YEs, and during the time that the Mediterranean was a desert the Tigris and
Euphrates (or more correctly, the paleoTigris and paleoEuphrates) emptied
into the basin! The uplift that created the Dead Sea Rift didn't occur
until the Pliocene. You need to pay attention to geologic changes with time.
Furthermore, during the Ubaid (the wet Neolithic)
>four rivers flowed into the northern edge of the Persian Gulf. What say
>you of this?
I don't see the name 'Persian Gulf' or its ancient equivalents in the
Bible. Can you point them out to me in the Genesis 2 passage? You are
assuming that it had to be there at the Persian Gulf. YOu may be correct,
you may be incorrect.
>Concordism, of course, assumes God's creative activity. The play
>that is concordism starts with the verse after Genesis 1.1. Why the
>six days? Notably, the division of a continuum of creation time
>into days is echoed in our modern investigation of the evolutionary
>record, which breaks the continuum of evolutionary time into periods
>of interest, such as the Pliocene. That is why I like a day to age
>'match'. The point of view is aesthetic, not scientific. However,
>the beauty of the perspective will be judged by criteria, such as
>consilience, that are similar to the way scientific theories are judged.
If you try to match geologic ages to events in Genesis 1, you will end up
in a hopeless muddle. The sun is created eons after the trees. Insects
needed to pollinate trees are created eons after the trees. Birds are said
to be created with the fish, which is contradicted by the geologic record.
I could go on and on. If such a silly view as the day-age theory is to be
judged by the fit of the data, then it is clearly a falsified view. And if
you really judged that theory by the data, you would reject it. The fact
that you are advocating such a falsified view shows that you either don't
know the geologic/paleontologic data or you are ignoring it.
>Inspires one to look through Adam's eyes:
>
>Visions often present two facets: A view and a commentary upon
>what is being viewed. Visualization and meaning. When I look at Genesis
>1, I find some phrases that may be regarded as visualizations (of
>a corresponding period of evolutionary history) and other phrases
>that do not fit. If I put those 'phrases that do not fit'
>together, I find that they have something in common. They'image'
>the importance of the corresponding period. They are like meaning.
>
>For example, the 'creation of plants' (day three), would be
>a statement of meaning within the context of a creation day that
>aesthetically corresponds to the formation of the earliest continents
>(visualize as dry land) and the earliest evidence of life
>(visualize as vegetative and bearing according to its own kind).
>
> If you asked the question:
>
>What is this purple gunk on these rocks?
>
>while pointing to a bacterial growth in the Archean, I
>suspect that
>
>'These will someday become plants yeilding seed'
>
>would be an answer that any discerning Neolithic would relate to.
>
>Once routinized, a legend formed by this type of vision might
>lose the original sense of what was visualized and what
>was experienced as commentary. Thus, a modern reconstruction
>of 'Genesis as vision' could not ignore the metaphor of 'Genesis
>as archaeological artifact'. The artistic weighing used in
>designating phrases as 'visual' or 'meaningful' recalls
>a sense of the archaeological project itself, where artifacts
>imply but do not articulate 'intent'.
>
>Thus, the aesthetic perspective that Genesis 1 holds a 'two-tiered'
>resemblance to the evolutionary record inspires two metaphors,
>'Genesis 1 as vision' and 'Genesis 1 as archaeological artifact'.
>These two metaphors, in turn, cohere to the two facets of
>concordism, where Genesis 1 not only points to our modern
>understanding of the evolutionary record, but also points from
>a moment in prehistory where we, as humans, had just stepped out
>a primordial way of being into revolt.
Huh??? I am sorry but that didn't make a lot of sense. Sounded to me like
that web page where you can get a post-modernist paper written on demand.
Can you make this more clear? I fail to see how Genesis 1 points to our
modern view of evolution. I do think it points to evolution, just not our
modern view of it. So tell me how it points to our modern view?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution