He told them if they self-deported, it would go much easier for them.
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No, it’s a myth which some people insist on taking literally,
Putting falsehoods in God’s mouth isn’t showing intellectual humility either.
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On this planet, humans spread out and explore.
Your article confirms that the distinction originated with the creationists Geisler and Thaxton in the 1980s.
You are showing everyone that you are dishonest.
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You are too modest. The flood layers (and note that you have disclaimed all knowledge of which layers are in fact flood layers) enable us to infer that no place in the record was inhabited by people.
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And then there’s this elephant in the room you’ve been ignoring up to this point
(screenshot of AI saying that a tiny fraction of 1% of all fossil-bearing rock has been excavated and sampled to date)
I’m not sure why you think I’m ignoring something obvious. I asked AI how much fossil-bearing rock Earth has. It replied “a few billion trillion kilograms”. What percentage of that do you think needs to be sorted through to reach a solid conclusion? I asked AI to estimate the budget that would be required to sample 10% of Earth’s fossil-bearing rock. It estimated “100 quadrillion to 10 quintillion dollars”. I asked it whether this would destroy human civilization, and it said that was an understatement. “You’d be removing the ground civilization stands on… the dust alone is an extinction mechanism…the energy budget rebuilds (and wrecks) the planet by itself…” etc.
The elephant in the room is not that. It’s also not the vast number of “early flood” samples which have been examined and the percentage of them which contain pollen (0). It’s your unwillingness to suggest a solution to the problem this topic is about, even after being asked directly several times.
I hope that you mean well, and would like to believe that. But it’s becoming more difficult.
All you’ve said here is to imply that somehow, knowing this might solve the problem. You have not suggested any way in which the shape of continents or the arrangement of ecological zones could keep pollen from blowing into the ocean and mixing around, or make all pollen wash, float or sink to precisely the same level as its host plant, whether it’s free or trapped in amber. I’ve asked for a YEC solution. I believe in miracles and I invite you to invoke them, or anything else, as freely as you like. Any solution whatsoever which might explain the pattern is welcome. But simply saying that there’s probably a solution helps nobody.
Please suggest one. But if you can’t imagine a solution, it would only be decent to say so, rather than implying that my question is unreasonable.
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Your general knowledge of science is deficient, and you are in no position to lecture others.
The conclusion (not assumption) of science is that there was no global flood, but we do know the shape of the continents over the past couple of billion years, and we broadly understand the climates and ecological zones over that time. Given that there is already a well established and detailed record of continuity bracketing the period of the flood story, a pre-flood world is excluded and questions so based are moot.
People need to eat, that requires desirable territory with water and fertile land, exactly the resources sought by any animal from the Permian onwards. So of course there would be dinosaurs mixed with humans. But that is only a minute portion of the difficulty. There are no modern mammals mixed with dinosaurs - no cats, no wolves, no bears, no sloths, no equines, no deer, no elephants or mammoths, no giraffes, no kangaroos, no hippos, as well as no monkeys or apes including humans. There are foraging herbivore dinosaurs and grazing mammals. Same ecological roles. There are carnivorous dinosaurs and carnivorous mammals. Same niche. There are large and small dinosaurs, same as mammals. So your plea of separate zones fails not only as science, but fails as common sense. Is that abductive enough for you?
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Not a myth. Good science shows it is true.
You can’t even get your story straight. Is Genesis a myth, or is it just not teaching the things you say aren’t true? Genesis is absolutely crystal clear there was a global flood. I’m not putting anything in God’s mouth by saying so. Until the 1800s Christians simply weren’t confused on this point. It wasn’t a debate.
Post-Babel they do. Pre-Babel they didn’t.
You are not going to lie to me about what my own article states. The basic distinction (not the modern terms) goes back to the 1930s, and I quoted Lacey’s article on that. Stop lying.
You should read the bible someday. Start with Gen11.2: As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. Moving eastward is spreading out and exploring.
Lacey’s article says that the contrast between origins and operational science began in the 1980s with Geisler and Thaxton, both creationists, albeit not necessarily YECs. Your article confirms this.
The reference to the 1930s is to Kroeber, who was comparing physics with anthropology, i.e. labwork vs fieldwork or experimental vs observational, and not operational vs historical, and who notes that “From physics Boas brought into anthropology a sense of definiteness of problem, of exact rigor of method, and of highly critical objectivity.” Kroeber even notes that Boas doesn’t use archaeology.
While Kroeber does note that there are historical and processual approaches, he does not distinguish them to the extent you claim, and in fact cites astronomy and geology as disciplines that use both approaches. He contrasts science with history more than he contrasts the two approaches to science.
But your claim wasn’t about different approaches. Your claim was that “the scientific method pertains to operational science (…), not to historical science” and Kroeber, by describing how Boas applies the rigor of physics to anthropology, confirms that the scientific method has been used in historical science. Nor does he imply that the historical approach is in any way less conclusive, reliable or scientific than the processural. That is the claim you made, that is the distinction that was invented by the (possibly non-YEC) creationists Thaxton and Geisler, and by presenting it as anything other than creationist chicanery you are flat out wrong.
P.S. Calling some-one a liar based on the contents of an article from AnswersInGenesis is incredibly stupid. Not quite as stupid as thinking that the 1481 Scottish Defence of the Realm Act might have restored castles as a precautionary measure against itinerant sauropods, but still incredibly stupid.
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Operational science and historical science and not recognized modern terms; they are creationist terms coined to dismiss the necessity of rigor in evaluating evidence, and designed to place untethered speculation on the same basis as science. While historical as an adjective may designate some trivial direction of focus, nobody outside of YEC recognizes operational science. Does that include astronomy? Does it denote engineering and is a synonym for applied? Does it include data gathering? Does it refer strictly to the lab bench? Does it include theory and math? Because science does not need an adjective, if you are hearing the term chances are it is in the context of YEC leading up to, let us use the adjective, pseudo science.
It is a stretch to assign some fundamental principle to Kroeber’s comments on the particulars of cultural anthropology. Mass spectrometry works the same whether you are analyzing tracers or performing carbon dating. Observations of SN1987 were science, even though supernovas neither repeatable or occur in labs. Some 50 experiments chemistry kit does not represent the pinnacle of science, good grief.
As for Geisler and Thaxton, they are pretty much unknown outside of creationist circles. While Geisler did not contest that the earth was ancient, he was a theologian and philosopher of religion by training and did not really know what he was talking about in regards to science. His textbook on apologetics was assigned where I eagerly enrolled in the class in Bible college, and even back then I soon discerned he was out of his depth, which at the time was a disappointment.
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Complete rubbish. We’re not seeing any good science from you in this thread - just excuses to try to explain away the evidence. Indeed if it was good science it wouldn’t be almost universally rejected by the scientists working in the relevant fields. It’s very telling that there are almost no exceptions who didn’t start by assuming YEC beliefs.
And that is complete nonsense. You assert that God literally claims that the Flood myth is true. That is putting a falsehood in God’s mouth,
Genesis does not attribute the Flood story to God. Let alone assert that God claims that it was literally true. So that really isn’t any sort of defence.
Christians can and do misunderstand the Bible. Again, this is not a defence - unless you believe that God is controlled by what Christians think.
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Indeed. The article you cite in your defense itself quotes Alfred Kroeber, and the quotes use neither of the terms the article attributes to him. “Historical science” is a real term, though you misuse it. “Operational science” is not. I’m willing to accept that you are clueless rather than lying, if you like.
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You’ve selectively responded to me, omiting large portions of what I said to you. That’s not a kind of discussion I have any interest in maintaining.
Regarding your abuse of AI: I asked AI an objective question (using it like a search engine). You on the other hand abused AI by asking it to do your thinking for you, asking it a subjective question-- “how much do we need to excavate to reach a solid conclusion?”
Not even close. Perhaps that explains why so many Old Testament scholars disagree with you?
I grew up in a tradition which ASSUMED the Noahic Flood was global. It wasn’t until I studied Hebrew that I realized that the global concept is not found in the Masoretic Text. I’ve written on this topic countless times on Peaceful Science so I will not rehash it here. But the Hebrew text uses the word ERETZ, which means LAND or “the ground” or even “wilderness” and not necessarily “planet earth”. The text simply says that Noah’s ERETZ—or the world which Noah knew—was flooded.
“Everything under heaven” can also be translated as “everything under the sky”. In all directions to the horizon, Noah saw water. That’s what a flooding of the entire ERETZ means. (By the way, it is also worth mentioning that “the circle of the ERETZ” in the Hebrew Old Testament is simply their way of saying “the horizon”, because it is obviously a circle which surrounds the LAND you are standing on. It has NOTHING to do with planet earth being spherical. The Young Earth Creationist community promotes a lot of really bad Hebrew pseudo-exegesis. It’s on a par with their “creation science.”)
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Of course he’s clueless. He gets almost everything he writes from other YECs, and rarely if ever checks their sources.
That’s how he contrived to parrot something that had been deleted from Wikipedia as unverified several years earlier.
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You’ve selectively responded to me, omiting large portions of what I said to you. That’s not a kind of discussion I have any interest in maintaining.
You entered a thread that asks a question and have done everything except answer the question. Now you sound offended by my attempts to steer you back to it. You also misread my question to you as a question to AI and scolded me for it.
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Read the thread. Selective responding has been your modus operandi.
That is fine by me, there is no obligation to reply at all, but it is rich of you in particular to level that as a charge.
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Now you’re making excuses for your selective response. Everything I said to you bears heavily on this question you seem to think is much more profound than it actually is.
Going back and re-reading, you are correct. I misread your question to me as if you had asked AI this question. My mistake there. My answer is, way more than the tiny fraction of a percent we have excavated so far. It’s simple statistics. When you have a tiny sample size, such as we have, then you cannot draw solid conclusions. You say it’s not feasible. That’s not my problem! I’m not looking to the rock layers to build out my whole story of the past. I have something far better to go on, which is the history in the Bible.
“So many”? Nonsense. According to Professor James Barr (Oxford Hebrew scholar), you’re dead wrong on this point.
Of course it is. It’s only by attempting to work around the plain meaning and insert artificially narrow conceptions that one can attempt to avoid the conclusion. But one is then left with the embarrassing question: if God had intended, in the context of ancient Hebrew, to convey a worldwide flood, how exactly could God have been any clearer? And for that matter, how can a local flood possibly make sense of the text, or of the broader story? It can’t.
If the flood were local, then 120 years’ advance notice was plenty of time to evacuate the area with no need for an ark. If the flood were local, it would not have covered all the highest mountaintops, even locally, nor would it have killed all life in which there was the breath of life.
Give it a rest on this silly scriptural gymnastics. It says what it says.
The infamous James Barr PRATT. It never gets old. (Uhhhh, actually, it was old and tiresome even when he first made the claim.)
I’m quite familiar with Barr’s work—and with Barr personally. We had a cordial but not close familiarity. One of his doctoral students was heavily invested in my own research and that led to a number of conversations. However, all the one-on-one discussions I can recall with Barr were about that student’s Greek lexicography work. Nothing about the Genesis Hebrew text. (So no entertaining war stories and Hebrew anecdotes about Barr from me. Sorry, @Dan_Eastwood.)
Coincidentally, considering our topic, I was in the audience when Barr delivered his famous a plenary session paper titled “Words and Meanings: This Century and Next.” (I figured it was about 30 years ago and indeed a quick search confirmed the details and nostalgically brought me back to the American Academy of Religion & Society of Biblical Literature Conference in New Orleans, 1996.) I also got to listen to David Clines rip Barr’s ideas to shreds. (You’ll find them published prominently. And not just Clines’ critiques. Many took up the cause. It became a pile-on.) Barr’s claims were controversial and got major attendance precisely BECAUSE so many scholars disagreed with his conclusions!
What 99% of Young Earth Creationists who quote him don’t understand was it was part of his effort to discredit them and their claims by pointing out the absurdities of their fundamentalist positions. The irony of Barr’s thesis was that even as he tried to box his opponents into a “global flood equals literalist” binary, this brought down on him an avalanche of criticisms from his HMT peers saying that he was guilty of his own brand of “anachronistic literalism”, one that was FAR REMOVED from the realities of ANE cultures and their texts. (Isn’t it strange that none of Answers in Genesis’ many cites of James Barr ever mentioned any of this?)
One of my favorite parts of your linked Answers in Genesis article is:
" 1. Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark."
Notice it says “world-wide” and NOT GLOBAL!!! Most scholars (including this one) agree that the Noahic Flood pericope intended a “world-wide” interpretation! As I already stated, Noah’s world was flooded. To him, it was world-wide. That’s a loooooooooooooonnnnnng way from stating that the entire planet earth was flooded. (And do I really need to cite examples from the Bible where “the whole world” did NOT mean “the entire planet”? How about when there was a famine “in all the earth” and “all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph”? Did ancient peoples from the Andes and Tahiti and Appalachia journey to Egypt to avoid starvation by buying grain? Come on. Try harder.)
Barr died about 20 years ago, if I recall. As with their favorite pseudo-science arguments, Young Earth Creationist “authorities” like Answers in Genesis love to quote mine past instead of present Biblical scholarship. (And that includes ignoring current Evangelical scholarship.) If they had been more complete and honest in their research, they would have found that Barr’s ideas are far from universally accepted outside of the YEC fan-fic community.
Answers in Genesis also pretends that one scholar trumps all others and proves that “the majority” hold their favorite position. Come on, I wasn’t born yesterday! Not going to fall for that one. Nor is anybody else on Peaceful Science. Choose better sources to quote.
As to your other PRATTs, you can use the Peaceful Science SEARCH feature to find my dissections of them one-by-one. At my age, I’m too old to waste a lot of time recycling.
This has always been one of my “very most favoritist” [sic] Young Earth Creationist taunts. And anybody who has worked in theological circles knows that “scriptural gymnastics” is the stereotypical response that is employed when someone doesn’t want to deal with exegetical evidence. (Both Norman Geisler and John MacArthur relied upon it whenever they got too lazy to construct an actual exegetical argument. And that was often.)
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Claiming simultaneously that humans didn’t spread far from their place of origin and that Noah’s flood was global is a tad inconsistent.