Solving the Mystery of the Biblical Flood

By WM. Scott Anderson

This is a very unique book, that for the first time puts forth a new theory on how a recent global flood as described in the Bible may have occurred, that is both plausible and scientifically sound. The author treats Noah´s flood as a scientific mystery story which he then proceeds to solve by examining the clues found in the geological record and human history, building a theory that is in harmony with the biblical record of an earth wide deluge and with what we know about the geology of the earth. In this detailed and well referenced book, common objections to the biblical deluge are examined and answers are found that satisfy both a literal interpretation of scripture and a scientific examination of the facts. This book is compelling as the author proves what many have come to view as mere myth, is actually a historical event well supported by scientific evidence. The author also presents the results of his research on detecting recently deposited micro marine fossils left by the flood in soil samples. Presenting solid Paleoclimatological evidence of the deluge, this book may require rewriting many currently used textbooks. Sure to be considered very controversial, this is a must read for any one interested in geology or the biblical deluge. Written for the general public and the more geologically inclined as well, this book is a seamless merging of a literal reading of Genesis with what geology knows about the earth. 305 pages, 20 B&W illustrations, index.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 15, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469122304

WM. Scott Anderson

Having a deep interest in both the Bible and science; the author Wm. Scott Anderson, has had a life long interest in the deluge and has spent many years researching this fascinating and controversial subject. The author received his advanced education at the college of the local library and has pursed further independent study at the local bookstore. By attending the classes held inside the cover of a book, he has had the privilege of being taught by some of greatest minds in the field of geology. Although first in his class, he has yet to graduate from the college course that never ends. He lives in the kettle moraine area of southeastern Wisconsin with his wife Karin and their three cats, Nimitz, Samatha and Maggie.

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Copyright © 2001 by Wm. Scott Anderson.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

This book is for those who wonder and who

want to know how it all happened.

This book is also dedicated to my loving wife

Karin, who is the angel of my heart

and the enchantress of my dreams.

I love you, both now and forever.

CHAPTER 1

The Mystery of the Missing Flood

In our collective cultural history we carry the memory of a great disaster that very nearly resulted in our extinction, the great flood of Noah, the deluge. But while people may know of it, many no longer believe it really happened. With the passing of time, the flood has increasingly come to be viewed by some as just a popular myth. For them it is nothing more than a mere children’s story told in pop up books. While in the Bible, the flood is stated as a historical fact. Today many are asking themselves if they can believe the Bible, wondering if these events were real. We live in an age of doubt, a time of failing faith. People are questioning old beliefs and asking if these things really happened. A little bit of doubt is like spilled acid, it slowly dissolves things, and if left to work long enough, it can completely dissolve even large seemly indestructible items or beliefs. If we ignore the acid like attack of doubt we find all around us, it doesn’t go away, it just slowly keeps eating away. Doubts need to be faced and answered by being neutralized by facts. But if we look to the sciences for an answer, geology seems to sweep the idea of a recent global flood into the dust bin with a hardy laugh. Modern science currently rejects any possibility of the biblical flood as having occurred as an actual recent global event. Considering the general attitude of people today toward the deluge, that viewpoint is to be expected. But since the flood is a historical event, we would also expect to be able to find evidence left by it, and thus prove that it occurred. But if we are going to find this evidence we are going to have to search for it ourselves, for the scientific community has certainly not been busy looking for it. There are the Scientific Creationists who try to prove that the flood happened by putting forward strange theories that modern science shoots down like so many clay pigeons. (The Scientific Creationists or Creationism promotes an interpretation of the Bible account of creation and the flood which conforms with the beliefs of American fundamentalists.) The Scientific Creationists mean well, but they seem to have a limited understanding of geology and physics. It would be so easy to prove the flood if the Scientific Creationists knew what they were talking about, but unfortunately they don’t. To be fair, in the following chapters we will look in detail at what the Scientific Creationists and others have to say about the flood, and see if it holds up to a thorough examination. For if we are going to prove that the flood happened, we need to use real evidence that cannot be easily overturned. Impossible theories that only serve to cloud the issue and confuse people, are best disposed of by showing exactly why they will not work.

In our modern world the flood is now like a half remembered dream, it doesn’t seem real to many people, yet the world still remembers it. People all around the world have flood myths, tales of how most of mankind was destroyed in a great flood, while in the daylight of science it seems to be just a myth, a folk tale to be forgotten like last night’s dream. If last night you dreamed you had walked barefoot on the beach in the moonlight, you would just pass it off as only a dream, but you would start to wonder if in the morning there was sand in your bed. Myths don’t leave evidence, but real events do. So has the flood left evidence for us to find that will stand up to inspection in the daylight of the scientific age?

First we do have the historical evidence consisting of all those folk tales of a global flood from around the world. The flood tales differ from one another in detail, but they all tell of a worldwide flood which only a few people survived. It would seem that nearly every ancient people have a global flood story, most of these flood stories probably have a common source, it would be too much of a coincidence for all of them to have occurred independently. There must be some kind of common link, an ancient flood tale upon which all these flood stories are based. A flood so early in our history and so large, that people all over the world still carry the memory of it. But to prove whether or not the flood occurred, we will need more concrete evidence than just folk tales.

The most accurate evidence we have comes from the Bible. There once was a time that to prove the flood all one would need to do was to cite chapter and verse. But now the Bible is no longer accepted without question. Some scientists have even stated that they see no reason why people cling to belief in the flood, that Christianity can do just as well without Genesis, the first book of the Bible. What they fail to realize is how all of the Bible is interconnected forming a whole. If you remove one part, like pulling on a loose thread, you threaten the integrity of the rest. For example, at Matthew 24:37-39 Jesus compares his return with the flood. Now if the flood is just a myth, what does that make the second coming? Apparently some scientists know the Bible as well as some Scientific Creationists knows science. You just cannot delete part of the Bible without affecting the believability of the rest of the Bible. That is one of the main reasons for the conflict between religion and science; the flood is a key part of the Bible, a historical event, and yet most scientists state it never happened.

It is really not so much a conflict as it is a mystery. A conflict is a disagreement, a mystery is far more complicated, and that is certainly the case with the flood. Possibly the biggest event in the recent geologic history of the world and it is missing. How does one misplace something as big as the flood? A stage magician uses misdirection and slight of hand to create his illusions. In the case of the flood we could be looking at something similar, only on a larger scale. If the flood happened it must have left some kind of evidence, so why can’t people find this evidence? As we attempt to solve the mystery of the flood in this book, you will see it is a case of looking in all the wrong places. For the best way to hide something big is to leave it out in plain sight and get everyone to think it is something else, besides it would never fit up your sleeve. Now a global flood would have left far too much evidence to hide, so you alter the flood story so that everyone is looking for the wrong kind of flood evidence and the evidence they do find doesn’t match what they are looking for and presto the deluge appears to disappear. Now the Biblical story of the flood has not been changed, but there are many different interpretations of that story, and that is where the trouble is. The conflict is not so much between science and the Bible as it is between geology and certain interpretations of the book of Genesis. The Genesis flood has been made into a kind of fairy tale through the addition of interpretations that read between the lines and attempt to alter it to fit a particular doctrinal viewpoint. The worst offender is Scientific Creationism’s young earth theory, the belief that the earth is only six thousand years old. This widely held view places an impossibly large burden on the flood by requiring that all fossilized animals died in the flood and all the strata they are found in were deposited by the flood. Being in complete conflict with over a 100 years worth of geology, this hydro theory has turned the flood into a truly impossible fairy tale. It is these doctrinal additions that have created most of the conflict with geology. By adding on theories of men, some have tried to turn the word of God into something contrary to the creation itself. The evidence we find in the natural world all around us conflicts with the additions people have made to the history recorded in the Bible, but is in harmony with the biblical record itself. The reason for this slight of hand in trying to change the flood is simple. Using science you can prove that the biblical flood has occurred as this book will go on to prove. But it is not possible to prove the flood additions. The purpose of these additions is to make the flood an easy target. One military tactic used particularly when fighting a superior force is to trick them into advancing into a undependable position and then ambush them with overwhelming force. By following human interpretations and add-ons to the biblical account, many Christians have been misled into a position they cannot defend against an overwhelming attack of well supported scientific facts.

To be able to find the flood we are going to have to strip away all the misinformation it has been hidden behind. Without preconceptions we need to look at the history of the earth for evidence of worldwide flooding, and yes there is such evidence. But because of the perceived conflict, people who believe the Bible have tended to ignore the findings of geology. By turning their backs on geology they have also turned their backs on the very source of evidence able to confirm the flood account. Instead of running away from science we should embrace it like a long lost friend. Using the discoveries of science we can find answers to all sorts of questions. But we need to remember the difference between the word of man and the word of God. Whereas the Bible is reliable because of being God’s word, each discovery in science is supported by varying amounts of evidence. Some things have been proved beyond any doubt, like the theory of gravity, (care to test it?) but other theories are not as well supported. So everything in science is valued or weighted according to how much evidence backs it up. Many times a well supported theory is overturned by an even better supported theory. The halls of the history of science are lined with old out dated theories that once were on the cutting edge, but now are as dead as the mummies at the local museum. Science is an ongoing search, a work in progress. Always remember to consider each scientific theory in the light of how much evidence supports it, and how well it fits in with what is already known. It is also wise to remember that science progresses by constantly challenging everything, nothing is sacred, even the oldest most cherished theories are regularly attacked. Every flaw is exposed and wedges driven in, to see if they can bring down the old view, so that what is true may be brought out into the light. What I am getting at is that while the core of scientific theories have survived many attacks and is very well established, the surrounding fringe is not as well founded in facts, hence the name theories. Don’t get all worked up about new conflicting ideas, in time when more is known they will find their place where they fit in, which may very well be in the trash can. It is through this constant testing and searching that truth is found, it is an approach from which Christians would do well to learn from and imitate. Christians are even told to keep testing themselves to see if they are still in the faith at 2 Corinthians 13:5. It is wise to question ourselves as to the reasons why we believe certain things, for if we don’t, we will have no answer when someone else does.

Don’t let anyone else do your thinking for you. We have all known at one time or another adorable little child who with eyes of innocence believes every ridiculous thing their older sibling tells them. There is no prize for being gullible, one needs to be discerning to find out the truth of the matter. Bearing in mind the relative reliability, we can compare what the Bible says about the flood with the evidence from science that supports a flood, and see how well such evidence fits in with the rest of what is known. Like searching for missing pieces to a puzzle, the pieces have to fit in with the rest of the puzzle if they are going to make any kind of sense. We are also going to see that some of the old theories about how the flood may have happened are like wrong puzzle pieces that some have tried to force into place. But the mystery of the flood is a solvable puzzle if we work at it and remove what doesn’t fit. Each piece that we add to the puzzle will enable us to see a larger part of the picture and will let us see more clearly how the rest of the pieces of evidence fit together.

If we can solve the mystery of the flood and show it to be consistent with what science knows about the earth, it would change the way we look at the world. It would answer a lot of questions and create some new ones. It is one of the biggest mysteries out there and it would have far reaching effects for the world, if what has come to be viewed as myth, turned out to be reality.

CHAPTER 2

The Age of Rocks

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth thus opens the Genesis account of creation. Under the young earth theory, six thousand years ago the heavens or in other words, the universe and the earth appeared instantly from nothing with everything very much as we see it today. This view is however only one interpretation, others read the same verse and believe the universe and earth are old having been created earlier In the beginning. So which interpretation is correct? If everything has been recently made, then much of geology would be a study of things that never happened. In short, there would be so little reality in our world, you would not know what geological or fossil evidence was real and what was not. Under these conditions, proving that the biblical flood happened would be impossible. Without the believability of cause and effect, evidence of the deluge would be useless if we don’t know what really happened and what did not. In order to prove anything we first have to know, what are the rules of the game? What kind of world is it that we live in? We need to know how old things are if we are to even know where and how to look for evidence of the flood.

First, how old is the universe? On one hand we have science telling us that the universe is about 15 billion years old, while others say it is only 6,000 years old. Among the people who argue for this recent date of course are the Scientific Creationists, and this is most definitely a clay pigeon theory as you will soon see.

First 15 billion is equal to 2,500,000 times 6,000. That means science is saying that the universe is two and half millions times as old as the Scientific Creationists are saying it is. The difference is as if the scientists are saying that a certain house is a mile away, and the Scientific Creationists are saying it is 0.025 inches away, about the thickness of a piece of paper. With a difference this big it should be very easy to tell which view is correct, the evidence should be right under our nose.

Actually the answer is right in our eyes, the answer is light. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km/ sec), or about 670 million miles per hour. The sun is about 94 million miles away from the earth, so it takes 8 minutes and 25 seconds for the sunlight to reach us. The warm sunlight we feel on our faces left the sun 8 and half minutes earlier, so when we see the sun, we see it as it was 8 and half minutes ago. The same is true when we look at the stars, we see them as they were when the light left them. Light travels about six trillion miles in a year, this distance is called a light-year. So it takes light, one year to travel the distance of one light year. Polaris, the north star is approximately 360 light years from earth. We see the star as it was 360 years ago. The Andromeda galaxy which is visible to the naked eye is 2 million light years away. Since the light took time to reach us, we see Andromeda as it was 2 million years ago, if we can see it, it had to exist 2 million years ago. The Hubble space telescope has seen distant galaxies at over 14 billion light years away. In order to be able even to see such distant galaxies, the universe has had to been in existence long enough for the light to be able to reach us. Hence the estimate that the universe is about 15 billion years old.

So to prove that the universe is older than a few thousand years all you have to do is to look at the stars. If the heavens were only 6,000 years old, we would only be able to see nearby stars. The night sky would be a sphere of visible stars 6,000 thousand light years in radius with the earth at the center. With the passing of each year, we would see another light year into space. We would be living in a constantly expanding ball of light as the light from ever more distant stars reached us for the first time. But that is not what we see in the heavens, instead we can see almost forever. Astronomers are able to map galaxies millions and billions of light years from earth. If the universe was only 6,000 years old, they would not even be able to see another galaxy. Since we can see our next door neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy which is 2 million light years away, without a telescope, all we need do to prove the ancientness of the heavens is to open our eyes.

The glory of the heavens speaks for themselves and they speak of great age. Since it is possible to see galaxies billions of light years away, the universe is unquestionably billions of years old.

You would think that confronted with this overwhelming evidence everyone would accept the great age of the universe. But instead some choose to deny the basic laws of physics. The laws of the universe contradict their theories, therefore the physical laws must be in error. No, I am not making this up, some really do argue against the physical laws of the universe. Their first claim is that the stars are all less than six thousand light years away. We know that is impossible because then the stars in other galaxies would have to be much smaller than normal stars to be closer than they appear. First 6,000 goes into 14 billion, 2.3 million times; so that means that the most distant galaxies would have to be 2.3 million times closer than they appear to be. The universe would have to be build like a scale model of itself at a reduced scale of 2.3 million to one. At this scale the Moon would be only 572 feet away from the earth, the Apollo astronauts could have used a tall ladder instead of a spacecraft. The astronauts also then could have brought the Moon home with them and put it in a display case, because at a reduced scale of 2.3 million to one, the Moon would be less than five feet across. At this same scale a star the size of our sun would be only 2 thousand feet across. That cannot be, because smaller stars would be unable to give off light because they would lack the gravitational mass to produce the pressures and heat necessary for nuclear fusion. Clearly objects in the night sky are much farther away than some would like to believe. Failing to prove the stars are nearby, some then make the claim that light moved much faster in the past and that current measurements show light to be still slowing down. This one really takes your breath away. For the speed of light is one of the basic physical laws of the universe, a simple number, and time is measured by its flow. Since in a way, light is time, light always takes a year to travel the distance of one light year. If the light is slowed by a thick gravitational field in an area, then in that area time is also slowed down by the same amount. So the only way their argument would work is if the earth had been in a local very thick gravity field that slowed our local time down, so that only 6,000 years had passed here while billions had passed everywhere else. But then that would mean only our part of the universe would be only 6,000 years old while the rest would be still billions of years old. A pointless argument since the universe would still be billions of years old, and gravity strong enough to slow down time that much exists only in black holes and would have crushed the earth to a pulp anyway. The light slowing down over time argument is also easily shot down by realizing what the rate of slow down would have to be. For light to have covered the distance of 14 billion light years in 6,000 years, the initial speed of light would have to been over 4.6 million times what we measure it at today and then over time it would of have had to gradually slowed down to the speed we measure it at today. The rate of slow down would be 4.587 miles per second slower each second for 6000 years. That would mean that at this same constant rate of slowing, light would come to a complete stop less than 12 hours after being measured at its current speed. Since you are still able to see these words, light has yet to come to a stop, light clearly has not been slowing down. Using some simple math and logic it is all too easy blast these clay pigeon theories right out of the sky. If we are to prove the flood or anything else, we will need theories with much better foundations which are not so easily shot down.

If the universe is so ancient, how old is the earth? Once again we see the huge difference in dates, the scientific date of 4.5 billion years verses the 6 thousand years of the Scientific Creationists, only a 750,000 to one difference this time. We can tell if the earth is young or old by looking at plate tectonics, the movement of the earth’s crust. The earth’s crust is made up thick rocky plates which move slowly over time, it is this movement that creates earth quakes. The plates come in two types, continental and ocean plates. The continental plates are thicker than the ocean plates and their tops rise above sea level forming the land masses.

At one time all the continents were packed together into a single land mass called Pangaea. It is still possible to look at a globe and still see how the land masses fitted together like puzzle pieces. If you could shrink the Atlantic ocean to nothing, it would be like running a movie backwards. You could watch as continents fitted themselves together, the east end of South America fitting up against the coastline of Africa, as the Atlantic disappears the North American east coast shrink-wraps itself around the northwest coast of Africa with Spain looking like the leading edge of a European wedge trying to split them apart, with Greenland squeezed between North America and Norway.

As wild as the idea of the land masses moving around the globe sounds, it is happening right now as you read this book. Each year the Atlantic ocean grows a bit wider and the Pacific shrinks a bit. The earth’s crust is slowly splitting apart at the mid-Atlantic ridge. The island of Iceland sits on the middle of this ridge and each year the island gets wider by about 1 to 2 inches. Iceland’s growth has been monitored for a number of years, but an even older record of growth is on the ocean floor.

Once every so many thousands of years the earth’s magnetic field reverses itself, looking at a compass, north becomes south and south becomes north. A record of these field reversals are recorded in the earth’s crust. As molten lava cools the minerals crystallize, and crystals containing iron align themselves with the magnetic field. Once the lava has hardened, the crystals are locked in place, they cannot be changed except by remelting the lava. A magnetic sensor towed over the mid-Atlantic ridge records a pattern of field reversals preserved in the ocean floor. The pattern is split down the middle of the ridge with a mirror image recorded on each side. As fresh lava rises and cools in the center of the ridge the iron crystals align with the earth’s magnetic field as they form. Then as the ridge widens over time the cooled lava is split in two and new lava forms in the middle. This process has gone on for a very long time and has formed a record of magnetic field direction. Magnetic sensors towed over the ocean floors reveal a striped pattern of field reversals, recorded as if the ocean floor were a very large piece of cassette tape. As the cooled lava is slowly moved away from the hot center of the ridge it is slowly covered by ocean sediment. The ridge is self is mostly bare of sediment. The thickness of the sediment on the ocean floor increases in thickness with increasing distance from the mid-Atlantic ridge. The farther the ocean floor is from the ridge, the older it is and the more time it has had to accumulate sediments.

The true edge of the continental land plates are submerged under the sea and this shallow ocean area is called the continental shelves. The Atlantic continental shelves on each side of the ocean have an average distance apart of over 2,700 miles. At a growth rate of 2 inches per year it would take a bit over 84 million years for the Atlantic ocean to grow to its present size. The true age is thought to be about 200 million years. If the earth was only 6,000 years old, the Atlantic would have to be growing at the rate of over 2376 feet wider per year. At a growth rate of 2 inches per year, 0.3 square miles of new Atlantic ocean floor would be formed each year. An Atlantic spreading rate of 2376 feet per year would create over 4,500 square miles, an area nearly the size of Connecticut, of new ocean floor each year. The cooling of this much molten lava year after year would have greatly increased the ocean water temperature and would have probably boiled everything in the oceans by now. The island of Iceland which has been formed by the mid-Atlantic ridge is 335 miles wide. At a growth rate of 2376 feet instead of 2 inches per year, the island would only be 744 years old. Iceland would have appeared about the year 1254 AD as a small island, yet history tells us that when the Norwegians arrived in 874 AD, they found the island very much as it is today.

The gradual increasing depth of sediment away from the mid-Atlantic ridge shows a continuous slow growth of the Atlantic ocean over time. This is backed up by the record of magnetic field reversals recorded in the ocean floor. In order for the earth’s magnetic field to reverse, it has to gradually lose strength and then grown in strength