The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science: A DiscourseDenton, William
Religion
The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science: A Discourse
Denton, William
Bible and science; Deluge
Geology furnishes us with evidence that no such deluge has taken place.
According to Hugh Miller, "In various parts of the world, such as
Auvergne in Central France, and along the flanks of Etna, there are
cones of long-extinct or long-slumbering volcanoes, which, though of at
least triple the antiquity of the Noachian deluge, and though composed
of the ordinary incoherent materials, exhibit no marks of denudation.
According to the calculations of Sir Charles Lyell, no devastating flood
could have passed over the forest-zone of Etna during the last twelve
thousand years."
Archæology enters her protest equally against it. We have abundance of
Egyptian mummies, statues, inscriptions, paintings, and other
representations of Egyptian life belonging to a much earlier period than
the deluge. With only such modifications as time slowly introduced, we
find the people, their language, and their habits, continuing after that
time, as they had done for centuries before. Lepsius, writing from the
pyramids of Memphis, in 1843, says, "We are still busy with structures,
sculptures, and inscriptions, which are to be classed, by means of the
now more accurately determined groups of kings, in an epoch of highly
flourishing civilization, as far back as the fourth millennium before
Christ." That is one thousand six hundred and fifty-six years before the
time of the flood. Lyell says that "Chevalier Bunsen, in his elaborate
and philosophical work on ancient Egypt, has satisfied not a few of the
learned, by an appeal to monumental inscriptions still extant, that the
successive dynasties of kings may be traced back without a break, to
Menes, and that the date of his reign would correspond with the year
3,640 B.C.;" that is nearly thirteen hundred years before the time of
the deluge. Strange that the whole world should have been drowned and
the Egyptians never knew it!
From the "Types of Mankind," we learn that the fact is "asserted by
Lepsius, and familiar to all Egyptologists, that negro and other races
already existed in Northern Africa, on the Upper Nile, 2,300 years B.C."
But this is only forty-eight years after the deluge. What kind of a
family had Noah? Was amalgamation practised by any of Noah's sons? If
all the human occupants of the ark were Caucasians, how did they produce
negro races in forty-eight years? The facts again compel us to announce
the fabulous character of this Genesical story of the deluge.
_"No intelligent person now believes that it was a total deluge:
Buckland, Pye Smith, Miller, Hitchcock, and all Christian geologists,
agree that it was a partial deluge, and the account can be so
explained."_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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