What you should say is that it doesn't fit the concept of an IMMEDIATE
post-flood world in the Fertile Crescent. A strict chronology in Genesis 11
leaves Noah alive at the same time that Abraham is alive and yet not many
really believe that. Even Whitcomb and Morris do not believe this. They
say,
"If the strict-chronology interpretation of Genesis 11 is correct, all the
postdiluvian patriarchs, including Noah, would still have been living when
Abram was fifty years old; three of those who were born before the earth was
divided (Shem, Shelah and Eber) would have actually outlived Abram; and Eber,
the father of Peleg, not only would have outlived Abram, but would hav lived
for two years after Jacob arrived in Mesopotamia to work for Laban!
On the face of it, such a situation would seem astonishing, if not almost
incredible." Genesis Flood, p 477.
If Morris believes that there is a significant gap in time, why can't I? How
long of a gap? If you tell me that my 5 million year gap is too much I would
ask on what basis you make that charge? Whatever value one puts into this
gap, we are all doing the same thing. The only question is how large the gap
should be. I contend that because of the genetic diversity, the time it
takes for a cave to form so a post-flood man can live in it requires a large
gap. How large is the gap you want?
Or do you believe that Eber lived in Jacob's time?
Stephen wrote:
>>I agree with Glenn that YEC global Flood theory indeed has the problem of
explaining how the present biological diversity arose in over 4,000 years
from basic kinds of animals taken on board the ark. YEC believes rates of
evolution far in excess of the most committed punctuationist!<<
At last, someone agrees with me on something!!! :-)
The problem is even worse. Recently Kurt Wise stated:
"To my knowledge, virtually all creation geologists accept the entire
Cenozoic as post-Flood. The real debate among us is whether the Mesozoic
should also be seen as post-Flood."~Speaking To the Earth," An Interview with
Steven Austin and Kurt Wise," Bible-Science News, 33:5 July, 1995.
If this is the case then it presents a tremendous problem for the global
flood people. The only mammals found in the fossil record prior to the
Cenozoic are opossums. C. Barry Cox and Peter Moore write:
"Though the opossums are the only mammal family (1 percent of the total 94)
known from the Cretaceous, 31 (22 per cent of the total 141) angiosperm
families had already appeard by that time. In the Palaeocene, three families
(3 per cent) of the mammals had appeared (hedgehogs, armadillos and
horses),..."Biogeography, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1985, p. 167.
Since no modern mammals except the 'possum is found in the sediments of the
flood, according to Wise, does this mean that what got off the ark was not
what got on the ark? Grasses are not found until the Cenozoic. Whales are
not found until the Cenozoic. Thus if the Cenozoic was postflood, the global
flood people have a real problem accounting for the stratigraphic
distribution of modern biological systems.
Stephen wrote:
>>However, PC does not hold to a global Flood, and therefore does not
believe there was any genetic bottleneck among plants and animals at
the time of the Flood. Descendants from the inhabitants of the Ark
later mingled with their kinds from other regions outside the scope of
the Flood.<<
I would agree that your model answers the problem of an extremely recent
genetic bottleneck.
In another post, Stephen wrote concerning how God created the world.
:
>>
Why does it have to be either-or rather than both-and? Does not Glenn
commit here the obverse fallacy of assuming that if God did it "like a
magician" (to use his analogy), then God didn't design the universe
"as an engineer"?<<
This is a good point. I go my way because I think the evidence supports the
engineer model of God's activity. I do not rule out the other model which is
my complaint about the way Christianity deals with evolution. They seem to
think it inconceivable that God could work in any fashion other than the
miraculous when it comes to life. I feel that since God acts like an
engineer with regards to the planets there is no reason to rule out him
acting like this in relation to life. If the evidence supported the other
view, I would go that way.
Stephen wrote:
>>Besides, I can find nothing by Ross that says that says that God reset
man's genetic clock back to zero, when He created Adam.<<
If there could only be two alleles in Adam's day, that IS a reset of the
genetic clock. Even if Hugh Ross has changed to a 60,000 year time frame,
even that might not be enough.
Stephen wrote:
>>1. Creation of man: a) man was either created de novo with an
apparent genetic history; or b) that he was created from pre-existing
genetic material, ie. from hominid stock; and/or c) that he later
mingled with pre-Adamite homids; and<<
Man could not be created with a genetic history if there were only two humans
on the earth. Adam and Eve together can only carry 4 alleles. In the human
population we now find at some locations, lots of alleles. To say that Adam
was created with a genetic history in this case is like saying that a pint
jug was created with a gallon of water in it. It is an oxymoron.
In yet a third post, Stephen wrote:
>>GM>Thanks for this point, Art. If this is the case, then THIS is
>where Christians should argue their case against the reductionist
>view of the origin of life. To argue against the origin of life from
>the probabilities simply is weak. I have shown a two step process, 1
>creation of a long string 2. random excision of sub-strings, which
>makes the finding of a particular functional unit much, much more
>likely. The probability argument is too weak to support the weight
>of any anti-evolutionary arguments.
Stephen wrote:
>>Perhaps Glenn could re-calculate his probability estimates, taking
into account B & T's factors above? Until he does, he can hardly
continue to claim his simple English-language sentence analogy
disproves the creationist argument from improbability against the
chance origin of life. <<
Stephen, we were talking about cytochrome c in the post you are quoting.
glenn
glenn