Actual photo of Noah.

Articles

Following Global Floods and Creationist "Logic"

by D. Jones

Recently, I was sent an article during a theological debate over the evidence of a worldwide flood. As usual I was sent typical articles from creationist websites. Well I decided to take one in particular to show how not only do people not research what they read, but it also seems as if there is a conscious effort on the part of creationists, mainly Christians, to lie and distort facts to get a point made. So here in the following is a debunking of sorts on one such article. Website in question: Evidence of a worldwide Flood

http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/gn/gn047/worldwideflood.htm

The article itself was written in 2003 for "The Good News Magazine," a Christian bi-monthly magazine that calls itself "A magazine of understanding." It was written by Mario Seiglie. The article begins by listing three well known scientists. Cesar Emiliani of the University of Miami, James Kennett of the University of Rhode Island and Nicholas Shack of Cambridge University. Here is where they make their first huge journalistic mistakes.

1.) Cesar Emiliani is actually spelled Cesare Emiliani.

2.) James Kennett is no longer associated with the University of Rhode island and hasn't been since 1987. Anyone with any kind of journalistic background will tell you that finding up-to-date information is always helpful when writing an article about someone.

3.) Nicholas Shack of Cambridge University is actually Sir Nicholas Shackleton of Cambridge University; another huge personal and journalistic mistake. - Note: Anyone with journalistic integrity or actual accredited college training knows that before you submit an article for publication you not only fact check but you get the correct names of the people you are writing about.

Mario Seiglie quotes Cesare Emiliani as stating, "There is no question that there was a flood and there is also no question that it was a universal flood." (Cesar Emiliani 1977)

1. No official verification of this statement can be found anywhere.

2. It is in fact a lie to imply that Mr. Emiliani was a theist or that he even claimed to have proof of a worldwide flood. Cesare Emiliani himself wrote books on evolution and the big bang theory. You would think making such a huge discovery as this Christian site claims would have changed his mind...but it didn't.

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780471133247

3. Professor James P. Kennett, a marine geologist and firm believer in evolution, has even dedicated his life to showing the evolution of life using sediment and core samples taken from the ocean floor. Funny, you would think confirming a global flood would change his opinion's about evolution.

http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=446

4.) Sir Nicholas Shackleton who died very recently was a life long evolutionist.

http://www.quaternary.group.cam.ac.uk/history/directors/shackleton.html

Next, they make a scientific mistake in stating that "Radiocarbon dating is imprecise after 4,000 years." This is untrue.

While it is true that radiocarbon dating cannot give a precise date when something occurred, it gives us a very accurate range of when something began to decay. It is not very accurate as far as more recent deposits go but it is actually very accurate for anything ranging up to 50,000 years. Notice how the author states, "It clearly shows that there was a major period of flooding from 12,000 to 10,000 years ago" A reasonable estimate using radiocarbon dating. Then notice how he changes the facts to fit his belief structure when he says, "It is also worth mentioning that the radiocarbon dating used to establish the number of years is imprecise after 4,000 years, so the time of this universal deluge could be closer to the 4,300 years described in the Bible as the time of the Biblical flood". This is an obvious fabrication of the truth in order to get the reader to see a correlation between Biblical beliefs and scientific facts. Anyone who reads this more than once will notice the lie.

Radiocarbon Reference Sites:(http://id-archserve.ucsb.edu/Anth3/Courseware/Chronology/08_Radiocarbon_Dating.html)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating)

Next, the article touches upon something called the Black Sea Deluge theory.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory)

1. According to William Ryan and Walter Pittman, they estimate that this occured around 5600 BC when glacial fresh water caused the Mediterranean to finally spill over a rocky sill at the Bosporus. This lead to massive flooding in the Black Sea basin. But there is absolutely no indication that this was nothing more than a local flood.

2.) In one statement they list the story of Noah occurring 4,000 years ago while in the next they indicate that the flooding of the Black Sea occurred 6,000 to 7,000 ago, a difference of about 3,000 years.

3.) "Additional evidence of the deluge being global and not local..." When Mario Seiglie says this, anyone with common sense should wonder how the flooding of the Black Sea shows anything more than just that; the flooding of the Black Sea. You can see clear Christian bias and a desperate attempt to get simple minded readers to agree with his points.

Finally, while it is true that there are many flood stories from many different cultures spread out across the world, there is no indication at all that any of them were global. In order for that to happen you would need them all to be from the same exact time period and most of them are not.

Let's use a simple analogy to explain this a little better. Imagine 4,000 years from now archeologists find records of the flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Now imagine that there is also a flood 2,000 years from now in Japan. Does this mean that just because they are in the same time frame the flooding was global? No, not at all.

Final thoughts: If you read and re-read this you will notice consistent bias and fabrication of science to attempt to get a point across. The author obviously has no scientific credentials and apparently no journalistic ones either.