>How do you account for what seems a parallel to other flood and creation
>stories in which the flood is a cosmic phenomenon--a return to the
>primordial chaos from which the world was made. I agree that in our
>present view of the universe, this seems like the wrong direction to go,
>but don't you think that at least a world-wide cataclysm maintains the
>original intent? Or do you think the original intent translated into
>our present understanding of the scale of the universe would come out
>looking significantly different?
I see two levels of intent here. There is the intent God had when He
inspired the account. There is the understanding of the human writer and
what he thought God intended. Under this view, the intent of the human
writer is much less important than the intent of God. So, given the fact
that God does not lie, and does not deceive, if we believe God intended
something which we KNOW to be observationally false, then our view of what
God intended MUST be wrong. For if God intended to convey the idea that
there is a solid dome immediately above the earth (the firmament, rachia
[sp???]) then the fact that we can send a space probe out of the solar
system limits what God must have intended. God could not have intended to
say that there was a solid dome immediatley over the heads of us humans.
Could there be one at the edge of the universe? Sure, but that is unlikely
given what we know today of cosmology.
Similarly, if what we know says that the global flood could not have
occurred in Japan (the 43,000 layers of springtime algae blooms) means that
God could not have intended the flood to be global and within the past
43,000 years. To try to make God say that, in light of our present
knowledge, does two things. It makes God very unknowledgable about geology,
and opens the door for an atheist to convert our children. Such
discrepancies between what Christians teach and the data of biology, allows
William Provine to convert a huge number of Bible believing college students
to atheism within 1 semester in his class. What is so sad, is that our
inability or reluctance to deal with the real scientific data, gives Provine
a huge opening through which he can do his thing. By the way, I have
corresponded with Provine and he is a very pleasant fellow, the son of a
Preacher who didn't believe in evolution and gave Provine the usual
antievolutionary stuff. When Provine saw that what he was taught was not
true, he rejected Christianity and has now done that for thousands of
others. This is the truly sad effect of teaching young-earth creationism.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm