Re: Is the Hills' flood possible?

1st, I don't think the biblical flood story should be read as an historical narrative so I won't try to reply to some of your questions about what I think God did or didn't do in connection with it.

2d, one needs to know how a "miracle" is being defined. It is a traditional belief, & 1 that seems to be assumed by many on this list, that miracles are phenomena completely beyond the capacity of created agents - God "violating the laws of nature" as people sometimes put it rather crudely. I have been assuming that that is what is meant here (& it is in practice the kind of thing YECs appeal to), though I do not think that it is necessary to regard all the things which are usually called "biblical miracles," such as the feeding of the 5000, need to be understood in that way.

Then to the point Glenn & I made. If YECs are going to claim to give scientific explanations of how certain things in the Bible actually happened then they cannot be allowed to introduce miracles in the sense I gave. The proper scientific response to "Then a miracle occurs" as part of a supposedly scientific argument is, as in the well know Harris cartoon, "I think you need to be more explicit here in step 2." If scientists are allowed to appeal to miracles then any theory can explain anything.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Philtill@aol.com
  To: gmurphy@raex.com ; asa@calvin.edu ; glennmorton@entouch.net
  Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 9:57 AM
  Subject: 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 11:07:22 2006