Flood Miracles

Why does Mr. Oard Embrace the Actualism that He Hates Instead of YEC Supernaturalism to Explain the Origin of Supposed Flood and Post-Flood Deposits? 

Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D.

June 15, 2014 Update

Oard (2009b, p. 138) and elsewhere in Oard and Reed (2009) commonly complains that restricting scientific hypotheses to the natural realm “equates atheism with science.” Klevberg and Bandy (2009, p. 63), another chapter in Oard and Reed (2009), also claim that the “diluvial geological paradigm” (Flood geology) includes supernaturalism. Furthermore, Oard (2009a, p. 113) openly boasts about young-Earth creationists (YECs) having a supernatural worldview. Somehow, groundlessly speculating on the existence of magically formed rocks puts YECs "one step ahead" of actualists (Oard 2009a, p. 113).

Oard (2012, p. 45) summarizes his views of miracles during Noah's Flood:

"We cannot avoid miracles during the Flood; after all, God brought the animals to Noah, closed the door to the Ark, started the Flood, ended the Flood, sat as King over the Flood, and remembered Noah and the animals during the Flood. In The Flood Science Review of Flood models, Joe Bardwell had a problem with invoking miracles, but thinking through the issue he concluded at the end of the review:

'Can we be certain from these passages that God was or was not supernaturally involved in the Flood? It is difficult to say, but I no longer believe it is unwarranted when an author claims God acted supernaturally during the Flood... . My conclusion is, for an author to invoke a miracle, it must be referenced in the Bible or it must be solidly backed up by evidence that it happened... . For us, the cardinal sin should not be to propose a supernatural event. The cardinal sin should be to propose a supernatural event that cannot be backed up by a body of evidence that it actually happened.'

I [Oard] believe these wise words." [emphasis and ellipses in the original]

Yet, after claiming that the supernatural has an important role in their worldview and "science" and that miracles cannot be avoided in the Flood, I have not been able to find any solid evidence or specific examples in Oard (2009a), Oard (2009b), or elsewhere in Oard and Reed (2009) on the role of the supernatural in Flood geology. As far as I can tell, Oard and Reed (2009) do not mention a single miracle that God performed to create the geologic record of Noah's Flood or the geology of the supposed non-biblical post-Flood ice age. Oard (2012) also will go no further than to vaguely claim that God started, ruled over and ended the Flood - whatever all of that specifically means. Oard (2012) claims to believe in the "wise words" of Bardwell (2011), but he and some of the other authors in Oard and Reed (2009) never proposed any specific examples to back up their support for a supernatural Flood and its miraculous geology. By proposing a supernatural Flood without backing it up with a body of evidence, Mr. Oard and his colleagues in Oard and Reed (2009) were committing the very cardinal sin later mentioned by Bardwell (2011). Oard and Reed (2009) pay nothing but lip service to the importance of the supernatural in their YEC Flood geology worldview.

Now, Humphreys et al. (2003) and some other young-Earth creationists (YECs) have suggested that radioactive decay rates might have accelerated during Noah's Flood. However, Reed and Oard (2009a, p. 16, footnote #1) are not that specific and are only willing to state that an acceleration in radioactive decay may have occurred within the past 6,000 years. Snelling (2009, pp. 185, 192) comments most on the topic in Oard and Reed (2009), but he will also only commit to one or more acceleration events sometime in the past.

Rather than practicing what he preaches by providing specific examples of the supernatural that he claims to support (Oard 2009a, p. 113), Oard (2009a; 2009b) repeatedly restricts his hypotheses on the formation of his so-called Flood and post-Flood ice age deposits to natural (actualistic) processes, including: Dr. Berthault's laminations (p. 143), clay flocculation (p. 143), turbidites in post-Flood lakes (p. 132), dropstones from floating logs and kelp (p. 142), etc. Like actualists, YECs probably recognize that scientific methods cannot positively identify any evidence of the supernatural in the sediments and sedimentary rocks of the geologic record. Genesis 19:24 claims that God threw down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, but Mr. Oard knows that he does not have a shred of evidence to claim that God threw down dropstones into Flood deposits. Yet, under his supernatural worldview, this and other events are possible even if they happen to not be mentioned in the Bible. In Mr. Oard's imaginary supernatural world, he has no way of determining whether diamictites actually formed during Noah's Flood or if God or other supernatural beings created the dropstones ex nihilo and levitated them into position to form the diamictites during the Creation Week. Perhaps, God knew that Adam and his pre-Flood descendants needed to mine dropstone boulders for fences and building stones. Under Mr. Oard's supernatural fantasy, he also could not rule out the possibility that YEC Henry Morris (1972) was right and that the craters on the Moon were produced by warring angels and demons rather than meteorites and asteroids during the Creation Week or Flood. The Bible does not say either way and is no help in deciding this YEC controversy. Mr. Oard certainly hates the naturalistic restrictions of actualism, but if he really wants to take the advice of Bardwell (2011), he knows that he is forced to rely on naturalism to explain his Flood geology, such as floating logs and kelp for the origin of dropstones. Nevertheless, as shown in my reviews of Oard (2009a) and Oard (2009b) at this website, his naturalistic speculations utterly fail.

YECs probably also realize that unless their Flood geology is totally bound by natural laws (actualism), how could anyone, including Oard (2009a, p. 120), claim to have a “basic understanding of what a global Flood might accomplish”? If the laws of chemistry and physics are replaced at all by the supernatural, then no understanding of the geologic record is possible because anything could have happened if God willed it and the Bible is not expected to mention every miracle. This is why Reed (2009, p. 211) refers to the portions of the crust that supposedly supernaturally formed during the Creation Week as “not open to forensic investigation.” Despite the best efforts of individuals like Bardwell (2011) and others to limit the influence of the supernatural, YECs or anyone else know that once they open the door to the possibility of the supernatural, science ends and unsupported and wild speculation can flourish like weeds and choke realistic investigations. This is why actualism and other scientific methods under methodological materialism (naturalism) openly reject the role of the supernatural in any scientific investigations (also see here).

Despite the vague claims in Oard (2012, p. 45) about God being involved in the Flood and because of the endless, chaotic, subjective and untestable mess that would result if YECs actually listened to themselves and fully embraced the possibility of miracles in the geologic record, Mr. Oard and his allies probably realize that miracles should not have been plentiful during Noah's Flood and perhaps not present at all during their non-biblical post-Flood ice age. Unless the Bible mentions a miracle or unless a YEC has a personal revelation from God, YECs would probably find it just as impossible as anyone else to identify evidence of the supernatural in the “Flood” record. If YECs solely base any miracles in the geologic record on their biblical interpretations, then they have demonstrated that their YEC ideas are not based on scientific investigations. Instead, their claims are solely based on subjective and fallible interpretations of copies of copies of copies, etc. of questionable ancient biblical texts being forced upon the geologic record. Without the Bible, it is also doubtful that any modern individual would ever claim that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that a worldwide Flood once impacted the entire global about 4,500 years ago. There is simply no scientific evidence to support these beliefs. While Oard (2009a, p. 113) is quick to quote Gould (1987) and point out that Lyell and Hutton inappropriately forced their uniformitarian biases onto the geologic record, Oard and Reed (2009) are guilty of the same inexcusably biased behavior when they ignore most of the geologic record and selectively force their antiquated biblical interpretations onto whatever they can get away with. YECs are forced to inconsistently and awkwardly straddle the worlds of magic and science by giving lip service to supernaturalism, espousing hatred for actualism and then hypocritically attempting to twist actualism into supporting their Flood geology. While YECs are confident of their biblical interpretations and even brag about their supernatural biases (e.g., Oard, 2009a, p. 113), we see how subjective and unreliable they really are when young-Earth creationism is not only rejected by most Bible-literate Jews and liberal, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians, but also by countless old-Earth evangelical Christians.

References

Bardwell, J. (editor). 2011. The Flood Science Review, In Jesus' Name Productions, Inc., www.injesusnameproductions.org

Gould, S.J. 1987. Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 222pp. 

Humphreys, D.R., S.A. Austin, J.R. Baumgardner and A.A. Snelling. 2003. “Helium Diffusion Rates Support Accelerated Nuclear Decay,” in R. Ivey (editor), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, http://www.icr.org/pdf/research/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf

Klevberg, P. and R. Bandy. 2009. “Do Soils Indicate Long Ages?”, chapter 5 in M.J. Oard and J.K. Reed (editors). 2009. Rock Solid Answers: The Biblical Truth Behind 14 Geological Questions, Master Books: Green Forest, AR, pp. 63-92.

Morris, H. 1972. The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth, Bethany House Publishers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, 111pp.

Oard, M.J. 2009a. “Landslides Win in a Landslide over Ancient 'Ice Ages'“, chapter 7 in M.J. Oard and J.K. Reed (editors). 2009. Rock Solid Answers: The Biblical Truth Behind 14 Geological Questions, Master Books: Green Forest, AR, pp. 111-123.

Oard, M.J. 2009b. “Do Varves Contradict Biblical History?”, chapter 8 in M.J. Oard and J.K. Reed (editors). 2009. Rock Solid Answers: The Biblical Truth Behind 14 Geological Questions, Master Books: Green Forest, AR, pp. 125-148.

Oard, M.J. and J.K. Reed (editors). 2009. Rock Solid Answers: The Biblical Truth Behind 14 Geological Questions, Master Books: Green Forest, AR, 272 pp.

Oard, M.J. 2012. "Michael Oard Replies: An Impact Flood Submodel - Dealing with Issues", Journal of Creation, v. 26(3), pp. 45-46.

Reed, J.K. 2009. “Fossil Distribution in the Flood,” chapter 12 in M.J. Oard and J.K. Reed (editors). 2009. Rock Solid Answers: The Biblical Truth Behind 14 Geological Questions, Master Books: Green Forest, AR, pp. 207-215.

Reed, J.K. and M.J. Oard. 2009a. “A Context for the Flood Geology Debate,” chapter 1 in M.J. Oard and J.K. Reed (editors). 2009. Rock Solid Answers: The Biblical Truth Behind 14 Geological Questions, Master Books: Green Forest, AR, pp. 11-17.

Snelling, A. A. 2009. “Radiometric Dating: Challenging an Icon of Evolutionary Geology, “ chapter 11 in M.J. Oard and J.K. Reed (editors). 2009. Rock Solid Answers: The Biblical Truth Behind 14 Geological Questions, Master Books: Green Forest, AR, pp. 185-206.