A friend of mine with a strong religious background enjoys debating the finer points of the science of geology with me. The other day he came by and mentioned “antediluvial theory”, which apparently holds that the Biblical great flood was caused by the peircing of a ‘vapor canopy’ that surrounded planet Earth. This vapor canopy is supposed to have held most of the water on the earth suspended in the sky somehow, behind a kind of membrane. A meteor or some other event pierced the membrane, making all the water dump on the planet. According to my friend, this also caused the Earth to cool down, and what we now observe as global warming is actually the Earth returning to its normal temperature.
I mentioned this to my girlfriend, whose brother is a fundamentalist. She told me she’d been hearing this theory from her bro for years, and it’s supposedly proven by the fact that tomato plants can be grown upside down. (?)
For the record, I was raised by a geologist, and my family vacations were all about hunting fossils and looking at rock formations. To me, the great flood was a localized event in the Tigris Euphrates river valley, and this theoretical ‘vapor canopy’ is impractical for a few basic reasons (like gravity.) But in the spirit of trying to listen to all sides of the argument (as well as the spirit of ‘learn the ignorance in order to dispell it’,) I’m trying to find out more about this theory. Wikipedia only has a couple of paragraphs (and doesn’t mention the tomato plants.) Other internet searches come up dry - even the SDMB only has one use of the word “antediluvial”. Anybody know the straight dope on this theory, where it comes from, and what it entails?
What, specifically, is your question? Is it “Does this ‘antediluvial theory’ have any credible scientific basis?”, 'cause the answer to that would be a resounding “No.” That is to say, “No, we have no evidence of a water-retaining sky membrane. No, there’s no indication that a sudden flood resulted in massive cooling of the Earth. No, global warming (insofar as we can quantify it at all) is not ‘the Earth returning to its natural temperature’ but rather part of the process of cyclic climate change that may (likely) be influenced in some measure by anthropic pollution. No, this is not a credible, comprehensive theory with any coherence or factual basis whatsoever.”
Seriously, this goes along the same lines as the Intelligent Design movement, co-opting the language of science to sell a “theory” which wedges in some bastardized version of Biblical Creationism while totally ignoring any of the methodology of science (i.e. hypothesis, test, refinement, falsification). It’s utter balderdash, designed specificially to confuse and distort, and like the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, isn’t even internally consistent, much less validated by physical evidence.
I’m hoping someone will post a summary or a link, or relate some experiences with people who follow this. I’m really just trying to gather information to wrap my head around this idea and the motivation behind it. I suspect this doesn’t come from the same place as Intelligent Design. If it did it would be better documented, and I’d find pages and pages online of people trying to sell this theory.
I’d like to have an intelligent conversation with my friend where I’m respectful of his beliefs, hopefully with a result of him thinking about some alternatives to the theory he’s adopted. In my experience, if you start by telling people “What you believe is crap” they immediately stop listening to anything else you have to say.
I never have understood how taking God entirely out of the biblical story makes it a support for fundamentalist dogma.
But, if it did all fall down at once, where did it go later? I mean, thirty thousand feet of water over the entire surface of the earth is a whole lot of water. Where is it now? Is there a deposition layer at exactly the same temporal depth over the entire world? Is it above or below the iridium layer? What effect did it have on the salinity of the world’s oceans? (We are talking about a whole lot more water than there was on the earth before, so the minimal drop in salinity would be much greater than 50%.) What happened to the remaining material of the “membrane” after it tore open?
If the light of the sun used to be filtered through this vapor layer equivalent in mass to a six mile deep layer of water, how did it make the surface of the Earth warmer than now? In fact, how was anyone able to even know that the sun existed, since it was obviously as dark as the deepest part of the ocean, until the water fell?
Think about it. You can go on all day, if you do. But no one will be listening.
Well, it wouldn’t have been quite that deep. If the volume was only sufficient to cover all of the Earth to a depth of six miles (which value I assume you took from the height of Mt. Everest), that same volume at an altitude greater than six miles would be spread across a larger circumference.
I think it was Paulos in his book innumeracy who calculated that rain would have to fall at the rate of 15 feet per hour (or was it per minute) in order to satisfy the required depth and coverage. That’s more than enough to sink an aircraft carrier, nevermind a wooden boat.
But here we all are trying to pin the tail of science on the donkey of scripture, where in anything is possible at the hand of God.
It lets you justify the otherwise implausible creation story in the Bible (or other religious texts) without appealing to faith in miraculous and factually-unsupported events. From there, you then inject God (or Allah, or Great Green Arkleseizures, or whathaveyou) giving fundamentalism the appearance of strong technical validation.
Here’s the problem: your buddy has already unquestioningly absorbed a “theory” (and I use this term in the loosest possible sense) which is totally specious and by virtue of its vagueness lacks any verifiable or testable elements whatsoever. (For laughs, ask him what happened to this membrane and/or what trace evidence remains of its existance.) When you come to him with a competing theory (in the more rigorous sense) he’ll evaluate it on the same basis as his adopted theory; that is to say, not based upon a critical evaluation against tested and generally accepted scientific knowledge, or falsification via experimental testing, but rather how well it gels with his pre-existing system of beliefs. Debating or even discussing this issue with someone who adopts and promotes such nugatory claims without a hint of appropriate skepticism is, in my experience and opinion, a frustrating and ultimately pointless exercise. Leading someone down a logical path only to have him make an abrupt jump into the grass the moment you hit something unpalatable to their existing way of thinking, is about as satisfying as eating cotton candy in the middle of a rainstorm.
If, on the other hand, your friend is seriously interested in considering any theory which perhaps doesn’t fully and unquestionably support the dogma that he’s absorbed and internalized, then the best thing you can do is get him started with some basic science, like Sagan’s Cosmos (or if he’s not a reader, the accompanying miniseries). Without a foundation in at least basic science, your buddy will have no reason to believe or consider that the alternatives you’re providing him has any more basis in reality than the crackhead notions he’s been taught.
These are scientific arguments AGAINST the theory from a creationist of all people. Your friend may believe the writing of a fellow religious advocate over that of others.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember part of this idea, and many of the same ilk, being that the oceans did not exist prior to the flood; that the oceans were opened up through sudden geological processes to allow the flood waters to receed. Perhaps many of the tallest mountains in the world (such as Everest) were formed during this process such that the depth required to cover the highest mountains is significantly reduced (perhaps to only a thousand, or even a few hundred feet). …Sorry, no cite on this, but I’m sure I could find it if anyone is that interested.
Also, Genesis 7:11 specifically also mentions some “springs of the great deep”; thus I would say a significant portion of the flood water also seems to have come from within the Earth.
This particular theory aside for a moment to refute this statement as a brief hijack (maybe lending itself to a separate thread), I tend to prefer a naturalistic approach to the explanation of miracles. In my mind to say that God, an omniscient and omnipotent being, must constantly “snap his fingers” to instill his will seems to undermine his very definition; that is, an all-knowing being would know precisely when his interactions would be necessary and an all-powerful being would have the ability to set events to occur from “natural chains of events” at precisely the right times*. This naturalist approach acts as both a demonstration of his power to the believer and a buffer to the non-believer prevent the whole knowledge vs. faith conundrum. Thus, in my opinion, it is a not a lack in God’s ability to simple make things happen, but ultimately, IMHO, against the nature and style of God who desires our willful obedience.
However, I strongly suspect that is not the reason most individuals do it; they simply seek to place religion on the same ground as science by attempting to show that the events of the Bible could have happened in ways science is able to study. That is, I think its just a normal, unreasoned reaction.
*Obviously, certain other miracles such as the virgin birth and miraculous healings where the “snapping of the fingers” has the desired effect are excepted.
Regarding Squink’s second link, somebody who doesn’t even get the name of the researcher or the name of the university right really undermines the credibility of his account. The accepted spelling is Keio University and the researcher would be Kei Mori. “Moris” is impossible as a Japanese family name. Hell, Keio is a really famous university. You’d think that part at least would be easy to get right, but I found at least three different misspellings on creationist sites that basically copied each other. I guess that’s supposed to be an attempt at “correcting” whoever posted this stuff in the first place.
This reference at Amazon to a symposium in his honor, and two articles that feature him as an author on the Science Direct website are the only two references — besides several misspelled and dubious cites on Creationist sites — that I could find in a quick search. Apparently, he did his plant growth studies back in the 1960s. I can’t find any corroborating reference to the size of the tomato plants or any references to that study, but then again, I’m not willing to look that hard when the credibility level is so low to begin with.
A 14 foot cherry tomato plant with 900+ fruits isn’t all that spectacular. Some varieties are indeterminate after all. I grew a 10 footer just this past summer. The fruits were not the size of baseballs, but I didn’t fertilize with CO[sub]2[/sub] either.
The ref doesn’t prove much, other than that flood enthusiasts really do talk about antediluvian tomatoes.
