Sunday School And A Worldwide Flood (Pt.3)

[Grudunza]

I believe very much in a God of miracles, but I also believe that He is a God of laws, who is bound by the physical laws of the universe (and His faithful adherence to them is part of what makes him a God, as Brigham Young has described). There are many things we can do today which people a few centuries ago would call "miracles." As Pres. Uchtdorf described in Conference recently, some ancient rulers would have given up their entire kingdoms for one ride in an airplane. And there are many things that we are continuously discovering and learning to tap into and harness which someday may include spontaneous healing/regeneration, water manipulation (for walking or parting), teleportation, liquid alchemy (e.g., water to wine), etc. So did and does God work miracles? Absolutely. But can they be explained by some natural process or scientific law? Yes, though we may not begin to understand how that works at this time.

I take some scriptural accounts like the Flood as being literal, but with a poetic purpose and with a "telephone/grapevine" aspect attached. Did God inspire a man to warn others about an impending disaster and build a vessel to protect himself and his family and all of his livestock? Sure, that's reasonable. And as the story grew, it become Hollywood ("based on a true story"), with a worldwide flood and two of *every* animal. But the importance of the story is still the same... repent, have faith and obedience, preach the Gospel, protect your family, etc.

Would I share all of that in Gospel Doctrine? Not unless the right lead-in question were asked of the class. But I probably wouldn't offer it. A handful of people in class would appreciate it and agree, but I think most would bristle.

Edited February 8, 2014 by Grudunza

[bcuzbcuz]

In the temple in Taiwan you can do proxy work for families where grandparents were born pre-flood, parents were born during flood (approx.) and children were born post flood. That is based on the churches Old Testament handbook chronological timeframe for the flood estimate. Those families don't seem too disrupted by the global flood.

 

I didn't realize that people in Taiwan could check their genealogy back to the flood.

[Flyonthewall]

From what I read, it all boils down to - "There was no global flood because science cannot prove it"....? really?

Science does not dictate my religious beliefs.

I have always believed that true science and true religion go hand in hand and will be in harmony.

My religious beliefs may be at odds with science at times, but that is because I believe science hasn't gotten to the point to recognize the evidence, or it has not been revealed that an event was actually a myth/fable/parable/allegory/figurative or just plain made up.

Until science and my religious beliefs are in harmony, I leave it open...otherwise the scriptures are full of miracles that science cannot find evidence of.

I believe in a global flood because it is in the scriptures, and has been alluded to by other prophets. I realize that science is at a disagreement on its reality and that is okay.

Perhaps it started out as just a story that a parent told a child and took on its own life from there, I don't know.

Perhaps in a 1000 years anthropologists will be looking at Christianity like we now look at Greek mythology, time will tell.

Right now, we are supposed to live by faith.

faith [feyth] Show IPA

noun

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.

4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.

5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

[Rob Osborn]

Do you want to run that past me, one more time? Just which "so much evidence" are you referring to? You responded to the Egyptians and Chinese not noticing any global flood, so I assume you have something, evidence, etc., that indicates that the Egyptians of 2500 BC got wiped out by the global flood.

Surprisingly, it appears that if the Egyptians got wiped out, their society immediately sprang up again, same language, same culture, same pyramid building, right where they left off, and not so much as any water erosion or deposits on their previous buildings. If their whole nation of people got wiped out, where did they find all the workers to continue building pyramids?

One of the factors that enabled the Egyptian society to expand and devote so much effort and resources into huge projects like pyramids and temples....and their temples covered acres of land, with walls almost 2 kilometers long, ( over a mile long), were their storehouses of grains. A global flood would have wiped out their graineries, or at the least, have water damaged them beyond repair and usage, yet the Egyptian storehouses remained. The Egyptians have written about problems with rodents depleting their food stocks, but no where did they write about problems with water damage.

So, please, share this evidence you talk about.

Egypt didnt come into existence until after the flood. Whatever chronologies they may have can only be traced back to Noah. Anything else isnt correct.

[David T]

noun

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

 

 

I put in red how I consider Faith. Faith is IN someone. It is loyalty, and it is trust. Trust and loyalty are based on experiences. Trusting in and having Faith in God and in Christ does not mean you must believe everything said about him, or attributed to him. My faith is based on experience, and how God works. It does not involve affirming statements validity contrary to every single bit of data. That isn't faith. Or perhaps it is, but it isn't faith in God, it's faith in a principle of infallibility of written scripture, or infallibility of interpretation of scripture. I don't have faith abiding faith in those those.

 

There are doctrinal claims I have hope for, based on by Faith in God, and my experiences with Him. But accepting demonstrably true assertions of millennia old text that can be convincingly shown to be part of a mythic worldview and with all modern evidence pointing to the contrary, and recognizing that it has nothing to do with my or my family's or humanity's personal progression to becoming more Christ like - well, I expect my energy elsewhere, and assume that God isn't a giant trixter. That's not consistent with the God I express Faith in.

[Rivers]

Egypt didnt come into existence until after the flood. Whatever chronologies they may have can only be traced back to Noah. Anything else isnt correct.

So when do you think the flood happened?

[thesometimesaint]

Egypt didnt come into existence until after the flood. Whatever chronologies they may have can only be traced back to Noah. Anything else isnt correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_millennium_BC

[Rivers]

The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphics date to about 3200 b.c. So a global flood had to have happened before then.

[Flyonthewall]

I put in red how I consider Faith. Faith is IN someone. It is loyalty, and it is trust. Trust and loyalty are based on experiences. Trusting in and having Faith in God and in Christ does not mean you must believe everything said about him, or attributed to him. My faith is based on experience, and how God works. It does not involve affirming statements validity contrary to every single bit of data. That isn't faith. Or perhaps it is, but it isn't faith in God, it's faith in a principle of infallibility of written scripture, or infallibility of interpretation of scripture. I don't have faith abiding faith in those those.

 

There are doctrinal claims I have hope for, based on by Faith in God, and my experiences with Him. But accepting demonstrably true assertions of millennia old text that can be convincingly shown to be part of a mythic worldview and with all modern evidence pointing to the contrary, and recognizing that it has nothing to do with my or my family's or humanity's personal progression to becoming more Christ like - well, I expect my energy elsewhere, and assume that God isn't a giant trixter. That's not consistent with the God I express Faith in.

Whether it was a global flood, local flood or just a heavy rainstorm, I don't know for sure, and it doesn't really matter to me... as you say, it has nothing(directly) to do with our progression.

There is a risk taken to relegate all scripture to "millennia old text that can be convincingly shown to be part of a mythic worldview and with all modern evidence pointing to the contrary"...

I guess it depends on what we choose to believe or not believe.

[Kenngo1969]

Hey, "Fly"!

 

I was starting to worry someone'd swatted you!  Good to "Cyber-see" you again!

[Rob Osborn]

So when do you think the flood happened?

About 2,400 BC give or take a few hundred years

[Rob Osborn]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_millennium_BC

This chronology isn't based on scriptural chronology

[thesometimesaint]

Whether it was a global flood, local flood or just a heavy rainstorm, I don't know for sure, and it doesn't really matter to me... as you say, it has nothing(directly) to do with our progression.

There is a risk taken to relegate all scripture to "millennia old text that can be convincingly shown to be part of a mythic worldview and with all modern evidence pointing to the contrary"...

I guess it depends on what we choose to believe or not believe.

 

I find comfort in the stories told in the Scriptures, but no I don't believe they are all literal fact.

[thesometimesaint]

This chronology isn't based on scriptural chronology

 

So? Scriptural chronology isn't particularly useful for anything but Scripture.

[Rivers]

Scriptural chronology is useful when you begin with the assumption that the book of Genesis is completely historical, literal, and infallible. This is the assumption that all of Kent Ham's views are based on. It's a backward way of doing science.

Edited February 8, 2014 by Rivers

[bcuzbcuz]

This chronology isn't based on scriptural chronology

 The scriptural chronology that you reference has people living more than 900 years/per person. Noah is reported to be 500 years old when he fathered Ham, Shem and Japheth. The flood (and all their work on building an ark) would be when Noah was 600 years old and Ham and his brothers would be 100 years old each. How many 100 year olds do you know that can put in hard labor to building the biggest wooden boat ever built?

 

Then after they stepped off the ark, Ham would father the Egyptian nation, by your account. How many kids would he and his wife raise, considering they're over 100 years old? If, as you say, Egypt didn't exist prior to this, the Egyptian population would have started with two people and then swelled to 10,000 pyramid workers, plus supporting staff. According to the records the Egyptians kept themselves, only a small percentage of the population could be freed up from farm labor to build temples and pyramids. How many generations would the population need to grow from two, 100 year old parents, to a nation capable of building the largest stone structures on the earth? 

 

You can do the math yourself.  The rate of population growth at any instant is given by the equation

 

dN _{= rN}

dt

where

• r is the rate of natural increase in
• t — some stated interval of time, and
• N is the number of individuals in the population at a given instant.

The algebraic solution of this differential equation is N = N₀e^rt where

• N₀ is the starting population
• N is the population after
• a certain time, t, has elapsed, and
• e is the constant 2.71828... (the base of natural logarithms).

 

According to: 

 

http://ronconte.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/adam-and-eve-versus-evolution/

 

it would take 15 generations to reach a population of 32,000. He doesn't publish his growth rate calculation but if he's even ballpark, then Egypt couldn't have started building pyramids until the year 2000 BC.  

 

2000 BC just isn't enough time. Too many kings, too many temples, too many pyramids, too many wars. You've designed a box too small for all the parts to fit.

[David T]

 The scriptural chronology that you reference has people living more than 900 years/per person. Noah is reported to be 500 years old when he fathered Ham, Shem and Japheth. The flood (and all their work on building an ark) would be when Noah was 600 years old and Ham and his brothers would be 100 years old each. How many 100 year olds do you know that can put in hard labor to building the biggest wooden boat ever built?

 

The ages also aren't consistent with the earliest strands of the narrative. The combined JE, for example, doesn't even give the impression that the Ark took 100 years to build, or that Abraham and Sarah are 'bout 100 at the time of Isaac. The Abimelech story doublet is particularly weird if it shows Abimelech lusting after a 100 year old Sarah, and then a few chapters later, is lusting after Isaac's wife Rebekah. Years were attached in later strands, and attached also to family lines which are contradictory to those in the earlier versions. (Doesn't look like Seth existed in the earliest strand ! It went Adam -> Cain -> Lamech -> Methuselah -> Noah. Everyone descended from Noah in this version was also a descendant of Cain! Notice how Cain has a line that has the same basic names as Seths, even with Enoch building a city? That's a hint that something's wonky in the editing! Ages and dating in Genesis are not at all reliable historical markers.)

Edited February 8, 2014 by David T

[Rob Osborn]

So? Scriptural chronology isn't particularly useful for anything but Scripture.

Yeah, for Darwinian evolutionists its just a nice mythology.

[David T]

Yeah, for Darwinian evolutionists its just a nice mythology.

 

Or a useful teaching framework and tool for understanding the nature of revelation and God's relationship with His people for those who interested in understanding the scripture in its cultural context, and how it was crafted, and how God might be found in it even if it isn't designed to be compatible with 21st Century scientific revelation.

 

Not believing Genesis is an historical or scientific textbook DOES NOT EQUAL writing it off as a theologically useless fairy tale.

Edited February 8, 2014 by David T

[Rob Osborn]

The scriptural chronology that you reference has people living more than 900 years/per person. Noah is reported to be 500 years old when he fathered Ham, Shem and Japheth. The flood (and all their work on building an ark) would be when Noah was 600 years old and Ham and his brothers would be 100 years old each. How many 100 year olds do you know that can put in hard labor to building the biggest wooden boat ever built?

 

Then after they stepped off the ark, Ham would father the Egyptian nation, by your account. How many kids would he and his wife raise, considering they're over 100 years old? If, as you say, Egypt didn't exist prior to this, the Egyptian population would have started with two people and then swelled to 10,000 pyramid workers, plus supporting staff. According to the records the Egyptians kept themselves, only a small percentage of the population could be freed up from farm labor to build temples and pyramids. How many generations would the population need to grow from two, 100 year old parents, to a nation capable of building the largest stone structures on the earth? 

 

You can do the math yourself.  The rate of population growth at any instant is given by the equation

 

dN _{= rN}dt

where

• r is the rate of natural increase in
• t — some stated interval of time, and
• N is the number of individuals in the population at a given instant.

The algebraic solution of this differential equation is N = N₀e^rt where

• N₀ is the starting population
• N is the population after
• a certain time, t, has elapsed, and
• e is the constant 2.71828... (the base of natural logarithms).

 

According to: 

 

http://ronconte.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/adam-and-eve-versus-evolution/

 

it would take 15 generations to reach a population of 32,000. He doesn't publish his growth rate calculation but if he's even ballpark, then Egypt couldn't have started building pyramids until the year 2000 BC.  

 

2000 BC just isn't enough time. Too many kings, too many temples, too many pyramids, too many wars. You've designed a box too small for all the parts to fit.

And then the rains came down. Where would you have been if you lived in Naoh's day- a true believer or a naysayer? Everyone must have laughed when Noah went around warning everyone about the flood.

You can do all the complicated math you want on population estimates. All we know, as LDS is that Egypt came into existence through Ham's lineage afterthe flood by Egyptus. We would bestupid to assume we know anything about how old people really used to live in ancient times.

[Bikeemikey]

Egypt didnt come into existence until after the flood. Whatever chronologies they may have can only be traced back to Noah. Anything else isnt correct.

The same can not be said for the Chinese and Indian (as in the subcontinent) societies.

They can be reached back to before the flood - assuming the OT manual has the date roughly correct.

[Rob Osborn]

Or a useful teaching framework and tool for understanding the nature of revelation and God's relationship with His people for those who interested in understanding the scripture in its cultural context, and how it was crafted, and how God might be found in it even if it isn't designed to be compatible with 21st Century scientific revelation.

 

Not believing Genesis is an historical or scientific textbook DOES NOT EQUAL writing it off as a theologically useless fairy tale.

But yet chalking up every major chronologic historical event in the bible as myth as some surmise is worse? Whats next? Does Christ himself get chalked up as a villian?

[David T]

But yet chalking up every major chronologic historical event in the bible as myth as some surmise is worse? Whats next? Does Christ himself get chalked up as a villian?

 

This is comparing apples to grashoppers, man. Understanding genre and culture is important. The Gospels, and the NT Epistles are of a completely different genre and compositional history than the Genesis texts and stories. The Genesis stories as we have them were written thousands of years following the proported events as the foundational stories of the Solomonic Kingdom. No one is even claiming to be an eyewitness. 

 

That's like saying if the story of Paul Bunyan is myth, therefore we might as well say that Abraham Lincoln was a villain!

 

And to Abe's opposition, he was seen that way. But not because of the veracity of the Paul Bunyan story. And to some of the Jewish sects, and even to some today, Jesus was seen as a villain too. But not because of the composition of Genesis.

Edited February 8, 2014 by David T

[Rob Osborn]

This is comparing apples to grashoppers, man. Understanding genre and culture is important. The Gospels, and the NT Epistles are of a completely different genre and compositional history than the Genesis texts and stories. The Genesis stories as we have them were written thousands of years following the proported events as the foundational stories of the Solomonic Kingdom. No one is even claiming to be an eyewitness. 

 

That's like saying if the story of Paul Bunyan is myth, therefore we might as well say that Abraham Lincoln was a villain!

 

And to Abe's opposition, he was seen that way. But not because of the veracity of the Paul Bunyan story. And to some of the Jewish sects, and even to some today, Jesus was seen as a villain too. But not because of the composition of Genesis.

I see things like the global flood as being true and it bothers me that we live in a world that is ever increasing to discount all of genesis as myth. That troubles me a lot.

[David T]

I see things like the global flood as being true and it bothers me that we live in a world that is ever increasing to discount all of genesis as myth. That troubles me a lot.

 

If it turned out Genesis was mostly mythical material used by God to speak to nascent Israel in their language, context,  and needs, and that God has approved our adapting and updating the stories to speak to us in our day ... would it cause you to discount your personal experiences and faith in Christ? If so, why?