You write
>" I am confident that when I die and stand before the judgement seat of
>the Father, He is NOT going to ask me "Son, did you or did you not believe
>in a geologically-recent global flood?" I too take the Bible seriously
>and know the important issue is my acceptance of the Salvation offered by
the sacrifice on the cross made by Jesus Christ."
I fully agree! However, I also feel that, in trying to unravel history,
especially geological, we are "seeing a poor reflection as in a mirror"
[1 Cor. 13:12]. No matter how confident we may be in our models that we
feel we can extrapolate from eternity to eternity, they are only models.
This is not to take anything away from geology, physics, or chemistry
and I, for one, have great difficulty arguing for a young earth in the
face of evidence such as the Oklo phenomenon, but we should always keep
an open mind in these things.
I ask myself sometimes what drives some of the investigators who spend a
large amount of their lives looking for things like the Ark (either
one!). Is it just curiosity or is it an attempt to "prove" the
authenticity of the Bible? It's probably a good thing that the Shroud
of Turin has proven to be a fake. Imagine if it had been the burial
cloths of Jesus! Would we dare look for His DNA structure?
Will we, in the hereafter, find out how God did all this, how He created
the earth, Adam and Eve, how to correlate the Flood with geological
evidence? Will we know this automatically or will we look back at these
questions as trivia?
Chuck Vandergraaf
Geochemistry Research Branch
Whiteshell Laboratories
Pinawa, MB R0E 1L0
Canada
Providence College,
Otterburne, MB
*vandergraaft@aecl.ca
((204) 753-2311 xt. 2592
>----------
>From: Steven Schimmrich[SMTP:schimmri@kutztown.edu]
>Sent: October 23, 1997 10:01 AM
>To: Arthur V. Chadwick
>Cc: asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: Re: Evolution and Christianity
>
>On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, Arthur V. Chadwick wrote:
>
>> At 04:32 PM 10/22/97 -0400, Steve wrote:
>>
>>> The problem is you're 150-200 years too late. The flood hypothesis was
>>> considered early on in geology and found sorely lacking. For example,
>>> read any introductory geology textbook to learn about the work of Louis
>>> Agassiz in the Alps. He showed the material being called "drift" and
>>> thought to originate during Noah's flood was, in actuality, material
>>> deposited by glaciers. This was around 1836.
>>
>> Whoa! So we have learned that geologists prior to 1836 had some wrong
>> ideas. Well surprise, surprise. Some geologists today have wrong ideas as
>> well. Science is not supposed to be into dogmatism, but I sure hear a lot
>> of it from geologists who have abandoned the Biblical account of earth
>> history (yourself and a few others excepted).
>
> I'm just saying that anyone claiming geologists haven't wrestled with the
>idea of a global flood is ignorant of the history of geology. Agassiz
>wasn't an atheist, he actually was one of the last prominent scientists
>to reject Darwin's ideas because they conflicted with his religious beliefs
>(S.J. Gould wrote an interesting essay about Agassiz and his opposition to
>Darwinism).
>
> Of course we have some wrong ideas today, I would never deny that or
>become dogmatic about modern science. But the global flood idea really
>is in the dustbin of history (the ONLY people who want it to be true are
>Biblical-literalists and it isn't because they studied geology and found
>compelling evidence but rather because they read Genesis 1-11 literally
>and want nature to support their Biblical exegesis.
>
>>> I could cite numerous other examples from the history of geology.
>>> That's why modern geology rejects the idea of a global flood.
>>
>> They may have to reconsider that idea someday, but lets hope it is not in
>> the judgment.
>
>
>
>--
> Steven H. Schimmrich KB9LCG s-schim@uiuc.edu
> Department of Physical Sciences Kutztown University
> 217 Grim Science Building, Kutztown, PA 19530 (610) 683-4437
> http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/s-schim Fides quaerens intellectum
>
>