Christianity’s Flood Problem: Part 1

From Ararat to Islands: The Flood Story Science Can’t Support

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Series Introduction

The following content is draft work for an upcoming book.

 

“See, I am placing before you today a blessing and a curse –“

Deuteronomy 11:26

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Galileo later proved it—and the Church declared the sky heresy. Psalm 104:5 and Ecclesiastes 1:5 seemed to clearly say the Earth could not move, yet time revealed that faith and evidence were not enemies. Scripture had not failed; our interpretation had.

When Galileo pointed his telescope skyward, he didn’t discover a godless universe—he simply showed that our theology books needed footnotes. The Church trembled, then eventually matured. We stand at another crossroads now. This time, the telescope is a coral drill, an ice core, a genome sequencer—and again, believers are being asked whether our explanations still fit the world God actually made.

Modern Christianity is not at war with truth, but it often fears it. Young-Earth Creationism—born from sincere conviction that the Bible must describe literal history—has anchored much of evangelical theology for more than a century. Yet as evidence mounts, this model of faith finds itself in crisis. The deeper scientists look, the older the world becomes. The further divers drill, the thicker the coral. The more clearly we see creation, the less room there is for a single, global flood that reset all life 4,000 years ago.

This does not mean the Bible has failed. It means our lenses are due for cleaning. People are not abandoning God—they’re abandoning explanations that insult their intelligence. The problem isn’t the gospel; it’s the scaffolding we’ve built around it that refuses to bend. If creation itself “pours forth speech” (Psalm 19) and “God’s invisible qualities are clearly seen in what has been made” (Romans 1:20), then ignoring evidence isn’t defending Scripture—it’s rejecting revelation.

Faith doesn’t die from new data; it dies from dishonest explanations. Truth doesn’t need bodyguards. It needs witnesses.

Christianity is entering a pruning season. Knowledge has multiplied, and those who stood on the moral high ground above science are losing that ground. This isn’t about abandoning faith—God is real; I’ve witnessed His power—but about letting it grow up. It’s that Old Earth Creationism has already become mature enough to find harmony between faith and evidence, while Young Earth Creationism chooses cling to traditional readings out of sincere devotion to the tradition of their forefathers. 

We shouldn’t gripe about anyone’s opinion, as a faithful believer by any means is a win for what Chist seeks to accomplish. Yet many churches are dimming, not because God has changed, but because their interpretive methods no longer illuminate as strongly. 

Ken Ham's Post
Ken Ham's Post

They are going to continue to mock. Let it be their opinion, but the “apostate” talk is not going to be be profitable for them spiritually. 

Generally speaking: blasphemy against the Spirit is where God draws the line (let's not get into any of that). And then again: for judging ourselves -- there are 10 limits written in stone for measuring loving behavior -- and one Reason we don't need to be condemned by that measure.

“There is a time to tear down and a time to build up… a time to be silent and a time to speak” (Eccl. 3:1–7). The time to speak without regard to position on more complicated matters is now —While there’s still time to relay the conviction of sin and hope in Jesus.

Can Christians Disagree About Creation & Evolution?
Can Christians Disagree About Creation & Evolution?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxMR8UKPpao

Somewhere along the line, we confused literal with faithful. Many of us are coming to find that early Hebrews weren’t writing a physics textbook—they were writing poetry, law –and in regards to the records that pre-dated writing the Hebrew language itself– cultural memory. Yet we’ve spent centuries trying to cram those genres into a modern laboratory.

Ironically, literalism began as a shield against superstition. Now it’s become superstition with citations. Recent biblical evidence has been providing evidence on how muddled Genesis 1-11 is, even referencing places and peoples that never existed until the time of Solomon. We’ll discuss this in more detail later, along with plenty of other pieces of scriptural evidence that will be brought to light before the end of this series. 

This shouldn’t be made out to be rebellion; when we find it necessary to redefine how we can bring reverence to the Creator –by understanding how humanity, and even believers got things wrong. To seek truth in creation is to respect the Author of both Scripture and nature. Jesus warned against calling others fools (Matt. 5:22). So my purpose here is not accusation, but reconciliation—showing that questioning interpretation is not apostasy, but pruning for greater fruitfulness.

In Part 1, we’ll trace the discoveries that led me to this point. In Part 2, we’ll revisit Genesis—what Scripture truly does and doesn’t say when read through the eyes of faith, symbolism, and reason together.

May the name of Jesus be glorified. 

The 33+ Year Long Question

From adolescence, I wrestled with the gap between faith and evidence—especially the idea of a global flood. Growing up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I was taught that Noah’s flood was literal history. Some extra-biblical writings I was exposed to claimed all coal deposits were formed during that flood—and that burning coal caused earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Even as a teenager, I knew this wasn’t science; it was a dated literature baptized as revelation.

I loved science. By fifteen I was already testing at university level, and that curiosity made me question—not God—but the explanations I was given about Him. I’d already witnessed miracles too great to doubt His reality, yet I couldn’t reconcile divine truth with human fabrication. From then on, Noah’s flood became the question that refused to drown.

Years later, around 2016, I encountered Christian models like Genesis Apologetics, which proposed YEC theories around the flood being a year-long tectonic cataclysm that reshaped continents. It seemed plausible—until until 2024 when I began to study living species. The global distribution of endemic species  [2], especially those isolated by oceans, didn’t fit a literal migration from Mount Ararat. That realization changed everything.

By 2025, my entire framework shifted. Through prayer, I began to approach the flood question as I would a complex architectural problem in cloud computing or AI development—seeking patterns instead of dogma. I stopped defending what I’d been told and started asking what creation itself was saying.

To my surprise, many of the insights I arrived at independently had already been observed by scientists and Christian scholars alike. It was humbling—and reassuring—to find I wasn’t alone in realizing that the truth of God’s world doesn’t contradict the Word, only our interpretation of it.

I Wanted To Know More

In early 2025, I looked out from thirty thousand feet above South America’s desert spine—miles of exposed geology stretched beneath me like the pages of an ancient book. Somewhere over the Andes, I prayed that God would reveal His secrets: how His creation and His Word fit together.

I had grown up believing the Earth was only a few thousand years old. My faith tradition—rooted in literalism—had taught that science was suspect and that radiocarbon dating [3] worked only when it agreed with Scripture. But the more evidence surfaced, the more that confidence eroded. Even artifacts made by human hands were being dated beyond the Genesis timeline, and the response was not re-examination but denial.

By 2023, I realized that sincerity alone doesn’t sanctify misinformation. We can’t assume something is holy just because someone claims it is. That realization forced me to rebuild my faith from the ground up.

I began searching not the fossil record, but the living one—the patterns still visible in creation itself. On those flights, staring at mountains carved by time and water, I asked God to help me see what earlier generations could not. When I landed in Santiago, that prayer had already taken root: a conviction that truth and faith were never meant to be adversaries, only companions waiting to be reconciled.

The Island Contradiction

By 2024 one question kept pressing on my heart: the strange distribution of species across islands. I hadn’t learned this from Darwin—I’ve never studied him—but from simply observing patterns of life that refused to fit the Genesis flood narrative. East of a narrow boundary called the Wallace Line [4], the living world changes abruptly. Marsupials and other endemic creatures appear only there, yet none of their kind exist to the west.

Creationist institutions rarely touch this subject. When they do [5], it’s with children’s-museum simplicity: only a dozen marsupials [30] , some kangaroos, some koalas, and the suggestion that everything floated or hopped there over debris after the Flood. Meanwhile the fact that only marsupials and not other mammal types decided to do this while leaving no traces in Asia or Africa is a tough sell. 

Take the koala—a creature that sleeps twenty hours a day, eats only eucalyptus leaves (an Australian native itself), and refuses to eat them unless they’re still attached to a tree. Unless eucalyptus trees sprouted every few steps across oceans and deserts, or someone packed their lunches for the next two centuries, migration from Mount Ararat is biologically impossible.

Meanwhile, Christian universities—whose scholars publish on everything from paleontology to astrophysics—remain almost silent. It isn’t that they haven’t noticed; it’s that there’s no straight-faced way to explain how seventy unique marsupial species could hop, burrow, crawl, and nap their way twelve thousand kilometers across mountains, jungles, and seas without leaving a single fossil cousin or other living relative behind.

Yes, we can have faith blindly, but that is not what all 8 billion of us can do faithfully. To me it is a sin not to look at the possibility that the interpretation of the texts is where the problem is. 

Among all the puzzles in global biodiversity, none is louder than the Wallace Line—a bright dividing line where species simply stop. On one side: Asia’s placental mammals. On the other: Australia’s marsupial world. It’s as if nature herself hung a “Do Not Cross” sign in mid-ocean.

When sea levels were low, land once connected parts of Indonesia west of the Makassar Strait, allowing Asian animals to spread. Yet even then, the waters east of that line were too deep to cross. The result: two ecosystems, close in distance but worlds apart in origin.

To the east lies Wallacea [7]—a region teeming with species found nowhere else on Earth. These animals share no direct ancestors or fossils with those in Asia, Africa, or Europe. The further east we travel—from Indonesia to New Guinea to Australia—the sharper the distinction becomes. If these species had ever mingled, they’d have shared predators, fossils, and migration trails. The observation is clear, they have not go mingled with the native Asian mammals.

Marsupials in Australia fill every niche—herbivore, omnivore, and carnivore—because no other mammals ever competed with them. There are roughly seventy to eighty unique species east of the Wallace Line, more than two hundred if we include subspecies. Strikingly, they’re more closely related to living marsupials in South America and fossils in Antarctica than to anything in Asia or Africa. There are no ancestral marsupial fossils west of the line—none in Europe, Africa, or native to North America.

There are very rare fossil exceptions [9] to the marsupialiforme clade globally, but they are not ancestors of modern marsupial species.

The most simple solution is deep time. These species trace back to when South America, Antarctica, and Australia were fused as the supercontinent Gondwana. For example: The Monito del monte of Chile—a tiny nocturnal marsupial—shares closer lineage with Australian species than with its own continental neighbors.

This pattern extends far beyond the Wallace Line. Across the globe, the distribution of endemic species—plants and animals found nowhere else—defies the flood narrative. Some are too fragile, too localized, or too immobile to have rafted across oceans after a global deluge.

Even insects follow the same rule. Take the endemic blind cave wolf spider of Kauaʻi, living only in a few lava tubes, unseen anywhere else on Earth. Or the platypus—another riddle that refuses to fit a post-flood migration story. It crawls on its belly, confined to freshwater rivers. Imagining a platypus hitching a ride in a kangaroo pouch across continents would be comical if it weren’t the best literalist model available.

Some Creationist theories, like those in the flood series [10] from Genesis Apologetics, suggest the Flood played out as global tidal waves during rapid tectonic shifts, leaving pockets of survivors. But such a scenario still clashes with both geology and Scripture. Genesis 7:21-23 makes no allowance for survivors outside the Ark:

“All flesh that moved on the earth perished… only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark.”

If we claim that some species survived in place, we no longer have a global flood—we have a local one. And if we accept that, the Bible’s language must be seen through the lens of symbol and scope rather than physics and hydrology.

That doesn’t destroy faith—it refines it. Perhaps Noah’s flood echoes a real event, like the Black Sea deluge or another regional catastrophe remembered in oral history and magnified through inspired storytelling. Scripture often speaks in hyperbole when it says “all,” yet within those exaggerations lies symbolic truth.

The question, then, isn’t whether God’s Word is wrong—it’s whether we’ve been reading it with the wrong kind of eyes.

The Wallace Line
These land animals wouldn't have co-mingled without leaving fossil or living record with them together

Then The Floodgates Opened

Even after wrestling with the island paradox, I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted evidence that could either confirm or collapse the global flood narrative, so I began studying modern fossils—not dinosaurs, but living witnesses turned to stone. For over a year I searched for signs that might validate the catastrophic flood model promoted by Genesis Apologetics—theories of rapid tectonic separation [11] and world-wide subduction.

Then, almost by accident, discovery found me. While in Santiago, my phone’s news feed surfaced an article about fossilized trees nearly 2,000 years old at the time of death. I’d never considered trees as a clue to biblical timelines. The thought captivated me: could the age of trees reveal the rhythm of creation?

The oldest living trees today are about 4,000 to 5,000 years old—close, in fact, to the timeline Creationists associate with Noah’s flood. Intrigued, I searched for fossilized trees older than that but found none exceeding roughly 2,000 years at death.

To a literalist, this absence could affirm a young Earth: 2,000 years before the flood, 4,000 after. But the deeper I looked, the more Genesis itself seemed to resist such simplification.

Genesis 2:5–6 describes God creating a mature world but not a ready-made ecosystem—a planet designed to grow. God may form fully developed life, yet the text also shows Him cultivating process, not just product. There are, after all, two creation accounts with differing orders of events, and adam means “mankind,” not simply one man.

That realization shifted my thinking: perhaps creation was not instant fabrication but divine acceleration—a process God could hasten or slow at will. The apparent age of trees, then, could not determine Earth’s true age. The evidence remained fascinating, but incomplete. I needed more.

Corals Take The Witness Stand

The search for more evidence led me from fossilized trees to another kind of living stone—coral. During a quiet Sabbath afternoon in Chile, I began thinking about what else could record time as faithfully as tree rings but on a global scale. Coral came to mind: slow-growing [15], layered, and deeply tied to sea levels.

I’d long taken comfort in hearing that some of the oldest corals were just over 4,000 years old [16], which seemed to harmonize with the biblical timeline. But when I began reading more deeply, that comfort faded into curiosity.

Corals, I learned, don’t merely live; they build. Their skeletons preserve millennia of environmental history in limestone layers. If the world had truly been reshaped by a global flood only a few thousand years ago, we should see the evidence in those coral platforms—violent breaks, chaotic sediment, massive discontinuities. Instead, what scientists found was something far older and far more ordered.

Around the world, entire mountain-sized terraces [17] and islands [26] of drowned coral lie far below the surface—sometimes more than a mile deep [20][26]. They don’t resemble flood debris. They resemble time itself, built layer upon layer, patiently marking the rise and fall of seas [18] long before human history.

I realized this was the perfect test case: shallow water coral species only grow near sunlight and stable sea levels. If the Flood had truly covered the earth and then receded quickly, we would expect to find shallow-water coral only near current ocean depths, not buried beneath thousands of meters of limestone.

Due to slow mantle subduction [19], we would expect to see some platforms lower than one might expect, especially in places like the Caribbean, but that’s not always the whole story. Additionally, we would expect fossilized pre-flood corals at any level, including atop continents globally, which indeed exist. However, my immediate focus was not on these fossils, but rather on modern coral platforms, given that the flood scenario posits drastic changes in ocean levels occurring quite recently.

So, with that in mind, I turned to the most recent global research, particularly the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program—modern-day explorers who lower drills deep into drowned reefs to read the history of the ocean like scripture written in stone.

What they found would change everything I thought I knew about the Flood.

IODP Expedition 389 (Hawaiian Drowned Coral Reefs)

The data from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) stunned me. Core samples from Hawaii’s drowned reefs revealed thick platforms of shallow-water coral extending down nearly a mile (IODP 389 [22]) . These weren’t fossilized remnants of one brief catastrophe—they were continuous, orderly growths, each layer older than the one above it by hundreds of thousands of years.

The evidence was the same around the world: in Tahiti [21], the Maldives, the Caribbean, and Enewetak Atoll [24]. In some places, scientists drilled through over a kilometer of solid coral limestone [25], each terrace marking a period of rising or falling seas. The deeper they drilled, the further back the story went—beyond 300,000 years in some locations.

How could such formations exist if the entire planet had been submerged only 4,000 years ago?

The answer came through the chemistry of the corals themselves. Corals absorb uranium from seawater as they grow, but not thorium. Over time, uranium decays into thorium, and by measuring the ratio between them, scientists can calculate age with remarkable accuracy—a method known as Uranium–Thorium dating [23]. The results were consistent, elegant, and, for a literal flood model, devastating.

I spent weeks rereading the reports, hoping to find an oversight. There wasn’t one. The data were simple, observable, and reproducible. These reefs were not relics of a single deluge—they were monuments to deep time, built slowly by living things in patient obedience to the physical laws God set in motion.

For years I’d imagined coral as proof for the Flood; now it seemed to testify against it. But rather than shaking my faith, it deepened it. Creation wasn’t lying—our interpretations were. The Earth had been speaking the same language all along; we just hadn’t been listening.

If Scripture says, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), then the corals declare His patience. Their growth is a sermon in limestone—proof that time is not the enemy of faith, but its canvas.

I began to wonder if Noah’s flood was never meant to describe a planet drowned, but a people washed—an ancient story of cleansing and covenant, later mistaken for global geology. Perhaps, as with so many things in Scripture, the truth was both simpler and more profound: the Flood wasn’t just about water covering land—it was about God covering sin.

And so the coral stands as witness: not against Genesis, but against the limits of our imagination.

The Multi Pronged Evidence Approach

As days turned into weeks, my findings continued to expand.

Consider the case of New Zealand’s legendary Giant Moa [27], a remarkable flightless bird standing over 3 meters (10 feet) tall, which became extinct approximately 600 years ago—and around 200 years after the first humans first arrived on the islands. Remarkably, unfossilized skin and feathers of these birds have been discovered preserved in dry caves, and their bones have been found piled in middens near ancient human settlements, as uncovered by archaeologists.

New Zealand, isolated by vast oceans, has no native mammals aside from bats. This isolation means that only flying creatures could naturally settle there. Given this context, the Moa could not have arrived in New Zealand by walking or swimming from Noah’s Ark. The quantity of other unique species also testify to this playing out in situ. For example: The Haast’s Eagle [28] one of the earth’s biggest eagles to have existed on earth which fed almost exclusively on the giant Moa went extinct shortly after its prey did. No prey, no play.

Going back to that article from the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis [5], where it’s proposed that marsupials returned to their exact pre-Flood homelands by walking — or perhaps rafting — across post-Flood debris fields to reach Wallacea and eventually Australia, we’re left to wonder: how, exactly, did the Moa make the trip? Because last time I checked, New Zealand isn’t exactly next door to Australia. 

Now, unless we’re prepared to believe the Haast’s eagle personally flew in a few breeding pairs of flightless Moa to New Zealand — perhaps to start a free-range farm — we’re left with a more grounded question: what about the other small flightless birds too tiny for the eagle to consider a snack, let alone the countless flightless species on islands across the globe? Many of those don’t even have a predator.

If this apex predator was capable of international livestock logistics, you’d think we’d see Round Two somewhere in the fossil record. More likely, there’s a simpler explanation — that both the eagle and its supersized snack were part of Gods creative process right there, uniquely shaped by New Zealand’s isolation, ecology, and total lack of large land predators.

Because while “avian airlift program for culinary purposes” is a fun image, biogeography tends to play it a bit straighter.

Comparison of a kiwi (Apteryx sp., Apterygidae, Struthioniformes), ostrich (Struthio camelus, Struthionidae, Struthioniformes), and giant moa (Dinornis giganteus, Dinornithidae, Dinornithiformes), each with its egg.

Madagascar also had a similar example, with the recently extinct endemic Elephant Bird. Even in the living record, Madagascar is the unique home of lemurs, a wet nose primate family of eight (8) unique species endemic only to the island of Madagascar 

Still, I needed more evidence.

I returned to considering mammals that live below the earths surface. These aren’t migratory animals. Here I found the blind and deaf marsupial mole [29] endemic to Australia’s deserts. I began to feel so foolish. How simple would this question have been to ask from the beginning? Well, either that or the marsupial mole might be the only creature to attempt burrowing its way through Asia!

This animal is so specialized that even its pouch faces backward — a brilliant adaptation to keep sand out while tunneling through desert soil. It’s fascinating to consider that God may have granted it this flexibility through a generative biological process. But still — why is a marsupial doing this in Australia? Simple: because no other mammals were present to exploit that nutrient-rich underground niche.

I have a very hard time accepting that this blind, deaf, highly specialized creature somehow made its way from Noah’s Ark to the red sands of Australia. I see the idea is, quite frankly, rubbish — and especially in light of the idea that all marsupial species migrated together to Australia. How would they have log hopped across a floating platform and kept up with the others? It makes me feel a bit of pity or almost sad inside that this is what humanity is left to struggle with. The answer should be easy to see. 

Now, some might claim this kind of evidence supports evolution exclusively — but perhaps we’ve misunderstood God’s methods. Nothing appears without his foresight, even when expressed through a generative process. Perhaps this question only touches on one way of looking at what Gods creative process was, but — What if biological emergence is the result not of randomness, but of divine intentionality embedded within dynamic systems?

After all, is not mankind now building generative AI models that generate new things? These are tools that can create, adapt, and even surprise us — yet they’re ultimately shaped by our design, our input, our rules. These systems may behave almost autonomously at lower levels, but their creativity is never truly detached from their creators.

So why wouldn’t God employ a similar approach — setting the initial conditions, applying laws and boundaries, and training biological, behavioral, and even sentient systems of creation through an intelligence that far surpasses anything we can engineer?

Some who believe in deep time -like Dr Hugh Ross and Reasons  to Believe— stop short of a generative process, and rather start to take the Genesis account literal. Meanwhile, there are others in the academic world –like Dr Lane Craig at Texas A&M– who have began to show substantial evidence on how Genesis 1-11 is not intended to be literal history through and through. 

We’ll discuss this and the biblical evidence in much more detail During Christianities Flood Problem Part 2.

Regardless of whether we believe in one or another – as Jesus said, when speaking of things beyond what many could grasp: “He who has ears, let him hear.”

Continuing again in such reason as deep time exists, we also begin to see a reason for why God would have been meddling with mankind since even before they began to realize the difference between right and wrong. –it was an extension of his ongoing process– and a method to help us cultivate love within family and cultural settings. Again, stay tuned for Part 2.

This is to say, love and civil behavior -the fruits of the Spirit– being the end goal for the fruitful personalities this branching vine produces, and somehow we needed a savior for that once we were old enough as a species to understand our incapability to achieve it in the flesh on our own. 

Some won’t be able to accept this. Their view of Scripture has been too thoroughly rounded — tested, codified, and defended by evolving human reasoning for thousands of years — to the point that they see it as a perfect, end-to-end system that must be interpreted literally and flawlessly… according to their God inspired but human formed framework.

They need God to be who they thought He was.

So did I, honestly! But, somehow there was a such a profound perception in my being the first day i felt overwhelmed by it. “Don’t cry over spilled milk”. 

The creation itself has more credibility than men — even men inspired by the Spirit. The Bible says God spoke, and in a way —creation obeyed– otherwise it wouldn’t be here. The Bible also says that man is faulty, and that God inspired them. Beyond prophecies about the future specifically [31, 32, 33], that distinction matters.

Beyond this, we might not have had the interpretation of the flood or creation story exactly right. Genre in the bible matters, what was the intent of the writers, and what were they ultimately trying to teach?

Conclusion

Proof that God has truly been working with mankind is in bible prophecy. Throughout history, faithful individuals have testified to divine help and miracles beyond coincidence, and evidenced to later generations through prophecies predicting the future rather than detailing the past explicitly. One of the primary reasons I could never let go of my faith in him (may God be willing) is the 70 Weeks Prophecy from Daniel chapter 9 that predicted the year of Jesus Christ’s death. This was recognized by early Christians as early as the early second century CE, and meanwhile the earliest extant physical copies of those texts are more than 190 years before the death of Christ.

While I may have evidence contrary to what many once found to be sound doctrine –this evidence is still going to be part of light shining in the darkness [34] for many of us. The physical witnesses that testify to what I’m saying are too diverse, and in further parts in this series we’re going to discuss how they are not necessarily at odds with the teachings of Christ specifically.

For example: A prophecy about Jesus from 700 years before his time also testifies of Christs behavior and intent when he would be on this earth.

A bent reed He will not break off And a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice.

Isaiah 42:3

This here is speaking of how he would not say anything that would stop anyone from loosing their faith. As such, his duty was to bring justice, provide forgiveness, and fulfill prophecy by providing a way for us to proceed beyond this very reality should we be willing to accept what he has prepared.

He was sent to the lineage of Abraham first, as this is where the promise manifest anew — and as such he would not break their understanding, as it was not necessary. Christ did however say that those who are poor in spirit would inherit the kingdom of heaven, and we know from Job 32:8 that he meant that they lack understanding. 

He was also perceptibly careful when speaking about creation, or at least history beyond Abel, and again said scripture can not be undone, so there must be symbolic value in anything that was said. We’ll cover all this in higher detail during Part 2. 

There remains space for belief in God as the Creator, though we must not presume to fully understand His mechanisms. Across broader Christianity, one view holds that God created life without death; another observes a natural cycle inclusive of biological death. (These are only two examples of Christian opinion)

Some find it inconceivable that God could allow death from creation, or that their God is your God if you don’t believe their literal version with them. Others believe death appears to be a tool of God nonetheless**.

**It is written that Satan holds the power of death [35], but so did the Angel of the Lord [36].

What is important is that we not throw-stones at one another, for when we throw them we are in danger of losing what we thought we would gain. If some can’t see all of Genesis literally, but accept that the story of our origins is symbolically significant, and they obey God, then who is another disciple to say they are lost?

Whether we are one side of the opinion or the other, what is imperative is to remember that right now isn’t a time to lose touch with our faith, nor is it a time to harass others about our position. Dialogue is necessary, but it must happen willfully, and we can recognize that if it was not important for Christians to understand this in the time of Christ, then equally so, now also. It is not our job to shake the tree branches, aka: Gods vine with this belief now either. The process needs to precipitate naturally. 

It is also not a sin to understand this knowledge to be the truth, or to not be able to accept it as the truth — not yet. In the next part I will focus heavily on the teachings of Christ and how he did tell us that we should never judge others for their knowledge, nor should we call them a fool without being in danger of being the person we thought they were. 

Let’s save the rest for the next article.

Want to know more? Please join me in part 2 where we will continue to address this issue with a deeper look at what clues we may have to overcome this challenge when using the scriptures.

Citations

  1. Genesis Apologetics (2018), Noah’s Flood and Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (from Pangea to Today) ver. 1.1 – [Episode on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8SCjn1hubc)
  2. Endemic species – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemism)
  3. Radio Carbon Dating – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating)
  4. The Wallace Line – [National Geographic](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/dividing-species-wallace-line-map/)
  5. Australian Animals: Why Are They So Unique? – [Answers in Genesis](https://answersingenesis.org/animal-behavior/australian-animals-unique/)
  6. Makassar Strait – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassar_Strait)
  7. Wallacea – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallacea)
  8. Marsupial – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsupial)
  9. Sinodelphys – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinodelphys)
  10. Genesis Apologetics (2018), Noah’s Flood on North America – [Episode on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOcndUvedGc)
  11. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History – Steven A. Austin et al. [PDF link](https://www.globalflood.org/uploads/1/0/4/4/10444187/cpt_joint_paper_1994_icc.pdf)
  12. List of oldest trees – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees)
  13. Genesis 2:5-6 – [BibleHub](https://biblehub.com/genesis/2-5.htm)
  14. Genesis 2:9 – [BibleHub](https://biblehub.com/genesis/2-9.htm)
  15.  Lophelia Growth – NOAA Ocean Explorer: Deepwater Platform Corals 2012, Growth [NOAA.gov](https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/12lophelia/background/growth/growth.html)
  16. Deep-Sea Corals: The Oldest Organisms in the Sea – [Smithsonian Ocean](https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/coral-reefs/deep-sea-corals#:~:text=Oldest%20Organisms%20in%20the%20Sea?,-Ultraviolet%20light%20illuminates&text=Not%20only%20are%20deep%2Dsea,there%E2%80%94in%20Hawaii%20or%20elsewhere.)
  17. Carbonate platform – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate_platform)
  18. Submerged Reefs – [Springer Encyclopedia of Modern Coral Reefs](https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-90-481-2639-2_153)
  19. Subduction – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction#:~:text=Subduction%20is%20a%20geological%20process,and%20sinks%20into%20the%20mantle.)
  20. Sea‑level and monsoonal control on the Maldives carbonate platform (Indian Ocean) – Alonso‑Garcia et al. [Clim. Past 20, 547–571 (2024)](https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/20/547/2024/)
  21. IODP Expedition 310 Preliminary Report: Tahiti Sea Level – [Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP)](http://publications.iodp.org/preliminary_report/310/prel4.html)
  22. Hawaiian Drowned Reefs (Proceedings of IODP Expedition 389) – Webster, J.M., Ravelo, A.C., Grant, H.L.J., and the Expedition 389 Scientists. [IODP Volume 389 Proceedings](https://publications.iodp.org/proceedings/389/389title.html)
  23. Uranium Thorium Dating – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93thorium_dating)
  24. Bikini and Nearby Atolls; Drilling Operations on Eniwetok Atoll – U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 260‑Y [PDF link](http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/0260y/report.pdf)
  25. Geothermal convection: a mechanism for dolomitization at Enewetak Atoll – USGS/ScienceDirect (Wilson et al. 2000) [Abstract link](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0375674200000480)
  26. Bulk sediment geochemistry (IODP Expedition 359, Site U1471) – [IODP Data Report (Vol. 359_201)](http://publications.iodp.org/proceedings/359/201/359_201.html)
  27.  Moa – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa)
  28. Haast’s eagle – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast%27s_eagle)
  29. DNA reveals secrets of Australia’s elusive marsupial mole – [mtpr.org](https://www.mtpr.org/2025-01-02/dna-reveals-secrets-of-australias-elusive-marsupial-mole) 
  30. Marsupials in Austrailia – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monotremes_and_marsupials_of_Australia)
  31. 2 Timmothy 3:16 – [BibleHub](https://biblehub.com/2_timothy/3-16.htm)
  32. 2 Peter 1:21 – [BibleHub](https://biblehub.com/2_peter/1-21.htm)
  33. Deuteronomy 18:22 – [BibleHub](https://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/18-22.htm)
  34. John 1:5 – [BibleHub](https://biblehub.com/john/1-5.htm)
  35. Hebrews 2:14 – [BibleHub](https://biblehub.com/hebrews/2-14.htm)
  36. Destroying Angel – [Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroying_angel_(Bible))
  37. Dr. Kurt Wise (2024), How Did Animals Spread Around the World After Noah’s Flood? – [Episode on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vagBooaBJY)

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Don

I would rather do the Lords work than anything else.

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