The Flood: Not Global, Barely Local, Mostly Theological, I

The difference is not in the lines on the page, but in the angle from which the observer is viewing those lines.  I consider it possible (at this point) that the interpretation of the ice core data is of that nature.  I know that is how Michael Oard views the situation.  He writes, “If one starts with the uniformitarian paradigm, it is easy to see how the various methods appear to be corroborating.  However, when one steps back and questions the unspoken starting assumptions and allows the parameters to vary by the full range available, completely different consistent results can be obtained.  This shows the importance of where we start.  The Bible claims to be a reliable historical record and this history from the very beginning was attested to by Christ and the Apostles. Thus, it is a logical starting position from which to create our worldview. On the other hand, belief in deep time may be internally reinforcing, but has no external reference point. Either must be accepted by faith, only one will be right.”  I agree with Oard about the historical accuracy of the Bible, but I am not yet convinced that absolutely requires a young age for the ice core.

Since you goal was to prove the flood was not global, you quit looking before the evidence called for a final conclusion.  The evidence is all across the spectrum; there are “conclusive” facts proving a global flood, as well as “disproving” it.  There are certainly ancient events which cannot be reconstructed from the extant evidence, which you cannot even begin to speculate, or did that even occur to you?

“The Bible claims to be a reliable historical record and this history from the very beginning was attested to by Christ and the Apostles. Thus, it is a logical starting position from which to create our worldview”

>> This is the mother of all mistakes.  You can argue all day long how justified the YEC position is, and how many “qualified” personnel are attesting to it; but unless you are a college student talking to friends about Christianity you will never know how many people so easily and automatically close their minds and hearts to Christianity because of the astounding views propagated by YECs.  I stand with the non-Christians on this: the YEC position mocks the intelligence of my God.  It is a hindrance to evangelism, and an obstruction to worshipping in Truth and in Spirit.

Zx,
I disagree with you as to the reason why people close their minds and hearts to Christianity; it is not the alleged ‘absurdities’ of the YEC position that causes them to do so, but their innate hostility, as fallen sinners, to the sovereign God of creation and redemption.  It is because men feel no need to be redeemed from their sins that they find, not only the YEC position, but the gospel of salvation through a crucified Savior to be utter “foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:18), unworthy of consideration by any rational person.  That is why the Greeks laughed at Paul’s preaching about the resurrection of the dead (Acts 17:32); that is also why King Agrippa accused Paul of being crazy (Acts 26:24); because “the man wihout the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:14).  To lay the blame for people’s close-mindedness to Christianity at the doorstep of the YEC’s, in my judgment, shows a failure to grasp the innate depravity of the human heart, which is the real cause of people’s contempt for the gospel.

“To lay the blame for people’s close-mindedness to Christianity at the doorstep of the YEC’s, in my judgment, shows a failure to grasp the innate depravity of the human heart, which is the real cause of people’s contempt for the gospel”

Equally I can tell you that is overtly presumptuous and naive.  One can only meaningfully accept or reject the Gospels if one is convinced that it is worthwhile to give it proper thought and consideration.  If one is told to believe in a God who requires one to accept that the Earth is only 6000 years old, underwent a global flood which there is no evidence of, and that the overwhelming scientific evidence and consensus of the fact of evolution is false, then maybe it is not too hard to understand why this person cannot see the need to give this God “proper thought and consideration”.  I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do, but that it’s perfectly understandable - just like how we can understand why a man whose family was slaughtered by Crusaders is unwilling to consider Christianity, or why most of us do not give a second thought to the seriousness of stories of fairies living under mushrooms, or monsters under our bed.

Zx,  When YEC’ers rightly insist that Christian conversion involves a radical intellectual revolution in which one’s very way of thinking about the natural world must undergo a revolutionary change, they are simply being honest about the nature of Christian conversion, which calls the unbeliever to ‘intellectual’ repentance.  The unbeliever views the natural world as something which functions “on its own” apart from God; consequently, its operation is invariably uniform because its operation is unsupervised.  God never intervenes to perform works involving the temporary suspension of natural law.  Now, this way of thinking about the natural world is “natural” to the unbeliever, but it is ungodly and profoundly unbiblical, and conversion to Christ involves embracing a new view of the natural world as totally dependent on God.  God exercises complete control over the forces of nature.  He personally directs every subatomic particle in the universe to accomplish His will.  Moreover, He not only can, but has intervened repeatedly in the course of cosmic history to perform works involving a suspension of natural law (continued)

(continued).  This intellectual revolution that conversion involves results in a profoundly altered view of natural law.  A Christian cannot see natural law as prescriptive, but merely descriptive of God’s ordinary way of directing the course of nature.  Since God is sovereign over nature, He is free to direct the course of nature in ways that run counter to its ordinary operation, just as a traffic cop is free to direct traffic in ways that run counter to the “traffic signs” that ordinarily govern the flow of traffic. 
    I have a hard time understanding why anyone who has undergone the intellectual revolution that I describe would ‘sniff’ at the theories of YEC’s without giving them serious consideration.  Those theories are not infallible, of course, and they may be wide of the mark, but they are worthy of consideration for the simple reason that they take into account the miracle-working God of Scripture in a way that theories based on the assumption of strict naturalism do not.  Moreover, they make a serious effort at correlating the data in the natural world with the data of Scripture.

(continued)  Why, for example,  should a Christian, whose mind has been set free from the shackles of strict naturalism, not consider the possibility that God has supernaturally accelerated the rate of radioactive decay at some moment in the past, as some YEC’s suggest?  That would certainly explain how rocks that appear very old may in fact be younger than they appear.  Why should a Christian, whose thoughts are not bound by strict naturalism, not consider the possibility that God used the mechanism of ‘catastrophic plate tectonics’ to produce a global flood that buried all the continents under water and laid down the sedimentary deposits that we observe in the world today?  On what ground may believers automatically reject a theory, simply because that theory appeals to the working of supernatural or miraculous forces to make the theory ‘work’?  I can understand why an unbeliever would reject with contempt any theory to explain the natural world that involves the working of supernatural forces—after all, he is a strict materialist.  I can’t understand a similiar attitude in a Christian.

Because it is profoundly absurd, Martin.

One does not need to be a strict materialist to, quoting Galileo, “not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use”.  The theories of Young Earth Creationism demand that of us - to forgo our common sense, reason and intellect.  Just look at what you just submitted - you are totally toying with the evidence to fit your preconclusion.  If “intellectual revolution” requires intellectual dishonesty, it remains perfectly understandable why non-Christians are obstructed from considering Christianity.  It is exactly what Saint Augustine predicted in his “The Literal Interpretation of Genesis”.

You also made it sound as if non-YEC Christians are not open to the plausibility of the YEC position, but that is wrong.  Give sufficient and proper evidence, many Christians (myself included) will be all too happy to boast that the Bible is not just true spiritually but literally as well.  Why shouldn’t we?  What do we gain from denying this if it is true?  It is YECs like yourself, however, who are closed to being convinced otherwise right from the beginning - no amount of evidence/scientific studies can convince you that the first few chapters of Genesis did not happen literally.  This is because you have committed to the philosophical paradigm that Science cannot help us interpret/understand difficult verses in the Bible.  To a YEC, Science must always play second fiddle.  You don’t seem to be able to appreciate that both Scriptures and Science can complement each other so beautifully in His divine plan; Scriptures being a ideological bulmark against the atheistic materialism that can so easily result from the success of Science, and Science helping to reinform the true meaning of Scriptures meant for all mankind of all times.

It must also be said that it is bad theology to posit a God who performs miracles for no rhyme and reason except to confuse and cause such division within His people.  To explain the global flood, you need to believe in 2 miracles - that God intervened in the natural order to cause a massive amount of water to cover all land masses (not unacceptable); AND after that He purposely wiped off every single trace of physical evidence that He did it while allowing evidence that He didn’t to surface (completely unacceptable).  The first miracle has a purpose - to punish mankind of their sins; the second, I can think of no benign ones.  It is therefore NOT analogous with other miracles stated in the Bible such as the preservation of Daniel’s friends, or the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Zx,
Although you say there is no evidence for a global flood, you know that there are many YEC’s would disagree with you on that point.  I wonder if you have ever familiarized yourself with the “catastrophic plate tectonics” model developed by men like John Baumgartner and Andrew Snelling.  It is a model that focuses on one mechanism (catastrophic crustal plate movements caused by rising heat and steam from the earth’s mantle) that God may have used to cause flooding on a global scale.  It accounts for much of the data observed in the geological record, including evidence of catastrophic deposition of sediment as titanic waves of rising oceanwaters swept in repeated surges across whole continents, burying alive both marine creatures and creatures from different ecological zones as the waters rose higher with each successvie surge.  I suspect that most mainline scientists never both to look at such a model, since they have already made up their minds that the verdict is in on creationism—all creationists are cranks, and their theories are unworthy of consideration by any serious scientist (continued)

Someone like myself, however, is more willing to hear what they have to say, since I share their basic presupposition that the Bible is true in all that it affirms—even when what it says touches on the realm of history.  Of course, I am open to viewing the Genesis narrative as a non-historical parable or legend intended to teach spiritual lessons, if there is any textual evidence to support that view of Genesis.  But the evidence is quite the contrary; just look at the details given in the narrative—the precise day, month, and year of Noah’s life when the flood began, the precise duration of the flood, the precise height to which the floodwaters rose.  There is nothing in the Flood narrative to suggest that we are dealing with an event that took place “once upon a time.”  Moreover, in Genesis 11, the entire human race is said to descend from Noah’s three sons, a point that the apostle reiterated when he said that all human beings are “of one blood.”  The Bible clearly presents these chapters as an historical record, and Jesus and the apostles clearly regarded it as a trustworthy record.  I cannot allow the fallible declarations of scientists to obscure that indisputable fact.

You may think that I am “toying” with the evidence by my openness to consider the alternative interpretation of the evidence by (in your view) creationist “nuts;” but I do not see it as “toying with the evidence"rather, as persevering in the confidence that, rightly interpreted, the evidence will be seen to confirm, rather than contradict, the Genesis account.  I am sure when Abraham sought to see divine benevolence in God’s command to slay his son on Mount Moriah, the devil must have tempted him to think, “You are overlooking the obvious, Abraham!  Only a God who takes sadistic delight in watching parents agonize at the thought of killing their own children would command you to take a knife and plunge it into your own son’s breast!  Get real, Abraham!  A God who would ask you to do such a thing cannot be good.”  But Abraham persisted in putting the best interpretation on God’s actions, even when others might have seen that interpretation as “strained.”

Zx, There is one further thing that I must say.  You view my position as absurd; but you forget that many evolutionists freely admit to the seeming “absurdity” of their position.  By that I mean, they admit that it is completely counter-intuitive and seemingly contrary to reason and common sense to attribute the vast biodiversity and complexity we see in the natural world to the unguided and random operation of natural forces.  That’s why Richard Dawkins has felt obliged to give his books on evolution titles like “The Blind Watchmaker” and “Climbing Mount Improbable.”  The reason they search unceasingly for the ‘unguided processes’ that caused life to arise from non-life is this:  they are driven by a kind of faith, the faith that, when all the facts are known, mindless nature will be seen to have within itself all the properties needed to produce ‘accidentally’ every phenomenon that we observe in nature, without the need for a guiding hand—and that includes the first living cell.  So it is not only creationists who propose ‘absurdities’—everyone proposes what seems like an absurdity to those outside their belief system.

Martin,

I am tired to debate the other points with you because I believe I’ve already addressed them (though I promise you I’ll look up your ‘catastrophic plate tectonics’ model); but your caricature of Richard Dawkins (as a biologist) I think is clearly wrong-footed.  It might be better if you had actually read both his books rather than simply infer from their titles his ideas (this guy earns a living from being unnecessarily provocative).  These 2 books of his explain in great detail how evolution is exactly NOT what you think it to be - it is NOT “unguided and random”, a common misconception propagated by creationists.  Dawkins states clearly in “The God Delusion” that evolution by natural selection is a 3rd option to the perceived dichotomy between random chance and direct design.

I personally think that Dawkins is as much a ‘believer’ in his belief that the Darwinian process might also account for non-biological entities such as the fundamental physical constants of the Universe (Ref: 2nd debate with John Lennox organized by the Fixed Point Foundation), or that evolution has disproved the existence of God. These beliefs of his, as with creationist ones, are non-scientific and non-sequitur.  But I will strongly disagree that in the field of biology, the theory of evolution as explained by Dawkins is as absurd as that of Special Creation.  It is not - it is a theory that is explicable, verifiable and falsifiable; and if true, gloriously testifies of a God who in His infinite intelligence can not only create the world, but create it with self-creating/transformative, naturalistic powers.

Zx,
If you do look into the catastrophic plate tectonics model, I would suggest you see firsthand what a ‘creationist’ geologist like Andrew Snelling says about it (he has a DVD in which he explains the basic model, entitled, “The Flood:  The Big Picture and the Resulting Evidences.”  It is a vast improvement on earlier models, because it is based on a knowledge of the earth’s physical structure and utilizes concepts that are widely accepted by geologists, such as plate tectonic theory—although it obviously modifies that theory by suggesting that a “catastrophic” tectonic event involvement the rapid movement of crustal plates (at meters per second) occurred in the past, producing widespread flooding.  This model has also made one scientific prediction that was later verified—namely, that there would be found evidence of cooler, denser rock material ‘subducted” into the earth’s mantle where the younger, basalt ocean floor meets the older, fossil-bearing continental rock.  (continued)

Zx,
I would like to know, however,  what you regard as"sufficient and proper” evidence in support of a scientific theory?  Must any scientific model that depends for its viability on God’s miracle-working power be automatically rejected as ‘absurd’?  If so, why?  Why does mainstream science automatically reject any scientific model not based on strict methodological naturalism?  Why does it say such a model cannot give us a reasonable explanation for what occurred in the past?What is the basis of this “faith” which says that only scientific research based on the principle of strict naturalism can yield a true and reliable knowledge about the ancient past?  Why this a priori exclusion of miracle and direct supernatural causation in the events of earth’s history?  It would seem that a miracle of God would be needed to trigger simultaneous volcanic explosions all over the globe.  For those who believe in a miracle-working God, why would it be ‘out of court’ to posit in a scientific model that miracle played some role in the triggering of past geological events?

Martin, how about using an example - the explanation of rainfall.  What causes rainfall in the past?  We have no 100% certain evidence of that.  I have a sudden liking of this theory today - that it rained in the past because God invisibly rested on the clouds and poured water from an ancient metallic jug to wet the Earth.  Do you consider this absurd? 

But wait…