Is Young Earth Creationism Biblically Problematic?

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we have a very exciting episode. We're going to be covering the issue of young earth creationism. I know folks are very interested in discussions with regards to the debates surrounding creation, the different interpretations, and understanding young earth, old earth, these sorts of things.

And of course, they have a lot of application for apologetical issues. So hopefully this episode will be very, very useful to folks who are interested in these sorts of discussions. And it's very important as well, since we're talking about foundational issues.

I mean, the book of Genesis is a foundational book that the rest of scripture kind of refers back to as so important in understanding doctrines that are more developed throughout the rest of scripture.

So these are very important issues. All right, well more specifically, we're going to be dealing with biblical objections to the young earth interpretation, and we are going to specifically be responding to a video that was put out by Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy.

And he is a very well-known YouTube apologist. I mean, he's got a very large following. He puts out some great content with regards to covering all sorts of issues. I mean, if you're familiar with his web, not his website really, but his YouTube channel, he covers a wide range of topics that a lot of people benefit from.

I've had Michael Jones on the show before to talk about tactics and debate and things like that. And so this is nothing against Mike, but at the same time, I think it's important to have a clear voice and response in defense of the other position that is being criticized.

The young earth position has a very strong history, and there have been able defenders of that position. And so I thought it would be a great idea to have someone like Jason Lyle, who most who listen to this channel are familiar with, to have him on and provide some responses.

So here's how things are going to go, okay? I'm going to introduce Dr. Lyle in just a moment here, but then we're going to be playing the video that was put out by Inspiring Philosophy, and then Dr. Lyle is going to take some time to respond to each of the points, all right?

And these are biblical objections, all right? So I think Michael Jones does a good job in really focusing in on what's important. There are discussions of science that are brought in usually in these debates, but really as Christians, we want to be faithful to scripture and we want to know what the Bible says.

And so I do appreciate that Michael tries to zero in on the text of scripture. And while I personally disagree with Mike's conclusions, you know, this is a good launching pad for a good discussion, okay?

So all that in mind, let me introduce Dr. Lyle. And there is Dr. Lyle. Hello, Dr. Lyle. How are you doing? I'm, I'm very well. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I've been busy, but it's all good. We've got some snow over here.

It's clearing up and then we're going to get some more snow, so. All right.

All right. I'm from Colorado, so I'm used to snow. Where are you from? Well, I'm now living in Colorado Springs. So we get snow here quite often, especially. Okay. All right, all right. We get snow on the ground up in the mountains.

It's quite, quite lovely. Okay.

All right. Well, for those of you who don't know who Dr. Lyle is, I'm just going to read a little bit of his information that can be located on his website, Biblical Science Institute, which I highly recommend folks to visit if you're interested in young earth creationism, science, and apologetics, presuppositional apologetics.

I mean, he's written a couple of books, just a couple. I mean, you know, this is a really good book to help you to think clearly and logically. He also has this fine book that addresses apparent biblical contradictions, keeping faith in the age of reason.

And a book that I just got finished recommending to someone who was trying to look into Introduction to Logic. I was like, I have a good idea here. This is an Introduction to Logic by Dr. Lyle. So very good book.

It's got pictures and everything. If you don't like to just read, you know, boring, dry words on the screen, he does a very good job in, you know, explaining these issues, these complex issues, and simplifying them.

All right. Well, Dr. Jason Lyle is a Christian astrophysicist who researches issues pertaining to science and the Christian faith. He is a popular speaker and author. Dr. Lyle presents a rational defense of a literal genesis showing how science confirms the history recorded in the Bible.

Brought up in a Christian family at a young age, he received Christ as Lord. Since then, Lyle has always desired to serve the Lord out of love and gratitude for salvation and to spread the gospel message to all.

Dr. Lyle is double majored in physics and astronomy, with a minor in mathematics at Ohio Wesleyan University. He then went on to obtain a master's degree and PhD in astrophysics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

There, he used the Soho spacecraft to analyze the surface of the sun and made a number of interesting discoveries, including the detection of giant cell boundaries. Since then, Lyle has worked in full-time apologetics ministry, and he wrote a number of planetarium shows for the Creation Museum, including the popular Created Cosmos.

Dr. Lyle has authored a number of best-selling books on the topic of creation, including Taking Back Astronomy, Stargazer's Guide to the Night Sky, The Ultimate Proof of Creation, which is probably his more popular book, and Understanding Genesis.

So, that's kind of the back info on Dr. Lyle, and you can follow his information there on YouTube and on his website, Biblical Science Institute. All right, before we get started, is there anything you'd like to say?

Anything you'd like to add, Dr. Lyle? Some interesting piece of information.

That I missed? No, you covered it pretty well. I just hope people will check out, if they'll check out that website, they'll learn everything that I know, because it's all on there. That's right.

Okay, very good. So, let's jump right in. I'm going to plop the video there, and we're going to play this video, and Dr. Lyle, you can just let me know when we should stop, or I will stop when I think it's a good time to stop, if you don't say anything, and we'll take it from there, okay?

Just for context here, he does not argue for it, but Michael Jones, I believe, holds to the theistic evolutionary position, which is the view that God used evolution, and so he holds to an interpretation of Genesis that is very much in line with someone like John Walton, who I just previously had on my show.

So, if you're interested in what John Walton says with regards to how to understand Genesis, that's kind of, I mean, he might have some differences, but that's kind of where Michael Jones is coming from, and so just to create that context, and of course, Dr. Lyle, it holds to a young earth, we would say a literal interpretation, right?

Of course, we want to explain what that means, but why don't we explain what that means first? Let's get that out of the way. When we speak of interpreting Genesis literally, what do we mean by that, Dr. Lyle?

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I think that's going to be an issue in this video. I've kind of got away from saying that, because a lot of people, the word literal, when you talk about reading something literally, you just mean that it's plain in ordinary sense, but some people take that to mean, oh, you mean every word has to be taken in the first dictionary definition.

No, that's not really what we mean. Biblical creationists like myself interpret the Bible literarily, I think would be a better way to put it, which means we read the text, and we take it at face value, unless there is a contextual reason to take it otherwise, and in some places, there are contextual reasons to take it otherwise, and so I don't take the Psalms literally.

When the Bible says there's no rock like our God, it doesn't mean that God is basalt. We understand that as a metaphor, and we would expect that in the poetic literature. That makes sense. What we want to avoid is looking at a text that makes sense in the plain text, but it's contrary to what we've been taught, and so we think, well, I can't mean that, because then I'd be wrong about, well, maybe you are wrong about whatever, so we want to read the Bible exegetically, looking at its text, interpreting according to its own standard, and that includes looking at the way Jesus interpreted the scriptures, looking at the way the apostles, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, interpreted the scriptures when they're penning the New Testament.

There are certain rules of hermeneutics, and I have written a book on this called Understanding Genesis. Basically, we read the Bible the way we would read really any other book in the sense of we use the grammatical historical context to understand the author's intention.

What is the author trying to say? That's what we want to get at, and that implies taking a text in a plain fashion unless there are contextual reasons to take it otherwise.

Okay. Would you also understand interpreting the Bible literally, or maybe this is what you said, but kind of I'm putting it in my own words just to make sure I'm understanding. To interpret the Bible literally is to basically interpret it in accordance with its literature, so that would include genre and all those other considerations, cultural background,.

Textual background, things like that. Yeah, and to avoid any confusion, I don't even say that I read the Bible literally because people think that means it would in literal sense. I like to say I read the Bible literarily.

I take it according to the type of literature that we're looking at. I interpret it according to its context. And by the way, that's the normal position for biblical creationists like myself. My friends at Answers in Genesis would take that position, too.

And so our critic here is going to argue against the position that we don't exactly hold to because he's going to he seems to think that we take everything in a wooden literal sense. That's not the case.

We use context to determine the meaning.

Okay. All right. Well, let's jump right into this and put this up back on the screen here, and I'm going to play it from the beginning, and then you just let me know when we should stop. If you haven't heard,.

There are millions of people today who believe the earth is only about 6 ,000 years old. And about 4 ,000 years ago, there was a worldwide flood that destroyed all life on land, except for a few people and two of every animal that survived in an ark.

The basis of this theory comes from many who say we ought to take a literal or plain reading of the Bible, the holy book of Christianity. The rationale behind this young earth view is that they are just taking the plain reading of the text and that Christians who believe the earth is old have to misconstrue or reinterpret passages to make the Bible fit with an ancient earth and the theory of evolution.

But what many young earth creationists don't realize is that there are several passages within the Bible itself that create problems for the young earth theory. Meaning if we took the plain reading of the text in many places, it would actually contradict the view that the earth and the universe are only about 6 ,000 years old.

These are the top 10 biblical passages that create problems for the young earth theory. Genesis recounts the story of Abraham and Sarah who were old in age and had no children of their own. God appears to Abraham and says he would have a son in his old age and then in Genesis 17 it reads.

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah who is 90 years old bear a child? So Abraham thinks it's biologically impossible for someone past the age of 100 to have a child.

But this seems to contradict the ages of his ancestors, also known as the early patriarchs, who were supposed to live for hundreds of years. So.

Already we have some problems here. Okay. So yeah, Genesis 17, 17 where God promises to give Abraham by his wife, Sarah, a child. And Abraham laughs and asks, will a child be born to a man 100 years old?

And will Sarah who is 90 years old bear a child? And a couple things there. First of all, in my view, and I think a lot of scholars will hold this view, his laugh is a laugh of joy. I don't think he's doubting what God says.

Abraham had faith in God. Now when Sarah laughed, it was a laugh of doubt. And she's criticized for it. Abraham's never criticized for his laughing. He's laughing out of joy. He's going to get a son. And he knows it's unusual.

So our critic here says that Abraham thinks it's biologically impossible for someone past the age of 100 to have a child. The text doesn't say that. It implies that Abraham thinks it's amazing that he's overjoyed that it's going to happen.

But he knows that with God all things are possible. He knows that's not an issue. And it could be, too, that it's not just him being 100 years old, but rather his wife being 90 years old, whom he also mentions.

He's not just a 100-year-old man. He's a 100-year-old man married to a 90-year-old woman. And that's all the more spectacular because even in our day, men can remain fertile into their older ages.

But women, once they pass menopause, then that's it. And so that might be the thing that's exciting to Abraham is that his wife, who has apparently passed menopause, God's going to give her a child. That's awesome.

So there's no doubt there, but it does seem unusual. And our critic says, but this seems to contradict the ages of his ancestors. No, a contradiction is A and not A at the same time and in the same sense.

Abraham did not live at the same time as those people who lived, for example, before the flood. Well, one of them, Shem, overlaps a little bit, but the rest of them, they were gone. It was very common before the flood.

It was common at that time for children to be born to 100-year-old parents because people before the flood lived to be typically around 900 years, in excess of 900 years. So the entire lifespan or lifespan was much greater back then.

And there are various scientific theories on that, but we don't have to get into that. So it was common before the flood for people to give birth to a child. If they were elderly, if they were 100 years or older.

But it was very uncommon at the time of Abraham. In fact, with the possible exception of Abraham's father, and we'll come back to that. The time that it happened was almost 400 years earlier. That was the last time anybody who was 100 years old, as far as we can tell from the text, anybody who was 100 years old, it would have been Shem.

So the last time that happened, again, with the possible exception of Abraham's father, would have been with Abraham's great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. And so I think it's entirely reasonable for Abraham to say, wow, this doesn't happen in quite a while.

So while we continue there, and unless you have any comments on that. Nope, nope, that's good. We'll move it along there. I'm gonna make sure we get through it.

There we go. And have children in their own ages. According to the Masoretic dates, many of Abraham's ancestors were supposed to be alive when God made his promise to Abraham in his 100th year. And his ancestor, Eber, supposedly outlived him.

So shouldn't Abraham's reply to God have been that many people alive are having children in their old ages? So having a child at the age of 100 is perfectly normal. More importantly, it's the fact that based on what Genesis 12 says, Abraham's own father, Terah, would have had to have fathered Abraham at his own age of 130.

So shouldn't Abraham's reply to God have been that having... Okay.

For Craig's saying, shouldn't Abraham's reply to God have been that many people are alive or having children in their old ages? Well, no, they weren't. Not at that time. Last one to do that, again, with the possible exception of Abraham's own father, the last person to do that was Shem.

And he was dead at that point. He was alive when Abraham was born, but he died before that point. So no, nobody alive at that time was having children at the age of 100. Now, he does mention Abraham's own father.

I don't think that's fatal to the plain reading of the text, though, because it would just be one exception to be like, wow, that is still extraordinary. The only time that's happened in the last 390 years was with my own father.

So that's kind of neat. Even then, we don't have any information on Mrs. Terah. And as I pointed out earlier, it might be more that Sarah being, you know, Abraham's not just a 100-year-old man. He's a 100-year-old man married to a 90-year-old woman who's presumably passed menopause.

So Terah, hypothetically, might have been married to a younger woman where it wasn't so extraordinary. Somebody who hadn't hit. He might have been married to a young Hani, for all we know. You know, so that's a possibility there.

But I think, and this is something that we need to think about. There are scholars who would agree with our critic here that Abraham was born when Terah was 130. But that's not clearly specified in the text.

In fact, Genesis 12 doesn't say that. Let's see. It's looking at some, I have some notes here. Yeah, so the assumption is that Abraham left Haran at the time of Terah's death. And that comes from two assumptions that are fallacious.

The first is that the beginning of the next chapter happens immediately after the events of the previous chapter. But we know the Bible doesn't always do that. The book of Judges, for example, is not in chronological order.

Some of the events that happen at the, that are recorded at the end happened earlier than events that were recorded earlier and so on. And so the same thing is true here. And also, I think because of a misunderstanding of Acts 7 -4, people think that Abraham left Haran at the time that Terah died.

But if you look at it in the original Greek text, which I've done in the Acts 7 -4, it most naturally means that when Terah died, Abraham moved Terah's body from Haran to have him buried in Canaan where Abraham had already been living for 60 years.

If you just look at, if you just look, pardon me, if you just look at Genesis 11 -26, that seems to indicate that Terah was 70 years old when Abraham was born. I think that's the more natural interpretation.

Not everyone would agree with me. But like I said, even if he were 130, that would still be one miraculous exception of now two.

So it's not And I think it's important to keep in mind too, that even if what you're saying is not necessarily correct, the very fact that it's possible means that there's not a problem in the text.

It just means now, which view are you going to adopt? You have a different, you have certain options to choose from interpretively to make sense out of that. It's not necessary. I mean, you might think, well, that's just unreasonable.

Well, I mean, you could say that, but that is a possible interpretation. And so therefore there's not a necessary conflict there. That's true. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Should we continue? Sure. All right. A child past the age of 100 is perfectly normal. After all, his own father had him when he was 130. The whole episode in Genesis 17 implies Abraham didn't know of anyone, his own father included, who had a child past the age of 100.

And this would imply that when Genesis assigns high ages to the patriarchs, it is probably not their literal ages, but symbolic numbers for theological messaging. And that would mean Genesis doesn't give us a literal chronology back to the creation of Adam, damaging the young earth creationist view.

That the Bible documents through the ages of the patriarchs, that the earth is only 6 ,000 years old. For a better understanding of the symbolic view of the ages of the patriarchs, see our video on Genesis 5.

Number nine, Genesis 8. All right. Yeah.

I would imagine you want to mention something about those ages being kind of, what do you say, metaphorical or symbolic or something?

Well, first of all, it doesn't follow from what was mentioned previously. I mean, he's welcome to speculate on why Abraham thought it was unusual or amazing to have a child of 100. But we've seen from the text, that makes perfect sense because nobody was having children at that time, at the time of Abraham in their 100th year, with the one possible exception of Abraham's father.

And I've shown from the text, even that's probably not an exception. He was probably 70 when Abraham was born. So there's no problem there. It makes perfect sense that Abraham would say, hey, at this time, in this time in history, that's very unusual.

And so it's really kind of a silly argument. It'd be like if we found the tomb of a Pharaoh and found that he was encased with a Toyota Camry, the Pharaoh had a Camry, that's amazing. You can imagine someone saying, that's not all that spectacular.

I've got a Camry. Something can be spectacular at one time and quite commonplace at another time. And that's what we see here in the text. So there's not even remotely any suggestion that the ages are anything other than literal ages.

We don't take our speculations about why a person responded that way and then use that to say, therefore, I'm gonna interpret this text as non-literal. He says, the numbers may be symbolic. Of course, the question I would ask is, what does it symbolize, right?

Because a lot of times people will use that as an excuse for, I don't wanna believe this text is written. So it's symbolic. But if it's symbolic, you better know what it symbolizes. Tell me what they mean.

And I don't, they don't mean, they mean the age, right? I mean, it's just, they're recording the normal age. You see, if we're doing exegesis, if we're doing hermeneutics, if we're looking at the text, then we would say, well, given the style, frequent use of the law of consecutive in Genesis is recording historical narrative.

Therefore, we ought to take it as literal history. Unless there's a certain phrase or something that's often used as a metaphor, which we can learn from other, the other sections of the scriptures. But in Genesis, it's just, it's historical narrative.

And therefore we take it that way. I don't believe the Bible is some kind of gnostic document with secret codes built into the numbers like that. That denies the perspicuity of scripture. The Bible is meant to be understood by less common folks.

You don't need to have a PhD in astrophysics to understand it, which I do anyway, but you don't need that.

I have one, but you don't need one.

Because it's going to be understood. It does pay to go back and look at the original language, as I respect that. That's great. The other thing too that's kind of interesting is if he's right and those ages are stretched out because they're metaphorical, guess what?

That would make the age of the earth even younger than 6 ,000 years. Because if you say, well, those are symbolic, they were actually regular age as well. And that just makes the earth even younger than 6 ,000 years.

So that's a good thing.

Now I have a question. So if I know Michael Jones and I've listened to his debates, he becomes very prepared. He's very well-researched, even though we might disagree with his understandings. I would imagine if you were to say, well, what do those ages represent?

He would probably try and provide some examples in ancient Near Eastern texts. Are there examples within the ancient Near Eastern context where ages are exaggerated to make some kind of point?

Oh, I think that happens. But the thing is, the Bible is not just, it's not just an ancient Near Eastern text. It's the word of God. And God doesn't lie. The pagan cultures lied. They made up myths about how the world began.

And it's very common for people to say, well, see, the Bible's like that. God didn't want them to be fooled by these other myths. So he wrote his own myth. And I'm thinking, that doesn't make any sense.

You can't counter fiction with fiction, right? I mean, you can't say, well, don't believe these fictional stories. So I'm gonna make up another fictional story about how the universe began. That's not what Genesis is.

Even in its own text, that's not what it says is. These are the generations of Adam. These are the book of the generations of Adam. These are the generations of heaven and earth, the birth things. This is what happened.

And you find that Toledot throughout Genesis indicating this is what happened. This is what followed. And so its own text indicates that it's historical narrative. It's not, God's not gonna exaggerate a factual account to make a point.

He's not gonna do that. Now in metaphorical literature, sure. In poetic literature, in Psalms, you can use hyperbole. That's fine. In the parables of Jesus, you can use hyperbole. That's fine. We're recording facts.

You don't do that. It's called lying.

God's not gonna do that. Well, what if someone says, well, God's just speaking to them in the way that they could understand, you know, kind of this accommodation view. God is accommodating his language and categories to relate to that ancient context.

Well, I think he actually is, but he's not gonna do it in a way that's untruthful. God does come down to our level to help us to understand things, but he's not gonna lie about it. He might simplify some things.

And then as we get greater revelation, we get more clarity on those things. That's fine. We do that with children. We say, you know, you're all made of these little atoms and they're like little balls.

Well, they're not exactly like little balls, but that's a good approximation until they grow a little older and you say, well, now that you're in a physics class, let me tell you, here's the true nature of atoms.

They're actually wave functions that break down when you look at it and so on. The language is meant for us to understand, but it's not gonna be a lie, okay? It's not gonna be something where I get to heaven and God, you said Methuselah lived to be 969 and I know he's only 72.

What? You lied. I mean, that's not gonna work. God does speak to our level, but he doesn't do it by distorting something, by lying to us, by taking something and making it false.

Now, wouldn't they say then that he's not lying. It's just that in the ancient context, they would have understood it. And it's our job as modern readers to put ourselves in the shoes of that ancient context so that we're understanding what was originally meant.

Well, the seductive thing about that is there's some truth to it because I do believe we should look at the radical historical context, key historical as part of it. But how do we know what the ancient world believed?

We do have other documents, of course, but how do we know those are true and so on? How do we know these other documents are authentic? What's the most authentic document of the ancient world? I'm sure you know the answer to this.

Yes, the Bible. It is, exactly. So it's the Bible that we use to learn how people understood the Bible. And when we look at the other texts of the Bible, we find that they interpret texts like Genesis literally.

Now, in fact, God warned the Israelites, occasionally they would go off into one of these pagan ways of thinking, and God punished them for doing that. He says, you're not to be like these pagan nations.

And so the idea that Genesis is written to help the Israelites be like pagan nations, but with a different myth, that's contrary to what the Bible itself teaches. The Israelites were to be separate. They were to be an example for the way everyone should be.

They weren't to go follow after myths, fables. They were to tell the truth. They were to tell, you know, but yeah, there is something to that. There is something to the fact that we look to see how people understood things at the time, but the Bible tells us how people understood things at the time.

So that's the primary source that we should use when interpreting the scriptures. All right, let's continue.

A common view among young earth believers is the idea that the earth was covered in a global flood about 4 ,000 years ago. When Genesis records that God flooded the earth, it should be understood as literally the entire globe because it says the waters covered the face of the whole earth.

But there is a problem for this view within Genesis 8. Verses 4 and 5 say the ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat or Eratu and the tops of the mountains could be seen at this point. However, later in the chapter, Noah releases a dove and it returns to him because the waters were still on the face of the whole earth.

But didn't verse 5 say the tops of the mountains were seen? So verse 9 cannot mean the waters were literally covering the whole earth. Implying the entire flood account might be hyperbolic in its description of the flood.

And this would mean it was not literally covering the entire globe, but just a regional area. This is also supported by verse 13 where it says the waters dried from the earth. But this obviously cannot literally mean the entire globe since most of the surface of the earth is still covered by water.

So it appears the flood account is describing the flood hyperbolically and doesn't necessarily teach the entire globe was covered. Number 8, Genesis 2 .24. All right. Go back and get some of these.

He says that we, younger creationists, claim that the flood was global because the text says the waters... He cites Genesis 8 .9, the waters still on the face of the whole earth. That's when the floods were seeding.

That's not the verse that we would use. It would be more like passages like Genesis 7 .19 -20 where the text says that all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. The waters proceeded upward.

The mountains were covered. Every creeping thing died. Everything that was on the face of the earth died and so on and so forth. So that certainly indicates a global flood. And frankly, the entire account of the ark mitigates against the local flood.

Why would you build an ark the size of an ocean liner and take two of every air-breathing land animal, including birds, for a local flood that you knew was coming? Why not just move? I'm going to flood this section.

Okay, I'm going to go over there. Thank you, Lord, for that warning. There would be no point in taking animals on board the ark because animals would just... They'd repopulate the area. They'd come from the surrounding areas.

You certainly wouldn't need birds for a local flood. Birds can get away just fine. There are birds that migrate every year from Alaska to Hawaii. And of course, there's no land in between. They have to...

That's how far they can go under certain conditions. And so, you know, there'd be no sense in taking birds on board an ark for a local flood. It just makes no sense. So the entire passage indicates a global flood.

And of course, if you know something about the Hebrew language, the double use of coal, when it says, you know, that all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered, actually, all and whole are the same word in Hebrew.

They're coal. And when you have it doubled like that, it's for emphasis. I mean, I really mean everything. It's like God's going out of its way to say, boy, it's global. The entire earth, everything that's on the earth, everything under the heavens, under the sky, everything on the earth died.

The text really is pretty clear. Now, the critic seems to have some confusion about the recession of the flood. He mentions in Genesis 8, 5, that on the 10th month of the flood, since the initiation of the flood, the tops of the mountains were visible.

That's right. By the way, that only works with a global flood. A local flood is not going to cover mountains. It just doesn't. Water seeps into the rubble. So that doesn't, that wouldn't make sense. And then later on, the dove was sent out, but returned because she found the resting place, for the water was on the surface of the earth.

Now, the Hebrew word there, just on, it's alpine, the surface of the earth. And that's different from Genesis 7, 19, where the mountains were covered. There's a difference between being covered by water and just water being on something.

You can fill a cup, there's water on the table, but it's not covered by water. There is a difference. And just context would indicate that as well. So Genesis 8, 5 indicates that the surface of the earth was still wet.

It still had water on it everywhere. It was muddy. And ravens don't care about that so much. They can feed on carrion, at least today. And they're a robust bird. Doves are more gentle. They're a gentler variety of bird.

And so no one knew what he was doing. He released the raven first, and it goes back and forth. But then the dove, he sends out, and she doesn't want to land on that mud. So she comes back in. It makes sense.

It wasn't until a week later, then she finally finds the olive branch, and he sends her out again, and then she's gone. So it actually makes sense. The land was still in the process of drying. And so we need to be careful about things like that, because people make the same kind of mistake with the tree that Jesus cursed, and immediately it withered, and then it comes back the next day.

And they were surprised that it had withered, because you can wither immediately to some extent, and then wither more to another extent. I mean, that makes sense. The earth can be dry in the sense that the waters are not covering the mountains anymore, and yet still the surface can still be wet.