The
Flood: True or False?
by Daniel Anderson
3/26/2004
There are many different views on whether the flood of Noah’s time was real or not. In the past decades many theories have been made and discredited. There are mainly two views on this subject: either the flood did occur or it did not. However the creationist’s view possesses the strongest argument. It is the strongest because it has the most supporting evidence that points to it as being fact. Evolutionists would argue against creationists, but there is not much information or evidence they can use to defend their argument.
Evidence from fossils
Fossilized
dinosaurs present the clearest support for the Great flood. Evolutionists
believe that dinosaurs died from an asteroid or a comet. There are many
different theories of how the comet or asteroid may have hit the earth or the
caused effect on the surface of the earth. Two hundred fifty million years ago
there was a “wobble” in the gravitational pull between earth and mercury
causing an asteroid or comet to break away from the asteroid belt. The asteroid
collided with earth throwing so much dust into the air it blocked out the sun
and killed all of the plants. The dinosaurs died because all of their food
sources where killed because of the lack of sun. (cnn.com).
The reason dinosaurs couldn’t have been killed by the asteroid is because if they did there would be no fossils to be found on this planet. The reason there are fossils is because they were quickly buried and had the right amount of water and suitable mineral deposits that they would be quickly buried in. They also would have to be buried a good distance underground so that they would not be eroded by weather, eaten by predators and decay. It could be possible for a few fossils of this kind to be created with out a global flood, but not at the magnitude and number that there are in the earth now. There are thousands of fossilized bones all over the world. Which is strong evidence that the Great flood did really occur. And that during it all or most of all the Dinosaurs were fossilized (www.christiananswers.net)
Under water findings
A find by the well-known deep-sea explorer, Robert Ballard, has given another strong piece of evidence strengthening the creationists view on Noah’s Flood. On one of his expeditions in the Black Sea Ballard found indications of an ancient coastline four hundred feet underwater and about twelve miles off of the coast of Turkey (Ryan 64-65) . He found all kinds of traces of human habitation. They found carved wooden beams wooden branches and stone tools. “Artifacts at the site are clearly well preserved,” says Ballard. Meaning that people that wanted to make false information or tampered with did not set it up. While down there they found two types of dead shellfish. One shellfish they found is an extinct species that was a freshwater organism. They were able to date this organism back six thousand, five hundred years. The other type of shellfish it was a saltwater organism dating back seven thousand years ago. These dates are significant because the structures that they found down there had the characteristics of Stone Age built about seven thousand years ago. Although the have found many artifacts down there they have not removed any of them from their watery grave. Mr. Ballard said, “When you first find a site you don’t just run in there and start picking up things.” Because they do not want to tamper with the artifacts that are there at this time.
Origin of the Black Sea
It is believed that the Black Sea that now covers the civilization that was in its place seven thousand years ago was created by the Mediterranean Sea. Originally it was a small fresh water lake that was many feet lower then today’s ocean level. The Mediterranean Sea burst through the Bosporus Strait surging saltwater into the once freshwater lake now called the Black Sea (Wilson 45, Ryan 72).
Stories from around the world
All over the world and in many great nations there are different stories of the Great Flood that is found in the scripture (Gen 6-8). Some of these stories come from Hawaii, China, Toltec, and Babylonia. They are all about the same but told from a different heritages point of view. Like the story from the Chinese writings, it talks about how the world was covered by a violent flood and all died except for Fuhi (Noah), his wife, his three sons, and his three daughters who after the flood repopulated the world. This story is written down on a wall in an ancient temple in china along with it are paintings of a boat with dolphins swimming around it and a dove carrying a fig. This story is an account of what is told in the Bible about the Great Flood (Gen 7:10-24). The other three stories from the other three nations tell the same story with more information then this one, but the Hawaiian one has the least information of the four. The oldest one of these records one from Babylonia (members.aol.com).
Other evidences
Other evidence of the Flood’s existence is found at the Grand Canyon. The evolutionist’s believed that the Grand Canyon was formed from the Colorado River. The problem with this theory is that there is about nine hundred cubic miles of eroded dirt missing from where the river ends. If it were created by the Colorado River, there would be a delta, which is formed from slow water erosion. However, there is no delta. So it could not have been formed by the river but only by a global flood. (members.aol.com)
The third important fact lies in the fact of a large number of living organisms that date back very far. However there is one tree that is dated back four thousand, seven hundred years from today. The tree is a Bristle Cone Pine, which is still growing high up in the arid dessert of the White Mountains bordering California and Nevada. These trees are known for living a long time and this particular one could very well live for another thousand years. The only reason there is no other living organisms dating back is because they were wiped out during the Great Flood that happened during the time of Noah.
The Biggest question concerning the Great flood is, where did it come from? And where did all the water go after the flood? The truth is, the water came from many different places: the polar ice caps, “fountains of the deep” (under water springs), and even the rain (Gen 7:11). The rain they are talking about here is the “Firmament” that surrounded the earth. At that time the earth had a whole green house affect causing it to never have to rain.
Where
the water came from
Some people
believe that there was not a large polar ice cap back then, and that it would
not be able to melt it all without the whole thing melting at the same
time. However, if you look at the
scientific findings of what the polar ice caps were like back then, they were
at least three times the size of the polar ice caps today (Wilson 5). So if that much of the polar ice caps melted
or even a majority of them melted, they would cover a good amount of the
world. However, some argument against
this idea is that it would have to be too hot if it were to melt the icecaps and
the whole world would be at constant boiling temperature (www.talkorigins.org). But this is not true. At that time the total volume of ice was
about seventy million cubic kilometers. [See Fig-1] At our present day and age
the icecaps are only about twenty-five million cubic kilometers. If they were
to melt right now, it would raise the standing ocean level approximately two
hundred ten feet. If that were to happen
Tokyo, New York, London, Paris, and Sydney Australia would all be under water
and only a few major cities such as New Mexico would survive the increase of
the ocean level. Now take into account that back in the time period of the
flood the polar icecaps were approximately seventy million cubic
kilometers. If forty-five cubic
kilometers of that were to melt, that alone would raise the existing ocean
level (approximately four hundred feet lower then it is today) just over what
it is at the present day (Wilson 7).
Some Egyptian tablets that Ryan and Pitman found while finding evidence of the Floods existence contained information concerning the beginning of the earth. It said that the waters were divided because of the chaos they were causing (Gen 1:6-7; 7:11). From this it said that the salt water was placed on the bottom while the freshwater was placed up above and in underground caverns (Ryan 50).
It also says in the Bible that it had never rained until the Great Flood. Louis W. Cable said in his article entitled “The Myth of the Great Flood” that the flood was not real in the fact it says that there was never a rainbow before the time when the Ark found its resting spot on top of Mount Ararat. They think that fact alone defeats the whole argument for the global flood because that would change all of the atmospheric laws of refraction. However, they do not realize that the reason there is a rainbow is because there has been rain and the sunlight hitting the raindrop acts like a prism splitting the light waves. In the Bible it never speaks of rain until the Great Flood so of course there was never a rainbow; there was no rain to act as a prism to split the beams of light that came from the sun (Gen 2:6,10). Also in the article by Louis W. Cable, he states that God is forgetful because he needed to put a rainbow in the sky so that he would remember that he could not flood the entire earth ever again. However, this person obviously did not read the rest of that passage where it says that it was God’s covenant to man promising that he would not flood the entire earth again. Therefore, the rainbow was put in the sky so that we could know and remember that God had promised never to flood the entire earth again not so God would remember.
Once you add all the water that came from the atmosphere (moisture in the air) you would come up with another twenty-five feet of water. So by then the total amount of water that was covering land was about four hundred and thirty-five feet. After all of that water we have to add the water that came from the springs of the deep. From the caculations that are in [ fig 2] we see that there is twenty-eight thousand, five hundred and sixty feet of water in underground caverns on this earth. If you add even half of that amount of water it easily covers the highest point of land in the world (mount Everest). So takeing the caculations from [fig 2] you can see where the water came from to produce the flood (Weast F-145-151).
Where the water went
The final question is where did all that water go to after the flood. There is no exact answer to that question. We know that four hundred feet of it is still here because our ocean level is that much higher then it was before the flood happened. The water that came from the polar icecaps is still in our waters but the water that came from the springs of the deep most likely receded back into the caverns from which they came from. Also, the water that came from rain was probably evaporated into the air.
Conclusion
There are a quite a few pieces of evidence that prove the flood happened. The first is the fact that there is a very large quantity of fossils in the earth. The second is Mr. Ballard’s discovery of an underwater coastline in the Black Sea off of the coast of Turkey that is four hundred feet under water, which is the amount of water that our ocean level rose after the flood. Finally the third fact lies in where the water came from: the Polar icecaps, which was forty-five thousand cubic kilometers larger than it is now [See Fig 1], rain and the springs from the deep.
Works Cited
Web sites
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/07/05/dinosaur.wobble
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/ednks004.html
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/09/13/great.flood.finds.ap/
Books and articles
Cable, Louis W. “The Myth of the Great Flood” 18 march 2004 <http://home.inu.net/skeptic/flood.html>.
Ryan, William, and Walter Pitman. Noah’s Flood, 1998. New York: Touchstone, Simon and Schuster, 2000
Weast, Robert C, ed. CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. 64th ed. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1983
Wilson, Ian. Before the Flood, The Biblical Flood as a Real Event and How It Changed the Course of Civilization, 2001. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
NIV [New International Version] Holy Bible. 1978. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1980.
