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What Does the Bible Say About..The Ice Ages?

I was hanging out with one of my best friends who is a hard core "evolutionist" and well we always talk about what we believe in and the other night we were debating things and she came over a statement that I couldn't say anything on. The question was she said ok well when was the ice age? I was kind of like umm and she asked to see my Bible and she was reading and then she's like "O well, it doesn't say anything about what the garden of Eden looked like," but I had a picture Bible so I showed her and then she started smiling and telling me that there was no grass before the ice age and in the picture there was grass everywhere and I was like umm? And I know that God created grass in one of the first few days and I was wondering how to prove that wrong. And I was also wondering when was the ice age and did it cover the whole world?

Answer

Before I answer your question, I must point out that any pictures in your Bible are probably some artist's idea of what it looked like. However, Genesis 1 does clearly say, as you point out, that there were grass and trees in the Garden of Eden before Adam was there. But that really has little to do with the ice ages.

Your friend obviously doesn't know much about what she thinks she knows, either. I don't know of a reputable geologist or evolutionist who would say there was no grass before the ice ages. Some of the ice ages occurred while man was on earth, so grass clearly existed before some or all of the ice ages. In fact, many scientists claim we are currently in a warm period during the latest of the ice ages. If, as they say, we are currently in an ice age, and grass certainly exists now, then your friend is wrong about grass not existing.

The term "Ice Age" (singular) generally refers to the last major advance of ice, dated about 16,000 years ago. It only covered northern Europe, Asia and the northern half of North America. The maximum extent of ice in North America during that ice age covered all of Canada and part or all of the current states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and the New England states. Most of what is now the United States (including Alaska) was not covered with glaciers. People living in Central America or the American South or Southwest probably would have been unaware they were in an ice age. Since this is the period of time in which some scientists place wooly mammoths and Cro-Magnon man, grass obviously existed before this Ice Age.

Nothing is said in the Bible about the ice ages because the Bible is primarily concerned with history in the Middle East. That area was not significantly affected by the ice ages. The main effect in that area would have been cooler than normal temperatures, which people would not have noticed or commented on, since the changes in temperature occurred over long periods of time.