Survey To Evaluate False Doctrine Among Membership

[BCSpace]

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism quote (above) excerpts John A. Widstoe's writings on the flood. thesometimesaint has used this excerpt to imply that Widstoe specifically, and thus the LDS Church in general, is at least open to the idea of a local (i.e. non-global) flood.

 

 

I think the Church is open in the sense of revelation on the subject and that would be in part what Widstoe is alluding to.  However, I agree that the doctrine of the Church is a Global Flood.  I believe the Church has merely gone with traditional Christianity in light of the absence of a specific revelation on it and I personally accept a local Flood, but the fact remains that Global Flood is doctrine.  Also, the Encyclopedia of Mormonism is not a doctrinal work as far as I can tell.

Edited November 22, 2013 by BCSpace

[danielwoods]

 

Then we are faced with the a conundrum. It is scientifically impossible for life to exist with the entire planet to be covered with water to a depth greater than Mount Everest.

 

Interestingly many thought Venus had people on it, including LDS Prophets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_in_fiction

 

Welcome to Venus.

 

Vapor canopy. This model proposes that much of the Flood water was suspended overhead until the 40 days of rain which caused the Flood.

• How was the water suspended, and what caused it to fall all at once when it did?
• If a canopy holding the equivalent to more than 40 feet of water were part of the atmosphere, it would raise the atmospheric pressure accordingly, raising oxygen and nitrogen levels to toxic levels.
• If the canopy began as vapor, any water from it would be superheated. This scenario essentially starts with most of the Flood waters boiled off. Noah and company would be poached. If the water began as ice in orbit, the gravitational potential energy would likewise raise the temperature past boiling.
• A canopy of any significant thickness would have blocked a great deal of light, lowering the temperature of the earth greatly before the Flood.
• Any water above the ozone layer would not be shielded from ultraviolet light, and the light would break apart the water molecules.

 

 

Or there was a Catastrophic Plate tectonic movement. Thus causing the oceans to become super heated, allowing for rapid evaporation and hence rain. 

 

http://www.globalflood.org/papers/2003ICCcpt.html

[thesometimesaint]

Or there was a Catastrophic Plate tectonic movement. Thus causing the oceans to become super heated, allowing for rapid evaporation and hence rain. 

 

http://www.globalflood.org/papers/2003ICCcpt.html

 

The plates move about 1-3 inches per year(depending on location), and have for the last 3.2 billions of years. Such an event of several thousands of miles still would cook every living thing.

Edited November 22, 2013 by thesometimesaint

[strappinglad]

The plates move about 1-3 inches per year(depending on location), and have for the last 3.2 billions of years. Such an event of several thousands of miles still would cook every living thing.

Let's assume a uniformitarian stance and divide 3.2 billion by 63360 inches in a mile. That would mean that the plates have moved about 50,000 miles or twice the circumference of the earth. Something doesn't 'multiply' up.

[Buckeye]

 

If the flood wasn't global, then people outside of the flood area would have survived, so in what way could we consider Noah a "second father - with Adam - of all mankind"?

 

Maybe because Adam and Eve were also not the only humans around when they became the father/mother of our race?

[danielwoods]

The plates move about 1-3 inches per year(depending on location), and have for the last 3.2 billions of years. Such an event of several thousands of miles still would cook every living thing.

It is a theory another possibility. I don't claim to understand it all, but if under water tectonic and vulcanic activity occurred, quite a lot of rain would be the result.

[Tiki]

It wasn't just rain which contributed to Noah's flood. The scriptures also mention the fountains of the deep:

http://www.lds.org/scriptures/search?lang=eng&query=Fountains+of+the+deep&x=-938&y=-361

Genesis 7:11 & 8:2

There could have been quakes, landslides, etc, during the Great Flood.

It's known that distant quakes can affect geyers in Yellowstone, meaning there is a giant underground interconnected litte-understood reservoir, possibly.

http://yellowstone.net/geology/earthquakes/

Even distant earthquakes can affect Yellowstone. In November 2002, the magnitude 7.9 Denali Fault earthquake struck central Alaska, 1,250 miles (2,000 km) northwest of Yellowstone. Because this quake’s energy was focused toward the active Yellowstone volcanic and hydrothermal system, it triggered hundreds of small earthquakes there. The region’s hydrothermal system is highly sensitive to quakes and undergoes significant changes in their wake. Earthquakes may have the potential to cause Yellowstone’s hot-water system to destabilize and produce explosive hydrothermal eruptions.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Tiki

[Rob Osborn]

Then we are faced with the a conundrum. It is scientifically impossible for life to exist with the entire planet to be covered with water to a depth greater than Mount Everest.

Mt. Everest was created after the flood along with all other major mountain chains. Someone may come back and say well the mountains are too old. Again, global flood theorists do not believe the mountains are as old as is believed.

[Calm]

Let's assume a uniformitarian stance and divide 3.2 billion by 63360 inches in a mile. That would mean that the plates have moved about 50,000 miles or twice the circumference of the earth. Something doesn't 'multiply' up.

Think mountains.  Also subduction zone.

 

 

 

 

http://www.globalflood.org/papers/2003ICCcpt.html

I assume you believe that the days of Peleg the earth divided physically, not nationally.  If so, what prevented the oceans from becoming superheated (and destroying a good portion of its life forms btw...I accidentally killed off my frogs in my aquarium when the thermometer broke and cause the water to become bathtub warm...the topical fish just got hyper active, but frogs went belly up) during that Catastrophic Plate movement?

 

 

Edited November 23, 2013 by calmoriah

[thesometimesaint]

Let's assume a uniformitarian stance and divide 3.2 billion by 63360 inches in a mile. That would mean that the plates have moved about 50,000 miles or twice the circumference of the earth. Something doesn't 'multiply' up.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20120406-23443.html

 

[thesometimesaint]

Mt. Everest was created after the flood along with all other major mountain chains. Someone may come back and say well the mountains are too old. Again, global flood theorists do not believe the mountains are as old as is believed.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/earth/birth.html

 

Now just get your idea published in Nature and then we'll talk.

[Rob Osborn]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/earth/birth.html

 

Now just get your idea published in Nature and then we'll talk.

This is why global versus local flood debates die. Getthe impossible to agree with...and then we will talk. Forget it.

[thesometimesaint]

This is why global versus local flood debates die. Getthe impossible to agree with...and then we will talk. Forget it.

 

The whole story can be dismissed as a series of supernatural miracles. There is no way to contradict such an argument. However, one must wonder about a God who reportedly does one thing and then arranges every bit of evidence to make it look like something else happened. It's entirely possible that a global flood occurred 4000 years ago or even last Thursday, and that God subsequently erased all the evidence, including our memories of it. But even if such stories are true, what's the point?

[Rob Osborn]

The whole story can be dismissed as a series of supernatural miracles. There is no way to contradict such an argument. However, one must wonder about a God who reportedly does one thing and then arranges every bit of evidence to make it look like something else happened. It's entirely possible that a global flood occurred 4000 years ago or even last Thursday, and that God subsequently erased all the evidence, including our memories of it. But even if such stories are true, what's the point?

The evidence actually looks like catastrophic events. The big parallel sedimentary layers can only be explained in a massive catastrophic flooding event. God made it so plainly apparent that it wasn't until the 20th century when godless man thought different and said "the present is key to the past". Then they throw around words like "supernatural" so they can then discard it as fairytale. I have asked many many a person to explain just where all the parallel layers we see exposed in the Grand Canyon came from. No modern uniformitarian model can explain how these layers stacked up thousands of feet, relatively parallel, over millions of square miles. there is no endless mountain that could deliver enough material.

Its interesting that when you break down their models and examine the true evidence, it become the supernatural, or should I say "fairytale".

[thesometimesaint]

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

 

New ocean basins. Most flood models (including those above, possibly excepting Hovind's) deal with the water after the flood by proposing that it became our present oceans. The earth's terrain, according to this model, was much, much flatter during the Flood, and through cataclysms, the mountains were pushed up and the ocean basins lowered. (Brown proposes that the cataclysms were caused by the crust sliding around on a cushion of water; Whitcomb & Morris don't give a cause.)

• How could such a change be effected? To change the density and/or temperature of at least a quarter of the earth's crust fast enough to raise and lower the ocean floor in a matter of months would require mechanisms beyond any proposed in any of the flood models.
• Why are most sediments on high ground? Most sediments are carried until the water slows down or stops. If the water stopped in the oceans, we should expect more sediments there. Baumgardner's own modeling shows that, during the Flood, currents would be faster over continents than over ocean basins [Baumgardner, 1994], so sediments should, on the whole, be removed from continents and deposited in ocean basins. Yet sediments on the ocean basin average 0.6 km thick, while on continents (including continental shelves), they average 2.6 km thick. [Poldervaart, 1955]
• Where's the evidence? The water draining from the continents would have produced tremendous torrents. There is evidence of similar flooding in the Scablands of Washington state (from the draining of a lake after the breaking of an ice dam) and on the far western floor of the Mediterranean Sea (from the ocean breaking through the Straits of Gibralter). Why is such evidence not found worldwide?
• How did the ark survive the process? Such a wholesale restructuring of the earth's topography, compressed into just a few months, would have produced tsunamis large enough to circle the earth. The aftershocks alone would have been devastating for years afterwards.

[Rob Osborn]

There is evidence everywhere you go. I live in Idaho and travel all around the western states and I see the massive evidence everywhere of upthrust, water catastrophic erosion events etc.

[thesometimesaint]

There is evidence everywhere you go. I live in Idaho and travel all around the western states and I see the massive evidence everywhere of upthrust, water catastrophic erosion events etc.

I've lived all across the US. I now call southern California my home. Everywhere I look I see massive albeit local/regional floods. The science just isn't there for anything more. Water has weight. That much water, in the form of vapor, would render this planet to be like Venus. Life as we know it could not exist here.

[strappinglad]

The whole story can be dismissed as a series of supernatural miracles. There is no way to contradict such an argument. However, one must wonder about a God who reportedly does one thing and then arranges every bit of evidence to make it look like something else happened. It's entirely possible that a global flood occurred 4000 years ago or even last Thursday, and that God subsequently erased all the evidence, including our memories of it. But even if such stories are true, what's the point?

Sorry TSS , but there is quite a bit of evidence of massive flooding. The fossils themselves provide evidence of rapid water born death. The thousands of feet of thickness of sedimentary rock in China. The huge underwater drainage canyons found off the East coast of the USA. The unusual mixes of fossils found piled together. I wouldn't say there is NO evidence for a massive flood. The flood stories from hundreds of old civilizations show something other than " I told two friend who told two friends ..." etc.

[thesometimesaint]

Sorry TSS , but there is quite a bit of evidence of massive flooding. The fossils themselves provide evidence of rapid water born death. The thousands of feet of thickness of sedimentary rock in China. The huge underwater drainage canyons found off the East coast of the USA. The unusual mixes of fossils found piled together. I wouldn't say there is NO evidence for a massive flood. The flood stories from hundreds of old civilizations show something other than " I told two friend who told two friends ..." etc.

I didn't say that. I said there is no evidence for world wide flood during human existence, and there isn't.

[Stone holm]

I didn't say that. I said there is no evidence for world wide flood during human existence, and there isn't.

Interesting, Masons have a folklore about an underground Temple from antediluvian times.

[Rob Osborn]

I've lived all across the US. I now call southern California my home. Everywhere I look I see massive albeit local/regional floods. The science just isn't there for anything more. Water has weight. That much water, in the form of vapor, would render this planet to be like Venus. Life as we know it could not exist here.

Well, Science is not God. The flood happened, it was a global catastrophe and we have the word of God as testimony of its happening

[Kevin Christensen]

Word of God heard, interpreted, transcribed, transmitted, translated, and interpreted again.   Communication involves a whole range of processes and it is best not to ignore the implications of what happens along the way, even if it means giving up the satisfaction of believing that God has parked his own understanding between my ears.

 

Duane Jeffery has a helpful survey here:  Noah's Flood: Modern Scholarship and Mormon Traditions.

 

https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/134-27-45.pdf

 

FWIW

 

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

Edited November 24, 2013 by Kevin Christensen

[thesometimesaint]

Well, Science is not God. The flood happened, it was a global catastrophe and we have the word of God as testimony of its happening

 

Never said it was. I have no problem with God doing it any way he chose. I do have a problem with those that claim he did it in defiance of all natural laws is how he did it. Look you can have a testimony that man will never be in space or go to the moon. Time to admit that was simply mistaken and move on.

[danielwoods]

Think mountains.  Also subduction zone.

 

 

 

I assume you believe that the days of Peleg the earth divided physically, not nationally.  If so, what prevented the oceans from becoming superheated (and destroying a good portion of its life forms btw...I accidentally killed off my frogs in my aquarium when the thermometer broke and cause the water to become bathtub warm...the topical fish just got hyper active, but frogs went belly up) during that Catastrophic Plate movement?

We have evidence that lots of marine life died, however it is also reasonable to imagine relatively isolated areas where animals (such as frogs) would have survived.

[thesometimesaint]

We have evidence that lots of marine life died, however it is also reasonable to imagine relatively isolated areas where animals (such as frogs) would have survived.

 

It isn't just frogs. You take plants and animals out of their ecological niche they die.