@mitchellmckain@AntoineSuarez While I consider the dialog between you two to be of interest in the search for means of reconciling Science with Christian Faith [in this case the ‘miracle’ of the biblical global Flood], forgive me if I think it may obfuscate how we view the nature of our Creator–namely that He is the essence of empathy and love. I find quantum physics no more convincing in this regard than the metaphysics of the Middle Ages. I just hope I am in the minority in this matter, and that evangelical Christians will not be put off, thinking that one must reach your level of scientific understanding (i.e. Quantum Physics that even Einstein could’t comprehend) to see that science really does support Christian Faith.
@mitchellmckain I agree (mostly) with your view of the miraculous. I have shared on this Forum two such important events in my life that were ‘against a million to one’ odds’ but did not violate the Laws of Nature. The first occurrence allowed me at least 75 yrs. more of life, and the second allowed God to work through me to reconcile a non-Christian colleague to his wife and family. For me, this reinforced my belief in a God of Love, just as it proved the story in the OT of God’s (miraculous???) decision to obliterate all humankind (except Noah’s family) to be–not merely false–but actually evil, since the majority of Christians believe it literally. God doesn’t make mistakes. But he allows us to.
Al Leo
For the most part, at this point we are just trying to get a handle on the differences in our points of view and it is more about the metaphysical implications of the science than anything else. I don’t think ether of us are looking for support of the Christian faith in science – we would be happy with simply a compatibility between the two.
And I would never say that the person with a Nobel prize for his contribution to the beginning of quantum physics could not comprehend quantum physics. To be sure it has been a game changer and something which we have been struggling to understand through most of Einstien’s life, with some rather crucial developments after his death (including both the Bell inequality experiments and chaotic dynamics).
Do you also believe that God could not be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs because that would be evil? Do you believe surgeons are evil for removing those cancer tumors?
Have you seen the film “Legion?” It makes an interesting basis for comparison. In the film God decides to exterminate the human race because He “got tired of all the BS.” As much as I like the film, I certainly do not believe in the God portrayed in that film as so terribly needy and lacking in faith. In the case of that film, I would very much agree that this is an act of an evil god. But that is nothing like the story I read in Genesis about the flood. When you read the whole story, it becomes clear that this was not a matter of God getting angry with us or losing faith in mankind (like in the movie). It was in fact to HELP us rather than to hurt us. If anything God was appalled at what he was required to do for OUR sake. If anything He wasn’t sure we were worth the cost to Earth and living things which died just so we would have a second chance to make a life that wasn’t a misery to everyone in it. Have you really thought through what this description implies: “The Lord saw that wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” That is not a world I would ever want to live in. And if this world ever becomes like that then I think people will be praying that God would quickly put an end to it.
I heartily thank you for this thoughtful post! Each point deserves detailed discussion.
To start with I quote the following one:
My search for an interpretation of the Flood narrative in Genesis 9:3-6 that is consistent with the New Testament and the available scientific data, started three years ago. My first explanation was precisely the “alternative” you “add” in your post and I emphasize in bold.
I was searching for a local Flood according to your description:
Indeed, your description fits perfectly the teaching of Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and the Letter to the Hebrews, who invoke Noah’s Flood in the context of the prophecies regarding the End Times. From their teaching I conclude that in Noah’s Flood all accountable humans living on Earth at that time, except 8 (Noah and his family), perished in this catastrophe.
Accordingly, I was interested in a local Flood capable of wiping out the about 200,000 people who may have lived in the five first City-states in Sumer around 3,000 BC.
The following article convinced me that there was no such a local Flood:
The best candidate would undoubtedly be the great flood affecting the city of Ur. However, you cannot find any vestige of this flood in Eridu, only 7 miles away! Similar objections hold for other “Mesopotamian local floods”.
In summary, if the Genesis Flood was a real historic event, it was one that did not let any observable trace in our ordinary world, so that nobody is bound to believe it happened if she/he does not trust Scripture and does not believe God was involved. And according to you this is the very mark of miracles:
You consider miracles “everyday events in the ordinary physical reality”. I agree this hold for a number of miracles, but claim that certain miracles like Pentecost, the Transfiguration, and the Dancing Sun involve observers perceiving an extraordinary physical reality different from and parallel to the ordinary one. In any case, according to your definition of “miracles” above, it seems that the Flood was one. And this is what I claim too.
The evidence shows that homo sapiens species migrated around the world much earlier than this. And the stories of A&E and their family are told in the context of a surrounding population of people as well.
I had already checked out that site myself several times and quite the contrary it shows that there was plenty of evidence for several local floods. Any of them or a flood even earlier could easily have been the real historical event behind the story in the Bible. The website itself is focused on discounting the claims of creationists and excessively literal treatments of the Biblical text (which I guess is what you are having a problem with, but I do not). It also speaks about the survival of a written account from earlier floods but not about the survival of an oral tradition from such times.
I would certainly rule out floods where there was a cultural continuity so I don’t think the ones later than the 3,500 BC are good candidates. And once you are not looking for a written account, one can easily find much more catastrophic nearby floods from an earlier time such as 7,500 years ago or even 20,000 years ago. And in an oral tradition the details from later floods can be easily be added to the story of an earlier flood.
The transfiguration was indeed a totally spiritual experience, the Pentacost only partially so, and the dancing sun can have many physical explanations. I think all of these are well within the range of experiences people have in religion around the world. Thus I see no reason to imagine any extra-ordinary physical reality.
P.S. Since we are simply repeating ourselves there is no point in continuing this discussion any more. We simply do not agree (and certainly have different expectations of both science and the Bible) and we will have to leave it at that.
Tired of @AntoineSuarez requests that I repeat myself again and again concerning the flood, I have decided to examine and make a response to the OP.
I do not believe in a God given “soul.” I believe in a spiritual aspect of our existence which grows from the physical as a tree grows from a seed, according to the description of Paul in 1 Cor 15. When you try to find a Biblical source for this belief in a God given soul I found nothing but counterexamples. Wikipedia goes to Genesis 2:7 and there is no basis for this belief there. And indeed that is not how read the text there either. The divine breath is the meaning of the word “inspiration” and that is what I see described in that text and not any magical “life” stuff (which we know from science does not exist) nor any pre-existent spiritual entity like the Greeks, Gnostics, and other believers in reincarnation or transmigration of souls. The divine breath has to do with the human mind which is just as physical/natural as the body and does not represent the gifting of anything non-physical or spiritual.
Yes the body is a biological entity which evolved (but not without God’s involvement) and God gave the inspiration which brought the human mind to life. That is how I read Genesis 2:7. This represents two inheritances for mankind, a genetic one from our brethren in the animal kingdom and a memetic one from God which make us literally His children. However that memetic inheritance has been corrupted by the addition of self-destructive habits which we call sin. And this inheritance passed to the rest of the species very quickly by human communication and so no genetic descent is required.
The spirit is something else entirely and is a product of our own choices and thus entirely of our own creation – where we alone are responsible for it. To make this possible is the reason for the creation of the physical universe – to give birth to children who are not simply what God made them to be (like the angels), but have a life and existence of their own.
Thus the characterization by Thomas is not quite right. If there were two populations then it was one which was human, children of God, but fallen into sin, and another which were only homo sapiens, with only the biological inheritance, with the potential for humanity to be sure, but lacking the crucial understanding that makes us human. There was never any question of wiping out His children and starting over. Parents do not think that way. There was only a parent’s response to the complete hopeless misery into which mankind had fallen and which He could no longer stand by and watch doing nothing. So after wiping out the civilization which locked mankind into a self-destructive pattern, we see God employing the same strategy by which our bodies evolved in the competition between civilizations. This limited the self-destructive tendencies because nations without some degree of integrity would not be able to compete.
I consider this to be as absurd as a magical “life” stuff added to inanimate bodies in order to make them alive (science gives us no reason to believe in any such thing). Original sin comes to us in the same package as our humanity with the memetic inheritance we get through human communication. This idea that God transmits any sin to people is not only preposterous but monstrous. I cannot believe in a God like that.
I employ a very similar reasoning to the concept of atonement by Jesus death on the cross. There is no magical power of human sacrifice or any divine justice system by which the innocent can pay for our sins. There is only our own perversity that we will not change until we see the innocent suffer because of our own choices and actions (if even that is enough).
In the Universe we can find today evidence demonstrating the Big-Bang, an event 13.77 billion years ago, the so called Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation!
More important: We have also clear archeological and geological evidence for many local floods in Mesopotamia at about 3,500 BC and later.
In previous posts in this thread I have argued that God made the first Homo sapiens creatures into “accountable humans in the image of God” at about 3,300 BC (the emergence of writing and civilization in Sumer), so that we can date the Genesis Flood at about 3,000 BC.
In this catastrophe perished all the genealogical descendants of the first humans in the image of God, Noah and his family excepted. This about 200,000 people were the sinners living in the area of man’s first civilization, in South Mesopotamian. Outside this area there were no sinners because Homo sapiens creatures in other regions of Earth were not yet transformed into accountable persons in the image of God.
At the end of the Flood God transformed the several million Homo sapiens living all over the earth into Mankind in the image of God : It is the episode related in Genesis 9:3-6. And since this very moment each Homo sapiens on earth shares the status of “image of God”, even if most of them are not genealogical descendants of the first Image bearers (“Adam and Eve”).
This description makes it clear that none of the Mesopotamian local floods (neither the great Ur flood nor later ones, affecting each of them at most a city at a time) can be equated to the Flood of the magnitude described in Genesis 6-9.
Accordingly, if we keep to the teaching of Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and the Letter to the Hebrews, and acknowledge that Noah’s Flood was a real historic event , we have to rule out the possibility that it was an event we can demonstrate as we demonstrate the Big Bang or the great Ur flood. We should rather conclude that it was an event that worked like the exterminations narrated in:
2 Kings 19:35 : The angel kills 185,000 men of Sennacherib’s Assyrian army, thereby saving Hezekiah’s Jerusalem.
2 Samuel 24:15-16 : The LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning until the appointed time, and 70,000 men of the people from Dan to Beersheba died.
That is an event that did not let any observable trace in the world we live today.
We will never know if this experimental evidence (obtained after Einstin’s death) would have made him more comfortable with Quantum Physics. Probably it would have. But would it have changed his ‘metaphysical’ belief that “God doesn’t play dice.” ? I doubt it.
I would rather phrase this as: "God allowed the extinction of the dinosaurs as a natural evolution in the biosphere which would inevitably produce the Noosphere–the sphere of consciousness. It is a mistake to consider it evil. Not only did it open a niche for more rapid evolution of mammals (and eventually us) but also lead to the evolution of birds, such as the colorful hummers that visit my feeder each morning.
[quote=“mitchellmckain, post:1305, topic:35442”]
this (the Biblical Flood)was not a matter of God getting angry with us or losing faith in mankind (like in the movie). It was in fact to HELP us rather than to hurt us. If anything God was appalled at what he was required to do for OUR sake. If anything He wasn’t sure we were worth the cost to Earth and living things which died just so we would have a second chance to make a life that wasn’t a misery to everyone in it. [his emphasis]
I was very surprised to see you suggest that God could be either appalled or required. In my worldview, God did NOT forsee or foreordain the physical form of the creature that could be considered 'made in His image. God set up evolution to lead to ever-increasing complexity and capability. This would inevitably would produce a brain/mind capable of a conscience, and thus capable of love, empathy, and compassion–God’s most significant attributes. Furthermore, to suggest that God ‘wasn’t sure we (humankind) was worth it’ goes 180 degrees against everything I have gathered from your past posts.
Can you clarify what I must have misunderstood?
Al Leo
All this accountability stuff along with the age of accountability idea used to make other aspects of the Christian worldview more palatable is all an artifact of too much emphasis on the judicial metaphor in the first place, as well as a legalistic gospel requiring you do something in order to be saved. I certainly don’t buy into such epicycle-like efforts to infuse more rationality into flawed thinking in such an ad-hoc way. A shift to the medical metaphor and a gospel of grace works better all around.
In other words, you don’t need to look for reasons to make exceptions for a general rule if this isn’t about punishing people for not doing something to be saved in the first place. If is all about sin being a degenerative disease then you don’t have to look for exception for those who don’t even have the disease (or at least not at a late stage in the illness).
I don’t doubt it. To be sure there are those who have stubbornly clung to such an idea. But Einstien always showed a willingness to accept that he had made a mistake. And I think it more likely that he would have gone with the scientific consensus. I am not alone in that opinion. Physicist David Kaiser says here, “My view is that Einstein was one of the first to discover the non-local consequences of quantum theory. He did not believe those consequences could be true.” If he had had the opportunity to witness the latest developments, Hanson continues, “he would have accepted these as facts of nature; he was a very smart man!”
Likewise if mankind developed a civilization that stood in the way of our development of the Noosphere, stood in the way of love, compassion, creativity, and the development of the rest of human potential, then it would be a mistake to say that destroying such a civilization is evil. From what I have seen in human history, I think that such a civilization is very much of a possibility.
Why? God is reported to be appalled or regretful in the Bible. And my repeated insistence about omnipotence not meaning that God can do whatever we say by whatever means we dictate, is all about God being required to follow the dictates of logical coherence in order to create anything real. If this is just a dream world then of course anything goes - but I do not think it is.
I have said essentially the same thing on this forum several times.
I do not think this is inevitable. I think there are numerous ways the process can get stuck in all kinds of dead ends. I think it was a rather delicate threading of a needle between the stagnation that can occur with either the excessive contentment of too much peace or the excessive anxiety of too much violence.
It is the Bible that suggests this, not me. And perhaps you have gathered the wrong thing from my posts – which has always been a confidence in the goodness of God and never in the worthiness of mankind.
Genesis 6:5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
Genesis 8:21 the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
You may see this as impossible given God’s purpose for creating the universe. I see the contradiction as a demonstration of the extreme anguish to which God had been driven - forced to do something quite distasteful to Him. But parents do this quite often (some of those diapers are really nasty).
That is the point; we cannot find specific evidence for a specific flood that specifically ties in with the biblical account.
The fact that Genesis shows God saw extraordinary wickedness and evil implies these people were accountable. So… a flood did occur and the world inhabited by such evil people was destroyed except for Noah and his family. The lesson is faith from Noah.
what else could be miraculous? One man held his faith in the face of such wickedness.
You appear to me to be seeking more than is provided in the Bible. You may be right on the size of populations of humans that we can estimate now, but I do not think Noah would have understood a round planet circling the sun with various animals and homo sapiens scattered throughout. It would have sounded like gibberish - and anyhow, who in those days would have such knowledge?
Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed
“That is, by the magistrate, or whoever is appointed to be the avenger of blood. Before the flood, as it should seem by the story of Cain, God took the punishment of murder into his own hands; but now he committed this judgment to men, to masters of families at first, and afterward to the heads of countries.”
So, Genesis 9:3-6 is rather the foundation of the “Rule of Law”, that is the principle that none is entitled to equate human to animal life, and kill a human being for one’s own benefit . And the reason is that “God made mankind in the image of God”. And this means, in particular, that legitimately constituted Courts always in the name of the universal human good are entitled to judge about crimes.
This principle is the foundation of any coherent morality and legal order. Getting rid of this principle is the greatest threat to the future humanity.
There is not good support in the Bible for the morality of “an eye for an eye,” which was advocated in Babylon. Instead there is Jesus’ criticism of this way of thinking. But even in the OT, Deuteronomy 19:21 was about bearing false witness to say that someone seeking to use the law as tool for inflicting harm on others should receive the harm they intended on themselves. And Exodus 21 was about the harm to a pregnant woman innocent bystander in acts of violence. In each case, it is demanding restraint and special care (with the law and with pregnant women), to say that for such things in particular there can be very little tolerance for misuse and carelessness.
What we have in Genesis 9:3-6 as elsewhere in the Bible is a good support for capital punishment. Opposition to this is more of a humanistic influence and thinking. Personally I support this not as an eye for an eye sort of standard but for dealing with predatory habits which I would describe as public menace.
Noah’s faith is undoubtedly an extraordinary free response of a human creature to God’s will, and in this sense can be called a “miracle of God’s grace”.
The Genesis’ Flood is “miraculous” in a different sense:
If we acknowledge that the Flood:
is a real historic event , as we are taught in the New Testament by Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and Hebrews’ Letter,
did happen at about 3000 BC in Sumer,
and has the magnitude described in Genesis for wiping out the entire population of genealogical descendants of the first Image bearers (“Adam and Eve”) after several generations,
then we should find specific evidence for it. And this means, remains demonstrating a flooding of at least the so called “antediluvian 5 city-states”.
However, as you very well state, there is no such specific evidence in our world today.
Therefore, Noah’s Flood is a real historic event that left no observable trace in the world we live today , and in this sense can be considered to be outside the physical reality we ordinarily experience, a miraculous event similar to the exterminations narrated in 2 Kings 19:35 and 2 Samuel 24:15-16.
In the region where Noah dwelled there were also genealogical descendants of “the sons of God”, the Nephilim, as reported in Genesis 6:2-4. This means Noah was aware that God was transforming adult Homo sapiens creatures into accountable humans in the image of God (“the sons of God”), the same way as God created the first human persons (“A&E”), although these “sons of God” were created by God lacking the state of original righteousness (contrarily to “A&E”).
Undoubtedly Noah had no knowledge about millions of Homo sapiens scattered throughout the planet in all continents. But the available data today suggest that at about 3000 BC the guestimate for the overall population of Homo sapiens is 10-14 million. So if you accept that the Flood is real and historic, and “only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water” as we are taught by St. Peter (1 Peter 3:20), then you have to explain why these 10-14 million creatures did not perish in the Flood.
In my view the more coherent explanation is that these creatures were not morally responsible and accountable, and therefore could not be sinners. By contrast the people affected by the Flood were “accountable wicked and evil people”, as you rightly state. So, only at the end of the Flood God made all Homo sapiens scattered throughout the planet to “mankind in the image of God”, that is, human beings capable of freely loving or rejecting God (but lacking the state of original righteousness).
This is the deep meaning of Genesis 9:3-6, where God establishes a radical difference of value between human and animal life, i.e.: proclaims the universal prohibition of homicide but allow humans to use animals for food. Genesis 9:3-6 marks the completion of the creation of mankind in the image of God , and the begin of humanity as it is today and will last forever.
One point that is relevant - God created all true humans in His image. The first humans who directly communed with God in a sacred place were A&E. From then those who heard from A&E would have some understanding. So genealogical descendants and those who were told about God are the relevant human beings.
Now, from this number only Noah had faith. I think that many of the wicked prerished from conflicts amongst them and the flood finished them.
On the contrary, @mitchellmckain, your view of the essence of God is closer to my own than any other’s I have encountered. Obviously you are trained in logic, and I am not–so I want to add to my vocabulary wherever it would help me get a point across. We both agree that the vocabulary used in the modern versions of the Bible ‘suggest’ erroneous visions of God’s omniscience and omnipotence.
In my earlier post I should have emphasized that I believe ‘evolutionary-diected humankind’ was inevitable, but possibly not on planet earth. My sense the words ‘omniscience of God’ does NOT include Him knowing that 150 million years of reptilian evolution was NOT leading toward production of humankind, and thus it was OK to wipe out most of them. It is wishful thinking, perhaps, to believe that He NOW thinks we ARE worth it. The NT account of Jesus’ life and death certainly supports that worldview, but my life’s personal experiences are even more impelling for me but, unfortunately, are not transferable to others as ‘ammunition’ for evangelism.
Al Leo
That sounds more like a Deist viewpoint. The theist viewpoint has God as participant rather than just a clock winder.
I think with both the destruction of the dinosaurs and the flood, it was about God shaking the system out of a developmental dead end. In the case of the dinosaurs, large voracious predators simply wasn’t conducive to the development of what He was looking for. It was an example of the excessive anxiety of too much violence which I mentioned before. In the case of the flood it was more a matter of social development rather than evolution, which was still very important in order to get where God intended.
In the matter of who deserves the sobriquet ‘Deist’, I believe God participates in human affairs more subtly than you credit Him with. I reserve judgement on whether He intended to eliminate large reptiles because they weren’t ‘going anywhere’ towards His purpose. Of much greater importance is your contention that God caused a devastating Flood because human society was not headed in the direction He intended. Lacking any scientific support, the only credence for such a worldwide flood would be to take, as historically factual, the OT account written and preserved by Israelites who had a specific axe to grind. (Just as they were successful in branding the Moabites as descending from incestual intercourse. Question: Is it possible that some of the current animosity between Israelis and Palestinians could have roots this ancient?)
In terms of God favoring certain societies over others, I have often wondered about the ancient Egyptians (whose history, incidentally, does not support a Biblical flood). My logic would predict that God would favor a society that believed in monotheism rather than polytheism. It seems strange, then, that when the pharaoh, Akhenaten, tried to force monotheism onto his people, he failed miserably. Is their any evidence to support the premise that Akhenaten’s ideas migrated to Israel and became the basis of the belief in a ‘chosen people’? I’ve often hoped so.
Al Leo
Absolutely. If (or since) he is omnitemporal, then how he affects events and their timing and placing in our sequential time is a mystery, a wonderful one, because we know he intervenes in providence.
Meaning the Bible is nothing but outright lies and racist propaganda. Guess we will have to disagree on that one. The participation of God in human affairs is subtle in the Bible but not as subtle as you are suggesting.
There is plenty of scientific support for numerous catastrophic floods. But in the end the lack of whatever scientific support you may imagine is needed is as irrelevant as the lack of scientific support for the existence of God or for millions of missing links in the evolutionary chain. It is all a matter of what evidence should be expected. For a worldwide flood we certainly have reason to expect evidence. But for local flood wiping out the very first human civilization (we don’t exactly know where or when) is an entirely different matter.
Yes God is decidedly in favor of goodness over evil – societies upholding what is right and good over societies promoting evil. You may not believe in things like good and evil, but I do. No… I don’t see so much evidence that theism let alone monotheism is that much of a priority for God.
In Genesis 9:3-6 God states that each human is accountable for the harm he causes to another human because God made mankind in the image of God . Cuneiform tablets with written contracts and registers are clear evidence of accountability relationships, whereas burial goods are not, as you rightly state. This is why I deduce that God made Homo sapiens to “Mankind in the image of God” according to Genesis 9:3-6, at latest around 3,300 BC, when Cuneiform writing emerges in Sumer.
The Creation of man in the image of God may have happened before, but for the time being we have no clear evidence allowing us to establish an earlier date. Burials goods demonstrate undoubtedly awareness of an “afterlife”. But this may be sort of animistic superstition and, as such, is not yet the belief in a “eternal life” following God’s judgement after death. In other words, from burial goods alone you cannot deduce with certainty that at the time when these burials were performed God had already transformed Homo sapiens into mankind in the image of God.
Notice that this accountability criterion along with the time when we find evidence for accountability relationships is NOT
In fact, it derives directly from the revelation that humans have to respect each other because God made mankind in the image of God (Genesis 9:6).
It is “a gospel of grace” and an indicator of social trust after all.
As I have already stated in a previous post, Genesis 9:3-6 can be considered an unwritten universal revelation to all peoples on earth, and not only to Noah and his genealogical descendants. In other words, at the very moment when God transformed the 10-14 million Homo sapiens into human persons in the image of God, He engraved in each of them and their descendants the moral code of Genesis 9:3-6. In this sense, this passage of Genesis at the end of the Flood refers to a universal archetype of morality and law, a moral content of the conscious and unconscious mind of humanity. This explains why you may find ‘indigenous people’ today that did not write down their moral code but share moral rules equivalent to the 10 Commandments.