Woody said:
Silas said:
Agreed -- a catastrophic event could possibly help explain this timeframe of the earth's geology 1.5 billion years ago. If there was a largescale collision, which half would you call earth prior to the collision?
Are you implying that if what was before the collision could not be defined as "the earth",
therefore "the scientists were all wrong, the earth
is much younger than they thought", the first thing I would say is that this is actually not the body blow you may think it to be. For the sake of argument,
something was in Earth's orbit, and its characteristics were sufficiently different from the current planet so that we could not properly call it the Earth, therefore the Earth, as we know it, is not 4.55 bn years old, but merely contains many rocks and structures that come from the "pre-Earth". Does this mean "science got it wrong"? Or does it mean that science has refined the model of the Earth's history to be closer to the evidence? Science is self-correcting, by its very nature. That is what makes it a useful tool for learning about the Universe. Genesis, however, cannot "change one jot or tittle" regardless of how far away from reality and all the available evidence its own model of Earth's history is.
To answer your question, I've read the "creationists'" list of natural causes for a great flood over at Talk Origins. I think they left one out.
I can think of another scenario that could cause a worldwide flood on the earth. It's unlikely that anything could survive and it's completely hypothetical:
If another planet passed close enough to the earth then a massive amount of water (in the form of high temperature and pressure steam) could possibly be released from the earth's core -- it's down there -- especially if the Roche limit were being approached. I don't know the chemical affinity of the water to the minerals in which it is embedded, but it is highly likely at least some of it would be released. It's unlikely anything could survive the event.
If the approach were parallel to the earth's rotational axis then the effect would be most pronounced at one of the poles, and more water would be released. If the planetary approach were perpendicular to the earth's rotational axis, then less water release but much more devastating effects to the earth's crust and surface.
In either event it would probably effect the earth's rotation in some fashion, causing it to wobble, and possibly change its rotational axis.
Aha! A new Velikowsky! Unfortunately, Velikowsky's theories were not based on any actual knowledge of gravitaitonal dynamics. This is the same problem here - you are speculating based on what you think you know about gravity, but it's nowhere near being a usable theory until you can create a model, based on strict mathematical and physical principles, which can create the situation you describe, and for which the evidence of Earth's history can be shown to match.
In any case, I do not see the point of such speculation. What you describe clearly does not match the description in Genesis. The whole point of Creationism is to promote the concept of Genesis being a literal description of the events. A worldwide flood may well have happened at
some point in early Earth's history, but if Noah isn't on there with his boatload of living creatures, it's not the Flood of Genesis. I once saw a response to an evolutionist's question about the Dinosaurs which said, in effect, "Noah took dinosaurs on the Ark, because birds are dinosaurs!" The number of reasons this is a nonsensical argument in favour of Creationism become almost too many to express, but principally, If birds are dinosaurs, that's an implicit admission of the validity of Evolution, which is the very thing the Creationist is trying to deny.
A worldwide flood 1.5bn years ago has no relevance because not only was there no Noah, there were none of the creatures that Genesis states had been created and existed at the time of the Flood. On the other hand it is far easier to believe that Flood tales (of which the one in Genesis is only one representative of many) derived from some major flood event that occurred sometime in the prehistory of each culture that produced it, written down from oral traditions that preceded. Everywhere the people could see there was deep flood water - so obviously to them "the whole world" was flooded.
Theologically speaking, the Flood story is very problematic. It is retained and defended because it speaks of God imposing punishment for evildoing, which makes it a moral fable. It speaks of His compassion for animals, and for the one man and his family He found to be just, which tells us of God's love, and of Man's responsibility for all other Life on this Earth of which we have stewardship. But it also speaks of an absolutist God who is capable of making mistakes and regretting them.
Creationism is a doctrine predicated on the concept that "if we cannot accept
every word of the Bible as the Word of God, why should we accept
any of it? The response is either to disbelieve all the evidence that proves Genesis wrong, or to twist that evidence round to fit the events of Genesis so that the Bible can be considered to be "free of error". But a more mature approach might well be to accept the fallibility of the Bible, without decreasing its importance to the world's culture, or to ones basic faith in God.
