Do you believe the Flood was a historical event?

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To accept the flood to have happened at all, regardless of the manner in which it happened belongs to Faith. As with the majority of things pertaining to the Faith, it is beyond explanation. For those who disagree, I’m waiting for you to prove the scientific basis of the Transubstantiation, and if it can’t be shown that mere bread and wine are transformed to an entirely new substance, why isn’t that a basis for refuting or denying the Transubstantiation all together? Obviously it isn’t a scientific fact is it?

These are all Truths only known to man through Revelation and do not need to hold up to scientific scrutiny for them to be true. God does not expect us to understand the scientific basis of these phenomena for us to accept them. The idea that we have to provide scientific explanations for religious truths is as silly as trying to explain a musical composition through gastronomy.
 
Not to derail the thread or anything. On a side note:

River Tam: So we’ll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God’s creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah’s ark is a problem.
Book: Really?
**River Tam: **We’ll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat.
 
edwest2 said:
I suggest you read up on what the Church does teach about Genesis, our first parents and Original Sin - the reason that Christ was made flesh, died and rose again. If this did not literally happen then our faith is in vain.

bible.cc/1_corinthians/15-14.htm

What you are observing here is a mixture of things.
  1. Oh, Genesis didn’t literally happen, it’s all symbolic.
  2. Our ancestors were hominids who, one day, developed the ability to detect God.
  3. The Flood is impossible because science tells me so.
This is called schizophrenia with a mixture of Science Worship. God has no ability whatsoever to perform miracles, because science can’t prove it.

I have come to the conclusion that some people post here because it is vitally important for them to get us to forget about God as an all-powerful being that does not need science, and replace him with a god that does nothing.

The other reason is simple. If we accept Adam and Eve as our first literal parents, then their science that talks about hominids and tells us our ancestors were lemur-like creatures stops being credible. If a process occurred, then the Special Creation of Adam and Eve would be 100% necessary. They would not be related - at all - to the supposed hominid or ape-like creatures we are told came before “true humans.”

The Church, as Pope Benedict stated, is open to the possibility that something occurred, but that it cannot be proven. There is a chance something happened in the development of life on earth, and, at one time, I had no problem with this. But it is obvious that something else happened as well that is outside the bounds of straight scientific inquiry. It seems God did a little of both.

Peace,
Ed
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I agree with much of your thinking. My personal thinking on these subjects are:
  1. Oh, Genesis didn’t literally happen, it’s all symbolic.
    I don’t believe that it is all symbolic. I think that there is a element of both.
  2. Our ancestors were hominids who, one day, developed the ability to detect God.
    This is not my vision. I don’t understand the mind of God so I don’t understand how He made this happen.
  3. The Flood is impossible because science tells me so.
    “The Flood” probably did happen but perhaps only in the known world at that time.
The word symbolic is not a bad word unless it is used with the words only and just as in “Only Just Symbolic”

The questions I have for many people who are adamant that the Bible be literally true are:

If some how you were convinced that the Bible is not in all cases and everywhere literally true would you cease believing in God?

Is it possible that God speaks to us in symbols because we are incapable of understanding the full meaning of his purposes?

When I was a girl I was dating a young man who was planning on become a protestant minister. I asked him the first question and he honestly said that he would cease believing in God. At the time I thought that this was so very sad and I still think that this kind of logic is so very sad. To have one’s faith placed on such fragic ground is a mistake.

He went off to collage and I lost track of him. I have often wondered if he still believes in God.
 
HelenRose said:
I agree with much of your thinking. My personal thinking on these subjects are:
  1. Oh, Genesis didn’t literally happen, it’s all symbolic.
    I don’t believe that it is all symbolic. I think that there is a element of both.
  2. Our ancestors were hominids who, one day, developed the ability to detect God.
    This is not my vision. I don’t understand the mind of God so I don’t understand how He made this happen.
  3. The Flood is impossible because science tells me so.
    “The Flood” probably did happen but perhaps only in the known world at that time.
The word symbolic is not a bad word unless it is used with the words only and just as in “Only Just Symbolic”

The questions I have for many people who are adamant that the Bible be literally true are:

If some how you were convinced that the Bible is not in all cases and everywhere literally true would you cease believing in God?

Is it possible that God speaks to us in symbols because we are incapable of understanding the full meaning of his purposes?

When I was a girl I was dating a young man who was planning on become a protestant minister. I asked him the first question and he honestly said that he would cease believing in God. At the time I thought that this was so very sad and I still think that this kind of logic is so very sad. To have one’s faith placed on such fragic ground is a mistake.

He went off to collage and I lost track of him. I have often wondered if he still believes in God.
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There are no “what if” questions about what the Church has taught. What I’m pointing out here is the long-standing practice, by some, of creating confusion where none should exist.

“fragile ground” is a well-worn phrase here and often goes unexamined. The formula is this: “I grew up in some Christian denomination and believed God did this or that, but once I was taught “the truth” in Biology class, I dumped my religion.” Science will turn you into an instant atheist if you were brought up on literal truths that the Catholic Church teaches. I don’t believe that for a second.

This fragileness is an illusion that does not exist for people who have studied what the Catholic Church actually teaches.

Peace,
Ed
 
I took Biology and I still am a Creationist.
The Flood happened, that is why there are so many legends all around the world about it.
 
edwest2 said:
There are no “what if” questions about what the Church has taught. What I’m pointing out here is the long-standing practice, by some, of creating confusion where none should exist.

“fragile ground” is a well-worn phrase here and often goes unexamined. The formula is this: “I grew up in some Christian denomination and believed God did this or that, but once I was taught “the truth” in Biology class, I dumped my religion.” Science will turn you into an instant atheist if you were brought up on literal truths that the Catholic Church teaches. I don’t believe that for a second.

This fragileness is an illusion that does not exist for people who have studied what the Catholic Church actually teaches.

Peace,
Ed
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page 74 of the CCC in regard to scientific studies.

" The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin."

Science explores the natural science. The Bible speaks truths of the meaning of life.

The flood may have taken place. In that case eventually there will be scientific proof.
Jonah may have been swallowed by a whale. But there may also be other meanings to these stories.

In either case the deeper truth is what meaning these stories give to my life and my relationship with God.
 
Allamanda said:
I think that a great flood has been mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh as well (Sumerian) as well as some other early writings from the area (not certain about these). So there probably was some major flood in the area?
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At the end of the Ice age, there were great evens owing to the rising of the sea and great contortions of the atmosphere. The rise of the Black sea led to breaking the land barrier that separated it from the Mediterranean Plain and filling it with water. It also was filled from the West through the now straits of Gibraltar. Many other things we don’t know about.
 
A scholarly conservative Catholic at church asked me, as an art major, to “follow the art.” He meant start travelling back in history along the chain of art/architecture. I did; and found the fabulous Noah & Wife & Kids as the nexus of enduring art, architecture, law and tradition. People were WILD about the Ark-onauts and sought to show their lineage in totem poles that were related to the mighty stem and stern posts of the Ark which gave us lotus pillars in Egypt and floriform columns in Greece and countless other traditions and customs and forms carried on today. It’s stunning. Just the stem and stern post gave us twin pillars, as the twin pillars in the temple to paganly deified Noah that Samson knocked down; and the twin pillars in front of Masonic Temples and the Temple of Solomon. Yikes! Everybody tried to grab the orthodoxy and divine blessing of Noah and claim it as their own, validly or not.

The last long-lived generation was Noah & Wife & Family and it is here that the Greeks derived the human-like “gods” of Mt. Olympus. No wonder! Imagine mom and dad are long dead; as are grandma and grandpa; great-grandma and great-grandpa…But there are these guys over there on “Mt. Olympus” who are brilliant and gifted and scrapping with each other. You’d think they were immortals, too! The Eight Immortals of China were originally the eight people on Noah’s Ark. The four couples of Noah’s Ark are the orthodox Sun-spinning, life-giving swastika seen all over the world. Four branches of two arms; four couples. The NAZI’s spun this anti-Sunwise as a logo for their death-dealing Satanism.

Jews say that Shem was Melchizedek, likely a refugee in fear of his life from his cannibal brother who was cursed by Noah, (C)Ham. We may–may–have life-like statues in Egypt of their visages, basalt sphinxes. One looks noble, wise, stern; the other only slightly less so. These could be Shem and his brother Japheth. The other one looks crazy, goofy, a rounder face with heavily-muscled jaws and the grin of a madman, the voluptuary anti-orthodox cannibal reputed to have a cackling laugh like a goose. (C)Ham. After all, Ham was cursed for mocking Noah in his drunken nakedness.

The drunken, naked Noah, is first depicted as a man with animal pairs flanked by a stem and stern post, “ringed bundles.” Later Noah becomes depicted as drunken, naked animal-man, the satyr, carrying not the miniature stem/stern post that was the symbol of his power and authority. This is turned into a grain flail (ninchuk, originally grain flail) then turned into a pitchfork. That’s our “devil.” Well does Jesus remind us to beware of Satan appearing as an “angel of light” not this Noah-turned-beast. Bless us, dear Lord, with faith, hope and charity for Thee and love of our neighbor for love of Thee. AMEN
 
I know Catholic Spiritual writer who claims it to be a symbolic event , while others(Thomas Aquinas Bible Study on the web) claim it to be a true historical event but with supernatural help e.g., how could 8 people feed all those animals and clean up all the dung; the dung would have been overvearing for humans and the animals; morevover, the dung would have worn through the bottom of the boat, so God must have acted in this event
 
Either way, it makes no real difference on the way I live my life in the present. Either the flood was historic and there valuable morals to learn, or it was symbolic where there are valuable morals to learn. People who get tied up on whether or not it really happened are kinda missing the point (doubly so for people who actually do let it influence their life such as atheists who disbelieve the Bible because of scientific implausibility or Christians who reject science).
 
Farsight001 said:
fossil sea shells. Way too old to be part of the flood roughly 4-6 thousand years ago and as geologists have known for well more than a century, a result of uplift of land when tectonic plates collide. We really would need an as of yet unfossilized whale carcass.
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I’m curious, are there any fossils of big fish in the mountains? If there are fossilized seashells there must be other sea animals fossils. I don’t think the uplift would discriminate against large sea animals.

The presence of sea shells in the mountains is explained not only by uplift. Since they are objects that don’t weight too much, it’s possible that they could have been uplifted by strong winds, like those of a tornado, hurricane or waterspout, reaching way up in the atmosphere and later falling in the mountains. This article has reports of rain that besides water dropped different kind of animals like frogs and fish. This one too explains the raining of fish.
LumenGent said:
To accept the flood to have happened at all, regardless of the manner in which it happened belongs to Faith. As with the majority of things pertaining to the Faith, it is beyond explanation. For those who disagree, I’m waiting for you to prove the scientific basis of the Transubstantiation, and if it can’t be shown that mere bread and wine are transformed to an entirely new substance, why isn’t that a basis for refuting or denying the Transubstantiation all together? Obviously it isn’t a scientific fact is it?

These are all Truths only known to man through Revelation and do not need to hold up to scientific scrutiny for them to be true. God does not expect us to understand the scientific basis of these phenomena for us to accept them. The idea that we have to provide scientific explanations for religious truths is as silly as trying to explain a musical composition through gastronomy.
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But there are several “Miracle Hosts” around the world. Here and here you can read about the miracle host in Lanciano, Italy that has lasted more than 1200 years. The host turned into flesh and blood. The flesh has been determined to be tissue from the heart as late as 1981. Lanciano means “lance”, which is what pierced Jesus’ heart. Similar miracles have happened in Mexico and Venezuela.

Do you believe the Flood was a historical event?

As for the question of the thread I do believe the flood was real. Most of the sciences that study the Earth and interpret it’s history are not exact sciences. They rely a lot on the scientists interpretation of the data observed and not all scientist agree on their conclusions, much like protestant churches interpreting the Bible.

That’s why some scientists in these fields don’t like to be challenged, because when challenged they can’t back up their claims as scientists from other fields can. The earth scientists can’t prove like 2+2=4 what they stand for and it’s not their fault. I’m not attacking or trying to discredit them, it’s just the nature of their field.

Was Noah’s ark fact or fiction? Noah is one of Jesus ancestors (Luke 3:36) so he’s a real person. Why would the story of the ark be attributed to a real person if the story was not real? I don’t think the Bible mixes real individuals with unreal events, but I might be wrong. Job comes to mind, I’ve heard the explanation that the whole book of Job is like a parable, that is, Job was not a real person and the story was not real.

The problem I see with this line of thought (science vs Scripture) is: where do you draw the line? Which is fact of history, which is fiction? In time science will lead you to believe that all the Bible is fiction. Think of this: science will reject the Resurrection every time it studies it.
 
IMO It is both a historical event and a symbalic event. The writers of the Bible used a major local event to teach a lesson, that if we do not obay God we will be punished. ;):bowdown:
 
HelenRose said:
page 74 of the CCC in regard to scientific studies.

" The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin."

Science explores the natural science. The Bible speaks truths of the meaning of life.

The flood may have taken place. In that case eventually there will be scientific proof.
Jonah may have been swallowed by a whale. But there may also be other meanings to these stories.

In either case the deeper truth is what meaning these stories give to my life and my relationship with God.
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“deeper truth”? That is also a common and misused phrase here, especially in regard to the book of Genesis. Do you believe in a literal, living - currently alive - Jesus Christ to whom we all pray?

My faith does not hinge on scientific truth. There are no scientific papers titled: “Analysis of Claimed Miraculous Events in the Book of Genesis in the Christian Bible.”

I’m waiting on God, not science.

Peace,
Ed
 
kbwall said:
Either way, it makes no real difference on the way I live my life in the present. Either the flood was historic and there valuable morals to learn, or it was symbolic where there are valuable morals to learn. People who get tied up on whether or not it really happened are kinda missing the point (doubly so for people who actually do let it influence their life such as atheists who disbelieve the Bible because of scientific implausibility or Christians who reject science).
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Non-theists require science as their Magisterium. Science tells them that only natural, unguided and unintelligent forces made them. Do Christians actually reject science or do they reject the following:

The Biology textbook is our Bible and if you don’t believe that everything alive today came to be through totally unguided, unintelligent - meaning non-God - forces, then you hate science and/or are anti-intellectual, or to be blunt, just plain stupid.

I find most Christians that others say “reject science” are aware of a God that can perform miracles. As the Catholic Church tells us quite plainly, there are certain things we must believe as the early Church Fathers believed. Even non-Catholic denominations reject a non-belief system that needs the comfort of knowing that science knows all and they are responsible, in their lives, to no “imaginary friend in the sky.” Or as George Carlin, who was raised Catholic, but later rejected it, said, “There’s no one - up there.”

Peace,
Ed
 
But there are several “Miracle Hosts” around the world. Here and here you can read about the miracle host in Lanciano, Italy that has lasted more than 1200 years. The host turned into flesh and blood. The flesh has been determined to be tissue from the heart as late as 1981. Lanciano means “lance”, which is what pierced Jesus’ heart. Similar miracles have happened in Mexico and Venezuela.
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Do you believe the Flood was a historical event?
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Yes, I most certainly do beleive that it was a historical event and I say this through the Authority of Scripture which is where we come to know of the actual event.

As for the Eucharistic Miracles, Yes I am aware of them, but these aren’t scientific proof that Transubstantiation does take place, given that not every Host in the world consecrated at every Mass is going through that same physical transformation that we see in those miracles. The simple point is that I beleive in the Real Presence not because Science can prove or dissprove it, rather I accept it on the authority of Chirst and his Church. As Edwest mentioned above, Faith does not need to hold up to science.
 
http://webworks.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834632be569e20133f26021e9970b-800wi

Think about the above image for a moment. Even though it is a satire of the ID movement, the string pulls “both ways.” If an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, endless, Infinite & Perfect Being exists (i.e., God), then is it at least possible that a grand miracle could occur for which there is no “residual” scientific evidence. If so, why does anyone need scientific evidence for the Deluge, or why does anyone think that just because there is no evidence for such an event that it did not occur?

Of course, the skeptics will start “trotting-out” the IPUs, FSMs, "fairies at the bottom of the garden, “Gog” (the giant sphere), etc.; however, what they fail to realize is that 1) The Deluge is a secondary truth to the Faith; 2) The primary truths of the Faith and the evidences which we have for them give us grounds for believing that the secondary truths, such as the Deluge, are also true.
 
Yes it realy happened. I believe there’s enough evidence to say noahs ark did float. Did the whole world flood… Maybe not.
 
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