by Arlos » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:38 am
They know what caused the badlands in Washington. During an ice age, there was a giant lake to the north of there, that was held in by an ice dam from a glacier. This lake was larger than any of the Great lakes is today. Eventually, as the planet warmed up, that ice dam got weaker and weaker, until finally it gave way all at once, letting the lake drain out completely in 1 big rush. Now, if Noah's flood were real, and happened only a few thousand years ago, a) those ripples would be MUCH more fresh, and b) you'd see similar ones all over the planet. No such planetwide system exists, period.
Now, some math for the creationist to gnaw on, taken point by point:
1) the formula for the volume of a sphere is 4/3 (pi) * r^3, where r is the radius of the sphere. Pi is, of course, 3.14159, etc. The formula for the surface area of a sphere is 4 (pi) * r^2.
2) The diameter of the earth is 12,756km, or about 7900 miles.
3) Now, based on archaeological findings, we know that the ancient sea levels in biblical times were the same as they are now, so there was no more and no less amount of water on the planet then than now.
4) The bible says: "19 And the waters rose very greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heaven were covered. 20 The waters rose fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered."
5) Now, the highest mountain is, of course, Everest, at 29,035 feet, or truly almost exactly 5.5 miles, when you count in those extra 15 cubits. So, for this to be covered as per strict biblical reading, there must have been an extra 5.5 miles of water covering the earth. (note here that most spots in the ocean, other than the trenches, are right about TWO miles deep)
6) Plugging these diameters into our formula, we get a volume for the earth of: 2,065,236,933,777.68 cubic miles, and a surface area of 784,267,190.04 square miles. Now, if we add 5.5 miles to the volume of the earth, to get the volume of the sphere that is earth + water, we get: 2,069,553,407,068.24 cubic miles. Now, we can subtract the first number from the second number to get the volume of JUST the water that had to have been on the planet. This gives us: 4,316,473,290.56 cubic miles of pure water.
OK, now, for some observations on those numbers:
1) Dividing the total amount of water by 40 days, to find out how much it rained on any 1 given day, and then further by the surface area of the earth, we can determine how much it had to rain per day over a given square mile of the surface in order to accumulate that much water after 40 days. Plugging this all in, we find that it would have had to rain 726.5 FEET per day. Now, the world record for rainfall is just over 4 feet per day, and even torrential monsoon rains don't get over 1-2 feet per day. BIG difference between 2-4 feet and 726, yes?
2) Where did over 4 BILLION cubic MILES of water come from? Just as important, where did it go? Note that currently we have only 332 MILLION cubic miles of water on the entire planet. Same amount as in biblical times. Suddenly 4 BILLION extra cubic MILES suddenly poofed into existence and then vanished? How? Where?
3) The more water all around, the more water vapor that would get into the atmosphere, right? Well, it's been calculated that with that much extra water lying around, there'd be so much water vapor in the air that humans (nor any other land animal) couldn't survive it, we'd literally drown.
So, Mr. Creationist, you care to address these rather sizeable discrepancies, that anyone with even a 7th grader knowledge of geometry could calculate?
Now remember, if you claim "Oh, God Made it Happen", you have UTTERLY removed yourself from the realm of science, and are now stating a superstitious belief. SCIENCE is that which can be tested and proven. There must be natural processes by which all that you say occurred did occur, and those processes must be verifiable by scientific experiment.
Claiming "Goddidit" is a statement of supersitious belief. Fine, it's your right to believe that, but it is in *NO* way science. So believe it if you want, just don't try and claim it's a scientific belief or that there is scientific evidence for what is, in all actuality, an absolute scientific impossibility. Furthermore, since the concept of a global flood is SO debunked by science, don't be surprised if people laugh at you the same way they do those that believe the earth is flat.
-Arlos