><<But if He used the system in place, then your theory is wrong.>>
>
>Perhaps, but I'm still very interested in what people like Art and
>Baumgardner are saying. I'm interested in what YOU are saying, too, which
>is why I keep wearing out my fingers on the keyboard.
You think yours are worn out. In 1996, I had to have a nerve moved in my arm
or I was going to cut it in half. My right arm still doesn't function perfectly.
>
><<And I don't think the Bible clearly rules out either option.>>
>
>Here is where I disagree. I can see absolutely no support for the "natural"
>explanation. Sound hermeneutics rules that option out for me.
>
As I imagine I am going to say to Dario when I get to reading his note, I
hear this "hermeneutical rules" allow this or don't allow that. I hear this
from both liberal and conservative each arguing that hermeneutical laws
require opposite things. I have begun to think that hermeneutical rules
are merely subjective and are used correctly when your interpretation agrees
with mine and used wrongly when your interpretation disagrees with mine.
The reason for this subjectivity is that one must decide what kind of
literature a piece is and the author didn't tell you. Secondly, even if
something is poetry and normally doesn't relay history, some poems DO relay
history like the poem written by Gordon Lightfoot on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
So, I don't think an appeal to hermeneutical rules is very good because it
is subjective.
><<So if a global flood requires miracles to produce it, then science can
>say
>absolutely nothing about the flood. And if it can say nothing about the
>flood, then why do global flood advocates continue to try to uses
>scientific
>evidence in support of what must be a miracle. >>
>
>Perhaps you're right. Globalists may have to agree that the data is not
>amenable to purely naturalistic interpretation.
>
Here is another case of a very honest globalist, Leonard Brand writes of
biogeography and the classic way globalists say the animals redispersed
across the earth:
"A large number of mammal families have a fossil record and modern
distribution limited to only one continent. Did they travel from the ark
and return only to their original home without even leaving any fossils
along the way? This could happen by chance for a few families, especially if
their home was a continent readily accessible to Asia Minor. However, 59
families of mammals fit this patter, and the continents with the highest
percentage of endemic families are Australia and South America." p. 302-303
and then he concludes:
"After carefully analyzing this issue, I conclude that the
current distribution of at least the terrestrial mammals from their
spread, and under their own power, from Asia Minor is refuted by the
above cited data. Perhaps the God who initiated the flood and
brought the mammals to the ark also involved Himself in concluding
the process by distributing the mammals so that the repopulation of
the earth would proceed in a balanced fashion. Whether or not other
possibilities are compatible with Scripture needs further study. The
choice between such interpretations is strictly philosophical, but
science can be used to analyze patterns of animal movement after the
initial point. Science can only deal with concrete data on
geographic distribution pattersn and hypotheses about patterns of
movement of the animals as revealed by data, not with ultimte
questions about causation."~Leonard R. Brand, Faith Reason and Earth
History, (Berrien Springs: Andrews University Press, 1997), p. 303
Once you go down that road, you can't stop multiplying the miracles. After a
while, everything is miraculous so why bother with science????
>But the data is not. Many of the mysteries (e.g., the sudden appearance of
>the geologic column with fossils) can be thus explained much better than
>the naturalists.
You phrased that wrong. It is not the sudden appearance of the geologic
column, but the sudden appearance vertically of animals IN the geologic
column. The column did not suddenly appear yesterday afternoon to the
amazement of geologists. :-)
Now to answer your point, considering that there are some very well attested
transitional forms, (even Berlinski in the PBS debate admitted over and over
that the reptile to mammal transition was well documented.) one needs to be
careful of repeating canards.
By the way, I liked you sick lawyer humor which due to space I snipped. :-)
>Once again, I question your assumptions. If the drying of the earth was
>indeed miraculous, even you have admitted that your theory goes out the
>window.
That is not quite what I said. You keep forgetting the little word
"everything". God could well have used miracle in conjunction with my views.
But if EVERYTHING was miraculous, then the my view is wrong.
>But it is not a miracle of deception except to those who insist on
>using a naturalistic lense.
>
If God makes it look like the naturalistic lens is the correct lens, then
god is deceptive. He could have mixed the fossils up thoroughly (whales
with dinichthys and trilobites with cave bears) and we would know that the
naturalistic lens was wrong. Unfortunately, God didn't mix them up.
>IOW, it's like you're trying to have it both ways. You'll allow for a
>miracle, but only one that is a deliberate deception. That, I think, is
>unreasonable.
See above.
>
>A question about footprints. Are you saying that preserved prints would
>necessarily disappear in a global flood?
What I am saying is that there would be so little time for the dinosaurs to
leave prints, they shouldn't have been made at all. I don't know if you
have been to the Grand Canyon or not. Imagine standing on the bottom of the
canyon and looking up you realize that the entire column of rock you see
above you is about to be deposited on top of you over the next 6 months.
This is 27 feet per day. When are you going to sleep? You might be able to
survive for a week floating in the water, but then you will die. Global
flood advocates have mankind and other animals surviving throughout the
flood floating on plant matter. They forget that salt water is hard on the
kidneys and leads to death. Without fresh water, the animals would die in
the first 2 weeks of the flood (or the first 392 feet of sediment). They
should not have been there to leave tracks. 5000 feet up the column.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm