Posted on 06/14/2002 7:32:58 AM PDT by aculeus
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Part of International Research Group Refuting Popular Theory
In 1996, marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman published a scientifically popular hypothesis, titled Noah's Flood Hypothesis. The researchers presented evidence of a bursting flood about 7,500 years ago in what is now the Black Sea. This, some say, supports the biblical story of Noah and the flood.
But, such a forceful flood could not have taken place, says Jun Abrajano, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer. He is part of an international team of scientists who refute the so-called Noah's Flood Hypothesis.
Abrajano cites evidence of a much more gradual rising of the Black Sea that began to occur 10,000 years ago and continued for 2,000 years.
According to the Noah's Flood Hypothesis, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a narrow strip of land now broken by the Bosporus Strait. Ryan and Pittman argue that the Mediterranean broke through the land and inundated the Black Sea with more than 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. The salty powerful flood swiftly killed the freshwater mollusks in the Black Sea. This, they say, accounts for fossil remains that can be dated back 7,500 years.
Abrajano's team has challenged the theory by studying sediments from the Marmara Sea, which sits next to the Black Sea and opens into the Mediterranean.
The team found a rich mud, called sapropel in the Marmara. The mud provides evidence that there has been sustained interaction between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea for at least 10,000 years.
"For the Noah's Ark Hypothesis to be correct, one has to speculate that there was no flowing of water between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea before the speculated great deluge," says Abrajano. "We have found this to be incorrect."
GSA (Geological Society of America) Today magazine recently published a paper in its May 2002 edition based on Abrajano's research. His research also will be published this year in Marine Geology, an international science journal.
For a map of the area go to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/maps/tu-map.jpg
Or your religion's holy book could (as it is apparent) be characterized by various stories whose purposes served as a moral examples (Creation- God: I made you, revere me. Flood Story- God: I destroyed you because of your evil, be good)
Well, kind sir, please enlighten me on why you think the Earth is 6,000 years old! And please base your answer on more than your faith! At least i tried to show you my basis (even though you still managed to 'find fault' with it).
Oblige me with your viewpoint, and its basis. Why isthe Earth 6,000 years old?
Some things you have to believe before you understand. I can get you a Bible if you like. Would you like me to get you one?
There are several possible explanations. Many such species can live in water. For the small species, they could float on mats of vegatation. When the flood waters go back down they are in about the same place they were. This would work fine for little stuff, but for anything bigger than a monkey I would say it is unlikely.
Australia is not as big a problem as it seems. Placental mammal fossils have been found there, they just, for some reason, died out. It could be that both kinds of mammals were carried on the ark, and both spread from there. For some odd reason, placental mammals did not make it in Australia, and MOST marsupials did not make it eleswhere. Both kinds were in both places before the flood, but AFTER the flood one kind dies out in one area, the other kind dies out in the other.
Microevolution, oddly, actually greatly strengthens the case for Noah's flood. Through loss of information, speciation occurs. That means many species that are unique to islands could have evolved after the flood. This would also reduce the number of animals the Ark would had to have carried. The Komodo dragon then, could have evolved from smaller members of their family after the flood, in response to conditions on those few islands. Of course, immature komodo dragons could have floated on mats of vegatation for a while too. The same for say, giant lemurs in Madagascar. It is possible that livng things can change within limits quickly, but the limits are real. Mircoevolution can happen within 10,000 years, marcoevolution never or almost never.
There is also the possiblity that the "whole world" being flooded was the world of the patriarchs and not the whole globe. I don't lean to this myself, except maybe in the idea that every continent was affected, but not every part of that continent. If asteriod impacts sent up millions of tons of evaporated water and formed Tsunamis that overran much of the globe there might have been some small corners of the globe untouched. Wrangel Island, with the late-living mammoths comes to mind.
As for Goliath, the Bible gives his height in a unit that we know (approximately). He was about nine feet tall- both a "really tall guy" and a giant.
The Nephilim are really interesting to me. The standard Christian belief is that they were the result of demons who left their proper abode and mated with human females. They were "locked up" until the last day, so demons don't do that any more. Another possibility is that they were Neadertals. Neadertals were taller and MUCH more robust than contemporary humans. They were the only hominids that were extant with humans (making human evolution quite unlikly). Could THEY have been the Nephilim (fellers, tyrants, giants), or "watchers" of Babyalonian stories?
I believe this was a story about a possible flooding of the Black Sea around 7,000 bce or so.
It is believed it is possible that this event is related to, or the origin of, the Gilgamesh flood story (which is certainly the origin of the biblical flood story).
But the specifics of the story as recorded by human writers later are hardly to be considered 'facts from the word of god'.
Once you start using something like 'the bible' as 'word of god evidence', I have nothing left to add. I believe you invalidate your own position.
I believe there is ample evidence that the 'bible' is a collection of writings written by many humans over a long period of time. That collection was put together in a *very* political fashion. And there is not one chance in a million that the bible is the 'inspired word of god'.
In my humble opinion.
I assume this puts our discussion at an impasse.
Okay, I reviewed your evidence.
I think you're very mistaken.
2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
2 Timothy 4:2-4
I only want to show that there is evidence against the old earth/macroevolution theory. I am tired of this theory (ever changing as it is) being taught as fact when it is not.
Thank the chance of star dust coming together that we evolved enough to come to some binding to morality that caused western civilization to allow you to your opinion!
The chances of what you refer to as 'star dust' coming together, and binding/bonding, and in several millenia spawning an ecosystem that is extremely well conceived are so small that their happening by some sudden and random rush of events are low! Thus i can in some extent agree with you that the main flaw in the big bang theory is how entropy and chaos could be overcome and perfectly designed ecosystems arise!
However the thing that i find ludicrous in your posts is your adamant acceptance of the Earth being 6,000 years old!(And since you may try to say you did not say any such thing this is part of the post you put forth: I believe the earth is 6,000 - 10,000 years old - after Eden.)
I am not here to advocate God, or propose evolutionary theories! None of those goals are my objectives, thus do not think i am some fervent religious zealot nor some science oriented know-it-all(although in reality i am a science oriented know-it-all). My point was just to say that accepting that the Earth came into being 6,000 years ago is pure lunacy!
Simply so!
There are so many pieces of factual evidence that point to the Earth being far older than 6,000 yrs old (even if you discounted scientific dating that gives the age of the Earth as 4.55 Billion years). For example go and do a simply geological survey, and look at the different rock strata! The rocks were obviously set eons ago!
And just in case you change your argument (or someone else with your thinking) to just mean living life....or lets even make it more difficult for me and insist on just mammals.....the fact still remains that they were in existence millions of years ago!
Basically there is NO CHANCE the Earth came into being just a couple of thousand years ago! No chance.
However let me try and assist you with your theory! I once remember seeing this program (whether i believed or not is another matter altogether) where this person was saying that the 'days' used by God in creating the world were not to be taken in the literal sense.....maybe they were symbolic for 'ages' or something like that! Do i think that person was trying to 'cop out?' Maybe! But at the very least his train of logic made more sense (and he actually had some rather interesting points of view). The alternate viewpoints of adamantly insisting that the Earth is just several thousand years old is just plain silly! I am sorry to say so but any logical person would arrive to the same conclusion....that no matter whether you believe the Earth was born by a Big Bang, by an omniPotent Creator, or by feuding Alien Races; one thing is for certain......the Earth is MUCH older than 6,000 years!
By the way i would encourage you to read the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was an historical king of Uruk in Babylonia, on the River Euphrates in modern Iraq; he lived about 2700 B.C.However the tale was a mythical epic of how he came to power, and one of the stories written in Summerian clay tablets depicted a 'worldwide flood' that covered the whole Earth! The funny thing is that this myth was written long before the Pentatauch (hence it is a predecessor to the biblical story of the Great Flood). Also it is 'interesting' that these Sumerian Gilgamesh stories were integrated into a longer poem, versions of which survive not only in Akkadian (the Semitic language, related to Hebrew, spoken by the Babylonians) but also on tablets written in Hurrian and Hittite (an Indo-European language, a family of languages which includes Greek and English, spoken in Asia Minor).
Many scholars attribute the flood stories of such diverse tomes as the biblical Genesis and even esoteric books like the Popol Vuh to adaptations of the Gilgamesh great flood story. And i feel you will not agree with this....but then how come the Gilgamesh epic was written long before the 'time of Noah,' and that it encompases the same tenets! And that one of the languages it was written in (Akkadian) is a semitic ancestor to what came to be known as Hebrew? You may not believe anything i post.....but there is something very weird here. And very 'interesting.'
The scriptures state in Gen Ch 2 V 4 "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God created the earth and the heavens."
Clearly the use of generations and day in this passage refers to an unspecified period of time - or an age of the earth's history, but human history appears to be no longer than the 6000 years...
Now, let's talk about Gilgamesh. It is predated by the Elba tablets by some 600 years. The names Adam, Eve, and Noah appear in these tablets. The creation account is much more similar to Genesis than the Babyloynian accounts. There is a good case to be made the the Bible contains the original story, and Gilgamesh is a corrupted version. Read "New Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by McDowell for more info.
I find it interesting when people claim that the Earth is only 6,000 years old....and i am glad that you agree with me that the globe is obviously more than a mere 6,000 years old! However.....you turned around and stated that human history is 'no longer than 6,000 years!
By that statement i am assuming you do not mean 'recorded history' but the actual existence of humans on the Earth. And that you are trying to claim that humans appeared/were created/were spwaned from clay etc 6,000 or so years ago.
Well, i also happen to disagree with that statement on various levels. Basically my basis is the spread of civilizations, there set-up, their proliferation and cultural development, and such matters.
And then i could bring up neolithic artifacts and communities....and how they could be if humans 'popped' up on Earth 6 millenia ago!
However maybe you can counter the following points i made to another Freeper (and whose response was simply to either quote Bible verse, or to adamantly claim that no matter what the Earth is six millenia old)! I would appreciate if you provided logical answers/counters to these points. Also since your main concentration was with the appearance of humans, please concentrate on that facet of this post. This is the post i had sent....and maybe you can provide me with a logical counter to it:
Now for the ludicrous statement that the world came into being 6000 years ago! Do they know there are civilizations OLDER than 6000 years! For example although Egypt was brought together as a unified nation around 3000BC (approx. 5000 years ago), there was an pre-Egyptian civilazation called the Pre-Dynasty, led by such notables as Narmer. They do not know exactly when it started...HOWEVER they have dated back certain artifacts (such as the Narmer Plate, which was a prehistoric sky calender) back to 4468BC (that is around 6470 years ago.... which somehow would not make sense if the world was created 6000 years ago).
Also if you look at the Nubian Kingdoms (of what is now known as Sudan) they settled there in the Mesolithic period (30,000-20,000BC), and were DOMESTICATING animals in the Neolithic age (10,000-3,000BC)! How can that be possible if the earth came into being 6,000 years ago? It just does not make sense.
And do not get me wrong.... i am not refuting the existence of God, nor am i championing or advocating evolutionism or its ilk! However i think that 'publications' that assert dinosaurs were fossilized by great whirlpools, or that the universe was created 6000 years ago are simply lying, and trying to tie their (rather ridiculous) lies with theology and faith!
Children may believe in some of the things those tracts say.....however any lucid logical person who sat down and clearly thought of it would find it ridiculous that anyone would say the world was created 6,000 years ago! (Unless they want to come up with a statement that somehoe things 'aged' faster etc etc etc)!
Ai yi yi. For a moment i felt like i was back in the middle-ages reading the about people being burnt as heretics for suggesting the Eart revolved around the sun. However after reading about the universe being created 6,000 years ago i think those ignorant kooks in the middleages who believed the Earth was the center of the universe were in many ways better than the current crop! 6,000 years.....wow, what next!
Did you happen to read the title of the thread ? I am not invoking the bible as absolute evidence except in so far as the author of this article evidently invoked it. Once the scientist or author writing about it attempts to bring in scripture then I imagine that then makes scripture relevant to the topic.
I personally have no problem with scripture as metaphor and I certainly believe that a valid reading of the Noah story was a literary device that stole the babylon flood story.
In any case, the actual biblical text becomes relevant because the author of the article introduced it, not me.
"Noah's Flood Hypothesis" -- referring to the idea that this 9,000 year old flood might have been the inspiration for the 'flood' story written down 6,000 years later, first in the epic of Gilgamesh and then in the bible.
Doesn't have anything to do with "the bible is the exact word of God". Doesn't really have anything to do with the bible at all, in fact, except as an influence on it.
You've taken a scientific thread and made it a mythology thread. And I don't believe in your myths, so you just cut me out of the thread.
Thanks a lot.
And many agree.
Someone is wrong. I, of course, feel the evidence is obvious who.
And the flaw in the "but the odds are so low!" argument are so obvious it reinforces to me the point that there's no chance of having a logical discussion here:
Given billions of years, then something that is a million to one shot is certain to happen over and over again.
Look, I consider several of your conclusions to be terribly flawed, so much so that it makes me feel that attempting to discuss this with you would be pointless. I don't believe that the bible can possibly be the word of god.
So any conclusions you present after suggesting it is become untenable, to me.
So if you'd like to discuss this ancient flood that the thread is about, I'd love to. But if you're only going to claim that "the bible is the word of god and my opinion of the flood is that the bible is direct evidence of it down to the last detail", we have nothing to discuss.
I believe you're clearly wrong, for the obvious reasons.
Now, any opinion on the actual event the thread is about? What do you think, slow flooding or fast flooding of the Black Sea?
It gives circumferences of some shields used to decorate the temple as well as the diameter. You, of all people, should recognize an approximation when you see one!
If you read through my posts above, you'll see that I definitely do believe it to be an approximation.
It's a non-issue.
It's a non-issue to a sensible person, but it is a serious issue to somebody who maintains that the Bible is literally true in its every particular. In that case, approximations cannot be assumed. The Bible didn't say, "about thirty cubits"; the Bible said, "thirty cubits".
Surely you've heard of "reductio ad absurdum"?
Of course both topics are completely relevant to this thread. When comparing X to Y one needs to examine both X and Y doesn't one ? The author or scientists endeavor to explain that the flood they are examining matches the Noah story. In order to make that examination both need to be examined. In examining the Noah story it is very relevant whether the text is supposed to be completely literal or metaphorical.
You are making a claim that its reasonable from a scientific point of view that we can compare X to Y without examining X because X has religious significance. I will propose to you that your claim that we can compare X to Y wihout examining X lacks any scientific merit and might be considered by most folks as silly.
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