Is the Global Flood Feasible? Discussion Q&A

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TrueCreation writes:
Theres a couple problems with Grand canyon, It loops back and forth, and it also has steep sides.

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Vertical sides are indications of rapid erosion, while sloping sides such as those at the Grand Canyon are indicative of a geological process known as slope retreat.The Colorado river was never as wide as the Grand Canyon. As the river eroded more and more deeply into sedimentary rock, the exposed slopes were exposed to erosive forces (thermal cycling, rain, freezing, etc). The highest parts of the canyon have been exposed the longest, and so have retreated the most. Here's a good picture of the sloping sides of the Grand Canyon: Also, meandering ("loops back and forth") is more commonly associated with very slow flow rather than floods.--Percy

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[This message has been edited by Percipient, 01-04-2002]

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TrueCreation writes:
A majority of it [the water from Noah's flood] is still in the polar regions, some of it is out in space as is shown by water vapor floating around, though this could also be explained by comets or other sources, but the rest is right where it is now. The ocean basins sank and mountains were uplifted and as it is told in the bible God changed the earths topography so that it would never again return to flood the earth, God's promise.

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I think this explanation is okay as a preliminary attempt at an explanation, but where is the supporting geologic evidence?We were discussing the Grand Canyon a while back, and there were several messages you didn't have the opportunity to reply to. I think if you examine the responses from me, Mark and Moose in messages 78, 80, 87 and 88 you'll understand why it is widely believed the Grand Canyon is a relatively ancient formation on the order of millions of years old.--Percy

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Percy wrote:
The Colorado river was never as wide as the Grand Canyon. As the river eroded more and more deeply into sedimentary rock, the exposed slopes were exposed to erosive forces (thermal cycling, rain, freezing, etc). The highest parts of the canyon have been exposed the longest, and so have retreated the most. Here's a good picture of the sloping sides of the Grand Canyon:

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TC replied:
I could partly agree, though what is the blow toward the Flood on this assertion?

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I was responding to your message 74 where you stated that the Grand Canyon had steep sides, and that this represented a problem for gradual formation over long time periods. You are correct that steep sides are a sign of rapid formation, and that's why I was explaining that to the contrary the Grand Canyon does not have steep sides and provided this picture: The sloping sides are a sign of a geological process known as slope retreat where a river cuts vertically down and the sides gradually erode back. The reason the Grand Canyon is extremely wide at the rim and extremely narrow at the bottom is because the edges at the rim have had the longest exposure to erosive forces. The canyon narrows as you descend because the lower you go the less time the sides at that level have been exposed.If the Grand Canyon had formed suddenly just a few thousand years ago the sides would be vertical.The canyon you describe forming rapidly at Mount St. Helens was actually created by pumping from Spirit Lake by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This is from the US Geological Survey site:

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"The debris avalanche raised the level of Spirit Lake 64 meters and dammed its natural outlet even higher..."

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"On May 18, 1980, part of the debris avalanche slid into Spirit Lake, raising its level nearly 60 meters and damming its natural outlet to a higher level. Water displaced by the avalanche surged up the surrounding hillslopes, washing the blown-down timber from the lateral blast into the lake..."

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"During the period from May 18, 1980, until November 1982, the level of Spirit Lake rose as it received runoff from rain and snow in the surrounding mountains. The rising waters threatened to breach the unstable debris-avalanche deposits damming the lake. A temporary solution, put into effect by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was the construction of a pumping station and pipeline near the southwest end of the lake until a more permanent solution could be devised. The pumping station went into operation in November 1982, creating a new source for the North Fork of the Toutle River. Water was released from the pump outlet at a constant rate of 5.0 cubic meters per second. It flowed across easily erodible volcanic deposits and caused rapid degradation and aggradation at cross-sections established downstream (Paine, 1984)."

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And that's how the canyon described by Stephen Austin of ICR was formed.

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Percy wrote:
Also, meandering ("loops back and forth") is more commonly associated with very slow flow rather than floods."

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TC replied:
According to the theory on how it formed, both are expected.

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Meandering paths are caused by slow flow. Rapidly flowing water capable of the rapid erosion required to create the Grand Canyon in days rather than eons flows straight. Rapidly flowing water cannot follow meandering paths.These superficial indications of great age are by themselves compelling, and they are further supported by

• Radiometric determinations of even greater ages for the sedimentary layers forming the sides of the canyon;
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• The absence of any flood indications on the scale of the entire canyon. For example, as floods abate the extremely large boulders they're able to carry with them come to settle in place. The Grand Canyon has no such evidence.
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• The debris piles that form in portions of the Grand Canyon such as the Tonto Plateau take long periods to form from the products of erosion off the canyon sides. The rate of erosion is consistent with the depth of these debris piles and an age of millions of years.

--Percy

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[This message has been edited by Percipient, 01-21-2002]

edge I get 6 miles from Everest being (nearly) 6 miles above sea level. I have shown with seafloor spreading that nothing catastrophic occurred from a plate tectonic point of view. Everest was roughly the same height 4,500 years ago. TrueCreation Everest along with the Himalayas was a little hill during the flood. These extra miles are not needed, as we can use the same amount of water as is in the oceans today. edge So Mt. Everest rose to some 30,000 feet in elevation in 1800 years or less? Do you have some evidence for this? TrueCreation It would be as if you highered ocean basins and lowered mountain ranges, what contradicts it. The rate of uplift was simply faster then. edge How do you do this? Explain it geologically. TrueCreation Ok I have seen this question numerous times, I don't know what it is that I am missing here, I will attempt an emphasis. I don't know what is so hard to grasp, we all know that uplift occurs right? So if uplift is pushing the mountains 'up' that means....they used to be...lower? Going back in time it doesn't matter what scale your looking at, elevation would be equalized with the rest of the land. All I am saying is that this process moved much faster long ago.

I think what you might be missing is that though uplift is a well known and widely accepted geologic process, it cannot be invoked merely because it's convenient to your point of view. Edge is asking for the evidence of radical unprecedented uplift of the Himalayas in the last 5000 years.You reply, "What contradicts it," and the answer is, "Nearly everything."First, it is the precise wrong question to ask. I could insist there are green martians living beneath that planet's surface and ask, "What contradicts it?" The answer is, "Nothing," but that doesn't give the little green men any substance.Second, there is already plenty of evidence contradicting your proposal. The Himalayas are composed of ancient sea floor millions of years old:

http://library.thinkquest.org/10131/geology_visual.html

The path the Indian subcontinent followed on its way toward collision with Asia is well documented in the orientation of rock magnetized by the earth's magnetic field:

Error - University of Houston

The radiometric ages of these rocks allows calibration of the rate of progess of the Indian subcontinent and indicates its speed was as much as 15 centimeters per year:

India VR

It continues to move north, as indicated by measurements using GPS (Global Positioning Satellites):

http://www.leica-geosystems.com/...pplication/mteverest2.htm

And the Himalayas continue to elevate at about 2.5 inches/year:

http://www.extremescience.com/HighestElevation.htm

So you have two tasks before you:

• Explain why the current evidence is wrong or misinterpreted.
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• Produce your own evidence for a relatively recent origin.

There is also the larger question of why God would constrain himself to operate through natural forces in just the way you propose. Presumably God could have operated completely miraculously, creating all the water by miracle and flooding even the tall Himalayas, and later removing the water in the same way. How do you exclude this possibility? Then there are the other Creationist proposals similar to your own in that they attempt to take a naturalistic rather than miraculous approach. By what evidence do you reject the Creationist view that the water came from a vapor canopy? Or the one where the water flowed from beneath the ground and then returned there?What these Creationist views have in common is lack of positive evidence and inconsistency (often severe) with already available evidence. It's why Edge keeps pushing you for evidence and why Moose calls your ideas baloney. You need evidence.--Percy

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TC writes:
Oh my gosh I am soooo frustrated, I was finished with a reply to your post Percipent and I submited it and I accidently closed it, I thought that it posted because it posts rather quickly after you hit the submit button, but then I realized that I wasn't even connected to the internet afterwords, it took me about 2 hours to make the reply and it was vastly long...

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The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways! --Percy

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Percy wrote:
I think what you might be missing is that though uplift is a well known and widely accepted geologic process, it cannot be invoked merely because it's convenient to your point of view. Edge is asking for the evidence of radical unprecedented uplift of the Himalayas in the last 5000 years.

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TC replied:
I agree I wouldn't just say this because it is convenient to my point, it simply is relevant and feasable on the contrary.

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It isn't feasible to anyone familiar with geology.

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Percy wrote:
Second, there is already plenty of evidence contradicting your proposal. The Himalayas are composed of ancient sea floor millions of years old.

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TC replied:
I would disagree on the millions of years old, this 'ancient sea floor' would be expected as the world was covered with water! Also it would be reasonable to think that Indea was at one point not connected to asia the way it is today.

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The sedimentary layers forming the Himalayas are known to be old because of radiometric dating and fossil correlation, and because of the sheer depth of the layers that would have taken millions of years to deposit.Some of the most persuasive data for an ancient earth comes from sea floors, by the way. Did you know that no submerged sea-floor anywhere in the world is older than 200 million years? That's because the sea floor is formed from magma at mid-oceanic ridges and travels from them conveyor belt-like to subduction zones. The rate of travel is only a few centimeters per year, and for wide oceans it takes as much as 200 million years to complete the journey.Magnetic polarization studies of the sea floor, originally conducted by the Navy to provide navigation information for submarines during the Cold War, were what provided the initial clues. The sea floor was magnetized in alternating stripes of polarization, and these stripes were always parallel to the ridges. Further research revealed that at mid-oceanic ridges the sea floor was very young with almost no sedimentation, while near subduction zones the sea floor was very old and deeply covered in sedimentation. This is because newly formed sea floor has had no time to accumulate sediments, and of course the radiometric clocks of newly solidified magma are set to 0. But the sea floor approaching subduction zones has just completed a journey of millions of years and accumulated deep sediments along the way, and the radiometric clocks indicate great age. The age and depth of sediments measured at points from mid-oceanic ridge to subduction zone increases at a constant rate, indicating that the sea floor has been traveling at the centimeters/year rate for many eons.Also, there are no significant sedimentation discontinuities that would indicate sudden world-wide flooding 5000 years ago.I'm sorry you didn't find the links useful. The information I provided you is just what I know, but I provided links to related information thinking you might find them helpful.About the math at one site, a growth rate of 2.4 inches/year for 2,000 years is 400 feet, not a mile, so the conclusions you draw concerning uplift aren't valid.

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Percy wrote:
Explain why the current evidence is wrong or misinterpreted.

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TC replied:
I would not say that all of it is 'wrong' though I would have to say that it is missinterpereted as to saying it takes millions/thousands of years.

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I understand. But to be scientific you have to explain how it is misinterpreted. All science is tentative, so of course it could have been misinterpreted, but for your point to carry you have to explain how.

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All the evidence can be just as consistant with what the geography would have been like during the Global Flood as with a uniformitarian perspective, though I feel that it is more consistant with the Flood.

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Can you explain how the geological (not just geographical) evidence is consistent with a global flood? Just saying it can be is insufficient.

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Many ask this question, and the simple answer is that, God wanted to leave evidence of his judgement so we would know that it really happend.

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The world is full of religious people who think they know what God intended. Convince me with evidence.

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My belief is that this is the way he did it for that reason, he even said it himself that he did it naturally in Genesis.

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What God said was, "I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights." He doesn't say how we will cause it to rain, or where he will get the water for the rain. Plus plenty of Creationists disagree with you. What's a poor evolutionist to think?You say you don't reject the vapor canopy theory or the groundwater theory, but your original scenario posits that no additional water was necessary because the world was more uniform in elevation at the time.You're being pushed hard for evidence, but you never offer any. You only respond like this:

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The evidence can be interpereted just as easy for a Global flood, and this is proof of feasability, not neccessarely that it happend, though I think it overwhelming evidence that it happend and that it fits easier with the Global Flood than uniformitarian time scale.

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Where's the evidence?--Percy

Philip, I know you said this wasn't yours, and a search reveals it can be found at many places on the web, but doesn't at least some of this stuff sound fishy to you?Meteor impact craters *are* found in sedimentary layers (see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/seismic.htm for an example, search for "meteors").Redwood trees *do* die, though I'm not sure of what, and the oldest redwoods are estimated to be perhaps 2500 years old, not 3500. But the oldest trees in the world are bristlecone pines, around 5000 years old, so 3500 year-old redwoods, if such exist somewhere, are irrelevant to the argument.A flood does not order organisms from the simple to the complex. Density, shape and serendipity are probably the biggest factors.I'm surprised dust on the moon and 2LOT wasn't on that list.There are three types of Creationist arguments:-- Arguments from the pulpit. These have no scientific merit whatsoever. They're appropriate only for people who either are unwilling to question or have no scientific background whatsoever. The arguments you posted fit in this class. Informed Creationists blush when they see such things.-- Arguments for laypeople. This includes all other Creationist arguments. These have a higher level of scientific sophistication, but usually are inconsistent with existing theory or evidence or both.-- Scientific arguments. The empty set.--Percy

Well expressed!--Percy

I think the Ridley quote may only apply to a very narrow context, and that all he is saying is that it isn't practical to use the fossil record to argue against Special Creation, which is a sub-branch of Creationism that believes that the sudden appearance of each new species in the fossil record is due to special creation by God at that point in geologic history.--Percy

No one can respond to your list of points until you present the data they are drawn from.You need to go beyond, "I've read four monographs and I'm a scientist." Provide citations for the monographs you're referring to, or post links to them, or post graphics from them, or post quotes from them. So far all you're saying is, "I've read the monographs, they don't support the conclusions of paleontologists, trust me."About the Ridley quote, I think you'll find he meant precisely what I said he meant when he referred to special creation.--Percy