[Part 7 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective.  Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6]

When identifying the primary points of conflict between science and religion—the areas where most debates seem to start and stop—the top two are almost certainly: (1) evolution and (2) Noah’s flood.  

Saving evolution for later, it is remarkable the amount of attention that Noah and his ark receive, only because of how insignificant that story really is from a religious perspective.  (The story itself contains nothing directly or even indirectly related to what we would call ‘doctrines of salvation’—if it were removed from the Bible altogether, Christianity as a religion changes hardly a bit…)

Yet, upon second glance there are clear and understandable reasons why Noah’s flood gets a disproportionate amount of attention given its tiny amount of scriptural text, and near irrelevance to Christian doctrine.    The most obvious reason is because it contains a clear scientific component capable of analysis.

Most ‘religious’ (read: spiritual) elements have no such component:  It’s hard to argue logically that IF God exists He would certainly have to be visible through a telescope, for example.  Angels and other heavenly visitors presumably don’t leave some sort of ectoplasmic residue when they appear, like the ghosts from “Ghostbusters”.  “Spirits” that continue to live after death wouldn’t necessarily have to show up on an X-ray to exist.  And so on…

Most religious claims, even if true, inherently do not have any component that’s accessible to science to even attempt to prove or disprove it.  (Obviously, this does not stop some on the science side from presuming that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, regardless…)

The story of Noah has that clearly identifiable scientific component.  Sure, no one will be able to prove or disprove a person named Noah existed, let alone he talked with God, but the idea that the entire Earth was covered with water which drowned all forms of animal life except for those in a small boat, presents a story with natural elements that should have some distinct scientific evidence to support it.  To date, such evidence has not been found.  What to make of it then?

When attempting to ‘reconcile’ Noah’s flood, or scriptural stories in general, (make sure you’ve read the previous section on reconciliation if you haven’t already) one of the standard methods is simply to tweak the ‘interpretation’ gauge on your scriptural parser a little further towards ‘figurative’ and ‘metaphorical’, and away from ‘literal’.  Basically, you try to derive whatever spiritual lesson you think the text is trying to impart, and don’t worry so much about strict ‘historicity’.

This is one tactic that many take:  just dismissing the story of Noah’s flood as completely fanciful and figurative, in which case the lack of actual scientific flood evidence doesn’t really matter much.  Others take the tactic that the text is literally correct and that evidence of the flood has been removed from the Earth by God so as to not to countermand the necessity for ‘faith’.  (Or, alternately, that science is so fundamentally incompetent that the scientific evidence for a worldwide flood does exist, just has completely escaped notice to this point…)

One problem with just slapping a ‘figurative’ sticker on Noah and the ark, however, is—again—how insignificant a story it is from a spiritual perspective.  If the existence of that story in Genesis is NOT simply just to record historical fact and report things that actually happened, what would its purpose be?  (There’s no obvious spiritual lesson to be gained…  Compare this to the off-hand mention in Genesis that Methuselah lived to be 969 years old.  If that’s supposed to be figurative—I mean, no one *really* could have lived to be that old, right?—it’s supposed to be figurative apropos what, exactly?)  )

And, on the other side, a problem with the literal interpretation where God has ‘hidden’ the evidence…um, why would God do that, now?  (Wouldn’t tangible evidence of a worldwide flood increase faith in the other parts of scripture?  You know…the important parts?)

The easiest way to find a ‘middle ground’ between the purely figurative and purely literal interpretations of the flood account is fairly simple: the idea of a NON-worldwide flood.

A local flood idea answers the lack of evidence of a global flood, of course, (plus the complementary questions about the development of existing animals all over the globe) and basically answers all of science’s concerns about the story at once.  The question is: how compatible is the local flood idea with scripture?

Here’s some of the relevant scriptural passages in question (from Genesis 7):

1 And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
…
  4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.
  …
  11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
…
  17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
  18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.
  19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and ball the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
  20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
  21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
  22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
  23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

(Doesn’t sound too ‘figurative’, does it?  Now what?  Fifteen cubits, by the way, is about 30-40 feet.)  

One indirect answer to this question can be found, not in the Bible, but in the Book of Mormon.

In the book of Helaman, we read that the Nephites are wicked (again), and Nephi persuades the Lord to ‘bless’ them with a famine, instead of a war.  From Chapter 11:

5 And so it was done, according to the words of Nephi. And there was a great famine upon the land, among all the people of Nephi. And thus in the *seventy and fourth year the famine did continue, and the work of destruction did cease by the sword but became sore by famine.
  6 And this work of destruction did also continue in the *seventy and fifth year. For the earth was smitten that it was adry, and did not yield forth grain in the season of grain;

Just how widespread was this famine?  Continuing on in verse 6:

and the whole earth was smitten,

Wow, the WHOLE earth?  Really?  Continuing on,

and the whole earth was smitten, even among the Lamanites as well as among the Nephites,

Ah, ha—the WHOLE Earth, meaning the land of the Nephites AND the Lamanites.

Obviously, the use of the phrase “the whole Earth” was not meant to imply that there was a famine in Poland at the same time, but rather as a colloquialism for “the entire land in which we live”.

What are the possibilities, then, that the text in Genesis had the same sort of colloquialism—where the waters covered the “whole earth”, meaning just the local area where the author(s) lived?  How aware were the eventual scribes of the story (since it’s obvious Genesis wasn’t written by Noah) of the broader geography around them?

It’s important to note that Mormon and the other Nephite authors of the Book of Mormon DID know that the Earth (the planet) included more lands than their own—their original ancestry from Jerusalem is a fundamental part of their history.  (Mormon’s inclusion of the second phrase explaining the first may have been in an attempt to avoid misunderstandings about what he meant by ‘the whole earth’)  Therefore, we KNOW they didn’t genuinely think their land was “the whole earth”…yet such phrases make their appearances anyway.

(Some other sections of the Book of Mormon that use the phrase “whole Earth” which probably didn’t mean to imply it was also happening in China:)

Alma 38:7--But behold, the Lord in his great mercy sent his angel to declare unto me that I must stop the work of destruction among his people; yea, and I have seen an angel face to face, and he spake with me, and his voice was as thunder, and it shook the whole earth.

Helaman 3:8 And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east.

We have two potential problem points in accepting the literal meaning:  what did the scriptural writers intend when they used phrases similar to ‘the whole earth’?  And when scripture was translated into English, how appropriate was the phrase ‘the whole earth’ based on the original language?

I’m not a historian of ancient scriptures or languages so I have no specific insight to offer as to these questions, only to note that either one of these two areas could present a problem as to how literally we should interpret the world-wide flood.  We know the text of Genesis was not written down by God Himself, nor likely by Noah, but someone after the fact, after a time where the flood story was likely spread as an oral tradition from place to place.  How likely is it that during that oral tradition, the story naturally came to be known as the flood that covered the whole Earth (meaning ‘the whole land in which we are aware’) without ever intending to mean the ‘whole planet’?

Last month, LDS Science Review discussed an article about a scientist who grew up with a traditional young-earth/creationist upbringing, and later found he couldn’t reconcile those teachings with his scientific studies and ended up forsaking his faith.  The breaking point in his departure from religion?  You guessed it--Noah's "worldwide" flood.

While not strictly an atheist now (the article reports this scientist believes in God…sort of), the fact remains he could not find a way to reconcile religion and science together…and all because he knew religious people who assumed the flood must have been universal, and he felt that in order for 'religion' to be correct at all, he must accept a universal flood as well.  Is that true?

The tragedy here is that as I see it, the idea of a universal flood is so tangential to religious belief that it should never be the primary cause to abandon ‘religion’ altogether.  Can you simply throw away any and all experiences with prayer and the Holy Ghost, not to mention the Atonement and the Resurrection, simply because you can’t see how the flood waters reached the tops of the Himalayas?  Gee, maybe they didn’t!

At the ‘end of the world’ when all is said and done, and mankind finds out, say,  that the story of the flood wasn’t ‘figurative’, but wasn’t literally true in all aspects either, how much difference would that make?  Would you be ‘surprised’, in a “Wow! That changes everything!” sense?  Or would you say, ‘Oh, okay…” and go on to more important things about the universe and our place in it?

I don't know much about the flood whether it was small or large, real or 'figurative'...but I don't really care either.  That's not an important part of my 'religion'--if I were to find out someday that it was any of the above, that would make no difference to me whatsoever.    Is it worth it for anyone to stake their entire foundation of religious belief on the interpretation of a couple of pages of text?

(Additional resource:  Sunstone article discussing the problems between science and religion regarding the flood)

Next: Evolution