Noah's Flood Came Down. It's Goin Back Up!!

Your message is just a grocery list of assertions with no supporting evidence. You can't replace evidence-based scientific theories with fairy tales. As already pointed out in some of the messages, parts of your scenario don't make sense on even an elementary level.Your scenario is appropriate for faith-based belief, but if you want it to be considered as a replacement for currently accepted scientific views then you'll need to present the evidence underlying it so that it may we assessed, evaluated and compared with the evidence for current geological views.--Percy

Hi Buzsaw,It might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the views of modern geology by reading an elementary geological text. That doesn't mean you'd have to accept these views, but it would acquaint you with the available evidence and current thinking around that evidence so that you'd know ahead of time when you're making proposals that contradict what we already have some convincing evidence for.My favorite introductory geological text, definitely written for the layman, is Earth Story by Simon Lamb and David Sington. A similar text, but more techical, is Building Planet Earth by Peter Cattermole.--Percy

I would if I believed they would be the last two questions. That's why I suggested you do some reading.In the Creation/evolution debate, evolutionists often find they have to tackle Creationist objections in two stages. The first stage involves addressing all the misconceptions and disinformation that many Creationists pick up from reading Creationist websites and literature. Only after a Creationist understands the actual scientific positions can an evolutionist advance to the second stage and actually address the Creationist objections to evolution.--Percy

Of course I have answers to these questions. The reason I won't answer them for you is because I don't believe these will be the last questions you'll ask. The reason I believe this is because you know next to nothing about the views of modern geology, I can't see how answering two little questions is going to fill such a huge knowledge void, and so there are bound to be more questions. It would be a very time consuming exercise to in essence give a course on elementary geology by typing answers to questions into a little message box. I suggest you do some reading.--Percy

Hi Buzsaw,I'm doing this against my better judgment. I hope I'm not wasting my time. This is the wrong question. You instead want to ask how the ocean basins formed. This has been answered for you already, but I'll answer it again by providing an example.Somewhere around a hundred million years ago (I'm going from memory, don't hold me to the date) the predecessors of the modern continents were joined into a single continent called Pangaea. The Atlantic Ocean did not exist, but it began to form when a rift occurred between what is now North America in the west and what is now Europe and Africa in the east. Ocean flowed into the rift between the continents, and magma poured out of the rift and solidified into ocean floor. Some of the magma fell to the west and pushed North America westward. Some of the magma fell to the east and pushed Europe and Africa eastward. The new seafloor to the west of the rift joined the North American plate. The new seafloor to the east joined the European and African plates.Now, the above is just one of those "just-so" stories until you understand how we were able to deduce what happened. It was after WWII when the US (and the Soviets) were making detailed maps of the sea floor as an aid to submarine warfare, and magnetic maps were part of this effort. The magnetic maps revealed something startling - the magnetization of the seafloor was striped, and the stripes were parallel to the oceanic ridges! How could this be?Further research revealed that new sea floor was constantly being formed at the oceanic ridges at the rate of a few centimeters per year. As the new sea floor cooled it acquired a magnetic field aligned with that of the earth. Stripes were formed over time as the earth's magnetic field reversed itself every few hundred million years.And we know where the continents were over time because of the direction of magnetization of volcanic rocks. The earth's magnetic field has an angle of incidence with the earth's surface that is a function of latitude. Take any layer of volcanic rock. Then measure the angle of magnetization and the radiometric age, after which you'll know the latitude of that part of the continent when the lava cooled. Put together many such measurements of many layers at many points on each continent and you can trace the dance of the continents over time. The continents are not like ocean liners plowing through oceanic crust. Where continent and sea floor collide, such as along the west coast of the United States, the sea floor subducts beneath the continent and down, down, down into the depths of the earth and the mantle where it melts and disappears. Though there are continental rocks as old as 3.8 billion years, there is no sea floor in the world older than 200 million years. That is because the fate of all sea floor is to eventually subduct beneath a continent. The only thing that can preserve a sea floor is to become part of a continent, fortunately a fairly common occurrence else we'd have no ancient sea fossils.Now, Buzsaw, I've given you the scientific story and a little bit of the evidence supporting that story. This story is not necessarily the final word. It is not even necessarily correct. However, it does successfully explain almost all the evidence we have (important for any successful theory), and certainly all the most significant and important evidence.There is no requirement that you accept this story, but if you want to be scientific then any story you propose to replace it must explain the available evidence at least as well. Most complaints here about your approach is that you're proposing alternative stories while almost completely unaware of current geological views and the evidence behind them. Until you remedy your ignorance of this information you will be unable to formulate any worthwhile proposals. Even more frustrating for the people you're debating with, you won't even be able to understand the objections to your proposals.--Percy[This message has been edited by Percipient, 05-27-2003]

I think you're misunderstanding the criticism. No one is saying, "The events of the Bible supposedly took place thousands of years ago, and that is so long ago that there is no possible way we could know whether they really happened or not." What they are actually saying is, "How can you conclude that those events of the Bible for which there is no known evidence, some of which violate known physical laws and are therefore miraculous, really happened?" It is the impossibility of the events combined with the lack of evidence, and in many cases the existence of falsifying evidence, that raises this criticism.We can dig up Jericho and radiocarbon date the layers and know that Jericho burned at one time a few thousand years ago, but we can't know if trumpets really blew and the walls came tumbling down, because for that we have no evidence.We know from historical evidence that Sennacherib lay seige to Jerusalem and that he eventually gave up the seige and returned home, but we can't know if angels of the Lord really swept over his army and killed them all because there is no evidence for this, and Sennacherib's own account that he was paid a ransome to abandon the seige is far more believable. It's also easier to believe neither Sennacherib's nor the Biblical account, since the longer an army is away from home the more dissatisfied they become and the harder it is to keep the army in place. The bottom line is that we don't really know why Sennacherib abandoned the seige because we have no solid evidence.Even though much of the sea floor is millions of years old, we have little problem dating it. The evidence is just sitting there waiting to be gathered. Anyone with sufficient means and ability can obtain a core from the sea floor and have it dated by any of a number of methods, and this has been done innumerable times for sea floor all the world. The dates are consistent with magnetic reversals, sea floor spreading rates and sedimentation rates, something that would be impossible if we were wrong about any of these things.So people aren't doubting the Biblical accounts because they occurred thousands of years ago. Evidence is not judged on some sliding scale based on age where you increasingly discount the evidence the older it becomes. Any authentic evidence that has survived to the present is valid, no matter how old it is. The problem with your arguments is not the age of your evidence, but the fact that you haven't got any.--Percy

Hi Buzsaw!Just thought I'd correct a few more of your misperceptions. Even though this reply is to your Message 66, it also replies to issues you raise in Message 67 and Message 68.You err when you equate global warming with global drought. Just as in your home state of New York where warm summers are more humid than cold winters, global warming would mean increased melting of the polar ice caps, higher ocean levels and increased moisture content in the atmosphere (higher humidity). While it is true that some regions of the world would become dryer, many regions would become wetter. If you need a global drought in order to fulfill Biblical prophecy, global warming is not the right mechanism to produce it. You therefore cannot point to global warming as a harbinger of fulfilled prophecy. Forest fires in the United States today are far less frequent than a hundred years ago. The reason is housing development in previously sparsely settled regions. Forest fires that do start are put out right away because they threaten human habitation, and over time this has caused large areas that previously experienced periodic burns to be completely covered by forests, whereas previously they were a patchwork of forest and burned-out areas. This means that when conditions and circumstances conspire to allow a large fire to take hold and spread that there are no natural firebreaks to stop it, and it can burn for miles and miles and for days and days. So while forest fires today are far less frequent, they are also far larger and more devastating. You are making a significant mistake in assuming that science is as ignorant of such things as yourself. In fact, any kid who pays attention in science class knows enough math and science to answer this one by 10th grade.The mass of the earth is about 6x10²⁷ grams. Let's assume that in order to alter the earth's orbit to a sufficiently significant degree an object must be at least 0.01% as massive as the earth, which would be 6x10²³ grams. Using the typical asteroid density of about 3.6 grams/cm³ we can solve for the necessary volume and get 1.7x10²³ cubic centimeters. Plugging in the volume equation for a sphere, (4/3)Πr³, where r is the radius, we get a diameter for the asteroid of 688 kilometers. The asteroid that possibly wiped out the dinosaurs is thought to have been less than 10 kilometers in diameter.So an asteroid only 1/1000 the mass of the earth is 70 times larger than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. That's why Macavity was hinting to you that, "A meteor big enough to alter earth's orbit might do a wee bit more than just trigger new weather patterns." It would wipe out almost all life on the planet, possibly all of it as it would easily turn an area the size of Alaska into bare magma exposed to the atmosphere - imagine the equivalent of a million Mt. Saint Helen's erupting continuously for thousands of years.In case there's any doubt in your mind about the amount of devastation such an impact would cause, let's go ahead and do some kinetic energy calculations. The kinetic energy of an object is equal to mv²/2, where m is the mass and v is the velocity. If we assume an impact velocity of 20 km/sec, which is fairly typical, then the kinetic energy of our orbit-altering asteroid is over 300,000 times greater than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs (since the velocities of both asteroids are equal we can drop the v² from the comparison and it becomes simply a comparison of mass, which is directly proportional to the cube of their diameters, so the answer is 688³/10³). The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs had energy equal to about a billion (yes, that's billion with a b) Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, and your orbit-altering asteroid would have an energy 300,000 times greater. That's the energy of 300 trillion Hiroshima bombs.You've been dismissing points with mere handwaves based upon personal incredulity underpinned by your own ignorance of all matters scientific. You shouldn't be doing this. The forum guidelines request that you address points in a substantive way by supporting your assertions with evidence. No one expects a silly and obsessive adherence to the guidelines, but neither should one make a steady diet of violating them.It's just been shown to you mathematically that an asteroid big enough to alter the earth's orbit would be devastating, certainly an extinction event for most species larger than bacteria. I went through the math showing that you're dead wrong so you wouldn't be able to reply with a handwave. TC has taught me clairvoyance, and I predict you'll simply again reply with a handwave that I couldn't possibly know what I just showed you. But please resist this temptation and follow the forum guidelines. Are you aware that there's a long history going back at least a thousand years of religious groups claiming that the Bible prophesied the events of their era? And using many of the same Biblical passages that you're using? We've been through this before. In science, theories are never proven. Some theories are more strongly supported by the available evidence, but no theory ever becomes so strongly supported that it becomes a fact. Saying "imo" in this context is nonsensical - the concept of a scientific theory already has a definition, you can't go making up your own. And what term should one apply to someone who replies to reasoned and evidence-supported argument with the term, "HOGWASH." Ignoramus comes to mind. You said previously that you were going to study my earlier reply, and part of it bore directly on this issue of ancient evidence. You repeatedly begged me to reply to you, I finally replied, but the information but just went in one ear and out the other, I guess.Evidence that has survived to the present, no matter how old, is still evidence. There's that "imo" again. Your opinion is irrelevant in the face of your inability to produce a single shred of evidence for the flood. But Ballard dates his findings to about 8000 years ago, which predates the flood and the creation. If Ballard is correct then it calls into question the events of Genesis, since he found no evidence of either a global flood or a young earth, but plenty of evidence for a local flood and an ancient earth. If Ballard is correct then it contradicts the generations of Luke and Matthew in the gospels, since there must be many, many missing generations to fill the extra couple thousands years between Adam and Jesus. And sea fossils found in the Rockies and the Himalayas date to millions of years ago, not the 8000 years ago found by Ballard, so Ballard's flood and the deposit of the fossils can't possibly be contemporaneous events. Except that no it doesn't. People have been telling you the many ways the Bible doesn't fit, and all your replies have basically been, "Oh, hogwash, I just can't believe that." I guess since you've got God and the Bible on your side you don't need rational argument or evidence. Science is the study of the natural world. What you're doing is religion.--Percy

Hi Buzsaw,This is from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency): This reinforces what Ned and I have been telling you:

• In general, there will be increased precipitation.
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• Specific impact predictions for each region are difficult to impossible to make.
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• You can not generalize the impact of global warming on just one or a few regions to the entire world.

If you want to argue locally and anecdotally, why don't you use your own region as an example? Pretty wet and cool spring so far in New York, wouldn't you say? Temperature was way down from average, and the number of days with rain was way up. Doesn't sound like global warming, does it? It was a particularly cold winter, too, wasn't it? And last year's summer was cooler than average. But this kind of weather doesn't cause any great concern the way dry weather out west does, and so you never read about it under alarming headlines, and you probably barely give it any thought even though you live there. But it has to be included if you're trying to develop a global picture of what is happening. You can't just take the extremes and ignore everything else.Bottom line: We don't yet know the global impact of global warming, if indeed that is what is happening, but it isn't going to be a global drought because some regions will get wetter and some drier.About the number of forest fires, I don't think anyone would argue that the numbers haven't increased. The problem with the statistics you're using is that every minor out-of-control campfire that gets squelched gets counted as a forest fire. Most forest fires are caused by people, and the number of people visiting forests has increased dramatically over the past hundred years. Just look at attendance figures for any national park.What has decreased here in the US is the number of forest fires that get out of control. Surveillance by fire tower, aircraft and satellite catches most fires while they are still small.You didn't address these other points, and I didn't want them to get lost:

1. The effect of an impact by an asteroid big enough to push the earth away from its orbit would pretty much destroy life on the planet.
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2. The prophecies you are applying to the current era have been interpreted endlessly by prior prophecy interpreters over the centuries as applying to their own era, and if you're right then they were all wrong.
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3. Evidence that has survived to the present, no matter how old, is still evidence.
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4. The findings of Ballard in the Black Sea contradict your interpretation of the Bible.

--Percy

Crashfrog has already replied to this, but I wanted to point out that what keeps water vapor aloft in clouds and what keeps satellites aloft in orbit are completely different things. Just as a hot air balloon rises because the hot air inside the balloon is less dense than the surrounding air, water vapor rises in the atmosphere when it is less dense than the surrounding air. When it is more dense than the surrounding air then it descends to the ground and is called fog, which is actually just low flying clouds. Clouds are not in orbit.The atmosphere can only hold so much water. Humidity is a rough measure of how much water is in the air, and when the humidity is 100% it means that the air can absorb no more water. The atmosphere is not capable of holding the amount of water that could flood the world, not even close. It's so far beyond the realm of possibility that going through a mathematical exercise to illustrate this shouldn't be necessary, and you ignored the math about the asteroid in a previous message, so I think perhaps you'd prefer to stay away from math, so I won't do it.But that's why Crashfrog asked what is going to hold the water for the flood up there, because the atmosphere by itself can't hold that much water. I suppose you could put the water in orbit like a satellite, where it is the satellite's velocity just equaling the pull of gravity that maintains an equilibrium between shooting off into space and falling to the ground (not the rotation of the earth - you're probably confusing orbital velicty with using the earth's rotation to give an additional boost at launch time - the earth's rotation is why you want launches to be as close to the equator as possible in order to maximize the satellite's initial speed at launch), but you need a Godly miracle to put the water in orbit, another miracle to make it fall, and yet another miracle to get rid of all the extra water. Why not just have God say, "Let it rain for 40 days and 40 nights," and the rain just miraculously appears. Since you need miracles anyway, why contrive scenarios that obey physical laws but need more miracles. Occam's razor says the scenario with the fewest miracles must be the right one. --Percy

Hi Buzsaw,In Message 68 you said, "If you were around 300 years ago, you wouldn't see voices and pictures flying through space originating in Seattle to be almost instantly landing in another's living room in a little box in NY either would you? Only the Bible predicted such technology as this with all nations viewing things in one spot on the planet." ConsequentAtheist inquired about where the Bible predicts these things, and you offered a couple: There are several problems with these passages regarding prophecy of modern communications. First, they make no reference to communication technology whatsoever. Second, because of this they cannot be considered predictions of modern communication technology because no one living before our modern era would have arrived at this interpretation. It isn't a prediction if you can only figure out what it means after the fact. Third, such a loose and free interpretative style as yours could place any interpretation on any passage and has no real significance. Fourth, what you're doing is simply following the age old prophecy trick of using passages that are as vague as possible so that no matter what happens the prophecy can be interpreted as correct.--Percy

You appear blind to the fact that you are repeating the same mistakes as your predecessors. You accuse them of ignoring or allegorizing certain passages while you do precisely the same thing. You emphasize those passages you think have correspondences, allegorical or factual, in the current era, and ignore those which do not.So you latch onto passages that appear to predict global drought because you think, "Aha! They're predictions of global warming!" Except that global warming doesn't mean global drought. And you ignore passages that predict other types of disaster. And then there are those passages that are always true for any era, like the ever popular, "There will be wars and rumors of wars."Prophecy is just a parlor game where you back-fit prophecy to events that have already happened. If they were truly prophecy then you would know what was happening before the fact instead of after. There were no Bible prophecy interpreters predicting global warming before science started talking about it, it only came after, and even then they got it wrong thinking global warming meant global drought. When you can use the Bible to predict something we couldn't possibly know in advance, and then it happens, then you've got some persuasive evidence. Short of that the only people you're going to convince is other prophecy believers and the always-present-in-any-era believers in the supernatural.--Percy

The dialogue with Buzsaw reminds me of this old joke: --Percy

Some Creationists *do* know very little science, and to them almost any idea seems possible. Some Creationists know much science, and so in order to hold their views they must ignore much evidence, and in the case of YECs they must ignore much of modern science. The problem for Creationists is to develop a theory that explains rather than ignores the currently available evidence. Science is tentative (haven't we been over this?). Today's views may one day be found to be incomplete, naive, even wrong, but they're the ones best supported by currently available evidence, a claim Creationism cannot make.Your scenarios have two very significant problems:

• They violate known scientific principles.
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• They possess no supporting evidence.

It is not possible that the 4.56 billion year history of the earth uncovered by modern science and the 6000 year history of YEC Creationism could have created identical worlds. The processes are too dramatically different. You should be able to easily identify evidence that, once found, would strongly support the YEC view. That that evidence is still lacking after a couple centuries of looking should tell you something.You're under no obligation to accept the explanations and information offered to you, but you should at least weigh them against your own lack of evidence.--Percy

You gotta be kidding. All your side of the discussion has demonstrated is how little science you know, and how resistant you are to learning any. It's still not clear that you understand that global warming is not synonymous with global drought, or that the temperatures necessary to hold the volume of water necessary for the flood would wipe out life on the planet, or that the evidence for an ancient earth contained in the oceans is unequivocal.It is now clear that you're resorting to the supernatural, so I repeat an earlier question that you didn't address. How do you know in what way God is going to circumvent natural laws? For example, why does he need a vapor canopy? The Bible doesn't mention one. Why can't God just say, "Let it rain for 40 days and 40 nights," and have it be so?--Percy

I'm not sure what the smiley means. If it means you realize how ridiculous this statement is and that it was only intended in jest, then it doesn't actually address the statement you were replying to where I said, "You gotta be kidding. All your side of the discussion has demonstrated is how little science you know, and how resistant you are to learning any."If, on the other hand, the smiley is saying, "Isn't it something how a little bumpkin like me can tie all you scientific types in knots," then it only reinforces what people have been saying. You know so little of science that you not only don't understand how wrong most of your arguments are, you don't even understand the explanations of why they're wrong. Because of this you're unable to directly address what people have told you, and you're reduced to repeating already rebutted arguments, as you do here: As has been told to you over and over and over again, global warming and global drought are not synonyms. Some places will get wetter and some places will get drier. Providing citations about places where things are getting drier does nothing to rebut the citations about places that are getting wetter, including your residence in New York.Here's another example of you repeating yourself because you don't understand the counterarguments: Unless you're planning for this water vapor to rise thousands of miles, the height is irrelevant to gravitational attraction. Gravity ten miles up is only very slightly less than on the ground. This has been explained to you before. Then there's this incredible statement: This simply says that you're going to ignore the explanations and believe what you want. The math has been presented to you and the process has been described. An effective rebuttal would show where the math or the process were wrong. You do neither. There was never any "messianic millenium" when the seasons disappeared. Amos predicts that Israel will be reborn when the "the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman" and when "New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills." Since these last two events never happened, the "prophecy" is wrong.Constantly over the past couple thousand years people have found correspondences between the Bible and events contemporary to their time. In a book as huge as the Bible it is inevitable that this be so. But to convince those who don't accept prophecy as a real possibility, you're going to have to do much better than falsely drawing a single phrase out of a longer prophecy, as you do here with Amos. If prophecy is indeed so amazing then you have no need to attempt transparent tricks like quoting the part of a prophecy that came true while ignoring the rest, and indeed you hurt your cause when you do so.--Percy