Was There a Global Flood?

Below are the three main views.  After each of the views I will write what we think does and does not work with each idea.

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Evolutionist View: All Evolutionists believe that there was no global flood.  Most do admit that there was some sort of disaster that occurred that basically wiped out most every thing on earth. They do not know, however exactly what that was.  They have several theories, but I will explain why they don’t really work.

Old Earth Creationist View: The Old Earth Creationists view on the global flood varies.  Most believe that there was no global flood but there was a local flood. Some believe that there was no flood at all.

Young Earth Creationist View: Young Earth Creationists believe that there was a global flood that covered all the mountains and hills. This flood wiped out all the animals and people that were not on the ark. Young Earth Creationists believe that the water was on the earth for over one year and was probably hundreds to thousands of feet deep. ________________________________________________________________________

 Now I will look at each of the three ideas and see what does and what does not work about each idea.

Both the Evolutionist and the Old Earth Creationist agree that there was no global flood.  The difference between the two is in that the Old Earth Creationist believes that there was a flood but it was local. We are going to explain why we think that the flood was global with a Christian perspective first. After that we will explain why we think there was a flood and why we think it was global from a scientific perspective.

In Genesis 6-7 God tells about the flood and how it covered the earth. .  Some old earth creationists say that the earth was only covered by 15 to 20 feet of water.  They claim that the flood only went into places that there were animals and people. In chapter 7:19-20 it says that all the high hills and then the mountains were covered. It does not say that just the hills were covered; it says that all the high hills and mountains were covered. We are not talking about little mounds of dirt. We are talking about mountains and high hills. The flood had to have been global if it covered all the high hills and mountain under the heavens. If you say that it was not a global flood you are saying that there were no hills or mountains even though the bible says that there was.

The ark then landed on the mountains after 150 days.  Altogether Noah was in the ark for about 370 days before God opened up the door.  Any flood that that was upon the earth for over a year is no small flood.

Now, why would God tell Noah make an ark if the flood was to be local?  It took Noah over 100 years to make the ark. Surly Noah could have climbed a high mountain in that amount of time and have been safe from the waters.  That would have saved him and his family a lot trouble and work. For a local flood would never have covered all the mountains and hills with water.

Scientific Reason. (this part is still being worked on) 

One of the Evolutionist’s arguments is that all the animals could not have fit on the ark and that the ark would have been easily flipped by the waves.  Those arguments are usually easily refuted though. 

First, the ark was 300 cubits (about 450 feet, or 135 meters) long.  It was 50 cubits (about 75 feet, or 22.5 meters) wide. It was 30 cubits (13.5 meters, or 45 feet) high. That comes out to about three stories high.  The ark displaced about 22,000 tons of water.  The ark's gross tonnage which is a measure of cubic space (100 cubic feet is one gross ton) would be 15,100 tons. The floor space for the ark would be over 101,000 square feet. This would be more floor space than 21 standard college basketball courts. The ark’s total space available for use was about
1,518,000 cubic feet.  This would equal the capacity of 569 modern railroad stock cars. The standard size for a stock car is 44 feet long and a volume of 2,670 cubic feet. This would make a train more than 5 ½ miles long.  All that space could easily fit all the animals that are in the world right now that we know about.  Add the animals that we know are extinct and allowing for animals that we do not know are alive or were alive at some point but now are extinct we still have more than half of the ark’s space left over. That is still enough space for all the food and water for all the animals and Noah and his family for more than a year. 

The ark was built on a 1:6 ratio (50 cubits: 300 cubits). The science of naval architecture reveals that the most stable ratio for an ocean going vessel is 1:6. All modern day ocean going vessels use this same length to width ratio. It is estimated that the ark could easily have survived even the largest of ocean waves. If the ark were equipped with a dragging stone anchor, it would have been properly positioned to meet any size ocean wave. The design of the ark would have made it almost impossible to turn over.

*Thanks to Creation Tips at http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/arksize.html for the info on the size of the ark.