Continuing the discussion from The Problem with the Flood:
Patrick, the problems I have mentioned have not been shown to be false. It is not proven scientific fact. I have just come back from visiting Mt. St. Helen’s and the catastrophic events precipitated by this explosion were ten times as great as the scientists thought they would be, and yet, Mt. St. Helen’s is a small volcano, compared to Yellowstone National Park, which is at least 2500 times larger as an eruption which still shows evidence of great heat, of levelling not just one mountain, but a whole mountain range. (with the potential to erupt once again…). Evolutionary theory continues to postulate slow gradual change, when in fact geologic evidence demonstrates very little of that, but rather that catastrophic changes predominate, particularly those associated with water. It was great and interesting to visit Yellowstone after having just seen Mt. St. Helen’s, and I hope to go there again some times as well.
The Mt. St. Helen’s myth that you cite has been debunk several times. Do some research, understand the real geology of Mt St. Helen’s. The true facts are out there - Google Mt St. Helen’s Creation myth and see the mountain of evidence debunking the claim made by YEC’s.
@Eddie , I think first of all I agree that we should not conflate dates with physical evidence. In other words, the physical evidence does not have a date printed on it. But physical evidence does have indications of water vs wind, of rapid vs slow burial, of sequences or non-sequences, of groupings of animals/fossils. It is not that those who propose a global flood must prove it happened at a certain time, but rather that their evidence is as viable as the evidence of slow gradual deposition and removals.
Local flood of the type described in scripture would be impossible, more impossible than a global flood, and nonsensical from a pragmatic perspective (why build a boat for it?) so that doesn’t really help the situation in terms of correlating anything to scripture.
The thing is that the slow and gradual theory for sedimentation, mountain uplift, tectonic plates movement has often been shown to be presumptuous and eventually shown to be unlikely with demonstrable aberrations. There is more and more indications of water influence than wind influence, and that many sedimentary layers were formed in shorter periods of time leaving no time for organic soil formation, nor for erosion of the magnitude we would expect had things taken as long as postulated to form new sedimentary layers.
If there was no archaeological record of destruction, that might mean that the destruction left no evidence, or that the civilizations would not have left much evidence of their existence, and thus obviously not of their destruction. We can argue existence from evidence, but not non-existence from lack of evidence.
However, as far as dates are concerned, just as various theories apply to the dating of patriarchs in scripture, so various theories apply to the dating of various events in Mesopotamia and Sumeria and Egypt. It has been discovered that the lineage of Egyptian kings for example often describes multiple simultaneous kings, rather than a simple line of descent.
Back to geology, it is unlikely that erosion of the Grand Canyon took place slowly and gradually. It is more likely the result of a catastrophic breakthrough of water, based on the size and shape of the canyon, as well as the general topography. Mt. St. Helen’s showed the destruction of one third of a mountain taking place in ten minutes, as well as the dramatic movement of mud, trees, water, and ash. Formation of a bulge/cone in the crater occurred at the rate of 5 to 8 feet per day. If conditions permitted, that could mean 3000 feet uplift in a year. Yellowstone (according to vulcanists) is a huge crater or caldera formed from an eruption that levelled several mountains in one blow, releasing 2500 times as much ash in a short period of time. Apparently Long Valley in California is a caldera, another example of such a huge explosion. All to say that the potential upheavels in the earth today may yet be only a small indication of the dramatic and rapid upheavals that occurred in the past. It would make a global flood much more feasible, when that type of dynamism is considered.
Eddie, in addition to looking at geological dating methods and processes of sedimentation, vulcanism, and erosion, some healthy scepticism is valuable. Scientists recovering dinosaur dna, and then discovering it was actually human dna, would make it valuable to be cautious in accepting all results without question. But later scientists actually recovering dinosaur dna (supposedly 80 million years old) would make one question the dating techniques, especially when also considering the non-decomposition of various dinosaur tissues and non-permineralized bones of supposedly millions of year old fossils.
In 1994 the prestigious journal Science shocked the scientific world by publishing sequence data from DNA retrieved from dinosaur bone said to be 80 million years old.
DNA is a fragile molecule, and so it breaks down quickly. Measurements of DNA stability suggest it could last thousands of years, at best, under the likely conditions.
But 80 million years was just too incredible for other skeptical scientists. Eventually, these skeptics were vindicated—as it became apparent that the original researchers had sequenced contaminating human DNA, not dinosaur DNA.
However, in 2012 a different group of researchers published new results supporting the discovery of actual dinosaur DNA. These new results appear much harder to disprove, with the researchers applying multiple checks against contamination from non-dinosaur sources.
The preservation of dinosaur DNA doesn’t make sense from an evolutionary perspective. But it fits biblical history, whereby dinosaurs lived thousands of years ago, not millions of years ago. To find out more from Creation Ministries International visit our website creation.com
I hope you are not adamant about that. Noah supposedly had a hundred years advance warning. I doubt it would take even a year to walk out of that area before the flood came. Animals could find their own way out much quicker, especially the birds.
I’m open to a somewhat slightly longer timeframe, but have seen no justification for it yet. If we were to redate 100,000 year old stuff to 10,000 years, that would just highlight the relativity of dating methods, which would mean that 10,000 yrs would not be conclusive, but merely a rounded off number with a somewhat high degree of error.
Given all the stories about a similar large flood in every culture, it would seem that there is significant evidence for a flood. These flood stories deal with survival of man and animals, and not just one particular family among many. That is significant. Actual date? Debatable, but discarding the entire scenario is to diminish all the stories, not just the biblical one, although the biblical one seems to be the most comprehensive and complete and logistical.
Which claim? What is the particular claim by YEC that you are contesting?
@DougK @jlock, @GJDS, @Eddie, @Christy , @Patrick
Please, allow me to drop in on this subject with a completely different approach and results, based on the principle “if you can’t express it in mathematics, then it ain’t science but just another personal opinion.”.
I start with a summary of the scientific facts:
- There have been at least 30,000 but no more than 80,000 Floods.
- The last four were approximately 240, 150, 60, and 15 millennia BD. The next is building up.
- All Floods were global. But sometimes some areas were left untouched.
- The Floods left an unmistakable trace: a layer of dust between two layers of limestone.
- The Floods are responsible for the periodical extinction of species.
- The Floods are ultimately caused by the Sun.
- All humans living now on Earth are descendants of a single woman who survived the 150 millennia Flood.
- All males living now on Earth are descendants of a single male who survived the 60 millennia Flood.
- All humans living now on Earth are descendants of one of 33 women who survived the 15 millennia Flood.
- Almost every so called scientific fact related to the prehistory and the Floods by geologists, prehistorians, and many others, is incorrect.
The human civilizations that were destroyed by the 240 ky, the 150 ky and the 60 ky Floods left a large CO2-footprint and lasted long enough to have developed space travel and to colonize planets in other solar systems before their civilization was destroyed and thefew survivors had to reinvent Stone Age.
Having dropped this bomb on the table, I invite you to read my four posts about the “History of the Earth” to get the general idea and read the very interesting book “The Seven Daughters of Eve” by Bryan Sykes to understand item 6, 7 and 8.
Earth has a built-in disease, which causes the Floods. This disease is the result of two properties of our Earth:
The whole interior of Earth, from the underside of the crust to the edge of the solid central core is not liquid, what they told me at school 75 years ago, nor is it solid as stated in Wikipedia. It has to be gas!
The Earth is expanding due to a still unknown radiation from the Sun.
I trust that we can proceed step by step through the items.
Yeah… I don’t buy it. But it sounds like it would make a good movie. 
> 32 Noah was five hundred years old, and Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. … 9 These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, [g]blameless in his [h]time; Noah walked with God. 10 Noah [i]became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.
So, we hear that Noah was 500 years old, had three sons, and then God told him to build the ark. Not before he was 500. While God could have told him sometime after, it seems the 500 years old refers mostly to when God told him, since he unlikely had all three sons the same year, since he had only one wife, according to the account, unless they were triplets. He possibly had the three sons shortly after he was 500. He possibly took somewhat less than 100 years to build the ark, not more, but perhaps spent quite some time just gathering materials. But regardless, in whatever time it took him to build the ark, he certainly could have walked out of any flood area much quicker than that if it was merely a local flood. Perhaps walked to Greece, or to the Alps, or to Pakistan. Potentially could have used horses or camels to travel. Furthermore, what would the local flood be limited by… what geographical features would contain it to allow the mountains to be covered?
Is the hundred year warning reliable? I think it is, in a rounded off way. It is the turning point, the only indication we have of a transition. Maybe it was ninety years, but certainly not one year. If it takes a man with a good crew and modern tools and steel barges at least four years to build an ark today, it would likely have taken Noah somewhat longer. It is also not reasonable to suppose that the wickedness of men only began when Noah became 500 years old. It was a progressive thing, increasing in intensity and significance. Giving people 100 years to repent was most gracious on God’s part. This is the best information we have and the best scenario, given the information available. When God said man’s days would be 120 years, many commentators even supposed that God had already told Noah all of this even 20 years before his 500 birthday… that it would be 120 years until the flood. I don’t agree with that, but even so, we can see that the way the story is told, with the detail of the days, months for the flood itself, if it had only taken a short time to build the ark, then that would have most likely been indicated. The logical conclusion is that the warning was given several decades before the flood arrived, most likely about 100 years.
Genesis appears to be a straight forward account and recording of things that happened. The level of detail, the sheer detailed size of the ark for example, the actual length of time of flooding and recession, the names of the patriarchs, the recording of their age and the age at birth of sons, the explanation of the fall, the recording of their rebellion against God, the indications of technology and music, the calling of Abraham and the events of his descendants all are written and told in a way to be accepted as real and verifiable, not in the mythical sense of the earth being placed on the back of a turtle or held up by a demi-god named Atlas. If genesis was written as mythological speculation, we would not have YEC people arguing for its veracity. The only reason we have speculations about Genesis as non-historical is because of interpretations of physical data about geology, space, and genetics. The greek stories are perceived as myth because of their inherent qualities; they seem to be myths simply because of the way they are written. Yet, the fact that there are many of these similar stories in different cultures also seems to indicate that there is a common basis for them; that seems to be the actual event as portrayed in scripture.
A significant local flood would not seem to be physically possible unless the geography of the area was dramatically and hugely changed, which takes all of the discussion in another direction entirely, since this is the argument of YEC, that the flood was a time of dramatic global tectonic upheaval. The latest theory I have heard, (not YEC), is that an asteroid impacted earth with enough force to cause a violent increase in volcanoes and mountain building on the opposite side of the globe. When such events can be postulated, a global flood should not be seen to be an impossible event. Another recent theory is that volcanoes are not the result of magma plumes, but rather magma sheets covering thousands of square miles a few kilometers under the crust of the earth. All of which is to say that the geological story is not yet finished, and will likely see some dramatic changes in the future.
It would be difficult to speculate outside of one’s cultural historical background. Like saying if you weren’t a Christian, would you still be against divorce? However, to argue that others do not argue for a global flood, and therefore Christians also should not do so, is not a good argument. If all other people believed that some races were inferior to others, and that slavery is okay, then we could not argue that christians should also not think that their faith had some particular different insight on that point. It’s just not a good way to make an argument.
The problem with data in this case, is that it is “historical”; in other words, it is not repeatable in the sense of designing a rocket propulsion system. Interpretations of the data depend on a lot of factors. I have said in the past that potentially the universe could be much older, but yet that the creation of Adam and Eve, and subsequent events need to be taken as fact, and in the realistic context of scripture, without us superimposing our own ideas and conditions on it. There is much difficulty with the data, and a lack of alternative interpretation. In other words, the scientific emphasis on evolution is simply too religious. It deserves to be challenged constantly, both in the details and in the overall framework.
Thus, the actual physical data, the way layers of sediment are formed, the action of geysers and hotsprings, the formation of volcanoes and destruction of mountains, the creation of grand canyons, the position of fossils, the absence of transitionals, the polystrate fossils, the finding of dinosaur dna and tissue, the location of water living fossils in the highest points on earth… all of these things cannot simply be excused under the religion of evolution, which makes time and chance its main sacraments.
Great! Tell that to Spielberg and he might be tempted to come back from retirement to make another disaster movie: the Pacific Ocean flowing at 500 km/h over the Rocky Mountains. (The money it brings in will go 50/50 to Compassion and to some missionaries who are providing a home, education and a future for stray children. No kidding.)
Let Google search for “Well preserved whale “ and tell me if you know a better explanation for a whale ending four million years ago on a much older mountain.
James Cameron got lots of experience with wet sets on Titanic, and he’s still working… Too bad all this BioLogos forum participation gets us nowhere in making important Hollywood connections. 