My son, the fundie, correctly points out that many religions mythologize a diluvian episode which to one degree or another cleanses the planet for a new start.
So.
If all the water in the atmosphere were condensed to the earth’s surface in (say) 40 days and nights, what would the planet look like?
Extra credit, same question after 100 years of global warming.
If your son is a fundamentalist, then he knows the water didn’t come from rain, it came from the “floodgates of the deep.”
There’s no clear interpretation of that, but the general consensus is that subterranean water like aquifers is included. That water accounts for a lot more than you’ll find in the air.
The amount of water vapor in the air is trivial compared to the amount in the oceans.
From the US Geological Service:
Not much of a flood.
While a warmer atmosphere will hold more water vapor and there will be more evaporation, it wouldn’t be enough of an increase to change that figure very much.
If all ice on land melted, sea level would rise about 70 meters, or 230 feet. While that would inundate many coastal areas, it wouldn’t come anywhere close to covering most continental areas, let alone the highest peaks.
There isn’t anywhere near enough water on Earth to entirely submerge the continents as they presently are. But facts aren’t going to deter a biblical literalist in the slightest.
Thank you and all.
Furthermore, the amount of water contained in the continents (aquifers and rivers) also is much higher than that contained in the atmosphere. It’s also significantly less than the amount contained in ice sheets, so even if the aquifers released their water it wouldn’t significantly increase the area flooded.
Well, one interpetation is that somewhere (but not everywhere) a big flood DID occur and the locals were smart enough to know that rain wasnt what caused it.
When the story got passed on and became a legend, the fact it wasnt cause by rain, like most floods are, was duelly noted, probably making it seem all the more god like in the process.
Which meshes nicely with the med or red sea or whatever flooding many moons ago due to sub sea level levels and eventual breaches.
Plenty of floods are caused by rain that you don’t see downstream, you know. Ask people in the desert who drown in flash floods under a clear blue sky.
Yes, but two things.
The live near a river when that happens.
And it GOES BACK DOWN.
If Death Valley ever gets breached by the ocean, it aint going back down.
Missed edit window.
Most floods are caused by rain and/or most folks know this even when the rain isnt local.
The wording in Biblical text indicates the folks telling the story knew there was something different about this flood. Maybe they just wanted to make it sound different. Maybe they understood that somehow it was different. We will never know which.
Flooding valleys mesh with this nicely.
.
National Geographic and Bob Ballard are looking at the Black Sea Deluge as the principal source for these stories.
Or perhaps it was Glacial Lake Missoula.
Or maybe it’s just a myth, with no basis in reality. Is there any reason to believe otherwise?
Well, certainly it’s a myth, but there were plenty of huge floods in which to base the kernel of truth most myths start with.
I think it would.
Somebody with more knowledge would have to do the calculations, but I’d bet all the floodwater would be gone in less than a year.
I think what Bill meant was that if there were a breach into Death Valley that leads directly to the ocean, the waters woldn’t recede because Death Valley is below sea level.
If her son is a fundie, then he knows it came from both. Genesis 7:11, "In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
7:12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."
Just offering the correct myth.
A webpage pointing out a lot of the problems with the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark:
Right… but as we’ve already demonstrated earlier in the thread, the amount of water that came from rain could only have been a few inches. Others have done the math to say that the friction from so much rain would have boiled it before it landed. If you’re going to try to apply any kind of science or reason to a world-wide deluge, you have to believe that the 40 days and nights of rain was window dressing and that 99.999% of the water came from below rather than above.
I’m always inclined to take the fundie side of these things, but I do think it’s wrong in this case. A few small tweaks to the interpretation of the stories (for example, interpreting “whole earth” to mean “whole country” or “whole region” which are legitimate alternative translations) and you wind up with something that could fit a few possible events, such as the Black Sea theory.
But even if we think it was the Black Sea event, the rain would have been nothing more than a token addition to the real cause of flooding.
The Salton Sea in So Cal Salton Sea - Wikipedia is a reasonable analog for a Death-Valley-temporarily-connects-to-the-ocean scenario. ~100 years later it’s still there. Definitely drying up, but still there.