The Post-Noah's Flood Period is Explained by Evolution

This policy statement is your first and greatest mistake.Your difficulties originate in your treatment of literature, not science.The Bible is a collection of books. Books are literature. Your policy statement has nothing to do with how literature is read.Fair-minded readers don't force genres onto texts before they examine them. They ask. They pose questions like 'What kind of story is this?'You assume the genre automatically before you even read. You declare that every narrative, every story in this eclectic assemblage of texts gathered over centuries will be read by you as a newpaper story unless you feel forced to consider other possibilities. You assume.You have been taught that assuming is a smart thing to do. But how can it be, when countless literary genres exist? Many of these genres are primarily symbolic in their mode of expression. Some are primarily factual. Many mix both modes of expression. Some describe realistic events that, for all their realism, are fiction--yet these stories convey truth just the same.Symbols appear in all sorts of writing. Almost never does the storyteller 'inform' you 'specifically' that symbols are being used. This is silly. Good writers aren't pedantic. They expect a minimum of savvy from their readers, and normally they get it.Wise people understand that an unlimited Being is free to speak in any form at all. God is under no obligation to express himself in the single literary genre you happen to like.But, sadly, you do not grant God this freedom. You have been taught your prejudice in favour of newspaper stories. You have been taught that newspapers represent the supreme literary form. You have been taught that the highest respect you can show a story is not to approach it in an open-minded way and ask what it is, but just to assume it's a newspaper and treat it that way.The newspaper is your default setting for God. It is the only genre you permit God to use to talk to you. You deny him the freedom any human author would enjoy to express himself as he chooses.This prejudice in favour of newspapers remains just a prejudice. Nothing more. The Bible itself never demands that you treat its texts this way.No commandment given at Mount Sinai reads:

Thou shalt take my Scriptures quite literally, unless the passage states specifically that it is speaking in metaphor.

Jesus never said in the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed are they take the Bible quite literally, unless the passage states specifically that it is speaking in metaphor.

John of Patmos never said in the closing pages of his Apocalypse:

Thou shalt take this book quite literally, unless the passage states specifically that it is speaking in metaphor.

No, you did not get your 'newspaper rule' from the Bible. You did not get it from God. You learned this policy statement somewhere else.Which means you are free to discard it.And it's time to discard it. You already noticing that your 'newspaper rule' puts you at odds with everything that is known of the age and size of the universe and the natural history of the planet you live on. The discrepancy bothers you enough that you feel the need here to negotiate some sort of compromise with reality that will let you keep reading your Bible as a newspaper. But half-measures don't work for a mistake this basic.It's time re-examine your investments--not in God, but in newspapers. It's time to ask whether newspaper writing is so important that you should ever have automatically equated it with the mind of God.God doesn't have to write you a newspaper story. God can speak to you any way God wants. God can do anything. God is God.--We're exploring this in detail in another thread: the Two Trees in the Garden. Feel free to visit if you get the chance.________________Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.

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Archer OAll species are transitional.

Well, sure. That is the line they teach people.It didn't rain just any old water for forty days. It rained magic water.Magic water is amazing. It does anything YECs need it to do.Need to raise mountains? Magic water does it. Need to form the Grand Canyon in a year? Magic water. Need to make tons of sandstone turn into limestone into marble into jade in a matter of weeks? Magic water. Need to raise every island in the Pacific Rim up from the ocean floor, split the Americas from Eurasia and move them halfway around the planet, zoom the Indian subcontinent at supersonic speed across half a hemisphere and slam it into Asia hard enough to raise the Himalayas? Magic water does that, too.Need to change the entire chemical make-up of earth's atmosphere? Magic water. Change earth's gravitational pull? Magic water. Change the speed of light? Magic water can handle that, too.It does everything. All in one year.Do you need it to do all this while not burying Noah, dunking any creatures floating around on their vegetation mats, or disturbing any of the human settlements already established in South America, the Indus Valley, Egypt and China? Magic water does that, too. The Flood is global and catastrophic, except when it's gentle.Magic water does all this and vanishes without a trace. It leaves no ugly earthquake, lava, and tidal wave problems you would normally have within centuries of such an upheaval. It doesn't even leave mildew. No bathtub ring.Magic water. It can do anything.______Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.