Global Flood

[otseng]

One of the significant parts of the Creation Model (CM) is that a world-wide flood occurred. This flood covered the entire world. Naturally, many questions arise out of this:

How can a world-wide flood feasibly happen?
Where did all the water come from?
Where did all the water go?
What significance does it have on the CM?
What evidence are there of a global flood?

[Bro Dave]

You might enjoy reading this rendering of the origin of the story of the Great Flood.

THE FLOODS IN MESOPOTAMIA
The river dwellers were accustomed to rivers overflowing their banks at certain seasons; these periodic floods were annual events in their lives. But new perils threatened the valley of Mesopotamia as a result of progressive geologic changes to the north.
For thousands of years after the submergence of the first Eden the mountains about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the northwest and northeast of Mesopotamia continued to rise. This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley. These spring floods grew increasingly worse so that eventually the inhabitants of the river regions were driven to the eastern highlands. For almost a thousand years scores of cities were practically deserted because of these extensive deluges.
Almost five thousand years later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to one of them to abandon the effort, to let the whole world drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.
The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth’s surface are universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a universal flood since life was established on Urantia. The only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had begun to appear.
But Noah really lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He kept a written record of the days of the river’s rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.
These floods completed the disruption of Andite civilization. With the ending of this period of deluge, the second garden was no more. Only in the south and among the Sumerians did any trace of the former glory remain.
The remnants of this, one of the oldest civilizations, are to be found in these regions of Mesopotamia and to the northeast and northwest. But still older vestiges of the days of Dalamatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden lies submerged under the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.

UB paper 78.

Bro Dave

[2 and 92]

One problem with the hydro-plate model not mentioned yet…

Water in contact with basalt or granite absorbs large amounts of mineral salts such as copper, iron etc… The ejection of such mineral rich waters would cause massive amounts of acid rain and throw the salt balance of the oceans (small seas in this model) off so badly as to kill all fish life. The Iron settling out of this post flood sea as it combines with oxygen would have drastically reduced the available oxygen in the atmosphere, killing those in the ark, and pulled all oxygen out of the oceans waters, killing any life needing oxygen there too. There should be a thick layer of this iron and metal rich layer at the bottom of the oceans too. There is not.

[2 and 92]

One of the significant parts of the Creation Model (CM) is that a world-wide flood occurred. This flood covered the entire world. Naturally, many questions arise out of this:

How can a world-wide flood feasibly happen?

[/quote]

It can’t.

Where did all the water come from?

Nowhere, it was just a story.

Where did all the water go?

It was just a story… A parable to make a theological point.

What significance does it have on the CM?

It is one of the points that falsified the CM over two hundred years ago. Please people, quit beating the dead horse now, it isn’t going any further.

What evidence are there of a global flood?

If you wish to be scientific you are asking the wrong question. The question should be “What falsifying evidence is there for my flood model?” If your model is falsified by any point it cannot be true no matter how many other things you try to prop it up with. Creationism was falsified over two hundred years ago, come up with a new and better theory or people will never stop laughing at you.

[Jose]

If you wish to be scientific you are asking the wrong question. The question should be “What falsifying evidence is there for my flood model?” If your model is falsified by any point it cannot be true no matter how many other things you try to prop it up with. Creationism was falsified over two hundred years ago, come up with a new and better theory or people will never stop laughing at you.

You make an important point: we should address this scientifically. If you work back a few pages (near the top of p7 of this thread), you'll come to a point where we digressed from the initial questions of the thread, and into a series of predicitons based on the Flood Model. We did so because the discussion from Should Creationism be Taught in Classrooms led to the idea that the things taught in science classrooms should be taught scientifically. Because the Flood is an important aspect of Biblical history, many think that it should be taught...so, I thought, we should evaluate the model formally.

We've somewhat lost track of the exact predictions, since some of those that I suggested needed to be modified. We haven't gone back and collated the predictions into a single list. I should probably do that.

The point, however, is that in a forum like this, there is significant value to listening to the various views, and thinking about ways to bridge the gaps among us. The creationists want to see their views treated scientifically; here we have an ideal forum in which to do so. Let's look at their model closely (and dispassionately), as you have suggested, and see what predictions it makes, and whether those predictions are met.

[Nyril]

If you wish to be scientific you are asking the wrong question. The question should be “What falsifying evidence is there for my flood model?” If your model is falsified by any point it cannot be true no matter how many other things you try to prop it up with.

Not so. This applies only in the instances of natural laws (for instance, if you find a way to violate the law of universal gravitational attraction, the law itself is instantly degraded into a Theory). Quantum Theory has a great deal wrong with it, mostly when you try to apply it to any macro systems, Relativity fails when you apply it to the scales that Quantum Theory is best for. Now, although I may have named the wrong pairs of theories that are wrong, a new theory (String Theory) is being written to try and combine the previous two, and correct the errors.

[2 and 92]

If you wish to be scientific you are asking the wrong question. The question should be “What falsifying evidence is there for my flood model?” If your model is falsified by any point it cannot be true no matter how many other things you try to prop it up with.

Not so. This applies only in the instances of natural laws (for instance, if you find a way to violate the law of universal gravitational attraction, the law itself is instantly degraded into a Theory). Quantum Theory has a great deal wrong with it, mostly when you try to apply it to any macro systems, Relativity fails when you apply it to the scales that Quantum Theory is best for. Now, although I may have named the wrong pairs of theories that are wrong, a new theory (String Theory) is being written to try and combine the previous two, and correct the errors.

Wrong, a theory can never become a law and a law can never become a theory. They are two separate entities in science.

A law is a short description of how things act in specific and narrow set of circumstances. The laws of motion describe how objects move in space. The laws of thermodynamics describe how heat moves in a system.

A theory describes how a system works. It is very broad and covers many aspects of systems.

Newton described how objects acted in the Laws of Motion; Einstein described why they move like they do in the Theory of Relativity.

If a law is proven false it is abandon. It does not become a theory.

If a theory is proven false it is abandon. It does not become a hypothesis.

[axeplayer]

You might enjoy reading this rendering of the origin of the story of the Great Flood.

THE FLOODS IN MESOPOTAMIA
The river dwellers were accustomed to rivers overflowing their banks at certain seasons; these periodic floods were annual events in their lives. But new perils threatened the valley of Mesopotamia as a result of progressive geologic changes to the north.
For thousands of years after the submergence of the first Eden the mountains about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the northwest and northeast of Mesopotamia continued to rise. This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley. These spring floods grew increasingly worse so that eventually the inhabitants of the river regions were driven to the eastern highlands. For almost a thousand years scores of cities were practically deserted because of these extensive deluges.
Almost five thousand years later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to one of them to abandon the effort, to let the whole world drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.
The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth’s surface are universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a universal flood since life was established on Urantia. The only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had begun to appear.
But Noah really lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He kept a written record of the days of the river’s rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.
These floods completed the disruption of Andite civilization. With the ending of this period of deluge, the second garden was no more. Only in the south and among the Sumerians did any trace of the former glory remain.
The remnants of this, one of the oldest civilizations, are to be found in these regions of Mesopotamia and to the northeast and northwest. But still older vestiges of the days of Dalamatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden lies submerged under the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.

UB paper 78.

Bro Dave

Thats interesting Dave....i've never heard that argument of the origin of the flood....ever. I just think it's amusing how you have absolutely NO pysical evidence to support this wild proposal. you talk about the date 5000 BC as the date of the mountains rising and the floods increasing, and then you say that 5000 years later is when the story of the flood was proposed by Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity. 5000 years later, however, would settle around 1 or 2 BC (if you're estimating the date of the floods increasing). This is around the time that Jesus was born. Around that time, there was no more Babylonia, and there were definately no active Hewbrew priests, much less priests in Babylonian captivity. I think you just made this story up. I'm also curious as to where you got the story of Noah going to neighboring river settlements and telling them to make their houses of wood into boats. Sounds to me like someone is getting a little desperate to prove the Flood wrong.

[Jose]

You might enjoy reading this rendering of the origin of the story of the Great Flood.

THE FLOODS IN MESOPOTAMIA
(see Bro Dave's post)

UB paper 78.

Bro Dave

Thats interesting Dave....i've never heard that argument of the origin of the flood....ever. I just think it's amusing how you have absolutely NO pysical evidence to support this wild proposal. you talk about the date 5000 BC as the date of the mountains rising and the floods increasing, and then you say that 5000 years later is when the story of the flood was proposed by Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity. 5000 years later, however, would settle around 1 or 2 BC (if you're estimating the date of the floods increasing). This is around the time that Jesus was born. Around that time, there was no more Babylonia, and there were definately no active Hewbrew priests, much less priests in Babylonian captivity. I think you just made this story up. I'm also curious as to where you got the story of Noah going to neighboring river settlements and telling them to make their houses of wood into boats. Sounds to me like someone is getting a little desperate to prove the Flood wrong.

It sounds to me as if this becomes a battle of opposing books: Bible vs Urantia. It might be interesting to go at it the other way, and start by looking at the world itself. If we collect data from the world, and then try to figure out what it tells us with no preconceived notion of what that might be, where do we end up?

[YEC]

It sounds to me as if this becomes a battle of opposing books: Bible vs Urantia. It might be interesting to go at it the other way, and start by looking at the world itself. If we collect data from the world, and then try to figure out what it tells us with no preconceived notion of what that might be, where do we end up?

Then again a post like that should come as no surprise from you...after all your pre-conceived ideas that flood never happened is getting in your way...as well as the pre-conceived idea that we once used to be apes and the bible is wrong concerning Adam and Eve.

You see Jose, the YEC's have collected data...LOTS OF IT...is it their fault if it disagrees with your world view and agrees with scripture?

Personally I don't think so.

[Jose]

You see Jose, the YEC's have collected data...LOTS OF IT...is it their fault if it disagrees with your world view and agrees with scripture?

Personally I don't think so.

Uhhh....you know, we've asked you many times to show us the data. What is it? You've given us long lists of acronyms and word groups, but many others in this forum have presented the data that prove those things to be invalid. Where's the YEC data? If there actually is data that forces us to conclude that YEC belief is right, then we should hear it, and we will all agree that the YEC view is correct. You'd think that, over the last 150 years or so, someone would have come up with some.

Now, rather than just call me stupid (which may well be correct), or accuse me of being so closed-minded as to refuse to look at what you tell us (certainly, there are those who behave this way), why don't you present it simply to me (again?) so that I can know what you base your argument upon. Obviously, I still don't get it. Try to convince me.