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From: flash@sas.UUCP (Gordon Keener)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Creation, Evolution, and Flood
Message-ID: <172@sas.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Sep-86 16:02:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: sas.172
Posted: Tue Sep 16 16:02:43 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Sep-86 00:55:31 EDT
References: <203@BMS-AT.UUCP>
Organization: SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC
Lines: 53
Keywords: science flood cosmology
Xref: linus talk.origins:46 talk.religion.misc:90

In article <203@BMS-AT.UUCP>, stuart@BMS-AT.UUCP (Stuart D. Gathman) writes:
> 
> Thoughts:
> 
...
> 	Changes in lifespan and weather indicate to me that radiation
> 		based dating would be totally off base for events
> 		prior to the flood.  (I.e. carbon 14).

  You assume that the lifespan difference is due to some sort of radiation
(or lack thereof) before the flood. I do not believe that any sort of
change in radiation level over the period of a year could have that sort
of effect; i.e. so that the data is not only _wrong_, but _consistent_ with
a 4-billion year existance.

> 	Evidently, some species were able to survive the flood without
> 		being in the Ark.  (E.g. insect eggs, fish eggs, plants,  etc.)
> 		The Bible says that everything that breathed died (Gen 7:22).
> 		Only breathing creatures were in the Ark (Gen 7:15).

  Plants breathe, but in the opposite manner that animals do. Also, I cannot
conceive of any plants, after living on the surface, surviving for more
than a few days underneath miles of water (where it is also rather dark).
Of course, mountaintops would have been closer to the surface, but plants
do not usually find them habitable otherwise.
  Then again, it is possible that Genesis referred to _air_ breathers only,
as it is unlikely that Moses would have been aware of the distinction.

> 	Was the flood the demise of dinosaurs?  (They were too big
> 		to fit in the Ark?)

  Many dinosaurs, unlike T. Rexx and friends, were quite small. I think,
but am not quite sure, that even the small reptilian dinos became extinct
(except crocs and a few others), while most of the mammals survived. This
would not indicate an upper size limit across all species. Granted, all of
the mammals then (and now) are rather small.

> 	What kind of sediment layers (mixed with creatures) would the
> 		flood produce?

  I would expect the flood to be rather violent, and that the 
turbulence would cause at least a few feet of existing ground cover to
become scrambled. Perishing creatures (human and otherwise) could end
up being buried almost anywhere in the resulting layer. I do not know of
any evidence for such layers.

> -- 
> Stuart D. Gathman	<..!seismo!{vrdxhq|dgis}!BMS-AT!stuart>

  Carbon-14 is not the only method of dating, either. One can consider the
amount of time it would take for n feet of sediment to accumulate; it
could not accumulate quickly, or the fossils found in different layers
would not be so radically (and _consistently_) different.