From:    James G. Acker
To:      All                                    Msg #109, Oct-06-93 07:07AM
Subject: Re: Christianity & The Age of The Earth

Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center -- InterNetNews site
From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker)
Message-ID: <28umv3$eeh@skates.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Newsgroups: talk.origins,talk.religion.misc

Lionel Tun (lionel@cs.city.ac.uk) wrote:
: >Matthew 24:37-9: As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at
: >the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood,
: >people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
: >up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about
: >what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.
: >This is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
: >
: >Luke 17:26-27: Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will
: >it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating and
: >drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day
: >Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
: >
: >2 Peter 2:4-5: For if God did not spare angels when they sinned,
: >but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be
: >held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he
: >brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a
: >preacher of righteousness, and seven others;

: Jim Acker and all the professing christians on t.o: How do you
: interpret these NT references to a global flood?

      Davis Young writes (in "Is God a Creationist"):

      "Just suppose for the sake of argument that the Bible and the
scientific evidence do not seem to agree at every point.  Does it
really advance the Christian cause to force the facts of nature to
fit into a preconceived theory of the Earth as is done by the creationist
movement?  No, it harms our cause.  Christ has called us to _truth and
honesty._  We are to tell the truth in love, but we are _not_ telling the
truth if we insist that the facts of nature indicate that the Earth is
very young and that the Earth was totally covered and renovated in
one year by the Flood as described by Flood geologists."

      And later:

      "In the same way, I should be very much surprised if we had a
unified knowledge of both the Bible and the world that had no loose ends.
Why should theology and natural science ever be expected to agree fully
when each by itself has plenty of loose ends?  The problems and apparent
contradictions do not exist between _nature and the Bible_, but
between _our understandings_ of these two very different revelations of
God.  We should be content to let both bodies of revelation _speak
for themselves_ and listen as carefully as we can.  Nor should this
situation cause us to reject nature or attempt to falsify the evidence
to make it come into conformity with what we _think_ is in Genesis."

      Further down:

      "They [Creationists] have persuaded themselves that the story
of the Flood in Genesis can be interpreted _only_ as a flood that
completely covered the entire globe and that the mountaintops all
around the world were under water.  They typically have not
recognized other valid interpretations of Creation and the Flood.  Having
locked themselves into these rigid interpretations they are in
disagreement with modern scientific ideas.  Not willing to allow
tensions to exist, they have sought for harmonization with the facts of
nature or with science not be reevaluating their biblical exegeses but
by _wholesale distortion of science and the facts of nature_.  They
have tried to make nature say things it is not saying.  Elsewhere I have
documented that creationists have ignored data when convenient and have
been very selective in the use of other data.  They have attempted to
develop a wholly new science.  Their wholly new science agrees with their
biblical interpretation, but it has almost nothing to do with the facts of
the Earth, rocks, chemical element distribution, fossils, and so on, except
in the most superficial way.  Their theory of a young Earth and a global-
Flood catastrophe has been superimposed not only on the Bible, but on
nature as well.  Such an approach to the harmonization of the Bible with
nature is no harmonization at all, for it harmonizes by ignoring the
_real world__ in which God has placed us, which God himself made and
controls, a real world whose factuality has been determined and given
by the sovereign God of the universe."

      Thus, my response (and to others who've seen this before, it
shouldn't be surprising):

      The Flood described in Genesis was a well-known chapter in the
Hebraic religious tradition.   Thus, to quote it as an example would
be as familiar to the listeners as if I were to quote stories of Paul
Bunyan to early settlers of Minnesota.  Quoting lends credence to the
story as a shared tradition, but in no way validates the story as
a literal description of actual events.   The Flood tradition, perhaps
based on a massive regional flood*, is a divine illustration of God's power
both to create and destroy.


*The Laminar Flood is a strong possibility, too.  ;-)

===============================================
|  James G. Acker                             |
|  REPLY TO:   jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov  |
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