Noah's Flood solved.

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Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman wondered what could explain the preponderance of flood legends. Their theory: As the Ice Age ended and glaciers melted, a wall of seawater surged from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea.
• During the Ice Age, Ryan and Pitman argue, the Black Sea was an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland.

• About 12,000 years ago, toward the end of the Ice Age, Earth began growing warmer. Vast sheets of ice that sprawled over the Northern Hemisphere began to melt. Oceans and seas grew deeper as a result.

• About 7,000 years ago the Mediterranean Sea swelled. Seawater pushed northward, slicing through what is now Turkey.

• Funneled through the narrow Bosporus, the water hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Each day the Black Sea rose about six inches (15 centimeters), and coastal farms were flooded.

• Seared into the memories of terrified survivors, the tale of the flood was passed down through the generations and eventually became the Noah story.



I had heard this story before but had forgotten it. We can only imagine the terror the survivors must have felt as their world literally disappeared under all that water.
_________________
Carl Sagan:
"I don't want to beLIEve. I want to know."

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I've heard that one before and it doesn't work.


Sure it does. Absolutely.

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I present established scientific facts and you counter with already discounted nonsense


No you didn't. You presented scientists' opinions of what they think happened.

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Creationscience.com? You can't be serious.


Certainly more credible than the sites you visit that obviously have an anti-religious slant (to put it lightly). Just because you don't believe in creation science doesn't mean you should discount everything that is said there.

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This can be a confusing issue.

It certainly can be confusing.

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One thing that puzzles me about the "hard-line" creationsit theory is that they believe man was walking around with dinosuars.

These are my thought on that. God created the animals before man. There was no death until sin entered the world. This would preclude Dinosaurs dying off before man came on the scene (even if you believe in the gap theory). The bible does discuss dinosaurs but calls them dragons. The word dinosaur is a relatively new term that came about in the last couple of hundred years.

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That's a big beast to have been put on the ark.

Two very possible scenarios here. 1) Dinosaurs already died off before the flood, or 2) There were dinosaurs on the ark but they were very small baby dinosaurs. Think about it. Its much easier to feed and care for baby animals that it is for full grown animals (which might be past their prime mating years). My guess is #2 but that's simply my guess.

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Also the ability to construct the ark in a manner that could survive floods and storms of that magnetude. We can't even build wooden boats today that could survive that kind of storm let alone in the suggested short time frame.

The chinese built HUGE wooden boats thousands of years ago. Some were as large if not larger than Noah's. Noah had two huge advantages in building his boat. He had God's help with the boat plan. His boat also did not need to go "anywhere". It just needed to float.

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Was it in fact a worldwide complete submersion flood?

I believe it was complete submersion. I believe the high mountains we see today were caused by the flood and did not exist before the flood.

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My thinking is that the nature of the flood may have been more of rising water and the Ark might have been more of a barge shape. It was probably a huge event but perhaps not completely world wide. If all that watered covered everything, where did it go after? Did all the land masses suddenyl rise up? Did it all gather up back on the poles and freeze?

I understand that what I'm about to say is quite radical. The earth was made to be inhabitable. I suspect that close to 100 % of the earth was inhabible. Today it is less than 3 percent. I also believe that most of the water you see on the earth now was under the earth at one time and it was released by the giant springs that existed and is recorded in the Genesis. Today water covers most all the earth except for those land masses pushed up by the flood and weight of the water upon the earth.

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I don't have the answers but I do think there is some misinterpretation going on. I'm one of those weirdos that think science and the Bible can go hand-in-hand if interpretted correctly. But what exactly "correctly" is, is in fact the question.

You're certainly no weirdo. In fact I once believed in the gap theory myself as it seemed to answer a lot of the questions I had but then I saw too many holes in it. Science and religion can work side by side but I believe that too many people think science can answer way more than it can and its being used too much to push an atheistic philosphy.

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Biblical support for the presence of subterranean water. Gen. 1:6-7 without the words “of the heavens” added as in verses 14-20, uses the word expanse to mean the earth’s crust which divides the surface water from the subterranean waters below. Some other verses that support this interpretation: Psalm 24:1-2, 33:7, 104:3-6, 136:5-9, and II-Peter 3:3-6.

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The rain [Hebrew word used here is geshem which means extreme rain (rather than matar which means normal rain) and is sometimes accompanied by high winds and huge hailstones that can destroy mortared walls-Ezekiel 13:11-13] fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights. (could fountains-rain be a cause and effect sequence?).

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If you want pagan answers to your pagan questions


Pagan?? I think you're starting to lose it,dude. I didn't ask any questions. I presented facts demonstrating the probable source of all the flood myths around the world. It doesn't matter which forum it winds up being posted in, the facts remain the same.

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You presented scientists' opinions of what they think happened.


Scientists do not operate on opinion.

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Certainly more credible than the sites you visit that obviously have an anti-religious slant (to put it lightly). Just because you don't believe in creation science doesn't mean you should discount everything that is said there.


Explain to me the "anti-religious slant" of National Geographic please. Discounting creation science has nothing to do with beLIEf and everything to do with the facts.

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Also the ability to construct the ark in a manner that could survive floods and storms of that magnetude. We can't even build wooden boats today that could survive that kind of storm let alone in the suggested short time frame.


The ark would have been about 450 feet long.A wooden boat that big would not have survived a huge storm without breaking up. It would have taken an army decades to build.

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The Bible does not specifically say how long it took Noah to build the ark. When Noah is first mentioned in Genesis 5:32, he was 500 years old. When Noah entered the ark, he was 600 years old. The time it took to build the ark would depend on how much time had passed between Genesis 5:32 and the time that God commanded Noah to build the ark (Genesis 6:14-21). At the absolute most, it took 100 years.

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Scientists do not operate on opinion.


If I said hypothesis instead of opinion would you understand more easily?

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The total volume of water on Earth is about 1.4 billion cubic kilometers www.space.com, USGS.gov

Volume of a sphere = 4/3 r3 where r=radius

Radius of Earth = 6,378.15 Kilometers

Height of Mt. Everest = 8.85 Kilometers

The volume of water needed to cover Earth to the height of Mt. Everest is approximately the difference in volume of a sphere needed to encompass Mt. Everest and the volume of a sphere the size of the Earth.

Volume of a sphere encompassing the Earth at sea level
= 4/3 (6,378.15 KM)3 = 1,086,825,918,019 KM3

Volume of a sphere encompassing Mt. Everest
= 4/3 (6,378.15 + 8.85 KM)3 = 1,091,388,460,971 KM3

The Difference = 4,530,488,766 KM3

Notice that this is more than 3 TIMES the amount of water presently on Earth.


Where did all the water go?

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The question still remains, to me: where did all the water go? Where did it come from? If it came from under the earth, that would mean there are hollow pockets now where the water was. Unless that is if you're saying it spewed up, than went back to where it came from.


Try to look at it like this: The water was under the earth (and over the earth). But most of it was under the earth. The water was forced up out of the earth and as this happened the earth pushed down replacing where the water was. Many parts of the earth dropped more than others and maybe that is where the continents and higher mountains formed. This could easily explain why there are no pockets where the water was at and also explain how mountains/continents were formed. It might also explain why you can find seashells 15,000 feet up a mountain. Keep in mind I'm just hypothesizing here.

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Now I think we all could except that melting ice caps combined with lower sea levels can easily results in a flood.


I don't think it was the ice caps melting that caused the flood. In fact I tend to believe the ice caps were formed after the flood. There is some evidence to support that the world went through a mini ice age at about the time of the flood or afterward. Maybe this is how the various animals migrated to their now native continents.

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If I get your suggestion, you're asserting that perhaps the earth's surface was somewhat flatter and the weight of the water drove up the land masses?


Yes.

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I couldn't argue for or agaist that for sure. I do know that it takes some amazing pressure to cause earth quakes and cause mountains. But from what I also understand is that is takes quite a bit of time for mountains to form. i'm not entirely sure of that.


Volcanic mountains can form in months. I know that isn't really relevent though. Still yet... water is one of the most powerful natural forces in the world. Imagine what masses amounts of it can do.

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And if that was in fact happening, that would have certainly caused some massive tsunamis. But thinking about that, if the ark was not near shore, then a tsunami may not have even been noticed.


In a global flood there is no shore line

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Another thing that leads me to believe the entire earth was not submerge is that didn't a dove take off and come back with a branch or something? That tree couldn't have survived a flood of that magnitude and if it grew from seedling, than that would have taken at least a year or 2. Were they on the ark that long?


The tree did not survive the flood. Noah and is family was on the ark for 1 year. It rained 40 days and nights but he was on the ark for a year. That would be plenty of time for vegetation to start forming again.


Here is a very good demonstration of how the mechanics of the flood changed the world. Caution: this is a creation website so if that offends you do not visit it.

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview7.html


The main thing to keep in mind here is that nobody living today can fully explain HOW most of the flood/ark/dinosaurs came into being but its important to not restrict your views to what popular science of the day commands. The ark, the flood, and the dinosaurs existed. That's all we know other than what God felt we needed to know through His Word. In the grand scheme of salvation it doesn't matter what you believe on how those things happened. You aren't going to be kept out of heaven because of those beliefs.

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If I get your suggestion, you're asserting that perhaps the earth's surface was somewhat flatter and the weight of the water drove up the land masses?


He needs to learn a little bit about plate tectonics.

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Now I think we all could except that melting ice caps combined with lower sea levels can easily results in a flood.


Exactly. Melting ice sheets resulting in rising sea levels causing the Mediterranean to spill over into the Black Sea turning a fresh water lake into salt water. This has been proven by taking core samples from the sea bed and analyzing them.

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The Himalayan mountain range dramatically demonstrates one of the most visible and spectacular consequences of plate tectonics. When two continents meet head-on, neither is subducted because the continental rocks are relatively light and, like two colliding icebergs, resist downward motion. Instead, the crust tends to buckle and be pushed upward or sideways. The collision of India into Asia 50 million years ago caused the Eurasian Plate to crumple up and override the Indian Plate. After the collision, the slow continuous convergence of the two plates over millions of years pushed up the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau to their present heights. Most of this growth occurred during the past 10 million years. The Himalayas, towering as high as 8,854 m above sea level, form the highest continental mountains in the world. Moreover, the neighboring Tibetan Plateau, at an average elevation of about 4,600 m, is higher than all the peaks in the Alps except for Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, and is well above the summits of most mountains in the United States.

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Above: The collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates has pushed up the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. Below: Cartoon cross sections showing the meeting of these two plates before and after their collision. The reference points (small squares) show the amount of uplift of an imaginary point in the Earth's crust during this mountain-building process.