Some thoughts on the Flood

[_dogmatic]

the Bible uses the "whole world" or earth in a local meaning many times, like when paul says the gospel has gone out to the whole world, there are other places of this use but I'd have to look them up. and just a curious question, didn't evolutionary theorist say all man came from one point in Africa, like 75,000 years ago?

[_dogmatic]

the Bible uses the "whole world" or earth in a local meaning many times, like when paul says the gospel has gone out to the whole world, there are other places of this use but I'd have to look them up. and just a curious question, didn't evolutionary theorist say all man came from one point in Africa, like 75,000 years ago?

just found this: Hebrew word "erets", especially in the Book of Genesis. Its translated "earth" 665 times, "land" 1581 times, "country" 44 times, "ground" 119 times, "lands" 57 times, "countries", 15 times, and a few others.

[_Hoops]

Aren't Penguins an aquatic animal? I don't know the first thing about Penguins except they always seem to be overdressed.

[_Rambo]

Aren't Penguins an aquatic animal? I don't know the first thing about Penguins except they always seem to be overdressed.

What about kangaroos? Can they swim?

[_Runtu]

Aren't Penguins an aquatic animal? I don't know the first thing about Penguins except they always seem to be overdressed.

Does that matter? It doesn't for marsupials, to which my questions apply equally.

But let's suppose penguins weren't gathered in the ark. A global flood would have killed just about all fish and aquatic life because these are dependent on temperature, water depth, and salinity, all of which would have been altered significantly by a global flood. So, after forty days of rain, the penguins would have nothing to eat, except maybe the dead carcasses of fish. But those wouldn't last long, and the oceans would not have recovered for a very long time, meaning the penguins would have died.

But again, marsupials are not aquatic and thus, by your accounting, would have been on the ark. How did they get to Australia without leaving a trail behind them?

[_Hoops]

Aren't Penguins an aquatic animal? I don't know the first thing about Penguins except they always seem to be overdressed.

What about kangaroos? Can they swim?

Don't know. What is it you're asking exactly?

[_Hoops]

Are you going to require an explanation for every animal living today?

[_Runtu]

Are you going to require an explanation for every animal living today?

Nope. Just wondering how you explain the long distance required to get marsupials to Australia from the ark, and yet the lack of any trace of marsupials anywhere else. You've been saying that you want to engage the evidence for a literal reading of the Bible, so I'm taking you up on the offer. I think it would be nice to respectfully discuss your position and the evidence for or against it.

[_Rambo]

Are you going to require an explanation for every animal living today?

It's probably a good idea to explain the ones that don't make any sense. There are tons of animals that would not have been able to go on Noah's ark. It's one of the big reasons why a global flood did not happen.

Then again the Bible has a talking ass in it so I guess kangaroos got to australia by magic. God probably just teleported them. This is the way I thought when I believed in a global flood.

Good thing a tapir was able to make it on the boat because if they didn't how would apologists be able to explain horses in the Book of Mormon.

[_EAllusion]

There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of problems with the notion that the earth completely flooded a few thousand years ago. To talk about any few, no matter how significant, always seems to come across as trivializing the problem.

My personal favorite goes as such:

Mutations rates at various loci in the genome is relatively discrete. This is a consequence of the physical properties of DNA and its environment. Because of this, we can measure when a population has undergone an extreme bottle-necking event. It takes time for diversity of mutations to build up in the genome. It would be plain as day if a massive % of biodiversity underwent a bottle-necking event a few thousand years ago as a global flood would predict. That evidence simply isn't there.

The believer's out here is the believer's out with any intractable problem. They can either simply point out that science is fallible and expect vindication down the road or they can tap into God's magical ability to do anything and argue God could've artificially created biological diversity post-flood.

To the former, that very well may be, but it doesn't change the fact that the state of the evidence today is still overwhelming evidence against what you think. Appealing to the problem of induction is as tepid as it would be if you were to deny that arsenic is poisonous.

To the latter, this is precisely the problem with injecting God into science. God can do anything at any time. God could've created the universe a second ago with the appearance of age. It makes a mess of understanding the world. But, that aside, your counter-theory is incredibly ad hoc and thus is highly implausible. Throwing up bare possibility doesn't create likelihood.