Where did the flood waters come from and where did they go?

Ok serious answer. I am a little out on a limb here but my understanding is that the Babylonians also had a flood epic. And isn't it true that much of the Old Testament was written during the Jewish exile in Babylon? My thinking is that the flood story was lifted from the Babylonians and written into the Hebrew scriptures. There must be linguistic and textual analysis that could confirm whether this is plausible. Now - the water. I remember reading a while back about an ancient shoreline being discovered under the Black Sea? that would suggest a rapid rise in water level at some time in the past. Does anyone know whether the dates of that event would precede the Babylonian flood epic and whether there is geological evidence for rapid wide spread flooding of an inhabited area? For example, an earthquake that broke a natural dam and allowed a valley to be flooded?This message has been edited by deerbreh, 06-22-2005 03:55 PM

Please watch what subtitle you pick.Also that is all off topic in this thread. This is about flood waters in the literalists model not the real source of the myths.

About this diagram: You call this the "famous stratigraphically determined sea-level curves." The diagram comes from the paper The Age of the Earth: Geology and the Deluge by Paul Garner as posted at the Amen.org.uk website. The paper says the diagram was derived by estimating the area of continental flooding, and that it was "adapted from Hallam" from a paper called Pre-Quartenrnary sea-level changes in the Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Science Letters.The diagram is bunk, and I'll explain why.Assuming a constant volume of water (if you don't want to make that assumption then you can address the thread's topic and tell us where the water came from and where it went to), then the most straightforward way to affect sea levels is to remove or add water. One of the most common ways that this happens is for water to be held on land in the form of ice as glaciers (ice in water cannot affect sea levels). But we know that even if all the glaciers in the world melted that sea levels wouldn't rise more than 100 meters at most, yet your diagram has sea levels rising by as much as 600 meters. How could this be?One way we know that the diagram is bunk is because the area of continental flooding does not correlate with sea level, primarily because how much land is flooded is a function of the elevation of all the earth's surface, which isn't known. With both sea levels and the earth's surface rising and falling, there is also no fixed point against which to measure sea levels. The only valid approach is to measure sea level with respect to the earth's center.Using distance from the earth's center as a measure, and leaving the impoundment of ice in glaciers out of the equation, and assuming a constant volume of water, and assuming a constant volume for the earth, how can the water level be made to rise? The only way is to change the topography of the earth's surface so as to cause the water's surface to be further from the earth's center.The simplest way to accomplish this is to reduce the depth of the ocean basins. Since we've assumed a constant volume for the earth, this would require the mountains on land to diminish, and for land levels in general to decrease. It's a little hard to envision, but I think the highest sea levels would occur when all land was underwater.The reasoning behind this conclusion is that starting with a completely submerged earth, any part of the earth's surface that pokes above sea level has only risen because elsewhere another part has fallen (this is required because of constant volume). Any further rise of the land above sea level can only cause sea level to drop, because another part of the earth's surface beneath the sea is falling in order to contribute to the part that is rising.Obvious problems with what I've just presented is that the volume of water on earth is not necessarily a constant, and the volume of the earth can change, due to things like temperature and compressibility.Anyway, this is all a digression. Unless you believe that early Palaeozoic sea levels rose because water was added from somewhere, this is all off-topic.--Percy

A global flood where there were "considerable areas of the continents that were not flooded?" Given that the hidden context is Noah's flood, I think your terminology invites confusion.Regardless of the words you chose to describe the situation in the early Palaeozoic, you definitely do not agree more with TB. He only entered this discussion to argue that mainstream geology has the same problem as Creationists of finding a source for the water of the flood. Whatever word choices you might share with TB, your definition of "flood" and his are definitely not the same. Of course, but that's not the topic of this thread. If his chosen scenario requires that water be added, then he should tell us where it came from.--Percy

Well, ok but it is kind of silly to speculate about the origin of water for a global flood if in fact there is a much simpler explanation - that there was a catastrophic flood but it wasn't global. Shooting down "just so" stories about water sources is not nearly as intellectually satisfying as trying to understand the underlying myth.

I thought that diagram looked odd. It certainly did not look like the diagram I remembered from Vail et al. 1977, which IS the landmark paper for relative sea level variations.Important mainstream papers on relative sea level changes are:Vail, P. R., R. M. Mitchum, Jr., R. G. Todd, et al. 1977. Seismic stratigraphy and global changes of sea level. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Memoir 26:49—212.Haq, B. U., J. Hardenbol, and P. R. Vail. 1987. The chronology of fluctuating sea level since the Triassic. Science 235:1156—1167.Haq, B. U., J. Hardenbol, and P. R. Vail. 1988. Mesozoic and Cenozoic chronostratigraphy and cycles of sea-level change. SEPM Special Publication 42:71—108.Although the Vail and Haq curves are well-accepted, they are not without contention. There are several/many things that need to be taken into account such as growth/melting of ice caps, tectonics/tectonism, subsidence/uplift, rate/amount of continental erosion and redepsotion into ocean basins, glacio-isostasy, etc.Did Hallam, Vail, and Haq all take these into account appropriately? Maybe, maybe not.This message has been edited by roxrkool, 06-22-2005 06:32 PM

I found this image of Vail's sea level changes at Mass Extinction events caused by a fluctuating sea level, but I don't know how to interpret it: Here's another from The Earth through Time: --Percy

In a general response to several posts above . .My main point in this thread was to show that even if there is a water problem it is not as big as everyone makes out. Mainstream there was 'little land left uncovered' during the Ordovician.Secondly, we can all agree that the 'comings and goings' were largely tectonically controlled. Sure, YECs believe there was some 'fountains of the deep' source but after that the comings and goings (innundations and retreats) are tectonically controlled.There's some good common ground here. An early Paleozoic Flood simply does not have a hugely different water problem than mainstream science does.PS And all of those differnt Vail curves are different massagings of the same data I'm pretty sure. They are not gospel but neither are they not relevant. And as I mentioned before they are lowere limits because no-one is sure how much of each bed was eroded by later activity.This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-23-2005 02:18 AM

Responding to most of your post would only draw the discussion further off-topic. I'll only respond to this on-topic portion: If you are a YEC who believes "fountains of the deep" contributed to the flood, then now is the time to offer your evidence.--Percy

Some massages are better than others. The flood was supposed to have been the result of a global deluge of massive proportions and therefore YECs need to explain the source of that unusual amount of precipitation. In addition, the water levels later fell, where did all that extra water go?The fact that relative sea levels have in the past 'flooded' continents does not support the YEC position in the least because those are explained by something other than rain.Finding these 'fountains of the deep' would certainly help your position as would finding massive deposits of continent-sourced sediment in the ocean basins.In fact, that's one of the ways to get ocean levels to rise - displace the water in the ocean basins with sediment. YECs need to find that sediment... and then figure out where the water went...Mainstream geology doesn't have a water problem.This message has been edited by roxrkool, 06-23-2005 11:21 AM

You are doing a pretty good job of arguing that flooding has happened on the old Earth timescale. I, personally, will grant you that point.Compressing all that old Earth geologic evolution into a young Earth time frame is the trick. Perhaps I will eventually get back to the YEC Geologic Column - Created with apparent age?.Moose

I agree that there is no "water problem" for mainstream geology. Why would there be? Mainstream geology can explain all of the various fluctations in sea level without invoking supernatural intervention. OTOH YEC apologists have a huge water problem if they take the Genesis flood story as fact because there has to be enough water to cover the highest mountains by 15 cubits (22 ft?) world wide. Fountains of the deep and canopies are not going to cut it, either from a supply or final water disposition standpoint. That leaves tectonics and sea level changes. That could work except that the time periods are absurdly short (for the flood itself and ages of the earth before and since)The YECs would have an easier (but still extremely difficult) time of it if they would just accept that the flood was local and the Genesis account is mostly a mistranslation/exaggeration of an earlier Sumerian account. (Here is one sensible explanation http://www.flood-myth.com/faq.htm )

Remember that in Message 20, TB said: That's why I don't think you and TB mean the same thing when you say flooding. When you say flooding you mean that changes in relative sea levels over long time periods caused large land areas to become submerged. When TB says flooding he means that an incursion of additional water from somewhere submerged the continents, though he also apparently grants that sea levels are tectonically influenced, leaving open the question of why he believes additional water is required, a question he probably won't address. And his diagram of sea levels is completely bogus, as I explained in Message 48. Roxrkool appeared to agree in Message 55 ("Some massages are better than others"), and he put "flooding" between quotation marks.Beyond that, the terminology is incorrect due to the different time frames. Use of the term flood in reference to a sudden event seems fine. But it seems incorrect, at least in a geological context, to apply the term flood to land that slowly sinks beneath the waves at rates even as great as a few feet per century.Moving on: This seems off-topic to me for this thread.In Message 53 TB said: TB apparently believes that "fountains of the deep" were in part responsible for the flooding of the early Palaeozoic. I'd like to hear about where he thinks the water came from, and where it eventually went.--Percy

If mainstream science has no water problem then ours is not a very big problem either. We're not claiming to be able to inundate today's world. It's the early Paleozoic we - at least the Paleozoic Flooders - are claiming to Flood.Percy, If the fountains of the deep represent the magma of the mid-oceanic rifts then it's all purely tectonic. On the other hand maybe something like the hydro-plate model will gain further evidence. Where did the water go? You clearly have not even attempted to sit along side our view. We believe the water rearranged into the new tectonically created ocean basins - just like mainstream sceince believes.Are you under some false-impression that mainstream science - or anybody else - has a quantitative model of the Paleozoic world and the tectonic activity that has occurred between now and then *sufficient* to determine whether today's sea-levels are consistnet with a near (or total) Paleozoic covering? Of course there is no such model or data.For now, my point is that mainstream science has no problem almost covering the Paleozoic world.And Moose, you know very well that our claim to compress the geo-column into 500 years (in the Recolonization Model case) is based on numerous points of evidence, and is not just a baseless claim.This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 06-23-2005 07:11 PM

Deerbreh, it sounds like you are unaware that there exist creationist computer models built by *mainstream* tectonic simulators that demonstrate catastrophic plate tectonics involving 'runaway subduction'.Baumgardner is unarguably a major contributer to the mainstream field of tectonic simulation.Error | The Institute for Creation Research
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