Question for Christians!

[alexxcJRO]

-How can an intelligent, honest, compassionate person when he reads objectively the bible can say and believe that it is somehow in sync with reality, science, genuine moral values, and logic is beyond me?
-How can someone believe that an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good God exists
as long as the problem of evil, pain is not resolved yet?(not even great philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, and Berkeley have given a satisfactory response)

-How can someone believe the Genesis story of creation, that some fictitious omnipotent being made light and after the stars, therefore the sun and ignore the science that tells us that light cannot exist without the existence of stars; or that the life existed first on the land as plants and later the seas teemed with living creatures when geological science can prove that the sea teemed with animals and vegetable life long before vegetation and life appeared on land?
(Genesis 1:11-13)(Genesis 1:20-23)
-How can someone in 2016 believe that some fictitious omnipotent being created the first humans, Adam and Eve just 6000 years ago and ignore all the fossils of homo sapiens found that are older then tens of thousands of years old, all the ancients sites that are older then 9000 years old, all the caves painting that are tens of thousands of years old?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofmeyr_Skull
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology
http://www.hebroots.com/lul7_8.html
-How can someone believe that in ~4000 BC there was a global flood and all the saved animals migrated from Middle East after the flood to all places of the Earth and ignore all the evidence from all the scientific fields that tells us the opposite, that there was no global flood; when we have trees older then 5000 years old, when we have fossils of kangaroos only in Australia or fossils of a particular species of bisons called Bison latifrons only in North America, when you have The Old Red Sandstone, a collection of fossilized desert dunes, which was formed in Devonian times(~400 millions years ago), when The Grand Canyon contains fossil desert dunes and other sediments that to all appearances were deposited on dry land?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Red_Sandstone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_latifrons
https://ncse.com/cej/1/1/fatal-flaws-flood-geology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Tjikko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)
-How can anyone believe the story of creation that some fictitious omnipotent being created from dirt the first humans Adam and Eve and say that the theory of evolution is not a scientific fact when we have all the transitional fossils of animals(Tiktaalik, Ichthyostega, Pederpes, Ichthyornis, Archaeopteryx, Lycaenops , Pakicetus, Indohyus, Eocaecilia, Pezosiren portelli, Najash, etc) and the transitional fossils of humans(Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus africanus , Homo habilis , Homo erectus, Australopithecus afarensis ) that show otherwise, all the DNA evidence that shows we are related to all animals to some degree, and animals are related to each other. The fruit fly (Drosophila) shares about 36% of its DNA with humans. About 60% of chicken genes correspond to a similar human gene. Cows (Bos Taurus) are 80% genetically similar to humans. Cats have 90% of homologous genes with humans, 82% with dogs, 80% with cows, 79% with chimpanzees, 69% with rats and 67% with mice. Chimpanzees are 96% to 98% similar to humans. Neanderthals are 99.5% similar to humans. Genome-wide variation from one human being to another can be up to 0.5% (99.5% similarity)?
http://www.transitionalfossils.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h ... on_fossils
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2448423/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/
http://genetics.thetech.org/online-exhi ... nes-common
-How can anyone believe that the resurrection of Jesus is historical proof and a fact when the mainstream scholarly view is that the Gospels are anonymous works, written in the third person, in a different language than that of Jesus, in distant lands, after a substantial gap of time(decades), by unknown persons, compiling, redacting, and inventing various traditions, in order to provide a narrative of Christianity’s central figure–Jesus Christ–to confirm the faith of their communities.
http://www.humanreligions.info/gospels.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historica ... he_Gospels


-Even the concept of a perfectly good, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, all loving being that created our universe and life falls short when you analyzed it against the bible.
-Even though God is all loving, therefore loves all humans equally he chose a specific group of humans, the Israelites that he showed favor over all the other humans. Why?
-Even though God is omniscient, omnipotent therefore with perfect knowledge, perfect efficiency, infinite wisdom he chose to spread his message through one of the most small, undeveloped civilization and culture of the time: the Israelites. Why? Wouldn’t have been more efficient to choose the Chinese, being a more powerful, big and developed civilization at the time?
-Even though God’s middle-knowledge and foreknowledge told him that the future population of the earth would be mostly of Chinese and Indians he didn’t chose any of them to convey his message. Why?
-Even though God is omniscient, omnipotent therefore with perfect knowledge and perfect efficiency and infinite wisdom he didn’t chose to reveal himself personally to every person that lived, lives and ever will live; which would have made 100% sure that all people know that he exists and receive the message, but chose to do this through a book that would later be translated to all the world languages that he created in the first place when he confused the people that were building the tower of Babylon, leading eventually to errors, changes in the text and therefore spreading the wrong message. Why?
-Even though God’s middle-knowledge and foreknowledge told him that this would lead to the different interpretations by the faulty humans, to the many different denominations and quarrel among them about who knows the truth, the true path to achieve salvation, and to billions not believing or not getting reached by those who spread the gospel; he chose to do this anyway. Why?
-Even though God is all loving, therefore loves all humans equally he punished people of Sodom and Gomorrah for being sinners while letting the rest of the population of the Earth at that time of the hook. Why? Surely there were many gays, rapists and murderers outside of Sodom and Gomorrah.(Genesis 18:16-33), (Genesis 19:24-25)
-Even though God’s middle-knowledge and foreknowledge told him that people were and will be sinful all throughout history, all across the globe he chose to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of sin. Why? Now for example there are more rapists, murderers, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals then ever before.
-Even though God is all loving therefore loves both humans equally; is omniscient, omnipotent therefore with perfect knowledge, perfect efficiency, infinite wisdom and even though he wanted the Pharaoh to let the Israelites go from Egypt, he violated, restricted Pharaoh’s free moral will when he hardened his heart, strengthened his resolve and he didn’t let the Israelites go and then punish him, his people severely (killed firstborn babies)for something God orchestrated and was responsible for. Why? This is absurd because free moral choice is the essential component which justifies the concepts of reward and punishment. (Exodus 10:27-28) (Exodus 12:29-30)
-Even though God is omniscient, omnipotent therefore with perfect knowledge, perfect efficiency, infinite wisdom and even though because of his middle-knowledge and foreknowledge knew Jesus paid for the penalty of all sins including the sin Uzzah, therefore sinners only need to repent to achieve salvation(he came up with this plan); he killed Uzzah instantly when tried to stop the ark of covenant to fall to the ground, therefore refusing him the opportunity to repent at all for his sin so to be forgiven and condemning him indirectly to everlasting destruction. Why? (2 Samuel 6:3-7)
-Even though God is perfectly good, therefore is not in his nature to condone, order evil things, even though the Israelites had a close and open relationship with this perfectly good God, even though the bible is said to be inspired by this perfectly good God we see the old testament condoning things like intolerance; murder of witches, gays, fornicaters, people that worship other gods; genocide, rape, slavery; sometimes even commanded by God. Why?(Exodus 22:17), (Leviticus 20:13), (Leviticus 20:27), (Numbers 1:48-51), (1 Samuel 6:19-20), (1 Kings 20:35-36), (1 Samuel 15:2-3), (1 Kings 14:9-16), (Exodus 21:7-11), (Exodus 21:20-21), (Leviticus 25:44-46), (Numbers 31:7-18), (Deuteronomy 20:10-14), (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), (2 Kings 2:23-24).
-Even though God is omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good chose to create a world with a system of justice(believe in God and Jesus’s sacrifice or else) that would lead to the majority of the humans he created to experience an everlasting torment in the lake of fire as a punishment. Why?(Matthew 10:28), (Revelation 20:14), (Revelation 4:9), (Revelation 15:7), (Revelation 20:10), (Revelation 14:10-11), (Matthew 25:41), (Matthew 25:46), (Jude 13), (Matthew 13:50), (Mark 9:43), (Mark 9:48).

[historia]

Do you believe that giants, unicorns, dragons(they appear in the bible) really existed?

Unicorns in the bible :
(Job 39:9-12), (Isaiah 34:7), (Psalm 29:6)

I'm afraid this is based on a misconception. The Hebrew word re'em most likely means 'wild ox', which is how it is rendered in every modern translation:

"Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Will it spend the night at your crib? Can you tie it in the furrow with ropes, or will it harrow the valleys after you? Will you depend on it because its strength is great, and will you hand over your labor to it? Do you have faith in it that it will return, and bring your grain to your threshing floor?"

Wild oxen shall fall with them, and young steers with the mighty bulls. Their land shall be soaked with blood, and their soil made rich with fat.

He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.

[JLB32168]

The fact the problem of evil has not been resolved after hundreds of years adds to the improbability that a omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good god exist.

I’ve never seen the import of the value of the argument that evil exists; therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity doesn’t exist. That problem has been solved for millennia. Perhaps people don’t like the answers, but the problem has been solved.

Even if the problem of evil it is solved. That does not prove God exists. Only that an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being might be possible to exist. If a God exists our reality points more towards a indifferent God and not a personal perfectly good God.

I would say that all evidence points to such a god at a minimum and that rejection of an intelligent, transcendent entity is informed more by axe grinding than by objectivity.

There is not one single miracle, or supernatural event being proven true.

Supernatural miracles, by their very nature of being supernatural, cannot be proved using scientific means, which only measure natural things. Anecdotal evidence is all that we have. I have little reason to accept that every person on the planet, no matter what the religion, is deluded. If anything I accept this as evidence for a supernatural realm of existence.

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 7 by ttruscott]

ttruscott aswer this questions:

Wow - how imperious. I think....not.

What do these irrelevant questions have to do with a statement defining your "problem of evil"?

[ttruscott]

I am not talking by moral evils done by humans, but about non-moral evils.

Since the explanation did not get thru:
Evil is a word used to describe a MORAL state or action that is aberrant. There is no such thing as an non-moral evil! Gigo rules!

[1213]

...
-How can someone believe that an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good God exists
as long as the problem of evil, pain is not resolved yet?(not even great philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, and Berkeley have given a satisfactory response)

Maybe they are not so great, if they have a problem with so simple matter. Evil is not a problem, it is just something what people wanted to know, and now we are in this death to learn what it really means.

-How can someone believe the Genesis story of creation, that some fictitious omnipotent being made light and after the stars, therefore the sun and ignore the science that tells us that light cannot exist without the existence of stars;

So are you saying that for example led lights can’t exist without stars?

or that the life existed first on the land as plants and later the seas teemed with living creatures when geological science can prove that the sea teemed with animals and vegetable life long before vegetation and life appeared on land?

How is that proven?

-How can someone in 2016 believe that some fictitious omnipotent being created the first humans, Adam and Eve just 6000 years ago and ignore all the fossils of homo sapiens found that are older then tens of thousands of years old, all the ancients sites that are older then 9000 years old, all the caves painting that are tens of thousands of years old?

Actually I tis quite easy because we don’t have any solid proof for old age.

-How can someone believe that in ~4000 BC there was a global flood and all the saved animals migrated from Middle East after the flood to all places of the Earth and ignore all the evidence from all the scientific fields that tells us the opposite, that there was no global flood; when we have trees older then 5000 years old, when we have fossils of kangaroos only in Australia or fossils of a particular species of bisons called Bison latifrons only in North America, when you have The Old Red Sandstone, a collection of fossilized desert dunes, which was formed in Devonian times(~400 millions years ago), when The Grand Canyon contains fossil desert dunes and other sediments that to all appearances were deposited on dry land?

It would be miraculous to really see evidence that is against the Great flood.

-How can anyone believe the story of creation that some fictitious omnipotent being created from dirt the first humans Adam and Eve and say that the theory of evolution is not a scientific fact when we have all the transitional fossils.

Transitional fossil is just an interpretation. They could as well be own species that were once created. But according to the Bible, things have degenerated after the creation, so the “transitional� fossils could as well be evidence for the degeneration of species and so evidence for the Bible.

-How can anyone believe that the resurrection of Jesus is historical proof and a fact when the mainstream scholarly view is that the Gospels are anonymous works, written in the third person, in a different language than that of Jesus, in distant lands, after a substantial gap of time(decades), by unknown persons, compiling, redacting, and inventing various traditions, in order to provide a narrative of Christianity’s central figure–Jesus Christ–to confirm the faith of their communities.

How can you believe what you say?

-Even though God is all loving, therefore loves all humans equally he chose a specific group of humans, the Israelites that he showed favor over all the other humans. Why?

God loves, but it doesn’t mean He will allow unrighteous to have same as righteous will have. It would not be good to let unrighteous have what is for righteous. God showed favor, because Jews were righteous and not evil.

-Even though God is omniscient, omnipotent therefore with perfect knowledge, perfect efficiency, infinite wisdom he chose to spread his message through one of the most small, undeveloped civilization and culture of the time: the Israelites. Why? Wouldn’t have been more efficient to choose the Chinese, being a more powerful, big and developed civilization at the time?

On what basis China was more developed?

-Even though God’s middle-knowledge and foreknowledge told him that the future population of the earth would be mostly of Chinese and Indians he didn’t chose any of them to convey his message. Why?

Perhaps because they would not have wanted and received it.

-Even though God is omniscient, omnipotent therefore with perfect knowledge and perfect efficiency and infinite wisdom he didn’t chose to reveal himself personally to every person that lived, lives and ever will live; which would have made 100% sure that all people know that he exists and receive the message, but chose to do this through a book that would later be translated to all the world languages that he created in the first place when he confused the people that were building the tower of Babylon, leading eventually to errors, changes in the text and therefore spreading the wrong message. Why?

The point is not to know that God exists, but to become righteous. If you don’t understand the teaching in the Bible now, it doesn’t matter do you know that God exists.

-Even though God’s middle-knowledge and foreknowledge told him that this would lead to the different interpretations by the faulty humans, to the many different denominations and quarrel among them about who knows the truth, the true path to achieve salvation, and to billions not believing or not getting reached by those who spread the gospel; he chose to do this anyway. Why?

The message is perfectly ok for those who want to understand.

-Even though God is all loving, therefore loves all humans equally he punished people of Sodom and Gomorrah for being sinners while letting the rest of the population of the Earth at that time of the hook. Why? Surely there were many gays, rapists and murderers outside of Sodom and Gomorrah.(Genesis 18:16-33),

Maybe there was not.

-- Even though God’s middle-knowledge and foreknowledge told him that people were and will be sinful all throughout history, all across the globe he chose to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of sin. Why? Now for example there are more rapists, murderers, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals then ever before.

Perhaps they have sill time to repent before same thing will happen. God is patient, but don’t worry, if there are unrighteous people, their destiny will also be death.

-Even though God is all loving therefore loves both humans equally; is omniscient, omnipotent therefore with perfect knowledge, perfect efficiency, infinite wisdom and even though he wanted the Pharaoh to let the Israelites go from Egypt, he violated, restricted Pharaoh’s free moral will when he hardened his heart, strengthened his resolve and he didn’t let the Israelites go and then punish him, his people severely (killed firstborn babies)for something God orchestrated and was responsible for. Why? This is absurd because free moral choice is the essential component which justifies the concepts of reward and punishment. (Exodus 10:27-28) (Exodus 12:29-30)

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 726#805726

-Even though God is omniscient, omnipotent therefore with perfect knowledge, perfect efficiency, infinite wisdom and even though because of his middle-knowledge and foreknowledge knew Jesus paid for the penalty of all sins including the sin Uzzah, therefore sinners only need to repent to achieve salvation(he came up with this plan); he killed Uzzah instantly when tried to stop the ark of covenant to fall to the ground, therefore refusing him the opportunity to repent at all for his sin so to be forgiven and condemning him indirectly to everlasting destruction. Why? (2 Samuel 6:3-7)

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 727#805727

-Even though God is perfectly good, therefore is not in his nature to condone, order evil things, even though the Israelites had a close and open relationship with this perfectly good God, even though the bible is said to be inspired by this perfectly good God we see the old testament condoning things like intolerance; murder of witches, gays, fornicaters, people that worship other gods; genocide, rape, slavery; sometimes even commanded by God. Why?(Exodus 22:17), (Leviticus 20:13), (Leviticus 20:27), (Numbers 1:48-51), (1 Samuel 6:19-20), (1 Kings 20:35-36), (1 Samuel 15:2-3), (1 Kings 14:9-16), (Exodus 21:7-11), (Exodus 21:20-21), (Leviticus 25:44-46), (Numbers 31:7-18), (Deuteronomy 20:10-14), (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), (2 Kings 2:23-24).

Bible doesn’t condone murder, which is unlawful killing. It doesn’t also condone rape.

-Even though God is omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good chose to create a world with a system of justice(believe in God and Jesus’s sacrifice or else) that would lead to the majority of the humans he created to experience an everlasting torment in the lake of fire as a punishment. Why?

Perhaps you should read the Bible so that you would understand for example what these mean:

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
Matt. 25:46

For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without the law. As many as have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it isn't the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified (for when Gentiles who don't have the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience testifying with them, and their thoughts among themselves accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ.
Romans 2:12-16

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 8 by alexxcJRO]

Hey Alex,

I agree with other posts above: you have given in one OP your magnus opus. Any one of your questions is worthy of a single thread.

As far as these go

Do you believe that the universe is not ~14 billion years old?
Do you believe that earth is not ~4.5 billions years old?
Do you believe Yahweh made Adam and Eve from dirt 6000 years age?
Do you believe thousands of years ago there was a global flood?
Do you believe that giants, unicorns, dragons(they appear in the bible) really existed?
Do you believe the evolution is not a scientific fact?

1) You seem to have mistaken fundamentalist Christianity as representative of all Christianity, which is simply not true. There are numerous Christians who do not take Genesis as a literal description of the creation of the world--that kind of scientific genre simply did not exist in the ancient world.

2) I have no problem with evolution as a theory. It most certainly is not a scientific fact. It has not been duplicated in a laboratory:

3) unicorns do not appear in the Bible; nor dragons, unless you are referring to apocalyptic literature or poetry, both of which is a genre that employs wild imagery known to be wild imagery.

[alexxcJRO]

[Replying to post 16 by liamconnor]

"3) unicorns do not appear in the Bible; nor dragons, unless you are referring to apocalyptic literature or poetry, both of which is a genre that employs wild imagery known to be wild imagery."

does not appear in the bible look here:))
/////////Dragons

"Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him."
(Psalm 18:8)

"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon"
(Isaiah 51:9)

"His breath kindles coals, and a flame comes forth from his mouth."
(Job 41:21)

"In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon
that is in the sea."(Isaiah 27:1)

but what about giants?
//////////Giants
"Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was as strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit
above and his roots beneath. Also it was I who brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite"
(Amos 2:9–10).

"10 (The Emites used to live there—a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. 11 Like the Anakites, they too were considered Rephaites,
but the Moabites called them Emites."(Deuteronomy 2:10-11)


"20 (That too was considered a land of the Rephaites, who used to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. 21 They were a people strong and numerous,
and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord destroyed them from before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place."
(Deuteronomy 2:20-21)


"11 (Og king of Bashan was the last of the Rephaites. His bed was decorated with iron and was more than nine cubits long and four cubits wide.
[a] It is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)"
(Deuteronomy 3:11-13)


"4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were
the heroes of old, men of renown."(Genesis 6:4)

[alexxcJRO]

[Replying to post 11 by historia]

what about giants and dragons?
//////////Giants
"Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was as strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit
above and his roots beneath. Also it was I who brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite"
(Amos 2:9–10).

"10 (The Emites used to live there—a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. 11 Like the Anakites, they too were considered Rephaites,
but the Moabites called them Emites."(Deuteronomy 2:10-11)


"20 (That too was considered a land of the Rephaites, who used to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. 21 They were a people strong and numerous,
and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord destroyed them from before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place."
(Deuteronomy 2:20-21)


"11 (Og king of Bashan was the last of the Rephaites. His bed was decorated with iron and was more than nine cubits long and four cubits wide.
[a] It is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)"
(Deuteronomy 3:11-13)


"4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were
the heroes of old, men of renown."(Genesis 6:4)

/////////Dragons

"Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him."
(Psalm 18:8)

"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon"
(Isaiah 51:9)

"His breath kindles coals, and a flame comes forth from his mouth."
(Job 41:21)

"In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon
that is in the sea."(Isaiah 27:1)

Where are fossils of Giants and dragons ?
Can you please provide some evidence that such creatures ever existed ?
Show me some evidence?
I am waiting:P.

[alexxcJRO]

[Replying to post 15 by 1213]

"It would be miraculous to really see evidence that is against the Great flood."

Before the flood:

How did animals travel from all over the world?
Some, like the sloths, can't travel overland very well at all.
Some, like koalas, require a special diet. How did they bring it along?
Some, like the dodo, must have lived on islands. (If they didn't, they would have been easy prey for other animals.)
If animals all lived fairly close to Noah before the flood (as Whitcomb & Morris suggest), how were they all able to survive the predation and competition pressures from all the others, and why doesn't evidence of their living together show up in fossil distributions?

How was the ark loaded? The Bible says all the animals were all loaded in seven days [Gen. 7:4]. Even if there were only 9 million species to be loaded, there would have to be an average of 30 animals per second going through the ark's one door.
How was the ark made seaworthy? The longest wooden ships in modern seas are about 300 feet, and these require reinforcing with iron straps and leak so badly they must be constantly pumped. The ark was 450 feet long [Gen. 6:15].
Life on the ark:

How did all the different species fit on the ark? 10 million species is a reasonable estimate of species presently alive (though estimates vary widely; see May, 1992). They all would have had to fit in about 100,000 square feet of deck space [Gen. 6:15-16]. Since most animals are small, they probably could have all fit, but only if you allow very little room around them. Caged animals probably wouldn't all fit, nor would the animals have any room to exercise. The dinosaurs, mastodons, and other now-extinct animals would have been aboard the ark as well [Gen. 7:15; Morris, 1993], and they would take up a lot of room. Bracings, corridors, bilges, etc. would have taken up a lot of room, too. If you hypothesize significantly fewer species on the ark than now exist, you must explain evolution rates faster than any evolutionists propose to account for all the present species.
How did Noah supply food and water for all the animals for a year? [Gen. 6:21] Food for a year would have taken up many times the space of the animals themselves. (I know of no animals, except some desert amphibians, that hibernate for anywhere close to a year.)
How was the food kept fresh for a year? (Aphids, e.g., can't eat wilted plants.)
What did the carnivorous animals eat, especially those which require fresh meat?
How did creatures needing special environments survive on the ark?
How do you explain how all host-specific parasites/diseases made do with only one pair of hosts (and if they did OK, how the hosts survived!)
How was the ark kept livable? Shoveling the manure of the ungulates alone must have been a full time job for eight people.
How well ventilated was the ark? The body heat from millions of closely packed animals must have been very intense.
The flood:

Where did the water come from? (It would take 4.4 billion cubic kilometers to cover Mt. Everest.)
Where did it go?
If you accept the vapor canopy model of some Creationists, you must answer some equally difficult questions, such as: What kept the water up before the Flood? What happened to the heat of condensation of all that water? Why didn't ultraviolet light from the sun break all the water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms and blow them away?

Geological effects of the flood:

How were mountains formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids [Gansser, 1964].) If these were laid down during the flood, how did they reach their present height, and when were the valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind that many valleys were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow process.
How does a global flood explain angular unconformities, where one set of layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top? They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.
When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces. It takes a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does granite erode very quickly. [For example, see Donohoe & Grantham, 1989, for locations of contact between the South Mountain Batholith and the Meugma Group of sediments, as well as some angular unconformities.]
How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution? Ecological zonation and hydrodynamic sorting fail to explain:
the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?
the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life. (Yun, 1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late Precambrian sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear that low in the geological column?)
why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in many geologic strata.
why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are still perfectly sorted.
why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high ground?
how coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long were preserved intact with other fossils below them.
why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid mechanics says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper strata.
How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed layering? One formation is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400 days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling *per day*. And yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly layered, with great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, followed by thirty minutes more of .... well, I think you get the picture. [From: Bill Hyde; see also Kent & Olsen, 1992]
How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle. [From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys)]
How do you explain worldwide agreement between "apparent" geological eras and several different (independent) radiometric and nonradiometric dating methods? [Short et. al., 1991]
Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. All such evidence is lacking in annual layers dating back 40,000 years.
How were limestone deposits formed? Limestone is made of the skeletons of zillions of microscopic sea animals. Some deposits are thousands of meters thick. Were all those animals alive when the flood started? If not, how do you explain the well-ordered sequence of fossils in the deposits?
How could a flood have deposited chalk? Chalk is largely made up of the bodies of planktonic animals 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter [Bignot, 1985]. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec. [Twenhofel, 1961] In a year of the flood, they could have settled about half a meter. [From xdegrm@oryx.com (glenn r morton)]
Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have originated only on the surface, such as:
rain drops;
river channels;
wind-blown dunes [Kocurek & Dott, 1981; Clemmenson & Abrahamsen, 1983; Hubert & Mertz, 1984];
beaches;
glacial deposits [Eyles & Miall, 1984];
burrows;
in-place trees [Cristie & McMillan, 1991];
soil [Reinhardt & Sigleo, 1989; Wright, 1994];
dessication cracks;
footprints. [Gore, 1993, has a photograph (p. 16-17) showing dinosaur footprints in one layer with water ripples in layers above and below it. Gilette & Lockley, 1989, have several more examples, including dinosaur footprints on top of a coal seam (p. 361-366).]
How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?
How could a one-year flood deposit explain stratigraphic sections showing a dozen or more mature forests layered atop each other, all with upright trunks, in-place roots, and well-developed soil? Such layers of forests appear in many locations. One example, the Joggins section along the Bay of Fundy, shows a continuous section 2750 meters thick (along a 48-km sea cliff) with multiple in-place forests, some separated by hundreds of feet of strata, some even showing evidence of forest fires [Ferguson, 1988]. For other examples, see Dawson, 1868; Cristie & McMillan, 1991; Gastaldo, 1990; Yuretich, 1994.] Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below Mt. St. Helens as an example of how a flood can deposit vertical trunks, but deposition by flood fails to explain the roots, the soil, the layering, and other features found in such places.
How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? Why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalacians during the flood?
How do you explain fossil mineralization - the replacement of the original material with a different mineral?
Buried skeletal remains of modern fauna are negligibly mineralized, including some that biblical archaeology says are quite old - a substantial fraction of the age of the earth in this diluvian geology. For example, remains of Egyptian commoners buried near the time of Moses aren't extensively mineralized.
Buried skeletal remains of extinct mammalian fauna show quite variable mineralization.
Dinosaur remains are often extensively mineralized.
Trilobite remains are usually mineralized - and in different sites, fossils of the same species are composed of different materials.
How are these observations explained by a sorted deposition of remains in a single episode of global flooding? [From: jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)]
How could the flood deposit layers of solid salt, sometimes meters in width, interbedded with sediments containing marine fossils? This apparently occurs when a body of salt water has its fresh-water intake cut off, and then evaporates. These layers can occur more or less at random times in the geological history, and have characteristic fossils on either side. Therefore, if the fossils were themselves laid down during a catastrophic flood, there are, it seems, only two choices: (1) the salt layers were themselves laid down at the same time, during the heavy rains that began the flooding, or (2) the salt is a later intrusion. I suspect that both will prove insuperable difficulties for a theory of flood deposition of the geologic column and its fossils. [From: marlowe@paul.rutgers.edu (Thomas Marlowe). See also Jackson et al., 1990]
How were sedimentary deposits recrystalized and plastically deformed in the short time since the flood? The stretched pebble conglomerate in Death Valley National Monument (Wildrose Canyon Rd., 15 mi. south of Hwy. 190), for example, contains streambed pebbles metamorphosed to quartzite and stretched to 3 or more times their original length. Plastically deformed stone is also common around salt diapirs [Jackson et. al., 1990].
How were hematite layers laid down? Standard theory is that they were laid down before Earth's atmosphere contained much oxygen. In an oxygen-rich regime, they would almost certainly be impossible.
How are the polar ice caps possible? Such a mass of water as the flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds. No way to drop them exactly back onto their original location, or to regrow them. (In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.) [From: Bob Grumbine rmg3@psuvm.psu.edu]
A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?
When did impact craters on the earth occur? Geological evidence indicates that they would have formed in sediments early enough for erosion and crustal movements to partially erase them. Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest they occurred during the year of Noah's flood. But the heat from all those impacts concentrated in one year would have vaporized the flood waters. [Fezer, pp 45-46]
And before you argue that fossil evidence was dated and interpreted to meet evolutionary assumptions, remember that the geological column and the relative dates therein were laid out by creationists before Darwin even formulated his theory. (See, for example, Moore [1973], or the closing pages of Dawson [1868], who was cited above.)

Biological effects of the flood:

How did all the fish survive? Some require cool clear water, some need brackish water, some need ocean water, some need water even saltier. A flood would have destroyed at least some of these habitats.
How did short-lived species survive? Adult mayflies on the ark would have died in a few days, and the larvae of many mayflies require shallow fresh running water. Many other insects would face similar problems.
How did all the modern plant species survive? Many plants (seeds and all) would be killed by being submerged for a few months. Most plants require established soils to grow--soils which would have been stripped by the Flood. Some plants germinate only after being exposed to fire or after being ingested by animals; these conditions would be rare (to put it mildly) after the Flood.
How do you explain the survival of any sensitive marine life (e.g., coral)? Since most coral are found in shallow water, the turbidity created by the runoff from the land would effectively cut them off from the sun. The silt would cover the reef after the rains were over, and the coral would ALL DIE. By the way, the rates at which coral deposits calcium are well known, and some highly mature reefs (such a the great barrier) have been around for MILLIONS of years to be deposited to their observed thickness. [From: bmb@bluemoon.rn.com]
Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating?
How does the flood explain the geological sorting of pollen? Fossil pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen hydraulically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic evidence is different for each layer? Furthermore, pollen and spores are found in association with the trunks, leaves, branches, and roots produced by the same plants [Stewart, 1983]. How could a flood sort all of them together perfectly?
How does a flood explain the accuracy of "coral clocks"? The moon is slowly sapping the earth's rotational energy. The earth should have rotated more quickly in the distant past, meaning that a day would have been less than 24 hours, and there would have been more days per year. Corals can be dated by the number of "daily" growth layers per "annual" growth layer. Devonian corals, for example, show nearly 400 days per year. There is an exceedingly strong correlation between the "supposed age" of a wide range of fossils (corals, stromatolites, and a few others -- collected from geologic formations throughout the column and from locations all over the world) and the number of days per year that their growth pattern shows. The agreement between these clocks, and radiometric dating, and the theory of superposition... is a little hard to explain away as the result of a number of unlucky coincidences in a 300-day-long flood. [From: stassen@alc.com (Chris Stassen)]
If a single flood is responsible for all fossils, where were all those animals when they were alive? From "Six 'Flood' Arguments Creationists Can't Answer" by Robert Schadewald, Creation/Evolution IV (Summer 1982), pp. 12-13: "Scientific creationists interpret the fossils found in the earth's rocks as the remains of animals that perished in the Noachian Deluge. Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in "fossil graveyards" as evidence for the Flood. In particular, creationists seem enamored by the Karroo Formation in Africa, which is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate animals (see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61). As pseudoscientists, creationists dare not test this major hypothesis that all of the fossilized animals died in the Flood. "Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota, has studied the Karroo Formation. He asserts that the animals fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the size of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A minute's work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion animals in the Karoo formation could be resurrected, there would be twenty-one of them for every acre of land on earth. Suppose we assume (conservatively, I think) that the Karroo Formation contains 1 percent of the vertebrate fossils on earth [land fossils only--whj]. Then when the Flood began, there must have been at least 2100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense dinosaurs. To a noncreationist mind, that seems a bit crowded." A thousand kilometers' length of arctic coastal plain, according to experts in Leningrad [N. Newell, Creation and Evolution; 1982, Columbia U. Press, p. 62], contains about 500,000 *tons* of tusks. Even assuming that the entire population was preserved, you seem to be saying that Russia had wall-to-wall mammoths before this "event."
How do you explain the relative commonness of aquatic fossils? A flood would have washed over everything equally, so terrestrial organisms should be roughly as abundant as aquatic ones (or more abundant, since Creationists hypothesize greater land area before the Flood) in the fossil record. Yet shallow marine environments account for by far the most fossils.
Even if there room physically for all the large animals which now exist only as fossils, how could they have all coexisted in a stable ecology before the flood? Montana alone would have had to support a diversity of herbivores orders of magnitude larger than anything now observed.
Historical effects of the flood:

Why is there no mention of the flood in the records of Egyptian or Chinese civilizations which existed at the time? Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1, Gal 3:17, various generation lengths given in Genesis) place the flood 1300 years before Solomon began the first temple. We can construct reliable chronologies for near Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, from many kinds of records from the literate cultures in the near East. These records are independent of, but supported by, dating methods such as dendrochronology and carbon-14. The building of the first temple can be dated to 950 B.C. +/- some small delta, placing the Flood around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egyptians (among others) have written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.
Why are no human artifacts found except in the very uppermost strata? If, at the time of the flood, the earth was overpopulated by people with technology for shipbuilding, why were none of their tools or buildings mixed with with trilobite or dinosaur fossils?
How did the human population rebound so fast? Geneologies in Genesis put the Tower of Babel about 110 to 150 years after the Flood [Gen 10:25, 11:10-19]. How did the world population regrow so fast to make its construction (and the city around it) possible? Similarly, there would have been very few people around to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, found the Sumarian and Indus Valley civilizations, populate the Americas, etc.
Aftermath of the flood:

How did koalas get from Ararat to Australia, polar bears to the Arctic, etc., when the kinds of environment they require to live doesn't exist between the two points.
How were ecological interdependencies preserved as animals migrated from Ararat? Did the yucca an the yucca moth migrate together across the Atlantic? Were there, a few thousand years ago, unbroken giant sequoia forests between Ararat and California to allow indigenous bark and cone beetles to migrate?
Why are so many marsupials limited to Australia; why are there no wallabies in Indonesia? The same argument applies to any number of groups of plants and animals.
How could more than a handful of species survive in a devastated habitat?
How could more than a handful of the predator species on the ark have survived, with only two individuals of their prey to eat? All of the predators at the top of the food pyramid require larger numbers of food animals beneath them on the pyramid, which in turn require large numbers of the animals they prey on, and so on, down to the primary producers (plants...etc.) at the bottom. And if the predators survived, how did the other animals survive being preyed on?
How could more than a handful of species survive random influences that affect populations? Isolated populations with fewer than 20 members are usually doomed even when extraordinary measures are taken to protect them. [Simberloff, 1988]
How could more than a handful of species survive the inbreeding depression that comes with establishing a population from a single mating pair?
How do you explain the genetic variation in all populations today?
The Bible states that seven pairs of all "clean" animals, but only one pair each of other animals, were taken aboard the ark. Thus, after the flood, clean animals should have started with seven times the genetic variation. (Clean animals could have had up to 28 alleles of any gene, while non-clean animals would have been limited to 4 alleles.) Why do we not observe a correlation between genetic variation and Hebrew dietary restrictions?
Is the flood model consistent with the Bible?

The model seems to say that large numbers of kinds of land animals became extinct because of the flood [e.g., Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 69n], while Genesis repeatedly says that Noah was ordered to take a representative sample of all kinds of land animals on the Ark to save them from extinction, and that Noah did as ordered. Which is right?
Genesis 6:20 and 7:14-15 say there were two of each kind of fowl and clean beasts, yet Genesis 7:2-3,5 says they came in sevens. How can a literal interpretation be appropriate if the text is self-contradictory?
How could Noah have gathered male and female of each kind [Gen. 7:15-16] when some species are asexual, others are parthenogenic and have only females, and others (such as earthworms) are hermaphrodites? And what about social animals like ants and termites which need the whole nest to survive?
What was used to waterproof the ark? We are told that God instructed Noah to coat the ark inside and out with the naturally- occurring hydrocarbon pitch, which causes a bit of a problem since, according to Whitcomb and Morris, all oil, tar and coal deposits were formed when organic matter was buried DURING the flood.
If your style of Biblical interpretation makes you take the flood literally, then shouldn't you also believe in a flat and stationary earth? [Dan. 4:10-11, Matt. 4:8, 1 Chron. 16:30, Psalms 93:1, ...]
In fact, is there any reason at all why the flood story should be taken literally? Jesus used parables; why wouldn't God do so, too?
Does the flood story make the whole Bible less credible? Davis Young is a working geologist who also is an Evangelical Christian. He has personal doubts about some aspects of evolution, but he makes a devastating case against "Flood Geology." He writes (Christianity and the Age of the Earth, p. 163): "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...." [From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys) See also Young, 1988]
If God is omnipotent, why not kill what He wanted killed directly? Why resort to a roundabout method that requires innumerable additional miracles?
The whole idea was to rid the wicked people from the world. Did it work?
Finally, even if the flood model weren't riddled by all these problems, why should we accept it? What it does attempt to explain is already explained more accurately, consistently, and thoroughly by conventional geology and biology, and the flood model leaves many other things unexplained, even unexplainable. How is flood geology useful?

[alexxcJRO]

[Replying to post 16 by liamconnor]

"Wow - how imperious. I think....not.

What do these irrelevant questions have to do with a statement defining your "problem of evil"?"

Dude go respond to the thread i did specially for this topic of problem of evil.
I am curious. Why are you not responding there anymore? I left replies to your posts.