Blood, Water and Magicians (rain and the nile)

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-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-errancy@infidels.org [mailto:owner-errancy@infidels.org] On Behalf Of Jan Haugland
Sent:	Thursday, October 01, 1998 9:24 PM
To:	errancy@infidels.org
Subject:	Re: Blood, Water and Magicians (rain and the nile)


> >JAN

> >I've tried to follow this long-winded debate, and I cannot remember to

> >have seen the CCBE bring up the topic of *rain* and the flow of water.

<snip>


> TILL

> There are two problems in your solution.  First, you are doing the same

> thing that Bell and the CCBE did, i.e., proposing solutions based on

> what the text does NOT say.  Their argument is that since the text does

> not say that the magicians did not dig for water, find some, and change it

> into blood, they can therefore assume that this is what happened.  <snip>


JAN
Of course. As the text stands, it's so self-contradictory it's hard to
imagine that none of the writer's contemporaries pointed the flaw out to
him.

But you'll never get inerrantists to accept your rules of the game. They
know they would loose miserably (and they do). So the inerrantist position
has to be: a text is proven self-contradictory if and only if it could be
strictly proven that no chain of events really happened that allowed the
text's (alleged) self-contradictions to be resolved. And since they can
always come dragging in an omnipotent God as the last resort, they can
safely assume that the Bible is never proved errant (in their view).

Of course, this makes the inerrancy position meaningless. If you can propose
any wild excusogetic (sic) solutions to solve contradictions, can't we just
propose the same set of solutions for any other text? Cannot any story
really mean anything?

TILL

> There would be no end of solutions if an inerrantist would be allowed to

> solve the problem by proposing solutions that the Bible did not say did

> not happen.


JAN
Exactly.

TILL

> The second flaw in your solution is that Exodus 7:25 indicates that the

> plague of blood lasted for seven days, so water flowing in from the

> south evidently didn't flow in very fast.


JAN
Evidently not. Anyone have any idea how fast the Nile flows on average?


Elf, 10/1/98 9:44 PM
What 7:25 says is : "After Yahweh had struck the river, seven days passed."

It does not say "Yahweh's striking the river passed after seven days."

I.e., it merely gives the passage of time between the first plague and the second.

Nothing in the text suggests that anything was done to reverse the plague or that the plagues effects had dissipated after seven
days - only that it was showtime again.

As for the flow rate, 2mph is probably a good guess, with 5mph being the upper limit for non-flood flow.

2mph would be roughly 50 miles a day X 7 would be 350 miles.

But blood is much thicker than water, so even if we start with the 5mph flow, we can expect a drastic slowing in the rate of
movement, but without correct numbers and equations its pure guesswork trying to infer flow rates. Never the less, I rather suspect
that a Nile full of blood would start flowing slowly and fairly quickly come to a stop as the mass of blood coagulated and
putrefied. Leading, as noted, to off season flooding as the mass of water continued to flow down from Ethiopia and overrun the
slowing/stopping blood in the channel.

And since the Bible is quite silent about any specific acts to end the plague of blood, one is NOT free to simply assume that it was
"turned off" at the start of the next show. The channel of the Nile was filled, and nowhere is it said that it was just as
miraculously fixed, so the blood must be accounted for.

Ciao!!


Michael Fisher, aka Elfish Chimera, San Diego, California

"If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, without allowing anything else to distract
you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing,
but satisfied to live now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in every word which you utter, you will live happy. And there
is no man able to prevent this."
		                        --Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and Stoic, from his MEDITATIONS, III, 12.---

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