MrDarwin

Hmmm, if you believe plants have "microevolved" to produce new species since the flood, you might want to take a look at <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000465" target="_blank">this discussion</a>, where I raise that very same issue. In this case, we have excellent evidence for a group of plants on the Hawaiian islands evolving from a single common ancestor. Take a look and tell me if it counts as "microevolution" or "macroevolution", how long ago you think that ancestor arrived on the islands, and just how fast you think this diversification happened.

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

Coragyps

Yes, no doubt that much water being released as steam would cause massive rains - but only after the atmosphere and surface cooled back below 100 C. Everything would be boiled, broiled, and sterilized.
Tim Thompson, please correct me if I am wrong, but if all the asteroids and comets were launched by an earthly impulse like Brown's, they would be in orbits that intersect ours. They would be coming back in to hit us weekly. They would also have chemical/isotopic compositions like that of Earth, and they do not, as far as several hundred analyses of meteorites and spectral and space-probe studies of several comets show.
Really, honestly, David, Brown's book is a random cobbling together of a few out-of-context factoids, a lot of improbable speculation, and an overwhelming wish on the author's part that it all be so, and evidence be damned.

Bait

John,
Could I get your honest opinion on this thesis?

<a href="http://www.unibg.it/dmsia/dynamics/apollo.html" target="_blank">http://www.unibg.it/dmsia/dynamics/apollo.html</a>

Not for debate, just curious as to a geologists point of view. You can e-mail me privately if you wish.
Ron

Bait

David,
go to your "my profile", then to your "private messages".
r.

Happy Wonderer

Ahem... I beg to disagree. Even during the height of the Roman empire, China was a vast, vital, and technologically advanced culture. Take a look at this
<a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~e232/Time.html" target="_blank">Timline of ancient China</a>.

It is important to realize that "the west" isn't (wasn't) the center of the universe. Most of the technology and science that we believe "we" invented came from either Asia or Arabia.

Not to belittle Rome's great achievements, but the empire's extent is more impressive through today's eyes than it was in their time. For example, England wasn't a very impressive conquest in the year 100...

I bring this up not to extoll China's virtues but to try to get (all of us) to broaden our horizons a bit. There is a lot of interesting and important human history that isn't covered in the Bible....


<a href="http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/teachingaids/china/trad/timeline.htm" target="_blank">Timline of inventions</a>

HW

John Solum

Hi Ron,

I'll look it over and let you know what I think. I may take a few days though.

John

Oolon Colluphid

Okay David, your point about Everest’s formation being during the flood is well taken. Okay, then. The site I linked on Everest’s geology says that "Within a few hundred metres of the summit are sedimentary rocks (clays, silts and the carbonate (chalky) remains of marine animals)." These overlay the igneous rocks, which presumably were already there before deposition of the sediments.

Call these "few hundred metres" five hundred. That’s 1,640 feet. Subtract from Everest’s 29,035 feet, and you get 27,395 feet. Divide by 960 hours. You get a 28.5 feet per hour water rise. If 70% of the water were from the “fountains of the deep”, you’re still stuck with rainfall at a rate of a smidge over eight and a half feet per hour, instead of the nine I suggested at first.

Or put it another way. If the rainfall was as heavy as the world record (which you wouldn’t want to take a wooden ship out in, let alone one filled with sauropods, baluchitheriums, elephants, rhinos, hippos etc etc and the tons of biomass in countless other ‘kinds’ ), three inches an hour would account for just 240 feet in the biblically stated time. Leaving 28,795 feet of Everest to be covered by FOTD waters. That’d be just 0.83% of the water coming from rain. If 99.17% of the water came from the FOTD, why bother with the rain at all? Either the ark was sunk, or the oft-mentioned rain was pointless.

Alternatively...

I think he’s got it! Yup, that’s how the sediment got up there! But... er... where did this mountain-building come from? Everest was there before the flood... okay. Call it just the height of Ararat at the time. (Ararat must have already been there, else the ark couldn’t have come to rest on it.) We can now add back the sediment to Everest’s height. So 29,035 minus 16,854 gives 12,181 feet that Everest has shot up by since the flood. In, what, about 4,000 years. So it grew at three feet (36 inches) a year... and has somehow now slowed to 2.4 inches a year. Why such a sudden slow-down (in the order of 16 times slower now), and why the hell did it shoot up in the first place?

Fine. Switch my 70-30 split around. Fancy floating an ark in 20 feet an hour rainfall?

Bwahahaha! Do you know what ‘dilution’ means, David? Do you think adding twenty-seven thousand feet of [edited to add: fresh] water would have no effect on the seas it fell into? (For comparison, the <a href="http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/ocean/" target="_blank"> average depth</a> of the Pacific Ocean is 15,000 feet, and all but two of the deepest trenches are less than 27,000. Here's another word: osmosis. What effect might doubling, tripling or quadrupling the amount of fresh water in the seas have, do you think? Could all the saltwater-adapted life could survive that? There’s 5,280 feet in a mile; you’ve just increased the depth of the sea by five miles. What about the delicate ecologies of coral reefs (which, not known for their swimming abilities, are now five miles under). Not to mention the effect on them of the increased pressure and massive silt inundation and loss of light. All their fish might bob upward... and have nothing to eat.

Or does your ark now need to accommodate a large chunk of marine life too?

Try "It didn’t". Try "myth".

Yup...

To sum up. The more you lower the mountains to reduce the amount of water required to rise up them, the more ludicrous become the rates of mountain-building since the flood to get them where they are now. I’d contend that even a mile extra depth of water (to cover a mere 5,000 foot mountain) would not exactly leave much alive in the sea (perhaps god’s purpose, but then you need to fit the fish on the ark too), and would still need flood waters rising at over 5 feet an hour. Go on, I’ll be generous, 24 inches an hour rainfall. The world record is three.

Still think the everything-else-plus-fishtanks-laden ark could float?

Here’s yet another word for you: <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=allegory" target="_blank">allegory</a>

Mind you, I suppose really low mountains would explain the olive leaf the dove plucked...

Oolon

[ March 20, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]

[ March 21, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

Peez

Hi Oolon!

Just to add: all those coral reefs must have been buried and fossilized. After all, isn't that when all those fossils were formed? How did anything in the sea survive, let alone delicate ecosystems, under conditions that were producing many metres of sedimentary rock with various fossils?


Peez

Bait

Thanks John, appreciate it.
Ron

Jayhawker Soule

Let me add that, while it is improbable that archaeological research may sometimes prove or disprove the Peter Pan and Snow White stories ... <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

[ March 20, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>