Hi Robert;: Your explanation is fair enough, well said. Perhaps we don't agree on many things but I enjoy the rap, Floyd, anyway. Keep it up.
Will do.
: As for not leaving material traces, perhaps God has left quite a lot and we simply don't understand them all. For example:
Well, my point was that if the evidence is not unequivocal, then we can assume that IF God did it, he wanted us to think he didn't, since he made it easier to explain using only "natural" forces, but OK, let's take a look at your examples.
: Maybe one could attribute the Noahic Flood to God's tilting of the axis to 16 and a half degrees.
Perhaps, but one would first have to provide evidence that there was a Noachian flood to begin with. To date, no evidence of a global flood has been provided. It strikes me that this story (which also appears in older Sumerian traditions from the same area, by the way) may be meant as a parable, rather than a literal fact. Certainly, large-scale flooding of the middle east is not impossible. In fact, I imagine the formation of the Bosphorous, as the Mediterranean broke through into the Black Sea, due to rising sea levels in the Holocene would be the sort of event that would make a lasting impression. Through centuries of re-telling, the tale could take on global proportions, like the children's game of "telephone," where slight distortions build up and multiply hrough time.
:Did you ever think, Why is there a polar north and a magnetic north?
The earth has an iron-nickle core spinning on the magnetic north orientation. This core is surrounded by a liquid mantle and encasing that is a thin crust which rotates along the polar axis. What would be the effect on earth if it were shifted?
It has actually "shifted," several times. There is a brief (in geological terms...thousands of years) period when the earth is exposed to higher than normal cosmic radiation, as the poles reverse, but the practical, noticable effect is that all the compases would point the other way. (Actually, such a shift seems to expose life to more cosmic rays, so the mutation rate may be slightly higher during such reversals of polarity, butthis would be unnoticable to an observer at the time.) The process you are describing, however, is more akin to magnetic polar drift, which is in fact happening all the time. We think of our planet as a perfect sphere, and it is pretty close, but in fact the distribution of mass is not entirely homogeneous, and as a result, the poles drift slightly all the time. Archaeomagnetic dating relies on this, since it measures the location of the poles at the time of the creation of certain materials (most notably clay or mud walls).
: Well the waters of the deep would build up energy and wash over the continents.
The problem with this hypothesis is that the "liquid mantle" you refered to is not liquid water, but liquid metals, mostly iron and magnesium. The "liquid" is what you see coming out of volcanoes. You'd have to argue that Noah's Ark was made of some pretty sturdy stuff, definitely not "gopher wood," in order to survive in such an environment. Besides, as I mentioned, polar drift, and even magnetic reversals, are happening/have happened, and the mantle stays/stayed below the crust. This is an effect of differing densities. Mantle rock is "heavier" than continental rock, so a "flood" of it is next to impossible except in extreme circumstances (e.g. cometary impact, such as may have caused the "seas" on the moon).
:Critics of the Noahic Flood have always said that there is not enough water in the clouds to rain and cover the earth, but the Bible indicates that the water came from the deep, or springs from below in four places.
The problem, here, is that geology and physics tell us that there is no liquid water in the mantle. The melting point of iron is much higher than that of water, so the temperature of the mantle (above 600 degrees C, IIRC) is such that water would all be broken down into its component elements, hydrogen and oxygen. These would more likely bond with the available metals than with each other.
:A sudden jerking of the earth's axis would be like pulling a wash basin and then stopping it. The water would slosh over the sides.
: Other supporting evidences are the worldwide normality of the mountain ranges to the "old" north (now in the Baniff Peninsula, Canada).
Actually, mountain ranges are almost universally parallel to either old coastlines (e.g. Rockies, Cascades, Appalachians) or to directions of force, (Himalayas,) or in rare cases, perpendicular to the direction of continental drift (East African Rift, Hawaiian Islands, US Great Basin ranges) due to the way mountains are formed (subduction and/or collision, or over-riding a "hot spot" [convection]). Any introduction to geology textbook written since the late 1960s (when tectonics finally became reasonably well understood) would help to clarify this, probably much more eloquently than I can.
:Paleomagnetic readings of the layered coolings. The sea bulge location of a mysterious sea port high in the Andes, Tiuhahnaco.
On what grounds do you consider Tiuhahnaco a sea port? What is your reference? (It better not be Erik VonDaniken!)
:The suddenly frozen animals (10's of thousands) normally associated with warmer climates whose undigested food is still in their stomach.
I'd hardly associate the mammoths of Siberia with warmer climates. Somebody gave you a bit of mis-information here, Robert. This story is originally based on the discovery of dandilions in the stomach of a frozen mammoth in Siberia. The "mystery," at the time, was based on the assumption that Holocene biotic communities were good representatives of Pleistocene communities. We now know that this is not the case. R. Dale Guthrie, in his 1984 article Mosaics, Alochemics, and Nutrients: An ecological Theory of Late Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions (pp.259-298 in _Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution_, edited by Paul Martin and Richard Klein, University of Arizona Press, Tucson) describes how Pleistocene biotic communities were probably fundamentally different from the communities of the Holocene. Dandilions, which were the source of the original confusion, are a particularly poor paleoenvironmental indicator to begin with. It's only because the field of paleoenvironmental reconstruction was in its infancy at the time that there was ever any confusion about this at all.
: Perhaps this could be one small example of God intruding into our 3-D space and 1-D time dimensions. But the biggest example was Jesus Himself, who as all-powerful God came here to save us from our sins.
Well, again, you've got a "circular reasoning" problem here, as well as "assuming the consequent," but I'll leave that alone for the time being, as I'm not currently in the mood for theological debate, sorry.
:He even submitted Himself willingly to total humiliation and was put to death in a most cruel manner. Why? so that you and I may live.
: Greater love I cannot ever imagine. The One who created me, also suffered and died for me. That counts for everything and no one can take it away. God Bless.
Thanks, as always, for the kind thoughts.
: Robert
: PS. Watch yourself and don't get beaten up by the police, Floyd.
Beating doesn't bother me. Heck, St. Stephen was stoned to death, and St. Joan was burned at the stake. Surely I can handle a couple of whacks with a billy club, rubber bullets and some tear gas! ;-)
: They've got a Darth Vader look about them these days, don't they?
Yes.
: Perhaps we'll agree about the WTO.
Sounds like it, although some of your colleagues here in the states (notably the so-called "Christian Coalition") disagree with you.
:They come on like a bunch of "free traders", but in actual fact, they are only about CONTROLLING economies and monetised DEBT currency policies. As far as I'm concerned those things equal Imperial Communism.
I think this may be one of our sources of confusion. You seem to be using the term "communism" in a...well..."unique" way here. Communism, sensu stricto, is about taking from each for the benefit of all, whereas the WTO seems more intent on taking from the many for the benefit of the few. "Imperialism" is definitely one of their traits, but their prefered economic system is clearly monopoly capitalism. Perhaps I'd be able to understand you better if you explained what you mean by your terms?
: Gold is the currency of Nations, Silver the currency of gentlemen, Barter the currency of peasants, and monetised debt the currency of fools. Debt notices (ie. unexchangable for gold or silver) are issued by central banks. As Lenin once said, 90% of communism is in establishing a central bank. Some countries euphemistically call their central banks, "federal reserve banks", same thing.
One could argue that establishing a central bank is also a defining feature of capitalist countries, but as I'm not quite clear on what you mean when you say "communism," and until I am, it seems unproductive to argue about this, don't you agree?
Best;
-Floyd
