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Continuing my thoughts from Identifying a Reasonable Approach to Evolution and the Great Flood, I have to figure out how to take a position without requiring 3 more college degrees, to stake out some ideological territory and be taken seriously for it.

One of the challenges is figure out the proper place for experts.  Every expert says something different, and I cannot find one who can decisively answer these important questions we all have about the flood:

1. When was the flood?
2. Where was the flood? Was it local or global?
3. Was the entire human race killed?
4. Is the genealogy from Adam to Noah complete?  Is the genealogy from Noah to Abram complete?

Let me address these all one by one:

When was the flood?

Scripturally, the flood appears to be within the last 4,500 to 10,000 years.  I place the upper limit at 10,000 years because Adam was banished from the garden to till the soil, and agriculture appears to have begun 10,000 years ago.  So, unless the flood was before Adam, or scripture isn’t historical, the flood had be after the advent of agriculture.

Running counter to this, Glenn Morton makes some excellent arguments for when altars first appeared, as well as art, music, and other important behavioral  indicators that we typically associate with humans that are made in God’s image.  The further back we push the date for when people were able to relate to God, the further back the Great Flood can be pushed as well.  Still, the agriculture is a sticking point for me.

I am open to additional evidence.

Where was the flood? Was it local of global?

The science tells me that mankind existed 200,000 years ago or so, and there are signs of mankind throughout the world at the time of the flood, and none of the populations appear to have ended.  Therefore, I conclude the flood to be local.  There are also convincing apologetics explaining why the scripture was never meaning to imply a global flood; it was an error in translation originating in the common wisdom of the day.

The only theory of a global flood is the position of the Creation Science, and I consider their views far too dismissive of mainstream scientific observations.  I will keep reading their literature on occasion, but I expect to continue finding it lacking.

I am pretty settled on this one.

Was the entire human race killed?

If the flood was global, the answer would be yes.  For a local flood to kill the entire human race, the entire human race would need to be located within a closed proximity.  The only theory I have read suggesting this is Glenn Morton’s, and he places the flood at 5.5 million years ago.  If he is correct, then I will have to make some judgement calls without a scientific basis for doing so, and this makes me uncomfortable.  Specifically, Morton places the flood in the Mediterranean Basin which had noticeable salt veins.  A critic claims the amount of salt is underplayed in Morton’s theory, and would in fact make the basin unlivable 5.5 million years ago.  I have no basis to make a decision in regards to that.  No matter, because while I find his theory appealing on a certain level, I am unsatisfied with how far removed it is from the advent of agriculture, and there was no end to the human race after the agricultural age began.

I pretty settled on this one, but will keep an open mind.

Is the genealogy from Adam to Noah complete?  Is the genealogy from Noah to Abram complete?

Luke 3:36 adds a name to the genealogy of Abram that Moses left out of Genesis.  This proves the genealogies are incomplete… but to what degree?  I mean, Luke only added one name.

Another peculiar aspect is the fact that the Genesis genealogies give the specific ages when person A begot person B.  This implies to me that even if someone was left out, you should still be able to add the ages the together to get a time-line.  Otherwise, I find them useless as history… and Moses was clearly attempting to convey history here.

To the extent that I remain open to questions 1 and 3, I will have to remain open here, too.

Other Issues

Every Flood theory appears to be physically impossible.  One theory fails to account for what would happen if certain areas were covered in fresh water.  Others fail to account for why an ark would be needed if the flood was global.  Other problems: how deep could a local flood have been?  What mountains would likely have been visible?  Where did that olive branch come from?  How did the flood last a year?  Do we really know the size of a cubit?  How many animals were really on the ark?  And on and on.

Argh.

Bottom Line

Well, at this point, I am inclined to stick with a recent flood that was local in scope.  But where was it?  Mesopotamia?  The Baltic Sea?  Lake Van?  What about the other issues?  The problem is that it’s easier to debunk a theory than to come up with one.  My current inclination is to not pick a specific solution, and to argue why a specific solution is unnecessary for maintaining faith in scripture and science.  I admit it is a difficult argument to make convincingly, but it seems easier to me than going back to college.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 4:08 am and is filed under Creationism, Creation Theories, The Flood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.