About that Boat - Noah's Ark

If water is descending, it is gaining potential energy. If it is being driven out of the earth, it certainly isn't *losing* potential energy, and is at best staying neutral (otherwise, it wouldn't move). Unless the energy from the rain coming down is somehow being transferred to being the energy that is driving the water out of the ground, there is an awful lot of energy to disperse here if the water falling out of the sky is even worth mentioning.This energy cannot just dissappear (unless you're going to invoke the God's Magic Clause). Where is it going? Clearly, eventually it's going to "heat" - but, seing as Noah wasn't parbroiled, this clearly wasn't an immediate effect. This would involve a tremendous amount - a nearly unthinkable amount - of kinetic energy being present on the surface, *No Matter How The Water Fell*. It doesn't make a difference whether it all poured onto the top of a high peak or sprinkled evenly across the earth - *the energy is still present and must be represented somehow*.Or, you can resort back to the GMC. Your call. Besides, you creationists are constantly relying on *tremendous* amounts of forces being present in the flood. Remember, enough to sweep exotons of the Earth's crust into mountains? And filled with lots of magic, too, like the magic that allows slow-cool igneous rock to form mixed in with sedementary from a flood, or the formation of sedimentary rocks that are hugely exothermic, or sorts out fossils without regard to physical characteristics, but only morphologically by steady linear progressions between traits around the entire world, etc.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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Are you absolutely sure you know my allegiances?

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I've never met a person who believed in the flood who wasn't a creationist before - I'd be quite interested in knowing if you're a special exception

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My comments about the falling rain not causing the damage was a response to the implication that the flood wasn't violent because not all of the water fell from the sky. Mine was a simple observation. Rainfall doesn't smash houses. One can stand in the heaviest downpours and suffer no harm, but that water accumulating on the ground and rushing downhill will cause damage. Thus, claiming the flood wasn't rough because it isn't all rain, doesn't work. The damage done by floods isn't the falling rain per se, but the collected water moving around on the ground. Of course, you are right. All that energy would add up to a lot, but I wasn't interested in getting that complicated. Several people have noted that all of this activity would whip up the mother of all hurricanes though.

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I wasn't arguing about the damage of a raindrop. I'm looking at the entire energy balance of the entire system, and pointing out that the energy has to go somewhere.I seriously doubt you've seen, say, a 14 ft/hr rain (assuming 3 miles of rain needing to fall in 30 days). That's about an inch every 20 seconds. That's not a storm, it's a waterfall. It's a basic part of physics: if 1 kg falls 1 m at 9.8 m/s^2 acceleration (Earth), it gains 9.8 joules of energy. If 1kg of water falls 2,000 meters, it's gaining almost 20kJ of energy.Lets put this into perspective here: every square meter of area on the planet, about every 25 minutes would have as much energy falling on it as a liter of gasoline contains (picture burning a new liter of gasoline on that plot every 25 minutes). A gun that is considered a "lethal weapon" to the US military delivers 122 joules of energy to their target. A square meter would receive that 191 times per second. Got a 100 watt light bulb in your room? Try 233 of them lit up constantly on every square meter. Every area that is 300m x 300m is constantly releasing the energy of Hoover Dam. We're talking about a huge amount of energy being released *everywhere*, for 30 days straight. (we're ignoring for now the fact that energy gets concentrated due to many factors).Where is this energy going? Every square meter would receive a total of 6 Gj during the course of the rainfall. If it were going to heat immediately, clearly it wouldn't be raining - the water would vaporize If it were changing to heat, where it impacts a "surface" (be it water or land) would receive most of the heat. With even a fraction of this energy, even with much of the energy being somehow transferred to the water surface/land, it would be a steam cooker on the surface. The only way the ark would stand a chance is if the energy of the water remained in kinetic energy, and its energy was kept as such until God took the water way (where, again? To nowhere?), or it very slowly leaked off, or was used up in some other way (?).So, how is God supposedly remedying this situation? Magically drawing heat away from the atmosphere? Or magically drawing kinetic energy away from the water around the boat, while having it carve out canyons and deposit mountains beneath? Leaving this little bubble of "miracle" floating around? Why bother to create a mockery of physics like that in the first place just to kill things?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I would add to that, that they have to build it out of available technology and materials. I.e., the boat would need to be sealed with pitch, planks would have to be cut by hand, any iron (let's say, nails) used in it would have to be forged, etc.I would be impressed if they could even manage to cut all of the wood before it rotted away Even professional shipbuilding operations (up until the advent of large metal craft) - employing hundreds of workers - had trouble getting large ships finished before the wood began to rot away. Another miracle from God? As to the other poster's remark about a keel that "rolls" in the water, have you *ever* tried stressing a piece of water-logged wood over a long period of time? Even fairly dry wood in short periods of time, when given large amounts of stress like you're describing, will warp (I'm being nice and assuming that it doesn't shatter outright). What do you think happens which a heavily loaded, pitch-sealed ship has its keel warp? What sort of pumping system do you think that Noah had on board? (of course, just to rid the boat of this immense rain and wave action - especially since the boat is supposed to be cooled by circulating air from the outside wind - would challenge even modern pumping systems)------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

John, do you realize how unrealistic it is to ask a newcomer to read through the entire archives as a prerequisite to discuss things with you? My apologies if I misassumed from what I have read thusfar, but I don't have the time to go back and research every poster's history before I reply to them.

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f we are going to go with the Biblical account, we don't actually know how much rain fell. The Bible makes the weird statement that water rose from beneath the Earth as well.

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If you'll notice, I was kind and assumed only 3 miles of water fell from rain. Mt. Everest, for example, is 5.6 miles above sea level, which is in turn 6.8 miles above Challenger Deep. Of course, in the extreme case, a creationist could argue that all of the water came from below - but why even bother talking about the rain from above at all if it is so imbalanced? In the extreme case, a creationist could argue that the world was already a "waterworld", with only a tiny bit of land before the flood, and then God just removed all of the water that was intially there afterwards - but I haven't seen any creationist advocate anything *that* extreme.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Looking back through the history, I figured out what happened. I had initially replied to the wrong post My apologies.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."