Source of Flood Waters

by VM44 42 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  VM44

  I do not have access right now to the Watchtower CD Library, could someone check and tell me what the Watchotwer now says is the source for the Great Flood waters?

  Do they still believe the theory of Isaac Vail that the waters came from above and that there was a water canopy in orbit about the earth? or does the Watchtower now say that the canopy was a vapor layer, not in orbit, but a simply above the atmosphere?

  Also, if either of these beliefs are taught by the Watchtower, then why have they not done a rigorous thermo-hydrodynamic analysis of what these models imply?

  --VM44
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  the_classicist

  It was a huge iceball from space!
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  IronGland

  Also, if either of these beliefs are taught by the Watchtower, then why have they not done a rigorous thermo-hydrodynamic analysis of what these models imply?

  How many at Bethel could even pronounce thermo-hydrodynamic?
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  Nathan Natas

  Moses pulled the floodwaters out of his ass.
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  GetBusyLiving

  They still believe in the water canopy. I burst out laughing right in my JW friend's face when he tried to use that tired old canned answer.. AGAIN.

  GBL
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  RunningMan

  The sillyness appears to originate from this scripture:

  6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so.

  So, based on this rigorous scientific analysis, the society figured that the "water above the expanse" formed a canopy that later fell in the flood.

  Now, a simple analysis would indicate that if this amount of water was above the earth, no light would reach the earth's surface - the atmosphere would not be able to absorb even 1% of the amount of water required for the flood - the air pressure from this weight would be enough to flatten us - and on and on.
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  tetrapod.sapien

  
  LOL nathan! huge enema.

  VM,

  i believe they do not explain it very well. but last i heard, they think there was a canopy of water that fell to the earth, and also that the "springs burst forth" meaning that a bunch of water gushed up from under ground. all by holy spirit of course.

  a good treatment of the idiocy, is at http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

  from said regarding the canopy and implications of such:

  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.

  and the hydroplate model:

  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.
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  VM44

  
  Thank you for the replies. The talk-origins website is very good.

  Have people noticed that for the last decade or so, the Watchtower doesn't even try to address the specific problems with the Flood story?

  All they offer for proof anymore are the Flood Myth legends that the various cultures of the world have.

  The Watchtower mentions nothing about ice core samples, erosion(or lack thereof) of the mountains or of the Great Meteor Crater in Arizona, tree ring evidence, the age of Niagra Falls, or any other hard technical proof that the Flood was not global and did not happen when they said it did.

  --VM44
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  DannyBloem

  The just ignore it if the know they do not have some answers.
  I always thougth that the GB belived themselves what they sais. But why if something is critical no sounds. Nothing for years about the length of creation days also.
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  tetrapod.sapien

  yes, i have noticed that too VM44. i think they know that the ark doesn't hold much water anymore, but have painted themselves into a corner. that's what sucks about being a religion. they have no room to be wrong, unlike science. afterall, if they conceded that the flood is a retarded myth, what would that say to the rank and file about the rest of genesis? and if the rest of genesis is called into question, isn't the whole JW doctrine? imperfection, ransom, kingdom etc.

  i could be thinking of something an elder said, but i can practically swear that i read in one of the mags a while ago that they admitted that the flood could have been a localized black sea incident. but maybe it was an elder in a talk that i heard that from. but even if they admit it was a localized black sea incident, doesn't that make the flood account a lie? without some major mental gymnastics of course. it actually says that the flood covered the highest mountains. how could that be in a localized account?