I wasn't arguing for a local flood merely saying that it is important to determine what the text actually claims before one proclaims that it is not possible. The "sun rises" is a valid way to describe the earth's revolving even if it is not technically accurate.
The Mt Ararat of today is not necessarily the same one named in the bible and it's elevation today is certainly not what it was in the past, or what it will be in the future. As to the dating of the Burgess Shale to 530 million years I have doubts about the validity of the assumptions that are used to derive those dates. It's possible that both Ussher and Hutton were both wrong in their assumptions. If you date the fossils by the rocks they are found in and the rocks by the fossils they contain where does that get you?
"The timescale is other than the one I'd specified in my earlier post, when I talked about the flood having its assigned window of occurrence during "human memory", generously allotted at ten thousand years."
Geologic timescales are extrapolated from present day rates of change which may or may not be consistent over the course of history. Uniformitarianism is an assumption that has taken on the form of a doctrine, which Glacial lake Missoula actually disproves. I've been there, and I've also been to Mt St Helens to see the remarkable changes that have taken place since that catastrophic event. Scientists have been amazed at the rapid pace of recovery that has taken place there. All instruments need to be properly calibrated in order for them to render reliable results. If the assumptions used to calibrate them are off then so are the results. In other words: garbage in = garbage out.
"Uniformitarianism is defined in the authoritative Glossary of Geology as "the fundamental principle or doctrine that geologic processes and natural laws now operating to modify the Earth's crust have acted in the same regular manner and with essentially the same intensity throughout geologic time, and that past geologic events can be explained by phenomena and forces observable today; the classical concept that 'the present is the key to the past'." (Robert Bates and Julia Jackson, Glossary of Geology, 2nd edition, American Geological Institute, 1980, pg. 677)."
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"Do you recognize a difference between teaching and advancing an argument? I am doing the latter here with you. It is neither my perception nor my intention that I am doing the former. It could be mere semantics."
It seems to me that the line between teaching and advancing an argument is a very fine one. I take you at your word as to your intent but it seemed to me that it fell on the other side of the line. |
