Thoughts on Deistic Evolution

Faith & Science Conversation
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They have been stated here:

That’s what I find in 3 searches on this forum.

Given the above list, it does not look as though the request has been ignored.

Yes. If it looked like that replica, it wouldn’t work and would fall apart under the ocean conditions in question.

Citing an astronomer who had bad philosophy as a source for evolution is not a great option. Nor is citing 40-year-old critiques by someone who was stubbornly wrong a good way to attack the Big Bang.

And this data comes from where? Marginally deleterious and marginally beneficial are going to be about equally common.

Then why did scientists accept it in the first place? Long after they had concluded that the earth was at least millions of years old?

If a flood covers multiple hundreds of square kilometers, then yes, a boat would be useful. As I am inclined to guess the most likely geographic extent to be something on the order of a few tens of thousands of square kilometers, I don’t think that on foot would be a great way to evacuate.

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It’s tough to call it atheistic since study of it has brought people to conclude there must be a Designer, and many of those have come to Christ.
Insisting that it is totally atheistic is a mental shortcut to avoid having to think critically.

But that requires self-criticism. It’s an ability many people never achieve (and a reason that learning to debate either side of any issue is critical to education!). Conspiracy theory fans – which includes YEC folks – aren’t fans of self-criticism.

Frequently YECists don’t even try to do a decent job, let alone one as good as possible. I’ve ready too many articles on AiG and other YEC sites that would have been handed back not just in college but in high school science classes as not even of good enough quality to grade.

Something YEC folks ignore, operating instead on confirmation bias and quote mining. It dosn’t matter that I can’t find the sources of the things I know, YECers would still deny that anyone who was a faithful Christian could ever think the world was millions, billions, or a trillion years old (though that last one was almost certainly symbolic).

The YEC failure to grasp this comes from a shallow understanding of two things: worldviews, and the wiles of the Enemy. Someone could find a Roman scroll reporting to Pontius Pilate how the tomb of a man crucified outside Jerusalem had turned up empty immediately after a heavenly being had appeared on the morning of the third day after the dead body had been delivered to a prominent Jew and moved the stone covering the opening, and it would make no difference; arguments from science aren’t going to make a dent.

Kind of hard to reach when you’re expending immense effort to make Genesis talk science and history, since that effort throws out most of the theology there.

False. Repeat this and it will be a lie – indeed it may be now, since it’s really difficult to not know better just from reading history.

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Doesn’t have to be, just systems.

That’s a failure of imagination talking.

Go back to grammar school and learn that words can have multiple definitions.

Then go back to middle school science and learn the scientific definition of that term.

Multiple YEC lies have been pointed out here multiple times – which puts you in the category of those telling them.

False accusation. Go read Exodus and Deuteronomy, you’ll find the instruction on the matter in there.

Stop being deceptive – calling an event that covered multiple thousands of square miles and wiped out the known world isn’t usually described as “local”.

God could have raised a flat mountain just for Noah & Co. and they could have simply waited there.
You really don’t understand the Flood story, do you? You’re so deep into making stuff up to fit version of things you’ve lost sight of the text.

Given that the text does not describe a global event, that’s a not unreasonable choice.
Why do you insist on disrespecting the scriptures by changing the meanings of ancient words so they fit a MSWV? or perhaps I should ask how is it that you can’t see that this is what you’re doing? Hebrew “אֶרֶץ” does not mean “globe”, cannot mean “globe”; in context it means the land Noah knew about, i.e. Noah’s known world.
This is just a matter of respecting literature and those who write it.

More deception: you’re deliberately using a misleading term to twist things so you can mock. Genesis doesn’t talk about “a local flood” in the sense you keep using, it talks about an event that wiped out the known world (which, BTW, fits Peter’s language when he wrote of the Flood), so your comparison is deceptive. Not only that, but you know it is deceptive, since what the text says has been described to you a number of times. Now what’s the word for knowingly passing on incorrect information?

That’s a subjective judgment, not one that is text-based. Given that God supplying food to predators is praised in the OT, it must be concluded that God’s view of what is unpleasant does not match the modern humanistic view you are relying on.

It’s a very bad analogy; there are two errors: first is that God started off with mature species, wiped them out, and let them reassemble; second is that the assembly of proteins etc. in living creatures is purely chaotic.

Claiming that the idea of evolution was invented purposely to push God out of science is not willful ignorance, it is deliberate twisting of the facts.

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Except the fact is that many of them have no formal training at all. Many lasted a science book in high school, and if it was in the bugle belt, it may been glanced over. So you have these people who don’t know even the very basis of geology or biology, being told be people claiming to be scientists, that evolution is false, and being told by pastors that it’s false and man made and does not align with the word of God. Just look at the few in here. Reality is literally beyond them. It’s like a disorder. Just like all the people thinking magic flowed through them at some point. Part of what allowed me to not be as angry is to realize it’s literally an echo chamber of ignorance for almost all of them. Even the “trained” ones with scientific degrees who should know better are so out of touch. I would not be surprised if that mindset is label as a legitimate illness one day.

I am still fairly active with the great commission. I bring up Christ to strangers, ask to do Bible studies with them, and so on. I’ve done it a lot less this year than last year and far less last few years than a decade ago but I still tend to study the Bible with a handful of unbelievers each year and baptize them and encourage them to get active in a local physical body of believers. I come across people with all kind of crazy thoughts. Studied with someone few months ago who literally believes they can read auras and sees signs in things like a bird with a yellow string. They are so scared of things like ghosts that they put blocks between doors and doorframes to prevent them shutting and being locked in. They are not even Christian yet, and still think that science is potentially hiding the truth from us and that we are probably seeded here by aliens that everything seems to fine tuned to just have happened. Just instead of God they think it’s aliens that engineered us.

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The YEC approach is nicely illustrated by what in college we called “The Art of Tract-Stuffing”, where points were scored by stuffing those little 2" high tracts into people’s mouths – no communication necessary, just slap the words into someone’s face and call it good. It’s a magical belief, really, that somehow throwing scripture into people’s ears or slapping them in front of people’s eyes will make a difference, a bit of a Hermione Granger approach to persuasion – say the right words in the right way and presto!

I agree with those former atheists from our informal university intelligent design club that evolution is such a sublimely elegant scheme that it has to be the work of a Designer. It’s one of those things that drags me back when I hit one of the periods when being a Christian starts to feel like a burden.

Never done any field geology, have you? In central Oregon on one field trip we got to examine a quarry face that showed three different volcanic eruptions, intermittent riverine deposits, and multiple soil horizons.
So either you’re looking at carefully selected formations or you don’t know what to look for. Just one point: a meter of soil covered by 300m of overlying rock can compress down to just a few millimeters, and it really doesn’t look like soil to most people because it’s been turned to rock.

Scientific and historical accuracy are concepts that are alien to the scriptures, yet you insist on those.

Once again: where in the scriptures do you get the idea that the Holy Spirit intended there to be scientific and historical accuracy?

The above science fiction is not from the scriptures, it is the result of doing the very same thing that the Roman Catholic church did through the Middle Ages: use their science to make things up to “explain” the scriptures.
It should really bother you that they found that the scriptures were in perfect agreement with their science that said the sun goes around the Earth and that everything is made of just four elements – that shows that trying to shove human science into the scriptures is an error.

And for my part, fabricating an alternate reality that does not match the text of the scriptures.

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Please climb down off your high horse and get a grip on reality here:
You might learn something useful if you check out:

God bless,
jon

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For me it’s the opposite. When I stopped trying to force intelligent design and biblical literalism into my faith it significantly improved.

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And what the text of scripture says without blinders and ignoring evidence!

You mean like John Grisham’s The Firm? It reads more like history than anything in the Tanakh.

That’s not evolution.

I have already explained how this question is purposely deceptive so I won’t repeat myself, I’ll just note again that it is purposely deceptive.

This is a false statement easily shown to be false. The Grand Canyon alone exhibits ancient soil layers, ancient shallow lake sediment layers, ancient desert dune layers, and other evidences of interruptions of fluvial or ocean deposition.

I have a worldview that says, “Stick to the text!”

But you don’t have such a worldview – you have a worldview that insists that the Bible has to match modern science; that’s why you change the meanings of words so they have modern scientific content. A worldview consistent with biblical teaching would stand on the historical-grammatical method, reading the ancient Hebrew in its historical context and according to its grammar – both of which YEC rejects.

Stuff and nonsense – every decent scientist performs critical analyses of evolutionary theory because that’s how you make a reputation. Anyone can do research that confirms the standing paradigm; the actual science is found in challenging it.
Or at least that’s what every biology professor I ever took a class from did, and I presume that the (quite secular) university I attended was not unique.

False. You’ve been told before that this is false, yet you repeat it. Apparently mendaciousness is part and parcel of YEC.

Evolutionary theory has no “goal posts”. Adjusting to new data is what science is about.
It’s amusing that you insist that scientists all toe the line yet at the same time assert the need to “move the goal posts”, given that the latter implies substantial disagreements.

But the Bible doesn’t say there was a global flood – you only get that by forcing modern science into the account and ignoring Hebrew grammar.

Actually it’s more accurately understood as mythologized history – though regarding it as a parable doesn’t destroy the main point.

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When I was student teaching one assignment was to look at a couple dozen textbooks in whatever subjects we were teaching. I didn’t see a single textbook that asserted “that life came about by chance” – not one. Every single one said that we don’t know how life came about – and in fact none of them said that God wasn’t needed or didn’t exist.

Odd, since in my days on a university campus it was the YECers who drove people from Christ and those who actually focused on the Gospel – not caring about belief in evolution – that brought people to Christ.

The earliest belief in “deep time” that I’ve ever come across came from before the sixth century, from people studying Genesis 1 and concluding that Creation had to be old beyond human counting, so your history is wrong.

How about not being mendacious? Examples have been posted repeatedly, in threads in which you participate, which means you know they are real, which means you’re purposely making false assertions.

In our informal intelligent design club those were regarded as polar opposites – and anyone spouting Bible verses in a discussion about design was chased out.

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And for me it’s the other opposite, I was utterly convinced that evolution and deep time were real.
I believed that God used evolution as His method of creating.
I couldn’t see the wood for the trees, I thank God that I can now see clearly.
I have turned around completely and now see creation as the Bible ever so plainly tells us.
Once I did that, everything else fell into place, and I still marvel that I was so utterly blind for so many years. The Bible can be trusted to mean what is says.

God bless,
jon

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But you regularly reject what the text says and replace it with your own ideas derived from modern science. You don’t trust the Bible, you trust yourself.

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Dear Roy,

you keep repeating this same false mantra that I am forcing modern science onto the text, over and over, I can only guess in the hope that people will just accept it, no matter how utterly false it is.

I may be wrong but I get the impression that you actually believe what you are saying, but what puzzles me is why.

It is so readily demonstrated these days by simply looking at seventy Bible translations, and referring to the Ancient Hebrew and the Modern Hebrew where you wish to check and see the actual original Hebrew words meanings and how they sit in the context they are in.

It is not I that is rejecting what the text so clearly states is it?
I believe what is written in the Holy Scriptures.

I believe what is written in faith that the Holy Scriptures are trustworthy and true, and with precisely the same meaning as the Church has believed for about two thousand years, and with regard to the Old Testament for about the last four thousand years; it is NOT I that is changing the text!

Read the text below yourself:

7 And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

5 And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him.

6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,

9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;

14 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.

15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the Lord shut him in.

17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
Genesis 7

I believe every word written above with great respect and reverence.

The very fact that over seventy slightly different Bible translations in both the Old and the New Testaments ALL say precisely the same basic thing, that Adam and Eve were REAL people that Noah was a REAL man, righteous before God, that the ARK was a real vessel of enormous size, that the Flood covered all the land under Heaven, and that ALL flesh was cut off and the Earth was destroyed is good enough for me.

Do you believe:

a.) that Adam and Eve were REAL people?

b.) that Noah was a REAL man, righteous before God?

c.) that the ARK was a real vessel of enormous size?

d.) that the Flood covered all the land under Heaven?

e.) that ALL flesh was cut off except for those in the Ark and the Earth under Heaven was destroyed?

You appear to have a very high opinion of your own translating abilities, however your meaning of the Holy Scriptures turns out pretty well opposite to what all the over seventy carefully and painstakingly translated Bible translations I have access to actually say.

Continuing your insistence that your translation is correct, has the consequence that the thousands of people who translated those seventy Bibles got it wrong.

Excuse me if I don’t believe your version of the Bible, but I cannot, it is so clearly false., well meaning perhaps but ultimately incorrect.

The alarm bells should have gone off for you when Jesus affirmed the REALITY of the FLOOD!
Remember who Jesus is. He IS the great I AM, He is the ONE who commands the wind and sea to be calm, He is the CREATOR. When Jesus affirms the Flood and the Ark and Noah are REAL believe Him.

Praise His mighty name! Hallelujah!!!
Glory to Him in the Highest!
He is Lord of ALL, forever and ever,
Amen.

God bless you,
jon

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What is it with YEC leading up to some favorable quote that they have to layer on the hagiographic adulation. We know who Fred Hoyle is.

So difficult as to be not possible, and further, at that scale and of that construction, would sink quicker the the Vasa upon meeting the sea.

Scientists interpret evidence from observation. YEC has no observational backing, and rapid plate tectonics and spontaneous accelerated decay have never been observed, so there is no science involved at all.

Get your facts straight. No, I will not waste my time educating you.

Not only is Sanford wrong, but he is not even self consistent. See my forum post on

Of Mice and Men and John Sanford’s Genetic Entropy

Not only is that offensive, but very wrong. Scientists can and do think for themselves. You have had gracious responses from qualified and working scientists on this forum who have given much thought to origins and possess far deeper understanding than yourself. There are 1500 scientists named Steve or a variant thereof, who performed enough of a critical analysis of evolution, to sign the following statement

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to “intelligent design,” to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation’s public schools.

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Dear Ron,

well forgive me if I correctly identified Fred Hoyle as the Leading Astronomer at Cambridge University UK for many years, you may know who he is, but it is just a faint possibility that somebody who reads the post does not!

Once again, utter nonsense of the highest order. Yes, it would have taken a long time to build, but God is patient and He waited until Noah had completed building the Ark.

I strongly suggest you read the article at:

to get your facts straight about the amazing seaworthiness of the Ark!

You can believe whatever you want, but it won’t change the reality that many thousands of people around the world are realising the Truth of the historical creation account in Genesis, and the body of Christians who believe the Bible as it was written is steadily growing as is the number of scientists who affirm the same. There are difficulties with some questions, that as yet do not have answers but that can be said about any field of science.

I do have my facts straight and I have studied a great deal of strata in sedimentary formations particularly in sandstone and shale!

Well that is your opinion from your worldview, I see it very differently!

Well it certainly was not meant to be offensive, and I was one of them myself for a long time, but fortunately I now see how wrong I was.

The quoted statement is clearly written by people who reject the Biblical account and who believe the ‘deep time’ and evolution mythology, and are waging war with Christians who believe the straightforward creation account in the Bible, so what?
Are those 1,500 Steve’s Christians? As it is from the NCSE I very much doubt it!

God bless,
jon

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Dear Tim,

I really do not understand how or why you believe that you can make such rash, blanket statement based upon nothing more I can only presume than guesswork and disbelief of what the Bible plainly tells us in both Testaments.

How in the world do you think you know the Ark wouldn’t work and would fall apart?

The only way that I know is that I trust the Holy Bibles words to be faithful and true.
Jesus affirmed the Flood of Noah was real, the Ark was real and it did survive the flood that destroyed the Earth and drowned ALL flesh in whose nostrils was the breath of life from the land.

Well I think it is a great quote because it puts the reality into perspective.
Further more, the rush by many to adopt belief in a theory that has more questions than answers, is supported by things we have never observed that are supposedly 96% of the universe is if you ask me, more than just a tad unhinged.

But of course you are welcome to believe what you want; just don’t expect me to.

I’m content to know that God spoke and it was so,just as He did 2,000 years ago on Earth as recorded faithfully in the Gospels.

Do you Truly believe that a roughly 50:50 ratio of marginally good and bad mutations exists, where does that data come from?

Actually, the fact that it is unfalsifiable means that it does not even pass the test for a valid hypothesis.

Well first of all, I must make it abundantly clear that I accept the Bibles straightforward account that the Flood destroyed all the Earth under Heaven and extinguished all life on Earth in whose nostrils was the breath of life, thus the Flood covered the whole Earth.

But for the sake of what you believe, lets just do the simple mathematics and see what comes out of that to see if it makes more sense to spend I would expect fifty to one hundred years to build the Ark than to walk out of the Flood zone.

You assume the flood covers “a few tens of thousands of square kilometres”, so first we need to decide what’s a few tens of thousands of square kilometres" actually means in numeric terms; perhaps 30,000² kilometres but lets be generous to your theory, and say 40,000² kilometres or even say 50,000² kilometres, but no lets be really generous and make it 90,000² kilometres was covered by the Flood.
That more than qualifies as a “few tens of thousands of kilometres”.
That’s a very big flood by anyone’s standards.

At 90,000² kilometres to make the mathematics work simply, we will assume it was roughly square and the Ark was located right at the geographic centre at the intersection of both diagonals.

That would mean the flood extent was 300 kilometres by 300 kilometres as a square.
Thus if we put the Ark at the geographic centre of this area, it will be between about 150 to 212 kilometres to the edge of the flood in any direction.

How far would they travel each day walking at an average pace of 5 km/hour or (3 miles per hour)

Distance about 212 kilometres

Then it would take them the following number of days if they:

Walk for only 1 hour per day = 5km / day = 43 days
Walk for only 2 hours per day = 10km / day = 22 days
Walk for only 3 hours per day = 15km / day = about 14 days
Walk for only 4 hours per day = 20km / day = about 11 days
Walk for only 5 hours per day = 25km / day = about 9 days

Perhaps it would be reasonable to expect they walked for about 3 hours per day as an average.
Thus in just 14 days they would be out of the danger zone.

Compare walking for 14 days to spending who knows how long, 10, 20, 30, 40 or perhaps 50 years or even 100 years to build the Ark from scratch.

They lived much longer pre the flood genetic bottleneck that drastically shortened life spans.
Though I guess you probably don’t believe that either, even though the Bible is ever so clear.

14 days walk or say 50 years of extremely hard arduous work, felling trees,using an adze and a broad axe to square up timber, perhaps using bullocks to haul the logs etc, They must have amazing ingenuity.

I reckon it’s a no brainer.

There was NO Local Flood, it was as the Bible tells us, over ALL the Earth.

Obviously, the Flood was absolute and covered and destroyed the Earth as the 70 Translations of the Bible so reliably inform us.

Why do you believe that seventy Holy Bible Translations all got it so wrong by saying the Flood destroyed the Earth and killed all life on Earth except for those in the Ark, if it was only a local Flood?

I will continue to believe in faith that the Bible is trustworthy and true rather than accept all the extraneous beliefs that aren’t to be found anywhere in the seventy Holy Bible Translations that ultimately are used to accommodate ‘deeptime’ and evolution.

A real concern that I have is that when parts of the Bible are manipulated such as the creation and flood history of what happened, the precedent is set, where does it end?
Do you believe any of Genesis is history?
And so it goes all the way to Revelation, once on the slippery slope of reading into the text whatever suits the dogma of your worldview, there is no to it.

Anyway, I’ve said my bit.
I cannot afford much more time here, I have said what I have said.
The rest is out of my hands.

God bless,
jon

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An ark shaped like the one in the picture wouldn’t work and would fall apart. Genesis mentions nothing about having a keel or the exact outline.

That has already been pointed out to be both a lie and a slander against cosmologists.

HOW? Given that multiple examples of ways that it could be falsified have been pointed out already, this is an untruth.

All of the flat disk Earth under the Firmament. Given that the same word is used of “all the earth” going to Egypt during the famine with Joseph, and for “the land of Egypt”, it does not correspond to “the globe”.

No. Solely because “history” as a genre that any modern Westerner would describe it did not exist until at least c. 750 BC. “Is it trustworthy?” is a completely different question from “Is it history?”

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Not just my worldview. Sanford is wrong by Sanford’s worldview, as per the link I posted.

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If you think that is polite and respectful I suggest you go back to finishing school. You do not answer, you deflect with insults. I a fed up with your superior and condescending attitude.

If you can’t say anything constructive don’t say anything at all. I would prefer you to ignore me than insult me

Richard

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It’s not false and I’ve explained why. I’ll point out the most obvious example again: the moment you say that Genesis talks about a globe, you’re forcing modern science onto the text.

Yes, it is, because you keep replacing the actual meanings of the Hebrew words with modern meanings.

He didn’t – you’re reading that into the words.

It’s a method of reassuring themselves that they are following important people. It also functions as a way to avoid having to actually think.

It’s not a replica at all. the word “Ark” means a coffin or box that is rectangular, not curved – the people behind that clearly didn’t know their Bible.

And a real irony about that is that a box-shaped Ark would have had a much higher survival probability (assuming neither one fell apart)!

It’s what one of my history professors said is described by the technical term “MSU”, which stands for “Making Stuff Up”.

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It’s a matter of engineering, with emphasis on an area called “strength of materials” plus “structural integrity”.

Just to show that I can make stuff up, too, it’s simple: God slapped a force field into the pitch that coated the Ark so the structural and strength properties of the wood didn’t matter. And for good measure He made a hurricane form around the Ark and kept it in the eye of the storm the whole time.

This has graduated to lying: you have been informed repeatedly that evolution is falsifiable and given examples of how. You have also been informed that trying falsify at least aspects of the theory is the bread and butter of biologists.
Yet you insist on making these statements that are contrary to reality. Since you have been informed of the reality, continuing to make those statements constitutes lying.

There you go stuffing non-bliblical science into the text again! By capitalizing “Earth” you summon up the modern scientific understanding of a globe-shaped planet orbiting a star, but that is not in the text.

What the Hebrew says is that the Flood inundated all the known world that was beneath Heaven, and extinguished the life in that land. Do translators get that wrong? Yes, and they admit it; I have known two scholars who were on translation committees and they (and others) admitted that very, very frequently all the scholars agreed to use traditional wording even knowing that it was inaccurate. It’s why “Red Sea” has survived into modern translations even though it’s been known for decades (maybe a century) that it is actually “reed sea”. Translators work for publishers, and most publishers aren’t going to make radical changes because they want copies of their new edition to sell.

Yes, which is why you should stop being deceptive by calling it “local”.
IIRC there’s evidence of a flood that covered 120,000 km^2.

You really don’t understand the story, do you?

That’s you distorting the Hebrew and ignoring the ordinary use of language.
Or are you going to tell us that the Toltecs and Mixtecs in the central Mexican valley came to Pharaoh for food? or that everyone in Judea packed up and went out to the Jordan?

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