Re: Is the Hills' flood possible?

In a message dated 6/9/2006 11:54:12 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
gmurphy@raex.com writes:

This point that Glenn makes is a good one which I have emphasized with other
YEC attempts to give supposedly scientific explanations of their schemes -
e.g., Humphreys' cosmology. As far as scientific explanation is concerned,
natural processes plus a miracle is a miracle.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
With respect I think you and Glenn missed the point. We all agree that you
can't apply scientific explanations to miracles. But the Bible **does**
contain miracles, no? So what do we do? Do we simply leave out all science and
accept that all actions in the Bible could be miracles? If so, then let's just
shut down the ASA and move on to other pursuits.

Or do we draw lines where it is OK to involve science in our interpretation
of the Bible? It seems that everyone on this list does that. So how do we
draw these lines between miracle and non-miracle without being ad hoc to support
our pet theories? The only reasonable answer I can find is to admit miracles
only where the Bible actually **says** there is a miracle. Doing so is
**not** ad hoc. Inventing additional miracles to support pet theories most
definitely **is** ad hoc.

Nowhere does the Bible say that God miraculously changed the flood deposits
to fool the skeptics; or that God miraculously changed salt water into fresh
for the animals to drink; or that the animals went into supernatural
hibernation; or any such thing. I only see four actions from God in this account: (1)
that He sent a flood; (2) that He warned Noah; (3) that He shut the door of the
ark; (4) that He sent a wind to rescue Noah from the waters. Maybe all of
these except for (2) were miracles only in the sense of unusual timing or high
improbability, but nevertheless occurred through natural process. Or maybe
they were supernatural. Either way, the Bible specifically says that God did
them. You aren't denying that, are you?

So what basis do we have to say these events **couldn't** have occurred, when
the Bible already specifically says that God caused them to occur?

If the flood was in fact regional, and hence a big wind was needed to rescue
Noah, then God certainly could have done it just as the Bible says that He
wanted to. Therefore the occurrence of the needed wind gives us no basis to
critique a regional flood scenario.

The problem is that Glenn was trying to make science intrude into an area
where the Bible says that God was specifically acting. It wasn't my error to
make science intrude into God's actions. That was Glenn's error. I was trying
to point out that we can't do this. We can only make science intrude into
areas where there is no miracle. Items (1) through (4) cannot be disproven by
science. Anything else in a flood model **can** be disproven by science (such as
flood deposits) because the Bible doesn't allow for any other miracles
besides these four, and to rescue a model by inventing new miracles would be ad hoc.

Phil Metzger
Received on Sat Jun 10 09:57:50 2006