Re: Is the Hills' flood possible?

Interesting comments, as always, from you, Glenn. It would be great if you
could send this to Carol and Alan, if you haven't already. Their email
address is in the article and I know they would like to discuss it. Tis
only fair to give them a chance to respond before the rest of us sharks dig
in.

Randy

----- Original Message -----
From: <glennmorton@entouch.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2006 9:56 AM
Subject: Is the Hills' flood possible?

>
>
>
> My June copy of the ASA came about a week before I left Beijing and I
> didn't have
> time to read the articles by Carol and Alan Hill. Since the flood is my
> area of
> interest and since I had had a debate here on this list about this
> upcoming
> article, I was eager to see what the solution was.
>
> I won't claim to be as good a physicist as I used to be, but I took a hard
> look at
> this and have several questions which are left unanswered by the article.
> Maybe I
> am wrong, but I would like to hear critiques of my critique.
>
> And I know that few listen to me in my campaign to try to tighten up the
> logic of
> Christian apologetics, but one must never give up, so here goes a critique
> of the
> most popular flood speculation around, the Mesopotamian flood. I do wish
> people
> would finally realize that they need a new theory rather than the same ol
> stuff for
> 200 years.
>
> Hill calculates that the six side of the ark would require 65,000 cubic
> feet of
> cedar wood which he says would weigh 2 million pounds. This is 6 inch
> thick
> cedar. When I multiply the areas I get 57,375 cubic feet, not the 65,000
> cubic
> feet he cites. But, that is only for the 6 sides. I can't see where he
> calculates
> the weight for the 2 floors internal to the ark. Here are my values which
> are a bit
> different from his.
>
> Super.structure
> 45��tall
> 450â?¦..longâ?¦..1518750â?¦cubic.feet.in.ark
> 75��wide
>
> 3375â?¦sq.feet.front
> 3375â?¦sq.feet.back
> 33750..sq.feet.top
> 33750..sq.feet.bottom
> 20250..sq.feet.port.side
> 20250..sq.feet.starboard.side
> 33750..floor.1�����..He.didn't.count.the.floors
> 33750..floor.2
> 182250��..total.surface.area 57375
> 91125â?¦..Total.volume.of.wood cfâ?¦. .5.ft.thick
>
> 31.2135��lb/cf.of.cedar
>
> 2,844,330��..lbs.for.floors.and.walls
>
>
> Now, let's look at the water. Hill's table 1 says that the average animal
> weight
> is 250 lbs. I looked up how much a pig (similar weight) eats and drinks
> each day.
> It seems that animals between 100 and 500 lbs eat about 3.5% of their
> weight each
> day.
>
> 0.035��percentage of weight eaten each day.
> 1250000â?¦..total weight lb of animals
> 43750��..daily food weight lb
> 15,968,750...yearly food weight lb
>
> Hill says they only need 2.5 million pounds of food. I think he would
> starve the
> poor critters---call PETA! The reality is that the smaller animals, which
> are more
> numerous eat a higher percentage of their weight per day. Since
> numerically they
> are more, this would be a somewhat conservative number.
>
> Hill says that the ark took pairs of 2500 species, but I fail to see why
> that was
> necessary. There are only 4000 species of mammals on earth and why he
> needs to
> hauls such a large number is beyond me if Iraq was the only thing flooded.
>
> For water, I looked at the water intake of pigs--about 2 gallons per day.
>
> Pig water intake http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/archives/experts/swine/0064.html
> 2...........gallons per day/animal
> 0.266.......cf/day/animal
> 16.52392....lbs water per animal per day
> 21,728,955..total water needed lb
>
> Now, Hill says that the animals need 1 million pounds of water to keep
> them going
> 263 days. That is what I calculated above. Once again, if the same mass
> of smaller
> animals is there, the daily water use per pound is higher. ONce again,
> Hill would
> torment the poor animals.
>
> Now, what does this do for the total weight of the ark? Hill claims that
> the toal
> weight of the ark is 10 million pounds giving it a draught of 5 feet.
> There are
> problems with this, because the way I calculate this (equidistribution of
> the load
> on 3 floors), the center of gravity of the ark would be something like 10
> feet
> above the waterline making the ark subject to rolling over and over,
> especially if
> the ark got broadside to the 80 mph winds Hill wants for so long (another
> problem
> discussed later).
>
> In the appendix, Hill defines that he is using the front and rear surface
> area for
> moving the ark. However, this is one of those theoretical ivory tower
> assumptions.
> It assumes that the ark never gets broadside to the wind direction. This
> is an
> incredibly unlikely scenario. If the ark gets broadside to the wind and
> water flow,
> it would tilt up because the water would push south and the wind blowing
> north
> would create a torque on the ark making it want to tilt. As it tilts, the
> food,
> water and other loose flotsom inside the ark will re-distribute and
> accelerate the
> roll. As the ark tilts, the torque of the water and air flow will get
> stronger
> because there is a bigger area across which the force/unit area can work.
> While I
> haven't calculated the forces, I think this is a real weak point for this
> theory.
> Noah and company would roll their way to Turkey.
>
> I have taken cruises on ocean ships and they are quite pleasant. But I
> would never
> want to be on one that had the center of gravity significantly above the
> waterline
> as this ark would be if it were as Hill describes it. Maybe Allan has more
> faith
> than I in such a situation.
>
> But my weight calculation for the ark shows he needs 45 million pounds of
> weight to
> avoid mistreating the animals.
>
> 2,844,330.......lbs for floors and walls changed from Hill's figure
> 2,000,000.......braces
> 1,000,000.......cages
> 1,250,000.......animals
> 15,968,750......food changed from Hill's figure
> 21,728,955......water changed from Hill's figure
> ...250,000......humans fixin's
>
> 45,042,035.......total weight for the ark
>
> If his line called braces, includes the flooring, then remove 800,000 lbs
> from the
> above figure, but it won't make much difference.
>
> This makes the ark have a 21 ft draught and this then makes the
> corresponding
> windspeed needed to push the ark north even higher than the quite unlikely
> values
> Hill already uses.
>
> Now lets look at the wind and rain. Apparently the Hills are thinking of
> hurricanes, which don't happen in the Persian Gulf (minor problem there).
> Alan Hill
> says, "Althought more formidable winds are required to move a 20
> million-pound ark
> (with a correspondingly smaller draft) upstream, even these winds fall
> well within
> the range of a great hurricane." Alan E. Hill, Quantitative Hydrology of
> NOah's
> Flood," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Vol 58(2006):2, p.
> 138
>
> But even that weight of an ark would carry insufficient food and water.
>
> All I can say is that these New Mexican residents have never actually seen
> a
> hurricane and are unaware that they require open ocean. Land near the eye
> results
> in a weakening of the storm system, but never mind this, and never mind
> that the in
> Quaternary history to our knowledge, there has never been such a storm in
> the
> Persian Gulf which has too little.
>
> Once again, no one in this article (or any other article on the
> Mesopotamian flood
> tells us where the flood sediments are. Carol Hill argues that YEC is
> wrong
> because there is no evidence for global flood sediment but she herself
> does not
> tell us where the flood sediments are in the upper reaches of the Tigris
> river
> basin. What she does is explain why the sediments AREN'T found, which is
> an
> entirely different game.
>
> "A popular misconception is that a great inundation such as Noah's Flood
> should
> have left a widespread layer of sediment all over Mesopotamia. If flood
> deposits
> occur at Shuruppak (Fara), then why not at nearby Kish? Why have no flood
> deposits
> been found at Ur that correspond to NOah's Flood, and why in the
> city-mound of Ur
> do some pits contain thick flood deposits while other pits nearby contain
> no flood
> deposits?"
> "This presumed problematic situation is completely understandable to
> hydrologists--in fact, it is what they expect. Flood erode sediment as
> well as
> deposit sediment." Carol A. HIll, Qualitative Hydrology of NOah's Flood,
> Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 58(2006):2, ,p. 126
>
> When I get my computer back this week (it is on its way home from
> Beijing), I will
> post a picture again showing the lack of widespread Quaternary fluvial
> sediment in
> the northern part of the Tigris basin?
>
> OK, they have lots of rainfall pouring into the basin. It would bring with
> it lots
> of sediment in suspension. It should, even in Northern Iraq, find
> backwater places
> where it can settle out, but this sediment isn't there either. On Page
> 127 Carol
> says that one could expect to see 50 feet of sediment from this year long
> event in
> the backwaters. Well, there would be backwaters in northern Iraq well
> away from
> the river's channel yet the Quaternary riverine sediments are not found
> much more
> than 10 miles away from the present river channel. This argues
> persuasively that
> there was no widespread water being blown up to the north, nor was that
> basin
> flooded. Carol, where is any evidence of quaternary fluviatile sediments
> away from
> the actual river channel itself?
>
> It is quite convenient that the flood deposited and then eroded all
> sedimentary
> evidence of itself.
>
> In looking at the equations in the back of the article, on page 141 Alan
> Hill has 4
> equations Equation 18 is
>
> windwork=viscuswork +liftwork
>
> This means that all these terms must have the same units. Well, Equation
> 15 has
>
> windwork = .5 x [rho] x f x [wv(t)-Vship]^2 x S1
>
> Where f is defined in equation 19 and is dimensionless, S1 is an area
> wv(t) is wind
> velocity, Vship is self-explanatory.
>
> But equation 16 has viscuswork having different units if I am reading this
> right.
>
> Viscuswork = .5 x c x [rho] x (Vship-(-vel[t])^2 x Vship x S2
>
> C is the coefficient of drag and those often are mass/time but maybe this
> is a
> dimensionless form of the number. I will let that one go. But this
> equation has
> V^3 and the previous equation has V^2. The units are not the same as near
> as I can
> tell.
>
> Illogic like some of the things I see here is what I would like to see
> Christian
> apologetics move away from. We need to think through all the issues, and I
> am not
> entirely sure that that happens when apologetical systems are put
> together.
>
> As far as I can see this is another sunken voyage of the ark, that doesn't
> concord
> to any reality at all. I suspect I will hear soon from Phil Metzger.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Received on Sun Jun 4 18:37:03 2006