Does a global flood make the whole Bible less credible? Davis Young, an Evangelical and geologist, wrote?

Question

"The maintenance of modern creationism and Flood geology not only is useless apologetically with unbelieving scientists, it is harmful. Although many who have no scientific training have been swayed by creationist arguments, the unbelieving scientist will reason that a Christianity that believes in such nonsense must be a religion not worthy of his interest. . . . Modern creationism in this sense is apologetically and evangelistically ineffective. It could even be a hindrance to the gospel.

"Another possible danger is that in presenting the gospel to the lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem to be false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has given. Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is done. . . ."

Chris--as you say--if God is not bound by natural law and can do anything he wants--then you just totally agreed with the point that if he wanted the bible written allegorically, it was his perogative. there are no instructions anywhere in the bible that it is to be taken literally. Thanks for your agreement with me.

lol Whitehorse--your sticking your head in the sand response reminded me of the 15th century catholic churchs position with regards to the earths position in the solar system.

Answer 1

As Scott Huse has said, “In the field every conceivable contradiction to the proposed ideal sequence of the geologic column is found.” They are constantly having to explain away things like:

-The Cambrian explosion (where we have the sudden appearance of all these diverse and fully formed animals in the fossil record, with no evolutionary ancestors).

-Or fossils too low or too high in the geologic column.

-Or polystrate fossils (fossils that extent through several layers of strata).

-Or sedimentary strata found in the wrong stratigraphic order.

-Or missing strata.

-Or thousands of feet of strata that is bent and folded without cracking (which must have happened while it was all still wet).

-Or strata that lacks any erosion features with smooth lines between the layers.

-Or strata that are supposed to be many millions of years apart that are inter-bedded.

-Or out-of-place human artifacts (Cremo and Thompson have done a thorough job of listing some out-of-place artifacts in their book, Forbidden Archeology).

-Or “living fossils” (animals and plants that supposedly lived hundreds of millions of years ago that forgot to evolve and look the same as they do today).

-Or Dinosaur soft tissue being found (as they did in March of 2005); how could soft tissue and cells remain so relatively fresh for the tens of millions of years of supposed evolutionary history?

Before you criticize, you need to read some of this:
http://www.BiblicalGeology.net
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/flood.asp

Answer 2

There is no evidence of a world flood in geology. It is not there. There are too many places in the world that do not show evidence of there ever being a flood.

That goes against the bible. The people who say that the bible is 100% correct end up looking a bit silly because of this. Those who demand that the bible is 100% correct look insane.

Part of the problem is that this is one of the children's stories that the kids love so much. The idea of a big flood killing all of the bad guys and a few people saving all of the animals from it is good reading to a little kid. There is a reason why there are so many toys and children's books about Noah and the flood. It is marketing to get the kids on board with the religion thing. Now, later, the kid grows up and starts to learn of the world and starts to learn of science and begins to understand that story just does not add up. There is something wrong with it. Most will just toss the idea aside and tell themselves that part of the bible might be exagerated. Some will start to question the bible. Some will start to ignore anything that contradicts the bible. Those are the ones who are doing christianity the most damage. They make outlandish claims and try to push non-scientific ideas as science. They want to replace science with their own stories so that there is no longer a contradiction. These are the people who get the most press and make christianity look pretty bad. A lot of the world is really frowning upon the christians of the US and their push to make creationism a science.

Answer 3

I know when I was in 6th grade, these questions began to trouble me. I was told how important it is to tell the truth and was shown how important is is to be logical, but when it came to this funny book, they seemed to throw all that out of the window. In addition, I knew the subject was one of the most important of all, since knowing what God expected of me was vital to my eternal safety! Talk about pressure! I don't believe I was such an unusual case concerning these topics and at about 7th grade, I decided the whole thing was purposely being distorted and evaded for emotional reasons. I became an agnostic until C.S. Lewis presented me with a logical defense of Christianity. I did not discover until many years later that he was defending a kind of Taoism and not Christianity. I still think the fundamentalist defense of any religion is its own worst argument and turns the majority of people away from the religion.

Answer 4

One thing we can say about Evolution.. even though it is still just a theory there is a lot more evidance that points to evolution then just the Bible claiming creationism. Not to mention the Bible has been edited, and "translated" so many times the original version has been forever lost...

Answer 5

Relax. It's just the pig-ignorant-and-proud-of-it Fundamentalist types that spout that creationist nonsense.

They have a real problem with evolution because it presupposes an actually ALMIGHTY God; that is, One who can do whatever He wants whatever way He wants to do it. And when you're dedicated to the proposition that there's nothing you can't figure out about God, well...
A God that powerful just isn't going to fit neatly in a little box you can carry around and haul out on holidays and special occasions.

Answer 6

The split in science camps is their disbelief in "Catastrophism" and their belief in "Uniformitarianism."

Hydroplate theory-Ice comet hitting the Earth-quick sedimentation of fossils-freezing mammoths suddenly-Earth scarring by floods-biggest climate change ever @5500 years ago-frozen cromagnon man in France about 6000 years ago-Sea life fossils in mountain peaks-mountains made in a relative blink of an eye-the abundance of fresh water on polar caps and lush vegetation below them-fossils with man and sabortooth tigers and dinosaur footprints. The Pangea puzzle-the relative low population of the Earth given millions of years of existence-lack of ancient geological evidence for adequate oxygen supply to sustain life. These facts cannot be included in a Uniformitarian view.

Your "conclusive" evidence doesn't take any of these facts into account.

Answer 7

A Christian collegue of mine and a scientist once told me, it is not evolution that makes people become atheist. It is biblical literalism and creationism that makes intelligent people who want to truly investigate earth's geology and history turn against the bible and by extension the Christian religion.

Mark my words, there will be a HUGE backlash of growing atheism from young people kept at home to be sheltered from learning about evolutionary science, when they attempt or finally get exposed to outside knowledge that makes them feel totally unprepared, ignorant and conflicted.

Answer 8

I have the impression that due to Mr. Young's own inabilities, perhaps his own self-doubt, he has expressed such an opinion.
He is not the first, nor the last to have made mistakes which led to abandonment of Bible truths.

Answer 9

Are you saying we should try to win over the world by using worldly arguments and denying the word of God?? I trust that God will do as He has said....when He declared, "I will make foolishness the wisdom of the world."

*Edit: The Catholic church has had many bad interpretations of God's word over the years...please don't credit those interpretations to me or other Christians...

Answer 10

No, it makes Bible more credible, there are people that explain that flood did happen. For exapmple, doctor Kent Hovind explains it well.
You can go to http://www.drdino.com/downloads.php and download his video The Hovind Theory on it he explains what happened and that the Bible is credible and the truth.

You can also go to http://www.drdino.com/drdinoLinks.php and find more.