The Biblical Flood occurred

I. Burden of Proof Note that Pro perceives an unusually high burden on my behalf, which is simply not true. As instigator and the affirmative position Pro clearly has the burden of proof to provide good/convincing reasons to accept the resolution as it stands. In this case we need good reasons to accept that the biblical flood occurred, otherwise we must reject the resolution out of hand. Keep this in mind when assessing the contents of the debate, especially as Pro has forbidden me from making additional contentions. II. Affirming the Consequent This applies to all three of Pro's arguments so far and I suspect it will apply to more in future rounds. Virtually all of Pro's arguments follow this line of reasoning: P1) If P then Q P2) Q C) P This is a logical fallacy known as 'affirming the consequent'. [1] To put this into linguistic perspective! here is an example: P1) If I go to Walmart I will obtain some beans P2) I have obtained some beans C) I have gone to Walmart The problem clearly is that it neglects every other possible explanation for P2, just because I have beans doesn't necessarily mean it came from Walmart, it could have also come from the corner shop etc. When applied to Pro's arguments, it quickly becomes obvious that not a single one of them is a 'proof' as Pro seems to think it is, instead they are just points of evidence. In this debate I will demonstrate that these are pretty much all examples of this, and that Pro's case as a result is highly unsound, and therefore should be rejected. III. Mathematical Proof I don't think I have ever seen an example of 'circular mathematical reasoning' before, but this is as clear as one gets. First see Pro's calculation 1. 7,000,000,000 = 6e^r4500 2. r = 0.004639425893 3. r* = 0.4639425893 4. 6(1+0.4639425893/100)^n = 6,670,066,345.47 It will be somewhat complicated to show exactly how it is circular, but simply put equation 1 is the integral of equation 4. To demonstrate this though I will use Pro's same formulas to prove a starting population of 7,000, which will yield the same answer if the equation is circular. 1. 7,000,000,000 = 7,000e^r4500 2. r = 0.003070113457 3. r* = 0.3070113457 4. 7,000(1+ 0.3070113457/100)^4500 = 6,853,406,732 6,853,406,732 people is pretty much the same as we started with, in fact the discrepancy both myself and Pro see are due to decimal places cut off on our calculators. It's clearly circular mathematics, but even ignoring that, it just as easily proves a 7,000 starting population. Or virtually any other number you can imagine. IV. Sea creatures in high altitudes This is a strong case of affirming the consequent as I have already argued, and it neglects to take into consideration other possible causes of the evidence found. The most established and well substantiated alternative explanation that is widely accepted in paleontology and geology is that many of these mountains used to be ancient seabeds, and that these fossils were fossilized long before being 'thrusted up' in the mountain forming process. [2] The Himalayas is my favourite example, which is strongly regarded as a result of the collision of the India & Asian continental plates which has resulted in a mountain range which is still growing to this day. [3]Any oceanic crust caught in between (which would have been the case at the 'pinching point' where the Himalayas formed' would have been raised. Moreover I see no reason to accept Pro's evidence of Genesis as accurate and true, much less than his assertion that the fountains of the deep referred to what appears to be volcanoes in Pro's argument, as it can be interpreted to mean virtually anything with that much leniency. But even if this were true then we would expect to see evidence of this occurring on a global scale on the sea bed, yet sea beds consist of largely sedimentary rock (oceanic limestone), not igneous/metamorphic rock which would be a result of Pro's scenario. [3-5] Also, if the flood occurred and really did deposit fossils in the tops of these mountains, then we would expect to see large, enormous quantities of erosion and sediment deposition in the valleys of these mountains. Yet this is not what is observed. Furthermore, if marine fossils were transported to the top of mountains in the flood, then we would expect to see them to have been laid in various orientations on the mountain (upside down, sideways, left, right etc) but instead we find they are in essentially the same position they would grow in life, which is perfectly consistent with the mountain thrust hypothesis. [6] V. Historical proofs I honestly don't see how Pro can view this as a 'proof' for anything. He asserts 3 things: 1. All these historical accounts describe the same flood 2. These historical accounts are reliable because there are so many. 3. The flood described is the Noahian flood Pro however had given exactly zero reasons to believe #1 over multiple different local floods. There are excellent reasons to believe the other hypothesis that these are just local floods: 1. We have abundant evidence that local floods do occur, in virtually every continent and in virtually every country 2. If the flood was the Noahcian flood, then everyone except the family of Noah would have been killed and the stories from those regions would not have survived, either in oral traditions or in written form, since the waters would have destroyed most/all writing materials around at the time. Furthermore Pro makes an every larger concession: "Even though each flood story may have some distorted details here and there, many of them still have main reasons why the flood occurred (such as divine retribution). When different cultures have the same story in their folklore, that logically means that they had a common ancestor that faced the event. " There are two massive problems with this, first Pro concedes that there are discrepancies (often massive ones) in the stories. Which weakens itself as corroborating evidence. Second, Pro asserts the common ancestor explanation, which essentially means that all these stories are derivative from the original Noachian story. This is a BAD thing historically, as now we no longer have independent 'witness accounts' of the event, but instead we have lots of people talking about the SAME 'witness account' of the event. [7] To give an analogy, millions of people today will attest to Spider-man's feats and abilities, however we only have a handful of actual 'witness' accounts to Spider-Man, who reside in Marvell comics. The sheer number of people who talk about it, and their demographic locations etc obviously have no bearing on the truth of these claims, only determining the legitimacy of the original story can do that, and given we only have one source. .. It becomes very poor historical evidence. VI. Conclusion Pro hasn't come anywhere near fulfilling his BoP for this debate. VII. References 1. . http://www.fallacyfiles.org... 2. . http://pdfebooks.rourkepublishing.com... 3. . http://www.extremescience.com... 4. . http://journals.cambridge.org... 5. . http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk... 6. Gould, S. J. , 1998. The upwardly mobile fossils of Leonardo's living earth. In: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, Harmony Books, New York. 7. . http://en.m.wikipedia.org...