Magus55

Psa 104:6 Thou coveredst it with the deep as [with] a garment: the waters stood above the mountains.

Psa 104:7 At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away.

Psa 104:8 They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them.

Psa 104:9 Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.

Magus55

But Vicar did bring the problem of evil up. He asked why God couldn't just have created humans incapable of evil. Free will is quite relevant to that discussion.

RufusAtticus

What interesting is that you have to use Psalms and not Genesis for your reference. Why was this part of the flood story left out of Genesis? Could it be that later Hebrew poets invented it because it sounded good?

BTW: what do you make of Psa 104:5, "You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken?" Where are these "foundations" and why do we have earthquakes?

Autonemesis

Where's the lesson in blowing them away? Where's the lesson in burning them alive? Where's the lesson in drowning them? Noah and his family were said to be righteous. They didn't need to learn the lesson. If they did, Jaweh would have drowned them like everyone else. The people who needed to learn the lesson are dead. What can they learn if they're dead? And even if they learned the lesson just before their last breath bubbled to the surface, what good did it do them? They no longer have a life in which to apply what they've learned. Even if learning the lesson caused a kelp-death-bed turn of the heart that admitted them to paradise - now they are in paradise, it no longer matters that they were wicked enough in life to provoke God's wrath. Again, I fail to see the lesson that was supposed to be learned - death-bed confessions are a good idea?

By the way, how wise of God to have had the foresight to place one righteous man on the Earth at that particular time, so that there'd be a way to save humanity. But what of Noah's free will? If God placed him there at that time on purpose, then Noah didn't have any. But if God didn't plan for Noah to be there at that time and to be righteous enough to survive on the ark, then God must have gotten --- lucky? Is that possible?

Magus55

Auto -

A lesson to those who read Genesis - as in us - to see the penalty for disobeying God and spreading so much evil, and then when He gives ample warning - ignoring it - expecting nothing to happen.

Magus55

Why was it necessary to put that part of the flood story in Genesis? What difference would it have made if it did? God flooded the Earth, Genesis tells us how - the Earth is no longer flooded - so common sense tells us, either God burned off the flood waters, or stored it somewhere on the Earth. Since Genesis refers to tectonic and volcanic activity taking place during the time, its not unreasonable to come to the conclusion that much of the water flowed back to where it came - "into the deep". The deepest parts of the Earth's topography are the oceans, lakes, seas etc.

This is a moot point anyway - because if you believe in God and the global flood, who the heck cares where the water went?


Well, KJV says so that it shall never be removed, not shaken. That is referring to God's power holding the Earth in place, suspended in space without wandering all over the universe. Its fixed to its current orbit and place in the universe. Foundations is figurative, and it has nothing to do with earthquakes because the Earth doesn't move out of its orbit, or even move much at all when an earthquake happens. You feel ground tremors, but the entire Earth isn't rocking back and forth due to those tremors.

RBH

Magus55 wroteYeah, but how about all those bunnies and kangaroos and aardvarks? Were they warned? Nope! And down the drain they went anyway.

RBH

Alix Nenuphar

RBH:

You said,
This point fascinates me. As I am fairly new to this entire debate - at least in comparison to others - I am interested in why you believe that it is worth the time and energy to refute these claims; especially as it appears that most of them cannot or will not be convinced.

Would it not be simpler to ignore them?

Coragyps

Yeah, lots simpler. But at least out here in the more benighted provinces, that sort of dreck is what will be taught as science in the public schools if somebody isn't here combatting it. And besides, I like to be an argumentative old fart anyway.

Coragyps

But that has only been what that verse meant recently. Before Copernicus and Galileo, the Earth actually did sit motionless in the center of the universe - just ask any of the churchly folks from back then.

Do you have any inkling as to the number of ways in which "fixed in its current orbit and place in the universe" is completely without meaning?