The Great Flood of Noah part 1 - SC2522

SPEAKER 1 Welcome to Science Conversations. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Is there any historical evidence for a worldwide flood? Joining me to discuss part one of this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program, Dr. John. Hello, Kaysie. Good to have you with us again. Dr. John Ashton has written a book entitled Evolution Impossible: 12 Reasons why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin and so of Life we'll on Earth. be looking at his book during this program, and I believe we're up to about chapter eight. So we are talking about the idea of the biblical, the idea of the worldwide flood. And what I'm wondering is if you could just recap and revise the biblical flood story for us just to get those details fresh in our mind. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, sure. So I guess up until the early 1800s, you know, top unis taught geology in terms of a flood model. model because that's the account that is in the Bible. So in the Book of Genesis, it was written by Moses, a record written by Moses, the first book of the Bible. We find an account of a worldwide flood. Now, this flood was definitely miraculous in that, well, from a number of aspects. So going back, so essentially the account says that people had become very wicked. in the world and God destroyed it that decided that these people need to be destroyed, the whole world need to be destroyed and essentially restart again. There are a number of good people, of course, still that were standing up against the badness and one of those was Noah and God instructed him to build an ark for people to go on board. and animals and so forth. And the Bible account says that Noah preached that this was going to happen to warn the people, but the people didn't change. And the time came that God called the people to go on to the flood. God miraculously brought the animals to the ark and brought them on, male and female, except for certain animals where there were more brought on board. And the door of the ark was miraculously closed. And the Bible lists actually the day and the month, the month and the day when that actually happened in terms of the yearly cycle. So it's written as a factual account. Now the other interesting aspect is too that the Bible says that it, well, not only did it start to rain, but the fountains of the deep opened up. So there was massive underground water that was released onto the surface of the earth. And this is quite important actually in understanding things that happened after the flood and rain and that, This massive inundation by water occurred for 40 days, and then the water levels actually, well, maintained like that in total for 150 days, including those 40 days. And then for 150 days, the water receded. And then 70 days after the water had fully receded, the door of the ark opened. and the people came out. And so that's a very interesting account, this account of the rainbow and different things. Now, it's quite important that the Bible talks about this being a worldwide account. And yeah, so that's the basic biblical account of the flood. And it's written in a very, very factual way, actually. SPEAKER 1 Definitely, the way that those details are written, it sounds like someone has, like the people who were there who are on the ark, they were counting the days, they were like, okay, this happened now. and they're recording it. Like it just, it sounds like that's how it's done rather than some fanciful sort of fairy tale type story of what's going on. So very interesting. Now, obviously if that happened, and it was a global thing, that means the only people who, the people who were on the ark were the ones that then repopulated the Earth. So, Correct. every nation, every person, sort of stems back to that family, in which case the question arises, are there stories of the flood that exist in cultures around the world that are written outside the biblical record that are kind of like, it's just a story from the past? SPEAKER 2 Yeah, sure. And this is very, very important actually, and many people aren't aware of this, but flood stories are found around the world. Now, originally a lot of the scholars attempting to correlate the Bible, you know, make the Bible fit in with science and modern geology and all this sort of thing, proposed that maybe the flood was just a local thing. Well, if that was the case, people would have just fled to somewhere else nearby, you know, this sort of thing. So it doesn't really fit. Plus the geological evidence, as we've discussed previously, shows that there were global extinction events. These were massive extinction events. We know from the sedimentary record, the fossil record, these were all over the world. So the biblical account actually fits the geological picture. The problem then becomes how long ago did this happen? So the conventional wisdom puts this time way back in, you know, prehistory, more or less before humans. But the account actually and a lot of other data actually fit that this was a very recent event. So the biblical dating for the flood is about 2300 BC. And so for many people, oh, this is, you know, this is impossible. You know, we've got, don't indigenous cultures in Australia go back 65,000 years and you have, you know, so many things dating back tens of thousands of years. And later on we'll hopefully have the opportunity to discuss how the dating methods that are used to estimate these times have. We have major problems with those. That's a separate issue. One of the important things is that we have historical accounts, other historical accounts corroborating the Bible account. And this is quite important. So one of the oldest accounts is the Sumerian account. which was found on a fragment that was dug up near Babylon that essentially says that people had become very wicked, the gods had decided to destroy all mankind. One of the particular chosen person was warned and told to build a boat. Okay. And so forth. So it has a number of similar accounts. Then there's the famous Gilgamesh epic that often people, some scholars claim, oh, well Moses copied from this. Well, this is, it's very different really. And in the Gilgamesh epic, Gilgamesh, a hero, goes off to find the person who was the survivor from the flood. It's hard to pronounce his name, starts with you, but anyway. And he finds him and this person tells him the story of what happened. And essentially it's the same story that people were wicked, he was told to build a boat by his father, I think it was, and that's how people were saved. Now these sort of accounts are found around the world. And there was an archaeologist, Professor Andrew P. who was actually was director of all the museums in France at the time. And so he had access to a lot of cultural information that had been collected from around the world from ancient times. This is pre-Christian era in many cases, or in areas that hadn't been reached by missionaries that still had these accounts of a global flood. And they're from all around the world from, you know, Asia, Africa, Australia, North and South America, Russia and so forth. SPEAKER 1 And. SPEAKER 2 These accounts have a whole lot of commonality. Now, they don't include all the picture, but they often, the main features were that people were very wicked and the God or the gods, and in there, often in these accounts, decide to destroy the people and a righteous group were saved. And often there were eight people, the same as the biblical account, are recorded. Sometimes there's mention of a rainbow as well, as a sign that God would no longer destroy the world, never again destroy the world by a flood. These are accounts that animals were saved as well. The people were saved in a boat, a very large boat. So it's fascinating that these accounts have been preserved. Now often these accounts have been changed through, as they've been passed down, like on the Indian accounts, looks at, I think, a fish warning this particular righteous person to build a boat. I think maybe it was a basket and the fish towed it around. I think in another one, the boat was in the shape of a cube, these sort of things. In some accounts, the flood only lasted a week, seven days, this sort of thing. So the details, while they're sort of unrealistic and you see how they've been passed on and perhaps minimized by the way the culture developed over the years as years passed on. But the important thing is that these accounts were preserved and they're found all over the world. Now, obviously, after the flood, people migrated from those areas. And so that's, but they would have taken a long period of time. So we know, for example, some areas, for example, in South America and in Africa and this sort of thing, may, or those particular cultures only arose perhaps in the post-Christian era, in Polynesia, these sort of areas sort of thing. So obviously people took this account with them. So it was quite a significant story in their past. And again, the bottom line was that people had become very wicked. I remember reading in one of the Indian accounts, that the people no longer were taking care of their children. Things like this were mentioned. And again, there are other historians too, David Leeming from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He's an Emeritus Professor there. And his wife, who's also a researcher there, did a lot of work looking at cultures around the world. That was the area and again, they found again these flood stories around the world and they list them and document those. So scholars recognize this, that our history, when we look at the ancient historical records from cultures around the world, they essentially all corroborate the biblical account of a flood. The difference is that the biblical account seems to be more factual, you know, and fit things like the, the size of the ark. This sort of thing fits, you know, which was about 140 meters long and, and so forth, the design similar to a kayak. It was a very large ship. It actually fits the, the evidence of a type of vessel that would survive a type of vessel that could carry all the different species of animals. And remember, they probably, God brought the animals there. It was miraculous. He chose them. Would have chosen very fertile animals, but they may be junior ones. It wasn't a miraculous event. We don't want to underplay that. But it was a historical and miraculous event. That's the important thing. And again, it's written in a way that is further evidence for the actual factual account of the Bible. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it would be hard to imagine that much consistency across the cultures if there wasn't an event that impacted all of those cultures originally. Like if everyone was just dreaming up a mythological story as part of their culture, you wouldn't expect the same consistency. Exactly. So that really does have quite powerful weight to it, that evidence. SPEAKER 2 I believe so. SPEAKER 1 Very much so. Thank you so much for sharing that. Next time we're continuing to examine the question, is there any historical evidence for a worldwide flood? Be sure to join us.