For JCanon: Is the Global Flood Feasible (Nice Thread From Another Site)

by SYN 26 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  JCanon

  Hi JCanon,

  You have so much to say about Biblical chronology, so why no meaty reply on the above topic? Surely there was something that you found objectionable in that thread? Hmmm?

  Hi, actually there is not much to say here. My "wordy" position is limited to first of all Flood critics not completely understanding the specifics of the water "canopy" that was above the earth that caused the flood and being unwilling to accept that God was equally "creative" in removing the excess waters even though "winds" can include waterspouts that might have funnelled the water into outer space where there is water vapor by the way, proven by scientists. So I would excuse myself from the arguments that don't specifically challenge my own specific understanding of the flood within Biblical reference. Another reference is that the Bible suggests the water canopy was SOLID or at least one aspect of it, thus a solid ICE CANOPY is my best guess. Noah went into the ark 7 days before it began to rain. I'm presuming that at this time the ice canopy was melted down and vaporized and thus after a short while it became totally dark over this 7 days with a huge cloud cover. Now, already note that there has to be "miraculous" intervention at several points for this flood to occur, the super heating of the canopy, the controlled raining for 40 days. After the flood and the removal of the waters which took up to a year, the question is what evidence would be left immediately after the flood that would suggest a global flood? Further, what evidence after millenniums of time would still be available to us to PROVE there was a flood? In othe words, if the earth was inudated with water even today and that water went as high as mountains and then drained off, what kind of permanent changes would be see? I can't think of anything obvious right off the bat. On the other hand, the pro-Flood pro-Biblical references talk about tropical conditions that once existed in areas now in or near the artic circle. So what does that tell us? Or is that a bogus report. To me it would tend to confirm tropical conditions worldwide at one time which lends itself to the flood legend. Furthermore, these behemoths have been found fast-frozen with foodstuffs in their stomachs that are undigested. This is consistent with rapid freezing during a flood. Now you could claim "Local flood" but because they are located in areas with a different climate now it makes one wonder if that region was also artic. At this point, the scientists seem to say, "there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE' of the flood. But of coruse, maybe there isn't, but should there have been beyond these things we've seen? Circumstantial things. A final point is that "science" that examines things based upon natural laws would not find all their answers to the global flood anyway, since it was a natural disaster triggered and supernatural forces. So of course, they are not going to be able to explain some aspects of that, but that's nothing new, they can't explain why LIFE began in the first place either. So since I see this argument going into circles with the best defense simply saying things in the Bible haven't been proven "scientifically" as fact doesn't go far with me. You don't need proof of every single thing scientifically to claim it DIDN'T HAPPEN. Some things will remain without direct scientific reference. But generally, the water in outer space, the climatic changes evident, and the Bible's record of reliabiilty in general based upon other areas of my research, I have faith that the flood was a natural event that occurred as the Bible described. Now one thing that sort of is bafflign to me is that all of creation that was taken into the ark would have or could have been used to reestablish the entire earth's ecosystem. Now God has the power to turn stone into bread of course, but just because the Bible doesn't mention it, it doesn't mean there was no some supplemental adjustment in that regard to get the earth back to it's current level. I allow myself this Biblcial "leeway" because some adjustment had to be made in the behavior of creatures to adapt to the new ecological climatic changes anyway. So if god is going to make some adaptations in that aera, then maybe some new creatures sensitive to the new ecosystem came about after the flood as well. With that regard, the animals on the ark taken by Noah may have been primarily for the immediate post-flood period in Noah's area, particularly species that Noah would look after himself. Who is to say. Anyway, I can see why people don't believe based upon not having more specifics, but I also don't dismiss the flood for the same reasons. You know, you can't underestimate God. He likes to "trick the wise in their cunning", so maybe God made it so that very little direct evidence of the flood was left just to test people on whether they would believe the Bible or not? Anyway, I believe the flood and what I've read doesnt' persuade me sufficiently not to believe, though questions remani. JC
• 

  SYN

  Hi FirstInLine,

  I enjoyed your post. The answers were good, especially the bit about Revelation. Good points!

  JCanon,

  My "wordy" position is limited to first of all Flood critics not completely understanding the specifics of the water "canopy" that was above the earth that caused the flood and being unwilling to accept that God was equally "creative" in removing the excess waters even though "winds" can include waterspouts that might have funnelled the water into outer space where there is water vapor by the way, proven by scientists. So I would excuse myself from the arguments that don't specifically challenge my own specific understanding of the flood within Biblical reference. Another reference is that the Bible suggests the water canopy was SOLID or at least one aspect of it, thus a solid ICE CANOPY is my best guess. Noah went into the ark 7 days before it began to rain. I'm presuming that at this time the ice canopy was melted down and vaporized and thus after a short while it became totally dark over this 7 days with a huge cloud cover.

  As you run out of available logical fodder for your beliefs, your explanations simply become more and more absurd! Anyone with even a basic knowledge of physics will tell you that an "ice canopy" in orbit around Earth, hailing down on the planet, would cause such an enormous amount of friction that the mean temperature of the planet's surface would be a nice and toasty 6000 Degrees Celcius, i.e. everything would've cooked. But Jehovah cooled everything down! And so we get absurdities piled upon absurdities. Ice is heavy, mate! There's no getting away from it! The sheer volume of water needed to flood ALL the mountains (i.e. Everest) simply doesn't exist on Earth! And the idea of it getting blown into space by Godly "funnels" and "winds" is ridiculous. Where is the evidence for these terratonnes of water leaving Earth? Most importantly, you neglect to answer the really simple, basic questions. I'm going to give a numbered list. See if you can answer all of these really easy questions. I'd do the same for you, if you asked, no worries: 1. Water salinity. It's a well known fact that fresh-water fish die in seawater, and vice-versa. During a global flood, presuming you could explain where all that water came from, it's a given that the salinity of the new water being introduced into both seas and lakes would've been markedly different from the existing salinity, i.e., just about every fish would've died within days, if not hours. Please explain? Perhaps God "updated" the salinity ranges (an absurd thought, but God can do anything, y'know) for trillions upon trillions of fish? What about their food supplies? Fish are typically pretty specialized feeders. Why do we still find coral (that would surely have died during the Flood, also due to salinity changes) growing at exactly the same pace for so many thousand years? This is the most important and simplest proof of the impossibility of a Global Flood, although it doesn't preclude a Local flood of some sort. 2. Animals in Australia. How did God get them here? There were no animals in the Middle East even remotely resembling kangaroos or platypuses (such cute little buggers they are, too) at the time of "Noah". Did God whisk them to the vicinity of Iraq for Noah? It doesn't sound like that in the Bible, does it? Sounds more like Noah gathered all the animals himself, crossing vast oceans unnavigated by anyone at the time...it just gets more and more absurd, doesn't it? Please explain? 3. Where did all that water come from? The asteroid belt? What about the amount of energy that would've been released had it rained down from space, as you seem to suggest? 6000 degree surface temperatures? Not only did the fish die from salinity changes, they would've been quite nicely charred, too. A great little meal for the starving people on the Ark, methinks. 4. If you take the Bible literally, Noah's ark would've collapsed in on itself, due to the weakness of wood as a building material. This is proveable. Did God perhaps allow Noah access to super-strong wood, seeing as how there were no titanium alloys available at the time? 5. Climate changes. Yes, Antarctica was once tropical. This is explained very nicely by continental drift, which is doubly supported by magnetic anomolies in the bedrock of all the continents, pointing to a continual rate of movement for the crustal plates. However, if there had been a Flood, a lot of Antarctica's ice would have melted, and the ice level would be inconsistent with the amounts that should have been deposited during crustal movement. Explain? 6. Insects. Did Noah gather insects? How did he gather obscure Amazonian species? How did he feed the hummingbirds, which require very specialized diets at regular intervals? More to the point, how did he catch all those birds? With nets? So these are just a few starter questions. I have lots more waiting, but those are the big ones. Please do be nice and answer them!
• 

  JCanon

  And so we get absurdities piled upon absurdities. Ice is heavy, mate! There's no getting away from it! The sheer volume of water needed to flood ALL the mountains (i.e. Everest) simply doesn't exist on Earth! And the idea of it getting blown into space by Godly "funnels" and "winds" is ridiculous. Where is the evidence for these terratonnes of water leaving Earth?

  You know, this is interesting. I don't know if you understand how I'm imagining this. Per the Bible the water below and above were together and then gradually the water vaper was separated from the sea. I'm thinking it was pushed high above the earth first as cloud mass and then it was thencompressed into water consistency and then frozen so that the sun's light could shine through like a glass house.

  Now seems to me that depending upon HOW HIGH that canopy was and how THICK would measure what one would expect if it were converted back to water and then caused to rain over 40 days onto the planet gradually flooding it.

  So I'd love it for a physicist to calculate that. You know, basically calculate how much water would cover the entire surface of the planet say a half a mile above the highest mountain and then move the water above sea level higher and higher until it thinned down to a certain width encircling the planet which would eb the ideal place to freeze it. It's a matter of how high it was in order to be enough water to flood the earth. so your argment is circular. I didn't give you the thickness or the height, you presumed that.

  Anyway, we'll see. Thanks for considering it!!

  JC
• 

  SYN

  Answer my numbered points first, then I'll gladly answer your question!
• 

  SYN

  What you're forgetting here is energy, sheer kinetic energy.

  Even if all that water could somehow "form clouds" after "evaporating", thus saturating the atmosphere with so much water that it would closely resemble the weather of Venus, it wouldn't just coalasce in outer space - you'd need ENERGY to do it. Where did the energy come from? I repeat, water is heavy. Lots of energy would be needed. Piles of it. But of course, Jehover has as much energy as he wants!

  Now, once all this water got into orbit and froze, somehow, let's say there was a hollow sphere of it surrounding Earth.

  For starters, frozen water isn't translucent, esp. not if it was originally in the oceans. Are the polar ice caps translucent? Nope. And they'd be a hell of a lot thinner than what you're envisaging here. So you'd have this big chunk of ice between us and the sun. Result: Instance deep-frozen Earth. I hope Noah had some seriously thick jerseys.

  So now, after being alternately flash-boiled and flash-frozen, all the animals somehow got grabbed by Noah (even the hummingbirds, after a great trek halfway around the world across the Atlantic Ocean, birds that need to eat constantly due to their ultra-fast metabolisms, and only feed on certain very specific plant species). Then, Noah put them in an Ark, made of wood, the structural integrity of which was such that it would have collapsed long before being built, even if it was made of the strongest woods in the world, due to it's sheer monstrous size and weight.

  Now this big ice sphere doesn't exist in a vacuum (Hur, hur. ) There are other large objects, such as the Moon and the Sun, all tugging on it. Ice is well-known to be an incredibly strong substance (Hur, hur) that could easily withstand the immense gravitational "tug" of the Moon and Sun, no worries, and not even crack or split. Now, once this ice started to come down again during the Flood, the kinetic energy of it's fall would rapidly heat the atmosphere up to Venus-like temperatures again.

  Dude, when did you start writing science fiction? This should be filed under "terraforming", not "religion".
• 

  Abaddon

  JCanon

  You know, you can't underestimate God. He likes to "trick the wise in their cunning", so maybe God made it so that very little direct evidence of the flood was left just to test people on whether they would believe the Bible or not?

  This is the 'logic' you use whenever you can't explain something; "it's a test". Like you use the fact you are a 'stumbling block' to some as a validation of your claims you are Jesus. Of course it is exactly the same excuse used by believers AND con-men AND lunatics for centuries if not millenia, and by using it you make yourself as indistinguishable from them as the next person with unverfiable claims.

  In othe words, if the earth was inudated with water even today and that water went as high as mountains and then drained off, what kind of permanent changes would be see? I can't think of anything obvious right off the bat.

  Which shows the level you approach things at. So, if the entire Earth was flooded to the tops of the mountains and then drained off, you reckon there wouldn't be any permenant changes? So, teratonnes of water sloshing around wouldn't have a dramatic effect on landscape? Ordinary flood carve chunks out of the landscape and a global one wouldn't?

  What's the point in making up fairy tales if they are such poor fairy tales a child can see you are kidding yourself.

  Seek medical help before you waste your entire life.
• 

  JCanon

  For starters, frozen water isn't translucent, esp. not if it was originally in the oceans. Are the polar ice caps translucent? Nope. And they'd be a hell of a lot thinner than what you're envisaging here. So you'd have this big chunk of ice between us and the sun. Result: Instance deep-frozen Earth. I hope Noah had some seriously thick jerseys.

  Sorry, but you are creating a straw man here. I told you that we don't know EXACTLY the details and thus it is impossible to dismiss this. That is, that much water if lifted above the earth in an ever-thinning bubble would determine whether it was cold or not. It depends on how thin it is. I said the weather was like a GLASSHOUSE effect. Plus we know that igloos are made out of ice and they have heat inside. I just don't know the specifics.

  But since you mentioned it, I agree. Perhaps the atmostphere was much greater around the earth at that time. If you think of a bubble of water, that's a quality of water that allows it to be even, cohesive and continuous if the properties are right. So maybe God caused the precise requirements to create a canopy with the precise dynamics/ratios that are necessary for water to bubble. Since we can see through a bubble then why wouldn't it be clear.

  Furthermore, everybody knows that when you evaporate water from the sea it is desalinated. Where do you think FRESH WATER comes from? The ocean!

  So you see, it's still PLAUSIBLE though we don't know the details.

  Now here is one way I think God could have done it. He could have created sufficient extra-atmosphere to first establish a bubble-consistency canopy high above the earth then when he caused the outer atmosphere to dissipate it froze the bubble. Who knows. Then he undid that at the time of the flood.

  And as far as energy, YES, you're right, God could cause great winds to do whatever he wanted including with that extra atomosphere funnelling the water or even clouds high above the earth which were then removed into outer space as God reduced the upper extra-atmosphere, no longer necessary under the new conditions?

  Okay! Works for me!!!

  JC
• 

  SYN

  Well, I'm sorry, JCanon, but that stuff absolutely doesn't work for me!

  Sorry, but you are creating a straw man here. I told you that we don't know EXACTLY the details and thus it is impossible to dismiss this. That is, that much water if lifted above the earth in an ever-thinning bubble would determine whether it was cold or not. It depends on how thin it is. I said the weather was like a GLASSHOUSE effect. Plus we know that igloos are made out of ice and they have heat inside. I just don't know the specifics.

  I could go and say, "Back when we were still living in caves in France, there was actually a bubble of ice around the Earth, despite things like the Moon's gravity, the strength of ice (way too low to form a "bubble" in any form without instantly being shattered by the gravity of the Moon...maybe God held it in place the whole time?), and the fact that there is absolutely no evidence for it, anywhere. But, y'know, I'm pretty sure that works for me.

  Unfortunately, Mr JCanon, there is no way that could've happened without "Godly" (i.e. divine) intervention, of the sort we pretty much NEVER EVER see today. Weird, innit? The physics is just impossible. Any kid doing high-school level physics would have a good laugh if you explained your ice canopy concept to him/her, and would give you 20 reasons why it would just never work. God would've had to sit there the whole time, carefully holding the canopy in place with his infinite (bah) divine powers, for however long it took, then carefully stripping the kinetic energy from each shard of ice as it fell towards the Earth so Noah's ark didn't turn into a huge wooden take-out box...you see, the absurdities just keep getting greater and greater! Can't you just face the fact that the legend of Noah is just a story, a fable, told with a specific moral? Most reasonable people would realize that, after looking at the evidence (or lack thereof) for a global Flood.

  And, since you don't know the specifics, your argument is invalid. I do know the specifics. Come back when you do. And BTW, I wasn't creating a straw-man. I was presenting a valid argument, that you failed to deflect using accepted methods like the laws of physics, gravity, and relativity, things which have been repeated over and over by countless scientists.

  But since you mentioned it, I agree. Perhaps the atmostphere was much greater around the earth at that time. If you think of a bubble of water, that's a quality of water that allows it to be even, cohesive and continuous if the properties are right. So maybe God caused the precise requirements to create a canopy with the precise dynamics/ratios that are necessary for water to bubble. Since we can see through a bubble then why wouldn't it be clear.

  Absolutely impossible. The air would simply not have supported the ice. I mean, it doesn't get more ridiculous than this. Which planets do you see with shells of ice around their atmospheres? None, and for the very good reason that ice is incredibly heavy. And water has very different properties from ice, my friend. Ice doesn't form bubbles. And the atmosphere couldn't have been much greater without dramatically altering the physiology of every animal in the frikking world! (Air pressure, etc) And the reason you can see through a bubble is because it's walls are micrometers thick, unlike a canopy of ice miles thick around the globe. This whole ice canopy thing is by far the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of!

  Furthermore, everybody knows that when you evaporate water from the sea it is desalinated. Where do you think FRESH WATER comes from? The ocean!

  OK, I'll concede this point to you, since it is indeed correct (what a relief). So, since we had these incredibly higher oceans (no record of those in the Antarctic ice cores, Greenland, other cold places where it snows with depressing regularity) and since we do have evidence that links up around the world, such as meteorite impacts etc, that allow us to cross-reference the dating of chemicals in the ice cores, allowing us to see just how far back they go (millions of years, without any Flooding record), where did all the water go? Did Jehover make it shoot off into space? Where is it now? How did he do it? Well, I guess God can do anything he bloody well pleases, except stopping the starvation of millions of kids a year in Africa. But that's cause God has something to prove, I guess. Tough on the kids, but that's God's plan, so shut up and enjoy it while it lasts! We have (literally) rock-solid proof that there has never been a worldwide Flood. Local floods, definitely, there've been lots of those, but not a Global one at all. The numbers simply don't work out!

  And, I notice that you've neglected to answer my numbered points. Are you afraid of what they might reveal? This leads me into my second rebuttal of that sentence - once all the salt had been drained from the evaporating water, how did the fish in the oceans feel, suddenly having twice as much salt in their water? Ouch? Even small changes in water salinity can severely affect fish populations.

  Now here is one way I think God could have done it. He could have created sufficient extra-atmosphere to first establish a bubble-consistency canopy high above the earth then when he caused the outer atmosphere to dissipate it froze the bubble. Who knows. Then he undid that at the time of the flood.

  Impossible. Air doesn't support ice. Even a child could tell you that. Really!

  And as far as energy, YES, you're right, God could cause great winds to do whatever he wanted including with that extra atomosphere funnelling the water or even clouds high above the earth which were then removed into outer space as God reduced the upper extra-atmosphere, no longer necessary under the new conditions?

  So all this water went up into space, in vast funnels, not leaving a trace on the whole planet...suspicious, isn't it? And you'd think that all this (you know, funnels of water rising into orbit) would have sort of been noticed by Noah.

  Come on, dude, answer my numbered points already! Or are you a 'fraidy cat? What's stopping you? Would they make you feel uncomfortable?
• 

  hooberus

  SYN posted:

  Over the top of Mt. Everest then? The volume of water would have been astronomical. Millions of cubic miles. Where did it come from? Where did it go? The polar ice-caps are not big enough. The atmosphere does not contain millions of cubic miles of water.

  Using a bit of armchair maths, we can roughly calculate how much water would have been needed to cover the planet to the top of Mt. Everest:

  The radius of the Earth is approx. 6370km

  The height of Everest above sea-level is approx. 8.8 km

  Therefore, the volume of the Earth is approx. 1,082,696,932,000km³, or 1,080 billion cubic kilometers.

  The volume of the earth to the height of Everest is 1,087,190,293,000km³

  Subtracting the first volume from the second gives approx. 4,493,361,000, or four thousand, five hundred million cubic kilometers of water!

  Also, this rain is supposed to have fallen within about 40 days. That means that there would have been about 220 meters of rainfall every day over the entire planet (8800/40 = 220)! A few centimeters in a day is considered to be extremely heavy rain.

  This argument assumes that the pre-flood mountains were at their same level as current mountains. Psalm 104 NASB indicates otherwise:

  You (11) covered it with the deep as with a garment;
  The waters were standing above the mountains.
  7
  At Your (12) rebuke they fled,
  At the (13) sound of Your thunder they hurried away.
  8
  The mountains rose; the valleys sank down
  To the (14) place which You established for them.
  9
  You set a (15) boundary that they may not pass over,
  So that they will not return to cover the earth.

  Mt Everest/ Water amount information:

  http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/flood12.asp
• 

  Abaddon

  JCanon

  What, no denial of your mental problems? Or are claims to being Jesus normal in your head? Whatever;

  So you see, it's still PLAUSIBLE though we don't know the details.

  It is plausible in the same way that Star Trek, Star Wars, and the Dragon-riders of PErm are plausible. It is plausible in the same way Lord of the Rings is plausible.

  With the noticable exception that;

  1/ No one thinks any of the above are real

  2/ All of the above 'plausibles' require the suspension of disbelief over scientific impossibilities incorporated into them.

  But, your only argument is 'turtles all the way down, so by definiton, arguing with you is repetative and useless.

  hooberus

  Are you deliberately quoting the Bible out of context there (in order to support your beliefs, what a surprise QED)? It's pretty obvious when one looks at the language of Genesis 1 that the passage from Pslams is talking about the Creation myth, which is probably why you left out the verse directly before the passage you quoted where it says;

  5
  He (10) established the earth upon its foundations,
  So that it will not [4] totter forever and ever.

  Even the footnotes related to that Psalm, in the instances where they cross-reference a scripture in Genesis, cross-reference a scripture from the passages related to the Creation of the Fall, NOT the Flood. Surely a Bible student such as yourself would be aware of this and refrain from making a misleading statement? I suppose it's not fair to blame you, as even the websites you quote make the same connection;

  http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/flood12.asp

  ... why the misleading quote? The whole Psalm is about Creation and the answersingenesis site still twists the interpretation to suit their intent;

  Psalm 104 suggests an answer. After the waters covered the mountains (verse 6), God rebuked them and they fled (verse 7); the mountains rose, the valleys sank down (verse 8) and God set a boundary so that they will never again cover the earth (verse 9). 18

  If it wasn't so sad it would be hysterically funny...

  Of course, this all ignores the fact there were trees. Growing. Before. During. And. After. Any . Possible. Dates. For the Flood... but I expect your rebuttal of the accuracy of dendrochronolgy will be coming along any day now, eh?

  Leaving the fact you're ignoring evidence which indicates very very simply the Flood didn't happen in any literal fashion as described in Genesis to one side for the moment, let's pull the wings of you other arguments one by one, shall we?

  First of all, there's the wonderful hypocracy evident in many of these arguments, which combine modern geological theories with supersticious beliefs only by ignoring the time-scales that the very same modern geological theories requires.

  The Vapor Canopy Hypothesis Holds No Water

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/canopy.html

  Funny how the answersingenesis site actually admits that the water canopy idea is not really that viable as an explanation, and argues most of the water came from underground... see the red text below for why this is just more Creationist rubbish...

  Dinosaur Footprints in Coal

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/coalprints.html

  Of course, coal being laid-down in the Flood and having dino footprints on it are pretty much mutually exclusive events.

  Here's more from;

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#georecord

  5. The Flood Itself

  Where did the Flood water come from, and where did it go? Several people have proposed answers to these questions, but none which consider all the implications of their models. A few of the commonly cited models are addressed below.

  Vapor canopy. This model, proposed by

  Whitcomb & Morris and others, proposes that much of the Flood water was suspended overhead until the 40 days of rain which caused the Flood. The following objections are covered in more detail by Brown.

  • How was the water suspended, and what caused it to fall all at once when it did?
  • If a canopy holding the equivalent to more than 40 feet of water were part of the atmosphere, it would raise the atmospheric pressure accordingly, raising oxygen and nitrogen levels to toxic levels.
  • If the canopy began as vapor, any water from it would be superheated. This scenario essentially starts with most of the Flood waters boiled off. Noah and company would be poached. If the water began as ice in orbit, the gravitational potential energy would likewise raise the temperature past boiling.
  • A canopy of any significant thickness would have blocked a great deal of light, lowering the temperature of the earth greatly before the Flood.
  • Any water above the ozone layer would not be shielded from ultraviolet light, and the light would break apart the water molecules.

  Hydroplate.

  Walt Brown's model proposes that the Flood waters came from a layer of water about ten miles underground, which was released by a catastrophic rupture of the earth's crust, shot above the atmosphere, and fell as rain.

  • How was the water contained? Rock, at least the rock which makes up the earth's crust, doesn't float. The water would have been forced to the surface long before Noah's time, or Adam's time for that matter.
  • Even a mile deep, the earth is boiling hot, and thus the reservoir of water would be superheated. Further heat would be added by the energy of the water falling from above the atmosphere. As with the vapor canopy model, Noah would have been poached.
  • Where is the evidence? The escaping waters would have eroded the sides of the fissures, producing poorly sorted basaltic erosional deposits. These would be concentrated mainly near the fissures, but some would be shot thousands of miles along with the water. (Noah would have had to worry about falling rocks along with the rain.) Such deposits would be quite noticeable but have never been seen.

  Comet. Kent Hovind proposed that the Flood water came from a comet which broke up and fell on the earth. Again, this has the problem of the heat from the gravitational potential energy. The water would be steam by the time it reached the surface of the earth.

  Runaway subduction. John Baumgardner created the runaway subduction model, which proposes that the pre-Flood lithosphere (ocean floor), being denser than the underlying mantle, began sinking. The heat released in the process decreased the viscosity of the mantle, so the process accelerated catastrophically. All the original lithosphere became subducted; the rising magma which replaced it raised the ocean floor, causing sea levels to rise and boiling off enough of the ocean to cause 150 days of rain. When it cooled, the ocean floor lowered again, and the Flood waters receded. Sedimentary mountains such as the Sierras and Andes rose after the Flood by isostatic rebound. [

  Baumgardner, 1990a; Austin et al., 1994]

  • The main difficulty of this theory is that it admittedly doesn't work without miracles. [

  Baumgardner, 1990a, 1990b] The thermal diffusivity of the earth, for example, would have to increase 10,000 fold to get the subduction rates proposed [Matsumura, 1997], and miracles are also necessary to cool the new ocean floor and to raise sedimentary mountains in months rather than in the millions of years it would ordinarily take.
• Baumgardner estimates a release of 10 28 joules from the subduction process. This is more than enough to boil off all the oceans. In addition, Baumgardner postulates that the mantle was much hotter before the Flood (giving it greater viscosity); that heat would have to go somewhere, too.
• Cenozoic sediments are post-Flood according to this model. Yet fossils from Cenozoic sediments alone show a 65-million-year record of evolution, including a great deal of the diversification of mammals and angiosperms. [
Carroll, 1997, chpts. 5, 6, & 13]
• Subduction on the scale Baumgardner proposes would have produced very much more vulcanism around plate boundaries than we see. [
Matsumura, 1997]

New ocean basins. Most flood models (including those above, possibly excepting Hovind's) deal with the water after the flood by proposing that it became our present oceans. The earth's terrain, according to this model, was much, much flatter during the Flood, and through cataclysms, the mountains were pushed up and the ocean basins lowered. (Brown proposes that the cataclysms were caused by the crust sliding around on a cushion of water; Whitcomb & Morris don't give a cause.)

• How could such a change be effected? To change the density and/or temperature of at least a quarter of the earth's crust fast enough to raise and lower the ocean floor in a matter of months would require mechanisms beyond any proposed in any of the flood models.
• Why are most sediments on high ground? Most sediments are carried until the water slows down or stops. If the water stopped in the oceans, we should expect more sediments there. Baumgardner's own modeling shows that, during the Flood, currents would be faster over continents than over ocean basins [
Baumgardner, 1994], so sediments should, on the whole, be removed from continents and deposited in ocean basins. Yet sediments on the ocean basin average 0.6 km thick, while on continents (including continental shelves), they average 2.6 km thick. [Poldervaart, 1955]
• Where's the evidence? The water draining from the continents would have produced tremendous torrents. There is evidence of similar flooding in the Scablands of Washington state (from the draining of a lake after the breaking of an ice dam) and on the far western floor of the Mediterranean Sea (from the ocean breaking through the Straits of Gibralter). Why is such evidence not found worldwide?
• How did the ark survive the process? Such a wholesale restructuring of the earth's topography, compressed into just a few months, would have produced tsunamis large enough to circle the earth. The aftershocks alone would have been devastating for years afterwards.
6. Implications of a Flood

A global flood would have produce evidence contrary to the evidence we see.

How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?

How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.

Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [

Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]
7. Producing the Geological Record

Most people who believe in a global flood also believe that the flood was responsible for creating all fossil-bearing strata. (The alternative, that the strata were laid down slowly and thus represent a time sequence of several generations at least, would prove that some kind of evolutionary process occurred.) However, there is a great deal of contrary evidence.

Before you argue that fossil evidence was dated and interpreted to meet evolutionary assumptions, remember that the geological column and the relative dates therein were laid out by people who believed divine creation, before Darwin even formulated his theory. (See, for example, Moore [1973], or the closing pages of Dawson [1868].)

Why are geological eras consistent worldwide? How do you explain worldwide agreement between "apparent" geological eras and several different (independent) radiometric and nonradiometric dating methods? [e.g.,

Short et al, 1991]

How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution? Ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape fail to explain:

• the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?
• the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life. (
Yun, 1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late Precambrian sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear that low in the geological column?)
• why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in many geologic strata.
• why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are still perfectly sorted.
• why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high ground?
• how coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long were preserved intact with other fossils below them.
• why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid mechanics says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper strata.
• why artifacts such as footprints and burrows are also sorted. [
Crimes & Droser, 1992]
• why no human artifacts are found except in the very uppermost strata. If, at the time of the Flood, the earth was overpopulated by people with technology for shipbuilding, why were none of their tools or buildings mixed with trilobite or dinosaur fossils?
• why different parts of the same organisms are sorted together. Pollen and spores are found in association with the trunks, leaves, branches, and roots produced by the same plants [
Stewart, 1983].
• why ecological information is consistent within but not between layers. Fossil pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen hydraulically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic evidence is different for each layer?

How do surface features appear far from the surface? Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have originated only on the surface, such as:

• Rain drops. [
Robb, 1992]
• River channels. [
Miall, 1996, especially chpt. 6]
• Wind-blown dunes. [
Kocurek & Dott, 1981; Clemmenson & Abrahamsen, 1983; Hubert & Mertz, 1984]
• Beaches.
• Glacial deposits. [
Eyles & Miall, 1984]
• Burrows. [
Crimes & Droser, 1992; Thackray, 1994]
• In-place trees. [
Cristie & McMillan, 1991]
• Soil. [
Reinhardt & Sigleo, 1989; Wright, 1986, 1994]
• Desiccation cracks. [
Andrews, 1988; Robb, 1992]
• Footprints. [
Gore, 1993, has a photograph (p. 16-17) showing dinosaur footprints in one layer with water ripples in layers above and below it. Gilette & Lockley, 1989, have several more examples, including dinosaur footprints on top of a coal seam (p. 361-366).]
• Meteorites and meteor craters. [
Grieve, 1997; Schmitz et al, 1997]
• Coral reefs. [
Wilson, 1975]
• Cave systems. [
James & Choquette, 1988]

How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?

How does a global flood explain angular unconformities? These are where one set of layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top. They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.

How were mountains and valleys formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids [Gansser, 1964].) If these were formed during the Flood, how did they reach their present height, and when were the valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind that many valleys were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow process.

When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces. It takes a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does granite erode very quickly. [For example, see

Donohoe & Grantham, 1989, for locations of contact between the South Mountain Batholith and the Meugma Group of sediments, as well as some angular unconformities.]

How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed layering? One formation in New Jersey is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400 days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the Flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling per day. And yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly layered, with great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, etc.? [

Zimmer, 1992]

How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle.

How could a flood deposit layered fossil forests? Stratigraphic sections showing a dozen or more mature forests layered atop each other--all with upright trunks, in-place roots, and well-developed soil--appear in many locations. One example, the Joggins section along the Bay of Fundy, shows a continuous section 2750 meters thick (along a 48-km sea cliff) with multiple in-place forests, some separated by hundreds of feet of strata, some even showing evidence of forest fires. [

Ferguson, 1988. For other examples, see Dawson, 1868; Cristie & McMillan, 1991; Gastaldo, 1990; Yuretich, 1994.] Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below Mt. St. Helens as an example of how a flood can deposit vertical trunks, but deposition by flood fails to explain the roots, the soil, the layering, and other features found in such places.

Where did all the heat go? If the geologic record was deposited in a year, then the events it records must also have occurred within a year. Some of these events release significant amounts of heat.

• Magma. The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 10 24 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 10 27 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat.
• Limestone formation. There are roughly 5 x 10 23 grams of limestone in the earth's sediments [
Poldervaart, 1955], and the formation of calcite releases about 11,290 joules/gram [Weast, 1974, p. D63]. If only 10% of the limestone were formed during the Flood, the 5.6 x 10 26 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters.
• Meteorite impacts. Erosion and crustal movements have erased an unknown number of impact craters on earth, but Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest that cratering to the extent seen on the Moon and Mercury occurred on earth during the year of Noah's Flood. The heat from just one of the largest lunar impacts released an estimated 3 x 10 26 joules; the same sized object falling to earth would release even more energy. [
Fezer, pp. 45-46]
• Other. Other possibly significant heat sources are radioactive decay (some Creationists claim that radioactive decay rates were much higher during the Flood to account for consistently old radiometric dates); biological decay (think of the heat released in compost piles); and compression of sediments.

5.6 x 10 26 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 10 27 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.

Aside from losing its atmosphere, Earth can only get rid of heat by radiating it to space, and it can't radiate significantly more heat than it gets from the sun unless it is a great deal hotter than it is now. (It is very nearly at thermal equilibrium now.) If there weren't many millions of years to radiate the heat from the above processes, the earth would still be unlivably hot.

As shown in section 5, all the mechanisms proposed for causing the Flood already provide more than enough energy to vaporize it as well. These additional factors only make the heat problem worse.

How were limestone deposits formed? Much limestone is made of the skeletons of zillions of microscopic sea animals. Some deposits are thousands of meters thick. Were all those animals alive when the Flood started? If not, how do you explain the well-ordered sequence of fossils in the deposits? Roughly 1.5 x 10 15 grams of calcium carbonate are deposited on the ocean floor each year. [Poldervaart, 1955] A deposition rate ten times as high for 5000 years before the Flood would still only account for less than 0.02% of limestone deposits.

How could a flood have deposited chalk? Chalk is largely made up of the bodies of plankton 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter [Bignot, 1985]. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec. [Twenhofel, 1961] In a year of the Flood, they could have settled about half a meter.
How could the Flood deposit layers of solid salt? Such layers are sometimes meters in width, interbedded with sediments containing marine fossils. This apparently occurs when a body of salt water has its fresh-water intake cut off, and then evaporates. These layers can occur more or less at random times in the geological history, and have characteristic fossils on either side. Therefore, if the fossils were themselves laid down during a catastrophic flood, there are, it seems, only two choices:
(1) the salt layers were themselves laid down at the same time, during the heavy rains that began the flooding, or
(2) the salt is a later intrusion. I suspect that both will prove insuperable difficulties for a theory of flood deposition of the geologic column and its fossils. [Jackson et al, 1990]
How were sedimentary deposits recrystallized and plastically deformed in the short time since the Flood? The stretched pebble conglomerate in Death Valley National Monument (Wildrose Canyon Rd., 15 mi. south of Hwy. 190), for example, contains streambed pebbles metamorphosed to quartzite and stretched to 3 or more times their original length. Plastically deformed stone is also common around salt diapirs [Jackson et al, 1990].
How were hematite layers laid down? Standard theory is that they were laid down before Earth's atmosphere contained much oxygen. In an oxygen-rich regime, they would almost certainly be impossible.
How do you explain fossil mineralization? Mineralization is the replacement of the original material with a different mineral.
• Buried skeletal remains of modern fauna are negligibly mineralized, including some that biblical archaeology says are quite old - a substantial fraction of the age of the earth in this diluvian geology. For example, remains of Egyptian commoners buried near the time of Moses aren't extensively mineralized.
• Buried skeletal remains of extinct mammalian fauna show quite variable mineralization.
• Dinosaur remains are often extensively mineralized.
• Trilobite remains are usually mineralized - and in different sites, fossils of the same species are composed of different materials.
How are these observations explained by a sorted deposition of remains in a single episode of global flooding?
How does a flood explain the accuracy of "coral clocks"? The moon is slowly sapping the earth's rotational energy. The earth should have rotated more quickly in the distant past, meaning that a day would have been less than 24 hours, and there would have been more days per year. Corals can be dated by the number of "daily" growth layers per "annual" growth layer. Devonian corals, for example, show nearly 400 days per year. There is an exceedingly strong correlation between the "supposed age" of a wide range of fossils (corals, stromatolites, and a few others -- collected from geologic formations throughout the column and from locations all over the world) and the number of days per year that their growth pattern shows. The agreement between these clocks, and radiometric dating, and the theory of superposition is a little hard to explain away as the result of a number of unlucky coincidences in a 300-day-long flood. [Rosenberg & Runcorn, 1975; Scrutton, 1965; Wells, 1963]
Where were all the fossilized animals when they were alive? Schadewald [1982] writes:

"Scientific creationists interpret the fossils found in the earth's rocks as the remains of animals that perished in the Noachian Deluge. Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in 'fossil graveyards' as evidence for the Flood. In particular, creationists seem enamored by the Karroo Formation in Africa, which is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate animals (see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61). As pseudoscientists, creationists dare not test this major hypothesis that all of the fossilized animals died in the Flood.

"Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota, has studied the Karroo Formation. He asserts that the animals fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the size of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A minute's work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion animals in the Karoo formation could be resurrected, there would be twenty-one of them for every acre of land on earth. Suppose we assume (conservatively, I think) that the Karroo Formation contains 1 percent of the vertebrate [land] fossils on earth. Then when the Flood began, there must have been at least 2100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense dinosaurs. To a noncreationist mind, that seems a bit crowded."

A thousand kilometers' length of arctic coastal plain, according to experts in Leningrad, contains about 500,000 tons of tusks. Even assuming that the entire population was preserved, you seem to be saying that Russia had wall-to-wall mammoths before this "event."
Even if there was room physically for all the large animals which now exist only as fossils, how could they have all coexisted in a stable ecology before the Flood? Montana alone would have had to support a diversity of herbivores orders of magnitude larger than anything now observed.
Where did all the organic material in the fossil record come from? There are 1.16 x 10 13 metric tons of coal reserves, and at least 100 times that much unrecoverable organic matter in sediments. A typical forest, even if it covered the entire earth, would supply only 1.9 x 10 13 metric tons. [Ricklefs, 1993, p. 149]
How do you explain the relative commonness of aquatic fossils? A flood would have washed over everything equally, so terrestrial organisms should be roughly as abundant as aquatic ones (or more abundant, since Creationists hypothesize greater land area before the Flood) in the fossil record. Yet shallow marine environments account for by far the most fossils.

If I sound dismissive hooberus, it's becaue I am. Any ONE of the above is usually enough to show that the Biblical Flood did not happen as it is literally described.

If you want to have those beliefs and are happy to accept that they are YOUR reality, FINE.

You, and all the others of your ilk however, wish to impose an unprovable reality upon the rest of humanity. You cannot prove it happened, all the evidence you claim supports what you say happened is bad science or misleading.

Yet, whilst typing on a machine whose existence would not be possible without the scientific paradigm you continually claim the scientific paradigm is invalid and that whilst it demonstrably works in other areas, in the specific areas where it disagrees with a book written by a bronze-age goat-herd, the goat-herd is right, even though you have no evidence that he is right.

You then have the audacity to claim that all other books written by bronze age (or iron age) goatherds or their equivalents are wrong, but yours is right, despite the fact you cannot prove it or meaningfully differentiate between them.

Turtles all the way down, eh?