Michael wrote:
>If this is your evidence then please read your books carefully and not
>misread them.
Michael, In your zeal to zap me, you didn't read carefully what I wrote. I
wrote:
"Currently I have in my personal library books from the following 19th
century young-earth/global flood advocates:"
Now, young-earth/global flood includes two categories not one. I din't say
every one was young-earth.
Michael wrote:
>Figuier is not YEC either and accepted a local deluge.
Figuier's flood (one doesn't know what Barstow's contribution to the book
was) was so vast as to be classifiable at the very least as continental in
size and is much larger than anything people would recognize as a local
flood today. If you want to call the inundation of all of Asia 'local' go
ahead. Note the use of the term 'prolongation of the Caucasus. He did
beleive that there were inundations of Europe as well and he decided that
the Asian innundation was the flood of Noah. THat is not a local flood by
modern standards most certainly.
“The Asiatic deluge—of which sacred history has transmitted to us the few
particulars we know—was the result of the upheaval of a part of the long
chain of mountains which are a prolongation of the Caucasus. The earth
opening by one of the fissures made in its crust in course of cooling, an
eruption of volcanic matter escaped through the enormous crater so produced.
Volumes of watery vapor or steam accompanied the lava discharged from the
interior of the globe, which, being first dissipated in clouds and
afterwards condensing, descended, in torrents of rain, and the plains were
drowned with the volcanic mud. The inundation of the planes over an
extensive radius was the immediate effect of this upheaval, and the
formation of the volcanic cone of Mount Ararat, with the vast plateau on
which it rests, altogether 17,323 feet above the sea, the permanent result.
The event is graphically detailed in the seventh chapter of Genesis.” Louis
Figuier, The World Before the Deluge, edited and revised by H. W. Bristow,
(London: Cassell Petter & Galpin, circa 1872), p. 480-481
Now, if Ararat (the modern mountain) was covered with water, that is hardly
a local flood! Do I need to remind you of the elevation of Ararat he
mentions above?
Here is his view of the European Deluge which he beleived occurred before
man.
“The physical proof of this deluge of the north of Europe exists in the
accumulation of unstratified deposits which covers all the plains and low
grounds of Northern Europe. ON and in this deposit are found numerous blocks
which have received the characteristic and significant name of erratic
blocks, and which are frequently of considerable size. These become more
characteristic as we ascend to to higher latitudes, as in Norway, Sweden,
and Denmark, the southern borders of the Baltic, and in the British Islands
generally, in all of which countries deposits of marine fossil shells occur,
which prove the submergence of large areas of Scandinavia, of the British
Isles and other regions during parts of the glacial period. Some of these
rocks, characterised as erratic, are of very considerable volume; such, for
instance, is the granite block which forms the pedestal of the statue of
Peter the Great at St. Petersburg. This block was found in the interior of
Russia, where the whole formation is Permian, and its presence there can
only be explained by supposing it to have been transported by some vast
iceberg, carried by a diluvial current. This hypothesis alone enables us to
account for another block of granite, weighing about 340 tons, which was
found on the sandy plains in the north of Prussia, an immense model of which
was made for the Berlin Museum. The last of these erratic blocks deposited
in Germany covers the grave of King Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, killed at
the battle of Lutzen, in 1632. He was interred beneath the rock. Another
similar block, has been raised in Germany into a monument to the geologist
Leopold von Buch.”
“These erratic blocks which are met with in the plains of Russia, Poland,
and Prussia, and in the eastern parts of England, are composed of rocks
entirely foreign to the region where they are found. They belong to the
primary rocks of Norway; they have been transported to their present sites,
protected by a covering of ice, by the waters of the northern deluge. How
vast must have been the impulsive force which could carry such enormous
masses across the Baltic, and so far inland as the places where they have
been deposited for the surprise of the geologist or the contemplation of the
thoughtful.” Louis Figuier, The World Before the Deluge, edited and revised
by H. W. Bristow, (London: Cassell Petter & Galpin, circa 1872), p. 424-427
As to Cooper you wrote:
>I have a copy of Thomas Cooper, Evolution, The Stone Book and the Mosaic
>Record of Creation, 1884.
>HE IS NOT YEC and takes a long day view of Genesis - p129-31 in my edition
>of 1888.
No he wasn't a YEC, but he appears to have been a global flood guy.
“As I am simply sketching the history of the changes in opinion among
geologists, I must not stay to do more than remind you that the tradition of
the Deluge exists in the literature of Greece and Rome, as well as in that
of China, and, according to Sir William Jones, in the Sanscrit literature of
India; and that the ancient Scandinavians and Egyptians had similar
traditions—while the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, as well as the tribes
of North American Indians, and scattered islanders of the Pacific, also
shared them; that the famous medal of Apames, in phrygia, is also held to be
strongly confirmative of the verity of the Bible account; and that the
recent discovery of a long cuneiform record by the lameted George Smith, of
the British Museum, which must have been written in ancient Assyria, 600
years before Christ, has brought still stronger confirmatory testimony to
the front.” Thomas Cooper, “The Stone Book” in Evolution, The Stone Book,
and The Mosaic Record of Creation, (London: Hodder and Stroughton:1884), p.
63-64
And "But, of late, there have been some decided demurrers to the
Uniformitarian theory, and there will be more. Nothing less than some sudden
and mighty dislocation of the strata, can possibly account for the formation
of deep valleys and gorges, which are beheld in many parts of the earth."
Thomas Cooper, “The Stone Book” in Evolution, The Stone Book, and The Mosaic
Record of Creation, (London: Hodder and Stroughton:1884), p. 66
Once again, someone was buying these books on this topic. By the 1880s the
entire idea fo the flood was out of scientific thought, yet Christian books
continued to discuss it. THat implies that the laity were not following the
leadership.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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