At 04:09 PM 10/1/98 -0700, Dario wrote:
>Dear Glenn:
>
>I'm making this statement public because publicly I have been debating
>you.
>
>First of all I will like to express that I do appreciate the work you
>have done in trying to reconcile the Genesis account with sound
>science. Of those 2500+ hits in your web site, many are mine. I have
>been there and spent time reading through the various pages.
>
Thank you for the kind words.
>Secondly, I do envy some of your tasks such as searching for oil.
>Having friends in the oil industry (wildcatters) I have seen their
>excitement at the prospect of bringing a well in. Also their
>disappointment when it is just dry. But like you, they never give up.
>They go at it again.
That is the thing that makes it really tough. Over a career an
explorationist is wrong more than he is correct (even the very few YECs in
the oil business have no better luck). But when you find 100 million
barrels, it is really a good feeling, even thought that is only 6 days
energy for the world.
>
>Thirdly, I sincerely believe that the 6 Scriptural days and 15-20
>billion years of cosmology's universe age are one and the same event
>viewed from different perspectives. At this point I don't have any
>precise way (and in your case a specific sequence of words AKA verse)
>that clearly details how it was compressed (or expanded depending ones'
>point of view) these billions of years into 6 days.
Do you have any scientific support either?
>
>There were certain events taking place that clearly show that God and
>men move in different dimensions. We can't go outside ours but God
>does.
Other than that God is a transcendant being, I find the idea that God moves
in higher dimensions actually demeaning to God's transcendence. This idea
has been popularized by Hugh Ross, but here is the problem with it. God is
above ALL dimensionality. To make God move in 4,5,...11 dimensions makes
God subject to the laws of the universe rather than being the creator of
the universe. So, theologically, I reject this dimensionality business as
so much hokum. And I really reject the idea that all heresies come from a
misunderstanding of dimensionality. Hugh Ross writes:
"Other holy books include contradictions that cannot be resolved in extra
dimensions, and many religious cults attempt to explain all biblical
doctrines in a four-dimensional context. These reflect human thinking,
which both the Bible and science say will always fall short of God's." ~
Hugh Ross, Beyond the Cosmos (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1996), p. 51
So now if we are only a 4D religion we are a cult?
>For example, just like the final earth, the first three days of creation
>had an absence of sunlight. Instead the light came from the Creator.
>(Rev. 22:5 "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle,
>neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they
>shall reign for ever and ever.") . In Genesis the sun isn't created
>until the fourth day (or period) of creation. So when God creates
>light, it isn't necessarily light from the sun.
That is the case regardless of whether God created the universe instantly
6000 years ago or 18 billion years ago. If God created the universe via the
big bang, then the light spoken of was not from the sun either.
>
>Reconciliation and restoration are themes that permeate Scripture. By
>understanding God's will to restore His creation to it's original state,
>some of the missing pieces of Genesis can be found in the Biblical
>eschatological writings. We can read in Isaiah the results of the
>redemptive work of the messiah:
>
>Is. 65:25 '"The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion
>shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat.
>They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the
>LORD."
I would correct you here. That is a an interpretation of what permeates
Scripture. The idea that the world will be exactly as it was in the
beginning is demonstrably false from the scripture themselves. God told
Adam and Eve to multiply. But in the future, there will be neither male
nor female and without sexes, there can't be sex and without sex, no
multiplying. So, given what the Bible says about sex, the future will not
be identical with the past. And thus the lion may lie down with the ox,
lamb and other victims, but that does not mean that it was that way
necessarily in the past.
>
>This verse aids in understanding how was the creation before the fall of
>man. God states that 'they shall not hurt nor destroy' and this 'they'
>is referring to the animals mentioned before. The current state of
>nature is violent and in many instances cruel. God commands us to have
>mercy, aid the needy and help the invalid while nature will never give
>mercy, it will totally trample over the needy and kill the invalid.
But that verse about 'they shall not hurt nor destroy' is referring to the
future not the past. So what is the justification for applying it to the
past other than some overarching theoretical/theological concept? If sex
is gone in the future and it wasn't gone in the past, how can you be sure
that hurting and destroying were gone in the past? Plants were hurt and
destroyed by the munching of various contented carnivores (in your scheme).
>
>Fourthly, one can't honestly say that the earth isn't very old. The
>evidence points to more than 60 centuries of earthly existence. But The
>Scriptures aren't historically wrong either. Take the Bronze Age for
>example, according to Genesis it all began with one of Cain's
>descendants around 3000 years BC. Which is the same date that some
>archeologists give to the beginning of the bronze age.
But if Jubal was the father of tents, the first tent was 1.6 million years
ago, made by Homo erectus. See
Gen 4:20 And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents,
and of such as have cattle.
"One of the most interesting but seldom recalled archaeological traces is
of a stone structure at site DK in the lowest strata at Olduvai. This
structure has been interpreted by my mother as the site of a windbreak or
simple hut, where stones were perhaps used to support a series of branches.
There are stones piled unnaturally one upon another in small heaps, and
these were found in a roughly circular pattern with a diameter of some 12
feet (3.6 m). In my view, this is certainly a 'man-made' structure and is
of quite special significance to our understanding of our ancestors as far
back as 1.8 Ma." ~ Richard Leakey, "Recent Fossil finds From East Africa,"
in J.R. Durant ed. Human Origins, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) p 60-61
>
>So why will Scripture be historically correct for one event and not the
>other?
>Moreover, one can conclude that the flood didn't destroy the evidence
>for pre-flood life.
>
>Now Glenn, you make a very strong case for a local flood and give ample
>evidence of why you believe so. But for certain, the Scriptural
>language is all inclusive when describing this event.
Thank you for the compliment. I have pointed out that the all inclusive
language is not really all inclusive. If one translates the term 'eretz'
as land, rather than as planet earth, you have a perfect biblical
description of a local flood. And as to the 'under all the heavens'
phrase, you will find a similar use of thunder being heard from lightning
that strikes all places under the heavens in Job 37:3. Since I can't hear
lightning from Oklahoma city, or even from Denton Texas, I presume that the
phrase 'under the whole heaven' is used to describe the land from horizon
to horizon. Within that region, I can hear the thunder. Do you think the
Bible is wrong by saying that thunder can be heard after it has been
directed to various places under the whole heaven?
Was this event
>something that happen only in the populated earth (humanly speaking) or
>was it a global catastrophe? Will 40 days of rain and 150 days of
>flooding leave any lasting evidence for us to find?
YES. 40 days of rain left about 6 feet of sand along the Mississippi River
basin and covered lots of farm fields in 1993
One thing is for
>certain, men lived longer before the flood than after it.
>
>Something happened to the planet during this event that shortened the
>lifespan of humans. What was it? What changed?
>
>I don't know. When I lived in the Amazon jungle, every January the
>flood came and the river arose almost 20 to 30 feet over it's normal
>level in some areas. But after about 3 months the water went down to
>the river's normal path. One could walk through this area six months
>later and except for a few trees that had the flood marks on their
>trunks one could hardly tell that this area was flooded. The sediment
>had either been washed away by the post-flood rain or plant life had
>grown on it erasing any evidence.
Plant growth there is so rapid that any new sediment will be covered
rapidly. Secondly, not much sediment can be carried deep into the jungle
because the trees make the water move very slowly. That means that no sand
will be carried very far from the Amazon.
>
>As a matter of fact, nobody built a house close the river unless first
>seeing the area during a flood. There was no way of telling how high
>will the waters rise (or if the area flooded during the rainy season).
>
>Lastly, I must tell you that you aren't alone postulating your
>theories. A Jewish rabbi in the XII century AD wrote about God forming
>a being and after a period of time inserting into this creature a soul
>thus creating man. So your ideas have been around for a while among
>scholarly Jewish circles, even before Darwin et al and his theory.
Fascinating. Do you have a name for this guy? And a reference? I would
love to learn more about this.
>
>Well, I must close for now but I just wanted to tell that we may
>interpret somewhat differently Genesis, but except for certain details,
>we're not that far apart. I don't believe science and theology are
>mutually exclusive.
I am glad to hear this. We agree that science and theology are not
mutually exclusive. But if that is the case, one should be able to present
a scenario that unites the two.
>
>I still don't find room in the Genesis record for macro evolution and
>the Hebrew words used are very clear regarding who said what and how
>what was made. Plus in several places God forbids man to cross breed
>animals or plant seeds together of different trees. If His nature was
>mixing and matching genes all over, why would He forbid men to do it?
>Was Adam, the first botanist and zoologist in the recorded history of
>mankind, incapable of perfoming these tasks?
Why has God instituted the machinery that allows genes to be transferred
from one species to another? We see this occur most effective in relation
to microbes.
but thank you for the kind words. May we always strive for the truth, both
scripturally and observationally.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm