2008,18:45) Benjamin Sillman, head of geology at Yale wrote: “Respecting the Deluge there can be but one opinion: geology fully confirms the scriptural history of the event. Whales, sharks, crocodiles, amphibians, mammoths, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, hyenas, tigers, deer, horses, bullpine families are found buried together in deluvian at a greater or lesser depth and in most instances, under circumstances indicating that they were buried by the same catastrophe which destroyed them, namely a sudden and violent deluge.”
(Of course, this was written in the 1800's.)I'm sure geologists have gotten a lot smarter since then.
If whales and sharks were buried under the same circumstances as land animals then Prof. Sillman certainly has his wires crossed.Stuart
Quote (david @ April 01 2008,18:56) Quote chinese whispers starting with a common local flood event. So you're suggesting there was a “common local flood event” and this event became a legend in cultures all over the world. Was this a pretty big flood?
Common as in 'common or garden', as in common or garden creation ignoramus.Are you asking for a detailed account for each of the 270 flood mythologies? As there is no evidence for a worldwide flood I really don't see the point. I'm sure they all had convincing stories. The link between there being many and various flood myths and there being a common flood to explain them all is not a link you have established, say for example by building an argument for those supposed floods being contemporary.
Stuart
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