Earth may have been a 'water world' 3B years ago, scientists find

I don't see that. Genesis 1:21 says "great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind" were created on the 4th day, and "every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind" were on the 5th."

Evolution theory has that whales specifically (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans ), and all marine mammals, evolved first on land then entered the sea. The same for winged creatures.

Additionally, the Bible has two creation stories, with different orderings. Genesis 2 has man created before animals.

Genesis 2:7 - "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

Genesis 2:19 - "And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them"

To me, that seems to be just something a clothed adult in a pudic society would think, not something the first man would actually feel.

1. https://legacy.quran.com/21/30

2. https://legacy.quran.com/41/11

Quite a few across a wide geographic range all identically feature a handful of humans (and possibly animals and/or plants) being forewarned of an impending flood, building boats (or otherwise being put in boats), and surviving until the waters receded. (EDIT 2: I realize now that I got things mixed up and you were asking for the "Earth started off underwater" myths, but there are plenty of examples of those, too).

EDIT: to elaborate further on some specific examples (pulled from Wikipedia, except for the African example which I pulled directly from the cited source, since the article didn't include synopses of any of those examples):

- North America (Hopi): « The other version [of the Hopi story of their entrance into the "Fourth World"] (mainly told in Oraibi) has it that Tawa destroyed the Third World in a great flood. Before the destruction, Spider Grandmother sealed the more righteous people into hollow reeds which were used as boats. On arrival on a small piece of dry land, the people saw nothing around them but more water, even after planting a large bamboo shoot, climbing to the top, and looking about. Spider Woman then told the people to make boats out of more reeds, and using island "stepping-stones" along the way, the people sailed east until they arrived on the mountainous coasts of the Fourth World. »

- South America: « "The Inca’s supreme being and creator god, Con Tici (Kon Tiki) Viracocha, first created a race of giants, but they were unruly, so he destroyed them in a mighty flood and turned them to stone. Following the deluge, he created human beings from smaller stones. "In other versions of this story, the impious race is the pre-Inca civilization of the Tiahuanaco Indians about Lake Titicaca, the large high lake in the Andes. Viracocha drowns them and spares two, a man and a woman, to start the human race anew. Some versions of the Unu Pachakuti have the surviving man and woman floating to Lake Titicaca in a wooden box." »

- India: « Matsya (the incarnation of Lord Vishnu as a fish) forewarns Manu (a human) about an impending catastrophic flood and orders him to collect all the grains of the world in a boat; in some forms of the story, all living creatures are also to be preserved in the boat. When the flood destroys the world, Manu – in some versions accompanied by the seven great sages – survives by boarding the ark, which Matsya pulls to safety. »

- Korea: « Namu Doryeong (Hangul: 나무도령, Hanja: --道令) is a myth about the son of a guardian tree spirit. The son, Namu Doryeong, survived a flood by floating on the tree. He first saved a colony of ants from the flood, then a swarm of mosquitoes, until he had saved all the animals of the world. Namu Doryeong finally saved a young human boy, despite the tree's advice against it. After the flood, Namu Doryeong met an older woman and her two daughters on Mt. Baekdu, where they had been safe from the flood. The woman told Namu Doryeong if he won a contest, he could have her daughter's hand in marriage. Namu Doryeong won the contest with the aid of a swarm of ants, who turned out to be the very ants that Namu Doryeong had saved during the flood. Namu Doryeong and the human boy married the two daughters, and they formed the next race of humans. »

- Scandinavia: « According to the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson, Bergelmir and his wife alone among the giants were the only survivors of the enormous deluge of blood which flowed from Ymir's wounds when he was killed by Odin and his brothers Vili and Vé. They escaped the sanguinary flood by climbing onto an object and subsequently became the progenitors of a new race of Jötunn. »

- DRC (Bakongo): « An elderly woman, tired and covered with sores, arrived at a town in a valley. She asked for hospitality but was turned away at every home except the last one she came to. The people there took her in and cared for her until she was well again. When she was ready to leave, she told her hosts to come with her. Because of the other inhabitants' lack of hospitality, the town was cursed, and the Supreme God, Nzambi, would destroy it. The night after they left, heavy rain fell, turning the valley into a lake. All of the townspeople were drowned. »

The most famous example would be the Enuma Elish, where the world comes from the meeting of salt water and fresh water.

The correct analogy for a person from 2020 would be "chemical elements", or even "atoms and molecules".

Is there a variation on "straw man" that's more like "shadow boxing", where someone grossly misunderstands what someone's saying and then argues against their own misunderstanding?

I've never heard any reference to the sky being blue because there's water there. People 4000 years ago weren't stupid. Everyone knows rain comes from clouds, not from a blue sky. If you read one sentence in isolation and it seems stupid or perverse, you should first check to see if you're understanding it correctly, before writing it off, particularly if it's from a different language, culture, or time.

My interpretation of this I've given above already: The "waters above" were the clouds. This makes sense of the paradox that the creation story describes light as being created before the sun. Everyone knows that light comes from the sun; so why would anyone make up a story where day and night happen for three days before the sun shows up?

But suppose instead, what was described was from an observer on a particular point above the earth's surface:

1. Sun ignites; you can see light in general but you can't see the sun because all you can see is fog on a water.

2. The "fog" lifts above the water and become clouds, so now there's visible space between the water and the clouds, but you still can't see the sun.

3. The clouds part, and now you can see the sun, moon, and stars.

It is a relatively recent development; in the Middle Ages, the literal interpretation was only one of four levels of interpretation, and generally seen as the least important one. It's about the last 2 or 3 centuries that Biblical Literalism became big.

However, the existence of dinosaurs does not conflict with Genesis at all. The Bible simply says animals were created before man. For how long animals existed before the creation of man is not specified, it could have been millions of years. This allows for dinosaurs to have existed and gone extinct before man came along.

Also, the Bible does not talk about bacteria/viruses, but in the books of Moses, scientifically sound instructions are given as to how to curb the spread of disease through personal hygiene (e.g., burying human waste) and quarantining, etc. This implies a knowledge of the germ theory of disease. Contrast this with the ancient Egyptian "medical" practices of applying human waste poultices to open wounds, and the practice of open defecation common in many parts of the world even now.

Dinosaurs are believed to have been here before the flood by some. As for bacteria and viruses, well when you bring sin, you bring forth death, and death has many forms.

Course there's bacteria that isn't necessarily bad, and that's just part of the balance of things.

DNA is literally a language / coded instruction set - something that had to be designed and created, I've written a lot of code, it never ever accidentally writes itself, I have to design it and think thoroughly of what I want it to do.

> 1 photon/second

Perhaps your eyes are better than mine...

If you count the exome, which is not highly conserved because it doesn't play much of a role that we know of other than coiling, it's more like 1%. So "50% of our DNA" is not accurate, it's our genes.