A geologist gives 21 evidence-based reasons why Noah’s Flood never happened. It’s nice, short, succinct, and clear, and is going to be useful in future discussions about creationism. It’s also all really obvious — we have a few hundred years of observations by geologists, who were mostly Christian, that made it irrefutable that, in the most charitable interpretation, the book of Genesis was a metaphorical fable.
You’ll never guess who is very sad about the article, though. Poor Ken Ham and his crew at Answers in Genesis. They can’t address the arguments, so they resort to indignation.
“Now, we’re used to hearing false claims like that. What made me sad was that Collins was specifically writing this article to give Skeptical Inquirer magazine readers counter-arguments to use against Christians. And who are the readers of this magazine? Most are skeptics and atheists!” Ham continued.
“A professing believer (who claims on his website that he has ‘sought to bring people to Christ’) is trying to equip unbelievers to tear down the faith of believers! Ultimately, he is helping atheists attack God’s Word and the Christian faith. I would not want to be in his shoes standing before our holy God — he will give an account one day,” he added.
Yeah, the author of the article is a Christian. I definitely do not think he’s trying to tear down people’s faith. It seems he is a living example that you can simultaneously accept the science (Yay!) and still believe in God and Jesus (unfortunately, from the perspective of this atheist — but I’ll accept the progress). There are Christians like Ham who demand that you accept their every absurd interpretation of the Bible, refusing to recognize just how idiosyncratic their beliefs are, and then there are Christians like Lorence Collins, who recognize that their understanding of their religion is imperfect and incomplete and must be tempered with an accommodation to reality. If you must be a Christian, be like Collins, not Ham.
Oh, and AiG has one other well-worn argument. Andrew Snelling asks, “Were you there?”
“We don’t see a global flood happening today, so we would have never seen one in the past. Well, how do they know? They weren’t there in the past,” the AiG geologist continues.
“We need an eye-witness who was there to tell (the story), and a reliable witness,” Snelling says, noting that Collins’ authority should be God’s Word.
Sheesh. Everyone knows that material evidence trumps eye-witness testimony.
