Answering Skeptics: Where Did the Waters of Noah's Flood Come From?
This is a continuation of an ongoing discussion with an individual who responded to an ad I placed on Facebook. As before, we’ll start with his question in bold, followed by my response.
Where did all the water come from to cover the whole world? [numerous questions and comments about Noahic flood issues redacted]
Have a great day....
Howdy, sir. Good to hear from you again. I’m not going to tackle the ark itself at this point…there’s enough to chew on in your first post in addition to the previous reply that you’re still digesting.
I’ve covered the details of where the water of the Noahic deluge came from and where it went in a presentation called “Dissecting the Math of the Great Flood.” I find it interesting that you note the huge volumes of subterranean water that would have to have to rocks broken to release it…that sounds a lot like Genesis 7:11, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.” Scripture tells us what but it doesn’t always go into great details regarding the how, so the precise mechanisms that God used to flood the entire earth are not known to us. There have been several models suggested over the years, at least one of those involves a process known as “catastrophic plate tectonics” which could provide the precise mechanism you describe—but they’re just theories.
There are two presuppositions that underlie all of your comments about rates and processes: uniformitarianism (“the present is the key to the past”) and naturalism (“the natural world is all there is”). You’re assuming, for example, that the oceans then had a salinity that was similar to what we see today, but that is not knowable to us today (and actually runs counter to our understanding that salinity increases annually). You’re also assuming that plant growth would have been similar to what it is today…somewhat slow, but if the atmospheric conditions were different (e.g. more “greenhouse effect”) then it’s not hard to imagine how plant growth would be greatly accelerated. We see evidence of a lush forest in Antarctica, so clearly that icy wasteland was not always as we know it now—conditions on earth have not always been the same. Those are your uniformitarian presuppositions. Your naturalistic presuppositions are another layer beneath that, as you rule out the possibility that the God who created everything ex nihilo would not intervene in the world He created. I’m not one of those who thinks that every time we can’t explain something, we pull the “God card” (i.e. “the God of the gaps”), but it seems unwise to rule out an entire category of answers to satisfy a philosophical bias.
Dating polar ice caps and the glaciers that cover Greenland involves much speculation based, again, upon uniformitarian presuppositions—slow and gradual processes—that rule out a priori the possibility of those sheets of ice getting a huge kickstart during the “ice age” after the Noachian flood. Answers in Genesis has an article on their website that discusses this.
If there were a global flood, what might we expect to see? As someone else has said, “Billions of dead things, buried in rock layers laid down by water, all over the earth.” Lo and behold, what we find is consistent with the Flood narrative from Genesis 7-9. We even find marine fossils in odd places like the Grand Canyon and in the Himalayas (which is consistent with Psalm 104:8, by the way).
I’ve always been somewhat amused by the change in man’s perspective on things after the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s on May 18, 1980. The experts insisted that fine rock layers were an evidence of long ages of time. They insisted that valleys were the result of slow-and-gradual water flows (e.g. that the Grand Canyon was carved by the Colorado River). But what we’ve learned in the past 40 years is that fine rock layers can be laid down rather quickly—up to 600 feet of new strata have been laid at Mount St. Helens since 1980—and river valleys can be cut in a matter of hours. On March 19, 1982, another small eruption on Mount St. Helens caused a 20-mile-long mudflow, the movement of which resulted in a 140 foot-deep canyon dubbed “the mini Grand Canyon.” The longer we live, the more we learn, and the more we learn, the more we see that the Bible’s account still stands…we’ve come to the point now where the scientific community is willing to allow for some measure of catastrophism, but still turn a blind eye to physical evidence that strongly suggests a global flood.
You’re right in saying that the Flood narrative does not tell us how places like Australia were repopulated. Have you seen a Bible lately? How much bigger do you want it to be? As it is right now, my study Bible, which has moderately-large print for my middle-aged eyes already tips the scales at close to 5 lbs.! This is an argument from silence you’re making—“Because the Bible doesn’t say how this happened, it’s not possible.” I submit to you that if you’re not willing to believe what the Bible plainly says now, why would you make the case that the Bible should say more? This reminds me of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus:
““Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? ”
There’s more that was not written than what was written, but that which is necessary to know has been given to us in God’s Word: Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name. — John 20:30,31
It seems that a recurring theme in your questions is that you tend to reject the what if you don’t understand the how. What kind of god would God be if everything He did made complete sense to us? (Isaiah 55:8,9) Earlier, you said that you believe in God, but I have to wonder what god it is that you believe in, because he is definitely foreign to me. You seem to have a god who is constrained by your own understanding, and who is limited in the scope of his operation to the physical world—one who is incapable of superintending the transmission of his word through the ages without corruption. I have to wonder how you would suppose that such a weak and limited deity could ever save you from sin and the judgment to come?