Bernie,
if you think the simplifications in Alan's model caused it to over-predict how long the water will stay in Mesopotamia, then the burden of proof is on you to write the equations, have a computer solve them, and publish a paper. Alan's work was published and has been reviewed by scientists, including myself, in great detail. My research is in fluid flows and sedimentation, and my main effort is to produce models to predict the fluid flow and sedimentary interactions. I can tell you from many years of experience that there is nothing wrong with the aspects of Alan's model that you have mentioned. Nobody to date (to my knowledge) has refuted Alan's work. If you think you can, then it is up to you to do it or else accept that Alan's model is accepted by the scientific progress. YEC's can make conjectures against science like political pundits on the sidelines, but science doesn't work like that. It makes progress only by doing the math or experiments and then publishing papers with peer review. Your objections would never be accepted for publication in any scientific journal because they don't contribute to making progress and only serve to take valuable time away from the real progress.
If you want to overthrow Alan's work, then you need to take Alan's equations and code them, either in Mathematica (as he did) or in Fortran or some other code. Then take two additional cases besides Alan's case, each with increasing complexity in the shape of the terrain. If your conjecture is correct, the water will flow faster the more complicated the terrain. If you can show that sort of increased flow, AND show that the magnitude of the increased flow is adequate to render a long flood implausible, then you have disproven Alan's work. Anything short of this will not overthrow Alan's work.
However, I don't seriously think you should spend your time trying to do this because scientists and engineers have already studied this precise question extensively, and that's why Alan and others already know that his simplifications are perfectly fine. The more complicated the terrain, the slower the water moves. A straight channel and smooth surfaces without realistic topography, exactly as Alan has used in his model, allows the water to rush out to the Persian gulf much faster than it really would have. That's well established. Alan took a worst case in his modeling because he was trying to demonstrate plausibility. Since he proved plausibility for the worst case (simplest terrain), then we already know it will be even more plausible when the terrain details are put in. And as I mentioned before, he also omitted the water transport due to waves in shallow water and the surface shear stress induced by the wind, both of which also make the flood more plausible. You have pointed out a further thing that makes the flood more plausible.
Also, Alan was only demonstrating plausibility and hence he was interested only in orders of magnitude. You don't need precise numbers or detailed models to demonstrate plausibility. If keeping the flood in Mesopotamia for 9 months would require two or three orders of magnitude more rain in the mountains than could reasonably occur, then Alan would have shown that the long biblical flood was implausible apart from a miraculous overthrow of nature. But Alan showed that the entire scenario was plausible within reasonable orders of magnitude. Therefore, even if he over- or under-estimated the animal masses by a factor of two or three, it makes no difference, because the entire scenario is still within a plausible regime. There could have been more or less wind, more or less rain, etc., to make up the differences in animal masses. The actual numbers don't matter, as long as the orders of magnitude demonstrate that the overall scenario is plausible.
Further, suppose Alan left of certain species in his estimation of animal mass, then a flood without those species is plausible, and you can't overthrow his paradigm unless you prove that the particular species and all the other species in his estimate were required by the biblical account so that his masses were unrecoverably too low, AND that it throws you outside the order of magnitude for plausibility.
Now, if you disagree with this, and you think that the orders of magnitude are not plausible, then you should repeat his analysis but with different animal masses and see if you can prove that the scenario is implausible for the majority of the parameter space. I doubt you can, because he picked numbers that he thought were about in the center of the parameter space, and for the scenario to be plausible only one set of parameters needs to be plausible.
I hope this discussion gives a better sense for why PhD scientists with expertise in fluid flow and years of flow modeling experience (myself included) don't think Alan's model is wrong.
God bless,
Phil
-----Original Message-----
From: Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 6:51 pm
Subject: RE: [asa] Noah's local flood?
I just glanced at the paper. It seems crazy to me to think that someone could calculate water outflow. The path of outflow must be very complex, with the varying landscape. Seems to me it would take a supercomputer to figure out, using satellite images of the topography. I agree with this part of the article, though:
“First, this model, and the nature of the assumptions it embraces, are crude at best.”
At best- it is crude, as he says. I don’t understand how this is not obvious to anyone. For example, it says this:
“The three regions dealt with separately include: (1) the alluvial plain, which is one of the flattest places on Earth, its gradient is only 0.00072, over which the ark is being assumed to have traveled some 360 miles; (2) the foothills of Mount Ararat, where the gradient increases to 0.0017, over which the ark is being assumed to have ascended some 80 miles; and (3) a marshland delta region of some 120 miles, where the floodwaters could have escaped through marshlands to the Persian Gulf (figure 1 of the previous paper, p. 121).“
What kind of massive over-simplification is that for a real-life terrain? It is great for plugging numbers into an equation, but as Einstein said something like “Break things done into their simplest components, but never simpler.” This all seems way over-simplified to me, to the point of being worthless.
In addition, the author makes his own assumptions- how massive was the “local flood” and how many animals on board (2500 species he says). I suppose he has those 2,500 in a spreadsheet to calculate the weight, or he just did a common-sense ballpark average? He says avg. weight was 250 lbs… where did that come from, and isn’t it important? I think it likely came from thin-air, as he probably didn’t take time to define who was included in the species list (how many deer, bear, lion, bird, squirrel, rat, snake, etc.).
…Bernie
From: philtill@aol.com [mailto:philtill@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 3:28 PM
To: Dehler, Bernie; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Noah's local flood?
Bernie,
you obviously haven't read Alan Hill's paper, which proves that the water would stay in Mesopotamia as long as the Bible says it did. I personally believe the flood was probably smaller in scope that Alan believes. But nonetheless he did prove with valid hydrology modeling that a Flood of the larger scope could have stayed in the Mesopotamian basin for as long as the Bible says it did. If you "don't think" it could be so, then you are claiming to have intuition that is more valid then the actual hydrology equations. I gave the link to his paper yesterday -- here it is again:
http://www.asa3.org/aSA/PSCF/2006/PSCF6-06Hill.pdf
Let nobody _ever_again_ say that it's not possible for the water to stay in Mesopotamia as long as the Bible said it did. Anybody who wants to say so had better come forward with math models that are better than Alan's.
I want to add this, too: Alan did not take into account that the wind blowing the ark inland would also have kept the water in-place. Wind would provide a shear stress in the uphill direction, and because water is quite viscious, and the flood plain quite shallow over most of its extend during the flood, it would be very easy for the water to stay indefinitely as long as the modest wind kept blowing.
Also, you need to add the effect of waves, which Alan further neglected. Because waves in shallow waters are asymmetric in the upper versus lower branches, they produce net transport of water. Wind that blows over long stretches of open water cannot help but create significant waves, and these would add to the water transported uphill through the Mesopotamian basin.
Alan neglected these two features in his math analysis, and so therefore he was being more conservative than was necessary. It is actually much easier for the water to stay in Mesopotamia for as long as the Bible says. And even though he negelected these things, he still proved that it was easily possible via his valid mathematical solution of the hydrology equations.
Let nobody ever again dispute this without math equations.
Phil
-----Original Message-----
From: Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:58 pm
Subject: RE: [asa] Noah's local flood?
" I really have no idea what geological evidence would be expected given
a
full range of scenarios incorporating "dunking" with rain augmentation."
I think that one of the biggest problems is that for a massive flood
(one that kills all life around it), you need a geographical bowl shape
to contain the water- or else all the water will follow the river and
drain into the ocean. I don't think there's any bowl. And I don't
think the water can come down faster than it can leave via the rivers,
let alone stick around for a significant time. Sure, floods happen all
the time, but a flood of "Biblical proportions?"
...Bernie
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of George Cooper
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 9:16 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: [asa] Noah's local flood?
That doesn't surprise me. Yet, as much as I like natural processes to
work
within God's plan, the Flood certainly could be an intervention event
since
judgment was upon them. This is not unlike Sodom and Gomorah (but not
like
hurricane Katrina since Bourbon Street was, essentially, missed).
I really have no idea what geological evidence would be expected given a
full range of scenarios incorporating "dunking" with rain augmentation.
Coope
-----Original Message-----
From: j burg [mailto:hossradbourne@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 10:35 AM
To: George Cooper
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Noah's local flood?
On 6/27/08, George Cooper <georgecooper@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Is there any conjecture as to the possibility of the Arabian Plate
dipping
> in its NW region by, say, 0.08 deg.?This would drop that area by 2
miles.
> That dunk would only be 0.05% of its total height from Earth's center.
> Or, perhaps, the Eurasian plate rose slightly as the Arabian plate
dropped.
> I have no idea about such matters, admittedly, but am curious if this
has
> been discussed. [My apologies if I've missed it in these
discussions.]
>
> I had some discussion with Glenn Morton on this recently. He has what
looks like a convincing argument that such a dip is beyond the pale. I'm
not
expert to ay, however, if his argument is airtight.
> Burgy
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Get the Moviefone Toolbar. Showtimes, theaters, movie news, & more!
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sat Jun 28 21:17:25 2008
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sat Jun 28 2008 - 21:17:25 EDT