On the evidence of a global, half-year long flood

[Cheetah]

What evidence do you need?

To validate a global flood around 4000 BCE?

Well, lets define the hypotheses first:

H0: Around 6000 BP the world was almost like today. With the Older Peron transgression the Neolithic Subpluvial came to an end, an intense aridification set in, and glaciers and ice caps melted a bit, so sea levels were about 4 meters higher than the 20th Century average.

H1: Around 6000 BP a sudden, global flood lasting roughly half a year ended up entirely covering all landmasses on the entire planet. The waters then receded and we ended up with sea levels at the same height as in H0.

Do correct me if my H1 hypothesis isn't accurate with what you would be arguing. And I assume we aren't including the Ark story for this?


Anyway, if the H1 hypothesis is accurate enough, we can proceed to list the facts we would need to validate it.

1.
The first thing that strikes me is: What happened to all the ice? If the planet was covered in water, what happened with all the glaciers and ice caps?

If they melted and became part of the water for the flood, then they would also have to freeze again afterwards. Of couse, in theory, a glacier could form where the old one left off, and continue to dig out the valley it was going through. That would be rather natural actually, considering that the same place was suitable to a glacier before the flood.

However, this would leave us with something of a conundrum: How could the massive glaciers and ice caps of today form within the span of just 6000 years? And why do they contain layers matching over a hundred thousand years of history? This (among oher problems) makes it rather doubtful that the glaciers could have completely melted and refrozen during the last 6000 years.

We're then left with the possibility that the glaciers and ice caps did not melt. But with water completely covering them, they would certainly have started to float!

This would suggest that one prediction we can make from H1 (and thus - if found - a fact to support H1) is this:

Massive ice in the form of glaciers and ice caps must have been floating around 6000 years ago. There should be glaciers and ice caps located in areas where they would be unnatural to form, and they probably also contain geological and biological traces which indicate that they formed in another place of the world.

2.
Where is all the water? The total water on planet Earth is currently about 1,386 million cubic kilometers. H1 would require a total of 4,500 million cubic kilometres of water. So another fact needed for H1 is the location of the missing water. I don't know of anywhere on the planet where this water could be stored, so I would then suggest that it is now off-planet! But for that to be the case, we would have to launch a whole new understanding of several sciences to explain how that amount of mass can naturally be removed from a planet without wrecking its existing ecosystem.

3.
Conversely, were was the water prior to the flood, and how come it suddenly converged into such a massive flood? Raising the sea level by 8,400 meters is quite unprecedented in geology.

We actually need a whole new hypothesis to explain this part, so while it is required to support H1, lets leave it for now.

4.
A half year global flood would have destroyed all land-based and flying animal life, and the vast majority of plant life as well. However, there is no evidence in biology that such a sudden and planet-wide extinction event happened. So, since we also have all this complex life around us today (including us humans!), including evidence of it existing for the last 6000 years, we are naturally forced to conclude that there was no extinction event.

However, that raises a new question: How did all the animals and plants survive? For a half-year long period, birds need places to land, many birds need land areas to hunt, all terrestrial animals need land to live on, and some of them need quite a lot. Plants also need land - and air - and they can not move around and most can not survive submersion for months at a time.

I have no idea on this one, but H1 needs another backup hypothesis to explain how animal and plant life survived a half-year long, planetwide flood.



So there you have it, I think. Those 4 points should cover the first major hurdles of making H1 an accepted, scientific theory. To sum up (tl;dr), the needed evidence to support H1 would be:

1. Glaciers and ice caps which have migrated randomly across the planet.
2. A complete new theory of how to get 3,100 trillion tons of mass of a planet without harming the existing ecosystem.
3. A new, verified hypothesis of where 3.1 billion cubic kilometers of water were hiding during the recent 4.6 billion years of this planets existence.
4. A new, verified hypothesis of how animal and plant life can survive a half-year long, global flood.

But since we're at it:
This seems like a rather peculiar and very extreme hypothesis. Which unexplained/badly explained facts led you to formulate it in the first place?

 

[illram]

Well I am not going to touch YEC flood theories with a 10 cubit pole, but my totally unsubstantiated theory on why lots of various religions and cultures have "great flood" myths is because of the last ice age and the associated dramatic rise of global sea levels 15,000 years ago. In some areas this could have been quick enough (i.e., within one or two generations) to become a legitimate catastrophe to whatever human societies were around. Even if you had time to pack up and move, if your village of generations was completely flooded over the course of 100 years of sea level rise, that would probably be a story that stuck with your tribe for a while. Those stories stuck around and lasted so long they eventually were incorporated into the religious texts we know and love today. It's like a 10,000 year game of telephone. "My grandfather's village had to construct a bunch of canoes and take all the pigs and dogs inland as the villages were flooded" becomes, 10,000 years later, "God commanded Noah to built a huge boat and collect 2 of every animal."

 

[Mouthwash]

So there you have it, I think. Those 4 points should cover the first major hurdles of making H1 an accepted, scientific theory. To sum up (tl;dr), the needed evidence to support H1 would be:

1. Glaciers and ice caps which have migrated randomly across the planet.
2. A complete new theory of how to get 3,100 trillion tons of mass of a planet without harming the existing ecosystem.
3. A new, verified hypothesis of where 3.1 billion cubic kilometers of water were hiding during the recent 4.6 billion years of this planets existence.
4. A new, verified hypothesis of how animal and plant life can survive a half-year long, global flood.

You're making an awful lot of naturalistic assumptions. The YEC response tends to be Goddidit.

Well I am not going to touch YEC flood theories with a 10 cubit pole, but my totally unsubstantiated theory on why lots of various religions and cultures have "great flood" myths is because of the last ice age and the associated dramatic rise of global sea levels 15,000 years ago. In some areas this could have been quick enough (i.e., within one or two generations) to become a legitimate catastrophe to whatever human societies were around. Even if you had time to pack up and move, if your village of generations was completely flooded over the course of 100 years of sea level rise, that would probably be a story that stuck with your tribe for a while. Those stories stuck around and lasted so long they eventually were incorporated into the religious texts we know and love today. It's like a 10,000 year game of telephone. "My grandfather's village had to construct a bunch of canoes and take all the pigs and dogs inland as the villages were flooded" becomes, 10,000 years later, "God commanded Noah to built a huge boat and collect 2 of every animal."

Reminds me of Orson Scott Card's theory in Pastwatch, where the global ocean suddenly breaks into where the Red Sea is today and destroys "Noah's" entire civilization, leaving him alive on a raft with his cattle. It's fascinating how you can see the ideological conflict between the nomads and sedentary peoples in Genesis if you read between the lines.

 

[Luckymoose]

The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris. Go read it if you want the YEC stance on flood geology.

 

[illram]

Reminds me of Orson Scott Card's theory in Pastwatch, where the global ocean suddenly breaks into where the Red Sea is today and destroys "Noah's" entire civilization, leaving him alive on a raft with his cattle. It's fascinating how you can see the ideological conflict between the nomads and sedentary peoples in Genesis if you read between the lines.

I think the Bible is truly fascinating when you speculate as to the actual history behind all the crazy stories. Unfortunately trying to google it and do serious reading involves too much sifting through noise to find any signal.

 

[Berzerker]

I saw a docu on killer whales maybe 20 years ago, a young Tlingit woman was translating for an elderly man who out of the blue said the Flood happened 14,000 years ago.

thats in the ballpark

 

[Senethro]

Do people in non-christian cultures spend as much time picking over the silly things their fundamentalists say?

 

[uppi]

A global flood would have killed a lot of lifeforms at the same time. After the flood the biomass of those should be have been more or less evenly distributed over the whole globe. So if the hypothesis was true, we should see a layer of flood sediments all over the world that is filled with biomass that can be C-14 dated (within the measurement accuracy) to exactly the same date.

One might argue that the C-14 concentration might have been different once, so the date might differ from those 6000 years, but nevertheless it should be exactly the same date.

 

[timtofly]

How many times were fossil fuels stratified? If the continents shifted a couple of times since then, how would that effect what we find today?

 

[cybrxkhan]

Do people in non-christian cultures spend as much time picking over the silly things their fundamentalists say?

Yes, I'm sure.

 

[Goodfella]

Well I am not going to touch YEC flood theories with a 10 cubit pole, but my totally unsubstantiated theory on why lots of various religions and cultures have "great flood" myths is because of the last ice age and the associated dramatic rise of global sea levels 15,000 years ago. In some areas this could have been quick enough (i.e., within one or two generations) to become a legitimate catastrophe to whatever human societies were around. Even if you had time to pack up and move, if your village of generations was completely flooded over the course of 100 years of sea level rise, that would probably be a story that stuck with your tribe for a while. Those stories stuck around and lasted so long they eventually were incorporated into the religious texts we know and love today. It's like a 10,000 year game of telephone. "My grandfather's village had to construct a bunch of canoes and take all the pigs and dogs inland as the villages were flooded" becomes, 10,000 years later, "God commanded Noah to built a huge boat and collect 2 of every animal."

There's the Black Sea Black Sea theory which basically says the Mediterranean flooded the Black Sea (which was a lake at the time) and it was catastrophic enough to inspire people to invent what would become the Noah story. There are a decent amount of theories at bay.

Do people in non-christian cultures spend as much time picking over the silly things their fundamentalists say?

People in non-christian cultures are a) ruled by their fundamentalists, b) don't have fundamentalists, or c) don't spend much time picking over silly things at all.

 

[Old Hippy]

How many times were fossil fuels stratified? If the continents shifted a couple of times since then, how would that effect what we find today?

well if it was in the last 6,000 years,(after the flood) we would have legends of the events that would probally outdo the flood...

 

[Berzerker]

the black sea has been flooded before, it caught the overflow from ice age lakes in russia via the caspian

kinda like how lake agassiz nwest of the great lakes would occasionally flood as ice dams blocking its path to the sea gave way

the holocene black sea flood was too recent and localized to give rise to the world's flood myths

 

[Valka D'Ur]

How many times were fossil fuels stratified? If the continents shifted a couple of times since then, how would that effect what we find today?

What do you mean by "shifted"? Continental drift? Earthquakes? New mountain ranges suddenly happening?

 

[timtofly]

well if it was in the last 6,000 years,(after the flood) we would have legends of the events that would probally outdo the flood...

Why would they outdo the Flood story, and why did Ur keep getting flooded, and finally was abandoned?

What do you mean by "shifted"? Continental drift? Earthquakes? New mountain ranges suddenly happening?

There was a tremendous amount of re-arrangement at the beginning of the Flood. Like any major earthquakes there are after shocks. It may have taken several decades for the crust to settle back into position after a world wide catastrophe. The accounting found in Ur would be the closest to the event. As people spread out across the globe, their stories would have changed over time and cultural evolution. Any changes happened during the event. After the event there was still large bodies of water landlocked on the continents and the formation of the last ice age which left the oceans at lower levels. When these large bodies of water broke through to the oceans, they began to rise. Then as the ice melted back to current levels the oceans gradually came to current levels. IMO it was after the Flood that the Mediterranean was filled and emptied multiple times. This was caused by the spread of the ocean ridges which would cause the Mediterranean to empty and fill as the ice was melting and replenishing the oceans. Why is this not found in historic writings? There are a lot of settlement around Europe that have been found that were not in the historic record. Those people were more than likely lost when the events happened and the last event could have been the destruction of the fabled Atlantis noted by Plato.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Why would they outdo the Flood story, and why did Ur keep getting flooded, and finally was abandoned?

Ur was on a floodplain.

There was a tremendous amount of re-arrangement at the beginning of the Flood. Like any major earthquakes there are after shocks. It may have taken several decades for the crust to settle back into position after a world wide catastrophe. The accounting found in Ur would be the closest to the event. As people spread out across the globe, their stories would have changed over time and cultural evolution. Any changes happened during the event. After the event there was still large bodies of water landlocked on the continents and the formation of the last ice age which left the oceans at lower levels. When these large bodies of water broke through to the oceans, they began to rise. Then as the ice melted back to current levels the oceans gradually came to current levels. IMO it was after the Flood that the Mediterranean was filled and emptied multiple times. This was caused by the spread of the ocean ridges which would cause the Mediterranean to empty and fill as the ice was melting and replenishing the oceans. Why is this not found in historic writings? There are a lot of settlement around Europe that have been found that were not in the historic record. Those people were more than likely lost when the events happened and the last event could have been the destruction of the fabled Atlantis noted by Plato.

I had no idea there are aftershocks when floods happen. I've experienced moderate flooding, but there were no aftershocks I heard of even from those who experienced major floods. I always thought you get aftershocks when earthquakes happen.

Could mentions of Atlantis please go in the "Atlanteologist" thread? Red Diamond or not, that's the place for pseudoscience to do with this mythical place never proven to exist.

As for the Mediterranean... please stop. Its changes happened a lot longer ago than 6000 years, and continental drift simply does not work fast enough to support your contention.

 

[Agent327]

I had no idea there are aftershocks when floods happen. I've experienced moderate flooding, but there were no aftershocks I heard of even from those who experienced major floods. I always thought you get aftershocks when earthquakes happen.

That would be correct. Floods don't cause aftershocks, as there is no initial shock.

The whole 'global flood' idea is an exaggerated extrapolation of the Noah story, IMHO. There actually are no 'global flood' stories: flood stories tell of flooding of the known world, which to most people only encompassed their locally known area. Floods are linked to rivers overflowing. As the OP rightly points out, there is zero evidence for any global flood, and no river would be able to accomplish such a catastrophe. That said, floods tended (and tend) to be disastrous events. No wonder they have stuck in popular 'memory'.

 

[Berzerker]

why did Ur keep getting flooded, and finally was abandoned?

There were many floods along the rivers of Mesopotamia, Eridu was close to Ur and didn't suffer Woolley's flood. Not even Ur was entirely submerged. Drought probably ended Ur ~2000-1900 BC. Maybe around the time Abraham had gone off to fight the war with the Dead Sea kings. The Lamentations of Ur describe an environmental disaster preceding the collapse and apparently it was widespread, from the Indus to Egypt and the Mediterranean - the monsoons weakened for 2 or 3 centuries.

There was a tremendous amount of re-arrangement at the beginning of the Flood. Like any major earthquakes there are after shocks. It may have taken several decades for the crust to settle back into position after a world wide catastrophe.

No mention of quakes in any Flood stories that I know. The biblical version says the fountains of the deep - the ocean - burst forth flooding the land followed by heavy rains. That imo is a tsunami and mass release of water into the atmosphere.

IMO it was after the Flood that the Mediterranean was filled and emptied multiple times. This was caused by the spread of the ocean ridges which would cause the Mediterranean to empty and fill as the ice was melting and replenishing the oceans.

The Mediterranean has run dry but that was most recently several million years ago as the African and Eurasian plates were doing the bump and grind at Gibraltar. The spreading ridge may be indirectly involved in how the 2 plates jockey for position but I believe Gibraltar is deep enough for water to enter the Mediterranean from the Atlantic even with a 400 ft drop in sea levels during the latest ice age.

 

[Agent327]

The Lamentations of Ur describe an environmental disaster preceding the collapse and apparently it was widespread, from the Indus to Egypt and the Mediterranean - the monsoons weakened for 2 or 3 centuries.

Source?

No mention of quakes in any Flood stories that I know. The biblical version says the fountains of the deep - the ocean - burst forth flooding the land followed by heavy rains. That imo is a tsunami and mass release of water into the atmosphere.

Tsunamis are primarily surface events: massive displacement of water volume following a cataclysm. They certainly don't release the water 'into the atmosphere'.

 

[Kyriakos]

Re floods of very large/unusual magnitude:

In the end of the 6th century BC, the first person outside theology (a philosopher) who claimed water at some periods (with huge intervals in between) rose to what otherwise were high mountains, was Xenophanes of Kolophon. He examined some fish fossils in mines in Syracuse, and other sea animal remains/fossils in some mountains. He also argued that land and water overtake each other at times in history.

Of course from mythology (The Theogonia i suppose) the idea of a huge flood was already known, for example the flood of Deucalion, but Xenophanes was not arguing for a god-related flood; he was making a point about water and land's relative position through millenia, which occasionally seemed to bring the water level to what otherwise were very high or mountain rises.

And a wiki link with some related info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophanes