While I swore I would just listen, I am going to respond to the parts about
the flood since they do not directly address the issue I was interested in
with the atheist question I threw out there.
At 10:41 AM 4/15/98 -0500, mullerd@chplink.CHP.EDU wrote:
>
> Glen - I've come out of "lurking mode" to respond to your
> most intriguing question.
>
> Let me begin with a question to you. I respect your
> exhaustive research into geology and especially into the
> Flood, and I respect your Christian faith. However, if you
> maintain that the Flood was a local affair, how do you
> reconcile God's promise that he will never destroy the world
> again,(in respect to a world flood)? If the event was a
> local flood, then God has destroyed the "world" many times
> with local floods.
Remember one thing. The hebrew word which is translated as 'Earth' in
English Bibles is 'eretz'. But this word is more often translated as 'land'
and even where it is translated as 'planet earth' it could also be
translated as meaning 'land'. The entire problem is in the mistranslation of
'eretz' making it mean global earth. There is a bible verse which
illustrates this and does not at all fit the global flood view and it is
always ignored.
In Genesis 6:13, God said, "I am surely going to destroy both them[the
people] and the 'eretz'."
The people were DESTROYED (apparently they were destroyed so thoroughly that
there are no fossil remains of them except in what most YECs believe is post
flood strata). Yet the Earth was NOT destroyed. The earth still is here
with us. If 'eretz' refers to 'planet earth' rather than 'land' (which is
the most common translation of 'eretz') then Genesis 6-9 may be referring to
the destruction of a LAND not the entire Earth. So the question just might
be "Is there a locality where the land was actually destroyed by the flood?
Well, Mesopotamia was not destroyed becaue it is still here. The entire
earth was not destroyed, it is still here. But two places could fit this
need for the land to be destroyed. One is the shallow rim of the Black sea
which filled up between 7500-9500 years ago. The other place is the
Mediterranean basin which is no longer 'eretz'; it is now SEA! That land was
destroyed, just as the Bible said. And God's promise not to do it again is
still in effect. He has not done such a thing again. The river floods are
not the same thing as the destruction of a 900,000+ square kilometer desert
which is what the Mediterranean was when it was dry.
> You wrote:
> >The point here is that Christians have unfortunately been
> >willing to ignore observational data in order to believe
> >what their theology requires.
>
> If you replace "ignore" with "interpert", then yeah, I
> accept that statement without apology. Proponents of
> biogenesis make the same statement. Since you and I weren't
> there, the observational data must be interperted. We must
> rely on present observational data that may represent the
> past. I have seen, (in photographs), a geologic column that
> was laid down in seconds after the Mt. St. Helens blast.
> The column was complete with stratified layers of different
> thicknesses and compositions.
No you didn't see that at all. That is what Austin wants you to think you
saw. Mt. St. Helens didn't spit out any crinoidal limestones as are spread
around North America. It contains no sandstone, no shale, no salt, no
dolomite, no oolitic ironstones. What was deposited by St. Helens was
volcanic ash and nothing more. Stratification is not the same as the
geologic column. The geologic column consists of a multitude of
lithologies. Go see my web page article "The entire geologic column in
North Dakota."
This being said, Glen, I must
> admit that although I choose to be a YEC, you have certainly
> caused me to think about the age of the earth in a new, (or
> old), aspect. :)
I appreciate the complement.
>
> However, I believe it is a mistake to look for justification
> for the Resurrection in fossils. As the angel said to Mary
> in the empty tomb, "...why do you look for the living among
> the dead"?
OK I lied. I will respond to this and then quit. You misunderstand. I am
looking for evidence that the witnesses to this were trustworthy not looking
for fossils to prove the resurrection.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm