Poll - Noah’s Flood - Factual or Figurative?

[Neto]

I do sometimes read articles where intelligent design scientists make correlations between what has been found out about the earth, and what the Scripture records, but basically for me, faith comes before science. Science is a quest to understand the observable, and thus I find it of interest. But it "evolves" as time goes on, new theories replace older ones, new discoveries are made, etc. What is very interesting (at least to me) is where two teams each describe what they see, and their conclusions, from their differing (and sometimes completely opposite) points of view, w/o rancor. [Theology, or doctrine, can also be described as a quest to understand the unknown, but Biblical doctrine will have a solid starting point that is not up for grabs.]

That's the thing about science. In any scientific field from biology to physics there is nothing that will cement your scientific reputation faster and earn you a Nobel Prize than tearing down some well established theory and replacing it with something new. Science is all about the 'youngs' chipping away at or demolishing the doctrines of their elders. That's what scientists like Newton, Einstein, Hawking, Bohr, Watson, Pasteur, etc. all did. They demolished the old doctrines and presented new and better theories and models. And the people who followed them continued to do the same.

Religion is, of course, the exact opposite.

I don't know but what religion is sometimes similar, but that is certainly true in linguistics. As Dan Everett always told us, "Publish or Perish". And another well-known linguist, R. M. W. Dixon came to our area of the Amazon because, he said, that's where the challenges to his theories were coming from, so he wanted to find (and disarm) them before someone else did.

[Ken]

I do sometimes read articles where intelligent design scientists make correlations between what has been found out about the earth, and what the Scripture records, but basically for me, faith comes before science. Science is a quest to understand the observable, and thus I find it of interest. But it "evolves" as time goes on, new theories replace older ones, new discoveries are made, etc. What is very interesting (at least to me) is where two teams each describe what they see, and their conclusions, from their differing (and sometimes completely opposite) points of view, w/o rancor. [Theology, or doctrine, can also be described as a quest to understand the unknown, but Biblical doctrine will have a solid starting point that is not up for grabs.]

That's the thing about science. In any scientific field from biology to physics there is nothing that will cement your scientific reputation faster and earn you a Nobel Prize than tearing down some well established theory and replacing it with something new. Science is all about the 'youngs' chipping away at or demolishing the doctrines of their elders. That's what scientists like Newton, Einstein, Hawking, Bohr, Watson, Pasteur, etc. all did. They demolished the old doctrines and presented new and better theories and models. And the people who followed them continued to do the same.

Religion is, of course, the exact opposite.

I don't know but what religion is sometimes similar, but that is certainly true in linguistics. As Dan Everett always told us, "Publish or Perish". And another well-known linguist, R. M. W. Dixon came to our area of the Amazon because, he said, that's where the challenges to his theories were coming from, so he wanted to find (and disarm) them before someone else did.

I meant in the sense that no one in the Mennonite Church or Catholic Church or Baptist Church rises to the top by discrediting and arguing against the central dogmas of each faith. It is exactly the opposite of that.

[RZehr]

By top, do you mean least? In a Luke 9:48 sort of way?

[Neto]

I meant in the sense that no one in the Mennonite Church or Catholic Church or Baptist Church rises to the top by discrediting and arguing against the central dogmas of each faith. It is exactly the opposite of that.

By top, do you mean least? In a Luke 9:48 sort of way?

I's still at least a bit confused as well. But more so wonder how you mean the word "each". As in, do you mean discrediting the central dogmas of each {other} faith? (Or that of other leaders within the same faith group, as in a Mennonite discrediting the teaching of others in his/her own group?) And by "faith" do you mean different religions, or different denominations or sectors of the Christian faith? Paul seems to have experienced this at times, this "friendly fire" problem, probably born out of jealousy, or desire to control.

I wonder.....

[Ken]

I meant in the sense that no one in the Mennonite Church or Catholic Church or Baptist Church rises to the top by discrediting and arguing against the central dogmas of each faith. It is exactly the opposite of that.

By top, do you mean least? In a Luke 9:48 sort of way?

I's still at least a bit confused as well. But more so wonder how you mean the word "each". As in, do you mean discrediting the central dogmas of each {other} faith? (Or that of other leaders within the same faith group, as in a Mennonite discrediting the teaching of others in his/her own group?) And by "faith" do you mean different religions, or different denominations or sectors of the Christian faith? Paul seems to have experienced this at times, this "friendly fire" problem, probably born out of jealousy, or desire to control.

I wonder.....

I didn't mean "top" as in the Pope. I just meant rise to a position of prominence and authority. For example, if say...some young priest were to challenge all of the core Catholic dogma from the virgin birth to abortion to celibate priesthood to ordination of women. The response would not be to say "Oh wow...you are right. We need to promote you to Bishop and we need to adopt your revolutionary new version of Catholicism. The response would be excommunication

Likewise, if some young conservative Mennonite minister decided to start preaching just war theory, infant baptism, and an official state-sponsored church the response would be similar. Mennonites wouldn't convert en mass to Catholicism. He'd likely be tossed out.

Or if an Amish bishop decided to start preaching how the Amish got it all wrong and that they really should join the modern world. He'd also be tossed out.

Or on a grander scale, if any Christian leader came out and endorsed Islam because the newer Prophet Mohammad supersedes the teachings of Jesus he would most definitely be shown the door.

But science is the opposite. You make your biggest name as a scientist by completely upsetting and discrediting the scientific theories and dogma of your elders. Not by toiling away to confirm them. No one makes their name in physics by coming up with a new way to confirm Newton's Laws of Motion. That's something every HS physics student does in labs. But there are endless religious writings that essentially do just that--examining and confirming Jesus' teachings in new ways, not refuting them.

[Neto]

I meant in the sense that no one in the Mennonite Church or Catholic Church or Baptist Church rises to the top by discrediting and arguing against the central dogmas of each faith. It is exactly the opposite of that.

By top, do you mean least? In a Luke 9:48 sort of way?

I's still at least a bit confused as well. But more so wonder how you mean the word "each". As in, do you mean discrediting the central dogmas of each {other} faith? (Or that of other leaders within the same faith group, as in a Mennonite discrediting the teaching of others in his/her own group?) And by "faith" do you mean different religions, or different denominations or sectors of the Christian faith? Paul seems to have experienced this at times, this "friendly fire" problem, probably born out of jealousy, or desire to control.

I wonder.....

I didn't mean "top" as in the Pope. I just meant rise to a position of prominence and authority. For example, if say...some young priest were to challenge all of the core Catholic dogma from the virgin birth to abortion to celibate priesthood to ordination of women. The response would not be to say "Oh wow...you are right. We need to promote you to Bishop and we need to adopt your revolutionary new version of Catholicism. The response would be excommunication

Likewise, if some young conservative Mennonite minister decided to start preaching just war theory, infant baptism, and an official state-sponsored church the response would be similar. Mennonites wouldn't convert en mass to Catholicism. He'd likely be tossed out.

Or if an Amish bishop decided to start preaching how the Amish got it all wrong and that they really should join the modern world. He'd also be tossed out.

Or on a grander scale, if any Christian leader came out and endorsed Islam because the newer Prophet Mohammad supersedes the teachings of Jesus he would most definitely be shown the door.

But science is the opposite. You make your biggest name as a scientist by completely upsetting and discrediting the scientific theories and dogma of your elders. Not by toiling away to confirm them. No one makes their name in physics by coming up with a new way to confirm Newton's Laws of Motion. That's something every HS physics student does in labs. But there are endless religious writings that essentially do just that--examining and confirming Jesus' teachings in new ways, not refuting them.

I think that to some extent, perhaps in a much smaller way than you meant, this does happen, especially if the "new discovery" or new interpretation "scratches an itch" that a certain segment of their group identifies with. For instance, look at certain segments of the Mennonite constituency that are now in favor of behaviors which were previously considered immoral. It must have started with someone, or perhaps a small group of "someones". And it did involve criticizing the understandings of those who had held prominent roles in the same church group in years past.
Every new innovation, whether it is doctrinal or behavioral, will offend some of the members of the group. I remember how some of the single lady missionaries among our coworkers in Bible translation work latched onto some "new ideas" about how to interpret certain passages of Scripture, and how they kept "loaning" books and magazine articles to me (we being the most 'conservative' members on our particular mission center), in an obvious attempt to convince me that I had a wrong understanding of Scripture. Some of this had to do with things like whether the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, then later translated into Greek. (On that I was favorably disposed to that view - I wanted it to be true - but did not find the arguments convincing. The main 'argument' was to point out the Hebraisms in the Gospel, and then say that this resulted from a literal translation of the original Semitic text into Greek. But having grown up hearing PlautDeetchisms, and later the common PA Germanisms in the English speech of Amish & Mennonites in this area of Ohio, I remained unconvinced. For instance, the questions "What for car do you drive?" or "What do you work?")

Culture change works the same way. There was one of the men who felt especially bothered or concerned about the cultural drift that he saw coming about in the Banawa culture. After some traditional festival or observance, he often came & told me in what ways it was done all wrong, because it did not follow the old ways. One example, then I'll shut up. A Banawa girl, when she reached the age of maturity (which they phrased in the sense of "self awareness" - that's the closest I can do for a translation) was secluded for several months or sometimes nearly a year, after which a great feast was put on by her father. She was brought out from her small hut, a basket over her head, and the people danced around the singing pole all night long. The culmination came at daybreak, when she was tied face down on a whipping rack her father and some other men had built. She was then whipped by 4 men (of the father's choosing). In old times it was common for the girl to pass out during this lashing, it was so severe. (I once heard a recording made by one of the tribe's men while on a visit to a related tribe where you could hear the sound of the saplings striking the girl, the sounds of her crying out, and the sound of her mother saying "Don't stop!") In the Banawa, as the Gospel took hold (and also because the "chief" was a soft-hearted man who had long opposed this practice) this observance became only ceremonial. The saplings were coated with pimenta, so that this red dye would make very visible red stripes on the girls back, giving the appearance of deep bleeding gashes. When it was over, and the women came to help her off of the rack, they made a show of helping her to her father's house, as though she could not walk on her own. (I would imagine it really DID sting, but it was not brutally painful and debilitating as was the old way.) So this man, as a disgruntled guardian of the old ways, came & told me that this was not done right.

[Fidelio]

I have no doubt that there have been massive floods over time. They happen to this day in some parts of the world.

But the "world" as understood by the ancient Israelites was tiny. The known world at the time of Noah was what? 500 or 1000 miles across? A flood covering most or all of those lands is conceivable.

But a flood that covered the entire world as we know it today with rain water in 40 days and 40 nights? The average elevation of the earth's continents is 2759 ft. So a flood that only covers half the earth's surface would require a layer of water covering the globe to a depth of 2759 ft. Without doing the math, that seems at least a doubling of the total volume of all the world's oceans. And that would still leave half the world's land mass dry. To fully cover the entire planet with water would require several more times the volume of all the world's oceans combined.

Rain water does not come from nowhere, it comes mostly from evaporation of the world's lakes and oceans. The total volume of water on earth is actually incredibly stable. Sea levels rise and fall over time as the world's ice caps and glaciers grow and shrink. But the total quantity of water is unchanging. I just don't believe in a tripling or quadrupling of the total volume of water on earth followed shortly by the disappearance of all of that water.

For that matter, scientists estimate there are over 8.7 million different species of plants and animals on earth. Most of them living in specific distinct ecosystems scattered around the planet. Did Noah actually gather this many different species, 99.9% of which exist nowhere near the middle east? Did he zip around the world like Santa Claus in a magic flying ark, collecting polar bears from the Arctic, penguins from the Antarctic, pandas from China, anacondas from the Amazon, bison from North America, African elephants from the Serengeti, thousands of species of rain forest animals from Africa, Asia, and South America, along with all the foods those animals all required for 40 days? And then did he zip around the planet putting them all back where they belong? Or did they all just wander back home on their own across a devastated foodless earth from Mt Ararat and swim across oceans to their homes?

In any event, nearly identical flood stories appear in the ancient texts of other people's around the world. It is in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The ancient Greek god Deucalion, son of Poseidon, also built an ark and staffed it with creatures after being warned by Zeus, rode out a flood, and then relied on the advice of the Gods to repopulate the earth. Hindus have a flood legend in their ancient texts.

Your presuppositions may not hold regarding the Flood. The mountains were nowhere as high then.
The mountains rose; the valleys sank down
To the place which You established for them. Psalm. 104:8

So that would explain the lesser volume of water God used to flood the whole earth. And the valleys sinking, perhaps including the ocean, would swallow a great deal of the water.

There would not be a need to gather every variation of animal that exists today. Those have come from the (few?) animals that God made at Creation. And remember, God was still doing miracles--why couldn't He have scattered the animals Himself?

Like I said. I have no interest in arguing this. We aren't going to convince each other of anything. But I would point out that citing a Psalm about creation isn't any kind of scientific evidence of a biblical flood covering the earth. Of course mountains rise up and valleys sink. They continue to do that today through ordinary geological processes.

I can't say I have ever heard of such a thing apart from the Bible. Do we have examples from recent history, say 1900 forward, of mountains rising up or valleys sinking? I am talking on a large scale, not like a small uplift in an earthquake or a sinkhole.

[RZehr]

The Central Valley floor in California, has dropped in recent years due to massive amounts of ground water being pumped out of the ground to irrigate almond orchards.