Noah's Flood - Mathematically Impossible (technical video puts the issue to irrevocably to rest)

[random person]

Any math lovers, you're going to love this video.

 

[ddubois]

Any math lovers, you're going to love this video.

 

[miamited]

Hi RP,

Well, 'if' we believe the miracles of God and we understand what a 'miracle' is, I think we'll find that they are all mathematically or otherwise impossible.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted

 

[ddubois]

Thank you for your video. I enjoyed your pictures, and your challenge. However, I was a math major and you have not yet persuaded me that a universal flood is impossible.

My understanding is that seaborne fossils have been seen at the top of the Andes, some 19,000 feet up. So if you were to agree to a young earth, isn't it possible the Andes, Everest, and other tall mountains could have been thrust up after the flood? One theory I have heard is that the earth was more level before the flood and another is that one or more water-bearing comets (floodgates of heaven?) collided with the earth, causing the flood. If the earth were level now, wouldn't it be deeply covered by water?

 

[random person]

Hi RP,

Well, 'if' we believe the miracles of God and we understand what a 'miracle' is, I think we'll find that they are all mathematically or otherwise impossible.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted

I am sorry but that is a cop out Ted.

If the Earth is 6,000 years old and there was a global flood 1,656 years later.

There are 10,000 year old trees. Egypt's history records no such flood and their written history is extensive. There are pyramids that predate the flood and show no signs of being submerged by flood waters for a year and they are by fact still standing. And how did polar bears, walruses, seals, salamanders, crocodilians, semi-aquatic turtles, South American poison dart frogs, sloths, etc, etc, etc, I can go on all day with species, cross through oceans, over mountains, into valleys, and through deserts to the Middle East?

 

[gluadys]

Thank you for your video. I enjoyed your pictures, and your challenge. However, I was a math major and you have not yet persuaded me that a universal flood is impossible.

My understanding is that seaborne fossils have been seen at the top of the Andes, some 19,000 feet up. So if you were to agree to a young earth, isn't it possible the Andes, Everest, and other tall mountains could have been thrust up after the flood? One theory I have heard is that the earth was more level before the flood and another is that one or more water-bearing comets (floodgates of heaven?) collided with the earth, causing the flood. If the earth were level now, wouldn't it be deeply covered by water?

The problem with hi-speed activity is that it is also hi-heat activity. Having mountains the height of the Andes or Mt. Everest thrust up from the ocean floor to their present height in just a few thousand years would produce so much heat the area would still be uninhabitable today. (It takes considerable time for heat to dissipate into its surroundings.)

Whether the earth would be covered with water if it were (as suggested at the beginning of the video) a perfect sphere could be worked out mathematically, but it would not be deeply covered. The average depth of the ocean now is only 3.7 km (about) 2 1/4 miles) and anything over 200 metres (660 feet) is considered "deep ocean". This accounts for 2/3 of the current ocean area. The rest is more shallow, part of continental shelves. If all mountains were flattened out and deep ocean trenches raised, you might get a global flood too shallow to float the ark. Gather the necessary data and find someone with a good head for math to work it out.

 

[miamited]

I am sorry but that is a cop out Ted.

If the Earth is 6,000 years old and there was a global flood 1,656 years later.

There are 10,000 year old trees. Egypt's history records no such flood and their written history is extensive. There are pyramids that predate the flood and show no signs of being submerged by flood waters for a year and they are by fact still standing. And how did polar bears, walruses, seals, salamanders, crocodilians, semi-aquatic turtles, South American poison dart frogs, sloths, etc, etc, etc, I can go on all day with species, cross through oceans, over mountains, into valleys, and through deserts to the Middle East?

Hi RP,

Have you spoken to someone who was there when the pyramids were built? Have you spoken to someone who was there when the 10,000 year old tree was planted? Likely not. You see, all of our dating methods are based on some assumptions. It has been proven that in years of water shortages and other causes that trees can grow more than one ring/year. However, that really isn't the issue. Do you have any idea how they figure that a piece of wood from a tree is from a tree 10,000 years ago. After all, there are no standing trees today that are dated beyond 5,000 years. See here:


http://www.livescience.com/29152-oldest-tree-in-world.html

It would seem curious that if a tree standing today could be dated that old, then why aren't there other specimens standing that are dated older than about 5,000 years? After all, 5,000 years would put us right about at the flood, although a tad over based on the biblical record. Here's an article from ICR, which I imagine you will immediately discount but I throw it out there for study, that explains that tree ring dating may not be as accurate as we would like to believe.

http://www.icr.org/article/tree-rings-biblical-chronology/

It explains that laboratory tests have proven that many climate anomalies can cause a tree to grow 2 or more rings in a given year. In particular, short periods of drought can cause a tree to begin a new layer of bark and are then seen in a cross section as more years than are actually accounted for. They even dare to explain that there have been estimations of these climate anomalies happening possibly as often as every 4-5 years or so. Just assuming that they may be right means that a tree sample with 5,000 rings, which would normally be understood as 5,000 years old, may be off by as much as 1,000 years. However, even if we stretch the occurrence of such an anomaly to every 50 years, we may likely be off by 100 years.

If we consider any of this information to be true, then it leaves our oldest living specimens of trees to fit perfectly with the Noahatic flood account and time of event. Odd, huh?

However, wood that is dated older than these living specimens is done by matching. Two pieces of wood are looked at and varying tree ring sizes and formations are matched to each other. This matching process is by no means scientific. After all, tree ring growth could match in a number of different places depending on the climate conditions where each specific tree grew. For example, I can take a piece of wood from an old shipwreck or ancient structure, which is where they generally find their source material, and then attempt to match it to another piece of wood from another source, but I really have no way of knowing, other than blind faith, that I'm really matching them correctly. Here's a simplified picture explaining how it works.

In reality, the matches are rarely ever so obviously matched. Further, unless you know that each example came from fairly close in the same forest you could have matches that appear similar but are actually years apart because you are matching growth rings that may have come from similar and repeated climatic conditions in each area. As an example, let's say that a tree stood in a forest from 1920 through 1925 and in those years there were regular rains and good conditions for tree growth. Now, we take another tree that stood in a forest from 1950 to 1955 in the same or another forest in which there was a fairly close copy of the regular rains and good conditions for tree growth. Those two samples will very likely match for those five year periods even though they were 30 years apart. As you can see by the example, they don't necessarily match a lot of years of growth. Both of these examples are matched based on 5-10 last growth rings matching up with 5-10 starting growth rings. Needless to say, there are a lot of assumptions made in using this method of dating.

Here's an article from the University of Tennessee, a great tree state. If you read the article I'd like you to pay particular attention to the explanations of the principles. You will notice right off that the 'principle of uniformitarian' states that it must first be assumed that things in the past were the same as things in the present. At the end of the explanation the writer even agrees that 'because we assume that conditions must have been similar in the past...'. Simply put, if we believe the assumption, then we are assured that the result is correct.

Then in the 'principle of limiting factors', we find that there are actually a number of phenomenon that can affect tree ring size and growth. For example, a tree that is shrouded by the top growth of another, while growing through the exact same conditions, may have differing tree ring growth. So, a tree that was shrouded for the first 20 years of its growth, if the tree that is shrouding it were cut down, which would now leave the remaining tree with access to more sunlight and more nutrients, the ring growth during the period that they stood together wouldn't match even though they had gone through the exact same climatic period, but the later rings might match if the same climatic conditions continued.

There are other issues which you may find if you choose to read the article. These examples are given for samples that are of fairly recent origin. It discusses buildings in the Midwest or the United States as some of their examples. As you can see the science is not particularly exact based on all the 'principles' that must be accepted. If they could be off by 2-10 years in their dating of such recent samples, just imagine the margin for error in going back 5,000 years.

Tree ring dating and study is a phenomenal science, but there are very valid questions as to its accuracy.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted

 

[classicalhero]

I am sorry but that is a cop out Ted.

If the Earth is 6,000 years old and there was a global flood 1,656 years later.

There are 10,000 year old trees. Egypt's history records no such flood and their written history is extensive. There are pyramids that predate the flood and show no signs of being submerged by flood waters for a year and they are by fact still standing. And how did polar bears, walruses, seals, salamanders, crocodilians, semi-aquatic turtles, South American poison dart frogs, sloths, etc, etc, etc, I can go on all day with species, cross through oceans, over mountains, into valleys, and through deserts to the Middle East?

These are things that if you had looked a creationist literature would know they have been answered, but you refuse to listen to their answers. Why are you making assumptions about the living world as if it has been the same from the beginning? Quite frankly you are not even bothering to look at what has been said about these issues and that means it is a waste of time trying to talk to you.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Any math lovers, you're going to love this video.

Noah's flood was what today we would call a local flood. The Bible uses the Hebrew word Adamah for the area that was flooded. This is the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Biology book refers to this as an ecosystem.

 

[ddubois]

The problem with hi-speed activity is that it is also hi-heat activity. Having mountains the height of the Andes or Mt. Everest thrust up from the ocean floor to their present height in just a few thousand years would produce so much heat the area would still be uninhabitable today. (It takes considerable time for heat to dissipate into its surroundings.)

Whether the earth would be covered with water if it were (as suggested at the beginning of the video) a perfect sphere could be worked out mathematically, but it would not be deeply covered. The average depth of the ocean now is only 3.7 km (about) 2 1/4 miles) and anything over 200 metres (660 feet) is considered "deep ocean". This accounts for 2/3 of the current ocean area. The rest is more shallow, part of continental shelves. If all mountains were flattened out and deep ocean trenches raised, you might get a global flood too shallow to float the ark. Gather the necessary data and find someone with a good head for math to work it out.

Can you point me to a source where I can see how much heat would be generated by a tectonic plate with the Indian subcontinent being pushed up against an Asian tectonic plate over a very short time period, say a year or less, and how rapidly the heat would likely be dissipated?

 

[gluadys]

Can you point me to a source where I can see how much heat would be generated by a tectonic plate with the Indian subcontinent being pushed up against an Asian tectonic plate over a very short time period, say a year or less, and how rapidly the heat would likely be dissipated?

Not really. Not my field at all. You really need to consult geologists and physicists on that.

However, I can give a few links. While they don't deal specifically with the India-Asia plate collision still evident in the rising Himalayas, they do mention more generally some problems with rapid tectonic movement such as that proposed by John Baumgardner.

http://greatesthoaxonearth.blogspot.ca/2013/11/chapter-10-catastrophic-plate-tectonics.html
(Note the Hoax mentioned here is not plate tectonics, but evolution. The page is part of a review of Jonathan Safarti's anti-evolution book with the title "The Greatest Hoax on Earth".)

https://grisda.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/how-do-plate-tectonics-relate-to-the-bible/
This actually appears to be a pro-YEC site, but it does cover the problematic issues, including heat dissipation.

Basically, this model, applied globally, would result in all the oceans in the world becoming superheated steam and boiling away: even those in the ark would not survive. And then the dissipation of the heat would need to be a billion times more rapid than currently observed to reach current temperatures.

Even if one tries to reduce the event to the India-Asia plate collision, the physical requirements for reduced mantle viscosity, magma production and subsequent heat dissipation are enormous. Indeed even those who support this model say it is not naturally possible. So it certainly doesn't work as a model for reconciling the biblical flood story with science.

 

[jacobs well]

Noah's flood was what today we would call a local flood. The Bible uses the Hebrew word Adamah for the area that was flooded. This is the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Biology book refers to this as an ecosystem.

Scripture tells us all the mountains all around the world were covered to a depth of 15 cubits-Genesis 7:20
I will destroy them along with the earth -Gen 16:13. The earth was destroyed along with wicked humanity.
This could explain a massive reshaping of global topography.
God promises never to destroy mankind or the earth ever again by a flood - Gen 9:11.If the flood was only to be local it would have been simpler to move to another area rather than spend a hundred years building an ark and gathering all the world's animals into the ark.
Peter confirms the reality of a global flood - 2 Peter 3:5-6
Jesus implied the flood from a global perspective - Luke 17:26-27
The Bible, through Isaiah, uses universal terminology to describe the dimensions of the flood - Isa 54:9.
There have been many local floods in the world since Noah's time. If the great flood was only local in scope too, then God would have lied by allowing more of them to happen based on His promise.

Christian faith ultimately rests on the belief that the Bible is both inspired by God and true.

 

[joshua 1 9]

Scripture tells us all the mountains all around the world were covered to a depth of 15 cubits-Genesis 7:20
I will destroy them along with the earth -Gen 16:13. The earth was destroyed along with wicked humanity.
This could explain a massive reshaping of global topography.
God promises never to destroy mankind or the earth ever again by a flood - Gen 9:11.If the flood was only to be local it would have been simpler to move to another area rather than spend a hundred years building an ark and gathering all the world's animals into the ark.
Peter confirms the reality of a global flood - 2 Peter 3:5-6
Jesus implied the flood from a global perspective - Luke 17:26-27
The Bible, through Isaiah, uses universal terminology to describe the dimensions of the flood - Isa 54:9.
There have been many local floods in the world since Noah's time. If the great flood was only local in scope too, then God would have lied by allowing more of them to happen based on His promise.

Christian faith ultimately rests on the belief that the Bible is both inspired by God and true.

All is not in the original language. Still it is what it is. He destroyed what He destroyed and He did not destroy what He did not destroy. If you feel there is a conflict between Science and the Bible then you have to deal with that. I do not think there is a conflict. Because the scripture allows for an understanding that can be in agreement with the evidence found in the natural record that God has give us. Why would God contradict Himself? He would not and He could not. God must be consist with Himself, He must be true to Himself. God gave us the Bible and God gave us the wisdom, knowledge and understanding to know the natural world. Because they both come from God then they are in agreement. Even if it is difficult for us to reconcile that. Jesus paid a price so that creation could be reconciled with the Creator. I am sure that was not easy for Him to do.

I am sure that Noah did not sail all over the world to pick up all the animals before the flood and then take them all back again after the flood. Darwin saw islands that had been isolated for a very long time. There are over 10,000 islands in the Pacific ocean all with their own unique biodiversity. A lot of research was done looking for off shore oil. There is a very good reason why that Oil is there because that use to be dry land. But that landed was flooded when the glaciers melted. So science has a lot to tell us about this.

If you want a global flood then you have to go back to Pangea and the time of the dinosaurs. That is when the world was broken up and destroyed by water and Noah's flood was a shadow and a type of what happened at Pangea.

 

[Crowns&Laurels]

It was either Solomon or David who didn't actually seem to take Noah's Flood literally. Somewhere in Proverbs it is strongly implied that there wasn't literal interpretation, and that it was seen more reasonably as local.
And why would it be, really, when you take into account the actual origins of the story which was told among tribesman just like folklore told today.

 

[AmericanChristian91]

And why would it be, really, when you take into account the actual origins of the story which was told among tribesman just like folklore told today.

Agreed, I as well think the Noah's story was inspired by an actual large local flood.

One has to take into account those that would have expierneced some large flood, and those who later created the story of Noah lacked the knowledge we know. They didn't know how many humans existed, nor where they were all located. Those that created this story didn't know about all the landmasses nor that the earth is a globe. When referring to the "world", they sure were not referring to the entire Planet earth, and the "New World" where millions of natives lived is not included in their "world".

When thinking about the world within Noah's story, think about the world in this context, and the story makes more sense.

 

[-57]

Yes, I've seen this style of flood debunking in the past.
Here is the Hypsographic curve of the planet earth. Notice all of the dry land coild fit into the ocean.

Question, if the earth was made smooth how deep would the water be on the earth?
Answer, about 1 and two thirds miles....or so these guys say.

How tall were the mountains pre-flood? Not as tall as they are today. That's pretty obvious.

Psalms 104:6You covered it with the deep as with a garment; The waters were standing above the mountains.7At Your rebuke they fled, At the sound of Your thunder they hurried away. 8The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them. 9You set a boundary that they may not pass over, So that they will not return to cover the earth.