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2 Peter 3:3-7: …knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
"It’s impossible to study the universe as it is today and extrapolate from that all the way back to the beginning to figure out how everything came to be.
It would be like a very intelligent person who’s never seen a computer before, and he stumbles upon a functioning computer with a working operating system; and because he’s very smart and very curious, he eventually begins to figure out how this operating system works. But then, he tries to explain how the computer came into existence by studying the operating system. It doesn’t matter how smart he is, he will never figure it out because the process by which the computer was manufactured is a different process from the one by which it operates.
What modern science has been trying to do for the last ~100 years is to explain the origins of the 'computer' in terms of the working of the 'operating system'…
These 'scoffers' will have to ignore two facts:
1) That God spoke everything into existence in the beginning
2) That there was a divine judgment upon the world at the time of Noah that totally destroyed the face of the earth ('the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished')
We can’t look at the earth today and understand what it looked like before the Flood, because it was truly a kind of new creation through the catastrophe of Noah’s Flood."
2 Peter 3:3-7: …knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
"It’s impossible to study the universe as it is today and extrapolate from that all the way back to the beginning to figure out how everything came to be.
It would be like a very intelligent person who’s never seen a computer before, and he stumbles upon a functioning computer with a working operating system; and because he’s very smart and very curious, he eventually begins to figure out how this operating system works. But then, he tries to explain how the computer came into existence by studying the operating system. It doesn’t matter how smart he is, he will never figure it out because the process by which the computer was manufactured is a different process from the one by which it operates.
What modern science has been trying to do for the last ~100 years is to explain the origins of the 'computer' in terms of the working of the 'operating system'…
These 'scoffers' will have to ignore two facts:
1) That God spoke everything into existence in the beginning
2) That there was a divine judgment upon the world at the time of Noah that totally destroyed the face of the earth ('the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished')
We can’t look at the earth today and understand what it looked like before the Flood, because it was truly a kind of new creation through the catastrophe of Noah’s Flood."
I don't make a claim as to the dating of Noah's Flood.
Why not? Surely you must know that Noah's Flood is dated generally to the 3rd millennium BC - 3,000 BC to 2001 BC. This is based on the genealogies in Genesis and on the Jewish belief that creation occurred in 3761 BC according to the Hebrew calendar.
Of course this puts Noah's global flood as occurring during the time that Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations existed and which never noticed the flood.
Surely you must know that Noah's Flood is dated generally to the 3rd millennium BC - 3,000 BC to 2001 BC. This is based on the genealogies in Genesis and on the Jewish belief that creation occurred in 3761 BC according to the Hebrew calendar.
Of course this puts Noah's global flood as occurring during the time that Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations existed and which never noticed the flood.
Never noticed it? Egypt and Mesopotamian civilizations have their own flood stories. They obviously "noticed" it.
Never noticed it? Egypt and Mesopotamian civilizations have their own flood stories. They obviously "noticed" it.
You aren't listening. Egypt and Mesopotamian civilizations existed at the same time that the biblical flood supposedly took place. That of course is an impossibility.
The flood stories of the ancient Near East are based not on a global Noah's flood but on a local or regional flood such as the flooding of the Tigris/Euphrates river systems or perhaps the more ancient Black Sea flood.
Do you understand that if Noah's flood had been real and was global then neither Egyptian nor Mesopotamian civilizations could have existed during such a flood because . . .the entire planet would have been submerged under thousands of feet of water? You do understand that don't you?
Egypt and Mesopotamian civilizations existed at the same time that the biblical flood supposedly took place. That of course is an impossibility.
The flood stories of the ancient Near East are based not on a global Noah's flood but on a local or regional flood such as the flooding of the Tigris/Euphrates river systems or perhaps the more ancient Black Sea flood.
Do you understand that if Noah's flood had been real and was global then neither Egyptian nor Mesopotamian civilizations could have existed during such a flood because . . .the entire planet would have been submerged under thousands of feet of water? You do understand that don't you?
Obviously the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations would have begun and developed after the Flood took place. They even have their own flood stories that were undoubtedly passed down to them from their ancestors.
You aren't listening. Egypt and Mesopotamian civilizations existed at the same time that the biblical flood supposedly took place. That of course is an impossibility.
The flood stories of the ancient Near East are based not on a global Noah's flood but on a local or regional flood such as the flooding of the Tigris/Euphrates river systems or perhaps the more ancient Black Sea flood.
Do you understand that if Noah's flood had been real and was global then neither Egyptian nor Mesopotamian civilizations could have existed during such a flood because . . .the entire planet would have been submerged under thousands of feet of water? You do understand that don't you?
I suspect he will not as it does not align with his preconceptions.
Obviously the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations would have begun and developed after the Flood took place. They even have their own flood stories that were undoubtedly passed down to them from their ancestors.
No. We have firm archaeologic evidence that both Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations existed during the time period of the supposed biblical flood. Again, the flood legends of the ANE are developments of local or regional floods that did occur.
I know this is hard for you to accept, but Noah's Flood doesn't have to have been historically real for the Bible to be divinely inspired. I think you said earlier that the Roman Catholic church doesn't require you to believe in the flood story.
It's simply a matter of understanding why the flood story is in the Bible in the first place. That reason being that the biblical writer of Genesis wanted to usurp the reason given by the other ANE peoples for the flood. The biblical writer gave the flood story a Hebrew slant on the ANE flood legends and connected it to the Hebrew God Yahweh.
Well, I'll leave it at that, at least for now.
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