Literal Genesis AND a local flood?

The problem with Ross is that he assumes the world was the same before Noah.

Vance said:

And what evidence from God's Creation itself do you have that it wasn't?

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6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.


7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

I guess it matters how you interpret this passage from Genesis

what evidence, Vance - that the world you see today WAS THE SAME as Noah's day?

Thanks for the interesting article, Vance.

Raydar said:

6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.


7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

I guess it matters how you interpret this passage from Genesis

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Well, I think it would take a non-literal interpretation of this passage to get to a pre-flood world that was different from the post-flood world.

The literal interpretation is clearly that the firmament is the sky (heaven). Last time I looked, we still have a sky. And, I believe, heaven too. Note as well that the firmament is also mentioned in other passages of scripture in which the context clearly indicates a post-flood existence of the firmament.

e.g. Psalm 19:1; 150:1

Vance said:

Are you serious? Everything we can observe about our planet (and the universe, for that matter) evidences that things happened before 2,300 BC just like they happen now. Varves are just one single example. The burden is definitely on the proponent of a "changed universe" to show some natural evidence of this.

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In 5 years, you would not know that the Tsunami happened.
In 1,500 years, you would not know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki was nuked.
In 1,500 years, you would not know that Chenobyl exploded.
In 50 years you would not know the nations fought in wars known as WWI and WWII.
In 20 years you would not know that the twin towers were attacked.
Even now, you would not know that the whole world was in a Depression only 1/2 a century ago.

Without our written history you simply would not know.

Why? Because "generations come, and generations go, but the Earth remains forever."

You do not know the species that existed in Palestine 2,000 years ago.
You do not know the climate of Palestine 2,000 years ago.
You do not know the rate of fusion of the Sun 2,000 years ago.

You can guess. You can hypothesize. But you cannot know, because you cannot test it, because you were not there. That's why it is called history. That is how this discipline of "science" is not like that of Chem, Physics and Genetics.

Without the Bible and without the rainbow, you would not know God judged the whole of humanity "who's every inclination of their heart was only evil all the time" with water. And indeed the Bible and rainbow has been interpreted such that God has never judged the world before, and won't until Christ's Second Coming. I believe that the judgement then is the same as the judgement at Noah's Flood. The second judgement that is of fire, as Scripture says.

Uniformitarianism is flawed. On so many levels with gaping holes the size of the Andromeda galaxy. As is so much of the other philosophies employed by this world in an attempt to govern it without first seeking the Creator God.

Vance said:

It surely does.

And I asked for evidence from God's natural Creation itself, which can not lie, since that can help us determine which of the various possible readings of that Scripture is most likely to be the right one.

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Ro. 1:19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. Ro. 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

the point of the world is also for that quoted from Romans. the World exists to give God glory, not so that evolution (i use that word in Darwin's sense) can be employed and thus have a totally 'naturalistic explaination' with no Creator God - but i have a funny feeling we've been here before.

Hello Vance,

In short, he believes that the flood was geographically local, but "global" in its destruction of humanity, since he asserts humanity would not have spread beyond a local area yet.


I have only one object to his whole argument:

In Genesis 6 verse 1 we read that, When mankind had spread all over the world. The Bible clearly says that mankind was spread all over the world! Regardless of what this gent says, the Bible tells a different story. Since the Bible is the infallible Word of God, who are you going to believe? The Inspired Word of God who was there, or a fallible compromising man who was not there and who does not know everything?? It's illogical to believe the man who was not there and who knows nothing compared to our LORD God Almighty.

Adding proof to this is the fact that it was at least 1,500 years after creation that the Great Flood happened. In 1,500 years, mankind would have been more than capable to spread throughout the Earth. It was not until the Tower of Babel that mankind camped at the one spot - purposefully ignoring God's command to fill the whole Earth. Speaking of which, that is exactly what the first people where doing before the Flood.

It is also irrational to hold to a local flood idea because why would God have simply not told Noah to walk several hundred miles away from the rest of the human population to survive rather than spend hundreds of years trying to build a massive boat? That's just stupid and makes God out to be the biggest jackass in the whole universe. Many other religions also have accounts of the Great Flood and recall that it was a global flood, take the Australian Aboriginals for example.

Ross brings up the following objections to a global flood:
1. it contradicts a vast body of geological data;

2. it contradicts a vast body of geophysical data, at the same time requiring such cataclysmic effects as to render highly unlikely Noah's survival in an ark; [Noah's ark was created by God to survive the conditions that He knew that it would encounter. Also Noah's ark is not the small ship with a Giraffe's head sticking out the top of it that many may think; no, no, no, it was a super massive retangularish sturdy boat that had a volume of 43,200 cubic metres; which is equivalent to 522 standard railroad stock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep (the average size of the animals would have been about the size of a sheep)]

3. it overlooks the geophysical difficulties of a planet with a smooth surface; and

4. it contradicts our observations of the tectonics. The mechanisms that drive tectonic plate movements have extremely long time constants, so long that the effects of such a catastrophe would easily be measurable to this day. Since they are not, I conclude that the flood cannot be global.


All of these things involve taking things and natural processes as they occur now and applying them to this event. However, what really dumbfounds me is how these supposedly Christian people miss the fact that this was an event that God purposefully intervened in! In otherwords, God caused the required conditions supernaturally in ways that we could never hope to understand but can guess at [see the Answers Book for such mechanisms]. Fellow Christians, stop thinking naturalistically and start thinking supernaturally and know that NOTHING is impossible for our LORD and Saviour!

All of these objections brought up by Ross have already been answered and refuted in The Updated and Expanded Answers Book by AiG.

Also, there is one other problem with stating that the Great Flood was only local:

If it were local, God would have repeatedly borken His promise never (hence labelling God a liar) to send such a Flood again. There have been huge "local" floods in recent times: in Bangladesh, for example, where 80% of that country has been inundated, or Europe in 2002.

Delta One.

Here is a real scientist, who also happens to be an evangelical, even a fundamentalist, and even one who strongly opposes evolution.

Btw, Hugh Ross isn't a young Earth Biblical literalist. He is a progressive creationist. Please see <http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4077.asp> for more information about what Hugh Ross believes.

damn it ! i knew that article was a waste of time !
but now that i've read it...

...i "ditto" Delta One's post. I can't be bothered adding my own. that article has wasted enough of my time already.

Raydar said:

6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.


7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

I guess it matters how you interpret this passage from Genesis

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1. "The four different Hebrew verbs used in Genesis 8:1-8 to describe the receding of the flood waters indicate that these waters returned to their original sources. In other words, the waters of the flood are still to be found within the aquifers and troposphere and oceans of planet Earth. Since the total water content of the earth is only 22 percent of what would be needed for a global flood, it appears that the Genesis flood could not have been global."

2. The "water canopy" that was above the "firmament" which God called "Heaven", was beyond the sun and stars. It would have had to travel through stars and past our sun to flood the earth. And it would have need to do so at many times the speed of light.

Gen 1:14-15 "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: earth: and it was so."

3. Therefore, reason and Godly wisdom forbids the theological interpretations of the Young Earth Creationist movement regarding the Genesis flood.

Dark Matter

Delta One said:

Btw, Hugh Ross isn't a young Earth Biblical literalist. He is a progressive creationist. Please see <http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4077.asp> for more information about what Hugh Ross believes.

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Rather than send people to answers in genesis to learn what Hugh Ross believes, why don't you simply ask Hugh Ross or read his own website?

This is the kind of thinking that allows Young Earth Creationism to survive. Rather than go to the sources to see what they say, they filter everything through YEC organizations and teachers. Sad and disturbing.

Of course Hugh Ross isn't a young earth Biblical literalist [sic]. No one ever said he was. He is, however, a conservative evangelical who confesses Biblical inerrancy. He is not a fundamentalist and was wrongfully presented as such in the OP.

Dark Matter

Dark Matter,

Of course Hugh Ross isn't a young earth Biblical literalist [sic]. No one ever said he was.

What thread have you been reading? Look at the post that started this thread. Do you honestly think that I would go out to prove that he is not a literalist if there was no need to? He may well have been misrepresented, but that is an issue that you will have to take up with Vance, not me, because he was the one who stated it.

Vance stated: While I think he is simply wrong in many areas, since he is a strict literalist.

AiG is not making up anything here if you wish to imply that. All of those quotes were from respectable radio programs, such as Focus on the Family, or other sources. Dr Ross's website is not to clear about his beliefs in a way that exposes them for what they really are. He appears to "hide" the whole truth about his belief.

This is the kind of thinking that allows Young Earth Creationism to survive. Rather than go to the sources to see what they say, they filter everything through YEC organizations and teachers. Sad and disturbing.

If such thinking is bad, where you go get resources to check unclear statements, that you follow a strange philosophy. If these sources are not accurate, then you would have blown my argument about his beliefs out of the sky. The fact that you have not mentioned them is proof that they are accurate -- unless you have never looked at the provided link.

Btw, 99.9% of Christians believe the Bible's infallibility.

Delta One said:

Dark Matter,

Of course Hugh Ross isn't a young earth Biblical literalist [sic]. No one ever said he was.

What thread have you been reading? Look at the post that started this thread. Do you honestly think that I would go out to prove that he is not a literalist if there was no need to? He may well have been misrepresented, but that is an issue that you will have to take up with Vance, not me, because he was the one who stated it.

Vance stated: While I think he is simply wrong in many areas, since he is a strict literalist.

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A "literalist" is not the same thing as a "young earth Biblical literalist", which was what your post said originally. To be a literalist does NOT mean that literary devices and interpretation are not used in reading scripture. For example, I don't think that you believe that God has wings, or an actual hand span by which he measures the universe...do you? But you are a literalist. Young Earth Creationists do not hold some universal patent on being literalist and how it must be done.

AiG is not making up anything here if you wish to imply that. All of those quotes were from respectable radio programs, such as Focus on the Family, or other sources. Dr Ross's website is not to clear about his beliefs in a way that exposes them for what they really are. He appears to "hide" the whole truth about his belief.

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I have no idea what AiG says about Hugh Ross. I am simply saying that when you need to know what someone believes, then you should ask him. Ross has an extensive website and a plethora of published literature. As regards to quotes, I can produce dozens of YEC "quotes" that are maliciously out of context. YEC literature is well known for ripping quotes out of context and using them as a basis to continue their way of thinking. Trust me, you can call Reasons to Believe, Hugh Ross's ministry, and simply ask them what they believe. One doesn't need another police group in the middle to do it for you. [EDIT] Now, I will state that this won't always work. For example, the Mormon church, and missionaries at my door, rarely confess true Mormon doctrine when I ask them. I have to dig it out of them. However, I will not allow the placing of a ministry as respectable as Reasons to Believe to be placed on the same deceptive ground as cults such as Mormons and JWs. [end edit]

This is the kind of thinking that allows Young Earth Creationism to survive. Rather than go to the sources to see what they say, they filter everything through YEC organizations and teachers. Sad and disturbing.

If such thinking is bad, where you go get resources to check unclear statements, that you follow a strange philosophy. If these sources are not accurate, then you would have blown my argument about his beliefs out of the sky. The fact that you have not mentioned them is proof that they are accurate -- unless you have never looked at the provided link.

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So what you are saying is that if I go to the AiG website, and find a quote that is not accurate, then you will agree that AiG's arguments are "blown out of the water"? I don't want to waste my time there, so please define your challenge to me. It will be a very easy thing to produce YEC literature that maliciously uses quotes out of context to argue their point and misrepresent others. If I spend my time doing this, I would like a commitment from you as to the value of it. What will be the benefit to our discussion?

Btw, 99.9% of Christians believe the Bible's infallibility.

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No, actually it is much less than that. You are crediting the church far too much. But I understand your point that very few are "literalists". My point is that you have defined "literalist" as "the way that I interpret scripture in my young earth creationsist theology". That, my brother, is not what the word means.

Dark Matter

Dark Matter said:

2. The "water canopy" that was above the "firmament" which God called "Heaven", was beyond the sun and stars. It would have had to travel through stars and past our sun to flood the earth. And it would have need to do so at many times the speed of light.

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Is there undisputable evidence of this statement. You also are assuming that the world and the universe were the same always