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The Flood: Myth or Reality?
The Bible describes a worldwide flood which wiped out the civilized world thousands of years ago. Only one man and his family were spared. Noah was told to build a ship with dimensions very similar to those of modern vessels, and to collect animals--a male and females of some species and seven of others. The Bible claims that although rain had not existed until this time, it began to rain heavily. At the same time, the flood account indicates that water burst upwards from subterranean levels until everything was covered, at least throughout the Middle East if not worldwide. The ark finally came to rest somewhere in the mountain range of Ararat and the biological cycle began anew.
What about the ark?
The biblical account of the flood is often sneered at by skeptics, despite a great deal of physical evidence supporting it. One primary reason for this criticism is the lack of a physical ark itself. We don't know whether the ark actually came to rest on Mt. Ararat itself or on one of the foothills. The flood account only talks about the "mountains of Ararat" which are a long mountain range.
Evidence suggests that it's unlikely the ark came to rest higher than tree level, but Ararat may have been shorter at the time and subject to seismic upheaval since. The craft was made of a kind of wood that no longer exists. Whatever it was, the wood was tough enough to withstand tremendous G-forces and weight. Although some ships built today can reach 750 feet in length, a wooden ship of those dimensions built with currently available wood couldn't withstand the forces. Obviously the wood that was used was something special.
Geophysical Evidence
Yet there is evidence beyond the ark. Coal and fossil records suggest that something caused sudden widespread pressure of great intensity, the only way petroleum deposits and coal can form. This is also one way to explain complete intact skeletons of dinosaurs and other creatures. The geographic layer known as the "chalk strata" has revealed fossils of ocean-bottom creatures such as crabs in the same layer all around the world. These appear even at high altitudes. Some claim this is not evidence of a global flood, but evidence that the world was once covered with water before the existence of human life. Geological discoveries in the spring of 2000 show evidence of deep water in the southern plains of Russia.
Critics of the flood account often say that there is no physical evidence in rock formations or soil composition. This is not surprising. Today, even a few years after a major flood there remains no evidence whatsoever. However, there is some additional physical evidence for the biblical flood.
A tablet was discovered in Mt. Ararat's Ahora Gorge containing what is called the "Ahora Covenant Inscription." Proto-Sumerian hieroglyphics describe a rainbow sent as "God's sacrificial covenant" to "go forth, procreate, and be fruitful."
The flood account is not exclusive to the Bible, either. Other accounts such as the Gilgamesh Epic, though written in the form of a verbal legend, are eerily similar in detail. These stories come from other cultures but date back to similar time periods in history as the Genesis account.
There is also the issue of population to consider. According to some calculations, if the flood account was false, the world's population would today number about 102091 people. That staggering number is 10 followed by 2091 zeros--a number many times greater than the total number of atoms in the universe. If the human race began one million years ago (secular scientists are convinced we were around much earlier than that) and no flood took place, we would be walking around on a trillion times a trillion times a trillion skeletal remains of prior human civilizations. Although bones, unless fossilized, do eventually crumble to dust, there are not nearly enough fossil records to corroborate such a previous population base. Where are the trillions of people that would exist today? Even all the wars and plagues in known history cannot account for such staggering losses. We must either accept the flood account or assume that some other worldwide disaster took place before secular history was recorded in order to justify today's modest world population. The biblical account of the flood accurately determines the current population of the earth.
Universal or Global?
Some argue that there is evidence that while the flood was "universal" (covered the world that was known to the biblical writer) the flood may not have been global. Proponents of this view say that the phrase "all the world" would have referred to the known world of the middle east, not necessarily to the entire earth. The area of the Middle East that was likely to be inhabited at that time in history was relatively flat. Thus, they claim that the floodwaters might not have extended to all parts of the world. Even if the water rose to a few hundred feet it could well have destroyed all life in the Mesopotamian Plains of the Middle East. Those who hold this view point out that it would have taken far too long for water covering every mountain to subside. There would have been no live olive trees left for the dove to pluck. In addition, proponents of this view suggest that a flood covering the entire world would have made it impossible for the humans who disembarked to sustain life.
On the other hand, we know that there have been many very large floods over the past centuries, some of them covering entire populated regions, sometimes permanently. If the flood was indeed local, then how does that fit with God's promise never to send another flood? This promise would seem to be consistent only with a flood of such scale that it covered the entire world. This is also the only explanation that can account for the geophysical realities, the population calculations, and the entire purpose of the flood as described in the Bible.
Other evidence found recently indicates that there were devasting flood conditions as far away as North America, which cannot be explained outside of something like a worldwide flood. Recently, a US-UK team published an article in the journal Geology describing a 40 square mile fossil forest buried in Illinois. Deep underground, observers can walk through the coal mine where the fossil forest was discovered and gaze at acres of fern fronds and trees on the mine ceiling. The huge leaves and mosses were preserved with amazing detail, which happened so quickly that plants didn't have a chance to decompose. While there is no proof that this was caused by the biblical flood, it is generally believed that some kind of flood on a massive scale probably caused the phenomenon.
Regardless of whether it was a global or universal flood, the biblical account of the flood is scientifically acceptable.
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