>Soroka and Nelson basically set up a straw-man and then burn it down.
The particularly blatant straw man in their article comes at the very end,
where they conclude that, because all of their four tested models of water
production produce too much heat for life, the Biblical account of the
Flood cannot be literally or historically correct.
>Soroka and Nelson make the absurd assumption that Noah's Flood would have to
>over-top Mount Everest. Aside, perhaps, from some ill-informed Sunday School
>teachers, no Creationist proposes such a preposterous idea. The several
>scenario computations presented in their article are based upon this
>specification, so they do not address Creationary models in the slightest. The
>highest elevation for the pre-flood mountains are usually estimated by
>Creationary Catastropists to be less than 2 km. Many mountain ranges today are
>about 2 km high, such as the Appalachian, the Cascade and the Coast Range
>mountains in America.
Mt. Ranier in the Cascades is over 4 km, and maxima in the Coast and
Appalachians are a bit over 2 km. Is there any evidence on which the claim
of under 2 km is based? As Everest is under 10 km, I do not think that a
decrease of 80 percent in their calculated heat levels helps enough to
avoid the problem of cooking Noah et al.
Gen. 8:5 records the mountains first appearing above the water on the first
day of the tenth month. If Everest formed during the Flood, it was covered
until then if this verse refers to global conditions.
Catastrophic plate tectonics would add an enormous amount of additional
heat to dispose of, from both friction and the heat generated by the
propelling mechanism (second law of thermodynamics).
Woodmorappe's assumption that everything could get by in an ocean of around
15-20 parts per thousand ignores most aquatic invertebrates, many of which
are highly stenohaline (echinoderms, for example). Stable isotope
fractions are influenced by salinity and should reflect such an event, if
you can figure out what was or was not deposited during it. The fact that
individuals have been found in a setting of unusual salinity for the
species does not prove that it can survive a year under those conditions.
Substantial freshwater or marine pulses into a region normally the other
produce extensive dieoff of sensitive species.
David C.
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