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Evolution and the Biblical Flood

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JackRUS

New Member
I am wondering how many theistic evolutionists here believe in a literal world flood as described in Genesis 7?

Especially given the fossil record that Christians believe is a direct result of the Flood, and evolutionists deny. This teaching of a world flood is anathema to virtually every evolutionist that I have ever heard or read.

Last week on PBS there was a story on NOVA about an area in Washington state that a geologist had theorized to have been devastated by a flood. The old school of thought was that the area was formed by millions of years of geological change. When he presented this theory to his colleagues he was dismissed as a fool because this may have lent evidence towards a biblical flood.

Well now it is believed that a flood did cause the change to the area, but of course they came us with a theory different than the biblical flood. They say it was a local flood caused by a large glacier melt.

My point of course is that scientists will bend over backwards in order to discredit any chance for there being a world flood. The reason being that they are lost and know it, so they must suppress in their minds the thought of there being a God of judgement.

But what do you thesistic evolutionists here think; was there a literal world flood less than 10,000 years ago as described in Genesis 7?
 
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Charles Meadows

New Member
My point of course is that scientists will bend over backwards in order to discredit any chance for there being a world flood. The reason being that they are lost and know it, so they must suppress in their minds the thought of there being a God of judgement

Statements like this hurt the credibility of the YEC stance.

Most scientists are loose deists or agnostic and see themselves as objective, non-biased truth-seekers. They obviously do have bias - but you have willfully misrepresented them.
 
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JackRUS

New Member
Originally posted by Charles Meadows:
My point of course is that scientists will bend over backwards in order to discredit any chance for there being a world flood. The reason being that they are lost and know it, so they must suppress in their minds the thought of there being a God of judgement

Statements like this hurt the credibility of the YEC stance.

Most scientists are loose deists or agnostic and see themselves as objective, non-biased truth-seekers. They obviously do have bias - but you have willfully misrepresented them.
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No I didn't misrepresent them. I saw the NOVA piece last week, did you? They came right out and said that they didn't believe their fellow geologist because it could have lend credence to the biblical flood.

And BTW, you didn't answer the question to the thread. Do you believe in the biblical world Flood as described in Genesis 7?
 
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Helen

<img src =/Helen2.gif>
I think it might be important to mention that the Missoula Flood and others like it WERE local catastrophes and followed Noah's Flood by several hundred years. Noah's Flood WAS a world-wide catastrophe but the flood boundary is nowhere near the surface of the earth now in most areas.
 
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JackRUS

New Member
Originally posted by Helen:
I think it might be important to mention that the Missoula Flood and others like it WERE local catastrophes and followed Noah's Flood by several hundred years. Noah's Flood WAS a world-wide catastrophe but the flood boundary is nowhere near the surface of the earth now in most areas.
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I agree, and I had no problem with their later theory that it was a local flood. My problem was with the geologists from the 19th century that discredited the man that first came up with the theory of a flood cause based solely on their hatred for God's Word.
 
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UTEOTW

New Member
"I am wondering how many theistic evolutionists here believe in a literal world flood as described in Genesis 7?"

Global? No.

A large local flood that covered the world known to them. Yes.

There is no evidence for a global flood. There is great evidence for a large, local flood in the Middle East. Plus it is not hard to come up with examples of the Bible using the term world for the local area. Go read the temptations of Christ for a good example.

What I would like to see is someone admit that they believe in a global flood in spite of the evidence. God made the water supernaturally appear, He made it supernaturally disappear, He removed all evidence of such a flood and He returned all of the ecosystems immediaely and supernaturally to a fully mature state.

But, no, you never get this. Most YE theories make the pre-flood world as flat as can be so they do not need so much water and then cram billions of years of geology into a year or two to try and make up the difference. Most release so much energy when they try and explain where the water comes from that they simmer the life on the ark to death. Most ignore the study of taphonomy in trying to tell about the fossils.

"Especially given the fossil record that Christians believe is a direct result of the Flood, and evolutionists deny."

See the comment on taphonomy. This is the study of fossils including how the animal died, the fossilization process, and what happens to the rock until it is found. It denies the possibility that all, or even a few, could have been formed during the flood.

Since Helen has checked in here, you might want to check out her ideas on the flood.

http://www.setterfield.org/earlyhist.html

She avoids many of the pitfalls by not trying to explain all fossils and geology as being a result of the flood. It still runs into problems. For instance, in her scenario the flood waters come from deep in the earth where they have been released from hydrated rocks heated by radioactive decay. The water bursts forth because of the heat and pressure. The problem is that the pressure and temperature would need to be extremely high. Water is incompressible, so to get flow the water would have to be hot enough to flash partially into steam so that the expansion of hte steam drives the flow. The water would flash at the surface, releasing enough heat to cook the globe and and to choke all the life on the ark with an almost all water vapor atmosphere.

(Note: I was referring to just Helen but it would be more corect to speak of the work as being hers and her husband, Barry's.)

"Last week on PBS there was a story on NOVA ..."

And so you saw how when the scientific process is followed, that scientists can be made to accept things which they disagreed strongly when the data is presented.

"Well now it is believed that a flood did cause the change to the area, but of course they came us with a theory different than the biblical flood."

Yes. One based on the available evidence.

"My problem was with the geologists from the 19th century that discredited the man that first came up with the theory of a flood cause based solely on their hatred for God's Word."

There may have been a bit of that. I went back and read the transcript from the episode. You'll see hints of a great conflict in geology of the time. There was debate over whether geology was best explained by only slow processes or largely by catastrophe. The pendulum swang around and around before geologists finally recognized that it was best to use parts of both ideas. This debate seems to have been a victim of the larger debate in geology.

"The reason being that they are lost and know it, so they must suppress in their minds the thought of there being a God of judgement. "

I think I have already shown you this, but about half of the scientists claim to believe in God. So you cannot make such blanket statements unless you have some supernatural insight into their spiritural condition.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm

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"Scientist can find evidence of water? on Mars but cannot find evidence of a world wide flood."

They go where the data leads. I fail to see how evidence of water on Mars has bearing on the discussion. You seem to be implying a Mars flood as well. The Mars data only supports local or regional events.
 
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JWI

New Member
I believe the whole world was flooded.

Have you ever heard of the Ararat Anomaly? Some believe it is Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat. Mt. Ararat is really two mountains. The lesser mountain is over 12,000 feet above sea level, the greater Ararat is over 16,000 feet above sea level.

The Ararat Anomaly is located approximately 15,500 feet above sea level. That is nearly 3 miles deep.

Here is an interesting site. Check out the links at bottom for personal testimonies, many from military pilots.

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~arktracker/ark/Picture.html

Here is a 1949 Air Force photo of the Ararat Anomoly. I personally believe it could very well be Noah's Ark. But I believe the whole world was flooded regardless.

http://www.bibleprobe.com/anomaly.jpg

We can see the great damage done by the recent 20-25 foot storm surge of Hurricane Katrina. There is over 90,000 square miles of damage. Imagine how much damage a flood over 3 miles deep would cause.

I actually believe that Noah's flood was much deeper than this. The Bible says it covered the tops of all mountains. So that would include Mt. Everest at over 29,000 feet above sea level.
 
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El_Guero

New Member
JWI

A flood like katrina does not need to be 30,000 feet deep to cover the tops of the mountains. It just needs to rain an awful lot. Kinda like Rita in East Texas ...

Wayne ...
 
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Helen

<img src =/Helen2.gif>
The young, sharper mountains were raised at the time of the continental division at the time of Peleg. They were not part of the antediluvian world.

The Flood was indeed worldwide. Planetwide. Use what term you like. There is a two-mile thick layer of carbon-rich sediment all over the world under the Cambrian strata. That is the evidence of the Flood. The geologic column from there on up is post Flood.
 
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JackRUS

New Member
Another question:

Do those here that believe in theistic evolution and the Flood believe that the fossil record is a result of the Flood, or of millions of years of random deaths recorded in the rock layers?

A question for UTEOTW:

You say that there is no proof for a worldwide flood. And yet 1 Pet. 3:20 says that only eight people in the whole world survived this flood. How can that be if the flood was local? (Or don't you believe this Scripture to be either true or tangible evidence?)
 
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Helen

<img src =/Helen2.gif>
JackRUS, that question about fossils is not a good one. Fossils came from neither the Flood or millions of years of random deaths. The fossils we are finding in the rock layers are all post-Flood. The Flood did not fossilize anything -- it burned, smashed, destroyed, and then rotted and buried it. Keep in mind the Flood was NOT just rain, but Genesis 7:11 tells us all the springs of the great deep BURST forth. For them ALL to do that at once indicates a critical pressure and heat point had been reached under the crust and the explosive power must have been incredible, making the heights to which our volcanic eruptions today go look like a mild bubble in a pot.

These explosive waters were scalding from the pressure and the original heating they underwent from radio decay under the crust, and they would have carried up with them enormous amounts of pulverized rocks which would then have come crashing down with the condensed waters, making a flood like the world will never see again -- and one that totally devastated not only life but all signs of life on the land, washing the remnants of things down to the depths of the seas and into the rock fracture zones. As the waters settled out in the year after, the sediment layer would have been enormous, and that is just what we find under the first Cambrian fossils -- a TWO MILE thick layer of carbon-rich sediment, deposited by water, under which is a very thick layer of water tossed and cemented stones in a cement-like matrix -- also the result of the Flood.
 
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OldRegular

Well-Known Member
Originally posted by UTEOTW:
"Scientist can find evidence of water? on Mars but cannot find evidence of a world wide flood."

They go where the data leads. I fail to see how evidence of water on Mars has bearing on the discussion. You seem to be implying a Mars flood as well. The Mars data only supports local or regional events.
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Now I know why you are a theistic evolutionist, or at least one reason. You read things in a sentence that are not there. How could anyone read the simple statement I made which you have quoted and infer that I am implying a Mars flood is beyond me. Did you not notice the question mark [?] that followed the word water as in
Scientist can find evidence of water?
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To put it in very simply language I question whether scientists found evidence of water on Mars. They wanted to find evidence so they claim they did.
 
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UTEOTW

New Member
"For them ALL to do that at once indicates a critical pressure and heat point had been reached under the crust and the explosive power must have been incredible, making the heights to which our volcanic eruptions today go look like a mild bubble in a pot. "

As I said, this is where she cooks the earth.

The things described here would require extreme pressure, but let's choose something relatively low. Let's take 1500 psig of water pressure. This is only the pressure that would be generated by a cloumn of water a shade under 3500 feet high. I assume that much of this pressure would have built up at greater depths.

Now Helen has said in the past that about equal amounts of water were on the surface of the earth before the flood as was released in the flood.

Let's further assume that the oceans were all just above the freezing point at the start. I'm being generous.

Now it takes about 180 Btu/lb of water to heat it from the freezing point to the boiling point. But water saturated at 1500 psig has 611.7 Btu/lb of enthalpy. If you do the math, you will find that once 41% of the water has been released, there has been enough heat released to bring the oceans to the boiling point.

If some of the springs were to burst forth directly into the atmosphere, then something else happens. This superheated water will immediate flash partially to steam. At these pressure, 44% of the water will flash right at the surface while 56% remains in the liquid phase travelling up however high they can. But this releases 84% of the energy at the surface.

Helen has said in the past that the water went high into the atmosphere where it cooled and radiated the heat into space. But we see from simple thermo that most of the energy is released at the surface. Now since the atmosphere has about 2 orders of magnitude less mass than the oceans and a quarter the heat capacity of water, it will only take a fraction of a percent of the water/steam produced to heat the atmosphere past the boiling temperature of water.

We have released less than half the necessary water for the flood and already there is enough energy released to bring both the atmoshpere and the oceans to the boiling point.

There is another problem. About half of the water flashes as soon as it is released. But the atmosphere's mass is only like 1/100th of the water being released. So pretty soon, we have an atmosphere that is essentially all water vapor. There is no oxygen to be had to breath anywhere.

The remaining water and steam to be released have enough additional energy to boil about 1/3 to 1/2 of the oceans away.

And all this heat cannot just be radiated away into space. If you spread this over 40 days, there will be about 3 orders of magnitude more heat to be radiated away than normal. And that is making the generous assumption that no solar energy is reflected away before reaching the earth. It would require a significant increase in the temperature of the earth to increase the radiant heat transfer by this amount. So the only way to avoid the heating is to heat the earth.
 
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UTEOTW

New Member
"To put it in very simply language I question whether scientists found evidence of water on Mars. They wanted to find evidence so they claim they did."

Sorry about misunderstanding you. I have seen others claim a Mars flood and Ithought that is where you were headed.

For your actual claim I don't know how the presence of materials that form in water and evidence of erosional activity does does not indicate the past existance of surface water.
 
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Helen

<img src =/Helen2.gif>
Actually, OldRegular, Mars did flood, the same way and for the same reasons Earth did. Radioactive heating in the interior drove water out of the rocks and continued heating it until it burst out. Mars, however, did not have an atmosphere to hold the water vapor in and thus the water that did not shoot straight up and away but flooded the planet itself evaporated in time. It does not indicate life was ever there at all, just that the same processes happened there, and on Venus, and possibly on Mercury as well, as on earth.

The same process of heating and explosive water escape fractured and decimated Planet Y that used to be between Mars and Jupiter, as well as its moon. Thus we have the asteroid belt today.

Rocks high in water content, such as serpentine, give up that water when heated. In the case of serpentine, which is about 13% water, when it is heated and the water driven off, it becomes olivine, one of the major minerals in our earth crust today. We find evidence of the same activity in meteorites and asteroids.
 
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