Noah's Flood - Local or Global?

It actually doesn't matter. Science is about how it happens, not why.

 

"See, you don't need faith in God to acknowledge true scientific theories..."


No, you need only throw out half the laws of physics.


And I agree with Sam. If we have no understanding of why it happened, then it doesn't matter HOW it happened. In fact, there has to be a "why". Nothing happens within what we KNOW of the natural world without a purpose.

 

No, you need only throw out half the laws of physics.

Care to explain?


And I agree with Sam. If we have no understanding of why it happened, then it doesn't matter HOW it happened. In fact, there has to be a "why". Nothing happens within what we KNOW of the natural world without a purpose.

Thare are many purposeless things that even your faith can't explain.

Please tell us why does Jupiter exists, or it has many moons? Why the purpose of Pluto and its moon Charon? And many other uninhabited planets and systems?

And I must insist: science doesn't deal with the purpose! This is the subject of other fields, like theology and phylosphy!

 

"Care to explain?"


Third Law of Thermodynamics, for one.


"Thare are many purposeless things that even your faith can't explain.

Please tell us why does Jupiter exists, or it has many moons? Why the purpose of Pluto and its moon Charon? And many other uninhabited planets and systems?"


First of all, I meant mainly within nature, and life itself. There's always a reason for what happens out there. However, whether we evolved to this point or not, would you not agree that humans have an appreciation for beauty? While it might seem insigificant, being able to look at Jupiter out there with a telescope is a great thing. Another thing is that it helps/helped with direction in the past. Now, you say these purposes are only what we've given it, and I agree. But they're still purposes.


"And I must insist: science doesn't deal with the purpose! This is the subject of other fields, like theology and phylosphy!"


I agree, but science is attempting to make the other fields you mention obsolete.

 

So you're saying Jupiter was created for aesthetics? Excuse me, but if that's what you're implying, that's pretty damn funny.

 

How the third law of thermodynamics needs the belief in the Judeo/Christian God to be true?

I agree, but science is attempting to make the other fields you mention obsolete.

Actually not. They are becoming obsoletes by themselves.

What about Pluto?

 

"How the third law of thermodynamics needs the belief in the Judeo/Christian God to be true?"


It doesn't, but it gets thrown out to make certain scientific theories more believable.


"What about Pluto?


I don't know. Aesthetics (answer your question, FID? ), guidance, gravitational pull? I could name multiple reasons for it to exist, even if we could live without it.

 

It doesn't, but it gets thrown out to make certain scientific theories more believable.

Have you ever considered that it is verifiable? And falsifiable?

Pluto is purposeful because of its appearance and gravitational pull? Pluto is invisible to the naked eye, and even the Hubble telescope gets a blurred image of it. And its gravitational pull has a quantifiable effect only on Neptune, its nearest neighbouring planet. So to me it seems quite purposeless, not to mention a lot of other galactic objects that are not near any inhabited planets to make a significant difference on any sentient life.

Edit: at this point we have derailed the thread so much that I don't remember why we are talking about this

 

Ditto.


Let me just say that I believe God put every body in the universe for His own pleasure and enjoyment. This, however, has no bearing on my argument that all things have purpose in the natural world, so, yeah.


Moving on.

 

But I was enjoying the discussion. Which would be the thread that such an argument about the purpose of anything would fit?

 

I don't think there is one, to be honest.

 

Only when th belief in the God of the Bible is left out of the picture. If you accept His existence, then the flood story and all that goes along with it isn't really that unreasonable.

No, because common sense involves... what is common. It does not matter if God can do it or not, it matters if it is done commonly. Once in the entire existence of the universe is not common. Not impossible, just contrary to common sense.


EDIT: Oh yeah, for the record and if you don't mind being off topic, could you say what the 3rd law of Thermodynamics is?

 

It basically says that any substance at 0 Kelvin has an entropy of zero.

 

It is just that I have heard arguments that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics (but by the same logic, so does cleaning my room), but never the third.

 

My mistake, it was probably the Second law I was thinking of.

 

WHOA!

Before I try and get us back on the topic of the flood here, I want to explain in the simplest way possible how biological evolution does not break the second law of thermodynamics: The second law of thermodynamics only applies explicitly to a CLOSED system. In other words, in any system where energy and mass cannot enter or exit, order will continually run downwards into a state of complete chaos. Biological evolution on Earth can increase in order because our planet is an OPEN system. WThe sun provides Earth with an energy input. Of all the massive amounts of energy the sun continually exerts, a tiny fraction of it hits the Earth, and a tiny fraction of that drives things like biological evolution in an upward fashion. The small amount of order that's created on Earth is made at the expense of the even larger disorder that occurs on the Sun. If our sun suddenly stopped giving Earth the energy it needed to mantain biological order (in other words, turning our planet into a CLOSED system), life would die, buildings would crumble, we could no longer rust-proof our cars, etc.

Back on topic - the flood.
The truth is, the idea of a global flood was a central model for geology up until the mid-1800's. Up until this point in time, every fossil of fish bones and clams found on mountain tops were explained by Noah's flood. However, this model slowly became rejected as more evidence was compiled. For example, geologists who studied marine fossils on mountain tops found that if you cracked through the rocks, there were more bones INSIDE the rocks. Not just buried, but ENCASED in stone! Even more suspicious was the fact that other geologists who studied sedimentation rates discovered that year after year, decade after decade, discrete sediment layers under water lithified into solid stone, providing us with a tree-ring type of pattern in the ground where we could tell, with careful study, the age of the Earth! Then, the farther the people dug, they found even different fossils of animals that do not exist anymore.

To make a long story short, the more we studied, the more the Earth appeared to be older than was previously thought. The map of the geological strata and relative ages of fossils found in the different layers of rock was laid out in the early to mid 1800's, and is still used by geologists and paleontologists today as an invaluable information source.

Oh, and this all occurred BEFORE Darwin's Origin of Species was even published, so it may shock you to know that THE MAP OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD WAS MADE BY CREATIONISTS!!!

And this, my friend, is honest history.

 

Several people have said that there is evidence for a global flood. In reality they must be saying that it is the same evidence, you just have to interpret it differently. Am I right?

 

Several people have said that there is evidence for a global flood. In reality they must be saying that it is the same evidence, you just have to interpret it differently. Am I right

Yep. They interpret it wrong, I interpret it right. Easy really

/Z

(For the sarcasm impaired, wear Sarcasm Detection Goggles(tM))

 

If this argumetn is only a matter of interpretation, then we should try to how creationists interpret petrified forests on top of each other, the "crater"(which, according to a few creationists is not a meteoric impact crater) in Yucatan peninsula, etc.
In short, how do creationists interpret the geological column?
Where do the flood sediments start?
Where do they end?

I'm still waiting to see an answer to these questions.

 

JM, please stop using that 2nd law argument. it just weakens what you're saying even further.

 

Vagrant,

You wont see an answer from the Creo's.
I have been asking for years to give evidence, other than Biblical writings, to back up their claims....but their isn't any.

 

The flood caused the petrified forests.

 

The flood caused the petrified forests.

Elaborate.




Anata Baka?!

 

I don't exactly have that kind of authority. I would think it would be a rather simple explanation, the flood being global and extremely powerful in most areas.


I can't say I honestly know how it would have worked, but I believe that most of the things modern scientists attribute to billions of years of slow change can be easily attributed to a world-wide flood, causing the fossilization of several animals and plants (and humans), fault lines, "plate tectonics", layers of petrified forests, and so on.

 

Jedi Master,

One of the reasons scientists see billions of years of geological evolution is because of the vast number of layers in the geology.

If a global flood occured, we wouldn't have those vast amounts of layers.

There is evidence of a localized flood of the Black Sea which is what led to the folklore of Noah.