I wanted to know what you think of the flood etc.

If this is more appropiate in another forum; thanks for moving it.

Probably better in BC&A.

When Did the Flood Occur?
I Kings 6:1 says that 480 years passed from the start of the Exodus to the start of construction on the first temple by Solomon. Gal 3:17 says that 430 years passed from the covenant with Abraham to the delivery of the Law to Moses. Yahweh establishes the covenant with Abram about 135 years after he was born (11:32, 26). Abram was born when Terah was 70 (11:26). Terah was born when Nahor was 29 (11:24). Nahor was born when Serug was 30 (11:22). Serug was born when Re'u was 30 (11:20). Re'u was born when Peleg was 30 (11:18). Peleg was born when Eber is 34 (11:16). Eber was born when Shelah was 30 (11:14). Shelah was born from a 35 year-old Arpach'shad (11:12). Arpach'shad was born from Shem 2 years after the flood (11:10).
Since the date of Solomon's reign is agreed to be about 950[+/- 50]BCE, we can calculate the time of the flood using this chronology. Starting with Solomon and working backward, we have:
950BCE +480 +430 +135 +70 +29 +30 +30 +30 +34 +30 +35 +2= 2285BCE.

China and Egypt have unboken civilizations that extend back past 3500 BCE. The Bible is therfore errant.
big d

There is a problem with this method. It is a little unreliable to use the genealogies to arrive at a date.

True, thinker. Heh. Fun with monikers.

But anyhow, isn't genealogies what theists generally use to determine that "date" of creation? Surely it's good enough to calculate the "date" of the flood for comparison purposes.

diana

Actually, my point is it shouldn't be used for either. Archbishop Ussher disregarded Hebrew scholarship when he chose a date for creation. Others who ascribe to his date make the same mistake. The genealogies are not the way to go.

If Yahweh inspired the Hebrew Scriptures, then the date of 2285 BCE MUST be accurate. If Yahweh did not inspire the Hebrew Sriptures, then everything contained in them is subject to human error and fabrication. The most obvious answer is the second. The flood stories of Genesis are mythical.

rodahi

Let's leave biblical geneology and dating the flood by it aside for a moment. Let's give the flood theorists some leeway. Is there any evidence of a global flood within the past 10,000 or even the past 100,000 years?

If there was such an occurance there isn't any evidence left today to suggest it.
Where did the flood water come from, and where did it go?
How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? Why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?
Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors?

How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution? How did all the fish survive? Some fish require salt water, some fresh water, others brackish, some need warm water, some cold water.
How did sensitive marine life such as coral survive?

A global flood would have been detrimental not only to all terrestrial life but to marine life as well.

For the moment let's also forget about the unfeasibility of a 450-foot wooden boat being able to carry enough 'kinds' of animals to populate the earth in a relatively short period of time

Thanks for all the replies!

I think that because scholars have proposed only aproximate dates for the emergence of civilization( Some scholars say that the Chines emerged in 2250 BC- Ralph Lindon), these dates can be reconciled with the Biblxcal flood date. When we average the estimated dates for the emergence of the post flood civilizations (3,000, 3,000, 2,250, 2,740, and 2,620) we get 2,723 which in archological terms is quite close to the biblical date of 2,448 BC.
This is in no way completely accurate, but most of our dates in past history are based on estimation, so we must do the same thing for the Bible.

ThomasA, you asked if there was any evidence. I believe that there is. Mr Geore F. Dodwell, a retired government astronomer of south Australia and director of the Adelaide Observatory stated this in a leter to Dr. Arthur J. Brandenburg of Ohio State University that in 26 years of extensive study, he had found that the the earth showed a typical exponential recovery curve from a nearly vetical postion to an inclination of 26.5 degrees, and then returned to the rpesent inclination of 23.5 degrees. The date of this was 2345 BC and he concludes that the only way this could happen was if the Biblical flood was true.

Where did the water come from. Well, before the flood it neve rained, so there was that moisture in the air, but that is not nearly enough. The Bible speaks of underground resevoirs of water that burst open during the flood.. Where did the water go? Because the earth's crust was disturbed, some land went up forming mountains and some went down forming the deep sea trenches. This would provide room for some of the water. Other water went on to freeze because of the atmospheric cooling caused by the receding water causing the ice age. When the rain stoped, there was a huge windstorm, evaporating much of the water and also causing masive erosion. . This may explain why the Sierra Nevadas, pushed up higher than the Appalachians show less erosion.
Let me research about those ice core samples and the sea floor.
Is the fossil record really all that good for evolution. Darwin did not even want to use it.
We can find a succesion of animals, the larger less mobile animals are generally found near the lower half of the fossil record while the more mobile animals seem to be higher up. It seems that they were able to survive longer,
At the very bottom (the Palaeozoic) we find bottom dwelling marin creatures, these animals could not swim fast enough to escape the oncoming sediment. How about the giant fish beds, foud in California and England, These show thousands of preserved fish exhibiting signs of quick and violent deaths. In California, these beds are spread over 4 square miles. In England, they cover 10,000 square miles. At the Geisental lignite deposits of Germany, we can see waht appears to be a mass grave of plants, animals, and insects from all climatic areas of the world. How did all the dinosaurs die during the same period of time. Geologists L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine de Camp state that no logical way has been found to connect the know cause of extinction of individual species with the worldwide "Great Deaths." They continue by saying that some other cause, operating on a worldwide basis "would seem to be called for."

The fossil record is also quite mixed up in toher places: At Lake Athabasca, we can find the Cretaceous over Devonian, in Banff Alberta we find the Lower Cretaceous over Lower Carbinoferous, and in Tennessee the Lower Carbinoferous over the Silurian. There are many other examples of this. Scientist have also tried to preserve fish by placing them in wire cages and droping them into the balck muds of Louisiana to recreate what happened when the fossil record was formed. The investigators(Zangerl and Richardson) found that fish waying from one half to three fourths pounds disentegrated within six and a half days. Yet we can find very delicate animals and plants preserved perfectly in the fossil record. Something much faster must have happened to create these fossils.
Did all the fish survive? hardly, many of the fossils we see show that many species became extinct during the flood. Many of the marine life that existed int he antediluvian world was destroyed.
I need to do a little more research on how marine animals survived.
Let's not forget about the ark

First of all it was not 450 feet long, it was 900 feet long, 12,150,000 cubit foot capacity and a gross tonnage of 121,500 tons. Lets divide the ark up into boxcars. a normal boxcar can house 67 animals with comfort. If we use this measurment on the ark, we find that we can house 226,125 animals with 25% of the space left. I think the ark was up to the task. Antediluvian wood was also much stronger than todays wood, and the ark's design insure in ability to float.

Sorry, what? Was there no plantlife? Inland plantlife needs rain to survive.
A better question is where it came from. How deep underground? Where? Why is there no evidence of vast underground reservoirs?
The problem here is that the formation of mountains and trenches could never explain where the water went unless the world was incredibly flat up until Noah was about to disembark. In fact, if there were vast underground reservoirs, the land would collapse underneath them, causing a net lowering of the landmass.
Where did the water recede to?
Water evaporation would not account for the amount of water in the flood.

I'm sorry, but you've created a scenario which would require that God reform the world post-flood in order for it to appear as it does today.
The de Camps weren't geologists! They were writers!