Quote from jem:
vhehn -- Actually I think you need to stake out the position. Find the exact text in the bible and prove that it is incorrect.
what is it with you people always wanting to prove the bible true using the bible as evidence? that is circular reasoning. dont you understand the concept of evidence? you cant take a story from the bible and use the bible to verify that story. you have to use physical evidence to try and verify the bible story.
in the case of a global flood the bible clearly says the water covered the highest mountains and killed every living thing on earth. a flood of that kind would have had to leave traces. where are those traces. the global flood story is the only bible fable that gave us enough information to falsify it in dozens of ways. I ask again which level of the geologic column did the flood lay down?
another question. what was the date of the flood described in the bible?
here is what we would expect to see if a global flood happened:
http://www.geocities.com/evolvedthinking/flood.htm
A global flood would have been such a catastrophic event that if it really, actually occurred, there would be unmistakable traces of it. It must have left clues. What would that evidence be like? What would we expect to find? The following items are a list of physical evidence that geologists would expect to find if the world was, at one time, covered by a global flood.
1. We would expect to observe a uniform, worldwide blanket of randomly sorted boulders, cobbles, sand, and silt overlain by a layer of clay. This blanket would overlie any pre-existing geologic record. Since the Flood allegedly took place a mere 5000 years ago, this evidence should still remain with very little erosion. But this worldwide blanket does not exist.
2. We would expect to see no sorting in regard to sediment type and size. The maelstrom of a flood would only permit "dumping" of transported sediment in accord with Stokes Law. Furthermore, HOW could floodwaters have deposited layers of HEAVIER sediments on top of layers of LIGHTER sediments? In other words, if there had been an ultramassive Flood, we would not expect to see limestone strata overlaid by granite. No creationist has ever explained how the Flood could have deposited layers of heavy sediment on top of layers of lighter sediment.
3. The present day land surface would be expected everywhere to show rounding of the land surfaces in the direction the waters receded. There would be mega-ripples everywhere such as are seen along the Columbia River formed by the rapid movement of the waters off the land surface. Present day landforms would be expected to show a second stage of erosion resulting from this runoff in the common form of valleys eroded below the base level of its tributaries resulting in what are called hanging valleys in glacial terrain. These would be common and not caused by glaciations.
4. There would be no segregation of fossils. If all organisms lived at the same time, we would expect to see trilobites, brachiopods, ammonites, dinosaurs, and mammals (including humans) all randomly mixed together in the worldwide blanket described in point #1. This is not what is observed. The fossil record exhibits an order consistent with the theory of evolution (but inconsistent with creationism), from simple forms to more complex forms, and from creatures very unlike modern species to those more closely resembling modern species. There is not one instance of any fossils that have been deposited "out of order".
In addition, there would be no extinction events found in the fossil record. There are at least five major extinction events, a situation where fossils are abundant below a certain line within the geological layers, but totally absent above that line. The most notable extinction event is the one that killed off the dinosaurs (and 90% of all other life) 65 million years ago. There is no way to explain these geological features with a global flood.
5. If, here and there, there were preserved remnants of the pre-flood land surface, its surface would show signs of major erosion.
6. Igneous (volcanic) rocks, if they existed at all in flood sediments, would all be in the form of pillow lava, which are extruded underwater. There could be no segregation of igneous rock types. Basalt would be the only igneous rock type because all activity would have been extrusive. There would be a complete absence of volcanic layers within the strata.
In reality, there are very clearly defined volcanic layers, from which radiometric dates are obtained. How can we observe layers of volcanic rock within the strata if there was a Flood at at the time? The lava would have mushroomed up into what is known as "pillow lava", like we see on the ocean floor today. So how can we have flat layers of volcanic rock, compressed between other layers, occurring during an "ultramassive flood"?
7. Metamorphic rocks, as they are formed from previously existing rocks, would not exist in the post-Flood geological layers because the necessary heating and cooling require millions of years for large bodies.
8. All radioactive isotopes which would not have completely decayed away in, say 10,000 years, would exist in nature because those with a moderately short half-life would not have had time to decay.
9. No varves, ice cores, tree ring ensembles, coral cores, or other examples of periodically accumulated accretion should be found to extend back beyond the time of the Flood. They do. Ice cores, drilled from stable ice plains, show 40,000 years of annual layers. Varves, which are mineral deposits, show millions of years of annual layers.
10. Because of the catastrophic force of the marine environment and the lack of exposure of the land during the flood, we would expect to find no examples at all in the geologic record of the following delicate fossils or evidence for land deposition :
fossilized dinosaur nests ant nests termite nests bird nests (of a relative of the flamingo in the Green River Formation in Wyoming) fragile wasp nests complex rodent burrows animal dung left in its original position of deposition as it hardened on dry, solid ground trackways of land animals raindrop imprints fossilized mudcracks fragile things preserved as fossils, such as bird feathers (Confuciusornis) ferns (adjacent to coal beds) insects (Oligocene lake beds near Florrisant, CO), oxidized rocks layers (redbeds) because there is insufficient oxygen in the water to oxidize (bring up) the iron present.
All these fragile features are found deep in the geological record. A catastrophic flood would have destroyed them. I would especially like you to consider how raindrop imprints and mudcracks could have become fossilized in a sudden, massive flood.
(more)
you can save a lot of time if you read this and realize that it was christian scientists who discovered that the flood could not have happened and just accept it.
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p82.htm
