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 worldwide 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 others 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 is 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.