Noah's Ark

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Origionaly posted by coragyps
Purest grade-A boloney! 71% of the Earth's surface is, indeed, covered with water. The thickness of ice on Greenland and Antarctica is not "thought", but known, to range up to a little over two miles. If every bit of that ice melted, it would raise the oceans by about 250 feet: enough to get Florida, yes, but hardly to cover the Earth
______________________________________________________________________Thats true. The theory that the water needed to flood the whole world is held in the icecaps is incorrect. Instead, along with other scientist, Dr. Donald Chittick's believes there is another explination. The folllowing explination is the most widely accepted creationist view of how the flood occured.The theory is that before the flood the earth was flatter, there was a lot more moisture in the atmosphere, and most of the water that we see today in the oceans was ground water. Then the atmosphere emptied most of its water to the Earth through a period of forty days and nights, and the ground water became surface water erupting from ground springs (most of the water needed to flood the Earth came from the ground water, because if it came from the sky the sun wouldn't be able to shine through before the flood). Then the mountains rose and the valleys sunk and dry land appeareed. Thats my dumbed down version. http://www.answeresingenesis.org provides a lot of info on this sort of stuff. I have copied parts of an article from that site to give a more scientific approach to this theory."New continental landmasses bearing new mountain chains of folded rock strata were uplifted from below the globe-encircling waters that had eroded and leveled the pre-Flood topography, while large deep ocean basin were formed to receive and accommodate the Flood waters that then drained off the emerging continents. That is why the oceans are so deep, and why there are folded mountain ranges. Indeed, if the entire earth’s surface were levelled by smoothing out the topography of not only the land surface but also the rock surface on the ocean floor, the waters of the ocean would cover the earth’s surface to a depth of 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers). We need to remember that nearly 70 percent of the earth’s surface is still covered by water. Quite clearly, then, the waters of Noah’s Flood are in today’s ocean basins.A Mechanism?
The catastrophic plate tectonics model gives a mechanism for the deepening of the oceans and the rising of mountains at the end of the flood.As the new ocean floors cooled, they would have become denser and sunk, allowing water to flow off the continents. Movement of the water off the continents and into the oceans would have weighed down the ocean floor and lightened the continents, resulting in the further sinking of the ocean floor, as well as upward movement of the continents.[2] The deepening of the ocean basins and the rising of the continents would have resulted in more water running off the land.The collision of the tectonic plates would have pushed up mountain ranges also, especially toward the end of the flood.This uplift of the new continental landmasses from under the Flood waters would have meant that, as the mountains rose and the valleys sank, the waters would have rapidly drained off the newly emerging land surfaces. The collapse of natural dams holding back the flood waters on the land would also have caused catastrophic flooding. Such rapid movement of large volumes of water would have caused extensive erosion and shaped the basic features of today's earth surface.Thus, it is not hard to envisage the rapid carving of the landscape features that we see on the earth today, including places such as the Grand Canyon of the United States.The erosion caused by receding flood waters is the reason that river valleys are far larger than the rivers now flowing in them could have carved. The water flow that carved the river valleys must have been far greater than the volume of water we see flowing in the rivers today. This is consistent with voluminous flood waters draining off the emerging land surfaces at the close of Noah’s flood, and flowing into the rapidly sinking, newly prepared, deep ocean basins."(Dr. Chittick earned his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Oregon State University. He served as chairman of the division of Natural Sciences at George Fox University in Oregon. Since 1988, he has been an adjunct professor of chemistry at the Institute for Creation Research in the San Diego area. University. He was Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Puget Sound and Professor and Head of Natural Sciences at George Fox College.B.S., Willamette University, Salem, OR, 1954 Ph.D.
Oregon State University, Corvalis, OR, 1960 )

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Origionaly posted by Coragyps
Last time I looked, water was less dense than rock...
______________________________________________________________Me too, I'm not disagreeing with that. What I mean is that the pressure of the water on the ocean floor is pushing it down. The average ocean depth is about 3800 meters. At that depth there is 5,548 pounds per square inch. Compare that to the 14.6 pounds of pressure on dry land (at sea level) and the ocean plates are obviously much heavier. (The pressure increases about one atmosphere for every 10 meters of water depth.)Quote
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Origionaly posted by Coragyps
What sort of permeability would soil/rock have to have to give up a few hundred meters of water in a year? What force would drive it?
_________________________________________________________________________I’ll admit that the fountains of the great deep (Genesis 7:11) must have been a huge source of water. Some have suggested that when God made dry land appear from under the waters on the third day of creation, some of the water that covered the earth became trapped underneath and within the dry land. When the bible mentions the breaking up of the fountains this is understood to be large fissures in the ground or in the sea floor from which this trapped water could escape. Also there are many volcanic rocks interdispersed between the fossil layers (which from a biblical perspective would have been layed down by the flood), and this means that there was volcanic action during the flood. It is interesting to note that 70% of what comes out of volcanoes today is water in the form of steam. As for the force to drive all of this, I haven’t heard of a natural one. Though I could be wrong I believe the given reason is a supernatural one, but then if you believe in a God that created the earth in 6 days, then its hardly unrealistic.Quote
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Origionaly posted by Coragyps
How much more water can you fit into the atmosphere at livable temperatures? If you take our present atmosphere to 100% relative humidity, how much precipitation would this yield? Maybe a meter? Ten meters?
_____________________________________________________________________You’re right. I did some research on that and found that although the atmosphere was thought to be denser, creating a wamer climate, the most it would have been able to hold without creating intolerable temperatures is 40 ft of rain. The idea that I stated earlier is a weak one. That was kind of disapointing, but since I didn’t want to say uncle, I did a little more reaserch and found that they came up with a better and much simpler explaination for the 40 days of rain. The volcanic activity that I mentioned earlier would have created a linear gyser of superheated steam from the ocean, causing global rain.Ps. This is all basically what Tranquility base said in message 18. Thanks
PPs. Well stated Vangogh

Response to Shilohproject-
All I can see is like in Genesis 6:19-21 commands to bring in every kind. Where does it mention specific animals? I can’t find it. By the way Behemoth is a Brontisorous it talks about him in Job:40 feeds on grass;what strength;what power;his tail sways like a cedar The leviathan is talked of in Job:41, I guess its another dinasour. If you’re implying that the flood was only a local flood you’re wrong. First of all logically it doesn’t make sence. Noah could have avoided the flood on foot, and the ark’s size to so enourmouse it only makes sence if all the animals of the entire earth were to be gathered onto it. Besides that there are sediment layers all of the earth layed down by the flood, implying that it was anything but local.

I believe we’re discussing two different things. What I mean is that the ocean plate would sink a little lower than the continental plate because it is under 3,800 meters of ocean water, (which is a lot of weight/pressure pushing down on the ocean plate). Nothing is being pushed up. The signifigance of the ocean plate being pushed down by the water, is that it provides a place for the water on what is now dry land, to run off into, thus producing the dry land. No, it couldn’t have been an elephant. Have you ever seen the rear view of an elphant? An elephant’s tail is absurdly small to be compared to a swaying cedar tree. Sorry for the mundane explanation, but that’s the best one. The most reasonable explanation for behemoth is a large animal, with a large tail, and since no animal living now fits that discription, behemoth is also extinct.Like John said the word ‘Behemoth is literally a plural form of a common Old Testament word meanaing ‘beast’. However, practically all commentators and translators have agreed that here we have an intensive or majestic plural, so that the meaning is something like ‘colossal beast’. The phrase ‘chief of the ways of God’ suggests Behemoth was one of the largest, if not the largest, animal God made.Gordis gives an interesting overview of how Behemoth has been interpreted throughout history, noting that ‘the interpretation has oscillated through the centuries between two poles, mythical and real’. Also since several passages in the bible make comparisons with cedars because of their great height (2 kings 19:23, Isaih 2:13,37:24 and Ezekiel 17:22, 31:3) it may be that the tail is also compared to the cedar tree for it’s hight. However in Psalm 92:12 we read that the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree and ‘shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon’. Here the key idea is simply that of the great size and strength, and height is not important. Also in Job 40:24 it says you can’t pierce Behemoth’s nose. Therefore he has a distinct nose, and not a trunk.Now if we believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible we must maintain that the words spoken about Behemoth (and also Leviathan), were spoken by their Creator, who would have known the intimate details of His own design. The description of the animals in chapters 38 to 41 is given to convince Job of his ignorance and folly. It is thus a critical observation that, when the purpose is to show how marvellous an animal is, surely the most amazing facts about that animal, and the ways in which it is different in habits or appearance from all others, should be stated. The elephant is outstanding for its trunk, its great size (especially its feet), its enormous appetite and its ears. None of these unique features are mentioned in our passage, but they ought to have been, if Behemoth was the elephant.Consequently, the most reasonable interpretation (which also takes the whole passage into account) is that Behemoth was a large animal, now extinct, which had a large tail. Thus some type of extinct dinosaur should still be considered a perfectly reasonable possibility according to our present state of knowledge. There’s a picture of the Ark at this
site and I really think its worth looking at. The Arks bigger than you think. I think the answer to the question ‘is Genesis true’ is very important. First of all if Genesis isn’t true, what other parts of scripture aren’t? The salvation part? The ten commandments part? Where do you draw the line? Also if evolution is true instead of Genesis/Creation, then there is no need for God. Even if you believe God used evolution to bring us all about, that still puts death before Adam. The whole story of salvation, is about us being saved from death and sin, which the first Adam brought into the world, and the last adam (Jesus) conquers. However, if the whole garden of eden thing is just a myth, then we don’t really need to be saved. What would we be being saved from? The millions of years of death and decay that brought us into existance?So you see if Genesis isn’t true, then the authority, and the message of salvation are gone. Sorry, I guess I should have explained that statement a little more. My point is, if the flood were local, why did Noah have to build the ark? He could have just walked to the other side of the mountains and escaped. Traveling just 12 miles per day, Noah and his family could have traveled over 2,000 miles in six months. God could have simply warned Noah to flee, as he did for Lot in Sodom.It doesn’t say the exact amount of time that is took Noah to build the ark and fill it with food and animals, but judging from its size it would have been all together faster and easier to just start walking when God told Noah of the oncomming flood.That’s all I have time for.This message has been edited by AdminPhat, 04-28-2005 05:15 AM