SAWells

Fantastic line from Tibor Fischer in The Collector Collector: "Rivers, like a lumbering drunk, have pissed and slouched all over the planet."

mung bean

Bed-hopping tarts, the lot of them.

Stephen T-B

I just wonder, do the Creationist "scientists" and their devotees like Dave even begin to think what would have been entailed if the surface of the earth had been re-formed by the Flood - and how might a wooden vessel carrying breeding pairs of every terrestrial creature have survived the cataclysmic tumult?
Have they suggested a mechanism (apart from "magick" ) which could have caused that re-formation in so short a period? Have they suggested where the flood waters drained away to - draining so fast as to cut gorges which today are lower than sea level?
Have they proposed one single topographical/geological feature as being a result of the Flood which conforms in any way with the physical evidence - and so compellingly that mainstream geographers and geologists have been obliged to concede that a world-wide flood can be the only explanation?
Have they identified one single topographical/geological feature which is so universal that it might have been caused by a single flooding event?

Have they provided one scrap of hard evidence that human beings have ever lived longer than 120/130 years?

Their every attempt to make Bronze Age myths seem like real historical facts sinks them deeper into stupidity. And it doesn't matter how grave they look; how profound they sound; how lucidly they present their fatuous arguments: stupid is as stupid does.

Cege

I think I know the answer YECs offer to this question:
Psalms 104: 6-9

6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
The waters stood above the mountains.
7 At Your rebuke they fled;
At the voice of Your thunder they hastened away.
8 They went up over the mountains;
They went down into the valleys,
To the place which You founded for them.
9 You have set a boundary that they may not pass over,
That they may not return to cover the earth. (NIV)

I'm not endorsing the answer, just bringing it to your attention.

Since at least some YECs believe that the earth has had only one Ice Age and that it was caused by the flood, by my recollection the YEC belief is that the pyramids were built during that ice age, while wooly mammoths were hunted by those dispersed fartherest north from the tower of Babel.

(Again, don't blame me! I'm not a YEC.)

Johnny Skeptic

No rational God would ever cause a global flood and deliberately make it appear to the majority of geologists, including some evangelical Christian geologists, that the flood did not occur. In addition, there are not any sensisble motives for the flood. There was no need for God to kill animals and plants with the flood. Further, it is questionable that the only good people in the entire world just so happened to be Noah's wife, children, and in-laws.

Constant Mews

Indeed. Genesis poses as many problems for the theologian and philosopher as it does for the scientist. The scientific problems are resolved by realizing that it's primarily a mythology of origins; the theological difficulties are far harder to address.

mung bean

Since Dave's offline at the moment I don't mind a slight diversion.
I assume since most Christians take Genesis metaphorically that there aren't many real ethical or theological problems. After all, if god didn't do it he can't be blamed for anything. The story of the flood just becomes another example of humans trying to rationalise their experience. Am I missing something here?

The other interesting thing that's occured to me lately is that very little of what YEC's promote has any Biblical basis at all. AIG's motto is "Upholding the authority of the Bible from the very first word", but in practice what they do is more like writing their own scripture. This Humungous Cataclysm they propose was just a flood in the Bible. No galumphing continents or anything else.

Calilasseia

Ah but you see Dave, the difference here is that their mistakes were corrected by other accredited geologists. The scientific method works again.

Unfortunately for you, your creationist chums have leaped from one stupendous collection of errors to another precisely because they're trying to prop up the unsupportable.

Meanwhile ...

Slight problem here Dave. Once your flood waters are present, any sediments they are laying down are a chaotic jumble of exterminated life forms and assorted particulate suspended matter, some of which will be of detectably terrestrial origin. So if your flood scenario bore any relation to reality, we should expect to see a chaotic mix - terrestrial and aquatic life form remains side by side in material with the same date, along with terrestrial and aquatic particulate matter.

Unfortunately, what we see in the case of this Nile cross section is an ordered deposition of sediments on top of the bedrock. First a layer of marine sediments corresponding to a past time when the bedrock was under sea water, followed by a layer of freshwater sediments corresponding to a later time when the whole was now no longer under sea water, but under fresh water. I would hazard a guess that if anyone were to be capable of removing fossil remains from those sediments, they would again be sorted almost exclusively into the relevant categories by stratum, with possibly the very odd one or two examples of remains of the odd unfortunate terrestrial critter that happened to fall into the water and die. What YOU need to support YOUR hypothesis, Dave, is a chaotic assortment with a FAR bigger ratio of terrestrial animal and particulate debris remains mixed in with the aquatic sediments, AND in addition NO delineation WHATSOEVER between freshwater and marine life forms. After all, according to you, this supposed global flood was one truly humongous mega-catastrophe involving all manner of large-magnitude violent forces running rampant all over the planet, and last time I checked, such large-magnitude violent forces tend not to produce exquisitely sorted and ordered remnants.

Just recently here in England we've had some pretty spectacular flooding in the Gloucester area - three months' rainfall fell in 24 hours over the Severn Valley and the River Severn burst its banks. Oh, as an aside, we in England have spent virtually all of July under constant rainfall, even where I live which has been one of the driest parts of the UK (though you wouldn't know it from the amount of water that's tumbled into my drains) but despite having endured nearly a month of constant heavy rainfall (in some instances torrential - it's been one of the wettest July months since records began) I don't notice large shoals of fish outside my front window or the need to go to the local supermarket via submarine. But I digress ... anyway, your big problem here Dave, is that this comparatively small flood in the Severn Valley doesn't seem to have been a particularly ordered affair. Basically, the water is a sort of s**t brown colour. Partly as a result of the contents of the Gloucester and Tewkesbury sewer systems coming to the surface, partly as a result of river silt, and partly as a result of suspended topsoil from surrounding agricultural land. In other words, not a pretty mix. Which is why the locals are still receiving their drinking water supplies via tankers and bowsers. Now it's not difficult to check this, Dave, the BBC news website has LOTS of pictures taken by people with their mobile camera phones of the flooding, and you can see LOTS of s**t brown water all over the place. In fact you can see pictures of people canoeing in supermarket car parks if you dig around the BBC website for long enough, dated around July 20th to July 23rd or thereabouts.

So, the idea that your mega-flood would leave exquisitely sorted sedimentary deposits is a bit of a non-starter. The planet would be up to its eyeballs in chaotically mixed crap - including all those dead dinosaurs you think would have been there because you're one of those people who watches The Flintstones and thinks it's a documentary. Trouble is, we have lots of places where the strata are exquisitely sorted, the above one being merely one example.

So, once again, Dave, where is your "flood deposit"? You know, the one I launched a complete new thread for you to visit and explain all about but which you never bothered visiting?

Cege

Particularly in light of the fact that Noah got drunk first chance he got after the flood. When his youngest son Ham walked into the tent, saw Noah naked (and passed out), and told the 2 other brothers--which got him and Noah's grandson cursed by Noah. (Genesis 9)

RED DAVE

Just the standard weekly notice that although praxeus is posting on various threads, he has declined to fulfill his commitment to respond to questions on this thread.

RED DAVE