Biblical Flood? Fish, squid, and shrimp fossils in the mountains of Lebanon and Peru

[CORed]

It never ceases to amaze me that anyone over the age of ten thinks that the biblical flood story is something that really happened.

 

[Akhenaten]

The bible talks of a worldwide flood. Could marine fossils found 700 meters above sea level be evidence of that?

No, the bible talking about all manner of fanciful nonsense is self-evidentiary and doesn't need marine fossils at any elevation to do the job.

 

[steve s]

So, the surface of the Earth was perfectly flat before the Great Flood?

Yes. That's how the ark was able to come to rest on Mt. Ararat.

Steve S

 

[Akhenaten]

Different species of marine life live in different areas of the world's oceans.

Which areas of the world's oceans did the land animals live in?

You know - the ones that were fossilised alongside the marine animals.

 

[Cainkane1]

The bible talks of a worldwide flood. Could marine fossils found 700 meters above sea level be evidence of that?

From the article: Catching a mermaid in Jbeil
By Lara Khouzami

"Lebanon's three main fish fossil sites, Hgula, Haqil (both in the mountains above Jbeil) and An Nammura are the only ones in the Middle East,"

http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/500/550/551/abisaad/

From Brazil Weird News:

The location of the {shrimp fossil} appears strange for a marine animal ... 700 meters above sea level. But it is not a suprise for the scientists. In the same region were also found fossilized remains of a squid that belongs to the same period.

http://brazilweirdnews.blogspot.com/2011/02/peru-fossil-shrimp-from-cretaceous.html

Thats caused by the movement of tectonic plates or continental drift. Everything that was once under water is now above water and vice versa. Tectonic plates move about as fast as human fingernails grow and mountains can and currently are being pushed both above and underwater. Noahs flood never happened.

 

[Susheel]

Did DOC skip school? I learned this in my first few years of high school.

 

[Mojo]

Anyway, aren't the shrimp an abomination?

And the squid.

 

[Akhenaten]

This PhD in Geological Engineeringhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Morris#cite_note-5 disagrees:

Did Noah's Flood Cover the Himalayan Mountains?

by John D. Morris, Ph.D.

"We now know, of course, that the earth has plenty of water to launch a global flood. It has been calculated that if the earth's surface were completely flat, with no high mountains and no deep ocean basins, that water would cover the earth to a depth of about 8,000 feet."

Wouldn't it all have drained away through the openings at the poles?

 

[Susheel]

This PhD in Geological Engineeringhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Morris#cite_note-5 disagrees:

Did Noah's Flood Cover the Himalayan Mountains?

by John D. Morris, Ph.D.

"We now know, of course, that the earth has plenty of water to launch a global flood. It has been calculated that if the earth's surface were completely flat, with no high mountains and no deep ocean basins, that water would cover the earth to a depth of about 8,000 feet."


http://www.icr.org/article/520/

But according to your Bible, the Earth wasn't entirely flat before the flood. Even if it were, and the flood, which occurred around 700 years ago according to your cherished Bible scholars, was in some bizarre way responsible for the plate tectonics that resulted in the mountains how does the sedimentation that resulted in the fossils have time to build up.

Oh yeah...forgive me... Goddidit ^TM

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I don't know why we bother, all believers in the Flood also worship St. Yeahbut.

 

[Uncle Otto]

How do you get fossils on mountains from a 40 day flood that then recedes? -----------

Can we use that dodge about "every day is like a thousand years?"

Naw, cause that would mean that Noah and his family would have to have floated around with all those animals for 40,000 years. Thus rendering the Biblical story even more absurd than it already is. And it would mean that they would have to have enough groceries for everyone for that time period too. I find it hard to believe that even DOC can take this silliness seriously.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Another problem is the accumulation of guano that gave rise to the nitre beds of the Peruvian coast. Imagine a huge assemblage of seabirds with diarrhoea laying these structures down all at once ...

...underwater...

 

[Slowvehicle]

Hey DOC, any news on answering that pesky saltwater / freshwater fish issue yet?

Or, for that matter, why the two different accounts of the flood do not agree with each other?

 

[Slowvehicle]

Wouldn't it all have drained away through the openings at the poles?

...well played, sir!

 

[smartcooky]

No question some are shared, such as Atrahasis / Gilgamesh / Noah. I just wanted to point out that there is no *global* shared myth. Aside from flood plains, one might speculate that some of those myths result from post-ice age flooding, ice-dams breaking, meltwater pulses. No real evidence for that, but I like the idea that oral tradition might reach back that far.

I agree, there has been no "global" flood in the biblical sense. There is no geological evidence for such an occurrence, and in any case, such an occurrence as written, is impossible.

GEN 7:19 "They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered."

There is simply not enough water in the earth's "system" to cover it to a level of 30,000 feet above today's sea-level. Even if all the icecaps and snows of all the mountains were to melt, and there were no clouds in the sky (i.e., all water on the planet was liquid water), the maximum possible sea level rise would be about 75 metres (250 feet)

However, I think we have to beware of ridiculing an account that would have been handed down through many generations of oral history before being written down. We should also beware of applying our own contemporary terminology to historical accounts that go back thousands, perhaps even tens of thousand of years.

GEN 6:17 "And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth..."

The use of the term "earth" is a modern addition/alteration. Much older versions of the the term "world"

PET 3:6: "The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished"

We have to be careful not impose our terminology on this age of story, e.g. substituting "global" for "world". In the sense of what the world was then, the two words do not have the same meaning. Even just five thousand years ago, groups of inhabitants would have considered their "world" to be a very small place indeed. It is not unreasonable that a huge local inundation may have seemed like the "whole world" was flooded... because it was from their point of view.

I believe many legends have their basis in real events (Calvert and Schliemann's discovery of "Troy" for example). I also believe that it is ridiculous in the extreme to think that Noah and his family were the only people who had a boat. Anyone who had a boat at the time the rains and the flooding began, could have boarded it and waited out the danger. It is not unreasonable to conclude that people did just that.

IMO (and I have no evidence for this except that it seems like a reasonable hypothesis) the account of Noah's Flood in Genesis 6 and 7, is nothing more than an "after the fact" aggregation of numerous stories (written with an enormous amount of journalistic licence) taking place over many years, even generations, of people who survived numerous local inundation events using boats.

 

[Correa Neto]

Well, many a poster have already exposed evidence -actually its proof- pointing towards the universal flood being nothing but a myth.

Those defending the Biblical flood have nothing but tales dating back from the Bronze Age do back it. Scientists have proof, and not just one, but several of them.

Oh, yes, you can find this or that geologist, this or that biologist which will say the flood is real. Sure. We geologist are people and by being people, we are not all impervious to blind beliefs. Some of us will NOT do the right thing. These are the few fundamentalists who are prostituting their -actually our- trade. They distort and cherry pick data. If they could drop down the blinders imposed by religion they are wearing, they would not defend such silly belief.

I would really like to see religious folks with different faiths actually discussing, debating their beliefs. Why one should accept Semitic instead Mayan cosmologies, for example. What makes Hindu cosmology more accurate than Yanomami creation myths?

At the end of the day, "'Cause this is the truth!" will be the only answer they will be able to present. "This is the truth!" because this is what was shown, taught, presented to them as the truth. This is the way were indoctrinated.

I am really sorry for the people who consider the Bible -or any other religious text- as the absolute truth. Their quests for the truth ends in "goddidit". My searches for answers never end; usually I have no answer and finding an answer quite often means discovering more and unexpected questions. Not everibody can withstand this. Many need a simpler world, black and white, especially a world that makes them feel important. Too bad for them.

 

[GlennB]

I've never heard a Young Earth person explain how fossils can end up 00's or 000's of metres within the rock.

No doubt DOC will just add to that tally.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've never heard a Young Earth person explain how fossils can end up 00's or 000's of metres within the rock.

No doubt DOC will just add to that tally.

I can find coral within a mile of this spot. Coral doesn't grow in a few days. It's so common here there's a chunk being used for decoration two blocks away at a local park. YEC's will ignore that, of course.

 

[Elizabeth I]

I live in South Texas and have quite a collection of fossilized bivalves and one rather nice fossilized snail.

I believe it's common knowledge that this part of the state was once ocean floor.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Which is interesting, as that would mean earth was flooded until after the flood, but how can something that is flooded already flood?

No, they claim that there was no sea or even rain before Ye Floode