A scoffer is someone who says what these verses identify. Peter meant something meaningful by what he wrote.
So scoffers were saying that since Jesus hadn’t returned within their lifetime, that God had not kept his promise. They were also saying that there was something uniform about the history of the world and creation. But there was a deliberate forgetting that God created the world out of water (interesting) and that there was a time that this same creation was deluged and destroyed by water.
So those that were denying this were the scoffers and “deliberate fogetters” that Peter identifies. I suspect that since there are still people with animus towards God, that these same kind of scoffers may be found in the world today speaking similar narratives.
Here is one non scientific reason why the worldwide flood has no bearing even within theology.
Paul states that the whole world and all of creation has heard the good news in the first century.
Colossians 1:5-6
New American Standard Bible
5 because of the hope reserved for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel 6 which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth;
Colossians 1:23
New American Standard Bible
23 if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.
Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel* and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages* but has now been disclosed** and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith…”* [Romans 16:25-26]
So was the gospel literally heard by the whole world in the first century? 2,000 years ago was the gospel already in Australia and the Americas? If not then he just have meant something different than our understanding of the whole world.
So many Christians have so many versions of “the flood”.
First time i heard anyone say its irrelevant if it happened or not.
Or if the Bible means what it so plainly says.
I’m sorry you burned up the time. It’s above, in the first link, entitled “The World’s Largest Rock Tumbler…” It would be to your advantage to read and digest what’s presented the first time through (and I have posted that before in your sight, I’m sure, and more than once, I’m quite sure). I think it’s quite wonderful, but YECs won’t.
This is pretty much Todd Wood’s position, except, he freely admits the evidence strongly supports the scientific consensus (non yec) position. So, he avoids intellectual dishonesty.
[Quote]Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.
…
There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn’t make it ultimately true, and it doesn’t mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution
[/quote]
I’m not so sure about that. Saying that black is indeed black, but I’m going to say it’s white anyway is not intellectual honesty. It’s way more like denial, especially if you’re going to claim to understand science, like he does. And the earth is in fact flat.
The problem is that the error bars are different: the one for U-Pb dating giving ~5,000,000 on Novarupta is ~± 10,000,000 years. If one used U-He on a different sample and got the same answer, but it has an error bar more like ±50,000 years, then one of those is likely to be between 4,950,000 and 5,050,000 years old, and the other is likely to be between 15,000,000 and -5,000,000 years old.
The “Venus recycling its surface” argument is particularly bad, because the astronomical evidence in question indicates that Venus’ surface is much younger that the surface of the Moon, Mercury, etc. Trying to claim that this shows that Venus is young ignores the rest of the solar system, besides misrepresenting “it has all undergone major change relatively recently” as good proof that it was created recently.
Radiometric dating of a sample is moderately expensive, so you don’t want to waste money on something that won’t be helpful. If you have a general idea of the age, that will simplify the work involved in measuring. But if the values don’t turn out to match what’s expected, that will be discovered. As an analogy, I can make biscuits by adding some milk and some flour and getting the right consistency. But I use measuring cups to get a general idea of how much I need. That doesn’t mean that I don’t rely on the consistency. If I miscounted, I will notice the consistency is wrong and adjust accordingly. And radiometric dating works when you don’t have any idea what the date should be. A century ago, the rocks under me were guessed to be Archean. They are highly metamorphosed and are part of a small terrane, with no useful relationships to rocks that were more easily dated. The map from the mid-1990’s suggests somewhere in the late Proterozoic to earlier Paleozoic. But modern zircon dating techniques give clear ages. The rocks are metasedimentary, so they include a mix of zircons derived from various source rocks. Due to tectonic rearrangements, the particular source rocks were not known for certain, so the dating had to simply try a bunch of zircons and see what ages came out. The result was finding that rocks in the terranes to the east have dates matching source rocks around what is now Paraguay and those to the west have dates matching sources in eastern North America. I’m on the mix of stuff eroded from both sides as the plates collided. The youngest dates give a minimum age of the rocks here.
Similarly, the original development of radiometric dating yielded ages older than expected - the technique proved itself against other ideas, rather than merely matching preconceptions.
She is the modern founder of YEC. You might want to read up on your history. If you are interested she opposed evolution because it would lead to a belief in the old age of the earth which would then get the 6 days of creation thrown out and the sabbath along with it.
Well I think contextual analysis requires more than direct word for word translation. It’s like the phrase “ I’m so hungry I could eat a horse”. The words all have literal meanings. A plain straight forward reading though misses the point. The point is that they are very hungry.
When it comes to genesis 1-11 it’s mythology. It’s not written as historical or autobiographical narratives.
The point of the flood story is so much more than just those few chapters. It goes back to the very beginning. “ The world was formless and void and the spirit of god was hovering over the waters of the deep. This water is a metaphor for chaos. It’s chaotic. It’s not productive to life. It’s not our friend. If we were tossed into a world that was just darkness and water we would quickly die. We need land. We need a ark.
The first ark for life was the land appearing out of the deep waters.
The next ark was Eden. This land of goodness surrounded by these rivers.
The next ark was the ark of Noah.
Then we see the Red Sea splitting so that the Hebrews could travel safely through the water.
This all is hyperlinked to in baptism. We get baptized into Christ. The water washes away our sin just like the waters have washed away all the evil before from Noah and Moses’s enemies. This water metaphorically kills us allowing us to be reborn.
A man must be born of water and spirit.
Repent and be baptized.
That’s also why in revelation it says there will be no sea in the restored world. It’s again not literal, but metaphorical for in perfection we bo longer need water to kill anything. We don’t need this chaotic force that is counter productive to life. We have a new source of water. A well that gives eternal life.
As i commented, there are about as many ideas about the flood
story as there are Christians.
Im not much interested in the various possibilities as to why it
was written. Nobody knows.
Its kind of a strange thing to write if they didnt mean it.
And if there is some message, seems more sensible to just say it.
As it is either most, or all readers are led astray by the stoty.
Seems like you share the same interpretation of the Bible as the typical young earth creationist.
What makes a literalist interpretation better than one that considers genre and recognizes literary devices such as hyperbolic speech, metaphors, hyperlinks and uses cultural worldviews of ancient people?
Why should a young earth creationist style interpretation be better than the ones used by evolutionary creationist?
Have you never seen wisdom and word views shared through things like fairy tales, myths, folklore and ect?
It’s not that they didn’t mean it. Think of it as a parable that teaches an important lesson: We live in a moral universe and God judges the immoral but redeems the righteous. It’s one of our great stories. Clues that it shouldn’t be taken literally are right in the text. Two flood stories are merged together to make the account we see in Genesis. And God gives instructions for clean and unclean animals, even though the dietary laws hadn’t been given yet.