You overlook the fact that it’s not just sea shells, but an entire fossil coral reef that grew in place there over several million years. The corals are often positioned as they were in life. It couldn’t have been washed in there from the sea no matter how deep the flood was.
Biblical literalists who allege all fossil deposits are remnants of Noah’s flood can’t explain the many sites in which different environments succeeded one another, for example, in which a layer of mangrove roots is followed by a coral reef is followed by an oyster bed is followed by another layer of mangrove roots, as sea levels rose and fell.
The saddest thing of literalistic efforts like the Ark Encounter is that it is not only paleontology is cherry picked and the rest denied, but that also history has to be denied.
Because then having the pyramids in egypt being build before the usual estimates of the flood just does not compute. So the solution is usually (as answers in genesys has it) nowadays to declare the whole of egyptology a fraud. Of course literalists do the same with a lot of history.
And the Bible itself says this. All will stand to God. Who are you to judge another’s servant? When someone else was driving out demons in Jesus name, Jesus said not to stop them.
The Bible itself never says that literalism is the only possible way to interpret the Bible. The 2 Timothy quote even specifically gives multiple way to interpret the Bible.
When you tell other people what they must do to be Christians, beyond the actual teachings of the Bible, you are violating the command not to add to Scripture.
A literal reading of the Bible itself does not support literalism. That doesn’t mean that people in the past didn’t assume it was all literally true. But Christianity does not depend on Biblical literalism. If it did, it would have been dead back in at least the 400s, where I know there is talk about Creationism not being literal.
And, while I’m here–it’s not the idea that God isn’t big enough. It’s that there’s no sign of a worldwide flood, nor a mechanism. And God stopped creating, which means that it wasn’t something new. And God’s goals don’t require the entire planet to be flooded.
(And, no, the water canopy doesn’t work. The water from it still wouldn’t have covered everything, because, otherwise, it would still be covering everything.)
The Bible says there was a flood, that Noah and his family were sparred, God tells Noah how to build the Ark, which clean and which unclean and how many animals to put in the ark, the Bible says that a flood came on the earth not only from rain, but from springs of water that came out of the ground, the Bible says that all the people perished in the flood.
The Bible doesn’t tell us if it was just the Med for example or if it was the entire world that includes the Atlantic and the Pacific regions up to the ice shelf of the North or down to the ice shelf of the South.
How long ago is debatable, true … but faith that the flood happened is just that faith and I will stay in that faith.
Yahweh God got mad at mankind and flooded the world and then he repented by giving us a sign of the rainbow not to do that again.
The Ark in the OP thread can’t be all that bad for those that believe, the Jews believe, the Christ followers believe, even the Muslims believe in the Bible up to a certain point that is.
The Ark is a good foundation for our faith to believe not to argue how long ago or how wide spread the flood was.
The way things are going with the weather ya’ll should read the rest of the Bible, due to the next test of our faith is to be tested with fire.
The Bible says that the waters covered “all the high mountains that are under all of the heavens.” (Genesis 7:19). Modern readers might attempt to interpret this to mean some smaller, local scale in order to make it fit better with scientific evidence, but it’s pretty hard to say that the literal text does not mean the entire world, Atlantic, Pacific and polar.
The “Ark Encounter Exposed” Facebook page has pictures of empty parking lots, and implied that a huge percentage of the opening-day crowd had free passes anyway.
Ezekiel 24:14. “I…will not repent.” Several other verses declare: God does not repent. (Meanwhile, a number of verses say just the opposite.)
What’s interesting here is that it comes close to answering the riddle, Can God Create a Rock so Heavy He Can’t Lift It? By giving his word, God has created an obligation which he cannot negate. God cannot flood the world again, because that would require him to forswear his oath, something that would make him less than perfect, and less than God.
Even if you were to do that - which is reasonable, since to the Hebrews of God-only-knows-how-many-years-BC would have had an understanding of the known world that would have been fairly limited - a flood sufficient to surpass jus the mountains in that region would be a rather astonishing event indeed. Persia was certainly known to them and has mountains three miles high. A flood three miles high can’t be “local.”
I can’t imagine that too many public schools would want to take field trips here (many Christian schools wouldn’t either) but in the event that they do, the inevitable church and state separation thing has popped up.
BTW, the Ark Encounter people is offering $1 admission to public school kids in response. That MIIIIGHT get a few more people in there, especially if that extends to their parents as well. :dubious:
What do literalists say about the time on the ark? Genesis is a little inconsistent about how long it is until everything is dry, but they are on the ark for over a year. People seem to focus on the “rained for 40 days and 40 nights”, but that’s just how long the rain came down, it was much longer until the earth was dry and they came out. Even if all the animals were juveniles, a lot of animals grow quickly in a year, and also there’s a whole lot of food that would need to be on board.
According to the Bible, how long did it take Moses and his small crew of non-professional shipbuilders to gather materials and construct that huge thing?
Yeah, but the whole planet was much smaller in those days, about the size of the Middle East. The sun, moon and stars were only a few thousand [del]feet[/del] cubits above everyone’s heads, too.