The "Confessions of a Former Christian" thread has drifted somewhat off-topic, and spiraled into a discussion of Flood apologetics. I'm proposing this thread to continue the discussion in a more appropriate location.
The last reply from DwarfishSquints, with some formatting added by me for easier reading:
40 days of rain is all it took to feed the flood i realise i should have said that different.
quote:
ut oh, look! The Bible itself also says, very clearly, that "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered." The mountains had to have already existed, and we know the depth of the water...and there is not enough water on the planet to Flood the Earth to that depth, even without the mountains.
these Mountains were Not like the Mountains we have today if you can imagine a flood covering the earth i think there would be3 some movement don't you?
Once again, DS, there is not enough water on the entire planet, even including all of teh subterranean water, all water trapped in rocks, all of the moisture in the atmosphere, and all of teh water frozen in the polar ice caps to Flood the entire world to a depth of 15 cubits above even the continental shelves - that means, even
without mountains, there is
still not enough water.
Let's do the math for you:
A "cubit" was a unit of length in ancient times, and had a variety of measurements depending on the country of origin. The Hebrew cubit was typically between 14 and 18 English inches long - this is one of the shortest measurements (making it the most generous one to use, since it requires far less water than, say, the Egyptian cubit which was about 3 English feet in length). I'll be using 1 Cubit = 18" for the purposes of this calculation, because it gives you the best possible benefit of the doubt.
The Bible states that the Earth was Flooded to a depth of 15 cubits (the Bible includes the mountains, but once again for ease of calculation and to give you the best possible benefit of the doubt, we'll ignore mountains compeltely).
15 Cubits = 22.5 feet = 6.858 meters
So, we need to cover all of the continents, excluding mountains, to a depth of almost 7 meters.
The surface area of the Earth is 510,065,600 km^2. Unfortunately, we can't simply calculate the amount of water needed to cover this surface area by 6.858 meters, because the continents are not at sea level - if they were, we'd all be standing in a puddle every time the tides came in.
It's very difficult to arrive at a reasonable number for the height of the continents - all of the average elevations include mountains, and aside fom that the continents still vary greatly in elevation. For the sake of argument, I have picked Indiana, a state near the middle of the US that is not a part of any mountain ranges. Indiana's average elevation is 210 meters above sea level (Colorado, in contrast, is over 1000 meters above sea level in places; the middle east is almost completely above 500 meters) - so we need to raise sea level by at minimum 216.858 meters, and this is with us granting a much "flatter" Earth that includes no mountains and ignores the fact that even non-mountainous regions are still frequently at very high elevations above sea level.
To be more specific, we need to raise the sea level by 210 meters to make it even with our land mass, and then add that amount of water to the amount of water needed to cover the entire surface area of the Earth in 6.858 meters to provide the global Flood as described in the Bible.
The surface of the oceans is approximately 361,000,000 km^2.
361,000,000 km^2 * .210 km = 75,810,000 km^3 of water needed to bring sea level up to the average elevation of Indiana.
510,065,600 km^2 * .006858 km = 3,498,029.88 km^3 of additional water required for the Flood.
75,810,000 km^3 + 3,498,029.88 km^3 = 79,308,029.88 km^3 total water required to be added to the oceans to cover the continental landmasses not including mountains to a depth of 6.858 meters assuming an average elevation of 210 meters, which is a more than generous assumption considering that most areas are significantly higher.
A large quantity of the ice in the ice caps will not have a significant effect because they are already in water - melting their entire load of ice will not raise sea level significantly. The relevant portion is that which rests on land, because all of that water is added to the oceans. For the sake of the argument and once again to give you the biggest possible advantage, we'll assume that
all of the polar ice rests on land, and
all of it will add to the water in the ocean. This is massively inaccurate, but it's in your favor to demonstrate how wrongheaded your model is.
The total amount of ice trapped in the polar ice caps is a little more than 34,500,000 km^3 (this is the total of Greenland and Antarctica, which make up about 90% of the ice caps). Note that this is
less than half of the water required to Flood the Earth - basically, you haven't even brought sea level up to the average height of the continental shelves yet. Sure, coastal regions are devastated, but inland regions don't even feel a change. It's not a global Flood.
So now let's add in the total amount of subterranean water and the water in the atmosphere.
There is only about 12,900 km^3 water in the atmosphere at any given time - a drop in the proverbial bucket. Every drop of water contained in every cloud in the world could fall to Earth and it wouldn't even make a significant contribution to a global Flood.
There is approximately 23,400,000 km^3 water total trapped underground.
Adding these up:
34,500,000 km^3 from the ice caps + 12,900 km^3 from the atmosphere + 23,400,000 km^3 from all underground sources = 57,912,900 km^3
The amount we calculated as necessary to Flood the Earth as described in the Bible was 79,308,029.88 km^3.
What does this mean?
If you by some physics-violating miracle take
all of the water in the ice caps,
all of the water from underground, and
all of the water in the atmosphere, you will still be over 21,000,000 km^3 short. That's about 1/4 of what we said was needed.
There is not enough water on the entire planet to Flood the Earth as claimed in the Bible, even ignoring mountains, giving an absurdly low average elevation for the continents, ignoring all of the facts that make taking
all of the water on the planet out of the atmosphere and up from the ground and melting it from the ice caps completely impossible, and giving the Creationist side the most favorable measurements and assumptions possible. It's not even close.
If you mention again your little "idea" that the water in space was moved there from Earth, well...I'll outright call you insane. Water is one of the top ten most common molecules in the entire Universe - if all of the water in space came from the Earth, the oceans would be larger than our galaxy (okay, I'm pulling a rough estimate out of my ass, but the frequency of water is true). And of course you would need to propose some mechanism by which water is ejected at escape velocity from the Earth - that's a neat trick. If you say "miracle," you admit that you have no evidence for your "idea."
You also bring up "some movement" of geological features, resulting in the formation of the mountains, etc. But this is yet another gigantic problem, DS: a flood cannot deposit sediments at a level higher than the flood itself reaches. If the flood doesn't cover the mountains, it can't
create the mountains.
You may start referring to "hydroplate theory" or "catastrophic plate tectonics," but both of these are total non-starters as far as geology is concerned. They require so much geological activity that a Flood would be the least of the world's problems - catastrophic plate tectonics in particular causes enough heat to be released in such a short amount of time that all of the water would have
boiled away, and teh Earth would have been a molten ball of slag. No little boat filled with animals is going to survive
that.
The evidence we have is quite simply not consistent with a global Flood.
There are many other arguments against the Flood, but this is already getting long, and I've only started replying to you, so I'll leave it at that for now.
again if you were running for you life would run with the Man eating tiger Right next to you?
and the millions of fossils that were found together is explained with layers thats why everything is sorted by the flood all the layers each one is of that layer and then next layer is different then the one before it etc.
But that's
not what we find in the geological record. Why are stone and metal tools, which
cannot run for their lives and which do not float even a little,
always found
above dinosaurs and other creatures? Why are faster creatures like the velociraptor that were extremely light and should have not only fled to high groundbut should also have been somewhat bouyant
always found
below wooly mammoths that were also supposedly killed in the Flood, but which would have been slower to find high ground and were likely less buoyant?
The evidence we have is quite simply not consistent with a global Flood.
I think this is enough for a single thread. I'd include your ridiculous accusations regarding Darwin being "an inbreeder," or your Irreducible Complexity argument, or your halfhearted attack on abiogenesis, but that just makes the topic far too broad.
Geology and the Great Flood, please.
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