Vernon,
Amongst other things you wrote this on 6/7/02 at 11:28:19 PM:
> The fourth dilemma concerns the Flood. Evolutionists must believe it was
> _local_. However, if that be true it is pertinent that we ask why God
> required
> Noah to build so massive a sea-going structure to save himself, his
> immediate
> family, and representatives of all the created animal kinds, when there
> would
> have been ample time available for a much simpler escape to higher ground
by
> foot! And, anyway, how are we able to reconcile the notion of a local
> flood with
> such verses as "And behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon
> the
> earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under
> heaven."
> (Gen.6:17)?
I may have said this before, but you may be interested to know that the idea
of a global Noah's flood is a modern YEC reincarnation, brought about by
Henry Morris and John Whitcomb in their book "The Genesis Flood" published in
1961. Henry Morris was inspired by the writings of the 7th Day Adventist
George McCready Price earlier in the 20th century. Interestingly, many
evangelical Protestants in the USA in the earlier part of the 20th century
accepted that the earth was very old, although the age was not as well known
then as now, and that Noah's flood was local. Most geologists, many of whom
were Christian, came to the conclusion early in the 1800s that Noah's flood
could not be global based on the evidence, even though they initially
believed that the flood was global. Being Christians they had to accept the
truth, even if it apparently contradicted their initial ideas of the Bible.
One could envisage that in its original Hebrew in the culture of the day,
world wide could have meant known to the whole world, and only today does
world wide mean global. By insisting that the flood was global you are
reading modern concepts back into the Bible. As to the size of the ark,
which some people believe it was huge, though of course still not large
enough to accommodate all "kinds" from around the world, it's possible it was
a much more modest size, but the size was mis-translated, possibly in the
conversion from the Babylonian 60 based system to the modern decimal system.
The Bible may well have been correct at the time it was written in the
context of the day, I'm not denying that, but our perspective has changed.
Exactly what you say by "evolutionists" I don't know. Presumably you mean
everybody who does not accept a literal global flood, not just people who
accept biological evolution. Incidentally, global floodists are more
evolutionists than what you call evolutionists, as how did, say, a pair of
bear kinds evolve so rapidly into polar bears, grizzly bears, black bears and
pandas, and are Kuala bears another kind?
This whole nonsense of a global flood is very successfully undermining
Christianity by making it look absurd and ludicrous. There is simply no
evidence that supports it, and masses of evidence that contradicts it. Why
don't global floodists make a lot of money telling where oil and mining
companies should look for oil and minerals?
YECs are not interested in the truth, only in furthering their dogma, they
are not interested in looking at the evidence. It seems that regardless what
the evidence is, they are not interested, as their particular interpretation
of the Bible always comes first, regardless.
Christopher
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