Creationist models are often criticized for being too vague to have any
predictive value. A literal interpretation of the Flood story in Genesis,
however, does imply certain physical consequences which can be tested against
what we actually observe. Most, if not all, observations, discredit the flood
hypothesis, as you can see from what follows. (Most the the arguments below are
based only on a literal reading of Genesis, but some specifically refer to the
flood model of Whitcomb & Morris [1961].) Can any Creationists address even
half of the points in this list?
Before the flood:
How did animals travel from all over the world?
Some, like the sloths, can't travel overland very well at all.
Some, like koalas, require a special diet. How did they bring it
along?
Some, like the dodo, must have lived on islands. (If they didn't, they
would have been easy prey for other animals.)
If animals all lived fairly close to Noah before the flood (as
Whitcomb & Morris suggest), how were they all able to survive the
predation and competition pressures from all the others, and why doesn't
evidence of their living together show up in fossil distributions?
How was the ark loaded? The Bible says all the animals were all loaded in
seven days [Gen. 7:4]. Even if there were only 9 million species to be
loaded, there would have to be an average of 30 animals per second going
through the ark's one door.
How was the ark made seaworthy? The longest wooden ships in modern seas
are about 300 feet, and these require reinforcing with iron straps and leak
so badly they must be constantly pumped. The ark was 450 feet long [Gen.
6:15].
Life on the ark:
How did all the different species fit on the ark? 10 million species is a
reasonable estimate of species presently alive (though estimates vary
widely; see May, 1992). They all would have had to fit in about 100,000
square feet of deck space [Gen. 6:15-16]. Since most animals are small, they
probably could have all fit, but only if you allow very little room around
them. Caged animals probably wouldn't all fit, nor would the animals have
any room to exercise. The dinosaurs, mastodons, and other now-extinct
animals would have been aboard the ark as well [Gen. 7:15; Morris, 1993],
and they would take up a lot of room. Bracings, corridors, bilges,
etc. would have taken up a lot of room, too. If you hypothesize
significantly fewer species on the ark than now exist, you must explain
evolution rates faster than any evolutionists propose to account for all the
present species.
How did Noah supply food and water for all the animals for a year? [Gen.
6:21] Food for a year would have taken up many times the space of the
animals themselves. (I know of no animals, except some desert amphibians,
that hibernate for anywhere close to a year.)
How was the food kept fresh for a year? (Aphids, e.g., can't eat wilted
plants.)
What did the carnivorous animals eat, especially those which require fresh
meat?
How did creatures needing special environments survive on the ark?
How do you explain how all host-specific parasites/diseases made do with
only one pair of hosts (and if they did OK, how the hosts survived!)
How was the ark kept livable? Shoveling the manure of the ungulates alone
must have been a full time job for eight people.
How well ventilated was the ark? The body heat from millions of closely
packed animals must have been very intense.
The flood:
Where did the water come from? (It would take 4.4 billion cubic kilometers
to cover Mt. Everest.)
Where did it go?
If you accept the vapor canopy model of some Creationists, you must answer
some equally difficult questions, such as: What kept the water up before the
Flood? What happened to the heat of condensation of all that water? Why
didn't ultraviolet light from the sun break all the water into hydrogen and
oxygen atoms and blow them away?
Geological effects of the flood:
How were mountains formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of
sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine
limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids [Gansser, 1964].)
If these were laid down during the flood, how did they reach their present
height, and when were the valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind
that many valleys were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow
process.
How does a global flood explain angular unconformities, where one set of
layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded
before a second set of layers were deposited on top? They thus seem to
require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than
one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the
deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.
When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older
sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces. It takes
a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does granite erode very
quickly. [For example, see Donohoe & Grantham, 1989, for locations of
contact between the South Mountain Batholith and the Meugma Group of
sediments, as well as some angular unconformities.]
How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution?
Ecological zonation and hydrodynamic sorting fail to explain:
the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one dinosaur
make it to the high ground with the elephants?
the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life. (Yun,
1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late Precambrian
sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear that low in the
geological column?)
why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in many
geologic strata.
why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar
hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are still
perfectly sorted.
why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present animals
didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high ground?
how coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long were preserved
intact with other fossils below them.
why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid mechanics
says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper strata.
How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed
layering? One formation is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400 days for
this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the flood, we still
have 15 meters of sediment settling *per day*. And yet despite this, the
chemical properties of the rock are neatly layered, with great changes
(e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring within a few centimeters in the
vertical direction. How does such a neat sorting process occur in the
violent context of a universal flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day?
How can you explain a thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited
over an area of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes,
followed by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, followed by thirty
minutes more of .... well, I think you get the picture. [From: Bill Hyde;
see also Kent & Olsen, 1992]
How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in
Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those
being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each
layer would have required over a month to settle. [From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu
(William H. Jefferys)]
How do you explain worldwide agreement between "apparent"
geological eras and several different (independent) radiometric and
nonradiometric dating methods? [Short et. al., 1991]
Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? A worldwide flood
would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in
salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal
stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. All
such evidence is lacking in annual layers dating back 40,000 years.
How were limestone deposits formed? Limestone is made of the skeletons of
zillions of microscopic sea animals. Some deposits are thousands of meters
thick. Were all those animals alive when the flood started? If not, how do
you explain the well-ordered sequence of fossils in the deposits?
How could a flood have deposited chalk? Chalk is largely made up of the
bodies of planktonic animals 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter [Bignot,
1985]. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec. [Twenhofel,
1961] In a year of the flood, they could have settled about half a meter.
[From xdegrm@oryx.com (glenn r morton)]
Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have
originated only on the surface, such as:
footprints. [Gore, 1993, has a photograph (p. 16-17) showing dinosaur
footprints in one layer with water ripples in layers above and below it.
Gilette & Lockley, 1989, have several more examples, including
dinosaur footprints on top of a coal seam (p. 361-366).]
How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?
How could a one-year flood deposit explain stratigraphic sections showing
a dozen or more mature forests layered atop each other, all with upright
trunks, in-place roots, and well-developed soil? Such layers of forests
appear in many locations. One example, the Joggins section along the Bay of
Fundy, shows a continuous section 2750 meters thick (along a 48-km sea
cliff) with multiple in-place forests, some separated by hundreds of feet of
strata, some even showing evidence of forest fires [Ferguson, 1988]. For
other examples, see Dawson, 1868; Cristie & McMillan, 1991; Gastaldo,
1990; Yuretich, 1994.] Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below
Mt. St. Helens as an example of how a flood can deposit vertical trunks, but
deposition by flood fails to explain the roots, the soil, the layering, and
other features found in such places.
How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? Why weren't the Sierra
Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalacians during the flood?
How do you explain fossil mineralization - the replacement of the original
material with a different mineral?
Buried skeletal remains of modern fauna are negligibly mineralized,
including some that biblical archaeology says are quite old - a
substantial fraction of the age of the earth in this diluvian geology.
For example, remains of Egyptian commoners buried near the time of Moses
aren't extensively mineralized.
Buried skeletal remains of extinct mammalian fauna show quite variable
mineralization.
Dinosaur remains are often extensively mineralized.
Trilobite remains are usually mineralized - and in different sites,
fossils of the same species are composed of different materials.
How are these observations explained by a sorted deposition of remains
in a single episode of global flooding? [From: jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com
(Joel J. Hanes)]
How could the flood deposit layers of solid salt, sometimes meters in
width, interbedded with sediments containing marine fossils? This apparently
occurs when a body of salt water has its fresh-water intake cut off, and
then evaporates. These layers can occur more or less at random times in the
geological history, and have characteristic fossils on either side.
Therefore, if the fossils were themselves laid down during a catastrophic
flood, there are, it seems, only two choices: (1) the salt layers were
themselves laid down at the same time, during the heavy rains that began the
flooding, or (2) the salt is a later intrusion. I suspect that both will
prove insuperable difficulties for a theory of flood deposition of the
geologic column and its fossils. [From: marlowe@paul.rutgers.edu (Thomas
Marlowe). See also Jackson et al., 1990]
How were sedimentary deposits recrystalized and plastically deformed in
the short time since the flood? The stretched pebble conglomerate in Death
Valley National Monument (Wildrose Canyon Rd., 15 mi. south of Hwy. 190),
for example, contains streambed pebbles metamorphosed to quartzite and
stretched to 3 or more times their original length. Plastically deformed
stone is also common around salt diapirs [Jackson et. al., 1990].
How were hematite layers laid down? Standard theory is that they were laid
down before Earth's atmosphere contained much oxygen. In an oxygen-rich
regime, they would almost certainly be impossible.
How are the polar ice caps possible? Such a mass of water as the flood
would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their
beds. No way to drop them exactly back onto their original location, or
to regrow them. (In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow
under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.) [From: Bob Grumbine rmg3@psuvm.psu.edu]
A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an
uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size
distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain
has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive
extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?
When did impact craters on the earth occur? Geological evidence indicates
that they would have formed in sediments early enough for erosion and
crustal movements to partially erase them. Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung
suggest they occurred during the year of Noah's flood. But the heat from all
those impacts concentrated in one year would have vaporized the flood
waters. [Fezer, pp 45-46]
And before you argue that fossil evidence was dated and interpreted to
meet evolutionary assumptions, remember that the geological column and the
relative dates therein were laid out by creationists before Darwin
even formulated his theory. (See, for example, Moore [1973], or the closing
pages of Dawson [1868], who was cited above.)
Biological effects of the flood:
How did all the fish survive? Some require cool clear water, some
need brackish water, some need ocean water, some need water even saltier. A
flood would have destroyed at least some of these habitats.
How did short-lived species survive? Adult mayflies on the ark would have
died in a few days, and the larvae of many mayflies require shallow fresh
running water. Many other insects would face similar problems.
How did all the modern plant species survive? Many plants (seeds and all)
would be killed by being submerged for a few months. Most plants require
established soils to grow--soils which would have been stripped by the
Flood. Some plants germinate only after being exposed to fire or after being
ingested by animals; these conditions would be rare (to put it mildly) after
the Flood.
How do you explain the survival of any sensitive marine life (e.g.,
coral)? Since most coral are found in shallow water, the turbidity created
by the runoff from the land would effectively cut them off from the sun. The
silt would cover the reef after the rains were over, and the coral would ALL
DIE. By the way, the rates at which coral deposits calcium are well known,
and some highly mature reefs (such a the great barrier) have been around for
MILLIONS of years to be deposited to their observed thickness. [From: bmb@bluemoon.rn.com]
Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating?
How does the flood explain the geological sorting of pollen? Fossil pollen
is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each
plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants
produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in
different strata. Was the pollen hydraulically sorted by the flood water so
that the climatic evidence is different for each layer? Furthermore, pollen
and spores are found in association with the trunks, leaves, branches, and
roots produced by the same plants [Stewart, 1983]. How could a flood sort
all of them together perfectly?
How does a flood explain the accuracy of "coral clocks"? The
moon is slowly sapping the earth's rotational energy. The earth should have
rotated more quickly in the distant past, meaning that a day would have been
less than 24 hours, and there would have been more days per year. Corals can
be dated by the number of "daily" growth layers per
"annual" growth layer. Devonian corals, for example, show nearly
400 days per year. There is an exceedingly strong correlation between the
"supposed age" of a wide range of fossils (corals, stromatolites,
and a few others -- collected from geologic formations throughout the column
and from locations all over the world) and the number of days per year that
their growth pattern shows. The agreement between these clocks, and
radiometric dating, and the theory of superposition... is a little hard to
explain away as the result of a number of unlucky coincidences in a
300-day-long flood. [From: stassen@alc.com (Chris Stassen)]
If a single flood is responsible for all fossils, where were all those
animals when they were alive? From "Six 'Flood' Arguments Creationists
Can't Answer" by Robert Schadewald, Creation/Evolution IV
(Summer 1982), pp. 12-13: "Scientific creationists interpret the
fossils found in the earth's rocks as the remains of animals that perished
in the Noachian Deluge. Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of
fossils in "fossil graveyards" as evidence for the Flood. In
particular, creationists seem enamored by the Karroo Formation in Africa,
which is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate animals
(see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61). As pseudoscientists,
creationists dare not test this major hypothesis that all of the fossilized
animals died in the Flood. "Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the
University of Minnesota, has studied the Karroo Formation. He asserts that
the animals fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the
size of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A minute's
work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion animals in the Karoo
formation could be resurrected, there would be twenty-one of them for every
acre of land on earth. Suppose we assume (conservatively, I think) that the
Karroo Formation contains 1 percent of the vertebrate fossils on earth [land
fossils only--whj]. Then when the Flood began, there must have been at least
2100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense dinosaurs.
To a noncreationist mind, that seems a bit crowded." A thousand
kilometers' length of arctic coastal plain, according to experts in
Leningrad [N. Newell, Creation and Evolution; 1982, Columbia U.
Press, p. 62], contains about 500,000 *tons* of tusks. Even assuming that
the entire population was preserved, you seem to be saying that Russia had
wall-to-wall mammoths before this "event."
How do you explain the relative commonness of aquatic fossils? A flood
would have washed over everything equally, so terrestrial organisms should
be roughly as abundant as aquatic ones (or more abundant, since Creationists
hypothesize greater land area before the Flood) in the fossil record. Yet
shallow marine environments account for by far the most fossils.
Even if there room physically for all the large animals which now exist
only as fossils, how could they have all coexisted in a stable ecology
before the flood? Montana alone would have had to support a diversity of
herbivores orders of magnitude larger than anything now observed.
Historical effects of the flood:
Why is there no mention of the flood in the records of Egyptian or Chinese
civilizations which existed at the time? Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1, Gal
3:17, various generation lengths given in Genesis) place the flood 1300
years before Solomon began the first temple. We can construct reliable
chronologies for near Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, from many
kinds of records from the literate cultures in the near East. These records
are independent of, but supported by, dating methods such as
dendrochronology and carbon-14. The building of the first temple can be
dated to 950 B.C. +/- some small delta, placing the Flood around 2250 B.C.
Unfortunately, the Egyptians (among others) have written records dating well
back before 2250 B.C. (the Great Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th
century B.C., 300 years before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in
Egyptian inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.
Why are no human artifacts found except in the very uppermost strata? If,
at the time of the flood, the earth was overpopulated by people with
technology for shipbuilding, why were none of their tools or buildings mixed
with with trilobite or dinosaur fossils?
How did the human population rebound so fast? Geneologies in Genesis put
the Tower of Babel about 110 to 150 years after the Flood [Gen 10:25,
11:10-19]. How did the world population regrow so fast to make its
construction (and the city around it) possible? Similarly, there would have
been very few people around to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, found the
Sumarian and Indus Valley civilizations, populate the Americas, etc.
Aftermath of the flood:
How did koalas get from Ararat to Australia, polar bears to the Arctic,
etc., when the kinds of environment they require to live doesn't exist
between the two points.
How were ecological interdependencies preserved as animals migrated from
Ararat? Did the yucca an the yucca moth migrate together across the
Atlantic? Were there, a few thousand years ago, unbroken giant sequoia
forests between Ararat and California to allow indigenous bark and cone
beetles to migrate?
Why are so many marsupials limited to Australia; why are there no
wallabies in Indonesia? The same argument applies to any number of groups of
plants and animals.
How could more than a handful of species survive in a devastated habitat?
How could more than a handful of the predator species on the ark have
survived, with only two individuals of their prey to eat? All of the
predators at the top of the food pyramid require larger numbers of food
animals beneath them on the pyramid, which in turn require large numbers of
the animals they prey on, and so on, down to the primary producers
(plants...etc.) at the bottom. And if the predators survived, how did the
other animals survive being preyed on?
How could more than a handful of species survive random influences that
affect populations? Isolated populations with fewer than 20 members are
usually doomed even when extraordinary measures are taken to protect them. [Simberloff,
1988]
How could more than a handful of species survive the inbreeding depression
that comes with establishing a population from a single mating pair?
How do you explain the genetic variation in all populations today?
The Bible states that seven pairs of all "clean" animals, but
only one pair each of other animals, were taken aboard the ark. Thus, after
the flood, clean animals should have started with seven times the genetic
variation. (Clean animals could have had up to 28 alleles of any gene, while
non-clean animals would have been limited to 4 alleles.) Why do we not
observe a correlation between genetic variation and Hebrew dietary
restrictions?
Is the flood model consistent with the Bible?
The model seems to say that large numbers of kinds of land animals became
extinct because of the flood [e.g., Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 69n],
while Genesis repeatedly says that Noah was ordered to take a representative
sample of all kinds of land animals on the Ark to save them from extinction,
and that Noah did as ordered. Which is right?
Genesis 6:20 and 7:14-15 say there were two of each kind of fowl and clean
beasts, yet Genesis 7:2-3,5 says they came in sevens. How can a literal
interpretation be appropriate if the text is self-contradictory?
How could Noah have gathered male and female of each kind [Gen. 7:15-16]
when some species are asexual, others are parthenogenic and have only
females, and others (such as earthworms) are hermaphrodites? And what about
social animals like ants and termites which need the whole nest to survive?
What was used to waterproof the ark? We are told that God instructed Noah
to coat the ark inside and out with the naturally- occurring hydrocarbon
pitch, which causes a bit of a problem since, according to Whitcomb and
Morris, all oil, tar and coal deposits were formed when organic matter was
buried DURING the flood.
If your style of Biblical interpretation makes you take the flood
literally, then shouldn't you also believe in a flat and stationary earth?
[Dan. 4:10-11, Matt. 4:8, 1 Chron. 16:30, Psalms 93:1, ...]
In fact, is there any reason at all why the flood story should be taken
literally? Jesus used parables; why wouldn't God do so, too?
Does the flood story make the whole Bible less credible? Davis Young is a
working geologist who also is an Evangelical Christian. He has personal
doubts about some aspects of evolution, but he makes a devastating case
against "Flood Geology." He writes (Christianity and the Age of
the Earth, p. 163): "The maintenance of modern creationism and
Flood geology not only is useless apologetically with unbelieving
scientists, it is harmful. Although many who have no scientific training
have been swayed by creationist arguments, the unbelieving scientist will
reason that a Christianity that believes in such nonsense must be a religion
not worthy of his interest...Modern creationism in this sense is
apologetically and evangelistically ineffective. It could even be a
hindrance to the gospel. "Another possible danger is that in presenting
the gospel to the lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem
to be false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense
of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not
truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has given.
Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is done...."
[From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys) See also Young, 1988]
If God is omnipotent, why not kill what He wanted killed directly? Why
resort to a roundabout method that requires innumerable additional miracles?
The whole idea was to rid the wicked people from the world. Did it work?
Finally, even if the flood model weren't riddled by all these problems,
why should we accept it? What it does attempt to explain is already
explained more accurately, consistently, and thoroughly by conventional
geology and biology, and the flood model leaves many other things
unexplained, even unexplainable. How is flood geology useful?
References
(My thanks to R. Andrew MacRae for supplying most of these references.)
Bignot, G., 1985. Micropaleontology Boston: IHRDC, p. 75
Clemmenson, L.B. and Abrahamsen, K., 1983. Aeolian stratification in desert
sediments, Arran basin (Permian), Scotland. Sedimentology, v.30, p.311-339.
Cristie, R.L., and McMillan, N.J. (eds.), 1991. Tertiary fossil forests of
the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg Island, Arctic Archipelago, Geological Survey
of Canada, Bulletin 403., 227pp.
Dawson, J.W., 1868. Acadian Geology. The Geological Structure, Organic
Remains, and Mineral Resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward
Island, 2nd edition. MacMillan and Co.: London, 694pp.
Donohoe, H.V. Jr. and Grantham, R.G. (eds.), 1989. Geological Highway Map of
Nova Scotia, 2nd edition. Atlantic Geoscience Society, Halifax, Nova Scotia. AGS
Special Publication no. 1, 1:640 000.
Dundes, Alan (ed.), 1988. The Flood Myth, University of California
Press, Berkeley and London.
Eyles, N. and Miall, A.D., 1984, Glacial Facies IN: Walker, R.G., Facies
Models, Second Edition. Geoscience Canada, Reprint Series 1, p.15-38.
Fezer, Karl D., 1993. "Creationism: Please Don't Call It Science"
Creation/Evolution, 13:1 (Summer 1993), 45-49.
Ferguson, Laing, 1988. The Fossil Cliffs of Joggins. Nova Scotia Museum,
Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Gansser, A., 1964. Geology of the Himalayas, John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., New
York, 289pp.
Gastaldo, R. A., 1990, Early Pennsylvanian swamp forests in the Mary Lee coal
zone, Warrior Basin, Alabama. in R. A. Gastaldo et. al., Carboniferous Coastal
Environments and Paleocommunities of the Mary Lee Coal Zone, Marion and Walker
Counties, Alabama. Guidebook for the Field Trip VI, Alabama Geological Survey,
Tuscaloosa, Alabama. pp. 41-54.
Genesis 6:9-8:22.
Gilette, D.D. and Lockley, M.G. (eds.), 1989. Dinosaur Tracks and Traces,
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 454pp.
Gore, Rick, 1993. "Dinosaurs" National Geographic, 183:1 (Jan.
1993), 2-54.
Hubert, J.F., and Mertz, K.A., Jr., 1984. Eolian sandstones in Upper
Triassic-Lower Jurassic red beds of the Fundy Basin, Nova Scotia. Journal of
Sedimentary Petrology, v.54, p.798-810.
Jackson, M.P.A., et al., 1990. Salt diapirs of the Great Kavir, Central Iran.
Geological Society of America, Memoir 177, 139pp.
Kent and Olsen, 1992. (Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Geological
Observatory) Discover, Jan. 1992
Kocurek, G., and Dott, R.H., 1981. Distinctions and uses of stratification
types in the interpretation of eolian sand. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology,
v.51, no.2, p.579-595.
May, Robert M., 1992. "How Many Species Inhabit the Earth?"
Scientific American, 267:4 (Oct. 1992), 42-49.
Moore, Robert A., 1983. "The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark"
Creation/Evolution, #11 (Winter 1983), 1-43. The entire issue is about the ark.
Moore lists over one hundred references.
Moore, James R., 1973. "Charles Lyell and the Noachian Deluge", in
Dundes, The Flood Myth, 1988.
Morris, John D., 1993. "Did dinosaurs survive the flood?" Back to
Genesis, #53 (May 1993), d.
Reinhardt, J., and Sigleo, W.R. (eds.), 1989. Paleosols and weathering
through geologic time: principles and applications. Geological Society of
America Special Paper 216, 181pp.
Short, D. A., J. G. Mengel, T. J. Crowley, W. T. Hyde and G. R. North, 1991.
Filtering of Milankovitch Cycles by Earth's Geography. Quaternary Research. 35,
157-173. (Re an independent method of dating the Green River formation)
Simberloff, David, 1988. The Contribution of Population and Community Biology
to Conservation Science. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 19, 473-511.
Stewart, W.N., 1983. Paleontology and the Evolution of Plants.
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 405pp.
Tarnocai, C. and Smith, C.A.S., 1991. Paleosols of the Fossil Forest area,
Axel Heiberg Island. IN: Cristie & McMillan [see above], p.171-187.
Twenhofel, William H., 1961. Treatise on Sedimentation, Dover, p.
50-52.
Whitcomb, John C. and Morris, Henry M., 1961. The Genesis Flood,
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Philadelphia.
Wright, V. P., 1994. Paleosols in shallow marine sequences. Earth-Science
Reviews, 37, 367-395. See also pp. 135-137.
Young, Davis, 1988. Christianity and the Age of the Earth. Artisan
Sales, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Yun, Zhang, 1989. "Multicellular thallophytes with differentiated
tissues from Late Proterozoic phosphate rocks of South China" Lethaia, #22,
113-132.
Yuretich, Richard F., 1984. Yellowstone fossil forests: New evidence for
burial in place, Geology 12, 159-162. See also Fritz, W.J. & Yuretich,
R.F., Comment and reply, Geology 20, 638-639.
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuter) - An archeological site believed by some
Christians to contain Noah's Ark was being used as Turkey's equivalent of the
Loch Ness monster to raise research funds, a Sydney court was told Thursday.
Australian geology professor Ian Plimer said the site on Mount Ararat, which
he believes is nothing more than a large mound of mud, was being used as an
``income-generating mechanism'' by the Turkish geologist in charge of the site.
``I am sympathetic to the financial position he is in, but I am certainly not
sympathetic to the scientific fraud,'' Plimer told the Federal Court of
Australia.
After visiting the Turkish site in 1994, Plimer said he challenged the site
project leader about its authenticity. According to the Bible, Noah built the
Ark to rescue his family and animals from a 40-day flood called down by a
wrathful God.
``He said he was using this site to raise funds from Christian
fundamentalists. He said he doesn't believe in Noah's Ark and that this is his
equivalent of Loch Ness,'' Plimer said referring to the mythical Scottish lake
monster.
``He has supported the views of various Christian fundamentalists that yes,
this is the site of Noah's Ark. As scientist to scientist, in essence he
apologized and said to me, 'Sorry, this is the only way I can fund my
research'.''
Plimer and U.S. marine salvage expert David Fasold are suing creationist
Allen Roberts for ``misleading and deceptive conduct'' in Australian lectures on
his explorations of the Turkish site.
Creationists believe the world was created over six days, as in the Book of
Genesis, some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The protagonists say the trial is not about the Biblical story of creation,
but fair trading laws -- although many in the court including the judge see a
battle between science and creationism just below the surface.
Roberts, held hostage for three weeks by Kurdish separatists in 1991 after
visiting the Turkish site, does not say he believes the Turkish site is Noah's
Ark.
``If this is not Noah's Ark, then what is it?'' Roberts would ask in
concluding his lectures.
Plimer said he had found a golf tee and bits of plastic at the Turkish site,
adding: ``If Noah's Ark was 4,000 years old, the ancient game from St Andrews
would not yet have been around.''
REUTER
By Dean -- I couldn't resist adding this:
I have a humorous verse in the Bible. I don't know whether it is on your web
page or not.
Another
problem I see with the Global Flood is that with Mt. Everest being 29,035 feet
(8,850 m) above sea level, it would have to rain on the entire globe an average
of about 6 inches (15.2 cm) per
minute for 40 days and 40 nights. The recorded world record for rainfall
in one minute is 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) - -and
it occurred at one remote location, not globally, and only for that one
minute, not at a constant rate for an extended period of time. According
to Genesis 7:20, all the earth was covered by 15 cubits which would equate to
about 25 feet (7.6 m). So, with Mt. Everest being the highest point in the
world, that would equate to 29,060 feet (8,860 m) of water above sea level.
Anyone familiar with SCUBA diving knows that ocean water pressure at 33 feet (10
m) equals one atmosphere of air on earth. Fresh water is 34 feet per
atmosphere, so we're not talking about a big difference either way. At 33
feet of water per atmosphere, if we are under 29,060 feet (8,860 m) of water in
the form of vapor in the air before the rain began, this would equate to air
pressure at the earth's surface of approximately 12,775 psi as compared to the
actual earth surface air pressure of a mere 14.5 psi. (29,060 divided by
33 equals about 881. 14.5 psi times 881 equals about 12,775 psi.) It
would be impossible for anything to live under these conditions in that not only
would the air pressure be too great, but as a result of such intense pressure,
the ambient temperature at the earth's surface would be unbearably hot.
And we're not talking triple digits hot; we're probably talking quintuple digits
hot. Anyone with an elementary level of knowledge in physics knows that as
a gas expands under reduced pressure, its temperature decreases, and as a gas
contracts under increased pressure, its temperature increases. This is the
primary reason why air at the earth's surface at higher elevations is generally
cooler than that of lower elevations at the same latitude. Therefore, in
order believe that such a flood actually happened, you would have to believe in
an awful lot of magic. It never ceases to amaze me the things that grown
people will believe!