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Noah's Flood Hypothesis May Not Hold Water
RPI ^ | June 14, 2002 | Jun Abrajano

Posted on 06/14/2002 7:32:58 AM PDT by aculeus

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Part of International Research Group Refuting Popular Theory

In 1996, marine geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman published a scientifically popular hypothesis, titled Noah's Flood Hypothesis. The researchers presented evidence of a bursting flood about 7,500 years ago in what is now the Black Sea. This, some say, supports the biblical story of Noah and the flood.

But, such a forceful flood could not have taken place, says Jun Abrajano, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer. He is part of an international team of scientists who refute the so-called Noah's Flood Hypothesis.

Abrajano cites evidence of a much more gradual rising of the Black Sea that began to occur 10,000 years ago and continued for 2,000 years.

According to the Noah's Flood Hypothesis, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a narrow strip of land now broken by the Bosporus Strait. Ryan and Pittman argue that the Mediterranean broke through the land and inundated the Black Sea with more than 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. The salty powerful flood swiftly killed the freshwater mollusks in the Black Sea. This, they say, accounts for fossil remains that can be dated back 7,500 years.

Abrajano's team has challenged the theory by studying sediments from the Marmara Sea, which sits next to the Black Sea and opens into the Mediterranean.

The team found a rich mud, called sapropel in the Marmara. The mud provides evidence that there has been sustained interaction between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea for at least 10,000 years.

"For the Noah's Ark Hypothesis to be correct, one has to speculate that there was no flowing of water between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea before the speculated great deluge," says Abrajano. "We have found this to be incorrect."

GSA (Geological Society of America) Today magazine recently published a paper in its May 2002 edition based on Abrajano's research. His research also will be published this year in Marine Geology, an international science journal.

For a map of the area go to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/maps/tu-map.jpg


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News
KEYWORDS: blacksea; blackseaflood; catastrophism; grandcanyon; greatflood; junabrajano; noah; noahsflood; walterpitman; williamryan
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To: CyberCowboy777
It's fun to cut & paste things from all over the web, isn't it?

But you still haven't answered the questions in #136 about woman as man's rib, people living to be hundreds of years old, etc and the scientific evidence for such assertions.

161 posted on 06/14/2002 12:35:32 PM PDT by gdani
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To: MEGoody
Are you SURE there isn't physically enough water to flood the whole earth?

Let's not forget that this global flood was a divine act. There is no need to prove that it would be naturally possible. There does not need to be sufficient water present now to cover the earth, for God to cause a global flood. (God can say let the Earth be flooded with buttermilk and the world would be flooded with buttermilk. God could then say milk be gone, and then it would be gone.)

Also let's not assume that the earth today is the same as the earth was back then. It's my understanding that there is a balance to the earth's crust. A high mountain range is balanced by a deep ocean valley. It is possible that the the earth back then consisted of smaller mountains and much shallower oceans. The pro-flood position is that the flood radically altered the Earth. (I am being extremely brief, so please cut me some slack.)

162 posted on 06/14/2002 12:37:39 PM PDT by Sci Fi Guy
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To: azhenfud
Look up - Robert Gentry –CREATIONN’S TINY MYSTERY

RADIO HALOS

Physicist Robert Gentry has reported isolated radio halos of plonium-214 in crystalline granite. The half-life of this element is 0.000164 seconds! To record the existence of this element in such short time span, the granite must be in crystalline state instantaneously. (10) This runs counter to evolutionary estimates of 300 million years for granite to form.

(10) Robert Gentry –CREATIONN’S TINY MYSTERY)

163 posted on 06/14/2002 12:38:22 PM PDT by CyberCowboy777
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To: Physicist
1 Kings 7 23 He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits [1] from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits [2] to measure around it.

I have seen this before and I believe you are in error in its interpretation. The rim and the circumfurance of the vessel itself are not necessarily the same. For example, my tea cup might measure 3 inches around but while its rim measures 3.14 inches in diameter.

Seeing that the text descibes a rim and seeing that the vessel was designed to bath in a rim wider than the main vessel makes perfect sense.

164 posted on 06/14/2002 12:40:04 PM PDT by VRWC_minion
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To: azhenfud
I've wondered why we don't have sixty ton creatures roaming the earth today, if indeed evolution is truly a progressive process as evolutionists claim.

First of all, evolutionists do not claim that evolution is progressive. Second, what's so "progressive" about a sixty-ton creature? There's nothing in anybody's conception of evolution that says that creatures should tend to get bigger. Third, there are physics limits to how large a creature can be, regardless of what direction evolution would go.

165 posted on 06/14/2002 12:40:04 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: AppyPappy
Moses wrote the Noah story. God inspired it.

How about God dictated the Noah story, Moses copied it, God proofed it, and St. Peter quoted from it to the scoffers in his own time? (see II Peter 3: 3-7)

166 posted on 06/14/2002 12:41:01 PM PDT by Agamemnon
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To: CyberCowboy777
Thanks,
Az
167 posted on 06/14/2002 12:41:27 PM PDT by azhenfud
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To: HeadOn
if you look at God's reason for the flood (to eliminate evil men)

No, it was not. Reread Genesis again. The reason was to eliminate the offspring of the Nephilim (fallen angels) and the daughters of Adam. Among Adams' descendants, only Noah & family did not intermix.

168 posted on 06/14/2002 12:42:39 PM PDT by Citizen of the Savage Nation
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To: gdani
It is fun to ask me to prove all the Bible beyond a shadow of a doubt and yet not defend your position on the topic of this thread.

Does the Evidence lend to the theory of the Flood?

Does the Evidence disprove or at least call into question old earth/Macroevolution theories?

I have presented must data with sources. You have done nothing but change the subject.

Obviously if a Divine Creator wanted to create a Woman from a Rib, he could. Does the evidence lend to a Creator?

169 posted on 06/14/2002 12:44:17 PM PDT by CyberCowboy777
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To: VRWC_minion
For example, my tea cup might measure 3 inches around but while its rim measures 3.14 inches in diameter.

Did M.C. Escher design your teacup?

Seeing that the text descibes a rim and seeing that the vessel was designed to bath in a rim wider than the main vessel makes perfect sense.

And it does, too, but then it would take a distance larger than pi times the diameter to measure around it, not smaller.

170 posted on 06/14/2002 12:44:38 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: spetznaz
HUMAN ARTIFACTS THROUGHOUT THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN

Man-made artifacts – such as the hammer in Cretaceous rock, a human sandal print with trilobite in Cambrian rock, human footprints and a handprint in Cretaceous rock – point to the fact that all the supposed geologic periods actually occurred at the same time in the recent past.

171 posted on 06/14/2002 12:45:22 PM PDT by CyberCowboy777
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To: Junior
The fact that an olive branch was brought back proves the world was not completely covered by the waters; it takes years for an olive tree to grow

I don't think that the passage intends to imply that it was from a living tree, rather that the flood water had receeded in places enough to allow plants to begin growing again. (I checked with two different translations, both translated this verse as olive leaf. So it could be that a the bird brought back part of a new shoot that had just sprung up.)

172 posted on 06/14/2002 12:48:22 PM PDT by Sci Fi Guy
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To: CyberCowboy777
point to the fact that all the supposed geologic periods actually occurred at the same time in the recent past

That would be pretty remarkable. Why are there no accounts of dinosaurs in the Bible?

173 posted on 06/14/2002 12:52:03 PM PDT by gdani
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To: CyberCowboy777
Physicist Robert Gentry has reported isolated radio halos of plonium-214 in crystalline granite. The half-life of this element is 0.000164 seconds! To record the existence of this element in such short time span, the granite must be in crystalline state instantaneously.

What foolishness. Polonium-214 is a decay product of radon, which is produced by the decay of uranium, which is present in granite. In any piece of granite, trace quantities of polonium are being produced all the time. Of course you will find evidence for polonium decays in granite!

174 posted on 06/14/2002 12:52:49 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: EggsAckley
Use this link to get to site where you can get to original hebrew/greek

Linked word project

175 posted on 06/14/2002 12:54:18 PM PDT by VRWC_minion
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To: CyberCowboy777
Now for the ludicrous statement that the world came into being 6000 years ago! Do they know there are civilizations OLDER than 6000 years! For example although Egypt was brought together as a unified nation around 3000BC (approx. 5000 years ago), there was an pre-Egyptian civilazation called the Pre-Dynasty, led by such notables as Narmer. They do not know exactly when it started...HOWEVER they have dated back certain artifacts (such as the Narmer Plate, which was a prehistoric sky calender) back to 4468BC (that is around 6470 years ago.... which somehow would not make sense if the world was created 6000 years ago).

Also if you look at the Nubian Kingdoms (of what is now known as Sudan) they settled there in the Mesolithic period (30,000-20,000BC), and were DOMESTICATING animals in the Neolithic age (10,000-3,000BC)! How can that be possible if the earth came into being 6,000 years ago? It just does not make sense.

And do not get me wrong.... i am not refuting the existence of God, nor am i championing or advocating evolutionism or its ilk! However i think that 'publications' that assert dinosaurs were fossilized by great whirlpools, or that the universe was created 6000 years ago are simply lying, and trying to tie their (rather ridiculous) lies with theology and faith!

Children may believe in some of the things those tracts say.....however any lucid logical person who sat down and clearly thought of it would find it ridiculous that anyone would say the world was created 6,000 years ago! (Unless they want to come up with a statement that somehoe things 'aged' faster etc etc etc)!

Ai yi yi. For a moment i felt like i was back in the middle-ages reading the about people being burnt as heretics for suggesting the Eart revolved around the sun. However after reading about the universe being created 6,000 years ago i think those ignorant kooks in the middleages who believed the Earth was the center of the universe were in many ways better than the current crop! 6,000 years.....wow, what next! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

176 posted on 06/14/2002 12:55:16 PM PDT by spetznaz
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To: Physicist
There physically isn't enough water on Earth to do it. And if somehow it happened anyway, 100,000 years would not suffice for its effects to be overcome.

Frankly, it's embarrassing to see adults seriously entertain the notion of a worldwide flood as a historical fact.

As I Christian, and a person that is somewhat familiar with world history and the background of the history recorded in Genesis in the Bible, I'm sorry to say you are almost too correct in your assessment. However, please do not assume that the Bible says this that and the other, when it does not, just because mal-informed Christians say it does. Looking at the original Hebrew manuscripts, it is *not* written there that the world is 6000 years old, just as it not there that the whole world as we know it was flooded. Only a poor scholar not versed in the language that it was written in as well as figures of speech would make such claims.

When it says 'land' in the manuscripts, and the King James translators put in 'world', why would one then assume that Moses meant the whole entire world from China to the Andes to Siberia to the Himalayas was flooded, when he had no knowledge of such places, when he only wrote that the whole 'land' where Noah lived was flooded. Help me out here, what does Occam's Razor have to say about this?

177 posted on 06/14/2002 12:55:17 PM PDT by Citizen of the Savage Nation
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To: Physicist
And it does, too, but then it would take a distance larger than pi times the diameter to measure around it, not smaller.

Either way the diameter given is the rim while the circumference is the body of the vessel. The rim and the body are two separate circles.

178 posted on 06/14/2002 12:58:55 PM PDT by VRWC_minion
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To: Physicist
In two places it gives the value of pi as being 3.0, to two significant digits. Do you believe that?

It does no such thing.

It gives circumferences of some shields used to decorate the temple as well as the diameter. You, of all people, should recognize an approximation when you see one!

When we did calculations in high school, we didnt use the full value of pi. Ususally I used the "pi" button on my calculator, which gives 3.141592654. That, too, is an approximation. My teacher ususally used an approximation, too -- 3.14.

It's a non-issue.

179 posted on 06/14/2002 1:03:03 PM PDT by jude24
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To: Physicist
There's nothing in anybody's conception of evolution that says that creatures should tend to get bigger.

Really? Define "evolution", then. I believe it uses the term "a gradual process in which something changes into a different and usu. better or more complex form". Did not Darwin claim man, through evolving, has his source from the single living cell? Is this not being portrayed as "progressive" by evolutionists?

Then progressively, from dinosaurs, there should be the evidence of a continuum of a chain of life which would produce more huge forms of life, yet it does not exist.

One cannot totally believe evolution from specie to specie without great assumption....
Az

180 posted on 06/14/2002 1:03:04 PM PDT by azhenfud
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