Was there really a global flood? (new publication reasoning)

by Simon 28 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  AlanF

  Anyone who believes there was a global flood a few thousand years ago is either woefully ignorant of the evidence, or doesn't care about the evidence because of his or her religious agenda.

  There's not a shred of geological evidence for a global flood. Massive floods leave unmistakeable traces, like the scars left by huge ice-age floods that scoured eastern Washington. A global flood would have left such scars all over the world. Indeed, such scars would be the most distinguishing feature of the land.

  As for myths, the legend of Noah's Flood is a really neat story to tell. I suspect that the original Sumerian flood myth was told and retold, and gradually migrated to various ancient peoples. There's good evidence that there was a lot more contact among various ancient peoples than has been thought, and it's a given that when people meet, they exchange stories. This is especially so among people who don't read or write.

  AlanF
• 

  Abaddon

  Farkel

  Not to mention the fact that if Jesus did exist and did believe in a global flood, he was as ignorant as everyone else back then.

  An absolute gem sir!

  It really is very simple.

  Trees. Alive. Today. Were. Growing. Before. Any. Possible. Biblical. Date. Of. A. Global. Flood.

  Even if someone wants to get into silly arguements over dating techniques such as C14 or whatever, we're talking about something that can be falsified as simply as using a saw and some sandpaper.

  There's anecdotal evidence for there having been big floods, in stories, and various hard evidences to show some civilisations got it right between the eyes due to a flood. Maybe all the stories boil down to one or two events. Maybe big floods happen often enough for most cultures to have stories of them.

  But the Genesis account is just what you'd expect from the people from whom it came.
• 

  patio34

  Hi Panda, You're right--it was irrelevant to this discussion but a good example of the same kind of argument, imo.

  Hi Abaddon, You said:

  Trees. Alive. Today. Were. Growing. Before. Any. Possible. Biblical. Date. Of. A. Global. Flood.

  What kind of trees were, I mean, are they? I know the redwoods in California are over a thousand years old, but wouldn't a tree have to be over 4,000 years old to predate a date of the flood? That would be a good fact to have on hand!

  Pat
• 

  Sirius Dogma

  I think Abaddon might be talking about the Methuselah tree. I saw this nova not long ago, there are trees growing in the California White Mountains that are about 5000 years old.

  You can read more about it here:

  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/methuselah/
• 

  AlanF

  Bristlecone pines, such as the Methusaleh Tree, do indeed disprove claims of a global flood. Not only because some living trees are a good deal older than the supposed biblical date of the Flood, but because dead wood in their vicinity has been shown to be at least 9000 years old via the techniques of tree-ring dating (dendrochronology). I believe that other sorts of trees in other parts of the world date back nearly 10,000 years.

  Dendrochronology poses several problems for believers in a global flood. There's the one Abaddon mentioned, of course, but also one of how such a massive flood could have left dead wood lying around -- right where it originally grew -- rather than floating it away. Another problem is how such old trees could be growing high up on mountains more than 14,000 feet high, such as the White Mountains in California. I don't know of any flood-believers who think that the Flood overtopped such mountains. They claim that the mountains rose after the Flood. But that would require massive and violent erosion for granite mountains like the Whites to get to their present shape in only a few thousand years. Downed wood couldn't possibly survive such an onslaught.

  Here's a nice website on dendrochronology for anyone interested: http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/

  A similar dilemma for flood-believers is presented by a continuous record of annual layers in certain lakes and bogs. One lake in France has a continuous record going back several tens of thousands of years. It records ice-age conditions in Europe, and the change from ice-age to warm conditions from about 12,000 to 10,500 years ago. While flood-believers usually claim that more than one layer of sediment is usually laid down each year, that's simply false, as is shown by looking at layers put down in the last couple of hundred years. Furthermore, even the oldest sediments sometimes show a variation in thickness with a period of 11 years, which corresponds to the sunspot cycle. There's no way that such a pattern can exist if layers accumulated at 2-3 times the annual rate.

  An extensive debunking of the Flood myth can be found here: http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/flood01.htm

  AlanF
• 

  Sirius Dogma

  AlanF,

  http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/flood01.htm

  Wow, that is an amazing site and I have bookmarked it. Thank you for all the hard work and time you have spent.

  Regards,

  SD
• 

  patio34

  Hi SD and AlanF,

  Thanks for the information and the sites. I've bookmarked them too and will read more about them. That's really a fascinating subject and seems to effectively debunk the Flood.

  Pat
• 

  rocketman

  So much of it is about control, really. If the wts were to ever admit that the Flood or some other Bible account previosuly considered historical was in reality simply allegorical, much of the control would erode.
• 

  Abaddon

  patio34

  Well, the B9iblical date is something like 2304BC, that's 4308BP (before present).

  The placing of a catastrophic global flood in the year 2304 BC means that all civilizations discovered by archaeology must fit into the last 4285 years.

  http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3563.asp

  I love AiG; the Bible says 2304BC, so "All civilizations discovered by archaeology must fit into the last 4285 years" - even if the evidence points to the contrary. Don't you just love presuppositionalists?

  Anyway, in the White Mountains of California, on the trail of the Bristlecone pine...

  Earth's oldest living inhabitant "Methuselah" at 4,767 years, has lived more than a millennium longer than any other tree.

  http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/home.html

  Now 4767BP is 2763BC.

  Put simply, if the Noachian flood was global, that tree was 450 or so years old at the time. Hardy little number, isn't it?

  If the trees aren't good enough, then howabout some Egyptian buildings? The Great (or Khufu's) Pyramid, for example, is far from the oldest building in Egypt, but is generally dated to 2600BC; it was standing three hundred years before the er, 'global' flood.

  Man those Egyptians sure knew something about damp-proof courses!

  Alan F

  I love the dendrochronolgy stuff, it's simple, and as you point out, not only can one tree fell the Flood myth, but linking the growth ring patterns of trees can push the existence of trees way back past the date they were meant to have been created. Whoops.