The First World, the Flood, and Current Scientific Consensus

The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. — Genesis 7:11

Richard Doctor

God is the author of the book of revealed scripture and the book of nature. What other author is so misunderstood that two key books in his collected works are forced to stand on separate library shelves?

Frequently, the two hostile communities specializing in the exclusive study of one or the other of these books miss no opportunity to speak disparagingly about the other book and its special students. You might easily think these are rival works of mutually hostile authors.

Happily, a welcome thaw is occurring in the relations between science and the Bible. Nobel Prize winner Charles Townes, discoverer of the laser, recently summed it up this way: "Science wants to know the mechanism of the universe, religion the meaning. The two cannot be separated." (Science, August 15, 1997) Today scientific studies as diverse as cutting-edge supercomputer simulations of ancient climates, studies of ocean sediment cores, and physically grueling field research on Greenland’s inhospitable ice, all testify in harmony with the eye-witness account of the greatest environmental disaster man has ever witnessed — the deluge of Noah. These studies are still in progress, hence, this is a progress report. Without doubt there are still surprises ahead as our scientific understanding grows.

The Deluge — A One Act Cataclysm in Three Stages

What was the world like before the flood? The evidence points to an ice-age world with a very comfortable temperate climate in the middle east. An ice-age would not immediately come to mind, but as you will see, the evidence for this is very strong. Settled farming communities were developing. This mini-ice-age is known by geologists as the Younger Dryas.

Imagine the earth as it was then, slowly waking from the icy grip of the most recent and short-lived glacial advance. In our mental vision, let us stand then where my home stands now outside of Chicago. The familiar landmarks of this generally flat region then lay under the frigid waters of a much larger lake. Waters lap an icy shoreline that does not thaw through summer. Glacial Lake Chicago stands almost 60 feet over the level of modern Lake Michigan, held back from flooding the lowlands by thick ice dams. Extensive glacial lakes like this are typical throughout the world. Occasionally, wooly mammoths appear near the shore. Later, these high lake levels will be critical to the catastrophic events of the deluge.

Moving eastward the North American coastline appears unfamiliar, extending tens to hundreds of miles beyond the current shorelines because so much water is trapped in ice sheets that sea levels are lower. In Europe, we might pause to visit the French Riviera, and find ourselves on a canyon ridge with a spectacular overlook of lush green valleys with grazing herds of bison, wild cattle, and horses sprawling the basin of the as yet unborn Mediterranean Sea. All these areas are very sparsely populated.

We continue eastward to the population centers developing along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. We pause in the reed marshes that will later be submerged by the Persian Gulf — this should be near the pre-deluge home of Noah. The sky is hazy. The haze comes from airborne dust and fine sand carried across continents in intense jet streams. So much water is locked in ice, that for millennia there has been a world-wide disruption of rain patterns. On the marsh it is a pleasant spring evening in early May. A hunting party settled by their camp fire suddenly becomes animated. Something is wrong. Alarmed flocks of migratory waterfowl rise from their newly built nests to fly about in confusion. Curtains of glowing purple-blue light falling from the heavens directly overhead heighten the uneasiness. Seen in modern times only in northern latitudes, the Aurora Borealis is appearing in the wrong zone. Since we are carrying a compass, we are surprised that it no longer works. Within hours this heavenly light show is hidden by storm clouds, unfamiliar even in the memories of the elders. No rain has fallen in these inhabited zones for nearly two millennia. After a week, the gathering clouds block all sunlight. Then the rains begin.

We are witnesses to a phenomenon not seen since the deluge. Earth’s protective magnetic shield, normally only a few degrees off the earth’s axis of rotation, has buckled and shifted, locally ceasing in some zones. This first stage of the cataclysm — the Gothenburg geomagnetic excursion — is destined to set into motion a sequence of events that will reorder planetary weather patterns.

Movement over land under the best of conditions is about ten miles per day. As the unfamiliar rains begin, travel could not be worse. There is no time for the several days travel to higher ground, and all the winter provisions are used up. Nor is higher ground any safer. Where the flooding ceases, freezing rain, snow, and avalanches trap and doom the hapless caught in the mountain passes.

Those on the canyon overlooks are saved from their fate for a few days longer. As the rains continue unabated, the next stage of the cataclysm unfolds. A surging wall of water stretching as far as the eye can see, comes sweeping across the canyon rims. The ice dams holding back glacial lakes throughout the world have swollen and burst from the rain.

The third and final stage of the cataclysm soon follows.

Bitterly cold strong winds begin to blow. Waters surging in from the oceans sweep back inland over the already flooded coasts. In arctic regions, drowned wooly mammoths who a short time before feasted on abundant spring flowers, now are surrounded by freezing slush. While the ice-age climate now has ended for the rest of the earth, the mammoths are locked in ice where before there was none. Far in the future, their deep frozen flesh will stay fresh enough to be eaten as a delicacy by the wealthy at exclusive Victorian-era restaurants.

No Rain before the Deluge

Geophysical evidence supports the biblical account that for the midlatitudes, "there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground" (Genesis 2:6). Mayewski of the University of New Hampshire, writing in the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reports on ancient rain patterns as evidenced by dust loadings in ice-cores (Science, July 9, 1993). When there is heavy precipitation, dust washes out of the atmosphere before reaching the polar ice. When there is light precipitation, dust stays aloft and is carried to the ice sheets with the snow. Low precipitation patterns are in marked evidence during the entire period of the Younger Dryas. This is the era of "mist from the earth." These patterns radically change to rain patterns at the abrupt end of the Younger Dryas.

Stage 1 —A Magnetic Excursion Begins the Rain

What switched the weather patterns from no-rain to high-rain conditions? The earth’s magnetic field may be the key. This field serves as a giant "windshield" in space protecting us from the charged particles making up the solar "wind." Earth’s magnetism deflects some of these "ions" while trapping others in the Van Allen radiation belt. During a magnetic "excursion," the ions, now free of their magnetic trap should cascade into the atmosphere and become nuclei for rain drops — as happens all the time today.

In Nature, the pre-eminent European scientific journal, Fairbridge directly linked world-wide rain resulting from the Gothenburg Geomagnetic Excursion with markers of world-wide climate change and flood legends (Nature, February 3, 1977). Although follow-up "Letters to editor" were critical of the speculation on world-wide precipitation, Rossignol-Strick, of the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, follows with a report entitling her article "After the Deluge: Mediterranean Stagnation." Speaking of layers of organic-rich mud, the remains of massive fauna and flora kills resulting from "the start of a global event — a very heavy precipitation" (Nature, January 14, 1982).

The next stage of the deluge, brought about by the heavy rains worsens the catastrophe.

Stage 2 — Evidence of Superfloods from Glacial Lakes

The scientific community’s shift to agree that the biblical flood actually could have taken place begins in earnest when University of Miami paleoclimatolgist Casare Emiliani points to strong geophysical evidence for rapid ice-melting at the end of the Younger Dryas (Science, September 26, 1975). He holds that the evidence is consistent with the deluge accounts preserved throughout diverse nations and peoples of the earth. Based on carbon-14 dating and the claims of Plato that the flood took place 9,000 years before his day, Emiliani gives a date which is highly inconsistent with Genesis, but consistent with Plato. He holds that the flood took place 11,500 years ago. He observes that the cultural memory of this great geophysical disaster agrees with the best scientific data. Popularized reports on this work read, "In almost every culture ... emerge strikingly similar tales of a great flood that swept away emerging civilizations and changed the face of the earth. New evidence gathered from sea floor cores ... confirms the existence of such a universal deluge." (Science News, October 4, 1975)

Prof. Dansgaard, University of Copenhagen, also agrees with this, writing that "the Younger Dryas ended abruptly ... [in] this epoch defining event" (Nature, June 15, 1989). Finding support for an earlier date of 7,700 years before present for ending the Younger Dryas, Strief in the Netherlands underscores the enormity of the event concluding that "floodwaters" show evidence of a 24 foot rise in ocean levels which occurred either "within 505 years, or instantaneously" (Nature, November 2, 1989).

More researchers join the quest. Baker of the University of Arizona, reports on "superflooding" evidence from his field work in Siberia (Science, January 15, 1993). He concludes that, "Cataclysmic flooding ... [and] landforms of flood origin resulting from the ice-dammed lake failures ... [are] the largest known terrestrial discharge of freshwater ... these seem to have been earth’s greatest floods." Deep in the article he explains that the superflooding was not noticed earlier because no one was looking for it!

Stage 3 — The Freeze

The seven seas are marvelously connected by a solar-powered deep-sea conveyor belt. Starting near Nigeria, warm tropical waters — heavy with salt left behind by evaporation — descend. They are carried counter-clockwise towards Iceland by an undersea river twenty times greater in volume than all the surface rivers. Briefly they surface near Iceland. The tropical waters steam off into the dry frigid air, warming northern Europe with the power equivalent of one million 600-megawatt electric power stations. This evaporation leaves behind even saltier and colder waters that descend again near the straits of Denmark in an undersea waterfall four times taller than Angel Falls (Scientific American, "Giant Ocean Cataracts," February, 1989). From here their course takes them through every ocean basin on earth until they return to Nigeria.

The initial rain of the deluge led to the overflow and collapse of the ice-dams restraining glacial lakes throughout the world — including Lake Chicago. The result was superflooding. World renowned climatologist Wallace Broeker, of Columbia University, reports that flood waters from Lake Chicago and the other great lakes rushed down the St. Lawrence Seaway to combine with similar superfloods rushing down the Straits of Denmark. Thousands of cubic miles of ice-cold fresh water spread out in a sheet over the surface of the saltier North Atlantic. This shut down the ocean heat conveyor belt and brought about the final catastrophic episode ending the Younger Dryas (Nature, January 31, 1997).

Drawing together the threads of this tapestry, Street-Perrot and her husband find that the early May temperatures immediately went to arctic conditions — on average the northern latitude temperature plunged 25 F degrees (Nature, February 15, 1990). Isotope specialist James White of the University of Colorado said, "I am completely in awe of the scale of the change and its speed" (Science, June 14, 1996) — a speed which froze mammoths with spring flowers in their mouths.

Are these immense conveyor-belt waters "the fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11, 8:2)? This appeals to me more than the thought that these "fountains" sprang from the face of the earth for three reasons. First, "the great deep" always refers to the ocean. Second, when subterranean waters do on occasion erupt from the earth, they leave behind a conical structure that looks like a giant ant hill (see photo above). Since we see no evidence for such pox-like scars on the earth’s face, this could not have happened. Most importantly, the action of this ocean conveyor belt is now recognized as the final devastating blow of the deluge.

The geophysical community has yet to focus on "the breaking forth" described in Genesis 7:11. However, three mechanisms may be important. These include tsunamis, linked to earthquakes resulting from the rapid shifts in weight from superflooding; seiches (broad oscillating movements) caused by the atmospheric disturbance; and buckling and surging of the disrupted deep-ocean heat conveyor belt. We will need to wait and see what develops.

Concluding Thoughts

What shall we say? The mainline scientific community now finds itself believing in exactly the kind of catastrophe to which the Genesis account bears an eye-witness record, and the scientific evidence appears to be spectacular. Isn’t that just like God? Science asks for theories that can be tested, then it tests them rigorously. As both a Christian and a researcher I am comfortable with this.