Here is a post by Don Martin on AvC about Biblical flood. I thought I should archive it because I've looked it up about three times already.
Personally, I have said many times that I would welcome ANY
evidence of the existence of any god, and I have even specified
indirect evidence that would be quite convincing, not only to
me, but (I suspect) to all the wicked atheists here: the residue
of the Noachan Flood. It avoids the problem of "how can there be
physical evidence for a spiritual being?" by focussing on one
instance in which that spiritual being supposedly interacted
physically with the physical world in a way that would have
produced distinctive physical consequences. While we have seen
fundies claim that their god is so deceitful as to cover his
tracks, I, for one, would presume that such a dishonest being is
unworthy of being taken seriously, much less of worship.
I do not concern myself here with the issue of the needed
two additional hydrospheres of water and its drainage out of
earth's gravity well, nor with the necessary consequences
resulting therefrom by operation of the laws of physics: the
atmospheric pressure resulting from a "vapor canopy" that would
prevent the existence of life as we know it, the heat release
from the condensation of that much water that would be
sufficient to melt lead anywhere in the atmosphere, etc. are
very serious impediments to the veracity of the story, but most,
if not all, fundies lack sufficient knowledge of physics to be
able to follow the reasoning. It only confuses them, leading
them to drag out yet another version of the Deceitful God, who,
they claim, sets the laws of physics aside his wonders to
perform. Instead, I simply take the Genesis account at its face
value, looking at the effects that much water falling at that
rate would inescapably have upon the face of the earth.
We have an account of a global flood directly produced by
Yahweh in the Bible. Given the fact that we have information,
presumably from a source inspired by omniscience, of the extent
of the flood ("over the highest mountains," or roughly 30,000
feet above present sea level) and of the time of the rain (40
days and 40 nights = 40 24-hour days = 960 hours), it is easy to
calculate the rate of the rainfall: 30,000/960 = 31.25 feet of
water fell per hour. That is little better than six inches of
rainfall per minute.
I would think that "gullywasher" fails to do this rate
justice, inasmuch as that term is applied to rainfalls of one or
two inches per hour. Suffice it to say that this rain would wash
away pretty much any particles smaller than Volkswagens and
deposit all of this in a single stratum covering the low-lying
areas world-wide.
I would think that "gullywasher" fails to do this rate
justice, inasmuch as that term is applied to rainfalls of one or
two inches per hour. Suffice it to say that this rain would wash
away pretty much any particles smaller than Volkswagens and
deposit all of this in a single stratum covering the low-lying
areas world-wide.
Such a stratum would furnish perfectly good indirect
evidence for the existence of this Yahweh person, just as
tracings on a photographic plate tell us of subatomic particles
or the behavior of objects in space tells us of the existence of
enormous gravitational forces only explicable by the presence of
a black hole.
So show us this stratum. That would be evidence.
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