DINOSAURS! Noah's Flood & other awesome questions.

[Commander]

The Noah flood claim had the original races all drowned except of coarse an ancestor of the Jews, wink. And then Noah's kids each ironically carried the genes for new races. Ironically, all the races of Noah's kids returned to the same regions where those same races existed for ten's of thousands of years before the flood.

I never really believed in Santa Clause either.

You forget the tower of Babel!

 

[Speedwell]

True, Jesus did speak in parables, but it was usually pretty obvious when He was speaking that way as opposed to quoting historical events from the Old Testament. For example, when talking about Noah, He could have said something like this in parable form, "There once was a man who was considered righteous by God. Everyone else had become evil and consumed by their own lusts, so God instructed the man to build an ark large enough to carry his immediate family and lots of animals. When the man had finished building the ark, God sent a great flood and everyone died except for the righteous man and his family. So will it be when the Son of Man comes." Now compare the words that Jesus actually used and the fact that He was referring to events previously recorded in the Torah - it's a different style altogether:
Mat 24:37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
Mat 24:38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;
Mat 24:39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

That's silly. His audience knew that flood story by heart. All He had to do to invoke it was to say, as He did, "As it was in the days of Noah..."

 

[Commander]

I made a comment on stratigraphy and the geologic column. You went off on a bunch of fatuousnes about evolution. If you are going to quote something I said address it.

The only place that the geologic column exists is in the minds of some scientist. Can you explain folded mountains, that is where the strata is heavily bent? Try to explain how solid rock bends and does not break?

They are everywhere in the mountains.

 

[RickG]

True, Jesus did speak in parables, but it was usually pretty obvious when He was speaking that way as opposed to quoting historical events from the Old Testament. For example, when talking about Noah, He could have said something like this in parable form, "There once was a man who was considered righteous by God. Everyone else had become evil and consumed by their own lusts, so God instructed the man to build an ark large enough to carry his immediate family and lots of animals. When the man had finished building the ark, God sent a great flood and everyone died except for the righteous man and his family. So will it be when the Son of Man comes." Now compare the words that Jesus actually used and the fact that He was referring to events previously recorded in the Torah - it's a different style altogether:
Mat 24:37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
Mat 24:38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;
Mat 24:39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

The trouble is you are applying today's context with an ancient language and understanding. There is nothing there to indicate that whether Jesus viewed Genesis as literal or an allegory.

 

[Not_By_Chance]

It sounds like Jesus referencing well known stories and events/figures from those stories to an audience that would have been intimately familiar with them in order to make his points to me. Whether or not the stories are historical/literal or not is, for Jesus' purposes here, fundamentally irrelevant.

Possibly, but to a modern-day reader it doesn't sound that way does it? I wonder how the early church leaders would have understood the words of Jesus. Also, as Jesus would have known what was to come in the distant future and that people yet to be born would be relying on His words for guidance, wouldn't our Lord have made it more obvious for 21st century readers that He was only talking about stories from Jewish tradition, rather than actual events (especially in view of all the modern-day controversy that exists on topics such as these)? Either way, it does keep the topic of Jesus and the Bible alive, debating all these issues, so that can't be a bad thing can it?

 

[Speedwell]

The only place that the geologic column exists is in the minds of some scientist. Can you explain folded mountains, that is where the strata is heavily bent? Try to explain how solid rock bends and does not break?

They are everywhere in the mountains.

Right. And it is well understood by geologists that under the right conditions lithified strata can fold without fracturing. The phenomenon can even be demonstrated in a laboratory.

 

[Commander]

The trouble is you are applying today's context with an ancient language and understanding. There is nothing there to indicate that whether Jesus viewed Genesis as literal or an allegory.

The first chapter of John in the first three verses...tells us different from what you say.

 

[Commander]

Right. And it is well understood by geologists that under the right conditions lithified strata can fold without fracturing. The phenomenon can even be demonstrated in a laboratory.

So, if it can be demonstrated in the laboratory, then it does not take millions/billions of years for it to form?

 

[Speedwell]

Possibly, but to a modern-day reader it doesn't sound that way does it? I wonder how the early church leaders would have understood the words of Jesus. Also, as Jesus would have known what was to come in the distant future and that people yet to be born would be relying on His words for guidance, wouldn't our Lord have made it more obvious for 21st century readers that He was only talking about stories from Jewish tradition, rather than actual events (especially in view of all the modern-day controversy that exists on topics such as these)? Either way, it does keep the topic of Jesus and the Bible alive, debating all these issues, so that can't be a bad thing can it?

LOL! Why should He have made it obvious? Those stories are used exactly the same way by preachers today, some of whom think they are literal history, some of whom do not. Their historicity is irrelevant to their purpose.

 

[Colter]

The only place that the geologic column exists is in the minds of some scientist. Can you explain folded mountains, that is where the strata is heavily bent? Try to explain how solid rock bends and does not break?

They are everywhere in the mountains.

Rock bends by massive pressure over millions of years.

 

[Commander]

Rock bends by massive pressure over millions of years.

Only in the mind of an evolutionist.

 

[Speedwell]

So, if it can be demonstrated in the laboratory, then it does not take millions/billions of years for it to form?

On a scale that large? Tens of thousands, I should think. Ask a geologist.

 

[Speedwell]

Only in the mind of an evolutionist.

Except that unlike Creationism, it can be backed up with real evidence.

 

[Colter]

Only in the mind of an evolutionist.

 

[RickG]

The only place that the geologic column exists is in the minds of some scientist.

Please source post #286 in this thread where I listed 25 places around the world where the entire geologic column is seen.

Can you explain folded mountains, that is where the strata is heavily bent? Try to explain how solid rock bends and does not break?

It is what we in the field of Earth Science call Orogensis. It occurs when continental plates collide, Plate Tectonics

 

[Speedwell]

The first chapter of John in the first three verses...tells us different from what you say.

John 1 says absolutely nothing about whether the text of the creation stories is literal and inerrant. John is talking about the creation itself, not a story about it.

 

[Commander]

Please source post #286 in this thread where I listed 25 places around the world where the entire geologic column is seen.


It is what we in the field of Earth Science call Orogensis. It occurs when continental plates collide, Plate Tectonics

Have you ever been to any one of these 25 places, to observe for yourself? Or are you depending on what someone tells you?

 

[ViaCrucis]

Possibly, but to a modern-day reader it doesn't sound that way does it? I wonder how the early church leaders would have understood the words of Jesus. Also, as Jesus would have known what was to come in the distant future and that people yet to be born would be relying on His words for guidance, wouldn't our Lord have made it more obvious for 21st century readers that He was only talking about stories from Jewish tradition, rather than actual events (especially in view of all the modern-day controversy that exists on topics such as these)? Either way, it does keep the topic of Jesus and the Bible alive, debating all these issues, so that can't be a bad thing can it?

Every generation has its own hangups, expecting that the Lord would speak in such a way that it should be obvious to how every generation and every culture does things seems like a highly unrealistic approach--which is why I think understanding the Lord's words in His time and context is the appropriate approach. The secondary problem with thinking like that is it assumes that the Bible was written to us, and it wasn't. We say that the Bible is for us, as it is for Christians of all times and places; but it is in its own context and intent that it remains for us--to read the texts as the people of God (the Church) and to hear God's word, most importantly, to hear God's Word, Jesus Christ Himself. The Canon of Scripture has been received and transmitted through the Church's living faith and practice for this purpose, to hearken us back to Christ. As St. Augustine says the Scriptures contain but a single Utterance, that Utterance is Jesus.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Commander]

John 1 says absolutely nothing about whether the text of the creation stories is literal and inerrant. John is talking about the creation itself, not a story about it.

So He(Jesus) was not there when He created it? Look at Genesis 1!

 

[ViaCrucis]

Apparently you should learn where the theory of evolution stems from. "Babylon is fallen, is fallen...THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH."

I seem to have missed the 17th chapter of St. John's Apocalypse talking about the theory of evolution.

-CryptoLutheran