Describing what the Biblical Flood would be like.

Life before the Flood, including olive trees, would have had far more endurance than anything that has grown since then.

I remember something about paleosols that indicated that they had developed in a tropical climate under highly advantageous conditions, even something about their being unlike today's soils in their superior properties. Don't have the patience to look further than I just did, so maybe someone can correct me if this is wrong.

Seems to me such qualities in paleosols would indicate greater fertility and vitality in the pre-Flood world in general, and I would assume the same for anything growing then, such as an olive tree high in the mountains. In other words it may not be right to impute the weaknesses of today's olive trees to antediluvian olive trees.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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OK, thanks, but at an archaeological site aren't you seeing fairly recent layers that would have been built on top of the geo column? That is, assuming the Flood of course, the paleosols would all be post-Flood where you are working.

abe Or, so as not to stretch your credulity too much, in very recent time as compared to the time periods assigned in the Geo Timescale?

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes one wouldn't normally expect any tree to survive the Flood as this one apparently did. But that's why I said what I said about its likely greater health compared to today's trees. No it was not BOTH pre and post Flood, it had grown in the pre-Flood period and would have had all the attributes given it from that period.

The research by the Institute for Creation Research shows that no soil would be left on the continents by the Flood. Any antediluvian trees would have been ripped from the ground and left to float for a year. When the Flood receded, no soil would have been left on the continents for anything to sprout in.

One unsupported assertion after another. Well, that's all such a discussion as this could ever be.

Something allowed this olive tree to survive, perhaps its location high in the Ararat mountains as well as its health advantage from its pre-Flood environment. SOME soil may have been left, nobody can ever say anything with such finality about an event in the prehistoric past, all anybody is doing on both sides of the question is guessing. I'm not willing to entertain any idea that contradicts the Biblical account, and I have no reason to do that either, there are always possibilities that those hostile to the Bible aren't going to think of.

Merely "being alive" after the Flood does not make it a product of the post-Flood world. It grew and was nourished in the different environment of the world before the Flood. It had vitality to spare. Come on yourself.

"There is no evidence" of anything anyone has said on this thread if you're going to talk about evidence. We're trading plausibilities, which is all one can do with this sort of issue.

There is yet another piece of information we can get from the flood stories and that is in general almost none of the loose soil was washed away and somehow sea water did not rise up to cover the lands. That is another factor found in the stories, Noah planted a vineyard. Now grapes unlike olives have deep root systems often going down ten feet or more. Like the olive though they will not grow in soggy or water logged soil, or soil lacking nutrients or extremely acidic or alkaline soil.

All they need is good drainage and they do need a lot of moisture, and there is no reason why they wouldn't have had both. It takes three years for a grapevine to produce grapes too, so it had plenty of time for the soil to dry, if that would have helped, and I don't see any reason to assume it would. That's by uniformitarian principles but in this case those are in accordance with the nature of the plant itself rather than its hardiness.

As for salty water the usual understanding is that the oceans weren't nearly as salty then as they are now, and besides, the Flood had the input of the "windows of heaven" as well as the "fountains of the deep," which wouldn't have been salty.

This tells us that both the depth of the soil and the makeup of the soil remained pretty constant and that the soil definitely did not spend a year under water or get flooded by seawater or salts washed don from higher levels. It seems the flood described in the Bible stories was far more like the annual Nile delta or Amazon basin flooding.

As I said and you quoted, the silliest thing is when people hostile to the idea of the Flood try to imagine what it would have been like.

How can a person call himself a Christian who denies the plain words of scripture?

You don't get to win a debate about the Flood by simply declaring your prejudice that the Flood didn't happen.

Biblical scholars place the global flood about 4,250 years ago, and that is a time period which I have seen in maybe up to 100 archaeological sites.

According to human science. Sorry, science does not trump the Bible. You are looking at a made-up time period, not the time of the Flood or the evidence for the FLood.

I see continuity from much earlier up to historic times with no breaks which could be attributed to a flood.

The very idea that there should be breaks is a false human concept. The likely reality is that you are either working ON or IN the Flood deposits and not recognizing them for what they are.

I see continuity in mtDNA, cultural patterns, fauna and flora, and sedimentation. Nowhere in the 8-10,000 years that I routinely deal with is there evidence of a flood.

That's because you've been trained out of seeing the evidence for it and habitually think in terms that aggressively exclude the Biblical information. Your idea that you are looking in a period of eight to ten thousand years is also just human invention.

So, either the biblical scholars are wrong or the bible is wrong.

More likely the science of dating is wrong along with a few other things that make you blind to the evidence for the Flood.

The geological column has nothing to do with any of this--the flood is either in historic times (somewhere around 4,250 years ago) or it didn't happen at all. In this recent time period we are dealing with soils, not rocks. The only reason creationists try to place the flood at an earlier date, and attempt to deal with early geology, is they have given up trying to show a global flood at the appointed time of about 4,250 years ago.

I see no need to prove the timing, the important thing is that the geological column IS the evidence of the Flood, the whole shebang.

All the evidence shows that the global flood didn't happen and all the belief in the world can't change that.

The evidence has been shown over and over and over here. Unfortunately all the evidence in the world can't change an ingrained prejudice against it, especially one that bears the imprimatur of Science.

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

The Bible isn't a "religious belief," it's a revelation of true historical facts, some of which do in fact convey scientific knowledge.

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It's been proved a million times over at EvC already, with all the features of a model and all the rest of it.

It amounts to no more than saying "my dates are right, and yours are wrong." It's not an argument, it's an assertion.

It's implicit in hundreds of posts over a dozen years and Percy once called you on your constant bleating about the lack of a model and method, pointing out places where what I said clearly amounted to a model or method. For you to keep on about this is just obfuscating noise intended to misrepresent your opponents. It's YOU who should stop your accusation.

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Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is nothing magical about the effect a completely different and more advantageous environment would have had on a tree. You don't believe in the pre-Flood world but that doesn't allow you to call it magical. If it actually exists it would be as natural and real as the Bahamas. And there was nothing magical about my postulating that the soil wasn't soggy either. The only thing strange here is your weird inability to distinguish between realistic hypotheses and your own disbelief.

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I don't think you read what I said about the wet soil. If you did you didn't think about it.

Haven't heard anything from you yet except stuff you've made up, on top of your utterly wacko insistence on the idea of two floods in the Bible, which as far as I know is absolutely unique to you.

You made up the conditions for the olive tree to grow, and for the vineyard to grow. You may think your imagination suffices for fact but I don't agree. You don't know where the olive tree was situated or what growing conditions it had; and since the Bible says an olive leaf was produced we know it came from a living tree that must have been situated where it had what it needed to grow. That's elementary for anyone who believes the Bible. Same with the vineyard. The Bible says Noah planted a vineyard; that means it had the necessary conditions to grow, no matter what you say. Everything you say discounts something in the Bible. The Bible is evidence to anyone who accepts it as God's word. Clearly you don't, but you have no right to put your own imagination above it.