Re: Re[2]: Ramm's flood

Paul Arveson (arveson@oasys.dt.navy.mil)
Mon, 15 Apr 96 15:25:33 EDT

In message <17193980@Okway.okstate.edu> David S. Buchanan writes:
> Dennis wrote (among other things)
>
>
> <I think we agree. If my memory serves me right, flood stories have been
> <found all over the world, including among American Indians, and in Papua
> <New Guinea.
>
> I am new to this list so this may have been addressed at length
> earlier. However, shouldn't almost every ancient society have a story
> of a great flood? Since groups of people require fresh water, many
> settlements were built along a body of water and, if the settlement is
> in place long enough, there would be a flood. For example if there had
> been a primitive society north of St. Louis when the Mississippi
> flooded a few years ago, that society would now be passing down
> stories of a great flood that covered almost everything. To them,
> their whole world would have been flooded. No doubt there were
> settlements of Native Americans in that very place hundreds of years
> ago and, equally without doubt, the Mississippi would have flooded.
>
> Again, if this has already been discussed, please pardon my newness.
>
> Dave Buchanan

Of course. This is why the alleged conflict between "catastrophism" and
"uniformitarianism" is nonexistent. Floods, which can be quite catastrophic,
occur from time to time nearly everywhere. Especially in "flood plains".

The appearance of meanders and ox-bow lakes in flood plains is evidence of the
vast age of such flood plains and of countless past floods. This evidence, from
the field of hydraulics, should be of interest to Henry Morris. I wonder if
anyone has ever undertaken to estimate the age of such flood plains. After all,
the slow flow of a river causes the meanders; it can't be accelerated or the
meanders disappear and you get canyons. It is a slow, nonlinear process. When
I travel over the US in an airplane, I marvel at the complexity of sedimentary
structure in these flood plains.

Paul Arveson, Research Physicist
73367.1236@compuserve.com arveson@oasys.dt.navy.mil
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