Frank Johnson

Hi Martin,

The LDS Church doesn’t emphasize or even talk about Joseph Smith’s King Follett sermon, which he delivered in April, 1844, shortly before his martyrdom. It would have been fascinating if he had lived long enough to elaborate on it. Anyway, one of the most astounding things that JS said was to explain how God came to be God. We are the only religion that I know of that ever even asked such a question, let alone provided an answer to it. The answer–from JS– suggests that the Universe exists primarily as a machine for creating gods–at least the God of this earth. Which suggests that it may be very old indeed, but that does not affect the question of how old our earth is. The question of all dating of our earth depends on whether radio-metric dating of rocks is correct or not, because this is the way fossils are dated by modern science—the age of the rocks they are found in. The UM strongly suggests that there are flaws in radio-metric dating systems. I believe, though, that this comes out in the Age Model, which is part of Volume 2. Frank

Hi Barry,

I was rereading all of the above posts about the alleged flaws in the UM explanation for the Universal Flood, and I noticed that in your first one you referred to one “Will Meservy” as some kind of scientific expert. I am just wondering who this guy is and why we must accept whatever he says as the final word on the subject at hand. I’m under the impression that modern science never actually claims to have the final answers about anything, but is always open to new theories. There is a new one in almost every month’s issue of Scientific American. So why should the readers of this Forum discussion be overawed by Will Meservey? I, at least, have never previously heard of him. I would still prefer to focus on the evidences for the flood in Chapter 8, rather than the mechanism for it. Because what is important for readers of Genesis, and the UM, or any part of the biblical narrative of history, is whether the authors have made up a collection of myths, replete with cast of characters, or whether they are recounting actual events. There is this curious reference to the “fountains of the deep” being “broken up”, which I think even you might agree could refer to a subterranean source for all of that water. Or then again, would you?

Sorry Barry, but at age 87, and suffering from back ache, one thing I can’t do is swing heavy weights around my head. I will have to back out of that experiment.

The mechanism of the Flood presented in the UM seems to me to be as plausible as any of the various theories about the formation of the earth, the moon, and the origin of the earth’s oceans. These are all fundamental scientific questions, and over the history of science there have been many THEORIES presented for all three: The ruling ones now are 1) accretion for the earth’s formation, 2) a large impactor on the earth for the formation of the moon, and some combination of water in the original rocks, plus bombardments by comets and/or asteroiods for the origin of the oceans. But there are problems with all of these THEORIES, so they are not universally held and are in constant flux, and they are–and will always remain, theoretical. No humans were around to observe them at the time any of them allegedly appeared. The same is true for the mechanism of the Flood–if it was caused by the near passage of anothe celestial object, either no one observed it or no one recorded it. But plenty of people experienced the flood itself, and some form of it has been recorded in the history of almost every ancient people. We call it the human history of the earthy. So were these all just local or was it world wide? The UM argues that it was world wide, and suggest a plausible mechanism for it. The mechanism has to provide for some other source than rainfall or ocean water. And so it does–the argument that the earth is a hydroplanet, so that most of the water for the flood came from under the crust . An enormous quantity of verifiable evidence is provided for that in the hydroplanet chapter, and an enormous amount of physical evidences are provided for the reality of a flood that covered the earth by miles and not just feet, in the universal flood chapter. Scientists such as yourself may disagree with that evidence, but so do you with the larger questions which I cited at the beginning of this piece. An ever changing “consensus” proves nothing. Scientific truth is not a matter of majority opinion. The UM repeatedly asks and attempts to answer “fundamental questions.” In Every field of science! It does not claim infallibility. No one can do that. But it does open up entirely new fields of debate, inquiry and study: “Millenial Science!”

I’m not a scientist, Barry, so I will leave that response to others better equipped to respond than I. I am fascinated by your comment “I don’t think much of the evidences presented in chapter 8.” First time I have seen anything but a total denial from you about any subject in the UM. Are you perhaps wavering a bit?Personally, I found the 100 or so evidences for the flood to be easy to understand by a layman and to be overwhelmingly in favor of the flood. So I am extrmely interested to see how you will manage to demolish them all, because isn’t that the job you have assigned yourself?. Why wait till later? They are at the heart of the UM. If you are worth your salt as a geologist, and given that “peer reviewed” science categorically denies all evidence for a universal, same time flood, and you are apparantly the only current geologist attacking the UM in detail–generalized denunciations don’t count–isn’t it your responsibility to disabuse us laymen of the evidence in favor of it?
Then we can see how the UM team responds to you about flood evidences..

Say on, Barry, say on! Let’s get to the guts of the UM.

Frank

I’m glad to see that there is at least a first discussion going on about the Flood. The mathematics of the earth’s mass are interesting, but they are not at the heart of the UM. Chapter 8, the Universal Flood is. I find the arguments for it to be very persuasive. Let’s hear from those who think otherwise. I’d like in particular to hear from some who think it COULD NOT have happened, given the widespread accounts of local floods and the universal evidence of marine fossils on every continent. How does science prove its negative opinion about that?

Barry, how about taking that one on? Then let’s see how the UM team responds.