Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood

"The differences in dates as to when events took place is the biggest difference between biblical history and secular history. Since biblical history is based on eyewitnesses and the secular is based on indirect methods, I favor the biblical dates."A usual creationist argument but unfortunately,a very flawed one because it assumes the innerant nature of the Bible and then uses that assumption as proof that the Bible is innerant,a phenomenon commonly refered to as circular reasoning. Also,there is no eye witness account of Noah or Adam's time,since the Bible itself began to be writen 1700 BC,which means the writers lived almost 400 years after Noah's supposed death and almost 2000 years after the time of Adam.

Question...on what scientific imperical evidence do you base your belief of the accuracy of the biblical cronology?

I really fail to see your point there. Even casual reading of the Bible reveals that the autors had no concept of what it was they were actually threading on there. They clearly believed that the entire world could be observed from the top of a mountain and that some trees could grow high enough to be observed by all kingdoms on the planet. They do not describe a local flood in the Myth of Noah...But they are making it quite clear that they had absolutely no compreansion of how absolutely ENORMOUS the earth was compared to their little corner of the world. The make it quite obvious on several passages that they did not think for one moment that there were any other continents beyond the seas and everything in christian early mythology supports this ingrained belief that the Middle East was the whole world

Mr wmscott,Indeed,scripture often time refers to "the whole world" quite clearly. Wanna know what else is clear? That they had no idea how absolutely ENORMOUS the world really was. Lets leave aside their no less obvious belief in a flat disk shaped earth for a moment and concentrate on the fact that they believe that A: A tree could grow to be high enough to be seen from anywhere on "the whole world" and B:that it was possible to climb on a mountain high enough to actually SEE "the whole world". So when you look at things in that context,its easy to see why they would believe the the mesopotamian flood,which left much evidence BTW,was actually a GLOBAL flood...they honnestly believed that the Middle East was in fact "the whole world"...

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Originally posted by wmscott:
LudvanB

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Yes you are probably right that the Hebrews had no idea how absolutely ENORMOUS the world really is. I am not arguing that they knew the size or even shape of the world, just that they could and did make statements encompassing the whole earth. Such as the one you referred to "a flat disk shaped earth" would be one such where the entire planet was referred to even if the shape may have been wrong. Let's skip the whole circle/sphere debate, no need to go into that here. As a side point, the tree you referred to was the tree in the book of Daniel, was seen in a dream, it was a symbol and not a real tree. On seeing the earth from a mountain top, I believe you are referring to Satan showing Jesus all the cities of the earth and offering them to him. The showing was done by miraculous means, a vision, even the Jews of that day knew they couldn't climb a mountain and literally see Rome. Any one when they write, assumes the reader knows certain things. The bible is no different, the readers are expected to know many things that unfortunately most people today no longer seem to know.

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But thats the whole crux of my point scott. The Bible is supposadly of divine inspiration...meaning that for all intents and purposes,it was dictated to man BY GOD...And since we can infer that God would have been well aware that the earth was both a large sphere and a fast moving one at that,we have every right to expect the Bible to reflect scientific accuracy...and it doesn't. This means either one thing out of two...either God wilfully misled the people by dictating them quotations describing the world as a small,immobile flat disk...or the Bible is entirely the work of MAN by MAN and for MAN writen in its entirety WITHOUT the help or "inspiration" of God...meaning that its every bit as flawed as MAN is.The tree in Daniel's vision is not a real tree,that is true,since no tree can grow to be that large anyway...but the way it is described illustrates ancient hebrew beliefs as to the nature of our world. As for the story of the mountain and Satan,your point makes no sense...if the Devil was tempting Jesus with dominion over all cities using a miracles to show them all to the christ,there would be no need to climb a mountain to do so,since the miracle could be performed anywhere...more likely,this illustrates the beliefs of hebrews,who had probably never climbed atop large ice covered peeks,thats you could see the whole world from up there

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[This message has been edited by LudvanB, 03-03-2002]

Tell me Scott....is this book you mention yet another philosophical dissertation filled with biblical quotation like 99.9% of the articles in AIG or is it an actual science treatese that provides a scientific test to acertain that the Bible is the inerant word of God? If its the later,than it would be an interesting read but if its the former,then i see no more reason to waste my time on it than on reading AIG