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The Flood
- Thread starter Chirios
- Start date
ebbixx
New Member
Apparently the flood has been explained. Catastrophic flooding into the Black Sea when the Mediterranean and Sea of Marmara breached the land barrier that is now the Bosporus. At least that's what I took away from the display about applications of ROVs at the Mystic Aquarium (not Christian mystic, but Mystic, Connecticut) suggested this was pretty much confirmed about 10 years ago. See:
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1207/features/noah.htm
http://geology.about.com/library/bl/books/blbookryanpitman.htm
For general outlines.
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1207/features/noah.htm
http://geology.about.com/library/bl/books/blbookryanpitman.htm
For general outlines.
MagnaMater
New Member
Nobody found any undoubted settlements so far and did a real scientific excavation on them, though there should be some, if the dating of the flood is correct. Since this would need a lot of money, it's understandable, people go in for shipwrecks that have nothing to do with the flood; they're usually more spectacular than neolithic housing.
I get only sick when flood-friends come with the Ararat and claim rock is petrified wood, when the rest of the world already knows better...
I get only sick when flood-friends come with the Ararat and claim rock is petrified wood, when the rest of the world already knows better...
for the Black Sea flood, I've seen a NGC documentary, where they've found remains of huts on the sea floor. no big research, but the presence of settlements on the sea floor and the fact that the Black Sea suddenly formed, does explain the flood stories.
Whisperelmwood
New Member
Yes. It's annoying.
Though if you want amusing, yet TL;DR reading, see this debate between a Bible-Believing Theist and an Atheist all about the Flood:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=10675&sid=ffd52dd2788ce216e1b7687bb00f8e56
Suffice to say, the Theist lost.
Though if you want amusing, yet TL;DR reading, see this debate between a Bible-Believing Theist and an Atheist all about the Flood:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=10675&sid=ffd52dd2788ce216e1b7687bb00f8e56
Suffice to say, the Theist lost.
ebbixx
New Member
MagnaMater said:
Undoubted, no... highly suggestive, yes. How often is "undoubted" evidence found for every detail of an event 7,500 years ago? And if Neolithic settlements were found (the search done sounds like it was limited in scope and done relatively speaking, on the cheap) I'm sure other questions would still arise to fill the gaps and provide room for doubt.
In any case, don't expect any such finding, however persuasive and conclusive, to persuade true believers, and especially fundies/literalists or what the following article labels as "conservative christians" for reasons outlined in this article:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_noah.htm
ebbixx
New Member
irmerk said:
Location, location, location. Oh, and scale, plus timing.
Also, the biblical flood story has every appearance of having been cribbed from other Middle East stories, legends and myths that pre-date it. Granted, none of this will persuade the guy with the glazed expression who puts all his money into "documenting" stuff using the wishful thinking methodology so popular in the sideshow realm that is Biblical Archaeology.
Great video, btw.
orpiment99
New Member
When they try to use geology to justify it, yes. They see marine deposits and try to use it as evidence for the flood (wrong type of deposit) without knowing anything about geology. They claim the Grand Canyon somehow validates the flood idea when the entire canyon disproves the idea by strata and drainage pattern. They...URGH!Chirios said:
I'm going to quit before this turns into a long, boring rant.
ebbixx
New Member
Chirios said:
orpiment99 said:
I find that one more entertaining than annoying, imagining all the ways that various strata managed to twist, fold, tear, shred and invert themselves in less than 4,000 years, and with humans present for every one of them. It puts the "fun" in fundamentalist.
And as an added bonus it pretty much eliminates for good any reason I or anyone with half a brain might have to take their other "theories" seriously.
orpiment99
New Member
I hadn't thought of it that way. Yes, you would think they might have noticed all that activity...ebbixx said:
Good point! Not to mention the fact that they couldn't be bothered to learn anything, they just make stuff up or quote AIG.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4SfULoYH8E
Its quite an excellent cometary about Noah's Arc.
The flood and the arc are properly two entirely different stories that has later been merged.
But in no small manner is the ORIGINAL and true story any less interesting, than the fictional one though it didn,´t have a happy ending, its still a story about a family who survived against all odds.
Its quite an excellent cometary about Noah's Arc.
The flood and the arc are properly two entirely different stories that has later been merged.
But in no small manner is the ORIGINAL and true story any less interesting, than the fictional one though it didn,´t have a happy ending, its still a story about a family who survived against all odds.
Chirios said:
More than annoying I would say it is appalling that people actually take literally a fable that is as far from reality as Paris Hilton is far from talent.
But if you're willing to lose a few of your brain cells you should check out Hovind's water canopy "theory" that explains it all. There's videos everywhere on Youtube (i'm not very computer savvy so I don't know how to post a link
.)Forget tax evasion, Hovind should be in prison for crimes against humanity.
Mm, the flood. Now there is a story not even morons should take literally.
To start off with the basics, the stories predate christianity and vary too much to be even from the same source. Practically every old culture has a story about a flood, propably because it has been excessively used as the primary transportation in the past. So this does not compute.
Moving on to geology, conglomerate formations near France. There is a layer, hundreds of meters worth of petrified sand, with huge boulders embedded in it. If this whole formation is rapid, the stones would've sunk to the bottom. But they are not. This thing is also hundreds of meters wide, yet still ample in barnaclefossils. And they are real runners, attaching to solid surfaces and moving with the velocity and grace of a deep fried snail. So in order for them to move in with the masses these fossils show, each layer must have been stationary for years(hundreds of years).
If a worldwide flood would rapidly develop, it would tear the ground away with the watermasses. However we can follow a single line of strata from miles under the oceanfloor and right up the coastal line all the way to the mountains if we so choose. There are no worldwide markings showing that there has been a catastrophical erosion anywhere.
With the strata comes the fossils. The fossils are evenly distributed on the different layers, allegedly laid down by the churning hell that is the violent flood that covered the earth. I suppose it would make sense that the not boyant and heavy animals would sink like a stone and be found on the bottom, whereas your light, boyant, fast or even airborne animals would be found from the higher layers. But oh woe, this is not the case. We find trilobytes on the bottom(no matter how big they are. From 1 meter to centimeters, side by side), dinos in the middle(even the flying&swimming ones, that should escape some waters easily) and mammals on top. These agressive, muddy waters were so cunning, that they ignored all sorts of hydro-sortings(some creatards have proposed the water sorted these fossils), all forms of fluid-dynamics(streamlined animals didn't sink faster, boyancy is not a factor), physics(weight isn't the factor) and other methods you could expect to see.
This watermass sorted the dead animals by DNA. Yes, what humans discovered only recently and barely have mastered the skill, apparently water has known this from the beginning. The fossilized species were sorted by genetic complexity, making it look like there are some genetic markers and physiological signs that the species buried lower were somehow "less evolved", almost looking like ancestral to the ones higher up. There is not a single fossil out of order in these layers, anywhere in the world. The sorting mechanics used was so clever, that dinos are on the same layer with gnawed bones and eggs of the same species(so a bone-fragment from an animal has the same attributes as a whole carcass). There was not a single trilobyte shell, that used it's boyancy chambers to out-float the flood(these things float for weeks after death, btw). No, everything went exactly to it's proper place.
Shall we now move on to flora? Great. The oldest living clonal colony tree, here you go. Age estimates range from 80 000 to million years. Note the minimum age estimate on this puppy. Quite different from your standard YEC-earth.
Considering the requirements these plants usually have, during the nearly a year of floating around:
I think the point with flora has been made, let us move on to fauna.
So, we have the mysterious, never-defined "kinds", that went on board for a glorious joyride with Noah as the genocidal maniac beyond the clouds drowns everything alive. Listing their achievements:
There's the animal side of just enduring the ark. Then let us consider repopulating the earth. We will take as an example, the cheetah. They have a very low sperm count and genetic variability. It is thought that they've gone through a period of inbreeding followed by a genetic bottleneck during the last ice age(some tens of thousands years ago). These problems however are not plaguing other species. Why is this? Why other species have massive genetic variability, since they should have gone through a similar, if not even worse, bottleneck effect during the flood? Not explained anywhere in the lovely crap-piles creatards call "theories". Repopulating a species from two individuals, that takes generations of serious inbreeding and incest.
Another point of genetics worthy of pointing out. 6000-3500 years ago you had one proto-cat. Now you have domesticated little felines without fur, cougars, panthers and lions. Back then you had only one deer-like animal and now you have everything from a rather pathetic looking southern red muntjac to a huge, funky-antlered moose. Explain? Oh THIS IS MICROEVOLUTION, I see. The antlers are a part of microevolution? The enormous size-differences, mane-types, all just micro. I guess macro would require a lion to grow wings. And if animals would really speciate that quickly in nature, we would be listing new species emerging annually from known species.
Ah, much better. I think that about covers what I think about YECs and their precious floods. Anyone thinking the flood stories nothing more than a moral whip saying "be good or god will get ya" is stupid and should be pointed and laughed at.
To start off with the basics, the stories predate christianity and vary too much to be even from the same source. Practically every old culture has a story about a flood, propably because it has been excessively used as the primary transportation in the past. So this does not compute.
Moving on to geology, conglomerate formations near France. There is a layer, hundreds of meters worth of petrified sand, with huge boulders embedded in it. If this whole formation is rapid, the stones would've sunk to the bottom. But they are not. This thing is also hundreds of meters wide, yet still ample in barnaclefossils. And they are real runners, attaching to solid surfaces and moving with the velocity and grace of a deep fried snail. So in order for them to move in with the masses these fossils show, each layer must have been stationary for years(hundreds of years).
If a worldwide flood would rapidly develop, it would tear the ground away with the watermasses. However we can follow a single line of strata from miles under the oceanfloor and right up the coastal line all the way to the mountains if we so choose. There are no worldwide markings showing that there has been a catastrophical erosion anywhere.
With the strata comes the fossils. The fossils are evenly distributed on the different layers, allegedly laid down by the churning hell that is the violent flood that covered the earth. I suppose it would make sense that the not boyant and heavy animals would sink like a stone and be found on the bottom, whereas your light, boyant, fast or even airborne animals would be found from the higher layers. But oh woe, this is not the case. We find trilobytes on the bottom(no matter how big they are. From 1 meter to centimeters, side by side), dinos in the middle(even the flying&swimming ones, that should escape some waters easily) and mammals on top. These agressive, muddy waters were so cunning, that they ignored all sorts of hydro-sortings(some creatards have proposed the water sorted these fossils), all forms of fluid-dynamics(streamlined animals didn't sink faster, boyancy is not a factor), physics(weight isn't the factor) and other methods you could expect to see.
This watermass sorted the dead animals by DNA. Yes, what humans discovered only recently and barely have mastered the skill, apparently water has known this from the beginning. The fossilized species were sorted by genetic complexity, making it look like there are some genetic markers and physiological signs that the species buried lower were somehow "less evolved", almost looking like ancestral to the ones higher up. There is not a single fossil out of order in these layers, anywhere in the world. The sorting mechanics used was so clever, that dinos are on the same layer with gnawed bones and eggs of the same species(so a bone-fragment from an animal has the same attributes as a whole carcass). There was not a single trilobyte shell, that used it's boyancy chambers to out-float the flood(these things float for weeks after death, btw). No, everything went exactly to it's proper place.
Shall we now move on to flora? Great. The oldest living clonal colony tree, here you go. Age estimates range from 80 000 to million years. Note the minimum age estimate on this puppy. Quite different from your standard YEC-earth.
Considering the requirements these plants usually have, during the nearly a year of floating around:
- The seeds would have to stay in the right zone. Most plants are really picky about their habitats and will die if the moisture, temperature, soil composite, ratio of light and shade or rainfall is off by pretty miniscule amounts. Considering most plants capabilities in swimming, it is quite impossible for them to swim in a small circle for a year.
- Not only do they have to swim for a year in the exact spot, but also ignore the water(if they are only floating as seeds). Most seeds start to sprout roots instantly if water is induced.
- Not only do they have to fight their natural urge to try and grow in water, but they also have to resist dying of dehydration in the salt water.
- After soaking for one year in salty water, all the plants will have to now root themselves rapidly to the soil, that is void of nutrients and most likely void of anything they would normally even attach to, since dirt is washed away with the receeding waters.
- Nevermind that you don't have any nutrients, but you will also need to reproduce rapidly to create a stable habitat for the animals soon to be migrating through. This has to be done without food and without the help of insects, that usually do the job.
- Now that you've rooted/grown in the barren, nutrient-void wasteland from a seed after soaking in salty water for a year and reproduced by some unnatural means enough to fill a small patch of land, all the animals that beardy bastard gathered will run rampant through and eat everything green on their path.
I think the point with flora has been made, let us move on to fauna.
So, we have the mysterious, never-defined "kinds", that went on board for a glorious joyride with Noah as the genocidal maniac beyond the clouds drowns everything alive. Listing their achievements:
- So the animals did a glorious wander from all around the world to meet Noah. This migration might've took the slowest creatures several generations to even reach the place.
- Most of these animals are quite cranky with their food supplies. Koalas and pandas for example. They only eat one sort of food, and need quite a bit of it daily.
- This problem is of course only for the traveling plans of herbivorous animals. Carnivores are just perky on the way, eating a wide variety of animals. How lucky of us that god told the herbivores to get cracking in large packs so the two can get there alive.
- Now the animals have been mysteriously arranged in the ark. And the tons and tons and tons and tons of food and clean water. And the eight people who are going to take care of them for the next 300 days. You have to admire the architecture of this place, thousands of animal-kinds, ranging from elephant to crickets. And Noah built a compartment for everyone and built them so that the animals wouldn't eat eachother. Since I don't believe without proof that all the animals fell into some freakish, divine hibernation cyckle for the duration of the trip, they will be needing food and caring daily(this has been seen several times as a counter-argument for the "they'd be burried up to their necks in shit"-argument. Speaking of wich..).
- They'd be burried up to their necks in shit. Eight people taking care of thousands of animals. It would take one person to simply skoop the elephant turds overboard all day. Divided into two groups of four, you have four people distributing food(elephants eat 300kg hay daily, horses 66kg.. and well that is all you need to keep one guy busy for a day ) and the other handling droppings, 800 year old man isn't that good with a fork.
- Most animals would need to move daily. Now picture a wild cougar, lion, cheetah, or a tiger running around on a inside track, ignoring all the scent of flesh permeating the air from all the booths around it. Just keeping it from eating everything with a heartbeat on that boat is a job requiring three to four guys.
- No hay, leaves and grass stays good for a year in a storage(especially with the preservation techniques of the day). Moldy eucalyptus leaves sounds to me like a dead koala. Not to mention carnivores. Unless they dried and smoked and salted the tons and tons of meat they had to bring, they've ran out of meat in the first few weeks. Again, with no evidence of every single carnivore even capable of becoming herbivores for a year, I'm not bying into the "they became plant-eaters, it's a miracle halle-fucking-lujah!"-scene.
- Well, maybe they did get the animals in the ark, managed to prevent them from eating each other, succesfully shoveled the shit out and the food in, kept them in shape in such closed quaters that they were still viable after a year. Now comes the tricky part: They are leaving the ark. All the animals simultaneously, and perhaps the agreed "you shall not eat these guys in the ark"-treaty is lifted. Again, carnivores enjoy the buffee and herbivores run for their asses. They were so succesfull in escaping that again, not a single fossil out of place. Bravo. Take into account the facts that some have suggested that the dinosaurs were on board as well. Not one T-Rex was feeling nippy on the way and took a bite.
There's the animal side of just enduring the ark. Then let us consider repopulating the earth. We will take as an example, the cheetah. They have a very low sperm count and genetic variability. It is thought that they've gone through a period of inbreeding followed by a genetic bottleneck during the last ice age(some tens of thousands years ago). These problems however are not plaguing other species. Why is this? Why other species have massive genetic variability, since they should have gone through a similar, if not even worse, bottleneck effect during the flood? Not explained anywhere in the lovely crap-piles creatards call "theories". Repopulating a species from two individuals, that takes generations of serious inbreeding and incest.
Another point of genetics worthy of pointing out. 6000-3500 years ago you had one proto-cat. Now you have domesticated little felines without fur, cougars, panthers and lions. Back then you had only one deer-like animal and now you have everything from a rather pathetic looking southern red muntjac to a huge, funky-antlered moose. Explain? Oh THIS IS MICROEVOLUTION, I see. The antlers are a part of microevolution? The enormous size-differences, mane-types, all just micro. I guess macro would require a lion to grow wings. And if animals would really speciate that quickly in nature, we would be listing new species emerging annually from known species.
Ah, much better. I think that about covers what I think about YECs and their precious floods. Anyone thinking the flood stories nothing more than a moral whip saying "be good or god will get ya" is stupid and should be pointed and laughed at.
orpiment99
New Member
Daealis said:
Would you happen to have a link for the source material on the conglomerate?
For those who've never seen it, Potholer54 made an excellent video about the geological nonsense of the Flood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sD_7rxYoZY
DarwinsOtherTheory
New Member
I love how hovind asks people to try an experiment that disproves his theory haha.