This is the final part containing my brief responses to 14 "biblical and scientific" items on a list, sent to me some years ago from a "progressive creationist", called: "Why the Genesis Flood Cannot Be Global". This essentially evolutionary model of origins teaches that the flood of Noah's day was just a local event. His reasons are neither scientific nor biblical. Here is part 5 of my
brief responses:
12. PLANET EARTH CANNOT POSSIBLY SUPPORT AT ONE TIME THE HALF BILLION PLUS DIFFERENT SPECIES INDICATED IN THE FOSSIL RECORD.
The current, post-flood Earth might not be able to support this number of species, though that’s hard to verify. But, the perfect, pre-flood Earth, from which most fossils come, could easily have done so. Remember, too, that there was probably much more dry land surface prior to the flood.
It is also interesting to note that many paleontologists assert that the fossil record indicates no such number of species. They claim that many scientists simply add numbers of intermediate creatures (as yet, undiscovered) to fill in the gaps between the various types of creatures that are there. It’s a way of explaining away the sudden appearance of many species in the fossil record. This, of course,
grossly exaggerates the number that are really there.
13. A SINGLE GLOBAL FLOOD CANNOT POSSIBLY EXPLAIN THE EARTH’S ENORMOUS HYDROCARBON RESERVES.
I submit that the Earth’s enormous hydrocarbon reserves can only be explained by a global catastrophic flood. Any reasonable creation model will consider the Biblical flood event to be enormously destructive in order to be carried out by God the way He said it was. This would include the uprooting of countless trees and various other biological organisms and their burial in huge amounts of
sediment. Remember that there was probably more land mass before the flood and hence, more vegetation (and possibly larger, too). On a global scale, these would become the source for “enormous hydrocarbon deposits”.
14. THE MILLION PLUS ANIMAL SPECIES ON EARTH TODAY CANNOT EVOLVE IN JUST A FEW THOUSAND YEARS FROM THE 30,000 MAXIMUM SPECIES THE ARK COULD HAVE CARRIED.
Here he is confusing “kinds” that were on the ark vs. “species” that we have today. The ark carried a male and female of each original “kind” of bird, animal, etc. (and seven of each of the clean ones). The many “species” of each “kind” that we have today could easily be explained by genetic variation over time (for example, consider Dr. Frank Marsh’s observation: “The diversity in form and temperament to be
found among strains of pigeons would stagger our belief in their common origin if we did not know that they have all been developed from the wild rock pigeon of European coasts, Columbia livia”).
This genetic variation is sometimes called “horizontal” or “micro-evolution” and can occur very rapidly. This is what caused the minor changes in the finches that Darwin observed. People keep coming up with new varieties of dogs through the process of selective breeding - again, minor genetic changes within a kind. Darwinian evolution requires a change from one kind to another -
something never observed, nor is there any record in the fossils of any such transitions. Genetic variances within a kind are easily possible and quite well understood. Therefore - yes, the animals on the ark (two of each kind) could therefore easily produce, in the four to five thousand years or so since the flood, the huge variety of animal life that we see all over the world today.
