by a_haworthroberts » Tue May 01, 2012 9:22 pm
Email as just sent concerning ''Do mud cracks indicate multiple droughts during the flood?'
How on earth could just one drought, never mind several, occur during
a major flood? Even a flood lasting a 'year'? By definition droughts
are LENGTHY periods of minimal rainfall - lasting MONTHS or YEARS.
You can get a flood, or several floods, during an official drought.
The drought in such cases came FIRST. What is happening TODAY in parts
of southwestern, central and eastern England is precisely this -
flooding during a drought.
Yet young Earth creationist John Whitmore wrote a chapter entitled 'Do
mud cracks indicate multiple droughts during the flood' in a recent
'creation science' apologetics book entitled 'Rock Solid Answers'.
Parts of the chapter can be viewed online Google Books, including the
Abstract on page 167. From which I now quote: "Critics of creationism
contend that mud cracks are found throughout the geological record and
are thus 'proof' against a global Flood. A short catastrophic Flood
could not have caused the bulk of the sedimentary rock record, they
say, because of the multiple droughts indicated by the mud cracks...
Even though they are probably rarer in the rock record than Flood
critics admit, it also appears that true mud cracks could have formed
during the Flood".
I then looked at the Conclusion, parts of which are worth quoting:
"True dessication mud cracks may have formed in limited areas during
the Flood. Observation has proven that mud cracks can form quickly,
even during times of brief exposure and with damp sediments. However,
there are several other mechanisms that can lead to clay shrinkage and
subsequent sand-filling of cracks that can closely resemble mud
cracks...".
The chapter appears not to quote the BIBLE at all, even though
Whitmore is discussing the Biblical Flood of Genesis. So I will quote
the Bible FOR HIM (from Genesis 7:11 to Genesis 8:5, in the NIV):
"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of
the second month - on that day all the springs of the great deep burst
forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on
the earth forty days and forty nights.
On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together
with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They
had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock
according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground
according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything
with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them
came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and
female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord
shut him in.
For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters
increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and
increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of
the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains
under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the
mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing
that moved on land perished - birds, livestock, wild animals, all the
creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry
land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living
thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and
the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from
the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock
that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and
the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of
the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the
sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the
hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth
day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of
Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on
the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became
visible".
Whitmore's phrase, concerning possible mud crack formation, is "during
the Flood". This implies during the 150 days (the first 40 of which
apparently saw continuous rain), rather than subsequently as the waters
receded.
WHERE does the Bible indicate that while they were rising the flood
waters (from both rain and underground water) periodically ebbed or
sank back to allow cracking of mud? We are meant, according to the
Bible, to be looking at a worldwide flood that covered literally ALL
land within the space of just MONTHS. Yet our young Earth creationist
geologist wants us to contemplate that mud cracking might have taken
place during this event.
I thought YECs considered the Bible infallible and believed everything
it says without question?
On 17.2.10 Paul Garner, in a discussion under a blog entry dated
10.2.10 within his New Creationism blog, flagged Whitmore's chapter.
Whitmore, Garner and fellow YEC Andrew Snelling are the presenters of
a recent YEC-oriented DVD on UK geological formations, entitled 'Set in
Stone'.
Which the creationist organisation named 'Truth in Science' has
decided on its website is a 'teaching tool'.
Go figure!
