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The Deluge

David Henson said:
Of the present world or the one that existed before the flood?
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Wait? Are you claiming now that AFTER the flood that the entire world's topography changed and rose thousands of feet in a few hundred years?
 
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Cavemonster said:
David,
If this is what you were looking for, a thread where you make bald assertions and ignore the evidence presented, then I guess you're welcome to it.
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Bald? What evidence do you have that these are bald assertions? What evidence in this second round have I ignored?
 
paximperium said:
Wait? Are you claiming now that AFTER the flood that the entire world's topography changed and rose thousands of feet in a few hundred years?
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What makes you think that the topography would have had to rise thousands of feet in a few hundred years?
 
David Henson said:
Of the present world or the one that existed before the flood?

"Where the mountains of the world now tower to dizzy heights, oceans and plains once, millions of years ago, stretched out in flat monotony. . . . The movements of the continental plates cause the land both to rear up to heights where only the hardiest of animals and plants can survive and, at the other extreme, to plunge and lie in hidden splendor deep beneath the surface of the sea." - The Neck of the Giraffe, by Francis Hitching, 1982, p. 19.
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My bolding. When did you say the flood happened?
 
David Henson said:
Of the present world or the one that existed before the flood?

"Where the mountains of the world now tower to dizzy heights, oceans and plains once, millions of years ago, stretched out in flat monotony. . . . The movements of the continental plates cause the land both to rear up to heights where only the hardiest of animals and plants can survive and, at the other extreme, to plunge and lie in hidden splendor deep beneath the surface of the sea." - The Neck of the Giraffe, by Francis Hitching, 1982, p. 19.

"The average depth of all the seas has been estimated at 3,790 metres (12,430 feet), a figure considerably larger than that of the average elevation of the land above the sea level, which is 840 metres (2,760 feet). If the average depth is multiplied by its respective surface area, the volume of the World Ocean is 11 times the volume of the land above sea level." - The New Encyclopædia Britannica 1987, Vol. 25, p. 124.
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Yes, the terrain of the earth has changed, but not that much over that time period. You can only imagine that the world was that much flatter if you ignore everything we know about how mountains are formed.

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10k.html
 
Cavemonster said:
Yes, the terrain of the earth has changed, but not that much over that time period. You can only imagine that the world was that much flatter if you ignore everything we know about how mountains are formed.
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I would also like to point out that the quote David Henson provided isn't saying the entire earth was flat, just that the bits that are elevated today weren't always so. Ditto for the bits that are currently flat.
 
David Henson said:
The Bible flood.
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Did you ever provide scientific evidence to back up your assertion about the canopy of water vapour? Seriously, is this mythical water vapour canopy even mentioned in the Bible itself? I don't want some Bible verse you assume to mean "water vapour canopy". I would like to see the text from which you extracted those words.
 
Hokulele said:
I would also like to point out that the quote David Henson provided isn't saying the entire earth was flat, just that the bits that are elevated today weren't always so. Ditto for the bits that are currently flat.
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Not all of it. Just ginormous chunks of it.
 
David Henson said:
what?!
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The biblical flood account is only the last and most well known variant of this story. the so called eridu genesis predates the old testament by some 1200 years. given that it comes from a region with two big rivers it's only to be expected that the locals would get pretty wet feet at times. We actually have the sediments that show that there were floods in that region around the time the creation account places the story.
This story is both older than yours and has other gods and ancestors. Any reasonable arguments why I should trust your story more than this one (which seems to be the oldest recorded version)?

And trying to shift the burden of proof is disingenous. You posit the biblical tale of a global flood is true. So it's your business to prove it is true, not ours to disprove it. And thus far you have done a pretty bad job at that.

Edit: The Eridu Genesis probably isn't the original story, just the oldest record of this motif.
 
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Hokulele said:
I would also like to point out that the quote David Henson provided isn't saying the entire earth was flat, just that the bits that are elevated today weren't always so. Ditto for the bits that are currently flat.
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Further, the author he quotes is not a geologist, but a dowser ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Francis_Hitching

We have a pretty good general idea of how the current landmasses were shaped, going back quite a bit farther than a few thousand years.

Over and above that, the kind of activity that would have allowed for such a flat earth to transform into the world we know today in such a short time period would have required earthquakes and chaos the likes of which this planet has not seen since it started to cool. And yet this cataclysmic uprising of continents and mountain ranges is completely unremarked by history.
 
David Henson said:
That isn't really a question, but a quick response . . . according to Bible chronology the flood took place in 2370 B.C.E. The Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, as we know it from the library of Ashurbanipal (who reigned from 668 - 627 B.C.E.) didn't begin to circulate, fragmentarily, until 1900 B.C.E. so how you came to assume the former was inspired by the later is beyond my comprehension as well as, I would like to think, the comprehension of science.
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You are, I hope, aware that a gigantic part of the population of most places in the times BC (though, certainly not after AD either) did not read - but did indeed pass on stories by means of oral stuff - not the sex or eating things, the talking one, I meant.:)
 
David Henson said:
Up to 15 cubits (22 ft / 6.5 m) of water overwhelmed them. (Genesis 7:20)

It was a global deluge.
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*blinks* Are you really that ignorant of how high the Earth's land mass is, on average, above sea level? The city I live in is 238 metres (781 feet) above sea level. Calgary, Alberta is 1,048 metres (3,438 feet). Boulder, Colorado is 1,655 metres (5,430 feet—more than a mile!). Mount Everest is 8,848 metres (29,029 feet, or about 5-1/2 miles.)

According to uk.answers.yahoo.com, the average altitude of land mass on earth that's above sea level is 686 metres (2,250 feet). So your dinky little 22 foot flood would barely get toes wet more than a few miles inland over most of the Earth.

In fact, we've had worse floods than that in Winnipeg.
 
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Blue Mountain said:
According to uk.answers.yahoo.com, the average altitude of land mass on earth that's above sea level is 686 metres (2,250 feet). So your dinky little 22 foot flood would barely get toes wet more than a few miles inland over most of the Earth.
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Apparently the definition for the term "mountains" was greatly different in the days of Noah from what we call them now. Genesis 7:20 where he gets the 15 cubits figure says this:

Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
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We wouldn't even call that a hill today. I suppose the "mountains of Ararat" where this ark docked were just a little anomaly on the plains.

I wonder if there is also a different definition for the rivers mentioned in Genesis 2, prior to this flood. Wouldn't it be hard for rivers to flow if there were no significant elevation and especially no rain (Gen. 2:5)? Maybe there was some kind of mechanism like there is now at water parks?
 
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Hokulele said:
My bolding. When did you say the flood happened?
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According to Bible chronology the flood took place in 2370 B.C.E.

How accurate is the measuring of millions of years ago which you bolded?

What do you think they use to determine millions of years? The Uranium-Lead clock? The rock has to be free from lead at the beginning, which is usually not the case. We have to assume that it was sealed, which is sometimes not the case. Lead or uranium can seep into groundwater. Sedementary rock can absorb more. Thorium can slowly disintegrate into lead. Then there is the second isotope which decays at a different rate, also forming lead.

The Potassium-Argon Clock, you say? The potassium must be free of argon when the mineral is formed. The system must be sealed for the duration, as with the Uranium-Lead clock.

The Rubidium-Strontium Clock? The decay of rubidium is so incredibly slow that its half-life can't be measured with accuracy from counting beta rays from its decay. Not a completey indipendent method.

When measuring occurs under ideal conditions these tests compare with one another but that is usually not the case.
 
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