First, I will clarify my position somewhat on early man. Modern man (which
includes neanderthal) appeared about 100, 000 years ago. Homo sapiens
sapiens about 40,000 years ago. Remember that 100 years ago, it was an
embarrassment to consider that we might be related to neanderthal and now
most YEC's would accept that. My preference is that early man was Homo
erectus. Homo erectus is estimated to have stood as tall as modern humans and
had brain sizes only slightly less than ours. But no evidence for Homo
Erectus is found prior to ca. 2.5 million years ago. This may be due to the
fact that we never find the earliest example of a creature in the fossil
record, but only find examples from the time period when they become numerous
and thus more likely to be preserved. This is why I collected the examples of
first and second occurence of things in the fossil record. At the bottom, I
will include that list again. Realize as you read that list that in most of
these cases, the second occurrence was at one time the oldest occurrence and
prior to the finding of the present "oldest" occurence, it looked like the
object did not exist prior to the present "second oldest occurence.
. In my mind Homo Erectus is much prefereable than australopithecus but
the positive evidence for his existence at the time I want him is not there.
However given the list below, I would consider it quite likely that he was
there but unfound at the present time. But since I can not prove H. erectus'
existence 5.5 myr ago, I am prepared to go one step further. I would
consider the finding of H. erectus at a much earlier time a support for my
view.
As to religious activities by H.Erectus, there is only one (it is much
more common in Neanderthal). At Toralba, Spain, there was a ritualistically
laid out half elephant carcass.
Was mankind a primitive beast for millions of years? I think he must have
been. We flipantly think that Noah's immediate descendants picked up their
technology where they left off. Let me ask, if you and 8 friends were the
only survivors of such a destruction as a global flood, how much of today's
technology would you be able to pass on to your kids? Do you know how to
make clothes as well as the thread and cloth? Could you even feed yourself?
Do you know how to make a bow and arrow? how to cure the wood? make the glue
for the feathers? Without the yearly intervention of mankind, many of our
most preceious plant crops would be extinct. Wheat, corn, cotton, etc can
not live in the wild. Only rice lives in the wild but do you know how to
cultivate it? What does it look like and where can you find it?
Can you make stone tools with which to feed yourself? Do you know that
it takes an expert 2 hours per arrow head? A novice like you is going to have
a difficult time. Can you plant a crop and wait for harvest before eating?
If you have to spend your time hunting instead of caring for the garden, the
insects and animals will eat your crop before you get it harvested. Can you
make a flint sickle? A plow?
Do you know how to make iron? What does iron ore look like? Do you know
that even if you successfully acquire iron ore and coal, and burn them
together you will not get pig iron? There is an invention which is an
additional requirement for iron. How about copper ore? Do you know what
that looks like and how to get it? What temperature do you need to achieve
in order to make it? Gunpowder? Do you know how to make gunpowder? How about
pottery, can you find the clay and fire it?
Once you die off, will your grandchildren will view your stories of an
earlier golden age as fanciful. They will, with each succeeding generation,
have less and less reason to think that if they heat rocks, metal comes out.
Can you guard the stupid cows, sheep and goats which mankind has
domesticated? They are so stupid that they don't know what to do against
predators. While you are out hunting for tonight's dinner, the cougar is busy
eating your cow!
All of the above, implies to me that it would be a very long time before
mankind could re-invent technology after the flood. Without thinking, we
assume that Noah and his sons resumed their simple life after the flood
(which at the time most YEC's believe the flood was, had an incredibly
complex society). It might not have been as simple as all that. We have
such a simplified view of life after the flood. I would contend that it
would be an extremely long time before technology could be re-invented. Some
cultures never got beyond the stone age even into the 20th century and it was
not because of their stupidity. Survival in the bush is so precarious that
inventiveness/risk-taking is not prized.
Gordie wrote:
>"3. My brother's suggested solution to Glenn's very ancient Noahic flood -by
looking at relatively modern localized floods in the Middle East - has been
ruled out by Glenn. The details are complicated, and I don't pretend to
understand them all, but the gist of his argument is that the biblical
accounts describe facts which are difficult to reconcile with practically all
localized floods - and cannot be reconciled with a global flood - based on
well established geological understandings.<<
I would be delighted to look at any suggested local flood scenario with an
extremely open mind. But I have not found anywhere on earth a location which
can fit the biblical description as well as the Mediterranean Basin! Lacking
any PLACE, the local flood is non-falsifiable but also non-verifiable. My
scenario may very well be wrong (I was not there at the time this happened)
but short of a global flood (for which there is absolutely no evidence) can
anyone suggest another place, a basin, which can be investigated? If you
can't then judge the view based upon how well it fits the data, not the
emotion of "embarassment" Science is supposed to fit facts; apologetics is
supposed to fit the facts of theology with the facts of science and history.
I fail to see a place for embarassment here. The only thing which will
embarass me is if someone comes up with a very simple observation, of which I
should have known, which easily invalidates my view. Short of that, I stand
by the FACT, that my suggestion fits the data both Scriptural and scientific.
Gordie wrote:
> What about embarrassments? The church has experienced many over the
centuries. The list is well known to folks on the reflector, and I won't try
to list them. But let me point out that those with a naturalistic
bent have had their embarrassments as well - many occurring in the area of
archeology when evidence for civilizations described in the Bible turned out
not to be mythological after all. But there are others as well. For
instance, I believe it can properly be said that the idea of the Big Bang was
initially repugnant to a majority of naturalists because it suggested a
beginning<<
What is amazing is that while the naturalist is getting over his embarassment
at having a beginning and thus having to personally face the prospect of a
creator, many YEC's are still embarassed by the concept that the universe
might be old and was started by the Big Bang!.
Keith Simons wrote:
>. I guess I had not realized that his interpretation
is based on a localized flood. He is the expert but it seems to me that
once you reject the universal flood that about any local flood in the
mideast would do. <<
No that is not true. The Mississippi Floods of 1993 did not fit the Biblical
description of Noah's flood. Floods on the Tigris and Euphrates are no
different. They don't cover mountains, they don't kill all humanity, you
don't need an ark, and, they do not last a whole year. An ark can not float
down a river for a year and end up on top of a mountain (In my scenario they
can float for a year and end up on what used to be a mountain but is now
coastline). So in what sense can you say that any ole flood will do? If they
don't fit the description of an anthropologically universal flood, and cover
high mountains and at the end of it all dump Noah and the ark-onauts on a
mountain, those floods won't do at all!!!
With regard to the flood, it seems to me that there are 3 more embarassing
positions than mine: 1. advocating a global flood which geology utterly and
totally rules out, 2. advocating a unspecified local flood which requires
Noah float down a river and land on top of a mountain (rivers don't go across
mountain tops) or 3) admit that the Bible is historically erroneous on what
has every appearance of a historical account thereby opening the door to the
possiblity that the rest of Scripture is nothing more than a salamander
story.
glenn
first and second occurrences of things in the fossil record
Oldest evidence of subduction 2.7 billion years
Second oldest 1.9 Billion years -Nature June 22, 1995, p. 632 see also
670-674
oldest geologic unconformity - 3.46 billion years
second oldest unconformity - 2.9 billion years
July 15, 1995, Science News, p. 47
Oldest hollow algal filaments 1.2 billion years
Second oldest 800 million years.- Science News, march 12, 1994 p. 173
Oldest Caecilian bones 180 my
second oldest 80 my- Science News, Oc. 27, 1990, p. 270
Oldest tetrapod 375 my
2nd - 368
Ahlberg and Milner, Nature, April 7, 1994, p. 507
oldest dinosaur evidence - a track 240 myr
2nd 228 myr - Dallas Morning News, May 9, 1994, p. 8D
Oldest Turtle 60 million years before the 2nd oldest Nature 369, May 5, 1994,
p. 55.
Oldest Tarsier 30 million years before 2nd oldest. Nature 368 April 14,
1994, p. 586
Birds, Archaeopteryx 147 myr
Sinornis santensis 139 myr Science Feb. 14, 1992, p. 845
Oldest Maya farming 4,500
second 3000
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