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Summary: Why old-earth ideas are incompatible with a global flood
Review: Acceptance of old-earth ideas, including the Big Bang, progressive creation, theistic evolution, the framework hypothesis, etc., necessarily implies downgrading the Flood of Noah's day from worldwide in scope to merely one of local extent. For example, Dr. Hugh Ross (an aggressive advocate of billions of years for the earth's age) vigorously denies the global flood. He calls it "universal," covering all that Noah could see, but not the entire earth. This insistence does not come from sound Biblical exegesis, but from the incompatibility of a global flood with old-earth thinking, which he accepts. The evidence for great ages is thought to be found in the rock and fossil records of the earth's crust. These are interpreted by the principle of uniformitarianism, that "the present is the key to the past." Since geologic processes happen slowly today, they argue, the extensive rock and fossil records must have taken great lengths of time to form. However, a flood of the proportions described in Genesis would have resulted in vast amounts of erosion and redepositing of sediments, fossilization of plants and animals, volcanism, and redistribution of radioisotopes. If one denies the global flood as a historic event, he might use the Grand Canyon/Colorado River system to "prove" great ages, when, in reality, the Canyon demonstrates flooding processes with rates, scales, and intensities eclipsing anything observed today. Thus the misunderstood evidence of old ages, is actually strong evidence for the Flood. In reality, the global flood and recent creation doctrines are synonymous concepts, forcing Dr. Ross and others to twist Scripture, making it say something it clearly does not. To document that the Bible specifically teaches the global flood should be sufficient to convince a true believer in the authority of the Bible. Mr. Ross rightly claims that the word "all" can sometimes be used in a limited sense (e.g., Genesis 41:57); thus the terms used in the flood account might be similarly limited. But proper Biblical exegesis involves discerning the meaning of words in their immediate context. A passage cannot be interpreted by vaguely possible meanings. An honest look at the flood account uncovers an abundance of terms and phrases, each of which is best understood in a global sense. Taken together as forming the context for each other, the case is overwhelming. The global extent of the Flood is referred to more than 30 times in Genesis 6-9 alone! It would seem that the Author of Genesis could hardly have been more explicit. Conversely, if the omniscient Author had intended to describe a local flood, He obscured the facts. If words can communicate truth, if God can express Himself clearly, then the Flood was global. It would seem that only a rank downgrading of Scripture, and/or an unhealthy desire for the approval of unsaved men could lead one to question this doctrine. I would call on my Christian brothers, who choose to hold on to the idea of a local flood and its corollary concept, the old earth, either to return to a God-honoring trust in Scripture, or else to cease using the term "Bible-believing" to describe their position. I recommend clicking the "publications" link on ICR's (Institute for Creation Research) website, and browsing the highly informative (and voluminous) "Impact", "Back to Genesis" and "Dr. John's Q&A" sections.
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Summary: Problems with Mr. Ross's local-flood ideas
Review: Some people today (like Mr. Ross) are claiming that Noah's flood did not cover the entire Earth nor all the mountains of the day. Further, they claim that Noah and the animals floated on a shallow, temporary inland sea caused by the flood, somehow covering only the Mesopotamian region. Thus, they must claim that the Earth's entire human population was limited to this area, or that not all humans were killed in the flood. Is there really biblical evidence for claims of this nature? Keep in mind that local Noah's flood/old earth advocates postulate the earth before the flood as essentially identical to today's earth. 1. The Depth and Duration of the Flood. The flood waters covered the mountains to a depth of at least the draft of Noah's Ark (Genesis 7:19,20). Today's mountains in the Ararat region include Mount Ararat which rises to 17,000 feet in elevation. The flood lasted for a year, peaking 150 days after it started (7:11, 8:3,4), then it began to abate. A year-long mountain-covering flood is not a local flood. Noah was in the ark for more than a year, not just 40 days (Genesis 8:14). 53 weeks is absurdly long to stay in the ark for a local flood since dry land would have been just over the horizon. After the flood waters had been going down for 4 months, the dove could still find no suitable ground (Genesis 8:9). This does not seem to fit the circumstances for a local flood in which the dove could fly to dry land. However, these situations are consistent if the Flood was global. Note that the Bible [Psalms 104:6-9, NIV] talks about mountains rising (in connection with God's rainbow promise, so after the Flood). Everest has marine fossils at its peak. Therefore, the mountains before the Flood are not those of today. There is enough water in the oceans so that, if all the surface features of the earth were evened out, water would cover the earth to a depth of 2.7 km (1.7 miles). This is not enough to cover mountains the height of Everest, but it shows that the pre-Flood mountains could have been several kilometers high and still be covered. 2. The Physical Causes for the Flood. The Bible explains that the breaking open of "all the fountains of the great deep" and the "windows of heaven" (7:11) were the primary causes. The "deep" is the ocean; thus the "great deep" could hardly be the cause of a limited local flood. The "windows" seem to refer to the "waters above the (atmospheric) firmament" (1:7). These were global causes, producing a global effect. 3. The Need for an Ark. Noah was given many years of warning, long enough to walk anywhere on earth. The animals also would have lived globally and so could have migrated anywhere. There was no need for an Ark if the flood was local. The Ark's size, big enough to carry two (or seven for some) of each land-dwelling, air-breathing animal, testifies for a global flood. Building such a huge ship for a local flood for which there was ample warning would be ludicrous. 4. Destruction of All Mankind. The flood's primary purpose was to destroy sinful mankind. While the earth's preflood population is not given, reasonable assumptions based on Biblical data for average family size, life spans, and age of parent at time of first-born yield a population far in excess of the maximum mesopotamian population. The earth was "filled with violence" (6:11-13), and while this may have included animal violence, it certainly included human violence. An earth filled with violence would necessitate an earth filled with people. Only a global flood could accomplish its primary purpose. Not only were violent inhabitants under condemnation, the earth itself was to be destroyed (6:13). The word for "earth" was the same word as used in the creation account (1:1). Surely it means the planet, not just a local area. It boggles the mind to believe that after 16 centuries, no-one would have migrated to other parts outside of Mesopotamia. Or that people living on the periphery of such a local Flood would not have moved to the adjoining high ground rather than be drowned. 5. A "Cataclysm," Not a Mere Flood. Both Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament) use words to describe Noah's flood which are different than the ordinary words for flood. In this way, Noah's flood was represented as a totally unique occurrence. [Hebrew--"Mabbool", Greek--"Kataklusmos" (cataclysm)]." 6. Promise of No More Floods. At the end of the flood, God promised that there would never again be such a flood (9:15). But there have been many floods, even regional floods, especially in mesopotamia, since Noah's day. If this was merely a local flood, then God broke His promise, and the rainbow covenant means nothing. 7. The Testimony of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ compared the days immediately prior to His second coming to the days prior to the flood. He reminded us that "the flood came and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:27). The coming judgment will be similarly extensive. If the flood in Noah's day was local, people living outside the area survived, even though they, too, were sinners. This gives great hope to end-time sinners. Will they be able to escape the coming fiery judgment on sin? 8. The Testimony of Peter. Peter also wrote of the coming judgment of the entire heavens and earth (II Peter 3:10-12). He based his argument on the historical facts that the creation was of the entire earth (v.5) and that the flood overflowed the entire earth (v.6), causing it to perish. If the flood was only local, does this imply that only a portion of the earth will "melt with fervent heat" (v.10)? Furthermore, the entire creation will be fully renewed, replaced by "a new heavens and a new earth" (v.13). The local flood idea produces theological nonsense. Recommended reading: "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study" by John Woodmorappe.
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Summary: What do the Hebrew language experts have to say?
Review: The Bible uses allegory, figures of speech and other literary devices on occasion. Often this is obvious, but occasionally scholars disagree on whether a passage is literal or symbolic. But is this the case in Genesis 1-11? What do the Hebrew grammarians, lexicographers and linguists have to say? The answer is a resounding "no". There is no way in which the Hebrew text of Genesis 1-11 can mean anything other than what the fresh-faced child, picking it up for the first time without preconceptions, has always seen as obvious. The following is an extract from a letter written to David C.C. Watson on April 23, 1984, by Professor James Barr, who was at the time Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. Please note that Professor Barr, consistent with his neo-orthodox views, does not believe that Genesis is literally true, he is just telling us, openly and honestly, what the language means. Professor Barr said, "Probably, so far as l know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Gen. 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah's flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the 'days' of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know." There are many theologians (as opposed to Hebrew language experts) who insist on long days, for example. But the above makes it clear that it is hardly likely to be the text itself that leads them to this conclusion. Rather, it is almost certainly the desire to accommodate and harmonize opinions and world views (in this case, the idea of long geological ages) which arise from outside Scripture. Of course, arising from outside Scripture does not necessarily make anything wrong; but in this case, the clear, unmistakable teaching of the scriptural text is completely incompatible with, even opposed to, the extra-biblical viewpoint we are considering. It is, therefore, completely unacceptable to claim that Scripture may actually be teaching this view! Faced with such a unanimous consensus of scholarly linguistic opinion (backed by the common sense understanding of countless millions of Christians through the ages), it is no longer intellectually honest to say that the issue of the time and mode of creation (or the related issue of global versus local flood) is in the same category as disagreements over mode of baptism, church government, or prophecy. Disagreements over these latter issues arise from different understandings of Scripture itself, not from seeking to accommodate (or to defuse debate over) a world view that directly opposes a teaching of Scripture which is unanimously declared by experts to be the plain meaning of the text! I suggest that the only intellectually honest approach for a Christian is either to believe what the writer of Genesis is saying, or reject it as untrue. To disbelieve it brings the following problems: 1. How can you know which other parts of Scripture are in error as well--that is, how can you reliably know anything at all about Christianity? 2. What about the New Testament evidence that Jesus and the Apostles (including Paul) regarded Genesis 1-11 as inspired Scripture, giving us 'true truth' about historical characters and events? 3. What happens to the very basis of the Gospel - that is, the Fall into sin, death and bloodshed of the whole creation for which the Saviour shed His blood in death (I Corinthians 15:21, 22; Romans 5:12; Romans 8:19-22)? Those who insist that the days could be millions of years often forget that these "millions of years", in the popular view, are represented by layers of fossils which are interpreted not as the results of the biblical Flood, but as creatures having lived (with struggle/pain/bloodshed) and died before anyone called Adam could have appeared. To put it simply, there were Genesis "days" before man appeared and if you read the days as "ages" (remember that these "ages" are said to be shown by layers containing dead things called fossils) you've just put death and bloodshed before Adam! If the reader is by now feeling despair, the answer to the dilemma is to look again at the modern world view you may have been trying to harmonize with Scripture. It is not--it cannot by definition be--based on the scientific method (repeatable testing and observation). It is based on faith in the opinions of men who were not there at the beginning, and who are part of a humanity in rebellion against its Maker. Finally, there is a large amount of scientific evidence consistent with a recent, six-day creation and a global flood. To accept, by faith, the biblical statement "Thy Word is true from the beginning" (Psalm 119:160) is a reasonable position, which reasonable people, including large numbers of highly qualified, intellectually honest scientists, have accepted over the popular, atheistic, philosophical alternative. For additional information, I recommend visiting the "Answers in Genesis", "Institute for Creation Research" and "True Origin" websites. Also, I'd recommend picking up a copy of books like, "Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe" by Steve Austin, "The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods" by John Woodmorappe and "The Revised Quote Book" (available from the Answers in Genesis online book store).
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Summary: Problems reconciling Dr. Ross¿s conclusions with the Bible
Review: Unfortunately, Mr. Ross's interpretations raise far more problems than they attempt to solve (as will be documented below). I do not believe that those who adhere to some form of theistic evolution (God used evolution to create everything) or progressive creation (God intervened at various points in the process of evolution) fully realize that their position violates clear concepts revealed in the Bible--indeed much that is foundational to the very Gospel itself. For instance.. Concept violated: the goodness of God The Bible says 'God is good' and in Genesis 1:31 God described his just finished creation as 'very good'. How do you understand the goodness of God if He used evolution, 'nature red in tooth and claw', to 'create' everything? Concept violated: Adam's sin brought death and decay, the basis of the Gospel According to the evolutionist's (and progressive creationist's) understanding, fossils (which show death, disease and bloodshed) were formed before people appeared on earth. Doesn't that mean that you can't believe the Bible when it says that everything is in 'bondage to decay' because of Adam's sin (Romans 8)? In the evolutionary view, hasn't the 'bondage to decay' always been there? And if death and suffering did not arise with Adam's sin and the resulting curse, how can Jesus' suffering and physical death pay the penalty for sin and give us eternal life, as the Bible clearly says (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive")? Concept violated: the divine inspiration of the whole Bible If the Genesis accounts of Creation, the Fall, the origin of nations, the Flood and the Tower of Babel - the first 11 chapters - are not historical, although they are written as historical narrative and understood by Jesus to be so, what other unfashionable parts of the Bible do you discard? The biblical account of creation in Genesis seems very specific with six days of creative activity, each having an evening and a morning. According to the evolutionary sequence, the biblical order of creation is all wrong. Do you think God should have inspired an account more in keeping with the evolutionary order, the truth as you see it, if indeed He did use evolution or followed the evolutionary pattern in creating everything? Concept violated: the straightforward understanding of the Word of God If the Genesis account does not mean what it plainly says, but must be 'interpreted' to fit an evolutionary world, how are we to understand the rest of the Bible? How are we to know that the historical accounts of Jesus' life, death and resurrection should not also be 'reinterpreted'? Indeed, can we know anything for sure if the Bible can be so flexible? Concept violated: the creation is supposed to show the hand of God clearly Dr Niles Eldredge, well-known evolutionist, said: 'Darwin . . . taught us that we can understand life's history in purely naturalistic terms, without recourse to the supernatural or divine.' [Niles Eldredge, "Time Frames - the Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibrium", 1986, Heinemann, London, p. 13.] Is it not philosophically inconsistent to marry God (theism) with evolution (naturalism)? If God 'created' using evolution which makes Him unnecessary, how can God's 'eternal power and divine nature' be 'clearly seen' in creation, as Romans 1:20 says? Evolution has no purpose, no direction, no goal. The God of the Bible is all about purpose. How do you reconcile the purposelessness of evolution with the purposes of God? What does God have to do in an evolutionary world? Is not God an 'unnecessary hypothesis'? Concept violated: the need of restoration for the creation If God created over millions of years involving death, the existing earth is not ruined by sin, but is as it always has been - as God supposedly intended it to be. So why then should He want to destroy it and create a new heavens and earth (2 Peter 3 and other places)? Starting to get the picture of where Dr. Ross's compromising theology leads? See the Answers in Genesis website for volumnes of eye-opening information. Books I would strongly encourage one to read instead: "Icons of Evolution" by Jonathan Wells, "Bones of Contention" by Marvin Lubenow, "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!" by Duane Gish, "In Six Days: Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation" by John F. Aston, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" by Michael Denton, "Astronomy and the Bible" by Donald B. DeYoung, "Refuting Evolution" by Jonathan Sarfati, "The Answers Book" by Ham/Snelling/Wieland, and "The Young Earth" by John Morris.
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Summary: Pounds Square Pegs into Round Holes
Review: Anyone with the slightest open mind can see how Hugh Ross manipulates both the Bible and existing scientific theories to fit his ideas. Just read Genesis Chapter 1 without prejudice and see if, without vivid imagination, you can find the Big Bang in there as Ross does. And Ross' piece of trash only gets worse from there. Can you imagine the illogic of making Noah's Flood just a local river flood, and proclaiming TH AT a reconciliation of science and Scripture? Why does Ross just not admit that his views are governed by ruling scientific speculations and stop pretending that he values the Bible for itself?
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Summary: A Transparent and Disengenuous Juggling Act
Review: Having read this book, I can conclude that anyone with an elementary familiarity with either the Bible or science will see at once that Hugh Ross is juggling facts and opinions in order to develop his story. In fact, Ross is even slippery: On one hand he denies believing in evolution, while on other pages in the book he says that plants may have developed naturalistically. Now if that is not organic evolution, then what is? Ross' other claims also tell us much more about his imagination than they do about either science or religion. For instance, were they alive today, I am sure that Neandertals and members of Homo erectus would be thrilled to learn that they only seem human but are really not, and that they are soul-less pre-Adamites.
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Summary: Good subject, average writing, poor editing
Review: This book should be re-written to present the information in a better fashion. The author has some really good information which is pretty convincing. However, many points are not proven clearly enough and opposing viewpoints are at times brushed over without emphatic refutation. Some of the worst points about the book are that some important information or suppositions are buried in the text. There are also signs of abrupt transitions in thinking and theme. Some of the wording is not clear or un-edited. The word 'briefer' appears in the text and at time certain words (like 'certain') appear in the same sentence twice where alternate wording should have been used. The only way you could see no value in the book is if you have a completely closed mind and hold a fundamentalist/literal view of creation or by taking the evolutionary belief system which holds no interaction of God in directing the creation.
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Summary: Damaging to the prevailing paradigms
Review: This book will be very upsetting to the skeptic who seeks a straw man in the Bible and to the fundamentalist (religious or atheist) who fears complexity. Yet those who are open-minded will be given much food for thought. As a scientist in training who also believes the Bible, I find Dr. Ross's book to be true to both. Most importantly, he offers the critical insight that since God is the Author of both the Bible and nature, there are no discrepancies between the two even though there are sometimes discrepancies among interpretations of the two. This is not an attempt to create wiggle room or retreat to obscurantism, but the sorely lacking recognition that, even with all our discoveries, we don't yet know it all.
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Summary: Pathetic analysis of both Scripture and science
Review: While Hugh Ross insists on distinguishing himself from 'theistic evolutionists', Ross adopts the same basic philosophical approach. That is, he makes uniformitarian (i.e. essentially materialistic, billions of years, etc.) 'science' his authority over Scripture. This means that he must try to fit billions of years into Scripture, with corollaries of a local flood and pre-Adamite soulless man-like creatures, and death of nephesh animals before sin. The only real difference between the two positions is that Ross denies transformism, the changing of one kind into another (in fact, Ross goes to the absurd extreme of almost endorsing 'fixity of species'). Amazingly, Ross claims that his approach is 'a literal reading of the Genesis creation chapters' (p. 86) - surely a very non-literal usage of the word 'literal'! The worst part is the gross liberties Ross takes with the scriptural text, to fit the canonical 66 books into what he calls the '67th book', nature (really, the uniformitarian *interpretation* of nature). However, the creation is cursed (Genesis 3:17-19, Romans 8:20-22) and man's heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9) and the thinking of a godless man is 'futile' (Romans 1:21), while Scripture itself is 'God-breathed' (2 Timothy 3:15-17). So a biblical Christian should not re-interpret the perfect, unfallen Word of God according to fallible theories of sinful humans about a world we know to be cursed (Genesis 3:17-19, Romans 8:20-22). Ross's earlier theological and historical errors have been thoroughly rebutted point-by-point by Van Bebber and Taylor's book 'Creation and Time: A Report on Progressive Creationist Book by Hugh Ross'. This is essential reading for defenders of the biblical world-view. It's disturbing to see that Ross repeats many of the same errors in 'The Genesis Question'. This includes citing the 'Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament' to claim the exact opposite of what it says! Ross repeats fallacious Hebrew arguments, including his nonsensical claim about a continuing 7th day - refuted by the Hebrew scholar Dr Douglas Kelly in 'Creation and Change' (available from Amazon). Ross's ignorance of Hebrew shows when he tries to discredit the common creationist identification of behemoth in Job 40:15 ff. with a sauropod, because he believes the dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. Ross writes (p. 48): 'The Hebrew word for "behemoth" appears in its plural form, behema, ...' However, even beginners in Hebrew know that -a is often a feminine singular and -oth is a feminine plural. So Ross got it *back-to-front*: behema is the singular form, while behemoth is grammatically plural. It is a figure of speech known as an *intensive plural* or *plural of majesty*, where 'the referent is a singular individual, which is, however, so thoroughly characterized by the qualities of the noun that a plural is used', 'beast of beasts'. The context says that behemoth is the largest beast God made. And Job 40:17 says: 'His tail sways like a cedar' which certainly doesn't fit Ross's suggestion of a hippopotamus (unless it was a bonsai cedar, maybe). While Genesis clearly teaches that the sun, moon and stars were created on Day 4 after the Earth, Ross asserts that what really happened on the fourth 'day' was that the sun and other heavenly bodies 'appeared' when a dense cloud layer dissipated after millions of years. This is both fanciful science and bad Hebrew exegesis. The Hebrew word 'asah means 'make' throughout Genesis 1, and may be used interchangeably with 'create' (bara'), e.g. in Genesis 1:26-27. It is pure desperation to apply a different meaning to the *same word* in the *same grammatical construction* in the *same passage*, just to fit in with atheistic evolutionary ideas. If God had *meant* 'appeared', then He presumably would have *used* the Hebrew word for appear (ra'ah), as when the dry land 'appeared' as the waters gathered in one place on Day 3 (Genesis 1:9). This is supported by Hebrew scholars who have translated the Bible into English. Over 20 major translations were checked, and all clearly teach that the sun, moon and stars were made on the fourth day. Ross often treats creationists unfairly, by parroting arguments from atheistic sceptics that creationists had refuted long ago. E.g., Ross claims that it would be impossible to 'pitch' the Ark without millions of years for petroleum products to accumulate (pp. 153-154). Dr Tas Walker pointed out *15 years ago* that pitch need not be made from petroleum at all - the pitch-making industries in Europe made pitch from pine resin for centuries (article posted on AiG website long before Ross wrote his book, so there is no excuse). And _The New Encyclopædia Britannica_ says about naval pitch: 'Oleoresin, also called gum or pitch ... is extracted from the pine.' Ross also parrots the claim that there is too much coal in the earth's crust to have been formed in the Flood (pp. 151-154). Even worse, as 'evidence' he cites some calculations from Schönknecht and Scherer, Too much coal for a young earth?, _CEN Tech. J._ 11(3)278-282, 1997 (also on AiG website). However, the whole point of this paper was to *solve* that problem, by showing evidence that much coal had formed from large floating ecosystems comprising arboreal lycopods, which had been catastrophically buried by water. Ross also *omitted the question mark* when citing the title, thus further conveying to his readers the *diametrically opposite meaning* to the paper's intention. Also, John Woodmorappe had shown long ago that vegetation living at the start of the Flood was not the only possible source of carbonaceous material which had eventually transformed into coal. There were ~1656 years between the Creation and Flood, enabling much peat to form, which could have been buried by the Flood and easily transformed into coal since. I couldn't possibly cover everything wrong with _The Genesis Question_ on an Amazon review. But there is more info in my review in the _Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal_ 13(2):22-30, 1998 (posted on both the Answers in Genesis and True Origins websites).
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Summary: Why lie about the Genesis account?
Review: After reading the reviews that praised Dr. Ross for reconciling Genesis with science, I have to point out his basic mistake. Genesis gives an order of Creation. It describes "trees producing fruit" on Day 4, and then a night, and then "the sun, moon and stars" were made and placed into the dome of heaven on Day 5. Dr. Ross points out that the heavy elements, like carbon, in our bodies were formed by fusion inside stars, so the stars had to exist BEFORE trees could grow on earth. How does he reconcile this? He doesn't. He says the sun and stars only appeared on Day 5, when an opaque atmosphere became transparent, and they were actually created before Day 1 began. Any one who has a Bible can read the account, and it clearly states that the stars were not created until Day 5. A note to all Christians who are praising this book: go back and read Genesis and see that I'm right. He also glosses over the passage that says the dome separated the waters above the dome from the waters under the dome. When the stars were set into the dome, they were UNDER WATER. What water? No, the Genesis account can NOT be reconciled with current scientific theories, unless you only choose two or three verses out of a story 50 verses long.
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