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The Rivers of Eden

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  • The Rivers of Eden

    The last year and a half has been an amazing time in my Christian life. While I know Lurch disagrees, I figured out that there is evidence for the existence of the soul, the week my cancer moved into my bones. I felt it was a cheer up card from God.

    What I am about to talk about will make those who knew me from back in the 1990s and early 2000s very disappointed in me. But many atheists called me all sorts of bad names for merely taking down my web pages back around 2010. Many more liberal Christians will be disappointed as well. Young-earthers have been disappointed with me for a long time anyway. Most people know that back in 1997 I suggested that Noah's flood was the infilling of the Mediterranean Sea.https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1997/PSCF12-97Morton.html This suggestion was largely based upon the idea that it was the only flood in geologic history which actually matched the description of Noah's flood in the Bible. I never pushed the idea much because I never felt I had that one piece of data I needed. Now I think I do, right before I check out of this world.

    Six million years ago, the Mediterranean started being cut off from the world's oceans, depositing a thick layer of salt on the bottom of the Mediterranean sea floor. By 5.6 myr ago, the water was completely cut off and the water level fell drastically and over the next few hundred thousand years, rivers cut deep canyons into the continental crust along the rim of the Med. The Nile cut a 4000 m deep canyon at this time. After the salt deposition was finished, sediments from the various rivers covered the salt in clastics. and the land at the bottom of the sea became a place where lots of wildlife lived. These would have included among other things: giraffes, big and small, camel, hippopotomi, elephants, sabre-tooth and lynx-like cats, rabbit-like animals, mice, deer, antelope, etc. It was not barren by any means. Hippos and elephants eat grass, and elephants also eat fruits and tree bark.

    It is here that I placed Eden, and when the Mediterranean Flood came, it carried Noah and his small ark right up to Turkey. This in short is the theory I proposed.

    What has come to my attention is the geologic data collected over the past 10 years or so as the Eastern Mediterranean has become a natural gas producing area. It has filled in data that I never had before. While I haven't posted some of my things here lately, I will link to them if someone wants more detail. Anyway without any further adieu, here is the hard question I have both for Christians and nonChristians. As you read, realize that none of this could have been known until 1970. My question is how did this get into Scripture?

    The Rivers of Eden. by Glenn R. Morton, March 14, 2020

    The rivers of Eden describes the Eastern Mediterranean area as it was 5.5 myr ago. It points to Eden being located in the only place on earth that was flooded with a flood that matches the Biblical description of Noah's flood. How did that happen? How is that possible? Below, I show how the Bible does match that time frame. It is up to you to decide how this occurred.

    Eden is not popular with our theologians anymore. To me, this is a problem in need of solution because I believe Christian theology requires Eden and the events there to be real historical events. Most modern Christians don't think Eden's geography is real. And they do so for good reason, today's geography makes Eden impossible. Eden is reserved for a special castigation and unbelief by our scholars. John Monday writes:

    "Some have gone further and claimed the geographical allusion is to a fantasy. For Cassuto, 'The Garden of Eden according to the Torah was not situated in our world.' Skinner claimed: 'it is obvious that a real locality answering the description of Eden exists and has existed nowhere on the face of the earth...(T)he whole representation (is) outside the sphere of real geographic knowledge. In (Genesis 2) 10-14, in short, we have...a semi-mythical geography.' For Ryle, 'The account...is irreconcilable with scientific geography.' Radday believed that Eden is nowhere because of its deliberately tongue-in-cheek fantastic geography. McKenzie asserted that 'the geography of Eden is altogether unreal; it is a Never-never land.' Amit held the garden story to be literary utopiansim, that the Garden was 'never-known,' with no real location. Burns' similar view is that the rivers were the entryway into the numinous world. An unusual mixture of views was maintained by Wallace, who held that the inclusion of the Tigris and Euphrates indicated an 'earthly geographic situation,' but saw the Eden narrative as constructed from a garden dwelling-of-God motif (with rivers nourishing the earth) combined with a creation motif, both drawing richly from those motifs as found in Ancient Near East mythological literature." John C. Munday, Jr., "Eden's Geography Erodes Flood Geology,"Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1996), pp. 123-154,p.128-130

    John Worrall, professor of the philosophy of science at the London School of Economics, said:

    "There is an enormous difference between myths like the Garden of Eden -- so crazy even bishops don't believe it -- and those myths which, as yet, have no evidence to back them up. Camelot falls into this category." http://detnews.com/1998/accent/9808/20/08200043.htm Link no longer works

    So, is the geography of Eden real? I hope to show that it was real, and that geography has changed, and the description of Eden no longer fits today. But it is going to stretch the comfort of many.

    I remember as a teen hearing a preacher ask his audience of teens, how many wanted to know God's will? Nearly all the hands went up. Then he asked, How many of you are willing to do whatever it is he asks? Most hands went down and a few remained up. The preacher then said, "You are the ones who will find his will for your lives.?".

    I think this story also goes for apologetic. Are we willing to go where the data says to go? I think most are not, some go part way and a few might be willing to go all the way. When I was a new christian and was just getting into the creation/evolution area, and sadly becoming a YEC, I knew YEC had problems but felt the theology required a true history from Genesis. I told my best friend of the time,, my roommate and eventual best man, that I was going to solve the CE issue. That was a brash brag on the part of a 19 year old. The flood was what intrigued me most because floods leave evidence of themselves. And there is zero evidence of a big flood in Mesopotamia and the YEC global flood wouldn't work for so many reasons. My search led me eventually to the infilling of the Mediterranean Sea. Such an infilling perfectly fits the description of the flood in the Bible, but few are willing to call it Noah's flood. Doing so raises questions about farming that far back? And questions about can a primitive hominid really be capable of speech and communion with God? I will address these questions at the bottom of this post. I found a solution that no one likes.

    The question I have come to is "How on earth did Genesis 2:8-13 come to describe the geography of the eastern Mediterranean sea bottom, which at the time was dry land during the Messinian Salinity Crisis?" And that location for Eden lies in the only flood in geologic history that is local, and matches precisely the description provided by Genesis 7 and 8.

    8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates." The Holy Bible: King James Version. (2009). (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Ge 2:8–14). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc. (Note, all Bible quotations come from this source)

    Six million years ago the strait at Gibraltar closed, cutting the Mediterranean off from its main source of water. In the Mediterranean basin, more water evaporates from it than rivers can supply. Because of this, the entire Mediterranean sea dried up, leaving a few big brinish lakes and the rest was desert or grasslands where the rivers flowed in. Things were very different back then. Let's take a look.

    The first river is the river Pison and it is said to compass the land of Havilah. Genesis 25: says: And they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria.


    This places Havilah in Arabia or the Sinai. In 2019 Matt and Ryan presented a paper on this question at an AAPG sponsored geological conference.

    Yossi Mart and William B.F. Ryan Abstract

    "The offshore extension of Afiq Canyon is a deep valley, buried under thick Plio-Quaternary sediments beneath the continental slope off the southern coastal plain of Israel. ... Additional valleys of similar dimensions and characteristics to the marine extension of Afiq Canyon occur elsewhere along the continental slope of the entire Levant, suggesting that several rivers of the fluvial system of the Levant, which drained northwestern Arabia to the Mediterranean Sea during the Oligo-Miocene, still prevailed in the Messinian. The Afiq Canyon and its offshore apron as well as equivalents such as the Nahr Menashe fluvial system off Lebanon, imply that the geography of the Levant during late Miocene differed from the present. The Levant Rift could not have been a continuous tectonic depression as it is in the present, but rather a sufficiently disconnected series of grabens that allowed large rivers to still flow in between. The presence of the Afiq apron of substantial volume and with a thickness approaching 200 m along its apex confirms active fluvial systems feeding their bedloads into the Mediterranean as recent as 5 million years ago." 1

    This is the Pison river system and when the Mediterranean was a dry mostly arid land, this river flowed over the present continental shelf and ended up on the former Mediterranean sea bed.

    The second river is easy to identify because the only river that encompasses the land of Cush/Ethiopia between the White and Blue Nile tributaries, is the Nile river. During the Messinian Salinity Crisis, the Nile river cut the biggest Grand Canyon that ever existed. It cut over 4000 m into the African granite during this period.

    "During the MSC the Nile created an enormous canyon, measured at a depth of more than 4000m below sea level in the offshore area of the delta."2


    The sands it transported into the Mediterranean are shown on the picture below. The sharp linear cutoff of the yellow Nile sands is due to where the seismic survey stopped:

    MEssinian clastics Nile labeled.jpg

    The southernmost red arrow in the picture above marks where the Pison entered the Mediterranean Sea. That is crooked lines it points to is the Afiq canyon mentioned above. Below is a picture of Afiq canyon from another paper, it is an enlargement and a bit fuzzy but can be read.

    Couldn't upload this picture see it at https://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/...chance-or.html


    We now have two of the Biblical rivers coming together on the floor of the dry Mediterranean basin.

    The third river is the Tigris. It is called Hiddekel in Daniel 10:4


    "as I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel"

    Since the other river is always referred to as the Euphrates, Daniel had to be in the Tigris.

    The precise location of this river's entry into the system is not completely clear. It might have joined the Euphrates onshore. We know that because Arabia was then draining its water into the Mediterranean, the Tigris couldn't flow south because of topography. It was updip that direction at that time., So, the Tigris is boxed in by the Euphrates draining to the Mediterranean and the Pison draining to the Mediterranean. Logic dictate that this river entered the Mediterranean basin. My current best idea about where it entered that sea, was a data point I once thought was the Euphrates. Just north of the Lebanese/Syrian border a big river entered into the dry Mediterranean sea at that time. Below is the surface slice from 3d seismic showing there is a big river channel entering the Med which I have marked on the picture. The channel is about 3 km wide which means it was a major river. The Green sediment fan shown in the first picture has to be the Euphrates, because it is closest to Turkey where that river is sourced. The Tigris river is sourced further east in Turkey.


    Tigris channel marked.jpg

    The fourth river is the Euphrates, as it is named. It entered the Mediterranean through the province of Hatay, Turkey. The green sands, the Nahr Menashe, shown in the picture below are mostly from the Euphrates river, which even today gets about 62 miles from the Mediterranean coast at just this location. Today uplift along the coast turns the Euphrates away from its closest sea and heads it to the Persian Gulf.

    MEssinian clastics Nile labeled.jpg

    This is because the crash of Africa into Eurasia has changed the tilt of the land since then. But during the Messinian Salinity Crisis, when the Mediterranean was dry, the Great Euphrates dumped its sand in the same place we find the Pison and Nile(Gihon) dumping their sands. The waters of these 3 rivers would have intermingled.



    Putting this all together, this is a schematic of what I think the preflood rivers looked like and how they related to each other:

    Eden geography option 2.jpg



    Eden's geography can be quite real and quite historical. The question is, are you willing to go where the data of geology and the data of the Bible lead?


    Now, I have shown that at one time, 5-6 myr ago, the rivers of Eden met on the bottom of the dry Mediterranean basin. I think that is where Eden was. The geography is real, but it isn't applicable to our time. Geography changes.

    So, here is the question, How is it that the Bible mentions these 4 rivers which are impossible to be together today, but which were together 5 myr ago in a basin that experienced the most massive flood every known, find themselves grouped in a description of Eden, in a basin with a massive flood that would have matched Noah's flood as described?

    1. Noah's flood lasted a year. Geological cores from the flood layer show that the filling was extremely rapid--within an inch of sedimentation. Calculations show that it would have taken about a year to refill the Mediterranean 8.4 months to 2 years are recent estimates.

    2.That flood would have covered many high mountains within the basin, but whose tops were below sea level. Noah's flood says the same thing. "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered" Gen 7:20

    3. If you read the word 'eretz' as land rather than as planet earth, then Genesis 7:21 is absolutely true:

    And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the land, and every man: 22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

    4. Constant rain would occur because the flood waters filling the basin would push moist air up which would cool, condense to clouds and cause long periods of constant rain.

    5. Furthermore, in Gen 6:11, God says he will destroy the 'eretz' (land). And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. This can't happen with a global flood; we still have land. It doesn't happen with a Mesopotamian flood--Mesopotamia is still there. But with a big local flood, like the infilling of the Mediterranean, that land has actually been destroyed. It no longer exists.

    To top this off, this time period was when Hominids first appear on earth. This is the only time we could have had a primal pair of Adam and Eve. And this makes people nervous about having Adam be a small brained person. I have a series of posts here which discuss this and other issues.

    If you are worried about a small brain being stupid, see my post discussing a normal modern human with a brain the size of an australopithecus.https://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/...-small_17.html

    If you don't think Adam could have lived that far back, consider the series When Did Adam Live. Since humanity's oldest genes are 5.5 myr of age, genealogically, this is the only time a primal pair of parents could have existed, see here. Religion goes way back, meaning religion is not a new thing. The curses given to Adam and Eve both involve their brains growing bigger, which implies strongly that Adam and Eve were early hominids. Why would God curse big-brained Neolithic farmers with what they already had?

    Objection: Farming The choice of 'tiller' for the translation of what Cain did might be unfortunate. The word could be "served" the ground, or 'worked' the ground which would not have that connotation of farming. Strong's says: "AV translates as “serve” 227 times, “do” 15 times, “till” nine times, “servant” five times, “work” five times, “worshippers” five times, “service” four times, “dress” twice, “labour” twice, “ear” twice, "3 Early hominids used stick to dig up tubors. They were 'workers' of the ground, but not 'tillers' of the ground. Translators always think in terms of their scenario for the events they are translating. If they are wrong, well, they change what people think. I don't feel necessarily that this does mean tilling rather than working the ground.

    What of Abel keeper of flocks? There are two ways of looking at this. The word keeper can be translated as 'companion', so Abel could be a 'companion of flocks'. Did he consider he owned them? Maybe. Did flock consider itself owned? Maybe not--like my cat does not consider himself owned. Many primitive people follow 'their' herds, but their herds are wild. But lets say he did have some captive animals. This might be no more different than the Neanderthals of the Southern Caucasus who clearly had sheep in a closed off box canyon and used them as a food source. The sheep were wild but couldn't escape.

    Now, the word translated as sheep is tson and may mean sheep, goats or cattle. (it also could mean possessions). Now, herders get most of their calories from the flocks and herds they keep. That is why they keep them. But what are we to do when Neanderthals did the same thing in the Caucasus mountains where they obtained 85% of their calories from sheep!4

    At another cave they obtained 60% from sheep and goats.

    "Outside the Caucasus, high frequencies of mountain goat in Middle Palaeolithic contexts have been observed in Uzbekistan at Teshik-Tash (Capra sibirica: 1 80% NISP [Gromova 1949]) and Obi-Rakhmat (Capra sibirica: 47.4-66.7% [Wrinn n.d.]), at the Spanish sites of Gabasa 1 (Capra pyrenaica: 33.7-52.2% NISP per layer [Blasco Sancho 1995]) and Axlor (Capra ibex: 25.6% combined ungulate sample [Altuna 1989, 1992]), and at Hortus in southern France (Capra ibex: 75.4% NISP combined sample [de Lumley 1972])."5

    It seems that Neanderthals had some system which had a similar effect calorically as herders, but they were unlikely herders. Maybe this is something like what Abel had.

    Speech I do not believe that it was necessary for Adam to have the same ability in language that we have. There has always been a question in anthropology about whether language areas like Broca's area developed as speech improved or where they required first. If they were required first the question then becomes what caused them to grow, as useless things until suddenly, they got big enough for language. That seems backward. Broca's area should have evolved as a response to speech getting better.

    I also don't think it is necessary for the vocal tract to be like ours in order to have a primitive language. Meer cats have vocalizations for aerial attacks by eagles or a terrestrial attack. They don't have our vocal tract but communicate these things very well. Early humans would have had a slower communication, but it still could have been communication.

    When I was a young-earth creationist, I believed that the Bible was historically true and that grounded my faith. When I left it and had no historical anchor for early Genesis, I cursed the day I became a geoscientist. I envied the YEC's for the certitude they had and I didn't have certitude. Now that I have found a way to match the Bible historically from Genesis 1 through the Exodus, I have that certitude in Scripture again that I had so long ago. Certitude that they were correct is what powered the disciples. Without that certitude today, the church is weak and adrift.
    I will add that this time frame is the only time, based on the age of our oldest genes, that we could have a primal pair. https://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/...-genetics.html Furthermore both curses from Eden are curses about a larger head.https://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/...il-record.html For instance, Eve was cursed with pain in childbirth. But she and 2000 generations of her mothers also had pain in their childbirth--it's like cursing me to ugliness. Sweat of the brow is a cooling mechanism for the brain. All of this adds to say Adam and Eve were not Neolithic farmers and neither was Noah.

    Now, once again, is it blind chance or divine inspiration that the Bible describes a geography that actually existed 5.5 myr ago? Will you follow the evidence or not?

    References

    1.http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/do...t/ndx_mart.pdf

    2.Angelos Mousouliotis et al, " Siliciclastic Deposits of the Messinian Nile Canyon, Herodotus Basin, Eastern Mediterranean", Geoscience Technology Workshop, Exploration and Development of Siliciclastic and Carbonate Reservoirs in the Eastern Mediterranean, Tel Aviv, Israel, February 26-27, 2019http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/abstracts/html/2019/telaviv-90341/abstracts/2019.TelAviv.12.html

    3.Strong, J. (1995). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Woodside Bible Fellowship.

    4.Daniel S. Adler, Guy Bar-Oz, Anna Belfer-Cohen, and Ofer Bar-Yosef, Ahead of the Game : Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Hunting Behaviors in the Southern Caucasus ,"" Current Anthropology Volume 47, Number 1, February 2006, p. 91

    5.L.V. Golovanova, et al, ""Mezmaiskaya Cave: A Neanderthal Occupation in the Northern Caucasus,"" Current Anthropology, 40(1999):1:77-86, p. 85



    Last edited by grmorton; 03-15-2020, 04:26 PM.

  • #2
    Interesting as always and I'm keeping you in my prayers.

    I don't mean this as a criticism or to be trite but I put my certitude in Christ and His finished work on the cross and considering placing it anywhere else to be dangerously close to going against what He told us in Matthew 7:24-27.

    I'm always still in trouble again

    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      Interesting as always and I'm keeping you in my prayers.

      I don't mean this as a criticism or to be trite but I put my certitude in Christ and His finished work on the cross and considering placing it anywhere else to be dangerously close to going against what He told us in Matthew 7:24-27.


      It is not a criticism, rogue that is where I put my certitude, but, we are to meet people where they are and in our world, the people tend to be materialistic, think there is nothing but myth in Scripture and my hope is that it will cause one or two folk to re-evaluate. But also remember, the disciples saw the risen Lord. that was a factual event in their lives. Others might doubt, we might doubt but to them, it was a fact of history and I think that is why none of them relented even before the horrible deaths some of them suffered. Confidence does wonders.

      edited to add: I didn't write the bible which names the rivers, I didn't decode anything. I didn't write in scripture where Havilah was, nor make the Nile encompass Cush. I didn't acquire or interpret the seismic data that went into determining where the sediment was deposited. It was Ryan and his co author who noted that Arabia drained into the Med. I did nothing here except connect a couple of dots.
      Last edited by grmorton; 03-15-2020, 05:20 PM.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by grmorton View Post
        10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
        Water doesn't flow uphill, Glenn.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by grmorton View Post
          [SIZE=3]The last year and a half has been an amazing time in my Christian life. While I know Lurch disagrees, I figured out that there is evidence for the existence of the soul, the week my cancer moved into my bones.
          Just to be clear, i don't in any way object to you deciding that you've got evidence that you personally find compelling. I just disagree in general that the evidence rises to the level where it's a matter of "if you accept the evidence for quantum mechanics, then you must accept the existence of a soul." And i disagreed with some particular interpretations you had of the writing of some physicists.

          And, to be even more clear, whatever intellectual disagreements we have, I wish you the clarity to find a way to define what you consider the best outcome for the cancer, and the strength to achieve that best.
          "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
            Just to be clear, i don't in any way object to you deciding that you've got evidence that you personally find compelling. I just disagree in general that the evidence rises to the level where it's a matter of "if you accept the evidence for quantum mechanics, then you must accept the existence of a soul." And i disagreed with some particular interpretations you had of the writing of some physicists.

            And, to be even more clear, whatever intellectual disagreements we have, I wish you the clarity to find a way to define what you consider the best outcome for the cancer, and the strength to achieve that best.
            Lurch, if there are on this forum any comments coming from you about the existence of the soul, could you point me a direction to the relevant threads?

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Seeker View Post
              Lurch, if there are on this forum any comments coming from you about the existence of the soul, could you point me a direction to the relevant threads?
              I wouldn't say that this is an accurate characterization of the discussion. It was more about the requirement for consciousness in an observer of quantum systems. If that still interests you, i'll see if i can dig out the thread.
              "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                I wouldn't say that this is an accurate characterization of the discussion. It was more about the requirement for consciousness in an observer of quantum systems. If that still interests you, i'll see if i can dig out the thread.
                I'm still interested, sure.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by grmorton View Post
                  Eden is not popular with our theologians anymore. To me, this is a problem in need of solution because I believe Christian theology requires Eden and the events there to be real historical events. Most modern Christians don't think Eden's geography is real. And they do so for good reason, today's geography makes Eden impossible. Eden is reserved for a special castigation and unbelief by our scholars.
                  “Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”

                  ― Joseph Campbell
                  "When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers…. The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly…. But the deeper idolatry, of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers, was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar."

                  — Alfred North Whitehead

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Seeker View Post
                    I'm still interested, sure.
                    Discussion was in this thread:
                    http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...of-materialism
                    "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                      I had seen this, but hadn't read it fully. When I have more time, I will do that.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                        Just to be clear, i don't in any way object to you deciding that you've got evidence that you personally find compelling. I just disagree in general that the evidence rises to the level where it's a matter of "if you accept the evidence for quantum mechanics, then you must accept the existence of a soul." And i disagreed with some particular interpretations you had of the writing of some physicists.

                        And, to be even more clear, whatever intellectual disagreements we have, I wish you the clarity to find a way to define what you consider the best outcome for the cancer, and the strength to achieve that best.
                        I have been off doing other things and just came back. You know Lurch, somehow I didn't expect you to like it. lol, as if that is important to me. But thank you for noticing.

                        Sadly, I have looked at this forum now and everytime I come back, it seems well, far less exciting than when there were YECs here. I guess yall have run them off. Take care.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Hi Glen, good to see you're still around.

                          It is less exciting here, not just because of the lack of YECs but because of a general exodus. I recommend taking a look at Peaceful Science.
                          Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                          MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                          MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                          seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            After my last foray here to post about the rivers of Eden, I thought about how few christians are left in this science forum, and I fear I was part of the problem driving YECs out. I ceased arguing against YEC unless they pushed me into a corner. They beleive God and I was too often leading them not to believe God. Thus I went first to Biologos and argued my case for a historical and scientific Bible, thinking I would wipe my feet of this place. Then I went to Christian forums and did the same. At each site I got a few people interested in my finished view of how to make the Bible match modern science.

                            ]This will sound egotistical but Eph 2:9 says:For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

                            Fifty years ago as an arrogant 19 year old, I told my room mate I would solve the creation/evolution issue. I could never leave this area for long and it would pull me back like a moth to the flame, and my children can tell you how hard I worked to find a solution to this issue. I read thousands of books and tens of thousands of articles. I always had a book to read at school plays baseball and soccer games etc. I now have probably 2-4 months left to live and right now I feel like H. But I feel compelled to come back even here to lay out why I think I have a path whereby the Bible can be viewed as historically and scientifically true. As I reflect on my life, I have come to believe firmly that this work was what was prepared for me to do before I was born as Eph 2:9 says. And it was not until early April this year, that the rivers of Eden match up was found, giving me the last piece of my solution. Why did it happen as I am about to die? God's timing for some reason. All the stuff I will post can be found at my blog http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com

                            So, here is installment 2 of my views. This is an outline of what falls into place if we move Adam back to the time of the real geography laid out for the Edinic rivers. I will later post several things showing the match. I will continue doing this until I become bedridden. I have run the race set before me, but we are to continue serving God even to the day we die. This theory is not for atheists or Bahai. this is for Christian believers who yearn to have a true Bible.

                            Putting Adam back 5.3 myr ago All sorts of things in the Bible fall into place.

                            This the only flood in earth history that matches the Biblical description exactly.

                            Only at this time did the rivers of Eden 1 flow into the same place. It is amazing to me that the Biblical description of Eden is an exact match for the geography of 5.3 myr ago in the eastern Mediterranean region… The Tigris and Euphrates, the Gihon which encompasses Cush can only be the Nile, and the Pison which flowed out of Havilah which the Bible places in Arabia, all were in Eden. Their positions are marked on the PBS map below showing the locations I believe they entered the basin in based upon interpretations of 3D seismic data shown in the literature. That a river was at each of these locations is certain. One could of course squabble about the name. They do match what Scripture says about Eden.
                            I can't upload the bigger picture so you get this one twice.

                            Eden enlargement PBS.jpg



                            Below is an enlargement of this map showing what would be a huge area on the desert floor lushly watered by four different rivers. The area from the lake to the Levant coast is absolutely huge, but, as I said, would have been watered by 4 big rivers each of whom was mentioned in Scripture. The sediment from these four rivers would have created a land of intersecting deltas and built up a land gently sloping to the brine lake. It would have looked much like southern Louisiana only larger, and as with the Okovango delta in the Kalahari desert, much wildlife would have flourished there (see PBS video at end) or see my list in this Biologos post.



                            Eden enlargement PBS.jpg

                            3. It was just at the time when the earliest hominids appeared on earth. The earliest known as of this writing is A. kadabba dated to 5.6 myr. A flood at this time, when humans are brand new can be anthropologically universal and the theology of the young-earthers can be correct. If all the humans are confined to that basin, then when the flood happened, they all died. One doesn’t have to reject Noah’s flood as myth if we place the flood in the Mediterranean basin at this time.

                            4.One couldn’t easily walk out of this area so an ark was necessary. The Mediterranean basin is huge, an equal distance from one end to the other the same as crossing the USA. As air is pushed out of the basin, it would have created weird air fronts at the tops of the basin as the evicted air pushed outward away from the basin, and I feel certain it would have rained all around the rim of the basin, again making it difficult for someone to walk to safety.

                            In Mesopotamia where many put the flood, I want to ask why didn't Noah et al, just climb the Zagros Mountains a two day walk away?

                            5, It covered high mountains. This is the only local flood ever proposed that could cover 15,000 foot high mountains. Gravity models of the basin strongly suggest it was that deep or even deeper in parts. Note that in the model below they place the original Messinian surface, the red line in both models, at 7 km below sea level. Even after 2 km of salt is deposited, the depth of the basin would be more than 5 km below sea level. Gravity model of eastern Gulf.png


                            Gravity model of eastern Gulf.jpg


                            7.The length of time is approximately correct. Modeling of fluid flow shows that, depending upon how large the breach in the Gibraltar dam was, it would fill in between 8 months and 2 years.

                            Interestingly the western part of the basin would partially fill before the eastern Mediterranean even started filling. It is estimated that the eastern Mediterranean would require about 200 days to fill after the partial filling of the western basin. This is quite close to the 150 days of water prevailing recorded in the Scripture.water speed.jpg

                            8.An object floating on the waters could have easily landed in southern Turkey, which the Bible calls the mountains of Ararat!. The Bible does use the plural for mountains, not the singular, so the Bible doesn’t say mount Ararat. Again, in Mesopotamia where so many place the flood, the ark would flow south into the Indian Ocean so how did it land in Turkey?

                            9.The curses are explained because Adam really was a smaller brained hominid. Giving these curses to any Homo sapiens would have been a big so what? They already had pain in childbirth and sweat of the brow problems. See here

                            10.Only a deep basin explains the strange and weird hydrology going on in Eden. One has a hard time finding anyplace like that above sea level today.

                            11. Explains the rainbow, or rather lack there of.

                            12.Explains how a land on earth could never have been rained on--Mesopotamia always got rain.

                            13.Explains the phrase--there was no man to till the ground. I know most people believe there was farming and technology before the flood, but I don't. I think translators have inserted their view of what life was like into the translation, just like people have placed King Arther into the Age of Chivalry when in fact he was a 5th century barbaric warlord.. See technology 1, technology 2, Tubalcain and iron, and Was Noah a Farmer?

                            I know of no other flooding event in geologic history that can satisfy the above check list. I also know of no other apologetical view that accounts for so many of the interlocking pieces of Genesis and gives us a way to view this as real, divinely inspired history. The story of Noah could not have been handed down via oral tradition. Nor could the rivers of Eden have been handed down that way. It was due to Divine inspiration. How was anyone to even have a clue that the rivers of Eden match an actual geography--albeit not at a time anyone likes? But do our 'likes' determine what is true? I don't think so.

                            I love how our theologians have simply given up on Eden as shown by the quote below:

                            "Some have gone further and claimed the geographical allusion is to a fantasy. For Cassuto, 'The Garden of Eden according to the Torah was not situated in our world.' Skinner claimed: 'it is obvious that a real locality answering the description of Eden exists and has existed nowhere on the face of the earth...(T)he whole representation (is) outside the sphere of real geographic knowledge. In (Genesis 2) 10-14, in short, we have...a semi-mythical geography.' For Ryle, 'The account...is irreconcilable with scientific geography.' Radday believed that Eden is nowhere because of its deliberately tongue-in-cheek fantastic geography. McKenzie asserted that 'the geography of Eden is altogether unreal; it is a Never-never land.' John C. Munday, Jr., "Eden's Geography Erodes Flood Geology," Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1996), pp. 123-154,p. 128-130

                            What are they going to do when faced with a real possibility for a real Eden? I think they will still deny any chance of Eden being real. I have already had that experience with a well known theologian.

                            But to give up on Eden, is also to give up on the Fall, which is the basis for why Christ came and why he died. I agree with H. G. Wells that if the Fall didn't happen, Christianity collapses:

                            "If all the animals and man have been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there would have been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no Fall, the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement, upon which current teaching bases Christian emotion and morality, collapses like a house of cards." H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, (Garden City: Doubleday, 1961), p. 776-777

                            I am showing how, in an evolutionary world we can still have a primal pair--Adam and Eve. And if they existed, then so did the Fall! And if we have the Fall, Christianity stands like a giant granite mountain, not like a house of cards. I firmly believe, after 50 years of searching that Christianity has no reason now to shrink and cower in the face of science. Christianity and the early stories of Genesis are historically true.
                            Last edited by grmorton; 05-25-2020, 10:28 AM.

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                            • #15
                              Roy, Peaceful Science doesn't seem to have anyplace I could present my views. It seems to be a tightly controlled place where only 'acceptable' people and ideas are allowed. I am neither acceptable nor are my views for most people like Swamidass and William Craig Lane.

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