At least we agree on the Easter message. He is Risen!
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Payne
To: qraal@hotmail.com
Sent: Sunday, April 04, 1999 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: Tom Van Flandern & Bill
Hey there, Adam,
On Sat, 03 Apr 1999 04:35:18 PST "Adam Crowl" <qraal@hotmail.com> writes:
>Bill Payne...I'm a bit confused.
>
>You're arguing about coal and its floating [or not] origins, but you're
>also in touch with TvFlandern... why? So what's going on Bill?
Darn, caught again! Maybe I should use a pseudonym when communicating
with OECs? :-)
I have a personal affinity for YEC, partly I guess because I like to buck
the flow, and primarily because I feel more comfortable drawing the
scripture through the YEC timeframe. I guess the key verse that swings
me into the YEC grid is Jude 14: "Enoch, the seventh from Adam,...." As
was recently pointed out, there may be some generations missing, but the
thrust of the verse (in my mind) is that Adam was a real person in the
not too distant past.
I can understand your conclusions, but they don't negate the OEC position.
Adam might have been recent, but that says nothing for the rest of the world
and Creation. I'm not a literal believer so I don't have the problems you
do. Jude actually helped me out of believing too much [if that's possible]
by quoting "Enoch". If you've read the Book of Enoch you become very
sceptical of any sacred writings from that era. I certainly believe that
Jude was who he claimed to be, Jesus' brother, and I also think that he was
closely associated with Peter - there's no good evidence otherwise. But he
shows his limitations as a 1st Century Jew by quoting naively the Book of
Enoch. To me that says a lot about the writers and their limits - inspired
yes, but infallible no.
I thirst for the truth, and therefore don't mind learning about anything
regardless of what model it seems to support. I will freely grant you
that there are what I consider, given my limited scope of knowledge, very
good arguments supporting OEC. The arguments may be flawed, and I look
for the flaws, but haven't been very successful (haven't been successful
at all) in refuting those like Tom's as you pointed out above.
However, if the timescale were shortened (please don't ask me how, I
grant you in advance that I can't answer the arguments against what I am
saying now), Tom's exploding planet consisting largely of water would
give support to the Bibical idea of Genesis 7:11: "...and the floodgates
of heaven were opened."
There's too much that's wrong with that scenario for me to accept it at all.
Water falling from space will have an energy of ~63 MJ/kg at the very
least. A lot higher otherwise. The temperature rise would vaporise the water
and produce a water greenhouse at hundreds of degrees! Aside from that
there's all the problems that Tom VF's theories have anyway [no - I haven't
replied. I'm sure he could run a few rings around me on celestial mechanics,
but the explosion thing still kills his theory for me.]
Back to the timescale, if it were shortened Tom's EPH would support the
Bibical flood, and so would the Pennsylvannian coal seams (IMHO) of the
eastern US.
Still haven't figured out exactly how that's all supposed to work. Episodes
of "local" catastrophe could still be the cause. What makes it uniquely a
Flood thing? There are so many other geological deposits that say "age" to
me I can't deny radiometrics as blithely as Allen Roy. And philosophically
an evolved Creation is the only kind that makes sense of God as Creator, not
as Cosmic Engineer... but that's a long story that one.
In the meantime, and this will really drive some of our
friends here nuts, I have no problem accepting Gosse's idea of creation
with the appearance of age. OK, OK, I hear you and I agree, to get those
pesky comets and asteroids to settle down in just a few thousand years
would require some divine intervention (or so it seems), and that will
probably give me some philosophical heartburn if I think about it.
Aye aye aye.... Gossism. Brrrr.... gives me chills.
One thing I do know, it's EASTER and He is Risen!
God bless you all,
Amen, Bill. He is Risen and Death lies slain by His blood.
>PS
>Have you examined Joachim Scheven's idea that many of the coal tree
>species were actually free-floating forests in the pre-diluvial seas?
He
>draws on the structure of the roots as evidence. Definitely a novel
>idea... perhaps it's what whales snacked on before being given divine
blessings to eat >meat.
That's funny, I like that Adam.
Scheven is quite serious, though I'm a bit tongue in cheek. But it's true.
There are no plant resources sufficiently large enough in the ocean to feed
all the fish directly. There's lots of plankton, but for it to get from
plankton to Great White requires a whole lot of dead fish in between. The
Bible says nothing about vegetarianism for fish, so there was Death before
the Fall. It's the only logical and consistent conclusion. Carnivorous sea
mammals require animal protein and fats or they will die, and baleen whales
aren't "plankton" eaters - they're active catchers of fish and krill. So,
half-seriously, I proposed that they ate Scheven's floating forests, but
it's really quite silly - imagine a baleen whale straining at a floating
mass of "Glossopteris" or whatever Scheven reckoned floated around...
Incidentally, did you ever answer Tom's
question about the evidence for EPH?
As I said, no. But I'm working on it. It's not a debate I had expected.
Tom's got a point about the way people argue when faced with radically new
ideas. It's just his ideas are really crazy from the orthodox viewpoint. And
I can't see how planets explode. A structure phase-transition in their
atomic structure? That's silly. He's hand-waving to bolster a
least-parsimonious solution to problems that don't need his solutions. BUT
that'll need arguing. I'd like to know more about his stuff. Got a URL?
Adam