Proof Of Genesis Account Of Flood

[1oddmanout]

Gen 7:11 ESV

(11) In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

 

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070...ng_anomoly.html

[Brother Jeff]

Gen 7:11 ESV

(11) In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

 

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070...ng_anomoly.html

Interesting... very interesting, but I wouldn't worry about it. Sure, the fundies will say "Look, there's the proof! Glory!" But the problems with the Flood account in Genesis are legion, and it's known anyway that at least the first eleven chapters of Genesis are pure mythology.

[SWIM]

OK the flood.

 

hmmm

 

Where did the water come from? Rain? Yes yes, 40 days and nights worldwide I suppose. Where did the water come from? We know rain is evaporated water into the sky in the form of clouds. So the water came from the earth, then settled back down to the earth...

 

This is not *extra* water, why would it cover the globe, and mountains? After it stopped raining this magical water, where is it supposed to go?

 

A deposit as big as the artic ocean would not be big enough to do the trick, even as large as the pacific would still fall short, because there have always been caverns and other places that could hold water. What was in this deposit before the flood then?? Air? What stopped water from going into it before the flood?

 

A little common sense goes a long long way.

[Thurisaz]

Although they appear solid, the composition of some ocean floor rocks is up to 15 percent water. “The water molecules are actually stuck in the mineral structure of the rock,” Wysession explained. “As you heat this up, it eventually dehydrates. It’s like taking clay and firing it to get all the water out.”

 

Awww, too bad that rock (even if somewhat saturated with water) doesn't flow very well. Let alone squirt up et cetera.

 

And I wonder how the morontheists would explain that any water from such a reservoir would reach the surface as steam... superheated steam actually.

[GraphicsGuy]

All of that water is basically embedded in rock according to my understanding of the article. I thought at first it was this giant underground "bubble" of water. As it sits now there's no way it could "fountain" up from the deep.

 

Yeah, and adding the volume of the Arctic Ocean to the world isn't going to cover the 9km depth needed to sink Everest.

 

So, that's 900,000,000 mm of rain. 22,500,000 mm per day. 937,500 mm per hour. 15,625 mm per minute. 260 (1 cm over 1 ft) mm per second!

 

So, it's "raining" so hard it's raining 1 ft per second! 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, 3 one thousand, 4 one thousand, 5 one thousand, 6 one thousand...the water all over the earth is six feet deep...yeah, whatever.

 

"Extreme rain" is classified at 2 inches per hour.

 

Heavy rain within a day can cause extreme damage and loss of life: http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12...1537599,00.html

 

There would have been no need for God to flood the entire earth. NOTHING could survive that kind of impact and deluge. The very air itself would drown you. Within minutes of that kind of rainfall everything on earth would be dead. Every construction, every tree would be smashed to matchsticks - maybe even matchsticks would be pulverized.

 

Sorry for going on such a tirade about it...I just decided to do the numbers and found it quite shocking...

[Ouroboros]

And the Ark would be pushed a couple of hundred feets under the surface for all those 40 nights and days of rain... magically God gave them oxygene tanks so they could breathe.

[Guest WarrantedPVC]

I think the weirdest thing about the flood story is that Noah is actually meant to have had *all* animal species fitting into the Ark.

 

Now, since evolution didn't happen (or at least who believe the Noah story literally would say so), all animal species must have existed unchanged since Noah's time (or only decreased in number), right? But there are 1.8 million named species in the world today - only the beetles have 300 000 different species.

 

Yes, that's right: imagine 300 000 x 2 = 600 000 beetles on Noah's ark. And 4500 x 2 = 9000 mammals on the same ark. Including things like savannah elephants... It must have been a jolly big thing, that.... of course God generously provided Noah with extra samples as food for all the carniverous ones so they won't eat up the other precious animals, which had to be preserved too. And for the savannah elephants, God provided 200kg of plant material for every one of the 40 days, lest the poor thing would starve!

 

And that's only the species which are alive today. Maybe Noah had a pair of each dinosaur species too...?

 

PVC

[1oddmanout]

All of that water is basically embedded in rock according to my understanding of the article. I thought at first it was this giant underground "bubble" of water. As it sits now there's no way it could "fountain" up from the deep.

 

Yeah, and adding the volume of the Arctic Ocean to the world isn't going to cover the 9km depth needed to sink Everest.

 

So, that's 900,000,000 mm of rain. 22,500,000 mm per day. 937,500 mm per hour. 15,625 mm per minute. 260 (1 cm over 1 ft) mm per second!

 

So, it's "raining" so hard it's raining 1 ft per second! 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, 3 one thousand, 4 one thousand, 5 one thousand, 6 one thousand...the water all over the earth is six feet deep...yeah, whatever.

 

"Extreme rain" is classified at 2 inches per hour.

 

Heavy rain within a day can cause extreme damage and loss of life: http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12...1537599,00.html

 

There would have been no need for God to flood the entire earth. NOTHING could survive that kind of impact and deluge. The very air itself would drown you. Within minutes of that kind of rainfall everything on earth would be dead. Every construction, every tree would be smashed to matchsticks - maybe even matchsticks would be pulverized.

 

Sorry for going on such a tirade about it...I just decided to do the numbers and found it quite shocking...

 

No, don't be sorry; thanks for crunching the numbers. I am astounded and humbled. And Kryasst, I agree-mythology, but equally amazed at how the fundies can run with this with all the concrete evidence in front of them!

[Ouroboros]

I think the weirdest thing about the flood story is that Noah is actually meant to have had *all* animal species fitting into the Ark.

 

Now, since evolution didn't happen (or at least who believe the Noah story literally would say so), all animal species must have existed unchanged since Noah's time (or only decreased in number), right? But there are 1.8 million named species in the world today - only the beetles have 300 000 different species.

 

Yes, that's right: imagine 300 000 x 2 = 600 000 beetles on Noah's ark. And 4500 x 2 = 9000 mammals on the same ark. Including things like savannah elephants... It must have been a jolly big thing, that.... of course God generously provided Noah with extra samples as food for all the carniverous ones so they won't eat up the other precious animals, which had to be preserved too. And for the savannah elephants, God provided 200kg of plant material for every one of the 40 days, lest the poor thing would starve!

 

And that's only the species which are alive today. Maybe Noah had a pair of each dinosaur species too...?

 

PVC

The traditional answer from apologists (just FYI) is that the Bible says "a pair of each kind", which in their mind means not every single species, but whatever could be claimed to be the root of a species, and the "microevolution" afterwards took place to make up all the other species. So not all breeds of dogs for instance, only one kind of dog. And not every beetle, but only a subset of bettles. The problem is that no one has a specification for what a "kind" is. But it also opens up for the discussion that even the literalist creationist must admit that some form of evolution had to occur. Unfortunately, it means that a very extreme rapid rate of mutations and selections had to happen after the flood, which in essence mean they believe in a puncutated equilibrium, which is a more intricate understanding of Evolution theory. So if they do believe in parts of Evolution, then why fight so hard against the science of it? Unless they can't see how irrational they are.

[GraphicsGuy]

And the Ark would be pushed a couple of hundred feets under the surface for all those 40 nights and days of rain... magically God gave them oxygene tanks so they could breathe.

 

Yeah, that got me thinking about it again...you're right. A couple hundred...hell, maybe even a couple thousand feet. You pour water quickly over ice cubes in a glass and they don't magically float right to the top. They get pushed to the bottom of the glass and then swirled around and around - come the surface and the water pushes them down again. Pour the water is slowly and they will get pulled to the limits of their buoyancy and then bounce around a little.

 

So, "rain" at 1 ft per second slams into the earth (a cubic ft of water weighs 62.38 lb, btw - let that alone hit someone at terminal velocity...yeah, see ya!) and the ark is supposed to somehow stay on top of that? The initial energy would have to be despersed somehow since the ark had no where to "sink" except into the ground.

 

The damn thing would have been pulverized! According to a source I just looked up the ark was 450 ft long and 75 ft wide and 45 ft high. So, let's just compare the equivalent cubic footage of water hitting it:

 

450 x 75 x 45 = 1,518,750 cu. ft.

 

1,518,750 x 62.38 = 94,739,625 lb or 47,369.8 tons

 

So, to round it off, 47,000 tons of water slams into the ark at 29 ft/sec (fastest rain drops...though this would be a "wall") and it doesn't break into kindling?

 

I'm such a geek...I love these kind of problems...

[Onyx]

Even without doing the numbers, the Flood is rebuttable with this sentence: It's all a make believe session by the ancient Hebrews which happened to have astonishing similiarities with the flood myths all around the world, all which are as true as the Santa Claus legend.

[GraphicsGuy]

Even without doing the numbers, the Flood is rebuttable with this sentence: It's all a make believe session by the ancient Hebrews which happened to have astonishing similiarities with the flood myths all around the world, all which are as true as the Santa Claus legend.

 

Yeah, but where's the fun in that?

[Antlerman]

And the Ark would be pushed a couple of hundred feets under the surface for all those 40 nights and days of rain... magically God gave them oxygene tanks so they could breathe.

 

Yeah, that got me thinking about it again...you're right. A couple hundred...hell, maybe even a couple thousand feet. You pour water quickly over ice cubes in a glass and they don't magically float right to the top. They get pushed to the bottom of the glass and then swirled around and around - come the surface and the water pushes them down again. Pour the water is slowly and they will get pulled to the limits of their buoyancy and then bounce around a little.

 

So, "rain" at 1 ft per second slams into the earth (a cubic ft of water weighs 62.38 lb, btw - let that alone hit someone at terminal velocity...yeah, see ya!) and the ark is supposed to somehow stay on top of that? The initial energy would have to be despersed somehow since the ark had no where to "sink" except into the ground.

 

The damn thing would have been pulverized! According to a source I just looked up the ark was 450 ft long and 75 ft wide and 45 ft high. So, let's just compare the equivalent cubic footage of water hitting it:

 

450 x 75 x 45 = 1,518,750 cu. ft.

 

1,518,750 x 62.38 = 94,739,625 lb or 47,369.8 tons

 

So, to round it off, 47,000 tons of water slams into the ark at 29 ft/sec (fastest rain drops...though this would be a "wall") and it doesn't break into kindling?

 

I'm such a geek...I love these kind of problems...

Did you take into account the extremely steep, arrow-like pitch of the roof that was omitted from the biblical text?

 

Personally, it's always been my theory that the Bible wasn't wrong about the number of animals, but the actual size of the ark. The actual ark was the size of Texas, and people will never find it because they're looking for something much smaller. It's only a matter of time before satellite images reveal its resting place over the whole country of Turkey.

[Amanda]

And the Ark would be pushed a couple of hundred feets under the surface for all those 40 nights and days of rain... magically God gave them oxygene tanks so they could breathe.

Hey HanSolo... okay, okay... we all know the story in Genesis is too scifi to believe... okay. However, could these flood stories have been based on an actual occurrence... like St. Nicholas to Santa Claus? Have you heard anything about the book Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed History, more found here? It says this:

 

At this time - about 7,500 years ago - the global climate was still rapidly warming following the last Ice Age, causing the seas to rise. Ryan and Pitman hypothesize that, when sea levels rose beyond a critical point, the Mediterranean Sea overflowed, deluging the Black Sea basin with salty water and destroying the fertile plains around the once-shallow freshwater lake.

 

Any people living on those plains at the time would have witnessed what must have seemed like the wrath of an angry god. Based on the still northern flowing undercurrents of what we call the Bosporus Straits, Ryan and Pitman estimate the water rushed northward through this channel with force many times greater than Niagara Falls.

 

I'm wondering if the statement of this article, along with the topic of this thread, caused a great flood long ago that was passed down for generations... and embellished as it was passed down. I mean a little embellishment kept it more interesting and worthy of a traditional story.

 

Antlerman... that's too funny! Thanks!

[Ouroboros]

Thanks for doing the math. I kind of intuitively understood that it would be something like this, but I never had the patience to really figure out the numbers.

 

Another problem. Water from the sky, hitting the surface, and the temperature from the friction, and in general the different temperatures lower down and higher up. You most likely would have enormous whirlpools all over the place. The turbulence would be extreme. It would tear everything to shreds through tidal effects.

 

Btw, does creationists believe that some archeological findings and bones are from the time before the flood? How do they explain they're not crushed to powder? I mean, with those kind of forces, I don't think there would be any evidence or any archeological or paleontological findings at all. It would tear up mountains and crush everything together and tear it apart. Like a big coffee grinder or ice crusher. Nothing left.

[Ouroboros]

Hey HanSolo... okay, okay... we all know the story in Genesis is too scifi to believe... okay. However, could these flood stories have been based on an actual occurrence... like St. Nicholas to Santa Claus? Have you heard anything about the book Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed History, more found here? It says this:

 

At this time - about 7,500 years ago - the global climate was still rapidly warming following the last Ice Age, causing the seas to rise. Ryan and Pitman hypothesize that, when sea levels rose beyond a critical point, the Mediterranean Sea overflowed, deluging the Black Sea basin with salty water and destroying the fertile plains around the once-shallow freshwater lake.

 

Any people living on those plains at the time would have witnessed what must have seemed like the wrath of an angry god. Based on the still northern flowing undercurrents of what we call the Bosporus Straits, Ryan and Pitman estimate the water rushed northward through this channel with force many times greater than Niagara Falls.

Very true. I do think it could be linked. It makes sense, that at the time when humans started to tell stories because language evolved, that if things like that happened it would be told in generations. Actually, I think that this explanation is very plausible!

[GraphicsGuy]

Turbulent...yeah, I'll bet it would be. Dump a 4 gallon bucket of water into a bathtub and see how much splashing roiling takes place. Shit...you could end up with tidal waves a few miles high. All the energy has to go somewhere.

[Ouroboros]

Here's a number I found from http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html:

 

1.3 x 1017 Joules/day or

1.5 x 1012Watts.

 

This is equivalent to about half the world-wide electrical generating capacity - also an amazing amount of energy being produced!

 

This is regards to all storms in the world in one year. Now consider that this storm would have during 40 days produced storm capacity equivalent to more than hundreds of years, or maybe more like thousands of years in normal weather. This means we have some energy output to support the world population of TODAY with enough electricity for years to come, in just a month. That's like a series of nuclear blasts all over the planet at once. Yeah... you must admire the confabulations of the old.

[crazy-tiger]

I spotted this news somewhere else... and someone did the maths.

 

They worked out that all the water being talked about would result in the sea level being an amazing 3cm higher if all that water was "fountained" up out of the deep.

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah... makes all the difference, doesn't it?

[mwc]

I'm wondering if the statement of this article, along with the topic of this thread, caused a great flood long ago that was passed down for generations... and embellished as it was passed down. I mean a little embellishment kept it more interesting and worthy of a traditional story.

It's been quite sometime since I've tired of the whole flood thing but as I recall one, or both, of these authors are back-peddling from this theory since information is showing the flood went the opposite direction. If memory serves the cause is now from ice-damming related to late ice age thaws and the water flowed down and into the Mediterranean (I want to say more than once).

 

The information is probably floating around my drives somewhere but I doubt I'll be able to find it before this thread peters out.

 

Ice age flooding is probably the source for many deluge stories, especially when combined with the annual river floods that occurred in so many key locales, but I'm just saying that I remember those guys particular theory being shot down awhile back.

 

mwc

[Amanda]

It's been quite sometime since I've tired of the whole flood thing but as I recall one, or both, of these authors are back-peddling from this theory since information is showing the flood went the opposite direction. If memory serves the cause is now from ice-damming related to late ice age thaws and the water flowed down and into the Mediterranean (I want to say more than once).

 

The information is probably floating around my drives somewhere but I doubt I'll be able to find it before this thread peters out.

 

Ice age flooding is probably the source for many deluge stories, especially when combined with the annual river floods that occurred in so many key locales, but I'm just saying that I remember those guys particular theory being shot down awhile back.

 

mwc

MWC, I believe the article I cited speculated that the flood was caused by the last ice age ending. It seems to me, that article was in NO way trying to validate that the bible's renditions were literally true... just that there may have been an actual event in which the story had evolved and elaborated. I was just curious if the topic of this thread could have contributed to the flood they had referenced also. It seems to me this article on Noah's Flood was reported in 1999, so I don't know what has evolved on this since that time... However, here is what that article also said:

 

Going on Ryan and Pitman's estimates that sea levels rose roughly 150 meters during the flood,

 

In November 1999, Ballard announced the conclusions to the world. Ballard and his colleagues had collected shells from nine separate species of mollusks, shell-building invertebrates such as snails and clams. Expert analysis by Gary Rosenberg of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia revealed that seven of the species were saltwater mollusks, ranging up to 6,800 years old. The other two species, however, were extinct freshwater species that might have lived between 7,460 and 15,500 years ago. These two species proved this body of water must have been fresh until 7,460 years ago, providing more- and incontrovertible- evidence of an influx of saltwater from the Mediterranean Sea.

[Heimdall]

Had this argument several times in the past with Fundies...here is my standard answer, especially when they bring up the Asian deposit:

Considering that Genesis describes the flood as “fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered†and further considering that the highest mountain is over 29,000 feet high; the world would have to have it’s surface buried under 5.45 miles of water. Since the Arctic Ocean is only 5400000 sq miles in volume and the planetary volume is around 535,662,531,270,633 (yep, 535 Trillion plus) sq miles at present; adding 5.45 miles of water to that volume would increase it by several billion more sq miles. The piddling 5 million plus sq miles of water found below the surface would not even come close to accounting for more than 1/1,000,000,000th of the needed water. Even if you could account for the water, the heat energy released by the fountains of the deep and the water needed for 40 days and 40 nights (that’s 6 inches a minute and for every gram of water vapor converted to liquid water, 10 calories of heat is released) would raise the planetary surface temperature to around 2000 degrees farenheit! Can you spell baked Noah and company? I doubt if “Gopher wood†was very fire retardant! Since a calorie is approximately .004 BTU and one 1 inch of rain over 1 square acre will contain 857,250,000 grams of liquid water, and 6 inches of rain was falling per minute 12,858,750,000 BTUs would be released each minute, per square acre, 24 hours a day for 40 days, just from the rainfall alone. With a universally overcast sky, the large majority of the heat would be held at the surface and not dissipated into space (you can see this today even, a cloudy night will be warmer than a clear night). Now adding the magmaic heat that would accompany the fountains of the deep, once again largely held to the surface, the planetary surface would quickly become overheated with any rain forming being instantly returned to vapor form…hence it could not have rained 40 days and 40 nights! - Heimdall

[R. S. Martin]

Thanks for doing the numbers game, folks. I've heard the words games and can make them up myself but the numbers game and scientific facts go so far over my head that I simply can't do it. But I respect numbers and I respect scientific facts. I've heard that scientifically Noah's flood is impossible but this is the first time I've seen it proven with numbers and facts. Now I get a much better comprehension on it. THANK YOU, GG, for going with your gut and doing it! And thanks to the others for getting in on the game and approaching it from other perspectives. If the thing can be proven from several different angles--all inside the realm of science and math, surely it must be true. I have a hunch that Heimdal did not even read the earlier argument yet his results agree that the Flood was impossible.

 

I really like the idea about melting ice age contributing to major deluges all over the world. None would have covered the entire globe, but all would have been catastrophic locally and perhaps destroyed all but a few survivors from whom the stories come. This could account for the many Flood stories coming from so many different aboriginal peoples throughout the world.

 

If we realize how people conceptualized the world two or three thousand years ago, we might not fault them for claiming the entire world--including the highest mountain--was covered with water, even though we have evidence today that this was not the case. In Wikipedia I found a description of an educated Roman, Claudius Ptolemny's, limited view of the planet.

Claudius Ptolemy

(

CE

90

-

168

) lived in

Alexandria

, the centre of scholarship in the

second century

. Around 150, he produced his eight-volume

Geographia

.

The article ends thus:

His

oikoumenè

spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Canary Islands in the

Atlantic Ocean

to

China

, and about 81 degrees of latitude from the Arctic to the

East Indies

and deep into

Africa

;

Ptolemy was well aware that he knew about only a quarter of the globe.

I bolded the last sentence because I think it is so important. This educated military commander, whose job it was to maintain control and order of the entire known world, knew only a quarter of the globe. What can we expect of goat herders whose job it was to provide meat and milk for the table, cloaks for the backs, and a roof for the heads of their own clan or family only?

 

If the entire valley was covered with water and only a few family members escaped in a ship while everyone they knew perished, if there was nothing to be seen so far as the eye could see in the merky gloom of rain and cloud and mist, if the highest mountain they had fled to for safety got submerged--what other conclusion could they have reached than that the entire world was submerged, including the highest mountain? If by some weird streak of luck they had built a boat and somehow also had it with them (or found the means whereby to build it when things kept getting more and more desperate) when their final refuge was submerged, it would not take much to imagine they believed themselves to have been divinely led/instructed to build it. Stranger things happen today.

 

It would probably not be unrealistic to believe that there was also an accumulation of animals on the same hilltop seeking refuge from a watery grave and that these animals required little urging to board the boat when it was the only dry spot left for them to go to. Don't ask me how humans and animals co-existed for the better part of a year on that boat. If it wasn't the entire world that was submerged, perhaps it wasn't the better part of a year, either, that they co-habited the boat, just because the biblical legend says it was.

 

That there was a catastrophe, and that much human and animal life was lost, makes sense. That type of thing happens even today. Would the tsunami of two years ago or Hurricane Katrina of a year and a half ago have seemed like a global catastrophe to ancient peoples with such limited knowledge of the world?

 

I don't know enough about the situation in either case to make an estimate. I'm just saying that in their understanding of "world" the Flood may well have covered the entire world. We today have a very different understanding of world; we mean the entire globe for starters. They probably did not.

[GraphicsGuy]

that’s 6 inches a minute

 

Oops! I butchered my initial numbers...this is correct, not my 1 ft/sec. I plugged 900,000,000 mm into my initial calc instead of 9,000,000...

[Amanda]

 

Ruby Sera, I think even the NT calls these OT stories like Noah's Flood and Jonah's Whale, fables. It seems difficult to determine which stories are suppose to be fables and which are to be historical accounts, or where one ends and the other begins.

 

See Titus 1:14 where they are accusing the Cretians of not heeding those Jewish fables...

 

Titus 1:14

Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.

 

However, I do think there may be an actual catastrophic incident that these flood fables are built upon, like those of Noah's flood, the aboriginal tribes you mentioned, and the flood of Gilgamesh. However, I think that many people survived, no one got all the animals, there was no huge ark built ahead of time for this, they knew that the tallest mountain was never covered with water, nor all the land for that matter, etc. IMO, there was a message to a greatly embellished story that was the intention, like in a fable. I think they would probably laugh to see so many had misconstrued these fables into being literally true events. :ohmy: