Is there any obvious evidence today for the biblical global Flood?

[Yorzhik]

@Yorzhik The "rain" in verse 12 is introduced by "the windows of heaven were opened" in verse 11. That's how the passage reads. It simply doesn't allow for a canopy of any sort.

What are you talking about? Of course the canopy was ripped through before it came down. That's probably what brought the canopy down. I'm still not seeing why you think the rain happening after the fountains broke open does not allow for a canopy when that's exactly how a canopy being brought down would be described.

 

[Clete]

Comets in particular, are not very dense. So their size is very deceiving.

30 trillion hydrogen bombs have an immense amount of energy released.
If each hydrogen bomb was only 10 megatons. That would be equal to 300 million trillion tons of TNT.

Are you saying that this is Dr. Browns approximation of the energy released when this trapped water was released?

Again, this was not a simple release of "water pressure". There are many other factors including the release of many other types of energy, including ionization energy and nuclear forces as well.

My opinion is that Dr. Brown is correct.

You believe that God created Ceres along with the planets? It's entirely possible that Pluto is just the largest TNO.

Many discoveries support the fact that comets come from earth. Including their composition having so many things in common with the earth and things that are so different from the rest of the solar system.


The "normal" explanation of the origin of comet uses a "special explanation". The Oort cloud is their explanation and it's pretty ridiculous.

Okay, so you believe its plausible and I'm more than a little bit skeptical about the origin of comets and asteroids and such.

As for main stream explanations for the origin of comets, their explanation of everything in the solar system is ridiculous. Christians have no such problem. We don't need extraordinary explanations for the universe as we see it. God created it pretty much just the way we see it. There isn't any need for a special explanation for comets any more than for the Moon, Mars or the Andromeda Galaxy.

 

[Right Divider]

Are you saying that this is Dr. Browns approximation of the energy released when this trapped water was released?

Dr. Brown uses the "30 trillion hydrogen bombs" estimation at the beginning of the video that I posted earlier. I multiplied by what I believe would be a "typical" hydrogen bomb yield to get the TNT equivalent.

Okay, so you believe its plausible and I'm more than a little bit skeptical about the origin of comets and asteroids and such.

Yes, I think that it's plausible but unverifiable.

As for main stream explanations for the origin of comets, their explanation of everything in the solar system is ridiculous. Christians have no such problem. We don't need extraordinary explanations for the universe as we see it. God created it pretty much just the way we see it. There isn't any need for a special explanation for comets any more than for the Moon, Mars or the Andromeda Galaxy.

I'm with @JudgeRightly that these objects (comets, asteroids, TNO's) represent a dangerous threat to life on earth. I cannot see them as being part of the "very good" creation.

 

[Stripe]

"The windows of heaven were opened" has to be a figure of speech. For us, and probably most other languages (polyglots please comment) and cultures, it probably means something like "it rained so hard as if floodgates from above were opened", but since it's a figure it has to be explained.

I think it might be applicable in a metaphorical and literal sense:

Malachi 3:10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,” Says the LORD of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.

2 Kings 7 So an officer on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God and said, “Look, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, could this thing be?” And he said, “In fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”

 

[Yorzhik]

I think it might be applicable in a metaphorical and literal sense:

Malachi 3:10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,” Says the LORD of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.

2 Kings 7 So an officer on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God and said, “Look, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, could this thing be?” And he said, “In fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”

When I've read those passages they seem to be a figure more tied to getting blessings from "above". The use in Genesis seems to indicate more a physical process.

Any Hebrew scholars around to elaborate on the use in these cases?

 

[Clete]

Dr. Brown uses the "30 trillion hydrogen bombs" estimation at the beginning of the video that I posted earlier. I multiplied by what I believe would be a "typical" hydrogen bomb yield to get the TNT equivalent.

I watched a good portion of that video. I skipped over portions. Perhaps I missed that bit.

I definitely grant that I'm not a physics and so IF the energies involved are sufficient then fine and dandy. It just feels a bit far fetched to me, that's all.

Yes, I think that it's plausible but unverifiable.

The portion of the video most directly applicable to my objection is the part where he's using a train as a analogy where certain things are thrown in various directions off the "train". The things thrown behind the train at 5 times the speed of the train (i.e. 500 mph) end up being behind the train and the others end up either fully ahead of the train or partly ahead, partly behind and partly parallel to the train.

If you replace the number 100 mph (the speed of the train in the analogy) with the number 67,000 mph (the speed of the Earth relative to the Sun) and plug in numbers for the ejected objects that are proportional to those in the analogy then you start to see the point I'm making. If his five to one ratio is correct, then things ejected behind the train would need to be thrown out at 335,000 mph (i.e. that's 5 X 67,000 mph).

I get that it's an analogy and so those numbers aren't intended to be hard and fast but it illustrates the point I'm making, which is that, in order to end up in these elongated eccentric orbits that many comets have, you've got to send them into space at some pretty amazingly fast speeds.

I'm with @JudgeRightly that these objects (comets, asteroids, TNO's) represent a dangerous threat to life on earth. I cannot see them as being part of the "very good" creation.

There isn't anything in God's universe that poses a threat to life on Earth - period.

Even if such a thing existed in potentia, God wouldn't permit such a cataclysm to occur. God isn't in meticulous control of every event that happens but He is Sovereign and is fully capable of protecting life on Earth from other aspects of His own creation.

 

[Right Divider]

There isn't anything in God's universe that poses a threat to life on Earth - period.

There wasn't when He created it "very good". There definitely are NOW that there are meteors, comets, asteroid, etc.

People have been killed by meteorites. I consider that to be a threat to life on earth.

P.S. I was not talking about life being completely wiped off the earth.

 

[JudgeRightly]

But to just say there was torrential rain would have been very clear.

Not for something on the scale of the flood.

Adding "the windows of heaven were opened" has to be a figure of speech.

Of course it's a figure of speech.

But it's describing what literally happened.

Fountains push water into the air.
Floodgates let water fall.
Geshem rain doesn't last for forty days.

So where did the rain come from?

The sluices of the heavens.
Where did the water behind those sluices come from?

The fountains of the great deep.

No need to add anything to scripture.

For us, and probably most other languages (polyglots please comment) and cultures, it probably means something like "it rained so hard as if floodgates from above were opened", but since it's a figure it has to be explained.

It's explained by the fountains of the great deep breaking forth.

It could also mean that every time it rained, at least to Noah, that he wanted to differentiate rain from normal watering he was used to since he hadn't seen rain like this before. So he added a phrase to let people know this wasn't the usual water the way they normally got it, but a crazy new form that came from the heavens in such great amounts it was like floodgates were opened.

This idea falls apart when you remember that Moses wrote all of Genesis (barring the last few verses), not Noah.

Also, as far as we know, it didn't rain before the flood.

Did It Rain Before the Flood? | KGOV.com

kgov.com

In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - Did It Rain before the Flood? What Generated the Preflood Mist?

But again, it has to be explained because today we would simply say it was a torrential rain and we wouldn't add 'and it came from up in the sky' like Noah might.

You're missing the important part.

It's a cause and effect sequence.

Fountains broke forth.
Windows of heaven were opened.
Rain fell for forty days and nights.

You know what a fountain is, and how it works.
You know what a sluice is, and how it works.
You know what rain is, but you don't know how it falls for forty days and nights.

A canopy cannot answer that question, not without appealing to miracles, which the Bible does not imply occurred. You have to read such a miracle or phenomena into the text in order for your belief to work.

HPT, on the other hand, can and does answer the question, and sufficiently, as to what "the windows of the heavens"

The point being that 'windows of heaven' has to be referring to something that has to be explained and a canopy is just as much a something as the event of water returning to earth as torrential rain.

Except that the Bible doesn't say canopy.

It says Fountains of the Great Deep broke forth. Which means that water goes up into the air.
It says the Windows of the Heavens were opened. Which means that the water that went up, or at least some of it, came back down.
It says the geshem rain fell for forty days and forty nights.
It says that after those forty days and nights, the Windows of Heaven were closed, and the rain ceased, but the waters remained on the earth for another one hundred fifty days.

It doesn't say or allow for a canopy, of any kind.

Now if you want to say the better translation would be 'sluices' or 'floodgates', then that supports the idea of a canopy more than the idea that rain just fell back down to the earth

No, it doesn't.

because a canopy is a thing like a floodgate or sluice while rain falling back down is an event.

A canopy cannot be opened or closed.

The 'windows of heaven' is referring to a canopy.

Saying it doesn't make it so, Yorzhik.

"the rains stopped long before the water receded" explains what was happening with a canopy just as well.

But you have to read "canopy" into the text to get to that point. Eisegesis is not a good way to study the Bible.

We call it a canopy today, but the person that designed it just called it the atmosphere.

In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - Did a Water Canopy Surround Earth and Contribute to the Flood?

What are you talking about? Of course the canopy was ripped through before it came down.

Begging the question.

That's probably what brought the canopy down.

If it was brought down, then why does Genesis 8:2 say that "the windows of heaven were also stopped", after it was supposedly brought down?

I'm still not seeing why you think the rain happening after the fountains broke open does not allow for a canopy when that's exactly how a canopy being brought down would be described.

Again, it's a cause and effect sequence. Water launched into the air, water comes back down (as though floodgates were opened), and water continues coming down for forty days. After forty days, the waters remained on the earth for one hundred fifty days, despite the windows of heaven being closed.

There's no reason to assume "canopy."

 

[JudgeRightly]

I watched a good portion of that video. I skipped over portions. Perhaps I missed that bit.

I definitely grant that I'm not a physics and so IF the energies involved are sufficient then fine and dandy. It just feels a bit far fetched to me, that's all.


The portion of the video most directly applicable to my objection is the part where he's using a train as a analogy where certain things are thrown in various directions off the "train". The things thrown behind the train at 5 times the speed of the train (i.e. 500 mph) end up being behind the train and the others end up either fully ahead of the train or partly ahead, partly behind and partly parallel to the train.

If you replace the number 100 mph (the speed of the train in the analogy) with the number 67,000 mph (the speed of the Earth relative to the Sun) and plug in numbers for the ejected objects that are proportional to those in the analogy then you start to see the point I'm making. If his five to one ratio is correct, then things ejected behind the train would need to be thrown out at 335,000 mph (i.e. that's 5 X 67,000 mph).

I get that it's an analogy and so those numbers aren't intended to be hard and fast but it illustrates the point I'm making, which is that, in order to end up in these elongated eccentric orbits that many comets have, you've got to send them into space at some pretty amazingly fast speeds.

Of the 298 comets with periods exceeding 700 years, about half (53%) are prograde, while the rest (47%) are retrograde, orbiting the Sun “backwards”—in a direction opposite that of the Earth. Because no planets have retrograde orbits, we must ask why so many long-period comets are retrograde, while few short-period comets are.

In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - How Comets Move

hpt.rsr.org

If it's the Fountains that launched them, then I would say there was more than enough energy generated by the fountains to do so.

There isn't anything in God's universe that poses a threat to life on Earth - period.

Even if such a thing existed in potentia, God wouldn't permit such a cataclysm to occur. God isn't in meticulous control of every event that happens but He is Sovereign and is fully capable of protecting life on Earth from other aspects of His own creation.

To reiterate: God did not create the heavens and the earth with anything that could potentially harm His creation.

That means no asteroids, no comets, no meteors.

It was "very good."

The reason the above exist is that they are the result of a cataclysmic event, here on Earth, namely, the Flood of Noah.

No one is saying God isn't capable of protecting His creation.

What we're saying is that He didn't create a universe where He needed to. As RD pointed out, there are in fact meteor strikes that have killed people.

Thus, the only logical explanation is that they came about AFTER creation, even more specifically, after the Fall.

The HPT provides an (in my opinion, the best) explanation for their origin.

 

[Idolater]

There was an impressive plume from one of Saturn's moons recently:

Astronomers see 6,000-mile water vapour plume blasting from Saturn moon

‘Extraordinary’ sighting may open window on possibility of life beneath Enceladus’s icy outer crust

www.theguardian.com

And that moon is tiny compared with the Earth. If it can happen on Enceladus then perhaps it could happen even more impressively on Earth.

 

[Derf]

Then the burden of proof is on you to show that these phenomena existed, as Scripture does not state that there were such, nor does physics support the idea.

We don't know much of China from scripture, either.

Not liquid water.


Rather, that's an explanation that secular scientists have come up with to explain where the frozen water on Mars came from, when its origin is easily explained by the HPT as having come from Earth, not Mars.

No, liquid water in the past, now not visible, but which left telltale markings of something like a global, or at least catastrophic, flood there.

Of course it hasn't been thought out, because it can be dismissed based on the evidence, and on the fact that God did not create a dangerous place for His creation to live. It was "very good."

But Walt has the same problem if the lunar tides in place at the beginning eventually break up the firmament and cause fountains of the great deep.

There's not enough mass in the asteroid belt for there to have been a planetoid there, let alone a full blown planet. Ceres is the largest object in the Belt, and is only about 0.00015 times the mass of earth.

In fact, there's only about enough mass in the Asteroid Belt to make up about 3% of Earth's mass.

I don't see why that's relevant. A big explosion would displace more of the planet's mass. And we don't know what size the planet was in the first place.

The problem is that the Bible specifically states that the fountains of the great deep broke forth, and the windows of heaven were opened, in that order."

Yeah, that might make a difference, but it might be more based on what order someone (Noah) observed something, and not the order of the actual events. For instance, if a celestial object broke through the canopy in the opposite side of the earth, then hit the ground such that the fountains were opened quickly around the world, while the windows tool longer to break open, it could present something similar to Noah's eyes.

Scripture even gives us a glimpse at what happened just prior to the fountains breaking forth, and it doesn't show any sort of calamity like what you're describing.

Spoiler Now it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, that the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his multitude:‘Whom are you like in your greatness? Indeed Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon,With fine branches that shaded the forest,And of high stature;And its top was among the thick boughs. The waters made it grow;Underground waters gave it height,With their rivers running around the place where it was planted,And sent out rivulets to all the trees of the field. ‘Therefore its height was exalted above all the trees of the field;Its boughs were multiplied,And its branches became long because of the abundance of water,As it sent them out. All the birds of the heavens made their nests in its boughs;Under its branches all the beasts of the field brought forth their young;And in its shadow all great nations made their home. ‘Thus it was beautiful in greatness and in the length of its branches,Because its roots reached to abundant waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide it;The fir trees were not like its boughs,And the chestnut trees were not like its branches;No tree in the garden of God was like it in beauty. I made it beautiful with a multitude of branches,So that all the trees of Eden envied it,That were in the garden of God.’ “Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘Because you have increased in height, and it set its top among the thick boughs, and its heart was lifted up in its height, therefore I will deliver it into the hand of the mighty one of the nations, and he shall surely deal with it; I have driven it out for its wickedness. And aliens, the most terrible of the nations, have cut it down and left it; its branches have fallen on the mountains and in all the valleys; its boughs lie broken by all the rivers of the land; and all the peoples of the earth have gone from under its shadow and left it. ‘On its ruin will remain all the birds of the heavens,And all the beasts of the field will come to its branches— So that no trees by the waters may ever again exalt themselves for their height, nor set their tops among the thick boughs, that no tree which drinks water may ever be high enough to reach up to them.‘For they have all been delivered to death,To the depths of the earth,Among the children of men who go down to the Pit.’ “Thus says the Lord God: ‘In the day when it went down to hell, I caused mourning. I covered the deep because of it. I restrained its rivers, and the great waters were held back. I caused Lebanon to mourn for it, and all the trees of the field wilted because of it. I made the nations shake at the sound of its fall, when I cast it down to hell together with those who descend into the Pit; and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, were comforted in the depths of the earth. They also went down to hell with it, with those slain by the sword; and those who were its strong arm dwelt in its shadows among the nations. ‘To which of the trees in Eden will you then be likened in glory and greatness? Yet you shall be brought down with the trees of Eden to the depths of the earth; you shall lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude,’ says the Lord God.”

Bible Gateway passage: Ezekiel 31 - New King James Version

Egypt Cut Down Like a Great Tree - Now it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, that the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his multitude: ‘Whom are you like in your greatness? Indeed Assyria was a...

www.biblegateway.com

I'm not seeing a connection. Egypt didn't exist before the flood.

The moon is beaten to a pulp and molten on one side, but only has craters on one side.

I'll give you two guesses as to which side is more beat up.

So you're suggesting the "windows of heaven" might be talking about a lot of water coming from the moon? I hadn't thought of that, but I'm glad you did.

I actually did a simulation a couple of years ago using Universe Sandbox (a "game" on Steam (a gaming platform for computers)).

I was trying to see if I could get it to show to any degree of accuracy what the HPT claims.

Using this as a guide:
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - When Was the Flood, the Exodus, and Creation?
I took one of the default "models" of the solar system and simply reversed the flow of time in the program.

Long story short, the comet that I was tracking in the program was in earth's vicinity WELL WITHIN the 100 year margin of error (I believe it was only 3-4 years away from the target time) of 3290 B.C.

I may try to run it again, now that I have a bit more powerful computer to do it with, to see if I can find another few comets that fall within that timeframe and location.

Regardless, the fact that I was able to demonstrate even one of the comets being in Earth's vicinity within 100 years on either side of the estimated date should at least lend credence to the idea that comets originated from Earth, not elsewhere in the solar system.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I was talking about. I thought the 35 days apart for the two comets in the video was pretty close. I'm not so sure about 100 years. Yes, I understand there are other forces at work, so maybe we shouldn't expect too much.

 

[JudgeRightly]

We don't know much of China from scripture, either.

What does China have to do with this?

No, liquid water in the past, now not visible, but which left telltale markings of something like a global, or at least catastrophic, flood there.

Why couldn't that be the result of Earth's Flood?

I mean, Earth IS the only place in the solar system that is mostly liquid water on it's surface...

But Walt has the same problem if the lunar tides in place at the beginning eventually break up the firmament and cause fountains of the great deep.

Not necessarily.

Remember how, in the Garden, there was a natural spring that was the source of a massive river, that left the garden, and split into four rivers that watered the whole earth?

Yeah, that one.

What do you think powered that spring?

The tides of the moon.

Guess where that spring was located.

Yeah, that's right, right within a garden that the only tenants were kicked out of, who were supposed to tend the garden.

Guess what happens when a garden is left untended.

It becomes overgrown. More on this in a moment...

I don't see why that's relevant. A big explosion would displace more of the planet's mass. And we don't know what size the planet was in the first place.

The estimation is that the crust of the earth was about 60 miles thick, originally.

Currently, the crust is only about 9-12 miles thick, on average.

The crust is relatively thin, compared to the rest of the earth, even at 60 miles thick.

Yeah, that might make a difference, but it might be more based on what order someone (Noah) observed something, and not the order of the actual events. For instance, if a celestial object broke through the canopy in the opposite side of the earth, then hit the ground such that the fountains were opened quickly around the world, while the windows tool longer to break open, it could present something similar to Noah's eyes.

As I pointed out to Yorzhik, Noah didn't write Genesis. Moses did.

I'm not seeing a connection. Egypt didn't exist before the flood.

Coming back to what I was saying above...

Overgrown plants tend to have deep roots, ESPECIALLY when they have a good source of water from which to drink.

Read Ezekiel 31 again.

Don't worry about the bit about Egypt. That's the primary message of the passage, which isn't important in this context. Focus on what is being described.

A tree.

In the garden of Eden.

One that had become very overgrown, because of a good source of water.

Can you think of any trees in the Bible that this might describe?

How about the other, more figurative descriptions?

‘Therefore its height was exalted above all the trees of the field;Its boughs were multiplied,And its branches became long because of the abundance of water,As it sent them out. All the birds of the heavens made their nests in its boughs;Under its branches all the beasts of the field brought forth their young;And in its shadow all great nations made their home. ‘Thus it was beautiful in greatness and in the length of its branches,Because its roots reached to abundant waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide it;The fir trees were not like its boughs,And the chestnut trees were not like its branches;No tree in the garden of God was like it in beauty. I made it beautiful with a multitude of branches,So that all the trees of Eden envied it,That were in the garden of God.’ “Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘Because you have increased in height, and it set its top among the thick boughs, and its heart was lifted up in its height, therefore I will deliver it into the hand of the mighty one of the nations, and he shall surely deal with it; I have driven it out for its wickedness.

A weird way to describe a tree, don't you think? Unless the tree is symbolic for something else... But if I tell you for what, it'll spoil the answer to the above question, so for now, I'll leave it at that.

So you're suggesting the "windows of heaven" might be talking about a lot of water coming from the moon? I hadn't thought of that, but I'm glad you did.

No.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I was talking about. I thought the 35 days apart for the two comets in the video was pretty close. I'm not so sure about 100 years. Yes, I understand there are other forces at work, so maybe we shouldn't expect too much.

Explained in the link.

 

[Clete]

There wasn't when He created it "very good". There definitely are NOW that there are meteors, comets, asteroid, etc.

No. I'm sorry, but the Earth absolutely will not ever be destroyed by such things unless God uses them to do it Himself. It is God who will destroy the Earth, not any accidental consequence of the fall of Adam.

People have been killed by meteorites. I consider that to be a threat to life on earth.

People have been killed by trees, fire, mud, sand, wind, rocks, water, holes in the ground, etc, etc and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with Adam's fall.

P.S. I was not talking about life being completely wiped off the earth.

I obviously felt like we were talking a macro scale destruction of life on Earth, not individuals being killed here and there. It doesn't seem to follow that individuals being killed by meteorites means we need a special, post creation week, explanation for their existence. Individuals are killed by all sort of things that definitely existed before the fall of Adam.

 

[Clete]

Of the 298 comets with periods exceeding 700 years, about half (53%) are prograde, while the rest (47%) are retrograde, orbiting the Sun “backwards”—in a direction opposite that of the Earth. Because no planets have retrograde orbits, we must ask why so many long-period comets are retrograde, while few short-period comets are.

In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - How Comets Move

hpt.rsr.org

If it's the Fountains that launched them, then I would say there was more than enough energy generated by the fountains to do so.

I'm not convinced that's so and it isn't necessary to believe it in order to explain retrograde orbits of small bodies in the solar system. In fact, the smaller the body, the easier it would be for it to end up in a retrograde orbit because their orbits are so easily effected by gravitational effects of relatively close passes by large bodies in the solar system. Giving a small object the size of a comet a gravitational assist as it passes by Jupiter or Saturn is one excellent way to generate the sort of gravitation speeds necessary to either add or subtract momentum such that an object could end up in practically any orbit you can imagine.

To reiterate: God did not create the heavens and the earth with anything that could potentially harm His creation.

Of course He did.

People have been killed by pretty nearly everything that existed prior to the fall of Adam. Trees, insects, snakes, birds, rocks, sand, mud, water, fire, etc, etc.

Then, of course, there was this one particular tree that was pretty harmful.

That means no asteroids, no comets, no meteors.

It was "very good."

The reason the above exist is that they are the result of a cataclysmic event, here on Earth, namely, the Flood of Noah.

Faulty premise, false conclusion.

No one is saying God isn't capable of protecting His creation.

Yeah, it pretty much sounds like that's what you have to be implying, even if it isn't your intent.

If God is going to make it so that the Earth cannot be destroyed by an impact from one of these objects, then they aren't threats to life on Earth and so where's the need for a special origin theory?

What we're saying is that He didn't create a universe where He needed to. As RD pointed out, there are in fact meteor strikes that have killed people.

As I just pointed out to him in my last post. I felt like we were talking about "life on Earth" in the macro sense of that phrase. Individuals are killed by God definitely created prior to Adam's fall on a daily basis.

Thus, the only logical explanation is that they came about AFTER creation, even more specifically, after the Fall.

Again, faulty premise, false conclusion.

The HPT provides an (in my opinion, the best) explanation for their origin.

The best other than that they were created by God along with every other item that exists in the universe.

 

[Clete]

There was an impressive plume from one of Saturn's moons recently:

Astronomers see 6,000-mile water vapour plume blasting from Saturn moon

‘Extraordinary’ sighting may open window on possibility of life beneath Enceladus’s icy outer crust

www.theguardian.com

And that moon is tiny compared with the Earth. If it can happen on Enceladus then perhaps it could happen even more impressively on Earth.

Ejecting water vapor from a moon would require a whole lot less energy than ejecting trillions of tons of rock from a planet. In other words, it's easier to eject less mass from a weaker gravity well.

 

[Right Divider]

@Clete So I'm curious. I believe that you said that you could agree that some comets were formed in the manner that Dr. Brown described in the HPT (correct me it that is not the case). My question is: Why would some be formed that way and some by created directly by God?

 

[Clete]

@Clete So I'm curious. I believe that you said that you could agree that some comets were formed in the manner that Dr. Brown described in the HPT (correct me it that is not the case). My question is: Why would some be formed that way and some by created directly by God?

I'm pretty skeptical that any could be created in that manner. I readily admit that I'm not an engineer or a physicist and so I could be wrong. Maybe the forces involved are way more than I'm thinking or maybe it's not quite as hard to eject stuff off the planet as I'm thinking but I've been pretty aware of cosmological issues for pretty much my whole life and so I think I understand these issues fairly well and it just does not sound plausible to me in the slightest.

The friction of the atmosphere alone would tend toward blowing most rocks to smithereens before they got half way to space, never mind big chunks of ice or liquid water. Then there's the fact that a large percentage of meteorites are made of mostly iron, as in elemental iron, not iron ore or iron oxide or other form of iron rich rocks. Most meteorites are pieces of metal that are between 75% and 95% iron whereas the crust of the Earth is only about 5% iron and most of that is combined with various different elements to make all kinds of minerals. If these iron meteorites came from Earth then how did they end up being nearly pure iron?

As for whether some comets or meteors were created by the start of Noah's flood, that would be more plausible than suggesting that they all were just for the simple fact that a small handful of objects would take far less energy to eject than trillions of tons worth, right? But, even conceding that much, I lean pretty heavily on the side of just rejecting the whole idea entirely because if it were only a few that were created in that way, it wouldn't solve the problem that this portion of the theory exists to solve, which removes any reason to think it happened in the first place.

Also, my views on this particular issue have evolved over time. There for a while, I accepted the idea without having given it much thought. It was never my favorite part of the theory and so I just focused on other aspects and mildly neglected the comet origin stuff. I don't really remember when this objection gelled in my mind. It was a few years ago. Probably as a result of some other discussion of the HPT here on TOL or maybe something that was stated on one of Bob's radio shows.

Clete

 

[Right Divider]

I'm pretty skeptical that any could be created in that manner. I readily admit that I'm not an engineer or a physicist and so I could be wrong. Maybe the forces involved are way more than I'm thinking or maybe it's not quite as hard to eject stuff off the planet as I'm thinking but I've been pretty aware of cosmological issues for pretty much my whole life and so I think I understand these issues fairly well and it just does not sound plausible to me in the slightest.

The friction of the atmosphere alone would tend toward blowing most rocks to smithereens before they got half way to space, never mind big chunks of ice or liquid water. Then there's the fact that a large percentage of meteorites are made of mostly iron, as in elemental iron, not iron ore or iron oxide or other form of iron rich rocks. Most meteorites are pieces of metal that are between 75% and 95% iron whereas the crust of the Earth is only about 5% iron and most of that is combined with various different elements to make all kinds of minerals. If these iron meteorites came from Earth then how did they end up being nearly pure iron?

As for whether some comets or meteors were created by the start of Noah's flood, that would be more plausible than suggesting that they all were just for the simple fact that a small handful of objects would take far less energy to eject that trillions of tons worth, right? But, even conceding that much, I lean pretty heavily on the side of just rejecting the whole idea entirely because if it were only a few that were created in that way, it wouldn't solve the problem that this portion of the theory exists to solve, which removes any reason to think it happened in the first place.

Also, my views on this particular issue have evolved over time. There for a while, I accepted the idea without having given it much thought. It was never my favorite part of the theory and so I just focused on other aspects and mildly neglected the comet origin stuff. I don't really remember when this objection gelled in my mind. It was a few years ago. Probably as a result of some other discussion of the HPT here on TOL or maybe something that was stated on one of Bob's radio shows.

Clete

I think that you are underestimating the amount of force involved and overestimating the problems that you perceive with the launching of the materials. That is why I continue to bring up the 300 million trillion tons of TNT (Dr. Brown's estimate of the force released).

That's 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT (3 times 10 to the twentieth power) or 300 quintillion tons of TNT. That power is just incredibly immense.

Take a look at the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated (estimated at 58 megatons) and then do the math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

I'm curious how you can think that Dr. Brown's theory is quite good and yet think that he is so far off (completely wrong) about this aspect of the HPT. I find that dichotomy very difficult to reconcile.

Another question: Do you think that the multitude of craters on the moon were caused by something other than debris launched from earth during the explosion described by the HPT?

 

[Clete]

I think that you are underestimating the amount of force involved and overestimating the problems that you perceive with the launching of the materials. That is why I continue to bring up the 300 million trillion tons of TNT (Dr. Brown's estimate of the force released).

That's 300,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT (3 times 10 to the twentieth power) or 300 quintillion tons of TNT. That power is just incredibly immense.

Take a look at the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated (estimated at 58 megatons) and then do the math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

I'm curious how you can think that Dr. Brown's theory is quite good and yet think that he is so far off (completely wrong) about this aspect of the HPT. I find that dichotomy very difficult to reconcile.

Where does he come up with this number from? I don't recall the book having any sort of rigorous mathematical calculations in it. Is this just a number he's throwing out there or does he have some specific reason from positing that specific number?

Another question: Do you think that the multitude of craters on the moon were caused by something other than debris launched from earth during the explosion described by the HPT?

The craters on the far side of the Moon came from the same place as the craters on the near side came from. Most all of which were there when God created the Moon.

I'm curious, do you feel the need to explain the origin of Valles Marineris or the craters and other features found on any other planet, moon or other body in the solar system? Why do any of them need a special event that happened after the creation week?

 

[Right Divider]

Where does he come up with this number from? I don't recall the book having any sort of rigorous mathematical calculations in it. Is this just a number he's throwing out there or does he have some specific reason from positing that specific number?

I've never seen any "rigorous mathematical calculations", but I assume that he's not just throwing spitballs.

The craters on the far side of the Moon came from the same place as the craters on the near side came from. Most all of which were there when God created the Moon.

That's a little too convenient. They appear to be impact craters.

I'm curious, do you feel the need to explain the origin of Valles Marineris or the craters and other features found on any other planet, moon or other body in the solar system? Why do any of them need a special event that happened after the creation week?

Only because they appear to be impact craters. I don't think that they need to be a special event, but that this is exactly what they appear to be.