In article 16077@plains.NoDak.edu broberg@plains.NoDak.edu (Robert Broberg) writes: }I ask

From: James W. Meritt In article <16077@plains.NoDak.edu> broberg@plains.NoDak.edu (Robert Broberg) writes: }I asked for evidence and was told about a mastodon found frozen }in the arctic. He said it "had" to be frozen instantly. I pointed out }that it could have fallen through the ice. His response: "but it had }a tropical flower in its mouth!" From the FAQ on Velikovsky (who likes to claim the same): The original article extracted here is cited as "Farrand, Wm. R.; _Science_,133:729-735, March 17, 1961 (Copyright, 1961 American Association for the Advancement of Science)" My comments are in []; the material in () is included in the article. "...In contrast to scientific efforts, a number of popular and quasi-scien- tific articles have appeared in recent years, in which fragnmentary knowledge, folk tales, and science fiction are combined under the guise of veracity-- much to the chagrin of scientists and the confusion of the public. The most recent of such articles is that of [Ivan] Sanderson, who comes to the conclusion that the "frozen giants" must have become deep-frozen within only a few hours time. Such a thesis, however, disregards the actual observations of scientists and explorers. Adding insult to injury, Sanderson proceeds to fashion a fantastic climatic catastrophe to explain his conclusions.... "...The cadavers are unusual only in that they have been preserved by freez- ing; the demise of the animals, however, accords with uniformatitarian concepts...The ratio of frozen specimens (around 39) to the probable total population (more than 50,000) is of the order of magnitude expected among terrestrial mammals on the basis of chance burials. Furthermore, the occurance of whole carcasses is extremely rare (only four have been found)... "...There is no direct evidence that any wooly mammoth froze to death. In fact, the healthy, robust condition of the cadavers and their full stomachs argue against death by _slow_ freezing. [their emphasis] On the other hand, the large size of their warm-blooded bodies is not compatable with _sudden_ freez- ing. In addition, all the frozen specimens were rotten...only dogs showed any appetite for [the flesh]...'the stench [of decay]...was unbearable.' "Histological examination of the fat and flesh of the Berezovka mammoth show- ed, "deep, penetrating chemical alteration as a result of the very slow decay," and even the frozen ground surrounding a mammoth had the same putrid odor, implying decay before freezing [actually, no--the ground could have thawed after the mammoth was frozen and permitted decay, then refrozen. ERE] Furthermore, the stories of a banquet on the flesh of the Berazovka mammoth were, "a hundred per cent invention." "...The only direct evidence of the mode of death indicates that at least some of the frozen mammoths (and frozen wooly rhinoceroses as well) died of asphyxia, either by drowning or by being buried alive by a cavein or mud- flow...Asphyxia is indicated by the erection of the penis in the case of the Berazovka mammoth and by the blood vessels of the head of a wooly rhinoceros from the River Vilyui, which were still filled with red, coagulated blood. "The specific nature of the deposits enclosing the mammoths is not known well enough to be very helpful as an indicator of the mode of death or burial. Most of the remains are associated with river valleys and with fluviatile and terrestial sediments, but whether the mammoths bogged down in marshy places or fell into 'riparian gulies' or were mired in and slowly buried by sticky mudflows is not clear...in Siberia only mammoths and wooly rhinoceroses have been found frozen and preserved... "...so far no other members of the contemporary Eurasian fauna [except mammoths and wooly rhinos]...have been found frozen and well preserved. That only the bulky and awkward 'giants' of the fauna are so preserved points to some pecularity in their physique as a contributing factor...the mammoth, with his stiff-legged mode of locomotion would have difficulty on such [Siberian] terrain and moreover would not be able to cross even small gullies. It would be nearly impossible for him to extricate himself if he had fallen into a snow filled gully or had been mired into boggy ground... "The stomach contents of the frozen mammoths indicate that death occured in the warm season...when melting and soluflication would have been at a maximum and, accordingly, locomation would have been difficult. "...Digby was impressed by 'countless riparian gullies' that would have been ideal mammoth traps...Vollosovich...theorized that an animal so trapped might fall on its side and act as a dam, being slowly buried and suffocated by mud. The Berezovka mammoth is commonly regarded as having fallen as a cliff slumped beneath it; its broken bones attest to such a fall...the Mam- ontova mammoth perished in a bog...Quackenbush [wasn't he also Groucho Marx?] believed that his specimen from Alaska perished on a floodplain and that most of the flesh rotted away... "...All of these theories are credible and can be accepted as possibilities. There seems to be no need to assume the occurance of a catastrophe." Thanks to edeck@av8or.enet.dec.com } Anyone have any good proof the flood didn't occur? From the FAQ: } timing problems let's look at the Biblical dates. I Kings 6:1 says that 480 years passed from the start of the Exodus to the start of construction on the first temple by Solomon. Gal 3:17 says that 430 years passed from the cevenant with Abraham to the delivery of the Law to Moses. The chapters of Genesis after the Flood accound give the periods in years that passed between the births of various individuals from Noah to Abraham, giving a period of 390 years from the Flood to the covenant with Abraham. Thus, according to the Bible, the Flood took place 1300 years before Solomon began construction of the first temple. a) This is a clear, direct, falsifiable claim. These are clear, unambiguous statements that a period of X years elapsed between two events. b) The event itself (a global Flood that wiped out all but 8 humans) would be pretty hard to miss or gloss over. c) Because there were any number of literate cultures in the near East, who recorded dynastic lists, raised monuments giving dates and length of reigns, and sent ambassadors to each others' courts, we can pretty reliably construct chronologies for near Easter history, particularly for Egypt, and without reference to (but supported by) dating methods such as carbon-14 with corrections from tree-ring sequences. d) The upshot of which is that the building of the first temple can be dated to 950 B.C. +- some small delta, placing the Flood around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egytians (among others) have written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C. e) Therefore, either we have to reject the historicity of the Flood account; accept the historicity of the Flood account, but explain away the clear Biblical dating of the event; or accept the Biblical account and chronology, and reject the massive amount of written and archaological evidence estab- lishing the chronology of history in the near East. }Also, at the end }we were offered a book "the carpenter" or somesuch by Josh McDowell }. I know he was a topic of much debate on }talk.religion.misc? If anyone saved any posts on this fiend (er, mislead }Christian soul), could you please forward them to me? From my three-parter on _Evidence_That_Demands_A_Verdict: _Evidence_That_Demands_a_Verdict_ is a book that presents "historical evidences for the christian faith". It is produced by the Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc and was prepared by a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Talbot Theological Seminary. Since I'm a lot better with logic and the scientific method than languages and history, I will primarily be concerned with the massive logical flaws present, though I will include other items. The entire text is rife with circular reasoning, attempts at incremental confirmation, pleading to authority, and insufficient set definition, but there are many other logical errors. Please do not assume that just because it isn't mentioned here as an error I believe that it is correct. He also made up his own outline format. I'm going to try to keep his organization. Lines beginning with "}" are direct quotes taken from the book. The material I present is either written by me, or by someone on USENET, a mailing list, or email. Where appropriate, I asked their permission to quote. Look upon them as "witnesses" for Josh's "verdict". Since his title seems to indicate SOME judicial standpart, using "verdict", I believe that this will show that it is either wrong, unconfirmed, debateable, or biased. Thus, it "demands" no such thing. Given the wide press this book gets, I expected better. The total is somewhat large. I'm emailing it to you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scharle In article <16077@plains.NoDak.edu>, broberg@plains.NoDak.edu (Robert Broberg) writes: ... |> Anyone have any good proof the flood didn't occur? ... If you will bear with me a bit, I have to get a few things off my chest before giving you what little help I can. A critical question here is what your debating partner will accept as "proof". I think that we suspect that the answer to that is "nothing", so we have a rather difficult job in providing proof. When I say "nothing", I mean *nothing* -- if, for example, (to take an extreme case) one were to find a statement in the Bible which said "the flood didn't occur", I don't think that that would count, as for some creationists their agenda takes precedence over what is in the Bible, too. Then there is the problem of proving a negative (can anyone prove that there isn't an invisible monster under my bed?). So you seem to be left in the nearly impossible situation of proving that something doesn't exist to someone who wouldn't accept any proofs. But it is only "nearly impossible". The Flood story is *so* out of touch with reality that we can do something. I think that the posting which we have seen a while ago about corals was about as good as I have seen -- although I cannot vouch for the facts from my personal experience, I have not seen any reply to it in this group. The poster was an aquarist with an interest in growing corals. (Are you still out there, Bryan?) He said that corals were extremely sensitive to their environment, and even a slight change in, for example, the salinity of the water would cause them to start dying fast. A world-wide flood which killed all of those animals and plants which ended up as fossils would surely have wiped out the highly sensitive corals. Then he went on to mention such things as: the coral need a certain amount of sunlight, which would have been blocked by the heavy rain clouds for forty days. This does not mention the argument that we can date the corals back millions of years (any dating argument is likely to bring the knee-jerk response of "you are making a uniformitarian assumption", so you may want to avoid that -- not because there aren't good rejoinders, but just to avoid the tedium). In a posting from some time ago, there was a list of 103 creationist "problems" with evolution. Here is one of them: |> 32. There are many instances where quite different forms of |> life are completely dependent upon each other. Examples |> include: fig trees and the fig gall wasp, the yucca plant and |> the pronuba moth, many parasites and their hosts, pollen- |> bearing plants and the honey-bee family consisting of the |> queen, workers, and drones. If one member of each |> interdependent group evolved first (such as the plant before |> the animal), the other members could not have survived. Since |> all members of the group obviously have survived, they must |> have come into existence at essentially the same time. (As the original poster did not claim that this represented his/her ideas, I thought it appropriate not to include his/her name to protect the innocent.) Obviously there is no problem for evolution here for anyone with the slightest acquaintance with evolution, but as long as creationists seem to think that these are significant issues, not just something artificial brought up by evolutionists based on phony data: This poses a lot of problems for Ark theoreticians. How did the fig trees, yucca plants, and pollen-bearing plants survive over the time period from the beginning of the Flood (when the fig gall wasps, pronuba moths and honey-bees were floating on debris in the Flood, as one recent posting suggested, or in the Ark) until the end of the Flood? That is, not only getting a thorough soaking, but also deprived of those insects. And how did these insects survive while their food was under water -- for how long was it, a year? "Since all members of the group obviously have survived, they must have" survived together.