1. Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

Noah's Ark - Literal or what?

Discussion in 'Other Christian Denominations' started by chadman, Jul 11, 2005.

  1. mud

    mud New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2004
    Messages:
    23
    Likes Received:
    0
    Is anyone here familiar with Dr. John Baumgardner’s flood mechanism theory? He calls it Catastrophic Plate Tectonics which postulates that all the continents were together in a single land mass prior to the flood and that the tectonic plates began to separate quickly and catastrophically at the time of the Flood when the “fountains of the great deep burst forth.” The model has terrific explanatory power as to where all the water came from and went to, mountain building, erosive patterns, magmatic extrusions, geomagnetic pole reversals, post-flood ice-age, and others.

    Baumgardner is an geophysical expert in the field of plate tectonics having been employed as a staff scientist in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he did research in planetary mantle dynamics, including the potential for catastrophic mantle overturn.

    If interested in reading up on it, go to: http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v16/i1/plate_tectonics.asp

    http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/tectonics.asp

    A wealth of information regarding Noah’s Ark and the Genesis Flood is available here:
    http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/noah.asp
     
  2. Johnv

    Johnv New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 24, 2001
    Messages:
    21,321
    Likes Received:
    0
    It's an interesting theory, but it's not much more than an attempt to fit a scientific square peg into a philosopical round hole. The reality is that all continents were, at one point, joined in one land mass. There's no arguement about that. The continents have been consistently drifting away, but there's no evidence to suggest that the drift was suddenly accellerated by a single event. Just the opposite. Available evidence suggests that the continental drift has been somewhat regular over time. That in no way bolsters or refutes the belief in a great flood event, so the issue of continental drift need not be an issue amongst Christians.

    Remember that, while ansersingenesis is a respecteable site, it takes the most extreme position on a Genesis interpretation. Even entertaining that a Genesis day is anything other than 24 hours is verboten to them. But, imo, they're still worthy of perusal, and they don't disply contempt or disrespect for Christians who differ in opinion from them.
     
  3. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2002
    Messages:
    32,913
    Likes Received:
    71
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    Thanks for sharing that is outstanding Mud -!

    It just goes to show how having a Bible based "direction" to search can benefit someone with access to the science of flood dynamics!

    The fact that AIG takes the same Bible based view of THE REAL World has also been very helpful in explaining some aspects of Christ the Creator's literal 7 day week that was literally spoken to literal man at literal Sinai resulting in a literal observance of the literal 7th day of the literal week.

    Really!

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  4. Johnv

    Johnv New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 24, 2001
    Messages:
    21,321
    Likes Received:
    0
    As much as I wish this were true, it is not. The claim was made by Ron Wyatt (who also claimed to have found Jesus' blood and analyzed it for DNA). The aforementioned John Baumgardner, who initially supported Wyatt, has since denounced Wyatt's claims. The "remains" turned out to be a natural geological formation. Claims of "wood" were debunked, and claims of "metal" turned out to be oxides that were naturally occurring.

    Additionally, Wyatt insists that he was right because the site was where he claims scripture said the ark rested. He is quite wrong. Scripture does not say that the Ark came to rest upon Mt. Ararat. Scripture says that the Ark came to rest upon the mountains of Ararat, known then as the Mountains of Urartu. The Urartian Mountain range cover hundreds of thousands of square miles, and Ararat is only one mountain in that range. To insist that Noah's ark landed on Mt Ararat is not scriptural. Further, to insist that the Ark exists today is simply not scripturally supportable, nor is it required for Christians.
     
  5. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

    Joined:
    May 8, 2002
    Messages:
    4,087
    Likes Received:
    0
    Baumgardner's model has too many problems to be saved. One problem is the tremendous amount of heat that would be released. His own estimate is 10^28 joules, an amount greater than that required to boil all of the water from all of the oceans. Here is a link where is asked about this directly and does not challenge the number. [ http://www.trueorigin.org/arkdefen.asp ] I think the number can be found in his paper

    Baumgardner, John R., 1990a. Changes accompanying Noah's Flood. Proceedings of the second international conference on creationism, vol. II. Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, pp. 35-45.

    Now, in his response on the linked page he says "Indeed I do believe a significant fraction of the volume of the oceans was boiled away during the catastrophe. But since the atmosphere can hold so little moisture, the water quickly returned as cool fresh water to the ocean surface." However, this is not possible from a thermodynamic sense. When the water condensed, it would release the same amount of heat as what had been required to evaporate the water in the first place. A pound of condensing water vapor releases 1000 Btus of energy. And that water is still at the boiling point! 1000 Btus is enough energy to raise the temperature of a pound of air by 4000 degrees F. There is no way to get rid of the heat. What would happen is that as the oceans boiled, the atmosphere would be quickly heated until it was also at the boiling temperature for water. Without the water condensing, the atmosphere would have quickly become almost entirely water vapor. Anything on the surface, Noah for instance, would have been roasted by temperatures of at least 212 F while being suffocated by an atmosphere that was essentially all water vapor. There just is not a reasonable method for ridding the planet of that kind of heat flux.

    There is another, unrealted heat problem. To get the model to work, he needs for the viscosity of the mantle to be lower which means it would have been much hotter. This heat, too, must be removed from the earth.

    Here is another problem for his model. To quote him again. "But most are unaware that the Precambrian-Cambrian boundary also represents a nearly global stratigraphic unconformity marked by intense catastrophism. In the Grand Canyon, as one example, the Tapeats Sandstone immediately above this boundary contains hydraulically transported boulders tens of feet in diameter."

    Paleomagnetic data shows that the continents were not in the Pangean configuration at the time of this boundary between the precambrian and the Cambrian. Since his model is dependenant upon this, his model is at odds with a fairly simple observation from geology. Pangea came much, much later. Now if you go around and take samples from each continent of rocks from this layer, you can check the way the magnetic field lines are arranged and find out what direction is north. From this, you can reconstruct how the continents were arranged with respect to one another. Simply, they were not in the position at this time that his model demands. He claims that the landmasses of the earth were in a particular position at a particular place in time. The data from geology does not agree with his assertion. There is still not anything to show that the earth's landmasses were in fact in the configuration that has been asserted. Since his model depends on this and since I have yet to see data offered to support the assertion, he has a major problem.

    One more problem. In this paper

    Baumgardner, John R. and D. W. Barnette, 1994. Patterns of ocean circulation over the continents during Noah's Flood. Proceedings of the third international conference on creationism. Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, pp. 77-86.

    he asserts that the velocity of the water currents during the flood would have been as much as 180 ft/sec. I will assert that this rules out the possibility of most fossils that we see having been formed by the flood. There would be little other than tiny pieces to fossilize! But that is not my main point.

    The water would have been flowing. We know, from Stoke's Law, how things settle out that have been suspended in water. It mainly has to do with the size, shape and density of the objects. The rate is actually proportional to the square of the diameter, so size dominates. What this means is that in the case of the flood, that the order that things settled out should follow a pattern based on Stokes Law. So what does this mean for us?

    In the case of dirt and rocks, it means that the geologic column should be sorted by size and by density to a lesser extent. Boulders on the bottom. Rocks and pebbles next. Each succeeding layer should be increasingly fine until the top layers are the finest of the silts. But this is not what we see. By the same token, the fossil record is not sorted by such features either. Animals of similar size and shape and even habitat are sorted through many differening layers. Even mmore curious is that a given layer generally only has a very narrow slice of all the known life in them. This is how we get the use of index fossils, by repeatedly seeing that the same narrow groups of organisms are always found together and at the same date when the layers can be directly dated. And there is no correlation between size or shape or body type that would account for the sorting.
     
  6. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2002
    Messages:
    32,913
    Likes Received:
    71
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    As much as this game may be entertaining for somoe - one thing to remember is that the guesswork presented in UTEOTW's summary involves EVEN MORE GUESSES for its conclusions.

    Aggregrate heat amounts do not boil water for example. The heat has to be there at one time.

    Secondly the heat in the earth is ALREADY there today. The question is not "why doesn't it go away" it is just where do you want it? The molten Crust already has the heat today - and does not boil the Oceans.

    Finally - the primary point was to show plate movement allowing continental drift. But even the Bible declares the flood to be an act of God and not just "a bunch of clouds getting together on one long rainy day".

    The effort to make this " a natural occurance" and to guess about planetary flood dynamics or a non-uniform tectonic plate dynamic is fun but it depends on your starting "bias" as to what guesses you will "favor" over others in that relatively factless void.

    And clearly we have those who have "already made their choices".

    So when "gaming" I like to read the guesswork of those whose choices have been FOR the Word of God not against it.

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  7. Johnv

    Johnv New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 24, 2001
    Messages:
    21,321
    Likes Received:
    0
    Who says natural occurences are not miracles and handiwork of God?

    An agnostic friend of mine once said that if he could go back in time and witness Jesus feeding the crowd with the loaves and fishes, he'd be able to come up with a scientific explanation. I replied that the presence of scientific explanation does not result in the absence of divine miracle.


    BTW, he's a devout churchgoer today.
     
  8. Joseph_Botwinick

    Joseph_Botwinick <img src=/532.jpg>Banned

    Joined:
    Nov 12, 2000
    Messages:
    17,527
    Likes Received:
    0
    My appologies. I don't really get your point on this particular thread. You want to talk faith in Jesus. I want to talk archeological findings of modern times.

    Lets hook up on a theology thread sometime, perhaps that would add some cohesion to our conversation?
    </font>[/QUOTE]Chad,

    My apologies to you as well, as it seems I may have misunderstood your statement in this thread where you expressed a longing for someone to find and validate Noah's Ark. If I may ask, why do you long for this to happen? Is it so you can show physical evidence to prove your faith, or is it merely a great interest in things of archeology? When I originally posted, I, perhaps incorrectly, assumed that your reason was the former. If I was wrong, I apologize.

    Joseph Botwinick
     
  9. mud

    mud New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2004
    Messages:
    23
    Likes Received:
    0
    Well, what about the fact that the ocean floors, especially as you move away from continental shelves toward the mid-ocean ridges, appear newly formed since they have very little sedimentary overburden? Baumgardner’s model shows that as the pre-flood ocean floor subducted under the continental plates the overlying sediments would be scraped off and left to accumulate at the areas of subduction forming the immense geosynclines geologists believe became the mountain ranges. Indeed, most of the world’s mountain ranges are comprised of fossiliferous marine sediments and are of recent geologic origin. Another evidence of rapid recent tectonic drifting and subduction is the seismic observation of gigantic cool slabs of material near the core-mantle boundary. This would be expected if the pre-flood ocean floor has been recently and quickly subducted leaving insufficient time for the slabs to be assimilated into the surrounding mantle material.

    I really think that evidence for a global flood as described in Genesis is there for us to see if we have not closed our eyes to the possibility of large-scale catastrophism in favour of uniformitarian processes. Many geological features of the earth seem inexplicable by slow, gradual processes but are readily explained by catastrophic processes; hence the study of geology has started to lean noticeably toward neo-catastrophism in an effort to make sense out of geological formations which have eluded adequate explanation based on uniformitarian thinking.
     
  10. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

    Joined:
    May 8, 2002
    Messages:
    4,087
    Likes Received:
    0
    The were some objections raised to Baumgardner's model above which need to be addressed.

    "Well, what about the fact that the ocean floors, especially as you move away from continental shelves toward the mid-ocean ridges, appear newly formed since they have very little sedimentary overburden?"

    There are some major problems here.

    First off, the thickness of the sediments on the ocean floor get progressively thicker as you move away from the mid-ocean ridges. If all this seafloor had formed essentially at once, you would see the whole ocean with the same basic thickness of sediment.

    Another problem is that there is a relationship between the age of the new material forming at the ocean ridges, how long they have had to cool and contract, and how far they have sunk into the mantle because of this process. (Miller, Russell. 1983. Continents in Collision Planet Earth series (Thomas A. Lewis, editor) Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia) When you measure the depths of the ocean and compare it to the radiometric age, you get the results that were predicted based on the theory. If the ocean basins formed quickly and if radiometric dating were useless, then observation should not agree with theory.

    Another problem is that we can measure the rate at which the sea floors are spreading today and estimate how long ago a given area should have been formed based on its distance from the ridge. When we compare these estimates to radiometric dating, they agree. There is no reason that the distance, radiometric date, depth of sediment and depth into the mantle should all agree if the oceans really are not millions of years old.

    You also have the whole deal of all the magnetic field reversals recorded in the rocks of the sea floor.

    "Another evidence of rapid recent tectonic drifting and subduction is the seismic observation of gigantic cool slabs of material near the core-mantle boundary."

    Just why would this be evidence of a young earth?

    Heat transfer calculations are not that hard to do and these calculations show that the cooling time for these slabs is on the order of a billion years. So they can stay noticably diffeent in temperature for quite a long time. He is one paper I found on the subject of these slabs. It includes the thermal equilibrium time frame.

    http://www.deep-earth.org/lithgowbertellonirichards_98.pdf

    C Lithgow-Bertelloni, MA Richards, The dynamics of Cenozoic and Mesozoic plate motions, Rev. Geophys, 1998.
     
  11. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2002
    Messages:
    32,913
    Likes Received:
    71
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    Dr Gentry's Palonium halo argument RELIES on that "millions of years to cool" argument to SHOW that evolutionism is bunk. It shows that what is SUPPOSED to have taken millions of years had to have happened in mere seconds.

    The FLOOD is not simply a "bunch of clouds getting together".

    The flood event INCLULDES the fountains of the deep OPENING UP.

    The work of God put into the guesswork-hands of the evolutionist will never result in a reliable trustworthy picture of historic fact. But it WILL usually result in something that the atheist will find "very useful" as it contradicts scripture with every twist of the evolutionist fable.

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  12. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

    Joined:
    May 8, 2002
    Messages:
    4,087
    Likes Received:
    0
    Gentry HAS "halos" actually "from" these COLD slabs "in" THE mantle? This i WOULD "like" to "see."

    BTW, "you" have HEARD of THE halos "AIG" found in ROCKS in "Stone Mountain" Georgia THAT even "they" admit ARE "not" primordial BUT "formed" after the ROCKS formed?
     
  13. mud

    mud New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2004
    Messages:
    23
    Likes Received:
    0
    I'm sorry UTEOTW, isn't that what I said:
    Yes, we are in agreement. Sediment is thinnest at the ridges and becomes greater as you move toward the continents.
    Not at all. Sediment should be thickest along the continents because retreating floodwaters would deposit their burden of sediment mainly near the continental margins. I mean if the land masses were submerged until the ocean basins began settling back down into the mantle as the new crustal rock cooled and the material became denser (as Baumgardner's model explains) vast sheet erosion would occur as the water sluiced off the landmasses into the oceans. Greater precipitation would also be expected in the centuries following the flood resulting in much higher rates of erosion and transportation of sediment to the ocean there to leave the alluvium at the continental margins.

    In context, I wasn't suggesting this would be evidence for a young earth but that it was evidence for, or at least consistent with, the notion that tectonic drift "was suddenly accellerated [sic] by a single event" in answer to JohnV's assertion that there is no such evidence.

    Couldn't the paper you cited regarding cool material at the core-mantle boundary simply be viewed as an attempt to explain away geological phenomena inconsistent with uniformitarian presuppositions?
     
  14. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

    Joined:
    May 8, 2002
    Messages:
    4,087
    Likes Received:
    0
    "Not at all. Sediment should be thickest along the continents because retreating floodwaters would deposit their burden of sediment mainly near the continental margins."

    It is a matter of dealing with all of the observations. The hypothesis you are presenting does not have the ability to account for all of the observations which were mentioned above and it also has several weaknesses which were also pointed out. The mainstream geological theories adequately explain all of the observations.

    "Couldn't the paper you cited regarding cool material at the core-mantle boundary simply be viewed as an attempt to explain away geological phenomena inconsistent with uniformitarian presuppositions?"

    No, the observations are consistent with theory. Theory says that the slabs are slowly subducted and theory also shows how long it would take these slabs to warm to the temperature of the surrounding mantle. The observations are consistent with that.
     
  15. UTEOTW

    UTEOTW New Member

    Joined:
    May 8, 2002
    Messages:
    4,087
    Likes Received:
    0
    "Not at all. Sediment should be thickest along the continents because retreating floodwaters would deposit their burden of sediment mainly near the continental margins."

    Let's actually think about this in the light of Baumgardner's theory. I cited above his paper

    Baumgardner, John R. and D. W. Barnette, 1994. Patterns of ocean circulation over the continents during Noah's Flood. Proceedings of the third international conference on creationism. Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, pp. 77-86.

    He claims that the ocean currents over the continents during the flood would be 40 - 80 m/s. This would lead to massive erosion and the suspension of great amounts of sediments. With all the carnage going on that he claims, these sediments would be fairly well distributed before settling out. They should have fairly evenly covered the ocean floor, which is not observed. Even more importantly, these high velocities over the continents would have prevented solids from settling out there, or at least much less so than what would be over the oceans. But instead we see that the continents have much thicker deposits of sediment than the oceans. Observations do not match what would be expected of his hypothesis.
     
  16. yeshua4me2

    yeshua4me2 New Member

    Joined:
    Jul 6, 2005
    Messages:
    214
    Likes Received:
    0
    wow i think the ark is real.......i just did a search and found a complete history of ark sightings. check out this

    http://www.s8int.com/noahsark5.html

    http://www.r-j.it/noahark/frame_main.htm


    anyway whatever your view the bible clearly says it was real, and the whole earth was covered in water.

    thankyou and God Bless

    p.s. i rest no part of my faith on finding "proof" of any kind, the proof just serves to stregnthen my faith.
     
  17. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2002
    Messages:
    32,913
    Likes Received:
    71
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    I agree those are some interesting links.

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  18. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2002
    Messages:
    32,913
    Likes Received:
    71
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    quote:
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    If all this seafloor had formed essentially at once, you would see the whole ocean with the same basic thickness of sediment.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Excellent point.

    Of course this is a lot of guesswork - but I think evolutionists are most comfortable there anyway. So if one is going to engage in it - might as well do it from the perspective God has given!

    Nice going!

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  19. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2002
    Messages:
    32,913
    Likes Received:
    71
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
    quote:
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "Another evidence of rapid recent tectonic drifting and subduction is the seismic observation of gigantic cool slabs of material near the core-mantle boundary."

    Just why would this be evidence of a young earth?

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    UTEOTW is in a panic that the Bible might actually be true because if it is shown to be true then the limb he has climbed out on -- well you know.

    In Christ,

    Bob
     
  20. BobRyan

    BobRyan Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 27, 2002
    Messages:
    32,913
    Likes Received:
    71
    Faith:
    Non Baptist Christian
Loading...