A question about the flood myth, baraminology, and Pangaea

[Old Baby]

Drich could prove the Noah's Ark story to me and I still wouldn't believe in his "bible based Christianity", simply because he's a pompous asshole - exactly the type of Christian I found abrasive and counter-effective when I was still a believer.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Anyone who knows anything about the flood myth in Genesis knows that the story is impossible for a huge number of reasons. One of them being that the story gives us the dimensions of the ark. So, given how many animals Noah was told to gather, we can figure out how much volume on average each creature would have. Not only is there not enough space for them to survive until the water abated, they wouldn't have even fit.

This is where baraminology enters in. Baraminology is basically what you get when you take a sixth-grade understanding of evolution and combine it with a literal reading of Genesis and a very rules-lawyery interpretation of its use of the word "kind". Noah had to get two (or seven) of every kind of animal. So, rather than worrying about getting two lions, tigers, lynxes, pumas, panthers, cheetahs, ocelots, and house cats (and a shit-ton of other cats I'm not thinking about off the top of my head), he'd just get to cats and call it a day. Then, after they all get off the ark, the idea is that these cats would then evolve into every other type of "cat kind" we see in the world today, 5,000 years later. Also, given how old the stories in the Bible are, this evolution would have had to occur in less than a thousand years. Seriously.

So, we start with a bastardized version of evolution that flirts with the contentious boundaries of microevolution and macroevolution (there is no difference, except in creationist's heads) that involves hyper-fast speciation, and run into a problem of "how did everything get from Mount Ararat to where it is today?". Enter in a very weird notion of how fast continental drift happened. Basically, we take a sixth-grade understanding of geology and the notion that we used to have one "super continent" (Pangaea) that eventually spread into the seven continents we have today, and assume it happened really fast. I mean, we obviously have a problem if the ark opens up on Mount Ararat, and the world is void of all animal life other than right there. Sure, they could migrate across Asia to Europe and Africa, but how are they getting to the other four continents? I've been told numerous times that the flood caused the shift in the plate tectonics to cause the continental drift, and that everyone just went for a wild ride.

So, here's my question I promised in my thread title: When did this shift happen? Did it start before or after the waters abated?

If it started before, how did anyone get to those other four continents?

If it started after, how was it "caused" by the flood?

Now, I supposed you could weasel your way into the first answer by saying that it started first, but the plates were still close enough that the water between was really shallow. You could also weasel that it started after, but was caused by the waters receding (where did they go?). Either way, the continents couldn't have gone very far by the time the ark emptied, and they would have had to clear over 99% of the total distance after the fact. Can you imagine the earthquakes the entire planet would have been experiencing during this wild ride? This whole thing is incredibly stupid. The stated belief of baraminologists is that:

• The flood happened, as stated in Genesis.
  
• The animals emptied off and started fucking like rabbits (also, the carnivores weren't eating all the other animals, somehow).
  
• The animals spread all over Pangaea during this relatively brief period.
  
• The current seven continents flew apart at catastrophic speeds, and no one noticed or recorded these centuries long earthquakes!
  
• The animals evolved at a rate no one has ever seen!
  
• This evolution suddenly fucking stopped, and has since only been observed in controlled populations of gnats and bacteria, but it otherwise just doesn't happen.
  

Does this really help the creationist sleep better at night?

That's a very interesting analysis of the fairy tale.  I haven't seen it analyzed like that before.  

I think people like the Genesis story because it's a Jewish fairy tale and they simply love all Jewish fairy tales.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

...  
Maybe you can ask one of you more intelligent peers to explain this to you, if you don't want to take my word for it.. but if this did happen then the water would push the atmosphere up with it. So what you count now 30K feet, is 30,000 feet from is sea level. Now add enough water to encompass the earth to what we now call 30,000 ft, and... it becomes the new SEA LEVEL! so the new 30K feet would be what we call 60K feet. So what would the conditions at the new sea level/30k feet? the same as they are now at our current sea level.
...

Where did all that water come from?
And where has it gone?

Magic comets came to Earth and took the excess water to new worlds across the galaxy.

[Minimalist]

How long after the flood did it take for the salt water to separate from the fresh?

Did the Antarctic ice cap have to survive the flood year totally submerged in water - not something usually good for ice - or did it float away from the continent and magically find its way back afterwards?

How did all the marsupials end up in the post-flood Australias and not settle in some equivalent environment? Why did pumas trek back to South America and not decide simply to set up camp in Africa? How did all this animal displacement happen without leaving a trace of fossil evidence?

Dripshit fears facts, Stim.

[RobbyPants]

wow.. you sure added alot to the flood story.. Tectonic shift, barminology, and pangea...

I don't recall reading any of this in the Genesis accounts...

No I didn't. I didn't invent baraminology or the notion that the plate shift was caused by a global flood over a brief period. I'm not saying you believe this. I'm not saying most Christians believe this, but a notable number do, and this thread is discussing their beliefs.

Rather how God used the faith of a singular man and his family as a reason for God himself to save creation, by only killing the wicked.

And all the kids and almost all the animals.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The flood story...the zombie that won't die even after it's been crucified, beheaded, roasted, disemboweled, and filled with hot lead.

It's a fucking war story.

[Jenny A]

If the were a world wide flood, there would be a world wide sedimentary flood layer all at the same level.  There isn't.  Therefore,  no world wide flood.  There are many, many other impossibilitissues associated with the Genesis  flood story, but the biggest unanswered question is where is the sediment layer?

who says? The d-bags who study localized floods? people who study tsunamis? What do all floods have in common (except a global flood)???

Yes, those "d-bags" who call themselves geologists.  Or are only geologists who study floods "d-bags?" That's childish even for you.

A body of water moves to a previously dry area, and along the way picks up and deposits a sedimentary flood layer. why? because a body of water over takes dry land in a localized area. This would be like busting open you above ground pool and it washing all your stuff into your neighbors back yard.

So how does a global flood differ?

No one body of water over takes localized dry land. Water does not rush in from one direction and carries and push your crap to another.

No the ground (all of it) pukes up water. this is more like being on a boat that takes 40 Days and 40 nights to sink. Very little was move or destroyed, why? the water did not come in and wash everything out, it slowly crept up till the world was full

The titanic sank in hours and their are pictures of dinner plates/china still in their cuboards, of all sorts of things not nailed down remaining undisturbed why? Because in those parts of the ship water did not rush in, it crept in and filled/ stabilized everything when it did.

That is why your sediment argument does not apply. It does not account for the conditions set fourth by the account. The sediment argument pushes or rather forces the idea the flood happened like a tsunami nothing in the bible remotely records that.

what else you got?

There are more problems with your explanation then with the lack of of a sedimentary layer.  The first problem is Genesis itself which says:  on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights."  "Bursting forth" doesn't sound slow and gradual to me.  And then there's that pesky forty days and nights of rain.  So if Genesis is accurate there was more to it that water gradually rising out of the ground.

But let's look at what that "gradual" rise would mean.  To cover Mt. Everest the water would have to rise from sea level to 29,000 feet in 40 days (960 hours).  That would be a rate of over 30 feet an hour.  Over 16 and a half feet an hour if you only want to cover Mt. Ararat at 16,800 feet. You don't think that much water percolating out of the soil that fast would leave a mark?  Really?  You can say more of it was rain, but then you are back the lack of evidence of flooding.

But Genesis doesn't say it percolates, it bursts forth" out of the "springs of the deeps" whatever those might be.  That suggests localized springs not all over percolation.  But wherever it come from it would have run downhill from there, because that what water does, it runs downhill.  And even if it all welled up from land at or below sea level, or from beneath the oceans, you still have to account for forty days of world wide rain leaving no trace.  In most of the world two or three days of steady rain creates flooding of a more conventional sort.  So, yes, I would expect to see evidence of something like conventional flooding world wide.  The rain fell world wide according to the story for 40 days and nights.  That's a lot of streams, lakes etc. slipping their banks--all of them in fact.

And then there's the shear volume of water necessary.  Others have already covered the rather major problems of where did an extra 3 billion cubic kilometers of water come from and where did it go.  My question to you is if all that water exited the core of earth and then sat on top of it for 150 days before beginning to recede, don't you think the shear weight of all that water would leave a mark on the soil?  That's a hell of a lot of pressure.

Of and then there's salt.  Did it all stay handily in the oceans instead of spreading out and salting the waters of the flood? Otherwise that sedimentary layer we're missing ought to be salty too.

[Living in Death]

What about the kangaroos? Checkmate, creationists!

With all sincerity, it's just more adaptation of creationist myths to make themselves feel more secure. They try to weave in scientific theories and world views and think that it'll somehow blossom into something plausible (which, as you demonstrated so well, never really does).

The big problem is that most creationists would see this as a goldmine if they were to come across it. They think this really is the truth, in their deluded world view, and that's the problem. It upsets me a little that people think this way. It's damaging science, and potentially decent people.

[RobbyPants]

With all sincerity, it's just more adaptation of creationist myths to make themselves feel more secure. They try to weave in scientific theories and world views and think that it'll somehow blossom into something plausible (which, as you demonstrated so well, never really does).

Really, the only way they can make themselves feel more secure is by rejecting the story outright, and coming up with some plausible narrative for why fictitious story is in the Bible. Now, this approach has it's own problems, but at least it jettisons the problems of defending things that cannot be true and defending creepy people who kill children and animals because they're mad at the adults. Any person I know IRL that I've talked to about this myth either expresses strong doubts about or flat-out rejects this story.

It's damaging science, and potentially decent people.

Especially that last one. I've learned a couple of years ago that flood apologetics are the worst. It's this somewhat unique blend of butchered science and murder apologia that makes a person look like a complete ass. At the end of the day, I realize how far they're willing to go to reconcile their beliefs, and it's disturbing.

[Crossless2.0]

I think people like the Genesis story because it's a Jewish fairy tale and they simply love all Jewish fairy tales.

Meh. Needs more golems.