Why would they use it as an explanation. To acknowege the flood is to believe the Word of God and atheists will not go that direction.
For to accept the Word of God is to be held accountable and to recognize that God indeed does exist.
When these scientists who refuse to believe in God can duplicate God by creating something out of nothing, maybe then their arguments will have validity.
One of the lies that some young earth creationists tell is that anyone who opposes them is an atheist. Those other YECs who believe what they say are being mislead by liars. It is a lie because it is false. Here is a quote from the
Reverend Adam Sedgewick:…But theories of diluvial gravel, like all other ardent generalizations of an advancing science, must ever be regarded but as shifting hypotheses to be modified by every new fact, till at length they become accordant with all the phenomena of nature.
In retreating where we have advanced too far, there is neither compromise of dignity nor loss of strength; for in doing this, we partake but of the common fortune of every one who enters on a field of investigation like our own…
Bearing upon this difficult question, there is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established – that the vast masses of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period. It was indeed a most unwarranted conclusion, when we assumed the contemporaneity of all the superficial gravel on the earth. We saw the clearest traces of diluvial action, and we had, in our sacred histories, the record of a general deluge. On this double testimony it was, that we gave a unity to a vast succession of phenomena, not one of which we perfectly comprehended, and under the name diluvium, classed them all together.
To seek the light of physical truth by reasoning of this kind, is, in the language of Bacon, to seek the living among the dead, and will ever end in erroneous induction. Our errors were, however, natural, and of the same kind which lead many excellent observers of a former century to refer all the secondary formations of geology to the Noachian deluge. Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having more than once been quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation.
We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic flood…
Source: Reverend Adam Sedgewick, Professor of Geology, University of Cambridge, 1831
Behind all the Victorian language is a man admitting that his previous beliefs about a single flood were wrong. Adam Sedgewick was not an atheist. He was speaking before Darwin published. He admitted that the single large flood interpretation of the geological evidence is wrong.
To associate modern geology with atheism is a gross insult to those geologists who are Christian, Jewish or from any other theistic religion and contrary to the advice of Thomas Aquinas:In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.
By insisting on the literal interpretation of Genesis YECs are placing “obstacles” for people like Adam Sedgewick believing in God. If you tie belief in God inextricably to the Noachic flood, then do not be surprised if an intelligent person takes you at your word and when they see that the geological evidence is against the Flood that they also reject God. It is you who have tied the two together so it is you who are responsible for their possible rejection of God.
Adam Sedgewick was sensible enough to see that a rejection of the literal interpretation of Genesis is not the same as a rejection of God. It is a pity that some YECs cannot do the same.
rossum
