No actually it would go up and out (probably more out than up). There would be prevailing winds to help to move it along. There is nothing that would constrain the air movement to be only up (except for your imignation). And it has to reach a high enough altitude to get the cooling you need for rain.
lol, you still didn’t answer the question. It is geologic fact that these rivers flowed a different direction that long ago.
It seems that what you require of me isn’t required of your preferred view. There is no time in history that Cush and Havilah(where scripture places it), ever matched up with the sources for the Tigris and Euphrates which are miles apart in the mountains of Turkey. Cush is in Africa unless we redifine it to some place no ancient document has it.
In your ‘reasonable’ river scenario, I would love to see how they get a river that encompansses Cush (which is NOT in Arabia or Mesopotamia or Turkey), to join with the Tigris and Euphrates, and do what you want them to do–namely have Eden as the source for these rivers. Such a view of necessity MUST move Cush, Havilah, or both to make them join with the Tigris and Euphratess, sources. I would love to see their article.
While mine might be fantasy, theologians for years have proclaimed the fantasy of any other way of putting these rivers together.
To refresh your memory:
" Some have gone further and claimed the geographical allusion is to a fantasy. For Cassuto, ‘The Garden of Eden according to the Torah was not situated in our world.’ Skinner claimed: ‘it is obvious that a real locality answering the description of Eden exists and has existed nowhere on the face of the earth…(T)he whole representation (is) outside the sphere of real geographic knowledge. In (Genesis 2) 10-14, in short, we have…a semi-mythical geography.’ For Ryle, ‘The account…is irreconcilable with scientific geography.’ Radday believed that Eden is nowhere because of its deliberately tongue-in-cheek fantastic geography. McKenzie asserted that ‘the geography of Eden is altogether unreal; it is a Never-never land.’ Amit held the garden story to be literary utopiansim, that the Garden was ‘never-known,’ with no real location. Burns’ similar view is that the rivers were the entryway into the numinous world. An unusual mixture of views was maintained by Wallace, who held that the inclusion of the Tigris and Euphrates indicated an ‘earthly geographic situation,’ but saw the Eden narrative as constructed from a garden dwelling-of-God motif (with rivers nourishing the earth) combined with a creation motif, both drawing richly from those motifs as found in Ancient Near East mythological literature. " John C. Munday, Jr., "Eden’s Geography Erodes Flood Geology,"Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1996), pp. 123-154,p.128-130
If someone had succeeded in doing a geography for these rivers based upon these guys wouldn’t be saying what they say. Maybe trying something else is a good idea.
Lots of wild conjecture.
For an alternate view on Cush, see the NET Bible notes:
Even Genesis 2 says the Tigris flows east of Assyria.
How do you know the “land of Cush” doesn’t refer to the land of the father of Nimrod, whose name was Cush?
You have to understand how deep that basin was–4-5 km deep. There are WALLS in that basin and until the air tops the walls, Basicaly at current sea level, the air can’t go outward. And convection in the center of the basin will also happen carrying the clouds even higher.
The depths were taken from a gravity model It matters not whether Noah was on those waters, the basin would experience rain like never before seen
And how wide is that basin? It isn’t a chimney.
Back of the envelope calculation here, but using your numbers the water would be rising 2.8 ft/hr or .046 ft/min.
Normal updraft speeds in a thunderstorm are roughly 12,000 to 25,000 ft/min. The normal updraft in fair weather cumulus is 600 ft/min and it doesn’t produce rain.
So the rising water would not contribute to a constant rain.
Back of the envelope. Feel free to check my math.
5 km = 16,404 ft
8 months = 240 days = 5760 hours
16,404 / 5760 = 2.8 ft/hr or .046 ft/min
A convection cell, once started is self sustaining and generally isn’t bigger than a few miles. No it wasn’t a chimney but the air was constrained by the surrounding air which was constrained by the walls of the basin. I calculated if I recall correcty 1/1000ths of the earth’s atmosphere was packed into that basin because of the increase in pressure/density of the air at the bottom.
Sigh, Your calculation assumes that the basin gently fills with no turbulence. There would be all sorts of things going on in this basin. let’s go to Wiki about thunderstorms. They often arise from thermals–differential heating. but without the moisture, they can’t produce rain. The desciccated basin had no moisture to offer for rain (does that remind one of something said in the Scripture?). Secondly the rising air column over such an area with now moisture pouring in from the east would produce some clouds, which would then produce differential heating and thermals.
The average thunderstorm has a 24 km (15 mi) diameter. Depending on the conditions present in the atmosphere, each of these three stages take an average of 30 minutes.[10]
### Developing stage
The first stage of a thunderstorm is the cumulus stage or developing stage. During this stage, masses of moisture are lifted upwards into the atmosphere. The trigger for this lift can be solar illumination, where the heating of the ground produces thermals, or where two winds converge forcing air upwards, or where winds blow over terrain of increasing elevation. The moisture carried upward cools into liquid drops of water due to lower temperatures at high altitude, which appear as cumulus clouds. As the water vapor condenses into liquid, latent heat is released, which warms the air, causing it to become less dense than the surrounding, drier air. The air tends to rise in an updraft through the process of convection (hence the term convective precipitation). This process creates a low-pressure zone within and beneath the forming thunderstorm. In a typical thunderstorm, approximately 500 million kilograms of water vapor are lifted into the Earth’s atmosphere.[11] Thunderstorm - Wikipedia
I bolded the part about the latent heat re-inforcing the updraft, which then becomes self-sustaining. The generally rising air, some cloud formation, differential heating would all combine to produce rain. I can’t believe I am having to debate this issue. Nature is nonlinear and that is what creates thunderstorms. Indeed, he convection cell was the first thing chaos/nonlinear dynamics was discovered in. Go look up Lorenz.
Estimates vary on the speed by which the Atlantic waters shot into the empty basin.
this guy says max was 40m/s. That is 89 mph
This fellow says the Med went up a few meters per day. filling atthe rate of 90 sv. --that is 90 million cubic meters of water per second. the speed of the water depends on the size of the hole.
Computational fluid dynamics simulations of the Zanclean catastrophic flood of the Mediterranean (5.33 Ma) - ScienceDirect
I go into this because one could start the rain by the turbulence started at the Gibraltar strait and have it move eastward, to create the rain. A numerical simulaton of the influx, using a very small opening, which is not deep enough to bring in the ostracod mentioned by Hsu, has the water moving at 100 m/s
that is 200 mph, which would certainly stir up the atmosphere, causing turbulence, at the east, and once a convection cell started, it’s outwash would force further off areas to go down, and after that even further areas it would force air to rise quicker than the average.
I mention the benthonic ostracod. It lives deep and needs a deep entry to the Med, and that means that the flood was quicker than Perianez and Abril suggest. They are generally just over a year with one case at about 4 years.
"These earliest Pliocene strata contain a benthic ostracod fauna, which could only live in ocean bottom below 1,000 m. The associated benthonic Foraminifera are likewise indicative of a deep marine environment of deposition. The fact that of the deep-swimming planktonic genus Spheroidinellopsis is the dominant (up to 90%) microfauna lends further credence to the concept of a deep Mediterranean in the earliest Pliocene." ~ K. J. Hsu, W. B. F. Ryan and M. B. Cita, “Late Miocene Desiccation of the Mediterranean,” Nature, 242, March 23, 1973, p. 240
You are thinking of this as a slight rise in the sea level , but it is far far more than that.
Further counter clockwise eddies in the sea surface would also help get rain started.
The average rise per day means that these storms would have a constant supply of newly uplifed moisture laden air with which to form another convection cell
Edited to add a quote from this fluid simulation paper above: "“Simulations with a simple zero-dimensional model indicated that the Zanclean flood of the Mediterranean Sea, after the Messinian salinity crisis, was a process considerably fast, involving a time scale of the order of one year.” R. Perianez and J. M. Abril, “Computational fluid dynamics simulations of the Zanclean catastrophic flood of the Mediterranean (5.33 Ma),” Paleaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 424(215), p. 59
The Bible says a year for Noahs flood give or take. No Mesopotamian flood could possibly last that long, and it takes anyone floating on it in the wrong direction. We have here a flood that matches the description of Noah’s flood, and everyone hates it. We have here the Bible talking about a geography as it was at the time of this flood, and everyone hates that as well. The curses point to Adam and eve as having smaller brains because , well, pain in childbirth already existed by 1.8 my year ago, so cursing a Neolithic eve with what she already had, makes no sense to me. Do we christians beleive any fact should match anything in the Scripture? I sometimes wonder.
1 Like
Did you really mean to say that the air was constrained by air? That doesn’t make sense.
Yes there would be turbulence when the filling was beginning. However, as the low basins fill the surface of the water would no longer be turbulent. You would see currents flowing below the surface but at some point the surface would resemble what it looks like today.
You have to lift the warm moist air to produce clouds. The sun warms the surface of the water generating water vapor. This warm air will rise if the surrounding air is cooler. But this would be the same thing that happens today and no constant rain. So what makes conditions in the Med different? We should be seeing the same constant rain today.
What do you calculate the average rise per day to be? And this has to be sustained for a year by your theory.
I believe this is called a false dichotomy.
Yes I did. Have you ever heard of back pressure, or equal and opposite reactions? It is part and parcel of the same thing.
Uh, no we shouldn’t see the same conditions in the med as we did when it was infilling. The thing is filled today; it wasn’t back then. Conditions are decidedly different now.
Sigh, it doesn’t matter what the average is. Turbulence is part of this infilling. Some packets of air will be pushed up and start convections. I don’t think you followed my comment about the speed of the water shooting into the basin at 200 mph (100 m/s). But rising air cools and condenses the water vapor. As Wiki pointed out, once water vapor condenses it gives off lots of heat–540 cal/g, and that heats the air all on its own, causing that air mass to rise faster. There is your heating if it comes from no where else.
On this you might be correct, but I have noticed a trend. If I suggest something might be factual, almost all responders tell me I am out of my freaking mind. lol It is just a trend I have noticed here.
A trend I’ve noticed is you failing to notice the difference between reacting to the specific claims you are proposing as facts and reacting to the idea that the Bible contains facts. Those are not one and the same thing. No one here freaks out at the idea that the Bible contains facts.
2 Likes
Christy, I could sell my concept about the rivers to any geologist, so long as I didn’t mention anything about the Bible. That means it is the Bible that is at fault, not the data.
Edited toadd: I spent 47 years selling geological ideas to investors and I know when the data is solid. Shoot, I got the data from secular geologists who say what I am saying, except that they don’t think about the Biblical issues. Thus, it is again, not the data, it is my use of it to defend God’s word.
It is one thing to correctly describe what happened geologically in the past. It is a different assertion to say the Bible also describes that event. The correspondence is a big part of the “fact” you are claiming. It is the correspondence that people are skeptical about. For reasons other than a stubborn belief that the Bible does not contain facts, I would imagine.
1 Like
Well, it DOES correctly describe it. Are you saying that the Euphrates, the Tigris, the NIle and Pison had nothing to do with Eden? Is that your position, that the Bible doesn’t mention them in relation to Eden? If so, I need to be sure I have a good translation for me to use. lol
I know the geological world far better than almost anyone here. Maybe Martin is a geologist I don’t know. I also can read the words of the Bible, Euphrates, Kush, pison, and Gihon (which encompasses Cush–and only one river does that–the Nile). I know that the Biblical story is saying that those rivers were involved with Eden. Fluvial dynamics requires that a river coming out of Hatay province Turkey, into the Med, HAS to include the upper part of the Euphrates.
I can also read in the Bible that Havilah is near Shur and up against Egypt. That is the Arabian peninsula. Sheesh, you seem to want no connection ever made. Science is about making connections between disparate facts. Einstein connected the disparate facts of what a guy on the train station saw vs. what the guy on the train saw. That brought about relativity. Science isn’t stamp collecting as you seem to think it is; it is theory building, postulation of new ideas. Unfortunately, in this area of thology, Christianity hasn’t had a new idea in about 150 years.
Don’t try to tell me what I think, please. You’re exceptionally bad at it.
2 Likes
In case you missed it, I said 'SEEM to think". that word seem means ‘appears to me’, so I didn’t tell you what you think.
2 Likes
Here is one issue that I feel always disproves , at least to me, the idea that the words God gave were more than just a mythological account at times. But proves that he did inspire humans who used their own world view to explain something.
Joshua 10:13 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
13 So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies.
The ancient Jewish people did believe that the sun was tiny and that it revolves around earth.
So when they saw this and recorded it they did believe that the sun stopped rotating around earth. But we know the sun is huge and we revolve around it. It was not a figure of speech for them. It was not God replying in a way that satisfied their worldview while also speaking to us nowadays.
This is not a problem for me. It does not cause me issues with god or the word to know that the inspiration was not always scientifically exact.
Well, Bible scholars dispute that one. I’ve looked that one up before. A good commentary will explain that in Mesopotamia, the language describing the sun or moon “stopping” or “standing still” related to a full moon being visible while the sun was in the sky. If this happened on the the fourteenth day of the month, it was a good omen and the days of the month were said to be the right length. If it happened on the fifteenth or thirteenth day of the month, it was a bad omen, and could mean cities would be destroyed or enemies would overrun the land. So Joshua was asking for the sun and the moon to be in the position that would lead the pagan astrologers in the enemy camp to take it as a bad omen for battle, giving the Israelites a psychological advantage. Joshua asked for a sign that was meaningful to the people watching, and God listened to his prayer. A miracle is something that is interpreted by the people watching as a sign of God’s power, it doesn’t matter if there is also a natural explanation.
2 Likes
Is the Bible Inspired? Yes. By God? Yes.
Is the Bible the only thing inspired by God? No.
How do we know? Some do and some don’t. Personal experience is the only way. There is no objective evidence that this is the case. All evidence for this is subjective.
So is there anything special about the Bible compared to other things inspired by God? Yes.
It has authority for the Christian religion given by God and man. This is the word of God, written by God using human authors and history as His writing instruments.
Is the Bible inerrant? No. But that there are errors which mar its intent. Nor does it mean people should correct it. God has all the proprietary rights.
Is the Bible infallible? Nothing written in the highly fallible languages of human beings can be infallible. It can be used to lead people astray. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t reliable as communication from God, for those who read themselves with some sincerity. This is a fine life, to be sure. But life is full of them.
Is the Bible self-interpreting? No. Nor should we accept any claim that the Bible is only from God if interpreted correctly that would be too presumptuous as a revision of God’s word as if the interpreter could write the book better than God. How then do we deal with the fact that people interpret the Bible differently? We should not presume that such diversity of interpretation is not God’s intent. It is part of how the best of writers communicate with many different people – they write so the reader hears what they need to hear most.
Especially if the timing and placing are especially remarkable* – that is God’s providential M.O., denied by unbelievers of course, but recognizable by Christians.
*edited to add: (and also possibly to an extraordinary degree or extent of a natural occurrence, more typically seen in Biblical instances of God’s providence)
And how, exactly, does “turbulence” cause air to rise? You know physics surely you can describe the process.
That is the speed in the horizontal direction. What imparts a rather large upward motion to the air?
Warm air rises when it covered in cooler air. It’s call convection.
But it has to rise high enough for the water vapor to condense for this process to start. You have yet to propose a reasonable mechanism to get this initial lift started and then maintain it for a year.