Mark:
Yes, Christ's sacrifice is the "method" I meant.
My understanding of the quote from Luke goes more to the fulfillment of specific prophecies in Christ and in a confirmation that God had worked through the Jewish people rather than a statement that every word of the OT should be taken literally.
The Noah story, as I recall, fits with other flood myths. Why does the Bible record it? I think it tells a story of God being generally angry (perhaps, to use the vernacular--pissed off) because His chosen group was being stupid.
My original intent in starting this discussion was to find out if there was any real evidence of a young earth, Noah's flood, etc. outside of Biblical references. To date I have seen none. The idea of a young--just a few thousand years old earth---and a world wide flood has no real objective scientific evidence that anyone has been able to show me. That does not mean that I cannot believe in God, Christ's sacrifice, that a portion of the Bible is historical but a portion is not, etc. Dr. Nay in his first post to this thread stated that the earth was aobut 6000 years old. Sorry, that is both bizarre and preposterous. To believe the literal account of Genesis, every type of living thing was created within that first week. Man and dinosaurs existed together, no new species have evolved, etc. Doesn't work. Remember there was a time when we all thought that the sun and the universe revolved around the earth. Galileo paid dearly for those thougths. I trust that no one still believes that.
It does seem to me to go back to a faith or belief int he absolute literal interpretation of the Bible. If you believe that then you must twist everything else to fit. If you do not then you can look at science objectively and if you have faith then perhaps that objective look brings you more wonder at how the universe works than just a literal interpretation of Genesis. And if you are willing to combine that with faith, ah, there appears to be God's magic everywhere.
Gotta go, hope I answered your quesitons. If not lets do this again, but I really do need to work to pay those college bills for my kids.