Original Intent Of the Bible

Christians used to think a lot like this a century ago, but archeology has shown that the Old testament was a lot more reliable than had been thought. This cannot be denied. There are many mainstream Biblical scholars who are otherwise quite liberal that will testify to this.Creationists have simply said - well, what about the flood? We really do feel that the flood opens up a much better understanding to the origin of the geolgical column. And similarly for genomes and evolution. You just think we're being naive but we're quite thorough and deadly serious. We don't overlook much at all even though we are in the minority.So when the Bible talks of something that most certainly would have changed the face of the globe we'll at least go and look for that! And boy did we get excited when we found it and began to understand how it got lost by the earlier generations of creationists.------------------
You are go for TLI

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-20-2002]

We'll just have to agree to disagree Schrafinator.

^ PU, all non-naive models of the flood involve tectonic action as an instigator of the inundation of the continents with water from the oceans (we suspect the rain was condensing steam boiled t tectonic boundaries) as well as continental drift. Hence we're talking a lot of crustal movement up/down/horizontally. So we expect surges. The flood itself ocurred over 400 days (only the rain was for 40 days) and we wouldsuspect that retreat of waters took decades and that the current continental drift is an exponentially falling remnant of the initial catastrophically rapid drift.So we can easily accomodate temporary resettling on recently created flood plains for days to weeks.------------------
You are go for TLI

I am collecting stuff on it Joe. I've now realized that my main souce on this is a CEN Tech artilce I have to search the house for! But I'll compare/contrast this with the web too.

You really need to have this discussion with an actual creationist geologist but here we go . . .I don't have problems with dinosaur kinds (there are about 30 Linnean familes as a guide I think) on the ark. Neiher do I have a problem about dinosaurs who missed out creating footprints etc in between surges. Perhaps I missed your dinosaur point.I don't have problems with accelerated radioisotopic decay, radiogenic heating, sea floor spreading and magentic reversals occuring as a build up to the flood and during the following years. We don't claim to know the profile of accelerated decay although we may ultimately be able to estimate it.We're not talking some pedestrian event here - we're talking about kilometres of water and constant flows (as the paleocurrents document). I would not at all expect any remnant of the pre-flood biotic world to be in its original position. The basement rocks obviously would remain and in some places we would get marine sediments on top of basement rocks and in other places terrestial sediments (as observed). But that's where I have to leave it to detailed creationist studies. Let's not forget that, even in the beautifully recorded Grand Canyon strata, there are missing 50 million years of strata which stretch credibility given the flat paraconformities. To say that these flat, hardly eroded unconformities (defn: interfaces between seperate beds with a break in deposition) document tens of millions of years of erosion is quite bizaree. In our model we expect to get such 'missing time' because sometimes we will get terrestial beds on pre-flood bed rock and sometimes marine beds.For any more detail you need to get Baumgardner et al here although I am continually reading more and more of their stuff.By the way, I'm quite happy to keep discussing our problems, but do you know I haven't been able find a book yet or good web link on the corresponding details of how the GC came to be from your point of view? Lots of talk of fluvial, eolian, deltaic etc but not much on, now here's hw we go the Devonian etc . . . Can you help with a findable ref or link? I can categroically state that the three books I read on 'Origin of Sedimentary Rocks' hardly covered this issue. I was coming to the conclusion that there is no semi-deterministic mainstream detailed model for how the GC came to be but I'm sure you'll come to my rescue.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-21-2002]

OK Schrafinator, much of what you said came up in other posts/threads but I will deal with them one by one briefly:You say creaitonists just read the Bible and impose it via interpretaions of data. Yes this is partically true but IMO, the only reason I think about the flood much is that there is good evidence for it. Otherwise I would probably still believe it but I wouldn't think about it much. As such I find it a key to understading earth prehistory and understanding (the lack of) macroevoltuion.You commented on me 'feeling' things. 'We feel' is also commonly used in English to mean 'in our opinions' and I think you know that is more than 'emotional'.Some creaitonist sites are just 'quoters'. AIG and ICR are pretty good.I believe the early creationists were unaware that a catastrophe could generate neat layering. In addition they never proposed the simple idea (in my reading anyway) that Lyellian features could have been rapily carved out of soft sediments. Why not? - I'm not sure, possibly due to the first point in this paragraph.I understand that what we are saying is controversial and comes of sounding like a 'lunar landing hoax'. I'm sorry it feels like that to you. Having said that we retain a lot of mainstream concepts. Lyellian feautures just happaend fast, plate tectonics happened fast, magnetic reversals happened fast because - guess what - God probably accelerated radioisotopic decay. So if you did get it wrong you got it wrong for a good reason. I don't have a problem with this becasue although I love science I am utterly convinced there are far more important things than science.

I'm glad you asked about the 2nd law (of thermodynamics) Shrif. I disagree entirely with the creationist arguements and I intend to take them up on it. I agree with the open/closed system points made by evoltuionists.

Doubt about the validity of the OT did emerge in the 19th century. In the 20th century much evidence on cultures/peoples as well as specific cities and records of rulers mentioned in the Bible were uncovered. The Bible was proven right on many issues that had been raised against it. I know very little of these details but have been to a 6 part slide night on this about 20 years ago and have read a short book about it 10 years ago. I can't tell you the specifics but if you doubt there is validity in the Bible as a good historical document I suggest you go to the 'Biblical Archeaology' Dept of your mainstream university. There are lots of non-believers who use the Bible as a reliable source. This proves nothing except it's a test the Bible passed with flying colors. That is a historical fact I'm afraid.

Joe, in answer to your points:We propose that dinosaur footprints got there after a floodsurge and before the one that killed them.We do have evidence for accelerated radioactive decay. It's published in the RATE book and they have since done the helium difusion measurement. There is far too much helium in granties and too little in the air.Beehives etc could have temporarily resettled in between flood surges that might have been days to weeks apart. Presumably some fossilised habitats are pre-flood environments. I'll partially back down on that point and allow for a spectrum of possibilities here - in any location the catstrophism of the flood would have been modulated by the local topography.There are increasingly quantitaitve creaitonist models. I know of tectonic models, paelocurrent models and hydrodynamic sorting models. I'll link them soon.Your deep channels in the Mauv. You still think this is all you would get after tens of millions of years? These interfaces are flat for miles. I've haven't done a field trip so I 'll let you have the last say. Isn't there mainstream material talking about the lack of genuine unconformities?We don't get absolutely globally correlated strata in our model because there are still local effects - ecological, tectonic, morphological.I've authored papers with evoltuonary ideas in them by co-authors. To not do so would be professional suicide. I lecture on evoltuonary stuff. I think I'm quite fair about it and I talk about 'evolutionary/taxonomic relatedness' which I'm sure puzzles some of the students. Well Joe, our (life sciences) department doesn't have access to GEOREF but I'll wander over to the geology library and check out GEOREF when I need to from now on. Medline was made free to the world by Clinton a few years ago and it covers medical, biological and a lot of chemical journals so that's why it's more well known. I'll take a survey at our departmental coffee table and see howmany of our academics know what the geolgoical lit searching tool is called! Please give me some refs to 'origin of the geological column' type books/reviews from the mainstream point of view. I am genuinely interested and I have spent literally hours in the geology library wading through books and review papers. I can't find stuff on this. There truly appears to be no mainstream deterministic model for this other than making some analogy with modern day environments. This invariably ignores the generation of the vast beds that characterise the actual GC and instead concentrates how features wer gradually carved out and generated new sediments. The three 'Origin of Sedimentary rocks' books do not cover the issue. If you think these texts do cover it (PettiJohn, Blatt et al and Selley) then I would have to strongly disagree.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 05-21-2002]

I honestly did find books and thought - now I'll get to the bottom of this. And let down after let down - most of these - all so far - and I've perused probably 50 'origin of sedimentology books' - do not systematically study the origin of the GC. Thanks for the ref tip.

kind 1 [knd ] (comparative kinder,
superlative kindest) adjective
1. compassionate: having a generous,
warm, compassionate nature
2. generous: showing generosity or
compassion
3. agreeable or safe: not harsh, unpleasant,
or likely to have destructive effects a
detergent that is kind to the environment
4. caring: showing courtesy or caring about
somebody (formal) my kindest regards to
your family
5. loving: full of love (archaic)
6. genomically distinct organism.

A kind to me (a YEC) is a genomically distinct organism related via microevoltuion within and macroevolution/creation to other kinds. A recent creationist conference came to the consensus that a kind is approximately a Linnean family (ie just above genus and species) but this is a generalisation. So eg, this means that horse/zebras/mules are a kind for example (I think). Biology and genomics is currently consistent with this idea. When more genomes are in this will clarify the issue. At the moment science is consistent with a world of several thousand distinct genomes.

I don't think it was a joke. We simply believe that God created several thousand distinct genomes which have diversified. With the genomes in hand it should be quite easy to re-catalog them into their kinds. We'll see.

Have you got evidence for that? Zebras and Horses produce offspring that survive (although they might be sterile) don't they? I doubt that many people suspect that Bonobos and humans would produce viable offspring! %DNA similarity isn't that useful either. At the end of the day we really need the genomes (which we will have in about 5 years). At the edn of the day if you really want to believe that man evolved from a common ansecestor with apes over a period of 5-10 millions of years, feel free. However, we already know that the pattern of protein expression in brain is very different between man and apes. And we'll have a much more infomed discussion when the genomes are in.

It's a creationist idea that we think will align with the mainstream rewriting of taxonomy once genomes come in. Baramins is just a technical word for 'kinds' and some creationists have technical procedures for assigning baramins. My professional opinion is that this will be much easier once the gneomes come in.