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The Flood And A Change Of Physics

The account of the flood of Noah contains references to the world being overflowed with water - in fact the text refers to the "fountains of the great deep" and the "windows of heaven" being broken up and opened respectively. The idea that somehow water was ejected from within the earth and that space contained a blob of water through which the Earth flew in its orbit is a nice, if hard to believe fairy story.

We have the creation account in Genesis to refer to when we consider the term "great deep". The deep (abyss) was that upon which God created the universe with the separation of past and future from the present (firmament). It was a deep within which God created the spacetime we know today with "let there be light". Those areas of the "deep" that form the past, present and future of the universe make up the "waters" in the creation account.

Then we could align the fountains of the deep (as broken up) and the windows of heaven (as opened) to being the light cones of the past leading towards the flood, (as stemming from a single cause in the past, alike to an issuance of water directly upward from a fountain that parts as a cone at its top) , and the spacetime aperature through which the light in the firmament (the present) may pass respectively. (In effect altering the static causes of the universe and limiting the resulting effect respectively).

The fountains being broken up would be alike to introduce some event not deterministically consequent to the creation of the universe as a replacing 'cause' of the apparent past of our universe. The windows of heaven would then be such as to direct where the future of the heaven (observable universe) would lead to. (fountains are a source (cause) and light (spacetime) travels through windows, almost as if being newly "determined" the universe is put on a different track.)

The rain indeed covered the Earth, but we may find that whilst God was supernaturally bringing about a flood under extreme circumstances, He was also at work - ie, altering the past underneath the waters, reconfiguring the Earth and wiping out all effect of anything in the flooded world that was not to His will, to bring about a similar but reconfigured Earth with a subtly different set of physical laws.

We have Peters succinct passage;

2Pe 3:3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
2Pe 3:4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
2Pe 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
2Pe 3:6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
2Pe 3:7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. (KJV)

We find that the phrase "by the same word" in verse 7 indicates the direction the world is going, the destination opened by the "windows of heaven" from the world that had its past erased, (being overflowed with water, perished). The world is now heading towards judgment, instead of eternal continuance.

The world we see now is a world within which the laws of physics more than enough account for the continuing existence of creation,.. without the need for God to keep it here in place moment by moment. - Yet it was not the world the Lord created - He has shifted or translated the world to a subtly different past - being one He appears to have completely hidden Himself from creating it as to us today.

Likewise, episodes such as Noah's first getting drunk and the Lord stating that He will not always strive with men by His spirit, and of course the reduced lifespans indicate the laws of physics may have changed at the flood. (Although they do not appear so, we being within the altered universe as it is today.)

In fact the Genesis account indicates a similar system of creation ("by the same words" which the universe today are also created under) that accounts for both the initial universe and the one we see today. The initial being totally literal under similitude, and the subsequent today being as described earlier in this Creationism section as indicated by the same scripture.

The difference is that before the flood God gave men and animals only plants for food whereas afterward man was given meat of animals for food also. Why is this a sign? Clearly Noah was not instructed to bring all plants within the ark except for provender - if the world after the flood had no plants remaining to feed them, why would he have to eat those few precious beasts he rescued?

In the initial account the plants supposedly had a fossil record (existing before the creation of the present, or firmament) - they were able to survive apart from the presence of God's spirit in them (as contingent upon a distant past) and did not require a divine cause. (in this fashion they were "meat".) In the account of the sixth day and later flood we may indeed see that the surviving animals were also added to the fossil record (as if they were millions of years old and not with some types missing from fossils as they were beforehand) and could exist as apart from the life giving spirit-'momenta' of God also. However the text plainly says that God created man and man does not exist in the fossil record as a transitional form. In this fashion animals are "meat" also and man is not guilty of "murder" for eating them. The giving of animals for meat is the consequence of God withdrawing Himself from imbuing the animate life of animals with His spirit as its source.

Once again Noah took animals into the ark with him: Yet the altering of the universe and the granting of animals to man for meat would seem to imply that animals are now without "souls", or are strictly "chemically conscious", (whereas man has an eternal soul.) Is this the case? Or is plant life so rare now that Noah should eat even rarer animals? There is a slim window out from this: clearly the violence of the world before the flood was partly due to argument: if it wasn't over land or money it would be over food. Animals are helpful in that they concentrate a lot of energy from the plant world into handy concentrated packets called "meat". In permitting the eating of meat God shows that the universe has changed to make men able to digest it. Was Noah changed, or was the world only? If Noah became the first drunk,. then either is the case - we could not disallow God that Noah's body chemistry could be changed.

It would be some time before men reached the stage again where the agricultural effort of some could not sustain the lives of all the wicked that preyed upon them. If agricultural effort were to be small then hunting is judged a better alternative, even if it does show animal suffering. That there is yet a fossil record still and many more animals than Noah could have "possibly" brought into the ark, we are required to not minimally permit the "cattle" and "fowl" animals to be in the ark, on the basis all other types could be brought forth from the subsidence of the "waters" and appearance of the earth. - (In a similar fashion as the plants were brought forth from the earth in the creation account.) We must account for the text aserting two of every kind (but "clean animals in sevens") entered into the ark. This is not to state that animals have no souls, rather that suffering in the animal kingdom was judged to be preferential to the cries of men to God against their oppressors: God intervened, and swore He would not do so again. (Should we end up as cannibals or with soylent green? God forbid!)

The animals in the ark are divided up into clean and unclean. Note this is before they are then permitted as meat to man. Thus clean animals were such as provide dairy and wool etc to sustain man whom would live keeping them, whereas those brought in 'unclean' could be to later sustain other animals as they eat: not just such as bees with producing honey, but all manner of animals as part of a food chain. (A complete food chain to sustain Noah and his family for a long period was present in the account in the form of plant matter only.) We must admit that there may have been no possibility of growing any food on the ark due to being closed in without sunlight, at the very least we must have enough creatures sustained in the ark in a small ecosystem or microcosm of the complete life preserved in the account - not an impossibility in scientific terms (as we admit such experiments are possible to colonise Mars for example.) There is no hint of a set of genes that "span" the diversity of all life that is minimally brought into the ark: Species can not "interbreed" and regenerate all life.

Clealy the account requires some other explanation: We may find it in the miraculous, but it is not without precedent.

The bible teaches that Noah, filled with the fear of God was moved to build an ark to the saving of his family. (paraphrasing) Yet no mention is made in the bible afterward that Noah "saved all the animals" or that the earth's creatures owe their existence to the patience of Noah. In fact, only man was "saved" by the ark and God established His covenant with him - and the rest of the animal kingdom according to Peter, perished as without "souls" to be saved - becoming as "meat". Eventually at the judgement of God, so will the world of ungodly men perish before God ever formalises a covenant based upon a legal requirement for men to be free to eat other men in order that they survive.


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