In closing, I have a two part question geared towards theists and atheists alike.
Why do you gear it just toward athesits and theists and yet segregate the idea of no global flood to the atheists. I certainly am not an atheist and I also know there was no global flood.
A good treatment of this is also given in the book called Noah's Flood by Ryan and Pittman.
To the atheists, I ask, what does this information say to you about the validity of a considerable flood?
We learned about catastrophic flooding in geology 101 in college. I doubt that this is much a shocker to anyone who is mildly educated in geosciences. I doubt you could find a single statement from a modern geologist that would ever state that catastrophic flooding, especially in this circumstances of a natural dam, has not happened.
Note that we do not, as of yet, know with certainty that this was a "global" flood.
It most certainly was not a global flood. We are pretty sure there is not enough water in the Mediterranean to flood the world. There was enough to fill up the Black Sea basin pretty quick though.
We know empirically that this was considered global to the inhabitants. Does this mean that such a Flood really did exist? If so, is this inconsequential to you?
We know that the flood was probably pretty traumatic to the inhabitants. Enough to cause them to create lore about it. As it was though there was probably very little casualties due to the flooding as they estimate the flooding would only have encroached upon land at a rate of 1 mile per day. This is very catastrophic to non-nomadic people but it is not going to wipe out all things that have the breath of life. Pretty much anyone that could move about as fast as my great grandma could easily avoid drowning.
What is traumatic about it all is that you have to leave your shelters and any food or other objects that you couldn't carry behind. It is hypothesized that these cultures where beginning to have agriculture so that would be a big blow.
The second question is geared towards biblicists. This study, conducted in 1993, has had virtually no coverage.
Only for people who have enough room in their brains for the 7 o'clock news and nothing else. Like I said above, we learned about the black sea flooding in geo 101. Not exactly the pinnacle of academic obscurity.
And of that which is mentioned, it is routinely dumbed down in an apparent view of it being inconsequential.
You mean just like any other scientific finding that makes it to popular press?
Do you find it disheartening that some people have divorced themselves from this discovery, and if so, do you attribute it to them denying it over its greater implications-- such as, the denial of the Bible's historicity?
You are probably going to need to provide evidence that anyone has really divorced themselves from the discovery. Geologists certainly consider the discovery of the Black Sea flooding a pretty major geological event that happen at a very interesting time; the birth of agriculture and the very advent of history itself.
If anyone is denying the importance of this event it is YEC's. A YEC will tell you that this could not be the flood of the Noah myth because it was not global and did not kill everyone else on earth other than Noah and his family just like the Bible says. In fact, it probably didn't kill more than a small percentage of the people directly affected by it and most of them probably died from secondary effects from forced relocation. Certainly not drowning like the Bible says.
Yet it undercuts the story from the Bible because it is a source for all the common flood myths that most Biblical literalists claim lends validity to the Bible. Moreover, the Bible is terribly innacurate about the details of the flood pointing out exactly the mythical constructs that people who are not Biblical literalists point out all the time.
The story of Noah just very well might be a copy of a copy of a copy of an oral story that has been handed down through generations about a real flood that affected real people. The discovery of the Black Sea flood certainly lends credence to that idea.
Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.
Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)