Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood

Tranquility BaseIf I am guessing correctly, and remembering a bit I have seen in some of your posts, you are theorizing that the flood was caused by an uplifting of the Mid-Alantic ridge. I don't know all the details of your theory, but this angle is something I had considered early on and discarded for the following reasons. What is the mechanism that caused the uplift, and why don't we see it today? Impossible for rising mantle plumes to cause this effect in the short time reported in the Bible. A flood caused by this would have occurred slowly over the course of millions of years as happened in the distant past in connection with high stands of sea level caused by this effect due to plate tectonic movement of the land masses. A dramatic rise this large in such a short amount of time would have ripped this area wide open and caused a large number of effects that have not occurred. I am not saying this idea is without merit, just that I couldn't see a way of making it work. I would be curious to see if you really have worked out all the bugs. I would like to know more on this.The brief ice age after the flood theory runs into impossible problems as well. The last ice age lasted over 1.5 million years. There were at last four major advances of the ice sheets in North America. The length of time between each advance was many thousands of years as shown by what was plowed under in each advance such as mature forests. The amount of glacial erosion that occurred is staggering and could not have occurred in the brief time after the flood. The biggest problem with this theory of course is the fact that flood evidence appears on TOP of glacial deposits and not underneath. In this area where I live, I find traces of marine micro life left by the flood in the top soil. This area in SE Wisconsin was covered by all four advances of the ice sheets. We have up to hundreds of feet of glacially deposited sand and gravel covering the lime stone bedrock that was scraped clean by the advancing ice. The only way the marine flood traces could be found on top of glacial till is if the ice age occurred before the flood. Then of course there is the evidence of super flooding, giant glacial spill ways cut by huge quantities of melt water draining off the continent, which are of course on top of and not underneath the glacial deposits. In short, all of the draining erosion caused by the flood is always post ice age and not pre ice age. Then of course there is the thickness of the Antarctica ice sheet, much to thick to have formed since the flood. And also the ice age animals that appeared during the ice age and then died when it ended, how do you account for them in a brief post ice age theory?"Presumably you can not get a glacial flood that covers Everest if your mountains were not recently formed like ours."Actually there are two possible solutions, one they were covered by glacial ice which is a form of water, two they were at a lower elevation before the flood and have been uplifted by the depression of the ocean floors. Most probably it was a combination of the two effects."Why does one need to rip up 'the entire surface of the earth,"If one believes that all fossils were created in the flood, all fossil bearing deposits is practically the entire surface of the earth. In many parts of earth even the deep bed rock contains fossils. Here where I live, the bed rock is a several hundred foot thickness of Niagara Lime stone which is rich in fossils. This deposit is found to the east at Niagara Falls and extends west all the way to the Rocky Mountains. Now under YEC flood theories, this entire thickness of rock was all ripped up from somewhere and deposited as things began to settle. I work in a large government building that is covered with thick slabs of this rock and have had the time to examine it. The rock has been split along natural cleavage planes which tends to expose the fossils. Each of these surfaces once was a shallow sea bottom. You can see the fossils of ocean bottom plants and the occasional shell. The problem for YEC is that the entire thickness of all this is like a giant stack of cards, and each card records a period of time when that layer was the bottom. The shells and plant fossils found at each layer show that the rate of build up of sediment was slow enough that the plants and animals had time enough to grow to full size in every layer. This means the rate of sedimentation was low like maybe a half inch or less per year. Considering the thickness of lime stone here, we are talking about a minimum of many thousands of years. A rapid deposition using already existing fossils mixed in with the sediment doesn't work since in each cleavage layer, the sea bottom is visible with several fossils all on the same plane laying flat. If it was rapid, the fossils would not be laying level in groups, but would be all randomly located at different angles. Also the currents necessary to suspend several hundred feet worth of lime stone in a flood that was probably only a few thousand feet deep, would require 'blender' type currents. Think of the current speeds it would take to pick up and keep in suspension all those fossil clams found in the mountains YECs are so fond of."I don't see why YECs should expect to see the same deposits on the ocean floor."The flood was global, currents strong enough to rip up all the material with fossils supposedly created in the flood, would not be limited only to water above land areas, why or how would they? These currents would have had to have vast speeds and would have had enormous momentum and would have been extensive. Look at a chart of ocean currents, these currents are slow and yet they cover the globe, your super flood currents would have been much much greater. So if YEC flood theories were true, it would be a complete mystery why we don't find the same deposits on the ocean floor."You presumably believe in progressive creation or theistic evolution? Which of these? And what of the origin of mankind?"I not sure, I would have to study the evidence in great detail and see what it points to, the wording in the Bible is open to a range of possible interpretations on how animal life was created. On the origin of mankind we have a detailed description in Genesis, so there is no mystery there.

edge"How much mantle material do you displace from the ocean column to the continental column for a kilometer of water? Think about it. This is a simple displacement problem. It isn't very much."Since water has about one third the density of rock, if it was a simple displacement problem, the answer would be about one third of a kilometer. The land was also the source of the water that ran into the sea which would also double the shift to two thirds of a kilometer in your question. That would leave only about one third of the uplift unaccounted for. (the rock being underwater and displacing one third of it's weight in water, may also have accounted for part of the uplift.) But it isn't a simple displacement problem, it is more of a hydraulic problem due to the inside of the earth being a closed system. Small local shifts are just displacement due to their small size compared to the size of the earth. But considering the fact that the oceans cover nearly three quarters of the earth, shifts of this size will have big effects on the small amount of land on the earth. I have also been stating that there are two difference mechanisms involved, the shallow one would account for the part you are already aware of. The deeper one related to the closed volume of the earth acting with a hydraulic effect would account for the other. The shallow plastic deformation of the earth's surface is well studied. But the deeper fluid deformation is not as well studied but has been noted by a number of geologists. Perhaps you remember reading about plastic verus fluid changes in some of the old geology books. On a large scale the earth can behave like squeezing a water filled rubber ball."Examples, please. 'My source' is hardly something that I can verify. And, by the way, have you heard of tectonics? There are ways of raising terraces other than by lowering of water levels"The source was cited in the first posting on this. If you want the individual papers the original material appeared in, let me know which ones you want and I will post them or you can look it up in the book I cited yourself. Tectonics explanations were considered inadequate to explain the elevated terraces by the authors involved.

PercipientThank you, yes we do have areas where we agree. OEC is in much better harmony with current geology than YEC, even if it is not yet a complete agreement. With the right evidence the right type of OEC flood could be incorporated into geology with some adjustments, while if by some miracle YEC was proved true, geologists would probably throw up their hands and give up since the whole field would be scrap.

Tranquility BaseIt sounds like you are subscribing to a version of the Hydro plate theory. As I understand it, that theory states that the continents were all together in the Pangea land mass before the flood and during the flood suddenly moved to where they are today. Perhaps the biggest problem with this theory is that the continents did not move in a straight line from where they were then to where they are now. The locations of the land masses as they moved have been plotted using a number of geological clues. The results show that the movement of the continents looks like a dance as they twist and turn as they bump into one another as they moved along. A rapid movement in one year under the Hydro plate theory is always shown as occurring in straight lines, for if the land masses rotated and followed non-straight courses, the rapid movement would have generated enormous centrifugal forces as these huge masses turned or changed direction. Having this motion occur in such a short time increases the size of centrifugal forces to the point that the continents would have ripped the ocean floor that was moving them. This would have created Atlantic ridge like features on the pulling side and island arc like folding from the compression on the pushing side. The ocean floor has been mapped, take a look at map of the world's ocean floors and look for the evidence of rapid movement of the continents, there is none. Now if the Americas had been pushed away from contact with Africa and Europe in one year. The sea floor west of Americas would be very compressed and folded with a series of arc islands with deep trenches in between. Instead what we do have is a subduction trench where the pacific plate has been slowly pushed beneath the Americas.Using seismic tremors, the inside of the earth has been mapped as well. Pressure and temperature effect the passage of vibrations through the rock inside the earth. At different temperatures and pressures, certain rocks crystallize in different states. This allows the cold descending pacific plate to be mapped and the temperature of the plate and the surrounding material to be estimated. Now if the Hydro Plate theory was true, there would be a cold supducted pacific plate reaching as deep into the earth as the mid Atlantic ridge is from the Americas east coast. The plate would also be uniformly cold due to its recent and sudden submergence. But that is not what we find, instead the descending plate starts cool and is hotter deeper down, indicating a slow supduction. The plate is also too short, the end is melted off well short of the necessary Hydro Plate distance. The temperatures are known fairly well and follow a certain curve with increasing depth, which means that we know what the temperatures are inside the earth and we also know how long it would take for the supducted plate to heat up and melt. With this information, we are able to show that the rate of plate heating and melting agrees with gradual slow movement over millions of years and is not compatible with rapid movement in a short time.I had not heard of the sudden burst of heat from a surge in the earth's internal radiation as being the motor behind the Hydro plate movement before. Such a surge is not possible, for radioactive decay does just that, it decays, the level of activity slow drops off. The only way you could get a surge is in a run away chain reaction, a radioactive flash effect. This can happen when too much radioactive material is stored too close together and you get a positive feed back effect. This doesn't work for the earth since the density or amount of radioactive material per cubit mile inside the earth is far far too low to cause this to happen. If the earth had this much radioactive material in it, it would be too radioactive to live on. The radiation would sterilized the planet. Such a run away event would have produced large quantifies of secondary short lived radioactive daughter products. Yet even in deep drilling of the earth and in lava ejected from deep inside the earth, we fail to find such traces or their decay products in the amounts such an event would have created. And as pointed out in the preceding paragraph, the temperature/pressure profile of the inside of the earth has been mapped and shows no signs of a past burst of heat. Due to the earth's enormous volume and heat storage capacity of rock, it would take an extremely long time (millions to billions of years) for the earth's temperature to drop any significant amount. Once heated, all of the heat has to be slowly dissipated through the earth's crust and atmosphere out into space. Without a means of getting rid of the excess heat at the end of the flood, the 'radiation heat acceleration' model is dead in the water on this point alone and a temperature event this large would be extremely obvious in studies of the earth's interior. The complete lack of evidence in favor of this model, and the amount of evidence that is in direct conflict with it, clearly indicates this is a theory that is not a possibility.The mainstream knowledge of the Mid Atlantic ridge DOES rule out rapid movement. Palo magnetism, the record of magnetic reversals recorded on the ocean floor records a vast amount of time. YEC I know would have all of these reversals occurring in one year, but considering the vast changes that would have to occur in the magnetic flows inside the earth this is impossible. Even if it were possible to snap off the magnetic source, it would still take a long time for the field itself to collapse. Then even if you snap turned it back on reversed, it would take a long time for the field to build to full strength. Then there is the depth of sediment, which is none on the active parts of the ridge and gradually increases the farther you get away from the ridge. Now the rate of increasing depth of sediment with increasing distance agrees with the increasing age of ocean floor and the slow rate of sedimentation that occurs in the oceans. Now I guess you would have to say that it is just a coincident that the current sediment rate just happens to match up with slow rate geology believes the ocean basin formed at. However, I would like to point out that you are saying that something like 600 million years of currently believed geologic activity took place in the one year of the flood, then the 1.5 million years for the last ice age took place in a few hundred years after the flood and then the rate ran at our current rate for the last few thousand years. This would unavoidable create three very different rates of sedimentation on the ocean floor, which we do not see. Instead we see one slow continuous rate. Life can not be accelerated, if the rates of sedimentation were accelerated, there would be in comparison much lower percentages of traces of marine life. Yet coring of the ocean sediments doesn't show any significant reductions in the amount of marine life sediment compared to none living sedimentation. That in turn highlights the fact that most of the sediments on the ocean floor are the remains of marine life, which of course is impossible to have occurred at much higher rates than what we see today. If you wish to say that preexisting ocean sediments were stirred up in the flood and then settled out, we would not see the thinning in depth as the Mid Atlantic ridge is approached, such an event would have left a even coating on the ocean floor which is not what we find.And what about the ice age animals? They appeared in the ice age and most of them disappeared when it ended. If they lived after the flood, why did they die? Where did they come from? If they were from before the flood, under YEC they lived in a greenhouse planet, how did they do so well in an ice age and why did they then die off when it got warmer again? And if the ice age was so short, why do we find so many millions and millions of fossil remains from them.I am aware of the evidence for rapid formation of strata under rapid flow. I believe you are referring to the work of Neo-Catastrophists. I agree with Neo-catastrophism and so do most modern geologists. But you are confusing Neo-Catastrophism with Catasrophism which was disproved and discarded back in the early 1800's. The book "Great Geological Controversies" 2ed, by A. Hallam, has chapter on the history of this called 'Catastrophists and uniformitarians' on pages 30-64. A more in-depth coverage is found in Charles Coulston Gillispie's "Genesis and Geology". Your sources are probably referring to the work of Derek Ager who is one of the founding fathers of Neo-catastrophism. Ager accepts the great age of the earth and doesn't even believe in the flood. His theory is that some and only some deposits have been rapidly formed. In his book "The New Catastrophism" he repeatedly complained about YECs misquoting him and misapplying his work. Neo or new catastrophism in no way supports a rapid creation of the geologic column in the flood. Under this main stream geologic theory, only some deposits were created rapidly, and by known effects like slumping, sandstorms, landslides, turbity currents, etc., not by deluge super currents or whatever. There is no geologic support at all for forming most of the geologic column in the flood. As for 'turbidite deposits represent about half of the geo-column'. Perhaps in some locations, here there are none. Many other areas also have none, and those that do, the sources are generally known. In turbibity current deposits the fossils will not all be laying flat, and there will be no evidence of different sea bottoms one above the other. A turibity current of the magnitude of which you describe would be like pouring out the contents of a blender into a cake pan, no layers, no leveling of things mixed in. Next time you are eating a cake or ice-cream with nuts or something mixed in, look at how randomly they are positioned. They don't all lay flat in discrete layers. Now if the cook bakes his cakes one layer at a time and then adds a layer of nuts before pouring in the next, then you get layers, now that takes a lot more time, but then that is the whole point.You are correct about the sediment amounts decreasing with increasing distance from the source, however currents of the strength and speed necessary to rip up the pre flood land surface would have carried their load great distances before dropping them. For example, the megaflooding caused by the release of water from lake Missoila that created the scablands in Washington state, created turbidity currents in the Pacific ocean. "Long-distance transport of Missoula Flood sediments across the abyssal Pacific Ocean floor is indicated by the lithology of pebbles recovered form the Blanco Fracture Zone. However, the data from Ocean Drilling Program sites 1037 and 1038 provide clear evidence that sediment-charged Missoula floodwater entered the ocean close to the heads of Astoria and Willapa Canyons" Flood and Megaflood Processes and Deposits: Recent and Ancient Examples, page 5. The Missoula floods carried terrestrial material far out to sea in turbidity currents on the ocean floor. They were also able to map the deposit, its extent and where it entered the ocean. Now compared to the flood induced erosion you are theorizing, the Missoula floods were minor. Yet no mention is made of a much bigger deposit below the Missoula layer. How can a smaller flood create a turidity deposit while the YEC flood created none? If YEC was true we would expect to find this graduated terrestrial sediment off the continental margins, but it is not there. The only logical conclusion I can reach is that the deluge did not involve high speed currents and massive wide spread turbidity currents of unbelievable power that YEC flood models are dependent on.You pointed out that we do not have a mechanism for the parting of the red sea or for the resurrection. Science is also unable to study these things since science is a study of the natural world and not the supernatural. Using a supernatural mechanism for any geological deposits would remove that portion of geology from what can be studied scientifically. Creation of the entire geological record by supernatural means would put the science of geology out of business since they would have next to nothing that could be interpreted rationally without invoking unexplainable supernatural events. Which is why YEC is viewed as being fundamentally opposed to the science of geology.On the timing of my flood model, the biblical date for the flood seems to match up best with the end of the last ice age which is currently believed to have happened about 10,000 years ago. I favor the Biblical date, but allow for the possibility that the flood may have occurred earlier. The hills and mountains where lower in the ice age due to depression by the weight of glacial ice. The return of the glacial melt waters to the sea has depressed the ocean floors which in turn created a general uplift of the land. These two effects indicate the ice age mountains were at lower elevations, how much lower I don't know. The other possibility is that the high points were covered with water that was in the form of ice. Now there was glacial ice floating in the deluge as shown by the greatly elevated drop stones. Now if there was a glacier floating in the flood waters, what difference would it make if it covered a mountain? A mountain beneath ice is underwater whether or not the peak is above or below the sea level. I am not saying this was the case, but I view it as a possible explanation to what for many is a major problem with a global flood. This interpretation would still be in harmony with the wording in Genesis, even if it would conflict with how many read it. We should avoid trying to mentally limit the flood events to just the way we think they had to happen, for we can be wrong, sometimes things didn't happen the way we may think they did.

edgeWhat exactly would you accept as proof that the post ice age flooding was global anyway? I have been supplying evidence that shows very high levels of flooding. You seem to be demanding Noah's ark parked on Mount Everest. What exactly do you expect to find? I would like to know just what it would take to convince you.We both agree on glacial rebound and hydro static depression as being two effects that would help raise the level of the land at the end of a global flood. I would also like to point out that due to the scale these events took place on, hydrostatically depressing most of the ocean floors on the globe will result in a compensating rise in the land, and wide spread glacial rebound will result in a lowering of other areas such as the sea floors which are thinner and more flexible. You want documentation of deep flexing? Short of a video of it happening in the flood I doubt you will believe any evidence I present. I think what I will do is ask you a question. Please explain the formation of the following. "On Lanai fossileferous marine limestone as much as 45 meters thick extends up 165 meters altitude containing many shell fragments and foraminifera is found as high as 167 meters, these deposit are believed to mark a former shoreline at about 170 meters altitude. . . . Kahoolawe . . . shoreline 240 meters" then there are the submerged shorelines "One of the most remarkable features of the submarine topography around the Hawaiian Islands is a broad shelf at a depth of 900 to 1,100 meters. It surrounds all of the islands except the south end of the island of Hawaii, where is may have been buried by lavas of Mauna Loa, Kilauea and Hualalai. . . . there appears to be no other reasonable explanation for it except wave erosion," "Volcanoes in the Sea; The Geology of Hawaii" 2ed, 279-281. The submerged shorelines are easily explainable, they show what is expected to be found in the Hawaii Islands. But the elevated shorelines and particularly the elevated limestones are interesting, and no I am not saying the limestones were created in the flood, it was far too brief for that. So when and how was the 170 meter shoreline formed? That is my question for you, I know the answer, I want to see if you know as much about geology as you think you do. This relates directly to how changes in ocean volume can affect relative sea level changes on coasts and islands in ways we might not expect.The reason the authors didn't view tectonic uplift as a explanation was some examples were in areas that have not have recent tectonic uplift, passive areas and others where the amount of elevation was far above the amount of uplift that has occurred from recent tectonic movement.

edge[I would accept as evidence something that told us the entire world was covered by water at one time. The geological record does not support this.]You didn't answer the question. What kind or type of evidence would you accept as proof of a recent global flood?[My guess is that the island underwent a period of uplift due to intrusion of a new magma body at some time in the past. Just a guess. I am sure that you call upon some kind of rise in sea level due to glaciation, increased spreading rates, etc.,] [How about a little more information, such as the age of the deposits, their shape, etc.? Are they interflow? Geologists hate getting questions about rocks out of context. There is always something that the questioner knows but won't tell you.]No I am not going to call on a rise in sea level in this case. If you want the information I have on this deposit, check my cited source. The point here is that the Hawaiian islands are geologically recent islands with a number of shoreline lines above and below current sea level. According to Darwin's theory of reef formation, they should only have then below sea level as the island slowly sinks due cooling in the hot magma beneath it. In the book I cited they theorize that perhaps the raised reef was formed during a high stand of the sea in the last inter glacial period. There are a number of problems with that idea, first the formation of the reef indicates a lengthily stable submergence. Where did the extra water come from? From cores in Antarctica we know that the glaciers there did not disappear in the last inter glacial just as they haven't disappeared in our time. Where are the other reefs at this elevation we should find around the world? It is unlikely that the sea level attained a stable high level in the last inter glacial so high above what we see today. The fact that we see a number of old shore lines above and below sea level in the islands rather than just the expected progressive underwater staircase predicted, indicates another effect is at work that can raise as well as lower. The recent time period in which these up and down shorelines have been created is obviously connected with the changes in sea level associated with the comings and goings of the glaciers. Some of the shorelines can be explained by simple changes in sea level due to fluctuations in ocean volume. Imagine the islands at the LGM, the sea volume is greatly reduced with so much of earth's water tied up in the glaciers. Low shorelines are created the world over, but on the islands something unexpected happens. The islands sink down into the sea, creating some of the highest shorelines when the seas are lowest.As you know, ocean islands unlike the continents, are composed of the heavier ocean floor material and only maintain their elevations due to the hot buoyant magma beneath them, and sink as the magma cools. Now this magma is not confined to the foot print of the island, it extends out under the surrounding sea floor and the pressure the depth of the ocean waters exerts upon it affects its shape and the resultant elevation of the island. Let me illustrate this effect with a little thought experiment. Take the Hawaiian islands and the Pacific ocean as they are now, if I were to remove almost all the water from the pacific, imagine what the effects are. The island mountains suddenly become the mountains with the highest relief in the world. They rise so far above dry the pacific ocean floor and yet are made out of dense ocean floor material, and they lack the former buoyant effect of the surrounding ocean and the ocean waters no longer are pressing down on the surrounding ocean floor. This would result in the islands sinking down in the crust as the batholith beneath them spreads out, due to fact that the hot magma spreads out over a larger area, the amount of depression beneath the island is greater than buoyancy alone could account for. The islands end up sitting in a deep pocket which if we had left enough water in our ocean, would cover the islands to a higher level than the oceans do today.At the end of the flood as the flood waters drained into the deepening oceans, the increased pressure raised the Hawaiian islands to a higher elevation than they have today. The area of the newly exposed shoreline was devoid of plant life, and as the winds blew across a newly exposed sandy beach area, they created sand dunes. Then gradually over the thousands of years that have passed since the flood occurred, the hot lava beneath the islands continued to cool, and the islands slowly sank to the level they are found at today. The old sand dunes still exist covered over with vegetation and extent down the sides of the islands and out beneath the sea. To create these dunes would require the sudden exposure of land faster than tropical vegetation could cover it. These dunes are found on nearly all of the Hawaiian islands and are evidence of a sudden reemergence above water, followed by subsidence."Additional problems remain to be resolved for the hot spot hypothesis; one of the most serious involves the origin of rejuvenated volcanism. For instance, how can the hot spot hypothesis explain the generation of magmas of the Honolulu Volcanic series on the island of Oahu after a period of volcanic quiet of more than a million years, some 500 kilometers or more away from the probable position of the hot spot, and apparently from a depth in the mantle considerably greater than that at which the earlier Koolau magmas were formed?" (Volcanoes in the Sea; The Geology of Hawaii, second edition 1983, p.344) According to current geological theories, the late volcanic events on Oahu should not have happened and certainly not with lava from such great depth. This mystery is solved when we take into consideration the effects of the weight of the flood waters. Their great weight put a tremendous pressure on the asthenosphere and forced magma up into remains of the cooling magma chambers deep beneath the island of Oahu and forced lava to the surface while the island was still rising or had just risen from the waters. This resulted in the late volcanic activity (a number of these events were also hydromagmatic ) seen in the Hawaiian islands. Similar events have occurred through out the oceans on islands similar to the Hawaiian islands. The submerged seamounts and guyots are the remains of older islands, their magma chambers and their descending pipes or threads connecting them to the asthenosphere having already cooled and hardened, their elevators were in effect broken, and even with the increased pressure of the flooded oceans on the asthenosphere, magma was unable to flow into the solidified chambers beneath the islands to lift them above the water. This effect due to age has resulted in much of the stacking in elevation by age that we see in the islands and seamounts.In ocean islands such as the Hawaiian islands we see the effects of changes in global sea level having effects on elevations beyond the simple expected rising or lowering of local shoreline and beyond the shifts buoyancy can account for, with larger shifting being evident in elevations former shorelines are found at. Just as buoyancy alone can not account for island elevation, nether is it a complete answer for the relative elevations of land and sea in connection with the shifting of water at the time of the flood.[As to how much vertical tectonics can be expected, you have to know that most of the uplift of the Colorado Front Range has occurred since the Pliocene. That's more than 5000 feet in some places.]Vertical tectonic movement is essential to what I have been saying and I discuss it at length in my book. The shorelines are recent and can not be accounted for by uplift that may have occurred in the distance past, and some occur in passive areas that have not had any tectonic uplift in a very long time.

JohnMinnemooseus has already pointed out the flaw in your argument. My point in my earlier post was that since Antarctica did not melt in the last inter glacial, it seems highly unlikely that there were significantly higher sea levels at that time. There is also the lack of similar shorelines on the continents. Which is why the high shorelines in the Hawaiian islands are not explainable by a higher sea level due to a greater ocean volume.["Why can't that magma also raise the island, as is happening in Yellowstone(?) today?"]Yes that is what I am saying happened, see my post to Edge on this.["There are beaches in Texas with sand dunes on them."]Yes there are and funny you should bring them up. I was just reading about them, or at least about Mina mounds some of which are in Texas. The most plausible explanation for the formation of Mima mounds is moving water as in sheet flooding or the movement of possibly deeper water. The mounds appear to be ripple mounds and are also found in the area affected by the Missoula floods in Washington state. On beach dunes, their formation is affected by local climate and vegetation, both factors which differ from Texas to Hawaii. My point on the Hawaiian dunes was that Hawaiian islands are tropical and are densely vegetated on the rainy side of the islands, dunes require large open sandy areas to form. A sudden exposure of sandy submerged areas faster than tropical vegetation could cover it, is a good explanation for the dunes. But considering the information contained in the links posted on this page on uplift in the Hawaiian islands, it is now an unnecessarily long winded argument since a more direct route is now available. Check the first link in post 359.

edgeA traditional reference for Darwin's theory of reef formation would be "The Voyage of the Beagle" by Charles Darwin, pages 474-485. (in the Harvard Classics edition ) Very good book by the way. I consider Darwin's reef theory his best work and it is still accepted and referenced. You may also want to check out NeilUnreal's post 360 in reference to Darwin's reef theory.Now I have not been trying to prove a global flood with our little digression here, at least not directly, all I have been trying to do here is show that not all changes in sea level have direct isostatic explanations in terms of weight on or in the lithosphere. There are other effects that come into play that you have not been considering. Since modern geology does not accept a recent global flood, the recent shifts that have occurred due to the flood have not been investigated or studied. Clues such as the raised shorelines in Hawaii demonstrate that other effects inside the earth do have an effect on the level recent shorelines are found at.The 'pocket effect' is real as demonstrated by the range of shorelines on the islands. The high shorelines had to be created when the islands were lower, since the sea level did not reach that level in the last inter glacial as shown by the fact that the Antarctic ice cap did not melt and the lack of similar shorelines on the continents. Ocean islands only have their elevation due to the uplift of the hot magma beneath them. During low ocean volumes, the area of hot magma spreads out over a larger area, which lowers the height of the center below the island. The lack of peripheral confinement also reduces the pressure in the magma which causes the weight of the island center to sink down. Then when the ocean depth increased, the magma is under increased pressure which squeezes it toward the center by pinching off the edges which had expanded under the reduced ocean pressure. This effect forces the hottest magma back under the island from the surrounding ring, which lifts it and causes the late volcanic activity which also is noticed to have occurred with or under water. The late resurgence of volcanic activity and in some cases from deeper sources, after the hot spot had moved away, clearly indicates a pressure surge caused by an increase in ocean volume. The hyaloclastite nature of the activity also indicates this activity occurred when the islands were more deeply submerged then they are today, which is also supported by the island landforms such as the dunes and valley formation.["You have to show a blanket of water-lain deposits of identical age, present everywhere in the world."]That is the aim of the research I am presently engaged in. That is also the reason why I have been asking you what evidence you would accept as evidence of a recent global flood. I have been using this board to scope out what it would take to convince people who don't believe in the flood. Hopefully if my research works out, I will publish a scientific paper on the results. Since I will not be able to supply definitive evidence of the deluge until I finish my project, I for now have to rely on partial proofs. Which taken together, all points towards the recent flooding of the earth.

axial soliton;["It is all starting to become an integrated picture, if highly multi-disciplinary. The proof of all this is in the world around us."]Yes there is much evidence of flooding around the world, and as you point out, due to the highly mulit-discipline nature of scientific research it has yet to become fully integrated. In my book on the flood, ( the subject of this posting ) I put together many of these sperate pieces into one complete whole that explains how the deluge happened. Some of the floods were separate events that occurred at different times of course, but a number of the events have associations that tie them together as part of a larger single event.Hadn't heard about the "megaliths under 100 feet of water off the island of Yonaguni", sounds interesting. Where did you hear about this?["did Noah have 2 of each of the dinosaurs on his ark?"]None, by the time Noah built the ark, the dinosaurs had been extinct for 65 million years. We covered what was and was not in the ark earlier on in this thread. Basically I theorize many animals survived outside the ark, and what was on the ark was mostly a cross section of domestic animals.On your second post, I loved the information confirming that the coral was deposited by a high stand of the sea and not by a massive tsunami. Good information, I may want to reference their findings if I write a second edition. This fits in very nicely with what I have been saying. I would like to add that under my theory the mechanism behind the uplift was the increased pressure of returning water in the inter glacial followed by subsidence due to withdrawal of ocean water in glacial advances. Which is more workable since the uplift is affecting islands away from the hot spot, showing it is more of a general uplift, whereas uplift caused purely by the hot spot itself would expected to be more localized.Nice math on flooding the earth, but it doesn't apply since you failed to familiarize yourself with the details of my flood theory. You made the common mistake in your calculations of assuming the earth's surface is rigid. The weight of shifting flood waters would cause shifts in elevations. ( pushing down ocean floors which in turn pushed up land and mountains to higher elevations. ) I also theorize that higher elevations where possibly covered by water in the form of ice, with the extensive ice cover in the ice age this would reduce the required depth of the flood waters considerably. You also made the mistake of assuming that the glaciers were all solidly frozen before the flood. Prior to the flood the climate had undoubtedly already began to warm, which would have created large trapped glacial bodies of water. There is also no reason all the ice had to melt, it only had to displace water to contribute to the depth of the flood waters, surging ice raises sea levels just as well as glacial meltwaters does.I agree with you on the Pacific plate probably slowing down, but I fail to see the tie in with the flood. The flood was a recent geological event while the events you refer to are not. What does one have to do with the other?

PeterIf you would read the first post in this thread, you will see that I accept the age of the earth and have little in common with YEC other than a belief in the deluge.

edge["In fact, the magmatic uplift of the Yellowstone Plateau is about 2000 feet... easily enought to account for wmscott's uplifted beaches (if, indeed, they actually exist!)."]Yes, that explanation would work great if the beaches were located on the Yellowstone Plateau, however they are not, they are in Hawaii and I am saying that the islands were uplifted. As for whether or not they exist, why don't you check my cited source? To sum up the score here, you first cite irrelevant evidence from another part of the world and then question the validity of evidence from a cited source. Sounds like a home run to me. Unless you are willing to do some home work and come up with a better explanation, you might as well concede the point.["a fanciful story about topographic 'pockets' (which we do not see)"]If you want to see the pocket I was talking about, try looking at a detailed map of the ocean floor of the area of Hawaii. Look for names such as 'Hawaiian Swell', 'Hawaiian Deep' and 'Hawaiian Arch'. There is a nice map of this in the book "Volcanoes in the Sea; The Geology of Hawaii" 2ed, page 341. Perhaps you do not see these things because you don't take the time to look, your eyes are already closed to everything you don't accept.On your second post, many times the significance of some types of evidence is not realized until it is known what to look for. Since the deluge is considered a non event, evidence supporting it is currently interpreted in terms of other accepted geological events. There is nothing wrong in this, just a case of people going with what appears to be the most reasonable explanation. Now if someone were to provide convincing evidence of a world wide flood, some of the existing evidence would be found to be better explained by a global flood.On other effects affecting the uplift of the Hawaiian islands, I am not ignoring them, there aren't any that have a significant effect in recent geological history. If you know of any please list them in your next post and list them in order of strongest effect to weakest and explain how they have acted on island uplift.["Wait! If melting of the continental ice sheets could not raise sea level several hundred feet, then how do you flood the entire globe?"]Timing, a slow melt down would only raise sea level to what we have today, after all the ice age ice sheets are gone and we have no flood today. Only if the water entered the sea faster than isostactic adjustment could occur would there be a sea level rise to any levels significantly above what we have today. Out of the various retreats of the ice sheets, only the last is know to have been very abrupt. Also the coral implies a lengthily submergence, which is not possible due to a flood caused by a quick surging event, as isostactic adjustment will lower the sea level before high level coral reefs could form.["Do you have any references to this? Where is this actually observed? Sounds like a convoluted just-so story to me."]All the referenced evidence is from the cited source listed in the post. Since you are so overwhelmed by this evidence that you question it's validity, you really should check it and read it for yourself.["I'm sure you will get the results that you want..."]I don't share your confidence. The findings will be the foundation for a scientific paper, no evidence, no paper. I don't know if things will work out until I actually do my tests. Your attitude highlights the fact that I will need very solid evidence, I will have to wait and see if my findings will turn out to be of that caliber.

axial soliton;Yes, I view the ocean volume changes associated with changes in glacial ice volume as the secondary effect for elevation changes in ocean islands. The effect would probably come into play with smaller ocean volume changes as well, which would mean that if the remaining glacial ice were to melt, there is a possibility some of the ocean islands would literally rise above the rising waves and expose their current shorelines above water. There could be a minimum depth increase to trigger the shift, a threshold, rising sea levels below the threshold would start to submerge the islands. Then if the level of increase passed the threshold, a shift could occur uplifting the island. Or there may not be a threshold and the shifting is very responsive. But I would expect some sort of threshold due to the resistance to flow found in cooling magma. This up and down movement is visible in the effects created on the ocean floor around Hawaii. "The Hawaiian island chain . . . The island themselves are the projecting tops of a volcanic mountain range known as the Hawaiian ridge. . . . Partly surrounding the ridge is a moat like depression known as the Hawaiian Deep, and beyond is a broad upbowing of the ocean floor which is called the Hawaiian Arch." "Volcanoes in the Sea; The Geology of Hawaii" 2ed, page 341. Think of this area as a sort of bellows, a area of flexing. With each swing in ocean depth caused by glacial cycles, there was depression and uplift with this area taking up the slack in the middle. The mainstream explanation is to explain this away by hot spot uplift, which is not very good considering the generalness of the uplift compared to the location of the hot spot and the raised shorelines are too well preserved to date from remote enough time periods in the past to make this a reasonable explanation. The highly erodeable geology of the islands and their young age point towards this flexing being more recent. The above cited source on page 342 noted "the amount of actual subsidence measured far exceeds that which should occur by isostatic adjustments of the islands alone." My point in bring this discussion up is to show that not all land-sea shifts can be explained through strictly isostatic explanations, which is obviously true whether one believes in the deluge or not.My apologies to the National Geographic Atlas publishers, but their figure of a 6 m rise from the possible melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets is off the mark by quite a bit, or they may have gotten their facts crossed. The book "Glaciers & Glaciation" by Douglas I. Benn and David J.A. Evans, 1998, on page 11, states ". . . the Greenland ice sheet may have completely disappeared during the last inter-glacial, accounting for a 6 m rise in global sea-level at that time (Chappell and Shackleton, 1986)." Greenland by itself has enough ice volume to rise the sea level by 6 m, Antarctica has enough glacial ice to rise sea level by 60 m. (according to Britannica) Both of these ice sheets are minor and survived the end of the last ice age when the truly huge ice sheets of the Pleistocene came to a sudden end. I estimate the flood resulting from that to be in the range of several thousand feet deep.On the hydroclastic volcanic activity in Hawaii, it is for real, check it out for yourself. Much of the late volcanic activity that occurred at the end of the last ice age in the islands was hydroclastic. Some of the locations and examples include Diamond Head, and on top of Mauna Kea at 14,000 ft. The mainstream explanation for the last one is eruption under glacial ice. ("Volcanoes in the Sea; The Geology of Hawaii", 2ed, page 258.) In the areas too low to have been covered by glacial ice, 'ground water' is invoked, possible perhaps but it still raises the question of why at the time of the late volcanic activity there was so much more 'ground water' than today. Considering the islands were greatly uplifted at the end of the flood by magma being forced up beneath the island, late hydroclastic is exactly what is to be expected.On the Yonaguni structures, after checking the links, I would have to say that they appear to me to be of natural origin. The cuts look faceted and crystalline with a geometric beauty far beyond ice age stone age design and considering they are found in a naturally fracturing sandstone deposit, I vote for natural formation unless human artifacts can be closely tied with its creation.

JohnSee posts 365 and 379.

JohnLet's see, more clearly, humm. Think of the isostatic balance of land and sea. The crust of the earth that makes up the land has a lower density than the ocean crust. This is why the land rises above the level of the ocean floors. The lighter a material is, the higher it floats. The land and sea can be compared to two kids on a seesaw. At the moment the seesaw is balanced with the land kid raised a little bit higher than the sea kid. But then the sea kid's mother walks by the seesaw and hands him a large glass of water. This extra weight causes his side of the seesaw to sink while the other side rises. This happens when at the end of an Ice Age large amounts of water is returned to the oceans, the ocean floors are depressed and adjoining land areas are correspondingly raised. For example, the sudden flooding of the Black Sea pushed the former lake bottom down an estimated 200 feet. The weight of Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets has depressed parts of the land beneath them to levels below sealevel.Shifts in relative elevations like this are possible due to the fluid and plastic nature of materials beneath the earth's crust. As one area is pushed down into the earth, there is a sideways movement out from underneath the depression. The weight of an ice sheet depresses the land beneath it, pushing material beneath the earth's crust down and out to the sides, where a surrounding glacial bulge is created. This is a plastic movement, not a fluid one, in this example.The weight of returning water of even only a few feet of increased ocean depth is enormous because the increased pressure is felt across the entire ocean. every square foot on the ocean floor is under that much more pressure, adding up the entire square footage of the world's ocean bottoms adds up to a huge weight. The effect of this is that even a seemly small increase can cause a shift in the earth's crust. We have the example of the Mississippi river delta in the Gulf of Mexico, the gradual increasing weight of this delta is slowly depressing that part of the Gulf of Mexico. When large dam reservoirs are filled, the weight of the water depresses the earth's crust a bit, bending it and causing earth quakes. Here in the case of the dam reservoir, we see that even a fairly small concentrated weight of water is enough to cause shifting in the earth's crust.Now in the case of ocean islands and the deluge, one of my estimates for the depth of the flood waters is 4,000 ft. If all this water was taken up by deepening ocean basins, this would have resulting in a ocean depth increase in the range of 6,000 ft. (There is another effect that may have come into play with the Pacific that could have resulted in it taking up a majority of the returning waters, but to keep things simple we will ignore this possibility for the time being.) Now the bone we have been fighting over in this argument that you have jumped into, is that water has only less than a third the density of rock, so how could the lighter water push the heavier islands above the water? I have been invoking the fact that the total pressure felt by the large area of the ocean floor is much greater than the small area supporting the islands. Using plastic movement caused by the general depression of the ocean floor, a resulting local uplift in the hot material beneath the islands is possible that a strictly fluid explanation would be unable to account for. The islands only have their elevation due to the fact that the hot material beneath them is lighter than the surrounding cooler material. the islands themselves are cold, and sit on top of hot bulge like a rock on a hot air balloon. This is why the islands are often in a deep pocket surrounded by a rise. With a increase in ocean depth, the water pressure on the pocket squeezes shut the edges that in the lower glacial period it had spread out in.this causes the bulge to be forced back into a smaller area which raises the island. Like pushing a plate down into the mud, the mud squeezes out and up around the edges of the plate. the depression of the ocean plate has similar effects. Areas where the trapped plastic material beneath the plate can ozoo out are uplifted.Another effect that comes into play is depressing the ocean floor moves it closer to the center of the earth and slightly increases the effect of gravity. This would also increase the amount of island uplift by magnifying the density difference between the hot material below the island and the surrounding sea floor.

John & edgeYou two seem to be on the same track so I have decided to combine my response to the two of you here in this one post.If you want to see the pocket I was talking about, try looking at a detailed map of the ocean floor of the area of Hawaii. Look for names such as 'Hawaiian Swell', 'Hawaiian Deep' and 'Hawaiian Arch'. There is a nice map of this in the book "Volcanoes in the Sea; The Geology of Hawaii" 2ed, page 341. The term 'pocket' I have been using is, as far as I know, not the official designation for these island centered sea floor depressions. These depressions are part of basic ocean island geology and are not something I came up with. As you hopefully know, ocean islands are formed by the action of a hot spot. Now the hot spot before it melts through the ocean plate, creates a uplifted area on the ocean floor, a broad rise. Once it melts through, the island is built on top of this rise. As the mountain grows in size and weight, it begins to depress the center of this rise. (the 'pocket') At this point the island is floating on the buoyancy of the hot spot magma and the island elevation is very responsive to changes in the profile of the magma body. As ages pass, the hot spot feeding the hot magma body moves away which results in cooling. The bulge subsides and the island sinks beneath the sea and becomes a sea mount. The weight of the sea mount will tend to push the ocean floor down resulting in a depression centered on the sea mount."build a plywood platform say 100' by 100' and float it on some very dense but still liquid material like tar. Build a mountain of rock about six foot tall in the center. That mountain would depress the platform."Yes the mountain would depress the platform, it would continue to sink until the weight was compensated for by forming a pocket which would displace some of the dense liquid. The mountain could continue to maintain it's position if it's weight was supported by a warm bubble of hot liquid beneath it, the lower density of the warmer liquid would offset the density of mountain itself. Now there is a natural tendency for the hot bubble to spread out from beneath the mountain, which results in the mountain sinking down a bit. If we flood the platform with six feet of water, it will put pressure on the bubble and will change it's profile. Depending on the dynamics of our model, the pressure can cause the bubble to be squeezed back into it's original position of being centered beneath the mountain. The addition of the weight of the water to the platform also causes some of the hot tar like liquid beneath the top cold layer, to move up a connecting thread to the hot bubble of tar beneath the mountain, making the hot tar bubble grow larger. This increase in size results in lifting the island. The out come of any model like this is highly dependent on the way they are constructed. One has to remember the extreme small vertical scale we are dealing with here, if the earth was the size of an apple, the oceans would be thinner than the peal. On the scale of the size of the earth, the shifts in elevation I an talking about are very small.If we look at the earth itself we find evidence of large scale uplift of ocean islands. "Successive elevations of an island above sea level by geologic action have created a variety of "raised" coral formations. The northern half of , for example, is a coralline limestone plateau rising to 850 feet, while the mountains in the southern half of the island, formed by volcanic activity, reach elevations up to 1,300 feet. and (Ocean Island) are raised coral islands that stand at elevations of about 210 and 265 feet, respectively." Britannica. Now obviously these raised coral formations were not formed by a higher sea level, or else they would be located at a common elevation. As you can see from the quote, they were raised by 'geologic action'. Here we have islands scattered around the world which show evidence of recent uplift. Hummm, what force in recent geological history could effect far flung islands? The only connecting factor is they are all affected by the level of the sea. The swings in ocean volume due to the ice age is the best answer for shifts in island elevation. Yours attacks would be much more effective if you could show a different explanation that works better. Otherwise you are just nay saying which is something anyone can do about anything."Then it seems you are postulating an original pre-flood sea floor covered by 2000 feet of water? Is there evidence of beaches or coral formations around that depth?"No. My most far out flood model would reduce average ocean depths only by half and the draw down was probably far less. I assume you two are already familiar with the lower shorelines of the ice age. Around the world the continental shelves were exposed. Now in calculating the volume of water removed to create the low sea level, one doesn't treat the earth's surface as rigid, one has to allow for the flexing that occurred. As water was removed from the oceans the ocean floors flexed upward and land areas sank. This greatly reduced the apparent drop in sea level. Evidence of just how much flexing occurred is shown by wave erosion found on the tops of deeply submerged sea mounts. I have even heard of this type of erosion being found on areas of the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Due to this flexing effect, large removals of water from the world's oceans does not result in extreme low shorelines some think would occur."But the islands sit on top of that crust. Push the crust down the islands go with it. At the base of the island they are tied to the crust via a very substantial footprint. The water would be pushing DOWN on that foot as well as on the surrounding ocean floor . . . Resulting is volcanic eruptions perhaps? This seem more likely, as the channel for escape is already there."Your model is over simplified and is lacking key effects. The depression results in the movement of magma that raises the island while the sea floor sinks. Like stepping on a freshly cemented floor tile can push the tile down into the cement, the cement can squirt up around the edges to a level higher then the title had to begin with. It is all in how you build your model, they all have their limits and their faults. And yes this did result in volcanic activity, there was late glacial and post glacial volcanic activity that occurred in the islands and areas throughout the world associated with the sudden end of the ice age."Ok. I am sure this is correct to a degree, but don't you think some that elevation is due to volcanos constantly adding material to the top of the islands?"How does that raise a coral reef shoreline?"you are squeezing hydraulic fluid inside a hydraulic piston-" "I have two columns in gravitational equilibrium. I catastrophically add a mile of water to each. What happens?"You both are using over simplified models that are totally lacking the effects that raise the islands that I am referring to. The earth is not filled with hydraulic fluid nor is it's surface composed of hydraulic cylinders or columns. Plus why do you assume the starting point was in equilibrium? Perhaps the glacial pull down of ocean volume was faster or greater than could be compensated for. The models you two are referring to have their uses, but they are limited by their simplicity. The effects I am referring to are not included in your basic models, so it is no surprise they are unable to account for the uplift."Do you really think that material above you simply has no gravitation and can be ignored? Then think of it this way: there is less mass beneath you as you get closer to the center of the earth and gravity should be less." "The islands being much more massive would be pulled down more than the relatively thin crust (locally). I don't see how this supports what you are postulating."As you love to point out, water is much less dense than rock, this results in much less of the effect you point out. If you take a gravity meter in a submarine and descend to the ocean floor, you will find an increase, while at a comparable depth in a mine you may begin to see a decrease. This increase in gravity is felt by the buoyancy of the hot magma that the island is sitting on, which is greater than the mass of the island above it. This is like when clay of different densities are layer and centrifuged to model mountain development. The lighter material is forced to the top by the increased 'gravity'.