Noahs Flood

Hi Flyer, This may be a slight digression, but I just want to address this quickly.Speaking as an atheist, I don't quite see it this way. I am perfectly willing to believe the Bible where it touches upon verifiable history. To my way of looking at things, the Bible is just one historical source among many. I do not see it as being an especially reliable source, but I doubt very much that it is completely fictional. I just need a little outside verification from independent sources before I take the Bible's word for something. There is too much in there that is fantastical or clearly fictional to rely on the Bible alone as a historical source.Having said that, there are some Bible stories that really defy belief and stand contrary to the evidence. We know for certain that there was no worldwide flood. The evidence against it is simply too great. This is why OECs take the position they do; they know that there was no flood, but they simply cannot abide the idea that the Bible could be wrong about something. Therefore the interpretation must be changed, to better fit the evidence. I agree with you that in taking the local flood position, OECs are re-interpreting the text. The story clearly describes a worldwide flood. The tricky bit for Christians is reconciling this with the fact that no such flood ever occurred.Personally, I don't think it really matters what the details of the flood event were supposed to have been. The flood myth exists to tell a mythic story; that of God's covenant with man. This is its primary purpose. The specifics of the event aren't the important bit and to get caught up in disputes with geologists over such minor points of belief to miss the point. For all we know, the story's authors might never have intended it to have been taken literally at all. I suspect you'll find that many theistic evolutionists tend toward this view.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

Sure. I see no reason to accept accounts of supernatural events in general. Perhaps because they thought that, divine or not, whether 100% historically accurate or not, his teachings were especially valuable. Personally, that doesn't quite cut the mustard for me. To be fair, you would be better served by an answer from a TE. Yeah, he has a knack for that. In my experience, TEs and other moderate Christians cite scripture in a slightly different way to creationists, literalists and so on. With moderate Christians, scripture is more likely to be discussed in terms of the author's intent or it's allegorical content. With creationists, there seems to be a more... proscriptive view of scripture. Creationist members here at EvC typically show a great deal more confidence in their scriptural interpretations than TEs.Basically, I think that moderate Christians are less constrained by the idea that the Bible's word is law. I think this can only be a good thing.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod