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#1786

The Flood is Not a Fairy Tale

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The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

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2

After 2 votes and with 2 points ahead, the winner is...

David
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1485
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Round 1
Pro
#1
Thank you Virtuoso for accepting this debate.

There are many reasons why the Global Flood, described in Genesis, can be shown to have been a true historical event.

1. Flood Legends
There are somewhere between 300 to 500 Flood legends worldwide. Some of these include Hawaiian, Tanzanian, Chinese, Nordic, Aztec, Greek, Babylonian and many other civilizations had global flood legends. If evolution is true then why all these global flood legends? More interestingly, why are there civilizations that live in deserts or up in mountains that have these global flood legends?

2. Fossilized Animals

Special conditions are required to fossilize in the first place. It takes rapid burial so that the animal is preserved otherwise it will rot or be eaten by scavengers. This rapidity is seen with evidence of fossilized animals shown to be eating or giving birth.


3. Fossilized Trees

Trees have been found either upright or upside down through several layers that according to evolution represent millions of years.

4. Rock Layers

These have been found to have been deposited at the same time. These layers, however, are not just local, but worldwide. One example is the Tapeats Sandstone that is the basement rock of the Grand Canyon. It is also found in Wisconsin, Israel and Libya.

5. Multiple Flat Layers in the Grand Canyon

The Coconino Sandstone is right on top of the Hermit Formation without any indication of a layer separating them as would happen if five million years took place between them (as evolution suggests). No, these layers had to be laid out rapidly in a short time.

6. Bent Rock Layers

Obviously these bent rocks that do not show any signs of being broken had to be laid and bent before the layer could dry out.

These are some evidences for the Flood. If Con has other things he would like to add (like animals on the ark or the question about oxygen) I would be glad to have those added to the debate.

Con
#2
I want to begin by welcoming you to the site. I hope that you enjoy this debate and stick around for more! My opening case will be quite lengthy and will be attacked from multiple angles.

I. Definitions

Let’s begin by defining our terms. I will define “fairy tale” as a mythical story. In order for Pro to win this debate, he needs to show that the Biblical flood was global and happened less than 4,000 years ago. In order for me to win this debate, I have to show that the Biblical flood did not happen.

II. Feasibility of the Ark

The Bible describes the Ark as being 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high, and 3 floors (Gen 6:15). In modern calculations, that’s about 510 feet long, or about a football field and a half. Additionally, Noah was to take in 2 kinds of unclean animal and 7 kinds of clean animals. Finally, Noah and his cargo would be on the ark for about a full year (most commentators say 370 days. To be generous, I will calculate 340 days). With that in mind, let’s make some basic calculations.

A. Storage required for food

To illustrate how much storage for food would be required, let’s just take a look at the elephant. According to the National Elephant Center, elephants eat between 200-600 pounds of food a day [1]. So with 2 elephants eating 200 pounds of food per day that is equal to 400 pounds of food each day for the elephants. That’s 136,000 pounds of food for just two elephants for a 340-day journey. Where and how is Noah storing all that food?

B. Storage required for water

Answers in Genesis estimates that there were about 7,000 animals on the ark [2]. Let’s assume that each animal was given 1 gallon of water per day. This means that Noah would use up 7,000 pounds of water per day, or 2,380,000 gallons of water for the 340-day journey. One gallon of water weighs about 8-pounds [3], so if we multiply 2,380,000 by 8, Noah would need to find room for 19,040,000 pound of water.
It seems that this story is quite unfeasible, but it gets worse.

III. Surviving the flood

If a flood like the story of Noah actually happened, then nothing would have survived. Indeed, the Bible makes it clear that any creature that was not on the ark perished (Gen 7:23). This posts huge problems.

A. Marine survival  

Where was Noah storing all those marine animals? Remember, anything that was NOT on the ark died, so this would include marine species. Moreover, how did fresh water animals survive in the salt water? If that’s not bad enough, it gets worse.

Creationist organizations like Answers in Genesis maintain that the world’s continents were broken up during Noah’s flood [4]. Additionally, they argue that the Grand Canyon [5] and most of the geological features we see today were made during the Flood.

This would have created a ridiculous amount of heat and energy that would have wiped out all marine species. The National Center for Science Education calculates that such energy would have generated 3.65 octillion calories, enough to raise the temperature of the oceans to more than 2700 C! [6]

B. Functional extinction and genetics
A flood that reduced all species to 2 or 7 individuals would have left a noticeable trace in the genetic record. Whenever a population is severely reduced, it forms a genetic bottleneck. We can easily see this in species today and can even calculate roughly when this bottleneck occurred and how many individuals remained. For example, the African Cheetahs experienced a bottleneck effect roughly 10,000 years ago [7]. The Ashkenazi Jewish population also suffered a bottleneck, which is why there is a high rate of genetic disorders within the Ashkenazi Jewish community [8].

What then would have happened if a species population would have been reduced to 2 individuals? Well, for one thing, the species would effectively be extinct as it would be incredibly difficult to rebound the population when it’s reduced to such a low number. Finally, once they’re let off the ark, the predators would have gone after most of the remaining prey. Once one of the pairs were killed and eaten, there would be no way for the species to survive.
That said, let’s dig even further.  

IV. History and Archaeology

There is much historical and archaeological evidence that contradicts a global flood.

A. When did the Flood Happen?

 
When exactly did this flood happen? It depends on who you ask. This will become important later. According to Creation Ministry International, the flood happened 2304 BC ± 11 years [9]. Answers in Genesis says it happened in 2348 BCE [10] and another article in Answers in Genesis says it happened in 2500 BCE [11], and finally the Institute for Creation Research says that it happened in 2472 BCE [12]. This means that the earliest and latest date is off by nearly 200 years. Let’s be generous and take the average of these dates which means the flood happened in the year 2406 BCE. This will be my starting point.
 
B. Population Rebound
 

So how did the post-flood population rebound so quickly without any hint of a global flood? According to Answers in Genesis [see source 11], the population doubled every 150 years. So, in 2406 BCE, we have 8 people, in 2256 BCE we have 16 people, and in 2106 we have a total of 32 people and so forth to the present age. This presents monumental challenges as we have archeological and recorded history dating well before those dates.

 

C. The Pyramids
 
The first pyramid of Egypt, the Step Pyramid of Djoser, is traditionally dated to about 4700 years ago [13], well before the flood was supposed to begin. How does AiG reconcile this date? In one of their articles, they say that the more “realistic” date would be 1875 BCE [14]. That’s 531 years after the flood. So, what’s the global population then? If we take AiG’s population calculation, that’s less than 48 people alive at that time frame. Obviously, something does not add up.
 
How do they reconcile this? They really don’t nor do they really even try. The closest I could come up with is David Wright’s article: “Were There Enough People to Build the Pyramids,” [15] he states “According to Archbishop James Ussher’s biblical chronology, the Tower of Babel was about 2250 BC. So that gives a window of about 150–250 years before Egypt began constructing the pyramids.” But 2250 is only 156 years after the flood. According to AiG’s calculation, that means the global population at that time would be less than 20!!
 
Wright also states: “If we assume that Mizraim left Babel with a family of eight children (four boys and four girls), and if each couple averaged eight children every thirty years (which is probably quite conservative), in 150 years he could easily have had nearly 30,000 descendants. In 250 years, the population could explode to well over one million.”
 
This clearly contradicts AiG’s earlier estimate that the population doubles every 150 years. Instead, Wright has to double the population every 15 years. Even still, 30,000 people is still not enough to build the pyramids. In contrast, the Milpas, CA has a population of over 70,000 people [16]. That means Milpas has a greater population than the entire world did at that time.
 
To get around this, Wright gives three possibly solutions:
 
1.     The Egyptians likely had knowledge of building pyramids from the Tower of Babel.
2.     They surely had many labor-saving technologies (cranes, hoists, etc.).
3.     The Egyptians could have hired outside help or used slave labor (as is evidenced by the time of Joseph, Genesis 37–40), or both.
 
Solution 1 is fails because as I shown, the global population would barely be 60 people. Hardly enough to build even the Tower of Babel. Solution 2 also fails because how did they get these cranes and hoists? Someone has to build them, and they have to come from somewhere. Someone also needs to cook the food, grow the food, gather the materials, and many other things that make this unlikely. Finally, solution 3 fails because the global population is only about 60.
 
D. Other historical buildings
 

The pyramids aren’t the only problem. There are dozens and dozens of building that pre-date even the flood [17], even buildings in the Americas. It’s hard to imagine these buildings being built so quickly after the flood.

V. Conclusion 

I believe I have thoroughly demonstrated that the Genesis flood myth is a fairy tale. There are far too many problems with the story that it is hard to know where to begin. I think I have done a decent job and showing from multiple angels why it could not have happened. 

 
VI.Sources



Round 2
Pro
#3
Very good points 
First I want to address that Con has not rebutted any of my above statements, so I hope he does so in the next round.

1. Storage of Food and Water
The calculation that Con has given for elephants is for the adults. However, who said that Noah took adult animals with him. Actually it would make more sense to take the young elephants for several reasons: 1. Less weight, 2. Less food and 3. Less space occupied. Another possibility is that the animals were not only young, but also hibernated or slept for the whole trip or a great part of the trip since the ark would have been warm and dark.

2. Marine Animals
I don't know what version Con is using, but Gen. 7:23 clearly states that the animals that died were land dwelling animals and humans. Obviously, many marine animals probably survived (or maybe just two of each kind as well, but can't be dogmatic), however, the fossil graveyards also show that many did not survive.

3. Genetic Bottleneck
My answer is that the two dogs, for example, did not have to be two poodles, but could have been two different races of dogs, giving way to a litter of diversity.

4. Population

Con did not read the article from Answers in Genesis carefully. They used the word "assume" before they made the statement talking about the population doubling. However, the article is only saying that if you double the population every 150 years you can get billions of people today. Now let us look at what the Bible teaches In Genesis 10 about the population following the Flood. We know that eight people got off the ark after the Flood. The Bible does tell us that the total of sons for Shem, Ham and Japheth were sixteen. Now this would be double from what came off the ark, however, the Bible doesn't mention the daughters that the sons of Noah had to have so that Noah's grandsons could marry their cousins. Definitely there had to have been at least another sixteen. So we went from eight to thirty-two people in less than one hundred years. Now the Bible also tells us about how many sons each of the grandsons of Noah had. Each grandson mentioned had between three to five sons. If we give the same number of daughters to each family we get another three to five girls. Let us say that each grandson had four sons and three daughters each. There are sixteen grandsons, multiply that by seven and you have one hundred and twelve in about over one hundred fifty years. So in about one hundred and fifty years it went from eight people to one hundred and twelve. Then that generation would have produced at least another 784 people and then they would have produced 5,488 people and by the time of the Tower of Babel there would have been at least 38,416 people. You could have a couple thousand people for every major language group on earth.

5. Pyramids
So looking at the way the Bible shows us the mass production of people after the Flood 500 years after the Flood you would have large populations. You could have about 2 million people living on earth

Con
#4
Thank you, pro. I normally reserve the first round for opening arguments and refrain from rebuttals until this round, this way we all have an equal number of rounds. I will use this round to refute my opponent's opening case and will defend my case in the next round. 

===

I. Observations

A quick observation of my opponent's arguments are that they are unsourced. Any claim without evidence are assertions. I ask that the voters keeps this in mind as my opponent doesn't really prove anything here. He makes a lot of assertions, but provides no evidence for them. 

II. Flood legends

Flood legends are popular because floods are common. A comparative mythology shows that the flood legends are unrelated and are often related to localized flooding. Moreover, a comparative mythology analogy actually refutes the notion of a global flood that happened <4,500 years ago. Talk.Origins compiled a collection of these stories. Here are a few of these myths [1]:

Toltec (Mexico):
One of the Tezcatlipocas (sons of the original dual god) transformed himself into the Sun and created the first humans to show up his brothers. The other gods, angry at his audacity, had Quetzalcoatl destroy the sun and the earth, which he did with a flood. The people became fish. This ended the first age. The second, third, and fourth Suns ended, respectively, with the crumbling of the heavens, a rain of fire, and devastating winds.

Macusi (British Guyana):
The good spirit Makunaima ("He who works in the night") created the heaven and earth. When he had created plants and trees, he came down from his heavenly mansion, climbed a tree, and chipped off bark with a large stone axe. The chips turned into animals of all kinds when they fell into the river at the base of the tree. Next, Makunaima created man, and after the man had fallen asleep, he awoke to find a woman beside him. Later the evil spirit got more power on earth, so Makunaima sent a great flood. Only one man survived in a canoe. He sent a rat to see whether the flood had abated, and the rat returned with a cob of maize. When the flood had subsided, the man threw stones behind him, which became other people.

Warm Springs (Oregon):
Twice, a great flood came. Afraid that another might come, the people made a giant canoe from a big cedar. When they saw a third flood coming, they put the bravest young men and fairest young women in the canoe, with plenty of food. Then the flood, bigger and deeper than the earlier ones, swallowed the land. It rained for many days and nights, but when the clouds finally parted for the third time, the people saw land (Mount Jefferson) and paddled to it. When the water receded, they made their home at the base of the mountain. The canoe was turned to stone and can be seen on Mount Jefferson today

So what's the most likely source of these floods? At the end of the last glacial maximum, roughly 10,000 years ago or so, ice began to break up, the sea levels rose, and significant flooding happened. Indeed, there is significant evidence of this around the Earth, such as in the Missoula Floods [2]. 

III. Fossilized animals

A lot of these fossils are easily explainable my natural means. It would be nice for my opponent to cite an example so we can analyze what the scientific literature says about it. In the journal Plos One, Ryosuke Motani et al. describe a fossil of a Chaohusaurus (Reptilia, Ichthyopterygia)  giving birth. They describe that the most likely scenario is that the animal gave birth in water, died due to a difficulty in labor, and was subsequently buried [3]. This is a far more plausible scenario than a catastrophic global flood. 

IV. Fossilized Trees

The cause of polystrate trees has been known for over 140 years. Here's a 100+-year-old textbook that explains how they are formed [4]:

“It is evident that when we find a bed of clay now hardened into stone and containing the roots and rootlets of these plants in their natural position, we can infer, 1st, that such beds must once have been in a very soft condition; 2dly, that the roots found in them were not drifted, but grew in their present positions; in short, that these ancient roots are in similar circumstances with those of the recent trees that underlie the Amherst marshes. In corroboration of this, we shall find, in farther examination of this [stratigraphic] section, that while some of these fossil soils support coals, other support erect trunks of trees connected with their roots and still in their natural position.
V. Rock Layers

Can you elaborate on this point? I fail to see how the Tapeats Sandstone is evidence of a global flood.

VI. Multiple Flat Layers in the Grand Canyon

The Coconino Sandstone is probably the most powerful case against the Global Flood. Steve Newton from The National Center for Science Education notes [5]:

Some creationists look at the thick layers of sediments in Grand Canyon and declare that within those precipitous cliffs is conclusive proof that the Flood of Noah was a historical event. They point to the flat-lying strata and declare that here, at last, is physical evidence of vast inundation. And on a very superficial level, these rock layers might seem to give them some comfort; many of the rock layers found in Grand Canyon were indeed deposited in shallow marine waters. But on closer inspection, there’s nothing extraordinary about that because most sedimentary layers form in water. In fact, when rocks are lifted above sea level by plate tectonics, they tend to break down and crumble rather than accumulate.

But of all the persistent problems that plague the creationist model of the Flood, one problem in particular stands out as a fatal flaw for the idea of a universal Flood: the Coconino Sandstone.

The Coconino Sandstone is a buff-colored unit first encountered just a few miles down river from the Lee’s Ferry launching point. The Coconino is known for having striking diagonal features, called cross-beds, which you can see in the picture above. These cross-beds formed, according to standard geologic interpretations, as wind pushed sand up desert dunes, piling the particles higher and higher until an avalanche of warm sand spilled down the steep face. When you think of how the Coconino formed, think of an endless ocean of tan sand, punctuated by migrating dunes. The National Park Service describes it this way:

The Grand Canyon region would have looked much like the Sahara desert in northern Africa does today.
One of the classic signatures of sands in a desert environment is the “frosting” of grains, which happens in eolian (wind-blown) conditions. As wind blows dry sand grains up dunes, the blown grains smash together in uncountable tiny collisions. When viewed with a scanning electron microscope, such grains have pitted surfaces resembling frosted glass. Another feature of a desert environment is the large-scale cross-bedding (see picture above and huge cross-beds in Zion below). A third feature is the fossilized trackways of terrestrial animals.

Does the Coconino have frosted grains? Check. Cross-bed structures? You bet. Fossilized trackways? Yep. Everything seems to fit with the standard eolian interpretation. And here is the crux of the problem for creationists: this evidence means the Coconino formed on dry land in the middle of what should have been the year of the Flood.
So the Coconino Sandstone was made on dry land in the middle of a flood. This, my friends, is the ultimate blow out punch to Noah's flood. 

VII. Bent rock layers

Rock folding and bent layer are easily explained through plate tectonics. The National Park Service notes [6]:

Folding- Folding occurs when tectonic processes put stress on a rock, and the rock bends, instead of breaking. This can create a variety of landforms as the surfaces of the folded rocks are eroded.

Anticlines are folds shaped like an arch, and synclines are shaped like the letter 'U.' 

Geologists recognize these formations by what is visible at the surface. Look at the diagram of the syncline and notice how the surface shows a symmetrical pattern with the youngest rock in the middle and older rocks appearing on either side. Notice that the opposite is true of the anticline.
Even Wikipedia notes [7]:

In structural geology, a fold occurs when one or a stack of originally flat and planar surfaces, such as sedimentary strata, are bent or curved as a result of permanent deformationSynsedimentary folds are those due to slumping of sedimentary material before it is lithified. Folds in rocks vary in size from microscopic crinkles to mountain-sized folds. They occur as single isolated folds or in sets (known as fold trains).

Folds form under varied conditions of stress, hydrostatic pressure, pore pressure, and temperature gradient, as evidenced by their presence in soft sediments, the full spectrum of metamorphic rocks, and even as primary flow structures in some igneous rocks. A set of folds distributed on a regional scale constitutes a fold belt, a common feature of orogenic zones. Folds are commonly formed by shortening of existing layers, but may also be formed as a result of displacement on a non-planar fault (fault bend fold), at the tip of a propagating fault (fault propagation fold), by differential compaction or due to the effects of a high-level igneous intrusion e.g. above a laccolith.
 

So again, rock folds do not prove a global flood. 

I'll defend my arguments in the next round. Good luck! 

VIII. Sources
3. Motani R, Jiang D-y, Tintori A, Rieppel O, Chen G-b (2014) Terrestrial Origin of Viviparity in Mesozoic Marine Reptiles Indicated by Early Triassic Embryonic Fossils. PLoS ONE 9(2): e88640. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088640
4. Carruthers, W. (1868). II.—Acadian Geology.—The Geological Structure, Organic Remains, and Mineral Resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. By John William Dawson. For more information, see these sources: https://www.proof-of-evolution.com/polystrate-fossils.html and http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html  
Round 3
Pro
#5
In the first round I was only laying the foundation for the debate. I will keep in mind the use of sources at the beginning of debates.

I would like to explain my reason for not using sources in the second round for my 1st and 3rd points. I did not use it because, as Con says, I am assuming these things since the Bible doesn't really explain it. However, Con can not prove me wrong either with sources. So while there is no source for it, they are logical answers. For points 2 and 4 I did use a source, the Bible. My 5th point was based on point 4.

Flood Legends 1

Humanity, after the Flood, settled at Babel (Iraq). After God confused the languages humanity spread throughout all the earth in different directions taking with them their history of the world.
These civilizations lost or exaggerated some of the details of the original story of the Flood, which can be expected since they did not keep the exact record during the time of Babel when Noah and his sons were still alive. The reason the Bible has the accurate account is because God Himself told Moses the story. However, it is still expected that most, if not all, ancient civilizations retained many true facts of the Flood story in Genesis.

There are between 300 to 500 flood legends worldwide.

Let me add additional Flood legends:
Aztecs: A pious man named Tapi was told by the creator to build an boat, take his wife and a pair of every animal on his boat. The people made fun of him, but eventually the rain fell and the waters rose even covering the mountains, which the people and animals fled to. Tapi let a dove loose that didn't return and that is how he knew the land was dry. 2
Hawaii: Nu-u was the only good man left in the world, he made a canoe with a house on it and took in many animals. The water covered the whole earth.3
China: Fuhi, wife, three sons and three daughters were the only ones to survive a great flood.

We can expect flood legends in a biblical worldview, but if evolution is correct, there shouldn't be any global flood stories.

Fossilized Animals4

On the Ichthyopterygia, my question would be, If it just settled on the ocean floor, why didn't it get eaten by other fish (especially predators) or microbes which is proven to happen to all sea life. Fossilization cannot happen by a carcase just sitting around. External forces would wear the carcase away. In order for fossilization to occur there must be rapid burial. So the Ichthyopterygia could have only been buried by a flood (weather local or global). Also evidence had shown that many Ichthyopterygia have embryos still inside of them!

"For example, billions of straight-shelled, chambered nautiloids (figure 2) are found fossilized with other marine creatures in a 7 foot (2 m) thick layer within the Redwall Limestone of Grand Canyon. This fossil graveyard stretches for 180 miles (290 km) across northern Arizona and into southern Nevada, covering an area of at least 10,500 square miles (30,000 km2). These squid-like fossils are all different sizes, from small, young nautiloids to their bigger, older relatives.
To form such a vast fossil graveyard required 24 cubic miles (100 km3) of lime sand and silt, flowing in a thick, soup-like slurry at more than 16 feet (5 m) per second (more than 11 mph [18 km/h]) to catastrophically overwhelm and bury this huge, living population of nautiloids.
Consider what happens to soft-bodied creatures like jellyfish when washed up on a beach today. Because they consist only of soft “jelly,” they melt in the sun and are also destroyed by waves crashing onto the beach. Based on this reality, the discoverer of these exquisitely preserved soft-bodied marine creatures concluded that all of them had to be buried in less than a day!
Some fish were buried alive and fossilized so quickly in the geologic record that they were “caught in the act” of eating their last meal."

Fossilized Trees

Trees have been found either upright or upside down through several layers that according to evolution represent millions of years.



Rock Layers

These have been found to have been deposited at the same time. These layers, however, are not just local, but worldwide. One example is the Tapeats Sandstone that is the basement rock of the Grand Canyon. It is also found in Wisconsin, Israel and Libya.
"On every continent are found layers of sedimentary rocks over vast areas. Many of these sediment layers can be traced all the way across continents, and even between continents. Furthermore, when geologists look closely at these rocks, they find evidence that the sediments were deposited rapidly.
The Cretaceous chalk beds of southern England are well known because they appear as spectacular white cliffs along the coast. These chalk beds can be traced westward across England and appear again in Northern Ireland. In the opposite direction, these same chalk beds can be traced across France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, southern Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe to Turkey, then to Israel and Egypt in the Middle East, and even as far as Kazakhstan.
Remarkably, the same chalk beds with the same fossils and the same distinctive strata above and below them are also found in the Midwest USA, from Nebraska in the north to Texas in the south. They also appear in the Perth Basin of Western Australia.
Sediment layers that spread across vast continents are evidence that water covered the continents in the past. Even more dramatic are the fossil-bearing sediment layers that were deposited rapidly right across many or most of the continents at the same time. To catastrophically deposit such extensive sediment layers implies global flooding of the continents.".

Multiple Flat Layers in the Grand Canyon

According to Dr. Andrew A. Snelling:

"When the Flood waters swept over the continents and rapidly deposited sediment layers across vast areas, these sediments had to have been transported long distances. In other words, the sediments in the strata had to come from distant sources. And that’s exactly the evidence we find.
For example, in the previous issue we discussed the Coconino Sandstone, seen spectacularly in the walls of the Grand Canyon. It has an average thickness of 315 feet (96 m), covers an area of at least 200,000 square miles (518,000 km2), and thus contains at least 10,000 cubic miles (41,700 km3) of sand. Where did this sand come from, and how do we know?
The sand grains are pure quartz (a natural glass mineral), which is why the Coconino Sandstone is such a distinctive buff color. Directly underneath it is the strikingly different red-brown Hermit Formation, consisting of siltstone and shale. Sand for the Coconino Sandstone could not have come from the underlying Hermit Formation.
The sloping remnants of sand “waves” in the Coconino Sandstone point to the south, indicating the water that deposited the sand flowed from the north. Another clue is that the Coconino Sandstone thins to zero to the north in Utah, but the Hermit Formation spreads farther into Utah and beyond. So the Coconino’s pure quartz sand had to come from a source even farther north, above and beyond the red-brown Hermit.
Grand Canyon has another set of layers with sand that must have come from far away—the sandstone beds within the Supai Group strata between the Hermit Formation and the Redwall Limestone. In this case, the sand “wave” remnants point to the southeast, so the sand grains had to have been deposited by water flowing from a source in the north and west. However, to the north and west of Grand Canyon we find only Redwall Limestone underneath the Supai Group, so there is no nearby source of quartz sand for these sandstone beds. Thus an incredibly long distance must be postulated for the source of Supai Group sand grains."7

Bent rock layers

Con and his sources say that rock bends when pressure is placed on it by moving plates. However, rock breaks, it doesn't bend. Evolution may say that is takes millions of years to get bent rock layers, however, science shows otherwise.

"When solid, hard rock is bent (or folded) it invariably fractures and breaks because it is brittle. Rock will bend only if it is still soft and pliable—“plastic” like modeling clay or children’s Playdough. If such modeling clay is allowed to dry out, it is no longer pliable but hard and brittle, so any attempt to bend it will cause it to break and shatter.
When water deposits sediments in a layer, some water is left behind, trapped between the sediment grains. Clay particles may also be among the sediment grains. As other sedimentary layers are laid on top of the deposits, the pressure squeezes the sedimentary particles closer together and forces out much of the water. The earth’s internal heat may also remove water from the sediment. As the sediment layer dries out, the chemicals that were in the water and between the clay particles convert into a natural cement. This cement transforms the originally soft and wet sediment layer into a hard, brittle rock layer.
This process, known technically as diagenesis, can be exceedingly rapid. It is known to occur within hours but generally takes days or months, depending on the prevailing conditions. It doesn’t take millions of years, even under today’s slow-and-gradual geologic conditions. 
The 4,500-foot sequence of sedimentary layers in the walls of the Grand Canyon stands well above today’s sea level. Earth movements in the past pushed up this sedimentary sequence to form the Kaibab Plateau. However, the eastern portion of the sequence (in the eastern Grand Canyon and Marble Canyon areas in northern Arizona) was not pushed up as much and is about 2,500 feet (762 m) lower than the height of the Kaibab Plateau. The boundary between the Kaibab Plateau and the less uplifted eastern canyons is marked by a large step-like fold, called the East Kaibab Monocline.
It’s possible to see these folded sedimentary layers in several side canyons. For example, the folded Tapeats Sandstone can be seen in Carbon Canyon. Notice that these sandstone layers were bent 90° (a right angle), yet the rock was not fractured or broken at the hinge of the fold. Similarly, the folded Muav and Redwall Limestone layers can be seen along nearby Kwagunt Creek. The folding of these limestones did not cause them to fracture and break, either, as would be expected with ancient brittle rocks. The obvious conclusion is that these sandstone and limestone layers were all folded and bent while the sediments were still soft and pliable, very soon after they were deposited.
Herein lies an insurmountable dilemma for uniformitarian geologists. They maintain that the Tapeats Sandstone and Muav Limestone were deposited 500–520 million years ago; the Redwall Limestone, 330–340 million years ago; then the Kaibab Limestone at the top of the sequence (Figure 2), 260 million years ago. Lastly, the Kaibab Plateau was uplifted (about 60 million years ago), causing the folding. That’s a time span of about 440 million years between the first deposit and the folding. How could the Tapeats Sandstone and Muav Limestone still be soft and pliable, as though they had just been deposited? Wouldn’t they fracture and shatter if folded 440 million years after deposition?
The conventional explanation is that under the pressure and heat of burial, the hardened sandstone and limestone layers were bent so slowly they behaved as though they were plastic and thus did not break. However, pressure and heat would have caused detectable changes in the minerals of these rocks, tell-tale signs of metamorphism. But such metamorphic minerals or recrystallization due to such plastic behavior is not observed in these rocks. The sandstone and limestone in the folds are identical to sedimentary layers elsewhere.
The only logical conclusion is that the 440-million-year delay between deposition and folding never happened! Instead, the Tapeats-Kaibab strata sequence was laid down in rapid succession early during the year of the global cataclysmic Genesis Flood, followed by uplift of the Kaibab Plateau within the last months of the Flood. This alone explains the folding of the whole strata sequence without appreciable fracturing."8

I will defend arguments in the next round.

1. A Flood of Evidence by Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge
Con
#6
Thank you, Pro. I apologize for delaying my response. I will now defend my opening statements.

====

I. Storage of food and water

The Bible clearly states that Noah brought mature animals with him on the ark. Look carefully at the command from God in Genesis 7:1-8 (NRSV):

Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; 3 and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth. 4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” 5 And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.


It is clear that these animals are sexually mature as they have a mate with them. But it gets worse for Pro. Many animals cannot survive without their parents and many animals, like dogs, elephants, lions, apes, chimps, gorillas, and monkeys are social creatures that need a larger community to survive. Finally, my opponent clearly hasn't. done any of the mathematical calculations that I did in my opening response. If he did, he would clearly see the problems. In my opening round, I argued:

To illustrate how much storage for food would be required, let’s just take a look at the elephant. According to the National Elephant Center, elephants eat between 200-600 pounds of food a day [1]. So with 2 elephants eating 200 pounds of food per day that is equal to 400 pounds of food each day for the elephants. That’s 136,000 pounds of food for just two elephants for a 340-day journey. Where and how is Noah storing all that food. 

I'm going to be generous and bring this down to only 25 pounds of food per elephant (so 50 pounds per day). For the 370-day journey that the Bible story demands, we are looking at 18,500 pounds of food just for the elephants. Again, where and how is Noah storing all this? You completely drop the meat (pun intended) of my argument. 

What about water? Again, this is the calculation I did:

Answers in Genesis estimates that there were about 7,000 animals on the ark [2]. Let’s assume that each animal was given 1 gallon of water per day. This means that Noah would use up 7,000 pounds of water per day, or 2,380,000 gallons of water for the 340-day journey. One gallon of water weighs about 8-pounds [3], so if we multiply 2,380,000 by 8, Noah would need to find room for 19,040,000 pounds of water.
This point is completely dropped. Where's Noah storing all this water? Let's give every animal a half-gallon of water each day, so one gallon for each of the 7,000 "kinds" of animals. This translates into 7,000 gallons of water each day or 2.5 million gallons of water for the 370-day journey. 

The math doesn't add up. 

II. Surviving the flood

Once again, my opponent ignores the crux of my argument. How did the marine animals survive the change in the water's salinity? How did the marine species survive the breaking of the continents and the incredible amount of heat (3.65 octillion calories) that would generate? None of this is answered. How did this flood affect only the land animals and not marine animals? Again, all of this is dropped. 

III. Genetic Bottleneck

My opponent drops this as well. I have no idea what you're talking about. What do poodles have to do with my argument? Again, let's look at what I actually said: 

A flood that reduced all species to 2 or 7 individuals would have left a noticeable trace in the genetic record. Whenever a population is severely reduced, it forms a genetic bottleneck. We can easily see this in species today and can even calculate roughly when this bottleneck occurred and how many individuals remained. For example, the African Cheetahs experienced a bottleneck effect roughly 10,000 years ago [7]. The Ashkenazi Jewish population also suffered a bottleneck, which is why there is a high rate of genetic disorders within the Ashkenazi Jewish community [8].

What then would have happened if a species population would have been reduced to 2 individuals? Well, for one thing, the species would effectively be extinct as it would be incredibly difficult to rebound the population when it’s reduced to such a low number. Finally, once they’re let off the ark, the predators would have gone after most of the remaining prey. Once one of the pairs were killed and eaten, there would be no way for the species to survive.
So where is the bottleneck? Why aren't all animals and humans severely inbred like the cheetahs and Ashkenazi Jews are? 

IV. Populations 

I apologize, but I do not understand your huge wall of text and your word salad. Can you try again? 

V. Structures

My opponent has once again failed to address the major point. Both the pyramids AND numerous other structures that I mentioned were built long before the flood. How do these structures survive? 

VI. Conclusion

My opponent drops almost all of the critical parts of my arguments. I urge a vote for Con. 
Round 4
Pro
#7
Storage of food and water

     I see that Con is being selective with the Bible he uses. I personally use the King James Version, but besides that, if Con looks at most Bible versions he will find that instead of saying " the male and its mate" he will find that they say, "the male and its his female." So the animals don't have to be sexually active in order to be on the ark. Even if you want to include "its mate" still doesn't mean they were able to produce at that moment. Dogs can begin mating when they are 6 months old and are not yet fully grown.1 Elephants can begin to mate between 8 and 13 years old.2 At eight they still haven't reached their full growth.3 Con says that dogs cannot survive without their parents, but I challenge him on that because I have had several dogs throughout my life and I got them, individually, each time at less than a year old, yet they were fine and during their entire life were the only animal in the house. Con needs to provide evidence that these animals cannot survive without other family members. 

    As for eating, well now the elephants will eat considerably less if they are 8 years old. Now as far as space for the food, because kinds is based at the family level that means there would have been around 16,000 animals on an ark that is between 450-510 ft. long, 75-85 ft. wide and 45 to 51 ft. high so only 47% would have been used for the animals.4 That leaves another 53% of the arc to occupy. In John Woodmorappe's Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study on reads that the food could have filled between 6-12% of the ark. Also there are many kinds of animals that could have hibernated which eliminates a lot of food space.

     Water isn't a problem if you think that Noah would have used his brain for these kinds of dilemmas as any man would. Noah could have used the rain water that collected on the roof of the ark by using a drainage system that could have run to large cisterns collecting it all. After it rained for those forty days and forty nights it doesn't say that is ceased to rain for the rest of the year. You can imagine with all that water covering the entire earth there would still be a cycle of precipitation. Also. during the forty days and nights, most of the rain that fell down from the sky, wasn't from the clouds, but from the ground. Genesis says that the "fountains of the deep broke out" causing the most destruction of water. So after the forty days and nights the underground water ceased to come out of the ground, but preipitation would have kept cycling causing there to be a regular amount of rain after the forty days and nights.5

     On salinity:

"Most saltwater fish cannot live in freshwater, and most freshwater fish cannot live in saltwater. So how could both have survived the Flood? To begin with, the intolerances are not symmetrical in nature. Most ocean fish can survive considerable reductions in the salinity of water, even though they cannot go all the way to the near-zero salinity of fresh water. In contrast, most freshwater life is intolerant of more than a slight elevation of salt levels in the water.
There is a range of brackish water (about 5–10 percent the salinity of current ocean water) that would be tolerated by nearly all ocean fish as well as a significant fraction of freshwater fish. What about those organisms that cannot tolerate this? Variations in salinity according to geographic area, and the probable stratification of denser, saltier water, would have created pockets of considerable salinity and other pockets that approached freshwater qualities. Sensitive organisms could survive there.
Finally, it should be noted that organisms that are extremely intolerant of either salinity or reductions in salinity vary from species to species. The narrow range that they tolerate probably arose since the Flood by the mechanisms of natural selection of some of the great genetic variability built into the original created kinds (and still observable today) and in some cases through mutations also. In fact, there is evidence from selective breeding that tolerance or intolerance to salinity can be markedly changed in a matter of generations."6

     As for the waters heating up I am still looking for a response.

Functional extinction and genetics

"Critics point to the fact that, when a single pair of animals is released, it usually does not lead to a lasting population. But this ignores the fact that, under modern conditions, the released pair must compete against pre-existing animals, causing it to usually lose out. In contrast, the ark-released animals were introduced to an environment free of competitors. Experience has shown that single-pair introductions usually do lead to lasting populations when there are few or no competitors. One must also keep in mind that nowhere in the Bible does it claim that all animals that were released from the ark gave rise to lasting populations. There have been and continue to be extinctions, often caused by man.
Critics have also argued that single pairs are not sufficient to be able to transmit the genetic variability of the parent, pre-Flood population. This is a half-truth. In most traits, a single pair contains the most-commonly occurring gene forms (that is, alleles) that occur in the population at large. The rare alleles, which a single pair will seldom have, are usually uncommon in the population and of little or no relevance to its survivorship or fitness. Mutations in the post-Flood world could have created a new set of rarely occurring alleles.
Consider, for example, the human blood types. The relevant possibilities are: A-only, B-only, both A and B (that is, blood type AB), and neither A nor B (that is, blood type O). There are also rare blood types, but these, again, are just that—rare, and of little relevance to human survival. They are one-step mutational derivatives of the common blood types. A single pair of individuals would very likely have the A and B alleles represented within it. Rare blood types would be re-established by mutations of the common alleles after the Flood, and would probably not be the same as their pre-Flood counterparts."7

Populations 

     Con did not read the article from Answers in Genesis carefully. They used the word "assume" before they made the statement talking about the population doubling. However, the article is only saying that if you double the population every 150 years you can get billions of people today.
     Now let us look at what the Bible teaches In Genesis 10 about the population following the Flood. We know that eight people got off the ark after the Flood. The Bible does tell us that the total of sons for Shem, Ham and Japheth were sixteen. Now this would be double from what came off the ark, however, the Bible doesn't mention the daughters that the sons of Noah had to have so that Noah's grandsons could marry their cousins. Definitely there had to have been at least another sixteen. So we went from eight to thirty-two people in less than one hundred years. Now the Bible also tells us about how many sons each of the grandsons of Noah had. Each grandson mentioned had between three to five sons. If we give the same number of daughters to each family we get another three to five girls. Let us say that each grandson had four sons and three daughters each. There are sixteen grandsons, multiply that by seven and you have one hundred and twelve in about over one hundred fifty years. So in about one hundred and fifty years it went from eight people to one hundred and twelve. Then that generation would have produced at least another 784 people and then they would have produced 5,488 people and by the time of the Tower of Babel there would have been at least 38,416 people. You could have a couple thousand people for every major language group on earth.
     The clue for what I am talking about is in Genesis 10. I suggest you read it to be able to understand what I am talking about.

Structures

How do you know that these structures are that old?

7. ibd.
Con
#8
I want to thank my opponent for his response. I am sadly going to have to keep this round brief. 

I. Drops

My opponent has still dropped the point that pyramids and other historical buildings pre-date the mythical Flood. Thus, the Flood could not have happened. This point alone should suffice in order to vote Con.

II. Food and shortage of water

My opponent gripes about the translation of the text. First off, stating "male and his female" is essentially the same thing as saying "male and his mate." Basically, they're interconnected. The Hebrew is clear that the animals are a pair. Next, my opponent straw mans my argument relating to the fact that animals often depend on their parents for long periods of time and spend time in groups. I gave numerous examples, but the only one that he addressed are dogs, so consider the rest dropped. As far as dogs are concerned, I was referring to wild dogs (I know I should have been a bit clearer in the text). [1] 

Anyway I am out of time. I’m sorry. I’ll pick up in the next round. 


Sources
Round 5
Pro
#9
Forfeited
Con
#10
vote con