Re: [asa] Noah's local flood?

How important is it to have a convincing theory for the cause of the
Flood? The Bible describes a huge flood of a different order of magnitude
from other floods, indicating that this was a unique event. It should be
much more difficult to explain a unique event than it would be to explain
one that recurs, and so it shouldn't surprise us that we don't have an
obvious explanation. Nevertheless it is tempting to speculate.

Gordon Brown (ASA member)

On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, philtill@aol.com wrote:

> I'll argue for Glenn on this point because I quite agree with him on this.? It's a horrible thing to propose possible interventions that God might have used to produce the kind of Flood scenario (or any other miracle) that we are trying to defend.? If the Bible itself suggests an intervention, then well and good.? For example, the Bible suggests that God sent a wind.? That wind could have pushed water up into the Mesopotamian basin (as Alan Hill argues) or pushed the ark upstream (again, as Alan Hill argues), or it could have pushed the ark toward the Zagros mountains on the shore of the Persian gulf, as others have argued.? But nowhere does the Bible suggest that God intervened by tipping an entire plate of the Earth and then hiding the evidence so that the geologists cannot see what would have been simple for them to see.? That kind of ad hoc concordism is really bad because it brings shame on the gospel message, making people who believe the gospel out to be kooks who w!
 
 ill
>
>
> invent any kind of crazy scenario necessary to defend their a priori assumptions.? Better to give up your a priori assumptions and stick with a simpler packaging of the gospel that will not be a stumbling block to the people who need it.? If there is no evidence of a plate tipping, or water coming from Mars, or God supernaturally stabilizing a water canopy, or any of those other crazy ideas, then chunk them out the window as fast as you can and just accept that the Flood was probably somewhat different than you had imagined when you read the ancient text.? Accept that the ancient language is hard to understand, sometimes, and that the theological message is clear even if the history is a bit murky in places.? Why put stumbling blocks in people's way over something as unimportant as the mechanisms of the Flood?
>
> Phil
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Cooper <georgecooper@sbcglobal.net>
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:16 pm
> Subject: RE: [asa] Noah's local flood?
>
>
>
> That doesn't surprise me. Yet, as much as I like natural processes to work
> within God's plan, the Flood certainly could be an intervention event since
> judgment was upon them. This is not unlike Sodom and Gomorah (but not like
> hurricane Katrina since Bourbon Street was, essentially, missed).
>
> I really have no idea what geological evidence would be expected given a
> full range of scenarios incorporating "dunking" with rain augmentation.
>
> Coope
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: j burg [mailto:hossradbourne@gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 10:35 AM
> To: George Cooper
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] Noah's local flood?
>
> On 6/27/08, George Cooper <georgecooper@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> Is there any conjecture as to the possibility of the Arabian Plate dipping
>> in its NW region by, say, 0.08 deg.?This would drop that area by 2 miles.
>> That dunk would only be 0.05% of its total height from Earth's center.
>> Or, perhaps, the Eurasian plate rose slightly as the Arabian plate
> dropped.
>> I have no idea about such matters, admittedly, but am curious if this has
>> been discussed. [My apologies if I've missed it in these discussions.]
>>
>> I had some discussion with Glenn Morton on this recently. He has what
> looks like a convincing argument that such a dip is beyond the pale. I'm not
> expert to ay, however, if his argument is airtight.
>
>> Burgy
>
>
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Received on Fri Jun 27 23:39:23 2008