Genesis Flood and the Ice age. Did the end of the ice age cause the flood?

Question

Assuming that the bible is reasonably historically accurate It would put the great flood at around 10,000 years ago. Surely this is the same time as the end of the last Ice age. Given that people living in Judea were well south of the ice, they couldn't have known of it's existance so when it melted there was a flood. My problem is that many people seem to say the the great flood caused an Ice age albeit a very short one, surely this is nonsense as the ice age lasted for 10s of thousands of years

Answer 1

Hi, Kiddo gave an excellent answer.

First of all - the bible is not historically acurate in terms of science. In fact, if you go by the biblical account of the creation of the earth - the earth should only be about 7000 years old (this number was arrived at by Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland in the 1600's after he did a thorough analysis of the Genesis story). If that is so - then the earth is too young for there to have even been an ice age at all (since the ice age ended some 10,000 years ago - long before the bible was ever written).

The fact of the matter is - in the short time that humans have been on the planet, there has never been enough water on earth to cover the entire globe in water. This is simply impossible. If the world flooded, then where did all the water go? Even if the polar ice caps completely melted, the level of Earth's oceans would only go up by about 70 meters...

Simply put - there was no Genesis flood. It is a religious myth, much like the ones told by the Greeks and Romans. These were used to explain natural phenomena at a time when humans were unable to explain them based on scientific study.

One of the first people to question the "young earth" dogma was Leonardo de Vince. He noticed that there were fossilized sea creatures (clams, etc) in the rocks of the Italian Alps. He knew that clams lived in the ocean, and also knew that they couldn't have travelled the 300 miles from the ocean shore to the Alps in a mere 40 days (the length of the Genesis flood). He also observed that the shells were in good condition (not cracked and broken) so it was unlikely that they were simply washed there by the flood - because clam shells are fragile and would have been broken appart in such a violent current. He also observed layers of barren rock between the layers of sediment that contained fossils, and he concluded that the layers of rock must have come from sediment laid at different times.

Based on all these observations, de Vince concluded that the earth must be far older than most people currently believed.

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Anyway... The idea that the melting of the large continental glaciers of the last ice age could have caused a global flood is simply not possible. What is possible, is that ancient people that lived in low laying lands saw the ocean levels going up and up, and eventually had to flee to higher ground - and they blamed this on a diety since they had no natural way of explaining the event.

There is simply not enough water on Earth to flood the globe.

EDIT:
Brave Heart, it is completely impossible that water came out of the mid-atlantic ridge - then receded back into it. Since water is much less dense than rock it would be impossible for that much water to come out of the earth and then absorb back into it. While there is a very good chance that all the water on earth was once inside the inner-earth - it has long since migrated to the surface, and the inner earth is now extremely dry. What you suggested is completely impossible.

Answer 2

No, there was no Genesis flood. The Bible is not reasonably historically accurate, as proven by the fossil record, carbon dating, and common sense...people did not live hundreds and hundreds of years back in the biblical day, lifespans were actually shorter earlier in human history. And the creation story makes no sense in light of genetic and geologic evidence suggesting ancestry.

There have, however, been a lot of ice ages throughout the approximately 5 billion year history of the earth. But they never caused great big earth soaking floods. If you want to read about a real neat great big flood, though, I recommend checking out Glacial Lake Missoula. It is totally sweet!

Answer 3

okay miss lady that answered as number one, for you information the Bible is extremly historically accurate, and look at the ridges in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where the water opened up and receeded