THE FLOOD THEORY

Most Young Earth Creationists appeal to one or more catastrophes to explain geological features—mountain ranges, sedimentary layers, and so on—that might otherwise seem far older. There's nothing wrong with catastrophe theories as such. Even orthodox scientists suppose catastrophes—comet strikes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and so on—have played an important role in shaping this planet and the life on it. According to most contemporary Young Earth Creationists, the key catastrophe involved in shaping our contemporary landscape was the biblical flood: the flood on which Noah famously floated his ark. They believe that Old Testament story is literally true: Noah really did build an ark onto which he was instructed by God to put seven mated pairs of every clean kind of animal and every kind of bird (Genesis 7:2). The waters then rose, drowning the rest. The current inhabitants of the land and sky are descendents of those who boarded the ark.

So how is the flood supposed to account for various geological features, such as the fossil record? It's claimed that, when the waters rose, they produced huge amounts of silt and mud. This material settled and solidified, eventually forming many of the sedimentary rock layers we find today. Many of the fossils we find within these layers are fossils of creatures drowned by the flood. The flood supposedly also explains other geological features, such as the Grand Canyon, which was carved out when the flood waters subsided.

Perhaps you are wondering why creatures are not buried randomly within the sedimentary layers but are arranged in a very specific order? Why, if the flood theory is true, do we never find the fossils of large mammals within the same layers as dinosaurs? Why do the lower layers contain fossils of only simple sea creatures? Why do humans only appear in only the very topmost layers? Why, if they were all buried by the same catastrophic flood, aren't their remains jumbled up together?

Young Earth Creationists have their answers. They say we should expect the simple sea creatures living at the bottom of the ocean to have been buried first. Birds would be restricted to the higher layers, as they would be able to fly from the rising waters. Humankind, being the smartest, would probably have found ways to avoid being drowned until the last moment, so it is not surprising we find human remains only in the top layers. We should also expect to see some order in the fossil record due, for example, to the fact that different ecological zones were submerged at different times, and also because of the different rates at which the corpses of different species bloat and then sink. “So you see?” say Young Earth Creationists. “The fossil record is, after all, consistent with our theory! It all fits!”

We might say in reply, “But these moves made by Creationists only postpone their difficulties, as they generate a myriad of further puzzles. What about flightless birds, such as penguins and ostriches, which would not have been able to delay being drowned? Why do their fossils never show up in layers lower than other birds? Why do we find sharks, but no dolphins in the lower sedimentary layers, given they occupy similar ecological zones? Surely both would have been buried in the early stages of the flood? In fact we could go on and on and on, citing a mountain of fossil evidence that contradicts the flood theory.” Still, Young Earth Creationists continue to work on developing flood-friendly explanations for these observations.

Of course, it's not just the fossil record that generates puzzles for Young Earth Creationism. Let's think for a moment about the logistics of Noah's expedition. Genesis 16:2 says the ark was 300 × 50 × 30 cubits—that's about 460 × 75 × 44 feet. Not a particularly large vessel (a cross section of 75 by 44 feet is, coinciden-tally, not very much greater than that of my four-bedroom Victorian terraced house). How did at least two of every kind of animal fit aboard this comparatively small vessel? Remember, Noah didn't just need specimens of today's creatures such as African elephants, rhinos, and giraffes. If dinosaurs were drowned in the flood, then Noah must also have put dinosaurs on board his ark. Young Earth Creationists accept this. But then how did Noah get two T. rexes, two stegosauruses, two bronto-sauruses, and so on, safely aboard? These aren't even the very largest dinosaurs. What about, for example, two argentino-sauruses, at 120 feet long and 100 tons each?

Other questions arise. What did Noah feed his creatures during their voyage? How did Noah round up the known 900,000 insect species from around the planet, and how did he ensure they weren't trodden on during the voyage? Also, how did Noah acquire polar bears from the Arctic and possums from Australia—how did they cross the vast oceans and continents to reach the ark?

But Young Earth Creationists don't give up easily. They have constructed answers to all these and other obvious questions about Noah's voyage. For example, the website of Christian Information Ministries suggests that Noah did not need at least two of every named species of dinosaur, merely two of every “kind” (whatever that is, exactly): “Some creationists believe there may have been far fewer animals if Noah only took on board pairs of ‘kinds' as the word is used in Genesis 1. God created these ‘kinds' with potential for rich genetic diversity.” Creation Ministries International endorses this explanation, adding, “Although there are about 668 names of dinosaurs, there are perhaps only 55 different ‘kinds' of dinosaurs.”

The same source also suggests that Noah did not need full-sized adult specimens—young examples would do:

Furthermore, not all dinosaurs were huge like the Brachio-saurus, and even those dinosaurs on the Ark were probably “teenagers” or young adults. Indeed, dinosaurs were recently discovered to go through a growth spurt, so God could have brought dinosaurs of the right age to start this spurt as soon as they disembarked.

 

So how did Noah feed all his creatures while they were at sea? Christian Information Ministries suggests they hibernated:

How Noah and his small family could have cared for this large menagerie is unknown, not to mention the sanitation problem! What we must remember is that this event, i.e., the Flood, had supernatural elements. For instance, the animals came to the Ark against their natural instincts (Gen. 6:20). It is therefore reasonable to assume, as some creationists do, that the animals' metabolism may have been slowed down during their confinement, even to the point where some of the animals may have gone into a state of hibernation.⁷

 

Of course, once we allow “supernatural elements” to play a role, we could just say that God shrank the dinosaurs to pocket size during their journey. That would deal with many of these problems.

How do Young Earth Creationists explain how polar bears and possums made it all the way to Noah's Ark across the great oceans? According to Ken Ham and Tim Lovett at Answers in Genesis, there were no separate continents at that time. There was a single continent that the flood subsequently broke apart, as they here explain: “As even secular geologists observe, it does appear that the continents were at one time ‘together' and not separated by the vast oceans of today. The forces involved in the Flood were certainly sufficient to change all of this.” Really? The forces were sufficient to push vast continents around the face of the planet, but not enough to sink a wooden vessel with a cross section of 75 by 44 feet? I guess God must have somehow protected the ark from these extraordinary forces.

Even setting aside ark logistics, the flood theory raises a host of other questions, such as, where did all the water sufficient to cover the earth's great mountain ranges go? Answer: there were no great ranges at that time—they were created by the flood. Because the surface of the earth was relatively flat, there was, and still is, more than enough water to cover the land, as Ham and Lovett also explain: “Simply put, the water from the Flood is in the oceans and seas we see today. Three-quarters of the earth's surface is covered with water.”

So how did creatures get back to their respective newly created continents after the ark was finally deposited on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:4)? The marmosets could hardly have walked and swum halfway around the world, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Amazonian rain forests where they now dwell. I guess Noah must have dropped off the marmosets in South America and the possums in Australia as the waters receded (but how, then, did the ark end up deposited high on the mountains of Ararat?). Or perhaps Noah built them rafts.

So you see: Young Earth Creationists insist they can deal with many of these questions! Admittedly, they don't have all the answers—and don't claim to. But, as they correctly point out, who does? Even orthodox science faces questions it is not currently able to answer, and perhaps never will.

Explanations such as those outlined above are continuously being developed and refined by people describing themselves as “scientists” in multimillion-dollar “research institutes” dedicated to the pursuit of something called “creation science.” These “scientists” insist that, far from falsifying Young Earth Creationism, the empirical evidence is broadly consistent with it. Young Earth Creationism, they maintain, fits the evidence at least as well as its orthodox scientific rivals. Surely, they add, good science is all about developing theories to fit the evidence. But then, because they are developing their theory to make it fit the evidence, what they are practicing is good science. Moreover, if theories are confirmed to the extent that they fit the evidence, then Young Earth Creationism, developed and refined in these ways, is as well confirmed as its rivals.