Did the Flood really happen?

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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.

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You have not shown that the standard scenario is physically impossible. Only that you will invent nonsense which is in no way part of the standard scenario to try and say so.And, of course, you don’t accept that physical impossibility is a valid objection since you are quite prepared to invoke physical impossibilities in your own arguments.Since I - unlike you - do reject physical impossibilities I will stick to the standard scenario rather than going for your ridiculous fantasy.

I've shown it. It's just hard to conceptualize. No it's not easy to explain, you have to spend some time on it thinking it through, like some puzzles. A deep column of layers of slabs of rock that span continents cannot ever have been landscapes in which creatures lived. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I've shown it. It's just hard to conceptualize

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So what is the actual physical impossibility?

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No it's not easy to explain, you have to spend some time on it thinking it through, like some puzzles.

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But when you think it through you just start making up nonsense about the surface turning to rock. That - at the least - tells us that you don’t know that there is any real impossibility.

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A deep column of layers of slabs of rock that span continents cannot ever have been landscapes in which creatures lived

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That has simplification and exaggeration in it, but never mind. You still haven’t shown any real physical impossibility in the mainstream view and you are still happy to assume physical impossibilities when it suits you. So why should any rational person accept your view ?

That a whole complicated landscape with hills and valleys and plants and rivers and streams and rocks and grass and trees could end up as a flat slab of rock in a deep column of rocks of different sediments. Such a situation lies beneath most of the midwestern United States, but the surface is as I described, with enormous variation in the landscape. That surface is a version of what we have to imagine existed in each of those slabs of rock that lie beneath it in layers that go very deep, but that surface we know isn't ever going to become a slab of rock like that because that simply does not happen. It never happened, it can't happen, those slabs of rock cannot ever have been landscapes, something else has to account for them. You have no way of explaining how it COULD happen either. It just can't. If you refuse to see it then it is a refusal because there is no way to make sense of it on the usual scenario.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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That a whole complicated landscape with hills and valleys and plants and rivers and streams and rocks and grass and trees could end up as a flat slab of rock in a deep column of rocks of different sediments.

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And yet we see as much of that as can be seen. We see buried monadnocks, filled riverbeds, fossil trees, even buried rocks eroded from earlier formations.Of course we only see depositional environments or sometimes an erosional environment as it was when deposition started. That’s all that is possible.

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Such a situation lies beneath most of the midwestern United States, but the surface is as I described, with enormous variation in the landscape.

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Much of which is an erosional environment. That is not going to be preserved as it is, because it can’t be preserved until the net erosion stops and net deposition begins.

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That surface is a version of what we have to imagine existed in each of those slabs of rock that lie beneath it in layers that go very deep, but that surface we know isn't ever going to become a slab of rock like that because that simply does not happen. It never happened, it can't happen, those slabs of rock cannot ever have been landscapes, something else has to account for them.

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It seems to me that you are concentrating on your slab of rock’ terminology and ignoring the fact that surface features are found in the geological record. Ever mind that many layers are marine, or that many layers simply succeed each other as the material being deposited changes - as in the case of transgression and regression.

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You have no way of explaining how it COULD happen either. I

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But I do. You have no way of explaining how the fossil record could be ordered as it is. Isn’t it odd how you never seem to apply your own objections to your own ideas. A good critical thinker would - by definition.

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If you refuse to see it then it is a refusal because there is no way to make sense of it on the usual scenario.

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I don’t refuse to see it. I know that it is not true.

Because the pollen grains only occur in the dark layers, as they are released in the spring of the year. The light layers are from the dry seasons and they have no organic material, including no pollen.Each dark layer has accumulations of pollen, each light layer does not. Six million each. So that pattern confirms the annual layering, not swirly bathtub rings or some other ridiculous fantasy.AND you still have not explained how the different materials are sorted into 12 million layers alternating between dark and light layers: epic fail And you and I have discussed the glaring problem with this: those materials have different settling rates, so for them to settle out of ONE imaginary flood event, you and your imaginary flood need a fantastical mechanism that sorts faster settling material from slower settling material, so that the faster settling material doesn't all settle out first and you end up with only two layers, one dark layer, and one light layer. No such mechanism exists or can ever have existed without invoking magic.While I on the other hand, only need normal deposition of sediments over time, with the normal observed behavior of such materials, with the alternating layers accumulating with the alternating seasons of the year, year after year. Simple, normal, and what we see occurring today. No magic, no mystery, no problems.And that is just scraping the surface of what the Green River Varves tell us. The varves extend over 40,000 square miles in area with these wafer-thin varves.So according to the evidence, and the known normal behavior of materials, there was no WW Fantasy Flood.EnjoyEdited by AdminPhat, : fixed broken link

And interestingly we don't see such evidence just outside the area. The magical Flood must have some magical model, mechanism, method, process or procedure that is local to just those relatively small areas where varves are found.Yet another simple thing for Faith to explain.

I can assure you that many members of this forum, and many other much more knowledgeable people, have spent a lot of time thinking this through - that's how we've come to the detailed picture of the past we possess today.I don't know much about the geology of the mid-western US, but from your desciption it sounds pretty dull. And when I think to speculative reconstructions of earth history; it kind of makes sense. This would be the inner part of Laurentia, whole and undivided since the Proterozoic, covered at times by extensive inland seas.I have the good fortune to live, instead, somewhere of enormous geological complexity. A little country the size of South Carolina which appears to be constructed of no fewer than four seperate pieces of Proterozoic craton, twisted and broken by multiple different mountain building events. This leaves us with really cool geological structures like this: and also means you can find very different kinds of fossils right next door to each other, due to the way the original sedimentary layers have been repeatedly reshaped. The brown rocks on the left below are marine sediments, and date to the Cretaceous. The red sediments on the right are terrestrial, and were laid down 150 million years earlier. Fishes, sponges and brachiopods are found in the brown rocks, weird, extinct types of tetrapod are found in the red rocks. Your flood makes no sense of any of this.

Making up stuff that isn't in scripture is just as bad as flat out contradicting scripture.

You really are in the dark. The Bible gives us only the bare bones of the Flood, in fact that's all it gives us of everything else too. We are expected to expand on it. That's all a sermon is, an expansion on something in the Bible. That's all the apologists do, that's all the theologians do, that's all a preacher does.In many cases a preacher may do research on the cultural or historical background of an account in the Bible and we learn all kinds of things that illuminate the account that are not in the Bible but perfectly consistent with it. The book of Ruth is full of ancient cultural events that we don't understand that can be illuminated in this way, such as by information about the legal status of the "kinsman redeemer" which was what Boaz was to Ruth in that ancient cultural context. We don't have to have such extra information, we can learn from the Bible without it, but even then the preacher will expand on the implications of a passage.The Reformation movement that has been going on for a few decades now has preachers spending years on a single book, many months sometimes on a single verse, because there is that much to unpack in it and that much background that can be given about it. Some Reformed preachers have half a dozen commentaries open on the pulpit as they preach on a difficult passage.Sounds like you think all that should ever happen is they read the Bible straight and say nothing about it. That leaves it to the congregation to understand it and everybody will understand it in their own way. But really, if you were the preacher you'd want them all to understand it exactly as you understand it. And I bet you couldn't keep yourself from explaining how you understand it.Sometimes the teaching may be inconsistent with the Biblical theme, that can happen, but I haven't said anything inconsistent with the Biblical account of the Flood. I'm working from what I get from it, and since it doesn't describe anything about the effects of the Flood there's nothing wrong with spending time thinking about them.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Proverbs 30:6 Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

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With all your complaining about my Flood explanation of how the pollens all got collected in a single slab of shale, you haven't said anything to explain how that could happen on YOUR theory.

Yes it is possible to misrepresent God's word and be reproved for it. I'm not doing that and you haven't shown that I am, all you've been doing is complaining that I dare to think about how the Flood could have created what we actually see in reality that is not mentioned in the Bible...I'm afraid that you are misusing the Bible and it is you who are likely to be reproved for it.

You certainly are. You are adding something that is not there, exactly what Proverbs warned against. I'm observing that you're mangling both the Bible and reality to try to match them both to the fantasy you've made up in your head.

All that I've said the Flood did was lay down the layers. What you are showing me is layers that were subsequently twisted tectonically. It is true that the Midwest of the US is boring in that the layers are still pretty much flat and straight. When you get to the Rockies of course then you have them pushed up and twisted and raised to great heights, but the Midwest is plains and they are the surface of pretty straight strata that go down very deep according to many core samples taken across that area.But your geological examples are tectonically altered and that's what needs to be explained about them. However, the Cretaceous is not a marine layer, it's a terrestrial layer and often has dinosaurian type fossils IIRC, reptilian anyway. It's not marine however.Nevertheless all I'm saying is that the layers would originally have been laid down straight and flat by the Flood and their being so deformed is the result of the tectonic activity that occurred afterward. I like to focus on the areas where they are most straight and flat to make my arguments but they are deformed in one way or another in most places.