Sorry, but I have a few more questions. Where do …

Comment on Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood? by Linda Cunningham.

Sorry, but I have a few more questions. Where do you get the following facts?

(1) “Before the Flood there were no great oceans or continents as we have today. There were only rivers and shallow seas.”

(2) “The Earth was a fairly flat place compared to today’s world.” It consisted of “rolling hills and the ‘highest’ rolling mountains of a thousand or so feet tall.” Where do you get 1,000 feet as the maximum elevation?

(3) During the flood the waters were “a thousand or so feet” in height.

(4) There were “massive earthquakes that would have been produced around the entire world.”

(5) Asteroids (even one) struck the earth during the flood.

(6) There was any kind of “breakup of the Earth’s crust” during the flood.

(7) There were any tsunamis at all during the flood.

(8) Dinosaurs survived more than the 40 days and nights of rain.

(9) Dinosaurs layed eggs during the flood.

(10) Dinosaur footprints were not created before or after the flood.

(11) Only atheistic scientists come up with “just so” stories that go beyond available data.

(12) Could any portion of your account be a “just so” story?

Linda Cunningham Also Commented

Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood?
I admire your certitude and surety, Sean. Most scientists I know are very tentative with their interpretations, but you offer no reservations about your understanding. You are able to take a few facts (and a lot of assumptions, in my book) and elucidate intimate details regarding ocean depths, movements of land masses, movements of asteroids, movements of water, how long the dinosaurs survived the flood, and how the dinosaurs managed to survive and lay eggs during most of the flood. You are to be congratulated for providing the most factual portrayal of flood events that I have ever read. You must be an amazing geologist/paleobiologist/marine scientist–whatever you are.

I do have two more questions for you, and then I think I’m finished.

(1) If the dinosaurs managed to survive the 40 days and nights of rain and avoid becoming egg bound during the many months (“majority of the year-long Flood,” which you propose) of extraordinarily severe conditions during which asteroids (as you seem to suggest) struck the planet, massive displacements and heating of water occurred from major continental crust movements, and multiple giant tsunamis repeatedly circled the globe, when and how did all those nasty (and surely some friendly) dinosaurs finally die off? Did Noah and his family members have to finish them off? Seriously.

(2) Why did all the dinosaurs die off, but not other reptile groups like the crocodilians, or contemporary avian and mammalian groups? Surely many of the smaller dinosaur species were more harmless and less threatening to humans than crocodiles and bears. Did God just say, “let this entire clade be destroyed outside the ark” while going out of his way to preserve others within the ark?


Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood?
Your understanding of tsunamis is still way off. They don’t consist of a single wave; thus, the multiple waves would cause even greater fragmentation and cancellation when they meet on the opposite side of the planet. I don’t know how far a tidal wave can carry, but friction will slow the wave propogation, and more so with less water depth and increasing amounts of sediment in the water. In deep water, the wavelengths are very long but shallow, and waves travel at fast speed; only as they approach shallow water do they build height, but they also slow down.

So how deep was the ocean at the time of the flood? You have argued that the waters were fairly uniform in depth because you seem to know that “there were no large mountain chains or distinct continents.” Obviously, waves can’t persist at “thousands of feet tall,” as you have imagined, unless the water is much, much, much deeper than the 60 feet (40 cubits) above the highest land, as mentioned in scripture. If the seas are 100 feet in depth, then a wave can’t persist at greater than 200 feet in height because the bottom of the wave would be knocked out. Waves thousands of feet tall, going around and around the globe, according to your claim? Then you’re going to need seas that are thousands of feet deep, which would mean that there must be very tall mountains if they were covered to a depth of only 40 cubits.

Obviously, if there were areas of dry land during the many months of the flood’s duration, which you have also claimed, those waves “thousands of feet tall” would grow to tens of thousands of feet tall as they approached the dry land(!); they would collapse partially or completely as they rolled across the dry land; and they would diffract sideways around the area of dry land, again creating very complex waveforms that would break up the massively tall waves.

You’ve done a good job of revising your description of the flood events, but you’ve got more work to do. I still see no way that “paleocurrents” in a uniform direction supports a global flood. If anything, the very complex flood that you have now admitted had to be the case would be consistent with a hypothesis of largely random paleocurrents. Post hoc explanations based on uninformed imagination are simply “just so” stories.


Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood?
The earth is not a perfect sphere. It is not a stationary sphere. The depth could not be uniform (after all, there was dry land and water before the flood, and you have argued that geological processes were actively changing the planet’s surface during the flood). Water temperatures are not going to be uniform and wind speeds are not going to be uniform. In sum, water movement will not be uniform. Thus, the waves will not converge perfectly, as you imagine, on the opposite side of the planet, and then progpagate again in the opposite direction. They will refract in complex patterns.

Moreover, even with your unimpeded model, the waves that return from the side of the planet opposite of their generation will now move sediment in a 180-degree direction from their initial movement. Now you have trouble explaining a single direction for sediment deposition. Put it all together, and you’ve got every reason to dismiss the possibility that tsunamis would contribute to or cause the “directly [sic] of water flow [to be] consistent, all around the world, for various layers within the geologic column.” As you have shown now with another comment, the direction of water flow is NOT actually consistent, all around the world, for various layers within the geologic column. Your reasoning is as convulated as the paleocurrents depicted in the Chadwick maps.