Answering Koukl & Keaton Halley and Gary Bates

Two paragraphs from CMI:

Avoiding the obvious

According to Koukl, “There is nothing in the language of those passages that requires something like a global or universal Flood,” and he has offered arguments in defense of a local Flood on his radio program.2 For example, Koukl noted that in Genesis 8:9 Noah’s dove returned because “the waters were still on the face of the whole earth” (emphasis added), but earlier in verse 5 the text says that the waters had already receded enough so that “the tops of the mountains were seen”. So, Koukl reasoned, if “the whole earth” was still under water after some dry land had already been exposed, then “the whole earth” cannot refer to the globe.

However, this argument is flawed. If the planet was surrounded by water with some peaks poking up here and there, one would still be accurate in saying that the globe as a whole was covered. It wouldn’t mean every square inch of land, but rather that the land, broadly speaking, was submerged.3 The words are perfectly consistent with a global Flood, which the wider context demands.

Faltering on the Flood
by Keaton Halley and Gary Bates
Published: 18 May 2017 (GMT+10)
http://creation.com/local-flood

I disagree on the solution. As to "with some peaks poking up here and there", one could pretend tribes of mankind had survived at Andes and Himalayah's independently of Noah's Ark.

And I think this is wrong, even if an Inca Flood myth speaks of a sibling couples using Andes as Ark.

I think this is not what “the tops of the mountains were seen” really means.

In clear weather, you can see mountain tops down in the water some depth (say at least 1 to 2 yeards, depending on clearness of waters).

If you object that a raven (sent out before the dove) must have been surviving on one peak poking up somewhere, it could have survived on a mat of vegetation which included some carcasses as well. I take it that in verse 5, as yet no piece of land was both visible above waves sometimes and not at other times submerged by water. Or raven can have survived in a tree, hacking down on carcasses floating around it, while a dove needs to pick its food on the ground.

And whether raven survived or not is also moot on whether ravens were a pure bird, with seven individuals or couples, or an impure one, with only one couple. Only in the latter case need the raven have survived. But I think that is the case.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Venantius the Martyr
18.V.2017