Did the Flood really happen?

As I said there is no reason they would have been mentioned.

There is no reason for you to mention it except as yet another example of you just making stuff up.It is NOT mentioned in either of the Biblical Flood Myths.Now when you actually have some evidence perhaps then we can consider it.

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I agree that the dating methods are the biggest challenge to any Flood theory, but I still suspect that there's some slippage in the way the atomic decay methods are calculated and applied...

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Nowhere near enough. You need a massive error, and you need it consistent across all the methods of dating that go back more than 10,000 years- which includes non-radiometric methods like carve counting. And yet you have no plausible mechanism at all.Oh, And there’s plenty more challenges to the Flood. The absurdity of Flood Geology itself is an apologetic invention created to try to deal with the fact that there is no real sign of the Flood in the geological record.

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...and yes I know there's the supposed fossil record, and it's very suggestive too of course...

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It’s more than suggestive. It is very strong evidence against Flood Geology since there is no way for the Flood to produce that order.

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...but since the strata themselves defy the whole establishment conception of time periods it's out the window anyway.

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As I pointed out in the very post you are replying to the strata contain much evidence that support s the conventional view over Flood geology. To the point where it is Flood geology that should be thrown out.

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Slow transgressions and regressions are based on observations that are probably better explained by phases of the Flood, but that's something I have to work on.

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You have a habit of calling things likely because they fit your views - even if they are absurdly unlikely. Especially as the Biblical Flood story has very simple phases. The rain falls, drowning the land. The rain stops and the land remains flooded. The water gradually recedes.

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Large scale deformation of rock after lithification. Well lithification doesn't take anywhere near the great spans of time you all impute to it and if the post-Flood tectonic pressures can raise mountains, they can certainly be the cause of such deformations. You are all so enthralled with the establishment view you'll never even seriously consider what I'm proposing, but some day someone will.

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The time required for lithification depends on the rock. But I think we can say that even if it took mere centuries, your view would still be in deep trouble, because the deformation also has to be slow - rock cannot be rapidly deformed.

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Strata that could not be deposited by a flood. Well again we've got an interpretive conflict here. The Flood fits overall so all such conflicts will eventually be resolved.

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The Flood does not fit, at all. That is why you keep having to make things up to try and explain away the evidence.

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Oh but the strata and the baziillions of fossils certainly ARE evidence of the Flood, and not evidence against

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No sane person would believe that. And I don’t think you’re that crazy.

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Only such a worldwide inundation could possibly explain the great extent and thickness of the strata,

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Only continued deposition over long periods of time can explain the thickness. The Flood isn’t even great at explaining the extent - which is not, as I explained in the post you are replying to - a problem for the mainstream view,

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... and so many fossils are wonderful evidence of exactly what the Flood was supposed to do: wipe out all life on the land, plus of course plenty from the oceans as well

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The fact that the majority of fossils are marine is in fact one piece of evidence against the Flood as an explanation. and you cannot conclude from the fossils that they were deposited in a short space of time or that all - or even most - land animals were wiped out in a single event. Moreover, since the order of the fossil record conclusively rules out the Flood the assertion that fossils are evidence of it is obviously untrue,

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Just because you like the establishment interpretation doesn't make it right and as I say it's physically impossible for the strata to represent time periods, just impossible.

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I’m arguing from evidence, not personal liking. On the other hand your assertion that it is physically impossible for the strata to represent time periods is such nonsense that even you don’t understand it. Which suggests that you say it just because you like it. You can’t know it’s true if you don’t even know what it means.

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No, you can't think a rock a hundred feet thick that extends for thousands of square miles dould be the burial ground for a very particular set of living things.

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And yet there is no real absurdity there. Sediment is deposited. The remains of some of the animals and plants that die get buried in that sediment (sometimes well after death). Conditions change. Different sediment is deposited. Eventually the original sediment is buried so deeply that it slowly turns to rock.

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I plan to work on this one more too but it's quite clear to independent thinking that it couldn't have happened.

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Die-hard dogmatism is not independent thinking by any stretch of the imagination.

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There is no reason to think exceptions make any difference to the overall explanation, the variations in size of some of the strata for instance, or the monadnocks which are just intrusions into the strata.

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The existence of exceptions is sufficient to disprove a universal. And we do have evidence that the monadnocks were eroded, rather than being intrusions (you’ve even pointed some out, though you didn’t know it). Your idea that they are intrusions is simply something you made up. With no real evidence.

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I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop referring to an alternative theory as "falsehoods

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Calling something an alternative theory doesn’t make it any less false.

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Yes it is physically impossible for the strata to have formed according to the time periods scenario.

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That is another ridiculous falsehood that you invented. Which you have failed to support every single time it has been discussed.

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And yes I agree that the establishment theory has superficially persuasive evidence.

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It has far more than that, which is why it is accepted science. But even superficially plausible evidence is more than you have offered.Edited by PaulK, : Fixed a quote tag

It is far more plausible than Flood geology. As has been shown.If just thinking would find absurdity, you could point it out, but you never have. Meanwhile you invent absurdities to try to explain away the evidence against Flood geology.

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there's only one; the idea of two is a misreading by someone who doesn't understand biblical exegesis

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There are two versions of the Flood story that have been mashed together, as can be plainly seen if you study it. And I wonder what rule of biblical exegesis command you not to see what is right there in scripture.

Oh but I have pointed it out. Living things would be displaced by the formation of a slab of rock, they would become extinct and could not be the genetic source of evolution or anything else to pass on to the next supposed Time Period, which is also represented by a huge flat rock that formed on top of theirs. All sorts of fancy ideas about how sediments were slowly deposited and animals kept living on top of them just fall apart. They would have to be bured very deep to become lithified and then they would have to be exposed, all the dirt on top of them eliminated for them to end up as a simple flat rock in the geological column, and this would have to happen to every "time period" in the entire column. It is impossible, it is absurd, it couldn't have happened.The only sensible explanation is the Flood, which sorted the sediments, which we know water does under many circumstances, and buried whatever creatures were still living as the sediments washed over them. You cannot get "time periods" out of the strata but they do make sense as the depositions by the Flood waters that buried the bazillions of living things.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No evidence for a global flood.
Irrefutable of evidence that says it didn't happen.
No evidence for a young earth, irrefutable evidence for an old earth.And that's just the science.Historically, the flood myths in the bible are based on a series of earlier flood myths from Messapetamia, the best known being Gilgamesh.

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Mesopotamian mythology refers to the myths, religious texts, and other literature that comes from the region of ancient Mesopotamia in modern-day West Asia. In particular the societies of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria, all of which existed shortly after 3000 BCE and were mostly gone by 400 CE.[1] These works were primarily preserved on stone or clay tablets and were written in cuneiform by scribes. Several lengthy pieces have survived, some of which are considered the oldest stories in the world, and have given historians insight into Mesopotamian ideology and cosmology.

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Mesopotamian myths - WikipediaCan we please stop trying to convince Faith that she's wrong now, it doesn't work, she's heard it all before and we know she's not influenced by facts.

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Oh but I have pointed it out.

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No, you have made up things which can be seen to be absurd without requiring much in the way of thought at all.

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Living things would be displaced by the formation of a slab of rock, they would become extinct and could not be the genetic source of evolution or anything else to pass on to the next supposed Time Period

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Which living things are going to be displaced by the lithification of deeply-buried sediment? and how is that supposed to harm animals living on the surface?

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All sorts of fancy ideas about how sediments were slowly deposited and animals kept living on top of them just fall apart.

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You’re going to have to come up with something better than the idea that the surface has to suddenly turn into rock for no apparent reason.

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They would have to be bured very deep to become lithified and then they would have to be exposed, all the dirt on top of them eliminated for them to end up as a simple flat rock in the geological column, and this would have to happen to every "time period" in the entire column. It is impossible, it is absurd, it couldn't have happened.

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Why would they have to be to be exposed ? Not all strata are. And the time periods aren’t the strata anyway. And, of course, we do know that massive erosion has occurred over the time the strata (in aggregate) were being deposited. And given time there is no reason why it could not happen.

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The only sensible explanation is the Flood, which sorted the sediments, which we know water does under many circumstances, and buried whatever creatures were still living as the sediments washed over them.

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But that is genuinely absurd. Water is rather limited in it’s sorting and there are things that could not have been sorted. Not to mention the fact that if the strata were sorted by water action, the fossils should be sorted in the same way - and they aren’t.

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You cannot get "time periods" out of the strata but they do make sense as the depositions by the Flood waters that buried the bazillions of living things.

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Obviously we can say that there was a period of time when the sediment was laid down. We have evidence that tells us that the whole thing took a great deal of time. We have evidence that let’s us correlate the strata and - even without radiometric dating - see that strata in different locations were deposited at around the same time. So, time periods do make a great deal of sense. Which is more than can be said for Flood geology.

Explained many times but not substantiated by any facts. Fantasies are not facts.Meanwhile the dating methods, particularly the ones in Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1, show continuous, consistent dating of objects, both by annual counting methodologies (tree rings, ice layers, etc) and by radiometric methodologies. These have also been correlated with known historical dates and show consistent accuracy.For instance Volcanic deposits can be dated both by radiometric decay data and by the ages of the layers bedded on top of, below, and between the ash and lava layers.You simply cannot deposit ash layers between sediment layers by a flood myth and stay true to reality and the way things work. This is your typical avoidance approach to reality Faith: you try to ignore it and pretend it is somehow, someway, erroneous. It isn't. There is just too much cross correlation ... unless the whole universe is imaginary, or it was fabricated by a capricious god who mocks you. And what we have in the present are different levels of radioactive isotopes in different layers of sediment. Isotopes that cannot be sorted by any known mechanical/physical system. Levels that are explained by consistent radioactive decay over many many years. We have this with different decay strings and different sets of the pertinent decay isotopes, each with their own half-life, and this means that the proportions of the decay isotopes for one decay string to the decay isotopes in the second decay string change with each year of decay.The proportions found in the layers are consistent with each decay string dating for every layer investigated.This is simply not possible to achieve with water sorting of sediments.That is what we call verification in science. You can deny it, but that just makes you wrong. Nope. We know there was a vast, shallow inland sea, and the deposits of sediments and fossils are consistent with that landscape. Thousands of square miles is minuscule compared to the bottom of the pacific and atlantic oceans, so when you really put your mind to it, the reality emerges. The geological/ecological changes over long periods of time explain the data perfectly.Let me remind you of the Green River Shale Varves, found along the Green river, tributary to the Colorado river, upstream of the Grand Canyon.

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The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sediments are deposited in very fine layers, a dark layer during the growing season and a light-hue inorganic layer in the dry season. Each pair of layers is called a varve and represents one year. The sediments of the Green River Formation present a continuous record of six million years. The mean thickness of a varve here is 0.18 mm, with a minimum thickness of 0.014 mm and maximum of 9.8 mm.[1]

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The sedimentary layers were formed in a large area named for the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River. The three separate basins lie around the Uinta Mountains of northeastern Utah:

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• an area in northwestern Colorado east of the Uintas
• a larger area in the southwest corner of Wyoming just north of the Uintas known as Lake Gosiute
• the largest area, in northeastern Utah and western Colorado south of the Uintas, known as Lake Uinta

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Fossil Butte National Monument in Lincoln County, Wyoming is in a part of the formation known as Fossil Lake because of its abundance of exceptionally well preserved fish fossils.

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Six million years of annual varves ... meaning six million dark layers and six million light layers. That's 12 million layers of fine materials deposited over time. One after the other.And you can't explain how one such light/dark layer pair could form during a flood.The there are the pollen fossils:

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Tertiary Pollen-II The Oil Shales of the Eocene Green River Formation
R. P. Wodehouse
Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club
Vol. 60, No. 7 (Oct., 1933), pp. 479-524

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There are literally thousands of pollen grains in the shales. Frequently they are packed so thickly that they overlap each other making observation difficult. They are far too numerous to permit a complete count of the different species. In the present work only those identifications are recorded which I feel are reasonably certain and close as to the family. These constitute only a relatively small proportion (possibly less than one-third) of the identifiable pollen. The remainder will have to await a considerable extension of our knowledge of pollen morphology. No attempt was made to count the grains of the species which were identified, this is a subject reserved for later study, but in describing each species some note is generally made of my impression of its relative abundance.

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That is but a small section I copied out of the paper. It's quite extensive. You can sign up to read the whole article on-line for free. If you are interested in facts and reality.The pollen is also deposited in an annual pattern, confirming and verifiying the varve layering is an annual phenomenon.The reality overwhelms your simplistic fantasy.The evidence shows that the earth is old, very very old.Your mythology cannot explain the evidence of old age except by magical intervention, which means that everything (including religious texts) is imaginary or fake.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

The Green River Varves should be easily explained by a Flood that lays down a dark layer and then a light layer 11.45 times during every minute regularly for a full year.11.45 x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days = 6,018,120 instances. All we need is a model, mechanism, method, process or procedure for a Flood to lay down a light colored layer and then a dark colored layer about every 5 seconds and do that continuously for a year. Oh, and not disturb the column either during or after its creation.Should be easy to explain.

Yes you've got all that putative evidence, but if it's true that the standard scenario is physically impossible, which it is, plus other problems, then that evidence is simply going to have to be reinterpreted.

Why on earth would pollen grains in a slab of shale be a problem for the Flood? If anything it's confirmation.AbE: You go on to say that pollens accumulate on some pattern consistent with the varve layers, but that doesn't describe the situation of a huge bunch of them being found together in a shale slab. What that shows is that the pollen got collected together in the Flood and deposited with the fine silt and clay particles that became the shale.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No Faith, what needs to be reinterpreted is the silly notion that there was ever a Biblical Flood.The evidence exists.Now those people who think that either of the Biblical Flood myths actually happened need to present the model, method, mechanism, process or procedure that allows their flood to produce the evidence that exists in reality.

It's a huge problem on both counts. The vast majority of evidence contradicts the Flood story. Even you have admitted more than once that there are things you can't explain.And your perverted "explanation" of the Flood ignores scripture almost entirely. You make it up as you go along without regard to what the scriptures actually say.

Nothing I've said to try to explain the Flood contradicts scripture.