Of the Christians on this site, how many of y'all believe that Noah's Ark and the Worldwide flood were historic events vs metaphorical/exaggerated?

@gregloa

Yes there are seashells on mountaintops as a result of continental drift and tectonic upheaval where ancient sea beds were thrust up after subduction.

Even within the narrative of the flood one would have to question why these mollusks who couldn't really swim wound up right at the high water mark of the flood but no birds, mammals or reptiles managed to be up there, even the marine ones 🤷‍♀

@Pikachu
There is just as much proof if not more that the flood in genesis did indeed happen at the correct time. Of course atheists try to use their own logic and completely ignore the real evidence to the contrary. You can look it up yourself, it’s not that difficult.

@gregloa


Nope.
And if i thought you had any intention of honestly engaging with the subject i'd take the time to explain to you just why you're wrong about that.
Buuut i know you'll just get upset and dismiss any disconfirming evidence out of hand, probably ranting about bad, mean atheist scientists.

However, if you promise me that you'll engage in good faith then i'll take the time to lay out a few reasons that the flood is precluded my numerous lines of evidence.
Up to you ✌

@Pikachu
I’m way ahead of ya. I’m fully aware of everything you can possibly present on the subject by atheists of course and their so called proof and if I thought you would even consider the possibility that they might be wrong and at least look at the evidence to the contrary that does indeed provide convincing information and admit that so called Noahs flood was at least possible, then we might form a bipartisan opinion. I assure you that any reasons you provide can be as you say precluded by numerous lines of evidence. However if you promise me that you’ll engage in good faith and at least with the intention of honestly engaging with the potential possibilities that it could have happened. But I know you’ll just dismiss any disconfirming evidence so why? Can you at least agree with me that man and bananas share a common ancestor?

@gregloa


Sure, you got it.
Now you promise the same and we can begin.


Yup

@Pikachu ok

@gregloa

Alright, i'll assume that "ok" was a promise to engage in good faith with the evidence and argument presented.

First let's establish what you believe so that we make sure we're addressing accurately those beliefs.
What do you believe about the Noachian flood?

Examples:

About how long ago did it occur?
If is responsible for the fossil record or which portion of the fossil record?
What taxonomic level do you think most closely correlates with the "kinds" that Noah brought aboard?
Do you think every other human civilization on the planet was wiped out?

@Pikachu
How long ago about 2348 bc
Much of it was responsible for fossils.
What animals, the animals that God made come to Noah.
Yes I believe the flood wiped out all living things.

@gregloa


Oh i was hoping you were going to say that.
That immediately causes problems in terms of the observed science.

Problem the first: Diversification of species

Obviously Noah couldn't have fit two of every animal on the ark which necessarily means that after having got off the ark, animals had to diversify into the myriad species we see today.
Weeeell that's a big problem because that takes time and that timeline is utterly insufficient to allow that much diversification.
Proboscideans are a good example of this. You could call that elephant "kind" if you like. The pair on the ark would not have been a modern elephant but some kind of elephanty creature.
Now since you say that the flood wiped out the animals and is responsible for most of the fossils you now how to explain how in just a few thousand years we got this many different Proboscideans:

I believe you would agree that evolution just does not happen that fast. You would also have to agree that if they were separate created kinds on the ark then there simply would not be enough room to house and feed them all. I have some numbers on that if you're curious.

Problem the second: Limestone baby!

Lime stone forms and deposits at a few different rates depending on temperature, water depth and conditions.
I.E. it forms fastest in warm, calm, shallow seas. Young earthers are already in trouble because the Great Flood was anything but calm, shallow or warm.

Unfortunately for your timeline, this utterly precludes the Noachian flood. The rate of precipitation is just too slow. If Noah's flood happened just 2400 years ago then that's just not enough time to account for the amount of limestone we see.

To put it in perspective, if we assume the FASTEST POSSIBLE formation rate for limestone, multiply that by TEN and then say the flood actually lasted five THOUSAND years instead of one year .... you still end up with only .02% of the limestone we see today.
So....how do you get around that one?

Problem the third: Radioactive decay

If compressed into a few thousand years would vaporize the oceans and the earth into an irradiated wasteland.
As you know, the atoms of some elements spontaneously decay and form atoms of another element. This process is known as radioactive decay and it's the law of radioactive decay which allows us to date minerals.
Using known half lives (the time required for half the original substance to be gone) of certain elements are what allow us to do this reliably and these measures are corroborated by numerous independent means of relative dating like dendrochronology, ice varves and even recorded historical events.
This in itself precludes a young earth (sorry creationists) but that's not the problem we're discussing.

This process produces tiny amounts of energy and spread over 4.6 billion years are unnoticeable. Just as you can slowly rub your hands together to no effect but rubbing them quickly generates significant heat, the rapid radioactive decay which young earth creation would demand would release catastrophic levels of heat.
In order to achieve the decay levels that we observe today in just 6,000 year, the heat that would necessarily have been generated would have boiled the oceans and scorched the earth into a radioactive wasteland.

Problem the fourth: Earth's rotation

The Earth rotates around the sun but it also rotates around it's own gravitational axis. This rotation has a slight variance which results in a "wobble".
The "wobble" of the Earth results in changes in the cycles of the Monsoon seasons on the planet.
The Monsoons are incredibly predictable based on the equation: position of the earth + axial tilt = sun exposure on the continents.
This formula predicts the location and severity of Monsoons and reliably lines up with past Monsoons in recorded history.
Unfortunately for a Young Earth model, these cycles occur every 23,000 years and they leave consistent, identifiable traces in the geologic record.
It would be impossible for these records to be laid down during the Noachian flood, these elements of the geologic column must have been laid down after.
That means 23,000 years must be compressed into a period of just 6,000 years.
.....but that brings us into the time of recorded human history and that means we have to speed up the cycle which results in a devastatingly rapid rotation of the earth which would be highly observable to people with the stars and constellations not moving gradually over the seasons but changing entirely every single day....wiiiich shockingly no culture anywhere in recorded history has mentioned.

There are a lot more problems in terms of physics with the timelines you have set forth but i think that will do for now. Don't want to overwhelm you and i know this is already going to be a long post and i'll try to make these other points as brief as possible.


So obviously the flood must have killed dinosaurs and pterosaurs and wooly rhinos and all these other animals that show up in the fossil record.
Well that presents a HUGE problem for the flood because of course these animals are found in distinct geological layers and in sequence.
If Noah's flood really happened, why do we never find a dinosaur in the same geological layer as a human or a dog?
Why no whales in the same layer as mosasaurs?
Why no Apatosaurs in the same layer as elephants?

If all the animals were overcome by the flood at around the same time, why do we NEVER see these animals in the same fossil layers anywhere on earth ?
The knee jerk creationist argument is "HyDRoLoGiCaL SoRTiNg" which obviously makes no sense because regardless of size, habitat or niche there is not one single violation of the above described separation of fossils.


So everyone except Noah and his family were drowned in the flood. Got it.
Let's just not talk about the necessarily legendary amounts of brother/sister/cousin/in-law boning down that would be required for Noah and his family to get humanity going again.🤣

This last point is very simple: If the flood that covered the earth and killed everything on it happened only a few thousand years ago, within recorded history....why isn't it recorded elsewhere and how did the nations repopulate so quickly?
How did the Egyptians and the Chinese manage to have an unbroken history from before that time and after that time but miss a period of a year where water covered the earth up to the mountain tops and also they all died? lol
And if they DID all die, how did their civilizations come back so quickly to the point where only a few years after the alleged world-ending flood that hand huge populations, ancient cultures and traditions and architecture already standing....?
What's up with that?

Well sorry, that was a lot but i've spent a lot of time actually examining the arguments from creationism and the scientific evidence that refutes them...so i had a lot to say.
Good luck! 👍

And PLEASE for the LOVE OF GOD, quote parts of my post and respond to them or at least make paragraphs responding to particular ideas. I just cannot stomach the thought of reading an unbroken wall of text and run on sentences for this much information lol 😭

@Pikachu
Talk about a wall of text. 🤣😂 man that was a sky scraper! Ok I’m going to try to make this real simple. You were hoping I would say 2348 bc??? That would be 4373 years ago, not 2400. Now, think about who we’re talking about here! God almighty. If you believe in God then you also believe that nothing is impossible for God! If God does indeed exist and if He created the universe then can he not confuse the unbelievers by making things appear to be impossible from the fossils to the limestone to the age of the earth and everything else? Of course he can. Who is man that he should demand a perfect explanation of all God created and how He created it to be laid out as complete proof for man in the Bible? So God should answer to unbelievers. Problems don’t exist for God. Whatever animals that God sent to Noah to go into the ark is irrelevant. Just as God fed thousands with a few fish He could have made room in the ark for them all or even when they came out of the ark became all the animals that were required to repopulate the earth just like a few fish became enough food to feed thousands? Whether it ever rained yet or not. Whether indeed all animals of today descended from them or not, is God not able to create and place more animals and spread them across the earth? Just as Jesus fed the 5000 with hardly anything God made it possible to fill them all. Did all descend from Adam? Does God have to tell Adam or us today if he created other men and women and spread them across the globe besides Adam and Eve? No He certainly doesn’t. If Noah and his family were the only survivors left on earth is God required to inform us if we all descended from them or if He also decided to create others such as Asians, Africans, and every other kind of humans? Absolutely not. God absolutely is able to make all humans decend from Adam and Eve or from Noah and his family if he so chooses without requiring explanation to any unbelievers. God has his reasons for what He chose to be in His word and it is for our own good not meant to please man. It is most likely meant to confuse unbelievers though.

@gregloa


No argument there and i can only imagine your panic at seeing so many facts you had never heard of arrayed against you.
It was a lot of information and though i tried to break it down into a more accessible format...my prediction is that you will not specifically engage with any single argument.
Let's see.


lol yeah, i can do math. Even if you supposed i don;t understand what BC means, an additional 2000ish years in no way addresses any of the issues i raised.


Lmaooooooo🤣😂🤣😂😭
I did not expect you to so quickly prove my prediction correct. You seriously just responded to all that evidence with "Well nuh UHHH because magic".😅

For someone who boasted " I’m way ahead of ya. I’m fully aware of everything you can possibly present" you sure don't seem to have a lot of counter arguments by way of actual evidence.
No, you just have "gOd wORkS iN mySTERiouS WaYS🤪".

So much for your promise to engage in good faith with the evidence and arguments.

Well that was a tremendous waste of time but hey, i still had fun doing a brutal ground and pound on the notion that the Noachian flood actually happened and time enjoyed is not time wasted, i suppose.

Please make whatever face-saving response your ego demands and then excuse yourself from this thread.
lol WOOF

@Pikachu
I could waste time and present all the information in the world and it still wouldn’t help us come to any common ground now would it? I believe in God and you do not. It’s as simple as that. But I don’t see any reason why we can’t respect each other’s views and not hurl insults at each other because we have different beliefs. Do you? There are things that I agree with you on. Let’s just leave it at that. In my book we can remain friends.

@gregloa


Well considering how much effort that I put into presenting information to you, i sure would have appreciated it if you had tried even a little to reciprocate lol.

Sure, we'll agree to disagree.
Please remember your stance on respect next time you enter one of my threads and do also remember that if you do choose to debate science with me...you're going to have to debate science.

Have a pleasant evening ✌

@gregloa Here's the problem. The way the Bible itself describes the flood cannot be reconciled with itself.

Genesis 7:4 - For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”

Did God lie? Of course not. If he said he would kill every living thing not on the ark, he most assuredly did so.

Genesis 7:23 - He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those with him in the ark.

There you have it. God said he would kill every living thing on the earth, except Noah and anything in the ark. What was in the ark?

Genesis 7:8-9 - Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah.

This is the problem - they forgot to take any plants. So how did plants survive? Plants cannot live under water for 150 days, especially brackish water from rains mixing with the oceans. Yet the dove returned with an olive branch. This was impossible as olive trees also died, along with everything else not on the ark. Muslims get around this by saying that the dove brought the olive branch back from a tree in jannah (Paradise), which, not being on earth, didn't suffer the flood, but that wouldn't have been much help to Noah as he was interested in finding dry land on earth, not in Paradise. And of course, we have plants with us today even though Noah didn't take them onto the Ark.

The only way to reconcile this is to gin up an explanation that has no support in the text, like "plants aren't alive" (which is absurd, the difference between a living and dead plant is obvious), or "they survived, it was a miracle" (which contradicts the text), or "plants don't breathe" (Genesis 7:22 says "everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died") but that doesn't mean plants didn't die. That would be like saying a fire destroyed my house, and concluding that the fire spared my neighbor's house. There's no way to conclude that, because we don't have enough information. And since plants are, in fact, alive (and they do breathe; it's how they exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide), and the text says everything on earth died (with no exceptions), we can conclude that the story is made up and the writer simply forgot to include plants.

@Lila15
Genesis 6:21 you are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them. Of course they took grain and most likely every seed and fruit that would be required. God created everything, I believe He is perfectly capable of replenishing the earth with every kind of tree and plant that He wishes to flood or not whatever Noah was told to take. There were obviously no whales on the ark nor were they mentioned. They have the breath of life.

@VladG94

Nobody cares what you think tbh!!!!

@Pikachu