. God created Adam and Eve on the 6 th day and He rested on the 7 th day. I believe it to be a literal week. All the animals were created including the dinosaurs at the same time just like the scripture mentions. Everything was destroyed in the flood except Noah and his family and the pairs of animals that The Lord had sent to him .
How can one believe that humans and animals date back for millions of years. The scripture makes it clear that God called everything good after each day... My point, if is was all good , how could animals and humans be dying for millions of years and all be good. The sin of man came 1 st, then death followed. Not the other way around.
Genealogies of the bible are traced back for 1000s of years not millions.
My vote: relatively young earth.
May I refer you to post #17 in this thread? The age of the earth is very well established to be 4.56 billion years old. The first eleven chapters in Genesis are very well established to be severely redacted epic tales. These eleven chapters are not an accurate record of historic eventsthey are ancient oriental literature that addresses the thoughts and quandaries of ancient peoples.
In recent years, a number of organizations have been formed to defend an interpretation of Genesis 1-11 that is now known to be radically incorrect. A part of their defense is to quote scientists who hold to that radically incorrect interpretation of Genesis 1-11 and who have consequently thrown science into a trashcan and published nonsense in an attempt to falsely make it appear that real scientists are a bunch of atheists conspiring against Christianity. I have repeatedly asked these organizations to name just one scientist who teaches that the earth is young and who does not hold to that radically incorrect interpretation of Genesis 1-11and they cannot name one! They are all Christian fundamentalists rather than true scientists. About 25 of them have earned a Ph.D. in a non-relevant field, and earning a Ph.D. does not make a man or a woman a scientist.
Lets consider a few facts regarding Noahs Ark that must be considered in evaluating the literalness of the account in Gen. 69:
There are today about 2,000,000 genetically distinct populations of animals living on the earth. If we assume a date of about 2,349 B.C. (Bishop Usshers date), microevolution reduces the number of kinds of animals that must have been aboard the ark (to account for the about 2,000,000 genetically distinct populations of animals living on the earth today) to a few hundred thousand kinds.
The several thousands of kinds of animals, including the dinosaurs, mammoths, giant ground sloths, etc., which have become extinct must also be considered. Did they all become extinct before the flood? If not, they were, according to the account in Genesis, aboard the ark.
The ark, as literally described in Genesis, was much too small because the amount of water that it would be capable of displacing would weigh less than the animals on board, thus making it impossible for the ark to float.
The floor space on the ark was too small to hold any more than a tiny fraction of the cages that would be necessary to keep the animals in place (and from eating each other).
The amount of food required for the animals would weigh at least nearly as much as the animals, and would require a vast amount of storage space.
Many of the animals aboard the ark would have required specific FRESH fruits, vegetables, leaves, grass, bark, roots, etc., including fresh fruits that are produced only on MATURE plants. Therefore, these mature plants would necessarily have been kept and maintained aboard the ark, and subsequently planted in the ground after the flood.
Most of the genetically discrete populations of fish (including many VERY LARGE fish) would have to be taken aboard the ark and kept in tanks of water that met their very specific water chemistry needs in order to survive.
The weight of the water on the earth would have crushed to death any of the land plants that did not drown in the water.
After 150 days when the water abated, there would be no vegetation on the earth for the herbivores to eat, and no meat for the carnivores to eat, therefore a vast amount of food would necessarily have been kept aboard the ark to sustain the animals AFTER the flood.
The Animals could not be released all at once or in the same place because many of them would eat each other.
The coming of the animals to Noah from all over the earth would have been a physical impossibility no less impossible than Santa Clause delivering presents to every boy and girl on the night before Christmas. The polar bears and penguins, not to mention all of the unique kinds of animals in Australia, would have posed more than a few special difficulties.
After the flood, the animals could not be returned to their original habitat because all habitats would have been destroyed by the flood.
Many of the necessary habitats would take 50 years or more to be reestablished and their reestablishment would have required the effort of many thousands of persons.
Until all the necessary habitats could be reestablished, the animals requiring these habitats would have to be kept and cared for by Noah and his family.
There was not enough water to cover the entire earth, and even if there was, where did it go after the flood?
If the reported sightings of the Ark are factual, the Ark came to rest on a VERY high mountain on VERY rugged terrain from which the large majority of the animals would not have been able to descend.
Therefore, the narrative of Noahs Ark cannot be a literal account of an historic event. Indescribably huge and very numerous miracles would have been necessary, and a literal interpretation of Genesis does not allow for these miracles because the whole point of the narrative is that through the natural, physical means of an ark built by Noah and his family, mankind and all the kinds of animals were saved from the floodwaters. Therefore, we are left with the following choices: a collection of legends or myths, or a collection of epic tales.
