Local Flood vs Global Flood

[Forum Monk]

This picture illustrates northern europe with the sea level 120 meters below present levels:




It serves beautifully to support the idea that the preflood landscape and coastlines could have been quite different that they are today. Large parts of these lands are still under water in the post flood world we live in. I suppose much flood evidence is not found because it is still underwater.

[Gman]

the Bible doesn't say it came to rest at the top of the Mt Ararat. it says 'it came to rest onTHE MOUNTAINS of ararat" there is no indication that the ark is on top of ararat at all.

This is what I've been saying all along... It is apparent you are not reading any of the articles but are simply trumpet blasting..

that is what the word 'but' is for in 6:9 all means all even here except for 8 people. the exception doesn't change the meaning of the word 'all'.

Scripture contains many more references to the whole world that we recognize to mean "the known world" rather than the entire planet. No one can reasonably say that to interpret "world" in the writer's context makes a lie of the text.

Many people back then didn't even know about how big our world really is as we know today.

Marco Pollo was one of the first westerners to travel the Silk Road to China in the 1200's..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Pollo

Also the Americas were considered a land mass around 1507, or perhaps a bit earlier but not 2000 years ago...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas

Hope this helps...

[archaeologist]

This is what I've been saying all along... It is apparent you are not reading any of the articles but are simply trumpet blasting

how can you make this accusation? i quoted the article throughout my post. i may have missed a word that threw me off and i will go back to check but again, even if the ark landed in the mtns. of ararat, it does not provide evidence for a local flood.

Many people back then didn't even know about how big our world really is as we know today

so you are saying that God who wrote the Bible through men is imcompetant and could not communicate what He knew to be true? men didn't write the Bible as paul or peter attest, it was given BY God.

also is God is powerless that he couldn't move noah and the animals to a new location, & provide for them? by the way, zoos prove that animals indigenious to one land can live in other areas as long as they get the right food.

Marco Pollo was one of the first westerners to travel the Silk Road to China in the 1200's..

you do not know history do you?

we know that the minoans were great sailors and sailed to places modern man thought unreachable, there are roman ships found sunk off the coast of argentina.

i forget but i think it was ptolemy the geographer who was able to measure the circumferance of the world to almost the known modern measurement.

people had an idea.

Also the Americas were considered a land mass around 1507, or perhaps a bit earlier but not 2000 years ago...

let's just say that your expertise is not history. if the book and movie 1421 told us anything, it was that the ocean currents were kown and known that they could be travelled.

Dr. Charles Hapgood, wrote a great book,The maps of the ....Kings {not sure of the word there} which details ancient maps and that the ancients knew about the world.

the list could go on and on. don't stop your thinking at some textbook.

BY THE WAY, i do not consider wikipedia credible.

as to your point that marco polo was one of the first to reach china--that is very debatable as there is a city in eastern china which believes it was founded by or populated by a lost roman force. discovery channel did a t.v. show on it.

This picture illustrates northern europe with the sea level 120 meters below present levels

i can agree with the map except about girbraltor, i think though i can't prove it and need more information, that it may have been closed as well.

[BGoodForGoodSake]

Marco Pollo was one of the first westerners to travel the Silk Road to China in the 1200's..

you do not know history do you?

we know that the minoans were great sailors and sailed to places modern man thought unreachable, there are roman ships found sunk off the coast of argentina.

Off the coast of Argentina?
Really, could you cite the reference?
lol

[archaeologist]

charles pellegrino in his book, 'unearthing atlantis' pg. 110-11:

In a.d. 198, scuba divers located a shipwreck dating to the 1st century b.c. in rio de janerio, brazil. the wreckage contains several hundred long necked urns with distinctive handles. the urns were used to carry water, wine, oil, and grain on long voyages. they are called amphora and ---there can be no doubt about this-- they were manufactured in Rome. the ship was found in a sheltered bay, which suggests that it was manuevered there by a crew that had survived the journey.

in 1987 a second shipwreck was discovered in venezuela. again its cargo is undeniably roman. given the the exceedingly low probability of any single shipwreck ever being unearthed, the brazil and venezuela finds must represent only a small fraction of the vessels that actually made it to america...

sorry that i got the name of the country wrong, i was doing it from memory.

ancient man did a lot more than they are given credit by modern man. now pellegrion has taken a big hit onhis credibility with his association with jacobovici and'the jesus tombs' fiasco but that book was written when he was considered a credible scientist. {well volcanologist}.

[Gman]

how can you make this accusation? i quoted the article throughout my post. i may have missed a word that threw me off and i will go back to check but again,

All the way back on page one...

even if the ark landed in the mtns. of ararat, it does not provide evidence for a local flood.

No.. It proves that the ark stayed in one location.. Contrary to your belief, most scholars agree that the setting for Noah originated in the Mesopotamian area. In Genesis 1-9 the text mentions places-names only in the environs of Mesopotamia. Not China, Alaska, Australia or Korea.. Sorry.

so you are saying that God who wrote the Bible through men is imcompetant and could not communicate what He knew to be true? men didn't write the Bible as paul or peter attest, it was given BY God.

Again tell me what was God's objective? To destroy the planet or man? Who sinned the earth and the animals too?

also is God is powerless that he couldn't move noah and the animals to a new location, & provide for them? by the way, zoos prove that animals indigenious to one land can live in other areas as long as they get the right food.

Again this was answered in the article..

Why didn't God send Noah on a long trip?

If the Genesis flood were local, why didn't God just sent Noah and his family packing. Once they were out of the Mesopotamian flood plain, God could have judged the unrighteous without making Noah go to all the trouble of building a huge ark. It is true that God could have done this, although there are some good biblical reasons why He chose not to do so. Why did God make the Israelites march around Jericho for seven days prior to the wall falling down? Why did God make the Israelite look upon the bronze serpent to be healed of snake bite in the wilderness? Why did Jesus make the blind man go to the Pool of Siloam to heal his blindness? Were any of these things actually required for God to do His work? No! God could have just wiped out all the evil people in the world, as He did later to the all the Egyptians' first-born. Maybe God had good reasons for Noah to build the ark? God has a purpose for each person of faith to join Him in preaching His message. God's plan will be accomplished regardless of our participation in it. However, God gives obedient humans the privilege of participating in God's plans. Likewise, God had a plan for Noah, part of which was for him and his sons to demonstrate their commitment and perseverance to the Lord.

One will notice in the judgments that God renders, He almost always gives a warning to those who are being judged. For example, God sent angels to Sodom before it was to be destroyed,14 sent Jonah to Nineveh to warn them of the judgment to come,15 and will send two prophets to warn the people of the earth of the final judgment.16 The building of the ark was a great testimony of the coming judgment, since it was preached for 100 years during the building of the ark. The New Testament states this idea directly, since it says that Noah was a "preacher of righteousness":

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; (2 Peter 2:4-5)

If God had told Noah to just migrate away from the flood area, the people would not have been warned of the impending judgment. Ultimately, they were without excuse in their rebellion against God, since the impending judgment was proclaimed to them for 100 years before it happened. Likewise, God will send two preachers for 1260 days prior to the ultimate judgment of God.16 Those who get on God's ark (Jesus Christ) will be saved from the judgment and pass from death to eternal life.

you do not know history do you?

we know that the minoans were great sailors and sailed to places modern man thought unreachable, there are roman ships found sunk off the coast of argentina.

let's just say that your expertise is not history. if the book and movie 1421 told us anything, it was that the ocean currents were kown and known that they could be travelled.

Dr. Charles Hapgood, wrote a great book,The maps of the ....Kings {not sure of the word there} which details ancient maps and that the ancients knew about the world.

the list could go on and on. don't stop your thinking at some textbook.

So with your theory the ancient Jews had an entire map or a topographical understanding of the entire world, correct? After all God is supplying them the information, right? Since you say you believe in the Bible, where is your scripture to back this up? This information would have been useful back then to know..

i forget but i think it was ptolemy the geographer who was able to measure the circumferance of the world to almost the known modern measurement.

Yes Ptolemy... Are we talking about the same guy who formulated a geocentric model that the earth is at the center of the universe and the sun and other objects go around it? Also from history please don't forget that most people back then also believed that the world was flat too.. Including the religious God fearing one's too..

God did not keep them in one local geographical area...oh and where is that verse found?....Genesis 1:28

No... That was a commandment from God for man to be fruitful and increase in number and to fill the earth and subdue it. The question is did man fulfill this commandment out? Also why is God commanding Noah again to fill the earth and subdue it in Genesis 9:7? Why is he repeating the commandment again if man had already done it before in Genesis 1:28?

Since you believe that man inhabited the entire world around the time of the flood, please answer the question again, why don't we find human skeletons mixed in with these supposing global flood layers or with dinosaur bones?

[Forum Monk]

Yes Ptolemy... Are we talking about the same guy who formulated a geocentric model that the earth is at the center of the universe and the sun and other objects go around it? Also from history please don't forget that most people back then also believed that the world was flat too.. Including the religious God fearing one's too..

For historical accuracy we know Eratosthenes was the first to measure the diameter of the earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

Also there is no evidence that ancient people commonly believed the earth was flat. That is purely myth.

[archaeologist]

No.. It proves that the ark stayed in one location

no it doesn't. there is no place in the Bible that states where noah lived when he built the ark--YOU DO NOT KNOW if it stayed in the same spot. there is only one time where a place name was given adn that was for cain-- Gen. 4:15-- every other mentioning of a place is a general loction--earth.

Again tell me what was God's objective? To destroy the planet or man? Who sinned the earth and the animals too?

i quoted this verse previously-- gen. 6:13: "...i am surely going to destroy both them and the earth..."

Again this was answered in the article..

what was said in the article did not answer anything.

Maybe God had good reasons for Noah to build the ark

yes it was a global flood. God gave man 120 years of warning while noah was building an ark, the ark was for safety not a warning. IF it was a local flood, there would be no use for the ark--nada, none.

If God had told Noah to just migrate away from the flood area, the people would not have been warned of the impending judgment

that is just wrong. AND you haven't answered my question as to :if it was a local flood, what stopped the sinners from MOVING?

So with your theory the ancient Jews had an entire map or a topographical understanding of the entire world, correct?

no thatis not my theory. i was responding to the 'statement' you made, without proof, that the ancients had no knowledge of the shape of the world. i am saying they did, with proof. also since the book of timothy tells us that the Bible was written by God through man, it is quite conceiveable that God knew the shape of the earth and would relate it to his instruments.

Also from history please don't forget that most people back then also believed that the world was flat too.. Including the religious God fearing one's too..

without evidence toback this up, it is an empty statement. from history, archaeology and other fields WE KNOW that they knew the world was round. kids of the modedrn age thought the moon was made of green cheese, did that mean that everyone thought it was made of green cheese? no.

Also why is God commanding Noah again to fill the earth and subdue it in Genesis 9:7? Why is he repeating the commandment again if man had already done it before in Genesis 1:28?

are you really being serious when you ask these questions? please tell me because these questions are just innane and i want to make sure.

THE EARTH WAS EMPTY, IT NEEDED TO BE SAID AGAIN THAT IT WAS OKAY TO MULTIPLY AND SPREAD OUT.

question is did man fulfill this commandment out?

the same for this question. in the last 2000 years, how much has the population grown? are they all in one area? they had the same command from God...where are they? do you know how many people were on the earth at the time of the flood?

Since you believe that man inhabited the entire world around the time of the flood, please answer the question again, why don't we find human skeletons mixed in with these supposing global flood layers or with dinosaur bones

1. we do & we have

2. do you think the animals and the humans scattered inthe same direction and went to the same places?i donot think any man would enter a cave with certain animals even if both have a common enemy.

Dr. Charles Hapgood, 'Path to the Poles', Chapter 11, page 290:

In a limestone cavern on the borders of the Lagoa do Sumidouro some three leagues from Santa Lucia, Dr. P.W.Lund excavated the bones of some 30 individuals (human) of both sexes and various ages. The skeletons lay buried in the hard clay overlying the original red soil forming the floor and were found mixed together in great confusion--not only with one another but with the remains of the Megatherium and other Pleistocene mammals...all the bones, whether human or animal, showed evidence of having been contemporary with one another.

In other caves investigated by Lund, the bones of ancient man were found alongside those of the formidable Smilodon, a giant feline which became extinct during the last pleistocene times. Rferring to the evidence from these adnd other brazillian fossilferous caves, the Marquis de Nadaillac wrote: '...doubtless these men and animals lived together andperished together, common victims of catastrophes, the time and cause of which are alike unknown. (42:25)

it goes on, if you want to read a christian's book then read Dr. Rehwinkel's 'The Flood'.

the evidence is there, one just has to look honestly. now i will ask you to provide credible sources for yours and deem's statements to back up your contentions that it was a local flood. so far you have given squat.

[archaeologist]

i am waiting gman--your turn.

[archaeologist]

still waiting--there are lots of explanations i have asked you for yet you fail to provide anything. how do you expect me to understand your position if you fail to provide proof for your statements

[Gman]

still waiting--there are lots of explanations i have asked you for yet you fail to provide anything. how do you expect me to understand your position if you fail to provide proof for your statements

Still waiting for what? I can't keep repeating what I say, I would rather debate someone who wants to take this seriously... I don't have time for this...

no it doesn't. there is no place in the Bible that states where noah lived when he built the ark--YOU DO NOT KNOW if it stayed in the same spot. there is only one time where a place name was given adn that was for cain-- Gen. 4:15-- every other mentioning of a place is a general loction--earth.

We don't know where Noah lived? Again most scholars agree that the setting for Noah originated in the Mesopotamian area. In Genesis 1-9 the text mentions places-names only in the environs of Mesopotamia.. From Genesis 10 onward, we encounter references to places beyond the Mesopotamia.

Also from scripture we learn that in Christ's Jewish bloodline that Noah and his father Lamech were apart of it... Luke 3:36. Are you suggesting that the Jews did not originate from the middle east? If not where?

So we generally know where the ark was built and where it landed.. In one central area...

i quoted this verse previously-- gen. 6:13: "...i am surely going to destroy both them and the earth..."

I already answered this on the bottom of page three...

what was said in the article did not answer anything.

Well if you refuse to debate it, then stop asking me the same questions over and over again..

yes it was a global flood. God gave man 120 years of warning while noah was building an ark, the ark was for safety not a warning. IF it was a local flood, there would be no use for the ark--nada, none.

If there was no use for an ark, then we wouldn't be having this conversation now because we would be dead..

that is just wrong. AND you haven't answered my question as to :if it was a local flood, what stopped the sinners from MOVING?

What stopped the sinners from escaping? This was answered in the middle of page two... The flood ultimately killed them..

On top of this, according to Luke 17:27 they simply ignored the warnings and continued in their party ways..

no thatis not my theory.

Then why did you imply it?

i was responding to the 'statement' you made, without proof, that the ancients had no knowledge of the shape of the world. i am saying they did, with proof.

So where is your proof that the Jews knew of the entire topography of the world as we know of it today?

also since the book of timothy tells us that the Bible was written by God through man, it is quite conceiveable that God knew the shape of the earth and would relate it to his instruments.

Oh I believe that God knows the shape of our world... So then where in scripture does it say that the earth's shape was round? Why were religious people debating about the shape of the world in ancient times then? It would have been a slam dunk..

without evidence toback this up, it is an empty statement. from history, archaeology and other fields WE KNOW that they knew the world was round. kids of the modedrn age thought the moon was made of green cheese, did that mean that everyone thought it was made of green cheese? no

Well in early classical antiquity the earth was commonly believed to be flat.. Ok, with this argument lets just say that most people did believe that it was round.. Where is your proof that the ancients knew where Australia, Antarctica, or the Americas were then?

are you really being serious when you ask these questions? please tell me because these questions are just innane and i want to make sure.

THE EARTH WAS EMPTY, IT NEEDED TO BE SAID AGAIN THAT IT WAS OKAY TO MULTIPLY AND SPREAD OUT.

Yes again thanks for confirming that Genesis 1:28was a commandment by God.. Again, the question is did man fulfill God's commandment? When does man ever fulfill God's commandments? Do you?

the same for this question. in the last 2000 years, how much has the population grown? are they all in one area? they had the same command from God...where are they? do you know how many people were on the earth at the time of the flood?

Again... According to the Bible, the people lived in one geographic location before the flood. It wasn't until later that God scattered the people over the face of the earth with their different languages.. Genesis 11:1-9.

1. we do & we have

2. do you think the animals and the humans scattered inthe same direction and went to the same places?i donot think any man would enter a cave with certain animals even if both have a common enemy.

Dr. Charles Hapgood, 'Path to the Poles', Chapter 11, page 290:

Well fossils of the croMagnon and the neaderthal races are widely distributed in caves of Europe too. These were not human..

http://www.sentex.net/~tcc/humfoss.html

it goes on, if you want to read a christian's book then read Dr. Rehwinkel's 'The Flood'.

I already own the book.. Plain and simple Rehwinkel is not an authority on archeology..

the evidence is there, one just has to look honestly. now i will ask you to provide credible sources for yours and deem's statements to back up your contentions that it was a local flood. so far you have given squat.

Well good for you then...

[Gman]

For historical accuracy we know Eratosthenes was the first to measure the diameter of the earth. //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

No offense Monk, but according to your sources "Although Eratosthenes' method was well founded, the accuracy of his calculation was inherently limited."

Does this map by him look like the whole world?

Also there is no evidence that ancient people commonly believed the earth was flat. That is purely myth.

In early classical antiquity the earth was generally believed to be flat as suggested by the early greek maps of Anaximander and Hecataeus...

I guess I will ask you the same question proposed to arch then.. Lets just say that most people did believe that it was round back then.. Where is the proof that the ancients knew where Australia, Antarctica, or the Americas were then if God revealed it to them?

[archaeologist]

Still waiting for what? I can't keep repeating what I say, I would rather debate someone who wants to take this seriously... I don't have time for this...

don't have time to explain your position or back up what you say with evidence? you have been called onyour statements, time to pony up.

We don't know where Noah lived? Again most scholars agree that the setting for Noah originated in the Mesopotamian area. In Genesis 1-9 the text mentions places-names only in the environs of Mesopotamia..

as i said before, inthose chapters only 1 {ONE} name was given for a location. it had to deal with cain--gen 4:13--where do you get more than that? yes scholars believe but DON"T KNOW for a fact. we do not even know where eden was. (sorry, forgot we are given an end point but that doesn't mean they lived in its shadow)

Also from scripture we learn that in Christ's Jewish bloodline that Noah and his father Lamech were apart of it

they were part of the bloodline BUT that doesn't mean they started in mesopotamia. it may be where they landed but you still have no origination point.

you suggesting that the Jews did not originate from the middle east

not at all just telling you that you have no clue where the start point was. we know the end point.

I already answered this on the bottom of page three...

i wouldn't have asked it if you had.

Well if you refuse to debate it, then stop asking me the same questions over and over again

of course i will ask it again--you did nt answer the question. posting an article which doesn't answer the question is not answering the question.

If there was no use for an ark, then we wouldn't be having this conversation now because we would be dead..

i would love to hear you explain this...where do you come up with such nonsense?

What stopped the sinners from escaping? This was answered in the middle of page two... The flood ultimately killed them..

On top of this, according to Luke 17:27 they simply ignored the warnings and continued in their party ways..

so when the rain started they just partied and refused to find paths to safety? if it were a local flood, they would have found a way to escape.

So where is your proof that the Jews knew of the entire topography of the world as we know of it today?

i am waiting for you toback up your statements that the ancients new the world was flat. you said it but you have shown nothing that proves the statement is true.

Why were religious people debating about the shape of the world in ancient times then

for the same reason i have to deal with this website--people do not believe the truth.

Well in early classical antiquity the earth was commonly believed to be flat

this is just the same statement, not evidence or proof.

Where is your proof that the ancients knew where Australia, Antarctica, or the Americas were then?

knowing something is round does not mean you know the location of every land mass

When does man ever fulfill God's commandments? Do you?

i can't believe you just said that, that is just utterly inane. you are saying that God was forced to use a local flood because man disobeyed God yet God doesn't provide blocks so they can't escape the rising waters. also over-population did not force others to relocate?

Again... According to the Bible, the people lived in one geographic location before the flood. It wasn't until later that God scattered the people over the face of the earth with their different languages.. Genesis 11:1-9.

that is not proof for the pre-flood civilization. that was AFTER the FLOOD. the scriptures prior to the flood tells us they had spread out.

Well fossils of the croMagnon and the neaderthal races are widely distributed in caves of Europe too. These were not human

all that proves is that you listen to secular people who do not have the truth amd ignore evidence to the contrary.

Plain and simple Rehwinkel is not an authority on archeology..

i see that you dismiss anyone who disagrees with you. the man is a theologian and this is a theological issue not an archaeological one.

your failure to provide anything credible, undermines your position greatly. you can't back up your statements with any facts nor can you give substantial answers when asked, you avoid dealing with the issues raised because you have nothing to stand upon--not history, archaeology, science nor scriptures.

[Forum Monk]

No offense Monk, but according to your sources "Although Eratosthenes' method was well founded, the accuracy of his calculation was inherently limited."

Does this map by him look like the whole world?

My apologogies Gman. I was correcting the statement that Ptolomey was the first to measure the diameter of the earth. I didn't realize the issue was who was the first to MAP the earth.

In early classical antiquity the earth was generally believed to be flat as suggested by the early greek maps of Anaximander and Hecataeus...

I guess I will ask you the same question proposed to arch then.. Lets just say that most people did believe that it was round back then.. Where is the proof that the ancients knew where Australia, Antarctica, or the Americas were then if God revealed it to them?

First , let me say the context was Ptolomey and the statement was made that people believed the earth to be flat, but if Eratosthenes knew the earth was spherical hundred of years before Ptolomey, why would the people of Ptolomeys time think it was flat? Also, Anaximander developed a cosmological model which claimed the earth was suspended in a spherical cosmos. He also believed the earth was round several hundreds years before Eratosthenes. His maps are misleading because he did not use the modern projection techniques used by cartographers today. I don't know when the round earth concept was realized but I would bet very early when men began traveling by boat and realized that on the other side of the horizon was more water, not void. Don't forget, standing on the beach, the visible horizon is only 5 kilometers away. Many lakes and inland seas are wider than this and so the idea of sailing into the horizon was not unknown.

[Gman]

don't have time to explain your position or back up what you say with evidence? you have been called onyour statements, time to pony up.

Yes I believe its time for you to pony up.. You can start with the geological record... Explain this then... If you want to take them one at a time that would be fine by me too..

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 1024 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 1027 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 1023 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 1026 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 1026 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 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 1027 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 1015 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 1013 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 1013 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.

as i said before, inthose chapters only 1 {ONE} name was given for a location. it had to deal with cain--gen 4:13--where do you get more than that? yes scholars believe but DON"T KNOW for a fact. we do not even know where eden was. (sorry, forgot we are given an end point but that doesn't mean they lived in its shadow)

Arch, I don't have time for this... What about Genesis 2:11-14? Where do the rivers Pishon, Gihon, Tigris and the Euphrates reside today currently?

they were part of the bloodline BUT that doesn't mean they started in mesopotamia. it may be where they landed but you still have no origination point.

not at all just telling you that you have no clue where the start point was. we know the end point.

All the Biblical and archaeological evidence points to the Mesopotamia areas.. I'm sorry, anything contrary to this is just not Biblically sound... Believe me I'm not making this up...

of course i will ask it again--you did nt answer the question. posting an article which doesn't answer the question is not answering the question.

Ok, where exactly do you think the article was off? What specifically?

i would love to hear you explain this...where do you come up with such nonsense?

Again where is your evidence for the global flood?

so when the rain started they just partied and refused to find paths to safety? if it were a local flood, they would have found a way to escape.

How do you know what the land looked like back then? According to Ryan and Pitman there was a huge ice melt from the Eurasian ice sheet which would have altered the terrain considerably there. Most of the area could have been surrounded with lakes and raging rivers which could have also prevented them from escaping.

Also, who says they weren't sleeping at night and were taken off guard?

i am waiting for you toback up your statements that the ancients new the world was flat. you said it but you have shown nothing that proves the statement is true.

I already did... I said check out the early greek maps of Anaximander and Hecataeus who portrayed the earth as a flat disk floating in the ocean...

for the same reason i have to deal with this website--people do not believe the truth.

And what is the truth?

knowing something is round does not mean you know the location of every land mass

That is correct Arch.. My point exactly...

When does man ever fulfill God's commandments? Do you?

i can't believe you just said that, that is just utterly inane.

Well I just did... Do you follow all of God's commandments? Does anybody?

you are saying that God was forced to use a local flood because man disobeyed God yet God doesn't provide blocks so they can't escape the rising waters.also over-population did not force others to relocate?

Maybe God did provide blocks.. Who is to say that he didn't?

that is not proof for the pre-flood civilization. that was AFTER the FLOOD. the scriptures prior to the flood tells us they had spread out.

No... God commanded them to spread out... The question is did they follow that commandment..

all that proves is that you listen to secular people who do not have the truth amd ignore evidence to the contrary.

No man is an island arch... I use to believe in the global flood too. But when I examined the evidence further I found it didn't hold any water nor is it necessary to meet God's objective...

i see that you dismiss anyone who disagrees with you. the man is a theologian and this is a theological issue not an archaeological one.

It's both the Biblical and archaeological evidence that you need to support.. The global flood at this point can't support both...

your failure to provide anything credible, undermines your position greatly. you can't back up your statements with any facts nor can you give substantial answers when asked, you avoid dealing with the issues raised because you have nothing to stand upon--not history, archaeology, science nor scriptures.

Well that's funny because that was what I was going to say to you too..