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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Noah's Flood
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NJA
Shipmate
# 13022
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Posted
I guess views on this nowadays fall into 3 categories:
1) it was global
2) it was local
3) it never actually happened at that time, it was copied from other texts to convey a moral lesson.
Does anyone firmly nail their colours to one particular mast?
Posts: 1283 | From: near London | Registered: Sep 2007
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Given that there is no evidence for a global flood, and considerable evidence that such a flood did not happen then 1) is a non-starter.
A more local flood that was devastating to the people caught up in it, that could quite literally have washed away the world they knew (without affecting the rest of the planet) is entirely possible. As is a story inflated out of experience of much less severe floods for the purpose of relating a particular message. As there would have been some flood events that were more substantial than normal, and these would have been retained in the memory of the people involved (much as we still talk about "the great storm" when Michael Fish told us there wasn't a hurricane on the way) I tend towards parts of the story at least being derived from folk memory of a greater than normal local flood.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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WhyNotSmile
Shipmate
# 14126
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Posted
I agree with Alan... I think there are elements of facts in the story, coming from folk legend or memory, but that the primary intention is a lesson about God's protection and promise.
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Come visit:
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Posts: 528 | From: Belfast | Registered: Sep 2008
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Gentleman Ranker
Shipmate
# 15518
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Posted
I have neither credentials nor amateur learning in geology or related subjects, but the pervasiveness of flood myths across cultures tends to make me think that something happened.
I would tend to assume, however, that it was some perfectly natural phenomenon currently unknown to us, perhaps acquiring legendary status over many generations.
It may also be that (local) floods are simply not that uncommon (in terms of geologic, rather than human time scales), so that all cultures have had independent opportunities to develop flood myths.
regards,
GR
Posts: 66 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
I guess views on this nowadays fall into 3 categories:
1) it was global
2) it was local
3) it never actually happened at that time, it was copied from other texts to convey a moral lesson.
Does anyone firmly nail their colours to one particular mast?
(4) Some mythic systems have the concept of different "ages" of the world. Each age is separated from its predecessor and successor by what you might call a punctuation-myth (a term I think I've just invented, and which I rather like). This is the function the Flood myth seems to fulfil as used by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. There may be moral or aetiological messages attached (e.g. the covenant and the origins of animal sacrifice in the Noah story), but mainly it's a way of saying, "Right, that bit's finished ... Next!"
But no. No colours nailed to the mast. I'm an Anglican. As has often been said, we nail our colours firmly to the fence.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Liopleurodon
Mighty sea creature
# 4836
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Posted
Floods are common enough occurrences to warrant a selection of flood-related mythology. The scientific evidence is so overwhelmingly against option 1 that it has to be 2 or 3. 2 seems plausible enough, or rather I imagine that there was a flood with a handful of survivors but that the story of what happened to them was embellished as it was passed down through the generations.
Posts: 1921 | From: Lurking under the ship | Registered: Aug 2003
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I think 2 is the correct answer.
I have the impression that some Central or South American culture also has a flood story.
Any event which severely disrupts the lives and culture of a people will be enshrined in the folk memory.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
When I was a girl (1970s) my grandfather told me that when he was a young boy (just pre-WWI) his grandmother showed him the medal which her father was given for saving life in the Moray floods of 1829. As an adult I investigated this story and it was true.
If a story about a flood could survive orally in our family for 150 years, I would imagine that in societies more given to storytelling, a story could survive a lot longer.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
When I was a girl (1970s) my grandfather told me that when he was a young boy (just pre-WWI) his grandmother showed him the medal which her father was given for saving life in the Moray floods of 1829. As an adult I investigated this story and it was true.
Several of George Macdonald's novels have descriptions of great floods. He was born after the floods of 1829, but he had heard many vivid stories about them.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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sabine
Shipmate
# 3861
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gentleman Ranker:
I have neither credentials nor amateur learning in geology or related subjects, but the pervasiveness of flood myths across cultures tends to make me think that something happened.
I would tend to assume, however, that it was some perfectly natural phenomenon currently unknown to us, perhaps acquiring legendary status over many generations.
It may also be that (local) floods are simply not that uncommon (in terms of geologic, rather than human time scales), so that all cultures have had independent opportunities to develop flood myths.
Marine biologist Robert Ballard has done research on a catestophic flood that changed the Black Sea from a freshwater body to a saltwater body, and the people from that area migrated quite a bit in Europe and Asia, so that may explain the origins of some flood stories.
National Geographic program about this research
And certainly, global weather patterns could have produced floods in other areas.
If a flood story has entered the cultural tradition of one group of people, it doesn't always follow that the same event will be the source of similar stories among other groups of people. I'm willing to believe that there has been more than one flood large enough to become the stuff of legend (using that term in its broadest sense, not as a synonym for untruth).
Unless there was circumnavigation that we don't know about in biblical times, the biblical account of the flood was interpreted by the POV of people who had never heard of south america and therefore would think the "entire" world was a much smaller place.
sabine
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"Hunger looks like the man that hunger is killing." Eduardo Galeano
Posts: 5887 | From: the US Heartland | Registered: Dec 2002
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MerlintheMad
Shipmate
# 12279
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Posted
Number 2, obviously. And by "local" we can allow for thousands of square miles inundated, e.g. as when the Mediterranean Sea of even the Black Sea were formed. Any people living at the "bottom" of those places and barely escaping with their lives would of course remember the conditions and repeat them to following generations as oral traditions. The very evidence for this is in the Genesis Noah story: "the waters prevailed 15 cubits and the mountains were all covered" is proof that "the mountains" were not that high - yet the highest around - and somebody either took depth measurements or this detail is merely part of the oral transmission based on nothing in particular and therefore inadmissable as evidence of anything to do with the extent of the flood.
If I understand this correctly, China has no "great deluge" mythic tradition. So the "global" flood didn't reach eastern Asia?...
Posts: 3499 | Registered: Jan 2007
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I'm with sabine. Just because different cultures, even widely separated cultures, have flood myths doesn't mean they're based on the same flood. There are floods everywhere there are rivers. Look at poor Nashville.
Adeodatus, "punctuation myths" is an excellent term! I knew just what it meant when I saw it without your having to explain it. Would that more theological terms possessed such clarity.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Lord Jestocost
Shipmate
# 12909
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Posted
I too am with (2), with smatterings of (3).
A creationist argument I've heard (which in this case includes Jehovah's Witnesses because I've heard it from them too) is that Jesus himself referred to the flood as a factual event. If it wasn't factual then Jesus is a liar, QED.
My own riposte to this is that Jesus was illustrating a point the same way I could illustrate a point by referring, say, to last Saturday's Dr Who.
This generally proves nothing one way or the other but at least brings the conversation back to 15-all.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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kfingers
Apprentice
# 12748
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Posted
uh oh, last time I was on this topic it went on for a veeeerrrryyy long time hehe and to be honest, there isn't much to add to the basic arguments I see here (basic meaning "base" not "simple").
There is archaeological evidence of what some believe to be "the ark" in the middle east. But it has been dated at about 10 000 years BC, 5000 years older then what the ark would be. The stone ballasts found on the dig site are local stone (in Turkey) (as opposed to stone from near Noahs area) (the Euphrates).
The age is a problem too. The Biblie states Noah died at 900 years old. According to the Torah time line that was 1755 BC.
http://www.akhlah.com/history_tradition/torah_timeline.php .
Even if Noah had built the ark and sailed it by the time he became a man (12 years old) (I think) the ark (which sailed for a year) would have had its maiden voyage in about 2642 BC (4652 years ago). This all fits very nicely into a literalistic interpretation of the Noah story with one problem, no evidence.
The evidence that the dates are based on is The Torah. There are two ways of collaborating classical historical evidence. One is by finding collaborative and independent literary sources, the other way is by finding collaborative archaeological (physical) sources.
The physical sources so far have placed the ark in several different sites. The boat in Turkey has not convinced those looking for evidence. The photos the Chinese showed another Christian archaeology group showed cobwebs in the corners of the structure... at 4000 meters above sea level???? The explorers/archaeologists in question are also have evangelical interests. So I would question their impartiality when dealing with a find such as this. I have seen it several times before, when a historian or archaeologist wants to believe something so badly that s/he will be blind to alternative viewpoints.
Evidence in the silt layers of The Black Sea suggesting that there was a change in sea level in that area from fresh to salt water (suggesting a large flood from the Mediterranean into the black sea) has also been lauded as proof of a worldwide flood. It proves a local flood of the variety that hit areas of the world all the time, but that is how stories start.
The original "Ark" evidence is 5000 years too young. The number of arks scattered around the Baltic and Black sea suggest that 5000 years ago there were people making sea trips. But we have that evidence already by following the trail of Viking and Aboriginal DNA Its form is also inconsistent with both Biblical accounts and other classical accounts of sea transport from that area and era.
The literary evidence suggests a story of a man saving his family from a large flood in The Black Sea, but the boats were more like large coracles (circular boats) rather than the classical "Ark" boat we know from The Bible. However, there is no evidence of them being made before 5000BC
The oldest boats found have been in Egypt and England. They were both large log canoes which date back no further than 7000BC. The area Noah lived in would not have been able to sustain such a large naval project without massive natural resources. There have been no mention of large forests in early Biblical literature, so from what I can deduce, Noah was making the ark out of nothing.
Folk tails have a habit of popping up again and again in different settings, across cultures with different emphasis added.
The "Victorian" tale of a town mouse and country mouse can be found in the Poetry of Juvenal in about 71 AD and probably goes back even further.
I believe that the flood was a didactic story (like many other parts of The Bible). More of a parable then a historical account.
I don't believe that a non literal belief in the flood takes away from the authority of God. I read The Bible as both a (very) amateur historian/classicist with an interest in archaeology AND as a Christian who has grown up with these stories and has grown to love them and to treasure the hidden gems that they contain about living the Christian life and experiencing God.
I won't even go into the many often circular or dead end theological, philosophical or practical questions such as "how did Noah catch bacteria? How did he feed the carnivores with only 2 of each animal on board? or "why did he not kill both wasps when he had the chance?".
I am sometimes quite envious of those who take the Bible at face value in a literal sense. Things must be so much easier to just do that. I respect people who will stick to their beliefs against overwhelming odds.
If you wanna believe it then that's fine. If you wanna call it history that's ok with me. Just don't go teaching it as the only way of looking at and interpreting one section of The Bible at the expense of all other points of view. That's bigotry and it annoys me.
Posts: 32 | From: the grim north | Registered: Jun 2007
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kfingers
Apprentice
# 12748
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Posted
Lord Jestocost quote:
A creationist argument I've heard (which in this case includes Jehovah's Witnesses because I've heard it from them too) is that Jesus himself referred to the flood as a factual event. If it wasn't factual then Jesus is a liar, QED.
My own riposte to this is that Jesus was illustrating a point the same way I could illustrate a point by referring, say, to last Saturday's Dr Who.
This generally proves nothing one way or the other but at least brings the conversation back to 15-all.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Posts: 32 | From: the grim north | Registered: Jun 2007
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Shadowhund
Shipmate
# 9175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
I guess views on this nowadays fall into 3 categories:
1) it was global
2) it was local
3) it never actually happened at that time, it was copied from other texts to convey a moral lesson.
Does anyone firmly nail their colours to one particular mast?
I would add (4) makes a lousy subject for a Broadway musical.
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"Had the Dean's daughter worn a bra that afternoon, Norman Shotover might never have found out about the Church of England; still less about how to fly"
A.N. Wilson
Posts: 3788 | From: Your Disquieted Conscience | Registered: Mar 2005
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by kfingers:
The age is a problem too. The Biblie states Noah died at 900 years old. According to the Torah time line that was 1755 BC.
http://www.akhlah.com/history_tradition/torah_timeline.php .
The problem with timelines like this is that the time gap between the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus is never explicitly stated. You can construct a timeline from Creation up through the death of Joseph using the lists of descent from Genesis, but there's nothing in the Biblical text that tells us how much time passes between the death of Joseph and the birth of Moses. All we know is that it's a span of time during which the Israelites became "exceedingly numerous" and that the new pharoah "did not know about Joseph". The chronology at your link is the traditional Jewish one, but it's far from the only possible one. Those wishing to fit a literal flood into their chronology find this gap the easiest point to adjust up or down to fit whatever their theory happens to be.
quote:
Originally posted by kfingers:
Even if Noah had built the ark and sailed it by the time he became a man (12 years old) (I think) the ark (which sailed for a year) would have had its maiden voyage in about 2642 BC (4652 years ago). This all fits very nicely into a literalistic interpretation of the Noah story with one problem, no evidence.
Except that a literalist would tell you that Noah was a mere stripling of six hundred when he sailed the ark.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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W Hyatt
Shipmate
# 14250
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
I guess views on this nowadays fall into 3 categories:
1) it was global
2) it was local
3) it never actually happened at that time, it was copied from other texts to convey a moral lesson.
Does anyone firmly nail their colours to one particular mast?
May I raise yet another mast (I believe it would be 4c) and nail my colors to that? That it was never meant to portray an actual event, but was instead a parable from the start? It can be a small mast if there's any danger of sinking the ship - in fact, a small mast apparently would be more demographically representative. ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
Posts: 1565 | From: U.S.A. | Registered: Nov 2008
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Given that there is no evidence for a global flood, and considerable evidence that such a flood did not happen then 1) is a non-starter.
A more local flood that was devastating to the people caught up in it, that could quite literally have washed away the world they knew (without affecting the rest of the planet) is entirely possible. As is a story inflated out of experience of much less severe floods for the purpose of relating a particular message. As there would have been some flood events that were more substantial than normal, and these would have been retained in the memory of the people involved (much as we still talk about "the great storm" when Michael Fish told us there wasn't a hurricane on the way) I tend towards parts of the story at least being derived from folk memory of a greater than normal local flood.
Let me quote you something.
Henry Howorth; Flood geologist but non religious; from 1877, on the vast animal burial sites in Siberia and other places:
"we want a cause that should kill the animals yet not break to pieces their bodies or even mutilate them; a cause which would in some casesdisintegrate the skeletons without weathering the bones. We want a cause that would not merely do this as a wide spread plague or murrain might, but one which would bury the bodies as well as kill the animals; which would take up gravel and clay and lay them down again, and which could sweep together animals of different sizes and species and mix them with trees and other debris of vegetation. What cause competent to do this is known to us? Water would drown the animals and yet would not mutilate their bodies. It would kill them all with complete impartiality irrespective of their strength, age or size. It would take up clay and earth and cover their bodies with it...not only could it do this, but it is the only cause known to me capable of doing the work on a scale commensurate with the effects we see in Siberia."
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I would say that it was a huge and devastating local flood, where the known 'world' was destroyed few survived.
The flood story lived on, and grew. in myth and legend.
It is far from the only one.
Even on a small scale families have their stories which are passed down from generation to generation. These stories change and grow in the telling.
...
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I set out my stall on the Noah's Ark thread just a few days ago.
Although as I said there I wouldn't go to the stake for it, I find myself tending to believe 1) or at least 1a): the whole of humanity destroyed. While I think that on the whole, events pre-Abraham in the Bible don't read to me like they were necessarily intended to be taken as literally true, I somehow find myself reading the flood account more that way.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Pity the geological evidence for it is so non-existent.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
You need to read my post on the other thread.
My education is an arts-based one. It gave me no scientific competency at all, but it did give me a sense that contemporary science might not always have the last word and that it might sometimes be tainted by the history of ideas. (By the way, I certainly don't side with what I see as the bad science of some creationists either, especially those not writing in their field of expertise).
I'm not attempting to change anybody's mind here, and such a position is certainly not an article of faith in the church I'm in. I just thought it was time somebody answered 1) to the OP. ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Mr Clingford
Shipmate
# 7961
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Posted
Euty, you are giving arts-based educations a bad name. I have had one (including a little History and Philosophy of Science and Theology) and MT is dead right. You are using it as an excuse (and I find myself agreeing with you on a lot of things).
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Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
If only.
Posts: 1660 | From: A Fleeting moment | Registered: Jul 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Oh man, I should have kept my mouth shut!
I'm just trying to be honest, really. I come out as having a lot of "N" (intuition) in Myers-Briggs and that's what my intuition tells me on this topic however loudly my intellect may complain. I'm not about to force my intuitions on anyone else in this respect and I'm certainly not going to attempt some half-baked Genesis Flood type argument.
I do however admit to wondering whether there are some too intimidated to post in Purg who might "intuit" the same way as me (you are not providing support for this theory!).
I'm not a YEC. Like I said on the other thread, I'm not attached to the literalism of Adam and Eve or the rest of Genesis 1-11. I wouldn't assert 1) from the pulpit, either. But internally, for some reason I kind of get stuck on Noah.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Henry Howorth; Flood geologist but non religious; from 1877, on the vast animal burial sites in Siberia and other places:
"we want a cause that should kill the animals yet not break to pieces their bodies or even mutilate them; a cause which would in some casesdisintegrate the skeletons without weathering the bones. We want a cause that would not merely do this as a wide spread plague or murrain might, but one which would bury the bodies as well as kill the animals; which would take up gravel and clay and lay them down again, and which could sweep together animals of different sizes and species and mix them with trees and other debris of vegetation. What cause competent to do this is known to us? Water would drown the animals and yet would not mutilate their bodies. It would kill them all with complete impartiality irrespective of their strength, age or size. It would take up clay and earth and cover their bodies with it...not only could it do this, but it is the only cause known to me capable of doing the work on a scale commensurate with the effects we see in Siberia."
Howorth is right, deposition of dead animals by flood water would create the large fossil beds that are fairly common around the world. But, normal processes are enough to explain that; a largish fast flowing river emptying into a lake, especially if prone to flash flooding, would create deposits of dead animals caught up in floods upstream where the water flow slows in the lake along with uprooted trees and lots of silt. Have that process continue for centuries and you have significant numbers of fossils all in basically the same place. That's not evidence of a global flood, especially as the fossil beds are all dated at different times (which even before radio-isotope dating methods Howorth would have known. It's just evidence that floods are global phenomena.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
I opt for a series of (2) in different places around the globe at different times. The whole point is the story of God's ultimate mercy.
Much of the OT was transmitted as oral traditiona
until around 600 BC - just as Homer was. Is an oral tradition more likely than our written one to preserve ancient lore? For example, could the flooding of a large area at the end of the last ice age - not that far back at all, and well after the settlement of Australia by its original inhabitants - become an oral tradition transmitted over millenia, eventually written down at the Exile or shortly thereafter?
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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A.Pilgrim
Shipmate
# 15044
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Posted
My position of belief goes with option 2).
IIRC there is geological evidence for a substantial and widespread flood in the Mesopotamian area in a period of time that can be reasonably aligned with the account in Genesis. Sorry I can’t be more specific about the details of this.
I agree with sabine’s point: quote:
Originally posted by sabine:
... Unless there was circumnavigation that we don't know about in biblical times, the biblical account of the flood was interpreted by the POV of people who had never heard of south america and therefore would think the "entire" world was a much smaller place.
in that the referent of the word in Genesis chapter 6 translated as ‘the earth’ needs to be the one from the perception of the original author/editor (etc. etc.), not the referent which a 21st-century mind would associate with ‘world’. After all, we still use the word ‘earth’ to refer to just the ground under our feet that we walk around on, and the extension of the meaning to: ‘a planet of the solar system orbiting the sun at a distance of 93,000,000 miles’ must post-date the Genesis account. I would be very surprised (!) if a writer used a word with a meaning that would only become applicable a few thousand years* in the future.
ISTM that this position neatly eliminates any awkward questions about how Noah got the koalas from Australia (etc. etc.), in that the animals contained in the Ark were those within his domestic locus of control.
Dating the flood (or anything else in Genesis) by the genealogies in the book is a mistake, because the biblical association of two people by the term translated as ‘begat/fathered/was the father of’ does not necessarily imply successive generations, but rather a link of ancestry with an indeterminate number of intervening generations. (As can be seen in Matthew’s chapter 1 pedigree of Jesus where he omits some generations – as compared with the corresponding OT genealogies.)
*Please note my avoidance of any controversy regarding the dating of the ‘authorship’ of the account.
Angus
Posts: 434 | From: UK | Registered: Aug 2009
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Liopleurodon
Mighty sea creature
# 4836
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Let me quote you something.
Henry Howorth; Flood geologist but non religious; from 1877, on the vast animal burial sites in Siberia and other places:
"we want a cause that should kill the animals yet not break to pieces their bodies or even mutilate them; a cause which would in some casesdisintegrate the skeletons without weathering the bones. We want a cause that would not merely do this as a wide spread plague or murrain might, but one which would bury the bodies as well as kill the animals; which would take up gravel and clay and lay them down again, and which could sweep together animals of different sizes and species and mix them with trees and other debris of vegetation. What cause competent to do this is known to us? Water would drown the animals and yet would not mutilate their bodies. It would kill them all with complete impartiality irrespective of their strength, age or size. It would take up clay and earth and cover their bodies with it...not only could it do this, but it is the only cause known to me capable of doing the work on a scale commensurate with the effects we see in Siberia."
As Alan says, nobody disputes that ancient flood sites exist or that they are a great place to find fossils. The reason why so many fossils are found at flood sites, however, is not that there was a massive global flood at one point in time. It's that a sudden flash flood (not that infrequent an event, but not everyday either), bringing layers of fine silt and anoxic mud creates an excellent environment to prevent the corpses from decomposing/weathering/being picked apart by scavengers. Therefore although the vast majority of ancient land animals didn't die in floods, we know a great deal more about some of the ones that did. As with today, however, the number of animals which died from injury, disease or being eaten is vastly greater than the ones that died in the specific circumstances which are good for fossilisation - we just don't have their remains to look at.
Posts: 1921 | From: Lurking under the ship | Registered: Aug 2003
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Shadowhund:
quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
I guess views on this nowadays fall into 3 categories:
1) it was global
2) it was local
3) it never actually happened at that time, it was copied from other texts to convey a moral lesson.
Does anyone firmly nail their colours to one particular mast?
I would add (4) makes a lousy subject for a Broadway musical.
I'll add 5 - it made a good libretto with Benjamin Britten's 'Noye's Fludde'.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Let me quote you something.
Henry Howorth; Flood geologist but non religious; from 1877, on the vast animal burial sites in Siberia and other places:
"we want a cause that should kill the animals yet not break to pieces their bodies or even mutilate them; a cause which would in some casesdisintegrate the skeletons without weathering the bones. We want a cause that would not merely do this as a wide spread plague or murrain might, but one which would bury the bodies as well as kill the animals; which would take up gravel and clay and lay them down again, and which could sweep together animals of different sizes and species and mix them with trees and other debris of vegetation. What cause competent to do this is known to us? Water would drown the animals and yet would not mutilate their bodies. It would kill them all with complete impartiality irrespective of their strength, age or size. It would take up clay and earth and cover their bodies with it...not only could it do this, but it is the only cause known to me capable of doing the work on a scale commensurate with the effects we see in Siberia."
As Alan says, nobody disputes that ancient flood sites exist or that they are a great place to find fossils. The reason why so many fossils are found at flood sites, however, is not that there was a massive global flood at one point in time. It's that a sudden flash flood (not that infrequent an event, but not everyday either), bringing layers of fine silt and anoxic mud creates an excellent environment to prevent the corpses from decomposing/weathering/being picked apart by scavengers. Therefore although the vast majority of ancient land animals didn't die in floods, we know a great deal more about some of the ones that did. As with today, however, the number of animals which died from injury, disease or being eaten is vastly greater than the ones that died in the specific circumstances which are good for fossilisation - we just don't have their remains to look at.
So no evidence for 'global' flood.
Only massive flood site in mditerranean area, also in Mesopotamia and also in Siberia.
How interesting
No evidence for Flood?
Depends a lot on your assumptions.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Like for example things that didn't happen at the same time really did.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
So no evidence for 'global' flood.
Only massive flood site in mditerranean area, also in Mesopotamia and also in Siberia.
How interesting
No evidence for Flood?
Depends a lot on your assumptions.
Yes, evidence of floods. But, each of those sites would have been places where flood waters deposited the bodies of animals, trees etc caught up in flood events. Each event might have only washed a few animals into the sediment trap, but in some cases such floods were practically annual events (eg: linked to spring melts of snow) or they might have been less frequent. The fossil beds developed over centuries of floods laying down more and more animal remains.
And, each site is often a different age than the others. You can't claim a global flood on the presence of flood deposits across the globe when some of those sites are a few 10s of thousands of years old and others millions or 10s of millions of years old.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
So no evidence for 'global' flood.
Only massive flood site in mditerranean area, also in Mesopotamia and also in Siberia.
How interesting
No evidence for Flood?
Depends a lot on your assumptions.
Yes, evidence of floods. But, each of those sites would have been places where flood waters deposited the bodies of animals, trees etc caught up in flood events. Each event might have only washed a few animals into the sediment trap, but in some cases such floods were practically annual events (eg: linked to spring melts of snow) or they might have been less frequent. The fossil beds developed over centuries of floods laying down more and more animal remains.
And, each site is often a different age than the others. You can't claim a global flood on the presence of flood deposits across the globe when some of those sites are a few 10s of thousands of years old and others millions or 10s of millions of years old.
As Stated. Your evidence or lack of it depends on your assumptions. What you believe about dating, What you believe about the way fossils are created, What you blieve about catastrophism vs uniformity and what your theology is.
It is not about evidence.
BTW Is this true..honest question
"The fossils of horses identical with our present domestic horse exist in uncounted thousands in the deposits of the Americas from Alaska to patagonia. Yet no horses were in america when the white man came, they had to be imported..Speaking of the disappearance of these and other creatures from regions where theonce may have been numerous, George Mcready Price 91913) says "How did such an assemblage of animals all become extinct together? The diluvialist has an easy explanation.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
BTW Is this true..honest question
"The fossils of horses identical with our present domestic horse exist in uncounted thousands in the deposits of the Americas from Alaska to patagonia. Yet no horses were in america when the white man came, they had to be imported..Speaking of the disappearance of these and other creatures from regions where theonce may have been numerous, George Mcready Price 91913) says "How did such an assemblage of animals all become extinct together? The diluvialist has an easy explanation.
Now, that's what I call a clear Dead Horse tangent!
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I believe that some species in North America became extinct because of the eruption of Yellowstone.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
"The fossils of horses identical with our present domestic horse exist in uncounted thousands in the deposits of the Americas from Alaska to patagonia. Yet no horses were in america when the white man came, they had to be imported. Speaking of the disappearance of these and other creatures from regions where theonce may have been numerous, George Mcready Price 91913) says "How did such an assemblage of animals all become extinct together? The diluvialist has an easy explanation.
An easy explanation, but not a believable one. The problem with this formulation is that it is equally applicable to any large New World land mammal. Why would a global flood lead to the extinction of the equines of the Americas but not bison or llamas, for example? Using your explanation North America should have been devoid of all animal life except birds and insects. If bison and llamas were able to return to the New World from the Old after a global flood, why wouldn't horses? And if llamas made such a trek, why isn't there any fossil evidence of them anywhere in the Old World land mass?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Spike
Mostly Harmless
# 36
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
I guess views on this nowadays fall into 3 categories:
1) it was global
2) it was local
3) it never actually happened at that time, it was copied from other texts to convey a moral lesson.
Does anyone firmly nail their colours to one particular mast?
So what do you think?
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"May you get to heaven before the devil knows you're dead" - Irish blessing
Posts: 12860 | From: The Valley of Crocuses | Registered: May 2001
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
I guess views on this nowadays fall into 3 categories:
1) it was global
2) it was local
3) it never actually happened at that time, it was copied from other texts to convey a moral lesson.
What difference does any option make to the meaning of the text?
Probably none. Hence, nails to masts become redundant.
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
I think something happened, but I'm not sure what. I don't have a problem with the idea of one universal flood...but I do have a serious problem with the idea of God sending/permitting it.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I thought I was nailing the colours to the mast, but it was the captain's wooden leg.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Adeodatus, "punctuation myths" is an excellent term! I knew just what it meant when I saw it without your having to explain it. Would that more theological terms possessed such clarity.
Yes!
The captivity and exile in the Old
Testament have a similar ring. There is a repeating biblical pattern in which the old is destroyed, except for a few who go on to start something new. Prophets such as Ezekiel describe this pattern.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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NJA
Shipmate
# 13022
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
...What difference does any option make to the meaning of the text?
Probably none. Hence, nails to masts become redundant.
If all the judgements & works of God reported in the text are just stories, they didn't really happen then why should anyone believe in a God who doesn't actually do what he talks about?
Posts: 1283 | From: near London | Registered: Sep 2007
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
If it really did happen, even in a small way, I'd have a few questions that modern zoo's might want to know too.
1. How did they deal with all the animal crap?
2. How did they feed all the meat eating animals? What did they feed them?
3. How did they stop the reptiles from getting metabolic bone disease after being kept out of direct sunlight for so long?
4. Was there two of every kind of animal and then a food store of animals to feed other animals?
5. How did they get the animals to breed after they left the ark? Some of these animals surely wouldn't stick together and the chances of them meeting up again after release would be fairly slim.
6. Two of every kind of animal would mean the gene pool was pretty shallow. Even with two very good examples of species, brothers mating with sisters is going to lead to inevitable genetic problems. How did they stop this?
7. Wouldn't the human survivors on the ark mean that their descendents would end up marrying their cousins? (ok a modern zoo doesn't need to know this!)
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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Petaflop
Shipmate
# 9804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
If all the judgements & works of God reported in the text are just stories, they didn't really happen then why should anyone believe in a God who doesn't actually do what he talks about?
Why should anyone believe in a God who can come up with no better solution to the state of the world than drowning it or condemning most of it to eternal punishment? Such a God must be too stupid or too weak or too malevolent to come up with a better solution.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Liopleurodon
Mighty sea creature
# 4836
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Posted
Jamat: evidence really doesn't depend on assumptions. It's the same whatever assumptions you make. You can cherry pick it, ignore it, twist it and so on, but it doesn't change. The evidence for an old earth, evolution and no global flood is so spectacularly strong and consistent that it takes assumptions, a particular theology and so on to dismiss it.
Horses originated in America, passed over the Bering Strait when it was a land bridge because of lower sea levels during a glacial period and established themselves in Asia. At the same time, humans crossed into America taking the same route in the other direction. Shortly after humans showed up, horses went extinct in America. This is almost certainly because they went from having few natural predators to being intensively hunted by humans with weapons. As the earth got warmer again, the sea levels rose, the land bridge disappeared and there was no way for horses to get back into America.
Posts: 1921 | From: Lurking under the ship | Registered: Aug 2003
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NJA
Shipmate
# 13022
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Petaflop:
Why should anyone believe in a God who can come up with no better solution to the state of the world than drowning it or condemning most of it to eternal punishment? Such a God must be too stupid or too weak or too malevolent to come up with a better solution.
What would your solution have been?
His worked. Your existance is testimony to that.
(What do you mean eternal punishment?)
[ 13. May 2010, 11:02: Message edited by: NJA ]
Posts: 1283 | From: near London | Registered: Sep 2007
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Petaflop
Shipmate
# 9804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
Jamat: evidence really doesn't depend on assumptions. It's the same whatever assumptions you make. You can cherry pick it, ignore it, twist it and so on, but it doesn't change. The evidence for an old earth, evolution and no global flood is so spectacularly strong and consistent that it takes assumptions, a particular theology and so on to dismiss it.
Horses originated in America, passed over the Bering Strait when it was a land bridge because of lower sea levels during a glacial period and established themselves in Asia. At the same time, humans crossed into America taking the same route in the other direction. Shortly after humans showed up, horses went extinct in America. This is almost certainly because they went from having few natural predators to being intensively hunted by humans with weapons. As the earth got warmer again, the sea levels rose, the land bridge disappeared and there was no way for horses to get back into America.
I absolutely agree with all of that.
But go back and read what you wrote. In the first paragraph you make some statements about the nature of evidence and what it tells us.
In the second paragraph you then spin a story about what happened in the past, one which I think is broadly correct. But that story is connected by a long chain of inferences to the multiple fragmentary sources of data; the evidence. Without explaining those chains of inference, to the hostile reader, it sounds like you just made up a story.
In fact, those chains of inference are anchored to the data at multiple points, including contributions from geology, climatology, archeology, palentology and various supporting techniques.
But we have big problems in trying to communicate that science:
1. We are not in the habit of communicating levels of confidence in an explanation. How well is this chain of inference linked to actual data? To what extent is that data inconsistent with other explanations?
2. We are in the habit of accepting uncritically the consensus from other fields of science. So, for example, I would be prepared to make the same assertion you did above, but I haven't researched the chain of inference and supporting data. So I can't really make any claims for levels of confidence. It comes down to the a question of trust - on the whole do you trust scientists, or do you distrust them.
Now, you can do this sort of investigation if you have time, but in this case the sources are sufficiently diverse that I guess it would take a week to a month. Whenever I've done this sort of critical study (for example a couple of months back I read some creationist papers on radiocarbon data, quizzed a radio-carbon scientist and then went to the literature to draw some conclusions), I've found the fields I've looked at to be pretty robust. Combine that with the interconnectedness of science (e.g. QM forms the basis of chemistry, and electronics, and atomic physics, and to some extent nuclear physics) and it is pretty hard to see how any of the core scientific theories of their conclusions about the nature of the universe could be very wrong.
But how do you communicate that? Either you make an argument from authority (which are increasing suspect these days), or you need to equip people to make their own critical assessments and motivate them to do so. That latter is particularly challenging - most people would rather only read material which supports their pre-existing position.
Maybe we need to get into the habit of constructing arguments from utility, although that is only applicable to some areas of science.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Dal Segno
al Fine
# 14673
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
[QB]Horses originated in America, passed over the Bering Strait when it was a land bridge because of lower sea levels during a glacial period and established themselves in Asia. At the same time, humans crossed into America taking the same route in the other direction. As the earth got warmer again, the sea levels rose, the land bridge disappeared...[QB]
Is the end of the last ice age sufficiently near in time that legends of the waters rising could have lasted until now? I understand that it is possible for the sea levels to have risen appreciably within the lifetime of one human. Seeing your coastal village go under water would have been quite traumatic.
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Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
Posts: 1200 | From: Pacific's triple star | Registered: Mar 2009
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