How did the Floodwaters Recede?

[Tcg]

.
Genesis 8 states this about the waters receding after the flood:

8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down.

Ignoring the odd statement that after the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down given that Noah and crew stayed in the ark for over a year, how did the water recede? The only hint we have is that it was due to a wind that God sent. Does this suggest evaporation?

Perhaps more importantly doesn't the phrase the "water receded steadily from the earth" imply that the receding was uniform? In other words, it receded from the earth at the same rate all over the earth? If so, how could this receding be responsible for the creation of the Grand Canyon or other canyons around the world as some claim? Unless there were a plug pulled somewhere that would cause draining faster in one area than another, there'd be no reason for water to flow from one area to another. We read that the "springs of the deep had been closed" so this is not a viable option.

Given that the Bible reports a steady and uniform decrease in water to end the flood, how could it be responsible for the formation of canyons such as the Grand Canyon?


Tcg

[TRANSPONDER]

I had a look just now to see what the Key words brought up and anything about the Grand Canyon and Not the Flood brought up....Flood -supporting geology, and AiG half the time.

But I did find this which is handy, because I am not an expert in geology (though some posters here seem to be)and can only recall what arguments I heard in the past or summarise a 200 page long online paper on geology which wasn't arguing about the Flood anyway.

No, because 1) We have examples of what happens in a large outburst flood, such as Lake Missoula/channeled scablands and the draining of Lake Bonneville, and the structures left behind are much different. 2) There's nowhere upstream for the necessary amount of water to have come from. –
jamesqf
Mar 28 '16 at 18:48
4
It sounds like you might be getting at some sort of global 'Great Flood' hypothesis? If you're not, please edit it to indicate what non-biblical, scientific literature you have read — or what data you have collected — to lead to your theory. If you are, I'm voting to close this question as off-topic. –
kwinkunks
Mar 28 '16 at 19:12
4
@B. Clay Shannon: A global flood is disproven by everything from basic physics (where'd the water come from?) to biology (there are freshwater and saltwater fish). WRT geology specifically, there would be evidence of erosion and sedimentation everywhere, just not in the few places where we know that outburst floods have taken place. As for massive sustained rainfall, it takes energy to evaporate water to produce rain. No such energy source appears to have existed. About the closest you could get is a KT-sized asteroid impact, which would leave obvious traces. –
jamesqf
Mar 28 '16 at 23:17
1
While the answers are all basically no, ice age melt could have flooded the Colorado river many many times over the last 3 million years. And those floods very well could have played a role in the forming of the Canyon, but as others have said, a single flood or great deluge - no. It was formed over time. –
userLTK
Dec 30 '16 at 3:40
2
@userLTK: Not really that hard, at least for a geologist to get ballpark estimates. For instance, there's going to be a remnant lake basin somewhere upstream so you can calculate the amount of water released. There just isn't going to be sufficient energy in a single outburst flood to carve the whole canyon through rock. We do have good examples of such floods: the "channeled scablands" of eastern Washington caused by outburst floods from glacial Lake Missoula, and the Lake Bonneville flood: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_flood –
jamesqf
Nov 5 '17 at 18:37

[Tcg]

.
Genesis 8 states this about the waters receding after the flood:

8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down.

Ignoring the odd statement that after the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down given that Noah and crew stayed in the ark for over a year, how did the water recede? The only hint we have is that it was due to a wind that God sent. Does this suggest evaporation?

Perhaps more importantly doesn't the phrase the "water receded steadily from the earth" imply that the receding was uniform? In other words, it receded from the earth at the same rate all over the earth? If so, how could this receding be responsible for the creation of the Grand Canyon or other canyons around the world as some claim? Unless there were a plug pulled somewhere that would cause draining faster in one area than another, there'd be no reason for water to flow from one area to another. We read that the "springs of the deep had been closed" so this is not a viable option.

Given that the Bible reports a steady and uniform decrease in water to end the flood, how could it be responsible for the formation of canyons such as the Grand Canyon?


Tcg

I saw somewhere (I can't remember the documentary at this time) but the person interviewed said the correct term was 'plain' not 'world'. So in other words, it's his claim that the story was a misunderstanding: the whole world wasn't flooded but the whole specific area where the story takes place was flooded. Which would make loads more sense and answer a lot of questions.
But alas, if his POV was correct, it's not as 'impressive' and christians want their god to seem.
Past all that, there've been other questions other than 'where did the water go'?
How could the atmosphere hold that much moisture to make it rain enough to cover everything?
How was the salinity of the ocean protected? Or, if you like, how was the freshness of the water protected?
How did the sea animal cope with fresh water? Or, if you like, how did the fresh water animals cope with salt water? Or did all sea life die?

To answer the topic question:
magic
God specific magic
When it doubt, just claim 'god works in mysterious ways' and go on about life, I suppose.

Yes, the idea of a localized food would resolve a number of problems. It would create others with the universal language used in the tale that implies a world-wide flood. In this thread I'm concentrating on the claims some make that the flood is responsible for the formation of the Grand Canyon. While the tale doesn't specify it seems likely that Noah built his ark somewhere in the ancient Near East. If this is the case and it was a localized flood, it couldn't have possibly formed the Grand Canyon.

Of course, the mysterious ways god works in may resolve this issue in some unforeseen way. Perhaps the wind that caused the waters to recede blew the flood to what we now call the Americas.


Tcg

[Tcg]

[Replying to Tcg in post #1]

In considering the possibility that the surface of the earth was relatively smooth before the flood and it was indeed the flood that caused the formation of mountains, it seems that the description of the rising waters creates a problem:

Gnesis 7:17 The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. 20 The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.

The language used here seems to imply the existence of mountains, and "high" ones at that, prior to the flood. I suppose one could argue that this simply reveals that the mountains were formed sometime during the first 40 days of the flood. If this is the case, it implies that mountains rose to great heights in a number of days rather than millions of years.

You'd think the author/authors would express something about this new phenomenon. Like Noah exclaiming, "Hey, look at that, mountains!" Or perhaps a more subdued, "On the 32nd day of the great flood high mountains rose, but 8 days later the waters hid them completely."


Tcg

[1213]

I see some problems with that. I can't see how anything would compress the oceans to make them lower....

Oceans, or the water, was not compressed, but because there was lot of water on top of matter that had sunk, the sunken matter was compressed and its level has gone down, which is why also the level of water has gone down.

And the Grand canyon does not (because of its' meanders) fit a theory of being caused by a flash -flood, but several million years or erosion by the river.

I don't believe that it took millions of years, because the edges don't look like they would have eroded extremely slowly.

...Further mountains do rise...

I don't believe that, because there is no credible natural force that would do that.

[brunumb]

I don't believe that it took millions of years, because the edges don't look like they would have eroded extremely slowly.

In that case you should be able to enlighten us on how the edges would have looked if the erosion was extremely slow. Please do.

...Further mountains do rise...

I don't believe that, because there is no credible natural force that would do that.

But there is. If you do a little extra-biblical research on plate tectonics and what drives it, you will hopefully see just how credible it is. You can even do a simple desk-top demonstration by sliding slabs of clay so that they push against each other.

[Tcg]

Oceans, or the water, was not compressed, but because there was lot of water on top of matter that had sunk, the sunken matter was compressed and its level has gone down, which is why also the level of water has gone down.

Are you talking about matter that sunk during the flood? Matter sinking into the ocean would make water levels rise not go down. Additionally, there is nothing in the passage that suggests a falling ocean floor. The passage refers to receding water. Are you suggesting that God couldn't tell the difference between the two?


Tcg

[TRANSPONDER]

I see some problems with that. I can't see how anything would compress the oceans to make them lower....

Oceans, or the water, was not compressed, but because there was lot of water on top of matter that had sunk, the sunken matter was compressed and its level has gone down, which is why also the level of water has gone down.

And the Grand canyon does not (because of its' meanders) fit a theory of being caused by a flash -flood, but several million years or erosion by the river.

I don't believe that it took millions of years, because the edges don't look like they would have eroded extremely slowly.

...Further mountains do rise...

I don't believe that, because there is no credible natural force that would do that.

I don't think it works like that. Does sand compress at the bottom of oceans? does mud? Does even animal life? I don't think it does. The edges look just like they eroded, either by torrents of water, or by weather. What can you show that has 'eroded by water' that looks different from eroded by weather - but it takes longer? Of course there a force to make mountains rise - plate tectonics. We can go into the research for that. But what is the mechanism to make mountains rise in just months at the end of the flood. Water compressing the washed in matter to rocks in months and so much so as to make mountains appear? I don't think so.

[TRANSPONDER]

There's quite a lot on plate tectonics and subduct continental plate movement. Talk origins is a good source of answers which the Flood -believers would never look up. here are also the good old creationist arguments such as the vertical whale -fossil and sea shells on mountains that would refute the idea of existing mountains that were covered by water but somehow the water levels dropped revealing the mountains. The whale fossil upright because it is in folded strata supports deep time geological activity, not a year long flood and mountains 'appearing'.

Claim CH570:
The earth was relatively flat before the Flood. Most of the world's high mountains were formed during the Flood. This explains how all the waters in the oceans could cover all the mountains at the time. It also explains how mountains formed (from the violence accompanying the Flood) and the existence of marine fossils on mountains.
Source:
Whitcomb, John C. Jr. and Henry M. Morris, 1961. The Genesis Flood. Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., pp. 127-128.
Response:
This claim originated before the theory of plate tectonics existed as an explanation for mountain building. Plate tectonics, however, solved the problem in terms of relatively gradual processes we see working (and still building mountains) today. All the major mountain ranges have been studied in detail, the plate movements that caused them have been mapped, and their histories have been worked out for millions of years in the past. The problem of mountain formation has been solved, and a flood had no part in the solution.

The catastrophic formation of mountains and subsequent return of the sea into its basin would have released tremendous amounts of heat and mechanical energy, enough to boil the oceans and metamorphose the minerals in the mountains. No trace of such a catastrophe exists.

Formation of mountains during the Flood does not explain why different mountains are different ages. The Appalachians are much older than the Rockies, for example, as one can immediately see just from how the two ranges are differently eroded.
Further Reading:
McPhee, John, 1998. Annals of the Former World. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux. (This collects four previous books by McPhee -- Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California -- which may also be obtained separately.)

And of course we haven't even got off geological formations onto radiometric dating or fossil distribution.

[Tcg]

I don't think it works like that. Does sand compress at the bottom of oceans? does mud? Does even animal life? I don't think it does. The edges look just like they eroded, either by torrents of water, or by weather. What can you show that has 'eroded by water' that looks different from eroded by weather - but it takes longer? Of course there a force to make mountains rise - plate tectonics. We can go into the research for that. But what is the mechanism to make mountains rise in just months at the end of the flood. Water compressing the washed in matter to rocks in months and so much so as to make mountains appear? I don't think so.

As I've documented in post #29, the mountains would have had to rise somewhere in the first 40 days of the flood. Days not months. At least according to the story.

viewtopic.php?p=1057750#p1057750

Not that months aren't an absurd timeline. Days even more so.


Tcg

[1213]

...Does sand compress at the bottom of oceans? does mud? Does even animal life? ...

If there is for example about 6000 feet water, it causes extreme pressure, not many things can stand it without being compressed.

I think this video shows quite nicely what could happen.


It depends much of what the sunken material is. Solid metal like objects would not be changed much. This means, for example rocks, would probably be relatively same, all though their density can be much less than for example steel has. Organic material, like humans, would probably be compressed much and disintegrate. It depends on how much air is in the matter. Great pressure would force most air out of the sunken material, or compress it to much smaller space. And when the air is moved, matter needs less space and therefore will be compressed so that ocean floor goes down. At some point this obviously gets slower, when there is not much air to be removed.

This channel has also interesting examples of the effects of water pressure: