What are some proofs against the Biblical flood?

Answer 1

Answer

• The atmospheric pressure is 14.7 lbs per square inch at sea level. If the entire atmosphere was composed of nothing but water vapor, it could only condense to the weight of 14.7 lbs of water above a square inch. There are 8.4 lbs of water in a gallon. Two gallons of water weighs MORE than 14.7 lbs, and there are 231 cubic inches in a gallon. So an entire atmosphere of nothing but (super saturated) water vapor could only condense into a column less than 462 inches high (two gallons) of liquid water. That is a little under 40 feet. Not NEARLY enough to inundate the earth--and at that everything above it would asphyxiate in hard vacuum before the surface water froze from lack of atmospheric insulation. Water vapor is actually about 37% LIGHTER than dry air, so factoring that actually yields only 25 feet of water covering the earth--at most.

• The greatest rainfall ever recorded was 1.5 inches per minute, or 2160 inches per day. This unsustainable rate would yield 7200 feet of rain over 40 days, still not enough to cover any peaks 8000 feet or higher. Besides, as noted it cannot possibly rain that much everywhere at once. Water has to come from someplace. Rain is the result of one moist warm air mass meeting a cold air mass, so the greatest rainfall occurs along the boundary. If it rained everywhere simultaneously, it would have to quit once 25 feet of precipitation had been reached--however long that took--as noted above.

• Rain comes primarily from the sea and would drain back into the sea.

  The Bible vaguely mentions water from the deep - under the earth - but there is no evidence of any such water ever existed. Water from near earth's mantle would also possess mantle heat. It would vaporize to steam as it reached the surface, just as hot springs, fumeroles, and volcanic eruptions emit steam.

  Nor could we say where this huge volume of water went at the end of the Flood. Where is it?

• The Judaic Flood story can be seen to be based on the Gilgamesh Flood. So, if either story is correct, it must be the older one. Therefore the Sumerian gods must be regarded as the true gods, not the God of the Jews.

• There is also no evidence of a mass-extinction 4400 odd years ago in the fossil record. It is also genetically virtually impossible for a species to bounce back from a handful of members, let alone all life on earth. They would all suffer what's known as a genetic bottleneck because there are insufficient members of the species for natural selection to sustain their biological complexity over long periods of time.

• No genuine archaeological evidence has been found, of any great flood event during the last 5,000 years, or of any global flood in the past half billion years.

• Similarly, populations in the American South 5000 years ago--long before the flood--begin cultivating sunflowers and marsh elders, and continue to do so long after the flood is said to have occurred. People speaking a variation of Algonquin settled in North Eastern Canada 5000 years ago, surviving until modern times. Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump in Alberta was first used by the Blackfoot tribe 6000 years ago. Tribal members drove buffalo between rocky cairns off a cliff, and continued doing so up to first contact with Europeans. Flood creationists must have us believe neither the cairns nor cliff were damaged by the flood, and that people and buffalo completely eliminated by the flood migrated back to Alberta to reestablish the same practices of their long dead, unrelated predecessors (NOT ancestors). Mesoamericans develop maize about 6000 years ago, while Peruvians develop beans and squash. Flood creationists want us to believe the people who developed these agricultural products were utterly destroyed by the Noachian Flood, and completely unrelated people bearing uncanny skeletal similarities migrated back to the same region shortly thereafter with seeds saved for maize and squash--not used at that time anywhere else in the world--to reestablish the preceding agricultural practices.

• Flood creationists apparently want us to believe citizens of Babel migrated to North America, South America, Australia, Europe, China, India, and elsewhere to adopt certain unique customs and practices, who were subsequently utterly destroyed, only to be rapidly replaced by completely unrelated descendants of Noah to the same geographic regions post-flood and adopt identical customs, cultural practices, art and architectural styles, and distinguishing skeletal features.

• The ancients knew that animals would drown, but they apparently didn't know that plants would too. So, the Bible did not require Noah to collect seeds and spoors from millions of species and subspecies of trees, plants, ferns, grasses and so on, documenting exactly where each came from, then going back after the Flood to plant, water and care for each seed until it was viable.

• No species unique to one geologic strata are found in layers above or below that strata. Instead, both flora and fauna are sequenced to their respective layers based on the epoch in which they lived. While the joke about flowering plants and trees all running to higher ground (Cenozoic strata) to escape encroaching Noachian flood water is amusing, the notion of hydrologic sorting of taxa itself doesn't hold water. Plants and animals of wide ranging volumes and densitites are found in all strata. The distinguishing characteristics are the relative ages--NOT any features subject to sorting by random flood action. Moreover, geologic strata are often separated by undisturbed layers of volcanic ash, which is fortunate because these ash layers generally contain isotopes which reveal absolute ages

• Modern shipwrights constructed an enormous (400 ft) wooden vessel, the Wyoming, using the best science available to 20th century engineers. They failed to properly account for the mild twisting to which this ship would be subjected and it foundered and its 14 member crew was lost. Flood creationists want us to believe that Noah, having never built a ship in his life, constructed a much larger wooden vessel on his first attempt which withstood cataclysmic heaving seas capable of carving meandering Grand Canyon channels and deposting enormous quantities of sediment around the globe. (Argument credited to Bill Nye vs Ken Ham, February 4th, 2014).

• How did all Australian marsupials happen to end up back in Australia, the land of their origin, while leaving no trace of their subsequent migration from Mt. Ararat in the Middle East?

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Most of the sedimentary and tectonic processes were complete for all practical purposes millions of years before the Biblical period - or more accurately, these processes are so slow in human terms that the coastlines of the world we see now are not significantly different from their form 3000 years ago.

There is insufficient water on the planet for a 'Waterworld' style transgression.

The highest sea-levels were in the Cretaceous, approaching 100 million years ago, during a long warm period, and reached about 450ft above present level. This was many millions of years before Man appeared on Earth, and the oceans and continents were of different shapes and arrangements than now.

The Noah legend is certainly odd, and may have been oral-tradition legend based on some major but purely-local flood that devastated a particular tribe, but a total inundation is just not possible. Equally legendary is the notion of a vast, natural underground resevoir or aquifer capable of holding such a huge volume of water. So where has the water gone since the end of the Cretaceous 65Ma? Simple: it is held as ice on mountains and the polar land-ice sheets; and even more was held thus during the glacial phases of the present Ice Age! (Note: land-ice only. Melting the Earth's sea-ice such as the North Polar Ice-Cap alone, would not change the sea-level.)

All you need is one verified refutation to debunk the myth and they are numerous. For instance the Egyptians, who were flooded all the time, were not wiped out nor do they even record a flood during that time.

There is also the problem of genetic diversity. No species can survive with a single couple. if their children mate the progeny will quickly become so mutated they can't be viable parents.

Regardless of your faith it must be acknowledged that the flood myth is exactly that; as any educated theologian will tell you.

Answer 2

A few ideas:

• The Judaic Flood story can be seen to be based on the Gilgamesh Flood. So, if either story is correct, it must be the older one. Therefore the Sumerian gods must be regarded as the true gods, not the God of the Jews.
  
• No genuine archaeological evidence has been found, of any great flood event during the last 5,000 years.
  
• The Flood would have no purpose unless it flooded the entire earth to the mountain tops, but there is not enough water on earth to flood every continent to the top of the highest mountains. Forty days of the heaviest rain imaginable would scarecely make a difference and, in any case, rain comes from the sea and would quicky drain back into the sea.
  
  The Bible vaguely mentions water from the deep - under the earth - but there never was any such water. In any case it would have to defy the laws of gravity to reach the surface, and to stay there for a whole year.
  
  Nor could we say where this huge volume of water went to at the end of the Flood. Where is it?
  
  
• We now know from Egyptian records that the Egyptian civilisation continued undisturbed right through the period when the Flood was supposed to have occurred. Not only does that prove that the Flood did not reach Egypt (and therefore Africa), but one must wonder why Noah didn't simply walk to safety in Egypt rather than going to the trouble of building an ark and collecting millions of animals, birds, lizards, insects and so on.
  
• The ancients knew that animals would drown, but they apparently didn't know that plants would too. So, the Bible did not require Noah to collect seeds and spoors from millions of species and subspecies of trees, plants, ferns, grasses and so on, documenting exactly where each came from, then going back after the Flood to plant, water and care for each seed until it was viable.
  
• The Bible says that Noah lived for a further 350 years after the Flood. Having personally talked to God, been rescued from the greatest disaster in human history, and being the direct ancestor of every living person, it is inconceivable that no written record exists of the subsequent life of this great man. No one sought Noah's advice, and even the worship of the God who had saved Noah had totally disappeared by the time of Abraham, who knew nothing of his supposedly still-living ancestor.