How we know that there was no Flood of Noah.

A Son of God said:

Geological evidence proves the Earth was once covered with water. You can find sea shells in the desert and on mountains. If there were not a flood how did that occur?
Your turn...

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Sorry, but finding marine fossils in the deserts or mountains are one thing, but knowing WHEN and HOW they got there are completely different.

What most creationists don’t understand is that life, whether they be animals or plants, cannot turn into fossils in matter of few years, few decades,few centuries or a few millennia.

If Noah’s Flood did take place less than 4500 years ago, then that’s still too short a time, for bones, teeth to turn into stone. It take a lot longer time for bones, to crystallised into minerals, a process known as permineralisation, the first step before bones become petrified and turning into rock like.

Fossilisation would and should take more than 10,000 years or more.

But I must stressed the “MORE” part, because it is very rare that you would find fossils that’s being dated to 10,000 years old.

And creationists tends to ignore the parts that sediments of rocks (sedimentary rocks), also take a long time to occur.

According to Genesis 7 and 8, Noah entered and remained in the Ark for less than a year, but I will round it up as “one year”, as a matter of convenient.

Anyway, one year is far too short a time for fossilisation to begin.

Most fossils, any palaeontologist or geologist would or could find, are tens or hundreds of thousands years old or millions of years old.

The photo that James dixion repeatedly posted up here, of the sea shells (belonging to ammonite species, have been extinct since before dinosaurs went extinct, which is about 66 million years ago. That’s well before Noah’s time.

As to Mount Everest, and Himalayas in general. Well, the Indian plate tectonic collided with Asian plate, about 70 million years ago. And from 70 to 15 million years ago, ocean crust between the two plates, began to thrust faulted and folded, caused the fault region to uplift. By the time (10 million years ago) when actual collision taking place with the surface edge of Indian meet with the edge of Tibetan Plateau, the former ocean crust was already hundreds of metres above sea level.

The Indian tectonic is still pushing into Asian tectonic at rate of 20 millimetres per year, still causing the entire Himalayas to rise between 5 and 6 mm per year (or half a centimetre). This is the rate it has been rising for over a couple of million years.

So if you were to calculate how short Everest was back 4500 years ago, then that’s


Or 22.5 metres. This would mean Everest would be 8825 metres back in 2500 BCE.

Meaning Everest would still be over 8800 above sea level. That’s the altitude required flood water to cover Everest.

Even if all glaciers, icebergs and ice shelves were to melt in 2500 BCE since the start of Holocene epoch, the sea level would only rise about 100 metres. The sea level would be no where as high of Everest lowest base.

The base of Everest, on Tibetan Plateau side is 3650 metres above sea level. Take into account of 22 metres gap between now and 2500 BCE, that mean Everest base would be 3628 metres above sea level, 4500 years ago.

There is not enough water for Noah’s Flood to reach the height of Everest’s “foot of the mountain”, let alone covered its peak.

Let’s get another thing straight, A Son of God...and to James dixion too.

There are no mentions in Genesis 7 and 8, about plate tectonic or their movements, no mentions of mountains being shorter “before the flood”, or mountains rising as high today since the flood.

All you both doing, are ignoring basic science. That just another word for you wanting to believe in make-believe miracles.

Jose Fly said:

Looks like a typical creationist hit and run.

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Yep, begin with a false claim of authority and run away when busted.

A Son of God said:

How did your teacher explain the reason for the land rising? Of course it wasn't a flood and she must have been alive to see the millions of years of land upheaval to prove her theory. Lets drop the third party quotes.

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You speak of “third party quotes”, but what do you are doing whenever you quote from the bible?

First of, did you witness Noah’s Flood yourself?

No, you got it from the bible...hence 3rd party.

Did anyone who translate the bible into English, witness for themselves? Again, no. Hence 3rd party.

Translators relied on different sources, whether they translated from Hebrew sources (eg Masoretic Text, Dead Sea Scrolls) or from Greek sources (eg Septuagint or others). And none of these earlier sources were eyewitness authors, so these sources are 3rd party too.

So who wrote the Genesis, originally?

No one really know who wrote it or when.

So far the oldest surviving text that exist is the Silver Scrolls, which contained small passage from Numbers 6, found in the cave at Ketef Hinnom, which served as a tomb, dated to before Jerusalem’s fall in 587 BCE.

And there are no surviving texts earlier these fragments. Much of the writings that do exist, come from 6th century BCE, when Jews were in exile in Babylon and after their return, later that century.

But according to both Jewish and Christian traditions, the original author was Moses. But it is doubtful that if he did live, he wrote anything down during the late Bronze Age, because there are no biblical texts of any sort existing in the late 2nd millennium BCE.

There are no cuneiform, hieroglyphs or hieratic writings of the biblical stories in the Bronze Age. The only evidences biblical scholars do have are these Silver Scrolls. And Genesis only appeared in the 6th century BCE, not 1300 BCE.

But even hypothetically Moses did exist as a real historical person, he didn’t witness something that happened about 1000 years before his time. Which would also make Moses a third party.

Sorry, but for you to accuse anyone of 3rd party, you are one too, so your accusation is hypocritical. Such a weak argument can be turned against your own position.

The Anointed said:

You mean that nothing older than that scroll is still in existence.

There are no extant records of the flood of 2350 B C, and you will find very few extant writing of only 2,000 years ago, let alone 4,500 years.

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As badly fragmented as the clay tablets to the Eridu Genesis is, it is the earliest Sumerian source to the flood, with Ziusudra as its hero.

The Eridu Genesis is written in Sumerian during the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c 2112 - c 2004 BCE), but Eridu Genesis is based on the older oral tradition.

The 3rd dynasty of Ur is often referred to as the “Sumerian Renaissance”, because of art and literature were flourishing in the late Sumerian civilisation.

And Ziusudra is mentioned in a Sumerian poem of Gilgamesh, called the Death of Gilgames (or Bilgames), where the Gilgames met Ziusudra, as well as the Flood being alluded to.

Ziusudra is also mentioned in even earlier text than the Eridu Genesis, known as The Instructions of Shuruppak. Shuruppak is historically the name of Sumerian citystate, as well as the name of its king, and judging by the Instructions, Ziusudra was Shuruppak’s son.

This father and son relationship, also appeared in one of the versions of the Sumerian King List (WB-62, a recession of the earlier king list).

Anyway, back to Eridu Genesis. What does survive concerning the flood is about the Ziusudra sacrificing to the 4 great gods of Sumer, after leaving the vessel, which is basically very similar to the one in the Old Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis and in the 11st tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh (from the 7th century BCE, Assyrian Library of Nineveh; this version was known as the Standard Version, because it has the most complete tablets that survive; there are earlier versions, referred to as Old Babylonian Version and Middle Babylonian Version).

Based on the similarities between Ziusudra and Atrahasis, and between Ziusudra-Atrahasis to Utnapishtim, it is obvious the same character, but over time, evolved, becoming more fully developed than the original character.

The point is that each version, are literary evidences that predated the earlier written in Hebrew Genesis.

There are no Genesis written in the Bronze Age. And if did exist, it should be written in cuneiform, like the rest of the Levant, before the invention of the alphabets. But there are no such writing in cuneiform by Bronze Age Hebrew author.

You stated there are no extant writings around 2350 BCE, but that’s not true, because Sumerian cuneiform have existed since the formation of the Sumerian civilisation during the Jemdet Nasr period (c 3100 - c 2900 BCE), and inscriptions written in proto-Sumerian cuneiform was discovered at Chalcolithic temple in the Eanna district of Uruk. These inscriptions were dated to 3300 BCE.

In your Genesis 10, Uruk, or Erech, didn’t exist until after this Genesis Flood (which you claimed to be dated around 2350 BCE), built by Nimrod, the grandson of Ham.

But archaeology proved Genesis 10 regarding to Uruk (or Erech) to be false, because Uruk a couple of millennia before 2350 BCE.

Uruk, like many ancient Middle Eastern cities, newer settlement were successively built on top of older settlement, eg Jericho have 20 layers of settlements. And Uruk was no different from other cities, having 18 successive settlements.

The earliest settlement was built around 5000 BCE (late Neolithic period), which archaeologists labelled as Uruk XVIII.

Uruk, certainly predated Noah’s mythological deluge, and the fake history given in Genesis 10. For instance, there is no one by the name Nimrod, but there is actual king, Sargon the Great, who ruled Sumer from Akkad (Genesis Accad). Sargon started the Akkadian dynasty, before the 3rd dynasty of Ur.

I really think you don’t enough about Mesopotamian history, to comment what was or wasn’t written in Mesopotamia, or even Canaan/Israel for that matter, because you seemed to be clueless.

Subduction Zone said:

Meanwhile I can and have supported my claims.

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Supporting your claim by telling yourself that you are right falls a bit short. For those of us who cannot read your mind please provide your claim in a post we too can read.

thanks in advance

james dixon said:

For those of us who cannot read your mind please provide your claim is a post we too can read.

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Interesting sentence ...

Jose Fly said:

there are a lot of things out there that directly contradict it.

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Please spend ten (10) minutes of your pressious time providing this evidence.

Thanks in advance

james dixon said:

Supporting your claim by telling yourself that you are right falls a bit short. For those of us who cannot read your mind please provide your claim is a post we too can read.

thanks in advance

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If I make a claim that you doubt all you have to do is to ask me how I know something. I don't lecture. I will answer properly asked questions.

Jayhawker Soule said:

Interesting sentence ...

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I know, it pegged the irony meter.

james dixon said:

Please spend ten (10) minutes of your pressious time providing this evidence.

Thanks in advance

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Would it do any good? When I posted a clear example and offered to discuss it you instead said that you would use the image for your failed idea. Since the image refuted your myth that was rather laughable to say the least.

ecco said:

Perhaps "all" doesn't mean all.
Perhaps "every" doesn't mean every.

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Perhaps you are right.
At the time those words were written the authors were not aware of the America,s or the great oceans. The author's writings were based on their own known environment.

Climatologists, geologists, Anthropologists and paleontologists didn’t exist at that time. What was written was based on best guess's based on local events.

At that time there may well have been a period of heavy rains for a long period of time that did flood the region where they lived.

in my view

exchemist said:

Because what is now the Himalayas was once under the sea.

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I consed your view of this. Using the shells found on Mount Everest does not in itself prove a "great flood"; nor does it disprove it either.

gnostic said:

The photo that James dixion repeatedly posted up here,

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I no longer believe the sea shells found on Mount Everest proves that there was a great flood.

Willie has already provided the proof and I concede my error

james dixon said:

Please spend ten (10) minutes of your pressious time providing this evidence.

Thanks in advance

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As I noted earlier, there's simply not enough water on the earth to flood the entire earth. If there was, it would be flooded now. The reason it isn't is because there's not enough water to do so.

Creationists try and get around this fact by saying all the mountains didn't exist until after the flood, but that raises major issues in terms of the amount of energy required and heat that would be given off. Basically, the oceans and atmosphere would be boiled off.

There are also numerous geologic strata that creationists say are flood layers, yet have things like small animal tracks and raindrops preserved in them, which is obviously impossible in the midst of a global flood.

The fossil record also contradicts a global flood, in that it does not show any sort of pattern that is consistent with hydrological sorting. For example, one would think bottom-dwelling marine organisms would all be found together, yet trilobites are never found mixed in with lobsters and crabs.

Further, if all animal life was simultaneously reduced to a single breeding pair (or seven individuals) then we should see evidence of this extreme genetic bottleneck in the genome of every animal species on earth. We don't.

Finally, the amount of evolutionary change that would be required to go from two (or seven) individuals of each "kind" to all the species that exist today in just a few thousand years is simply impossible.

james dixon said:

I no longer believe the sea shells found on Mount Everest proves that there was a great flood.

Willie has already provided the proof and I concede my error

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And I concede mine, my statements that a creationist
will never admit to any error.

In the event, good for you, good attitude.

james dixon said:

I consed your view of this. Using the shells found on Mount Everest does not in itself prove a "great flood"; nor does it disprove it either.

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Actually they do disprove the flood. We do not see what would be predicted by the world wide flood in the fossil record. We don't see one thin layer of life. Instead we see millions upon millions of years of fossils amassing over the aeons.

james dixon said:

The bible does not state that the flood mentioned was a "world wide" flood.

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ecco said:

It doesn't?

Genesis
Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Genesis 7:12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Genesis 7:13 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;

Genesis 7:14 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.

Genesis 7:15 And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

Genesis 7:16 And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.

Genesis 7:17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

Genesis 7:18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

Genesis 7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

Genesis 7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

Genesis 7:21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

Genesis 7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

Genesis 7:23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

Genesis 7:24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

Perhaps "all" doesn't mean all.
Perhaps "every" doesn't mean every.

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james dixon said:

Perhaps you are right.
At the time those words were written the authors were not aware of the America,s or the great oceans. The author's writings were based on their own known environment.

Climatologists, geologists, Anthropologists and paleontologists didn’t exist at that time. What was written was based on best guess's based on local events.

At that time there may well have been a period of heavy rains for a long period of time that did flood the region where they lived.

in my view

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I completely agree. However, the Bible is considered by many to be Truth. The Bible states the entire world, not just those parts known to "the authors" was covered by water.

If Genesis and other early books of the Bible were written by Moses based on the words from God, then the Bible is wrong. If the Bible was written by people exaggerating ages old myths, then it is useless.

For flood believers it is a slippery slope when it comes to admitting that the flood was not worldwide. Any flood that would not have left massive evidence for its occurrence would also be too small to require an Ark. Noah and family could have easily walked out of an area that was to be flooded and very few species if any would be threatened with extinction from such an event. I can see why those that demand that their myth is true demand that it was a global in extent.

ecco said:

If the Bible was written by people exaggerating ages old myths, then it is useless.

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I wouldn't say they were exaggerating ages old myths. Just think for a moment what kind of world we would be living in today if the "bible" had never been written.

There would have been no guidelines to follow. No sense of good and bad, nothing to cause you to reconsider not to murder, not to lie or steal.

What king of society would we be living in today assuming we had not destroyed ourselves by now?

We live by the rule of law and the bible provided that law.

in my view of things