Evolution 101 podcast

Erik Nelson

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I see. It seems to me that any extraordinary, inexplicable, or miraculous event from stories, ancient or modern, could be given the same attribution, which rather diminishes the specificity of weather manipulation and telekinetic tractor beams.

How we'd distinguish a storm of rare intensity from one caused by weather manipulation is another story...
Well why haven't they been, then?

The super-storms of Noah & Moses occurred in the context of (reported) communications from heaven. Godlike heavenly beings were (reportedly) in constant Contact with those "Prophets", who were instructed to perform specific actions, whose successes required those super-storms

It's not just a storm... it's a storm in the context of (reported) communicative Contact instructing recipients to perform actions enabled by those storms -- "special effects on earth for a specific identifiable purpose"
 
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Ophiolite

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The super-storms of Noah & Moses occurred in the context of (reported) communications from heaven.
The evidence suggests that Noah's flood was the result of a local event. Doubtless a severe storm, but not one that requires a supernatural explanation. Attributing unique characteristics to it is an act of faith. I have no objection to that except when you then try to justify the faith with a circular argument that implies scientific support.
 
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Erik Nelson

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The evidence suggests that Noah's flood was the result of a local event. Doubtless a severe storm, but not one that requires a supernatural explanation. Attributing unique characteristics to it is an act of faith. I have no objection to that except when you then try to justify the faith with a circular argument that implies scientific support.
It was unambiguously a unique event, yes?

The Iraqis have remembered it for 5000 years as a once-in-5000-years-and-counting event, yes?

One can't have it both ways, claiming it was big enough to generate its own mythology but somehow ordinary and run-of-the-mill.

It was a freak event. Maybe natural, maybe supernaturally augmented.

Reportedly forecasted & observed, and exploited for heavenly purposes upon this planet
 
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JackRT

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There may be several grains of truth to the flood mythology of Noah and similar mythologies from elsewhere in the ancient Middle East. About 30 years ago it was discovered (" Noah's Flood" by Ryan and Pitman) that in antiquity the Black Sea was a freshwater lake with a water level at least 155 meters (510 feet) below its present level. It was cut off from the Mediterranean Sea by a silt plug in the Straits of Bosporus. This plug broke through about 7600 YBP due primarily to the dramatic rise in sea levels caused by the melting that ended the last ice age.. It created an immense waterfall whose sound was most likely audible for 100 or more miles. The Black Sea basin filled to its present level over a period of several weeks. It is estimated that the shore line advanced at the rate of a mile or more per day. For the people living around the lake it was a catastrophe of immense magnitude. It was likely the single most memorable flood in all of human history. The racial memory of this event probably inspired the Gilgamesh epic which in turn inspired the Noah narrative in the Bible. The evidence for this flood is scientifically solid. This prompted the National Geographic Society to finance an underwater search along the ancient shoreline for evidence of pre-flood human habitation. This search has been successful! A settlement has been found at a depth of 90 meters approximately 12 miles off the coast of Turkey. It is in a remarkable state of preservation because it is located in an area of the Black Sea where the water is completely devoid of oxygen with the effect that biological decomposition does not take place. This means that wooden artifacts such as tools, planks, housing beams etc are preserved intact. What is also quite amazing is that while there is solid scientific evidence for this local flood some 7600 YBP, there is no evidence at all for a worldwide flood just 4300 YBP. One would think that a more recent, more catastrophic event would have wiped out evidence of the earlier Black Sea event. There is also evidence for a similar event causing the flooding of the Gulf of Arabia about 10,000 YBP.

My thinking is that the "Noah Flood" is based on the tribal memory of a long ago natural event supplemented by a lot of folklore along the way.
 
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Ophiolite

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It was unambiguously a unique event, yes?
No.

Unique only in the sense that each time I open my front door I am engaging in a unique event. Was it an exceptional event? Apparently, though I am not necessarily convinced it was even a single event. I entertain the possibility that it was an amalgam of flood stories built of over decades, perhaps centuries, and relayed by word of mouth. When I considered the story as a Christian, what was important was not the character of the flood, not the details of the flood, but what the flood represented. The flood need not even have occurred (in any form) for that message still to be true, valuable and spiritually important.

One can't have it both ways, claiming it was big enough to generate its own mythology but somehow ordinary and run-of-the-mill.
I have made no claim that it was ordinary or run-of-the-mill.

It was a freak event. Maybe natural, maybe supernaturally augmented.
And since floods of comparable actual magnitude (not poetically enhanced magnitude) do occur naturally there is no need to invoke a supernatural explanation.

Reportedly forecasted & observed, and exploited for heavenly purposes upon this planet
Reportedly. That's the key word. A sceptical view of the matter would consider the significance was added retroactively. Faith provides the assurance that it was forecast, etc.

Thus, we are back to where I started. To attribute supernatural aspects to the flood requires an act of faith. I don't object to people making that attribution on the basis of faith. I do object to attempts to argue there is scientific support for the claim. I'm not sure if that is what you are asserting, but you appear to be.
 
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Erik Nelson

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And since floods of comparable actual magnitude (not poetically enhanced magnitude) do occur naturally there is no need to invoke a supernatural explanation.
you like science, right? All for "repeatability"?

Same "in", same "out"?

How many of those other "comparable magnitude" floods... spawned 5000 years of comparably enduring mythology throughout an entire region?

Unique "out" (5K years of mythic memory) implies unique "in" (once in 5K+ year event)


Reportedly. That's the key word. A sceptical view of the matter would consider the significance was added retroactively. Faith provides the assurance that it was forecast, etc.

Thus, we are back to where I started. To attribute supernatural aspects to the flood requires an act of faith. I don't object to people making that attribution on the basis of faith. I do object to attempts to argue there is scientific support for the claim. I'm not sure if that is what you are asserting, but you appear to be.
  • There was a unique, once in >>5Kyr event
  • at that unique time, a unique individual constructed a unique vessel of some sort, according to the instructions he reported he received from godlike beings in the heavens
  • the unique individual with his unique craft then enjoyed unique safety during the subsequent unique flood event
That is quite a chain of remarkably unique events, one contingent on the next -- seemingly like winning the lottery three times in a row

Supra-terrestrial intervention into the sequence of exceedingly improbable events parsimoniously, succinctly explains them all in one fell swoop

---

You know how complex human language is

Noah was a "subject matter expert" in his own language & his own name

If he says he received meaningful, intelligible, cogent, articulate audio-visual communications from heavenly beings, encoded in his own language, and calling him by his own name, then he -- being an expert fluent speaker of his own tongue & well versed in his own name -- is a credible witness

On questions regarding his own name, his own language, or (evidently) carpentry, we can trust Noah to be within his own area of familiarity & expertise

this hypothesis does not require "Noah" to have done anything extra-ordinary himself -- he just "magically" heard his name called one day, received instructions on how to apply his carpentry skills, and (surely awestruck) simply complied with the commands

at no time does this hypothesis "bring Noah to the stand to testify" about matters far beyond his kith & kin, it simply rests on:
  • Noah recognized his own name when he heard it
  • Noah could understand his own language when he heard it
  • Noah was a decent carpenter
Perfectly plausible
 
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JackRT

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There are indeed flood myths from all over the world. I believe that the vast majority of there myths are based on real floods caused either directly or indirectly by the melting of the glaciers and ice sheets beginning about 11000YBP. This caused a sea level rise of over 400 feet. Most of the time this rise was quite gradual, perhaps only a few inches per year, but some were spectacular and devastating like the flooding of the Black Sea Basin mentioned earlier.
 
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Erik Nelson

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There may be several grains of truth to the flood mythology of Noah and similar mythologies from elsewhere in the ancient Middle East. About 30 years ago it was discovered (" Noah's Flood" by Ryan and Pitman) that in antiquity the Black Sea was a freshwater lake with a water level at least 155 meters (510 feet) below its present level. It was cut off from the Mediterranean Sea by a silt plug in the Straits of Bosporus. This plug broke through about 7600 YBP due primarily to the dramatic rise in sea levels caused by the melting that ended the last ice age.. It created an immense waterfall whose sound was most likely audible for 100 or more miles. The Black Sea basin filled to its present level over a period of several weeks. It is estimated that the shore line advanced at the rate of a mile or more per day. For the people living around the lake it was a catastrophe of immense magnitude. It was likely the single most memorable flood in all of human history. The racial memory of this event probably inspired the Gilgamesh epic which in turn inspired the Noah narrative in the Bible. The evidence for this flood is scientifically solid. This prompted the National Geographic Society to finance an underwater search along the ancient shoreline for evidence of pre-flood human habitation. This search has been successful! A settlement has been found at a depth of 90 meters approximately 12 miles off the coast of Turkey. It is in a remarkable state of preservation because it is located in an area of the Black Sea where the water is completely devoid of oxygen with the effect that biological decomposition does not take place. This means that wooden artifacts such as tools, planks, housing beams etc are preserved intact. What is also quite amazing is that while there is solid scientific evidence for this local flood some 7600 YBP, there is no evidence at all for a worldwide flood just 4300 YBP. One would think that a more recent, more catastrophic event would have wiped out evidence of the earlier Black Sea event. There is also evidence for a similar event causing the flooding of the Gulf of Arabia about 10,000 YBP.

My thinking is that the "Noah Flood" is based on the tribal memory of a long ago natural event supplemented by a lot of folklore along the way.
doesn't seem completely impossible that there was some kind of ocean impact, creating a tsunami which travelled up the Persian Gulf and far up the Mesopotamian river valley ???
 
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Erik Nelson

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There are indeed flood myths from all over the world. I believe that the vast majority of there myths are based on real floods caused either directly or indirectly by the melting of the glaciers and ice sheets beginning about 11000YBP. This caused a sea level rise of over 600 feet. Most of the time this rise was quite gradual, perhaps only a few inches per year, but some were spectacular and devastating like flooding of the Black Sea Basin mentioned earlier.
read once that Australian aborigines have ancient traditional "song lines" memory-stories which accurately describe landforms submerged by rising oceans 10-11 thousand years ago
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Well why haven't they been, then?
If you mean reports of extraordinary, inexplicable, or miraculous events being attributed to heavenly powers, they very often have been - that's basically what a miracle is, isn't it?

The super-storms of Noah & Moses occurred in the context of (reported) communications from heaven. Godlike heavenly beings were (reportedly) in constant Contact with those "Prophets", who were instructed to perform specific actions, whose successes required those super-storms

It's not just a storm... it's a storm in the context of (reported) communicative Contact instructing recipients to perform actions enabled by those storms -- "special effects on earth for a specific identifiable purpose"
Very similar flood myth stories are found in far more ancient texts, probably based on real local extreme floods & storms; divine forewarning and tasking is a common theme of many myths & legends. The general idea is not that they should be accurate records of real events, but that they should be impactful and memorable, to get the point across and make sure it's retained.
 
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Erik Nelson

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If you mean reports of extraordinary, inexplicable, or miraculous events being attributed to heavenly powers, they very often have been - that's basically what a miracle is, isn't it?
people only attribute terrestrial events to supra-terrestrial powers when those heavenly realms (reportedly) tell them to do so

Earth happenings are only attributed to heavenly powers when those powers are (reportedly) communicating with earthlings & "taking credit" for the "special effects" wrought upon our planet

Nobody attributes Krakatoa to anything but geology, b/c their were no "Priests & Prophets" at the time, claiming to be chosen "Contactees" of heavenly powers who were communicating, through them, to the rest of humanity on earth, and "taking credit" for Krakatoa

Other events have been attributed heavenward, b/c those events were forecasted & predicted by "Priests & Prophets" on the ground claiming to receive their "intelligence" from supra-terrestrial powers, e.g. Noah building his watercraft for years "according to instructions from heaven" (as it were) before it finally came in handy

heavenly intervention is not the first thing people think of, and (reportedly) it's never anything humans themselves think of -- only when it's communicated to (chosen) humans instead

Very similar flood myth stories are found in far more ancient texts, probably based on real local extreme floods & storms; divine forewarning and tasking is a common theme of many myths & legends. The general idea is not that they should be accurate records of real events, but that they should be impactful and memorable, to get the point across and make sure it's retained.
Iraqi cuneiform records of "Atrahasis' Flood" predate the Hebrew written records of "Noah's Flood", but they are similar enough to plausibly derive from a single awe-inspiring event about 5000 years ago
 
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Kylie

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It is estimated that if all the world's ice should melt the sea level would rise about 200 feet. At the peak of the last ice age so much water was locked up in ice that the sea level was about 600 feet lower.

Source please?
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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people only attribute terrestrial events to supra-terrestrial powers when those heavenly realms (reportedly) tell them to do so

Earth happenings are only attributed to heavenly powers when those powers are (reportedly) communicating with earthlings & "taking credit" for the "special effects" wrought upon our planet

Nobody attributes Krakatoa to anything but geology, b/c their were no "Priests & Prophets" at the time, claiming to be chosen "Contactees" of heavenly powers who were communicating, through them, to the rest of humanity on earth, and "taking credit" for Krakatoa

Other events have been attributed heavenward, b/c those events were forecasted & predicted by "Priests & Prophets" on the ground claiming to receive their "intelligence" from supra-terrestrial powers, e.g. Noah building his watercraft for years "according to instructions from heaven" (as it were) before it finally came in handy

heavenly intervention is not the first thing people think of, and (reportedly) it's never anything humans themselves think of -- only when it's communicated to (chosen) humans instead...
It's easy enough to make such claims, but they're basically unfalsifiable. There are instances of disruptive events - including volcanoes - that were attributed, after the fact, to the upset or anger of heavenly powers; for example, the eruption of Agung on Bali in 1963

Iraqi cuneiform records of "Atrahasis' Flood" predate the Hebrew written records of "Noah's Flood", but they are similar enough to plausibly derive from a single awe-inspiring event about 5000 years ago
Indeed. But it's clear from the geological and historical record that, awe-inspiring as it might have been, it would have had to be pretty local. There have very likely been vast floods in the distant past, such the Black Sea flooding in the Late Quaternary, the Zanclean inundation of the Mediterranean basin (~5 million years ago), the creation of the English Channel ~400,000 years ago, etc; they would truly have been worthy of myths & legends.
 
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Erik Nelson

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It's easy enough to make such claims, but they're basically unfalsifiable. There are instances of disruptive events - including volcanoes - that were attributed, after the fact, to the upset or anger of heavenly powers; for example, the eruption of Agung on Bali in 1963

Indeed. But it's clear from the geological and historical record that, awe-inspiring as it might have been, it would have had to be pretty local. There have very likely been vast floods in the distant past, such the Black Sea flooding in the Late Quaternary, the Zanclean inundation of the Mediterranean basin (~5 million years ago), the creation of the English Channel ~400,000 years ago, etc; they would truly have been worthy of myths & legends.
If the entire Mesopotamian flood plain was inundated, it would have been water to the horizon and seemed to the locals like their whole known world was underwater.

If they recorded exactly such observations, transmitted them through the generations, and we wound up reading them today... what we would expect to read would be "all the land was underwater" (= water from horizon to horizon)

So, we don't have to make more out of this than there really is

Some sort of superflood of the entire Mesopotamian flood plain, "Noah / Atrahasis" observed water from local horizon to local horizon...

but, no, Eskimos were not flooded up above the Arctic Circle
 
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JackRT

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JackRT said:
It is estimated that if all the world's ice should melt the sea level would rise about 200 feet. At the peak of the last ice age so much water was locked up in ice that the sea level was about 600 feet lower.

Source please?

https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/

My post was in error. At the peak of the last glaciation the sea level was about 120m (400 ft) lower.

https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/earth/ask-a-scientist-about-our-environment/will-the-world-ever-be-all-under-water

If all ice should melt the sea level would rise about 70m (230ft).
 
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Kylie

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JackRT said:
It is estimated that if all the world's ice should melt the sea level would rise about 200 feet. At the peak of the last ice age so much water was locked up in ice that the sea level was about 600 feet lower.



https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/

My post was in error. At the peak of the last glaciation the sea level was about 120m (400 ft) lower.

https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/earth/ask-a-scientist-about-our-environment/will-the-world-ever-be-all-under-water

If all ice should melt the sea level would rise about 70m (230ft).

Do you think a sea level rise of 70 meters is enough to cause a WORLDWIDE flood?

Anyway, Mount Ararat is located in the far east of Turkey, on the Armenian Highlands. The average elevation is 1,500 to 2,000 meters. According to the Bible, Noah's ark came to rest there. Do you have any idea how a 70 meter rise in sea level could have allowed Noah's ark to reach Mount Ararat?

So the question remains, where did all the water required for the flood come from? Even if we melted every single bit of ice on the planet, there isn't enough water. Even if we had sea levels 70 meters higher and there were stormed, we'd need storms to produce waves more than a kilometer high to get the ark to the correct location. And a wooden vessel of that size could never withstand that kind of stress.

Your position seems to be without any support whatsoever.
 
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JackRT

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Do you think a sea level rise of 70 meters is enough to cause a WORLDWIDE flood?

Anyway, Mount Ararat is located in the far east of Turkey, on the Armenian Highlands. The average elevation is 1,500 to 2,000 meters. According to the Bible, Noah's ark came to rest there. Do you have any idea how a 70 meter rise in sea level could have allowed Noah's ark to reach Mount Ararat?

So the question remains, where did all the water required for the flood come from? Even if we melted every single bit of ice on the planet, there isn't enough water. Even if we had sea levels 70 meters higher and there were stormed, we'd need storms to produce waves more than a kilometer high to get the ark to the correct location. And a wooden vessel of that size could never withstand that kind of stress.

Your position seems to be without any support whatsoever.

I never suggested this would cause a worldwide flood but it certainly would be hugely catastrophic.
 
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Ophiolite

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I never suggested this would cause a worldwide flood but it certainly would be hugely catastrophic.
Actually, the flood would certainly be worldwide in the colloquial sense and would mark the end of civilisation as we currently know it. I've seen some estimates suggesting a 100m rise. I prefer this, since it would give me a beach front property with a sheltered anchorage for a small yacht. :)
 
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Kylie

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I never suggested this would cause a worldwide flood but it certainly would be hugely catastrophic.

Well, I was talking about how a storm could not produce enough water to cause a worldwide flood, and then you came out with the melting ice caps thing.

So, when you talk about something that can produce flooding while we're talking about the possible water source for a global flood, well, I'm sure you can see how I figured you were trying to stick to the actual topic.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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If the entire Mesopotamian flood plain was inundated, it would have been water to the horizon and seemed to the locals like their whole known world was underwater.

If they recorded exactly such observations, transmitted them through the generations, and we wound up reading them today... what we would expect to read would be "all the land was underwater" (= water from horizon to horizon)

So, we don't have to make more out of this than there really is...
I agree - the biblical flood could only have been local. Try telling that to the biblical literalists on these forums...
 
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