Ages In Scripture

newchristian99 said:

So Noah is more important than i first realised. The mass flood wiped out humanity and the human race was rebuilt from that point on. Other religions must also acknowledge this huge event in there historical records.

Click to expand...

Yeah it's pretty interesting that there are some very similar fables in other cultures. I've never done a real study on it but I found some legends in South America and China by just poking around on the internet.

newchristian99 said:

So Noah is more important than i first realised. The mass flood wiped out humanity and the human race was rebuilt from that point on. Other religions must also acknowledge this huge event in there historical records.

Click to expand...

Flood myths in various cultures

newchristian99 said:

So Noah is more important than i first realised. The mass flood wiped out humanity and the human race was rebuilt from that point on. Other religions must also acknowledge this huge event in there historical records.

Click to expand...

Some do, many don't. On the other hand, like here they have other, non-biblical stories that date back to before the flood.

To the best of my knowledge there is nothing resembling a flood story in the stories of the people of this area, but there is this story that is a mythologised account of a real local event that happened over 10,000 years ago. How do you explain that if the local people were wiped out and the area resettled by decendants of Noah?

So Noah is more important than i first realised. The mass flood wiped out humanity and the human race was rebuilt from that point on. Other religions must also acknowledge this huge event in there historical records.

Click to expand...

Hawaii does even has a similar story.

newchristian99 said:

Hello Everyone

I'm a new christian and i'm sure i will be annoying plenty of people with lots of simplistic questions over the coming months.

However i am looking to improve my knowledge and understanding and bring up any confusions i have about scripture and christianity. Hope this is okay!

Anyway i was in church recently and the pastor mentioned that Noah was 600 years old when he built the ark and another man possibly named "methusala" was like 750 years old. Excuse my vague information but how can this be? Surely people don't live to these extraordinary ages? Can someone help me out here.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I believe that people lived for literally 969 years, as was the case (supposedly) of Methuselah.

Before someone tries to claim that I don't believe the Bible, that is not true. I am simply remembering that Biblical culture of old was quite different than the culture of today. We measure age by years, and it's possible that early Biblical people measured theirs by moons.

If that's the case, then you would divide a person's age by twelve to calculate their age in years. Methuselah would have been almost 81 (80.75), which makes sense considering the fact that the eighties would have probably been considered quite "ancient" in those times.
Ringo

david_x said:

Hawaii does even has a similar story.

Click to expand...

Floods are very common, so we would expect many cultures to have a story about a big flood even if there never was a global flood, and vitually every culture to have a flood story if there had been a global flood withing the last few thousand years.

newchristian99 said:

Thanks for the input everyone i am already learning a lot. I think Ringo makes a very good point, people's interpretations back then must have been a lot different. Measuring ages by the moons makes sense to me, i suppose it may be similar in a way to them believing epileptic people were possessed by demons. Or am i on the wrong track here?

Click to expand...

Yes, that is very similar to the sort of altered perception we're talking about.

Originally Posted by BloodwashedPilgrim

I believe in both a pre-flood canopy,

Click to expand...

KerrMetric said:

I'm sorry you ignore high school level physics.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I'm sorry you ignore God's supernatural abilities and instead try to put Him in your finite box entitled "Things I Am Capable of Understanding".

DMagoh said:

I'm sorry you ignore God's supernatural abilities and instead try to put Him in your finite box entitled "Things I Am Capable of Understanding".

Click to expand...

DMagoh, all the things you believe about the creation of the earth and the Genesis account could certainly be true, if God was the deceptive type. God isn't the deceptive type.

Dannager said:

DMagoh, all the things you believe about the creation of the earth and the Genesis account could certainly be true, if God was the deceptive type. God isn't the deceptive type.

Click to expand...

Who said He's trying to deceive? Just because your finite mind cant wrap around a concept doesnt mean it didnt happen, and it doesnt mean He intended to deceive you.

You know, the laws of science say God cant exist. Why do you believe He does? The laws of science say a person can't come back from the dead. Why do you believe Jesus did?

If you believe this:
Science says the creation account couldn't happen
Therefore, it didnt happen, or God is deceptive.

Then you have to believe this:
Science says someone cant come back from the dead
Therefore, Jesus didnt, or God is deceptive

DMagoh said:

You dont know what I believe about the creation of the earth or the Genesis account.

Click to expand...

Oh, sorry. I didn't realize you were a TE.

Who said He's trying to deceive? Just because your finite mind cant wrap around a concept doesnt mean it didnt happen, and it doesnt mean He intended to deceive you.

Click to expand...

What other conclusion is there to arrive at, DMagoh? If there was a global flood, the evidence for it would be ridiculously obvious. We'd see signs of it having happened everywhere. We wouldn't even have to dig very far. If it did happen, I have to ask myself "Why don't we see evidence of it?" The only conclusion I can possibly think of is that at the end of this one miracle God performed a second one and covered up all the traces of the first one ever having happened. And then I have to ask myself "Why would God do such a thing?" Again, the only conclusion I can come to is that for some reason God wanted to deceive us. God would have known that we would examine the world for traces of it, and thus would have been aware that covering up those traces would divide the Christian faith. I can see no reason for this.

And don't give me that "you just can't understand God's intentions" nonsense. All of theology is centered on trying to understand God's intentions.

You know, the laws of science say God cant exist.

Click to expand...

I don't get it. Why do you lie like this? You know full well that science doesn't say anything about God. The best science can say is that if God were to exist, science can't measure such things anyway.

Why do you believe He does?

Click to expand...

Because I have faith.

The laws of science say a person can't come back from the dead. Why do you believe Jesus did?

Click to expand...

Because a miracle occurred.

You seem to have trouble understanding this. Let me break it down for you.

The flood was not global. I know this because using the hypothesis that it was global would lead us to expect certain things of the geological record. We find none of those things. The geological record does not show any evidence of such a flood occurring any time in the last 10,000 years, or indeed any of humanity's timeline.

Now, you might say "Well if you don't believe the flood was global, what's there to stop you from saying the Christ wasn't resurrected?"

My response is that I simply cannot say that. There is no evidence to support the idea that no miracle occurred. See, if we ever found Christ's body, for instance, that would be pretty solid evidence that he didn't get revived and ascend into heaven, at least in the physical sense. We don't have any evidence like that, though.

The difference between the global flood and Christ's resurrection is that we can say, for certain, that no global flood occurred, miracle or no miracle (unless God is purposefully covering up any evidence of the flood just to confuse us).

DMagoh said:

If you believe this:
Science says the creation account couldn't happen
Therefore, it didnt happen, or God is deceptive.

Click to expand...

NO. You're completely missing the line of thinking. It's not that science says is couldn't happen. It's that science says it didn't happen.

Dannager said:

NO. You're completely missing the line of thinking. It's not that science says is couldn't happen. It's that science says it didn't happen.

Click to expand...

And science says that Jesus wasnt ressurrected (because it cant happen) ...but you believe that.

DMagoh said:

If you believe this:
Science says the creation account couldn't happen
Therefore, it didnt happen, or God is deceptive.

Then you have to believe this:
Science says someone cant come back from the dead
Therefore, Jesus didnt, or God is deceptive

Click to expand...

I see you have never taken a class in logic or formal debate.

DMagoh said:

And science says that Jesus wasnt ressurrected (because it cant happen) ...but you believe that.

Click to expand...

Because science doesn't say it didn't happen. It only says that it can't happen without something supernatural taking place.

KerrMetric said:

I see you have never taken a class in logic or formal debate.

Click to expand...

Actually I have and passed with flying colors. The professor tried to convince me to change my major because I was so good on proofs.

DMagoh said:

Actually I have and passed with flying colors. The professor tried to convince me to change my major because I was so good on proofs.

Click to expand...

So then why are you totally ignoring everything he taught you?

DMagoh said:

Actually I have and passed with flying colors. The professor tried to convince me to change my major because I was so good on proofs.

Click to expand...

Well don't ignore that then. Because your post was a blatant no-no in debate.

And you know it IF you really have debate/logic experience.

Now you can make an argument for linking those two statement pairs together but to just state the absolute statement pair A implies statement pair B is a joke.

Put it this was - you'd fail the class in this subject I used to teach.