Re: New Flood Data

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 05:58:47 -0600

At 01:17 AM 2/18/98 -0500, Jim Bell wrote:
>All right, the subject line was a bit of a tease, but this is new to ME. I
>wanted to throw something out to Glenn, Art and anyone else interested in
>these matters.
>
>I've not been a "Flood" aficianado, so I haven't read all the YEC
>literature and replies thereto. But something just struck me in all this.
>
>Glenn, for one, has been asking why the geological evidence doesn't seem to
>give a picture of a global flood. This is from a uniformitarian position,
>of course, which assumes that the dynamics would have been exactly the same
>then as today. But is this premise valid?

Jim,

when I was a YEC I was like Art on many issues. I couldn't explain them.
And at that time I didn't believe in any form of uniformitarianism. I was
always having to say, "Someday science will provide answers to the problems
Science presents to the flood position." I was converted to
uniformitarianism (or actualism) because the data required it, NOT because I
presumed it. There is a big, big difference.

To treat the geological data as if one can interpret it either way depending
upon one's presuppositions misses the real problem. You can interpret parts
of the geological column in two ways because of ones presupppositions, but
not the entire thing.

The quantity of dead animals in the form of shells does not depend upon my
presuppositions. And there are more dead animals than could possibly fit
onto the preflood earth.
>
> I went back to Genesis 8 and read the following in verse 1:
>
>"But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that
>were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters
>receded." (NIV)
>
>A couple of things struck me. It was not that the waters abated normally.
>God sent a wind to do the job. Also, the word "recede" in the Hebrew is
>best translated "assuage" or "subside." In verse 3 it literally states the
>waters "returned" as a result.
>
>Now, the wind here is like the wind God used another time:
>
>"Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the
>LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry
>land." (Exodux 14:21, NIV)
>
>Check that out. The wind not only parted the waters, but made DRY LAND.
>That's certainly NOT what your uniformitarian would expect, is it?
>
>This, then, is my question: Could not the miraculous wind God used to dry
>the Earth make the Earth, many thousands of years later, look exactly
>like it does today? Might it indeed answer every single one of Gelnn's
>objections if this is the case?

Jim, God could do anything He wants miraculously. But Flood afficionados
don't want to rely on miracle. They try to use science to explain the
Flood. If they said it was a miracle, I would have no problem and no
response to them. What they do is try to say that science supports their
position. It doesn't.

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm