From: hamilton@hydra.cs.gmr.com (William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: noah's ark
Date: 6 Nov 92 18:25:12 GMT
Reply-To: hamilton@gmr.com (William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50)
Distribution: usa
Organization: GM Research Labs, Warren, MI

In article <1992Nov6.150024.15840@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker) writes:
>Dale Skiba (ds0007@medtronic.COM) wrote:
>
>: There appear to be two flavors of "modern creationism" here.  
>: Mark Issac seems to be referring to the 'Scientific' (sic) Duane
>: Gish style of creationism.  Bruce Korb seems to be referring to a
>: non-literal Hugh Ross style creationism.  The latter style seems
>: a good deal more reasonable. 
>
>	Still, despite accepting old-earth and cosmology, Ross 
>does not give one whit of credit to evolution.  I will postulate
>from his statements in that regard (as taken from the Gish-Ross
>debate transcript from Dobson's "Focus on the Family") that he believes 
>Noah is the descendant of all humanity (as Noah was the only 
>survivor of the global Biblical flood).  Bruce Korb stated that the
>Ark story was based on a description of a regional flood where only
>useful animals (i.e. domestic livestock) were transported.  Ross is
>unlikely to agree.

Here's the appropriate clip from the Gish/Ross discussion on Focus
on the Family:

Gish:  Well, let me tell you another reason why we're concerned about this, and
I want to bring in another person here - a person we're concerned about, a
person whose views have evolved, I should use that word objectively, evolved
considerably, and that's a man  uh, Dr. Davis Young who's a geologist who
started out believing in the Flood - by the way we haven't mentioned the Flood -
Hugh did not mention the flood. Hugh does not believe in a global Flood.  Now
there's no way you can read that Scripture and get anything but a global flood.
Now the Flood, I mean...

Ross:  How about a universal flood?

Gish:  A global flood...

Ross: I believe in a universal flood...

Gish:  But you don't believe in a global flood...

Ross:  Well the two terms are not necessarily synonymous...
they're only synonymous to twentieth century readers...

Gish:  Don't do it with semantics.  Did the flood waters cover the earth?

Ross:  All of mankind was destroyed and all the animals associated with him...

Ross appears to be saying the flood was local
without using those words explicitly. 
He seems to be saying it covered the known world and killed the humans and
animals who lived in that region. He does believe it killed all of mankind.

I don't understand why he rejects evolution, unless it's because  
that's too threatening a subject for many evangelicals. After all he
does rely on them for funding. It would seem to me that once you have
accepted the geologists' time scale for the age and development of the earth,
then the fossils are the age the paleontologists claim they are.
Then from the progression of life forms a Christian has to conclude
that either there were many separate acts of creation or that some form
of evolution occurred. To say that evolution occurred does not say that God
is not in control. It just says that evolution is the objectively
observable mechanism by which God accomplished these things(I'm speaking
from a Christian perspective).  Ross
either refuses to make that inference or refuses to admit publicly that
he has.

Ross also gets out on a limb when he claims that the big bang proves
the existence of the God of the Bible.  

Bill Hamilton
 

>	Jim Acker
>	jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
>
>