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Major_Tom
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Consider the source! I think the only thing that I would believe from the Sun are the football scores.
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zdon011
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Hello Ron Conte and Major Tom,
Re: the discovery in Turkey. On another website I saw a letter (seemed genuine) from a scientist who accompanied the expedition. In it he reveals that the ‘Ark’ remains had been planted by local Kurdish guides. In one of the pictures taken inside the ‘Ark’, there are cobwebs on the walls, which simply couldn’t occur if the ‘Ark’ had remained frozen on Ararat for 4500 years, as the expedition claim.
Sante Barnabas, ora pro nobis
Re: the discovery in Turkey. On another website I saw a letter (seemed genuine) from a scientist who accompanied the expedition. In it he reveals that the ‘Ark’ remains had been planted by local Kurdish guides. In one of the pictures taken inside the ‘Ark’, there are cobwebs on the walls, which simply couldn’t occur if the ‘Ark’ had remained frozen on Ararat for 4500 years, as the expedition claim.
This isn’t the first (or last) theory to posit an extraterrestrial body as the cause, which is simply not supported by Genesis or other Flood stories. From what I’ve read, professional Bible scholars agree that the Genesis genealogies simply weren’t intended to have their ages added up chronologically, so I tend to be wary of hypotheses that offer an exact date for the Flood. I agree that much of Genesis is meant to read figuratively.
Sante Barnabas, ora pro nobis
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Ron_Conte
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I think that ages of persons prior to the Flood are figurative. So we cannot tell when Adam and Eve lived by counting up the ages of persons.
However, ages of persons subsequent to the Flood, or about a generation or two afterward, seem to be literal (but perhaps also approximate).
However, ages of persons subsequent to the Flood, or about a generation or two afterward, seem to be literal (but perhaps also approximate).
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redneck22
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Noah is the most ridiculed and belittled figure of Scripture and yet we all owe our lives to him through his faithfullness in God’s word, he did what God told him to do.
I suppose you cannot blame the researchers for pursuing something that would deal a blow to atheism.
Digging through some science books will tell you that if the world had its mountains bulldozed into the sea and all the valleys filled in so that you formed a complete sphere of the world, water would cover it at a depth of 2.5 kilometers or 1.5 miles, so there is no problem covering the earth with water, after all it was created that way on Day one. eoearth.org/article/ocean
It’s not surprising that most of the world’s cultures have a creation and flood story, if they all spread from Babel.
The only dash of home-spinning is your quote
Better still there is 2 Peter 3-2
3 Knowing this first, that in the last days there shall come deceitful scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 Saying: Where is his promise or his coming? for since the time that the fathers slept, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 5** For this they are wilfully ignorant of, that the heavens were before, and the earth out of water, and through water, consisting by the word of God. 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.** 7 But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men
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twinc
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why do you think this - could it just be that the word of God must be right and your thinking wrong - twinc
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twinc
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if the Sun stated the world was billions of years old,would you believe the Sun /-twincConsider the source! I think the only thing that I would believe from the Sun are the football scores.
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Major_Tom
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I’d believe that they got lucky…!
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Ron_Conte
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It is certainly true that in Sacred Scripture some verses are literal and others figurative. But using a figure to express a truth is not a lie or a falsehood. So I am not saying that the Word of God is wrong.
The view that every passage is either entirely literal or entirely figurative is overly simplistic.
“Love your neighbor” Love is used literally, but the term neighbor is used figuratively, as a way of referring to all other human persons, not only those who are literal neighbors.
So this one brief profound expression contains both the literal and the figurative.
Similarly, the OT stories often contain both.
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St_Kevin
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The ages of people can’t be figurative. I don’t know who taught you that, but it’s plain wrong. It’s like you made it up out of thin air.
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Marc_Anthony
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twinc
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Hello Ron Conte and Major Tom,
Re: the discovery in Turkey. On another website I saw a letter (seemed genuine) from a scientist who accompanied the expedition. In it he reveals that the ‘Ark’ remains had been planted by local Kurdish guides. In one of the pictures taken inside the ‘Ark’, there are cobwebs on the walls, which simply couldn’t occur if the ‘Ark’ had remained frozen on Ararat for 4500 years, as the expedition claim.
This isn’t the first (or last) theory to posit an extraterrestrial body as the cause, which is simply not supported by Genesis or other Flood stories. From what I’ve read, professional Bible scholars agree that the Genesis genealogies simply weren’t intended to have their ages added up chronologically, so I tend to be wary of hypotheses that offer an exact date for the Flood. I agree that much of Genesis is meant to read figuratively.
of course you are wrong and just saying so does not make it so.No Hebrew scholar or professor accepts that yom means other than a 24hr day especially when preceded or followed by a numeral - commonsense also accepts this and not way out,weird and wacky alternatives - twinc
Sante Barnabas, ora pro nobis
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twinc
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The Bible clearly teaches trhat the life span was shortened after the global flood and fossils also seem to indicate that this is so - climatic conditions viz atmospheric pressure etc were altered and entropy entered the world - twinc
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zdon011
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I agree…except when you ask Aunt Winnie how old she is!
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nickybr38
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I read the first post and the last post so I apologize if this has been said already.
Back in the day when I was all on fire for God and studying His Word and history and the like I watched a documentary that ‘debunked’ the worldwide flood. However, they did manage to prove that there was a flood in that general region (Mount Aramat?). A great flood.
It got me to thinking.
Now, I don’t know the definitive answer but there are two thoughts that I have and as of yet I don’t know which is true.
I absolutely believe the story is true… but as always the past is a mystery we cannot hope to crack completely.
Back in the day when I was all on fire for God and studying His Word and history and the like I watched a documentary that ‘debunked’ the worldwide flood. However, they did manage to prove that there was a flood in that general region (Mount Aramat?). A great flood.
It got me to thinking.
Now, I don’t know the definitive answer but there are two thoughts that I have and as of yet I don’t know which is true.
- There WAS a flood where Moses lived. During his time the people weren’t scattered across the globe as they are now, instead they lived in a central area and this area alone was flooded out. Thus, the flood covered the ‘world’ as man knew it. So the flood story is true from the perspective of man of that time. (please note this is also why there are SO many flood stories, it was an actual event that Moses and his children shared with their children and grandchildren and eventually the story became distorted as all stories do)
- If you read the story of the flood it states that the depths of the earth rose UP as the rains came DOWN. It was not the rain alone that flooded the entire globe, instead the ocean itself rose up and swallowed the earth as the rains came down. Interestingly I was watching a documentary on global warming awhile back that insinuated something VERY similar could happen in our near future if global warming isn’t stopped…
I absolutely believe the story is true… but as always the past is a mystery we cannot hope to crack completely.
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Major_Tom
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Regarding the fact that there are flood stories in disparate cultures on different cultures… this seems very plausible if you recall that there were several ice ages prior to 10,000 BC. With successive waves of massive icebergs scraping back and forth over continents, it seems reasonable to think that the associcated “floods” that may have occurred would be large and memorable enough to commit to oral transmission. So I find it acceptable to think that floods did occur… not necesssarily the Noah and animals component, but a series of floods, sure. And if were large enough, of course it may appear to cover the “world”.
By the way, if it was real, how in the world did Noah fit all those species onboard one boat…?
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buffalo
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It depends on what you mean by species. It is not as many as one thinks.
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Roy5
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God created the world and everything was good. (Gen. 1) But then it wasn’t all that good, apparently, for humankind must have had a flaw, since Adam and Eve sinned. Oh - maybe they didn’t yet have the knowledge of good and evil, so as Kierkegaard points out, maybe they didn’t understand that they were sinning at the time???
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Anyway, things went from bad to worse - and, lo, God regretted that he had created humankind, so he decided to drown them all. Apparently God had made a mistake. But one man - Noah - was okay, so he told him to build an ark. The dimensions seem much too small for two, male and female, of every species. And their food, by the way - for the 150 days that the waters remained on the face of the earth! I also wonder how he got two of each kind into that ark - and why he didn't kill the two mosquitoes, fleas, cockroaches, rats, etc., when he had the chance. And having been raised in farm country, wow - they had to do a lot of work to keep that ark clean!
So, God drowned everybody but Noah and his family - every man, woman and child, every pregnant woman and her unborn child, etc. Why do I have a feeling that this was against the Ten Commandments, among other things. Rather more like a mammoth holocaust ala Hitler and Stalin than the gospel of Jesus.
All this flatly contradicts what I believe about God. The Bible, after all, assures us that he is merciful, forgiving, loving. Besides there are so many other parts of this story that contradict history, the Christian gospel, and common sense. Believe it? Give me a break!
Okay, it may be a legend based on a big flood, and there is a moral in it. But that doesn't allow me to believe for a moment that my God would drown all those people, even little babies and the unborn. I am always shocked when otherwise decent people believe such wild stuff. Maybe they have a very closed mind? But I'll let God do the judging, as I'm sure he's nothing like the Jehovah who drowned all those folks in the time of Noah.
Sorry, God bless everybody.
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zdon011
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Dear Roy,
You imply in your post that the loving God in the Gospel cannot be reconciled with ‘the Jehovah who drowned all those folks in the time of Noah’. This ‘Good Jesus, bad Jehovah’ dualism is positively Gnostic. The Church has always believed that Jesus is the same God as Jehovah of the Old Testament.
As a Christian, you are allowed to use your moral instincts in questioning God’s actions. So did Job. But to reject parts of the Bible just because we think they contradict ‘history, the Christian gospel, and common sense’ is simply hubristic. Are we sinners, with all our spiritual and intellectual limitations, to expect the Creator of all Moral Law to conform to our ‘standards’? Personally, I don’t think God’s the one on trial here.
God bless
Timor Domini principium sapientiae
You imply in your post that the loving God in the Gospel cannot be reconciled with ‘the Jehovah who drowned all those folks in the time of Noah’. This ‘Good Jesus, bad Jehovah’ dualism is positively Gnostic. The Church has always believed that Jesus is the same God as Jehovah of the Old Testament.
This is contrary to what Christ himself taught (St Mat. 24.37; St Luke 17.26). Unless, of course, if Christ meant that ‘the coming of the Son of Man’ would also simply be ‘a legend [with] a moral in it’.
Roy, you are absolutely right to say that God is ‘merciful, forgiving, loving’, and perfectly just. However, the Bible teaches us that He is righteous, and cannot tolerate our sins and imperfections. Only Christ is able to bring us back to a loving relationship with God. It was the ‘corruption’ of all mankind in Genesis that caused Him to send the Flood.
This seems to lie at the heart of your argument. We can’t just pick and choose what parts of Sacred Scripture fit in with our own prejudices and assumptions.
As a Christian, you are allowed to use your moral instincts in questioning God’s actions. So did Job. But to reject parts of the Bible just because we think they contradict ‘history, the Christian gospel, and common sense’ is simply hubristic. Are we sinners, with all our spiritual and intellectual limitations, to expect the Creator of all Moral Law to conform to our ‘standards’? Personally, I don’t think God’s the one on trial here.
God bless
Timor Domini principium sapientiae
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twinc
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what do you mean by all those species when in fact the Bible states kinds ten times.There would then have been no foxes,jackals,hyneas,dogs etc but only the wolf kind as also with cats,tigers,cheetahs etc nor any hugh dinosaurs but small young ones.Just accept the Bible as the word of God instead of way out,weird and wacky/barmy alternatives.If there had really been a world wide [global]floood what would the results have been and what do we find “millions od dead things buried in sedimentary rocks laid down by water all over the earth” - twinc
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twinc
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why then build an Ark,taking a hundred years to do so,why not just move out up country or up hill since water finds its own level etc - why not just accept the word of God instead of way out,weird and wacky alternatives - twinc
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