Re: Flood Deposits in Mesopotamia [Was: Special Creation]

Part II Didn't go through from entouch so I will try here.
Of magical walls of water, Phil wrote:
>>>Neither do I. A gradual slope of water from sea level up to a hill a little further north is all we need to meet the bare biblical description. The viscosity of downhill-flowing water, especially with wind providing a shear stress and wave action on its upper surface layers (with perhaps the upper surface flowing uphill by the wind action), is easily sufficient to maintain a gradual slope. There is no problem here.<<<
  GRM: Maybe not magical water, but magical winds? Is this being done miraculously? and there are lots of problems. I have outlined them above. Let's see if Mr. Hill actually has thought the issues through to this extent.
  *
>>>Man, let's not insult everyone on this list, alright? We're all in this together. Most of the solution -- I trust -- is in re-reading the text and not imposing our western preconceptions onto it. <<<
  GRM: That was not directed at you really, but was in essence an argument for the wider audience. There are so many 'solutions' to the flood which really don't pay attention to physics, or details of other sciences, that it is really depressing to see how poorly thought out so many of these positions are. And we are stuck in a couple of widely held views, neither of which will really work, yet no one seems interested in breaking out of that box which constrains solutions.
 
>>>If the Bible says all the high mountains were covered to some depth, let's not assume these "high mountains" had to be more than shallow rolling hills near the populated areas. The point the Bible is making is simply that **nobody** affected by the flood survived it. Since nobody in the cities of southern mesopotamia would have had time to run far away to a truly high mountain by our western reckoning, imposing that view onto the meaning of "high mountains" would be gratuitous to the purpose of the text. <<<<
  GRM: No problem here, except that Noah probably could have seen the Zagross mountains. And as he went north and the flood plain grew narrower, he could probably have easily seen the edges of the floodplain, where there was water and where there wasn't. And this doesn't take into consideration the fact that your windy solution will drive the ark towards the edge of the floodplain at several places along the floodplain, thus your theory contains the seeds of its own mismatch with what you desire. Wind would push Noah towards the northern edge of the floodplain and there, voila, he would actually see dry land.
 
>>>Also, there is no way it could have been a universal flood. DNA tells us that. So there is no reason to assume the cities in northern mesopotamia were affected by the flood. The extent of the flood is constrained only by the ark going to the mountains of ararat, not by anything else we see in the text.<<<
  GRM: With all these stiff breezes twirling in just such a manner that the ark is always pushed up the floodplain, surely if God wanted Noah in the Mountains, he could have told him to walk.
 
>>>>The wind didn't have to push the ark all the way to Mount Ararat, as you know. When your webpage discusses Mt. Ararat, I have to believe that is a strawman argument (would you consider removing that from your page). YEC's don't believe in a mesopotamian flood, and OEC's don't believe it landed on Mt. Ararat. So there is no reason to discuss that idea.<<<
  GRM: That was not directed at your windy solution. Thus, it isn't a strawman for other suggested solutions made by other people. Not everything I have on my web page revolves around you and your theory. There are lots of other theories out there. Indeed, I don't recall debating with you in the past so I don't see how I could possibly have been raising strawmen against your theory.
   
>>>I'm not looking at geological maps, only a historical map, so it could be wrong. But it's a nice map series and I tend to think it couldn't be **that** wrong. <<<<
  (Frustration). If it isn't a geological map, then it tells you nothing about the geology and what sediments are quaternary aeolian and what sediments are quaternary fluvial. There is no doubt that the Holocene fluvial systems in southern Iraq are quite widespread. But it isn't because of a single flood, but because the rivers wander all over creation down there. The land is very flat and that means that river channels move around a lot spreading their load everywhere. Why don't you take a look at http://home.entouch.net/dmd/IraqMapQuaternaryFluviatile.JPG . This is a tracing of the Arabic Organization of Mineral Resources map, Plate 4A. I traced the Quaternary fluviatile off the map. The rest of the quaternary is aeolian sand. Now, you can see how very narrow the river sediments are. Nowhere is it much wider than 10 miles wide. Remember that equation for how far you can be seen or see based upon the height of the individual? Well in parts of that river basin in the cente
 r of the
 river, the edge of the
fluvial sediments, and thus the flood is no more than 5 miles away. With that, Noah could see a hill only 16 feet higher than he is. And thus he would see dry land. YOu simply can't have Noah out of the sight of land in northern Iraq. The sediment says so. Science says so. I don't care what you want it to be, science says NO.
 
>>>It shows flood deposits all the way to Ninevah to a width of 100 km around the Tigris. At Jemdet Nasr the deposits are shown as being about 200 km wide, encompassing both rivers and a wide swath on each side. At that time Ur was on the coast, since the gulf was so much further inland. The deposits are so wide at Ur that they encompass the entire head of the gulf with two wide arms reaching down both sides of it.<<<
  GRM: Actually your map is wrong. It isn't a geological map. One needs to distinguish quaternary river sediment from quaternary windblown sediment. The map I traced is the real deal.
 
The reason I asked isn't to be stupid, but to find out if this map is wrong, or if these deposits were laid down before the quaternary.
*
>>>No, just a very gentle slope.
 
Alan Hill did the calculations using standard hydrology models and he shows that it actually does work using reasonable assumptions. As I said before, I think his assumptions are overly conservative since he didn't include the wind as a factor in sustaining the water gradient. Wind can indeed sustain a water gradient. But even without that, it still works. You can have a slope of water to the mountains of ararat, high enough to land on an actual "mountain" there, and have this slope of water remain in place for a year according to the actual calculations and simulations. When the paper comes out, the burden of proof will be to disprove it. I didn't go through all the calculations so I have to accept that the model might be wrong. But it does look reasonable.<<<
  GRM: Is a straight river flood plain a 'reasonable assumption?'
 
*
>>>>>I'm sorry I don't follow. Do you mean beaches on the shore of the gulf or on the shore of the rivers?<<<
  If there were a widespread flood lasting a year, one should see wave cuts along the old water level. We don't see that. Indeed, the river floodplain deposits are so narrow in someplaces it is lest than 2 miles wide.
 
>>>I don't imagine the flood was a torrent. I imagine the rivers swelling and then overflowing the banks out to some wide distance, and then slowly retreating back to the rivers. As you know sand is not suspended by water unless the motion is torrential. In the kind of flood the bible describes (as I read it) there would be sand moving for the first couple days, but then no more sand would move. When sand does move in slower waters it is by traction (rolling) and by saltation. These are very slow processes.<<<<
  GRM: Convenient.
 
*
Of the Altay and Missoula floods, Phil wrote:
>>This has absolutely no relationship to Noah's flood. A flood of this magnitude would have destroyed the ark.
  GRM: but it destroys your claim that flood sediments wouldn't be found. That is why I posted it. YOu claimed that we wouldn't find flood deposits. We do, but not widespread in Iraq. And by the way, a science that depends upon something NOT being found is on rather shaky ground. But after I posted it, you forgot what you said about us being unable to find such ephemeral sediments. As I said, if you have a theory based upon what one DOESN'T see, then one can postulate anything and be right. I don't see leprechauns therefore they exist. I don't see flood deposits, therefore there was a flood.

glenn
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Received on Sat Mar 4 21:41:55 2006