Welcome to the fray!
My point is this: people that posted in this thread, brought up numerous arguments that were contrary to the biblical account.
Let me run some evidence by you and see what you think. This evidence is not from any website, anti-Christian or not. It is from my own research as an archaeologist.
Two points that can't be ignored from the flood story: the flood was worldwide, and it occurred during historic times. Biblical scholars generally cite a date about 4,350 years ago.
If that story is accurate we should be able to examine sediments of that approximate age and find evidence of a flood, shown by either deposition or erosion. Floods leave distinctive evidence behind and archaeologists and other -ologists are pretty good at deciphering that evidence. (Google "channeled scablands" for some classic examples. Those floods in southern and eastern Washington were limited in area, not global, and about three times older than Noah's flood, but we can see the evidence they left very clearly.)
From my own archaeological research in >100 sites, most of which contain sediments about 4,350 years old, I have yet to see evidence of a flood in any of them. This alone disproves the idea of a global flood at about that time. (My colleagues across the country and across the world report similar lack of flood evidence at that time period.)
If you disagree with this finding, you can perform your own experiment: a global flood would have left evidence globally, including in your back yard. You can learn some archaeology and sedimentology and check for yourself! It is easier to do in archaeological sites, so perhaps you can take some classes and go on a field school that will be working with a site of the proper age. In any case, you don't have to take my word for it, you can conduct the experiment yourself. But don't get your hopes up. Modern geology developed through efforts to prove the flood occurred, and the folks trying to do that gave up just about 200 years ago.
A second line of evidence: In a cave in southern Alaska a skeleton was found and dated to ca. 10,300 years ago. It had a very distinct mtDNA pattern, designated D4h3. That mtDNA has been found in living individuals on the west coasts of both North and South America. This evidence by itself shows that there was no extinction of humans in the intervening time. Rather, we have continuity of that mtDNA pattern where the flood story would require total replacement by a mtDNA pattern spreading out from the Near East. From my own archaeological research I have a similar example of continuity of mtDNA, in this case Haplotype A2, from about 5,300 years ago to the present.
I welcome your responses to this evidence.
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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