A non-creationist interpretation of Genesis

that aint enough. Where does it say in the bible that there was no flood? ha.

 

1. could the ocean floor have sunk? Could mountains be here that once weren't? Could the continents have all been joined at one time?
2. So you know how many kinds of animals were loaded? Were all of these animals full grown?
3, so does the geologic column ever change? Are all of the layers correctly in place? does anything ever "not quite fit" into a "layer" or column?
4. what genetic variance should we see, if there was a flood?
Who said the three toed sloth crossed the water? Could it have all been one continent when it happened? Who says it was on the ark?

 

I’ll give you an example of intellectual honesty by freely admitting that I’m neither a physicist nor an astronomer. My knowledge on these matters is limited to what I learned in school and saw in the odd documentary (seeing that I’ve got a memory like a sieve likely even less). So I won’t even pretend to be able to follow such discussions and will happily contend with what I’m told is the scientific consensus, trusting the scientific communities ability to change its opinion in the light of new evidence/better reasoning .

Then again I don't see the need to make science conform to what I read in the Bible. The Bible is something I know a little more about than physics and I'm intellectually honest enough to change my views on it when confronted with new convincing information. If you gave me good arguments against the Q-source theory for example, I'd certainly ponder them.

 

I doubt that King Josiah of Judah and the authors of the Priestly Source had anything to do with edititing any scriptures of the Bible that were written long after their death. But I suppose you just mean the Pentateuch, and yes it is known that many OT (and NT) - scriptures have more than just one source and were edited many times over.

The other thing I doubt is that you have actually read the OP past its headline, let alone the link it gives.

However, I guess what you mean to tell me here is that you take some very selectively read findings of OT-studies to mean that the OT is all humbug. Fine. Now that you got that off your chest, I’m sure there won’t be any need for you to derail this thread any further.

 

Good observation, but the link I posted is more coherent than any science link and is TOTALLY CORRECT.

I will show you an example. Lets use a website of science that enjoys prestige, so you are going to be like "home".

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=origin-of-the-universe&page=5

YES! SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. You can't ask for less, and I'm trying to please you in what links is concerned.

Lets read the first page. Remember that in school, when you learn how to write an essay. the first paragraph must show the essence of the whole article or study. This is very important to be considered before continuing reading the whole article.

So, compare the two paragraphs of the link given by me with the paragraph provided in the Scientific American site. Lets see who is talking more fantasies. Page 1

The universe is big in both space and time and, for much of humankind’s history, was beyond the reach of our instruments and our minds. That changed dramatically in the 20th century. The advances were driven equally by powerful ideas—from Einstein’s general relativity to modern theories of the elementary particles—and powerful instruments—from the 100- and 200-inch reflectors that George Ellery Hale built, which took us beyond our Milky Way galaxy, to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has taken us back to the birth of galaxies. Over the past 20 years the pace of progress has accelerated with the realization that dark matter is not made of ordinary atoms, the discovery of dark energy, and the dawning of bold ideas such as cosmic inflation and the multiverse.

In space and time?

What a fool the one who belief that the universe is big in "time". What the writer is talking about? Does this article has a solid base foundation to confirm without doubt that the universe is also big in "time"? You yourself have practically recognized that time is not a physical entity, so the first sentence of the first paragraph is a total fantasy, a mixture of belief with fact in a way to "make them appear as one". Pay attention that "ideas" as inflation and multiverses are "bold"...

It mentions the "discovery of dark energy"... and one might ask, what the heck is dark energy? and we can find lots of answers, lets read one of them, from http://www.space.com/6619-dark-energy.html

"Dark energy is the name given to an unexplained force that is drawing galaxies away from each other, against the pull of gravity, at an accelerated pace.

Dark energy is a bit like anti-gravity. Where gravity pulls things together at the more local level, dark energy tugs them apart on the grander scale.

Its existence isn't proven..."

Whoa! so, dark energy is the name of something that can't be explained and less has been proved...

So, what the Scientific American is talking about?

Seriously, do you understand what Scienbtific American is given as information? So far, is telling fantasies and mentioning them as "facts", Reviewing each topic given in the first paragraph, only the the part saying that the universe is big in space is the sole truth, the rest is garbage.

You can look far away in space, but nothing will tell you about any age just by looking farther galaxies. The existence of multiverses is laughable, nothing exist to detect such a thing... all those ideas are fantasies, mere fantasies, nothing more than fantasies...

And look, I'm using websites of science, and they contradict themselves in the same topics.

I can write pages and pages showing you how silly are those "scientific" ideas about the origin of the universe, these two links are just a snack so you can taste the flavor of "storytelling" in those articles.

The article in the link I provided you is correct, when it says that the theories about the beginning of the universe are a complete failure.

Lets see, if you disagree with what I have wrote here, then please use the same paragraph of the Scientific American link and give "your interpretation" of it. You will see that in some place another website of science that also enjoys of prestige will contradict your point.

 

But isn't an insult, the verses of the biblical events you posted clearly show them as part of the third and fourth day, but you seem to understand them as events of the second and third day. If you can't get correctly the numerical order of the events, how can we trust your understanding of the context itself?

 

First of all what we have here is a theological paper showing that Genesis is not to be read literally as a “science book” and thus is not in contradiction with evolution. Harlow obviously assumes that the reader vaguely knows what evolution is about. If you don't why don’t you just get a biology book telling you about it?

Then we’re discussing creationism here, not original sin. So you should not let your opposition to the author’s stance on original sin get into the way of your seemingly widening acceptance of not reading Genesis as a literal quasi scientific text rather than as an allegorical theological account. I know a lot of people who hold traditional Augustinian notions on original sin and embrace theistic evolution. So obviously it's not that big a problem to live with both.

But as the paper rightly states: “Does Genesis picture humanity being created immortal, never to die? This is an important question, especially since many Christians object to an old earth and to evolution on the grounds that both require death before the fall (conceived as a specific episode at the dawn of human history) and therefore contradict biblical teaching. Genesis itself, however, does not propound a doctrine of the fall or original sin; the doctrine was formulated only in Christian tradition, beginning especially with Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis and Romans.”
What strikes me is that apparently Augustine’s interpretation is more important to you than a just literal reading of the text as such when it comes to your beloved doctrine of original sin, but less important to you when it comes to Augustine’s warning about interpreting the text literally when such a literal reading contradicts what is evident knowledge about the world.
Creationism clearly does not conform to the teachings of Genesis. By contradicting each other concerning the duration of creation, the primordial scenario, the sequence of creation and the way in which God created the two creation stories in Genesis themselves give you very clear signs that they were not intended to present some scientifically accurate account on how the creation of this world happened and no, creationists can’t harmonize these contradictions without bending and twisting scripture no end to make it conform to their wishes.

As for original sin: What the paper doubts is that Genesis says that Adams sin to disobey God resulted in us being mortal because according to Genesis we were mortal before (Gen 3:22). Augustine founds this idea more on Romans 5:12, ironically because Augustine read “death” literally as a bodily death rather than in a way that Harlow thinks Paul is more likely to have meant: a spiritual death in the separation from God. And yes, if you read 1. Cor. 15:35-58 and just take common human experience for the past 2000 years, you’ll find that Christ does indeed not spare us a bodily death. Christ saves us from being separated from God after our bodily death and thus gives us eternal spiritual life. Paul even goes as far as claiming that our bodily death is necessary for that. (“What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”) But IMHO Augustine wasn’t altogether off the mark concerning original sin: we are indeed all born both with Adams weakness of the flesh that will eventually perish and his tendency to disobey God that would destroy our soul would it not be through God’s saving grace in Christ.

 

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.


The last line lists the day after the events listed. Quoted above is what happened on the third day, as evening and then morning come and bring about the 4th day, whose events continue in the next paragraph that I did not quote.


And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

Same deal here. The events conclude and the second day, which this paragraph describes, passes into the third day.

The events of the second day cannot happen before the events of the third day. It's physically and biologically impossible.

 

Not really, and now we're opting to take a dump all over plate tectonics as well.

I do know that the bible talks about all of the "kinds" of animals. What "kind" means is incredibly vague (and commonly a piece of wiggle room for apologists), but asserting that it would be less than, say, at least one of every genus - or at the absolute least, family, would be ludicrous, because by the time we get to order, we're grouping very, very different animals together (For example, horses, camels, and hippos are all taxonomically Artiodactyla). Even then, though, we're still dealing with far more animals than a boat of that level could reasonably handle.

(I'm not a geologist, so take this with a degree of caution.)
The geologic column is not universal (different areas will have variations), but there are many pieces of strata that are at least very widely prevalent. We can generally measure geologic upheaval in areas, as it tends to be a very slow process, and any signs of such "not fitting" are generally visible. However, I think you're underestimating just what effect a gigantic, global flood which covered the entire earth would have on the geologic column. You would notice a fairly gigantic layer of silt in every geologic column fairly close to the surface. We don't see that. The geologic column on its own is essentially enough to completely debunk the idea of a global flood.

We would see genetic bottlenecks present in every species, not just a few like the Cheetah. Most mammals share about 80% of their genes with other members of the same species (that is, 80% perfect match, not 80% genome), which is about what one would expect from a genetically varied species; Cheetahs on the other hand share about an average of 99% with random strangers - that's more than humans share with most relatives. This makes it exceedingly difficult for a species to evolve to match its environment; we see this in Cheetahs primarily with genetic diseases. This makes perfect sense given what we know about genetics; what's more, we wouldn't expect a species to recover from a severe genetic bottleneck within 6,000 years - hell, the bottleneck event that knocked Cheetahs around is dated at about 10,000 years ago, and there were a hell of a lot more than 2 back then. Feel free to look up the issue on your own, it's really quite a fascinating look into how genetics works.

Well, it could have been one continent if we want to throw out all we know about plate tectonics. And if it wasn't on the ark, where'd it come from after the earth was flooded?

[MENTION=24595]Carlo[/MENTION]s: I'll get back to you.

 

The bible says it clearly, the water came out from the interior of the earth, and this is agreement with the part that mentions that at the very beginning there was no rain but vapor came out from the ground.Water that comes from the under ground also goes back to the under ground. Besides this common cycle in physics, NASA detected very recently how solar winds cut off part of our atmosphere and took it away, this is to say, part of the top of our atmosphere went out to outer space. If NASA detect it recently, we have nothing to deny that similar phenomena also happened in the past, and less to calculate how much of our atmosphere have been cut off in the past.

Nothing wrong with the construction of the ark because you can't discuss about it, the reson is simple, you have no blueprints to review. About "every kind of animal" it can refer to a representative like one feline, one canine, etc. etc.

Who told you that there were 250,000 species of beetle in Noah's time? Just picking up one representative was enough, the bible never mentions to pick up "every creature on earth" but one of each kind. No one can describe with certainty the diet and amount of food required for those ancient animals, and less if they went to "invernate" status while the phenomenon was in progress. Your estimates might be correct in "today's diet" of animals, but you ignore how it was in those days. As your estimate is not verifiable to apply with former eras, you are just assuming, and assumptions are not valid to contradict any narration.

Upheavals on earth are very common and hide very easily any path left by former events. An example of this fact is that you can find dinosaur fossils deep down on ground and others practically floating over the surface.

the most laughable mistake is trying to fit genetics with age of species. Look, the African bushman enjoys the greater genetic variance, but are no more than a few thousands of them, compared with the billions of people around the world. These are tribes descendants of the same ancestors, who are assumed to be the most closed to primeval men on earth, this is to say, they have no other mixture with other different populations since millenniums ago, even so, contrary to the theory about genetic variance, their level of variance is the greatest. How then they didn't over populated the earth. and why populations with lesser genetic variance are so many?

No doubt that the African bushmen is the fact that turns down the genetic variance fallacy which imposes it as a starting point to calculate the age of the different species. There are several studies trying to portrait that marriage between members of the same families lead to lesser genetic variance and cause of certain diseases, but there is not a single proof that such causes the extinction of a species.

Aha!... and... who told you that before the flood there were continents and mountains like today? Who told you that?

Interesting, who wrote such a study? lets compare it with other different studies. Show your stuff.

Your post is very general and it should be good going to specifics. So, please provide your specifics of each one of your points. Remember that each specific must enjoy of the proper back up. For example, if you mention "millions of years of age" you must first prove without doubt that the tool used for such a measurement has been verified. You must prove that such a measurement method can be tested using a different method of measurement against it. If you provide, for example, the radiometric method alone, your data will be considered only as a conjeture, because it has not been verified using a different method against the radiometric, and that can be trusted as accurate.

 

Lets go with this one for a minute.

When the telephone communications became part of a global need, a telephone cable was traced between the USA and Europe crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

The years passed by and a discovery was made, a discovery that surprised everyone in the different fields of science: the sumerged telephone cable was in a higher level that the original under water level. The only explanation given was "that the two continents are fallling apart". Views from airplanes and reviews from maps confirmed that at one time in the past the American continent and Europe were part of a sole continent. This idea was not new, but was never confirmed until the discovery of the rising up of the telephone cable.

Mr Wilson used this information to initiate his theory of the plate tectonics.

We must know, that the rate of the separation between these two continents was calculated as 5 meters per year!

Today, more than 50 years later, the separation rate is about a few inches.

No one in this world can prove that the rate of separation between the American continent and Europe has been regular of a few inches per year. To say the contrary is to belief in fantasies.

We have a biblical narration saying that when a descendant of Shem called Peleg, that that name was given because in his days the earth was divided. We have an interesting information here. We have the location of one of the deep cracks that caused the flood (the big wound between America and Europe) which still is "bleeding" up to today, and still setting apart these two continents. The rate of separation of lands after the flood in the days of Peleg must have been very fast, causing periodic earthquakes, and other consequences. Before the flood, in a sole huge continent, men and animals were closer, and after the separation having great amounts of water between them, the species started to suffer variations due to their new environment. We must remember that species don't have changes at their own will but that the environment changes them, the species themselves HAVE NO CONTROL OF THOSE CHANGES.

So, this short explanation was given to inform how Mr Wilson created his theory of plate tectonics.

 

Oh, I see...

It's very peculiar your perception of the counting of days, so, creation of heavens and earth, the earth filled with water and under darkness, and later light, all of this happened before the counting of days, because after the event of light "there was evening, and there was morning, the first day".

Now, according to your method of counting, in the first day the waters were separated and so forth...

Hmmm...

Wow, then this means that light is mentioned in a "non-day"... planet earth created in a "non day"... how can we call to this period before the first day when the waters were separated? the Zero day... the non-birth day... the hidden day... the anti-mathematics day... man! you have put me in big trouble with your style of counting the biblical days, I surely love your point, but I just want to catalogue the first verses before the "new first day" interpreted by you...

I will appreciate if you give me some ideas, because I truly like your counting of days the way you have mentioned.

 

I didn't create the divide, the authors and editors of the bible did. And the text I base my claim on is straight from the bible. Sounds to me like you have a problem with them, not me.

In any case, you're still missing the broader point here. Regardless of what specific days we're talking about, the events still occur in an order that make them physically and biologically impossible. Do not take this as an admission that I am wrong about the days involved, because I'm not, but rather that the debate route you're choosing to go on does not dispute my claim in the slightest.

 

I don't consider Augustinian interpretation of original sin more important than the scriptures themselves, but the reading that gives us original sin just makes more sense to me. But, that's me. People are different, and that's why original sin makes sense to some and to others its ridiculous. I understand that, and the writer didn't seem to make sense of the scriptures concerning original sin, for me.

But leaving that aside, I still am left to wonder how evolution fits into the genesis narrative. If God created us in the image of Him, then is He a single cell entity? If we're no different than the animals before us, then why did He create animals separately, and then bring us to name, as well as give us "dominion" over them?

I know how evolution is purported to work, so that's not an issue, and you saying that I don't is being disingenuous, and I'd rather not go down that road. I don't know how all the intricacies work, but I most certainly, given the way its taught, know that there was probably not a cat/dog hybrid. But, given the idea of natural selection or random chance, implies that God is not powerful enough to create a human without this process, and if He is, then why did He do it that way?

Biological evolution makes more sense on an atheistic level. If there is no God, then a universe that always existed and over time, things happening to eventually create us make more sense to me if there is no God, but if there is a God, why would He choose to do it this way? For example, if I want to create something I don't create many deadends, to get to my final creation, I just start on the final creation. Now I may say write a paper, and have many "rough drafts", but that's because I'm human. If I were an omniscient, omnipotent entity, I could create something the way I wanted, the first time.

 

I t seems that you're still trying to fit it in to a time frame. I'm just not sold on a time frame.
Is the Cambrian explosion an example of a bottleneck?
If you're saying the continents couldn't have been joined, then you don't support pangea right?
couldn't a boat could hold many different kinds if these kinds were not full grown?
So you think the geological column is enough itself to debunk the flood?

 

That surely is the problem. If God is as you say why didn't he create things the way he wanted them. Did he want a creature that was weak, prone to failure, that had to be punished etc. etc? He sure made a mistake when he made man, for that's what he got.

 

Can someone please explain how the Earth could have been completely covered with water? Virtually all the water on earth is connected in some way. If I take the Indian Ocean and flood Asia to the depth of 32000 feet (height of Everest), the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic ocean flood into the empty area left of the Indian ocean. This lowers the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic and exposes more land masses round their edges.
Anyone any suggestions?

 

I didn't make it through the whole thread but someone in the beginning suggested that God teaching humans about a 14 billion year long creation would be like us teaching the US tax code to a 3 week old baby.

This is just another way people try to get around the fact that God is God while trying to maintain the fact that God is God.

God teaching us about creation and or creating a bible that everyone in every language could easily understand without any discrepancies or confusion should be as easy for God as it is for us to do nothing at all.

Every post in this thread as with every other in every other thread that discusses what God did or thought or thinks or wants or doesn't is just people talking to each other about something they only know about through other people.

This is obviously the reason there are problems getting to know God, because we made him, not the other way around. And now I will hear all about what humans think about what humans think about what humans wrote as if it could possibly hold one ounce of validity as to the question of Gods existence.

Again if this is the best God can do why would anyone be impressed? I mean the reality is it’s almost like the bible was written by people who knew less about the world than my 9 year old son.

 

Easy. God made xtra water. Then when he was done with it a wind took it to Neptune where it shines to this day as a warning beacon against incoming rogue angels.

Then, he cleaned up the mess, and the surviving organisms hyperevolved.

IF he didnt clean up the mess, we could easily find the evidence of the flood, and, then what is the use of faith???

I didnt make this up. I got it from a Baptist. Reverence available on request, if you want to learn more like how dino footprints in coal are from dinosaurs getting into the angels coal bins.

 

Other than in various points that I explicitly laid out. And coherency is nice, but in science, I'll tell you what's a lot more important: facts.

You're right, I couldn't ask for less. I could, however, ask for a lot more, because Scientific American is a pop science journal. You know, kind of like Discovery Magazine or, well, Popular Science. Why not go to sites more focused on learning? Say... NASA's cosmology page? Or maybe something from a prestigious university? Or god knows how many other university splash pages on the big bang, or other real educational resources?

And honestly, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove with this. Yes, the idea of a multiverse is an idea that is bandied around. It's also unsupported, and generally speaking not widely accepted as a fact, theory, or anything beyond a wild hypothesis. This is part of the problem with taking popular science journals as an authority - of course they're going to bring up things like the multiverse hypothesis - they have a very long leash as far as presenting new ideas that may or may not have any actual merit behind them (they can't present utter crap lest they lose credibility, but how many of their readers know what is and is not crap?), and they need stuff which is going to draw viewers in. The multiverse hypothesis fits both bills. So no, your source is pretty terrible.

This is a classic creationist mistake - mistaking a name we offer a phenomenon for the explanation of a phenomenon. In the case of "dark energy", it was observed that there was some force pushing elements apart that acted on galaxies. This force was deemed "dark energy" much in the same way the attractive force we observe was deemed "gravity". It's a name for an as-of-yet unexplained force which has been shown to exist. Dark Energy is a very real phenomenon.

Honestly, as said, you're referring to a pop science journal... And even then, you're simply wrong about a good half of what you claim here.

It's a hypothesis with nothing backing it. And nobody said otherwise. To quote the article:

Cosmologists have mixed feelings about the multiverse. If the disconnected subuniverses are truly incommunicado, we cannot hope to test their existence; they seem to lie beyond the realm of science. Part of me wants to scream, One universe at a time, please!

My challenge stands, by the way - describe the big bang theory, and explain the evidence present for it. Because I don't think you can, and that in and of itself should speak worlds about your participation in this topic. You also completely refused to address the complaints I had with the article. Just as a quick refresher, here are a few:
- Evolution/the big bang theory did not come out of any atheistic mindset, but rather simply from observing nature
- Excluded middle fallacy - it's entirely possibly that the universe simply always existed, the dilemma is simply inaccurate
- We do not know that the universe began at a finite point.
- "Inflation theory" is a part of modern big bang cosmological theory - it did not replace or supplant it, it improved it.

You know, just because you think your source is "holy" and "unchallengeable" and "open to interpretation" doesn't mean I think mine are. That Scientific American article was a load of publicist tripe.

So, what, now we're placing Noah's flood, chronologically, at the formation of the earth?

There isn't nearly enough water in the water cycle to cover the entire earth, though. Not even close, unless the earth was virtually a flat spheroid.

We know that it had a certain size, and we know what boat-building techniques were known during that period in history (and if God gave Noah some special technique not known at the time, how do you explain that technique not being propagated?). Thus we can calculate the approximate strain on the boat. It's a shame ItsTheSuperFly's videos were taken down, he does a bang-up job explaining it. What's more, having one feline or canine would make the diversity present today completely impossible according to everything we know about evolutionary biology, rates of reproduction, and rates of mutation (never mind the fossil evidence that shows most canines having a common ancestor far, far before the flood).

"Ancient"? Uh, pal, 6 to 10 thousand years is not "ancient" when it comes to speciation. You're pulling this (*)(*)(*)(*) out of your ass. The age of various species, just for reference. Lions: 1,000,000 - 800,000 years ago. Elephants: upwards of 300,000 years ago. Hippopotamus: as many as 8 Million years ago.

Hey, you want to craft a hypothetical where they all went into some sort of hiberating status (including animals which do not hibernate and are active year-round), be my guest. But to assert that it was significantly different in "those days" is simply ludicrous given what we know about speciation.

Right. So... how 'bout that "supporting" them?

To an extent, yes. But they are also visible. We tend to notice major upheavals, and there would need to essentially be countless large-scale, global upheavals for the massive layer of silt laid down by a global flood to be missed. I somehow doubt you have much understanding of the geologic column as well.

Well, seeing as you failed to provide a citation, I went hunting. Is this what you were talking about? Because it makes no such assertion. Seriously, I have no idea what you're talking about, and if you don't provide a citation, I have no way of determining what you're talking about.

Grade school science class. Holy (*)(*)(*)(*), is this question even meant to be taken seriously? You sound like Bill O'Reilly asking where the tides come from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis

Although that's more a throwaway point at the end.

I don't see the point. You seem to show very little actual inclination in honest discussion, and you also seem to show very little actual scientific aptitude. Case in point:

Buddy, I'm sorry, but radiometric dating belongs in the same category as x-ray imaging and the polio vaccine. It has been proven to work within the given parameters to beyond a shadow of a doubt, and for you to deny this makes you either scientifically illiterate or simply dishonest. For what it's worth: here's a page with extensive citation explaining how it works, why it works, and debunking some of the more common creationist claims about it. Look, I'm sorry, but if you're going to deny that radiometric dating works - a tool used in various disciplines of science for all manner of reasons, which would not be used had it not already been verified to work beyond the shadow of a doubt (seriously, wanna assert a conspiracy or something?) - there's no point in continuing.

Speaking of fantasies, here's one - that the tectonic shift could accelerate to the point where we could move from one giant continent to many smaller continents in the span of several thousand years.

You know what the funny thing is about deep-sea rifts? They don't spew out water. They spew out lava.

Well, unless men lived forever, it couldn't have been that long before the Pyramids were built according to biblical chronology, and we know when that happened.

Did you actually look into what a genetic bottleneck is? It has to do with genetic variance within a species and/or population. The Cambrian explosion has little to nothing to do with the concept.

I'm saying they couldn't have been joined at that time. Furthermore, I will state the claim that it is essentially impossible for them to move from a Pangaea-esque formation to what we have today within the time span seemingly presented by the bible.

Maybe in zygotic form.

Yes. As is the genetic bottlenecking issue. As are the chronological issues arising from there being something like 8 humans left after the flood, and then very shortly afterwards the Tower of Babel and the Pyramids were built. All incredible problems with taking the old testament literally.

 

well, the "knee jerk" answer to that is, if you don't like the way man is made, proceed in making your own.

However, when He made man He gave us "free will", and with that comes consequences. Those consequences has left us where we are today.

 

You're still working in a "time frame" and I'm not committed to a time frame.

 

I am in fact quite curious as to how you justify this - the flood itself has a clearly defined timeline, and from there, doesn't the bible go straight into genealogies?

 

Good old stock answer. If God knew man would fail there was no point in making him. Is this not rather sadistic - to make man knowing you would have to punish him for not coming up to your (gods) standards.