Tag: Earth

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How Extensive Was the Flood of Noah?

How Extensive Was the Flood of Noah?
Perhaps the most argued event in the Old Testament is the flood of Noah described in Genesis. This week we have been examining some of the questions people ask. Today we will look at the question, “How extensive was the flood of Noah?”

Taking the Bible literally does not mean a superficial reading of the King James translation of the Bible. You have to look at who wrote it, to whom it was written, why it was written, and how the people to whom it was written would have understood it. The language of Genesis 6-8 certainly seems to indicate that the waters of the flood covered the whole globe.

Many times biblical passages sound like the event was global when it clearly was not. Luke 2:1-3 says “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…” Was that the whole globe or the Roman world? Did Rome collect taxes from the Incas, the Hopi, or the Denali? The people of the time would have understood that to mean the entire Roman world. In Colossians 1:23 Paul says that the gospel of Christ “was preached to every creature which is under heaven.” I have visited with the native people at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and they have no record of the gospel ever having been preached to their ancestors there. Clearly, Paul was talking about the world that he knew.

The message of Genesis 6-8 is that humans discarded God and became corrupt to the point that God destroyed them by a flood. The one person who stayed faithful to God was a man named Noah who was warned that the event was coming. God gave him time to construct a way to save his family and the animals of his area. There is evidence to verify this that we have considered in this series of posts and which is available on our website.

How extensive was the flood of Noah? It ended the lives of all but the few people on the boat. The Bible tells us that a flood like that will not happen again. However, it also says that the Earth will be destroyed by a fire that melts the very elements of which we are all made ( 2 Peter 3:8-13).

We must listen to the lesson of Noah and not try to deny the historical event on which it is based. I would suggest the flood covered the whole inhabited Earth of Noah’s day. It probably did not cover uninhabited lands thousands of miles away from where Noah lived. If you have a different opinion, that is fine, but don’t miss the message of the story.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
We have a discussion of the flood in our video series program # 27 available on our doesgodexist.TV website. You can also look up information on the flood by doing a word search on our doesgodexist.org website search engine.

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How Could All Those Animals Fit in Noah’s Ark?

How Could All those Animals Fit in Noah's Ark?
Perhaps the most argued event in the Old Testament is the flood of Noah described in Genesis. For the past two days, we have been examining some of the questions people ask. Today we will look at the question, “How could all those animals fit in Noah’s ark?”

The Bible gives the dimensions of the ark, and it indeed was huge, especially for that time. How do you get the 25 million or so species of animals on Earth today into that ship? The answer is that you couldn’t.

Genesis 6:20 lists the same groups that are described in Genesis 1. Those are (1) fowl, (2) cattle, (3) “creeping things,” and (4) fish. We pointed out in our lessons on evolution that the word “kind” in Hebrew is not the same as “species” in modern scientific terms. The word “kind” is the Hebrew word “min,” and the Bible tells us in both the Old and New Testaments that there are four kinds: the flesh of fish, the flesh of birds, the flesh of beasts, and the flesh of man. First Corinthians 15:39 identifies these four and Genesis 1 identifies them as well. The same groupings are used in Genesis 6 to describe what Noah took on the ark.

The Hebrew word “remes” is rendered as “creeping thing” in some translations of the Bible. “Sherets” is also translated creeping thing (see Leviticus 11). “Remes” was an animal the Jews could eat, but “sherets” was not. “Remes” clearly refers to goats and sheep – animals that could be eaten by the Jews. But “sherets” refers to things like snakes and lizards which they could not eat.

So how could all those animals fit in Noah’s ark? The point of all this is that Noah didn’t take two poodles, two cockapoos, two German shepherds, etc. He took two dog-like animals. Similarly, he took two bovines, not the dozens of varieties that exist today. There are over 100 varieties of chickens, but he took two of that group. In short, Noah’s ark would have had enough room, and the evolutionary change that has taken place since has given us the variety we have today.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
We have a discussion of the flood in our video series program # 27 available on our doesgodexist.TV website. You can also look up information on the flood by doing a word search on our doesgodexist.org website search engine.

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When Did Noah’s Flood Happen?

When Did Noah's Flood Happen?
Perhaps the most argued event in the Old Testament is the flood of Noah described in Genesis. Yesterday we looked at the question of whether it really happened. Now let’s consider when did Noah’s flood happen?

People have suggested many dates for the flood. The instructions given to Noah indicate that fabricated metals had not yet been invented. Genesis 6:14 indicates that the ark was made of “gopher wood” and covered with pitch. We don’t know what gopher wood was, but some wood expands when it is wet, and pitch can be used as a waterproofing sealant. The planing of wood to make planks had not been invented yet, so the construction of the ark is doubly amazing and modern portrayals are wildly misleading.

The Bible doesn’t answer the question of “When did Noah’s flood happen.” All calculations must be based on many assumptions that may or may not be correct. Therefore, there is no way to date the flood accurately. The one thing we can say is that it was very early in human history.

The instructions God gave to Noah suggest that the flood event happened before the smelting of metals and machining of wood. The stone age is the label we have given this time period, and scientists call it the Neolithic period. Our modern calendars would put that age at around 10,000 years ago. Noah would have used the primitive tools available at that time.

Another often-asked question is, “How could all those animals fit in the ark?” We will look at that tomorrow.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
We have a discussion of the flood in our video series program # 27 available on our doesgodexist.TV website. You can also look up information on the flood by doing a word search on our doesgodexist.org website search engine.

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Did Noah’s Flood Really Happen?

Did Noah's Flood Really Happen?
Perhaps the most argued event in the Old Testament is the flood of Noah described in Genesis 6–9. Atheists have portrayed it as a myth which came from ancient cultures but with no scientific support. Young earth proponents have used it to explain everything from the age of the earth to the geologic column to the origin of the races. In the next few days, we hope to provide some brief answers to questions people raise about the flood. To begin with, did Noah’s flood really happen?

There is massive evidence that the flood did happen. The fact that even skeptics point out that every culture has a flood account is strong support that it occurred. The flood stories of various cultures are remarkably similar although usually enhanced with local cultural flavoring. The Hawaiians have a giant canoe, the Denali in Alaska have a giant raft. But there is a global idea of a massive flood which only a few humans, who were warned in advance, escaped. To suggest that this was due to a myth being circulated among all cultures is difficult to support. Communication between these geographically separated cultures is not as likely as the fact that there was a common event.

The biblical description of the source of the water is “the fountains of the great deep” and the “windows of heaven” (Genesis 7:11). Two different Hebrew words can be translated “window.” The common window in your home is indicated by the Hebrew word “challon” and that word is used in Genesis 8:6 to refer to a window in the ark. The word used in Genesis 7:11 and 8:2 is “arubbah” which refers to an opening in heaven. (See Malachi 3:10 and 2 Kings 7:2.) The word “fountain” is the Hebrew “mayan” referring to a spring – an underground source of water. Massive underground pools of fresh water have been found all over the earth, and astronomical sources of water are also known. The fact that Genesis does not describe normal sources of water lends support to the notion that this was an unusual addition of water to the Earth.

There are many unanswered questions. Where did the water go? Was the flood global? There is no worldwide evidence of a massive flood in spite of what some may claim, nor would you expect there to be. The erosion of Earth’s surface is extensive, and whatever flood strata may have existed has long since been eroded away. However, if someone asks you, “Did Noah’s flood really happen’” the facts strongly suggest that it did. When did it happen? We will look at that question tomorrow.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
We have a discussion of the flood in our video series program # 27 available on our doesgodexist.TV website. You can also look up information on the flood by doing a word search on our doesgodexist.org website search engine.

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Springs of the Sea

Springs of the Sea
On the floor of the oceans of the world, hydrothermal vents are spewing superheated water. We could call them springs of the sea.

These ocean vents send out water at temperatures that are much higher than the temperature at which water boils under normal atmospheric pressure. The sea vents are usually called “black smokers” or “white smokers” depending on the minerals that are contained in the water they release. Those minerals nourish various sea life in the area. The white smoker in the picture is in the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument in the Pacific Ocean. It is emitting barium, calcium, and silicon as well as carbon dioxide.

The hydrothermal vents are primarily along the mid-ocean ridges which are formed by tectonic plates that are moving apart (diverging). Tectonic plates are massive sections of the Earth’s crust which move relative to each other diverging, converging, or transforming in various ways. It’s along the boundaries of those plates that most earthquakes and volcanic activities occur. As the plates diverge along the ocean ridge, they move outward and subduct (move under) other plates. This subduction forms trenches which are the lowest areas of the ocean floor.

It was only in 1977 that scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography discovered sea vents by using a submersible owned by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It’s interesting to note that the Bible in Job 38:16, written 4,000 years ago, records God saying to Job, “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?” We now know that there are “springs of the sea” (hydrothermal vents) and “recesses of the deep” (trenches) in the ocean. Of course, since God created them, He knew it long before we did.
–Roland Earnst © 2018

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Are We a Hologram?

Are We a Hologram?
This ministry has been functioning for 50 years, and one of the things we have seen is that atheist and skeptic arguments are cyclical. In the 1960s there was a push by skeptics to say that the physical world doesn’t exist at all and the universe is an illusion. So are we a hologram? Some scientists today seem to think so.

In the New York Times for May 10, 2018, science columnist Dennis Overbye wrote, “The news from some physicists like the late Stephen Hawking is that the universe might be a hologram, an illusion like the three-dimensional images on a bank card. Some cosmologists have argued that it is not inconsistent – at least mathematically – to imagine that the entire universe as we know it could just be a computer simulation as in The Matrix.”

Just because something is mathematically possible does not mean that it is true. You can prove that 1 = 2 if you make the right assumptions (in that case dividing something by zero). On a more practical level, there are certain things that holograms or illusions cannot do. For example, you can’t force an illusion to be taught to think. The whole notion of free will does not fit an illusion hypothesis. Our brains are not a simulation, and the things we do at a spiritual level are not within the reach of aliens.

If your view of the creation is that we are mindless pawns who have no purpose, then the hologram hypothesis may seem reasonable. Are we are a hologram controlled by aliens? For those of us who believe that we are spiritual beings with a purpose for our existence, this is just another silly, desperate attempt to get around being responsible for what we do.
–John N. Clayton

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Sun Stand Still

Sun Stand Still
Many times when a skeptic attacks a biblical story, the problem is caused by misunderstanding a word. In Joshua 10 there is an account of a battle between the Amorites and the Israelites. In verses 12 and 13 of the King James translation, Joshua said, “Sun stand still” and the Sun and Moon stood still for a whole day.

There is no question that God can make the Sun stand still. He can do anything He wants to do, but the physical consequences of stopping the Earth from rotating on its axis are enormous. The inertia of the water in the oceans, the effect on the atmosphere, and even the impact on the land masses challenge the imagination. A careful study of the words used in the biblical account resolves what appears to be an impossible statement in the scriptures.

The New Testament uses the Greek word “helios” which means Sun, but there is no Hebrew word for Sun in the Old Testament. In Genesis 1:16, the word for lights is “maor,” and the Sun is identified as “gadol maor” usually translated “greater light.” In Job 31:26, the Hebrew word is the shorter version “or” and Job 30:28 it is “chammah” referring to the heat of the Sun. In Judges 8:13 and 14:18 the word used is “cheres” again referring to the Sun’s burning heat.

In Joshua 10, the Hebrew word used is “shemesh” which refers to a ministrant, a device to minister to a need. It usually refers to the Sun but could be any ministrant. The word for Moon is “yareach” which refers to a wondering object. There is another interesting point about the words in the last part of Joshua 10:12. The pronouncement of God’s provision for the battle to continue says in the King James, “Sun stand thou still upon Gibeon (El-Jib today); and thou Moon in the valley of Ajalon.” Ajalon is in Dan and Gibeon is 4 miles from Bethel. These two locations are less than 30 miles apart. That fact should suggest that these are not the celestial Sun and Moon.

The question is not whether God caused a “great light” to allow the battle to continue at Joshua’s request, but what was the method by which God did it. There are many ways God could provide a great light or series of lights as a ministrant. Verse 11 speaks of “great stones from heaven” cast down on Azekah which was a town in Judah near Gibeon. Many astronomical possibilities to provide light are worth considering such as an asteroid or meteor shower or an aurora.

If you read the rest of the chapter, the main message is that God fought for Israel. Verse 14 indicates “there was no day like it before or after.” If you are satisfied with assuming that “Sun stand still” was simply a miracle of God and no explanation should be attempted, that is your prerogative. But to the skeptic, there needs to be an answer, and the evidence gives several possible answers that enable the believer “to be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks of the hope that is within us” (1 Peter 3:15).
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Natural Disaster and God

Natural Disaster and God Every time natural disaster strikes anywhere in the world, people tend to blame God for what happened. The current examples are the hurricane in the panhandle of Florida, and the catastrophic earthquake in Indonesia. What atheists and skeptics fail to realize about natural disasters is that the vast majority of catastrophes are due to human ignorance and mismanagement. Both of the current crises demonstrate that point.

The major loss of life and devastation in Indonesia is in an area that was built on a restored landfill. Gravel, sand, and dirt were brought in to make living space for what were mostly poor workers and laborers. Engineers have warned for a very long time that the land under the highly populated area was unstable, and the earthquake was enough to cause that land to move in a significant way. You could call this a human-designed natural disaster.

In America, we have the same situation in New Orleans and Los Angeles. New Orleans is built on an area that is soft and prone to flooding, and part of the city is even below sea level. Los Angeles is built in an earthquake active area riddled with faults. It isn’t a question of whether a severe earthquake will happen in the Los Angeles area, it is just a question of when. There will be a catastrophe when that happens, and God will be blamed for causing it.

Hurricane Michael is a demonstration of another human-caused natural disaster. One of the designs of our planet is the method which brings water to areas that would otherwise be a desert. At the equator, the direct sunlight evaporates ocean water which falls as rain causing tropical rain forests. The remaining dry air moves north or south in what is called the “Hadley Cells.” When that dry air cools and returns Earth’s surface at 30 degrees latitude, it produces desert conditions. Most of the world’s great deserts are found at 30 degrees north or south latitude–the Sahara, the Australian Outback, the Mohave, etc.

In the southeastern United States, 30 degrees north latitude runs through northern Florida. That area would be a desert were it not for hurricanes. The heating of the ocean in the summer is sufficient to lift massive amounts of water which are then carried to the land restoring lakes, rivers, and underground aquifers. Without that large water supply system, that area would be a desert like the Sahara. The land area around the Gulf of Mexico in its pristine state had barrier beaches and mangrove forests that moderated the wind and storm surge. When I was a child living in Alabama, we looked forward to “hurricane parties” when we would “button down” and enjoy not having to work. The storm’s damage was limited, and even the storm surge was never a problem. That was 80 years ago.

Since that time, we have modified the shoreline stripping the barrier beaches of vegetation, and building houses where they are easily destroyed by water or wind. Even the vast mangrove swamps that were a buffer to storms have been removed, and channels have been built lined with aluminum houses, golf courses, and boat facilities. It was an invitation for a natural disaster.

We are sympathetic to those who have suffered because of the greed and foolishness of city planners and real estate salespeople. But don’t blame God for the foolishness of human actions.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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Genesis 1:1 and the Creation Week

Genesis 1:1 and Zion Canyon
Because it was not God’s purpose to give details of the creation of the universe, Genesis 1:1 covers it in one sentence. “Reshith Elohim bara shamayan erets.” Those are the Hebrew words translated: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This is a historical statement which says there was a beginning to everything in space and on Earth. Those few words tell us that God was the cause of the creation. The creation included a planet with everything that we would need to exist and flourish–carbon, oxygen, water, coal, oil, nitrates, etc. “Erets” refers to a functional planet–not to a blob of gook.

As we drove through the canyonlands last month (see earlier posts), we saw how God prepared the Earth and the physical, chemical, and biological agents He used. It is interesting to see that dinosaurs, as well as many microscopic forms of life, were the gardeners who allowed all of this to happen. Without dinosaurs, there would have been no agents to process the giant plants of that day and spread their seeds. Without tiny diatoms, there would have been no agents present to form the oil and other fossil fuels that we need. Notice that Genesis 1:1 is untimed and undated! How long did it take? When did it happen? The Bible doesn’t say.

In Genesis 1:2 we see that the earth needed to be formed. The word translated “earth” is the same Hebrew word “erets” found in verse 1. This second usage is clearly different, however, because Genesis 1:9-10 indicates that God separated this earth from the water, meaning that it refers to the earth people live on, not planet Earth.

In the following verses of Genesis, the “days” of the “creation week” give specific explanations of the origin of the plants, water creatures, cattle, goats, sheep, chickens, and ducks the ancient Israelites knew. Each Hebrew word refers to known and domesticated animals, not unknown animals. Days are used to provide continuity to the sequence in which God created life. How long those days were, whether they were consecutive or had long time-periods between them can be debated endlessly.

The fact is that the first verse describes the creation made by God with the things humans would need to survive on Earth. As we said, that first verse is untimed and undated. All of the studies of geologists and biologist as to how those resources were produced are covered in that one verse of Genesis 1:1. The creation week is a description of the actual production of humans and their domesticated animals.

On our trip into the canyonlands, we saw the power, wisdom, and planning God used to allow us to exist. Proverbs 8 presents wisdom as the causal agent of creation–not blind mechanistic chance. Theological claims that create conflict between God’s word and the display of His wisdom and design are due to human error, not to the Creator.
–John N. Clayton © 2018

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God’s Engineering Skills

God's Engineering Skills at Sunset Crater
Yesterday we began to tell you about last month’s Canyonlands Educational Tour. It was a week of learning about how God works. In the canyonlands area, we can see God’s engineering skills.

Our trip was a bus tour with 50 people participating. We departed from Flagstaff, Arizona. That area allows us to study the basic rocks from which all other rocks were made, and that is volcanic material. Our analysis of elements in space and the minerals in Earth’s crust show us that all rocks are made of materials found in the interior of the Earth. For example, granite is made up of quartz which breaks down into sand and makes sandstone. Orthoclase is another constituent of granite, and it weathers to produce clay which is a major part of shale. Visiting Sunset Crater (pictured) and seeing the volcanic mountains surrounding Flagstaff allows us to understand the method by which God produced all other rocks.

In the first session of our trip on Sunday evening, before we departed, we pointed out the one basic assumption that underlies our entire trip. That assumption is that God is not a magician who does everything by slight of hand and magic. We see God’s engineering skills as He uses natural processes to produce things in the creation. The Bible tells us that “God planted a garden” (Genesis 2:8) not that He waved a magic wand and a garden appeared. When God created man’s body in Genesis 2:7, he “formed man of the dust of the earth.” The Hebrew word used to describe that process is yatshir which is a word denoting something an artist might do in creating a work of pottery from clay.

God did not “zap” the Grand Canyon into existence with all its many kinds of rocks and embedded fossils. Many religious people want to have God “speaking” these things into existence. The Bible indicates that God commanded the creation elements indicating that other agents were doing the actual work. In our twenty-first century mentality of rejecting scams and con-artists, it is important not to put God into the role of being a trickster. God did His creating process in such a way that we can discover the processes. That is the reason the Bible says we can “know God exists through the things He has made” (Romans 1:20). In Proverbs 8, wisdom personified speaks of God’s engineering skills.

We see the evidence of God’s engineering skills in the creation processes, and we read the Scriptures that tell what happened. Our approach to all of the evidence and the Scriptures is that they MUST agree. If the same God who gave us the Bible also did the creating, they cannot disagree. If there seems to be a conflict between the scientific evidence and what the Bible says, we either have bad science or bad theology or both. There has been plenty of both.

Tomorrow, we will continue to examine more of the things we saw of God’s engineering skills during our week in the canyonlands.
–John N. Clayton © 2018