greenblue wrote:
1. Over 200 myths exist from civilisations not aware of Biblical accounts of “Noah’s Flood” that speak of a universal flood (i.e. one that covered the whole earth). These myths often demonstrate a high degree of conformity to the Biblical account.
The fact that there have been lots of big floods in multiple areas of the world, many of which the residents saw as catastrophic or 'world-covering,' does not support the idea of a single, world-wide flood which is referenced by everyone. I have been in a 30-year flood, and it seemed pretty damn huge; I can only imagine what a century or a millenium flood would look like, but elaborated cultural memory of localized millenium floods is a far more parsimonius interpretation than a single global flood because of the underlying conditions and assumptions needed for either hypothesis. In other words, 'flood myths are common because floods are common.'
Furthermore, the supposed congruence of the many flood myths is false. The claim of a single family of eight surviving and preserving samples of every type of terrestrial life is pretty unique. In addition, there are many cultures which
do not have flood myths; do you think that they just forgot?
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2. The world’s population would have been drastically and unsustainably much larger (by simple statistical computation) if a large percentage of it had not been “eliminated”. Humanity itself has seen to that since then by means of war (primarily) and ignorance leading to disease.
There is no reason to suppose that human populations were unsustainably growing before the advent of agriculture. It is far more likely that we, like every other species on the planet, lacked the capacity to exceed our carrying capacity long-term for any local environment (with the exception of the population growth that occured through the colonization of new territories) until we had the technological capacity to produce enough food to keep more than an average of two of our offspring alive to reproductive age.
What is far more unlikely is the idea that the entire human population started from two human beings a few thousand years ago and was carried on by their incestuous children, and then bottlenecked again shortly thereafter with another incestuous set of decendants after the arc.
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3. The Bible says it happened.
So? This argument is only valid for people who already believe in the bible, and therefore the flood, thus begging the question.
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1. ‘Noah’s Ark would have been discovered if it was real.’ No! Not even gopher wood (the ark’s construction material is guaranteed to survive that long (4000 years).
Who makes this claim? What I hear far more often are false claims that the ark has been found, which subsequently must be debunked over and over again.
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2. The animals could not have fitted inside.’ Yes, they could. There was not as much variety within species then as there is now, and many of the representatives would have been immature and therefore quite small.
Even with limited variety and immature specimens, the physical volume of animals required would exceed the capacity of the ark to carry them. This argument simply displays an inability to grasp the vast number of acutal species on the planet.
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3. ‘There would not have been enough food.’ For many animals, even now, to be enclosed in a dark space (the Ark had one small window on the upper deck), darkness inside would mean rapid hibernation with consequent saving of energy. Their small size would also have been beneficial.
Most species of animals do not have the capacity to hibernate, especially in their infant form. Even assuming that the animals were all vegetarians, claiming that they were mostly infants means that there must have been stores of milk for the mammals to live on, requiring freezing to keep it fresh for that long (no, cows could not supply milk for that diversity of animals).
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4. ‘Even if there were dinosaurs around then, they would not have fitted.’ In fact, most dinosaurs were quite small. Although some were much larger as adults, it is most likely God would have chosen small or young dinosaurs to lead on board.
If you add even young tyranosaurs, apatosaurs, stegosaurs, etc to the volume of even the extant species reduced to undefined 'kinds,' the idea of fitting two of everything on board only becomes that much more rediculous.
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5. ‘The ark would have been too small.’ Have you actually envisaged the size of the Ark? 450m long, 50m wide and three decks high! Now, work out how big your local Woolworths is! A regular supermarket would be 70m by 40m: one eighth the size of one deck. And the stocks that place can hold!
eyyeaah. Again, you have no concept of how many types of animals are actually out there.
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6. ‘The animals would have eaten each other.’ The Bible records the animals were plant eaters before the flood, as were humans. Only after the Flood did God allow carnivorous traits to emerge.
Wait, isn't the standard creationist schill that carnivorism emerged after the fall of Eden?
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1. Man lived in a warm lush environment, home to a huge variety of plant matter, a plentiful supply for the huge numbers of animals, including large dinosaurs.
Hoookay - I guess the world was flat at that time.
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2. As no rain had fallen prior to this, others laughed when Noah said that rain would come and flood the earth. They ignored him.
And water didn't evaporate, and the plants didn't need rainfall to survive.
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3. The Flood swept over the land. The Bible says the “fountains of the deep were opened up” - we do have vast underground stores of water even today - sweeping huge numbers of animals into “cemeteries” of dead creatures (origin of the fossil bones remains and oil deposits) and forests of trees (coal deposits). Nothing else can explain the sudden capture of whole animals and trees perfectly preserved other than that they were buried under tons of mud and rock suddenly deposited over them to prevent decay. Huge chasms were formed by the rising floods; creating canyons not unlike the Grand Canyon. There is evidence of this happening quickly even in recent times - the Mt St Helens eruption caused similar events on a smaller scale in just 16 hours after the initial eruption!
And the center of the earth was cold enough to allow for enough underground water to cover the entire surface of the earth.
And, yeah - floods happen. We already covered that. They just don't necessarily happen globally. As for large canyons, uniformitarianism (ie, multiple small floods rather than one large flood) not only explain them perfectly, but can be observed and measured in progress. The Grand Canyon, for instance, is still eroding.
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4. The landscape subsequent to the Flood would be vastly different as would the climactic changes. The likely computer scenario suggests the earth would have been swept into a mini ice age, eliminating many of the animals not already killed by the Flood. Genesis 9:3 states that God lifted the prohibition on eating meat after the Flood. People and animals deprived of easy sources of vegetation would have turned to other food sources and thus developed carnivorous eating habits.
Why? Same planet, same amount of water, same sun. Without plate tectonics, currents, volcanics, and atmospheric changes to explain variation in the climate, there's no reason to suppose that a pre-flood planet would be any differernt climactically from a post-flood planet.
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The effects of the Flood can not be adequately explained by the idea of countless millennia of evolution. It happened.
Argument by decree. No response necessary.
There are lots of other arguments against a global flood, but I'll spare the reading audience at this point.
18 Jun 2010, 3:48 pm
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