OK, I planned to do a 3 part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), but I need at least three more. I was talking to a friend I respect who still believes in a old Universe and Earth. There was no way I could explain why this could be a problem for a true Bible believing Christian while typing on my phone, so here I am. I am including quotes from several technical articles and links to the articles to provide more details. I strongly recommend checking out the linked articles.
My plan is to do Part 4 on more historical, anthropological, and scientific evidences supporting the Genesis narrative. I’ll do a Part 5 on internal evidences that Genesis is literal history. I’ll do Part 6 on how our understanding of Genesis supports or undermines the rest of the Bible. We’ll see if I feel the need to do even more at a later date.
The biggest evidence the old age proponents have is the deep sediment layers covering the Earth. Of course there are two general ways these layers could come into being: through long, slow deposition of dust or through catastrophic, sudden deposition. Believing in an old Earth means that all of this sediment must have accumulated over long ages. Believing in a young Earth means this sediment must have been deposited by a catastrophic global flood as described in the Bible. Which matches the evidence more?
Before getting into the science, I want to get into a few anthropological evidences. If there was truly a global flood, we would expect different cultures around the world to mention a global flood. This is exactly what we see. There are multiple flood stories from multiple cultures on every inhabited continent.
95% say the flood was global
66% say it was caused by wickedness of man
88% say there was a favored family or individual
66% say the remnant were forewarned
70% say survival was due to a boat
67% say animals were saved
73% say animals played a part
57% say survivors ended up on a mountain
35% say birds were sent out1
Many times the biblical flood story is compared to the “Epic of Gilgamesh” and attributed to being borrowed from the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, but what makes more sense: Was the biblical story taken from the “Epic of Gilgamesh” or was the “Epic of Gilgamesh” taken from the Bible and/or actual history? The dimensions of the Ark in Genesis 6:15 “This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits” just happens to be the proportions that modern ship builders have determined to be most stable in rough seas. In the “Epic of Gilgamesh” the ship is a cube. The only less stable shape would be a sphere. If there really was a flood, which description is most likely to be true? The Biblical description, of course! It gives the only truly realistic, believable description. If the global flood story was only a parable or moral story, why would they get the physical dimensions of the ship so perfectly described? For that matter, why would they have dimensions at all?
Another example comes from the Miao people in China. They have passed down a song that parallels the first 11 chapters of Genesis very closely. I am including the section on the flood, but it is worth reading the whole thing because it is amazing how well the two texts match in details. These people were separated from the West, the Jews, and the Christians for thousands of years and yet they tell of the same beginnings.
So it poured forty days in sheets and in torrents.
Then fifty-five days of misting and drizzle.
The waters surmounted the mountains and ranges.
The deluge ascending leapt valley and hollow.
An earth with no earth upon which to take refuge!
A world with no foothold where one might subsist!
The people were baffled, impotent and ruined,
Despairing, horror stricken, diminished and finished.
But the Patriarch Nuah was righteous.
The Matriarch Gaw Bo-lu-en upright.
Their household entire got aboard and were floated,
The family complete rode the deluge in safety.
The animals with him were female and male.
The birds went along and were mated in pairs.
When the time was fulfilled, God commanded the waters.
The day had arrived, the flood waters receded.
Then Nuah liberated a dove from their refuge,
Sent a bird to go forth and bring again tidings.
The flood had gone down into lake and to ocean;
The mud was confined to the pools and the hollows.
There was land once again where a man might reside;
There was a place in the earth now to rear habitations.
Buffalo then were brought, an oblation to God,
Fatter cattle became sacrifice to the Mighty.
If you compare this text to Genesis 7, they match very well. Because the Miao tribe’s oral traditions were recited as couplets (two lines that mean basically the same thing), it is self correcting and is less prone to error than a straight narrative. It is truly worth reading the whole linked article. You will see the oral tradition matches (with only very minor disagreement) Genesis in creation, man, a wicked world, the flood, and the Tower of Babel. Even the names are similar. Look at the names from the Bible vs Miao names.
Seth ~ Se-teh
Lamech ~ Lama
Noah ~ Nuah
Ham ~ Lo Han
Shem ~ Lo Shen
Japheth ~ Jah-hu
This close of a description from two groups that are so geographically and culturally diverse does not happen unless they are describing real events that the descendants of both experienced. Genesis isn’t analogy, mythology, or parable. It is history.
If you believe in deep ages, you almost have to believe there is no global flood because it only makes sense that the deep sediment layers come from one or the other.
The Continents are covered with deep layers of sediments that mostly fall into six (or possibly more) megasequences composed of multiple layers with the lowest layers having the coarsest particles up to the highest layers with the finest particles and then an unconformity that can only be caused by sheet erosion from receding water. Conventional, old-age geologists say millions of years are missing at the unconformities, but this makes no sense because there is no erosion, no valleys nor gullies, no burrows, just a knife edge line. This strongly suggests that this surface was only exposed for hours or days, not years, and definitely not millions of years. A catastrophic, progressive, global flood would almost certainly have large tsunamis that would encroach on the land, and recede, followed by another tsunami, causing these megasequences.
This description of the Sauk Megasequence explains both the Biblical interpretation and the conventional interpretation. Consider which better explains the evidence.
Many of these sediments have been proven to have been transported vast distances over wide areas across continents. The conventional explanations of how this happened, ie. blown dust, meandering rivers, transgressing shorelines, etc. do not match the evidence well.
In addition to these continental and intercontinental sandstones, the Whopper Sand out in the Gulf of Mexico also strongly supports the global flood, because there is otherwise no good explanation for how this deep, pure sand got so far out into the Gulf.
Surprisingly, the newly discovered sand had sharp boundaries on the top and bottom
No slow gradual process could transport this much sand over this large of an area out in deep water. It would take a global flood draining off the entire North American continent to have enough energy to transport this much sand 200 miles out to sea.2
Another example of sediments that cover great areas are the vast, pure chalk beds that make up the famous White Cliffs of Dover and reach great distances.
How could such pure chalk beds be deposited across such wide areas without a global flood to deposit them? See this article for details of how these beds could be formed in the global flood and why the conventional idea of many millions of years doesn’t make sense.
In addition to looking at sedimentary deposits around the globe, we can look at erosion. We can measure how quickly the continents are being eroded. We can measure how quickly the continents are being raised. The continents are being eroded much more quickly than they are rising and should be planed down below sea level in much less time than the billions of years that the old age proponents say we have been around.
If the Earth was as old as we are told, the continents should not exist. Of course some people might say, that the amount of accumulated sediment is much greater than would be expected if the Earth was only ~6,000 years old. That is true if erosion had remained constant over the entire 6,000 years, but what does the Bible say happened in the past that could have caused faster erosion in the past? The global flood would have caused massive erosion as the water drained off of the continents into the seas. This could easily account for the extra sediment. The old-age geologists don’t have a good answer for why there is not enough sediment.3
In reality, the long ages pushed by scientists are pushed so hard because long ages are necessary for Evolution to be plausible. They need Darwinian Evolution so they can say that God didn’t create humanity, because God’s creation of humanity and the universe is what gives God the right to say what is right and wrong. Those who want to do as they please and who want to be their own “gods” will do anything to “disprove” god.
This post has gotten too long, so I will have to address evolution in another post at a later date.
Trust Jesus.
your sister in Christ,
Christy
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from “The Global Flood: Unlocking Earth’s Geologic History” by John D. Morris copyright October 2012 page 70
For more information on the Whopper Sand, check out this article https://www.icr.org/article/whopper-sand
See https://www.icr.org/article/continents-should-have-eroded-long for more information on continental erosion.