The TRVE history of the Flood...

And you have to explain why everything that left the ark didn't just die with a couple of weeks. The land was dead having been under water for a year.

To make sure there's a clear understanding of your scenario, let me restate this back to you: The geologic layers we see across most parts of all continents were formed gradually by repeated high tides of slightly greater than normal proportions over a couple hundred days. Rising flood waters caused the tides to encroach further and further onto the continent, and subsidence of the deposited layers allowed more layers to be deposited on top. Just a quick correction: being buried in mud only describes a subset of fossils. Another quick correction: nests and burrows and rivers and canyons and so forth are surface effects that are observed in buried layers.

That's OK but I do think of the Flood as occurring in stages so that the tides would only be a factor as it was rising, possibly also as receding; then after it reached its highest level (and I'm still not clear how long each of these phases would have lasted) the water would have been fairly quiet and sediments would be precipitated out of it. And I've not decided about the subsidence factor, merely consider it as a possibility. The water could have risen three miles according to at least one commentary I read. The vast majority, all the fossils in the strata. But the others are formed how and where? The nests are buried inside the layers, the "rivers and canyons" aren't really rivers and canyons, but burrows do appear on the surface of buried layers.But the overall point is that what we see is stacks of lithified sediments/'mud with fossils in them; we don't see anything that suggests time periods of millions of years except by extreme stretching (imaginative interpretation) of the facts.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

• The Ark was well stocked.
• There was at least an olive tree the dove plucked a leaf from, so that means there would have been other trees that survived as well.
• Plants would have already started to grow as soon as some of the land was exposed and that was in less than a year.
• Plants that had lived in the pre-Flood world, like all other living things, would have been much more vigorous than those today, possibly growing much faster.

The far less lush new environment would have taken a toll on all of them however, as time went by.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't think speciation -- or diversification -- occurred any faster after the Flood than before, or now if the circumstances permit, but creatures on the Ark would have had much higher genetic diversity than those today. After the Flood they would have increased in population over some number of years, many of them probably not moving too far from the Ark (ABE: Rethink: Actually they'd following the plants that were growing/abe), and then spread out into isolated groups that formed new species. In a couple hundred years there could have been very large populations of every animal already diversified into new species. People too. This is all normal genetics, nothing especially rapid about it as long as the Species/Kind starts out with sufficiently high genetic diversity. The only reason it isn't going on as rapidly today is that many groups are genetically decreased to the point that change is slowed.CRR may disagree with me about this of course.I'm sure he's right, however, that many new species did become extinct in the less friendly new environment after the Flood. This is surely what happened with the dinosaurs that needed an environment lush with vegetation.; Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Most fossils are NOT "animals that were buried in mud".

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The creation of a cast or mold is a common form of indirect preservation. Most fossils do not contain actual body parts but are impressions, molds or casts of the original organism. Essentially, a mold fossil forms when the organic matter of the organism decomposes and leaves a cavity, or mold. Casts form when the cavity fills with sediment or minerals that harden. Occasionally, casts and molds contain the hard parts of organisms, such as shells or bones. source

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There simply isn't enough time in between what would be the tides in your Flood scenario for the animals to decompose before the next tide came in to fill the cavities with sediment.

Wha? All that has to happen is that they be buried in mud/wet sediments, decomposition before burial is unnecessary. The decomposition occurs during burial and then the hard parts are fossilized. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No, not when the fossil requires the animal to decompose first, and then get filled in with sediment. These are different than the mineralization of the hard parts of animals, that's just one type of fossil.

The problem is that it ISN"T reasonable. We've all SEEN floods and that isn't how they work.In a local flood, the water comes down from higher ground bringing silt with it. The water can keep rising even after the rain stops. But if the whole earth was covered with water, the water couldn't keep rising after the rain stopped. And of course you'd still need a special mechanism to get rid of the water.

I'm imagining a giant wet-vac.

Comparing a local flood to a worldwide flood is ridiculous.The rain was not the only source of the Flood water: the "windows of heaven" and the "fountains of the deep" were the main source, neither of which had been opened before.The main idea for how the Flood waters drained is that the sea floor dropped.

On the contrary, making up a bunch of nonsense that contradicts reality is ridiculous. You need to explain WHY it would be different from the reality of real floods. The windows of heaven are rain.

Ringo, you've obviously not followed former discussions of this subject, you're coming at this as a complete newbie knowing nothing. I'll answer what I can when I can but be advised all of it has been answered before many times. Maybe I can dig up some links to earlier threads.Yes, my fault for the lack of clarity, the windows of heaven are rain.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Typical god-of-the-gaps and arguments from incredulity. Let's review the ending:

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The following topics and questions should be addressed in Part 2. Due to many other time-consuming tasks, however, I will probably come back to this topic only in a few months:

• Many Giraffidae species and genera appear in the fossil record practically simultaneously and the assumed ancestors co-exist millions of years with their "more evolved" offspring (illustration)
• Using evolutionary assumptions, one can almost always postulate a line of descent out of a large variety of forms.
• Neck vertebrae: Why is it so difficult to count to eight, in the giraffe neck?
• The question of causes (1): Macromutations — Possibilities and limitations
• The question of causes (2): Further hypotheses on the origins of the long-necked giraffe.
• The question of causes (3): Is Intelligent Design verifiable and falsifiable?
• Species concepts and basic types
• With regard to a duplication of a neck vertebra: could there ever be a continuous transitional series of fossils?
• The question of chance
• "Old" and entirely new research topics by the ID-theory.
• Mitchell and Skinner
• Conclusions
• Acknowledgement
• References

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I'll only comment on the ones worth comments:1: Punctuated equilibrium, shocking. Gaps in the fossil record, even more shocking.2: I'll go further: given a set of fossils in close proximity in time and space, that show numerous familial resemblances, with younger (later) fossils more derived than older (earlier) fossils, that can empirically be arranged in a nested hierarchy by their traits and timing, it is entirely logical and rational to "postulate a line of descent" because that fits the predictions and expectation of evolutionary processes. No other known scientific theory fits such data. Such a postulated pattern leads to predictions of where and when new fossils may be found, as a test of the concept. ... If, however, the data does not fit these constraints imposed by the spacio-temporal matrix, then such a postulate would not be called for.4: Please define "macromutations" - hopefully using a current biological science definition. Hopefully this isn't your "hopeful monster" pseudo-macro-evolution typical of creationist fantasies.8: Duplication of parts during fetal development is a common mutation. See polydactyly for examples. This would be considered a normal part of "microevolution" by biological scientists.9: Chance (mutation) ... AND selection (survival and sexual). Sexual selection can be particularly rapid, especially when one bull mates with several cows, and it also explains the sexual dimorphism. In the wild today bulls with longer necks win the battles for mating, showing that this selection is continuing. So you would agree that "it is entirely logical and rational to "postulate a line of descent" because that fits the predictions and expectation of evolutionary processes" and that we are just arguing over the time scale of the process, not the details. Correct? Rapid radiation into new ecologies with low selection pressure would allow this, however herbivores need the plants specific to them (koalas and eucalyptus trees?) and the predators would be evolving right behind them: this would keep selection pressure relatively similar to today, with the same ratios of predator and prey we see today.Also this does not explain the evidence of biogeography, the patterns of populations and their descendants through time and space: one would expect to see the fossil record show this radiation pattern of dispersal of all species from one location and in one time period. Sadly, for you, it doesn't, while evolution coupled to the geological sciences does explain the observed patterns of species and fossils, it explains why similar ecosystems are inhabited by different species on the different continents (grassland grazers for example). So rapid speciation and rapid extinction, fascinating, but it doesn't seem consistent with the all powerful all seeing god/s behind this purported scenario. More like deism ...Does this period also include rapid geographic relocations of continents, as Faith has proposed IIRC, so that species ancestors could run to their respective continents before they broke up and sailed across the seas to their current locations?Inquiring minds want to know.Enjoy

You have never answered anything to anybody's satisfaction but your own.You should be looking at the questions and trying to answer them honestly instead of just trying to shoehorn your answers into your existing ad hoc framework.For starters, demonstrate WHY the Flood would behave differently from a real flood.