The waters over the earth

The Revd Philip Ritchie accuses me of the sin of liberalness for suggesting that the tops of the mountains were not covered by water as part of the Great Flood. Indeed, he accuses me of trusting in Science and not Scripture.
Nothing could be further from the truth. I am a firm believer in Science and the One that invented it. And I refer not to Richard Dawkins.  However, it is clearly the case that, if the results of "science" differ with Scripture, then "science" (ie the results of a fallible scientist) is at odds with Science, the revelation of the mind of the Creator. Therefore, for example, the "science" of Evolution is a devilish deceit, and at odds with the true Science of Creation, which merely awaits acceptance of the evidence (i.e. the Book of Genesis) in the same way that Galileo and Copernicus had to wait for the Catholic church to recognise the truth of their theories.

However. I feel I have to explain my view of the dry-mountain theory of the Flood.

It is a simple calculation to derive that, were Everest to have been covered by the Flood, the amount of water required would have been 1.1bn cubic miles*.  It is equally clear that the amount of water on the earth, above the earth and under the earth - is about 332 million cubic miles. So if, as the Good Book has it, the floodgates of heaven were open and the springs of the great deep burst forth, then the maximum depth of all the earth in the world would be far less than the height of Everest.  Otherwise God would have created 1.1 bn cubic miles of water ex nihilo - a miracle unknown since the Creation itself.

Now I'm not saying that God could not have created that much water out of nothingness, and then destroy it again afterwards. For nothing is impossible with God. But - to do that, simply to ensure that he drowned all the Bigfeet and Yetis in the world except 2 each (for I presume they are unclean animals, possessing not cloven feet and chewing not the cud) would seem to be grandstanding in a big way. Far more rational to assume that he merely flooded the world to a reasonable depth, and left the Bigfeet and Yetis in peace.

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* for those of a scientific bent, I have assumed a height of 5.5 miles for Everest, and that the earth is a sphere of radius of 4,000 miles. This is approximate, but seems good enough for the purposes of this calculation.

Bible Translation

I've been sitting in my study this afternoon, musing over the inaugural sermon I have written and the process by which it is created. Of course, when I say "I have written", that might obscure the truth that the entire thing was inspired in me by the Holy Spirit. And therefore if anyone disagrees with it, they are disagreeing not with me, a mere conduit of heavenly truth, but with the One who gave me the message.

I have read a few times, because they still amaze me, the thoughts of Eddie Arthur on Bible Translation. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think that teaching everyone English will obviate the need for translation. After all, in some nations it would be more culturally sensitive to get them all to learn French, Spanish or even German.

But if we could save the considerable time needed to learn unimportant languages, often spoken by only a few million people, then we could concentrate on the important job of producing more English versions. I currently only have seventeen different translations, and I find that when I'm trying to express what the Spirit has given me, it's useful to be able to find support for my - sorry, the Spirit's - opinion in some obscure translation or another. It impresses the people in the pew, and helps me to sound learned.

And it's not just a way of crow-barring my own opinions in against the plain reading of Scripture, whatever the cynics may say. To take an example - 1 Sam 25:22 in the New International Version just appears to be just another example of our loving God's occasionally genocidal tendencies. But read it in the King James Version, and it becomes quite obvious that what God is really condemning is the antisocial behaviour of some drunkards wandering back from the Crown and Cushion on a Friday night.