THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE OF THE FLOOD
By John Ashton MSc PhD CChem FRACI
Dr. John Ashton Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Victoria University, Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor of Applied Sciences at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, the largest Australian tertiary institution. He holds a BSc (Honors) with a prize in chemistry and Ph.D. in epistemology (a branch of philosophy dealing with the limits of knowledge), also with a prize, from the University of Newcastle and an MSc in chemistry from the University of Tasmania. Dr. Ashton is a Chartered Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and a former Honorary Associate in the School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences at the University of Sydney. He also served as editor of three books related to science and faith issues, including the much-cited In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation.
Evolution Impossible.
Evidence for the global flood. How geology, history,
and astronomy confirm the flood of the Bible
Geological evidence of a global flood
There are massive sedimentary (formed underwater) deposits on every continent: coal, sandstone, limestone & conglomerates (pebbles).
There are no modern parallels for the formation of these fossil-rich deposits and conglomerates on such a huge scale.
Eg. The Morrison Formations with their dinosaur fossils stretch from New Mexico to Canada.
Eg. Chalk beds up to 100 m thick & rich in fossils stretch from Ireland to Turkey.
Eg. Grand Canyon with sediments 1.6 km thick.
Coal beds containing similar plant fossils stretch across Europe to the Caspian sea.
The Coconino Sandstone which stretches across Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas has cross-beds indicating water 90 metres deep was flowing at 1 -1.5 m/sec producing sand waves up to 18 metres high which deposited 42,000 cubic kilometers of sand.
The bedding layers in most deposits show very little surface erosion that is they are flat and parallel indicating rapid deposition with no time for erosion. Creatures that are rapidly decomposed are preserved and there are action fossils
Eg. Eating, hatching - all indicators of very rapid preservation.
Dr. David M. Raup, curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and past president of the Paleontological Society observes that present-day geologists do not actually find the gradual unfolding of life in the geological record.
What geologists find in the fossil record is species appearing in the geological sequences very suddenly, showing little or no change during their existence in the geological record and then they are no longer found. They do not find evidence of evolution. Also, we find fossils of creatures the same as creatures still exist today they have not changed or evolved.
Harvard University paleontologist Professor Stephen J. Gould conceded that there was an absence of fossil evidence for the intermediary stages required for the major evolutionary transitions.
NCBI Biologist Dr. Eugene Koonin also points this out.See: http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1 /21
For example:
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Insect authority Dr. Robin Wootton, from the University of Exeter, notes that when fossil insects first appear in the geological column, flying is fully developed.
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This requires huge amounts of new genetic code to arise from mutations.
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This is impossible from a probability basis, and there is no evidence of gradual development in the fossil record.
Comparisons of World Flood Myths
1. Was the catastrophe a flood, not another type? 95%
2. Was the flood global? 95%
3. Was a favored family saved? 88%
4. Were specifically eight people saved? 9%
5. Was the rainbow mentioned? 75%
6. Did animals play any part? 73%
7. Was survival due to a boat? 70%
8. Were animals also saved? 67%
9. Was flood due to the wickedness of mankind? 66%
10. Were they forewarned? 66%
11. Did survivors land on a mountain? 57%
12. Were birds sent out? 35%
The ark — realistic or not?
The ark described in Genesis is more realistic than the basket and cube type craft mentioned in other accounts. In modern measurements, the ark would have been about 140 metres (450 feet) long, 23 metres (75 feet) wide, and 14 metres (45 feet) high. Very realistic figures in terms of naval architecture and stability at sea - eg similar dimension ratios to a rough water kayak.
The ark has been calculated to be around 39,000 tonnes with an inside capacity of around 39, 644 cubic metres with an estimated deck area of 8,890 square metres.
Geologist John Woodmorappe has published a well-researched feasibility study demonstrating that sufficient kinds of animals would fit and survive on the ark to be able to repopulate the earth with the different kinds of animals that we know of today.
After Alexander, the Great had defeated Darius at Gaugamela in 331 BC. , he journeyed to Babylon. Here he received 1903 years of astronomical observations from the Chaldeans, which they claimed dated back to the founding of Babylon. If this was so, then that would place the founding of Babylon in 2234 BC, ie about 68 -114 years after the flood and 33 years before the birth of Peleg.
Constantinus Manasses (d. 1187) wrote that the Egyptian state lasted 1663 years. If correct, then counting backward from the time that Cambyses, king of Persia, conquered Egypt in 526 BC, gives us the year of 2188 BC for the founding of Egypt, about 13 years after the scattering of the peoples, or 114 -160 years after the flood. This would be during the time of Mizraim, the son of Ham, the son of Noah. Mizraim led his group into Egypt. Hence the Hebrew word for Egypt is Mizraim (or sometimes 'the land of Ham' e.g. Psalm 105: 23,27
According to the 4th Century historian Eusebius of Caesarea, Egialeus, king of the Greek city of Sicyon, began his reign in 2089 BC, 1313 years before the first Olympiad in 776 BC. (See Eusebius, Chronic Canones, Humphredurn Milford, London, Preface pp. 1 14, 1923. ) If Eusebius is correct, then this first Greek king started to reign about 112 - 158 years after the dividing of the peoples.
Note that Babylon, Egypt, and Greece each spoke a different language. These ancient historians have unwittingly confirmed the extreme accuracy of the biblical genealogies as found in the Hebrew scriptures. The Tower of Babel would have had to have occurred before the founding of these other kingdoms. Babel (Babylon), being in the same region as the Tower, would have been one of the earliest kingdoms, of course. Of the other kingdoms, the ones most distant from Babel would have been founded at the latest. This is exactly what these writers have described. First Babylon, then Egypt, and then Greece were founded.
Further evidence comes from Chinese history. According to the oldest text of the Bamboo Annals (Chu shu chi nien), the first royal house in China was established by the ruler and sage Fu Hsi in 1994 BC. (Britannica, 1967, Vol 5 p 575). That is 107 years after the scattering of the people from Babel in the year Peleg was born.
Table of the nations.
The "land of Egypt" , i.e. the land where Egypt settled, also the "land of Ham" is actually named after Noah' s grandson Mizraim, the son of Ham, the youngest son of Noah. The name "Egypt" is the Greek version of Mizraim. On maps, Egypt is named Mizr.
Manetho (C. 270 B.C.) recorded the history of Egypt at that time and wrote that "after the flood", Ham, the son of Noah, begat "Aegyptus or Mestraim", who was the first to establish himself in the area now known as Egypt at the time when the tribes began to disperse.
Grecians were referred to a "the sons of Javan" another grandson of Noah, via his second son Japheth. Javan is also the Hebrew name for Greece and is also used to refer to the descendants of Javan and their lands namely Ionia, Macedonia, Greece, and Syria.
Dr Robert Young LLD notes that Japheth is probably the original of Japetus or Iapetus, whom the Greeks considered as the ancestor of the human race.
Table of the nations in Genesis.
Ancient Armenian writers call the Armenians descendants of Togarmah or Ashkenaz, the sons of Corner who was also a son of Japheth.
Japheth had another son called Magog. Josephus notes that the Magogites were called Scythians by the Greeks - a people occupying southern Russia and Ukraine.
Another one of Japheth's s sons and grandson of Noah was Madai who according to Josephus was the father of the Madeans, who are called the Medes by the Greeks and who lived in the region south of the Caspian sea.
Ebla tablets and Sumerian King Lists
In 1974 an archive of around 20,000 very ancient cuneiform tablets was discovered at Ebla in northern Syria. These tablets contain several references to the Canaanites who lived in "the land of Canaan". Canaan was another son of Ham and grandson of Noah.
Canaan was the father of Sidon and the town he founded later became the chief city of ancient Phoenicia on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Genesis record also says that the land of Canaan extended from Sidon in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim as far as Lasha.
These four towns, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which no longer exist and up to this time were only mentioned in Genesis and Hebrew literature were also found to be named in the tablets as were towns and regions that are well known to historians and archaeologists such as Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo, Gaza, Sinai, Joppa, and Damascus.
The mention of Canaan and the four cities of the plain provide very strong evidence that Genesis contains factual historical information. Details of the Ebla tablets evidence have been explained in more detail by Dr. Giovanni C. Pettinato, professor of Assyriology at the University of Rome, who was the epigrapher who translated the tablets.
The flood is also mentioned as a historical fact
in the Sumerian King lists on the Weld-Blundell Prism.
Astronomer G. Dodwell' s observations
The angle of the earth's tilt, known as the "obliquity of the ecliptic",
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It can be easily calculated from the sun's shadow, being the angle midway between the angle of the sun at the longest day (summer solstice ) and the angle of the sun at the shortest day (winter solstice).
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The position of the Sun at these times was often marked on ancient monuments.
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Calculations by former S. Australian Govt Astronomer George F Dodwell showed the earth's tilt had been wobbling over and above that predicted by Newcomb's formula.
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The log plot of the wobble amplitude went tangential at approximately 2345 B.C.
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That is what we have evidence of a major event that significantly disrupted the tilt of the earth at this time.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
M. Joseph Hutzler,
Eschatologist
