The Flood

Hi,

I know the Flood isn't strictly to do with origins, but it seems quite connected to it

So my question is, the Noah's Flood was worldwide how did plants survive?

solarwave said:

Hi,

I know the Flood isn't strictly to do with origins, but it seems quite connected to it

So my question is, the Noah's Flood was worldwide how did plants survive?

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According to YECism, plants aren't alive to begin with, otherwise there would have been death before the Fall.

solarwave said:

Hi,

I know the Flood isn't strictly to do with origins, but it seems quite connected to it

So my question is, the Noah's Flood was worldwide how did plants survive?

Click to expand...

There are a lot of hard questions along the line of your concern. However, it happened that you picked up the easiest one, even I can answer it: Plants survived by their seeds.

Plants survived as well as aquatic life but often wonder about amphibians. There is a school of thought that the Flood was local, as appealing as that is I don't think so. My biggest problem with the Deluge (Flood) is the logistics involved with these creatures managing to circumvent the globe afterwards.

The only thing I can figure is the oceans were nowhere near as deep. Australia causes real problems to say nothing of isolated islands all over the place.

To be honest these ideas so far don't seem to explain it.

juvenissun said:

Plants survived by their seeds.

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There are a lot of codependent things in nature that creationists often point to as evidence against evolution. For the moment I'd like to ignore the evolutionists response to that and look at the YEC explanation for these codependent systems. If everything was destroyed in the flood, how did these systems manage to spring back to life after the flood waters receded? Also, wasn't the surface of the earth reshaped, how did these seeds stay on the surface? If they floated, why aren't they distributed a little bit more randomly, instead of being found in geographical locations that support evolution (biogeography)?

Every time I consider something new for the flood it makes less and less sense.

philadiddle said:

There are a lot of codependent things in nature that creationists often point to as evidence against evolution. For the moment I'd like to ignore the evolutionists response to that and look at the YEC explanation for these codependent systems. If everything was destroyed in the flood, how did these systems manage to spring back to life after the flood waters receded? Also, wasn't the surface of the earth reshaped, how did these seeds stay on the surface? If they floated, why aren't they distributed a little bit more randomly, instead of being found in geographical locations that support evolution (biogeography)?

Every time I consider something new for the flood it makes less and less sense.

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This is because you have the 6000-year number printed in your mind. Give it a few million years. There will be much fewer questions.

That there are as many creationist theories as there are interpretations of the creation story is actually not a boon for creationism.

solarwave said:

Hi,

I know the Flood isn't strictly to do with origins, but it seems quite connected to it

So my question is, the Noah's Flood was worldwide how did plants survive?

Click to expand...

Noah's Flood was a large local flood. As for plants, plants seem to return to areas previously flooded. In Missouri, we had what is termed a "thousand year flood" in 1993. The area has recovered quite well since then.

I'm supprised there arn't more people who think it was worldwide here

Faith.Man said:

Noah's Flood was a large local flood. As for plants, plants seem to return to areas previously flooded. In Missouri, we had what is termed a "thousand year flood" in 1993. The area has recovered quite well since then.

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Interesting. I've never thought to link this system to the Global Flood.

So, we can do an exercise by taking the largest 1000-year flood ever known to a local flood and project the curve to 6000-year (linear) flood to see how much water (logarithmic) it will take. It will most likely not work because such amount of water will overspill the drainage basin. So, there will simply no 6000-year local flood.

juvenissun said:

Interesting. I've never thought to link this system to the Global Flood.

So, we can do an exercise by taking the largest 1000-year flood ever known to a local flood and project the curve to 6000-year (linear) flood to see how much water (logarithmic) it will take. It will most likely not work because such amount of water will overspill the drainage basin. So, there will simply no 6000-year local flood.

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You might add the following books to your reading list:

Amazon.com: Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History (9780684810522): William Ryan, Walter Pitman: Books

http://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Flood-Scientific-Discoveries-Changed/dp/0684810522http://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Case-Earth-David-Snoke/dp/0801066190

I do not believe you can extrapolate data from a 1000 year flood in one geological area and apply it to another, and then speculate on Noah's flood based on this extrapolation. That is not scientific. The topography is quite different. That is not the point I was trying to make.

That the Himalayas were under water as a result of forty days and nights drizzle is wildly ridiculous. In fact, according to Ian Plimer, the atmosphere would have to have been 99.9% water vapour, so all the lunged animals would have drowned, and the air pressure would be 840 times the current normal, both of which factors would send the temperature to a comfortable 3500C. It wasn't so much constant rain as the entire earth being at the base of a cosmic, encompassing, boiling Niagra Falls, which no ark could have survived.


Think of the volume of water required to cover all the mountains of the earth. 40 days and 40 nights indicates a local flood, not the entire earth under 8.8 kilometers of water.

BrendanMark said:

That the Himalayas were under water as a result of forty days and nights drizzle is wildly ridiculous. In fact, according to Ian Plimer, the atmosphere would have to have been 99.9% water vapour, so all the lunged animals would have drowned, and the air pressure would be 840 times the current normal, both of which factors would send the temperature to a comfortable 3500C. It wasn't so much constant rain as the entire earth being at the base of a cosmic, encompassing, boiling Niagra Falls, which no ark could have survived.

Think of the volume of water required to cover all the mountains of the earth. 40 days and 40 nights indicates a local flood, not the entire earth under 8.8 kilometers of water.

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If one is a YEC and global flood believer, they have to answer one additional question to those you've posed. Where did all the water go? It's certainly not on Earth, or in Earth!

I was leaving the rest to the imagination.

It's a lot of water that needs to be accounted for - both its arrival and its disappearance.

Faith.Man said:

You might add the following books to your reading list:

Amazon.com: Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event that Changed History (9780684810522): William Ryan, Walter Pitman: Books

http://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Flood-Scientific-Discoveries-Changed/dp/0684810522http://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Case-Earth-David-Snoke/dp/0801066190

I do not believe you can extrapolate data from a 1000 year flood in one geological area and apply it to another, and then speculate on Noah's flood based on this extrapolation. That is not scientific. The topography is quite different. That is not the point I was trying to make.

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I said: use the largest one.

juvenissun said:

This is because you have the 6000-year number printed in your mind. Give it a few million years. There will be much fewer questions.

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Humans did not exist a few million years ago, as has been pointed out to you more than once. The 'flood' is supposed to have occurred during the time of Noah, which was 6,000 years ago, give or take.

juvenissun said:

I said: use the largest one.

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You clearly do not understand how the annual exceedence probability flood calculation system.

wow, there is a lot of misinformation here about what the theory postulates. Nobody has to believe it, but at least know what it says.
briefly, here are a couple things that it postulates
1) the question about the strata and layers, all the geologic column would be flood layers via hydrologic sorting. (like the black and white sand between 2 pieces of glass that you used to be able to buy in the mall, they always separate into countless layers despite only 2 types of sand.)
2) not enough time for the rain. most of the water came from underground. The bible says there was water above and below the firmament so if the firmament is the ground then when the "fountains of the deep" broke open then that is saying the water also came up.
3)where did the water go? it's still here. The earth is probably lumpier (more mountainous) due to the dirt filling voids where the water used to be. If it the earth was perfectly flat, we would have plenty of water to cover it all. Marine fossils on the tops of mountains is evidence that it was flatter in the past.
4) how did all the animals migrate? One theory says it must have happened during the ice age when enough water was trapped at the poles to reveal one supercontinent. Another theory postulates that the earth was still moving, settling into the now empty aquafirs so the topography was such that everything connected.
5)how did flora survive? Not all did. we find lots of extinct specimens. thinking that .0001% (or even less) of all discrete seeds/plants netting us 50-70% of all discrete species does not seem unreasonable

papakapp said:

1) the question about the strata and layers, all the geologic column would be flood layers via hydrologic sorting. (like the black and white sand between 2 pieces of glass that you used to be able to buy in the mall, they always separate into countless layers despite only 2 types of sand.)

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First, tell me more about these black and white sand thingies. They sound interesting.
Second, if hydraulic sorting was responsible for the deposition of the geologic column, we should see an overall fining upward trend. This is in no way the case. Failing that, there should at least be some segregation based on grain size. We do not see this either. There are conglomerates with meter-size and larger boulders in a silty matrix. Any hydraulic sorting whatsoever would eliminate this.
Not to mention the fact that there are intact carbonate systems, entire reefs preserved in strata of virtually every age. If the flood occurred in a year's time, there is no way these systems could possibly originate, grow, flourish, and the be buried and preserved. Have a look at the Permian Capitan reef complex for one of the more spectacular examples.
Also: Preserved eolian dune complexes (view the Colorado Plateau for outstanding examples), paleosols, and the preservation of ichnofossils (Early Cambrian to recent) and root traces (Silurian to recent) would not be possible were the flood theory of sediment deposition true.

Of course one need only look at the fact that there are innumerable faults that cut some sedimentary layers and not others, and growth structures adjacent to some faults to see that this theory is not true.

And that's not even going in to angular unconformities or dikes that cut through sedimentary strata.

2) not enough time for the rain. most of the water came from underground. The bible says there was water above and below the firmament so if the firmament is the ground then when the "fountains of the deep" broke open then that is saying the water also came up.

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From where? Were there large reservoirs of water in the subsurface? If so, please point out the exit points, as well as explaining structurally how the crust could support these large cavities, both pre- and post-flood.

3)where did the water go? it's still here. The earth is probably lumpier (more mountainous) due to the dirt filling voids where the water used to be. If it the earth was perfectly flat, we would have plenty of water to cover it all. Marine fossils on the tops of mountains is evidence that it was flatter in the past.

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Please point out these 'dirt filled voids'.

The earth was not perfectly flat, since the bible mentions mountains and hills prior to the flood.

Marine fossils on the tops of mountains (Actually, let me correct this: the fossils are not ON the mountains, they are, in fact MAKING UP the mountains)are evidence that
a. The flood did not deposit our sedimentary column (how would the sediment be deposited, lithified, and then uplifted in one year?), and
b. That plate tectonics functioned in the past and are still functioning in a way similar to that observed and theorized by the geologic community.

The geography in the bible is essentially identical to the geography today. If, as I think you are hinting at, the 'catastrophic plate tectonics' theory supplied by so many creationists were true, this would not be the case.

You know. That, and the whole 'if catastrophic plate tectonics was true, it would have produced enough heat to sterilize the surface of the earth' thing.

4) how did all the animals migrate? One theory says it must have happened during the ice age when enough water was trapped at the poles to reveal one supercontinent. Another theory postulates that the earth was still moving, settling into the now empty aquafirs so the topography was such that everything connected.

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Yep, I was right. Catastrophic plate tectonics. Already discussed that, so we'll move on.

Which ice age was this? The most recent one? The one before that? There are quite a few preserved in the rock record (Oh! Another refutation of the 'flood strata' theory!) If you say the most recent, then bummer, the animals were all over the place already. If you say the one before that, bummer again! Still got animals all over. I think that's pretty much the case unless you go back to the Neoproterozoic ice age. But wait. If that were the correct one, then why weren't all the other ice ages documented in the records of the civilizations present post-flood?

So which was it?

5)how did flora survive? Not all did. we find lots of extinct specimens. thinking that .0001% (or even less) of all discrete seeds/plants netting us 50-70% of all discrete species does not seem unreasonable

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Yes, there are many extinct species. We find them (and their roots and root traces) dispersed throughout the sedimentary record (Rats. There's that darn record again, screwing with our flood). So all these seeds floated about in the waters of the flood for at least 40 days, but more likely a year, and then they plopped down on the ground and started growing happily.

1. On water logged soil? I don't think so. Of course, none of that soil would be in place if the flood was as energetic as floodies hypothesize (waters of the deep, depositing the whole sedimentary record, etc. etc.), it would have been stripped away but the currents.

2. Let's assume the soil survived and was miraculously not water logged. The seeds sloshed and swooshed around in the currents of the flood for a month or a year or whatever you'd like, then settled down and grew happily. But, since they floated around so much, they all got mixed up and fell randomly on the ground, causing species from all over to grow near each other. Do we see this today? No, because of course the seeds lucky enough to fall on their native ground out-competed the other plants, re-establishing their old habitats. So we should see evidence for this initial homogeneity and subsequent takeover by native species. Do we? Nah. So there's only one option left:

3. Calm flood! The seeds got picked up floated straight up, hung out for a while, then floated right back down into their natural environments. Problem solved! Except that by gosh we couldn't have deposited a sedimentary column in a calm flood. Dang. Back to square one.

You can tell me how it was done, right?

I await your comment.

Edit: Welp, upon further consideration of your opening statement, it appears that what you've outlined may or may not be your personal favorite theory. If it is, great, and I await your comment. If not, that's cool, I'll just hang on for Juve or whoever else to take a whack at this. Thanks!