Noah and the Flood. Fact or Fantasy?

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by JohnR7
It is not all Adam's or man's fault. Satan and the Anti-christ will share in their part of the blame.

But God will not take responsability for the mess man and satan have made out of this old world. Nor will God take responsibility for the destruction the antichrist will bring upon this world.

Ah, the Essene view of the battle of good and evil. Too bad it's not Biblical.  You might enjoy The Evolution of Satan by Elaine Pagels.

Of course, you are denying one of the major creationist positions here: that Adam's sin is responsible for all the evil in the world. Also all the decay, not to mention all the degenerative and infectious diseases.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by LightBearer
When Satan tempted Eve in Eden 

For someone who is a Biblical literalist, you certainly take your liberties with the Bible, don't you? There is no mention of Satan in Genesis 2-3.  It is the serpent.  You have inserted your own non-literal intepretation into the Bible here.  How can you do that and remain a consistent Biblical literalist?

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Micaiah [When I say evolutionist I am refering to the beliefs of the humanist or atheist on how the world came into existence, or Christians who adopt those beliefs]

You have been better at hiding the mistaken definition of evolution than most creationists.  Imagine me 1 inch from your nose shouting as loud as I can:  EVOLUTION IS NOT ATHEISM!!  Never has been, isn't now.  You want to argue against the philosophies/beliefs of humanism or atheism, go ahead.  Evolution is not a belief, but a description of how the universe came to be like it is today.  For Christians, what science shows is simply how God created.  There is nothing to forbid a Christian from believing that God created by evolution.  Philosophical materialism that lies at the heart of humanism or atheism is logically and practically separate from the methodological materialism that science uses in its experiments.

On the practical side, nearly all the  major Christian denominations have denominational statements accepting evolution as God's method of creating.

Scripture doesn't contradict our observations. Each animal and plant reproduces after its own kind.

Until the populations diverge to the point that they don't, and then you have a new "kind".  Or species.  I was pointing out that creationist definitions don't fit what is in the Bible.  You apparently have several problems with the creationist definition.

Look at verse 21 of Genesis 1. The context is plainly that there is a many kinds of sea creatures and winged birds.

If there are, then kind = species. And we have observed species changing from one species to another.

Demonstrate where my statements do not reflect the truth taught in Genesis 1, and 2.

  Non sequitor on your part.  My statement was:
"Now, what has happened is that so much data has accumulated that speciation happens that creationists are desperately trying to save the theory. Therefore, like microevolution, they have conceded that speciation happens but have retreated to some vague definition of "kind" in hopes that the statement "one kind does not change to another kind" can't be falsified. Unfortunately, phylogenetic analysis and some fossil sequences have falsified any possible definition of "kind". Genes are not the independent observations that "kinds" demands, but are connected through their history with genes from different phyla and even kingdoms in the taxonomic system! "

My statement says that, if you think Genesis forbids one kind from turning into another, then your belief is contradicted by the evidence God left in Creation.  There is no barrier to limit change of one kind to another.


Any list is a best guess. The descrition in Genesis is clear enough to be see that it is different to the evolutionist's beliefs on the origin of the species.

The literalist interpretation of Genesis is different. What you apparently aren't getting is that your fellow creationists have abandoned you.  They know that enough speciation has been observed that creationists can no longer deny that species derive from previous species by a process of descent with modification. Therefore they have changed the definition of "kinds" so that they can pretend that evolution won't explain "kinds".

I'm glad you used that last phrase. What was Darwin's book? On the Origin of Species.  What your fellow creationists are saying is that Darwin was right about the origin of species.

The literalist interpretation of Genesis you are using is an incorrect interpretation because it is contradicted by the evidence in God's Creation.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Micaiah
I have an article in front of me Creation Vol 24, No 2 March - May 2002 that gives a detailed description of the possible rapid formation of sedimentary rock.

I expect there would be many fossils and these would have been the result of mudslides during the global flood.

You come across as one who knows a bit about science. Stick to that rather than trying to misrepresent the beliefs of Christians.

Micaiah, creationists claim about the interference of "intelligence" in origin of life studies.  Do you see how artificial the lab experiments on the formation of sedimentary rock is in this study?  Is there any correlation there that sedimentary rocks actually formed that fast?  And how about metamorphic rock? That is sedimentary rock subjected to gradual heat and pressure. No time to do that during the year of a Flood.

As to the fossils, the remains of organisms were trapped in local mudslides. The question is: why aren't raptors found in the same sediments as koalas or sloths or sabre tooth tigers? Why are teleostean fishes found always in layers above the chrondricthys fishes?  Remember, according to creationism, all these species were living at the same time and in the same places.  Therefore when they are overwhelmed and buried by the same Flood, they should all be mixed up together.  In Dinosaur National Monument in Utah there is a huge bone bed of all kinds of dinosaur species mixed all together (caught in a local flood). You would say they were caught in the Flood. But where are the bison, mastodons, camels, Mesohippus, titanotheres, etc. that we know also lived in N. America? All about the same size, herbivores that traveled in herds like the dinos, but they are completely absent. The Flood says they should be there. But they are not.  The absence of mixing of fossils of different eras falsifies the Flood.

We're not talking about the beliefs of Christians. We are talking about the hypotheses/theories of scientists:  creationists.  OK, very poor scientists the creationists are, but we are talking about their scientific theories.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Smilin
Specific tests/studies on that one? I'm curious how any scientist could test 'creationism'.

Look at all the tests of a Flood?  Look at phylogenetic studies.  Creationism states that kinds are independent groups. Yet the genes are not independent, but are related through historical connections. Look through Origin and see how Darwin tested special creation/creationism. 

Creationism isn't that God created.  If that were the case, then Darwin was a creationist.  Instead, creationism is a very specific how that creation happened.  That makes it a scientific theory.  All species were formed in a 144 hour period (in the recent past in YEC) in their present form.  A world-wide Flood made all the sedimentary rocks on the planet.  These are testable hypotheses.  They have been tested. And falsified.

Now, does this mean the statement "God created" has been falsified?  NO.  That is a theological statement that science can't test.  All science can do is say that, if there is a deity, then that deity didn't create the way creationists say it did.

"There is another way to be a Creationist.  One might offer Creationism as a scientific theory:  Life did not evolve over millions of years; rather all forms were created at one time by a particular Creator.  Although pure versions of Creationism were no longer in vogue among scientists by the end of the eighteenth century, they had flourished earlier (in the writings of Thomas Bumet, William Whiston, and others).  Moreover, variants of Creationism were supported by a number of eminent nineteenth-century scientists-William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, and Louis Agassiz, for example.  These Creationists trusted that their theories would accord with the Bible, interpreted in what they saw as a correct way.  However, that fact does not affect the scientific status of those theories.  Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobservable particles.  What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended.  The great scientific Creationists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered problem-solving strategies for many of the questions addressed by evolutionary theory.  They struggled hard to explain the observed distribution of fossils.  Sedgwick, Buckland, and others practiced genuine science.  They stuck their necks out and volunteered information about the catastrophes that they invoked to explain biological and geological findings.  Because their theories offered definite proposals, those theories were refutable. Indeed, the theories actually achieved refutation. "  Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science:  The Case Against Creationism  pp125-126

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by RazorX
Do YOU believe the Earth is old?

Belief has nothing to do with it.  I know that the earth is not young because the data completely falsifies a young earth.  I (provisionally) accept that the earth is 4.5 billion years old because that is what the data indicates.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by stillsmallvoice
Hi all!

I see that there's a bit of a rhubarb here over the meaning, in the original Hebrew, of the phrase translated as "after its/their kind." The original Hebrew is either l'minehu ("after its kind") or l'minam ("after their kind"). The l is a preposition that can mean to, of, for, or in this case, after. The word min, in Biblical Hebrew, generally means "species", "kind" or "sex" (as in "the two sexes"). (In modern Hebrew, it has been borrowed to mean sex, as in sexuality or the sexual act.) But in this case, it obviously means species/kind. The phrase first appears in Genesis 6:20. 

 

Thanks for the exposition. There are 2 discussions here:

1. What does "after their kind" mean Biblically.

2. What is the criteria for "kinds" for creationists.  That is, what does "kind" mean when you are a creationist, claim that "there is no evolution of kinds" and how you classify populations of organisms into kinds.  Are owls one kind or are there many kinds of owls, each kind corresponding to a species?  How do you know if two populations are one kind, so that they arose as "variations within a kind" or are two separate kinds?

Your exposition doesn't help much in the second.  It appears that "kind" should be "biological species".

 

[Micaiah]

Lucaspa,

1. Are you a Christian? Do you seek to obey and serve Jesus Christ?
2. Do you believe Scripture is the inspired word of God (2 Tim 3:16) ?
3. Can you outline your beliefs on origins? How was the world and man created?
4. Why do you feel under such a compulsion to defend an interpretation of Genesis that attempts to marry it with evolution?

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

Micaiah posted:

I'd like to see a straight word for word translation of the first two chapters of Genesis. It would be of interest to see how difficult it would be to turn that into something meaningful in english. I do not see how personal views of Scripture would make a big difference to the translation at this stage. I wonder if you are overstating the variations that could exist. After all, the variations that I've seen in some verses in the NIV, NKJV, and NASB are minimal, and don't significantly affect the meaning. Evidently there is a fair degree of agreement between these translaters.

The orthodox Jewish answer would be that crafting, "a straight word for word translation of the first two chapters of Genesis," is not difficult, it's utterly impossible. Translation of the Tanakh is one of my bugbears (alot of my work of the last 9.5 years involves Hebrew-to-English translating).

Here is a copy of a post that I've recycled several times here on various CF threads:

While the KJV may be a classic work of English literature and while it may have had a decisive role in shaping & influencing the evolution of modern English prose, it is NOT the word of God. Neither is any other version of the Tanakh in any language other than the original, i.e. Hebrew (and those parts of Ezra, Nehemiah & Daniel that are in Aramaic). God did not say, "Let there be light"; He said éäé àåø. He did not speak to Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Solomon, Isaiah, etc. in 17th century English, or 3rd century CE Greek but in Hebrew. A lot of my work is Hebrew-to-English translating. Gregory Rabassa, one of the masters of our craft (he's translated all of Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez's works from Spanish to English), has written extensively on the theory of translation. He says that there is no such thing as a translation per se. He says that all languages have a unique ability to shape, impart and communicate thoughts and ideas that simply cannot be reproduced, copied or duplicated in any other language. Thus, Sr. Rabassa says that every "translation" is, necessarily, an interpretation (Whose? The translators'). I do not want to read an interpretation of God's words, I want to read God's words in the original. It is our belief that only the original Hebrew version of the scriptures can, in any way, be considered authoritative (to say nothing of authentic). We view "translations" of the Tanakh as, at best, study aids and, at worse, gross misrepresentations of God's words (which were, after all, originally recorded/spoken in Hebrew).

The 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet (which was Sunday, Dec. 15) is a dawn-to-nightfall fast day (one of four such days on our calendar). On it we mark the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. But it also marks the translation of the Torah into Greek under the auspices of Ptolemy II (the so-called Septuagint). That the Torah was translated into another language is considered a cause for sadness & a reason to mourn. Our Sages say that when the Torah was translated (into Greek), (spiritual) darkness descended on the world.

Lucaspa posted:

Thanks for the exposition.

My pleasure!

1. What does "after their kind" mean Biblically.

Hmm, I'll have to fall back on Rabbi David Kimchi's explanation, which I gave in post #312:

in this case, it means 2 of each type/kind of fowl, 2 of each type/kind of bovine, etc. Now, whether Rabbi Kimche meant that there was a pair of every kind of owl (ferinstance), or a single pair of owls (I like owls), I don't know.

Sorry, that's the best I can do!

2. What is the criteria for "kinds" for creationists...Your exposition doesn't help much in the second. It appears that "kind" should be "biological species".

Seeing that I don't define myself as a creationist per se (at least not insofar as the term is understood in its current popular usage in the USA), I can't answer your second question.

Be well!

ssv

 

[Micaiah]

Imagine me 1 inch from your nose shouting as loud as I can: EVOLUTION IS NOT ATHEISM!! Never has been, isn't now. You want to argue against the philosophies/beliefs of humanism or atheism, go ahead. Evolution is not a belief, but a description of how the universe came to be like it is today. For Christians, what science shows is simply how God created. There is nothing to forbid a Christian from believing that God created by evolution. Philosophical materialism that lies at the heart of humanism or atheism is logically and practically separate from the methodological materialism that science uses in its experiments.

Micaiah waits till Lucaspa has settled down and is quiet, then leads him over to another Thread for him to explain in a quiet and rational manner what he believes the Scriptures teach.

 

[sulphur]

And I am just as tired of your inane ramblings. Cant you reason instead of ignoring the same posts made to you time after time.

 

[ocean]

Originally posted by sulphur
And I am just as tired of your inane ramblings. Cant you reason instead of ignoring the same posts made to you time after time.

YEC's are incapable of using reason.

 

[Micaiah]

Originally posted by stillsmallvoice
Hi all!
Micaiah posted:
The orthodox Jewish answer would be that crafting, "a straight word for word translation of the first two chapters of Genesis," is not difficult, it's utterly impossible. Translation of the Tanakh is one of my bugbears (alot of my work of the last 9.5 years involves Hebrew-to-English translating).

Thanks, but I can't help feeling you're overstating the difficulty and ambiguity of translating. I bought a new NKJV bible yesterday. Without realising it when I made the purchase, the Bible shows in italics the words that have been added and are not in the original language. I've shown the words in the following verses in italics.

(1) 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was without form, and void; and darkness *was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that it *was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

These are the only words according to the translator that don't occur in the original Hebrew or Aramaic. Thats a pretty close transliterateration I would have thought! Two words in five verses.

 

[sulphur]

Again you question the advice given to you.What do you want,god to make aspecial appointment and fill you in on the whole truth

 

[Micaiah]

Argument by authority doesn't wash!

 

[LiveFreeOrDie]

Originally posted by Micaiah
Argument by authority doesn't wash!

That applies to Biblical authority, too.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Micaiah
Lucaspa,

1. Are you a Christian? Do you seek to obey and serve Jesus Christ?
2. Do you believe Scripture is the inspired word of God (2 Tim 3:16) ?
3. Can you outline your beliefs on origins? How was the world and man created?
4. Why do you feel under such a compulsion to defend an interpretation of Genesis that attempts to marry it with evolution?

My personal beliefs are not relevant to the discussion.  It doesn't matter whether I am a Christian or not in relation to:

1. The theory of evolution.
2. Whether evolution contradicts Christianity.  Comparison of the statements of evolution [the scientific theory] and the statements of Christianity can be done whether one is a Christian or not. The statements are independent of the beliefs of the person looking at them.

You want to know what I accept about origins, look at mainstream science.  That provides the how of origins.  Science is agnostic as to whether those processes are the material methods a deity used to create.

The interpretation of Genesis is 1. Dictated by the internal evidence of the text.  It was never meant to be literal. 2. The scientific theory of creationism derived partly from the text has been falsified.  3. I don't want to see any idea destroyed unnecessarily, and creationism destroys Christianity unnecessarily.  Theism may or may not be an accurate picture of ultimate reality, but creationism destroys theism whether it is accurate or not.  If theism is accurate, I would call that a tragedy to have it destroyed when it is true, wouldn't you?

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by Micaiah
Micaiah waits till Lucaspa has settled down and is quiet, then leads him over to another for him to explain in a quiet and rational manner what he believes the Scriptures teach.

Apparently nothing gets through to you.  Not data, Not reason. Not even trying to get your attention. Once you have an idea, it appears that nothing on earth or in heaven will change your mind.  Evolution is still not atheism!  And you have made no attempt to show it is.

Micaiah, the who and why of creation are decoupled from the how.  The creation story is set in the best science of its day: the Babylonian cosmology. But the story isn't about science. If it were, there would not be two (really three) contradictory stories of creation in Genesis.  Instead, it's about the theology.  The question is whether the theological statements of Genesis 1 still work in evolution. 

Your other thread did not talk about how to interpret Genesis. You limited it to the scientific deductions from the text.

Does the theory of biological evolution (and much else in science) contradict a literal interpretation of Genesis? Absolutely. Does biological evolution and science contradict the scientific theory derived from a literal reading of Genesis known as young earth creationism or scientific creationism? Absolutely.

Does the theory of biological evolution and the rest of science contradict the opening statement of Genesis 1?  Not that I can find out.  If you think it does, please tell us how.

 

[lucaspa]

Originally posted by stillsmallvoice Hmm, I'll have to fall back on Rabbi David Kimchi's explanation, which I gave in post #312:

My post wasn't a question. It was  statements defining the two subjects that are being discussed at the same time.  If they had been questions they would have had question marks following them. I saw your answer, but the problem was that it was not helpful to the discussion.  You are basically saying there is no precise definition in the Biblical text as to what "kind" is. 

Sorry, that's the best I can do!

And it doesn't tell us anything.  Are "kinds" limited to populations that can interbreed or not?  You say the text is unclear.


Seeing that I don't define myself as a creationist per se ...I can't answer your second question.

It wasn't a question.  It was an exposition of the creationist position, as delineated in creationist literature. 

The post was an attempt to fill you in on the issues being discussed, since you didn't seem to understand them.  Since you didn't understand what I was trying to do, you still don't understand the issues under discussion.  I hope you understand Hebrew and Greek Biblical texts better.