Evolution, creation and floods.

Someone asked what I thought about what effect the great flood would have had on evolution.
Thought id type a bit about that.
This post isnt about religion. Its about thinking. History, theology, philosophy and that kind of thing.

One thing about the ancient bible stories. Creation, floods, the exodus, and all ... they all have spiritual meanings, or spiritual lessons. I really think those are more important. To me, to argue over whether they are literally true, misses the point.

I do think "something" happened to result in these stories. They are all "true" to some degree. However, the bible is not a history book, nor is it a biology book.
In this way of thinking you do have to draw the line somewhere though.
Because as Paul writes, if Jesus Christ is not risen, then our religion is in vain and you are still in your sins.

So I believe the stories are true. They are events that happened. But whether specific details are accurate doesn't matter to me.
The stories were written by people with a limited amount of information.
The creation was told as 6-day events, and the 7th day as a day of rest.
Was that a literal thing? or was that just a way of telling the story and communicating the spiritual nature of God and man? What if it had told the story without the days ... just this happened, then that happened ... would it matter?

I say it doesn't matter.
Most people would not agree with that, and that's ok.
But they were not telling the story as if it were an eye witness account of creation. The point of the writing was not to make a historical record.

There is no real conflict between evolution and creation, except when evolution tries to explain the origin. There is no conflict in the development.
The order of the creation story is the same as the order of the evolution story.
The only real difference that matters is ...
In the beginning God created .. versus some random spark set in motion a meaningless series of events that have resulted in the world we see today. The rest is commentary, as they say.
The spiritual implications of that are incredible. I could write many pages on that issue alone.

On the flood.
Again, huge spiritual truth there. Don't miss the message :)
But, nearly every ancient culture has a flood story.
To me that backs up the bible story. Its not possible to say who had the story first.
Many possibilities and theories.
One being that all of the land was in one place, no continents yet - both science and the bible agree on that. continental drift theory ?
And if only a few survived the flood, they eventually spread out as the continents drifted. So all would have that story.
(This could have been 5,000 years ago, or 500,000 years ago ... i say it doesnt matter.)

Its not that far fetched to think all the animals could be on the boat. All the canines with many variations - could have all been in one canine. All the felines - in one feline...
From there the canines and felines developed into the many species of them that we have today. Same with any other group. So thousands of species could have "been in" only a couple hundred animals.
The boat described in the bible would have been huge.
The flood could have caused some animals to become extinct . dinasaurs .. but isn't tha alligator a type of dinosaur ? Maybe they are not extinct, but have just developed differently?

Evolution does happen, things do change. We even "create" new species of dogs and cats and such.
The only problem is when you try to extrapolate that into explaining the origin of life. That isnt even good science really.

So the great flood might have knocked out some species, but in general, it would not have had that great of an impact. This was very early in the development of the world..

An interesting aside. Mt St. Helens is a volcano that erupted in washington state in the early 80's . It caused incredible devastation and changed to the environment. Ash from it was seen and felt all around the world, literally.
Imagine if there were 100 of these, or 1000 of these going on at the same time, would cause many great changes. That could cause a world wide flood. and continental drift.
But another intersting thing is ...
that just 20 years later, or 30 i guess now, there have been changes in the lava and rock in the area. There has been immediate fossilization, petrification and so forth.
The thing is, these are the same things that scientist say are millions of years old in other places. The same type changes to material happens. It really screws up carbon dating.

So these are just some random thoughts on the question.
Ive taken a lot of words to say that the flood would not have changed evolution very much, and vice versa.

There is also the theory out there that the ancient greek mythology is not mythology at all. But it is instead an account of the world that existed before the flood.
Its an interesting theory and not many people believe it, but ... i found the web site and i think the guy makes an interesting case.
The Genesis account does mention that spiritual beings took the form of flesh and took women of the earth, and mated with them, and the result was great spirit-flesh beings. It is just mentioned once and not explained at all.
But .. this guy takes that into greek mythology.

Ok, off to arkalalah