Sunfair

Interesting. Thank you very much.

Jayhawker Soule

We've recently witnessed disastrous floods in Europe and China. A Google search on some phrase like 'disastrous flood' results in dozens of references.

In prehistory, everyone's world was very small and very tied to proximal sources of fresh water. The rare but inevitable disastrous flash flood must have been viewed with myth inspiring fear and awe. It requires neither a Noachian Flood nor some Black Sea event to explain wide spread flood stories.

Kosh

Well, I see we've diverted from the question already. I don't care about how the myth got started, I want to know specifically how theists who believe it was literal can reconcile that belief against some very hard and contradictory cultural histories.

How can Dorissa, with a PhD in Archeaology, think it's true. Are all the other history and archeaology buffs wrong about Egypt and China?

Vinnie, yes, that date can be arrived at by adding up the dates in the OT.

ps418

Unfortunately, Ross' position is not tenable. The biblical flood date of ~2300BCE is firm, because the geneaologies include statements that A was X years old when B was born (for example, Abram was born when Terah was 70, Terah when Nahor was 29). Placing the flood 50,000BCE is an arbitrary attempt to reconcile the biblical text with Evilutionist Science. See:

<a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3563.asp" target="_blank">Dr. J. Osgood, 1981. Creation Education: The Date of Noah's Flood. Creation Ex Nihilo 4(1):10-13.</a>
<a href="http://www.churchesofchrist.net/authors/Brian_Yeager/studies/howoldistheearth.htm" target="_blank">Church of Christ: HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?</a>

Same thing with the 'local' flood. The text could not be more clear about the magnitude of the flood. Ross is simply choosing science over the bible when he advocates a local flood. And I dont fault him for that! But he should have the honesty to admit that he is rejecting the clear meaning intended by the author of the flood story, which is that the flood was global, that it covered the highest mountains, and that it killed all breathing things on the face of the earth, except for those in the ark.

Kosh

And the egyptians who climbed on the pyramids, and the Chinese, who built a huge levie that we now call the "Great Wall".

Bubba

Ross does some interesting mental gymnastics to deny human evolution. I think taking a middle position of old earth/no human evolution is intellectually untenable.

Bubba

Enigma

And the various Mayan people on top of their buildings, and a few Native Americas in their wigwams, all of the plant life on Earth in their, um, stems, and all kinds of fish and whales in which otherwise God went out of his way to kill during this whole process (unless Noah had a really big aquarium on the ark which likely would have collapsed under its own weight regardless of whether or not he saved termites and woodpeckers as well).

[ September 21, 2002: Message edited by: Enigma ]</p>

Kosh

Well, I'm very dissapointed. 3 days, and not one theist that can answer a simple question and explain away my "misunderstanding". What's a guy got to do to get his questions answered and his soul saved from the torments of hell?

Vinnie

Study and feed the poor

Bubba

Your not being dramatic enough. Try sacraficing a virgin. If it was good enough for the Incas it should be good enough for you.

Bubba