And we begin with simple things; and I’m one of those philosophers who find a lot of truth in the simple stuff. But I do think that how we go beyond those simple truths is a very complex business (as your earlier comments on this topic show). To read Genesis as a story is fine, and that may be all it was intended to be (but then why worry about the details of the language). But I think it more likely that that was part of what it was intended to be, which raises the fairly simple question, what about the rest of it? Of course, how I’m looking at it is a bit idiosyncratic (sorry).

But to me, it is a very simple idea, the idea that this world (and all of us in it) was created. Even if Genesis is just a story, you get that simple idea just so long as the Bible is about or (indirectly) by the Creator. You only don’t get it if Christianity (and Judaism and Islam) is not even slightly true. So just think about creation. It is ex nihilo, like a dream; it is not like taking some clay from the world around you and rearranging it into a vase.

Even the making of Adam was the taking of mud and the rearranging it into a man (much as Naturalists believe happened, oddly enough). But God made the Universe and Heaven too! And as a dream develops, as its central characters (often including the dreamer) interact, it is usual (in my experience) for the very nature of the dream to change (in apposite ways). Analogously why should physics not change, if there was a Creator?

Why should it not, at any time, be to some extent open, how physics might change? But then, isn’t it odd that we think that Genesis cannot be literally true just because the story taken literally contradicts known physics? (Or that that would be at least a complex philosophical concept.) It’s like we’re assuming atheism when we think like that!

It’s like we’re assuming that physical space is not as a fabric created ex nihilo would naturally be expected to be.

And I also ask, as food for thought, does it have to be complex and difficult like we make it out to be? Just think about that. I remember in my philosophy class at SBU (ugh!) the prof had given one class the final of one question: "Why?" One student responded with "Why not?" Good question and answer–the student got a 50% for creative thinking hehehe.

I wasn’t advocating or discounting the flood narrative, rather making sure that it is an option that is weighed out by the reader rather than just immediately discounted despite any evidence that could be shown in its favor. I know that you yourself (speaking of Honzo) have examined the evidence and reached the above stated comment. This is also determined by how much authority one believes the Bible has on scientific issues as well. If I remember, most of the authors on this site probably wouldn’t come to the Bible as the authority on the sciences?

The physics before and after the flood? Is there any evidence, besides the ad hoc need for a change in physics to force the interpretation to work. I am discounting it because there is no evidence for it, both in the book and in reality. A much simpler way of looking at Gen is to go the myth route. No need for a dramatic shift in how physics work needed.

Also, I’m not sure "ordering" is the best understanding of bara’ in Genesis 1:1; can I assume you are referring to the whole chapter when you refer to "ordering?"

That is my big question of the text. Given that the way it describes the creation (or ordering) of the world is physically impossible, and that it is meaning-laden, then perhaps we should not be looking at the text as a physical explanation, but as an explanation of the meaning of the world. It may be the case that our marriage to positivism skews our understanding of the text here.