Describing what the Biblical Flood would be like.

The point about the grapes and olives was far more than just how wet the soil might be. As I said back in Message 16:

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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.

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.

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The point is that there must have been at least ten feet of soil still present and present at a location that was "among the mountains". Grapes need deep soils , neither too acidic or alkaline and not damp or waterlogged.

Faith (and even other Biblical Flood supporters) are claiming that whole major features found in reality are products of the flood, critters found in layers that are hundreds or thousands of feet below today's surface were killed in the flood and that all the material above them was deposited by the flood, yet the Bible shows that deep layers of soil (not just dirt but soil) existed even as the flood waters were still receding.

Edited by jar, : appalin spallin show ---> shows

Above average grape vines as well. It takes at least three years for a grape vine to mature to the point where it will produce fruit so the story implies the soil was present and suitable at least that long before the first harvest and early harvests are generally spotty and small.

Long long ago and in a land far far away, back when I was doing wine reviews for some magazines I wrote a story about a discovery made in an ancient vineyard in the middle east where they discovered a cache of wines dating back to 2000 BCE including a batch where a single grape produced a Nebuchadnezzar of wine. It was fermented, stored and aged while still in the grape.

Faith writes: You made up the conditions for the olive tree to grow, and for the vineyard to grow.

Actually Faith, once again reality proves you wrong. I looked up the conditions needed from both olive trees and wine grapes. I made up nothing there, rather asked them what actually know about reality.

Faith writes: 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.

Again Faith, reality simply proves you wrong. I did not place my own imagination above the Bible but rather the evidence found in reality.

The problem is that if the olive tree existed and Noah did grow grapes then your imagination of what the flood did is wrong.

The flood if it happened was simply not world-wide or particularly catastrophic and that is not a matter of imagination but rather the universal conclusions of all of the evidence.

Edited by jar, : appalin spallin the ---> that

Edited by jar, : appalin spallin bot ----> both

Faith writes: I ALSO looked up the conditions necessary for olive trees and vineyards. You imagined soggy soil and let that dictate your rejection of the Biblical account. I assumed beneficial conditions. Neither can be proved, both are the product of educated imagination, but I trust the Bible and you don't. That's the whole of it. The Bible says the Flood covered the earth. Period.

Once again Faith, reality proves you wrong. I did not imagine soggy soil or use that as any rejection of the Biblical stories.

Please stop misrepresenting my position and posts.

Here is the Olive tree post content.

quote:

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There is yet more conclusions we can make based on the stories themselves.

The stories say that the Ark came to rest among mountains. It also says (at least one of the stories) that one of the indications was a a freshly picked olive leaf.

So what does that tell us?

Olive trees have a fairly shallow root system but one that extends far beyond the canopy line, often as much a four times the diameter of the canopy drip line.

They require a soil base, not lithified rock.

That means that the recessionary phase of the flood did not strip away the soil even in mountainous areas and that the flood duration at that location did not last long enough to kill the tree.

AbE:

We can say a little bit more based on the story itself. Olive trees cannot stand waterlogged soil and so even if the area around the tree received lots of rain the base did not remain underwater for any extended period and the excess water from the rain or "fountains of the deep" drained away rapidly; certainly for far less than a full year.

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from Message 3

and:

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In addition, the issue is not whether or not the soils before the imaginary flood were fertile, it is that the flood did not knock down the olive tree or cover the root system in water for more than a few days or harm the tree in anyway.

Physics is still physics. Biology is still biology. Chemistry is still chemistry. Mechanics is still mechanics. The Olive tree would have been the same Olive tree both before and after the flood. The soil the tree is growing in is still the soil that was there before the alleged flood.

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from Message 13

and on the vineyard:

quote:

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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.

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 down from higher levels.

It seems the flood described in the Bible stories was far more like the annual Nile delta or Amazon basin flooding.

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So soggy soil was hardly an issue at all rather the depth and nature of the soil and the total lack of any evidence of erosion or flood damage in the stories when compared to the utter nonsense of "all the geological column is a product of the flood" was the issue.

The topic in case you had not noticed is describing what the Biblical Flood would be like and based on reality and the evidence found in the stories themselves I am attempting to do just that.

Yes, I admit there are internal inconsistencies, outright contradictions and impossibilities in the stories but those too are simply fact.

Faith writes: I apologize for imputing too much of the argument about soggy soil to you, though you did mention waterlogging as a problem. But the principle still applies. You imagined a deficient amount of soil due to the Flood and let that imagination discredit the Biblical account of the olive tree. The Biblical account says the dove brought back a living olive leaf. That proves that the conditions were sufficient for an olive tree to live wherever it was planted. No further ponderings are necessary.

Yet you always seem to ponder and make stuff up.

I am describing what must be seen if one of the Biblical Flood stories were true.

I actually believe there is a GOD and that GOD is the creator of all that is, seen and unseen. That means the Earth and it's makeup was created by GOD.

The Bible on the other hand is simply a collection of stories written mostly by unknown authors, edited by unknown editors, selected by unknown Conference of Canon members, copied by unknown scribes, translated by unknown translators and redacted by unknown redactors.

I acknowledge the Bible stories contain the words that are there, including all the inconsistencies, factual errors and contradictions.

I do not simply check my brain at the door and further pondering is not just necessary but desirable.

And all I posted was what the conditions would need to be IF the Olive Tree really existed and the Vineyard really existed. If those conditions then conflict with some other part of the story it behooves us to look beyond the mere words of unknown men to the actual record of what does exist.

Edited by jar, : hit wrong key.

But Faith, we can and have proven those things.

We know what conditions are necessary to grow Olive Trees and Grape Vines. In fact folk even make a living actually growing Olive Trees and Grape Vines.

The conditions needed are not a matter of imagination.

Faith writes: And I'm pointing out what I've often said, there is no way to deal with events in the past EXCEPT by imagination, by educated imaginative reconstruction, and you can't get any closer to the truth than a reasonable plausibility.

Yes, we know you say that but once again, reality proves you wrong. There is a way to deal with events in the past and that is to look at the evidence, the change, caused by those past events. We can tell that a volcano erupted by the layers of ash it emitted. We can tell if a comet or meteorite hit the Earth even if no one witnessed the event by the evidence left, craters and shocked quartz and iron fragments that match those of other meteorites and the micro diamonds and iridium layers left. We can look at the actual geology and tell a river ran here and those ripples were made by a flowing stream but these ripples are made by blowing sands and when we find the imprint of a leaf we can know a tree once grew nearby and when we find charcoal we can tell a fire happened at that location.

Changes leave evidence. It does not matter whether it is recent or far past, witnessed or not witnessed; change leave evidence.

Once again, reality simply proves you wrong.

Faith writes: How do you let yourself assert such a fallible human perspective as if there is any real basis for it other than your fallible prejudices? The Bible is God's word, inspired by Him through His own chosen representatives. You are pitting yourself against God. He gave us His word because without it we don't stand a chance of interpreting His character accurately, and especially not events of the past where we are blind as bats and subject to the influences of our own fallen nature aided and abetted by Satan.

And that Faith is both wrong and simply more of your dogma. You need to stop posting falsehoods and misrepresentations of my position.

Faith writes: What I said was: 1) You are imagining that the necessary conditions were not present for the olive leaf and the vineyard to be true accounts. There is no reason to do that. You made up the circumstances to turn the Biblical account into a lie. 2) You are also imposing a uniformitarian assumption on the olive tree and the vineyard of scripture. Since Noah and his sons lived many hundreds of years after the Flood there is clearly a vitality that was imparted to them in their pre-Flood lives that carried them through that long. This extra vitality would also have been the case with olive trees and grapevines. It took some centuries after the Flood for the perfect created world to cease its influence and the fallen world to manifest completely.

You really have a hard time not continuing to misrepresent what I post, don't you Faith.

Honestly, can't you read?

Once again, here is what I really said in Message 3:

quote:

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There is yet more conclusions we can make based on the stories themselves.

The stories say that the Ark came to rest among mountains. It also says (at least one of the stories) that one of the indications was a a freshly picked olive leaf.

So what does that tell us?

Olive trees have a fairly shallow root system but one that extends far beyond the canopy line, often as much a four times the diameter of the canopy drip line.

They require a soil base, not lithified rock.

That means that the recessionary phase of the flood did not strip away the soil even in mountainous areas and that the flood duration at that location did not last long enough to kill the tree.

AbE:

We can say a little bit more based on the story itself. Olive trees cannot stand waterlogged soil and so even if the area around the tree received lots of rain the base did not remain underwater for any extended period and the excess water from the rain or "fountains of the deep" drained away rapidly; certainly for far less than a full year.

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and in Message 13:

quote:

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In addition, the issue is not whether or not the soils before the imaginary flood were fertile, it is that the flood did not knock down the olive tree or cover the root system in water for more than a few days or harm the tree in anyway.

Physics is still physics. Biology is still biology. Chemistry is still chemistry. Mechanics is still mechanics. The Olive tree would have been the same Olive tree both before and after the flood. The soil the tree is growing in is still the soil that was there before the alleged flood.

---

and in Message 16:

quote:

---

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.

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 down from higher levels.

It seems the flood described in the Bible stories was far more like the annual Nile delta or Amazon basin flooding.

---

What I am saying is that "If the Olive Tree and Vineyard stories are true here are the conditions that must have existed at that time."

Also I am just looking at evidence in the real world. There is no evidence to support your assertion that "Noah and his sons lived many hundreds of years after the Flood there is clearly a vitality that was imparted to them in their pre-Flood lives that carried them through that long. This extra vitality would also have been the case with olive trees and grapevines. It took some centuries after the Flood for the perfect created world to cease its influence and the fallen world to manifest completely."

That is simply dogma and while it might be relevant in some Bible study class it is irrelevant in a Science thread unless you can provide support.

Faith writes: And I'm saying you have made up the conditions that would have existed for the tree and the vineyard and since they discredit the Biblical account they are wrong. Clearly those are not the conditions in which the tree and the vineyard existed.

Faith, those are the conditions needed for ANY Olive tree or vineyard. If you wish to imagine some other conditions then it is up to you to provide the evidence needed to support your assertion. If one part of a Bible story is incompatible and contrary to other parts of the story that too is just fact and it is up to those who wish to deny such inconsistencies to provide evidence to support their position instead of simply denying that the Bible story says what it really says.

Faith writes: Of COURSE there is no evidence in THIS world for all that. It's all spelled out in scripture -- for the very reason that we couldn't imagine such things if God hadn't revealed them to us. Trusting in the conditions of THIS world, which is what uniformitarianism is, is what leads you to dismiss the Biblical revelation. Which I've already said many times. You merely confirm yourself in disbelief in the Bible by trusting in "evidence" that is guaranteed to conflict with it. You will forever deprive yourself of knowledge of things that can't be gained in this world or through our fallen minds. I look forward to the reinstatement of the original Creation and then some, through Christ's redemptive work, so I happily try to understand what it was like as far as the scanty information in scripture allows. Why you would want to discredit it all and deprive yourself of that is beyond me.

This is a Science forum Faith, not a platform for preaching or dogma or propaganda or apologetics.

Faith writes: I think it was Chesterton who wrote a wonderful book about why Christian dogma is the only way we can ever know anything of importance, but be that as it may, I expect the dogma of the Biblical revelation to guide me in the end to a completely new creation of such vitality and glory I can't even imagine it. What I learn from the Flood is how we lost the splendor and vitality of the first creation. But God sent Christ to give us hope of something even better.\ So now you want to invoke the Science restriction on me after all this? OK, fine by me. I'm not interested in the judgments of Fallen Science against the realities revealed in God's word.

Are you new here Faith? Is this thread not in the Geology and the Great Flood section of the Science Forums?

I am not invoking anything that has not been the rules here for over a decade.

You claimed ...

Faith writes: I think it was Chesterton who wrote a wonderful book about why Christian dogma is the only way we can ever know anything of importance, but be that as it may, I expect the dogma of the Biblical revelation to guide me in the end to a completely new creation of such vitality and glory I can't even imagine it. What I learn from the Flood is how we lost the splendor and vitality of the first creation. But God sent Christ to give us hope of something even better.\ So now you want to invoke the Science restriction on me after all this? OK, fine by me. I'm not interested in the judgments of Fallen Science against the realities revealed in God's word.

I am simply describing the conditions necessary if the Olive Tree and Vineyard parts of the story were true. The fact that those parts of the story conflict with other parts of the story is just another fact. I simply acknowledge those errors and omissions and inconsistencies and contradictions and accept the evidence of what I believe GOD actually created over the stories written by man.

Faith writes: You are misrepresenting my argument in many ways but I'd LOVE to get off this thread, now that you've decided to stop encouraging Biblical reasoning and invoke Holy Science against it.

And of course once again reality shows you are wrong. There is no such thing as Holy Science and the Science forums have always required evidence and reasoning to support assertions. There are lots of forums where Biblical matters can be discussed including the factual errors, contradiction and inconsistencies found throughout the Bible stories.

If I am misrepresenting your argument then provide the links and quotes to support that assertions. It's not hard, done all the time here.

Edited by jar, : appalin spallin required required

Faith writes: If the tree was growing high in the mountains it wouldn't have BEEN underwater for a year. The Flood wouldn't have reached it until the very last stages, then it would have sat underwater maybe a couple of months before it saw the light of day again as the water receded from the higher land.

According the stories the rain only continued for 40 days and 40 nights.

Olive trees are tropical plants and cannot live through long cold spells so it could not be very high in the mountains.

Can you provide a source that says olive trees can withstand being underwater for a couple months or even just having the roots underwater for a couple months.

According to one of the Biblical Flood myths the flood covered the high hills by 15 cubits or about 22-23 feet. Since there is no mention of which hills that only gives us the minimum clearance the Ark experienced. Fifteen cubits is not enough to submerge any but the smallest olive trees but unless the tree was at the pinnacle of one of the "high hills" it is deep enough to cover an olive tree fully.

So what is needed is some reference that will tell us how long an olive tree can be fully submerged before it dies.

Secondary information needed would be "how long can a olive tree root system be under water and still survive."

Those two factors would tell us the maximum duration of the flood at the location of the Olive Tree in the story.

Faith writes: The mountains weren't very high anyway and there were no cold spells in the pre-Flood world and the pre-Flood vitality would have carried it through any hardship anyway.

That is one of those really really really silly claims that supporters of a Young Earth and a Biblical Flood often mention.

But as usual all the actual evidence shows that environmental conditions before the date when the flood would have happened were pretty much the same as after the date when the flood would have happened and that there was no pre-flood vitality and that there WERE cold spells before the flood.

Once again Faith reality simply shows you are wrong. Stop just making stuff up.

Also, Faith, the dates you and others use for the flood are after writing was developed yet no one seems to have noticed mountains getting taller enough to even send out a tweet.

The idea of tectonic activity related to the flood is yet another one of those silly apologetic creations and not supported in anyway by either of the Flood Myths.

Faith writes: This olive tree was born and reared in the pre-Flood world with the vitality to withstand hardship. Source: Genesis.

Genesis does say the Olive tree had leaves after the flood and so existed before the flood but again, that is simply dogma and not evidence of anything except what the story said.

In a Science forum and a thread on describing conditions something more than once upon a time in a land far far away is needed to support anything more than the fact that the story said "once upon a time in a land far far away".

Edited by jar, : appalin spallin

My posts assumed both the olive tree and the grape vines existed and were mature enough to produce leaves and fruits.

The major points were first that the flood itself was not so violent that it toppled the relatively shallow rooted olive tree and that in both cases the soil itself was neither washed away by the flood or contaminated in any way by the flood. The second point was that in the case of the olive tree the tree itself as well as the root system was not covered in water for any extended periods, certainly not a year or even months. Some trees can withstand extended periods of their root systems and parts of the trunk being underwater but olive does not seem to be one of those species. Finally. the olive tree would not have been so high in the mountains that it was exposed to overnight cold temperatures.

The olive tree needed at least a soil depth of three to five feet and extending out several times the canopy width and grapes need an even deeper soil base, ten feet or more.

That the soil was not eroded away in either case seems to indicate a different picture of the flood than what Faith proposed. Far from moving tens or hundreds or thousands of feet existing materials or eroding already lithified soils, the olive tree and vineyards stories show a far gentler, more gradual flood more like the annual flooding of the Nile, the Amazon, Asian rice paddies and Indian monsoons.

Nowhere did I question the existence of either the Olive Tree of the story or the vineyard of the story but simply used them as a guide to what would have been seen if true.

And the point and purpose of this whole thread was to try to demonstrate that not only could the flood conditions be understood, the reasoning could also indicate what should be seen in the form of evidence if there had been a Biblical Flood.

The assumption begins with the position that the Biblical flood narratives, even though contradictory and mutually exclusive, were true and based on that position, what was the Biblical flood like and what evidence should be seen.

Faith writes: Sorry, creationists pretty much all agree that the pre-Flood world was not the same as the world now, that the mountains were lower, that the climate was warm, and there is every reason to impute great vitality to all living things if only based on the longevity of the line of patriarchs and Noah and his family, plus the fat that although the length of life declined after the Flood some nevertheless continued to live past a hundred. But you dictatorially insist on forcing your "scientific" uniformitarian opinion on us against the evidence of scripture that we relyl on.

But the problem Faith is that what scripture says is irrelevant beyond the fact of acknowledging what scripture says. It has nothing to do with reality or science. And what Creationists believe is also totally irrelevant unless they can provide the evidence from the real world to support their beliefs.

This is a thread about describing what the Biblical Flood would be like and basing that description on what the stories actually say.

Faith writes: This is false. The evidence for the Flood is everywhere, real-world evidence that is only contradicted by your paradigm, not by reality. If you weren't blinded by your bogus dates you could see that there is no other reasonable explanation for the Geo Column and its fossils than a worldwide Flood. It's a perfectly ridiculous scenario that opposes the Flood, not reality at all.

Yet neither you or any Creationist has ever been able to provide a model, method, mechanism, process, procedure or thingamabob for the claimed Biblical Flood to create any of the real world characteristics found in all areas and technologies over the last several hundred years.

Even in this thread you have been unable to explain the issues seen with the Olive Tree and vineyard and the fact that those two parts of the story totally disprove the idea that the Biblical Flood could have created the Geology seen in reality or the fossil evidence.

In Message 521 of the thread The Great Creationist Fossil Failure PaulK replied to an assertion from Faith:

PaulK writes: Faith writes: OE has been defeated over and over again; there's no actual order in the fossil record to consider. The first is just false bluster. For the second, William Smithnand two centuries worth of geology after him say that you are dead wrong.

To which Faith replied in the next message:

Faith writes: Poor William Smith; poor James Hutton; poor Charles Lyell. A legacy of Wrongness in spite of their obvious talents, but it's their wrongness that has misled generations. Very sad.

So it seems Faith was once again objecting to both the fact that the Earth is old and to the fact that there is ordering to the fossils but as usual without offering any support for her position.