Creation Museum / Ark

[RickG]

\This was not just a light drizzle---not only a torrential rain, but the water under the earth came up also--everywhere
Gen 8:2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;

I'm quite aware of what of what is described in the account. However, fountains of the deep on the scale needed to cover all land masses do not and have never existed, geologically speaking. I prefer using the evidence from Gods creation (the earth), rather than the writings of man presenting their view in the context of their time, perspective, and knowledge of their physical world. An never mind that there is no physical evidence of any flood of that magnitude ever occurring throughout geologic time, much less some 4500 years ago.

 

[RickG]

........ Could you please stop rudely making this about me & instead focus on what I'm asking? Or, if you're not able to do that, please just stop replying to my posts. I'm getting actual answers from Christians who are clearly knowledgable about this, so I think I'll be set without any more of your input.

Agreed. I can understand people imagining scenarios to explain specifics that are not described in the story but they should also have the fortitude to question and falsify those scenarios as well, or at least ask people who have the background to either verify or falsify those ideas.

 

[RickG]

You are asking questions that are in the bible that apparently you, and some other Christians, do not believe in.

Most Christians do not interpret the flood story as being literal. I can verify that there has never been a global flood on the scale as perceived in the Genesis description through many different aspects of the Earth Sciences. Can you verify authenticity of scripture, that it was not altered or embellished over thousands of years? I can't nor do I know anyone who can.

 

[Tallguy88]

I found this quote on a blog just now, and it jives with the quote I remember from more trustworthy sources, so I think it's accurate, but it may not be exact if the blogger made a transcribing error or something. It's originally from St. Augustine's work entitled The Literal Meaning of Genesis (The title of which is ironic in light of the excerpt).

With that caveat, here's the quote:

Thanks. In that same book, he says it's obvious from scripture that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that those who say it's older are foolish. He also believed all of creation was created in one instant and that the six day creation story was basically God being poetic. But he certainly didn't teach anything resembling evolution and outright rejected an Old Earth creation. He seems to take Genesis literally from after the point of creation.

 

[RickG]

I know that the standard approach is to read Genesis to find everything wrong with it. I took a different approach and read, in the Hebrew, for real detail. SOME of the questions that people ask actually are addressed, if it's read carefully and non-dogmatically.

Actually, I never questioned anything in the bible until I was exposed to the "creation science" literature, which was more than obvious to me presenting misrepresented science and in some cases just plain making things up. Thus, if things have to be distorted and made up to support the bible, what does that say about the validity of the bible?

 

[Vicomte13]

Actually, I never questioned anything in the bible until I was exposed to the "creation science" literature, which was more than obvious to me presenting misrepresented science and in some cases just plain making things up. Thus, if things have to be distorted and made up to support the bible, what does that say about the validity of the bible?

I ignored the Bible as a book of myths until divine intervention forced me to acknowledge the reality of spirits I cannot see. But God didn't say anything to me about the Bible - we talked about physics. I made my way to Christianity, and to the Scriptures, through an inductive reasoning process. I still don't think anything in the Bible is of particular importance other than what Jesus said. Through Jesus, the rest of it is bootstrapped in, but it's all sort of dangling out there like a caboose on a long train.

Science proved Christianity to me, by demonstrating that certain physical miracles - particularly the Shroud of Turin, Lanciano Miracle and Incorrupt bodies of saints - transcend what should be possible under the physics. Those miracles are what point to Christianity, and it is Christianity that makes the Bible worth taking seriously.

Knock out the miracles, and you knock out the proof of the divinity of Jesus. I directly know that there is God, spirits and demons. So that remains real, but the Christian aspect of things disappears.

 

[Cimorene]

Thanks. In that same book, he says it's obvious from scripture that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that those who say it's older are foolish. He also believed all of creation was created in one instant and that the six day creation story was basically God being poetic. But he certainly didn't teach anything resembling evolution and outright rejected an Old Earth creation. He seems to take Genesis literally from after the point of creation.

Wasn't St. Augustine from a time way, way, way before modern science? Or am I confusing him for somebody else.

 

[Tallguy88]

Wasn't St. Augustine from a time way, way, way before modern science? Or am I confusing him for somebody else.

Yeah. In the 400s. The point was he doesn't seem to be the best source if you want to go with an overall allegorical interpretation of Genesis.

 

[Cimorene]

Yeah. In the 400s. The point was he doesn't seem to be the best source if you want to go with an overall allegorical interpretation of Genesis.

Thanks, that's what I thought but I think there's more than one famous Augustine so I wanted to double check. He's not the guy you'd go to for an overall literal interpretation of Genesis either, is he?

 

[Cimorene]

This is another thing I don't understand about a global flood. Wouldn't pregnant ladies have been killed too? Why wouldn't God just make people infertile. Does the Ark Encounter explain the repopulation after everybody else was killed? Bc if Noah & his family were the only survivors & they were all well over 100 yrs old it doesn't make sense to me at all. So it's through incest that the world got repopulated & people way over the age for fertility did it?

 

[RickG]

This is another thing I don't understand about a global flood. Wouldn't pregnant ladies have been killed too? Why wouldn't God just make people infertile. Does the Ark Encounter explain the repopulation after everybody else was killed? Bc if Noah & his family were the only survivors & they were all well over 100 yrs old it doesn't make sense to me at all. So it's through incest that the world got repopulated & people way over the age for fertility did it?

Just my opinion, but I think when Christianity split from Judaism, I think it should have used the New Testament and only the New Testament.

 

[Tallguy88]

Just my opinion, but I think when Christianity split from Judaism, I think it should have used the New Testament and only the New Testament.

That's an ancient heresy called Marcionism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism

 

[RickG]

That's an ancient heresy called Marcionism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism

Thank you for the link.

 

[Tallguy88]

Thank you for the link.

Just something I remembered from my seeker days

 

[LoAmmi]

Just my opinion, but I think when Christianity split from Judaism, I think it should have used the New Testament and only the New Testament.

The problem with that is the New Testament spends a lot of time in it's attempt to justify Jesus's claim to messiah using the Jewish Bible. Using the New Testament only would raise a ton of questions.

 

[Tallguy88]

The problem with that is the New Testament spends a lot of time in it's attempt to justify Jesus's claim to messiah using the Jewish Bible. Using the New Testament only would raise a ton of questions.

Plus Jesus quoting and teaching from the OT, being called Rabbi, preaching in the Temple, claiming to fulfill the Law, etc

 

[LoAmmi]

Plus Jesus quoting and teaching from the OT, being called Rabbi, preaching in the Temple, claiming to fulfill the Law, etc

Yeah, you'd be missing an awful lot of backstory.

 

[Tallguy88]

This is another thing I don't understand about a global flood. Wouldn't pregnant ladies have been killed too?

Yes, pregnant women would have been killed in the Flood.

Why wouldn't God just make people infertile.

Why does God do anything the way He does? His ways are so far above man's way as the Heavens are above the Earth. We can't comprehend His thoughts anymore and an ant can comprehend our thoughts.

Does the Ark Encounter explain the repopulation after everybody else was killed? Bc if Noah & his family were the only survivors & they were all well over 100 yrs old it doesn't make sense to me at all. So it's through incest that the world got repopulated & people way over the age for fertility did it?

Noah's sons and their wives were also on the Ark. So the most incest that would occur is first cousin marriage by Noah's grandchildren marrying among each other. And the genetic problems of cousin marriage are overstated in the modern American mind. Historically, it is one of the most common marriage situations and still accounts for more than 10% of all marriages today.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage

 

[RickG]

The problem with that is the New Testament spends a lot of time in it's attempt to justify Jesus's claim to messiah using the Jewish Bible. Using the New Testament only would raise a ton of questions.

I agree but you are missing my point, which in particular, is with the book of Genesis and the fundementalist literal interpretation with the view "that if scientific facts conflict with that interpretation then those facts must be ignored".

Frankly from my point of view with respect to our physical environment (Earth & Universe), what we find in it is God's evidence of that creation, the evidence left by God. Conversely, the writings of man are questionable, especially those described in Genesis. I choose to accept God's physical evidence over the unverifiable writings of men thousands of years ago writing about something that supposedly occurred thousands of years before that. If I am wrong, then in my opinion that makes God a deceiver.

 

[LoAmmi]

I agree but you are missing my point, which in particular, is with the book of Genesis and the fundementalist literal interpretation with the view "that if scientific facts conflict with that interpretation then those facts must be ignored".

Frankly from my point of view with respect to our physical environment (Earth & Universe), what we find in it is God's evidence of that creation, the evidence left by God. Conversely, the writings of man are questionable, especially those described in Genesis. I choose to accept God's physical evidence over the unverifiable writings of men thousands of years ago writing about something that supposedly occurred thousands of years before that. If I am wrong, then in my opinion that makes God a deceiver.

The problem there is with the literal interpretation not the words.