GRAND CANYON PROVES THE GENESIS FLOOD

[teddyv]

Or the geologists are not understanding what they are seeing

If we are, it is not what the creationists are saying. I'd never say we have it all figured out, but 1. the earth is ancient - this is indisputable. The biologists are almost certainly correct in the assessment of evolutionary theory. This is even in less dispute.

Science in general has a great deal of confirmation bias

Says a lawyer. 

[teddyv]

This either means God supernaturally covered it all up

I would put it in a different way.

Our free will is our greatest and most precious gift, because it gives our lives meaning. And God wants us to use our free will, and would never to anything to impede that in any way. As a result, He gives us the option of believing in anything, including nothing at all. Want to believe in a worldwide flood because the bible says so? Great. Want to be intrigued by worldwide myths of a great flood, that all have a sole survivor chosen because they deserved it? Got it. But if you want to believe that it never happened, scientists are there to back you up also. Only in this way can we make the freest choice possible.

I know of your opinion here as you have stated it elsewhere before.

I don't have a problem with people believing in these things. My issue is with certain groups of YEC'ers lying to people, committing fallacy after fallacy, and in the worst case, making it a salvation issue.

[RabbiKnife]

Or the geologists are not understanding what they are seeing

If we are, it is not what the creationists are saying. I'd never say we have it all figured out, but 1. the earth is ancient - this is indisputable. The biologists are almost certainly correct in the assessment of evolutionary theory. This is even in less dispute.

Science in general has a great deal of confirmation bias

Says a lawyer. 

The earth is certainly ancient

Evolutionary biologist are worse than alchemists.

[IMINXTC]

But the NT believer is admonished to understand the "willful ignorance" involved in denial of the flood - and the notion that Jesus cited the event as fact out of His ignorance is, in fact, a denial of the faith.

"For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:" 2Pt:3

Science be damned.

EDIT: Also, Genesis does not assign a day to "In the beginning," when God created the heavens and Earth, which could, realistically, be vast eons before the Spirit of God moved upon the already existing waters of a void and formless Earth on day one. Etc, Etc...

[Athanasius]

Are we 'damning' the same science that's suggesting the earth was a water world some few billion years ago?

[teddyv]

Or the geologists are not understanding what they are seeing

If we are, it is not what the creationists are saying. I'd never say we have it all figured out, but 1. the earth is ancient - this is indisputable. The biologists are almost certainly correct in the assessment of evolutionary theory. This is even in less dispute.

Science in general has a great deal of confirmation bias

Says a lawyer. 

The earth is certainly ancient

Evolutionary biologist are worse than alchemists.

Dr. Todd Wood, a creationist biologist would strongly disagree with you on the latter. You don't have to believe in evolutionary theory, but the evidence is there to support it. Facts don't care about your feelings or vibes. Dr. Wood is working on his own competing theory, but he honest enough to recognize that the present synthesis is powerful and predictive. It's probably the best supported scientific theory at the moment.

[teddyv]

Are we 'damning' the same science that's suggesting the earth was a water world some few billion years ago?

Not sure about waterworld, but there is a hypothesis about Snowball Earth around 700 Ma ago. It's still debated as far as I can tell.

[teddyv]

But the NT believer is admonished to understand the "willful ignorance" involved in denial of the flood - and the notion that Jesus cited the event as fact out of His ignorance is, in fact, a denial of the faith.

If that damns me, then so be it.  If God somehow hid the evidence (which appears to be the case if the Flood happened), then I'm not sure why one should be treated as faithless. Anyone saying there is evidence for a global flood are actively lying to you, or listened to someone who is extremely ignorant about geology or has had someone actively lying to them (eg: Ham, Hovind, Snelling).

"For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:" 2Pt:3

Peter also grew up with the Torah and all that it entails.

Science be damned.

I would have been dead at 2 years old without medical advances. Unless its just certain branches of science are damnable.

I'm not attempting to argue the supremacy of science, as that is silly. I am arguing against lying about it to comport it to the Biblical narrative. (I am not leveling this at you, personally).

EDIT: Also, Genesis does not assign a day to "In the beginning," when God created the heavens and Earth, which could, realistically, be vast eons before the Spirit of God moved upon the already existing waters of a void and formless Earth on day one. Etc, Etc...

IMO, the waters are the primordial chaos. The spirit hovering/fluttering over them seems a easy call back to the tropes of cosmic battle. This is Bronze age cosmology. It does not negate the transcendant truths.

[RabbiKnife]

The 2 Peter passage is referencing the Genesis vs 1-2 condition prior to the 7 days creation.

[Bruce_Leiter]

Food for thought: Look at Genesis 1 and see that God creates an "expanse" or a "firmament" with waters above and below it on the second day of creation.

Gen 1:6  And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 
Gen 1:7  And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 
Gen 1:8  And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. 
Gen 1:9  And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 
Gen 1:10  God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good (ESV). 

Fast-forward to Genesis 7 and see that when God flooded the earth, he opened the "windows of heaven," probably the "expanse":

Gen 7:11  In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 

If this theory of a dome over the earth from Adam to Noah is correct, the earth is a little like a greenhouse that enables humans to live long periods of time. Furthermore, God uses the great amount of water that he has stored above the "expanse" to flood the earth and ends the dome or expanse at the same time.

What do you think about this theory based on the Bible's own description?   

[teddyv]

Food for thought: Look at Genesis 1 and see that God creates an "expanse" or a "firmament" with waters above and below it on the second day of creation.

Gen 1:6  And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
Gen 1:7  And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.
Gen 1:8  And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
Gen 1:9  And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.
Gen 1:10  God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good (ESV).

Fast-forward to Genesis 7 and see that when God flooded the earth, he opened the "windows of heaven," probably the "expanse":

Gen 7:11  In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

If this theory of a dome over the earth from Adam to Noah is correct, the earth is a little like a greenhouse that enables humans to live long periods of time. Furthermore, God uses the great amount of water that he has stored above the "expanse" to flood the earth and ends the dome or expanse at the same time.

What do you think about this theory based on the Bible's own description?

If you are referring to the Canopy Model, there is no real evidence of any such thing. This is quite an old idea that is no longer supported by any of the major creationist organizations.

[Athanasius]

What do you think about this theory based on the Bible's own description?

I think the (vapour) canopy model is bunk.

[RabbiKnife]

If I need science to “prove” something then I don’t need faith…. I need a back issue of Popular Mechanics and Mother Earth News.

Unbelievers do not have a science problem

They have a sin problem

[tango]

When most of humanity has lived next to water bodies, floods are an inevitable event.

That's true, but the universal flood stories have more similarities than just that. They all also feature a god unleashing the flood as a punishment, with a lone survivor who was spared because they were a better person than the others. It is enough to at least give one pause for thought.

I don't think the question is "Did a flood happen?" but when Genesis 7:20 speaks of the mountains being covered, does that mean actually all of the mountains, or just the known mountains of a region? In other words, was the flood local or global? If we're rooting for a global flood, we need to divine intervention away:

1. The animals making it to Noah
2. Survival on a boat at an elevation is nearly 9KM for ~370 days. This includes food, waste disposal, etc.

Food could be tricky, although waste disposal may have been little more than shoveling it over the sides. If all around you is water it's not that hard.

3. Maintaining the earth's mass, stability, orbit, etc.

We're certainly talking about a lot of water but if it came from the earth then the overall mass wouldn't seem to shift all that much - would it be more than the difference between water vapor as clouds and water liquid on the ground?

4. Generating the sheer volume of water
5. Protecting the surface of the planet as the rain fell, given the sheer volume of rain fall necessary
6. Disappearing all the extra water (to be clear, between 3 - 4.5 billion cubic kilometers of water)

At which point we also have to give up 'X is evidence for Y', given we're maintaining that Y is substantially supernatural. Even just considering that 3 - 4.5 billion cubic kilometers of water falling as rain over 40 days and 40 nights would be catastrophic to the planet's surface. It would destroy all that nice Grand Canyon 'evidence'.

Gen 7:11 talks of not only rain but also the fountains of the deep opening, suggesting that water came from the skies and rose up from the ground. Otherwise you'd certainly have to be talking the kind of rain that would make the worst of today's storms look like a picnic.

Gen 8 talks of the waters receding. 4.5bn cubic km of water is a lot of water, but if we take the earth as a sphere with a radius of approximately 6,100km the volume (4/3 pi r³) that turns into 4/3 * 3.14 * 6100³ = approx 950bn cubic km. So that water represents 0.5% of the volume of the earth.


This isn't evidence one way or the other, but the volume of water that sounds staggering on the face of it doesn't seem so large when compared to the volume of the earth, and the claim that some portion of it rose up from the earth and some portion of it receded into the earth.

[teddyv]

People have actually looked at the food and waste disposal requirements of the ark scenario and the logisitics are physically impossible. Creationists of course specualte with all sorts of ideas completely unsupported by the Biblical text - the same people who tell everyone to read the Bible as plainly read.

If the Flood occurred as it happened, it has left no telling trace. The YEC organizations should really just go with divine action, providence and protection, but that would mean that they can't cosplay as scientists anymore. It would also mean the end of the grift and monument building, and we can't have that.