Source of water for the flood

[OldWiseGuy]

Please forgive me if I'm not following, you see, I'm a bit new to "Flood Geology".

Here's a picture from Northern Iraq just south of the border with Turkey (SOURCE):

Look very closely at the middle of the picture. This is a classic "thrust fault" of a large large scale. Was this before the Flood or was this part of the enormous cataclysm many Flood advocates like to tout to explain their abysmal geologic knoweldge?

From about the same place:

We see some seriously tilted beds. Was that pre-Flood? Or was this a "gentle" event during the time of the Flood? (And if you could explain to me how a cohesive layer of what appears to be a whiter (cleaner?) higher energy sandstone overlies a lower-energy mudstone as depicted here, and how it could be lithified sufficiently to hold together through significant tilting. I'm curious about the "hydraulics" involved here...lesser intellects such as mine are so limited by what science tells us about how things like this happen, that I really need to hear some from the "other side" of the debate.)

Here's another massive thrust from the same area:

How gentle was the Flood?

Like I said, I'm a newbie to "Flood Geology" and I'm sorely confused by the various hypotheses about how violent the flood was or how gentle it was. It seems to come in waves depending on the weather for the particular YEC.

I'm guessing your pictures are all pre-flood. Such landforms are ancient as were the mountain of Ararat which obviously existed before the flood.

Neither side of this debate is reasonable (only myself). The flood wasn't either/or. The violence or lack thereof depends on the volume and speed of water and the topography it encounters. All degrees, from extremely violent to extremely gentle are found in most large floods. Backwater is a flood phenomenon that is rarely violent. I have personally witnessed this as the tide rushes into the Cook Inlet in Alaska. There is a deep main channel that looks like class 5 rapids, but the water over the mud flats near the shore rises and falls gently without disturbing anything. So it must have been with Noah's flood.

This is another reason why there is no uniform world wide evidence of the flood. Such evidence doesn't occur uniformly.

owg

 

[Loudmouth]

This is another reason why there is no uniform world wide evidence of the flood. Such evidence doesn't occur uniformly.

There are features which record uniform, uninterrupted slow deposition with absolutely no record of a recent global floods. These include tree ring records, ice layers, and lake varves. If there were a recent global flood it would have shown up in these records, but it isn't there.

The reason that there is no world wide evidence for a recent global flood is that there wasn't a recent global flood.

 

[Sinful2B]

Hi and welcome

Just to help you all along with your meanderings:

Although Ice Ages wax and wane, there is always a natural trend that dominates the progression. As what is now part of the confirmed historical record, the last such Ice Age began to melt about 28,000 years ago, from an initial beginning approx. 120,000 years ago. Global water levels gradually rose, and it was inevitable that areas of once fertile, dry land, would be slowly inundated with advancing tides. Such is obvious from many sites around the globe, but none more so than the coastline of India.
Around 13,000 years ago the huge accumulation of ice in the north pole caused an instability of the earth because its great added weight. This caused the sudden shift in the axis of the earth. The earth's north pole shifted from the area of Hudson Bay, Canada in North America to its present location. This large 30 degree shift in latitude at some places, had tremendous consequences for several thousands of years thereafter, because the slowly melting ice at the location of the old pole started raising the levels of the oceans which thereafter caused recurring floods throughout the world. First along the low lying seashores then in low lying inland areas that became accessible to the rising water levels of the oceans.The Mediterranean was particularly vulnerable, and whereas once it had been populated by many thousands of people, so it slowly gave way to breeching waters from the west, overriding the ridge that connects Africa to Spain.
The Ice sheets though, continued to melt as they retracted northwards to the polar region, and sea levels continued to rise.
Eventually, the Bosphorus, a ridge of land connecting Turkey to Greece, was ruptured in approximately 5,550BC in quite dramatic fashion, as the inrushing waters would have quickly scoured all soil, sediments, and loose rock down to the bedrock from the passage to create what is estimated to have been a cataract the flow of which would have been in excess of a thousand times greater than that now observed during flood stage at Niagra Falls, or approximately twelve billion (12,000,000,000) cubic feet per minute.
The Black Sea Basin was the cradle of an agrarian society, where the transition from hunter-gatherers to farming took place, and many thousands would have perished. The populace would have had to leave their food resources behind to climb out of the basin, and many would have found themselves isolated, to perish on hill tops that they had climbed as flood waters in surrounding valleys rose.

The flood account as portrayed in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, predating the biblical account considerably, does no less than to record the beliefs and fairytales that surrounded a perfectly natural geological event, that sea bed archaeological research in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea has confirmed as part of the historical record, from evidence found, mapped and dated from the ocean floor.
What is particularly noticeable, is that the Black Sea, is the only geographical site in the whole world, where a substantial, sudden deluge occurred, and the inevitable loss in human lives. Elsewhere in the world, hundreds of thousands of people, did NOT perish, as they had considerable time to evacuate their villages and towns to higher ground, or course, they weren’t even affected by the rising waters.
[FONT=&quot]In the Sumerian version, the pious Ziusudra is informed of the gods decision to destroy mankind by listening to a wall. He too weathers the deluge aboard a huge boat. Noah's flood lasts a long time, but Ziusudra comes to rest within seven days and not the near year of the Bible. He does not receive a covenant, but is given eternal life.

The Biblical flood account is none other than a regurgitated story of perfectly natural events, added to by earlier pagan cultures in their mythologies, be they Egyptian, Sumerian, Finn/Ugur or even Californian Indians.
In reality, there were probably hundreds of individual flood events throughout the world, which is why so many ancient cultures have tradtional descriptions of great variety of these events.

IF one wishes to primarily look for evidence, then today it is to be found under the oceans, and as far as the bible is concerned, that would be the Meditteranean and Black Seas. Both of these contain typical trademarks of human habitation that can be dated with great accuracy.

Remember, if anyone wishes to ascribe a biblical event to great antiquity, then anything beyond 200,000 years is just not possible, because humans didn't exist. Nearer to date, we have to come this side of language development and finally the written word.

All in all, given the geological and archaeological evidence of the last 15,000 years, the only historical period within which a biblical flood event could have occurred, the complete flood event as portrayed in the Bible, is total fabrication, based upon pagan religious stories that circulated throughout the Mesopotamian plain for generations.

http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/Sumer-origins.htm

[/FONT]

 

[thaumaturgy]

I'm guessing your pictures are all pre-flood. Such landforms are ancient as were the mountain of Ararat which obviously existed before the flood.

Boy howdy it sure would help if the Flood Geologists could get their stuff together and point out when the Flood showed up in the rock record. Because right now it is this jelly-like mass of "pure conjecture" that mystically morphs to answer any uncomfortable question posed to a Flood Advocate.

Guess that's the real value of Flood Geology not having any technical details or requiring anything like a knowledge of geology, physics, chemistry or biology!

Neither side of this debate is reasonable

Actually the Flood Side is pretty unreasonable. The Non-Flood side has quite a bit of data on its side. But if "data" is the real problem if the "Flood side" of the debate could muster some data it might help their cause.

(only myself). The flood wasn't either/or.

Wellllll...to be fair a GLOBAL FLOOD that destroyed every living creature save representative examples that impacted the entire planet over the course of a very short time (1 year or less) doesn't leave much wiggle room for the "other side". So indeed it is "either/or".

Again, unless data doesn't matter. Because anyone can make a claim and when shown the lack of data or data indicating their claim is likely incorrect, they can run away with some "It isn't either/or" declaration.

If the Flood was real and of any real value to humanity shouldn't it be patently obvious?

The violence or lack thereof depends on the volume and speed of water and the topography it encounters. All degrees, from extremely violent to extremely gentle are found in most large floods.

Interesting that you reference data from known flood deposits (localized). But strange we don't find any evidence for a Global Scale flood using any of this type of data to my knowledge.

So as usual Flood Geology wants it both ways.

So it must have been with Noah's flood.

You are, of course, familiar with correlation in geology, correct? So we should at least be able to find a globally correlatable "event" showing the scale of enough water deluging the planet occuring simultaneously (even if it had some "backwater" parts to the event) and marking a single point in time, with sufficient speed and force to flood the world in a year time frame and showing no contemporary dry land events (ie no desert dune deposits, no sub-aerial or aeolian deposits).

In order to positively prove the Flood (because we geologists don't have to disprove a mythical event) the Flood Advocates must show:

1. Globally correlatable event in a narrow time horizon.

2. Said global event must be solely "underwater"

3. Said global event cannot allow for any subaerial exposure contemporaneously with that event. (Otherwise it is hardly a "global Flood" as described in the Bible).

4. Said global event is also marked by extreme thanatocoenoses (death assemblage fossil beds).

To my knowledge in the past 3 centuries of geologic investigation no such singular event has shown up in the geologic record.

It is up to Flood Geologists to point us in the direction of their data. NOT to just assume that some "Mash up" of poorly understood geologic and hydrologic dynamics would make this over here but not that over there. You see? It is matter of understanding the whole picture along with the details.

Of course I've yet to see a Flood Advocate who covered all the bases, or seem to understand simple geology on this baord. But I keep waiting in anticipation!

This is another reason why there is no uniform world wide evidence of the flood. Such evidence doesn't occur uniformly.

Actually you are quite wrong there. Of course we don't necessarily expect the same type of deposit everywhere in a flood, but we do expect to see globally correlatable markers of some sort. So far the Flood Advocate camp has yet to provide this.

Geology is much more than just pointing at rocks in the distance and saying "Oh, some water and junk laid that down there and some muddy gunk sloshed up over there and, uh, it was real violent here an...ummm. I dunno, splooosh! Slosh-slosh-slosh!"

Because you see, geologist have to get down and dirty and make a picture that includes everything form the individual grains they see all the way up to the global scale.

I highly recommend Flood Geologists take the following courses:

Intro Geology (101)
Historical Geology
Sedimentology
Stratigraphy (you'll learn about "correlation")

That will be a very good start. It will teach you all the important terms and why you can't just mush it all up in your head and hope it sticks to something.

Believe me, it is a real discipline. And while many of us went into Geology because we didn't want to hurt our brains working in harder fields like chemistry and physics, it does involve a lot of work to understand (and strangely enough we all learned the hard way we still had to learn a lot of chemistry and physics to do it!) But no one is kept away from it. It's easier to get ahold of the fundamental data than anything in the Bible. All you have to do is walk outside. But you can't just stare blankly. You have to learn how to read it.

As most of us learned from our geo profs: this is likely the only planet you'll ever see in your lifetime, so it's good to learn a thing or two about it.

 

[RobertByers]

You are living in a dream world if you think the Earth was flat 6000 years ago, and remember for your so called flood geology to work you need high ground to supply the sediments needed to form the geological column.

Here’s a back of a beer mat calculation of how much water is needed to flood the Earth.


The Earth’s radius at sea level is ~6378135 m

The Earth’s radius at the top of Everest is 6386983 m

The Earth’s volume at sea level is 3.46 x 10^20 m cubed

The Earth’s volume at the top of Everest is 3.47 x 10^20 m cubed

The volume of water needed to flood the Earth is 1 x 10^ 18 m cubed

The volume of water in litres to flood the Earth is 1 x 10^ 22 litres

The amount of water presently on Earth is 1.26 x 10^21 litres

So to flood the Earth up to the top of Everest we would need 8 times more water than is presently on earth.

Stop deluding yourself

I'm not deluding and your not reading carefully.
No Everest. Small mts only if that.
The earth was probably flat. The continents breaking up dug out sediment enough to supply a covering for the earth by the way.
Your calcuations are based on wrong premises.
Just keep the seas at say 10% deep as they are now and thats one place to account for the water.
We know water in canada.
Rob Byers

 

[thaumaturgy]

...

 

[huggybear]

If you believe that there was at some point a global flood that covered all the mountains: [BIBLE]Genesis 7:19[/BIBLE]
Then where did the water come from? If it used to be underground, then the crust would have to have a porosity of about 50%; in reality, we find that it is about 1% due to the extreme pressures (source: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=EJ278607 ). If it came from the atmosphere, then the sheer enormity of the amount of water present beforehand would introduce similar problems, as well as raise the question of why it didn't rain beforehand.

i think the a better question is "where did all the water on the earth come from in the first place" the current theory says that it all came from comets,

well im not so sure

 

[Washington]

I'm not deluding and your not reading carefully.
No Everest. Small mts only if that.
The earth was probably flat. The continents breaking up dug out sediment enough to supply a covering for the earth by the way.
Your calcuations are based on wrong premises.
Just keep the seas at say 10% deep as they are now and thats one place to account for the water.

The Earth was probably flat? Not according to the Bible.

Gen7:17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. ​

At the very least Mount Ararat was covered--- at 5,137 meters (16,854 FT or 3.2 miles above sea level) it is not a high mountain---The 100 highest mountains in the world all top 7,000 meters.

In any case, it would take 2.08 X 10^9 cubic kilometers of water to cover the Earth to the height of Mount Ararat. That is 1.63 times as much water in all the world's oceans, 1.321 X 10^9 cubic kilometers.

We know water in canada.

But you're obviously a little rusty on your Bible.

 

[Baggins]

I'm not deluding and your not reading carefully.
No Everest. Small mts only if that.
The earth was probably flat.

Let's stop there and consider your evidence for this statement.

What you don't have any?

I am shocked

i am also sarcastic

The continents breaking up dug out sediment enough to supply a covering for the earth by the way.

Making up ad hoc fantasy statements based on zero evidence just makes you look foolish if you wish to debate scientists who have evidence for their views

Your calcuations are based on wrong premises.

Which premises would they be

Just keep the seas at say 10% deep as they are now and thats one place to account for the water.

, that is not very clever is it.

We know water in canada.

very possibly, some of you also, no doubt know science, it is just that you don't

 

[AV1611VET]

In any case, it would take 2.08 X 10^9 cubic kilometers of water to cover the Earth to the height of Mount Ararat. That is 1.63 times as much water in all the world's oceans, 1.321 X 10^9 cubic kilometers.

God could have sent 10 times that much water, if He would have wanted to.

 

[AV1611VET]

Making up ad hoc fantasy statements based on zero evidence just makes you look foolish if you wish to debate scientists who have evidence for their views

Scientists need to keep looking.

Let me make a suggestion: Build a machine that can do this ---

[bible]2 Kings 6:17[/bible]

--- and until you do --- science isn't qualified to speak against God.

 

[thaumaturgy]

God could have sent 10 times that much water, if He would have wanted to.

God is an awesome God! I bet if he wanted to he could have poured hot molten lead on the earth enough to cover it 10 billion-trillion-miles deep too!

Too bad he couldn't do the following:

1. Atone mankind to himself in the days of Noah without killing everyone but 8 people and a breeding pair of each animal. (You have to wonder how wicked the animals were being that they all had to die except the breeding pair "kinds".

2. Atone mankind to himself in the time of Jesus without incarnating himself as a man and subjecting himself to brutal humiliating torture to appease himself. (But also leaving the door open to some of the followers of his new "avatar" to hold a grudge of deicide against the older "believers" when indeed if the sacrifice hadn't happened the new believers would hardly have a religion.)

God is indeed an awesome God. But he does seem to have some limitations on how things have to be done. I wonder who exactly sets the rules that God simply must obey .

 

[thaumaturgy]

Scientists need to keep looking.

AV needs to keep looking in the library for a book on LOGIC.

Here's a LOC library call number for an intro text:

BC108 .S85

Here's a Dewey Decimal System call number for another logic book:

160 B561c

A library is where books are often kept. You can find the Bible in most libraries as well, so you don't have to get scared when you are there. But do keep in mind there are many other books there as well. Do not be afraid of them. They contain useful information that can help you navigate these tricky waters of "thinking".

Let me make a suggestion: Build a machine that can do this ---

[bible]2 Kings 6:17[/bible]

OK:

how 'bout this:

[BIBLE]2 Kings 6:12[/BIBLE]

[BIBLE]2 Kings 6:18[/BIBLE]

--- and until you do --- science isn't qualified to speak against God.

Qualifications? Yee ha!

 

[AV1611VET]

AV needs to keep looking in the library for a book on LOGIC.

Here's a LOC library call number for an intro text:

BC108 .S85

Here's a Dewey Decimal System call number for another logic book:

160 B561c

The only number I'm interested in is 1611.

 

[Psudopod]

Scientists need to keep looking.

Let me make a suggestion: Build a machine that can do this ---

Scientists have been looking, for hundreds of years. It's not just that they haven't found the evidence, it's that the evidence says the flood is impossible.

I completely agree that god could have sent ten times as much water. He could also have removed that water from existence. The question (for Christians who believe in a literal global flood at least), is why did he not only get rid of the water, but any evidence that the waters have ever been there.

Science can only look at what is there. If you believe that there was a flood and god is responsible for it and it's clean up, then you cannot blame the scientists for believing what god has told them through his creation.

 

[AV1611VET]

Science can only look at what is there. If you believe that there was a flood and god is responsible for it and it's clean up, then you cannot blame the scientists for believing what god has told them through his creation.

Yes, I can --- the greatest [secular] scientist that ever walked this earth, after viewing God's [fallen] creation, summed it up thusly:

[bible]Ecclesiastes 12:13-14[/bible]

Scientists need to go with the Documentation, which explains it better than just empirical observation of His creation.

 

[thaumaturgy]

The only number I'm interested in is 1611.

Too bad for all them suckers who done some thinkin' in the intervenin' 397 years!

But you know, I bet even in 1611 those fine men who translated the Bible knew you don't have prove someone elses' unevidenced contention.

But then I have met almost no modern fundamentalist who really had the mental skills people mastered 397 years ago.

 

[AV1611VET]

Too bad for all them suckers who done some thinkin' in the intervenin' 397 years!

But you know, I bet even in 1611 those fine men who translated the Bible knew you don't have prove someone elses' unevidenced contention.

But then I have met almost no modern fundamentalist who really had the mental skills people mastered 397 years ago.

You know, Thaumaturgy, when you wax sarastic, you wane making sense.

Or maybe it's just me, because I have no idea what you just said.

Your middle paragraph isn't even a coherent sentence.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Scientists need to go with the Documentation, which explains it better than just empirical observation of His creation.

Uh, AV, in case you were confused (as usual) about how science works:

empirical evidence trumps mere documentation pretty much every single time.

Documentation can be flawed. It can carry errors. Empirical data is harder to deny.

You see, you seem to be in a constant battle with what is plainly in front of you in the very rocks that are all around you.

But that's understandable. You'd rather trust the words of an often anonymous set of writings than what is plainly available to even the most ignorant sheepherder with more than a passing interest in looking at the ground.

You hold one particular translation of an often anonymous group of writings of often unknown provenance or even placement in time of writing as superior to even common sense of observation.

I suspect if you were on trial for a crime your approach to evidence would change quite dramatically!

(Note: I'm sure you would be on trial for a crime you didn't commit which would make it all the more fun to watch as you became a hard-core empiricist with an almost undying love of "strict chain of custody" for evidence.)

Oh there I go, taking part in the usual "revenge fantasy" that so many Fundamentalists like to do. My apologies.

 

[AV1611VET]

Documentation can be flawed. It can carry errors. Empirical data is harder to deny.

The best example I can come up with to show how you guys constantly trump your own evidence is the one I've used before. It's a simple question which, I suspect, is somewhat embarrassing for a "scientist" to answer:

• Was the first Periodic Table of the Elements wrong?

I really don't look forward to anyone answering this because, first of all, it won't be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." Second of all, the answer, I'm sure, will be encouched in plenty of rhetoric. So I'd rather not see anyone "answer" it at all.

But, of course, it's okay for you guys to trump your own evidence --- just don't let the Bible do it, right?