Vernon wrote:
<< In saying "I do not accept the idea that because 'earth' can mean 'land'
or 'country' that it can have this meaning in the Flood account. The
context of the Flood account demands a universal Flood.", you give me
cause to believe we are in agreement. However, in your closing sentence,
you then say "If one is not willing to maintains the biblical cosmology,
one cannot deny to others equal freedom in dealing with the biblical
text." - apparently introducing the qualification that unless one
discounts all verifiable scientific knowledge concerning 'the heavens',
and thinks as an Antediluvian, one must allow others freedom to subvert
Gen.6-8.
Surely our agreed reading of the true nature of the Flood is an absolute
which must remain independent of changing perceptions of 'the heavens'.
>>
When the writer of Genesis says, "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon
the
earth; and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were
covered," he is speaking of the flat earth of the universe of Gen 1 which is
capped by a solid firmament and has an ocean of water surrounding both heaven
and earth. It is the surrounding ocean, the ocean above the firmament and
upon which the flat earth is floating, which is the source of the water in
Gen 7:11 that floods the earth. The "earth" mentioned in the Flood account,
because of the action of Gen 7:11, collapses back to a state close to that in
which it was in Gen 1:2. If you remove the solid firmament, you dismantle the
universe upon which the account is based and lose the surrounding ocean of
water which is the source of the Flood----and therewith the universality of
the Flood.
Creation science, by reading modern science into the account and changing the
flat earth into a spherical globe, the solid sky into atmosphere and the sea
above the firmament into vapor or clouds, engenders so many problems which
violate the laws of physics (such as spreading the continents all out after
the flood thousands of times faster than is possible without adducing an
extra-biblical miracle, raising mountains to their present heights faster
than is possible without adducing a miracle, getting sloths (which cannot
walk) back to their habitats after the flood without adducing an
extra-biblical miracle, etc) that the idea of a universal flood becomes
impossible except by way of human speculations held together by ad hoc
miracles.
In short from both a biblical and scientific point of view one cannot read a
modern understanding of the heavens and earth into the biblical account
without bringing the universality of the Flood into serious question.
Paul
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