Let's start with the idea of a global flood a few thousand years ago. Just imagine it. The entire planet under water. As far as land animals are concerned this would have been a mass extinction event. Not only all land based life would perish but all land based plant life as well.
And where does all this water come from? Certainly not the Antarctic or Greenland ice shelf as we know they have been in place for hundreds of thousands of years.
Also, where is the geological evidence for all of this. It would have left 'footprints' everywhere. And yet there is precisely zero.
Then think of the logistics of building a vessel, out of wood, capable of not only withstanding this monumental event but also being able to accommodate a representative of the 1.75 million species of the Earth.
And who built this vessel? A vessel the like of which can only be imagined? Noah and his family?
How did Noah manage to get hold of Kangaroos, Bison, Polar Bears etc. which exist on completely different continents? And what about all the sea creatures? They would have no need for an ark so I presume they were exempt from this wrath were they?
And when the floods reseeded? Where did all the water go and how did Noah get all the species of animal, insect, reptile, bird etc. back to their now decimated home. Even if he could get them all back from where they came from they would have died out in days as there would have been nothing to eat (all vegetation having since died and rotted) unless they eat each other.
Do I really need to go on?
Their are hundreds of holes in religion which you've just poked one of them. I've studied geology with my father and It's a large interest of mine. My father showed me where the "Event" took place and their is absolutely no evidence in geology to prove that this event actually happened.
The truth about it is that this belief is a load of crap! No way in HELL can all that water appear out of no where and then dis-appear. There would be scars on the earth's surface if this actually happened.
So the conclusion - False
You'll find alot of flaws in religion.
I think the Noah story is over-exagurated. The original Hebrew religion was passed by word of mouth and by the time it came to be writen down, many facts had been distorted.
Here are the facts. Around 20,000 years ago the last Ice Age ended. The newly mealted ice flooded large areas of land-north Africa lost around 50 miles of coast. Although this did not cover the entire earth, it is big enough to be thought of as Noah's flood as it would have covered most of the inhabited world-people tend to live on the coast.
The evidence for this appears in the fact that fishermen regularly pull up land based animal bones miles out to sea which have not lived since the last Ice Age or before.
Also, almost every culture on earth has a flood myth which usally includes a Noah figure. Perhaps this is evidence shared in our collective memories of a large catastrophy that, perhaps, gave rise to a powerful figure who may have lead the remaining humans at this time and he became Noah.
Almost every ancient religion that predates Christianity has a "Jesus-like" figure as well. Some of the attributes are eerily similar, like the virgin birth, disciples, performing miracles, walking on water, etc.
I can only think of one or two. Please elaborate, I am very intrested in the ancient world in general.
Vapor canopy? Ahhh, no wonder - AiG. They have no interest in anything scientific at all. A large "canopy" of water vapor surrounding the earth would pressure cook everything on the surface.
The reason marine fossils are found on mountain tops is due to uplift, a property of two continental plates smashing into each other - an aspect of plate tectonics which has much more evidence to support it than a global flood.
Floods have specific effects upon the soil and geology of a region – when such an event happens you do not find nice, neat layers of sediment laid down in an orderly fashion. We actually find the opposite of an orderly patterning of sediment in such cases as large floods (Baker, 1973). There is no record of such a world-wide flood having left it’s mark in any sedimentary record, there is no evidence of such a flood in ice-core data not to mention that the faunal succession agrees with not only relative dating but radiometric dating as well which is what evolution predicts should be found. Such is not the result of flood geology.
One example would be that there should be a record of a flood found in tree ring data which is dated back to a timeframe prior to 6,000 years ago. Dendrochronologic data of which the age agreed with radiometric dating was examined for ecological changes – there is no evidence of a massive flood found in this record spanning back 9,928 years (Becker et al, 1991). And much more evidence can be laid against the claim of a world-wide catastrophic flood.
I would go into further detail if I had the time. But, since I don't, here's some more scientifically based reading for you:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
References:
Baker, V. (1973). Paleohydrology and sedimentology of the Lake Missoula flooding in eastern Washington.
Geological Society of America Special Paper 144, 79 p.
Becker, B., Kromer, B. and Trimborn, P. (1991). A stable-isotope tree ring timescale of the Late Glacial/Holocene boundary.
Nature, 353, 647-649.
Well put, squid. And this is all nicely laid out in Prothero's "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters." Great book, too.
It does sound like a great book, I'll have to put it on my list of "to read" books however, I have no idea when I'll get around to tackling that long list - I've still got a large stack of journals and manuals to read before I can event go about setting up my experiments for this upcoming semester *sigh*, I'll get to it someday I suppose.
Anyhow, thanks for the recommendation.