Glenn Morton hypothesis: The Flood could ONLY have happened 5 million+ years ago

First, Glen sometimes posts here as well and is very much aware of EvC. In addition, many of us are also members over at TWEB.Reading what you posted of Glen's messages he is saying that there could not have been a world-wide flood in at least five million years.There are, as he admits, no known examples of modern man anywhere near back that far.Glen seems to be trying to keep some literal Adam in the game by saying maybe it was not a modern Home species but rather one of the predecessor species.That's fine but it really seems to be much ado over nothing, little more than mental masturbation.The Bible contains several creation stories. There is the later one found in Genesis 1 and the much earlier (and a composite of several different stories) tale found in Genesis 2. They are entirely different and mutually exclusive. If one is literally true, then the other is literally false. They even describe two entirely different Gods.There are some things we can be pretty sure of. There are no signs anywhere of a world-wide flood at ANY time in the past.There are signs of regional floods, the breaking of the damn flooding the Mediterranean Sea, a smaller event that flooded the Black Sea, the great flood plains of the US North West, a major flood event that happened between the Tigris and Euphrates and laid down a bed of nearly 10 feet of sediment, but none of these were within the period of recorded history and all of them would have had minimal effect on world-wide populations of critters.It simply seems to me to make more sense to look at the Bible and ask some basic questions.Why did the editors and redactors include conflicting tales of creation?They were not dumb. They could certainly read and reason as well as anyone living today, so why include accounts that are not simply contradictory, they are mutually exclusive?One possible reason might be that they were trying, in poetic language and allegory, to explain the world as they saw it, explain GOD's relationships with man, man's relationships with God and her fellow man, and some "Just So" stories to explain why childbirth seems more difficult and painful for humans, why we fear snakes, why we must work the fields for our living instead of simply browsing like the animals, why we should take time off.They also included the two tales (actually more than two tales but the story in Genesis 2 is a compilation of several tales) because they describe two very different and very important aspects of GOD.The God of Genesis 1 is very much aloof from creation, creation is done by an act of will alone, God "speaks" it into existence. That God is very sure of Herself, Transcendent. That God creates by will, without error, and step by step until She stops, looks on it and "Finds it GOOD".But there is no interaction with what is created.The God we find in Genesis 2 is entirely different. This is a personal God, one that walks with people, creates things by hand from the earth itself. It is unlike the sure and transcendent God of Genesis 1.Why not simply accept the stories as the authors, editors and redactors did? Why try to pretend that they were meant to be taken literally?The Flood story is the same. It's not one story but rather a compilation of several flood myths. And it is ABSOLUTELY not something that happened at least at any time that Homo sapiens sapiens lived.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I only know you from your website, which is one of, if not the, best arguments for science over fundamentalism in regard to geology, and one of the better arguments for a rational approach to Christianity, that I have ever seen.That is why I was so puzzled. Now, as obviously suspected, it is clear to me from what has been posted that you have been misrepresented by this Mark character.Please keep up the good work and consider sticking around here. IMO you are a hero.

An excellent post. IMO jar is a hero too .Hey, I have to give credit where credit is due

I posted this on Theology Web a few minutes ago:Glenn,Other than TheologyWeb, the only place I have discussed your hypothesis online is on the thread (here: http://http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.c...&f=7&t=204&m=1 ) that I made you aware of the same day I posted it.Any misrepresentation of your beliefs on that thread was unintentional, and I accept blame for not better researching your views before seeking to debunk them.However, if you visit the thread, you'll see that earlier today I posted your rebuttal (from this thread [Theology Web]) regarding your beliefs about anthropology. So the accurate information is now there.Not to mention that if you felt I had misrepresented your views to begin with, you could have posted a rebuttal on that forum within an hour, since I e-mailed you immediately after posting to let you know I had posted (and obviously, to give you an opportunity to post anything you'd like on that forum).So I am not spreading lies about you or your beliefs, and as I mentioned, I apologize for whatever misrepresentation of your beliefs I am guilty of.-

Neither did mark say "anatomically modern man" ... nor do my comments pertain to "anatomically modern man" but to the first evidence of tool use and religious artifacts.So what IS your position on this issue. Rather than complain about being misrepresented, I would think you would want to say what your position is.Enjoyps - welcome to the fray.Edited by RAZD, : subtitle, added information

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Razd wrote:
"Neither did mark say "anatomically modern man" ... nor do my comments pertain to "anatomically modern man" but to the first evidence of tool use and religious artifacts.So what IS your position on this issue. Rather than complain about being misrepresented, I would think you would want to say what your position is.Enjoyps - welcome to the fray."I am in too many frays. When I look at anthropology, I see evidence which would reasonably be interpreted as evidence of religion among the archaic hominids. If one is a christian and believes that one of the things which marks us as human is our religious sense, then clearly those archaic hominids would have religion. The absolute farthest back one can push religion in any form is 600 kyr ago, but that is a lot older than Hugh Ross (Mark's hero?), believes. He says there is no evidence of religion prior to 30kyr ago. I would point out evidence cited on my page http://home.entouch.net/dmd/religion.htmTo me, this evidence says that the archaics had a religious sense and that makes them human (not anatomically modern human as Mark misunderstood).I do not beleive that looks defines who is made in the image of God. If that were the case, one might say my grand daughter, who looks much different than I (being half chinese) might not be in the image of god. Looks simply don't define humanity--behavior does.Now, as I said earlier in a previous post here, Adam could have been an australopithecine for all I care. H.floresiensis, regardless of whether or not he is a deformed H. sapiens or a descendant of A. garhi, had enough intelligence in his chimpsized brain to do many of the things we humans do--stone tools, mastery of fire, and hunting big (for them) game and all of this collectively screams intelligence.So, to answer your question, if one wishes to maintain biblical historicity, as I do one simply is forced to an older Adam than is popular among Christians.This fits with the lack of a genetic bottleneck and the evidence of very old genes in our DNA see http://home.entouch.net/dmd/hegene.htm.
Some of this evidence is discussed in a recent New Scientist article, which is very late to the game as far as I am concerned, because my web page was made years ago.
Dan Jones, “The Neanderthal Within,” New Scientist, March 3, 2007, p. 31

Jar wrote:
"The Bible contains several creation stories. There is the later one found in Genesis 1 and the much earlier (and a composite of several different stories) tale found in Genesis 2. They are entirely different and mutually exclusive. If one is literally true, then the other is literally false. They even describe two entirely different God"I would interpret it differently. I would say that Gen 1 is the pre-planning of the universe and Genesis 2 is bilions of years later. see http://home.entouch.net/dmd/daysofproclamation.htmIf the only thing God can inspire is a false story, why believe in God?

Thank you Mark. I appreciate the correction.

Except that most of the evidence points to the story in Genesis 1 being the younger more recent one and the story that begins around Genesis 2:5 being a compilation of older tales from far different cultures. In addition there is NOTHING in either Genesis tale to indicate that one is pre-planning and the other implementation. In fact the story in Genesis 1 is quite clear that a job is performed, finished, inspected, approved and that then God took a break. The Bible is not GOD, the Map is not the Territory, the Treasure Map is not the Treasure.The Bible is a creation of Man. I believe it is inspired, but it is also written to speak directly to a people of an era and milieu. It was written by people just like you, just like me, limited and ignorant. But it is still just a Map.I believe in GOD for more reasons than the Bible. I believe in GOD, GOD the creator and I look at the record that GOD left, and when the record GOD left refutes a literal reading of the Bible, then I believe GOD's record, not the work of Man.Over the years I have enjoyed reading your website, and I hope that you continue with your quest.I see no reason though to even wonder about many of the stories of the Bible. A good example is the subject of this thread, the story of the Flood.First, there is simply NO evidence of a world-wide flood.But we can go further.Genetic evidence shows us that there is no common bottleneck marker across all species.Shipbuilding and maritime expertise may go back as much as 40,000 years, but so far there are no indications of shipbuilding or maritime expertise back beyond the somewhat indirect evidence of the Polynesian, Australian, South Pacific expansions. And none of those were on a scale such as the Noah tales; the livestock on board was more likely a few pigs, chickens and perhaps rats.If there is a basis, a kernel of truth to the story of the flood it is that there was likely some local flood and the tale or tales were glorified and exaggerated. We should then look to see what lessons were taught by the story and are those lessons valid?The explanation for the Creation tales is IMHO far more likely as I explained in Message 16. The two tales were included because they served NOT a historical purpose but rather a social and theological purpose.I see science as simply another way that we can learn "How GOD did it."

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Jar you were losing me at first, but I agree totally with the last sentence. Excellently put. I beleive the Genesis story is the same in 1 and 2. If you look at it as one story instead of two. We do not ever speak in perfect chronological order. We tell a general summary of what happened gen 1. And go back to further explain how it happened. God's planning is the creation, so I don't believe the pre-planning and the implementation. When I read Genesis, I see clear evidence of a flood. Many "will" dis agree. The evidence I see is dead dinosaurs. I believe the bible is very accurate; our language is not. The meanings of words have just changed so much. Before the flood (maybe even immediately before the flood), the Bible, for some strange reason, speaks of "giants in the land in those days." Why do we ASSume giants meant giant humans? We have never found giant human bones; but we have found giant bones. We found the bones years later and called them dinosaurs and yet wonder why the Bible never speaks of "dinosaurs." THEY DIDN'T CALL THEM THAT, WE DID! (excuse the yelling please) No one really knows what killed the dinosaurs. Some say an Ice Age, but in "Day After Tomorrow" a flood causes the second Ice Age. I, on my own, came to that same conclusion though that Adam and Eve were probably cavemen. In Genesis somewhere (Go read it I'm not sure where) it said God made them a coat of skin when he kicked them out of Eden. We ASSume again that this means clothes, but I will point out that it could just as well mean fur like bigfoot. The only thing about the time I can say is. . (Scientist are going to have fun with this I know) God controls time. I beleive this. When it says creation lasted 6 days. It, for some strange reason, mentions that a day is when the sun rises/falls and the moon rises/falls. The sun could have stayed up for however long God wanted it to. We ASSume once more that it took 24 hours. I am not just making things up. Joshua, I believe it was, defeated an army before the sun went down. God made the sun stand still until the army was defeated. Bible scholars tell us which scripture that was from. The Bible makes sense because God is the ultimate cheat code. I mean come on 2007 and we(nice way of saying ya'll) still haven't proved the Bible wrong. It's time to stop trying and start trying to understand it.One last thing, if life started in the Garden of Eden and spread from that point out for a few generations, then even a local flood would have destroyed the world as they new it and all the life that was on the Earth at that time. Now if we are speaking of let's say Pangea, the land would have been one solid mass. If that flooded then the whole world and all life would be killed. All life except maybe some marine life and some that could fly maybe. Which is supported by historical accounts of Seamonsters(possibly "dinosaurs" that lived in the water).The answer is going to be found in what we haven't thought of yet.

I, personally, do not find total fault in mpb1's bringing your thoughts and material to this, a different forum. His failure, however, was to not provide specific links in message 1, per where he was pulling your input from (see my message message 9). And it was also an administrative failure in not insisting those links were there prior to the topic being promoted out of the "Proposed New Topics" forum (we try to do quality control on the beginnings of new topics, prior to them being released to open debate).I do think it was a nice touch on his part, to notify you that he was bring the discussion to . Now, if he expected you to follow him here, that is another matter. Of course, you should not be expected to do such, although it is nice of you to have done such.If you choose to post further at this forum, there are various coding devices available for formatting things, including creating quote boxes. Please see the dBCodes On link for further information, or use the "Peak" function link at the bottom of individual messages. The "Peak" version of the message shows the raw text, including any coding.Again, welcome to . You have put out many fine articles, including the ever popular "Morton's Demon", available at http://home.entouch.net/dmd/mortonsdemon.htm, The Talk.Origins Archive Post of the Month: February 2002, and http://www.answersincreation.org/mortond.htm (amongst other places, I'm sure).Adminnemooseus (Minnemooseus, when not in the admin mode)ps: Normally I guide the membership to respond to admin messages at an appropriate topic elsewhere. But in this case, I think the appropriate topic is this topic.pps to Jar, re: Message 16: Although Glenn's materials have been cited at , he is new to the forum as a poster.

Well, the word used in the Bible, which we translate as "giants" is "Nephelim" in the original.The complete passage from Genesis reads:"There were giants [Nephilim] in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." (Genesis 6:4)This seems plain enough: the Nephelim were a cross between these mysterious "sons of God" and humans, and they were "mighty men".They turn up again in Numbers 13, when Moses sends people to spy out the land of Canaan."And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants [Nephelim], the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." (Numbers 13:32-33).Again, the implication seems to be that the giants were large humanoids --- but even if they weren't, they were roaming the land of Canaan after the flood.

I'm sorry but your whole post is simply another example of the Christian Cult of Ignorance. It silly, childish, mental masturbation and an act of hubris.You seem to have absolutely no idea of how knowledge is gained. Has no one ever helped you understand how to approach a problem and reason through it? If you believe that you have either NEVER read them, are being willfully ignorant, lying or deluded. They are NOT the same story. I'm sorry but that is simply not true. In particular, Genesis 1 is specifically in chronological order. That is also true in the story that begins around Genesis 2:5. Both ARE in chronological order. Well that is part of your problem. You cannot look in the Bible for evidence of something that happened in real life. You need to look at the real world. Dead dinosaurs are pretty piss poor evidence, actually just plain silly not even sophomoric evidence unless you can explain the model that produces what we see in the real world. To use dead dinosaurs as evidence for a flood, you need to explain the model that somehow selectively killed and arranged the fossils in the order we see.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I used to be interested in knowledge. I view that as mental masturbation. Why would you try to attack my opinion as if I don't have the right to believe what I choose. I really believe your opinion is silly, childish, mental masturbation, even arrogant; but I know how to just think that to myself. I'm know more interested in wisdom. Wisdom is the exact opposite of knowledge. Knowledge you learn from another man/woman. Knowledge will tell you the Earth is flat until someone with wisdom refuses to except the arrogant babling of ignorant men in white coats. Basically wisdom is a God sent revelation to you, for your understanding purpose. If someone with wisdom gets famous enough, your revelations suddenly becomes scientific law or some other form of knowledge. Let's try to bring back wisdom. I mean seriously, if Newton, Einstein, or DARWIN were wrong in anyway then we(nice way of saying you) would be really wrong by now. I believe the word of my God, you believe the word of yours, Darwin. It's possible that the bible has changed, but by that same way of thinking it is also possible that Darwin's words have changed. We(you again) trust man quicker than we trust God. sorry to get off subject a little, but please ask Jar to give everyone here the right to think and voice their opinion without being called silly. The childish part, my bible does say you must have child like faith. In other words you must believe in something you can never prove. Sorry again you disagree; but I really believe they are the same. Most christians feel you, Jar, are willfully ignorant, lying or deluded. Do you not think it possible that someone can think and genuinely believe opposite of you? That's arrogant. That's 13,085 posts that I really care less to read if this is how you discuss ideas with people. Not very professional.Now the Nephilim post - Young's literal translation: Even when reading the King James Version, I read it as saying the Nephilim(how ever it's spelled) were already here when the sons of God come in unto the daughters of men. I believe the offspring of angel and woman were men like Hercules (men of old and reknown). I believe the bible supports Greek Mythology right here. I believe ancient civilizations were just as intelligent, if not more, as we are(Jar, I didn't say they had as much knowledge). I don't believe they made up the few things they found important enough to pass down(Wisdom tells me this). I did not know of the other account pointed out about the Nephilim(That's the proper way to argue Jar). I will read more on this. Excellent post Dr. Adequate. !@#$ you Jar.

And I have never questioned the intelligence of ancient civilizations. What is your point?You of course are free to believe anything you want, you are even free to state your beliefs. But when those beliefs are directly contradicted by the facts, you need to get used to folk point that out. That is very sad and I pity you. Because it is simply wrong. If a person believes, holds as their opinion, that they can override gravity by will and so simply step off the ledge, the Christian thing is to at the least point out to them that they are wrong. Another totally off topic post (why is it the Biblical Christians have so much trouble staying on topic?). Sorry but my GOD is not Darwin. Of course people can think and believe the opposite of what I believe. That is simply not an issue or even germane to this thread. In this thread we are talking about what is true. Specifically, the issue is whether or not there was a flood as described in the Bible.The facts are that during the period of time that man was capable of even building a vessel, there has not been a world-wide flood. Further, there are NO signs that anyone has ever found that there was EVER a world-wide flood.Now folk are of course free to believe there was a Biblical Flood just as they are free to believe that they can override gravity by will. And those that believe the former are still as wrong as those that believe the later.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion