Hi,
Thank you for your participation. I apologize for how long it took me to respond. I forwarded your question to one of the participants on our site. He is a doctor, a veterinarian, not exactly a field closely associated with the science involved with your question, but he is a science guy as well as a Bible guy. I knew he would have a better answer than I would. He was prompt with his reply. The delay is my fault. Anyway, here is his response:
Ken,
When it comes to questions about the Great Flood of Noah’s time, no answers and no evidence will please everyone. There are so many opinions as to what happened, how it happened, and when it happened, that nobody seems to pay an attention as to WHY it happened.
First of all, I’m not sure if I understand the full range of questions in the question your friend asked. He actually brings up more than one “problem.” Here is what he asked:
How can the flood be real when nature would dictate that such a thing would destroy all life on earth, including sea life, and would also eliminate oxygen? If one deeply thinks of all that would be destroyed by being buried under salt water for over a year it, becomes unbelievable.
It will be hard to answer his questions since he starts out with some assumptions that are not based on any facts from the Bible or anywhere else.
The Problem of Salt Water
Where does the Bible say it was salt water? Did it rain enough to cause the ocean to become fresh water? Did the springs of the deep produce fresh water or salt water? The Bible doesn’t say. Does it matter? I don’t know. If you assume that everything remained controlled by the normal forces of nature, then yes, fresh water fish would die if the earth was covered in salt water. But, salt water fishes would die if the earth was covered in fresh water. If it was a brackish mixture of salt and fresh, then probably all fish would die. Do you see the problem? I won’t be able to give answers that he would accept because his assumptions can’t be addressed. This is a “problem” only if you assume that God had no control over the conditions of the earth during the Flood.
One of the main problems is that too many people (Christians included) tend to think the Bible teaches that the Great Flood was a naturalistic process from start to finish, and that God had little or no control over it. In short, many people don’t want to believe that miraculous intervention was a necessary part of the story. Even Morris and Whitcomb in their book, The Genesis Flood, tried to make the Flood fit what they believed about science. Morris was a hydrologist, an expert in fluid dynamics, and he always seemed to try to explain things in a way that didn’t rely on God’s direct supernatural intervention. He was a Christian, but he seemed to want to make the Flood a natural event that science could explain without relying on the “God-of-the-Gaps” argument. That’s the argument that atheists and agnostics throw at Christians when we can’t explain something. They say that when we can’t give a scientific explanation, then we just say, “God-did-it.” In other words we use God as a way to fill in the gaps of our knowledge. Morris and Whitcomb tried to make it look that science could answer everything about the Flood. Of course, it was THEIR science (Young-Earth Science) that they used to explain things. In my opinion they failed miserably.
(Then again, when I ask evolutionists questions about how random chemical mutagens and random ionizing radiation combined with random geologic changes could produce non-random intelligence in DNA, they fall back on the “evolution-did-it” argument… evolution-of-the-gaps.)
One of the first questions that needs to be addressed is whether the Flood was global or local. I believe it was global, but I have read the arguments of many good Christians who argue that it was local. I assume, that your friend assumes, that we assume the Flood was global. If not, then his question makes no sense. If it was local, then your friend’s questions are answered even before asks them. If it was local, then there would be no need to explain a world wide impact. It wouldn’t have had a world wide impact. There would be no need to explain how freshwater fish, or salt water fish, or kangaroos, or Three-Toed Sloths, or Antarctic penguins, etc. could have survived. If it was local, then they were never in danger. The “Local-Only” Flood does not present much of a scientific problem, but it sure presents some major Biblical problems. I don’t need to tell you that because I know you are well aware of them.
Yes, things being under water for a year would have died, and it really wouldn’t matter if it was salt or fresh. BUT things would have died only if God was unable to preserve life in a supernatural fashion. This “problem” is self-defeating. If you don’t believe in God, then you don’t believe there was ever a Great Flood. If there was no Great Flood, then the preservation of life, during a Flood that never happened, was never a problem. The problem only arises if you believe there is a God who caused a Great Flood that was out of His control. You have to assume that the Creator was unable to control His creation. To ask this question assumes that the Designer and Creator of life was unable to temporarily modify the environmental, biological, anatomical, and physiological factors needed to sustain life. Yes, nature would dictate that life couldn’t survive such an event, but how does that eliminate a supernatural intervention?
Let me give a parallel “problem.” How could Lazarus come back to life after being dead and buried for four days? Well, if you are an atheist, and you assume that Jesus is not God, then you assume that Jesus didn’t raise him from the dead. It would be nonsense to argue the mechanics of how Jesus could have done it if you assumed Jesus never did it. You have to assume that supernatural intervention is impossible. But how do you use nature to disprove super-nature? You can’t do it. Science is limited to what can be naturally observed and tested. How can you observe or test what a supernatural God could or couldn’t do with His natural creation?
The real problem is not believing if there was a Great Flood; the problem is believing if there is a Great God.
The Elimination of Oxygen
Is he talking about the elimination of oxygen in the water or the elimination of oxygen in the atmosphere? Both of these “problems” have been used to try to disprove the Bible. First, let’s deal with the problem of atmospheric oxygen. This was one of the first questions I got hit with after becoming a Christian when I was in the Navy. A fellow sailor, an atheist, challenged me with these questions.
His question: Did I believe the Flood covered all the mountains, including Mount Everest?
My answer: Yes, I believed that.
His question: Since Mt. Everest is 5 ½ miles high, did I believe the Ark was at a higher elevation?
My answer: Yes, I believed that.
His question: Then how could Noah, his family, and all the animals survive since there is insufficient oxygen to breath at that altitude; the air is too thin to breathe that high up?
My answer: Uhhhhhhh….. I’ll have to get back to you on that one.
Those were the days before the Internet and the only resources I had were a few fellow Christians, a local pastor, and a good Christian bookstore in Glasgow. (I was in Scotland at the time) Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone who had an answer.
I was afraid that I was going to have to admit that his argument was valid, but then the Holy Spirit hit me up side the head and said, “YOU DUMMY.” Well, it wasn’t quite like that, but it should have been. You see, I was a sailor. I was on a ship. When we were at sea, we were at sea level. When we were in port, we were at sea level at high tide, and we were at sea level at low tide. It didn’t matter how high or low the tides were. We were always at sea level. It struck me that Noah’s Ark would have been at sea level no matter how high sea level was. The atmosphere would have been displaced upward as the ocean rose. The occupants of the Ark would have been in the same oxygen-rich atmosphere for the entire duration of the Flood. There would have been no elimination of oxygen from the atmosphere.
Now let’s look at the “problem” of elimination of oxygen in the water. Well, that wouldn’t have been a problem either. Atmospheric oxygen diffuses into the water quite nicely. Even at the deepest parts of the ocean, six miles down, there is sufficient oxygen for deep-sea creatures to live. As long as water is moving, the turbulence keeps creating a supply of oxygen from higher up the water column. AND MOST IMPORTANT: The concentration of oxygen in the water does not depend on depth alone. It depends on salinity, temperature, turbulence, local mineral concentrations, and a whole bunch of other things. Even with an increase in ocean depth of 5-6 miles, the concentration of oxygen at the surface would have been the same. Since we don’t know the temperature of the water, and we don’t know the salinity of the water, and we don’t know the turbulence of the water, we can’t use the mathematical equations that scientists use today to determine oxygen concentrations. This means that no one can determine how much oxygen was in the Flood’s water; not even your friend. He can assume there was no oxygen in the water, but he has no way to know what the conditions were. If the ocean was warmer during Noah’s Flood, then more oxygen would have dissolved. If the ocean was more saline, then it would have held more oxygen. If there was more turbulence, then there would be more mixing, and more oxygen would have diffused down to deeper depths. Since no one knows what these factors were during Noah’s Flood, no one knows if there was a problem with oxygen levels at deeper levels. As it turns out, the question isn’t even scientific since there is no way we can observe, measure, and test the conditions of the water as they were during the Flood. To ask the question assumes that the conditions of the Flood waters were such that life could not be sustained. But, to make such an assumption requires that you know something about the conditions of the Flood waters. He is not asking a scientific question because he had no science on which to base his question.
It also assumes that God didn’t know how to keep things alive. But, of course, He is the One who created them, and He is the One who designed them, and He is the One who could alter the conditions of the water so that they would be supplied with plenty of oxygen. In other words, the problem is only a problem if you first assume it is a problem. It’s the “anti-God of the gaps” argument. When we say that God performed a miracle, they fall back on the “there-is-no-god” response; therefore, the miracle never happened. They don’t prove the miracle never happened; they just assume that miracles can’t happen because there is no supernatural God capable of performing miracles.
I know your friend will have lots of other “problems” with the Flood and with the Bible, but the real problem is his relationship with Jesus Christ. Let me put this in a medical frame of reference. I would ask him this:
If your dog was shot by a .45 caliber pistol, and the bullet pierced a major artery, as a veterinarian, the first thing I need to do is to get in there and stop the bleeding. How I treat the surface wound, whether or not I’m going to use a cosmetic surgical closing, what kind of suture material I will use, or what kind of antibiotic I will use as a follow-up are all unimportant at the time. If your dog dies, none of that stuff matters. The same thing is true about your eternal destiny. It makes no sense to argue over issues that do not matter if you do not get saved. This is one of the most depressing things I think about when it comes to people who claim to be scientific and who claim they are searching for answers to questions about the universe. If you die and go to hell, you will never be able to have your questions answered. You will be in fire and torment and ignorance forever. You will never discover anything new in hell. On the other hand, if you put your trust in Jesus Christ, then not only will you be spared eternal damnation, you will be in the presence of the Creator Himself who will give you all the answers to all the questions you could ever ask about the universe. If you love knowledge, why would you reject the chance of living in the presence of the One who possesses all knowledge?
Well, Ken, that’s all for now. I hope it helps. I will pray that it will.
Your brother in Christ,
Steve