Episode 9 – Science, History, and Noah – Part 2

Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script: (dramatic opening music)(music under voice over)

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat. He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and the floodwaters began to recede. The underground waters stopped flowing, and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped. So the floodwaters gradually receded from the earth. After 150 days, exactly five months from the time the flood began, the boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Two and a half months later, as the waters continued to go down, other mountain peaks became visible.

The Book of Genesis, chapter 8, verses 1 through 5. New Living Translation

Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the new year, ten and a half months after the flood began, the floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. Two more months went by, and at last the earth was dry! Then God said to Noah, “Leave the boat, all of you—you and your wife, and your sons and their wives. Release all the animals—the birds, the livestock, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth.

The Book of Genesis, chapter 8, verses 13 through 17, New Living Translation

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Philippians, chapter 4 verse 8, New Living Translation

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VK: I’m Victoria K welcoming you to another episode of Anchored by Truth. I’m in the studio today with RD Fierro, author and Founder Crystal Sea Books. RD, I understand that today we’re still thinking about the story of Noah and the flood. Last time we spent time discussing the nature of the questions that are involved when people talk about whether the flood was a literal historical event or just an allegorical tale designed to teach morality and ethics. In that episode you pointed out that the Bible treats the flood story as literal history. You also mentioned that in a future episode you wanted to discuss some of the lines of scientific evidence that support that position. So I guess the future has arrived and today we want to talk about some of that evidence.

RD: And I still want to do that. But - as we’ve been doing - I’d like to start our discussion by listing to another in the Life Lessons with a Laugh series that focuses on Noah’s story. We’ve subtitled this lesson, Stability in Rough Seas, for reasons that I think will become obvious.

VK: Well, in this day and age we can all use some help and encouragement with how to deal with the storms of life. Let’s get going with more of RD and Jerry talking about the story of Noah – or whatever you call him in this lesson.

---- NOAH 4 – Stability in Rough Seas

VK: Ok. I think I counted six or seven different names you used for Jerry in that exchange. I’m kind of amazed how much information you two actually manage to exchange while you keep playing ping-pong with something as simple as Jerry’s name.

RD: The challenge is keeping up with Jerry’s ability to return serve. He doesn’t really let me get away with much.

VK: So I’ve noticed. But in between the Jermajesties and Jerbits I noticed that you added something to the stack of evidence in favor of the authenticity of the Biblical description of the ark. In the last Life Lesson we heard you pointed out that the ark had the size to carry a vast cargo of animals and their food. In this humor piece you pointed out that the ark’s dimensions as described in the Bible provide a design that is very stable in rough seas. So, insofar as the ark is concerned you’ve now shown that the ark’s size and stability are consistent with what we know about the real world. Is that one of the points you want to make?

RD: Yep. And in the humor piece we’re planning for next time we’re going to talk about the ark’s strength. So the Life Lessons are helping people have a great start in thinking about what kind of vessel would be necessary to successfully survive a flood of Biblical proportions – the necessary size, stability, and strength. But today I want to continue what we started to discuss last time which is the evidence that demonstrates that the flood occurred in the first place. There are four lines of evidence that can be cited to demonstrate that the Genesis account is an accurate record of a historical event.

• First, Fossil evidence demonstrates that some the highest geological structures on earth were at one point under water. Fossil evidence also demonstrates that large numbers of animals were, at one point, buried suddenly and in groups that contained mixtures of land and marine animals.

• Second, there are vast stretches of the planet covered by layers of sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary rocks are the type of rocks that are formed by the deposit and subsequent cementation of mineral or organic particles from a flowing body of water. Such deposits regularly happen on the floor of oceans or other bodies of water on the earth’s surface. In other words, there are geological oddities all over the world which are easily be explained by a sudden and extreme application of vast hydrological forces.

• Third, there are variants of a catastrophic flood story found in cultures all over the world. Some observers count almost 200 such variants.

• And fourth, the biodiversity found all over the world today is consistent with the Biblical account of how various “kinds” of animals were preserved from death by Noah and once released proceeded to repopulate the planet. We will not spend any time on this last line of evidence in this series of shows because it is intricately linked with the whole subject of creation and evolution. We’ll undertake those topics on a future series on Anchored by Truth. Listeners who would like to explore this subject for themselves are encouraged to read chapter 2 of Dr. Jonathan’s Sarfati’s book “The Greatest Hoax on Earth.” Sarfati has a Ph.D in physical chemistry and is the author of the bestseller “Refuting Evolution.”

VK: So today you’d like to begin the discussion of some of the specific lines of evidence. I think today you’d particularly like to touch on some of the paleontological and geological evidence, right?

RD: I would. Yep.

VK: Where do you want to begin?

RD: First, by reminding our listeners of something we covered last time. By their very nature past events, especially those of the distant past – like the flood of Noah - cannot be repeated. So to make intelligent assessments about whether such a flood took place or is highly likely to have occurred we have to look evidence that is available today. When you’re looking evidence for what happened on the earth’s surface you’re typically going to start with geology and paleontology. So I’d like to take a brief look at some examples of fossil evidence that are often offered to support the Biblical flood record. The following examples come from an article entitled “Is there evidence that the flood was global,” by Harold Coffin, which is available from Bibleinfo.com.

Our first example of the fossil evidence comes from the massive graveyards of thousands and even millions of fish, dinosaurs, and mammals that are found in North America, Europe, and Africa.  The same is true of plants.  From Utah-Colorado north to Alberta-Saskatchewan, Canada, thousands of dinosaurs are found in certain beds such as the Morrison Formation.  These sites along with others mentioned above reveal that great quantities of animals were buried together rapidly. The rapid burial resulted in excellent preservation of the remains and the position of mammals that suggest death by drowning.  The geological processes seen in the modern world cannot account for such unusual conditions.  A world-wide catastrophe involving water is the easiest explanation for these observations.

VK: So part of the thinking is that such huge fossil beds wouldn’t be present if all the animals hadn’t been buried suddenly simultaneously? And that would take them all having been covered suddenly by a huge volume of mud and silt and the easiest explanation for how that could happen is being caught unexpectedly in a catastrophic flood. I mean if the water had risen gradually or the flood hadn’t been so extensive they could have gotten away.

RD: Exactly. And such fossil evidence isn’t limited to North America. In Brazil there is a large plateau where fish fossils are found with the skin, muscles, organs etc. all preserved.  The fish look like they had just been caught but they are petrified and hard as stone.  They are abundant and distributed over several thousand square miles.  The plateau where these fossils are found is well above sea level and a good 500 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.  This is remarkable because experiments with fresh dead fish have shown that dead fish in water will disintegrate and their skeletons will fall apart in less than one week.  Only catastrophic conditions would have enabled such an extensive collection of animals and plants so exquisitely preserved.

A final example of fossil evidence is found unexpected fossil mixtures of amber which is petrified pitch from trees.  It is easy to understand how insects could be caught in sticky pitch and wind could blow pieces of leaves and even flowers into the pitch. But how could sea animals such as coral be included?  One explanation would be that waves or strong currents from the sea must have broken up and carried bits of coral that stuck to the pitch before it became hard or petrified meaning that forests where such amber is found must have been underwater at one time.

VK: The point is then, that there is a lot of fossil evidence that is consistent with a sudden, widespread inundation of truly mammoth proportions. Naturally, we recognize that non-Christians would offer a different explanation other than a world-wide flood. But that just means that there are two competing truth claims on the table, right? And the fact that are competing explanations means people should investigate the evidence for themselves to decide which explanation is more credible. But you mentioned that in addition to fossils there is also geological evidence that is consistent with an ancient, massive flood.

RD: Yes. But before I move away from the fossil evidence, I just want to emphasize that the examples I mentioned are exactly that – only a few examples. There are lots of others. For instance, most of the rock layers in the walls of Grand Canyon, which are more than a mile above sea level, contain marine fossils and fossils of shellfish are even found in the Himalayas. This clearly indicates that at one time these structures were under water. In these radio episodes we only have time to skim the surface – no pun intended – of the evidence available that supports the Biblical flood account. There are entire books that have been written on the subject as well as a lot of great resources available from the internet.

VK: Well, to quote Jerry from the Life Lesson, true dat. We’re really just starting the discussion here in the hope that listeners can take some time to investigate this subject for themselves.

RD: True dat. So let’s move on and take a brief look at some of the geological evidence.

Geologists know that there are sedimentary rocks found all over the world including at levels that are far above current sea levels. The most common cause for the formation of sedimentary rocks is sediments – essentially earth and mud being carried along by moving water – being deposited when the water slows down or disappears completely. The sediments then cement together and the sedimentation process occurs fairly quickly if the sediment is given the opportunity to dry out. When the 2011 tsunami struck Japan, sedimentary layers were deposited as much as kilometers inland and formed layers up to 20 centimeters thick. All that occurred from an event that would have been dwarfed in size by an inundation such as the one described in Genesis.

Yet, if you look around the world you see sedimentary rock formations that are up to a hundred meters thick that go on for miles. When geologists examine these layers they don’t see evidence that the sedimentary layers were built up in successive events. If successive events were involved geologists would expect to see either soil formation or evidence of organic activity such as holes from burrowing insects or plant roots, but such soil formation or bioturbation is absent in many of these really thick layers. In general, the deeper the layer of sedimentary rock the larger the amount of sediment that was deposited in a relatively short amount of time and thus the greater the volume and flow of water that was involved. If a single tsunami deposited sediment layers up to 20 centimeters think, imagine how much water would have been involved to create a sediment layer hundreds of times thicker.

VK: So both the fossil evidence and the geological evidence are both consistent with a flood of Biblical proportions?

RD: Absolutely. And the geological evidence is not limited to just the presence of massive layers of sedimentary rocks present all over the world. Geologists also acknowledge that many of the great river valleys all over the world were created by truly epic floods. David R. Montgomery, a geology professor at the University of Washington, labeled the floods that created these river valleys “Noah-like” in a 2012 article for Discover magazine. In that same article Montgomery noted that the first geologist to propose that the river valleys of eastern Washington were caused by such floods, J. Harlan Bretz, was met with widespread disbelief when he first proposed the idea in the 1920’s. Yet acceptance of the truth of Bretz’s observations is so widespread today that, at the age of 97, Bretz was awarded the Geological Society of America’s highest honor. Nor is the evidence of ancient flood carved landscapes limited to North America. It is also found in Europe and Asia.

Other, geological phenomena also demonstrate that at one or more times in history megalithic hydrodynamic forces were acting on the surface of the earth. There are huge boulders perched on the tops of mountains in many parts of the world that are of are distinctly different from their surroundings. It’s hard to see how they would have arrived there unless carried by to their positions by an enormous force such as that which would occur during a flood.

In other words there is substantial evidence that at one point the entire surface of the world was affected by major hydrological forces. We recognize that not all observers will agree with this conclusion.

But the point is that there is evidence from both paleontology and geology that is consistent with the Biblical account. And though all people might not arrive at the same conclusion about what the evidence means that doesn’t do away with the evidence.

VK: I think that’s a point that should be emphasized. Just because there are people who are not persuaded that the fossil or geological evidence demonstrates the certainty of Noah’s flood does not do away with the evidence, Disbelief in the occurrence of Noah’s flood does not render the account any less likely. Science provides solid support that the earth contains physical remains of one or more past cataclysmic floods. Everyone is free to evaluate the evidence and arrive at their own conclusions. But it is entirely reasonable for Christians to use science as well as scripture in their pursuit of truth.

RD: True dat and Amen.

VK: Today for our closing prayer how about if we pray for our nation since it is only by the illumination of the Holy Spirit that any of us in America or throughout the world can hope to be led to and anchored by the truth.

---- Prayer for the restoration of the worship of the One True God, radio version.

VK: We hope you’ll be with us next time and we hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show.

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!”

https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/geologic-evidences-for-the-genesis-flood/

https://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-biblical-type-floods-real-absolutely-enormous

https://considerthegospel.org/2014/03/28/the-noah-controversy-could-that-flood-have-happened/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjpjkBRDRARIsAKv-0O13H95aNEtfy54OtzCKypQNTJ_88M6sLzW4qVoFXoqy4BqDZrincmoaAneMEALw_wcB