Posted: Sep 08, 2010 3:46 am
logical bob wrote:The sticks we beat fundies with are usually scientific ones. Geology, paleontology and physics provide the standard tools to show there was no global flood, and very good tools they are too. Fundies don't know the first thing about science, however, and perhaps there's a simpler argument using history.
The fundies usually like to place the Flood somewhere around 2300 - 2500 BC. That's around the time of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties in Egypt and we have abundant evidence that Egyptian civilisation continued for centuries before and after without sudden changes of the sort that would happen if the entire population of the world was reduced to 8 people. Answers in Genesis goes for 2304 BC, during the reign of Pepi I. Pepi's scribes recorded the opening of a new trade route to Lebanon about then, but they strangely failed to mention the complete destruction of everything. It's the kind of thing you'd probably notice.
If you use scientific arguments against the fundies you get an avalanche of made up "science" involving variable speed of light, hydroplate "theory," why carbon dating doesn't work etc etc. (And in fairness to the rank and file fundies, I don't think many of them realise how blatantly they're being lied to by the creation "scientists.") I've used this history argument a few times on a Christian forum and got silence in response. I think it may be more effective.
Its simple logic. I'll explain.
Any dates of human civilization that conflict with the bible are wrong dates.
Its just incompetent research that has any peoples existing segregated before about 2400 b.c.
You don't know Egypt had society before this date you simply accept the authority of those who write about ancient egypt.