Flood, literal or not?

JohnR7 · Feb 12, 2007

Wiccan_Child said:
Source? This could be useful in future debates

The best source to study the origional language is strongs concordance. I use to have to use strongs before the computer. But now with the computer it is a LOT faster and easier to study the Bible, then what it was even 20 years ago.

Source? As far as I am aware, there is no palaeontological evidence for mass extinctions ~4000 years ago.

We have been over this many time. A day in the Bible is 1000 years. So that means the Bible began about 12,975 years ago. Which is the same time that Science tells us the earth was beginning to warm and go though some radical changes. In fact we still have global warming and world wide flooding as a result of global warming. Science tells us that places like NYC, London, Flordia and so forth are going under water. It could be 50 to 100 years. It is not a question of IF it is only a question of when.

Beastt · Feb 12, 2007

pyro214 said:
Athiests like to try prove the Bible wrong by saying the world does not contain any evidence of a flood ever taking place. This is not what this thread is for, but more or less the discusion of if we should even spend are time arguing against that. Is Noahs Flood a literal happening, or a mere parable that was written to teach us a lesson?

I often see the argument that the flood story is a parable designed to teach us a lesson. But I'm confused as to what that lesson might be. If you look to the story it appears to be that if evil persists on the Earth, God might flood the planet, killing all life but a tiny "seed" by which life can once again cover the Earth. The problem of course, is that the story ends with God promising that he'll never "again" do this. So there seems to be no point to the lesson.

And when you look to stories from other cultures of the time, you find a multitude of similar flood myths. So it makes sense that the authors of the Bible believed that such a flood actually occurred, and included it with their writings; believing this to be inspired by God, just as they believed the rest of their writings to be divinely inspired.

Beastt · Feb 12, 2007

JohnR7 said:
A day in the Bible is 1000 years.

This is untrue. The Bible defines a "day" not once, but three times within the first eight verses.

Genesis 1:5 (1)And God called the light day and the darkness he called night. (2)And the evening and the morning were the first day.

So a "day" is the period of light between morning and evening.

Genesis 1:8 (3)And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Again; a "day" is defined as the period between morning and evening... according to the Bible.

But this remains highly disputed because we know that using such a time period for the Bible renders many of its claims demonstrably false. As there are many who cannot accept that the Bible is false, they continually search for other definitions for the word "day" despite the Bible's own definition being provided right within the scripture which presents the 6-day creation, which we know isn't workable.

Wiccan_Child · Feb 12, 2007

JohnR7 said:
We have been over this many time. A day in the Bible is 1000 years. So that means the Bible began about 12,975 years ago. Which is the same time that Science tells us the earth was beginning to warm and go though some radical changes.

I'm not sure what you are on about. The Bible 'began' at the dawn of the universe, which most certainly wasn't 13000 years ago. Indeed, there was no major climate shift at that time (with or without the start of the Bible).

JohnR7 · Feb 12, 2007

Beastt said:
So a "day" is the period of light between morning and evening.

You will not get anywhere in understanding the Bible until you realize that things have more then one meaning.
You will never see the whole picture if your only looking at one peice of the puzzle.

JohnR7 · Feb 12, 2007

Wiccan_Child said:
I'm not sure what you are on about. The Bible 'began' at the dawn of the universe, which most certainly wasn't 13000 years ago.

You do not seem to understand that both can be true and that both are true. You seem to think that it has to be one or the other and that is just not the way it is. I can actually come up with four or five levels of meaning, but the string theory says there are 12.

Wiccan_Child · Feb 12, 2007

JohnR7 said:
You do not seem to understand that both can be true and that both are true. You seem to think that it has to be one or the other and that is just not the way it is. I can actually come up with four or five levels of meaning, but the string theory says there are 12.

Unfortunately, no. For one thing, string theory merely posits that fundamental particles are closed (and, occasionally, open) vibrating loops of string. It doesn't really say much on the Bible.

The Bible quite clearly starts 'in the beginning', in a spacial void without form or substance, which is before the dawn of the spacetime continuum. Thus, the Bible begins at this dawn (insofar as temporal stances have meaning in a place without time).

I am, once again, baffled by what you mean by, 'four or five levels of meaning'. Meaning to what? The Bible starts at the beginning of time (in it's fictional setting, of course; it is as yet unknown whether time began at all), which wasn't 13000 years ago. I suppose you could do an AV and argue for 'embedded age', but, well, that's just nonsense.

JohnR7 · Feb 12, 2007

Wiccan_Child said:
The Bible quite clearly starts 'in the beginning', in a spacial void without form or substance, which is before the dawn of the spacetime continuum. Thus, the Bible begins at this dawn (insofar as temporal stances have meaning in a place without time).

Genesis 1:1-2
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

tohuw, Hebrew 8414, Strongs
tohuw, to'-hoo; from an unused root meaning to lie waste; a desolation (of surface), i.e. desert; figurative a worthless thing; adverbial in vain :- confusion, empty place, without form, nothing, (thing of) nought, vain, vanity, waste, wilderness.

bohuw, Hebrew 922, Strongs
bohuw, bo'-hoo; from an unused root (meaning to be empty); a vacuity, i.e. (superficially) an undistinguishable ruin :- emptiness, void.

You know I am a GAP. That means we are what they call ruin-reconstructionist. In the beginning 12,975 years ago, the earth was in a state of ruin. There had been something here before. If you want to study the world that was here before then that would be OEC. Or old age creationism. The geological ages were developed by christians who were OEC. That means a lot of science is based on creationism. The "big bang" theory is for example a Hebrew Creation theory that got picked up and used by science because some of the evidence that they have point to that theory.

The YEC theory began 6,000 years ago. The YEC theory covers the last 6,000 years of earth history. The GAP theory trys to join and bridge the gap between the OEC and the YEC creation theorys.

They are all peices of the puzzle and you can not go throwing away the puzzle peices and still expect to put the puzzle together and see the big picture. If you disregard them, then your not going to understand as much as you would otherwise be able to understand.

JohnR7 · Feb 12, 2007

Wiccan_Child said:
The Bible starts at the beginning of time

That might be the problem right there. The Bible is looking at blocks of time. You seem to be looking at the Greek concept of time and not the Hebrew concept of time.

If you study the OEC theory, or what science calls the geological ages, that is a wonderful creationist theory that will help you to better understand time. It is also theory that is fully accepted by science.

We have come a long way in the last 200 years to understand time a lot better then we did before. Look At Adam Sedgwick one of the founders of modern geology.

While by no means a fundamentalist or evangelical by today’s standards, Sedgwick always maintained a fine line between his science and his faith. His geological position was catastrophist, and he believed in a succession of Divine creative acts throughout the long expanse of history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Sedgwick

AV1611VET · Feb 12, 2007

pyro214 said:
the question is how local,
if it covered the entire earth then why didnt the ice caps melt (or maybe the water/ice shared a symbolic relationship at 0C at that depth)?

There were no ice caps in Noah's time. The earth was one uniform tropical temperature.

When God created the earth, He sheared off a layer of water and ballooned it out into space.

[bible]Genesis 1:6[/bible]

Notice the division is top-to-bottom, not side-to-side.

[bible]Genesis 1:7[/bible]

The top layer, ballooned into space, became what we call a Water Canopy, that refracted the rays of the sun evenly over the surface of the earth, making it one tropical paradise.

Remember, until the Flood, it had never rained.

[bible]Genesis 2:4-6[/bible]

When the Flood occurred, God sent the Water Canopy crashing to the earth, with 40 days of torrential rainfall, coupled with water gushing up from inside the earth (the Grand Canyon possibly being one of the sources).

[bible]Genesis 7:11[/bible]

After the Flood, the ice caps appeared, the dinosaurs eventually died out, and we now have seasons.

Bombila · Feb 12, 2007

Arguing 'real true story' on the basis of lots of detail and recurring mention of popular characters would make it likely that the Celtic mythologies, story cycles, hero tales, such as those surrounding Cuchulainn, are also true and really happened, given that the tales have great detail. There are physical descriptions of characters sometimes down to the clothes they wore and the exact nature of the weapons they carried, the exact locations they lived and fought, and the numbers of cattle they owned or stole. Many of the characters occur in story after story, or are referenced by other characters. Must be true, eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_mythology

AV1611VET · Feb 12, 2007

lemmings said:
Lets say the Flood was really a storm. If Noah’s Ark was a large merchant vessel that he was on then it would have been swept down stream into the Indian Ocean. The boat could easily have been adrift for months before they found land.

The Indian Ocean, per se, didn't exist at the time. The earth was one giant land mass that some call Pangaea.

One of my pet theories is that Noah actually lived on that part of Pangaea that is now the United States.

The Ark arrived at Ararat, not departed from there.

[bible]Genesis 8:4[/bible]

Molal · Feb 12, 2007

I suppose you have three choices:

1. The flood was physically real - thereby leaving evidence.
2. The flood is a parable and did not happen.
3. Its a miracle........doesn't need evidence since some might not have been left, thus it cannot be argued in scientific terms as this is purely faith based reasoning.

Clearly, the flood was not physical since there is no evidence of a global flood. There are; however, multiple instances of localized floods.

AV1611VET · Feb 12, 2007

Hi, Molol --- welcome to CF --- nice to meet you

Molal said:
There are; however, multiple instances of localized floods.

You bring up a good point, to which I must add:

If the Flood was just local, then God has broken His promise to us over and over.

[bible]Genesis 9:15[/bible]

Beastt · Feb 12, 2007

JohnR7 said:
You will not get anywhere in understanding the Bible until you realize that things have more then one meaning.
You will never see the whole picture if your only looking at one peice of the puzzle.

It is likewise true that one can never get anywhere in piecing together a piece of fiction if before they start, they conclude that it is non-fiction.

I have shown what the Bible itself says and that a "day" is indeed the period of light between morning and evening. This is what the Bible states. You have presented nothing but conjecture which is contrary to scripture. You can't support what the Bible says by ignoring what it says and replacing it with that which is contrary to what it says.

It says what it says, John and it's very clear about what a "day" is. And despite attempts to find definitions for a "day" which is other than what the Bible defines a "day" to be, you still can't make the claims of the Bible work within reality.

Beastt · Feb 12, 2007

JohnR7 said:
You do not seem to understand that both can be true and that both are true. You seem to think that it has to be one or the other and that is just not the way it is. I can actually come up with four or five levels of meaning, but the string theory says there are 12.

This is not true. The "beginning" of the universe, (as we know it), was not both 13,000 years ago and 13.7 Billion years ago. It was 13.7 Billion years ago. Only one can be true.

When one finds it necessary to conclude that two opposing suggestions are both true in order to find truth to a concept, it's a tell-tale sign that the concept in question is fiction.

Beastt · Feb 12, 2007

AV1611VET said:
There were no ice caps in Noah's time. The earth was one uniform tropical temperature.

When God created the earth, He sheared off a layer of water and ballooned it out into space.

[bible]Genesis 1:6[/bible]

Notice the division is top-to-bottom, not side-to-side.

[bible]Genesis 1:7[/bible]

The top layer, ballooned into space, became what we call a Water Canopy, that refracted the rays of the sun evenly over the surface of the earth, making it one tropical paradise.

Remember, until the Flood, it had never rained.

[bible]Genesis 2:4-6[/bible]

When the Flood occurred, God sent the Water Canopy crashing to the earth, with 40 days of torrential rainfall, coupled with water gushing up from inside the earth (the Grand Canyon possibly being one of the sources).

[bible]Genesis 7:11[/bible]

After the Flood, the ice caps appeared, the dinosaurs eventually died out, and we now have seasons.

Thank you for demonstrating the vast inaccuracies of the Bible. It does indeed say what you've shown it to say. And these things, while being consistent with ancient beliefs, born of ignorance, are simply not possible. The Bible is wrong.

AV1611VET · Feb 12, 2007

Beastt said:
And these things, while being consistent with ancient beliefs, born of ignorance, are simply not possible.

What's the problem --- can't reproduce it in a lab, so it's wrong?

MrGoodBytes · Feb 12, 2007

AV1611VET said:
What's the problem --- can't reproduce it in a lab, so it's wrong?

That's pretty much it, yes - apart from the complete lack of evidence outside the lab.

AV1611VET · Feb 12, 2007

MrGoodBytes said:
That's pretty much it, yes - apart from the complete lack of evidence outside the lab.

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Flood, literal or not?

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