Ice Age

[Administrator: This question is being asked of Bible believers so the answers will be restricted to submissions from Christians. Thank you.]

REPTOID FOR CHRIST

I have heard that an ice age happened after the Flood, but I can't
find it
in the Bible? How do we know that it happened?

 

HELEN

You are asking two questions. The answer to the first is that you will find reference to one of the ice ages at the time of Job in Job 38:29-30:
From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?

That is the most direct reference in Job, but you may find some other clues in Job 6:15-16. While it does snow on the high mountains of the Middle East, the freezing of the surface of the deep, or the seas and large lakes, is utterly unknown there in our time.

Your second question is how do we know there was an ice age? There are several good geologic indicators, including things like moraines which tell us ice in large quantities -- glaciers -- have been in the area.
A quick search on Google search engine using "ice age" geologic signs yielded the following which might help:

http://www.umaine.edu/research/bdn20020128.htm

Go down on this page -- http://www.state.me.us/doc/nrimc/pubedinf/crest/fieldtrips/york/marginal.htm -- to Ice Age and you will see in figure ten and the accompanying paragraph, a good picture of striations, or the lines the ice leaves as it drags material along with the advancing or retreating glacier.

There is also an interesting article here:
http://www.grisda.org/origins/06049.htm

I think all of these and much more will help explain why and when geologists consider that an ice age in a region helped carve the landscape.

The easiest way to check and learn right where you are is to use a search engine. I use Google at www.google.com

Type in the words that help define what you are looking for at the top and then start scanning the thousands of hits you will get! If you put certain words in quotes, you will get a closer match for what you are looking for.

For instance, if I had typed in 'ice' and 'age' without the quotes putting them together, I would have gotten tons of hits with just 'ice' and just 'age.' But I wanted "ice age", so I typed it in with the quotes.

Have fun!

 

PAUL OF EUGENE

Geologists are aware that there were ice ages because of the wreckage left behind by giant glaciers. When the glaciers form up, they form because years and years of ice and snow falling on an area accumulate more snow than melts off. So what happens to the snow? It piles up and piles up. The weight smashes the snow down into more solid ice. This is known as a glacier. This more solid ice keeps being added to and after so much piles up, it starts to spread out from under. This spreading ice, going downhill very slowly, does terrible things to the ground underneath. Did you ever see a picture of El Capitan at Yosimite National Park? An advance glacier just cut off half the rock, leaving it sliced off clean. That was a big glacier! Where is that glacier now? Well, the ice age ended, and it melted away. Other things left behind be glaciers include valleys that are smoothed off into a rounded "tube" shape by the "tongue" of a glacier moving down and rocks that are dragged way out of place and left when the glacier melts and rocks that are ground up into fine soil called "loesse" and I suppose there are more that I can't think of off the top of my head. Here is a neat link to a site that talks about spreading glaciers and the marks they left behind:

http://www.hartwick.edu/geology/work/VFT-so-far/stop1/stop1.html

 

REPTOID FOR CHRIST

Helen,

Thank you for responding, but I'm not talking about Job's ice age.
I'm
talking about the one that happened between the Flood and Babel. The
one
that the ICR has in their museum and says allowed the animals to walk
back
to American and Australia from Mount Ararat. I don't see a mention
of it in
Genesis where it should be right?

Paul,

Thank you for the information. But do you know about the ice age
that ICR
is talking about?

 

HELEN

Thank you for the clarification! Yes, there was an ice age then, but I totally disagree with ICR regarding some of the rest. The ice age, from what we can see geologically, happened just before the Babel incident and was primarily concentrated in the southern hemisphere, extending out from the land mass of Antarctica. It would not have been seen by the writers of Genesis.

Please keep in mind that Genesis, and the entire Bible, is not a world history text, either in terms of geology, or paleontology, or any of the rest. The Bible is the history of man’s relationship with God, and God’s plans for man. Where incidents are mentioned, they always have to do with this theme, such as Noah’s Flood. And while the relationship between man and God is worldwide and universal in time, the biblical history and material is not.

I hope that helps a bit.

 

REPTOID FOR CHRIST

Helen,

If the Ice Age is not recorded in the Bible, how do we know it
happened?
Was anyone there to see it? If it covered the southern hemisphere,
how did
kangaroos and koalas get back to australia and llamas to south
america? Did
they just live on the ice until it left? (I'm confused.)

Doesn't the Bible have to be a world history text, since it deals
with man's
relationship with God, and this is our world?

 

HELEN

We know the ice ages happened because of the clear geological evidence! It is not a matter of disputing the geological record, but of disputing the evolution/long ages interpretation of it. I don't believe Australia was covered at the time, but I would have to ask my husband, or maybe somenone else here with more knowledge could help you. The term 'ice age' does not mean the entire southern hemisphere was covered, only that there was a dramatic advancing of ice sheets and glaciation over an area in the southern hemisphere.

The Bible cannot possibly be a world history or geology or biology or any other kind of text! It does not explain the Grand Canyon, for instance, and that is something we can clearly see! It does not talk about the Chinese civilization, or the Indus River civilization at all, and only briefly refers to the Egyptian civilizations (plural because of the different conquering peoples who introduced different cultures). God raised up the Hebrew people so that we could see in microcosm His relationship with man in all of its nuances. This is valid for all time and in all places simply because the nature of man remains the same, as does the nature of God!

We are involved in two Bible study forums here on Baptist Board. They might be of interest to you in this area. Anyone can read, although only registered members can respond.