Science & Religion

[buffalo]

Buffalo, you haven’t solved any of the problems I posed. Are you a secret member of Answers in Genesis or the Institute for Creation Research? Your defense of the flood myth echoes theirs.

But here’s another problem: with a global population in 4500 BCE of approximately seven billion Homo sapiens, and an average pregnancy rate of 3.13% of the female population, 219,100 women were pregnant at the time of the flood. A literal interpretation of the flood as an event caused by God makes God one of the world’s most prolific abortionists.

It is my refusal to blaspheme a loving creator as cause of all these flood-associated abortions that leads me to deny a literal interpretation of the flood myth.

StAnastasia

I got my ring a few weeks ago.

The questions you pose are so easy to answer one not need be a member of any organization.

God is the creator. We, the created. Your reductionist view shows a very shallow understanding and lack of faith. If your physical life is terminated today by God and you find yourself in heaven is that a bad thing?

When Jesus arrives at the 2nd coming are you going to shout - I am not going with you you abortionist?

 

[rossum]

What are the salient points, you ask?

• The earth was flooded, every bit under water - true.
• The animals on those flooded lands died - true.
• Some animals survived to repopulate - true.
• The water receded - true.

Your first point is disingenuous. In Genesis the flooding is simultaneous over the entire Earth. In your version the flooding is sequential with different parts of the Earth being flooded at different times.

Your interpretation also makes God break his promise to Noah not to repeat what He did. Local floods have happened since then, killing both men and animals. Are you saying that God does not keep His promises?

rossum

 

[You]

The Noah myth has been discussed over and over on CAF. To repcapitulate some of the chief difficulties:

1. There is not enough water on earth to submerge it to a depth of 29,053 feet. Magic needed here.
2. The water would not have been able to drain anywhere to reveal dry land. More magic needed here.
3. Noah had no animal collection system to capture animals from all over the globe. Magical flying transport carpets might have helped.
4. Noah would have needed aquaria with lighting and heating systems to preserve all the fish species that could not survive in brackish water. Either magic, or solar-powered lighting and filtering systems.
5. The elephants alone produced 5,600 pounds of manure per day over the duration of the flood. Noah would have done little else besides shovel elephant manure.(That doesn’t count the other 8.7 million species.)
6. Noah would have to have traveled to Australia to drop off the marsupials before heading to Ararat. But since Ararat is higher than any point in Australia, how did the ark come to rest on that mountain? How, you ask? Easy – magic!
7. Noah would have to have carried seeds of all the plants, which would not have survived 150 days of submersion in salt water. After the flood, there was no living vegetation. How did the plant eating animals survive, you ask? Easy – magic!

I could go on, but I’ll give You time to solve these problems first. Then I’ll give You another problem set for tomorrow.

StAnastasia

Yes, He walked on water; Yes He fed the five thousand with three loaves and two fish; yes He raised people from the dead; yes He resurrected Himself from the dead.
Saving animals is obviously impossible if you can raise a person from the dead, etc., etc.
You cannot now escape from the scientific, geological fact that all the earth was covered in water and many if not most types of animals died and some survived and repopulated the planet. The next time you touch down in England for your Geophysical Conference you can think of all the times England was beneath the sea in its history and all the animals that died in those inundations and of the few types that survived to live and breed again.

I welcome all your problems, for me there are no problems only difficulties.

 

[StAnastasia]

I welcome all your problems, for me there are no problems only difficulties.

You haven’t answered any of my points.

 

[You]

Your first point is disingenuous. In Genesis the flooding is simultaneous over the entire Earth. In your version the flooding is sequential with different parts of the Earth being flooded at different times.

Your interpretation also makes God break his promise to Noah not to repeat what He did. Local floods have happened since then, killing both men and animals. Are you saying that God does not keep His promises?

rossum

Not disingenuous I think. It is split into two points; the first is that Noahs flood technically was not instant and simultaneous, as in, in the twinkling of an eye all the earth was under water. It took 40 days to flood, and numbers in Sacred Scripture are highly symbolic like methylated spirits are highly inflammable. So 40 days could mean as long as you want and that means the flood took as long as you want to reach everywhere; the point of the story being that it did actually reach everywhere and do its work well.

I think that He promised never to send a similar type of flood again, in other words a global catastrophe, no matter how fast or slow it proceeded. And it probably is true that since most of the floods in prehistory happened relatively soon after the single supercontinent broke up that the land then probably was quite low-lying, with orogeny and volcanism mostly occurring when those scattering plates collided with each other. Definitely as far as humankind is concerned we might be long gone before all of those mountains are eroded flat enough to produce another technically global flood covering every bit of land on the earth.

 

[You]

You haven’t answered any of my points.

Your answer was that nothing is impossible!

 

[rossum]

Not disingenuous I think. It is split into two points; the first is that Noahs flood technically was not instant and simultaneous, as in, in the twinkling of an eye all the earth was under water. It took 40 days to flood, and numbers in Sacred Scripture are highly symbolic like methylated spirits are highly inflammable. So 40 days could mean as long as you want and that means the flood took as long as you want to reach everywhere; the point of the story being that it did actually reach everywhere and do its work well.

Your interpretation has a series of non-universal floods. Noah’s flood was universal, covering all the earth simultaneously. That seems to me to be a major difference. Local floods have never been an issue. Global flooding is an issue.

I think that He promised never to send a similar type of flood again, in other words a global catastrophe

In your interpretation it was never a “global” catastrophe, it was only ever a series of local catastrophes. How can God promise not to do “again” what He never did in the first place? You cannot equivocate between local and global in this way, it just shows the weakness of the logic behind your interpretation. We can all see that local catastrophes continue to happen. You have a real problem reconciling your interpretation with God’s promise.

If the flood was global, then the evidence shows that it never happened. If the flood was local then God has broken his promise. Far better to interpret it as an exaggerated story of a large local flood, where the most important thing about the story is the moral rather than the narrative details. An overly literal interpretation of the Bible can miss a lot of the moral and get hung up on the narrative details. It is not the narrative details that are important.

rossum

 

[buffalo]

rossum;8577567 It is not the narrative details that are important.:

The text itself must be respected. The Tradition must be respected. The numerous (over 70 ) accounts must be considered.

 

[inocente]

It took 40 days to flood, and numbers in Sacred Scripture are highly symbolic like methylated spirits are highly inflammable. So 40 days could mean as long as you want and that means the flood took as long as you want to reach everywhere; the point of the story being that it did actually reach everywhere and do its work well.

How do you know that 40 days is highly symbolic and could mean whatever we want, but that the flood actually happened, and wasn’t symbolic, and can’t mean whatever we want?

How do you know which parts of the text must be literally respected as history, like the flood, and which parts can safely be ignored as unknowns, like the duration?

 

[grannymh]

Granny, you know those 10,000 individuals were not the first humans, right? Humans have been around for 200,000 years but the population wasn’t reduced to 10,000 until ~50,00-100,000 years ago.

In actual scientific research papers, the claim of roughly 10,000 breeding pairs, as you pointed out, refers to the famous bottleneck theory (reduced population) which theoretically could have happened at any time during the ancestral genealogy of either pre-humans or real humans. In biological genealogy, there is not a precise line of demarcation between subhuman (ancient extinct hominids which have many characteristics of humans, but are not the exact same nature as you and I) and fully-complete humans because all that is being researched is similar anatomies. Note: various species of monkeys, chimps, etc. are often used as comparison anatomies. This is why scientific research language uses general time spans such as 50,000 - 100,000 years, plus or minus.

The interpreters of “10,000 breeding pairs” claim that Adam and Eve did not exist. Different methods of calculations have come up with the possibility of lower estimates or “smaller” populations; nonetheless, the claim that Adam and Eve did not exist, still exists.

If there is contemporary research dating the population bottleneck to a more definite period between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, I would appreciate seeing the citation. Contemporary meaning in the last five years or so. I am not implying that previous research is wrong. So if your research citation is older, please present it. Thank you. When one checks contemporary research footnotes, one can easily tell which previous research is still a valid contribution in the eyes of scientists.

What I have been saying is that humanity is not a group of miscellaneous descendents from the sexual relations of a miscellaneous group of 10,000 breeding pairs which existed at some point over a period of 50,000 years plus or minus a few centuries. Considering the effective population size, the breeding pairs are only part of the actual population existing for x amount of years.

In other words, in order to defend human unity down through many, many centuries of pre-history, there needs to be a single source for the human species.

 

[SGWessells]

SGWessells, I thank God for your sense of humor, even if you yourself would not attribute it to God!

The reason I said what I did about probability is that in the course of research for a book I discovered a curious episode in seventeenth-century English Natural theology. Whereas natural theology before this had argued for the “existence and attributes of God” on a positive or absolute basis, in one period of that century a few theologians began to argue that God’s existence was more probable than his non-existence. In other words, they took the question out of the positive realm, and situated it in the realm of probability. Of course, once you have it on that footing, it’s only a small step to the alternative conclusion that God’s non-existence is more probable than his existence.

StAnastasia

Thanks for the compliment. I attribute it to my innate wackiness, which I wouldn’t presume to attribute to God; but who knows? There is the platypus, after all.

Interesting point about the negative approach… May I ask what theologians?

 

[SGWessells]

Right on! That has been my point all along.

Do you expect science to be able to show soft tissue can last 19 or 65 million years? On what grounds?

On the grounds that first, it was not exactly “soft tissue” but the degraded fragments of same; second, that it was found in rock reliably dated at about 68 million years old. Soft tissue does not survive under most conditions. Now an exception has been found. It will take more than one exception in one field to overturn the evidence for an old earth from many fields repeatedly confirmed, all of which corroborate each other.

 

[tonyrey]

Is that an American game show, or does it have a more commonly known name?

You should know by now - if the name of your denomination is correct…

NB The term is etymologically precise…

 

[buffalo]

On the grounds that first, it was not exactly “soft tissue” but the degraded fragments of same; second, that it was found in rock reliably dated at about 68 million years old. Soft tissue does not survive under most conditions. Now an exception has been found. It will take more than one exception in one field to overturn the evidence for an old earth from many fields repeatedly confirmed, all of which corroborate each other.

Time will tell.

 

[tonyrey]

Depends on what you mean by “physical events.”

Events that are generally considered to be within the scope of science.

Do you believe free will can be explained scientifically?

 

[rossum]

The text itself must be respected. The Tradition must be respected. The numerous (over 70 ) accounts must be considered.

So, tell me then, buffalo, did the Prodigal Son’s father live at #142 Main Street, Nineveh or at #144 Main Street, Nineveh? Since you seem to think that narrative details of a moral story are important I would expect you to know these things.

The point of the story of the Flood is not to be a geology textbook, any more than the point of the story of the Prodigal Son s to be a street guide to the city of Nineveh. By narrowly focusing on the specific details of the narrative, you are missing the moral of the story. Or do you think that Jesus was really wanting to tell us about who lived where in Nineveh?

rossum

 

[buffalo]

So, tell me then, buffalo, did the Prodigal Son’s father live at #142 Main Street, Nineveh or at #144 Main Street, Nineveh? Since you seem to think that narrative details of a moral story are important I would expect you to know these things.

The point of the story of the Flood is not to be a geology textbook, any more than the point of the story of the Prodigal Son s to be a street guide to the city of Nineveh. By narrowly focusing on the specific details of the narrative, you are missing the moral of the story. Or do you think that Jesus was really wanting to tell us about who lived where in Nineveh?

rossum

There is a difference between historical narratives and parables.

 

[StAnastasia]

Events that are generally considered to be within the scope of science. Do you believe free will can be explained scientifically?

As opposed to being explained magically? There are some very interesting lines of research into this topic. But I’m not worried that an explanation of free will explains it away.

 

[davidv]

As opposed to being explained magically? There are some very interesting lines of research into this topic. But I’m not worried that an explanation of free will explains it away.

Why do you think that if it’s in not scientific, it’s magic?
What about spiritual, or supernatural, explanations?

 

[StAnastasia]

Why do you think that if it’s in not scientific, it’s magic?
What about spiritual, or supernatural, explanations?

Why would you invoke “spiritual” or supernatural explanations for a physical, natural flood?