A number of years ago, my wife and I signed up for a Bible Study on the Gospel of John. Within ten minutes of the very first class I’m in a fight with the nun who is the teacher. She starts off with the course introduction by immediately making it clear that the Bible is not to be taken literally. Sister then proceeds to do her little allegory and metaphor dance routine.
When anyone, and I mean ANY ONE starts down this path, they mean to infer that the Holy Book is chock full of morality lessons couched in “Bible Stories” which should not be taken as historically true. THE most attacked book of “stories” is in Genesis 1-11: Adam and Eve, the serpent, Garden of Eden and the Flood of Noah. Think of any book you have ever read, including math and science texts. The first chapter is used to define basic terms and concepts which you will need to understand the remainder of the tome.
If the first chapter of a book has been discredited, what value and veracity does ANY part of the book now hold with you? Answer – none; it is little more than mindless, meaningless gibberish and bupkis. A comic book holds more worth! Can you see why people, especially the youth, have rejected the Bible out of hand – because that is all the Bible will ever be, just fairy tales!
Throughout my atheistic period, devout Catholics/Christians would challenge my lack of beliefs. I would immediately counter attack. And guess which book of the Bible I chose to malign? Yep – Genesis! I would query them directly, if they believed that God had created the entire universe, the earth and all that it contains in six days and rested on the seventh? (Topic for a future installment). Did they believe in a literal Adam & Eve, Noah and his floating menagerie? Rapid fire questions directed at these loser Christians, until I had them pleading the metaphor/allegory defense ploy. OK, I asked, what IS real and literal in the Bible? The New Testament! The New Testament, they shouted; trying to weasel their way out. Oh, so all those Bible stories in the Old Testament and Genesis were just that – stories!? But you want me to believe that four clowns (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) wrote about some dude who was born of a virgin, he ran around performing magic, then was tortured and killed, and finally reanimated himself, zombie style, after being stone cold dead for three days? Those stories are NOT metaphor – but literally true?? You Christians are LITERALLY crazy!
Back to our Nun, warning us of the metaphor and allegory that exists throughout the Bible. So Sister, I asked, I assume then much of Genesis and the Bible is allegory and metaphor? Yes, she said, smiling approvingly. And Moses parting the Red Sea, and Jonah being in the belly of the big fish? Yes, you got it now. And a dead guy coming back to life? Uh oh – big frown this time, wrinkled forehead and pinpoint pupils. Who makes these decisions, I asked, as to which stories are real or not? You, Sister?
The students in the class had now really perked up their ears. These were mostly all middle aged Catholics. They’ve been around the block a few times. They saw where I was going with this.
“You are a Fundamentalist”, her voice rising two octaves higher to a screeching pitch; her eyes like daggers as she points an accusatory finger at me. “You believe that EVERY word be taken literally in the Bible”, she howled. Wow Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. I was expecting the flying monkeys to carry me away at any moment.
When Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches”, THAT’S a metaphor Sister. I’m sure Jesus didn’t mean for us to believe He was a literal vine and we literal branches. Besides, Sister, can you show me any Encyclical from any Pope or any pronouncement from any meeting of the College of Cardinals that states we are no longer required to believe that the Bible stories are no longer literally true and therefore historically accurate? Silence! Although she was turning beet red and steam was emanating from her ears. Where is that bucket of water Toto?
That first class ended early, amidst the clamor and a slew of competing questions and comments being hurled back and forth among the students. My wife and I, needless to say, did not return for the next session.
The term “Fundamentalist” has achieved a status with a negative connotation in recent times. The liberal Catholic hierarchy look upon any young earth Creationist (Catholic or not) as some type of ultra- right wacko. The liberal leftist media classify the young earth Creationists in the same category as any radical jihadist; in essence grouping us with terrorists. Heck, I can’t even speak Farsi.
If you want to be a spongy couch potato and remain an ignorant sot, so be it. To defend truth: FIRST you must educate yourself and be knowledgeable of the facts. SECOND, you need to grow some brass spheres. Or in Bible-speak, St. Paul wrote us to “having your loins girt about with truth” Eph 6:14. Otherwise the liberals, evolutionists and atheists will chew you up and spit you out. The likes of Bill Maher, Jon Stewart and Kathy Griffin will have a field day destroying whatever remnant of faith is left in you.
St. Peter says to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh of a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” 1 Peter 3:15. I haven’t attained that perfect humility in my Christian walk yet. Guess I’m more in-your -face and feisty, along the lines of St. John the Baptist; although being brash and bold can get your head handed to you. Seems some things haven’t changed much in the Mid-East over the past two thousand years. So, as the saying goes, “get tough or just roll over and wet on yourself”.
Moving along kiddies: This next point is a great example of why the slow layer-by-layer Uniformitarians are moving slowly (no pun intended) toward a direction of catastrophes; becoming Neo-catastrophists. There is something called “polystrate fossils”. It’s a fossil that passes through multiple (poly) levels of strata. These are formerly living organisms that became fossilized as a result of action by water, sand, mud, silt, etc. Mostly trees, although whales and dolphins are other examples. Visualize a massive tree appearing to have been ripped from the ground with only some stumpy vestiges of root remaining and the upper limbs are gone, having been sheared off by massive forces of nature. Like Noah’s Deluge perhaps? This tree trunk is standing in layer, after layer, after layer of hardened sedimentary rock strata; completely encased from bottom to top. I know, that’s nice.
THINK!! If it took sedimentary layers hundreds or thousands of years to build up to encase the tree, shouldn’t the tree have rotted away long ago, trying to wait for all that sediment to build up around it? Duh!! The very slow “uniformitarian” model of one sand grain at a time definitely doesn’t work, but then neither does the multiple catastrophic model of Neo-catastrophism. You still would have upper portions of the tree waiting for subsequent floods to occur to cover it completely. It’s all or nothing, Jack! – Can’t have the One-Flood model, because that implies a Supreme Being, with massive omnipotent powers who commanded it.
One of the most famous of the polystrate whales is found in Lampoc, CA. This baleen whale (they even know the species) is found in a tilted position. The whale, like the tree, is encased in layer after layer of sediment, all of which had to overwhelm the massive beast virtually instantaneously. “And the waters returned from off the earth going and coming” Gen. 8:3. Obviously this whale was discovered (in rock) on dry land. How many are still buried or fossilized under the current oceans? Oh, note the subtle reference in the above Douay-Rheims translation regarding tidal action occurring during the cataclysm.
The now newly encased whale is wrapped in clay- like consistency (silly putty for you young- uns) of sediment. BEFORE the sediment can harden, while it is still plastic in texture, massive geo-tectonic upheavals to the land occur. These forces raise the still semi- solid massive multiple sedimentary layers (with whale inside) toward a vertical position – a 40 degree angle. This Lompoc, CA whale is often referred to as the “whale on its tail”.
If all this had occurred slowly over millions of years: first, the whale wouldn’t have even been there, having been torn apart and devoured long before by predators. Or if the whale had managed to be sequentially buried by one of many supposed multiple floods (Neo-Catastrophism), how did it avoid rotting away and/or being ocean road kill, while trying to be covered in the process? All this, during the supposed millions of years of imaginary time that the sediment hardened like concrete and then tilted up without cracking rock nor fossil ?!! This strains all credibility, of “millions of years”, to the breaking point.
Think of your kid’s play dough or working with plaster of Paris. Only while it is still malleable and soft can you bend and mold it. Once hardened and stone like, you can try to lift or bend it, but it WILL break and fracture, along with anything you had put inside it prior to its hardening. And you MUST shake, jostle and bounce it, while in the lifting process, to duplicate tectonic earthquake activity.
P.S. A little tidbit that gives proof that all the layers (Kaibab, Toroweap, Coconino, Hermit Shale, Supai, etc.) were laid down in ONE event only, and NOT by multiple cataclysmic floods, is the lack of tiny little holes. Huh? Take a walk outside to your yard or garden and kneel down. What do you see in the ground: Tiny little holes. There is burrowing going on from worms and insects. The Neo-catastrophists predict we will have another flood in around 10,000 years. For you Global warming adherents, Al Gore says you will have to wait only about 10 years. The sediment would cover, but not totally obliterate all those tiny holes. You would even expect to find many of them with the creatures still inside (fossilized of course). Noah’s Flood was really the original, the one, the ONLY one-time event which formed ALL those layers in short order. Guess what – NO HOLES between all the major layers. For example: no holes between the Toroweap and Coconino, and no holes between the Coconino and the Hermit Shale. There ARE zillions of holes on top of the Kaibab Formation; that’s the layer you walk on at the Grand Canyon.
But why no holes, Conti? Insects and worms need time to burrow between the supposed cataclysmic events. No holes means no time, which means no multiple catastrophic events. Therefore Noah’s Flood created All those layers (without holes between them) during its ONE- time event. Got it!! There’s a “gottcha” question in there somewhere for the Park Ranger.
The ONLY way this could have happened is in the 371 days of Noah’s flood and the short post- flood timeframe, 4400 years ago. Rapid massive sedimentary entombment of organisms (fossilization); the rapid loss of water off the land as the “mountains rose and the valleys sank” Psm 104:8; which left the denuded land clay- like; easily capable of being bent and lifted by the ongoing geo-tectonic physical forces . It could only be during this period while the land was still flexible that fossils and the rock-to-be not shatter and crack. Go online and view some exquisite 200 feet of multi-layering at the Grand Canyon that has met resistance and bent in some cases up to 90 degrees without fracturing. Obviously this had to occur while the layers were still soft and pliant, all the while as the tectonic plates were shifting these layers and land masses.
Close to where I live is Clifton Forge, Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Right off Route 220 there is a beautiful multilayered arch, which is part of a mountain hillside containing this rainbow type of arch, about 200 feet up, which spans over a quarter of a mile. One end hit some resistance, likely post-Deluge, and forced some other layers at this end of the “rainbow arch” to shift into a vertical 90 degree position. Absolutely gorgeous! – Couldn’t locate the leprechaun and his pot of gold though. Dang!
How many of you have seen photos and videos of when Mount St. Helens blew her stack on the clear morning of May 18th, 1980? Mount St. Helens is considered by volcanologists to be a small volcano. Eighty percent, yes 8-0 percent of volcanoes are under the oceans. Remember the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Pacific Ridges and the Ring of Fire in the Pacific Ocean. All “the fountains of the deep” exploded on the one same day.
There is a “little grand canyon” just North of Mount St. Helens. It’s a one-fortieth scale model of the Grand Canyon. Even has a river, a branch of the North Fork of the Toutle River, at the bottom running through it. It has the multi-layered cliffs and side canyons just like its big brother. As this relates to the Creation/evolution conundrum, both sides note the SAME facts, but there is different interpretation of this evidence. The evolutionist would take the standard position of a little water over a looong period of time to form the Toutle River canyon we see today. It’s obvious, he would state, that we are looking at layered canyon walls millions of years old. The Creationist would say – no, it was a lot of water over a short period of time. But NOT from Noah’s Flood. Huh? No the canyon was entirely carved in a day only 30+ years ago. How? That little blast from Mount St. Helens in May of 1980 released a pyroclastic mud flow that created twenty five foot canyon walls in a period of a day! The walls are currently over one hundred feet high from subsequent smaller eruptions and mud flows. The canyon system with the river going through it didn’t exist even one day prior to the volcanic eruption. How do YOU know Conti? It’s called satellite technology and video documentation, simple. Now go suck your thumb.
And speaking again of the Grand Canyon: When in the course of the Deluge the “mountains rose and the valleys sank”, there were many lakes left behind. Some of these lakes have remained until today – the Great Lakes. Some have evaporated –Lake Bonneville. C’mon, the Bonneville salt flats where they set vehicle speed records?! When the lake evaporated, only the ocean salt was left behind. And some lakes burst through their earthen dams –a former series of lakes north and east of Colorado (3000 cubic miles of water) which started with the failure of the ancient Hopi Lake. The Grand Canyon was then carved out in a matter of weeks, not millions of years. 3000 cubic miles is the same as Lake Superior rupturing – which is greater than the areas of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut all COMBINED!!!
Want to do a psych job on the Park Rangers at the Grand Canyon? Next time you have the chance to go and listen to the story of how the Colorado River slowly carved down through all those layers over the millions of years to where it is today, ask him: doesn’t the river enter at @2800 foot elevation at the beginning of the canyon. Yes, he says. And isn’t the highest rim of the canyon @8000 feet? Yes again. Then how is it that the Colorado River could flow UPHILL 5000+ more feet in elevation to carve the canyon? Last I heard water only flows downhill. Therefore, the river was defying the laws of physics, by flowing a mile UP, for “millions of years”?
Now be careful. Since the Creationists have caught them with their pants down, the evolutionary geologists have had to modify their strategy. They are not completely stupid. So if you ask that question regarding water flowing uphill; they will say: Oh, the top rim was at one time at the 2800 foot level or lower, therefore the laws of physics still hold and water still flows downhill.
Now you can nail the Park Ranger with: Sir, did that 5000 plus foot geo-tectonic elevation of the entire 277 mile length of the canyon occur BEFORE or AFTER the rocks hardened? If he says it was while the rocks were still soft and supple, then it had to be a lot of water over a short period of time (before ALL the layers hardened to stone) –Noah’s Flood. Think what he just confessed to. He inadvertently admitted that ALL the layers (Kaibab, Toroweap, Coconino, etc.) had to have been in place BEFORE any uplifting/elevation/shifting took place (subsequently no major cracking – which is what we see today). If the Ranger say it was AFTER the sediment hardened to stone, then we are back to raising solidified rock (billions of tons of it) without creating major faults lines (not small ones mind you, which do exist in the canyon)? I don’t think so. Try raising the Island of Manhattan one mile up in elevation, from beneath, WITHOUT disturbing the buildings. Yeah right!
What would happen to those “canyons” of New York’s steel reinforced concrete skyscrapers? Talk about a collapsing house of cards. And the island of Manhattan is only 13.4 miles long x 2.3 miles wide versus the 277 mile long x 10 mile wide Grand Canyon. The skyscrapers are only a quarter mile high, while the Grand Canyon is one mile high or deep, (depending on your perspective). If the 277 mile long Grand Canyon had been raised up 5000 feet AFTER the rock layers had hardened, there wouldn’t even be a Grand Canyon – it would be a Grand Collapse!! Likewise for Manhattan. I was born at night, but not last night.
Have you been to Yellowstone National Park, with their geysers, hot springs, mud pots and “fountains”? I know, how quaint. You see some mountains about 15 miles distant that seem to ring the entire park. You are actually walking through the caldera (center) of an active volcano. When Yellowstone erupted (as part of the Noahic worldwide cataclysm), it released 2400 times the amount of debris than Mount St. Helens. Yellowstone alone, apart from the Deluge, was an extinction- level event in its own right. Can you even begin to imagine the eruption of ALL the volcanoes, the tectonic plates shifting and ripping the continents apart? These plates “greased” with water from the “fountains of the deep”, moving at over 40-50 miles an hour; the east coast of South America, violently separating from Africa’s west coast. You always knew they fit together at some era in the past. Today the plates shift at a snail’s pace @ 2-3 inches a year. Are you developing some appreciation of “the fountains of the deep”? – All this bursting on the same day! The tectonic plates lubricated with water underneath sliding away at highway speeds, then meeting resistance thousands of miles away and buckling upward to form mountain ranges like the Rockies and Himalayas (remember the whale, clams, etc. on the mountain tops), and downward to form the ocean basins and trenches like the 7 mile deep Marianas trench. Uniformitarianism is a stale joke. The present is NOT the key to the past. Slow and gradual is NOT the way it has always been. 4400 years ago, this planet was rocked to its core.
My wife and I enjoy watching cataclysmic sci-fi movies. I would love to see someone make Noah’s Flood, the greatest catastrophe of all time, into a movie; no sci-fi here! It would be awesome in 3-D!
Click onto this link which will take you to a short 2-minute video of the opening events of the greatest geologic cataclysm this planet has ever experienced:
http:// www.answersingenesis.org/media/video/ondemand/creation-museum/flood-initiation
Every millimeter of every layer of strata in the Grand Canyon, and at Mount St. Helens, and those “cut-throughs” along turnpikes and roads around the globe should be screaming at you that God punishes sin (BIG TIME)! The rocks are crying out – “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked” Gal. 6:7
Those Catholics out there who are reading this, the Blessed Virgin has more than once in recent times been sent by God to warn mankind to change his ways. The Immaculata has stated to Fr. Stefano Gobbi (with God’s approval) that the world today is “worse than in the days of Noah”! Does this really surprise you, given the state of the world today? Don’t shoot the messenger. Our Lady has stated that God is very displeased and saddened with His creation today. She is only relating the facts and warning us that the Good Lord wants mankind to reform his evil ways.
“Fear (respect) of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” Prov 9:10
Gene Conti, MD
gconti62@gmail.com (new email)
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www.AnswersInGenesis.org
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