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Author | Topic: Potential Evidence for a Global Flood | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Coyote Member (Idle past 2128 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
I was asking because he seems so adamant that he knows what he would find if the flood took place as the Bible says.
Wrong. Assuming that he did seems to have been a bad assumption on my part. You are somehow coming up with a date of 250 million years ago for the flood. That's long before humans were around (by about 248 or so million years). Why should I play guessing games over something that is so contradicted by the evidence? Biblical scholars place the date of the flood at about 4,350 years ago, so forget the 250 million year nonsense. We would do better do debate the geography of Middle Earth; at least then we would both know we were dealing with fiction. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4040 Joined: Member Rating: 8.1
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Hi Rahvin,
Rahvin writes:
So according to the Bible account the land mass was all in one place when the flood took place. The land mass was divided somewhere from 100 to 329 years after the flood. That's your hypothesis. That is not my hypothesis. That is what the Bible says. Yet the Bible is not a person and cannot participate in this thread. Since you are a person participating in this thread, and since you are the one who proposed the above hypothesis in this thread (even if you were simply repeating a claim in the Bible), it's your hypothesis for all practical purposes. The original source (the Bible, God, you, your friend Steve) is irrelevant. All that matters is the hypothesis and whether the evidence proves it to be more or less accurate than competing hypotheses.
Now if this was my hypothesis I would say that with the flood occurring prior to the breaking up of the land mass you would find zero support for a global flood. Curiously, your anticipation that no evidence supporting for a global flood should be found is identical to no flood having ever occurred. Why is that, do you think? But more to the point - your prediction (that no global-flood evidence should be found) is equally supported by both modern geological models and your hypothesis. It really doesn't help us distinguish which is more accurate - from the standpoint of being able to predict that no flood-evidence should be found, they are both equally accurate. What else would not be explained by your hypothesis?
I know you don't think it is possible that it could happen like the Bible says as we have discussed this in the past. I can believe that it did just as easily as you believe the universe just is when I ask you where it came from. Personal credulity is irrelevant, and that goes for both of us. Cosmology is also irrelevant in this thread, as it is in most threads where you bring it up lately - a rather obvious attempt at a red herring and a tu quoque fallacy. Let's stick to discussing the topic - which in this case means talking about your hypothesis.
Rahvin writes: Asking Coyote what he would expect to find is not the best question to test the accuracy of your hypothesis. I was asking because he seems so adamant that he knows what he would find if the flood took place as the Bible says. I'm aware of that. My point is that we can better test the accuracy of your hypothesis by asking what it would not explain than by looking for validated predictions. Note that I said "better," not "only."
Assuming that he did seems to have been a bad assumption on my part. God Bless, Well, he's not the one proposing your hypothesis - you are. I;d rather expect you to have a better handle on what is and is not explained by the hypothesis you yourself believe to havea high probability of accuracy, else you wouldn't think it so likely to be accurate. That;s why I'm asking you, not myself or Coyote, what would not be explained by your hypothesis. If all landmasses were once collected into one conjoined supercontinent that then broke apart over some period of no more than 229 years, what observations would you not expect to find? Even better, what observations would not be explained by your hypothesis, but would be explained by competing hypotheses? We need something to differentiate your hypothesis from others so that we can see which is the most accurate according to observed reality.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Jzyehoshua, you have a lot to respond to ...
... so I'm going to add a little bit more.
I would like to see a topic created discussing the possible evidence for a global flood. One piece of possible evidence for a global flood would be mass extinctions, especially one where there were more extinctions of land organisms than of marine organisms. The problem with mass extinctions are (a) there are so many, that if this is evidence of a global flood, then there must have been multiple floods (or other catastrophes), and (2) there has been no mass extinction since apes evolved. The last mass extinction was at the end of the Cretaceous period, the KT boundary, some 65 million years ago. Meanwhile, apes evolved from earlier primates some ~30 to 25 million years ago: http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html
quote: With Homo sapiens only showing up some 200,000 years ago. This means that no apes of any kind have experienced a mass extinction. One of the other problems you have, is that it is possible to find bits and pieces of evidence that can support virtually any hypothesis, such as (for instance) that the earth is flat. However, for an hypothesis to be valid, not only must there be evidence that supports it, but there can be no evidence that contradicts it. Evidence of an oblate spheroid shaped earth orbiting the sun invalidates the flat earth (and the geocentric earth) hypothesis. Evidence that the earth is old invalidates the young earth hypothesis. To be scientifically valid, the hypothesis must not only address all the known evidence, but predict new evidence that has yet to be found, evidence that would not exist unless the hypothesis is true, and thus gives falsification tests for the hypothesis. THUS:
IF there were only one global world wide flood, and no other world wide catastrophes of any kind, THEN there would be only one mass extinction event in the fossil record. This is falsified by the evidence of multiple extinction events. AND:
IF there were a global flood that is recorded by humans, THEN there would be evidence of a mass extinction event while humans were living. This is falsified by the absence of mass extinctions after 25 million years ago, to say nothing of in the last 200,000 years. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : ) we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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Kitsune Member (Idle past 4322 days) Posts: 788 From: Leicester, UK Joined:
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ICANT writes: So according to the Bible account the land mass was all in one place when the flood took place. The land mass was divided somewhere from 100 to 329 years after the flood. With the land mass all in one place at the time of the flood and then being divided as it is today what would you expect to find in your search for a global flood? I will answer this question at the end of this post, which I will keep as short and simple as possible. When I think about plate tectonics, I think about paleomagnetism. This is one important way we can tell that the plates are shifting, and that some of them have moved a very long way from where they originated. Scientists have data on the time and duration of geomagnetic reversals (periods when the earth's magnetic poles flip-flopped) up to about 4 billion years ago. Here is a table for such reversals during the last 160 million years:
So to get back to answering your question. What would I expect to find in my search for a global flood, if all the continents had been joined at that time, and only broke up after the flood? I would expect to see evidence that the earth's magnetic field had flip-flopped over 100 times in the past 4,000 years or so. That's a reversal about every 40 years. Since that doesn't describe what is happening in the real world, you may want to go re-think your runaway plate tectonics model. There are other problems with it but we can focus on this bit for now. (ABE) The last geomagnetic reversal was 780,000 years ago. This one event took place over "several thousand years." In fact, the possibility of whether we are undergoing one now, and the effects this would have on the earth and on us, is a popular topic. Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given. Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given. Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.
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Drosophilla Member (Idle past 3663 days) Posts: 172 From: Doncaster, yorkshire, UK Joined: |
Hi Coyote:
On another website I was told, with great confidence, that evolution was impossible. It violated the Second Law of Thermal Documents! Great stuff!....I laughed out loud! Do you suppose he was gearing up for a "heated" argument? Then I read Subbie's reply ("Do you think he thought it didn't fit the fax?") and was creased up! ....you know I like the humour and wit on here every bit as much as the actual discussions.....interestingly I have to say about 95% of all the wit and humour on here that I've seen, comes from the evilutionist side. The creationists seem to be a humourless lot by comparison - I wonder why?.....Could be an interesting thread in the coffee house maybe.... Edited by Drosophilla, : No reason given.
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greentwiga Member (Idle past 3449 days) Posts: 213 From: Santa Joined: |
The Bible verse, Gen 10:25, could mean that the region was divided up (for personal ownership) rather than communal ownership. It might also refer to city states each owning part of the land so the whole region was owned. Saying the continents were joined together and were separated is just an interpretation. They insist that their interpretation is right and then use it to prove their point.
In fact, it wasn't until after ~2,500 BC that the city states grew big enough that their borders ran into each other and there was no more arable land in Sumer.
Adminnemooseus says - An interesting point for a different topic, but pretty damn far from this topic's theme. Maybe a new topic? Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner etc.
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menes777 Member (Idle past 4341 days) Posts: 36 From: Wichita, KS, USA Joined: |
quote: Stop and think about that for a moment, then consider the global implications for having the plates move in such a short period of time. For the sake of argument (and somewhat easy mathematics) suppose the continents had to move 1000 miles (a very conservative estimate) in 500 years. That comes out to the following numbers: 1,000 Miles500 Years 2 Miles/Year 10,560 Feet/Year 28.9 Feet/Day 347.2 Inches/Day 881.8 Centimeters/Day 321,868.8 Centimeters/Year Guess how much continents move now? About 10cm at the most PER YEAR. What you are saying is that every day for 500 years the continents would have moved 80 times what they move in ONE YEAR and over a year 32,000 times as much!??? Compress that down any further and the numbers become unimaginably large. Can you imagine the tsunami's that would be generated from such movement? Factor in the constant earthquakes, tremendous increase in volcanic activity, mountain ranges forming, etc, it would be hard to imagine how man would survive it. You see it's one thing to say that the continents just broke apart and made their way to where they are now. It's something else entirely to get them to do it in a short period of time and still leave someone alive to tell about it later (so casually as to mention it in one sentence in the bible). 2012 (that Cusack flick) might be in Michael Bay territory but that seems to be what you are proposing. For all your sincerity there comes a point when what you say is no longer plausible. Unless of course there was some divine intervention, but that's really just another "What if", that Coyote is trying to avoid.
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archaeologist Inactive Member |
i am sure someone has addressed this but i will give it a go:
"But the soils at 4,350 years ago don't contain evidence of a global flood." it is better for you to say: 'the soils i assume to be 4,500 years old and studied do not showe any flood evidence" you and i both know that studying samples is a limited way to go about discoverying evidence. one reason you did not see any evidence is that you picked the wrong soil, whether by age or location. another is construction or wars, earthquakes, and subsequent floods destroyed the evidence you are seeking. remember that wooley went down about 90 feet or so and found virgin land and called it flood level,{ he was forced to recant later}, so you may have gone to the wrong depth. finding 10,000 or 4,500 year old dirt is not that easy as its depths are not uniform and dating is too subjective. also, you are assuming that Noah's flood acted like a local river uprising, we cannot be sure how it acted since not all of the water disappeared and the geography was changed and was not the same as the pre-flood lands. then you have to consider regrowth of plant life, rivers changing courses and so much more. it is said that there was a huge lake in the area if the modern sahara so what kind of erosin are you going to look for in the sand and froma lake drying up? just some ideas for you to think about.
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jar Member (Idle past 416 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined:
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archaeologist writes: also, you are assuming that Noah's flood acted like a local river uprising, we cannot be sure how it acted since not all of the water disappeared and the geography was changed and was not the same as the pre-flood lands. It does not matter because the Biblical Flood has been absolutely refuted. I never happened. That is a fact. You are new here so I will repeat one of the absolute refutations for you. In the version of the myth found in Genesis 6 God instructs Noah to:
quote: In the version of the myth found in Genesis 7 we see similar (close but not the same) instructions:
quote: We also find similar explanations of what will be destroyed in Genesis 6 it says:
quote: and in Genesis 7:
quote: In both myths lots of critters get killed, in the myth found in Genesis 6 it seems to be talking about land animals and birds while the myth found in Genesis 7 goes even further and wipes out all living things. If we play mix and match and take the best scenario from each of the myths we might be able to claim that only the birds and land animals were wiped out based on the passage from the Genesis 6 story and that we have the larger saved population found in Genesis 7. Based on that mix and match game set we have a situation where all land animals and birds found today will be descended from a population that consisted of at most fourteen critters (seven pairs of clean animals and birds) and at worst case four critters (two pair of unclean animals). Now that is what I would call a real bottleneck. We know we can see bottlenecks in the genetic record; a great example is the one in Cheetahs but we even see them in the human genome and most other species. BUT... If the flood actually happened we would see a bottleneck in EVERY species of animal living on the land and EVERY bird and EVERY one of the bottlenecks show up in the SAME historical time period. Talk about a big RED flag. That bottleneck signature would be something every geneticists in the world would see. It would be like a neon sign, Broadway at midnight on New Years Eve. It would be something even a blind geneticist could see. So it seems to me to be a very simple test that will support or refute the Flood. If that genetic marker is there in EVERY species living on land or bird of the air, then there is support for the flood. It does not prove the flood happened but it would be very strong support. If on the other hand that genetic marker is NOT there, then the Flood is refuted.
That genetic marker is NOT there. The Biblical Flood has been refuted. Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9146 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.3 |
I thought you said you were "highly" educated? You certainly are not an archaeologist as the term is understood.
Why is there a sudden lack of evidence of things from 2300 years ago to 4300 years ago? Do you dispute the artifacts from early roman times? What happened in the 2000 years prior to that that all evidence was erased? I, probably unlike you, have worked at a middle east archaeological site. It is Tel Gerisa, near Tel Aviv. We were finding artifacts from the middle bronze age. This site alone shows the ridiculousness of a Flood scenario. Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1489 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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one reason you did not see any evidence is that you picked the wrong soil, whether by age or location. Location? It's a global flood, is it not?
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2128 days) Posts: 6117 Joined:
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"But the soils at 4,350 years ago don't contain evidence of a global flood." it is better for you to say: 'the soils i assume to be 4,500 years old and studied do not showe any flood evidence" you and i both know that studying samples is a limited way to go about discoverying evidence. one reason you did not see any evidence is that you picked the wrong soil, whether by age or location. Sorry, no. I have tested well over 100 sites whose strata included the approximate 4,350 year time period. That is a very easy time period to find in most archaeological sites where I work! My colleagues have tested tens of thousands of other such sites. None contained the evidence of a flood which would have to be there if the flood was truly global. But we have evidence of older, more limited floods. Google "channeled scablands" and see what archaeologists, geologists, and other -ologists have found. Then ask why evidence of a more recent, and hugely larger flood can't be found. Face it: the global flood as described just didn't happen. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Bikerman Member (Idle past 4978 days) Posts: 276 From: Frodsham, Chester Joined: |
The scablands flood is quite interesting from several perspectives.
For one thing it shows the damage that creationism did to geology as a subject. Since geologists were at the sharp end, even before Darwin, they became very sensitive about catastrophe-type theories. Overly sensitive, with hindsight. Hence the 'ice-dam followed by massive 'scouring' when the dam broke' hypothesis was seen by many as unacceptible. Of course one can see why uniformatarianism took hold and became so dogmatically embedded when you see the sort of nonsense that creationists still spout today, but it was a shame that Bretz had to wait until his 90s to get the recognition and respect he deserved. This doesn't absolve his colleagues from blame, of course. Alden and Bryan behaved in a disgraceful manner, IMHO, and what Pardee was playing at I can only guess (that guess being that he was 'lent on' to keep silent) because he had data that would have lent great support to Bretz's hypothesis.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2128 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
I agree--the Channeled Scablands are fascinating. I did some field trips into that area in grad school and have flown the area in a small plane.
For the purposes of this thread, they show evidence of several pretty large floods over 10,000 years ago. Scientists of various types have been able to track the course of those floods, date them, and study the damage they did. This is most interesting because a purported flood of vastly larger proportions a third that age has left no evidence at all. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Buzsaw Inactive Member
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Jumped Up Chimpanzee writes: Bear in mind, though, that in ancient times people would have had no knowledge of the whole world (in fact, little knowledge of anything more than a few miles from where they lived), so what might have appeared to be a major flood to them, would have been insignificant on a global scale. On the other hand, bear in mind that IF indeed there was this Biblical flood, there was allegedly only 8 people, all surviving witnesses of the event. Given that these eight were the total living post flood population of the planet, the phenomenal event would have been the most significant historically known and talked about event for many generations to come by all living cultures, all being relatively close descendents of these eight. I say relatively close, because after all, IF it was true, we're all descendents of these eight. As the time passed and the event passed further into history, though the accuracy of the event would become distorted in various manners according to the areas and cultures, the event would still be known to some degree fairly universally. The further from the event down through the centuries and millenia, the less frequent and less accurate any information would be.
WYATT PARAGRAPH EDITED OUT BY BUZSAW We don't know how extensive the knowledge would have been prior to the flood, but IF those eight experienced the event, there would have been no doubt in their minds that it was global, due to the length of time the were afloat in it. Edited by Buzsaw, : Wyatt deleted and word emphasised. Edited by Buzsaw, : No reason given. BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW. The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.
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