Catastrophic floods built Grand Canyon

UPI ^ | July 20, 2002 | Dan Whipple

[Consort]

Uncivil engineers build damns.

[gcruse]

Uncivil engineers build damns.

Heh.  I like that.  Say, if beavers building
dams is a natural thing, why isn't humans
building dams natural, too?

[frodolives]

Oh! Thanks for the reference. This is of some interest to us folks in North Idaho and Eastern Washington. Stand up at the top of Schweitzer Mountain Ski hill and see lovely Lake Pend O'rielle and imagine the outpour! Nice PBS special on this recently.

[TomB]

bump

[dalereed]

They ought to build dams the entire length of the Grand Canyon and contain the water for human use and electric generation especially since the enviros were successful in stopping flights in the canyon so a few of them could waddle around in it undisturbed.

Luckilly, I was able to make 2 flights halfway down in the canyon the entire length of it before they stopped it. That is a sight to behold, especially the one I made in the late afternoon in the winter with snowcapped tops of all the flat spots.

[Sabertooth]

The main reason they don't think the canyon came from Noah's Flood: there was no single world-wide flood.

I checked your link, and ya know, the preamble stinks. Ken Harding should have just gotten to his list and made a scientific argument. But no, he couldn't resist gratuitous dainties like...

"While the biblical flood story is almost certainly derived from the earlier Babylonian flood mythology..."

What does this have to do with science?

And what is the source of Harding's "almost" certainty? He doesn't say.

However, it's popular to believe that the Genesis account of the Flood is derived from that of Gilgamesh, and odds are this is the basis of Harding's commentary.

Setting aside for the moment the Historical accuracy of the Flood accounts one way or the other, there's a serious problem with this interpretation... it's based on a fallacy of literary superposition. This fallacy lead to the judgement of modern criticism that Genesis is derived from Gilgamesh simply because they share common details and our earliest copy of Genesis is younger than our earliest copy of Gilgamesh. That's it.

But that's like saying that recent investigations of the JFK assassination are all derived from Mark Lane's seminal tinfoil theorist "Rush to Judgement," which was published in the 1960s, simply because they came later. Obviously, that's not logically necessary.

There is no sound basis for concluding that Genesis is derived from Gilgamesh.

So when Ken Harding makes this error of literary criticism, one wonders what ax he has to grind, even has he's demonstrating Henry Morris' Creationist biases.

Is it too much to ask for scientists to stick to science?

[VadeRetro]

Setting aside for the moment the Historical accuracy of the Flood accounts one way or the other, there's a serious problem with this interpretation... it's based on a fallacy of literary superposition. This fallacy lead to the judgement of modern criticism that Genesis is derived from Gilgamesh simply because they share common details and our earliest copy of Genesis is younger than our earliest copy of Gilgamesh. That's it.

That's probably what the "almost" was about. If you desperately don't want to think the Genesis account is based on the Babylonian story, there's no way to force you because there's no control log of how many times that story was told and to whom.

It's not important to what Harding's saying on that page.

[Sabertooth]

If you desperately don't want to think the Genesis account is based on the Babylonian story, there's no way to force you because there's no control log of how many times that story was told and to whom.

It's not important to what Harding's saying on that page.

It certanly is if Harding's planning on preaching to more than his own choir.

Nor is it desperation to say that there's no basis for claiming that Genesis is derived from Gilgamesh. In fact, the suggestion of desperation is itself emotionally charged. Why not leave all of that, and the fallacious literary presumpions, to the side?

Why inject the non-scientific into a scientific argument? Especially in light of the point Harding makes that Henry Morris has done exactly that...

Henry Morris (one of the founding fathers of the creationist movement), is saying that if the physical evidence suggests that events occurred differently than the accounts spoken of in the Christian bible, then the physical evidence should be rejected out of hand.

It is said that: "When the evidence contradicts the theory, the scientist rejects the theory.  The theologian rejects the evidence."  This is certainly the case with creationism.

When Harding wanders off the scientific reservation to make gratuitous and unfounded comments about the literary provenance of Genesis, he fuels the notion of Creationists that there is a religious component to the scientific arguments against them.

How productive is that?

[VadeRetro]

How productive is that?

It doesn't help you, except to stay focussed on the irrelevant. Nothing Harding is doing gives you grounds for comparing him to the charlatan Morris.

[Sabertooth]

It doesn't help you, except to stay focussed on the irrelevant. Nothing Harding is doing gives you grounds for comparing him to the charlatan Morris.

I'm not an advocate for Morris, you're missing the point entirely.

Harding sullies his scientific argument by not remaining agnostic. That's not irrelevant, that's a major source of the contention with literal Creationists.

Do you want the Creationists' ears open or closed?

If you want them open, why close them with the gratuitous inclusion of the "irrelevant?"

[VadeRetro]

Harding sullies his scientific argument by not remaining agnostic. That's not irrelevant, that's a major source of the contention with literal Creationists.

This is turning into, "That's not how you reach literal Creationists."

You don't reach literal Creationists. I'm here to tell you after over three years of throwing the whole pile at them day after day, you just don't reach them. That's a fact. It's not a consideration in writing articles against their arguments. Rather, it's a fascinating area of Abnormal Psychology.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 7/20/2002. Thanks gcruse.

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[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 7/20/2002. Thanks gcruse.

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[Lancey Howard]

Catastrophic floods built Grand Canyon

Catastrophic? The result of some ancient sequester?

[SunkenCiv]

Grand Canyon Gorge Is 9 Times Older Than Thought
National Geographic News | 4-9-2008 | Hope Hamashige
Posted on 04/09/2008 1:26:29 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1999143/posts

and coming soon to a topic near you:

A Grand Old Canyon
by Sid Perkins on 29 November 2012, 3:35 PM
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/11/a-grand-old-canyon.html