62 - Review: Evidence of the Flood, Young Earth vs. Old Earth [A]

Review: Evidence of the Flood; Young earth vs old earth

Why is Noah's flood important? It is important because understanding what Genesis says about the flood changes everything about how you view earth history. If the Bible record is correct, a universal reality, is historically accurate, then it changes everything in terms of science: ages, the age of the earth, dating mechanisms. In flood geology we have on the one hand those who believe there was a literal world-wide flood that lasted up to a year that changed everything about the earth's structure. The results of a flood of that nature would have impacted many other of earth's systems, not just water. It would have changed geology, meteorology, and would have had an impact on creating an environment that would develop into the ice ages. On the other hand there is modern geology which insists that the earth is millions and millions of years old and that all life on earth developed gradually through a process known as evolution, and that the evidence of this process is what is embedded in the rocks in terms of fossils. Flood geology argues that all of these fossils were laid down at the same time in a catastrophic global event that killed everything except the animals that were on Noah's ark. The difference is a time factor of just a few years. Modern geology has a lengthy time frame because the assumption is that if you have enough time anything can happen.

The Bible says that the earth really isn't that old. From Abraham until now is only about 4000 years. Abraham was born about 2156 BC. If any archaeologist gives a date for any civilization beyond about 2000 BC, then just discount it. There are reasons for this but a lot of it has to do with the fact that they date things on the same basis and the same assumption of uniformity that evolution uses. So if the dating is flawed for evolution then it is also flawed for archaeology. The date for the earth is only 6-7000 years.

2 Peter 3:5 says that modern man is willingly ignorant of what the Bible says about the heavens in Genesis chapter one. "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was [pre-flood earth], being overflowed with water, perished." There is divine judgment. If that is ignored then there is the need to come up with explanations for where all the dead things came from that are found in the rocks. The presupposition that underlies that is uniformity.

The result of taking the flood literally is that it would have resulted in vast deposits of sediment which would contain the extensive remains of plant and animal life. This is what is found all over the planet. Fossils show that these animals were killed quickly. Something catastrophic had to happen to kill these rapidly. In the fossil records ninety-five per cent of all fossils are marine invertebrates, and they are found on top of the land. Ninety-five per cent of the remaining five per cent are plants. Ninety-five per cent of the remainder are fish, and most of the rest are insects. Much less than one per cent are land vertebrates, and these usually consist of less than one bone. So we have very little evidence that we are using to extrapolate theories from. Fossils are found in catastrophic underwater deposits, but only on the continents. This indicates that at one time the earth was covered with water.