Phat writes:
Jar is making up all his evidence, how the olive tree COULDN'T have survived
Do you not feel the need to explain how a living tree could survive being underwater for that period of time? We KNOW - not speculate, but know - that trees drown under water. They need gaseous oxygen to live and they die if only their roots are waterlogged for extended periods.
Some trees survive better in floods than others - is an olive tree one of them?
I don't know, but I suspect there's a clue in its environment and the notes for growing them. Trees that survive local, short term flooding - not buried under 15 cubits of water for long periods - tend to be those that live close to water, willows spring to mind. I wouldn't imagine that trees adapted to hot and dry climates - such as olives - would enjoy water logging. And their gardening notes tell us that they need free draining soils and shouldn't be planted any places were water may gather.
And that's before you add in the effect of the power of the water which you tell us stripped rock and sedements to miles deep then redeposited it all again. Is your olive tree going to survive that? Apart from the virtual certainty of being uprooted, if somehow it wasn't, it would have been in total darkness for months by all the sediment in the water.
Then we've got the small matter of brackish water - do olive trees like that?
The working hypothesis is that all trees were killed. You need to explain why this one wasn't. I'd be happy for you to claim a miracle - I don't see why not.
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