So I was on a forum where an old earth creationist was posting mentioned that while they accept the old age of the earth they still believed in a literal global flood. So i got thinking just as a mental excercise. What evidence would a global flood have left in an old earth scenario that is diffferent from the young earth scenario. i.e. they accept that all the mountains and many layers of sediment are already millions of years old so there is no nonsense about the flood laying down millions of years of sediment in one year. Also they accept the pre existing fossil record as being millions of years old so there is no bullshit explanations of trying to fit them into living at the same time. Like i said this is just a mental excercise how owuld we falsify a flood in an old earth scenario? The only thing I can specifically think of is that there would be a bottleneck across all land vertebrae species. What geological footprint would a global flood leave in an earth that alreadyhas the millions of years worth of different layers of rock?

If there was a global flood, all that water would still be around here somewhere, in some form.

You're right about the genetic bottleneck and that alone proves there was no global flood when humans existed.

There is not a layer of flood sediment all over the world. Where did all the mud, sand, and loose rock from the flood go ? Did god just make it vanish to test us ? Two hundred years ago, the sincere Christians who went looking for flood sediments discovered the principles of modern geology - but they never did find the flood evidence they were looking for. Nor since.

There are not jumbled-dead-animal "graveyards" on high ground. Remains of most kinds of animals that could walk, gallop, or fly should be found wherever there was local high ground that they tried to take refuge on, as the waters rose, before they ended up drowning there in a heap. Even if the floodwaters washed their dead bodies away, the bones of most should still end up nearby, in a local low spot, where they would have been nicely preserved by silt. Remember, everything died at the same time (according to the floodists) even the scavengers who could have disturbed the carcasses and scattered the bones. So there should be many more remains than we have found anywhere.

There is not a layer of peat or plant matter all over the world. What happened to all the mass of plants that died, on every inch of land ? What would really happen when a jungle like the Amazon were drowned and covered in mud ? It wouldn't all rot away without a trace; it would be preserved by anoxic conditions under the thick mud. And flooded plant layers should be even more prevalent than the possible animal remains - because plants cover so much of the land surface, and of course, they couldn't try to run away from the floodwaters.

The geological footprint that would be left would be a global flood deposit that dated back to x years ago, whatever date they decide they want this flood to have happened.

Doesn't matter if it was 4,700 years or 10,000 years there would be an observable deposit from an event of that magnitude.

The water is a big problem, beyond there not being enough of it to cover the landscape they have to admit was present the fact that they accept much of the geologic record means they can't deny the salinity of the ocean and the problem a massive influx of freshwater would cause to aquatic life (i.e. it dies off).

So OEC flood apologetics suffers from pretty much the same problems as the YEC flood garbage once you exclude the multiple sedimentary/non-sedimantary layers in the geologic record.

A global flood would leave evidence of:

- higher salinity of land-locked bodies of water
- hydrologically sorted beds of deposited & debris
- geological disruption due to huge tides
- evidence that the atmospheric concentration of more volatile gases was higher prior to the flood (the thickness of Earth's atmosphere is a function of gravity. Fill some of the intervening space with kilometres of water and quite a bit of the atmosphere will boil away into space)

reddix wrote:If there was a global flood, all that water would still be around here somewhere, in some form.

One of the explanations I've read is that the Earth used to be flatter. After the flood the mountains rose higher, and the oceans sunk, so the water had somewhere to flow to.

Needless to say there isn't a scrap of evidence to support this, and the problems caused by such massive geological changes are simply handwaved away.

xrayzed wrote:

reddix wrote:If there was a global flood, all that water would still be around here somewhere, in some form.

One of the explanations I've read is that the Earth used to be flatter. After the flood the mountains rose higher, and the oceans sunk, so the water had somewhere to flow to.

Needless to say there isn't a scrap of evidence to support this, and the problems caused by such massive geological changes are simply handwaved away.

I think rather than 'flatter', it would have needed to have been flat. Then the water could have poured off the edges of the earth!

Such deference of logic and intellect to preconceived bullshit deserves to be mocked if nothing else than to provoke the believer to confront their belief.

Young Earth or Old Earth, the idea of a biblical global flood is fucking stupid and lacking in any support from reality.

Just for fun I did the math. If the earth were completely flat it would be covered in 2.62 kilometers of water. Slightly less since I didn't adjust for the added surface area of being 2.62 kilometers higher, but meh.

Dudely wrote:Just for fun I did the math. If the earth were completely flat it would be covered in 2.62 kilometers of water. Slightly less since I didn't adjust for the added surface area of being 2.62 kilometers higher, but meh.

Which causes creationists some interesting questions.

If a flattened Earth explains how the water could cover the entire surface, and that results an a 2.6 km ocean, how did it manage to deposit 4.7 km of sediment in North Dakota's Williston Basin?

Ironic that I posted this topic a couple of days ago, look what I just found lol
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1045033
Another hoax or something else?

Here's one skeptical take on the story http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/04/27/2280442.aspx.

I sez bollix. I'd need a shitload more data, such as who did the C14 testing, how have they confirmed it's the exact size if it hasn't been thoroughly excavated, how do they explain the fact the rest of Turkey remained above water during the purported time of the flood, why is there fresh straw inside the supposed ark, etc.

A few pictures and a claim "we are 99.9% sure" isn't quite rigorous enough for me.

The only way the flood could of happened would be due to a smoothening out of all the land masses in the world to allow the water on the earth to be able to cover everything. Essentially the earth would need to turn into a round smooth ball with a water skin. However such movement of the earth's crust would a) leave a ridiculous amount of evidence behind to show such movement and b) release so much thermal energy (both by friction and from under the crust) that the water on the earth would evaporate into space.

Epic fail on all counts.

Net Traveller wrote:Ironic that I posted this topic a couple of days ago, look what I just found lol
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1045033
Another hoax or something else?

"Discovered" by evangelical explorers. Yeah, that's independent.
So wooden rooms, on a mountain, therefore boat? WTF? I mean, why would anyone in the lovely warm climate of the middle east ever want to build a cabin in the hills? That's just crazy. The only sensible explanation is that it's from a giant boat that got washed up by a flud that covered the world up to (apparently) 400m above sea level, but left all the civilizations on the planet untouched.
And as it's been carbon dated to 4800yo or 1200yo, it must be the ark!

Their logic is flawless.
Flawlessly absent.

Wouldn't want logic to get in the way of a press release that will be remembered as a fact by religious adherents long after it has been firmly debunked.

HughMcB wrote:The only way the flood could of happened would be due to a smoothening out of all the land masses in the world to allow the water on the earth to be able to cover everything. Essentially the earth would need to turn into a round smooth ball with a water skin. However such movement of the earth's crust would a) leave a ridiculous amount of evidence behind to show such movement and b) release so much thermal energy (both by friction and from under the crust) that the water on the earth would evaporate into space.

Epic fail on all counts.

Yes, think of the Himalayas. In about 40 million years, the mountain building episode which began when India first crashed into Asia has lifted up a whole range of 8000meter peaks. And new peaks are still rising, at a few centimeters per year, which is actually quite speedy for mountain building. The whole area is seismically active (look at the 6.9 Tibetan quake on April 14, 2010) because rocks don't "like" to move out of the way. They don't move, they stay locked in place until the pressure builds up enough, and then they break loose in an earthquake.

Now, imagine compressing the time scale of Everest rising into a few thousand years post-flood. Imagine forces pushing up 8000meter peaks in a time span, not of 40 million years, or 10 million years, or 1 million years, but 4 thousand years. It would mean a ceaseless barrage of major earthquakes. If the earthquake strength remained the same, on average, there would need to be about 1000 times as many to produce the same total rock movement. How about a magnitude 6+ quake, every day of every year, for a ballpark figure.

Ha, I think we would notice if the Himalayan region had a mag.6 quake every day in order to raise it from sea-level post-flood.

hotshoe wrote:

HughMcB wrote:The only way the flood could of happened would be due to a smoothening out of all the land masses in the world to allow the water on the earth to be able to cover everything. Essentially the earth would need to turn into a round smooth ball with a water skin. However such movement of the earth's crust would a) leave a ridiculous amount of evidence behind to show such movement and b) release so much thermal energy (both by friction and from under the crust) that the water on the earth would evaporate into space.

Epic fail on all counts.

Yes, think of the Himalayas. In about 40 million years, the mountain building episode which began when India first crashed into Asia has lifted up a whole range of 8000meter peaks. And new peaks are still rising, at a few centimeters per year, which is actually quite speedy for mountain building. The whole area is seismically active (look at the 6.9 Tibetan quake on April 14, 2010) because rocks don't "like" to move out of the way. They don't move, they stay locked in place until the pressure builds up enough, and then they break loose in an earthquake.

Now, imagine compressing the time scale of Everest rising into a few thousand years post-flood. Imagine forces pushing up 8000meter peaks in a time span, not of 40 million years, or 10 million years, or 1 million years, but 4 thousand years. It would mean a ceaseless barrage of major earthquakes. If the earthquake strength remained the same, on average, there would need to be about 1000 times as many to produce the same total rock movement. How about a magnitude 6+ quake, every day of every year, for a ballpark figure.

Ha, I think we would notice if the Himalayan region had a mag.6 quake every day in order to raise it from sea-level post-flood.

1) Maybe the earthquakes cancelled each other out.
2) Maybe they did but didn't write about it.
3) Maybe God intervened with a miracle.

Creation science (AKA making-shit-up-ology) is fun and easy.

Ok thanx for all the answer guys, Just one more wuestion what a worldwide flood sediment look like from an old earth persepctive? remember our old earth creationist friend accept that the multiple strata of rock and mountains existed already prior to the flood, so what would a flood sediment that lay on top of billions of years worth of cambrian, metazoic, etc etc, rock look like?
Or more simply what would A one years worth of global flood sediment on top of billions of years worth of rock layers already present look like?

Depends on what you define Global and Flood as.

There was certainly flooding on a global scale when the glaciers melted ending the previous ice age.

defien global and flood as what there bible says, a huge flood that had enough water to cover every mountain in the world which they acknowledge were already present and did not form during this flood. the waters then receded, such evidence would look like-------?