Young-Earth Creationists are Full of Hot Air When it Comes to the Flood

Last updated on: April 23, 2013 at 11:32 am by James F. McGrath

Young-Earth Creationists are Full of Hot Air When it Comes to the Flood 2013-04-23T11:32:49-04:00 James F. McGrath

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Facebook friends have pointed out a few interesting tidbits related to the notion of a global flood in Genesis.

One pointed out Genesis 8:1, which says:

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.

How does sending a wind cause waters that can cover the highest mountains to “recede”? Where does it recede to? Recede doesn’t mean “evaporate” – but even if it did, not even as much hot air as young-earth creationists are full of would do the trick. Just saying that it was a miracle doesn’t cut it, since the young-earth creationists emphatically maintain that their claims are at least compatible with the scientific evidence. And even so, there is nothing in the text to suggest that this was a miraculously hot wind.

Those who insist on interpreting the text as a global flood seem not to have read the story or given it much thought. Like most self-proclaimed defenders of the Bible, they assume it says certain things, and then become adamant defenders not of what the Bible actually says, but their own assumptions and views.

Another Facebook friend pointed out this detail in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews 1.4.1:

Now the sons of Noah were three, – Shem, Japhet, and Ham, born one hundred years before the Deluge. These first of all descended from the mountains into the plains, and fixed their habitation there; and persuaded others who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on account of the flood, and so were very loath to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their examples.

Survivors of a flood that literally covered the entire planet is an impossibility. And so the view that the flood did not cover everything is at least as old as the first century, and certainly not just an innovation based on discoveries in geology.

All of this is besides the point, however. If flood geology were correct, young-earth creationists would be making a fortune in the oil industry, since they would be bound to have figured out a better way of finding petroleum deposits based on their superior understanding, which would give them an advantage over those who think fossil fuels form in the way mainstream science says.

Young-earth creationists are full of hot air on this topic. They don’t care what the Bible says. They misrepresent the history of interpretation. And they could prove they were right, if they were right, and become rich in the process. But instead they ask for donations and bilk the gullible.

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