Catastrophic Plate Tectonics - Fact or Fiction?

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.

It would require an act of god, unless you can provide evidence that the very physics of the universe changed after the flood, till someone can do so all we have is the physics we see now and detect in the strata they are impossible for classical physics theres not quotes needed, we can assess what is impossible within the theory we are using, as with any science we have to change the thoery if new evidence is found 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?
i would say yes you should always keep an open mind, but having such an open mind would be to the point your brain would fall out

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.

There is no evidence of a world wide flood. There is lots of historical, archeological, geological evidence that there never was a world wide flood.You seem to be attempting to find a way to scientifically prove that an ancient myth happened. You've convinced yourself and have a group of co religionist agreeing with you. That is religious faith. It's not science and never will be. The Jews, Mormons, Christians of this or that sect, Muslims, Hindus, etc. and etc. all have their religions. It's easy to believe but it's not science and it's not evidence. It's a group social agreement to "believe" which is a form of group self delusion. It's just a story handed down and then written down.Neither God nor anything else caused it because it never happened.lfen

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. 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.

oh i gleaned it alright, you may not think so but thats not my fault if you arn't very clear about what you are saying do you think i don't reealize this from the million and one times its been said? sigh, so you just feel the need to obscure the usual claims then? we are talking the creationist explaination, why do we need to go through this? if you want to talk about the norse story we can..as for evidence, its a flood, world wide, with lots of noticable effects that come from it, mountains popping up,etc,plates moving..
if it did happen wouldn't there be evidence that a flood happened and not just inferrence that it did? i mean the "evidence" is "hey there are mountains!", "there are fossils!" that doesn't indicate anything more than what geology says why put a worldwide flood in there? oh yes because people believe it, geology answers the questions a lot better and with detail then your understanding of science is so flawed, you need to retake a science class course. if we can't detect god or test or see anything indicating god, why include it, its a wild factor that we can't predict.
i think we can assess things that are assessible, you just want to factor in something we can't detect.

which is a religious text and not a science based book, so no its not evidence of anything but a belief there was one factoring in god is a waste of time then, and people have done tests on how it might have occurred, they found it was impossible
{abe: edited to compose it a bit better}This message has been edited by ReverendDG, 04-02-2006 03:07 AM

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.

then you need to stop posting in a science forum and post in faith and belief, do we need to go through this every time?
as for it being scientific, do you understand what this forum is about?it has to have some scientific basis, or its meaningless to argue over this.
People ARE trying to wedge it in as science based when they can't even answer simple questionsThis message has been edited by ReverendDG, 04-02-2006 03:26 AM

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

My claim? where did i say such a thing as that? i said god is an irrelevent factor, because its a rogue factor, so showing god did something such as the flood is meaningless if there is no evidence of a flood to begin with.
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 ok where do i misuse science and i don't feel that it is warrented that you take a shot at me like that.
your distortion of what i said is just so wrong i can't believe you think this. Ok i'd like to know what flood you think we are discussing because it seems we arn't discussing the same flood that has no evidence that can be found to support it outside the bible. I am talking about the YEC creationist flood story what are you talking about?
if someone claims that the earth shows evidence of the worldwide flood then why wouldn't we test that? this is a pure copout, we are talking about the genesis worldwide flood and you are adding in some unknown factor to add to the confusion

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: 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

Hi Rand, 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.Even if God just thought the Flood into existence there has to be some physical support for it. We have the entire Earth flooded and every human, except the 8 on the ark, killed. Every civilisation on Earth wiped out by a flood c. 4500 years ago would leave some sort of record, but there is none to support the Flood.Science may not be able to test for God or how He carries out His actions, but a great many of His actions would have to leave some evidence. Take His part in the tumbling of Jericho's walls, regardless of how He done it there would have to be evidence that there was a wall there for Him to bring down, we know there wasn't, so it is the same with the Flood myth. God can use whatever mechanism He wishes to, but that action would have such a huge impact that some evidence would have to be left.Brian.

Randman, you have revived this topic by responding to MESSAGE 1. Your reply has, at best, next to nothing to do with the content of that message 1 and/or the topic theme in general, which is John Baumgardner and his Catastrophic Plate Tectonics idea.Not remotely an impressive return from your suspended status. I suggest you involve yourself in fewer topics, and really try to post material relevant to the topic in the topics you do participate in. Fewer but better messages.I will leave this topic open for a bit longer, but will probably close it soon. It is about at the 300 message total anyway, and that is a standard closing point for any topic.Adminnemooseus

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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