What happened to the waters from Noah's Flood

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I decided to address the excellent post of @faded_Glory in a separate thread because it is possible we have someone among us who could reply with the detailed math of the physics.

I’m particularly interested in what @faded_Glory wrote here:

YEC vs FE Part 1: Evidence for YEC - #118 by faded_Glory.

I once asked a Young Earth Creationist writer/speaker (can’t remember his name from long ago) where the water from Noah’s Flood went. He said something like this:

A lot of it gradually evaporated during the many months after the rain stopped when Noah was still in the ark. The rest of it drained into the ‘lower depths’ of the earth and got incorporated into the ‘fountains of the great deep’ from which they came. [a paraphrase of my recollections.]

More recently a YEC pastor told me that “creation scientists” had discovered that the water from Noah’s Flood that drained to the “fountains of the great deep” was in the “crystalline structure” of rocks deep in the earth. I assume he meant that the water got incorporated into hydrated minerals like gypsum (CaSO₄·2H₂O) and mirabilite (Na₂SO₄·10H₂O).

I didn’t bother to ask him about THAT heat problem, the heat of crystallization, because he has no understanding of basic physics. But I wondered to myself just how much heat would be caused by the formation of huge quantities of hydrated minerals. Of course, my pastor friend and most YECs I’ve known assert that Noah’s Flood involved enough water to cover Mt. Everest, so they round off the depth of Noah’s flood to about 5.5 miles. [[My own exegesis of the Hebrew text of Genesis interprets the depth of Noah’s Flood at less than 23 feet—and regional in scope—but that’s a topic for another time. I’ve covered those details in long ago PS posts which readers should be able to find with the Search function.]]

I can’t begin to put the numbers together to calculate the total heat of crystallization of all that Noah’s Flood water if it was “stored” in the earth’s “crystalline structures of the great deep” as claimed----but I assume the mega mega-joules [Perhaps even the mega MAGA mega-joules, considering the politics of many Young Earth Creationists] would be more than enough to “judge” the earth even more than the flood itself.

I have also wondered how much of the water from Noah’s could be “evaporated into the atmosphere” as the “creation scientists” have asserted. Because I’m lazy and don’t want to look up the numbers, I asked the Gemini Advanced Artificial Intelligence engine what “depth” of water from a world-wide flood could be evaporated into the earth’s atmosphere if the air was completely free of water vapor before the “flood experiment.” The answer I got back was “about one inch.” And it added the comment that evaporation would not be a very good explanation of what happened to the waters of Noah’s Flood. I don’t know if “one inch” is at all accurate but it strikes me as generally reasonable, knowing that the atmosphere is not a limitless soup.

Anyway, perhaps someone with time to kill is masochistic enough to subject themselves to quantifying the immensity of these popular “creation science” failures. But I admit to having a perverse fascination in really bad “creation science” and “flood geology” arguments.

@jeffb, keep in mind that the heat of crystallization is just one of MANY heat problems that arise in “creation science” and Young Earth Creationist scenarios. If it is solved by “God intervened and sapped away the heat without harming the earth”, then we have left the realm of science because there’s no way that I can subject that assertion to the scientific method.

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I’d also like someone to explain to me how such enormous amounts of anhydrous Calcium Sulphate, Sodium Sulphate, or whatever, was preserved away from water that would rehydrate it pre-flood, but so that it was immediately accessible to rehydrate post-flood. That would seem to be a really neat trick.

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@jeffb, I recognize that all of these topics and subtopics spawned by your posts are overwhelming in number and I don’t expect you to quickly address them all. But I do hope you will recognize from them that those of us who read/hear a lot of young earth, Noah’s flood, and “creation science” arguments see TONS of these kinds of basic scientific problems with YECism----and we see so few meaningful attempts by YEC speakers/authors to address these problems.

Indeed, today, just as a half century ago when I was part of the YEC community, “creation science” materials were/are always about keeping the YEC faithful “in the fold.” (That is why the classic “101 evidences for a much younger age of the earth and the cosmos” at Age of the earth · Creation.com is so embarrasingly bad. It only works for a science illiterate audience.) Little effort, then and now, is made to meaningfully address the mass of scientific criticisms for those outside of the YEC echo chamber. It used to drive me nuts when I was still sincerely trying to support the young earth view. (I don’t recall if I told you that in the 1970’s I even represented the YEC perspective in university campus debates.)

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Oh that’s easy! It fell of the edge of the Flat Earth. :wink:

Some fun with Fountains of the Deep math:
Raising one kilogram of water from the Earth’s mantle (~1000 kilometers deep) requires 9.8\times 10^6 Joules of energy.
4184 Joules are need to increase the temperate of 1 kilo (one liter) of water by 1 degree Celsius, which works out to enough heat to increase the temperature of that 1 kilo by 2342 degrees C. This ignores any friction, or energy needed to convert that water from mineralized form back to liquid water.

Next, multiply that by the amount of water needed for a Global Flood. That’s a lot, certainly more than the amount of water currently available on the Earth’s surface. What does this to to global average temperatures? Considering only water, and letting the surface water be at 0 C in equal amounts, that averages to (2342+0)/2 = 1171^\circ C. I generally just round it off to "at least 1000^\circ C". This ignores the temperature/mass of land and air, but I’m already underestimating the amount of water and ignoring friction, so I call that a wash. (To date, no YEC has attempted to improve on my calculation.)

TL;DR: Enough superheated water arrives at the Earth’s surface to raise the average surface temperature by at least ~1000^\circ C. That’s a lot, enough to boil away the oceans and incinerate anything organic. A “Fountains of the Deep” scenario is not survivable.

Therefore, it doesn’t matter where the water goes, because no one will be around to see it.

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I love this part! The HEAT PROBLEM is so enormous for the traditional YEC explanations such that you can still IGNORE this factor among many.

It is yet another reminder that the best way to be a confident Young Earth Creationist ministry speaker/author is to be totally ignorant of basic physics—or to simply lack a conscience about gaslighting one’s audience and donors. [Yeah, that’s kinda harsh. But not just kinda true. I just find it very difficult to candy coat or rationalize these behaviors. Gaslighting is a HUGE problem in the YEC community. So when I learned how much of it that I had been blindly repeating, I had to leave that community. I couldn’t contribute to that problem. I was no longer ignorant of the evidence.]

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I would like to know where and how the flood waters that drained off had access to the mantle. Reverse volcanoes?

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Yes. It was a miracle.

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While I was doing my workout this morning I was thinking about why I can’t stand the kind of ‘explanations’ offered in that video.

I’m a (retired) Earth Scientist and I do know that a lot of geology is about reconstructing the past, possibly to a larger extent than most other natural sciences. Geological experiments are carried out but obviously they are not straightforward because of the nature of the subject. So, when trying to reconstruct the past we build models. Models are a bit like jig saw puzzles, you have a heap of pieces (observations) and you try to put them together into a coherent picture. This doesn’t go without rules, just like most puzzles have rules you need to adhere to if you don’t want to be cheating. In geology, the rules are that you stick to known physics and chemistry, and that you have to honour what we know from experiments. This isn’t always possible because we don’t actually have 100% knowledge of all of physics and chemistry, and experiments have themselves constraints and if we need to go beyond those that means a degree of extrapolation, which can be risky.

So, sometimes we are allowed to come up with a model that has an obvious weakness or gap, simply because there might be a way out if somehow our understanding of, say, physics is incorrect. But, in such a case we need to be honest and clearly flag where the problem lies, and how it might be overcome. In general, however, we try to make our models fully compatible with the ‘rules’ I outlined above.

Look for instance at plate tectonics. We all know of Alfred Wegener who built an early model that had the continents move across the ocean floors. This violates physics (it can’t work because of the friction involved) and that is the main reason his model was not adopted.

Once seismic measurements provided us with knowledge about the asthenosphere, a ductile layer in the upper mantle, the main physical objections against continental drift were overcome and plate tectonics quickly became the reigning paradigm. It now fitted with our knowledge of physics and became a very strong model.

What I dislike about YEC is the lack of clear rules and the obvious and very serious violations of known physics and chemistry that permeate it. Not only that, but the clear reluctance from YEC proponents to owe up to these violations smacks of politics and apologetics instead of science.

On top of that, they make virtually no attempt at building coherent models of when and how this worldwide flood actually happened. Most of the time we get people trying to shoot holes in mainstream geological thinking without building any models of their own. There have been a few, to be fair, such as Baumgardner’s catastrophic plate tectonics, but that is such a risible ‘model’ that even most YEC’s seem hesitant to stand behind it (apart from the massive friction heat problem, imagine a world where entire oceans are being swallowed up in mere weeks or months, and yet a small wooden boat rides the waves without being in the least affected by this!). What we don’t get are models that are consistent with all or even most geological data, physics and chemistry.

If people prefer to believe the Bible, or at least their interpretation of it, instead of accepting the findings on mainstream science, then that is their right. But when they claim that their geological, physical and chemical nonsense is more valid than what mainstream science has delivered in the last few hundreds of years I just can’t stand it. YEC proponents, at least be honest and take ownership of what you are doing - violating science at a breathtaking scale.

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No smack at all, it is apologetics start to finish. The only rule is that their interpretation of Genesis may not be contradicted. At least that rule is clear, and they are honest about God as the Creator, instead of concealing that motivation as Intelligent Design.

There have been a few, to be fair, such as Baumgardner’s catastrophic plate tectonics, but that is such a risible ‘model’ that even most YEC’s seem hesitant to stand behind it …

There are worse models, like the asteroid impact models that caused the continents to go surfing around the world. Maybe I can find that link …

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And remember—I’m not making this up—the claim that volcanic explosions after the flood propelled some of the animals (who had disembarked Noah’s ark) back to Australia.

Yes, it is an extreme fringe view but I’ve heard people promote it. Of course, if one explains the problems with such transportation by propulsion, you are told that it was a miracle and Divine intervention makes anything possible. Of course, why not resort to something more believable like a Star Trek like transporter—because Noah had per-flood technologies far beyond our imaginations—for nearly instantaneous trips to Australia?

(To be fair, a much more popular view is that sea levels were low and the Australian animals simply set their GPS unit to “Go Home” and walked the distance. Fortunately, their dietary and other survivable needs were entirely met during the entire journey. Of course, supernatural interventions made that possible. But somehow a Star Trek Original Series transporter was not an option. I think those animals got a raw deal, myself.)

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So you admit it! You weren’t there! (Got ya! Boy, that Ken Ham sure learned me all kinda good stuff.)

Oh, that reminds me, I need to mail out my AIG donation check for this month.

Newcomers to Peaceful Science: That was satire in the form of sarcasm. I never mail checks to anyone. Instead I donate by credit card.

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Here are some worse models:
36,000 Asteroid Impacts (Oard)
Shock Dynamics (Fischer?)

Lots of crazy stuff at that second link, and I recommend using Incognito Mode so Google doesn’t start sending you more weirdness.

[Dan, I inserted the intended NOT to produce the word “doesn’t” in order to clarify your meaning. — @AllenWitmerMiller]

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Oh my. Your second link to “Shock Dynamics” put me in very real danger of losing several hours to GAPER’S BLOCK. I mean there is SO much Poe-potential material on that website. It is overwhelming! I started reading and found it very hard to turn away. (It reminds me of one of those old 1950’s campy science fiction movies: “It’s so bad it’s good!”)

I am still struggling with the possibility that some of those “articles” are “Gotcha!!!” type pranks. (Can they actually be real and serious?)

In any case, they at least provoke the obvious question for Young Earth Creationists: Why is your community so riddled with totally ridiculous nonsense? (This is a question I started asking myself when I was still part of the YEC community long ago. I’m not simply piling on. I was troubled by it back then—and, frankly, I think the YEC community is far more ridicule-prone now.)

I just now recalled a friend from my YEC days who expressed concern after attending a Duane Gish event back in the 1970’s. He lamented talking to attendees during lunch and discovering that some of them were Flat Earthers—and one was an admirer of John Alexander Dowie, founder of a religious utopia that is now known as Zion, Illinois.

If someone has time to kill and a fascination with real-nut-job “science”, you can read about this flat-earther:

I vaguely recall Dowie claiming something like, “The sun is actually just 32 miles over Kenosha, Wisconsin.” [I’m sure I got that wrong. But it was certainly something as crazy as that.]

By the way, I recently learned that jazz/blues singer Rachael Price of the Lake Street Dive band is the great-great-granddaughter of Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price who wrote the pamphlets and weird booklets that inspired Whitcomb & Morris to write The Genesis Flood. Somehow, I get the impression he wouldn’t be a fan of her music. [Yes, not at all important. But just another fun fact to know and tell.]

@Puck_Mendelssohn, don’t know why but I thought you might find that Price factoid amusing. Somehow it reminds me of my recent discovery that my 13th great grandfather, Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, was at the Diet of Worms and got to know Martin Luther quite well. Wikipedia says this of him:

Within a few weeks of his 1523 marriage to Christine of Saxony, who was also alleged to be an immoderate drinker, Philip committed adultery; and as early as 1526 he began to consider the permissibility of bigamy. According to Martin Luther, he lived “constantly in a state of adultery and fornication.”

In stark contrast, piety speaking, my 9th great grandfather was Hans Herr, the first Mennonite Bishop to come to America. He made a deal with William Penn himself to buy land for him and his Mennonite brethren—for which they paid a purchase price AGAIN directly to the Native Americans in the area because based upon Biblical principles of justice it rightly belonged to them—and he sent a few of the younger guys back to the Palatinate of Germany to invite what became vast numbers of German immigrants to Pennsylvania. So he played a big role in setting the stage for the Christian pioneer farmer cultures which swept west into Ohio, Indiana, etc. to produce the “Northern Bible Belt” heritage I grew up in.

I guess those are tangents far from “What happened to the waters from Noah’s flood?” but I’m an old man who lapses into telling stories and drones on and on. (So sue me.)

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