Why is the story of the Flood so detailed?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Science works well when exploring evidence to the best explanation, and hence you arrive at theories which are the best current working model and explanation… but id still caution that in such cases the “best” explanation in many cases can still be erroneous. There is still a significant gap between the question of fact of “was there a global flood” and the theory regarding “what is the best explanation.”

I am philosophically opposed to the idea of Occam’s razor for this very reason… the simplest explanation that answers the facts may yet be a false explanation, whereas a more complicated, convoluted explanation may yet be the true one. If I were in fact innocent of a murder, having been framed by a complex conspiracy, I would hope that the investigators in said case would pursue the true answer, not necessarily the one that most easily and simply “best explained” the relevant facts.

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In the case of a worldwide flood 6000 years ago, the evidence points not only to no evidence that it ever occurred, but that also that something completely different happened. The combination of both positive and negative evidence leaves only one explanation if you insist on it: God cleaned up all evidence that it ever happened, and left false evidence that something else took place.
That explanation is untenable given the the presupposition of God being good, God being truth, and God being holy.

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God saves His people – from themselves, from the world, from sin, and death. When I think about the flood, I like to look forward in Scripture:

Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying out;
my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God. (Psalm 69: 1-3)

Drowning is a sea of sin, trying to swim - by the Law, by personal righteousness, struggling and tiring. However faithful and resolved we are, we cannot save ourselves. We call upon God to deliver us. His “ark” is a plan for salvation, a hope that lifts us out of the polluted waters. His plan, His work, His strength and power. It is specific, detailed, planned, and assured. The ark does not drift or founder, no matter the storms or the waves created by the world of sin and temptation. For this reason, hope has long been pictured as an anchor.

Then there’s the prophecy aspects of the flood story, bringing us through water to salvation:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. (1 Peter 3:18-22)

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You can listen to the heat issues discussed: Intro, Atmosphere, Atmosphere and oceans, Crust, andFinal
Objections of Kuban, Reed, Baumgardner, and Faulkner are addressed.
The RATE study is also addressed. Their need for miracles is an admission that their catastrophic plate tectonics theory is a failure.

Edited to add last link.

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Water deposited sedimentary layers over a mile deep on all the continents demonstrates a need for much water in the past. Makes it impossible for me to eliminate the possibility of a global flood.

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Those sedimentary layers are perfectly sorted over all the continents. A global flood couldn’t do that. The layers contain traces of life, tracks, burrows, nests. A global flood wouldn’t do that. The layers contain vast amounts of salt that formed by evaporation. A global flood wouldn’t do that. I could go on and on.

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Blockquote

Where can i find a good explanation of where the sediments came from and how they were sorted?

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@dlc All of these resources were written by Christians BTW.

A couple of pages on Joel’s web site of interest would be

His web site is full of examples that show there was no global flood in the recent past.

A couple of books of interest that I found to be an enjoyable read.

https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Canyon-Monument-Ancient-Earth/dp/0825444217/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2SPMJSANGGR8J&keywords=grand+canyon+monument+to+an+ancient+earth&qid=1566924088&s=gateway&sprefix=grand+canyon+mo%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Rocks-Time-Geological-Evidence/dp/0830828761/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=bible+rocks+and+age+of+the+earth&qid=1566924151&s=gateway&sr=8-3

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I would be interested in sources also, as intuitively, I know it takes time to grind granite down to sand and clay, with one place I read that the Colorado river once down to the basement igneous rocks, only wears them down a thousandth of an inch a year. Do not know if that is correct, but I see granite rocks in shorelines of a local lake that have not changed visibly in the last 37 years I have watched them. For that granite to be ground up into sand and deposited a mile deep over vast swatches of earth, would take a while.
Plus, there are limestone deposits just as deep, made by the slow deposition of marine life.
It strains credibility to think that granite was ground to sand in under a year.

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That was a super interesting article! I started out pretty dubious but the author does seem to propose some plausible things. Also interested to see what more knowledgeable people make of it!

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Yes I have read the things that he’s written. I also have a doctorate in physics and there is nothing in there that answers my questions. What Brown has done is cherry picked a few bits and pieces of physics and smashed them together in a way that doesn’t tell any coherent story and mixes together different ideas and experiments that are unrelated to each other. Take for example his ‘logical conclusions:’

Logical Conclusions

Because Earth’s radioactivity is concentrated in the crust, three corollaries (or other conclusions) follow:

  1. The Earth did not evolve. Had the Earth evolved from a swirling dust cloud (“star stuff”), radioactivity would be spread throughout the Earth. It is not.
  2. Supernovas did not produce Earth’s radioactivity. Had supernovas spewed out radioisotopes in our part of the galaxy, radioactivity would be spread throughout the Earth. Again, it is concentrated in continental granite.
  3. The Earth was never molten. Had the Earth ever been molten, denser elements and minerals (such as uranium and zircons) would have sunk toward the center of the Earth. Instead, they are at the Earth’s surface.

All three of these are really one single argument, not three separate points. Supernovas do indeed produce some of the elements in our universe but the heaviest ones tend to be produced by an even rarer process of merging neutron stars. A summary of how elements are produced can be found here:

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It turns out that we have observed neutron star mergers in real time and we see exactly those elements heavier than iron being formed (including many of the radioactive elements)! (well the light took hundreds of millions of years to reach us). We know for a fact where all these elements came from and they did not come from the processes Brown describes. This is a great summary of a neutron star merger event:

As for the question of why aren’t the elements evenly distributed throughout the earth when the earth was first forming, that is a good question to ask. The answer relies on the properties of radioactive elements like Uranium, Thorium, Potassium and other Lithophile (or rock-loving) elements and a short accessible summary can be seen here:

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Thanks for the detailed reply. Makes sense when you know what is happening with those heavy elements.

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The NET Bible notes say that the Hebrew text says the water rose 15 cubits and covered the high hills/mountains (hills and mountains are the same word).

So, in a relatively flat land with low hills, the water rising 15 cubits would have covered the hills.

In addition, the Hebrew text says the ark rested on the hills (plural) of Ugarit. If the landed on multiple hills, they must have been small hills, not mountains.

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