# Where did the water come from?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 14, 2000, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521 "2000-12-14T12:19:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Gollum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gollum)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/1 "2000-12-14T12:19:13Z")
Alright, I’m fairly sure you people are not creationists. This would be a fairly elementary deduction. You do all seem to know the bible stuff well, however, so i shall pose my query.
Given that Noah and the ark is necessary as a true tale for biblical creationists, as factually told in the bible. So, where did the extra water come from to flood the whole world? You cant flood everywhere at once with the water there currently is.
Did god just dump some extra stuff down here then hoover it off? Did He fill in the ocean trenches? Did he cause the currently available water to expand? Anyone know how creationist pseudo-science explains this?
Anyone care to work out how much extra water would be required to cover the peaks of the highes mountains?
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### Author:  [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/2 "2000-12-14T12:21:05Z")
They usually mention some kind of huge water vapor canopy that surrounded the Earth in Antediluvian times and/or underground reserves of water that somehow were pushed to the surface and then sank back down into the Earth when they weren’t needed anymore. Neither one makes a bit of sense.
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### Author:  [@Gollum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gollum)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/3 "2000-12-14T12:23:02Z")
well, that was quick. thanks
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### Author:  [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/4 "2000-12-14T13:58:15Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Gollum \*
> \*\* Given that Noah and the ark is necessary as a true tale for biblical creationists, as factually told in the bible. So, where did the extra water come from to flood the whole world? You cant flood everywhere at once with the water there currently is.
>
> Did god just dump some extra stuff down here then hoover it off? Did He fill in the ocean trenches? Did he cause the currently available water to expand? Anyone know how creationist pseudo-science explains this?
> Anyone care to work out how much extra water would be required to cover the peaks of the highes mountains? \*\*
IANAC (I Am Not A Creationist): They say that there was something called a “Water Canopy” surrounding the Earth, a bubble of water around the atmosphere umpteen miles thick.
Creationists claim that the bubble, like the Ozone layer blocked out harmful radiation, and that’s why Adam and those types lived 900+ years.
Back in High School, a buddy figured out how thick the “canopy” would have to be to raise sea-level enough to cover the Mount Everest by 100 feet. I no longer remember the answer, but we did determine it was so thick that the “harmful radiation” that the “water canopy” would have blocked out included all light and heat from the sun.
We’d have still gotten neutrinos, though. Maybe we saw by neutrino-light back then! :rolleyes:
Fenris
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/5 "2000-12-14T14:25:14Z")
> [@](#):
>
> IANAC (I Am Not A Creationist): They say that there was something called a “Water Canopy” surrounding the Earth, a bubble of water around the atmosphere umpteen miles thick.
>
> Creationists claim that the bubble, like the Ozone layer blocked out harmful radiation, and that’s why Adam and those types lived 900+ years.
>
> Back in High School, a buddy figured out how thick the “canopy” would have to be to raise sea-level enough to cover the Mount Everest by 100 feet. I no longer remember the answer, but we did determine it was so thick that the “harmful radiation” that the “water canopy” would have blocked out included all light and heat from the sun.
**Fenris** , where did you get that? I’ve been researching creationism for the past year or so and have never heard of a “water canopy” surrounding the Earth… though it is no more ridiculous than some of the other theories I have read… If you can remember where you read this, I would appreciate the info! 🙂
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/6 "2000-12-14T14:41:02Z")
If you read Genesis, you will note that at the Creation, God “divided the waters” to create the firmament. There is water below the Earth. At the story of the Flood, those waters beneath the Earth are explicitly mentioned as contributing to the Flood. (Gn 7:11)
This works better if you have a flat Earth sitting atop a vast resevoir, but there are a number of Creationist who have speculated that there are immense amounts of water trapped in the Earth’s crust.
Most, however, will simply note that God can do what He wants and that if He felt the need, he could simply create enough water for the Flood, then dissipate it later.
Quibbles about whether there is enough water in the current geosphere aare just that, quibbles. After all, the Flood was miraculous, science will never adequately explain it.
(I have more respect for those folks than for the ones who will distort facts in order to try to find water that just does not exist.)
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/7 "2000-12-14T14:52:54Z")
Pah. Any true creationist would tell you that God considers Conservation of Mass less as of a law and more as of a guideline.
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### Author:  [@Phobos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phobos)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/8 "2000-12-14T18:10:51Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Astroboy14 \*
> **Fenris** , where did you get that? I’ve been researching creationism for the past year or so and have never heard of a “water canopy” surrounding the Earth… though it is no more ridiculous than some of the other theories I have read… If you can remember where you read this, I would appreciate the info! 🙂
Some links on the subject (I recommend the first one in particular).
[http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/canopy.html](http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/canopy.html)
[http://www.indirect.com/www/wbrown/onlinebook/faq/canopy.html](http://www.indirect.com/www/wbrown/onlinebook/faq/canopy.html)
[http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/faq/canopy.shtml](http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/faq/canopy.shtml)
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2000, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/9 "2000-12-14T23:47:18Z")
Fenris wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> Creationists claim that the bubble, like the Ozone layer blocked out harmful radiation, and that’s why Adam and those types lived 900+ years.
So _that’s_ what the secret to long life is! All that talk about proper diet and exercise and regular check-ups is just mumbo-jumbo – all you have to do is wear a radiation-proof suit and you too will live to the ripe old age of 900.
I’m going out right now and invest in some lead-lined clothing.
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### Author:  [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2000, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/10 "2000-12-15T04:02:01Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Astroboy14 \ ***Fenris** , where did you get that? I’ve been researching creationism for the past year or so and have never heard of a “water canopy” surrounding the Earth… though it is no more ridiculous than some of the other theories I have read… If you can remember where you read this, I would appreciate the info! 🙂 \*\*
Christian Talk Radio. Back in the good old days when I had more free time and was more easily amused I listened to Bob Larson (who’s “ministries” were pretty close to where I lived) and Hank Hannagraf(sp) of “Bible Answer Man” fame regularly.
I’m pretty sure I learned the whole “water canopy” thing on one of the endlessly smarmy “Evolutionists are _so_ stooopid” shows that Hannagrapf did. He’s written a number of books, I’m sure one of them deals with evolution. He also had on a guest who hawked a book called something like “Answering the Myths of Evolution” or something of that nature. Hanagraf also wrote one called something like “The F.A.C.E. That Demonstrates the F.A.R.C.E. of Evolution”. Either one should go into detail about their ummm…“theory”.
* * *
As long as we’re asking for Stupid Answers to Snappy Questions abou creationism, I’ve always wondered how creationists answer these questions. I’ve never heard a creationist deal with them.
#1) How do they explain what happened to the salt water or fresh water fishes? Depending on what the saline content of the hyper-diluted oceans would be, either all the salt-water fish should die, or the fresh-water ones should. Or both.
#2) Ever been to Carlsbad Caverns? It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. But it wouldn’t be if six thousand years ago (give or take) a huge tidal wave of salt-water rushed in. Not only would delicate formations that took eons to build be destroyed, the cave’s “ecology” would be ruined. And even if Carlsbad somehow continued to be a living cave (the formations still growing), there hasn’t been time since the flood for those formations to have grown to the size they are. (Granted, given that these are people who postulate a universe in which the speed of light mischeivously keeps changing it’s speed, variable cave formation speed isn’t much of a trick)
Anyway, anyone have the creationist answers to these questions?
Fenris
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### Author:  [@The\_Ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Ryan)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2000, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/11 "2000-12-15T09:08:00Z")
BTW, this water canopy that blocked out radiation also kept the rate of formation of Carbon 14 low. Evolutionists, unaware of this, have extrapolated from current C14 levels to get the age of fossils, and have thus overestimated their age (after all, we all know no fossils are more than 10,000 years old).
[/Creationist]
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### Author:  [@Feynn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Feynn)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2000, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/12 "2000-12-15T18:02:53Z")
"Anyway, anyone have the creationist answers to these questions? " - Fenris
A Creationist explanation? Not that I am one or anything but how about…
God is omnipotent. It explains everything. No proofs are needed. Just faith.
How do you debate with these people?
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### Author:  [@jmullaney](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jmullaney)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2000, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/13 "2000-12-15T18:32:03Z")
But, come to think of it, where’d all the water come from for the Ice Age? Where’d it all go when it melted?
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### Author:  [@bryanmcc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bryanmcc)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2000, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/14 "2000-12-15T18:55:06Z")
jmullaney-
the formation of large ice sheets during the ice ages caused sea level to drop quite a bit because the water for the ice came from the ocean. IIRC, sea level at maximum ice coverage was about 100 meters lower than today.
-b
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2000, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/15 "2000-12-15T22:36:33Z")
Silly! You know the “ice age” is nothing but an evilutionist myth. You don’t think those wooly mammoths preserved in ice are _genuine_, do you? Next you’ll be saying that the Earth really _is_ round and that the Apollo astronauts really _did_ go to the moon!
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### Author:  [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2000, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/16 "2000-12-16T00:06:00Z")
Here’s something I saved from way back in the day when I called BBSes for my computer-related entertainment:
> [@](#):
>
> Figuring that it took 40 days and 40 nights to cover all land masses on the globe, (960 hours) we are talking about… Well, let’s do the math, shall we? Figures show the point very well indeed.
>
> First thing is to define how high the water got. If we use Ararat as our ruler, we are talking about 16,945 feet. For those of us who have trouble remembering our lame standards of measure, a mile (In the US and UK) is 5,280 feet. So to cover ararat, we are talking about 3.2 miles (Plus a shade, but we’ll leave the last hundred or so feet uncovered for purpose of easy math.)
>
> This is, by far, nowhere near Everest’s 29,002 feet (Roughly 5.5 miles), but is contemporary to the place. We’ll do Everest in a second.
>
> The earth has a mean diameter of 7,918 miles, and a surface area, including existant oceans, of 196,961,287 Sq.Mi. Raising the water level by one mile, essentially raising the diameter by 2 miles, would requre two hundred MILLION cubic miles of water, and that’s only got us one mile of the way there!
>
> To raise it by 3.2 miles would basically amount to the difference in volumes between a sphere with a diameter of 7,918 miles and a sphere with a diameter of 7,924 miles. The volume of a sphere 7,918 miles across is 4/3(Pi)r^3, or 259,923,400,000 cubic miles. The volume of a sphere 7,920 miles across would be (Same formula) 260,514,570,000 cubic miles. The volume difference is 591,700,000 cubic miles. That means, for “God” to raise the levels of the oceans by 3.2 miles (Enough to cover ararat) he would require approximately six hundred million cubic MILES of water. Each gallon composes 231 cubic inches. Each cubic mile is therefore 1,101,117,100,000 gallons. That means we are talking about roughly 600,000,000,000,000,000,000 - six hundred quintillion gallons of water. That’ll fill a LOT of swimming pools.
>
> Incidentally, this amount of water would compose a sphere about 10% the size of our moon if put into orbit. It is about 3 times the amount of water in all our oceans. And that doesn’t even mesh with the biblical description! According to the Bible, ALL land masses were covered, meaning (Drum roll please) even our friend Everest. That would mean that we would be talking about a sphere 7,929 miles across, volume 261,008,030,000 cu.mi. The amount of water would be 1,084,792,780 cubic miles, now about a fifth the size of our moon. And we are getting into the sextillions of gallons, and about 6 times the amount of telestial water.
>
> Let’s stick with that second set of figures, and be true to Biblical notation, believing that this primitive book said correctly (Genesis 7:17-24) that all the mountains were covered (The bible gives a measure of 15 cubits for this. Given that a cubit is about 2 feet, I’d say there was something wrong with this description, big time, but let’s humor them) in 40 days and nights, 960 hours.
>
> In 960 hours, 5.5 miles worth of rain fell. That means that 363 inches of rain fell in each hour. 6 inches in each minute. An inch of rain fell every 10 seconds. This is assuming that it was raining on every spot on the globe evenly and at the same time. The amount of erosion caused by a glacier in 10000 years cannot begin to comapare with a single HOUR of this onslaught! The mountains themselves would have been weathered away (Pardon the pun) before the first WEEK was out, in all probability. Note please that in the recent storms that have wracked the east coast, a HURRICANE only deposits about an inch every 4 hours or so. We are talking about rain coming down at a rate 24 times the strength of a medium sized hurricane!
Just thought I’d share…
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2000, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/17 "2000-12-16T01:24:02Z")
Max Torque quoted an ancient BBS message as saying:
> [@](#):
>
> According to the Bible, ALL land masses were covered, meaning (Drum roll please) even our friend Everest. That would mean that we would be talking about a sphere 7,929 miles across, volume 261,008,030,000 cu.mi. The amount of water would be 1,084,792,780 cubic miles, now about a fifth the size of our moon. And we are getting into the sextillions of gallons, and about 6 times the amount of te[rr]est[r]ial water.
>
> [snip]
>
> An inch of rain fell every 10 seconds. This is assuming that it was raining on every spot on the globe evenly and at the same time. The amount of erosion caused by a glacier in 10000 years cannot begin to comapare with a single HOUR of this onslaught! The mountains themselves would have been weathered away (Pardon the pun) before the first WEEK was out, in all probability.
Ah! There’s how it happened!
The flood eroded Mount Everest, so it **no longer had to cover** Mount Everest, so far **less** rain actually needed to fall!
Of course, then we have the problem of where the modern Mount Everest came from if no mountains would have survived being eroded by the flood…
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### Author:  [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2000, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/18 "2000-12-16T01:44:04Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by tracer \*\*\*
> The flood eroded Mount Everest, so it **no longer had to cover** Mount Everest, so far **less** rain actually needed to fall!
>
> Of course, then we have the problem of where the modern Mount Everest came from if no mountains would have survived being eroded by the flood… \*\*
Oh, that’s _easy_. The following is from the world’s single **dumbest** creationist site. And I’m confident when I say dumb **est** site. I haven’t seen all creationist sites, but I’m still willing to bet it’s the dumbest.
Per [this guy](http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/14flod03.htm), before the flood everything was flat. There were no oceans, just big, shallow puddles. No mountains, just large swells in the land but because the water of the flood weighed so much, it pushed the ocean beds down which, since the earth is built like a giant, cheap, waterbed, resulted in the mountains getting pushed up. To quote:
> [@](#):
>
> …because of the immense amount of water on the earth’s surface, it was necessary for the sea basins to sink and the continents to rise—otherwise there would be no dry ground anywhere!
> \
> Mountains rose and basins sank. As water flowed into them, they sank even more. Rock strata buckled, folded, and went up or sideways. Out of all this came our present nonvolcanic great mountain ranges. Scientists call these “folded mountains.”
>
> But the immense pressures also caused cracks (fissures) in the earth, and volcanoes began exploding. Volcanic mountains arose…
This guy also proves that everything we know about stellar composition, astronomy, astrophysics are wrong! WRONG! over [here](http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/01-ma2.htm) with 41 earth-shattering proof. For example:
> [@](#):
>
> 24 - Stars and galaxies exist. A theoretical explosion could only produce outward flowing gas, not intricate stars, planets, galaxies, and their complex interrelated orbits. Scientists draw a total blank in explaining how this could happen.
And he sounds just like an Ed Wood movie “Your Stupid MINDS! Stupid, STUPID minds!”
He also has a Socratic dialogue that would make David B. weep. Or laugh. or both. wherein a good creationist student boggles the mind of his astrophysics professor with good Biblical logic [here](http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/03-ss6.htm)
Have fun, and I challenge anyone to find a dumber site. At least the Creation Research Institute knows what it needs to disprove. This guy doesn’t even understand the questions.
Fenris
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### Author:  [@Sterra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterra)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2000, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/19 "2000-12-16T03:26:53Z")
actually, its much more likely that simply everywhere noah lived flooded and then drained. Becuase that would be the whole world to them and would correspond with the greeks.
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### Author:  [@MattTheCroc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MattTheCroc)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2000, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-the-water-come-from/45521/20 "2000-12-16T10:36:39Z")
And let’s not get into how much heat umpteen sextillions of water would “deposit” on the Earth. Lavola, anyone?
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