UPDATED 8-6-2022 w/Video
(hat-tip to Otangelo Grasso: REASON AND SCIENCE for the video)
The following are clipped from my debates in 2001, 2005, a supplement I posted in 2013 to a men’s group, and a response to a question asked by a friend in 2018 (not in any order)
2018
BTW, as a side note, everything YEC’ers (young earth creationists) say happened in this mega flood and is derided by most until recently:
- Did a Comet Cause the Great Flood? (Discover Magazine)
Many also talk of a near global flood on Mars… or features of what young earth creationists discuss about the features involved in the Noahic Flood. (Which are rejected on Earth but not Mars.)
- Fassett, C.I. and Head III, J.W., The Timing Of Martian Valley Network Activity: Constraints From Buffered Crater Counting, Icarus 195:61-89, 2008.
- Rodriguez, J.A.P., Kargel, J.S., Baker, V.R., Gulick, V.C., Berman, D.C., Fairen, A.G., Linares, R., Zarroca, M., Yan, J., Miyamoto, H., and Glines, N., Martian Outflow Channels: How Did Their Course Aquifers Form, And Why Did They Drain So Rapidly? Scientific Reports 5(13404): 1-9, 2015.
- Wang, C-y, Manga, M., and Wong, A., Floods On Mars Released From Groundwater By Impact, Icarus 175:551-555, 2005.
- Toon, 0.B., Segura, T., and Zahnle, K., The Formation Of Martian River Valleys By Impacts, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science 38: 303-302, 2010.
2005
Now, I want to, as a fellow believer, do what the scripture tells us to, “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” (2 timothy 4:2) that’s what I want to do, is exhort you in the way of scripture. Since this is my post – Seang30 – I will hopefully be allowed some freedoms. But first, let me write down that scripture for you from another translation, keep in mind that Timothy is telling all Christians this: “Herald and preach the word! Keep your sense of urgency [stand by, be at hand and ready], whether the opportunity seems to be favorable or unfavorable. [Whether it is convenient or inconvenient, whether it is welcome or unwelcome, you as preacher of the Word are to show people in what way their lives are wrong.] And convince them, rebuking and correcting, warning and urging and encouraging them, being unflagging and inexhaustible in patience and teaching.” okay, I think that makes that verse clear in case it wasn’t before. On to the “meat” of the topic.
It may indeed be possible for a Christian to be an evolutionist (either through ignorance or deliberate disobedience), but evolution can itself cannot be Christian, for obvious reasons that Christ was not an evolutionist. Consequently, there is no such thing as Christian evolution.
Jesus Was A Creationist/Creator
He [Jesus] accepted the compatibility of the two supposedly contradictory accounts of creation in Genesis 1 & 2: “Have you not read that He… made them male and female [quoting Gen, 1:27], and said, ‘For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and, they twain shall be one flesh?’” [quoting Gen. 2:24] (from Matthew 19:4-5 – all quotes, above and below, are Jesus)
He believed that the creation of man and women was at the beginning of the creation, not 4 billion years after the earth’s beginning and 15 billion years after the big bang: “From the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” (Mark 10:6)
He believed that the cosmos actually had a beginning, and that matter was not eternal: “Such as was not since the beginning of the world [Greek – kosmos] to this time.” (Matthew 24:21)
He believed that it was God who did the creating, not some natural process: “From the beginning of the creation which God created…” (Mark 13:19)
The Apostles Were Creationist/And Acknowledged The Creator
Paul, Peter, Matthew, Luke, etc., etc., were all creationists’. Because they knew Christ was Creator and they recorded His view on the matter. I can give more Bible references, but the point is to say that you’re a Christian means you are a Christ follower or want to be “like” Christ. We have His words and His theology in the form of the Bible, so I suggest, in an “unflagging and inexhaustible in patience and teaching” that you take another look at this whole topic, with patience and understanding. I will end with the apostles and Christ’s testimony of the flood. In addition, remember that if you don’t believe in a flood as Christ describes, than you are calling God a liar.
The lord Jesus Christ himself, as well as Peter (2 Peter 2:5 and 3:6) and the author of Hebrews, probably Paul (Hebrews 11:7), confirmed that the Flood at least destroyed all mankind. Christ said, “the flood came, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:27). The modern system of geology and archaeology, which the local-flood theory tries to accommodate, certainly includes a worldwide distribution of mankind long before any possible Biblical date for the Flood. A flood that was anthropologically universal would certainly have to be geographically universal.
God’s unequivocal promise never again to send the Flood (Genesis 9:11) has been broken repeatedly if the Noachian flood were only a local flood. Therefore, the local-flood theory not only repudiates the plain meaning of the Biblical record of the Flood, but even changes God with breaking His promise!
The Scriptural record says the Flood covered the tops of the highest mountains (Genesis 7:19-20) and that this situation prevailed until ten months (Genesis 8:5) after the flood began.
2001
(Quote you)
- “It seemed weird to me that the Bible was the only source to mention a flood that was supposed to be world wide. It seemed more likely that it was a contained flooding.”
This is a false statement that anthropology has shown false.
~ Commonality of flood stories found in over 270 historical documents and stories from ancient cultures ~
- a) Humans are guilty of transgression.
- b) A God sends a flood as punishment.
- c) Instructions are sent to an individual to build a craft.
- d) The instructions include ensuring the survival of all species.
- e) The flood destroys the old race.
- f) Most include a bird being sent out prior to “departure.”
- g) Most tell of a sacrifice being made to the God who sent the flood
- h) After the flood, a new, less sinful race emerges to repopulate the earth.
Australian Aboriginal; Aztec; Algonquin; Assyrian; Andaman; Arekuna (Guyana); Babylonian; Basonge; Bakongo (western Zaire); Batak (Sumatria); Caddo (Okalhoma, Arkansas); Chaldean; China; Chippewa; Chorote (Eastern Paraguay); Cheyenne; Cameroon; Celtic; Fiji; Greco-Roman; German; Gunwinggu; Hindu; Hebrew; Hawaiian; Haida (Queen Charlotte Is., British Columbia); Hopi; Huarochiri; Huichol; Ipurina (Upper Amazon); Ifugaos (Philippines); Jicarilla (Apache); Jivaran Indian (South America); Kabadi (New Guinea); Kwaya (Lake Victoria); Kammu (northern Thailand); Kikuyu; Kootenay (southeast British Columbia); Lenni Lenape; Lakota; Lake Tyras (Victoria); Miao/Yao; Micmac; Mayan; Makiritare (Venezuela); Mandingo (Ivory Coast); Maori (New Zealand); Malorotare; Netsilik Eskimo; New Hebrides; [North American Indians generally]; [Northern California Coast]; Navajo Pima (SW Arizona); Nizqualli; Ojibway; Papago (Arizona); Pygmy; Palau Islands; Palau Isles; Quamish; Quechua; Quillayute; Roman; Shuar (Andes); Sioux; Shasta; Samoan; Skagit; Sumerian; Scandinavian; Tahiti; Toba (Northern Argentina); Toltec (Mexico); Totonac (eastern Mexico); Tsetsaut; Tahitian; Toltec; Tsetsaut; Wiranggu (Australia); Yoruba; Yamana (Tierra del Fuego); Yuma; Yakima; Yanomamo; Zoroastrian; ETC., ETC.!
HAWAII: Long after the death of Kuniuhonna, the first man, the world became a wicked, terrible place to live. There was one good man left; his name was Nu-u [close to Noah]. He made a great canoe with a house on it and filled it with animals. The waters rose up over all the earth and killed all the people. Only Nu-u and his family were saved.
CHINA: ancient Chinese writings refer to a violent catastrophe that happened to the earth. They report that the entire land was flooded. The water went up to the highest mountains. One ancient Chinese classic called the “Hihking” tells the story of Fuhi [close to Noah] whom the Chinese consider to be the father of their civilization. This story records that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters [in-law] escaped the great flood. He and his family were the only people left alive on earth. After the great flood they repopulated the earth. An ancient temple in China has a wall painting that shows Fuhi’s boat in raging waters. Dolphins are swimming around the boat and a dove with an olive branch in its beak flying toward it. The Chinese word for boat is literally a drawing of a boat with eight people in it.
TOLTEC: found in the histories of the Toltec Indians of ancient Mexico is a story of the first world that lasted 1,716 years and was destroyed by a great flood that covered even the highest mountains. Their story tells of a few men who escape the destruction in a “toptlipetlocali,” which means a closed chest. Following the great flood, these men began to multiply and build a very high “zacuali,” or a great tower, to provide a safe place if the world were destroyed again. [*Note ~ most of the cultures in the 270 plus stories have a story of all races coming from one geographical area. All races having the same language, etc.. The commonality of the boomerang, bow and arrow, the ziggurats, etc., in all cultures are a testament to a common background.] However, the languages became confused, so different language groups wandered to other parts of the world. The Toltecs claim they started as a family of seven friends and their wives who spoke the same language. They crossed great waters, lived in caves, and wandered 104 years till they came to Hue Hue Tlapalan (southern Mexico). The story reports that this was 520 years after the great flood.
BABYLONIAN: one of the most ancient accounts of the “Great Flood,” also called the Deluge, is a tablet inscription found in Babylonia. The Tablet referred to an older tablet from which this was copied, but only fragments have been found of that older copy, which was handed down from a previous king of Babylon. That previous king could very well have been King Amraphel (Genesis 14:1), who was one of the early kings of Babylon after the flood. The Babylonian gods told a man to build a boat and fill it with his family, property, cattle, wild beasts, and food [big boat]. The coming rains would destroy life on earth. After only six days the rain stopped, then this Babylonian “Noah” sent out a dove, a swallow, and a raven. When he left the boat, he sacrificed an animal.
GREECE: in an ancient Greek story a man made a box into which he put all the things necessary for life. When he and his wife shut themselves in the box, the Greek god Zeus caused a great rain to fall, everyone died except those who climbed to the tops of very high mountains. For nine days and nights the man and his wife were tossed to and fro on the sea, finally the box landed and the man and his wife departed.
INDIA: An early story from India tells of a fish that warned a man named Manu [close to Noah] about a flood that would kill everything. Like the Biblical story, Manu was told to build a boat, and he alone survived the flood.
NORTH AMERICA: In North America, the Lenni Lenape Indians told of a time when a powerful snake made all people wicked. The snake caused water to destroy everything (via his wicked influence). But on an island was a man named Manabozho, the grandfather of all men [like “grandpa” Noah]. He was saved by riding on the back of a great turtle.
SOUTH AMERICA: From Peru a story comes about a shepherd and his family. They noticed one day that their llamas were sad, so they studied to find out why. The stars told about a great flood which was coming. The shepherd and his family climbed to the top of a mountain. The flood waters came and the mountain began to float. The shepherd and his family were the only survivors.
THE PACIFIC: Even the islands of the Pacific have flood stories. One of these explains how a fisherman got his fishing hook caught in the hair of the ocean god. The god awoke and decided that people were evil and should be destroyed. The fisherman begged for forgiveness, so the god told him to go to an island where he would be safe from the flood he would send to wipe out all men.
FLOOD LEGENDS ~ in story fashion
- (Greek legend from Syria recorded by Lucian) – “Not one of us now living is a descendant from the original race of man. We, numerous as we are, are no other than a second race sprung from nucalian (< spelled wrong [this is the Noah of this legend]). The original peoples were full of pride and insolence. Unfaithful to their promises, inhospitable to strangers… death to supplicates.”
- (Hawaiian legend) – “Long after the time of Kuniuhonna, the first man, the earth became wicked and callous of the worship of the gods. One man was righteous, Nu-u.”
- (Babylonian) – “the god Cronos (< spelled wrong) had come to him [‘Noah’] in a dream that all men would perish by a flood.”
- (Greek legend from Syria recorded by Lucian) – “Nucalian (<spelled wrong) put himself with his wives and his children in a great chest. And thereupon, there came to him bores and horses and lion and serpent and all kinds of land dwelling animals. He took them in.”
- (Ancient Indians of Cuba) – “an old man built a great ship and went into it with his family and an abundance of animals.”
- (Hawaiian) – “Nu-u made a great canoe with a house on it and stored it with food, taking animals and plants into it.”
- (Aztec legend) – “But before the flood began, god warned the man Nota (< spelled wrong) and his wife Nina (< spelled wrong) saying, ‘Hollow the great cypress into which you shall enter, the waters shall near the sky,’ and when god had shut them in…”
- (Fiji islands) – “…the angry god gathered the dark clouds together and caused them to burst, pouring streams of water down upon the doomed earth.”
- (Greek legend from Syria recorded by Lucian) – “The earth suddenly opened its lucids (< spelled wrong, I think) and heavy showers of rain fell… the rivers swelled”.
- (Latin poet Ovid) – “The rivers breaking out, rushed through the open plains and bore away together the standing corn, the graves, flocks, men, houses and temples… floated like trunks of trees the corpses about. Like the spawns of fish they now fill the sea.”
- (Fiji) – “towns, hills, and mountains were slowly submerged”.
- (Latin poet Ovid) – “and now the sea and land had no mark of distinction. Everything was now ocean. The wolf swims with the sheep.”
- (Athapascan Indians) – “Every day it rained, every night it rained. The sky fell. The land was not. Animals of all kinds drowned, there was no land.”
- (Ovid) – “The wandering bird having long sought for land where it might be allowed to alight, its wings fail, falling into the sea”.
- (Greek legend from Syria recorded by Lucian) – “Except Nucalian (< spelled wrong), who on account of his virtue and piety was saved to give birth to a new race”.
- (Transylvania) – “After a year, the waters began to recede”.
- (Persia) – “A violent wind then came and dried up the ground”.
- (Mechoachen Indians) – “He sent out a crow, which at first did not return; staying to feed on the dead bodies. But afterwards, returned with a green branch”.
- (Fiji) – “The persons saved… eight in number”.
September 2013
THIS IS FROM MY “IRONMAN SUPPLEMENT” FOR MY CHURCH MANY YEARS AGO
Firstly, the most basic thing one can say about Genesis is that its authors intended it to come across as literal. James Barr, Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Oxford University, England, in a letter to David C.C. Watson (23 April 1984), stated the following:
The following is an extract from a letter written in 1984 by Professor James Barr, who was at the time Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. Professor Barr said,
“Probably, so far as l know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Gen. 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the ‘days’ of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.”
Thus, according to the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, Tim is completely deceived in his wish to read Genesis figuratively. Let it be emphasized that according to professor Barr, virtually every professor at a world-class universities believes Gen. 1-11 are intended to convey the six 24 hour day creation and universality of Noah’s flood. (Planet Preterist)
Barr, despite not believing Genesis’ literal sense, does however, understand what the Hebrew so clearly taught. It was only the perceived need to harmonize the Bible with the alleged [evolutionary] age of the earth which led people to think anything different of the easy reading of Genesis—it was nothing to do with the text itself.
So the memory points can look like this:
• One of the leading Hebrew professors of our day;
• From Oxford University;
• Who did not believe in the literalness of Genesis;
• Teaches that the language and cultural times;
• Demand a literal reading of the text;
• Whether you agree with the outcome of that reading or not.
Simple enough. If one kinda’ remembers these points they can communicate the text’s meaning in a way that shows that insertion of long ages is a newer phenomena, not something warranted by the text itself. Here is an opening of a debate between a theistic evolutionist and a young earth creationist that makes clear the theological implications of anything but the Biblical position (the entire debate can be found HERE):
While theistic evolution is almost at complete odds with the Gospel message, we should understand that the union between man-and-God is the acceptance of Jesus, not these particulars.
