Some water measurements for the Flood

Because of the thread about the water contained in ringwoodite in the mantle, which has creationists wondering if this explains where all the water went after the Flood, I got curious about how much water would have been contributed to the depth of the Flood waters by the forty days and forty nights of rainfall that occurred at the beginning—apart from that contributed by the “fountains of the deep” which would have been considerable but incalculable as far as I know.

So I looked around for information on measuring rainfall and found this Weather Underground blog the most informative for my purposes:

What is the Most Rain to Ever Fall in One Minute or One Hour?

The rainfall at the beginning of the Flood is supposed to have been worldwide and continuous and very heavy. How heavy I don't know, but there is one extremely heavy rainfall recorded for the US at over an inch a minute in Unionville, Maryland according to this blog, so I simply computed from an inch a minute and got some pretty hefty numbers.

An inch a minute all over the earth would be
Sixty inches an hour or five feet an hour
Ten feet in two hours, twenty in four, forty in eight,
120 feet in 24 hours. Or 4800 feet by the end of the forty days and nights of the rainfall. That would pretty well cover the pre-Flood mountains which weren’t anywhere near as high as the mountains we have now that were formed by tectonic force.

Please correct my arithmetic if necessary.

Since that's an extreme rate of rainfall, although for all I know it's close to what actually happened, I figured I should consider a lower rate as well. An inch an hour would still be a heavy rain as we know it, so I computed that too. That's of course 24 inches or two feet in a 24-hour day. That's 60 feet in a month or 80 feet by the end of the forty days and nights.

Something between the two rates might be the best guess.

This may be a rather thin topic for a thread but I'm not sure how to flesh it out.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : Change "rainful" to "rainfall"

Yes, there were supposedly two sources, the rainfall and the "fountains of the deep" but there's no way to calculate the latter that I know of, besides which I have a problem imagining how something that came up from below could have raised the level of the ocean. It would have to have left a space beneath the ocean floor to do that.

But perhaps something like that happened, I don't know. If something like that happened it would contribute to explaining how the sea floor could have dropped at the height of the Flood to permit the water to drain back into the ocean basin. I admit that all this sounds physically impossible, but nobody knows what actually happened and it would fit with what the Biblical account says.

So if something like that happened then whatever the rainfall contributed would just be a portion of the total, reducing the rate of the rain which would help as far as the ark's wellbeing is concerned, but there's no way to know how much either source contributed.

I'd have no problem considering it a miracle if the Bible did, but it doesn't.

What drives you all crazy about (YEC) creationist attempts at science is that we insist on fitting it into the Biblical account. That's the whole enterprise of Biblical creationism. Where there is a contradiction between science and the Bible, which there is when it comes to current scientific calculations about the past, we put the Bible over science and you do the opposite.

Since there is really no way to actually prove anything about one-time events in the past – WHICH YOU ALL REALLY SHOULD ACKNOWLEDGE IN ALL FAIRNESS -- it all remains conjecture and speculation, no matter how reasonable in some cases, and we're going to continue to put the Bible above whatever calculations you come up with that contradict it.

So it's all very interesting to read how one creationist calculated temperatures in relation to the canopy idea, but if it doesn’t convince you it doesn’t matter. Anything any of us comes up with, including your answers, HAS to conform to the Biblical account or we're not going to accept it, though we’re always willing to adjust the scientific aspect where it clearly needs adjusting as long as it doesn’t violate the Biblical account.

We do this about the Flood because there is nothing in the Biblical account to suggest it was anything but a natural occurrence, although, yes, circumstances were different enough to require a non-uniformitarian point of view to understand it. I have no objection on any other grounds to regarding it as a miracle: The Bible doesn’t so YECs don’t.

If the science doesn’t work then we need to adjust the science. The Bible says it rained forty days and nights. If your calculations don't provide enough water for that to have happened, too bad for your calculations. We’re talking the Creator God here, you can’t compete, sorry.

I suppose that makes this whole thread futile too. For my purposes I got some idea at least of how a heavy rate of rainfall could all by itself cover the pre-Flood mountains. I thought that interesting even if you can't find enough water in the pre-Flood atmosphere to make it happen.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : punctuation correction

Edited by Faith, : To add YEC to creationist

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So here we are. The Earth is flooded to a varying depth no less than 100 ft. So now, what happens to the water? As anyone who is familiar with the properties of hydrodynamics, water, like most liquids, will reach a certain state of equilibrium if we are at some point where no other forces are being applied. The only source of water removal at this point is evaporation.

But since evaporation can't explain the removal of that much water in a period of something like five months we need another explanation. Which is where the dropping of the sea floor becomes a possibility. Creationists have to use their ingenuity to come up with such explanations. It would be nice if our opponents would exert a little of their ingenuity in the same direction once in a while rather than being content with the first piece of debunkery that strikes them.

Now as was mentioned in another thread, we already know the maximum amount of water that can be held in our vapor canopy. The total water can only account for approximately 1-6 inches of water removal from the total water volume that has resulted in the flood.

But "our" vapor canopy is most likely nothing like the original vapor canopy that existed from the Creation to the Flood. You accepted some of the Biblical account, all you have to do is keep thinking like a creationist. Help us out here.

So assuming that evaporation now takes effect, the resultant water level of the Earth would only drop by a depth of 1-6 inches. Thus leaving, using my depth assumption above, over 99 feet of water still covering the tallest peak. There is no way for this remaining water to go anywhere since the fountains of the deep, which were holding this water (allegedly) are now 'opened' and if the force they applied was a net positive, there is no balancing force to draw the water back. That would require suction.

Perhaps that is provided by the space that might have been left beneath the sea floor as the fountains evacuated it -- a vacuum in other words.

If you're going to accept any of the Biblical account, why not all of it? The water rose for five months, sat there for a bit and then took another five months or so to drain away. Evaporation hardly seems the explanation for this so we figure it had to have some place to go and the dropping of the sea floor gives it a place to go. Not ENOUGH of a place to go, though, if we're adding a huge quantity of rain to the total volume, so we still need some creationist ingenuity to give us enough space since evaporation doesn't do it. Ringwoodite in the mantle perhaps?

So now, we have poor Noah floating on his boat still looking for land. And it is nowhere to be found.

Except of course we know it was found because the Bible says so. All we have to do is bring science into line with the Bible.

That is the creationist's Mission Impossible but of course we believe it to be ultimately possible. You are welcome to join in the effort. All it takes is discarding anything that contradicts the Biblical account and exerting your scientific imagination to finding explanations that support it.

ABE: Since supposedly the scientific imagination of an actual scientist would be better at this than our poor creationist attempts, it should be an interesting attempt worthy of your training.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith, I already took the drop of the sea floor into account in the original assumptions. The Earth, at equilibrium post flood already had a drop in the sea floor resultant from the fountains of the deep releasing their water. Which means they cannot account for removal of the water after the fact.

But that wouldn't contribute to the Flood volume, it would only move the sea floor downward as the fountains were released, the volume would remain constant. But if the release of the fountains did contribute to the increase in volume this would require the retention of the evacuated space beneath the sea floor, which I believe I said in my first comment on this subject above. Which in response to you I then posited would be the vacuum needed to supply the suction you said would be required to pull the water back into the ocean basins. We only need the vacuum to be maintained for a short period of time before the collapse of the sea floor, which then occurred at a rate allowing for the Flood waters to drain over roughly a five-month period.

But "our" vapor canopy is most likely nothing like the original vapor canopy that existed from the Creation to the Flood. You accepted some of the Biblical account, all you have to do is keep thinking like a creationist. Help us out here. Actually, no. We know precisely what the vapor canopy was like because it is easy to calculate the maximum amount of volume of water that it can support. This was already explained to you in another thread.

Actually it was this thread I believe, but as usual you are succumbing to uniformitarian assumptions rather than thinking like a creationist and finding ways the pre-Flood canopy did support more volume than today's canopy would, which of course it had to since it rained for forty days and nights which your calculations make impossible.

And no, I did not accept some of the biblical account. I am using it as reference because that is the foundation of your argument.

Well, that's a start, you just stopped too soon as the foundation of my argument uses a lot more than the part you were willing to reference. Ah well, of course it's too good to be true that an evo would stoop to the level of a creationist.

Perhaps that is provided by the space that might have been left beneath the sea floor as the fountains evacuated it -- a vacuum in other words. Please read my post again. As I stated, if the fountains released the water, they exerted positive pressure. How precisely do they now suddenly exert negative pressure?

By creating a vacuum in the space they evacuated that eventually causes the collapse of the sea floor, sucking the water back into the ocean basins.

Except of course we know it was found because the Bible says so. All we have to do is bring science into line with the Bible. Riiiight. Believe the bible because it is the inspired word of god and we know that because the bible says so. Seriously, do you even listen to yourself sometimes?

Well, clearly you don't listen to what I say or you wouldn't say this sort of nonsense.

That is the creationist's Mission Impossible but of course we believe it to be ultimately possible. You are welcome to join in the effort. All it takes is discarding anything that contradicts the Biblical account and exerting your scientific imagination to finding explanations that support it. Does this require a head injury as a prerequisite? Or can it be achieved through a combination of inherent gullibility and a genetic predisposition to extreme denialism?

It results from recognizing God as God and the Bible as His word, that's all. Since it took me until my mid-forties to believe anything other than atheistic rationalism I don't think I can be accused of anything genetic that predisposed me to believing the Bible, and I don't recall a head injury at that time.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

if the Earth were a current sea level sphere, the water covering depth would be about 2560 meters

I'm apparently missing what you mean about what exactly you are measuring, bringing sea floor up and continent level down and so on. Are you talking about the depth that would cover the land as it is now, mountains and all etc., or something else?

Hi Larni

You ask:

Why don't you say say that God did it with his divine power? Why does it need to be mechanically possible (as it is not) when God could simply will it that way?

And I believe I answered this back in

Message 9 where I say

I'd have no problem considering it a miracle if the Bible did, but it doesn't.

And the following Message 10 where I say

...there is nothing in the Biblical account to suggest it was anything but a natural occurrence, although, yes, circumstances were different enough to require a non-uniformitarian point of view to understand it. I have no objection on any other grounds to regarding it as a miracle: The Bible doesn’t so YECs don’t.

I hope this answers your question.

And as to whether it is mechanically possible, not being able to prove that doesn't mean it isn't, and there's so much else that fits the Flood scenario (strata, fossils, argued to death here many times) I feel no need to abandon the attempt.

Sorry, you seem to be highly exercised about some egregious error you think I've committed but I'm afraid I can't make any sense out of what you are saying.

I'd have no problem considering it a miracle if the Bible did, but it doesn't. Well, the Bible makes it quite clear that God caused the flood. If he didn't cause it by a miracle, what did he do, turn on his rain machine? Pull the lever that opens the hatch that lets the fountains of the deep out?

I already answered this but can do it again I guess.

For most natural events there is a series of causes that are all natural. Miracles are usually pretty easy to identify, something like raising a person to life from death, causing a depleted supply of oil or grain to increase to overflowing, causing fire to come down from heaven and consume a water-soaked sacrifice, making the sun move backward, turning water into wine, feeding thousands with a few pieces of bread and fish.

There is nothing in scripture that indicates that the release of the fountains of the deep or the rain from heaven was anything but a natural if unusual event, which would have been brought about by a chain of natural events --ABE: even perhaps due to the condition NoNukes describes as persisting from the Creation. /ABE.

God is said in scripture to cause everything: "I make peace and create evil" is in Isaiah 45 where He also lists more things He does; "If there is calamity in a city won't God have done it" is in Amos 3. There are many passages where God says He's going to do something like bring the Assyrians against Israel. In Ezekiel it's a theme "Then they shall know that I am the Lord" when He does various things to punish Israel, make the land desolate etc. He also says He's going to raise up a prophet. None of these things in themselves is anything miraculous that God says He does or is going to do. Peace and war just happen a lot on earth, calamity just happens, enemies invade, events may lay a land desolate, prophets arise etc., all in the normal course of events. All scripture does is show us that God has a hand in all of it, which otherwise we wouldn't think of.

In Exodus He does say He's going to "do marvels" too, however:

"And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee."

God is the God of the ordinary and the natural, as well as the extraordinary. Unless an event is clearly supernatural or scripture gives us some other reason to think it is, there is no reason to take it as supernatural.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Seems to me we could call this a matter reasonable minds can disagree on since you are so sure scripture indicates the events were supernatural. I gave my reasons based on my understanding of scripture why I think not: To my mind God's saying He's going to open the windows of heaven doesn't carry any more supernatural significance than saying He's going to bring the Assyrian army to devastate Israel, and it has none of the earmarks of miracle as I laid those out.

Nevertheless I don't have to call you names for believing as you do and it would be nice if you would spare me as well since my position is sincere and I think my arguments are scripturally founded.

You have not provided any reason that would distinguish between the sun moving backwards, and water being suspended above the earth.

Seemed obvious to me I guess. The miracles are all one-time events that clearly violate natural laws, the sun moving backwards being a clear example of that.

The water being suspended above the earth, on the other hand, is understood to have been there from the Creation until its release over 1500 years later, therefore clearly a part of the originally created natural physical order, just as the fountains of the deep are presented as also having been there all that time until their release as well.

Their release seems to have completely ended that early physical order, just a small part of the huge changes that can be biblically inferred to have accompanied the Flood and given us in many ways a different world to live in.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't care if you want to regard it as a miracle, just please allow me the right not to read it as a miracle. I've given my reasons, you are welcome to yours. I see it as opening on its own the way the clouds still always open on their own to release rain -- a smaller version of the original opening, making it not a one-time event -- although I've also said God is involved in everything, including such natural events. Nothing supernatural about it. But if you have to see it as supernatural for some reason, as others also do, fine, just don't tell me I have to see it that way. My reasoning is biblical, but there can be various ways of reading the Bible and on this point differences of opinion are not crucial. Mine follows the basic idea here:

http://www.truthnet.org/pdf/creation/genesisflood.pdf

Canopy Theory - A theory that before the flood there existed many times the amount of water vapor in the upper atmosphere than there is today. - This theory is attributed in part because of the account in Genesis 1:7. GE 1:7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. Genesis 1:7 (NASB) - A “canopy” would have created a greenhouse effect in the pre-flood world. - This could also help explain the longevity of man prior to the flood. Prior to the flood men would live up to 800, or 900 years old. - The canopy could have provided a shielding action against radiation helping prolong life.

The idea is that sin, the Fall, had an effect on the physical Creation that brought about disease and death and destruction of many other kinds that found expression at the Flood and in other physical events.

I don't know how it works, but scripture speaks of "the fullness of time" until various events are to come about in various contexts, disasters being clearly understood to be punishment for sin. At some point God speaks of the sins of the Canaanites as not yet full, so that He waits until it is full to bring the Israelites into their land. I can't find the scripture verse for that, possibly one of those problems caused by the cacophony of translations. Judgments of nations have to do with the accumulation of sin. Anyway, the Flood would have been the result of the more than 1500 years of sin that had accumulated in the human race since the Fall. While all these things have to do with God's sovereign judgments, they also have a fine-tuning that suggests an exactness of timing that has an automatic aspect to it, as something built into the nature of the universe itself that affects it physically.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.