Noah's Flood

[Chad]

The Flood - Biblical Story
The Flood (a.k.a. Noah's Flood) is the worldwide cataclysmic event that utterly devastated the earth sometime between 2,000 and 3,000 BC. According to Genesis, chapters 6 through 9, earth's humanity had degenerated into such a cesspool that God, in His sovereignty, decided to purge the earth. He graciously chose to spare a single human family and a variety of representatives from the animal kingdom to repopulate the earth after the Flood waters receded. Noah, the patriarchal head of this chosen family, the man who "found grace in the eyes of the LORD" (Genesis 6:8), was commanded to build a massive ark. This ark (a.k.a. Noah's Ark) was the implement of their salvation. In the aftermath, eight human survivors disembarked from the ark. These eight were all that remained of the human race: Noah, his wife, their three sons, and their sons' three wives.

The Flood - Universal Tradition
According to the Bible, every human to have lived since the Flood is a direct descendent of Noah's small remnant. It logically follows that despite the relative isolation of the various cultures that have thrived since the Flood, because every culture descended directly from the flood's survivors, traditions of this traumatic event ought to be abundant and universal, having been passed down generation to generation. Indeed, Flood traditions are both abundant and universal. Literally hundreds of Flood traditions have been preserved throughout the world, abounding in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. Collectively, these Flood traditions serve to corroborate the Bible's Genesis Flood account. These surviving Flood traditions include two of the oldest known stories to have survived the ravishment of time's passage: China's "Hihking Classic" and Babylon's "Epic of Gilgamesh." These Flood traditions are remarkably consistent, considering the relative isolation of the cultures, the length of time since the Flood, and the human tendency to embellish and exaggerate stories over time.

The Flood - Physical Evidences
The Flood "myth" is not just some ancient allegory meant to teach us about God's judgment on sin. The Flood was a real historical event and earth's crust bears witness to this in many compelling ways. Consider the fossil record: billions of dead things buried in sedimentation ("laid-down-by-water rock") found all over the earth. Geologist Dr. John Morris explains, "Sedimentary rocks, by definition, are laid down as sediments by moving fluids, are made up of pieces of rock or other material which existed somewhere else, and were eroded or dissolved and redeposited in their present location." [1] Over 70% of the earth's surface rock is sedimentary rock (the rest of earth's surface rock is volcanic igneous and metamorphic rock). In these sedimentary rock layers, geologists find some very odd features. For example, fossilized trees buried at all angles, upside-down and right-side-up, often passing through multiple rock layers, obviously the result of a marine cataclysm. These "polystrate" fossils (poly, meaning more than one; strate, meaning rock layer) are a worldwide phenomenon.

Consider the ratios of dead things we find buried in this sedimentary rock: "95% of all fossils are marine invertebrates, particularly shellfish. Of the remaining 5%, 95% are algae and plant fossils (4.74%). 95% of the remaining 0.25% consists of the other invertebrates, including insects (0.2375%). The remaining 0.0125% includes all vertebrates, mostly fish. 95% of the few land vertebrates consist of less than one bone. (For example, only about 1,200 dinosaur skeletons have been found.)" [2]

Also consider the abundant fossil remains of marine life found atop every mountain range in the world. For example, clusters of hundreds of gigantic (300kg/650lbs) oysters found atop the Andes Mountains in South America. [3]

 

[M Paul]

The local library near me has a video on the flood by the ICR. Here are my notes from viewing it. I debate a lot in the forums, and the athiests try to make it impossible to cite an ICR web site, having a system of ridicule down pat, saying the organization is based on creation science, which is a type of joke, totally lacking objectivity. I posted these notes once, after citing an ICR site on the association of Hitler with the theory of evolution, and asked for a demonstration based on an assessment of the facts presented of how the ICR is unobjective and inherently bogus on science. No one could respond. The site I cited then had to be refuted according to the facts it presented, rather than being dismissed summarily as bogus--but no one could do that either.

The Grand Canyon Catastrophe
American Portrait Films Inc.
P.O. Box 19266
Cleveland, Ohio 44119
1-800-736-4567
ISBN 1-57341-026-8
Copyright to Keziah

Breached Dam Theory -- that catastrophic drainage of vast post-flood lakes may have carved out the Grand Canyon rapidly and recently. Lakes east of the GC containing maybe 3,000 cubic miles of water failed on the Colorado Plateau at the Ca abab(?) up warp and channelization of the water formed the GC.

Dr. John Morris -- President, Institute for Creation Research
Dr. Duane Gish -- Vice President
Dr. Steven Austion -- Geologist, ICR
Dr. Andrew Snelling -- Geologist, Creation Science Foundation, Brisbane, Australia

According to Indian legend in the SW USA, there was a great flood and as water washed away canyons were formed, including the Grand Canyon. According to Hopi legend, the water rained, and waves rose above the mountains, and continents broke apart, and still it rained.

Currently geologists hold that a small trickle of water, represented by the river at the base, over vast ages carved the canyon 18 miles wide, 200 miles long, and up to a mile deep.

1. Robert Scarborough -- Consultant Geologist, Biosphere 2

The collapse of dammed water at a channel on the east side of the Grand Canyon, creating a huge flow of water, would have carried massive blocks of limestone, widening the channel in days or hours. In 1983, at Glen Canyon, due to a flood caused by melting snow, the spillways of the dam were opened to relieve pressure. But, the force of the water broke through the steel-reinforced concrete spillways' lining, leaving an enormous cavity 32 ft. deep. Torrents of water at high speed create cavitations, which some geologists think is how the Grand Canyon was formed.

At the Grand Canyon the breakwater could have exceeded hundreds of feet, if not being 1,000 ft. in depth. Boulders the size of Greyhound buses would have been rolling down the canyon, causing rapid erosion.

In 1980, Mont St. Helens in Washington State erupted, leaving a plume of ash 12 miles into the sky, leveling trees for miles around. Violent mudflows ripped the sides of the volcano and carved out deep canyons as geologists watched. Up to 600 ft. of volcanic ash strata was deposited. Then, in one day a mud flow generated by volcanic activity carved into those sediments a canyon system 1/40th the ______ of the Grand Canyon. Cliffs remained 100 ft. high. The canyon is 600 ft. wide, 150 ft. deep, and has a small stream at the base, which is merely a remnant of the major catastrophic mudflow which carved it out. The canyon was cut in a matter of hours, not millions of years.

Evidence suggests that ancient lakes stretched across Arizona and Utah into Colorado and New Mexico, covering more than 30,000 square miles, three times the size of Lake Michigan. As these lakes drained, the Grand Canyon may have been carved out, as well as Flaming Gorge and Bright Canyon in Utah. In the Colorado River area there are rocks with fresh water fossils of fish and a restricted area of outcrop, that indicates once a large lake was there (Hopi Lake), that drained into the Little Colorado River Drainage Basin.

2. Dr. Eugene Shoemaker -- Scientist Emeritus, US Geological Survey, Flagstaff.

The oscillation of the shoreline through time can be traced in the area of the Grand Canyon of 300 ft. of the lake beds. The cutting of the Grand Canyon occurred after the filling of the Hopi Lake. In southern Arizona fossils have been found of freshwater fish, beaver, and other water life. Lake bed sediments indicate several hundred feet of lake beds. Two other lakes existed to the north -- Canyon Mountain Lake and the Vernal Lake.

Dr. Edmond Holroyd, US Bureau of Reclamation

Dr. Edmund has mapped out the location of lakes in the area, using as evidence class and deposits of sediments from the rim of deposits and the stream deltas. The drainage of these lakes may have carved in the man stone sculptures in the region. When a lake in Montana drained over East Washington State the Grand Coulee Canyon was formed, 50 miles long, two to three miles deep, with erosion through solid rock. 1580 cubic miles of water drained, catastrophically leaving a 32,000 square mile area of scablands. Huge boulders were ripped up as the water washed toward the sea at 100 mi. per hour. There was once a waterfall in the area 350 ft. high and five times a watered and the Niagara Falls.

At one time and for 50 years it was considered incompetent and preposterous to hold that the Grand Coulee Canyon was formed by a catastrophic flood, but the theory prevailed on finding the source as trapped glacial waters, dammed up by debris, which broke through basalt rock, carrying sand, borders, and rubble with corrosive power.

****************

The Mystery of the Missing Sediment

The current theory on the formation the Grand Canyon holds that the Colorado River carved it out over vast ages. However, if this theory is accurate, there should be a least a thousand cubic miles of sediments accumulated near the river's mouth, and it is not there. However, behind San Diego there's up to 17,000 ft. of sediments in the desert with similar composition to the rock in the Grand Canyon. 15 years ago the US department of energy drilled holes in the area looking for geothermal potential, and after having gone down 18,000 ft., they were still in the same age of rock as is found in the Grand Canyon. It appears in this sediment came from water rushing toward the Pacific Ocean, and dumping the sediment as it was impeded, and then it headed south to the Gulf of California.

 

[M Paul]

Dr. Bon Vie,

Well, the thing about ICR is reputation. On the internet, it's amazing how the atheists have a system of putting the ICR in the quack category. I know some Chritians who are such experts at straw man arguments, that it seems to require a miracle, to be allowed to state what one's own words mean. I think regarding the ICR, the atheists learned something from our Christian straw man specialists. That all means, that if a person wants to use an ICR site in a debate, he/she has to have a response ready for the anticipated reputation attack. But, it's a lot of good stuff, so I think having that response is exactly what should be done, but it requires prayer. Actually, there should be prayer for its reputation in general, and for the Christian scientific community in general. However, just having a movie like THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST seems to accomplish more for Christianity on general acceptance than anything. Before that movie it was cardinal sin to say the word Jesus on TV. Now, I hear it any time I turn the TV on and make the circle of channels.

Regards,
Paul

 

[pamy]

SCIENTIFIC BIBLE students are rapidly reaching the conclusion that we are fully justified in laughing at the so-called scientists who have denied the Bible story of the Deluge. The Bible is corroborated by Geology, Astronomy and History. The oldest records of Babylonia tell the story of the Deluge--of Noah and his ark.

To discredit the Bible, these archaeologists declare that the Genesis account was merely copied from the Babylonian records. How foolish! Who does not know that there were no records of ancient times that will at all compare with our Genesis account! None other even professes to give a connected history of the human family, a chronological line of 1656 years from Adam to the Flood, or a definite record, as the Bible does, of just how long it rained, just how high the floods rose and just how long was the period required for the waters to drain off.

"Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan" God's Book in vain.

But, says one, the theory of a deluge, whose waters would cover the hills and the mountains, might be thinkable if the earth were flat; but how could it possibly be true since we know that the earth is a sphere?

Geology comes to the rescue of the Bible student and points out distinctly that there have been several great deluges. It shows us great beds of sandstone, clay, shale, etc., all of which science declares must have been placed where they are as the settlings of great floods. Some of these deposits are hundreds of feet below the surface. When we ask where such floods could come from, Astronomy answers us, pointing us to Saturn and Jupiter, with their "rings." Scientists declare that these rings consist of minerals and water thrown far off in a gaseous state when the planets were at white heat. They subsequently cooled and formed into various strata or rings.
Because of their great distance from the planets their motions are different, and they are held in suspense by the same laws which hold the planets themselves in space. Nevertheless, the superior weight of the planets draws them nearer and nearer.

The ring nearest the planet, and approaching it, is still held off by the "firmament" of circumambient air. The rotation of the planets on their axis gives least resistance at the poles; and these rings, after spreading out as great envelopes, gradually thin at the center, or equator, and thicken at the poles, until the weight at the poles becomes so great as to overcome the power or the strength of the firmament, and then breaking through from both poles, causes deluges.

NO RAIN ON THE EARTH

The astonishing statement that, prior to the Deluge, there had been no rain on the earth (Genesis 2:5), is in full agreement with what we have seen from the foregoing. The earth once had similar "belts" or "rings." These were precipitated, as we have described, one after the other, at long intervals during the Six Creative Days mentioned in the first lesson of the year. By means of these deluges, our minerals were deposited and our coal beds buried. God, foreknowing all things, foreknew the necessity of the Noachian Deluge, and hence so timed the features of His Plan that the last of earth's "rings" was still unbroken when man was created. But it was no longer in the form of a ring. The waters above had approached the earth and formed a great watery canopy or veil, merely held off by the "firmament." There could be neither rain nor storm under such conditions. The temperature of the whole earth was equable, the sun's rays acting upon the watery canopy as they do upon the white glass of a hot-house. The temperature was the same at the poles as at the equator. This accounts for the remains of tropical animals and of plant life found imbedded under hundreds of feet of ice in the polar regions.

WHY THE POLAR ICE?
Geology testifies to a Glacial Period, when great icebergs, carried by floods of water, rushed from the poles toward the equator. Geologists have traced great valleys cut by these icebergs. On their findings they base the theory that the earth was once ice-covered. Instead of attributing the ice to the period of the Deluge, 4,400 years ago, they add a handful of naughts; and the more they add, the prouder they feel of their achievements, because they think that they are getting away from the Bible and discrediting it. But scientific Bible students are having their faith in God's Word established more and more. Without affecting the torrid zone, the warmer temperature is now extending itself into the frigid zone quite rapidly. "Greenland's Icy Mountains" will soon be things of the past. The poles are warming up. The ice caps are dissolving. Last winter was called the "straw hat season" of Alaska, because of the higher temperature than ever before known.

"THY WORD IS TRUTH"

The fitting of these facts to the Bible narrative is not only intensely interesting, but conducive to faith in God, in His providences, and in the Bible, and very conducive to a disregard of the wild guesses of "professors," who have no faith in the Bible and are seeking to discredit it.
The sudden break of the canopy of water would not only cause a deluge to come down at both poles, and the flow of great tidal waves toward the equator, as geologisshow was the case, but it would also produce a sudden and intense cold at the poles. The water froze so rapidly that out of the solid ice animals have in recent years been dug, which have grass between their teeth.
We have only to put two and two together to have a chain of evidence linking us to the Bible. For instance, is it asked why it was colder at the poles then than now? The reply is: The more direct rays of the sun then, as now, fell on the equator; but the torrid zone was hotter than now, until the trade winds sprung up, which carried the heat and distributed it all over the earth. And the waters of the equator must have been hotter then, as the poles were colder, until the ocean currents set in--which, like the Gulf Stream, carry the water from the equator and distribute it along the shores of America and Europe--and the Japan and other currents, which in the Pacific carry their water warmed at the equator to the poles. These processes, going on for 4,400 years, are gradually thawing out the polar regions, as all scientists agree; and this it is that has recently been causing larger numbers of icebergs from the glaciers of the polar region to break loose and float down, to the distress of mariners.
Still there remains the question, Why was not Noah's ark carried off by this swift current toward the equator? Why did it apparently remain not far from the place where it was built and come to rest on the top of Mount Ararat? Professor George Frederick Wright has dropped the suggestion which fits well with the Bible narrative. As we understand the professor, the geological evidences are that the swift currents of water, laden with icebergs and rolling rocks, visited various parts of Europe and America, and perhaps Asia, but seemingly avoided the vicinity of Mount Ararat. There, alluvial deposits are of extraordinary depth. The geologists say that while there was a commotion round about, there was an eddy and back water in that particular vicinity. Is it too much for the child of God to believe that the Great Creator, who intended to preserve alive Noah and his family to begin afresh the population of the earth, was fully competent to regulate the currents of that Deluge?
"Faith can firmly trust Him, Come what may." It is pleasing to us, additionally, to note that the time required for the draining off of the waters (Genesis 8:1-14) is reasonable and in harmony with the scientific investigation conducted from the Bible standpoint.

Your Sister in Christ

pamy

 

[xDICEx]

Yes, when you begin to intigrate these great facts into an understanding of what actualy happened to this earth, an overwhelming impression of the power of God settles over your mind; his amazing special care and severe judjments, and he can do any thing he wants. No thing, as he said to Sara and Abraham, is imposible. His plans and acts will succeed. And a rich man can be saved too. But I supose the greatest notion setteling on the mind is that this present world is preserved unto fire as Noa's was to the waters of the flood. Gods power, reighteous judgement, and man's sin are the formost reasons modern man will not abide the obvious facts under our feet and over our heads. Peter speaks of this; does he not?

DGB

 

[Yeshua]

I Know...

I know that we are to live and walk by faith and seeing isn't the kind of believeing we are suppost to be asking God for. I also know that sometimes God does refreash us by leting us see the good that we are causeing by following him in humble obedience a faithful children.

Wouldn't it be nice if the top of mountains of Ararat would have six months of complete thaw so every one could see Noah's Ark for themselves.