This is one of the most bizarre threads I've seen on OLO.

Here is some homework for those of you, like Dan S de Merengue, who purport to believe in a literal flood.

Take a land plant, plant it in a suitable pot with soil and nutrients and immerse it in water for, say, 180 days. It needs to be totally immersed. Every leaf should be under water. The side of the container should be opaque and there should be at least a foot between the top of the water and the highest part of the plant. Feel free to refresh the water as often as you like subject to keeping the plant totally immersed.

After 180 days report back with your findings.

Ideally this experiment should be performed with a tree but in practise that may be difficult. For now any land plant, even a weed, will do.

Or you might like to try it with a bonsai tree.

Dan.
I guess without bothering to learn science (it is hard work), you would assume it operates in the same way as faith...it doesn't.
What yourself and runner fail to grasp is that science works because it makes *real* predictions that work *in detail*.
Yes they sing off the same song sheet...it's called reality.
Unlike religious "truth" which is asserted and deemed to be correct, science is provisional and inherently humble. By humble I mean that any amount of real evidence can knock any "authority" off simply be being repeatable. the power comes from truth, not authority.
I believe that the child indoctrination that religion requires imparts the lack of humility and sells it as a virtue. The hubris really becomes evident when older people start barging into areas they have no expertise in, yet feel they have equal voice to those that have studied all their lives. Here they play the man, not the ball and hence bring the level of debate down to a slanging match.

Neatly summarised, Dan S de Merengue. I totally agree.

>>And a miraculous event such as the resurrection of Christ is not of much or any qualitative difference from other creative miracles such as the creation of man or the virgin birth. So I can't see the sense in believing in one and not the others.<<

It puzzles me too, that Christians still to this day pick and choose the parts they want to believe in, and reject the parts they don't. It reduces the whole thing to an intellectual exercise of ever-diminishing returns: either your God is evident in a whole series of miraculous acts, or he is not. If you stop believing in the fact that Adam was created in God's image, or that the world was under water for ten months and only a boatload of animals and a handful of people survived, then there very quickly becomes no clear reason to believe any of it.

Not that this small fact seems to deter anyone. Selective religious interpretation has been the cornerstone of violent disagreements since religion was invented. But that will inevitably occur, given that the basic written material is so difficult to swallow. The human brain finds it extremely difficult to hold two conflicting ideas without going at least slightly crazy.

its funny steven
your perfectly right..ECCEPT*
according to 'evolution'...one WILL survive
MUST have survived...or it wouldnt 'be here now'

yes..puting a land plant..back into the water
is every bit absurd as a 'land beast'..returning to the water

[the science explaination for water mammel evolutions..
[wales SO THE THEORY say]..came from..[decended/evolved]..
from..a wolf like cxarnivor mammal land best..to dolphines/whales

returning to the water
thats coverd by evolution
the fittest will [lol]..survive

so 'dan's' land plant
will be the exception..cause [faux evolving..evoloting]science said so..one..must have survived..[or the threory is refuted..on the first declared law]..

proove..the fittest didnt survive

Ozandyh,
You say your thinking relies on repeatable experiments. You also allege Australia is one of the oldest continents. How could you establish this fact relying only on repeatable experiments? What test could be (or has been) done? 

I think in reality that there are many philosophical (untestable) assumptions behind your claim.

The 'humility' which you prize is, in reality, a state of the heart, not partial to a particular philosophical approach.

Pericles,
Regarding your last sentence, I think it's quite common for people to hold conflicting ideas in different parts of their brain at the same time. That's also part of the fickleness of mankind.

Ozandyh alleges that I don't understand science. Yet Stevenlmeyer challenges me to do an experiment. He must have some faith in my ability to follow logic and reasoning.

So I'll make my prediction. Put the bonsai tree under water for six months - I'm guessing it will die.

So the logical question which follows is how did trees survive the Great Flood?

I'll first take a step back and compare this with the question facing the naturalist (or the atheist). How did the world become covered by green plants? Evolutionary scientists have no idea whatsoever about how the first life (first living cell) came about from non living chemicals on a dead planet. The first living cell is as much a miracle to them as to everyone else.

So Christians have a much easier task explaining how green plants recovered after a cataclysm such as the Flood on a planet that was only months before teaming with life.
 
It is true that most plants and trees cannot survive being submerged for a long time; even the plant life that could survive underwater was probably uprooted and destroyed by the violence of the Flood. But seeds and plant matter would have been able to survive outside the Ark for the duration of the Flood, and sprouted afterwards. Some trees, including those which would provide appropriate sources of food for many herbivorous animals, grow very quickly.

In reality, within our own lifetimes we have seen places which have been desolate, like the barrenness surrounding a volcanic explosion or perhaps a newly formed volcanic island, recover to establish a living ecosystem within a few years.