OK, I am going to go through this again as I have done several times and
explain why every concept of an anthropologically universal flood would
absolutely require such an extended history. Obviously if you don't
believe in an anthropologically universal flood, then the argument gets
weaker, but I would then argue that the advocate of a nonuniversal flood is
not arguing from the Bible but from his own idea of what things ought to be.
Given an anthropologically universal flood, there are very few people left
(8 ccording to the Bible). Eight people are not enough to maintain ANY kind
of technological society. Why? The maintenance of a technological society
requires stimulation and we get bored with that few people saying the same
things over and over. (Thhis is analogous to ants in a colony. If you have
too few ants, they act chaotically and make bad choices. Increase the
density and they begin to act in concert, rhythmically. They stimulate
each other and new stuff arises (see Goodwin How the Leopard Changed its
spots, p. 189-192). In terms of technology, look at the IQs of people
raised in small, isolated communities especially poverty stricken
communities. They are low because they get no intellectual stimulation.
This same situation would arise after the flood. Everyone would lack
intellectual stimulation. Also you would not be able to transmit very much
technology to the first generation. You, even as a physicist probably
couldn't tell anyone where to find iron ore, coal and even how to make it
unless you brought lots of books with you. And if you could pass on the
recipe, hunger and the need for food NOW would prevent you from investing
the time and energy necessary to mine the ore, cart the ore to the coal (or
vice versa), build a kiln and throw everything in it and light it on fire.
And if you did that you still wouldn't come out with iron ore. Do you know
what is missing in this recipe? If you can't tell me then you, if stranded
with 8 of your closest friends couldn't make iron!
This lack of transmissibility would go across all levels of technology. Do
you know how to build a loom with which to weave cloth? Do you know how to
farm cotton? Can you build a wagon with axles? What are you going to use
to chop the tree down with? All of these things would force you into savagery.
Do you know how to make medicines? No? This would lead quickly to a very
slow reproduction rate. Childhood mortality would go up. The population
would remain small for a long time. And a small population would mean that
they are restricted geographically. Given the few individuals available for
fossilization and the restricted area in which they live, it is very
unlikely that anyone would be fossilized.
When a species arises this is exactly the conditions we find--restricted
habitat and few individuals. This makes finding fossils of the earliest
members of a species almost impossible. This is what it would have been
like for the earliest humans, both pre and post flood!
Does the fossil record bear this out? YES! When we look in the fossil
record at what is the oldest example of any species or genera today, one
thing we can be sure of is that the future will bring an older example of
that fossil. And we can be sure that the new 'oldest' example of the
genera will have quite a gap in time between the old 'oldest' and itself. I
have collected examples of this. I won't document this but the references
are available if you want them. I will cite the temporal gap between the
first and second examples of several genera/families.
time gap between first and second examples of
caecilians 100 million years
tetrapod 7 million years
dinosaur 12 million years
african turtle 60 myr
tarsier 30 myr
birds 8 myr
coprolites 22 myr
mushrooms 69 myr
sharks 25 myr
vascular plants 20 myr
tube worms 420 myr
pollen eating insect 150 myr
proboscidean 10 myr
chordate 10 myr
land snails 200 myr
crayfish 65 myr
Tribosphenida 25 myr
birds with beaks 65 myr
ascomycetous fungi 250 myr
angiosperm 10 myr
archaeocete whale 3.5 myr
therizinosaur 94 myr
Maldybulakia arthropod 40 myr
grass 30 myr
sponges 50 myr
gorilla 3.5 myr
This is very, very important for you to understand. Each of the above
examples came from an article announcing the discovery of a new 'oldest
example'. Until that article, the believed origin of each category above
was as much as 3.5 to 420 million later than it actually was. This means
that each of these categories lived on earth for the cited time without
leaving any known shred of evidence of their existence! Why is this
important? Because all I am asking for is a 3.5 million year gap---EXACTLY
THE SAME GAP AS EXISTS BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND GORILLA FOSSIL!!!!!
You can chose to believe that the very first H. erectus fossil is the very
first H. erectus (which you must do in order to deny me the existence of
them prior to the beginning of the fossil record) but I don't think that
this is a reasonable position at all. It is contradicted by all that we
know about the fossil record. H. erectus existed on earth long before they
left a fossil record. They easily could have been there 3.5 million years
ago to name the drainage basins! IN fact a 3.5 myr existence prior to the
first fossil H. erectus would place him on earth at the time of the
Mediterranean flood.
So could H. erectus have named the basins? Sure, they were smart enough
to--They could plan ahead which is necessary for moral accountability (see
my article in Sept 1999 PSCF) and THEY WERE RELIGIOUS!
You don't think that H. erectus can be human. Then explain this!
Homo erectus built a village and altar that was found at Bilzingsleben and
dates to between 350-424,000 years ago. And skeletal remains there are of
H. erectus! (see D. Mania and U. Mania, "Latest Finds of Skull Remains of
Homo erectus from Bilzingsleben (Thuringia)" Naturwissenschaften,
81(1994):123-127)
Consider the descripton:
"The home base of early man from Bilzingsleben was situated on a shore
terrace close to the outflow of a karst spring into a small lake. Previous
excavations revealed a division of the camp site into different activity
areas and outlines of three simple shelters with hearths and workshops set
up in front of them. Five to 8 m from the dwelling structures, an
artificially paved area with a diameter of 9 m was found. According to the
archaeological evidence, special cultural activities may have been carried
out there.
"Along with large pebble tools( choppers, chopping tools, and
hammerstones), small specialized tools of flint appear. Basic standard
forms are knives, scrappers, denticulates and notches, simple points which
are pointed-oval, Tayac and Quinson points, borers, and core-like tools.
Edge retouches predominate, but also unifacial and bifacial retouches
occur. Large scrapers, knives, chisel-shaped tools, wedges, bodkins, and
work supports were manufactured from the compact bone, preferably of the
straight-tusked elephant. Mattock- and cudgel-shaped tools were made from
cervid antlers. Specific, deliberate manufacturing activities are
recognizable in the workshops. Apart from the dissection of the animal
prey, these tools served for the working of predominantly organic materials
which in turn were used for the manufacture of other tools and objects of
daily use. Wood was also a frequently used raw material. Numerous
calcified remains of wood artifacts were found at the site. Some bone
tools dispaly deliberately engraved sets of lines which we regard as
expressions of abstract thinking, perhaps as graphic symbols." ~ D. Mania
and U. Mania and E. Vlcek, "Latest Finds of Skull Remains of Homo erectus
from Bilzingsleben (Thruingia)", Naturwissenschaften, 81(1994), p. 123-127,
p. 124
**
As very smart people all the doors on their huts faced south and had a
hearth in front of the door (See Figure 5 ~ D. Mania and U. Mania, "Latest
Finds of Skull Remains of Homo erectus from Bilzingsleben (Thuringia)"
Naturwissenschaften, 81(1994):123-127, p. 127)
Although Mania himself doesn't accept this, some of his workers beleive
that there was a drawing of a quadrupedal animal on a bone! (see von
feustel, it was not neanderthal but Homo erectus He says "Produzent dieser
fruhen Kunst war der Homo erectus, noch vot dem Neandertaler!"von Rudolf
Feustel, in H. Muller-Beck and G. Albrecht eds. 1987 Die Anfange der Kunst
vor 30,000 Jahren. pp 60-63)
But, there is an even more important indicator of the spiritual state of
these homo erecti. It is an altar. Mania and Mania write:
"Five to 8 m from the dwelling structures, an artificially paved area with
a diameter of 9 m was found. According to the archaeological evidence,
special cultural activities may have been carried out there." ~ D. Mania
and U. Mania, "Latest Finds of Skull Remains of Homo erectus from
Bilzingsleben (Thuringia)" Naturwissenschaften, 81(1994):123-127, p. 124
In a more recent description of this social area we read,
"But Mania's most intriguing find lies under a protective shed. As he
opens the door sunlight illuminates a cluster of smooth stones and pieces
of bone that he believes were arranged by humans to pave a 27-foot-wide
circle.
"'They intentionally paved this area for cultural activities,' says Mania.
'We found here a large anvil of quartzite set between the horns of a huge
bison, near it were fractured human skulls.'" ~ Rick Gore, "The First
Europeans," National Geographic, July, 1997, p. 110
I would contend that if you found such a thing in a modern village, you
would interpret it as a religious altar where human sacrifice was conducted
and run like all get out to save your own life!
To ignore anthropological data like this is to bury our heads in the sand.
We need to incorporate it into our theological theories or explain it away.
If this is really an altar, then my view is correct and spiritual mankind
is much older than christians want to accept.
If this is to be explained away, one must explain how nonspiritual animals
were able to build a village and a paved area that mimics a modern
religious altar. Animals don't do that---people do!
The last alternative is to ignore such data because it isn't comfortable.
Just thought I would challenge you a bit. :-)
But I would contend that your view pays no attention whatsoever to the
massive amount of data that is out there telling you that christian
apologetics must adjust. What is being taught (a young Adam) is wrong. Your
really need to study what is out there.
>Getting back to the stories of Adam and Eve and to Genesis 1, however,
>I admit that I have a double standard.
Double standards should always be eliminated. Remember Matthew 7:1-5. A
double standard is rightfully condemned by our Lord.
I think that the stories of
>Adam and Eve are legends that started as actual experiences of individuals,
>that were then narrated over many generations. The stories themselves
>sure seem to fit that mold. Also, Adam and Eve are linked through
>genealogies to Noah (a figure who also appears in Sumerian literature -
>what a coincidence!) and to Abraham (another founder coming out of
>Mesopotamia - another coincidence?).
>
>Genesis 1, in contrast, may have been a vision that was ritualized
>into a narrative that was then passed on through memorization over
>many generations. I think that this perspective allows one to
>aesthetically reconstruct the contents of an original vision of
>the evolutionary record, and to appreciate the accomodations that
>were made in its passage through time. I think that Seely has
>a firm grasp on the 'natural worldview' that would have altered
>a vision of the evolutionary record.
No one has the wisdom to know what changes were made to a story through
time. Not you, not me, not Seely. All presumed changes are hypothetical and
speculative. If one wants to reconstruct a totally speculative view, then
have at it, but don't try to tell me it is worth much. Only through
observational data can one really pound the table and say 'this is the way
it must have been!'
For example, the perception
>that the sky was a solid dome would have made incomprehensible
>the loss of cloud cover in the epoch following day 3. The
>appearance of which WOULD HAVE BEEN PERCIEVED AS THE 'CREATION'
>OF THE SUN, MOON AND STARS. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
I am sorry Ray, but the whole concept that the earth was cloudy for 4
billion years simply won't work. Hugh Ross makes the same claim. But the
earth's atmosphere can not hold clouds of water all over the earth. First
there is too little water in the atmosphere and secondly, since the
droplets in the cloud want to fall, only the friction with an updraft of
air counteracts the gravitational pull and maintains the cloud in the sky.
Are you (and Hugh Ross)seriously saying that the earth's atmosphere was
moving upward for the first 4 billion years--moving upwards all over the
earth 24 hours a day for 4 billion years? This violates physics and
observation. IN 4.0 billion years of updraft, the atmosphere would be at
Alpha centauri!
How can you seriously suggest this? Explain please.
>
>Notably, my 'double standard' is consilient with the documentary
>hypothesis that concluded that Genesis 1 and the stories of Adam
>and Eve represent different literary traditions.
As I said, double standards are to be rejected at all costs.
>
>This gets me back to my original point - that concordism is a two
>pronged 'match' between Genesis and the evolutionary record. One
>prong is the archaeological match - which Fischer has made so much
>progress on. The other is the aesthetic evolutionary record match -
>which Glenn has been involved with. I think that the 'match' will
>have to accomodate the particularity of Fischer's view with the
>expansive range of Glenn's approach.
The problem I have, as a geoscientist, is that Dick's view presents a flood
that doesn't match geology or physics (see the debate we had back in May
1996 (I believe) on the ASA (it may have been 1995.) See also
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/mflood.htm) . He wants the ark to travel
upstream in a flood. 8 people don't have the strength to pole the ark
against the current. And water certainly doesn't flow uphill.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution