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Author Topic:   Catastrophic Plate Tectonics - Fact or Fiction?
randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 286 of 301 (300177)
04-01-2006 10:30 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by deerbreh
06-30-2005 9:47 AM


the God factor
The claim of the Flood involves an act of God. I think one can posit that perhaps God works within the realms of the physical laws He established and so there has to be the possibility of something occurring to reasonably think it could occur, but then 2 issues are raised.
1. We don't understand all the principles of the universe so we really can't properly assess often if something is impossible. Things like quantum tunneling are "impossible" according to classical physics and yet still true. So we have a lot to learn.
2. There is the other view that God changes everything without using the mechanisms of the universe. I think cavediver has espoused this view; that God would not get His hands dirty by actually relying on physical principles to create and enact such miracles. If this is the case, then the Flood could well have occurred without nary a shred of evidence on how it could reasonably have happened. Maybe we would see remnants of it, which I think is what the claim is with the mid-Atlantic ridge you refer to, or maybe not, but it's problematic to use any data to say it could not happen.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by deerbreh, posted 06-30-2005 9:47 AM deerbreh has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 287 by ReverendDG, posted 04-01-2006 11:01 PM randman has replied
 Message 299 by Adminnemooseus, posted 04-02-2006 4:26 AM randman has not replied

randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 288 of 301 (300183)
04-01-2006 11:08 PM
Reply to: Message 287 by ReverendDG
04-01-2006 11:01 PM


Re: the God factor
Rev, you seem to have glossed over my post and not really gleaned what was stated. The simple fact is the proposition of the Flood first and foremost is posited that God caused it. Depending on how one thinks God caused it has a lot to do with whether one thinks there is reasonable evidence for it. If God caused it, not using physical principles known to us, then it may be we are not scientifically advanced enough to understand how it could have happened and so are not in a position to assess the evidence one way or another.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 289 by lfen, posted 04-01-2006 11:38 PM randman has replied
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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 290 of 301 (300192)
04-02-2006 1:47 AM
Reply to: Message 289 by lfen
04-01-2006 11:38 PM


Re: the God factor
Sure,there is evidence. First, the Bible records a Flood happened, and that's evidence right there. You may not like the evidence, but it's evidence.
There is lots of historical, archeological, geological evidence that there never was a world wide flood.
Not really. Since we don't know exactly what God did, we really cannot say there is no evidence. How would we know from a scientific perspective? We could perhaps test one way a flood could have occurred, but that's about it.

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 293 of 301 (300196)
04-02-2006 3:08 AM
Reply to: Message 292 by ReverendDG
04-02-2006 3:06 AM


Re: the God factor
It's sufficient evidence for the people that beleive it. if you want to say it is not scientific evidence, fine. So what? My point is there may or may not be scientific evidence for something God would do.

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 295 of 301 (300200)
04-02-2006 3:28 AM
Reply to: Message 294 by ReverendDG
04-02-2006 3:25 AM


Re: the God factor
No, you need to recognize that your claim that science can disprove a claim of something God has done is 100% wrong and recognize that science while perhaps in some instances could lend support to a claim of something God has done, it can never address in a negative fashion whether God has done it because the fact science provides no evidence, or even contradictory evidence, is meaningless because science is based in limited technology whereas the proposition of God doing something deals with an entity that has no such limitations.
Keep in mind that I am not the one trying to misuse science here and claim science can address areas outside of current technical abilities. I am not even making a defense of the Flood, but merely pointing out that it is totally incorrect for anyone to claim that science in anyway has or even can at present disprove or even discredit the story of the Flood since we are dealing with a claim of something God has done.
The best we can do is test if this was done through normal natural processes, but since there is no way to know even if God knows of other natural processes, even claims in this regard are highly suspect.
This message has been edited by randman, 04-02-2006 03:31 AM

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 Message 294 by ReverendDG, posted 04-02-2006 3:25 AM ReverendDG has replied

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 297 of 301 (300204)
04-02-2006 3:58 AM
Reply to: Message 296 by ReverendDG
04-02-2006 3:43 AM


Re: the God factor
But what you don't seem to grasp is if you promote the idea of a flood of some sort you have to provide something outside a belief that it happened
Who says? Maybe if you are promoting it here, but certainly not in real life. I mean what if we applied that sort of thing across the board. Let's say you fall in love, but before you can believe you love the person, you have to have some scientific research into the event. Is that reasonable?
I think the Christian judges whether what they think God says is true based on their experience with God and whether they think it's really God that said it. I certainly don't think you should rely on scientists since science is way too young, and the technology way too primitive to know the answer for many things.
Can science, for example, tell me the right ethical decision to make day in and day out?
Hardly.
I will clarify that my initial comments were to debrah and so perhaps there is some confusion. My point is that you cannot use science to disprove something that God has done since science cannot address all the ways that God could presumably do something, and thus this is problematic. You wrote:
why is it probmatic? doesn't the fact that there is no evidence to conclude a flood happened make it nearly impossible? wouldn't believing it could happen be considered willful ignorace on the part of the person?
My response is to point out the same thing. The fact there is no scientific evidence means nothing since science is very limited technically, especially if we are talking about something God has done. I think the point is pretty simple and not sure why the beef with it on your part.
Also, it's not a cop-out since the basic proposition involves an unknown factor, God doing something through an unstated mechanism. That's the thing under debate. It may be we could guess how God would have done it, and thus verify a potentially likely mechanism, but we can never use science to rule out God doing it because science, at present at least, is incapable of addressing that.
This message has been edited by randman, 04-02-2006 04:01 AM

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4930 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 300 of 301 (300209)
04-02-2006 4:31 AM
Reply to: Message 298 by Brian
04-02-2006 4:22 AM


Re: the God factor
I think what the Rev is getting at, and what probably the scientifically minded members may be thinking, is that regardless of what mechanism God used to flood the world there should be some physical evidence remaining that would suggest that there was a Flood in the first place.
Maybe and maybe not. In talking with cavediver about a potential ID mechanism or that miracles could be done by God manipulating loopholes, such as engineering extremely unlikely but possible things like macroscopic quantum tunneling, etc,...and his view, which I disagreed with, is that when God did a miracle, it was likely a global change. By that, He just meant that God just changed the whole picture, the whole universe, and no mechanism within the universe used at all since that would "dirty God's hands" and he felt that God would not allow His fingerprints on His work.
Well, I say all that just to illustrate that with the Flood, for all we know, that could be the case. I am not arguing that, nor arguing for or against the Flood, just stating since we don't know all the details of how and what God did, science cannot really address it, unless science could show it was likely true.
But that would only be if God did it in such a way that showed, that left His fingerprints. If God created a global flood, and then at the end, cleaned up, for example, the effects to a certain extent, then we really would have hard time matching the data up, and that's just one potential. I certainly have not thought of all the ways that God could have and did do this. Maybe we live in a multiverse or potential multiverse and during that time, He switched everything into an alternate time-line with the Flood, and then gradually switched it back.
Who knows? You don't know. I don't know, and the Bible doesn't say that much about it to know. So we just don't know. It could be science could discover that God did it, but science can never discover that God did not do it...just impossible to do.
This message has been edited by randman, 04-02-2006 04:32 AM

This message is a reply to:
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