Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood II

WmScottI am reading your book. However, can you please for everyones sake, write a pararagraph or two for semi-layman that explains your thesis simply? Not just a hint of what's to come if they read your book - how about a summary of what your theory is, how it works, what the key evidence is and what it means?Here's an example for 'standard' flood geology:Many creationist flood geologists believe that much of the fossil-bearing rocks were deposted during the flood year by a catastrophic event that caused the inundaiton of the continents due to sea-level rises and catastrophic rain. Mainstream geologists agree that the rocks tell the story of inundations of the land by sea. Most of the sedimentary trocks on land are seawater deposits. Creationists argue that it occurred recently via catastrophic tectonic processes. The same processes of sea-floor spreading and continental drift that mainstream science attributes the major sea-level increases to are implicated by flood geologists.Of course mainstream science doesn't agree that the entire surface of the planet was ever covered. However, the highlands would have been significantly lower during the earlier stages of the continental movements which built many of the mountain chains. The highlands would also be the last, and most briefly covered, and would only have received a light sprinkling of sediment. Highlands also preferntially erode more quickly. There are many reasons to not expect to find evidence for a complete covering of the earth.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 11-11-2002]

I had a quick look at it. Of course every flood geologist knows about this! I'm just a simple genomics researcher and I've thought about it.I would presume that the modern day rivers were named after the Eden ones!! Ever heard of New York? I've got a suspicion it wasn't the first 'York'.

^ I guess I dispute that the Bible accurately describes that terrain (firt time for everything hey?). I'll have a more careful read and get abck to you.

Thanks wm.I'll continue reading your book and comment when I've finished.So far I don't find your evidence sufficently compelling to abandon a young earth. Catastrophic tectonics, flood surges, helium retention and a creationist cosmology IMO is the answer to your problems with YEC. In short, some bizaree things but completely compatible with 2 Pet 3 and its prophetic description of uniformitarianism. I hope that some of your iceage/comet stuff will help YE-creationists nevertheless.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 11-13-2002]

wmscottThe uniformitarian dception in 2 Pet 3 is 'everything goes on as it has since the beginning'. This is identical to 'the present is the key to the past'.You have so much confidence in these mainstream analyses of rocks. Have you studied paleocurrents at all? Half the geo-col is turbidite deposits. Most is marine on land.Why can't you see that mainstream geology could just be a calibration exercise to expectation? 'This looks most similar to a river delta so that's what it was.' What eveidence is there that it wasn't catastrophic draining of a flood surge erpoding soft sediments? NONE. These things have never been seriously considered since the 19th century.What of the huge freshwater beds of the Grand Canyon? Ferns strewn over thousands of square miles. No evidence of a river delta geometry. It was Genesis level catastrophic flooding.

EdgeIf your statements are made in good faith then why do you deny that most beds could have been rapidly genernated?Let's not go and pick a problematic one for us - every theory has problematic aspects. Let's stick to the bread and butter of the geo-column. Let's pick most of the Grand Canyon strata.What is stopping most of those layers being generated by erosion of recently laid soft sdiment?[PS On the river delta point: how do you explain thousands of square miles of layered fresh-water deposits contiaining land plants? The only place thiscould happen is in a huge river delta but there is no sign of deltaic geometry in the freshwater layers of the Grand Canyon.]

Dear wmscott The Scriptures in a number of places talk about the burning up of the Earth. It does not disappear, but its surface is destroyed, as it was with the flood. It is clear to me that almost every pronouncement of mainstream geology is no more than an empircial 'best fit'. There was no analogy of the flood to fit to so they fit the column to modern processes. But they ignored the Scriptures to do it. Simply becasue they had no model for it. Berthaults experiments even show that layering under currents has not been properly understood until now. There is nothing stopping every pronouncement of mainstream geology being quite wrong. It is a digital switch. Almost all of it is either flood or not. I think you place too much faith in mainstream pronouncements of eolian deposits and great ages. In our scenario perhaps a lot of metamorpheses and salt beds were formed by accelrated decay heating. As A8ustin and Berthault are showing the GC tells the story of vast hydrodynamic sorting of facies rather than eons of time. See my comment above. The ferns are distibuted in the hundreds of foot thick Hermite formation and are not rooted! You imagine that you can spo easily work out the dynamics of the flood. That is ridiculous wm! We completely agree. Almost everything mainstream geology pronounces fits even better in our scenario. Have you seen my thread on Lyell's catch cries of uifromitariansim? The basic catch cries are perfectly expected by a catstrophic flood. No, but they could have been. Since the Bible implies it then the two together tell me that that is how it was. We unashamedly propose the entire formaiton and break up of Pangea dueing the flood period. Our scenario was the mother of all catstrophes. It was the lietral rebirth of the continents. If you stop constraining yourself to uniformitarian thinking the flood makes a lot of sense. And Baumgardner has shown that catstrophic plate movement is possible and the trigger was probably accelerated decay.You can attempt to appease mainstream science but we are finding what really happened. You clearly haven't familiarised yourself with Berthault's and Julien's expereiments. What are you talking about? The bread and butter of the geo-col is vast sub-continental formaitons. The geo-col is 50% tubidity deposits and paleocurrents can be measurd throughout the geo-col. I believe he did use natural means. The events of the flood were tectonically instigated as mentioned above.Have you ever watched a baby being born? I noticed the separate skull plates of my sons head come together and subduct under each other and then slide back out to their sperate places as the baby emerged from 'the narrow gate'. The cross of Christ is a constraining door. The flood was the rebirth of the continents. It represents the baptism and sanctificaiton (= separation) that we all have to go through. At the same time we Scriptually get separation on the basis of tongue (Babel). It all comes together and gives the why and wherefores for the first time. Christ was baptised and separated to his call via 40 days in the wilderness.The geology of this planet, the birth from water, the rebirth in the flood, the separation of the continents and the fire to come is not an accident - it is a picture of the process of our life and that of our forerunner.None of this is an accident. It is not the realm of mainstream science. The geology of this planet is God's realm. It is his footstool.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 12-12-2002]

wm The precedents of Scripture tell us that this will fire will be both literal and spiritual. OI agree wth you that the 'earth' is a picture of mankind, but it really got baptised didn't it? That was literal, even for you. Agreed, but that isn't an arguement against a physical fire! I have no idea how God will protect his church but have you not heard of Shadrach, Meshack and Abednigo? I'll have a look but I a the first to admit that it is early days for accelerated decay and rapid drift/spreading. I am convinced these are the answer but I am even more convinced that, nevertheless, the flood ocurred 1500 years after creation so it must have occurred quickly. With that sort of statement I think you'll have to back it up with excerpts.If you read the thread carefully my demonstration that the 3 catch-cries are explained by the flood emerged unscathed. It was almost not even commented on becasue it is so clearly true. The flood really does generate the same features as Lyellian gradualism. No one is claiming their work proves anything! It is very suggestive hat layering could have occurred rapidly under currents. And the videotape is much, much better than the website. You can get it for peanuts. Have you really considered Austin's work at all? Do you still beleive the mainstream Yellowstone petrified forest fairytale? Those reefs could simply be compactifid transported shell material. It would be a convolution of ecology, mobility and sorting events. That's a good point, but perhaps these layers were just well mixed during depositon. You ignore much of the data which is simply documents unrooted ferns strewn throughout huge areas. Every bed will have evidecne for both points of view. The total data of the Hermite speaks of the flood.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 12-16-2002]

^ It's preciesely El Capitan that creationists suggest are transported and compactified marine creatures.

whoops[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 12-16-2002]

wm That is your belief that goes against the precendents of Scripture. I cna't prove it to you but the precednets of Scriptures suggest it will be a literal fire. The ark floated on top, their past was the world and unsaved below. The Israelites did walk under the level of the water and their pst life, the Egyltians wer literally washed away. God is incredibly detailed with his patterns. If you want to maintain that, although 1 Pet 3:21 identifies the waters of the flood with baptism waters, and that the earth was completely covered, that that doesn't represent a baptism of the earth you are free to do so.It is very clear that the earth was an object of reworking as was man: Both man and earth were 'baptized'. In Greek, baptism means immersion in water.The sceanrio whereby the land is birthed out of water on creaitn day 3, baptized in the flood and refined by fire all literally is incredible evidence of God's systematic mixing of natural and spiritual.You can ignore it if you want but I think you just don't like me showing the clear reasons we really think YEC is the true declaraiton of Scripture. The entire geology of earth is his and is decribed in Scripture with its timing. Are you aware that I was quoting the mainstream catch cries of Lyellian uniformitarianism? That was one of Lyell's argeuments! I was humouring him.I don't believe it is systematically true in every case!!I suspect it is largely true but not every time. My flood arguement about catchments shows why one might expect it to be true much of the time. I agree there was a recent catastrophic ice age so you may be qute right that glaciation explins the anomalies.Please, stop thinking you can trounce a YEC flood so easily Wm! I appreciate that mainstream geologists have come around to rapid layering over th elast 30 years. I have posted various mainstream excerpts myself to demonstrate that. The point is that this means most formations themselves could have been layed in a matter of days.Yes there are salt and chalk to think about. With accelerated decay heating and inorganic calicum I thnk these are all within the realms of possibility.It is not cut and dry. The YEC scenario opens up an entire new universe of possibilities that habve to be carefuly examined. Much metamorphism may even be due to rapid radioheating. We have pointed out on dozens of occasions that we agree the flood occurred in surges with even weeks and months inbetween for accelraed decay evaporaiton, metamorphisms and temporary rehabitaitons from high ground.The Scriptures talk of the 'windows of the heavens' opening up so there would have been huge fesh water beds formed in between the marine surges. You ignore these things everytime Wm. You are clearly not aware of Austin's seminal work at Mt St Helens. He has showed that the forests of floating logs on Spirit Lake are sinking vertically, rooted ends first, and settling in mud at different levels giving he appearence of multiple generations of forests. The 27 generations of Yellowstone forests at different levels are predicted by him to be the sam phenomenon.On a different topic, in support of his floating mat model of coal formtaion (dhave you read about that??), he also has found 3 or 4 feet of bark at the bottom of Spirit Lake. This is how coal formed, not in swamps. I am not claiming they moved whole! I have read that the fossil reefs look systematically diffenert to todays reefs. I have no ref for that currently but I'll keep an eye out. That is the problem with putting scientific reconstructions ahead of Scripture. Man thinks he is wise. Those trackways could have occurred between surges and the burrows could be escape burrows. I will get to it.All of these issues can be seen for wht they are. Shoehorning. Mainstream science shoe-horms the data into eons and we shoe-horn it into the flood year. Why? Becasue one of them is the right answer, it's just too difficult to tell for sure becasue it's so complicated and we don't know all of the starting conditions and dynamics. Every point you bring up can be reinterpreted via the flood and there will be some questions that neither of us can answer with certainty.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 12-19-2002]

OK Coragyps. Explain your arguement in total please.This reaction generates too much heat, is that your point?What if it the calicum was already present as a carbonate on the surface of the earth? How do you know what the pre-flood earth was like?

Wmscott I think you'll find that reading the literally hundreds of verses littered throughout scripture on reshaping valleys and mountains might probably be descriptions of the flood. You can claim they are creation week events but I think they are both. I cant prove it to you. God is continuing to unfold his word to us. Some of it is more relevant in this scientific age than it was earlier. I believe it was both. Neither of us can prove anything here Wm. We would simply claim that these are uprooted plants buried in transported soil and rock sediment. It is simply an assumpiton by you and mainstram sceince that these are genuine soil horizons. Of course ultimately, in each geographical location, it would be nice to have an inventory of the entire evidence for habitaiton. In the absence of that, the evidence I have seen so far is explanable within the realms of possiblity by the flood so I will assume the flood model is still alive. These freshwater layers do grade into marine beds as one trsaverses horizonally. It fits the flood model perfectly. Your issues of composition favour our model better than yours.The incredible purity of beds throughout the geo-col are fantastic evidence of hydropdynamic sorting. I fully agree the canopy model is dead. In our model catastrophic tectonics would have boiled significant water to create vast freshwater beds. I allow for possibility of an extrateristial origin of water as well (eg comet). Not at all. Inbetween surges there should be no marine evidence. This is irrelevant. The nature of the beds are determines from the fossil types anyway. I think you have missed what we are really proposing. The gross structure of any local geocol might typicaly be:marine groups (2000 feet)
freswhwater groups (500 feet)
marine groups (2000 feet)
freswhwater groups (500 feet)
marine groups (2000 feet)
freswhwater groups (500 feet)covering, for example, the entire Paleozoic or Mesozoic in three cycles. At he boundaries there may be small scale oscialations between marine and freshwater but at the gorss level the above is a good first order description of a typical 200 million years of geo-col.So we explain it as 3 or 4 marine surges with freshwater depositon in between. No contradiciton and, in fact, it is the same explanation that mainestream science uses except they we replace 'transgression/regression' with 'surge'. You have missed the point that the freshwater flows would erode the soft recently laid marine beds (during marine regression) in highlands as well as pre-flood rocks. And who knows the volume with tectonically generated rain? Are you referring to freshwater beds I presume? During shallow flows there is nothing stopping multuple levels of temporary habitaiton and these environments do not have to be 'dry'. I've pointed out our answers to aparent paleosoils, eolian and evaporite deposts on many occasions. They were washed away!! Just like in the mainstream model we do not claim the geo-col is complete. There were probably entire formations laid in any local geo-col that are not evident. The highlands would have been covered by marine sediments that were eroded away during retreat. the mainstream claim that only 50% of the land surface has been simultaneoulsy covered by marine transgression is utterly ridiculous. With the amount of the geo-col missing as we all know that 50% is a lower limit. I think you need to explain that again. The flood eroded from highlands and deposited into basins just like everyone would expect. I simply disagree. The Scriptures plainly talk of creation 6000 years ago with a flood 4500 years ago. The creation week details are described in a time sequence as well. I do my creation research and education as part of a local congregation under the authority of our eldership. I am not a one-man show and what I am saying is part of our local declaration of the gospel. So if you have a problem with my interpretaion then it is with the body of elders from my church Australasia-wide. So do I. I am not declaring a theory. I am declaring what our eldership has declared to be the gospel and I have found the scientific data mostly fits it like a glove when we take creation and the flood literally. I'll get to that over X-mas.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 12-22-2002]

wmscottJust before we go on, can you remind me whether your flood covers the entire Earth? And if not what do you make of the Biblical description of the flood 'covering the highest mountains' and doing it for about a year?

wmscott I have had a quick look and there are dozens of verses describing the mountains quaking and the land being inundated but I'll agree that I can't prove a 'reshaping' Scriptually. But the Scripute is clear in Psalms (as well as Genesis of course) that the entire Earth was covered and if that didn't reshape the Earth then nothing would. I've been using Quickverse for about 15 years now wm! And the web is pretty handy too. At BibleGateway I can access about a dozen translations for free. If you want to take God's patterns to ridiculous extents feel free. Do you believe that the Passover lamb represented Christ? Did the Passover lamb ever teach parables? Of course the Passover lamb represented Christ but we do not need it to have taugh parables. Noah's flood representing the baptism of the Earth is quite reasonable given its birth out of waters and firey refinement in Rev 20-22. How do you know this regarding the Hermite? The so-called 'ground levels' of non-marine beds are so flat that they beg interpretation as huge flood deposits! I think you may have a misunderstading concerning the nature of the Hermite layers wm. They are simply fresh water beds primarily containing fern leaves! Have a look at the Mt St Helen's forests floating on Spirit lake. If you want to rule out the Scriptual timing on that basis that is your decision. Everything else about the Scriptual model is looking too good to rule it out as you do. Baumgardner et al even suggest that much of the heat was expelled through transport of water as superheated jets into space. This may even account for comets the existence of which are a mainstream problem with an artifical solution.The answers to the 'mysteries of the flood' may be far more encompassing than you think. Radioisotopes become the trigger of the flood rather than a method of dating for example. Comets are jets of steam that reached escape elocity. The floodgenerateed the geo-col and is the mother of all extinction level events. Etc, etc. I'm happy to go with the mainstream account of the origin of the waters (ie tectonically generated global sea-level changes). I simply allow for a 100% coverage rather than a 50% coverage of the land. There may have been localized regions devoid of radioisotopes and heating.For every one of your questions there may be an answer that emerges natrually from the model. Catastrophic spreading at rift valleys that traverse the globe over 40 days could generate global rain on a scale never witnessed before or since. You're just making unfounded statements wm! There are plenty of mixed marine/fresh water beds at the boundaries between fresh/marine as you would know. None of us expect instant rocks. We've had thousands of years for rocks to form. The flood didn't need to 'disolve' rock it carved out rock violently at the start of the flood as eveident at the PC/Cambrian layer, for example at Grand Canyon. There is evidence of incredible violence at this boundary. No it doesn't, the erosion from highlands and depositon into basins happens with each surge. Our surges correspond to the mainstream epeiric seas. It's all mainstream. The geo-col is simply a story of about 6 surges of alternating fresh and marine layering, mostly of the latter. Temporary habitation occurred in between surges as it did mainstream. Clearly you are now taking a particular, and non-standard, theological view of God's rest day. It doesn't say that in the Bible translation I have!Why don't you quote it and we'll look at it. Gen ch 2 is clearly a fill in of details for Gen ch 1! I take my direction from the Body of Christ, not science, my own thinking or even para-church creationist groups. The Body of Christ is the only context for revelation. Scripture clearly tells us to hear from outside of ourselves. I do my work in response to a genuine presbytry-calling. Para-church groups and individuals are doing very good work but they really need to come back under the authority of the church. There can be no other way. This is His way. The super-apostles Paul and Peter even submitted themselves to the Jerusalem presbytry.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 01-13-2003]