Geology, Noah's Ark, and Dinosaurs

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All right, so the first week of this series, we learned about the importance of the issue of evolution and the age of the earth due to many trying to insert long ages into Genesis because of the fossil record, putting death before sin, which undermines the gospel.
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Last week, we looked at how biology doesn't support microbes to man evolution, but rather supports the biblical belief that God pre -programmed creatures to go in many directions genetically.
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This week, we'll be looking at how the fossil record actually got there, carbon dating, the
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Ark of Noah, and, drumroll please, dinosaurs, and what the biblical view of dinosaurs is.
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So, the global flood is the key to understanding geology.
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If you remember from the first week, I talked about presuppositions everyone brings to scientific observations, and that one presupposition
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Old Earthers bring to inform their interpretation is uniformitarianism, the belief that everything happens at a consistent rate and in the same way over time.
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For instance, they would say the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon over millions of years because that is the only eroding force that we see there today.
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There is a number of demonstrable problems with this view.
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First off, you don't know the starting point of the canyon or whatever you're talking about.
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If you walk into a kitchen, say, and the faucet is dripping into a cup that's three quarters full of water, you can measure the rate at which the water is dripping into the cup and calculate how long it would take to fill up the cup to that point, but you're assuming the cup was empty to start with.
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What if it was placed in the sink half full, or nearly three quarters full? Second problem with uniformitarianism is it doesn't account for catastrophes or special events or other types of events that could speed up processes or affect the way things happen that would otherwise take a long time.
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So say if that cup in the sink was placed there empty, but then someone turned on the faucet for a little while, greatly filling up the cup before turning it back to a drip.
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If you don't take that into account, you're going to come up with much longer time for the cup to fill up than actually happened.
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People do the same thing with erosion rates, continental drift, and many dating methods.
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And I mean how you date a rock, not how you find a spouse. The global flood in Noah's day greatly sped up these processes.
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Let's start with our Bibles and read Genesis 7. So if you brought your
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Bible with you, please turn with me. It's the Old Testament, right at the beginning of your
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Bible, chapter 7. And we'll read the entirety of the chapter. And I'm reading from the
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LSB. Then Yahweh said to Noah, enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone
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I have seen to be righteous before me in this generation. You shall take with you of every clean animal by sevens, a male and his female, and of the animals that are not clean, two, a male and his female.
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Also of the birds of the sky by sevens, male and female, to keep their seed alive on the face of all the earth.
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For after seven more days I will send rain on the earth, forty days and forty nights, and I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made.
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And Noah did according to all that Yahweh had commanded him. Now Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of water came upon the earth.
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Then Noah and his sons and his wife and his son's wives with him entered the ark because of the water of the flood, of clean animals and animals that are not clean, and birds and everything that creeps on the ground.
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By twos they came to Noah into the ark, male and female, as God had commanded
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Noah. Now it happened after seven days that the water of flood came upon the earth.
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In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the fountains of the great deep split open and the flood gates of the sky were opened.
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Then the rain came upon the earth for forty days and forty nights. On this very day
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Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with him, entered the ark.
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They and every beast after its kind and all the cattle after their kind and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind and every bird after its kind, every fowl, every winged creature.
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So they came to Noah into the ark by twos of all flesh in which was the breath of life.
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And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, entered as God had commanded him and Yahweh closed it behind him.
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Then the flood came upon the earth for forty days and the water multiplied and lifted up the ark so it rose above the earth and the water prevailed and multiplied greatly upon the earth.
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And the ark went on the surface of the water and the water prevailed more and more upon the earth so that all the high mountains under all the heavens were covered.
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The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher and the mountains were covered and all flesh that moved on the earth breathed its last and its, and its, that is birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth as well as all mankind in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life of all that was on the dry land died.
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Thus he blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky that were blotted out from the earth and only
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Noah remained and those who were in the ark with him. And the water prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.
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So some people try to say that this flood that we just read about is a local flood, that it just affected
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Noah's world and Mesopotamia region. However, that is a very hard case to make with the language that is used in verses 19 -20 that says the water prevailed more and more upon the earth so that all the high mountains under all the heavens were covered.
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The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher and the mountains were covered. So, a cubit, if you don't know, is from the tip of your elbow to the tip of your fingers about eighteen to twenty inches.
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So it probably would have to look something like this if it was a local flood because we have fifteen cubits higher than the highest mountain peak it says.
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So, God uses very clear descriptions to completely obliterate any notion of this flood being restricted to just one part of the world.
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It covered the entire face of the globe and he emphasizes very clearly that every living creature that was on the face of the earth died.
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Only those in the ark survived. So from just reading the text and viewing the world with our biblical glasses, we should expect to see in our world, knowing that this cataclysmic event happened and affected every inch of the globe, what should we expect to see?
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Well, Genesis 7, 21 -23 says and all flesh that moved on the earth breathed its last, that is birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth as well as all mankind.
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All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on dry land died.
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So a bunch of things died and even local floods move around a lot of sediment that would cause and cause a lot of erosion.
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So a global flood would have done this on a far greater scale and it also says the fountains of the deep burst open or split open.
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So then we would expect to see a bunch of dead things buried in sedimentary rock layers all over the world.
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And what do we see? A bunch of dead things buried in sedimentary rock layers all over the world.
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We even see marine fossils on top of Mount Everest. How did those get up there?
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Well, it would have been a marine catastrophe obviously. And by the way, the water from the flood would not have been higher than Mount Everest because Mount Everest would have been formed during the geological activity happening during and shortly after the flood as the continents moved around and smashed together and stuff like that.
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But not only this, but we could assume that the volume of water in such a short time,
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I thought I had them on silent. Not only this, but we would assume that the volume of water in such a short period of time would have smashed continents together, creating massive mountain ranges, near tectonic plates and eroding grand canyons, pun intended, as we see in the world today.
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So let's take a look at an example here. Look at this canyon, whoops, this canyon.
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Take a look at this canyon and the sediment layers. How long do you think this canyon took to form?
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You can see the rock layers there that's often used to say, oh, these, each of these layers was millions of years old.
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That little river in there in the middle of the canyon carved out the whole canyon, but and over millions of years.
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But we actually know how long this, how old this canyon is, you know, how we know is because there's many people alive today who were there when it was formed, because it was formed from a little event called
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Mount St. Helens. Many people are still alive who witness that today.
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So you can see in a matter of days, all this geologic activity happened and the mud flow from that canyon, from that eruption, sorry, carved that canyon in a matter within a day.
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So if you don't take that into account, you see that canyon, right? Well, that must have taken a long time to form with that little river there.
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But it's the, you know, these large events can speed up things greatly.
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So plus 95 % of the fossil record is marine organisms.
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This points to a marine catastrophe that would have primarily buried marine creatures who couldn't get away because most of them are, are the creatures that would have lived on the bottom of the ocean floor.
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So what about carbon dating though? And all these other long ages we hear about.
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So aren't these methods that come back with long ages rock solid scientifically?
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No pun intended. Well, no, these dating methods, again, presuppose uniformitarianism.
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And I've already gone through the problems with uniformitarianism and that is a massive problem with these dating methods.
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Not only that, but a lot of these methods have a lot more variables than is taken into consideration.
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Say for like instance, with carbon dating, even the earth's magnetic field can affect that.
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And that's a, if you don't know, carbon dating is a measure of how quickly carbon 14 is decaying in a specimen.
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But again, like back to that water analogy in the sink, we don't, a lot of times we don't even know where it started from, what events could have affected it increasing or decreasing.
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And a lot of it is just assumes long ages that you'll never get a young age usually from carbon dating.
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So these, these methods are complex. These dating methods are complex and I won't get into all the technical details of all the problems with them, but please go to creation .com
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to learn about those details. If you are curious, we have 10 ,000 plus articles that are free for everyone to read up on any of these topics that interest you.
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But I hope I've given you a good interview overview of the problems with radiometric dating.
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So let's move on to Noah's Ark. So first off, we're talking about a miraculous, you know, event here.
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God is commanding Noah to build this Ark, but people still ask, like, could this have been physically feasible and all this?
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Like for starters, when you're talking about a miraculous event, yes, anything's possible with God.
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But also, yes, it was possible for this all to be feasible even without any supernatural intervention.
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So let's talk about some questions about the Ark itself. Did it look like this?
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No. We see so many depictions like this that honestly play into the idea that Noah's Ark was merely a fairy tale and not a cataclysmic real historical event that it was.
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For those who went to the Ark last week, you probably heard a lot of the things
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I'm going to get into here. But so first, how actually big was the
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Ark? So let's read in Genesis 6, 15 to 16.
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It says this. Now this is how you shall make it. This is God speaking to Noah.
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The length of the Ark is 300 cubits and its breadth 50 cubits and its height 30 cubits.
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You shall make a window for the Ark and complete it to one cubit from the top and set the door of the
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Ark on in the side of it. And you shall make it with lower second and third decks.
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So from this description, remember cubits from the tip of your finger to your elbow.
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So that's about 18 to 20 inches, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high.
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That would be about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.
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It was a big boat, a huge, stable, seaworthy vessel.
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Its volume was 100, sorry, 1 .54 million cubic feet.
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To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent of the carrying capacity of 340 semi -trailer trucks.
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This would be like them being lined up six lanes wide and half a mile long or 522 railway stock cars, which in total could hold about 125 ,280 sheep.
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Many people say that such a big wooden vessel wouldn't work, but there are actually many have been a number of recorded vessels in history that were made out of wood and were similar size and floated just fine.
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Not only that, but the ark didn't need to navigate like these other vessels did. They just need to float and survive the flood.
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So there have been studies done on the stability of a vessel shaped like the ark, which the word ark means box.
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There would have been no fin, canham. And even in violent seas, it would have been able, it would have been very stable.
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It could tilt beyond 60 degrees and still right itself. It was very stable, very seaworthy.
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So could Noah have fit all those animals on the ark? So it was big, but could it still fit all the animals?
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Because there's a lot of animals in the world today. But remember back to what we were talking about last week is that not all species we see today were created on day one.
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That a lot of species come from God creating them after their kinds, like the canine kind.
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What we can see here is modern taxonomy juxtaposed to what the
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Bible talks about as kinds. So we come up with all these other specifications within what would have been the created kinds that we see like the canine kind.
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There would have been an original kind that wolves and chihuahuas would have come from.
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Noah didn't need to take a wolf and a chihuahua. And because God pre -programmed in that genetic capabilities we saw last week.
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So if we look at, so there's been a great, there's a great book called
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Noah's Ark of Feasibility Study by John Wood Moropy. And he went through every question that you've never even thought of about the ark.
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And he estimates that there was about 2 ,000 to 8 ,000 genera or kinds, including extinct genera.
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Thus about 16 ,000 individual animals. And if you remember what we just read, there was seven of each clean animal, seven pairs of each clean animal.
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But that wouldn't have added a significant number to this 16 ,000. So the median size of these animals also would have been about the size of a rat.
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Only 11%, 11%, one, one, 11 % would have been larger than a sheep.
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And the average cage size would have been 50 centimeters by 50 centimeters by 30 centimeters or 1 .6
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feet by 1 .6 feet by one foot. So average size would have been a rat.
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This would have been the average, or the median size would have been a rat. Average cage size 50 by 50 by 30 centimeters or 1 .6
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feet by 1 .6 feet by one foot. This is a lot less space needed than many people think.
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And guess what? Noah had, would have had dinosaurs on the ark as well.
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They are part of the creatures that would have had the breath of life in their nostrils. And therefore, they would be on the ark.
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This tends to take people off guard when they think of Jurassic Park -sized dinosaurs on the ark.
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But if you stop and think about it, there is a very simple solution. First, most dinosaurs aren't that big.
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Those numbers I just said about the average size includes dinosaurs. Second, take baby or youth dinosaurs.
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This makes so much sense not only from a space perspective, but also these animals would have to be repopulating the world.
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Taking a young dinosaur would just be the best option rather than taking grandpa.
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Insects aren't included in the breath of life definition. But if Noah did want to take them in tiny little cages, he still would have had room.
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There would have been still plenty of room for exercise for all the animals and everything like that too.
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The insects probably would have survived though on mats of vegetation or in the water itself.
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Like many are able to survive through many different cataclysms even today.
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So the sea creatures likely hadn't developed any intolerance to low salinity in the water.
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That's a question people have like, well, how could, you know, freshwater creatures and saltwater creatures have been, you know, in the water because no one obviously didn't take sea creatures on the ark.
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But there's been many, even today, we can see many animals that can thrive in both, that go back and forth from both.
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So likely that intolerance hadn't developed. It came about through mutations and likely their ancestors didn't have such a intolerance.
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But also like we've, there's been people have observed like saltwater, pockets of saltwater and freshwater in through different temperatures and densities and stuff like that.
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That is another option that's definitely feasible. Again, if you have a specific question and want specific numbers about these, go to creation .com.
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There's a lot of great articles on there. So a really interesting thing to mention here is that many, many cultures from all around the world and civilizations that have nothing to do with each other, have many flood legends that sound very similar to the account we have in the
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Bible. Of course, they're missing some and that would have some details, but that would have been expected as, as these legends are passed on from generation to generation.
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But if we're all descended from Noah, it makes a lot of sense that there would have been this oral tradition of the, this great cataclysm that happened to all of our ancestor,
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Noah. And so you can see here, there's, I don't know if you can read that, but like there's the different aspects of the story of the account and narrative we're given in the
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Bible and how all these different cultures from all around the world that have nothing, don't talk to each other and take notes from each other.
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But a lot of them have similar themes. It's interesting and what we would have expected if we're all descended from Noah.
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All right. So if dinosaurs were on the ark, when did they go extinct? Now the topic everyone's been waiting for dinosaurs.
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So this isn't super complicated because just dinosaurs live with people and the evidence is pretty plain.
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Like let's read in the Bible in Job chapter 40. That's the book before Psalms.
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So if you found Psalms, just go back one look. Job chapter 40, beginning in verse 15.
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And then we will read 41 too. Behold now behemoth, which
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I made along with you. It eats grass like an ox. Behold now its power is in its loins and its vigor in the muscles of its belly.
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It hangs its tail like a cedar. Its sinews of its thighs are knit together. Its bones are tubes of bronze.
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Its limbs are like the bars of iron. So I forgot to mention, this is God talking to Job. Job has been complaining and God's like, look at all these things
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I've made. He talks about horses and different animals that he's made. And then he talks about behemoth.
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So it was the first of the ways of God. Let its maker bring near its sword.
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Surely the mountains bring it food and all the beasts of the field play there. Under the lotus plants it lies down in the hidden place of the reeds and the marsh.
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So like if you read like those sinews and thighs knit together, its bones are tubes of bronze.
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Its limbs are like bars of iron. It hangs its tail like cedar. Sounds a lot like some sort of a dinosaur.
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So and then chapter 41 verse 1. Can you draw a leviathan with a fish hook or press down its tongue with a cord?
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Can you put a rope in its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? Will it make many supplications to you or will he speak to you soft words?
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Will it cut a covenant with you? Will you take it for a slave forever? Will you play with it as with a bird or will you bind it for your young women?
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Will the traders bargain over it? Will they divide it among the merchants? Can you fill its skin with harpoons or its head with fishing spears?
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Place your hand on it. Remember the battle. You will not do it again. Behold, his expectation is a lie.
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Will he be laid low even at the sight of it? No one is so fierce that dares to arouse it.
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Who then is he that can stand before me? Who has given to me that I should repay him?
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Whatever is under heaven, the whole, whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.
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I will not keep silence concerning its limbs or its mighty strength or its graceful frame.
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Who can strip off its outer armor? Who can come with its double bridle?
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Who can open the doors of its face? Around its teeth there is dreadful terror.
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Its strong scales are its pride. Shut up, as with a tight steel. No one is so near to another that no air can come between them.
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They cling to one another. They are interlocked and cannot be separated. Its sneezes flash forth light, and its eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.
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Out of its mouth go burning torches. Sparks of fire leap forth. Out of its nostrils smoke goes forth, as from a boiling pot and burning reeds.
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Its breath kindles coals, and a flame goes forth from its mouth. In its neck lodges strength, and dismay leaps before it.
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So God here describes a big scaly creature that breathes fire and is something fierce that no one wants to even hunt.
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He says, can your spear pierce its armor?
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But he talks about its limbs and its teeth.
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It sounds a lot like a dragon or a dinosaur. So the word dinosaur didn't come about until the mid -1800s.
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So before that time, many people used the word dragon. And even older Bible translations use that word and sea monsters and words like that.
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But in this passage, we have a vivid description of two creatures that could only be dinosaurs.
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And God describes them as if Job has seen them for himself after the flood. The word dinosaur didn't come about until the mid -1800s.
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And before that, they were often called dragons. Consider the Chinese calendar. All the animals there are real.
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But we think that the dragon is the only fantasy creature that is in that calendar. Or was it a real animal that eventually made its way into mythology?
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So like, check out this drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. How was he able to draw that with no storybooks or movies?
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Drawn amongst a bunch of real creatures. So why is that the only made up one in that series?
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And how did he know? Like, did he see Jurassic Park? I don't think so.
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Here's a carving of dinosaurs in a church in the Republic of Georgia.
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That's not Georgia in America for anyone who doesn't know geography. And here's a carving of a stegosaurus in a temple in Angkor, Cambodia.
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Again, how would they have known what that looks like? Look how detailed that is. Even from if they found fossils or something.
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These are like, look at that. How would he have known what its skin looked like and stuff like that?
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But these are all different cultures all around the world that have very consistent drawings of dinosaurs.
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Here's an early Mesopotamian cylinder seal. And there's the seal rolled out in the background there.
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It looks like two sauropod dinosaurs. And here's engravings that are very similar to that on Bishop Bell's tomb in Carlisle Cathedral, United Kingdom.
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So the previous one that looked a lot like that was from Mesopotamia.
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This one's in the UK. And then here's sea monsters depicted in a 4th century mosaic at Lydney, Gloucestershire, England.
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How do all these look so similar to fossils we find and to artwork of culture in different parts of the world?
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And we just think that they were just coming up with this purely from imagination and purely coincidence that they looked like that.
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Look the same as people on the other side of the world with the same drawing. And this doesn't even touch on legends from all sorts of societies involving dragons like George and the
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Dragon, Beowulf. And now these could be like fictional stories, but they could have been based on reality.
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Like if a dinosaur was living near you in the
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Middle Ages and eating your livestock, maybe the men of the village would go and hunt those things, right?
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It's not that wild of an idea. So where are the dinosaurs now?
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Likely extinct. Not from an asteroid or something like that, but species go extinct all the time from various causes.
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Environmental changes, food supply changes, hunting. Like there was an ice age right after the flood.
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Like a great many of them would have died probably during that. So it made them a lot rarer, obviously.
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And food supply changes, people hunting them, especially if they're a threat to their livelihood.
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We have many legends of man hunting down dragons. And when they get too close to our homes, it's not that wild of an idea.
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We do that with many predators or people have in the past. So they were likely alive in the last few centuries, but not likely anymore.
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So this is the final lesson in this series. And this has just been the tip of the iceberg, how deep you can go on these topics.
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That you can dive into these topics a lot more and get very technical. We have a great episode of our show available for free on creation .com,
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featuring yours truly, on every question you would ever have about the feasibility of Noah's Ark based on that book
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I was talking about earlier. There are over 10 ,000 articles available for free on creation .com.
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It's a great resource if you have questions about anything concerning Genesis, the age of the earth, and how that all works with what modern science is saying.
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All this information and Bible affirming evidence is great, but we need to start with the
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Bible. All this questioning of the biblical narrative comes from people having authorities higher than the
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Bible. Believe the Bible and trust God who cannot lie, that whatever science says or whatever the world says is false if it contradicts scripture, even if you don't have an answer why.
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There are answers, but we need to get back to the biblical authority where Christ is king over our minds and over all our beliefs, where all our beliefs are subservient to him, no matter how dumb we may look to others or how academia may mock us.
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But we are trying to please, we are not trying to please them, we are trying to please God.
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So I guess we have a couple minutes for if anyone had any questions about that.
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Seven clean animals? Well, for starters, Noah offered a sacrifice right after he got off of the ark.
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It also says, like with the birds, it says, so that they may not perish from the face of the earth.
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So, you know, one question people have is like, well, wouldn't have predators immediately eaten the pair of, you know, like herbivores right after they got off the ark?
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But there's even like some, like if you read the part where Noah gets off the ark, it says send them out by their families.
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So there could have been like a delay between sending out the herbivores and the predators. I mean, we don't know, but, you know, that's definitely possible.
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And then let them get a head start. No, the
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LSB, I don't know if it says it here, but... My LSB? Yeah.
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The behemoth, it says it could have been a hippopotamus and then... Does it say that?
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It said that in the LSB. Really? Well, I mean, people have said an elephant as well, but it's like, does that sound like it has a tail like a cedar?
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Sounds more like a twig. And I mean, the description of Leviathan, especially, like is so detailed.
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It's like, OK, yeah, I mean, crocodiles are very similar to dinosaurs to begin with, but also like there's like talk about like, you know, breathing fire, like that's not something that, you know,
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Crocodiles do. Mine doesn't have that, but no.
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Again, especially that one line, like the, yeah, like a cedar, like cedars are big trees.
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But also like, I mean, when you think of some of this other description, like of, you know, its power is in its loins and its vigor in the muscles of its belly.
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I mean, you think that sounds like a hippopotamus? But again, like there's,
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I mean, there's even other places in scripture, like Moses talks about sea monsters and stuff like it's, and like we see that in our modern world, like it just showed a bunch of, like dinosaurs live with people and there's no other way around that in scripture, right?