Potential Evidence for a Global Flood

All of those questions are nice, but why don't you address one basic problem first.The supposed global flood is placed at about 4,350 years ago by biblical scholars.Fossils, mass extinctions and all those other things you are citing range from tens of thousands of years to hundreds of millions of years in age.One of the first things I learned in studying archaeology -- if you want to find a 10,000 year old site, look in 10,000 year old dirt.Now, if we want to find evidence of a global flood about 4,350 years old, we simply find dirt of that age and see what it tells us.Archaeologists deal with that time period all the time. I've tested probably over 100 sites of that age myself. We don't see massive erosional and depositional features at that time period that span the globe.What we see is continuity of human cultures, fauna and flora, mtDNA, and deposition, etc. This shows there was no disruption at that time period as would be caused by a global flood.So please stop with the fossils, geology, mass extinctions, Pangea and all the rest of those unrelated things. The flood was supposed to occur just 4,000+ years ago. Fossils and geology and all the rest are totally irrelevant to this time period.Can you address this one basic problem?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

If you want to be taken seriously you can't have a date for the supposed global flood bouncing around anywhere between 4,000 and 500 million and more years ago depending on what is convenient for your argument at the moment.Biblical scholars place the date somewhere close to 4,350 years ago, so if you disagree you need to pick a date. Once you pick a date we can examine the relevant soils and see what they tell us.But the soils at 4,350 years ago don't contain evidence of a global flood. Cut out the mass extinction and underwater volcano nonsense. Those are red herrings and have nothing to do with the subject.If you want to learn the age of a soil, you go to an expert--either an archaeologist or more likely, if no cultural materials are present, to a geomorphologist. They can figure those things out pretty easily. And don't bother trying to "what if" their results away.This may sound harsh, but you are bringing red herrings and "what ifs" to the discussion and trying to substitute them for evidence. They are not. An example: "What if the moon is made of green cheese?" "It's not." "I know, but 'what if' it is?" See, no evidence, just an attempt to cast doubt a scientific argument. That's what you are doing with the mass extinction, volcano, and other issues. They have nothing to do with the subject. They are red herrings designed to throw the discussion off track and make you feel your beliefs have withstood scientific scrutiny. Question dating methods if you want, but go to the proper thread. And bring evidence, not "what ifs" if you want to actually get anywhere.Now you still need to explain the lack of corroborating evidence for a global flood in sediments about 4,350 years of age, or produce a firm date for the flood so we can see what sediments of that age tell us. No more "what ifs" please.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

You are correct about the sea level rise since the last ice age. It is probably closer to 400 feet than 200 feet however.And since most of the world's population lives relatively close to an ocean or sea, it is likely that some traditions may have come from this.But there still is no evidence for a worldwide flood during historic times. That's why creationists have to equivocate about the evidence, picking and choosing anything that just might help their case, no matter how poorly the different elements fit together. But what's 500 million years one way or the other when you're doing creation "science" eh?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

There is no evidence for a global flood at 10,000 years either. I have only worked a couple of sites of that age myself, but my colleagues have studied a lot more. No evidence of a global flood. Sorry.Do you want to keep guessing ages? Or are you willing to accept that there was no global flood?As for dating, from your paragraphs it appears that you don't know enough yet to discuss the issue. If you could study some of the methods, using real science rather than creationist websites, we could have a better discussion. You have too many concepts mixed together.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

The assumption that the decay rate is constant is one of the things the RATE Project set out to overturn. They failed. They had to admit that the decay rate was steady for many millions of years. See the thread on that topic for more details. Your "what if" is disproved even by creationist data!Tree ring growth can be checked against volcanic events of known ages. There have been a number of those in historic times in the Mediterranean area. If you study a tree from the White Mountains of Southern California, such as a bristlecone pine, and it has a reduced ring in the same year as a known volcano, and you see this pattern repeated over and over, then your assumption of one ring per year isn't such a bad one. This is what has been done. Your "what if" is disproved. None. Your multiple "what ifs" are disproved.Can't you see what you are doing? You're grasping at straws! You are looking for any "what if," no matter how unlikely, in an effort to prop up your belief in a global flood.When will you look at the actual data and realize that it is overwhelming -- there was no global flood in recent historic times, be it 4,350 or 10,000 years ago?Here is another bit of evidence for you to deny: A partial skeleton was found in a cave in Southern Alaska. mtDNA was extracted from a tooth. It was also dated to 10,300 years. The mtDNA turned out to be of the haplotype D4h3. Something like 46 living individuals stretching along the west coasts of North and South America have the same haplotype. If there was a global flood, in the intervening time those individuals would have the same haplotype as individuals in the Middle East and Mediterranean. They don't. There is continuity of this mtDNA type in the Americans during the time the global flood would have resulted in a discontinuity.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Good post RAZD. You have more patience than I do, and I'm an archaeologist!One thing I find interesting is that many creationists try to discredit Carbon 14 dating as a means of supporting the belief in a young earth. Because of the widespread use of Carbon 14 dating, and it's popularity in the literature, it is often confused with the longer half-life dating methods.What that tells me is that they don't know enough about dating methods to even know which methods to try to discredit! And yet they are trying to tell scientists who actually work with these dating methods that they are all wrong. Amazing.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

No, not on the clipboard but done on the fly.What amazes me is the answers I get -- invariably nothing of substance.Bringing up various "what ifs" is not evidence, and doesn't negate scientific evidence but that's all I get as a response."What if the dating is wrong?" No evidence that it is wrong, but "what if?""Assumptions!!!" No evidence that those assumptions are unwarranted or incorrect, just another "what if.""Fossils, extinctions, volcanoes, local creation myths." No evidence that these relate in any way to the question, and certainly no evidence that these show the evidence that science has amassed is incorrect.It is as if these "what ifs," these magic words of power, are enough by themselves to make scientific evidence roll over and die.They only wish that were the case!What it really amounts to is a stopgap measure. They think that they can hold the scientific evidence at bay by the endless string of unsupported and insubstantial "what ifs" they propose, and by doing so they can pretend their beliefs are not contradicted by the empirical evidence.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I'm not sure what the longest is. Presumably a number of early humans have been sequenced, in part at least, as they have sequenced Neanderthal fossils going back 30,000 years and more.I remember reading about one from east Asia a while back that didn't match any of the known haplogroups. It was close to 50,000 years if I remember correctly.I have one from my own research that spans 5,300 years. That is enough to disprove the global flood at 4,350 years.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I don't know of any DNA studies on the ancient SA specimens. I haven't studied that area.Wouldn't surprise me though. The mtDNA studies are really starting to take off now. We are getting interesting results from a lot of new studies.I'm waiting for one on the full mitochondrial genome of Haplogroup A1 that might be out this summer.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Reason and common sense are great, but these discussions require a knowledge base as well.But the real problem is not lack of knowledge--we all suffer from that in most areas. It is creationism: Creationism becomes frustrating for scientists because it picks and chooses the facts it wants to use, and ignores, denies, or misrepresents the ones that contradict it.Creationism generally sees "divine" revelation and scripture as the highest forms of knowledge.In this it is anti-science and anti-knowledge.How else can one argue for a global flood about 4,350 years ago, when the overwhelming body of evidence shows there was no such flood?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I'm just going by what you folks keep claiming: water covering the earth, different critters running up mountains resulting in sorting of fossil remains, volcanoes, and all sorts of other goings on.And the implication I take from this is that I should find evidence for that flood in the archaeological sites which I test and which span the 4,350 year date established by biblical scholars for that flood. That evidence should be everywhere archaeologists excavate.That evidence should include: depositional and erosional features in the soils at about that date; extinction of local fauna and flora; extinction of local human populations and cultures; and termination of previous North American mtDNA haplotypes. The fauna and flora, human populations and cultures, and mtDNA haplotypes should all be replaced with Near Eastern varieties after the flood.The problem is that we don't find that evidence. It simply is not there.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

On another website I was told, with great confidence, that evolution was impossible. It violated the Second Law of Thermal Documents!

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

What you are describing to me is your religious belief. Unfortunately, it does not coincide with the scientific evidence.The last time all the land masses were together, as in your avatar, was about 250 million years ago.There were no people cavorting about 250 million years ago. The first dinosaurs were just getting underway.Biblical scholars place the global flood about 4,350 years ago, so your timing is off there as well, by several orders of magnitude.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Why should I address an hypothetical?There is no scientific evidence for the scenario you suggest. Rather, it is contradicted by all the evidence. Why even consider it?What I see you doing is this: there is no evidence for the flood 4,350 years ago so you make up some other date for the flood. If it is shown that there is no evidence at that date, you come up with still another date.Sorry, I'm not going to play that game.The flood is a religious belief that has been disproved by the scientific evidence. That was done just about 200 years ago, and the case against the flood has grown much stronger since then. So much so that even my own archaeological investigations disprove it.I understand why you have to believe in it, but don't pretend it is supported by scientific evidence.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Wrong.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.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.