*** w62 1/15 p. 64 Questions From Readers ***
Questions From Readers
? How can we account for animals in isolated lands when the Flood is said to have covered all the earth and the only land animals that survived were those in the ark?—P. G., England.
The presence of certain forms of animal life on Australia and New Zealand, for example, is no valid argument against the Bible account that all life on earth was wiped out in the Flood, except that of Noah and those with him in the ark. How might these animals have migrated from Mount Ararat, where the ark landed, to other continents and to islands? By means of land ridges. Oceanographic studies reported on by Dr. René Malaise and published in the Swedish geographical magazine, Ymer, tell of findings that indicate that there was once a “Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” crossing that ocean above the surface. (New York Times, September 23, 1956) It is possible that there were also other ridges, and animals could have migrated by means of these before such ridges sank below the surface of the ocean.
Nor is that the only possible explanation. Other oceanographic studies have turned up evidence that once there existed a huge South Pacific continent that took in Australia and many of the South Sea isles. If such was the case, then, of course, the animals had no difficulty in migrating to those lands.
Doesn't make sense to me.
what about the "water canopy" that was supposed to be above the earth ? is that true?
*** w68 7/15 pp. 419-421 Was There an Earthwide Flood? ***
SOURCE OF THE WATERS
Obviously the source of the floodwaters was not the moisture that is ordinarily found in the atmosphere today. For it has been estimated that if all the atmospheric water were suddenly released as rain, it would cover the earth’s surface only to an average depth of less than two inches. There must be another explanation, then, for all this water, and the Bible gives it.
In its brief account of creation the Bible says regarding the forming of earth’s atmosphere: “And God went on to say: ‘Let an expanse come to be in between the waters and let a dividing occur between the waters and the waters.’ Then God proceeded to make the expanse and to make a division between the waters that should be beneath the expanse and the waters that should be above the expanse.”—Gen. 1:6, 7.
The waters “beneath” the atmospheric “expanse” were the waters on the surface of the earth. Whereas, “the waters . . . above the expanse” were vast quantities of moisture suspended high above the earth, evidently in the form of a heavy vapor. These waters surrounded our earth in its earlier history.
Regarding the possibility of the existence of such suspended waters, the book The Genesis Flood (1961), by John C. Whitcomb, Jr., and Henry M. Morris, observes:
“The region above about 80 miles is very hot, over 100° F and possibly rising to 3000° F, and is in fact called the thermosphere for this reason. High temperature, of course, is the chief requisite for retaining a large quantity of water vapor. Furthermore, it is known that water vapor is substantially lighter than air and most of the other gases making up the atmosphere. There is thus nothing physically impossible about the concept of a vast thermal vapor blanket once existing in the upper atmosphere.”
However, the exact height and the way in which the waters were held above the earth cannot be known by us with certainty. But we do know that it was to these suspended waters that the Christian apostle Peter referred when writing under God’s inspiration about the Noachian flood. He explains that there was “an earth standing compactly out of water and in the midst of water,” and that “by those means the world of that time suffered destruction when it was deluged with water.”—2 Pet. 3:5, 6.
The earth in the pre-Flood days was “out of water” in the sense that the ground on which men lived and walked stood above the waters of the seas and rivers. Yet, it was “in the midst of water,” since a vast quantity of it surrounded the earth, suspended far above its surface.
“But,” a person might observe, “such a canopy of water suspended above the earth would greatly affect earth’s climate.”
Indeed it would! The light and heat rays from the sun would be diffused by the vapor canopy, while this vast canopy would prevent heat from escaping. Such a “greenhouse effect” would thus produce a milder, more uniform climate earth wide. Biologist Harold K. Blum explained this effect of water vapor upon climate, saying:
“Just as the warm glass of the greenhouse tends to raise the temperature of the interior, the water vapor tends to raise that of the earth’s surface below it. This surface, or any object on it, is constantly exchanging radiation with the water vapor in the atmosphere, so the temperature of the surface is closely dependent upon the amount and temperature of this vapor.”
That earth’s climate was uniformly warm at one time is commonly recognized. In an article concerning dinosaurs, Scientific Monthly of August 1949 observed:
“In those days the earth had a tropical or sub-tropical climate over much of its land surface, and in the widespread tropical lands there was an abundance of lush vegetation. The land was low and there were no high mountains forming physical or climatic barriers.”
Of the now-frigid Antarctic continent the French magazine Science et Vie, in its July 1966 issue, said:
“This inhuman land, this desert of ice, was once a green land where streams flowed among flowers, where birds sang in the trees.”
According to this source, at least sixty-one kinds of plants then grew in Antarctica.
How consistent, therefore, is the Bible’s explanation that there was a suspended mass of water above the earth in man’s early history! This water vapor would have created the uniformly warm climate that is known to have once existed earth wide. And it was the unleashing of this tremendous reservoir of water, and not simply a severe rainfall, that caused the global deluge. Note how the Bible shows this in its description of the Flood:
“All the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And the downpour upon the earth went on for forty days and forty nights.”—Gen. 7:11, 12
Really? i am more inclined to think this was just a bad tsunami / storm type event that maybe covered a large area of land. but the whole globe under water?.... really?
