Hello @Boscopup. Here are my answers.
I think it is hard to imagine all of AE’s genealogically descendents localized in a single region, so a regional flood would at most wipe out those in that area. Given the tight geographic scope of Genesis 6 (including the word eretz, not “the globe of the earth”), I don’t see how this would be a problem. Allowing for AE descendents outside the region of the flood obviates all the scientific objections that come from this.
The table in that figure explains it.
F = de novo, recent, with people outside the garden, but AE are not ancestors of everyone (i.e. not Tasmania)
G = not de novo, recent, with people outside the garden, but AE are not ancestors of everyone (i.e. not Tasmania)
Only YEC and YAC (Young Adam Creation, the GH of the GAE) have all three criteria: 1) de novo creation, 2) recent in middle east, and 3) ancestors of us all. That is why. No other accounts capture all three things.
We’ve discussed this elsewhere: 2 Peter 3 and the Flood.
Reading the passage in context is no difficulty at all.
The key point is that Peter is warning of scoffers that don’t believe that God will judge sinners for their sins. He says that they deliberately forget that God has judged people in the past (in the flood). With that context in mind, a regional flood to destroy AE’s descendents does not diminish the point in any way. The flood is in fact a real event to which Scriptures testifies, demonstrating the God of the Bible does judge sinners for their sins. One would have to willfully ignore this part of Scripture’s testimony to argue that God would never harshly judge sinners for their sins.
So, it is not clear at all why this verse would support a global flood across all of the sphere of the earth. At the time of Genesis, they did not know of the globe of the earth, and the could not have possibly meant this. When 2 Peter wrote, they may have wondered if the earth was a globe, but there is no sense in which it needs to be a global flood for Peter’s point to be entirely valid. Whether the flood is regional or global, Scripture testifies of God willing to judge sinners for their sin, and that is what Peter’s point is. That is what he is intending to teach us.
Does a regional flood reduce the salience of the verse? Absolutely not. There certainly are scoffers that argue that a loving God would never judge sinners harshly for their sin. They certainly do ignore what Genesis taught about the flood (wither it be local, regional, or global). There is no reason to think that the flood must have been global over the sphere of the earth to understand Peter’s point perfectly well.
Notably, I don’t know of anyone who affirms a regional flood that also denies God will judge sinners for their sins. So the slippery slope arguments on this are highly suspect.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and how it goes!