For me, the Bible is the story of people who came to know God.
I think using it as a biology or geology text is blasphemy. Such blasphemy is generally used to buttress the secular political power of human agents trying to benefit in this world from the promise of the the Lord. That too is blasphemy. To love these blasphemers is a trial that true Christians must bear. Non Christians get to point and laugh, with derision.
Lucky them.
Tris
Well, you do kinda get the love and aid of the Almighty Creator of all existence. So, you know, swings and roundabouts. 
OEC here (sometimes Thestic evolutionist) & believer in a real Adam- EITHER there are massive gaps in the genealogies, most likely from Noah to Abraham, or Adam was not the first homo sapiens but the first person with whom God made a covenant, and that covenant & its breaking (the Fall) was indeed about 6000 years ago, and the Flood was a local one to wipe out the apostate Adamites, Noah’s family excepted, but not all other humans.
I also believe in the great ages of the Pre-Flood patriarchs, but I see no reason to extrapolate a Biblical claim that all Adamites were so long-lived. Perhaps that one line of Covenant-keepers was the exception.
I’m an Episcopalian, a denomination which doesn’t tend to have a lot of Young Earth Creationists. My take on it is, the Bible was written by men inspired by God in a way which would be suitable for the people at the time it was written. I don’t have some of my usual references, but Genesis was written over 2,000 years ago and I suspect it existed as an oral history long before that. I assume the genealogies in Genesis exist in their current form because they made sense to the earliest Israelites and because that form is easy to remember and recite. I would also posit that, if Genesis were being written today with the knowledge we have in the 21st century, it would include references to the Big Bang Theory, the forming of galaxies and planets, natural selection, and evolution.
Christ commanded us not only to love God with all our hearts, but with all our minds. In my opinion, if we close our minds to the wondrous scientific discoveries of the past few hundred years and instead insist on clinging to a paradigm established 2,000 years ago, we are breaking that commandment. We have been placed in a world full of wonders and puzzles. Working them out, seeing how things fit and how things could have become the way they are now, rather than damaging my faith, only fills me with greater awe and wonder at the way God has made this world. It’s much more fun and makes much more sense than sitting through yet another long line of "begat"s.
Nicely put, and something I will think about. Thanks, FriarTed.
Yes.
You can? But no further? Then you believe he was the first man, no?
Such massive, massive gaps?
That would mean man had no knowledge of good and evil or shame of nakedness, etc, until only 6000 years ago?
Wouldn’t it have been easier for god to tell Noah to move his family for a while because there was going to be a local flood rather than build an ark and collect so many animals? Why would it take so long for a local flood to recede? Why would God claim that the folks on the ark are the ones that will re-populate the Earth?
Why do you believe in the great ages of the Pre-Flood patriarchs?
Why is ease to remember and recite a good reason for lies to be told in a holy book?
“Jesu” is the vocative case (used in direct address) of “Jesus” in Latin and related languages. Cf. Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Mans Desiring.”
As for the question raised in the OP, while I admire the Knights-of-the-Round-Table willingness of YEC’s to stand in defense of their beliefs, see them as emulating the wisdom of Merlin, Nestor, or Gandalf, and believe their love for God is like that of Rama for Sita, nonetheless the Achilles’ Heel of their argument is that they have no concept of story. They are taking the modernist goal of an objective literal narrative historical account and anachronistrically attributing it to writers in the past who would have been scandalized at the idea.
Like Parson Weems of young-Washington-and-the-cherry-tree infamy, ancient writers made sure, not that they had a Joe Friday “just the facts, ma’am” attitude, but that their retelling of the tale was properly tailored to make the philosophical, theological, and moral points they felt were most important to draw from it.
And like the Brutus books of medieval “history” which linked Owain Gwynnedd and Hywel Dda back to Vortigern, Belinus, and Brutus the heir of Aeneas, the “P” writer introduced the Toledoth passages into Scripture to place a frame linking together the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Lamech, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The stories of Adam and Eve, Noah and his ark, etc., are exactly as true as those of Arthur and the Round Table, Roland and Ogier the Paladins of Charlemagne, Odysseus, etc. And that truth value is indep[endent of any historicity in the accounts.
What “timeline” are you talking about? There’s not a single date presented anywhere in the Bible, except in relative terms.
Anywhistle: not fifty feet from me is a copy of the Silmarillion, which includes, I believe, a geneology from Earendil the Mariner to Isildur, king of Arnor. That’s geneology is also fictional.
He took my sister to prom. As I recall he got a bit grabby and she was forced to kick his ass. His older sister took offense and took a swing, so my sister kicked her ass; and then the penised-Rabinowicz woke up and starting talking smack, so my sister kicked his ass again. The chaperone thought about intervening but, wisely, choose not to.
What?
Please accept my apologies for the responses of some of my colleagues. You need only to recognize the suffering that Christians in Name only inflict upon mankind to understand their reflexive response to idolatry of the Bible.
There was indeed a first being that became aware of self and god and good and evil. I trace the ancestry of both my flesh and spirit directly through this ‘adam’ to god.
What god wrote in earth and man places this date this long before what man recorded in the Bible. I choose to believe what god wrote without the ‘help’ of man.
ItS
Peace
r~
Many will hear the Words, but few will serve In the Spirit.
Will somebody tell me again how big the Ark was? Because I’m thinking that two of every single animal on the earth was, like, a lot of animals…
Just curious, of course, since I understand from some of you that it isn’t an illustration but an actual event that really happened. Was it bigger than the Titanic? How long did it take one guy and his sons to build it again? And where did they get the enormous amount of wood required for this? I’m thinking maybe there wasn’t a cedar twig left in Lebanon or something…
Anybody wanna help a mama out?
:: sighing ::
I have explained this before, but okay.
When Yahweh decided to massacre every living being on Earth, including the newborn babies who had committed the supreme sin of being alive during one of his hissy fits, he knew Noah and the boys would not be able to construct appropriate emergency facilities and escape vehicles. Therefore he sent a message that that wonderful fellow Fabulous Creature, who immediately hied back to the Bronze Age with a Cosmic Cube powered from Reed Richards. Using the Cube’s reallity warping powers, FC saved a breeding sample of animals and plants in between seconds of the clock, at the same time creating an illusion so that Noah & Co. thought they were able to build the Ark with their own hands in the allotted time and also storing provisions in a tesseract accessible from the third level rumpus room. Okay?
Yeesh.
Main info in Genesis 6:
Three-hundred cubits long, thirty high, fifty wide.
What’s a cubit? as some comic might ask. 
Basically, a forearm length- some have theorized about there being a regular cubit (wrist to elbow) and a royal/sacred cubit (tip of the finger to elbow), so it would be by modern standards about 18 to 24 inches.
Dimensions of Ark: 450’l x 45’h x 75’w to 600x60x100
Titanic dimensions:
“Length over all: 882ft.
breadth, extreme 92ft. 6in.
depth, moulded keel to top of beam, bridge deck, 73ft. 6in.
total height from keel to navigating bridge, 194ft.”
So 882’x194’x92.5’
God decides to give humanity 120 years to repent, apparently lets Noah know then, Noah’s three sons are born 20 years later, Flood comes 100 years after that.
Also, if Noah was a wealthy man, others may well have been hired on to help, regardless of their disbelief in his message.
I believe the Flood was local from Eurasia to perhaps as far as western China. They did have to collect lots of animals (one pair of each unclean, seven pairs of each clean) but only those native to that region AND, some have speculated, also gave passage to non-Adamic peoples who joined with them, with Noah’s family being the only Adamites.
Also, the Pre-Flood Mideast may have been quite well-forested.
And to your previous post, you’re welcome!
Such massive gaps- perhaps.
Not just a simple matter of knowing basic right from wrong, the Covenant-couple Adam & Eve, selected by God as the first of His children and placed in His special zoological garden Eden, would become aware & enamored of all the possibilities of rebellion against their Father and yet also ashamed at having their now-rebellious selves exposed before Him. Their self-consciousness manifests most primitively as shame at their nudity.
God likes big dramatic lessons. A massive civilization-destroying disaster with one haven floating above it all is much more dramatic than- “Hey you folk, move a few hundred miles away for a while.”
When I say “local”, I still mean one that affected to some degree everything from the Mediterranean to western China. Receding would take a while, esp if they were at the center of the activity.
They were the only ones to re-populate the Earth/land… with Adamites, who, IF there were non-Adamites around, would assimilate the non-Adamites (“resistance IS futile”), which is why I don’t buy the racist variant of the Adamites/non-Adamites idea.
Re the longevity of pre-Flood patriarchs- shrug Why not?
I love this board.
Thank you also for the brief.
Mount Ararat is 15,000 feet high (some think the ark is still there), in order for that to be true there would had had to have a flood of at least 15,000 feet; if the entire earth was covered with water it would mean at least 29,000 feet as I believe that is the height of Everest. The water would have had to come down so hard in 40 days that no air could have been in the Ark at least not enough to keep that many animals and people alive for nearly a year, All plant life would have been killed under such pressure. The evaporation process would have made for a lot of humidity and where a palm tree could come from on Mt.Ararat is another question.
Monavis
I don’t believe the ark necessarily rested on THE Mt. Ararat, nor do I believe the entire earth was covered (the word is just as easily translated “land”), nor did all the water come from a 40-day rain but from geological upheavals.
That’s easy. All the other animals evolved from those crammed in various numbers on the Ark via a process of natural selection.
That’s not really realistic considering the Bible gives details of each generation. To think that there is a gap of a couple hundred thousand years of generations is a little ridiculous.
With shame of nudity only occurring about 6,000 years ago?
So, God chose the much more difficult solution for one of his good prophets because He’s a drama queen?
There would be scientific evidence of such a flood. AFAIK there isn’t any.
The Earth is not sysnonymous with land. The Bible says the Earth.
Because it’s scientifically impossible?
The geneology of the Japanese emperor is claimed to trace from the sun goddess Amaterasu. The first emperor is said to be her great-great-great grandson. Are we to accept that as well?