Answering Carter and Cosner on Eden

Creation vs. Evolution : How Much was Shinar Devastated by the Flood? · You Find a Fossil Whale Here, a Fossil Pterosaur There ... · Answering Carter and Cosner on Eden · Trying to Break Down "Reverse Danube" or "Reverse Euphrates" Concept · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Damien Mackey on Four Rivers and Related, I to X · Continuing Previous, XI to XX - are Nile Rivers Excluded? · Continuing Previous : XXI to XXXIII - getting to Troy (as we Tend to Do)

Here is their part 2:

Where was Eden? part 2: geological considerations—examining pre-Flood geographical details in the biblical record
by Robert Carter and Lita Cosner
https://creation.com/eden-2

I defend that Frat and Hiddekel are Euphrates and Tigris.

Here are two problems they find with this:

Where did the antediluvian Tigris and Euphrates flow to if there was no Persian Gulf?

And, citing Carol Hill:

But modern geological study has shown (by oil drilling) that the landscape of southern Iraq is underlain by six miles [10 km] of sedimentary rock. Thus the question can be asked: How could the Garden of Eden, which existed on a pre-flood landscape existing before the flood, have been located over six miles of sedimentary rock created during the flood.

Here is a solution taking both into account:

• Frat and Hiddekel were flowing FROM a land which is now covered by Persian Gulf.
• They were flowing North, as they now flow South.
• Immediate pre-Flood Iraq was probably covered in Sea. This sea could have resulted from a smaller Flood, as Josephus records one coming as a warning (Antiquities, I think smaller flood came at contraceptives, Flood of Noah when marriage songs were sung for two women or especially two men - from memory).
• Rivers are "identic" by the fact of same riverbed partially being there, though with a reversed direction.

It may be noted that St Thomas Aquinas (Prima Pars, Q 102, read all), partly following St Augustine, considered that Paradise was an unexplored country and that for instance Euphrates and Tigris had visible sources separate from an original (now) underground source, which need not have been so.

I have wondered whether Earthly Paradise, to preserve it from the Flood, was lifted off Earth and put somewhere higher up in the heavens, and whether Enoch and Elijah went there. If so, we would not have a place which is Paradise or a place which covers Paradise, but a place from which Paradise was lifted up. However, immediately after, Paradise was separated from Man by wall and by angels carrying swords in the porch, and one could find a place East of Eden ... which I consider to be India or Himalayas. (I am not a Hindoo in any way shape or form, and my views of Krishna would at least offend some, my views on Shiva all of them : but this does not mean Mahabharata is ahistoric nonsense, it could be memories from Nod).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XIII
Vigil of Sts Peter and Paul
28.VI.2018

Their footnote for Carol Hill reads: Hill, C.A., The Garden of Eden: A modern landscape, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 52:31–46, 2000.

Update on Enoch and Elijas in earthly paradise:

(St. Thomas) Supplement to III Part:
Question 69. Matters concerning the resurrection, and first of the place where souls are after death
Article 7. Whether so many abodes should be distinguished?
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5069.htm#article7

Objection 5. Further, the earthly paradise is distinct from the heavenly paradise. Now some were borne away to the earthly paradise after this state of life, as is related of Enoch and Elias. Since then the earthly paradise is not counted among the five abodes, it would seem that there are more than five.

Reply to Objection 5. The earthly paradise belongs to the state of the wayfarer rather than to the state of those who receive for their merits; and consequently it is not reckoned among the abodes whereof we are treating now.

But as Enoch and Elijas were taken up, it would seem, earthly paradise has been taken up before them./HGL