Re: hypothetical question about Noah's flood

Sure there's a problem - a major one (and I thought this "cooked Noah"
theme was an earlier one of yours!). That is sorta implicit in my
"including the phenomenon which caused the water to emerge from the
deeps" comment. Didn't Brown like the superheated water/steam
explanation for moving the water? In any case, I was just following
Sheila's exercise of following an "explanation" to its logical
contradiction. - JimA
D. F. Siemens, Jr. wrote:

> Jim,
> There is a problem with your scenario. If the cavern (great deep)
> supports remained, there would be no force to move the waters in those
> remaining caverns to the surface. Those who hold the view of the great
> deep have the entire underground system collapsing to force the water
> to the surface. Thus there can be no return, and the question to be
> answered is where all the water went in order to dry the land.
> However, an estimate from /Van Nostrand Scientific Encyclopedia/ says
> that, spread over a smooth globe, the water in the oceans would be 800
> feet deep. Positing a surface with virtually no relief broken up as it
> drops into the deep would produce a highly irregular surface that
> could be covered by 15 cubits in shallower spots. Rearrangement could
> produce the ocean basis which are, on average, much deeper. However,
> instant tectonism produces problems which I have not found considered
> in YEC literature.
>
> With everything above the deep broken up, it seems that erosion is not
> an insurmountable problem. However, I have seen some claims that the
> Cambrian deposits are the obvious result of the ocean dwellers being
> buried at the bottom, something not possible if the primeval strata
> were totally broken up. But, as one of my profs loved to misquote
> Emerson, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Additionally,
> for the collapse of the deep theory, the temperature at depth and the
> heat of friction, etc., moving virtually all the water, makes for a
> major problem. Noah had to get cooked. Don's comment on the deposition
> of sediments adds a further difficulty. But flood geologists do not
> have little minds.
> Dave
>
>
>
> On Sat, 23 Jul 2005 08:27:08 -0700 "Jim Armstrong" <jarmstro@qwest.net
> <mailto:jarmstro@qwest.net>> writes:
>
> Just to pursue this one more step, suppose that there were pillars
> which continued to successfully support the cisterns from which
> the subterranean water arose, when the water flowed back, it would
> carry immense amounts of soil and such, reducing the cavity volume
> such that the flood would not completely subside. Oh by the way,
> we should be able to find that water, one would think. I also
> wonder about the Joule heating temperature rise just from moving
> that much water around, including the phenomenon which caused the
> water to emerge from the deeps in the first place, turn into vapor
> and then rain. Scary!! JimA
>
> Sheila Wilson wrote:
>
>> I had not heard the idea of a layer of mostly water just under
>> the surface. I am a geologist and teach hydrogeology at
>> university. Obviously, the theory is ridiculous. The theory
>> implies that as the water retreated, it went back to its original
>> location because it had to go somewhere. The one-time compaction
>> event would destroy the space from which it came, with limited
>> similarity to the resurfacing of Venus (magma vs. water, of
>> course). As Jim said, even if it were possible, the thermal
>> energy release would definitely be mind boggling, completely
>> altering the atmosphere. As I said in an earlier email, I don't
>> think the laws of physics would allow something of that magnitude
>> on earth. I also agree that the chronologies don't mix - I've
>> indirectly stated that from the beginning.
>>
>> With all that in mind, is there any realistic mechanism that
>> would release that amount of water? I can't think of any. If we
>> grant the flood geology a miracle mechanism and say it happened,
>> how would that affect the sediment? I think a global flood that
>> lasted less than two years would have limited effects in eroding
>> existing rock. Obviously some would occur but I don't know that
>> it would be measurable.
>>
>> Would a short term global flood of 1/4,500,000,000 cause any
>> noticable changes or leave any recognizable changes? What would
>> they be? Surely a thin layer of millions of bones of all recent
>> animals would be noticable but we don't see that anywhere. What
>> other indications would we have?
>>
>> Sometimes in science, it is important to look at what we would
>> expect and what we do or do not find. Obviously, I find this an
>> interesting exercise.
>>
>> Sheila
>>
>>
>> Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net> wrote:
>>
>> Once again, one might start with the very real example of the
>> recent tsunami and the damage that resulted from that minor
>> (in terms of Earth dimensions) movement of a portion of the
>> earth's shell. If that were multiplied in any rational way to
>> get some sense of what might happen with surface layers of
>> the Earth collapsing into the voids previously occupied by
>> "the waters of the deep", I think the whole idea of the
>> living biosphere surviving in any semblance of what it was
>> before the collapse would be pretty hard to justify, let
>> along the survival of a tiny ark. The thermal energy release
>> alone would surely be mind-boggling. JimA
>>
>> D. F. Siemens, Jr. wrote:
>>
>>> Sheila,
>>> You're still talking about 1/4,500,000,000 instead of
>>> 1/6000. As for tearing things up, one of the flood
>>> geologists has claimed that the great deep was a layer of
>>> mostly water under the entire original earth. Its collapse
>>> would reduce the diameter of the earth and therefore alter
>>> the surface under the universal water. You can't mix the
>>> standard geological chronology with flood geology/recent
>>> creation chronology and ask an intelligent question of their
>>> interaction. There is TOTAL incompatibility.
>>> Dave
>>>
>>> On Fri, 22 Jul 2005 14:06:53 -0700 (PDT) Sheila Wilson
>>> <sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net
>>> <mailto:sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net>> writes:
>>>
>>> I agree with all the implications and ramifications that
>>> you have given. Focusing on the hypothetical question,
>>> however, how much of the primordial land (using your
>>> term) would have been torn up given an old earth
>>> scenario. In other words, if we had a global flood
>>> today on our 4.5 billion year old earth, how much
>>> different would the topography look? In Genesis, the
>>> waters flooded for forty days. Would that have been
>>> enough time and power to significantly erode existing
>>> rock? Or would the waters rise so quickly that very
>>> little erosion would occur?
>>>
>>> I believe these questions are important in understanding
>>> what a geologically instantaneous global flood would
>>> do. Many of us agree that a global flood never
>>> happened. Others believe that it did. If it did, how
>>> much different would the earth's surface look before vs.
>>> after. Could we have a global flood without cataclysmic
>>> plate shifting, as suggested by Humphreys, Ham, and
>>> others? How could cataclysmic plate shifting possibly
>>> cause a global flood. I don't believe that it can. I
>>> don't think the laws of physics would allow that type of
>>> plate shifting, nor do I think the earth has the
>>> potential energy to cause it. Even if it could, I don't
>>> think the atmosphere, much less a boat of any size,
>>> could possibly survive the turbulence created by plate
>>> shifting of that magnitude.
>>>
>>> Venus appears to undergo periodic resurfacing caused by
>>> global, cataclysmic volcanic events. The resurfacing is
>>> probably a function of cooling and the lack of plate
>>> tectonics. Even with that level of deformation, the
>>> planet itself appears to remain stable in orbit,
>>> rotation, and tilt. How could a flood possibly cause
>>> the earth's axis to tilt? I don't think it can.
>>>
>>> Also, given the geologically instantaneous event and the
>>> depth of the water, would enough sediment be created to
>>> fill the basins of Wyoming? The depth of sediment
>>> there can be measured in miles, not feet. I think the
>>> speed at which the proposed global flood occurred would
>>> not generate the sediment volume required. A global
>>> flood would probably just resort existing sediment more
>>> than erode existing rock and a lot of the sediment would
>>> end up in the ocean as the water receded.
>>>
>>> Sheila
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "D. F. Siemens, Jr." <dfsiemensjr@juno.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Sheila,
>>> I think you are not taking into account the broader
>>> requirements of a global flood less than 6000 years
>>> ago. It has to be something that tore up the
>>> primordial land and redeposited it in the strata now
>>> encountered. That the Flood only lasted a year is,
>>> from the standpoint of geological time, virtually
>>> nothing. But geological time is absolutely excluded
>>> from consideration by all who hold to a global
>>> flood. The deluge was, according to flood geology,
>>> catastrophic and cataclysmic. One thing possibly
>>> suggested as a model is the length of time it took
>>> for the atomic bombs to explode over Nagasaki and
>>> Hiroshima relative to the extended existence of the
>>> cities. But it seems inadequate. Even destruction
>>> times duration of the recent tsunami off the
>>> Indonesian coast seems relatively close to
>>> zero compared to the destruction required and
>>> yearlong duration of the Flood.
>>>
>>> A major problem which we have in analysis is
>>> focusing on a single aspect of a greater problem as
>>> if it were the crucial and major factor--tunnel
>>> vision. There are always ramifications galore.
>>> Dave
>>>
>>> On Fri, 22 Jul 2005 10:47:57 -0700 (PDT) Sheila
>>> Wilson <sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net
>>> <mailto:sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net>> writes:
>>>
>>> I understand your position but that wasn't my
>>> question. My question was, if it did occur,
>>> what would we see. Purely hypothetical, no
>>> debate on whether or not it happened.
>>>
>>> These questions came after reading Chris
>>> Sharpe's essay on the age of the universe and
>>> astromony. One significant point that he made
>>> was, if the universe was only 6000 years old, we
>>> would not see most the stars because they are
>>> too far away. The light didn't have time to get
>>> here. So what would the earth look like if a
>>> global flood did occur? I don't think we would
>>> see any geologic evidence of a global flood as
>>> described in Genesis. In geologic time, it was
>>> instantaneous. Of course, volcanoes are
>>> instantaneous and we can see lots of evidence of
>>> them. How deep of sediment layer would we expect?
>>>
>>> Any ideas?
>>>
>>> Sheila
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sheila McGinty Wilson
>>> sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Sheila McGinty Wilson
>> sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net
>
>
>
Received on Sat Jul 23 14:47:54 2005