Researchers at National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder have been running computer simulations to see if strong wind could create a dry channel in a body of water. The point being to simulate the “parting of the waters” miracle in Genesis. According to CNN’s Belief Blog:

The computer model shows a 63 mph east wind blowing across the area and its 6-feet-deep waters for 12 hours. In the scenario, the wind pushed back the waters into both the lake and the channel of the river, exposing a mud flat 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide for four hours. As the winds died down, the waters quickly flowed back in and in theory would have drowned anyone on the mud flat.

I’m not going to argue about the simulation. Such things are beyond me, and PZ Myers has said what needs to be said. What interests me is the mentality of the people doing it.

If you’re going to argue that there is a divine being beyond the constraints of space and time, does it really make sense to argue that some things are impossible for it? Is it really bound by the laws of physics if it is beyond physics? But then what is the point of the test?

Then there’s things like this:

“The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus,” said Carl Drews of NCAR, the lead author of the study published in the online journal PLoS ONE.

The account in Exodus is loaded with theological language, with talk of the “angel of God” and the “pillar of cloud”. Wind is sometimes a metaphor for the active power of God, as in the breath or spirit of God. Treating the account like a newspaper story misses the point.

And then there’s the sticky issue of translation: Red Sea or Reed Sea?

This kind of looks like a throwback to the old Deists and Rationalists who believed that the Bible was basically accurate journalism, but refused to believe that almighty God would pop down and meddle with his creation. A God who needed to constantly muck about with miracles wasn’t a very good planner.

Instead they saw miracles as things laid out by God at the beginning using the natural laws He had created. For example, Isaac Newton’s and his disciple William Whiston believed that a comet had grazed the earth and caused the Great Flood, all pre-arranged by God.

But I had thought that the Rationalists had died out. Are we witnessing a come back?