Other Problems With the Flood

Alan Feuerbacher

If the oceans were always shallow, why does there exist life specifically designed to live at extreme depths?

The present distribution of animals cannot be explained in the context of the Flood except by another miracle. For example, why are marsupials so common in Australia compared to the rest of the world? Why is this also true of the fossil animals of Australia?

If the animals were dispersed from the "mountains of Ararat" after the Flood, how could they have differentiated into so many different forms, in just four thousand years? The biochemist J.B.S. Haldane once remarked that God must have an inordinate fondness for beetles to have created 250,000 species. Do you think Noah took that many beetle species on board the ark?

If the present oceans are the remnants of the Flood, then most fresh water life would have died, as it cannot endure even brief immersion in sea water. On the other hand, if the Flood were mostly an influx of fresh water, as would be the case if the floodwaters came from a great vapor expanse suspended above the earth, then most sea life would have died, as it cannot endure immersion in fresh water. Corals in particular do not tolerate low salinity.²⁴¹ The fact that some species of fish, such as salmon, live part of their lives in fresh water, and part in salt, means nothing as regards other sea life, including plants. If the Flood were mostly an influx of fresh water, and the influx had the volume implied by the Society, the previous ocean water must have been far saltier than today. How could sea life have survived the radically changed conditions? Also, the fossil record shows no extinction of sea or fresh water life during the past 10,000 years. One would expect a major extinction of either salt or fresh water varieties.

If hothouse conditions existed prior to the Flood, why is it that many animals are specifically designed to live in extreme cold? Polar bears have structures called heat exchangers in their circulatory systems to help them deal with cold. These do not exist in other bear species. Antarctic fish contain sophisticated antifreeze chemicals. Many insects are genetically programmed to manufacture antifreeze chemicals at the start of the cold season.

A large number of cave paintings have been found all over Europe. These paintings often depict extinct animals, such as mammoths, that clearly must have existed shortly before the Flood. If there really had been all the crustal shiftings, mountain building, and other upheavals the Society claims happened during or shortly after the Flood, then how could all the cave paintings have survived? They are often found in the same mountainous regions the Society claims were uplifted after the Flood. These regions contain individual mountains more than 14,000 feet high. If these mountains came through the Flood intact, the Flood had to cover them. Then where did the water go, since there is only enough water to flood the earth to 8000 feet today?

Footnote

²⁴¹ Thomas F. Goreau, "Corals and Coral Reefs," Scientific American, p. 124, New York, August, 1979.