Frank Hubeny

Sunday Walk 68 – Flood Geomorphology

The geologist Michael J. Oard is writing a multivolume account of the Earth under a biblical creationist perspective. The chapters of his first volumes are freely available on Flood/Ice Age Research for download. The one I have been reading is Earth’s Surface Shaped By Genesis Flood Runoff. This volume gave me an introduction to geology and the philosophical presuppositions surrounding the science.

In the 18th century the narrative of the catastrophic global flood in Genesis 6-9 was replaced by a narrative presuming that uniformitarian processes visible today along with local catastrophes operating over deep time shaped the Earth into what we now see. The problems are these uniformitarian processes are low-energy while the permitted, non-global-flood-like catastrophes are not large enough. All they are able to do is erode away how the Earth is currently shaped.

Does it look like a catastrophic, global flood formed the present geological structures?

Yes, it does. For example, given wide and high plains (planation surfaces) all over the globe with hard, rounded gravels like quartzite transported hundreds of miles on top, the global flood would provide the high energy water force over a large area needed to accomplish that. See Chapter 27. Rivers or local floods do not have the power or width to deposit these gravels or smooth that surface.

Could this have happened only a few thousand years ago?

Yes, it could have. For example, given current measured erosion rates, the formations we now see can not be very old. See “erosional remnants” in Chapter 9. These are structures like Devils Tower in Wyoming or Ayers Rock in Australia. They were once buried in sediment. How long ago could that have been? Given current erosion rates, in 10 to at most 50 million years the entire continent would be flattened to sea-level from typical erosion one sees today. So these structures could not be older than that. But one can reduce that age further. Based on the debris at the base of Devils Tower, the events exposing the formation should have completed less than 10,000 years ago. If someone should claim it is older, where is the debris that would have fallen over that period of time? Why is Devils Tower still standing?

Should one find a fossil allegedly hundreds of millions of years old all that means, given present erosion rates, is that there is something wrong with whatever dating method was used. Those deep time dates are not consistent with present erosion rates. See Chapter 35.

Once we reject the uniformitarian detour taken in the 18th century we can start asking the right questions about why the Earth is shaped the way it is.

Weekly Bible Reading: Micah and Nahum
Commentaries:
David Pawson, Micah, Part 52, and Nahum, Part 53, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Micah and Nahum
Weekly Torah Readings
16 Kislev, 5782, Vayishlach: Parashat Genesis 32:4-36:43; Haftarat Hosea 11:7-12:12

Learn – Décima

Through cold gray clouds the sun still beams
on soundless white and frequent fear.
That was a wintry time of year
when what was bad went to extremes.

Till Judgment comes demonic schemes
of wickedness rehearse their coup,
but there’s still time. May hearts renew,
return, repent, refrain and learn
to let the Spirit help discern
the flaws in stuff we thought was true.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “learn” to be used in a D-line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge.

Ronovan's Decima Poetry Challenge Image — Ronovan’s Decima Poetry Challenge Image

Blanket – Six Sentence Story

Greg told his three friends sitting with him in a booth for lunch that he had peeked out from under a cultural blanket of deception, a demonic snow job, that had covered him for decades. They listened politely amused by the stuff he came up with knowing he’d be over with his revelations shortly.

It’s not that he had been right often before. Generally he got things wrong especially when he offered health tips for losing weight. But he seemed pretty sure about what he had seen.

That they thought he was nuts only confirmed Greg’s suspicions, which he tactically kept to himself for the moment, that the cultural deception he experienced had disarmed them as well.

Denise offers the prompt word “blanket” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley's six-sentence-stories icon — GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley’s six-sentence-stories icon

Enchanted By Interesting Textures

Dale offered the prompt “interesting textures” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

These are old photos. I wonder why I keep using them. In the photo above, the detailed textures of the footprints remind me that, being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), we are a distinct and separate creation from anything else that God created. For example, we are very proficient at speaking and understanding words. We are not silent and our words express moral power through blessings or curses.

In the photo below the textures of the white stone, red gravel, dark cavities, green vegetation and fallen leaves presented together seem to have enchanted me. I’m glad Eugenia offered the word “enchanted” for her Thursday Prompt which gives me an excuse to describe them in that way.

Being enchanted, however, suggests to me on the negative side being “manipulated”, “deluded”, or “under a spell of words”. Having been under many I am wary of enchantments. I wonder: Why am I so fond of these photos? To avert any harm, if they seem enchanting to you, may they also be blessings.

Sunday Walk 67 – Jonah and the Miracles

Although I mainly remember that Jonah was in a great fish (whale as I heard it told) for three days, David Pawson noted that there were eight miracles recorded in the book. He further claimed that if you believed any one of them you might as well believe the other seven.

Although I find the story of Jonah to be rather humorous, I realize that the prophet Jonah son of Amittai was an historical figure mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 and the events were not recorded to make fun of him. The only sign Jesus said He would give was the “sign of Jonah” (Matthew 12:38-41), that is, His Resurrection after being dead for three days.

Here are the eight miracles that Pawson listed.

God sent a wind when Jonah fled in the boat. (Jonah 1:4)
The sailors cast lots to find who was responsible and God made the lot fall to Jonah. (Jonah 1:7)
After they threw Jonah overboard, God calmed the sea. (Jonah 1:15)
God sent a fish to swallow Jonah. (Jonah 1:17)
At God’s command the fish vomited Jonah alive onto dry land. (Jonah 2:10)
God provided a plant to shade Jonah in one day. (Jonah 4:6)
God told a worm to eat the plant the next day. (Jonah 4:7)
God sent an east wind with a hot sun to torment Jonah. (Jonah 4:8)

What makes all of these events miracles is that each event explicitly involved an action by God. God sent that wind. God told a worm and a fish what to do. It was not that the wind blew by chance. It was not that the worm just happened to be nearby and hungry. Explaining the miracles with naturalistic explanations that do not involve God’s action would not be explaining them as they were told in the book.

Since the naturalist, and likely the deist as well, rejects God as a cause, the naturalist would have to reject all eight of these miracles. I would expect the naturalist to dismiss the entire book as myth.

Others who do accept, say, the east wind blowing since God sent it might as well accept the part about the fish that God sent, because ultimately they would be expected to believe the truthfulness of the “sign of Jonah” that Jesus referred to: Jonah died and three days later came back to life.

David Pawson, Jonah

Weekly Bible Reading: Amos and Jonah
Commentaries:
David Pawson, Amos, Part 50, Jonah, Part 51, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Amos and Jonah
Weekly Torah Readings
9 Kislev, 5782, Vayeitzei: Parashat Genesis 28:10-32:3; Haftarat Hosea 12:13-14:10

Pride – Decima

Rebelliousness will find its fall.
Self-righteousness will show the way
deceived deceivers go astray.
They think they’ve won, but lost it all.

On wayward paths some hear His call
and follow giving up their pride.
The faithless seek a place to hide.
The leaves descend upon the land
and snowy winter takes a stand.
The warmth’s for those who went inside.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “pride” to be used in a C line of a decima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge.

Armour – Six Sentence Story

Jeff knew from personal experience that he was not only up against human beings although they were the evident ones attacking in the field so much as their demonic manipulators. It was still possible for those human adversaries to flip and become allies, but no chance at all for the demons to do so.

The manipulated, however, didn’t believe in demons and pursued Jeff with extreme prejudice.

If it were as easy as taking a red pill Jeff would have taken one himself when he was under their influence. Today if someone offered him such a pill he’d wonder whether it contained the very witchcraft that caused the war in the first place. As he put on his armour that morning, his last morning as it turned out, he was grateful that he was still found useful in spite of all he had done wrong.

Denise offers the prompt word “armour” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. I was thinking of Ephesians 6, but you are welcome to imagine these manipulators as zombies, aliens, rogue robots, or some other symbol of the demonic.

Look To The Skies

Dales offers the prompt “look to the skies” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge. These were taken in Ryerson Conservation Area in Illinois.

Sunday Walk 66 – The Mythology of Deep Time

A few years ago I would likely be labeled a theistic evolutionist without realizing what that meant. I was reading Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies and studying his evolutionary argument against naturalism. I was also studying how William Lang Craig accepted the deep time of the Big Bang to try to make the kalam cosmological argument work for him.

To caricature my position I tolerated ideas of evolutionary and cosmological deep time as long as I could sugar-coat them with some kind of spirit “guiding” evolution or somehow squeeze in the kalam argument to assert the existence of that spirit. By accepting deep time I was, unwittingly, throwing original sin under the bus along with the rest of the Bible. And all for what? My goal was to assert the existence of some spirit without checking first just what that spirit was.

I now realize that whatever that spirit might be it could not be Yahweh as revealed in the Bible because I had replaced the historical chronology of Genesis with the pseudo-scientific mythology of deep time. Rejection of Genesis is a rejection of the entire Bible. Atheists understand this which is why they ridicule Creation, Noah and Babel. Compromising Christians do not. What I needed was an apologetics directed back at myself that would lead me to take the Bible seriously.

All of that changed when a fellow member of our Men’s Group briefly mentioned the rapid geological change that happened as a result of the eruption of Mount St Helens. Looking into this, I was shocked to realize that places like the Grand Canyon did not need millions of years of deep time to form. The catastrophic global flood and its aftermath could explain the present state of continents, oceans, mountains, coal deposits, canyons, fossil-filled sedimentation layers and glaciers.

Furthermore, if I started with God creating the universe in a functionally mature state, that is, if I took Genesis as seriously as I should have, I could get to the present state of the universe with only a few thousand years of change using processes identified and measured by modern operational science.

By contrast, if I started with the Big Bang and over 13 billion years of deep time, I could not get to the universe I see today. Too much entropy would have occurred over that span of time. Indeed, the evidence is so overwhelming against deep time that Don Batten could provide 101 separate lines of evidence suggesting that the earth and the universe could not be anywhere near as old as deep time mythologies claim it to be. I began to see that the hypothesis of deep time had been falsified over and over again.

The reason I mention all this is because experimental, operational science (not naturalistic speculations presented as “science”) has matured to a point that no one needs to shy away from the historical creation and fall accounts in Genesis.

Cal Smith, The Trojan Horse of Long Ages, Answers in Genesis Canada

Weekly Bible Reading: Obadiah (Audio), Joel (Audio)
2 Kislev, 5782, Toldot: Parashat Genesis 25:19-28:9; Haftarat Malachi 1:1-2:7
Commentaries:
David Pawson, Obadiah and Joel, Part 48, Part 49, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Obadiah and Joel

Time – Décima

Delusion masks the sense of it.
Deceptive dreaming wastes my time.
From out of this I’d love to climb,
this dark, demonic, dragon pit.

Against the wall in mud I sit.
I see a makeshift rope appear
and from above the voice I hear
is telling me to grasp it tight.
There was no way, but now there’s light.
Death grabbed my feet, but mercy’s near.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “time” to be used in a B-line of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge. I was thinking of Jeremiah 38 about Jeremiah being rescued from the dungeon of Malchiah when describing the rescue from this dragon pit.