>Let me take up a few points here:
>(1) Regarding 'common sense', wouldn't you agree that the whole Flood
>episode, as you see it, is rather odd? The reason for the event, and
>God's purpose in bringing it about, is clearly put, surely: "... God saw
>that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
>imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually...And
>the Lord said, I will destroy man from the face of the earth; both man
>and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air;..." (Gn.6:5,
>6:7)..."And the waters were exceedingly mighty on the earth, and all the
>high mountains under all the heavens were covered;..." (Gn.7:19). How is
>this judgment to be effected with a flood which is merely local?
No I don't find it odd. What I find odd is young-earth creationists who
ignore any and all observational data in order to believe an interpretation
of the Bible that makes the Bible false as grandpa's teeth.
First, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you and you never respond to it,
the word translated as 'earth' is 'eretz'. It can mean 'land,' 'country',
or "the world." You chose to translate the word as 'Planet Earth" without
a single bit of theological or linguistic justification. If you translate
the word as 'land' then those verses read:
"... God saw
>that the wickedness of man was great in the land, and that every
>imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually...And
>the Lord said, I will destroy man from the face of the land; both man
>and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air;..." (Gn.6:5,
>6:7)..."And the waters were exceedingly mighty on the land, and all the
>high mountains under all the heavens were covered;...
As I show in Foundation, Fall and Flood, the phrase 'under all the heavens'
meant from horizon to horizon, not under the sky as 20th century man knows it.
>Why
>have poor Noah build a large ocean-going vessel when he (with his family
>and animals) could have traversed the globe in the time available?
Nowhere does the Bible say Noah built an "ocean-going vessel" THat is pure
imagination on your part. Show me the verse that says 'ocean going
vessel". Noah built an ark. We don't know if it went on the ocean or not.
In fact that is the point in dispute.
>We
>are informed that he alone "found grace in the eyes of the Lord."
>Gn.6:8) No one else!
I don't doubt this. But it doesn't mean that mankind was everywhere on
earth at the time of the flood. In fact, I say mankind was not everywhere.
>In my rejecting the ridiculous notion of a local Flood you might like to
>point out where reason and 'common sense' fail me.
They fail you because you don't consider the linguistic possibilities.
>(2) You have already provided a clue as to the means used for clouding
>and defeating the clear narrative, viz 'under the whole heavens', 'the
>face of the earth', and 'all' are to be interpreted with reference to
>other, totally unrelated, biblical passages.
Hebrew scholars always compare usages in other passages to understand the
meaning of a word. This is normal procedure with a dead language, which
Hebrew was until 1948. If you fail to do this, then you are doing an
inadequate job of exegesis.
But isn't it more
>reasonable (and, indeed, more usual!) to allow context to determine the
>meaning of a word where some ambiguity exists?
It is the context itself which is at issue. You can't allow the context to
determine things when there are two different possible contexts. What you
have done is assume a particular context and deny that there is any other
possibility. That is poor methodology.
In view of God's stated
>purpose, can there really be any doubt as to what these words mean?
There is doubt. Does 'eretz mean 'land','country', or 'earth'? Abraham
was told to get out of his 'eretz'. If 'eretz' means 'planet earth' then
Abram disobeyed by not going to Mars.
And
>can we turn a blind eye to the Lord's words concerning the outcome
>(Mt.24:37-39, Lk.17:26-27)?
These only say that the flood was anthropologically universal. It says
nothing about geographic extent of the flood. Where does it say 'planet
earth' was flooded? It says the 'eretz' was flooded. The entire issue
revolves around the translation of that word.
>(3) I make no apologies for raising these issues again. The Flood
>narrative provides the Christian with a real opportunity to demonstrate
>where his true loyalties lie.
My loyalties lie in trying to provide a scenario which will make the
Biblical narrative historical. If I must believe that the Bible has no
historical content (which the YEC view forces on me) then I would reject
the Bible as the Word of God.
>Glenn, you claim to be a serious student of the Word of God, but as I
>see it, for you, it is the doctrine of evolution that ever 'calls the
>tune'! Am I not correct?
You are incorrect. For me explaining the Flood is what calls the tune. As
a YEC, I published 20+ items trying to harmonize what I saw at work as a
geoscientist with what I believed as a Christian. I could not make it
work. The data I saw as a geophysicist was so totally against the concept
of a global flood that I was driven to the edge of atheism. It was only
AFTER I found out how to harmonize the story of the Flood with geology,
that I became an evolutionist.
>Thank you for clarifying some of matters re geological dating. I'm sure
>the setting of the 'radiometric clock' is indeed 'a long and involved
>question' - and, undoubtedly, crucial to the whole enterprise.
Actually it is very simple. Unfortunately, most young-earth creationists
won't take the time to understand it.
glenn
see
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm
for info on this and lots of other creation/evolution information