This thread has grown beyond the Egyptians. The way that creationists argue their points needs to be elucidated because it highlights shortcomings in their story and their attack on the scientific record. For example, in the link pointed out by blitz77,
http://www.amen.org.uk/eh/science/flodpg/flodpg3.htm , the author, Paul Garner, quotes only Genesis 7:4, 11, 21-23 for all the scientific details he tries to bring to bear. Of 8,565 words in his discourse, 136 are from the Bible, 8,429 are facts, scientific observations, and scientific-sounding analysis. This is not balanced. Shouldn't there be much more text taken from the bible and used in this article to support the creationist position on this crucial flooding event? None of the science and none of Garner's analysis is from the Bible. What Garner is trying to do is to select from a group of facts and observations developed by scientists, to show there are holes in what science knows, therefore creation must be true. That line of reasoning is insubstantial and illogical because it can be used to pretend-prove absolutely anything.
Here are Garner's only quotes from the Bible:
quote:
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." (Genesis 7:11)
"For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth." (Genesis 7:4)
"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth....All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth...." (Genesis 7:21-23)
There is nothing in these Biblical passages about superheated water, magma, fossils, "vast underground water sources beneath the pre-Flood continents", dinosaurs, trilobites, on and on. The Bible is a fixed story, while science is growing in its facts and observations hour-by-hour. Yet Garner tries to graft creation onto science by selectively ignoring facts and observations. He is trying to use certain facts and observations from science, while ignoring others, to show that technologically, creation must be true. Take a look at the text of the Bible and the text of his scientific-sounding discourse. How are we supposed to logically trace from the generality of the Biblical passages to the specificity of the scientific record? Maybe the better question is why?
Nothing of the facts and observations known to science today were deemed relevant to include in the Bible by God, or the writers of the Bible. So, why try to do it now? The record of science is directly and fundamentally connected to what we can touch and measure around us. Maybe God or the writers of the Bible did not know what science knows today. Anyway, that large discrepancy is the problem of creationists, not technology. Shouldn't it be obvious that there is a chasm-sized disparity between the fixed Bible story and science that evolves as more facts and ovservations are recorded and integrated?
For a set of observations to be reliable and accurate, they have to be repeatable. For example, a farmer has to know a series of steps to execute resulting from environmental factors that he has measured, to grow food for us. Here is a series of steps that highlight something Garner did not intend:
quote:
Many professional geologists now recognise the impressive evidence for catastrophism in the geological record, although most of them still believe that the earth is over four-and-a-half billion years old because of radiometric dating methods. But this leaves them with a big problem. If the rocks were often laid down rapidly, then where are the missing millions of years?
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If the idea that the earth is billions of years old is to have any credibility, then the missing millions of years must be in the gaps. But does this idea stand up to scientific examination?
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Many young-earth creationist geologists have become convinced that the problems with the ecological zonation model are so overwhelming that an entirely new explanation is needed. A group of European creationists has argued that the geological record from the Late Carboniferous to the Pleistocene was not laid down during the Flood, but during the turbulent centuries after the Flood.
Let's forgive him for mistakenly using the word "rocks" to describe the sediments that suddenly buried the life in different periods of Earth history. Falling rocks would have crushed the life before it fossilized, rather than preserve them. We establish that radiometric dating puts an age on the Earth of 4.5 billion years. The rate of radioactive decay is measured precisely in the lab, so it is unnecessary to discuss its accuracy or its relevance. Note that isotope ratios are one of the relevant facts missing from creationist arguments.
In the first passage from Garner- introduction of a 4.5 year-old date of the earth by scientists, introduction of radiometric dating methods which demonstrate ancient origins of sedimentary layers, mention of a "big problem", mis-use of the word "rocks" in describing the sediments that suddenly buried trilobites, and other life in different eras and periods, and finally, "missing millions of years". There is no logical connection proceeding from 4.5 billion years old, through sudden burials, to missing millions of years. The crucial thesis of his discourse is crossed in the second statement. Put plainly, there is no series of steps that take one from 4.5 billion years old, to "missing millions of years" that allow for creation 5,000 years ago. He is actually claiming the loss of Billions of years, not "millions of years". An honest mistake? Totally illogical, but Garner introduces radiological dating of 4.5 Billion years, radiological dating of sedimentary layers containing fossils of 100's of millions of years to show the "flood" was 5,000 years ago. How can the "flood" be 5,000 years ago when mammal fossils are 5,000 times older than that?
In the third passage where Garner attempts to graft creationism to the scientific record, the logic is incomprehensible. By incomprehensible, I mean that you cannot write down the proviso-facts he presents and the steps of his presentation and connect them together like dots. In a true scientific analysis, this is exactly what you can do. Garner says that he and other creationists have a problem that the "geological record" of the 286,000,000 years between the late Carboniferous to the Pleistocene periods. That the 286,000,000-year-old geological record was laid down "during the turbulent centuries after the Flood" of 5,000 years ago. It even sounds incomprehensible to try and repeat what the man said. Nowhere in the Biblical passages is there any discussion pertaining to this. So, what is the purpose behind generating an unanchored speculation that is internally incomprehensible?
A recommendation
Science provides the technology for all people, everywhere, to live, prosper, and enrich their minds. Science does not provide a roadmap for philosophy. Humans need a strong institution from which to draw their thinking on morality, integrity, etc. Why can't religion settle for that job?
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