I'm looking for a strong rebuttal to an Old-Earth, literal Noah's Ark story

Watched this online:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_BzWUuZN5w&feature=relmfu

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_397131&fe...

Basically an animation on the ridiculousness of the Noah's Ark story.

Here's my father's response:

"I guess an explanation of "old Earth" is part of the confusion here.

Here is an "old Earth" timeline: http://www.reasons.org/files/articles/creation_timeline_chart_color_201107.pdf

Linked here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11888148/01DaysofCreation-TheBigPicture.mp3 is an MP3 which is the first part of 7 MP3's on the days of creation. The first provides an overview of the 7 days of creation and how they can be interpreted from the Bible.

For the Ark itself, here is a clarification based on a world-wide complete flood.

Dr. Norman Geisler feels that the ark needed to house about 72,000 different kinds of animals.

Animals with Nostrils

Remember that Noah was commanded to take all of the land animals in whose nostrils was the breath of life (Gen. 6:17, 7:14-15, 22). This means all animals who breathe air. "Kinds" refers to species.

In other words, Noah did not need to take wolves, coyotes, and dogs into the ark. He needed only one representative from the canine species. He didn't need to house lions, tigers, bob cats, Cheetahs, and domestic cats. He needed only a representative from the feline group.

_________

Admittedly "kinds" is tough to equate to species as the historical definition of species is animals which can interbreed but with today's genetic understanding the definition of species is a moving target. So the debate can be around the extent of micro-evolution and speciazation, but as you can see from the passage above some level of micro-evolution is assummed in the Bible by the command of taking from each kind.

That all said, I am open in the case of Noah's Ark account to local vs. world-wide flood as I personally have not studied enough of the related texts and arguments. The old-earth creation account was my bias before we started debating this in our family because the Hebrew word for day = yom which I knew from the class I taught takes its meaning from local context. It is like us using the word "day" in the phrase "back in the day..." which in this phrase is period of time, not 24 hours. In the Bible "Day of the Lord" is clearly a period of time reference which needs to be interpreted from the local passage.

In the end I think I have said this to everyone in the family, the Bible will come together with science because god created everything including the laws of science.

I'm a biology student in college, and he's trying. The "moving target" comment is a little closer to truth than not.

Should I drop the speciation thing and focus instead on the impossible amount of water necessary (and of course the lack of evidence of the world covered in water), drowning if people breathed in the humid air, and other related events? Or, do any of you have a good macro/micro evolution rebuttal? Perhaps the lack of genetic variability found in a single mating pair for the "microevolution" of all felines, etc.?

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Permalink Reply by Gretchen Becker on January 26, 2012 at 1:54am

Excellent! :D

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Permalink Reply by Suzanne Olson-Hyde on February 6, 2012 at 7:20pm

xians justify everything, the way the ark was built, how the fed the animals, blahdyblahdyblah. Ask a xian, 'What do they think was the population of the earth at the time of the flood. Xians fiddle the numbers ad nauseum. I have seen xian numbers on the population of the earth between 120 thousand to 7 billion. This all loving god was willing to mass murder every man woman and child, every living animal etc. It wipes out all the descendants of adam and eve - this is the omnipotent, knows what is coming in the future - and he is willing to murder all. Xians are following a god that is very happy to murder - well, they can do that. You have higher standards and don't want to follow the teachings of a mass murder.

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