The TRVE history of the Flood...

...the huge amounts of real-world evidence that shows there was no such flood.

Proving a negative?

The evidence for the Flood is gargantuan, worldwide, starting with the sedimentary strata that were laid down one on top of another across huge spans of geography, obviously deposited by water, showing very tight contacts between them, razor sharp in many cases. Then there was the amount of time erosion would have had since then to carve various figures out of the deposited sedimentary rock. 4500 years just about exactly the right amount of time to carve the hoodoos and the monuments and the Grand Staircase and so on.

Lots of good evidence there. Against what, fallible artificial dating methods?

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No I can't disprove your methods directly, but since there really is excellent evidence FOR the Flood around the time given in the Bible, to my mind that serves well as evidence against your methods. I find the world to be chock full of evidence of the Flood, wherever one looks, even apart from all the collected specific evidence put out by creationists.

But let's see what David Jay says on the subject.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

From what I've read the creationists have done a pretty good job in some cases but it's too hard to prove something that is all pure reason with no anchor in the real world. I certainly understand why you believe in your methods, but I prefer the observed phenomena that I can point to as something the Flood would account for. I've argued my case too many times to be eager to get into it again, so I'm hoping davidjay will show up and provide his evidence on the subject.

aaa, hard to resist:

In my research I have continuity of human cultures from before to after the date of the flood,

I'm sure you have continuity across some swath of time but it can't span the Flood so I don't take your date seriously.

and most importantly I have mitochondrial DNA of the same type extending from before to after that date. If there was such a flood, the earlier mtDNA haplotype would be eliminated, to be replaced by a type from the Middle East.

Again you put all your eggs in the date basket. If your dating is wrong then your evidence against the Flood falls apart.

A few other little details: there is no evidence of the erosional or depositional features that would necessarily associate with such a flood in the area I study.

That could be because you have no idea what actual features would be evidence for the Flood, but perhaps in your area of study they aren't particularly obvious anyway.

But if you truly want to see the features left by flood erosion, google "channeled scablands" and look at the images. Some notable examples are from central and eastern Washington:

The scablands are extremely good evidence for a flood that occurred from a very large body of standing water AFTER the Flood, the water having been left after all the rest of the Flood waters had drained away. The Flood itself is most likely responsible for the huge flat plateaus all over the Southwest, which are the surface of sedimentary rock that would have been laid down in the Flood. The receding water would have scoured off those huge plateaus. And in fact in the area of the scablands it looks like that smaller flood cut into a similar plateau that was already there.

The nice thing about the flood evidence in Washington is that we can date the events and we know the cause! They occurred between 18,000 and 13,000 years ago, and resulted from formation and breakage of ice dams upstream.

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The dates are preposterous but the cause of the flooding makes sense, fitting with what I said about the rapid drainage of a standing body of water left after the Flood. Like all those huge lakes, Missoula, Lahontan and so on.

Oh, and this evidence is about three or four times older than the purported global flood. How is it that we see the evidence of those older floods but not evidence of a much larger and much more recent flood?

Yeah but we know the dating is bogus. The timing of the Flood and the huge subsequent standing lakes, and the ice age effects too, all fit the scablands into the biblical Flood scenario.

(Answer: it didn't happen.) So, don't be claiming that the flood is TRVE history. It is a belief, not a fact.

Actually it's your dates that are a belief rather than a fact. I wish you could TRY to think outside your dating box just to get a sense of a different way of looking at all this, but you seem to take your belief in the dating methods as fact to the point that you can't even consider a hypothetical? Could you at least try?

The evidence is in the appearance of the phenomena and the reasonableness of the explanation, in this example anyway, there's plenty more in other examples. Nothing I said depends on the dates, but does depend on the order of things. The Flood came first, which left plateaus and canyons after it receded, as well as huge standing lakes during the ice age that followed, and then the breaking of the ice released the lake creating the scablands. It all hangs together. I only need relative dates, hot absolute dates.

Yes there are a few other phenomena that are hard to reconcile with the timing of the Flood, such as the tree rings and the varves but they are overshadowed by the greater evidence FOR the Flood, just as the dating methods are. There are other possible explanations for all those phenomena.

I think the "huge amount of evidence" is on the side of the Flood.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What I've said IS evidence, abd there's lots more where that came from too. But since "science" to you means your dating methods trump all observation, I'm happy enough to leave you alone with it. Happy debating.

The quote is a little confused but he doesn't say they were "wiped out" in the Flood. He shouldn't say they "recorded" the Flood in their "histories" because obviously that couldn't have happened, but all people and cultures are descendants of Noah's sons and the reports of a Flood that are really quite universal have to go back to what they heard from their ancestors. That accounts both for the prevalence of so many accounts of a worldwide Flood and for the differences among them, the distortions, the embellishments etc. These people didn't remember such an event, they recorded what was passed on to them.

And as we know from discussions here the strata were deposited over a long period of time and are certainly not the result of a single short-term event.

No you do not "know" any such thing. It's commonly believed here but the actual observed facts of the strata don't fit that long-term scenario but are best explained by rapid deposition. The strata are laid one on top of another quite straight and flat, there is nothing about them to suggest there was ever anything like a normal earth surface to any of them, they are flat as a pancake stretching over huge distances and stacked to huge depths. There couldn't have been any "time periods" of millions of years marked by any of them, they are just deposits of sediment, obviously by water, lying flat, containing the remains of dead life forms which must have died in the deluge. The standard idea is really absurd if you just think about it carefully.

Core samples taken all over the Midwestern US all show a stack of sedimentary rocks one on top of another over a great distance. You can see the same thing in the Grand Canyon walls. Straight and flat with dead things fossilized in many of them. No hint whatever of any of them ever having formed anything like a normal surface of the earth as we experience it today.

The surface we have today was formed after all the strata were laid down. They are folded and pushed up in blocks, showing the layers were already in place. Canyons are cut into them to great depths, showing that cutting occurred after they were all in place. The strata from which the hoodoos form aren't being laid down any more, the strata have been there for thousands of years while erosion slowly carves away the softer parts leaving the characteristic hoodoo forms.

The idea of deposition over millions of years is truly ridiculous.

Oh and they are all so clearly different from each other, sharply different layers from each other. Given millions of years how did that happen? But it would be easily explained by their being carried in water and deposited one on top of another, one kind of sediment with a particular kind of living things in it on top of another, to very great depths, a mile in the case of the Grand Canyon.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No you do not "know" any such thing. It's commonly believed here but the actual observed facts of the strata don't fit that long-term scenario but are best explained by rapid deposition. On the contrary, the facts demonstrate that long time periods are required.

Utterly false.

The strata are laid one on top of another quite straight and flat In places, and rapid deposition is hardly required for that.

Actually it's the only realistic explanation. Over long periods of time you aren't going to get such flat deposition. Wherever the layers are seen lying straight and flat that would be the form of the original deposition. There are plenty of places where they have been folded or otherwise distorted, all showing that the strata were laid down first and they were deformed in a block. Explanation: The Flood laid them all down over the year, and sometime afterward, or at the very end when the Flood was draining away (which I think is demonstrated in the Grand canyon/Grand Staircase area), the Atlantic ridge formed and the continents split apart causing all kinds of tectonic effects to whole continents. All the strata of the British Isles are pushed up as a block. In some places you see the breakiup of strata, the cutting of canyons and cliffs, the pushing up of mountains. All these things exhibit the original deposition of the strata now being deformed in blocks, many layers at a time.

there is nothing about them to suggest there was ever anything like a normal earth surface to any of them Except for things like riverbeds and embedded tree roots...

The "riverbeds" are channels that run through some of the sediments. All it shows is that water ran there, otherwise there's nothing about them to suggest an actual riverbed. Water would have run through the sediments during deposition, on top of some before the next layer was laid down, continuing between them in some cases. Tree roots would certainly have been carried along in the Flood waters and buried like anything else. What they usually actually show is that the time period explanation is really a fantasy because they can span more than one layer and even within one layer they are just Stuff carried along with it, not part of any scenario or landscape.

There couldn't have been any "time periods" of millions of years marked by any of them.. . Maybe one day you will explain what you mean by that.

Perhaps I can try to make it clearer if it isn't clear enough.

...they are just deposits of sediment, obviously by water, lying flat, containing the remains of dead life forms which must have died in the deluge. Except that there are extensive deposits that were not laid down by water, plenty laid down in lakes and especially seas (and not by a flood) and no reason to attribute the vast majority of deaths to even a local deluge (the dominance of marine fossils being an obvious example)

Surely vast numbers of marine deaths would be expected in a worldwide Flood.

Besides the many dinosaur beds as evidence of the sort of death a worldwide Flood would cause, the enormous Karoo formation is a staggering graveyard of dead things. Enormous numbers of creatures piled up in one place certainly fits the idea of such a deluge.

The surface we have today was formed after all the strata were laid down. Rather obviously, regardless of who's right.

The point is important: It means the strata were never on the surface of the earth, they were all laid down as flat slabs of sediment, they stayed flat until deformed by tectonic force, which is the cause of the present lumpy hilly dippy surface we live on.

They are folded and pushed up in blocks, showing the layers were already in place And we have strata obviously laid on top of folded rock.

Here and there you have an angular unconformity which is often though not always made up of one or two layers straddling a block of upright or tilted layers, which I think is best explained as the result of tectonic movement tilting the lower block without disturbing the horizontal layer above. The remaining horizontal layer would formerly have been the lowest of a deep stack of layers that subsequently broke up and washed away due to the tectonic disturbance, leaving the one in place --because it stuck there due to the friction from the movement of the block beneath it. It's just one of the many ways the worldwide tectonic movement affected the strata in some places.

Canyons are cut into them to great depths, showing that cutting occurred after they were all in place. We have buried canyons, which were obviously cut before they were filled in.

Which I explain as all happening beneath the surface as the Flood waters drained away, cutting the canyon and then filling it in/

The strata from which the hoodoos form aren't being laid down any more, the strata have been there for thousands of years while erosion slowly carves away the softer parts leaving the characteristic hoodoo forms. And when they are eroded away the surface will be flat.

More or less.

Oh and they are all so clearly different from each other, sharply different layers from each other. Not all. But they have to be distinct in some ways to be labelled as different strata.

Yes, and they are identifiable as different strata, even in those cases wshere the material is the same. Which again suggests water deposition.

Given millions of years how did that happen? Which is more likely? That there would be many significant changes in conditions over millions of years ...

Significant changes sure but not abrupt knife-edge distinctions between the sedimentary deposition of one "era" and the next. That's what makes no sense, that there should have formed a stack of disparate kinds of sediments with tight contacts all flat and straight if they occurred over millions of years. Change would be expected but not sharp change, rather messy lumpy mixedup change.

...or the same changes over just one ?

Don't know what you mean by "same" changes. The layers suggest deposition by water. Water does layer sediments, it layers them in rivers and according to Walther's Law as sea level rises. It would make sense to expect layering from the Flood as well, especially since it is an example of rising and falling sea level

Anyone who thinks seriously about the issue can see that you are being absurd.

I doubt that.

The sequences produced according Walther's law are an example - changes in sea level change the sort of sediment deposited at a location, in ways a flood would not be expected to mimic.

On the contrary, Walther's Law is an excellent explanation for the layering that would have occurred in the Flood as the water rose and then receded.

But it would be easily explained by their being carried in water and deposited one on top of another, one kind of sediment with a particular kind of living things in it on top of another, to very great depths, a mile in the case of the Grand Canyon. No, it wouldn't.

Yes it would.

Where does all this sediment come from ?

Now you are changing the subject but most of it would have come from the land mass, and no doubt some from the ocean as well. Think what happens in a very small flood as streams carry down an enormous amount of "dirt." Heavy rain pounding the earth for forty nights and days followed by the rising water that eventually covered all the land would certainly have filled the water with sediments.

How was it sorted ? How were the living things sorted ?

Don't know. But water is known to sort sediments into layers. And besides, it's even harder to explain how you'd get such neat sorting of sediments and creatures on the Geologic Time Scale model. At the least there should be more gradation of creatures than there is, not the highly segregated types that are actually found.

Why doesn't it look like a catastrophic flood deposit (e.g. the preservation of delicate features in some strata). It is much easier to explain it in terms of long periods of time

Some things may be easier to explain that way. But the Flood probably had violent phases and quiet phases.

And this is just repeating points from previous discussion. As I said, we've established here that you don't have a viable case for the flood.

You've concluded that, I haven't.

David, I think you aren't replying to the messages you intend to be replying to. Be careful which "Reply" button you are clicking on. It's going to confuse us all if you give a reply to the wrong post.

abe: Also I agree with Theodoric, which is probably a First, that you must spell out your evidence here and not just refer us to links. For one thing I can't read a lot of material at links, it's hard on my eyes, but besides that we need to see the argument spelled out here on the board. So if your links demonstrate the timing of the Flood it would be good to see exactly how you arrived at that, but in your own words here.

Thanks.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith, this needs to be repeated here. Old earth models are tested. Science. A paper by eight professional geologists who are members of the Biblically conservative Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) http://www.asa3.org/...ics/Physical%20Science/EarthAntiquity From there. One of the best ways of making a name for yourself in the scientific community is to challenge a widely held scientific understanding with a strongly defended alternative theory. It is thus of considerable significance that the tens of thousands of geologists worldwide are virtually in complete agreement that the question of the earth's age has been answered: roughly 4.6 billion years. The agreement is perhaps even more striking in the world of economic geology (oil and mineral exploration) where theories that lead to increased revenue always win, even if philosophically distasteful. Understanding the age of the earth and its layers plays a critical role in natural resource exploration, yet to our knowledge there is not a single oil or mining company anywhere in the world that uses a young-earth model to find or exploit new reserves. Old-earth models work. Young-earth models do not. Old earth models work and are employed by thousands of exploration and mining companies all over the world. Old earth models work. They put their money where their mouths are. Creationists don't. They preach a lot. That's it.

Yes I understand your position but I am not preaching, I am describing observations that contradict the prevailing Old Earth explanation. I understand that your models "work" such as for the discovery of oil and minerals, but I dare to suggest that a lot of that is illusion, that the ancient-age time factor is really not important in that work, it can be done based purely on the physical facts in relative time -- that is, the order of deposition.

Anyway instead of just preaching the status quo as you are doing, why not address the observations I made about the strata, which do not fit the Old Earth explanation but are much better explained by rapid deposition: the straight flat layering, the sharp contacts between layers, the clearly differentiable layers, the oddly segregated fossil contents of different layers when you'd think more living things from earlier "periods" (lower layers) would be represented in later "periods (higher layers) than there actually are;, the absence of any erosion between layers on any scale remotely similar to the erosion that formed today's earth surface etc,

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

We do know that some "strata" take millions of years to form and other "strata" take minutes to form.

Unsupported assertion is not considered to be a valid debate strategy.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Hmmm. I have obtained radiocarbon dates of BC 2344, 2334, and 2306 in a couple of my excavations. Didn't see any evidence of floods.

Coyote, with all due respect I hope, this argument is really silly. I don't know what David's arguments amount to since I can't read the links, but most likely you are simply not seeing the evidence creationists identify for the Flood although it's probably there even where you are doing your dating. The claim is that there is enough observed evidence that doesn't fit the Old Earth model to call the dating methods into question. You need to respond to the claims of such evidence instead of just relying on your dating methods alone.

I also have continuity of mitochondrial DNA from before to after your 2348 BC date. That shows there was no population change. Perhaps you should knock off your mathematical models and look at real-world evidence for a change?

Well I am, and for all I know David is too, looking at real-world evidence (not scientific theories but physical observations) -- it's what I've been arguing here and everywhere else I've argued this -- observations of the real world.

Since these observations call the Old Earth model into question, they also call the dating methods into question, so you can't just keep pointing to those methods as if they trump everything else.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

you'd think more living things from earlier "periods" (lower layers) would be represented in later "periods (higher layers) than there actually are; And why would you think that ?

Because evolution isn't all that pat. Former variations/races from which the later supposedly evolved, don't just disappear, replaced by the evolved form -- as evolutionists themselves are always pointing out -- the previous apes didn't go away when the higher apes evolved from them. What happens is that the former type also evolves somewhat as well unless the population is very large where changes wouldn't be dramatic, and those would go on multiplying and show up in the "later" stages along with the "evolved" forms.

But that doesn't seem to be the case, the "evolved" forms appear to have mostly or sompletely supplanted the forms from which they are supposed to have evolved, which simply are not represented in the "more recent" layers, not in the numbers one would expect for sure if at all, and in some cases not at all.

The whole idea of evolution from period to period is based on rather specific variations that happen to show up in the separate layers. There isn't any evidence that they (those in the higher layers) evolved from the former (those in the lower layers) at all, except the order of the layers itself, but they are most likely just other variations or races of the same creature, cousins if you will, that all existed at the same time.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Generally it is the groups that continue, not species. The "lower apes" might still exist as a group, but the species that existed when the "higher apes" branched off almost certainly do not.

But what I said was that the earlier form might also have evolved somewhat depending on how large the population was, I didn't claim the species continued exactly as it formerly existed -- although again depending on the size of the population it could have continued fairly recognizable.l But perhaps not. It's not important to the point, which is that there is no reason to suppose the former, OR other population that also evolved from it, just disappeared, but that seems to be what is observed in the layers, which gives the false impression of a supposedly more primitive form no longer existing while the evolved form for some reason proliferates in the higher layer, apparently completely supplanting the earlier form.

I'm getting my impression from all kinds of discussions and graphic representations of the fossils found in various layers, which amounts to the observation that there seems to be surprisingly little overlap from one layer to another compared to what one would expect based on evolutionary theory itself.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.