Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood

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Originally posted by wmscott:
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But in short, some of the other things supporting a flood are the presence of ice rafted rocks in areas the glaciers didn't reach such as the Driftless area in SW Wisconsin. This area adjoins the Mississippi river, a number of high valleys and hills along this river have rocks left by floating ice. As the sea level rose, the river backed up and rock bearing ice drifted into flooded valleys and over the hills.

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And this is evidence for a global flood? I don't believe that you have eliminated the possibility of local epeiric seas on the continent. We know this happened in the Cretaceous Period as well. Was that another global flood? Tell us exactly the elevations where these glacial erratics have been found and then show us how the same waters covered land masses thousands of feet in elevation. Then you might have something.

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The presence of sea life in inland bodies of water is also evidence of a former connection with the sea.

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A connection with the sea is far from a global flood. Is the Baltic Sea a global flood, also?

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We have the Pleistocene extinction which is a mystery and occurred in a pattern consistent with the cause being a global flood.

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Another assertion. What is the evidence of this and how does it rule out other causes such as climatic change?

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We have the disappearance of Ice Age people and the sudden change since in the archeological record.

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Who are the ice age people? Couldn't this have to do with the retreat of continental ice caps without any flood? You have not shown this.

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We also have a wide range of geological evidence supporting a recent sudden end of the ice age that resulted in large scale elevation changes around the world. As shown by greatly elevated shorelines of recent geological age.

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Prove to us that you are not confusing glacial lake shorelines with marine shorelines. What is "greatly elevated?" I have seen the stranded beach deposits from glacial lake Missoula. Are these part of your flood? They occurred at about the same time as your break up of the continental ice sheet. Show me wave-cut marine terraces in Denver and then we will have something to talk about. I think you have spent too much time in the flatlands.

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There is also of course the marine diatoms here in Wisconsin deposited in an event that dropped large ice rafted boulders at fairly high elevations far from any sea.

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What are fairly high elevations? Can you show is that the diatoms were not wind blown?

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These things and many others are part of an over all pattern. If viewed in isolation, each event is a bit of an anomaly, but not too troubling if it were just a case of there only being one anomaly. However once they are connected together we begin to see that they are each part of a much larger event.

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I think you need to connect together with a few more facts rather than selecting the ones that you want to use. Your data is quite provincial. If you are trying to convince us to buy your book, you have a long way to go.

wmscott, I'm a little vague on a few things. You state:

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The ice sheets collapse into the sea raising the sea level suddenly, which causes the level of the Med to rise above the level of the Black Sea area, the water flow in the river draining the area is reversed.

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How do the ice sheets "collapse into the sea?" Whenever I pour water over ice, the cubes just lift of the bottom of the glass. Where do these ice sheets go? What is the gradient that causes them to move?...

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For other quiestions on raised shorelines, the ones I am referring to are found along sea coasts, which eliminates the possibility of them being formed by local flooding.

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Exactly my point. Why do we not find marine terraces farther inland, at higher elevations?

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The Diatoms found in Wisconsin were found at an elevation of 1000 Ft. The drop stones in SW Wisconsin are also found at elevations of about 1000 Ft also. [quote] Isn't it funny that the elevations are concordant? Could it be that this was the highest level that the oceans reached? Sorry, not global yet!

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[quote]On the Pleistocene extinction, I would suggest you do a little research into some of the accepted causes and you will see what I mean about it being a mystery.

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All I know is that some people say it was a climatic change. No word on a flood.

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Originally posted by wmscott:
On the lakes having shorelines and the flood having none, where would the shoreline be of a total global flood?

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So shorelines are irrelevant. Why did you bring them up?

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The flood was brief enough that few shorelines would have formed, for it takes time to create a shoreline. In areas where the conditions were suitable, we do find high level shorelines.

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What are these conditions? Why did they not occur at higher elevations?

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It appears from what we have found, that only towards the end of the deluge when the draining into the deepening seas slowed, was there time enough for shore lines to form. These raised shore lines are found on coasts in many parts of the earth and are due to a former higher sea level combined with local uplift caused in part by the depression of the ocean floors.

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Again why are they all at low elevations? Why were the ocean floors being depressed? Why were they higher at one time? Why weren't the continents depressed by the weight of the water, also?

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On the Pleistocene extinction, I have posted more above in this post already, but flooding is a better explanation of the pattern seen, especially when you consider how poorly current explanations fit with what is known about this extinction event. I find that flooding being the cause of the Pleistocene extinction event answers many questions in animal population distributions that have been without reasonable answers.

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Where is your data for this? You keep making assertions about this and that but never back them up. You think this and you find that, but never why...

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Like why did so many animals survive in Europe when they died in America?

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Hmm, doesn't sound like a global flood then, does it?

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For Edge; The collapse of an ice sheet or glacier is called a Jokulhlaup, what happens is a large amount of trapped water beneath the ice is released at the edge.

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The problem with this is that the source of your water is the encroaching sea. Also do you know how much water it would take to lift an ice cap? Can you show where an entire Icelandic ice field has catastrophically broken up and moved into the sea?

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This water release reduces the ground friction to about zero and the ice surges forward in a huge release of ice and water. These events have been observed on a small scale in Iceland. Similar events are believed to have happened on a larger scale with the ice sheets. If a large ice sheet suffered a large Jokulhlaup, the resulting release of ice and meltwater surging into the sea could have been large enough to raise global sea levels enough that the rising water destabilized other ice sheet edges resulting in a chain reaction of surging and flooding.

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So, you have evidence that this actually happened and that the effects are what you assert? I think you misunderstand Jokhalaups as well. I'll look into it.

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some of the marine shorelines are found at great heights such as in the Andes mountains, ...

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Are you saying that the Andes were not uplifted? Did you ever hear of plate tectonics? Perhaps you should define how you use the word "marine." Does that include saline lakes?

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...but for the most part the flood was to brief to have created extensive shorelines at high elevations, or we would still be waiting for the water to drain. Yes you are right in that flooding is not considered as a possible cause of the Pleistocene extinction. It is specially excluded from consideration since the people involved do not accept the possibility of a global flood.

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It seems that some of your own information denies a global flood, if European animals did not suffer the same extinctions as North American animals.

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For this reason they are blind to any evidence that may point in that direction. As you can see in reading the responses I get here and on other boards, everyone automatically rejects the flood regardless of any evidence I may present.

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Your evidence is weak and contradictory. How can you expect to be taken seriously?

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Originally posted by wmscott:
Edge- On shorelines, my point was that at its peak, a global flood would have no shore on which to create a shoreline. Then as the water receded, it was to steady in its withdrawing to leave extensive shorelines for the simple reason it takes time to create a shoreline. Only where the water and land maintained a stable level in respect to each other long enough for wave action to erode a shoreline, will one be found. Many brief floods fail to create shorelines, if they also fail to leave a strand line or a sediment deposits, they disappear with out a trace. The reason for greater occurrence of raised shorelines at lower elevations is the slowing of the draining of the waters as the flood ended. The draining at first apparently lowered the water level too fast to allow time for the creation of extensive shorelines or the greater grade and erosion found at higher elevations resulted in their erasure.

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And they are all at lower elevations... Hmm, that is pretty solid evidence then that the water was actually deeper.

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On the depression of ocean floors and land. Yes the land was depressed by water, in the form of ice. The depression of the earth's surface by the weight of glaciers is well known. The same effect is also known to occur with the ocean floor when the depth of water increases which increases the amount of pressure on the ocean crust.

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I get it. The deeper the water is the lower the crust!

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The reason the ocean floors and warped upward in the ice age was that the formation of the ice caps pulled large amounts of water from the oceans reducing the amount of weight pressing down on the ocean crust.

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Just a question here, wmscott. Why is Death Valley so low in elevation? Was there water pushing down on it?

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then when the flood occurred, the ocean floors are denser and much thinner than the continental crust, this greater flexibility combined with their lower elevation which put them under greater pressure than the land, resulted in the ocean floors sinking while land areas tended to rise.

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If the land areas were rising, why was there a flood? Seems like the situation we have now.

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The removal of the weight of some of the glaciers from the land and putting them into the seas also helped to tip the weight balance. This process of the earth's crust shifting in elevation due to weight put on it is called isostatic compensation.

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I thought you said that the Greenland and Antarctive ice caps weren't affected. Why is that and do you know what percentage of the ice was in them?

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The water to move the ice sheet comes from underneath, the geothermal heat melts an ice sheet from the bottom up at the end of an ice age. The thinner edges remain frozen to the bedrock acting as a ice dam. If the dam breaks, a huge amount of ice and water will surge into the sea.

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And then the ice cap sets back down right were it was. Do I have this right? Is there an example of complete ice fields doing this in Iceland? Seems like Iceland would be denuded of glaciers pretty frequently with all of the geothermal energy.

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Enough to raise the sea level high enough destabilize other ice sheets which were on the verge of surging on their own due to the warming conditions. This theory is called the "domino Theory" in glaciology. There is evidence that there were massive sudden releases of ice and water at the end of the last ice age, evidence of super floods and huge surging events shown by disrupted and plowed sediments and many drop stones found on the ocean floors.

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And this was a worldwide event, but you can't even show us that it is an island-wide event in Iceland.

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On Andes mountains uplift, yes of course, that is why they have such highly uplifted shorelines. As the Pacific ocean floors was pushed down, the Andes were pushed up. This happened in stages or steps which is how the shorelines had time to form.

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But then it had nothing to do with receding floodwaters, right? If the uplift was caused by convergent tectonics, which we can see happening today, by the way; why call upon a flood that has never been observed?

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The word marine implies marine life and conditions where salt lakes just have the salt at varying concentrations and lack ocean life forms.

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Then you know that there were/are some saline lakes in various mountain ranges today. They could leave shorelines at high elevations. So, if we found some we might consider this as a possibility for their formation. Or would you automatically assume a worldwide flood?

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Yes I know all about plate tectonics, ...[quote] All? Very good. There are very few degreed geologists that know ALL about plate tectonics.

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[quote]...I have only been dealing with outlines and small parts of it in these posts, it would take a book to explain it all in detail, which is why I wrote one. You can have what ever opinion you want, but doesn't mean much if you have never read my book. Now if you read someone's book, then your opinion has some weight behind it.[/B]

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You and TC should get together. He/she never has time to cover such miniscule details like the Paleozoic and Mesozoic. What was your textbook in college geology. Did you read it?

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Originally posted by Quetzal:
Whoa! Up to now we were discussing the evidence for (or against) an actual geophysical event (a global flood at the end of the last ice age). Start dragging in Noah and the other Genesis fairy stories, you're now arguing biblical inerrancy. Worse, you're implying that your entire premise rests on the shaky foundation of a 2700-year-old myth that, by your own dating, could only have been written 7000+ years after the events depicted occurred!!!! I guess I have to ask: which is it? A biblical apologetic or a scientific hypothesis?[/B]

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This kind of blew me away too. Wmscott has tried to be reasonable as possible, given the tenuousness of his arguments; but now we are faced with a dilemma. Are we dealing with a person who has marshalled scientific facts and come up with a conclusion, or a person who has selectively culled the facts to support an a priori dogma? Wmscott seems to espouse an old earth viewpoint with the modification of a post-ice age flood. However, if one accepts the literal, biblical account of the flood, as he has now revealed, then why not also accept the 6000 year old earth? To YEC or not to YEC. That is the question.

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Originally posted by wmscott:
Edge-On dead valley, I believe it is a dropped block fault valley. Britannica states "The geologic history of Death Valley is extremely complex and involves different types of fault activity at various periods, in addition to crustal sinking and even some volcanic activity.
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A type of fault activity called , in which the movement is dominantly vertical, began to form the valley in the middle Tertiary Period (about 30 million years ago).

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So this tectonic activity occurred without any glacial surging and hydraulic loading of the crust.Or did it?...

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It is important to remember that the up lift has happened in association with the comings and going of the ice stages over the last two million years of the ice ages, and during ice advances has operated basically in reverse. And the reason there was a flood despite the shifting going on, is that the sea level rose much faster than the crust of the earth could adjust to the shifting pressures.

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How can you say that the uplift occurred in association with the comings and goings of the ice ages when it started 30 Ma ago? Seems like uplift could happen without your mechanism. What is your evidence?

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On Greenland and Antarctica not being affected. Actually they were affected quite a bit by a global flood. They lost a lot of ice on their margins and were probably thinned by ice lost into the rising flood waters, but they largely remained intact.

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I was just going by something you had said earlier.

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Some of the reasons for their survival could be the fact the Greenland glaciers are surrounded by a ring of mountains that keeps them in place, and may have kept them in from floating away in the flood. Antarctica has a surrounding ring of ocean currents that may have acted in the same manner.

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Not sure how this works. Seems like plenty of icebergs get carried away by those currents.And what are you saying, anyway? These are points against your model. If the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are held in place how does your model proceed? Why wouldn't the continental ice sheets be held back similarly? Moreover, how does the actic ocean ice participate. Seems to me like it can't because it should simply rise with the rising sea level. The amount of icemelt in your model is disappearing with each post, wmscott.

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On the Iceland glaciers reseating after a release of sub glacial water. Yes, what happens is the trapped water is released which carries away ice from the edge of the glacier where the release occurs. In areas away from the edge that lost water, the ice subsides as water is removed form underneath.

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So, your mechanism is not known to ever occur anywhere? You have taken a local phenomenon (a jokhulhlaup) and applied it to multiple continental ice sheets. Are you sure that this is valid?

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I don't know if the glaciers are retreating or advancing on Iceland. Even an advancing glacier could experience a large release of water and ice. Yes there certainly is plenty of geothermal heat in Iceland, but remember it is pretty far north too.

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Yes, and so were the continental icecaps of the ice ages.

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For evidence showing wide spread surging of glacial ice into the ocean I can quote by last post. "On the reference on drop stones in the Atlantic, I was reading "Riddle of the Ice; A Scientific Adventure into the Arctic" by Myron Arms, on pages 160-165 he discusses the finding of drop stone layers in cores taken from the Atlantic ocean floor. The cores were the 'GRIP' cores and were used to support the "Bond-Heinrich cycles" theory. I had just been reading this and thought it interesting and included it in the post. Most of the references to drop stones I have in my book refer to areas closer to where the edges of the ice sheets were located. The layer in the GRIP cores apparently cover most of the North Atlantic and indicate that a number of ice ages or stages, have had huge sudden releases of ice and water into the sea." Couldn't say it better myself. The ocean wide layer of drop stones is evidence of a very large surging of glacial ice into the ocean.

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Nonsense. The phenomenon is not "ocean-wide." You state that they are found in the North Atlantic. Can you give us the actual distribution? Neither have I seen a convincing argument that this event or events caused a worldwide flood. In fact, I am not convinced that the dropstone deposits actually indicate a surge of the type you propose.

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On the uplifting of the Andes you stated, "But then it had nothing to do with receding floodwaters, right? If the uplift was caused by convergent tectonics, which we can see happening today, by the way; why call upon a flood that has never been observed?" First off, this flood was observed and is recorded in a book called the Bible.

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So you admit that the bible is the actual basis of your belief. Okay. Do you know that there are lots of floods in recorded history? Could it be that you are selectively collecting facts to support a legend?

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You mite try reading it sometime, the flood part is near the beginning by the way. On the uplift, it has been caused by a combination of factors, convergent tectonics created the mountains, and Ice Age flexing has lifted them to their current elevation.

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Can you show me a map that tell us where the continental ice sheets were in South America during the ice ages?

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As for knowing ALL about plate tectonics, don't be a child, I used the word 'all' in the general sense and not in an all inclusive sense. On geology textbooks, I have read quite a few, my favorite is "The Earth's Dynamic Systems" by W. Kenneth hamblin, very nice book, I wrote a review on it at Amazon.

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So, was that your college geology textbook?

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Originally posted by wmscott:
Edge-You asked "What is your evidence?" on uplift and subsidence being associated with the comings and goings of the ice sheets. We have evidence in that the recorded uplift and subsidence has occurred in stages and has been associated by some geologists with the coming and going of the ice sheets. "The margins of continents have afforded remarkable sites of cymatogenic tilting with repeated uplift upon the landward and depression upon the seaward side of axes trending closely parallel with present coasts. Corresponding with the polycyclic denudational history of the lands is therefore a polycyclic depositional record embodied in the offshore sediments." (The Morphology of the Earth; A study and Synthesis of World Scenery by Lester C. King 1962, p.223) By polycyclic King means that there occurred a number of distinct periods of rapid erosion of recently uplifted land followed by periods of little erosion. He also connected the uplift of the land with subsidence of the sea floors. A number of geologists have connected this pattern with the pattern of the ice ages. An extreme flooding event at the end of the last ice age would have repeated the earlier pattern and due to the suddenness and size of the shift in weight, the effects were more extreme and more sharply felt than the previous events.

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Once again, what is your evidence for this last statement? I have no doubt that some isostatic changes occurred with the melting of the ice sheets, and they may have resulted in higher sea levels, but I think you are exaggerating the effect and also confused between alpine glaciation in the coastal ranges with the continental ice sheets of the interior. To my knowledge the only glaciation of the coast ranges of Canada were alpine glaciers. On top of that, you gave us some information that suggested uplift long before the glaciers. Why couldn't tectonics account for all of the uplift?

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edge: "Why wouldn't the continental ice sheets be held back similarly? Moreover, how does the actic ocean ice participate. Seems to me like it can't because it should simply rise with the rising sea level. The amount of cement in your model is disappearing with each post"

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Whereas current studies seem to indicate that the Greenland and Antarctica Ice sheets remain intact during a warming climate, evidence such as the fresh water spike indicate that the other continental ice sheets were falling apart and very vulnerable to surging at the end of the ice age.

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Of course they were melting. The problem is that there is no diagnostic evidence for surging on the scale that you suggest.

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This difference in response to changing climate conditions is why the ice sheets responded differently. And as I have stated before, it was not necessary for the ice to be in the sea to contribute to the flood waters since whether they were floating over land or ocean, would make no difference.

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But I thought that was an integral part of your model. The glaciers surging into the sea and upsetting the climate to such an extent that more glaciers were melted.

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edge: "You have taken a local phenomenon (a jokhulhlaup) and applied it to multiple continental ice sheets. Are you sure that this is valid?"

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Yes it is, I didn't come up with it, it is part of what is know about the behavior of the ice sheets. I have merely used it as part of my theory. Most of what I am saying is nothing unusual, I have just picked up the pieces and put them together.

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We have already established that this is not the behavior of ice sheets. No complete ice sheets have melted, surged or otherwise been disrupted in history. Jokhulhlaups occur on the fringes of glaciers and ice sheets. Never has an entire ice sheet been affected that I can tell. If you have such information, please share.

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On drop stones in the North Atlantic you replied "Nonsense. The phenomenon is not "ocean-wide."" The source I quoted stated "The layer in the GRIP cores apparently cover most of the North Atlantic"

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Correct. The "most" of the North Atlantic. Not all of it. And what about the South Atlantic and the Pacific?

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"selectively collecting facts to support a legend" Some legends turn out to be true, and if it wasn't, then there wouldn't be any evidence for me to collect.

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Indeed some are true. Others are false. And no even without legends, there is plenty of data to collect. Just because you base your entire research on a legend does not mean that there is other data.

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"Can you show me a map that tell us where the continental ice sheets were in South America during the ice ages?" See the map on page 64 in the book "Late Glacial and Postglacial Environmental Changes; Quaternary, Carboniferous-Permian, and Proterozoic" edited by I. Peter Martini.

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Obviously, I do not have this at my fingertips. Pleas describe the continental ice sheets in South America.

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edge:"So, was that your college geology textbook?"

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I have read many geology textbooks, but I have never been to college as a student.

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Actually, I kind of guessed that. And yet you are writing geology books. Interesting.How about some figures, wmscott? Have you figured out how much energy would be consumed by melting a continental ice sheet? Over the time period of your flood? Have you calculated what that would do to the temperature of the atmosphere? Think that might have an effect on other ice sheets?

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Originally posted by wmscott:
Some of you also seem to be having difficulty accepting the idea of large portions or even an entire ice sheet suddenly surging. As I have already posted, the GRIP drop stones found over the area of the North Atlantic are believed to be the result of just such an event.

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So this is the only way to get a broad deposit of drop stones? Sorry, but I don't buy that. You have not connected drop stones with jokhulhlaups in anyones minds yet. I would suggest that the drop stones were associated with a major advance of the continental ice sheets under normal expansion.

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There are also, the last I heard, three teams monitoring one of the largest ice sheets in Antarctica, because it is feared that rising sea levels due to a warming climate could destabilize the ice sheet and cause it to surge which could flood coastal areas all over the world, sort of a mini Noah's flood. The possibility of large sudden movement by ice sheets is today not only believed in, it is feared. Link to site on the possibility of the ice sheets collapsing

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Page Not Found | UW College of Arts & Sciences

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Did you read this article? This process has been going on for 10ky and won't pose much of a hazard for another 7 ky. Hardly a catastrophic event in the sense of a Noachian flood. I think your operative word here is "mini." So, we still have yet to see a process on the scale of which you speak.

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As for drop stones in other oceans, there are probably are many other areas which have them, perhaps a Internet search will turn up more information, and remember just because we haven't gone and found something doesn't mean it isn't there, you don't know that until you look.

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You mean that you've done all of this research and not done this yet?...

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On the extent of SA glaciers, picture a map of the area about six inches long and mentally drag your thumb down the west side of the map where the mountains are.

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I believe that I asked for the extent of continental ice sheets. My guess is that there were none. The area was glaciated because it was already high. Exactly as we find modern alpine glaciers. I also believe that even the area you describe was not exactly a continuous alpine-glaciated area. In this case how do you manage all of the uplift of the Andes by isostatic readjustment related to glacial unloading?

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Originally posted by wmscott:
edge- I am pressed for time today, so I don't have time to post the information you request. I would suggest doing some reading on the subject, the extent of ice cover in SA and the way the last ice age ended. "Late glacial and Postglacial Environmental changes" is a good book for this. I suggest this because you are mostly questioning mainstream theories on the ice age.

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Not at all. I am questioning the way you apply them. I have no problems with ice dams, breakouts, jokuhlhaups, glacial lakes, glacial expansions, etc. It's just that you have offered nothing that is diagnostic of a worldwide, Noachian flood.

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I merely believe that many of the huge flooding events happen at the same time and perhaps on a larger scale or range then is currently believed. but you seem to keep questioning basic things like ice sheets surging, doesn't common sense tell you that the bigger a pile of ice is, the more unstable it is?

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No, common sense tells me nothing like that, and you have not made a case for it either. You have made a bunch of extrapolations from limited data and explained it with an event that has no broad support in geology and has never been observed. For instance, we know that plate tectonics works. We know where the faults are and their sense of motion. We directly observe motion along these faults. We can calculate the rates of uplift due to convergent tectonics. These more than adequately explain every uplifted shoreline along the western coast of North and South America. And yet you come up with some idea that minimizes this data and explains "everything" even though there were never enough continental ice sheets to account for all of the isostatic adjustment that you suggest.I admit that you have an interesting idea. However, you have carried it to such an extreme that it cannot be taken seriously. This particularly since you ignore some data, passing it off with a wave of the hand and then bend the rest the data to support the biblical concept of a flood.

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If we are to have a discussion on the details of this, you need to get a better background in the subject.

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No comment.

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Originally posted by wmscott:
...If bible chronology is correct on the age of man and when the flood occurred as I believe it to be, our absolute dating systems apparently have some pretty sizable errors left in them yet and are better suited to giving approximations then exact dates. The dating systems in use, yield valuable information and are well worth using, but the information they give needs to be evaluated thoughtfully, and not swallowed whole without examination. Blindly believing whatever number some of these tests spit out, may well result in our generation of scientists being regarded as gullible dupes by future generations.

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Do you really think that geochronologists "blindly accept" dates? Do you really think they want to publish faulty data and half-baked ideas? Seems to me that it is YECs who blindly accept a biblical myth and warp/ignore data to fit their model. How does a whole generation of scientists become so duped?It has always amused me that creationists have all these reservations about radiometric dating, but then criticize scientists for throwing out data that is questionable. Is it your opinion that there is some kind of mass delusion or conspiracy that is involved in the acceptance of radiometric dating?

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Originally posted by ps418:
Originally posted by wmscott:
On the seaway explanation for the Michigan whales, no such sea way is believed to have existed. You are perhaps thinking of the Champlain Sea which didn't extend far enough west to count for the whales. On the timing of the deposits, both diatoms and whales are found in material from the end of the ice age.

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You're missing the whole point. The whale bones around the margins of the great lakes and the fauna of the Champlain sea are localized deposits which can easily be explained by a localized transgression of marine water. No matter how you slice it, that's no evidence for a global flood. And how far away from the proposed margin of the Champlain sea deposits are the Michigan whales found? It cant be very far. The graph below, from the "Michigan Whale Fossils" page, seems to indicate that the whale fossils are found only near the margins of the great lakes:

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http://www.sentex.net/~tcc/michwls.html

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This is a good point. Thank you for the map. It shows clearly the relationship of the whale bone locations to elevation. I have repeatedly asked wmscott for the elevations of his anomalous whale bones and glacial drop stone deposits. He has not shown any to be higher than 600 to 1000 feet asl. Considering that we know the Champlain Seaway to have reached nearly this far, it is not a reach at all to think that there were connections to the areas where the whale bones were found. This is hardly a global flood.

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Where can I find more information on the stratigraphic context in which the bones were found?

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This is critical information. I hope that wmscott can provide it.

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Originally posted by wmscott:
On the lack of lower shorelines, there is some evidence for massively lower sea levels such as underwater canyons line up with rivers on land. Some of these are found over a mile below current sea level. But considering the fact that ocean currents are believed to have formed some of these canyons, it is not proof in itself. I would not discount the possibility of finding lower shorelines someday, because as it has been stated we know the surface of the moon better than we know the depths of the oceans. While that may be, I theorize that due to the relative density of continental crust verses oceanic crust, there is a compensating factor in isostatic balancing that keeps the ratio of land to water from departing too far from the ratio of the density of water to rock. So that as large swings in ocean volume will raise or lower the sea level and as a result reduce or enlarge the percentage of land, the isostatic forces will tend to counter balance, helping to keep the land/water ratio from getting too far out of whack. Due to this balancing effect, to create lower shorelines will take progressively larger amounts water removed to do it. Part of the reason for this, is as I have been posting, is as the ocean level drops, the rebounding of the ocean floor pulls the land downward. Meaning that to create a given low shoreline a greater amount of water needs to be removed. If the removal happens very quick, then the level may drop before isostatic compensation could occur. This could possibly explain some of the underwater canyons, they may have been formed in a brief pull down of the shoreline before isostatic compensation occurred in some areas.

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Wmscott, you remind me of an acquaintance who once claimed to have invented a perpetual motion machine. All he had to do was convince his wife to cut up the house to build it. It was truly real no matter what I told him. He had a rationalization for every one of my arguments. Well, twenty five years later, I haven't heard of him getting a Nobel Prize, so I assume that his wife prevailed... Or maybe I did.Anyhow, we are pretty certain that there are shorelines below the present sea level. They have been used to prospect for archeological sites in the Pacific Northwest with a degree of success.Now, since you have all of this pivoting about the continental slope(?), where is your evidence for this? There should be absolutely no evidence of a quiet, passive continental margin anywhere in the world. There should be massive volcanism of the right age on all continental margins along with mappable faults and seismicity. The only places that you find these shorelines are in the most active convergent plate boundaries in the world.... But they wouldn't have anything to do with plate tectonics would they?Even with many thousands of feet of ice on them, Antarctica and the high northern latitudes are significantly above sea level. No amount of ice melt will submerge those areas completely. How are you going to do this on a global scale? Your model is too sketchy to even ponder.You have not provided any evidence that there was enough ice melt to raise the oceans a significant degree and if there were, you you have to melt significant parts of the ice pack that you say remained intact. Even if the event occurred you are a long way from showing the remote possibility of a global flood.You have repeatedly referred to a cometary impact for which there is no evidence, but you pass this shortcoming off with a wave of the hand and move on building your house of cards.You have shown virtually no evidence that the flood reached any higher than 600 to 700 feet above the present sea level but just assume that it must have been high enough to cover the entire earth, further adding on to your house of cards. You reject any explanation to the contrary with a casualy dismissal and back it all up with scripture.Show us evidence for higher sea levels, not just wishful speculation in support of your legend. Show us a mechanism and evidence for see-sawing of the continents and the ocean basins. Show us evidence for sea levels over a couple of thousand feet in elevation. As yet you have failed to do any of these things. All you have managed to do is unsuccessfully try to boost your book sales.

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Originally posted by wmscott:
edge:
"Even with many thousands of feet of ice on them, Antarctica and the high northern latitudes are significantly above sea level. No amount of ice melt will submerge those areas completely."

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wmscott:
Actually you are referring to the surface of the glaciers, without the ice the Antarctica land surface is a number of islands.

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Exactly the point. Even if the ice completely melted in a short time, it would pretty much stay where it is as water. The mountains would still be above the water. As isostatic compensation occurred, even more land would emerge.

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edge:
"You have not provided any evidence that there was enough ice melt to raise the oceans a significant degree and if there were, you have to melt significant parts of the ice pack that you say remained intact. Even if the event occurred you are a long way from showing the remote possibility of a global flood."

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wmscott:
Actually I have provided evidence, such as the marine traces here in Wisconsin at an elevation of 1000 ft, the Michigan whale bones, the drop stones in the Wisconsin Driftless area, etc.

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A whole thousand feet! Now that's convincing. Like I said, you have a long way to go.

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Considering the elevation these things and others are found at, the fact that there was a global flood, is a simple fact.

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Wow, if I said something like that, creationists would howl.

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"a cometary impact for which there is no evidence" Actually there is some, as we have been discussing the Carolina bay lakes show signs of having been created by secondary impacts at the end of the ice age, and of course we have the sudden collapse of the ice sheet itself.

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Could you summarize the evidence that shows your point?

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edge:
"Show us a mechanism and evidence for see-sawing of the continents and the ocean basins."

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wmscott:
We, or at least Patrick and I have been discussing the mechanism of the flood for the last several posts. You really should read the posts before jumping into a discussion. It is nice that you have an interest in the flood, but it would be better if you could contribute something to the discussion other than just the usual Internet flaming. If you want to make more of an impression with your arguments, I would suggest learning what and where the targets are. Look at KingPenguin, at least he is open minded enough ...(complaint snipped)

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So, you can't propose such a mechanism... By the way I didn't ask for a flood mechanism, I asked for a mechanism that would uplift the deep ocean basins relative to the continents.

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Originally posted by ps418:
wmscott says:"
That is to be expected since as I having been posting, we do not find marine bottom life on land as a result of the flood. Since the flood was too brief to create corals on land, it is to be expected that it was too rapid to show up in coral ring records.

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A little problem here. If coral does not have time to colonize in shallower water, how does it manage to survive the wmscott flood? Even a modest 700 foot rise in water level (which is all the wmscott has shown so far) will kill all coral reefs on earth in a very short time. Why do we have modern coral reefs at all, much less the extensive ones that we all know about?

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Originally posted by wmscott:
Edge;
We are not talking about having a flood now. The Antarctca mountains are at their current elevation due to the shifts that occurred in the flood. The Antatcta Ice sheet was larger in the ice age and the ocean level was lower, the combination of these effects would have put the mountains at a lower level.

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What is your evidence that these mountains were at a "lower level?" This is a nice assertion, but it is unsupported.

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"mechanism that would uplift the deep ocean basins relative to the continents." "Isostatic copensation- The adjustment of the lithosphere of the earth to maintain equilibrium amoung units of varying mass and density; excess mass above is balanced by a deficit of density below, and vice versa." Dictonary of geological Terms, third edition.

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So, isostatic compensation just "did it?" Tell us why the flow of the asthenospere is so rapid from beneath continents to the ocean basin and back, but so slow during continental uplift due to glacial melting. I don't quite get this part.

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Coral- The flood was brief enough for some coral to survive. Some did not survive and was restarted by new growth.

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Okay, how long was the wscott flood, and how do you reconcile this with the biblical story?