Join John and Gerardo for an epic episode on Noah and the worldwide flood, with Dr. Simon Southerton and renowned geologist Dr. David Montgomery, Professor of Geology at the University of Washington in Seattle.
We will discuss the probability of Noah’s flood being a factual historic event, and how the Mormon Church has dealt with this issue. Dr. Southerton will share an interesting Australian perspective on the flood.
Show Notes:
- “Dingo genome suggests Australian icon not descended from domestic dogs,” by Alice Klein, New Scientist, April 22, 2022
- From the slide presentation:
“The flood and the Tower of Babel,” by Donald W Parry, Ensign, January 1998 - “DNA and the Book of Mormon” on Mormon Stories
- The Rocks Don’t Lie by David Montgomery
- “Noah’s flood and the development of geology,” David Montgomery’s TedTalk
- William Buckland
- Ice Dam on the Clark Fork River breached 14,000 years ago, National Park Service
- Bonneville Outflow via Red Rock Pass, Idaho, 14,000 years ago, Earth Science Picture of the Day
- Missoula floods 1920s
- “The Dream Mine,” on Mormon Expression podcast
- “Noah’s Flood: Modern scholarship and the Mormon Tradition,” by Duane E Jeffery, Sunstone, January 1, 2004
- “5 answers to difficult questions about Noah and the flood,” by Stephen O. Smoot, LDS Living, January 1, 2022
- “Race and the Priesthood,” Gospel Topics Essay
- “Founder of the Book of Mormon Heartland Model,” in Part 2 Rod Meldrum discusses race on Mormon Stories
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There is another explanation that people overlook far too often- and that is that the global flood thing makes a darn good story. Yes, myths developed as links to the unseen or supernatural, or the ineffable (a la Joseph Campbell)- but I believe a great many of our “myths” started out as simply gripping narratives, invented by story tellers. Nowadays they would end up in Hollywood.
Plutarch deduced that the “myth” of Theseus and the Minotaur started out as some guy who had to spend a few nights in a Cretan hoosegow. There was a real Paul Bunyan, who was a logger above average size. In Colchis, where Jason sailed, there is gold, and people collected the gold from the streams by using a sheepskin to trap the gold particles. These are just three examples of many more. I believe that things like the flood story may have started out as somebody’s “based on a true story” screenplay. The big mystery is how such short stories became required theological dogma. Thank you.
Of courseNoahs flood is a myth and a flippin good one.
We are all to often proving time and time again that it didn’t happen as a historical event.
I agree with that!!!
Most people with two brain cells or who haven’t been polluted by religion, can see that.
So what is the value of the myth? What are the archetypes? What truths, (albeit non historical), does this story demonstrate?
“Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.” Source: Google.
Religion is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the universe with the belief that the universe was created by God(s) based on revealed evidence. Source: Me
I thought a definition of science and religion was in order. They have at least thing in common. A search for knowledge and understanding about everything.
Science has provided many benefits to humankind. I for one honor and respect the men and women who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. There have many hits and misses in science as one would expect.
Religion has provided many benefits to humankind. Many people have found religion has made a huge difference in their lives. There have been many hits in misses in religion as one would expect.
With those few thoughts in mind, I would like to briefly discuss what science is discovering about religion.
A basic tenant of Religion (all that I am aware of) is that humankind live after dying. In recent decades medical science has found ways to resuscitate individual who have “died”, so a new science as evolved that is generally known as Near-Death Experiences (NDE). Initially, those who reported near NDE were looked at skeptically. However, over the years the number of people reporting NDE has exploded. Medical doctors who are often the first to hear about NDE are often astounded at what they are hearing from patience who have been revived. Among them are medical doctors, scientist, atheist, and believers of many faiths.
I will leave a link of a Ted Talk given my Dr. Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon who died in a Kayaking accident. There are many more people from the sciences who are testifying about NDE.
I suggest John contact Dr. Neal and do one of his interviews. She lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If she she is unavailable, there are many others that could be contacted. YouTube is a good source to find such individuals.
Dr. Bruce Greyson is a Psychiatrist and recently wrote a book about his 50 years studying NDE, “After”. A link is below.
The University School of Medicine has a department called Scientific Study of Extraordinary Experiences. Link below.
As a TBM who has had a few extraordinary experiences I believe Heavenly Father is communicating with mankind through NDE.
Mary Neal
“Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.” Source: Google.
Religion is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the universe with the belief that the universe was created by God(s) based on revealed evidence. Source: Me
I thought a definition of science and religion was in order. They have at least thing in common. A search for knowledge and understanding about everything.
Science has provided many benefits to humankind. I for one honor and respect the men and women who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. There have many hits and misses in science as one would expect.
Religion has provided many benefits to humankind. Many people have found religion has made a huge difference in their lives. There have been many hits in misses in religion as one would expect.
With those few thoughts in mind I would like to briefly discuss what science is discovering about religion.
A basic tenant of Religion (all that I am aware of) is that humankind live after dying. In recent decades medical science has found ways to resuscitate individual who have “died”, so a new science as evolved that is generally know as Near Death Experiences (NDE). Initially, those who reported near NDE were looked at skeptically. However, over the years the number of people reporting NDE has exploded. Medical doctors who are often the first to hear about NDE are often astounded at what they are hearing from patience who have been revived. Among them are medical doctors, scientist, atheist, and believers of many faiths.
I will leave a link of a Ted Talk given my Dr. Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon who died in a Kayacting accident. There are many more people from the sciences who are testifying about NDE.
I suggest John contact Dr. Neal and do one of his interviews. She lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If she she is unavailable, their are many others that could be contacted. YouTube is a good source to find such individuals.
Dr. Bruce Greyson is a Psychiatrist and recently wrote a book about his 50 years studying NDE, “After”. A link is below.
The University School of Medicine has a department called Scientific Study of Extraordinary Experiences. Link below.
As a TBM who has had a few extraordinary experiences I believe Heavenly Father is communicating with mankind through NDE.
Mary Neal
“Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.” Source: Google.
Religion is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the universe with the belief that the universe was created by God(s) based on revealed evidence. Source: Me
I thought a definition of science and religion was in order. They have at least thing in common. A search for knowledge and understanding about everything.
Science has provided many benefits to humankind. I for one honor and respect the men and women who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. There have many hits and misses in science as one would expect.
Religion has provided many benefits to humankind. Many people have found religion has made a huge difference in their lives. There have been many hits in misses in religion as one would expect.
With those few thoughts in mind I would like to briefly discuss what science is discovering about religion.
A basic tenant of Religion (all that I am aware of) is that humankind live after dying. In recent decades medical science has found ways to resuscitate individual who have “died”, so a new science as evolved that is generally know as Near Death Experiences (NDE). Initially, those who reported near NDE were looked at skeptically. However, over the years the number of people reporting NDE has exploded. Medical doctors who are often the first to hear about NDE are often astounded at what they are hearing from patience who have been revived. Among them are medical doctors, scientist, atheist, and believers of many faiths.
I will leave a link of a Ted Talk given my Dr. Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon who died in a Kayacting accident. There are many more people from the sciences who are testifying about NDE.
I suggest John contact Dr. Neal and do one of his interviews. She lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If she she is unavailable, their are many others that could be contacted. YouTube is a good source to find such individuals.
Dr. Bruce Greyson is a Psychiatrist and recently wrote a book about his 50 years studying NDE, “After”. A link is below.
The University School of Medicine has a department called, Scientific Study of Extraordinary Experiences. Link below.
As a TBM who has had a few extraordinary experiences I believe Heavenly Father is communicating with mankind through NDE.
Note: I tried to leave links but Mormon Stories comment policy wouldn’t allow it. If you search Google you will be able to find what I referred to.
“Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.” Source: Google.
Religion is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the universe with the belief that the universe was created by God(s) based on revealed evidence. Source: Me
I thought a definition of science and religion was in order. They have at least thing in common. A search for knowledge and understanding about everything.
Science has provided many benefits to humankind. I for one honor and respect the men and women who have devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. There have many hits and misses in science as one would expect.
Religion has provided many benefits to humankind. Many people have found religion has made a huge difference in their lives. There have been many hits in misses in religion as one would expect.
With those few thoughts in mind I would like to briefly discuss what science is discovering about religion.
A basic tenant of Religion (all that I am aware of) is that humankind live after dying. In recent decades medical science has found ways to resuscitate individual who have “died”, so a new science as evolved that is generally know as Near Death Experiences (NDE). Initially, those who reported near NDE were looked at skeptically. However, over the years the number of people reporting NDE has exploded. Medical doctors who are often the first to hear about NDE are often astounded at what they are hearing from patience who have been revived. Among them are medical doctors, scientist, atheist, and believers of many faiths.
I will leave a link of a Ted Talk given my Dr. Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon who died in a Kayacting accident. There are many more people from the sciences who are testifying about NDE.
I suggest John contact Dr. Neal and do one of his interviews. She lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. If she she is unavailable, their are many others that could be contacted. YouTube is a good source to find such individuals.
Dr. Bruce Greyson is a Psychiatrist and recently wrote a book about his 50 years studying NDE, “After”. A link is below.
The University School of Medicine has a department called Scientific Study of Extraordinary Experiences. Link below.
As a TBM who has had a few extraordinary experiences I believe Heavenly Father is communicating with mankind through NDE.
All organizations that claim to speak for God are regularly confronted with the folly of some of their past divine inspiration. We already know the LDS church’s playbook for dealing with the global flood. First it will drop out of the curriculum, and then a stealth essay will show up explaining that one need not take the myth literally.
Bravo!! Amazing episode so thank you to all involved. I could feel my brain growing lol. I can’t wait for more in this series.
Slight correction: We certainly have at least one native species of marsupial in North America… the Virginia Opossum, colloquially known as just “possum.” In fact the word for these marsupials comes from Algonquin, “wapathemwa,” so this creature lent its name to all South American and Australian bearers of the moniker!
It’s extremely widespread and common east of the Rocky Mountains, from Mesoamerica through New England, and is introduced on the West Coast. It almost certainly evolved from South American opossums and migrated north during The Great American Interchange that started at the end of the Pliocene.
Despite being a relatively large animal they live fast and die young, rarely making it to the age of 3 even in the best of care. But they’re among the most successful opportunists on the continent, having competed with raccoons and crows and still thrived. And it must be said they’re really rocking that retro “fingerless gloves” look!
However, the paucity of marsupial diversity (only ONE species in the entire CONUS) does drive home the point about biogeography not favoring the Deluge model. And why shouldn’t we have any monotremes? There are no surviving egg-laying mammals anywhere but the Aussie side of the Wallace Line.
It’s interesting how live birth evolved multiple times in multiple vertebrates, each one in a slightly different way due to different circumstances of natural history. There are no “placental” snakes, lizards, sharks, guppies, or even marsupials. What’s more, the further away on the family tree these creatures are the more likely they are to have a different live birth process. Yet if they’re closer on the tree, they’re likely to have similar processes to each other.
An all-powerful and miracle-prone Creator, unshackled by the “legacy code” of natural history and creating each life form independently, wouldn’t have to be so limited as to come up with a different way of arriving at live birth across multiple lineages and then sticking with it for their offshoots. The existence of different animal lineages using different methods from each other to come up with the same end result (live birth) argues pretty strongly for the evolutionary explanation.
It’s unfortunate that someone who claims some level of expertise on YEC and the Flood would make so many basic errors and be ignorant of actual YEC/Flood arguments. Specifically his 3 “fatal flaws”.
1) “Not enough water on earth to cover Mt. Everest” — YECs typically say that Mt. Everest was created during or after the Flood, and thus there is no need for there to be enough water to cover it. If you flatten out the mountains and the ocean valleys, there is sufficient water to cover the surface of the earth to a depth of nearly 2 mi (3km), which is more than enough for a global flood as describe in the Bible.
2) “Geologic record shows MANY catastrophic events” — this does not logically follow. There is nothing in YEC/Flood thinking that prevents there from being many local catastrophes such as the Lake Missoula Flood or earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis, or volcanoes, or anything else.
3) “99% of fossils are from extinct species” — most fossils are of plants, invertebrates, and/or marine animals, none of which are described as having been taken onto the Ark by Noah [not ADAM as said in the slide!]. Plus, the Bible says “kinds” not “species”, and also it’s hard to determine what is a separate species when we have only fossils to go by (imagine if we had only fossil skeletons for Great Danes and Chihuahuas and Border Collies and Schnauzers and Bulldogs — we’d never say they were the same species, since there are such great differences in size, body type, muzzles, etc.). Also, many plants and animals exist in the fossil record and still exist today, but some are given different species names despite looking very similar and seeming to be exactly the same.
I don’t know if I’ll get any notification of follow-up comments or not, but there are several YEC websites that have tens of thousands of articles dealing with YEC and the Flood, as well as tangential topics if anyone wants to check them out. (So this comment doesn’t get marked as spam, I won’t give them as links, but creation dot com, Answers In Genesis dot org, and ICR dot org are the top YEC websites.)
David Montgomery should be embarrassed to have presented his “fatal flaws” when they can be so easily refuted.
Hello Kathy. Let me give a few brief replies.
1) Geology simply doesn’t work that way. Mountains don’t get thrust up above sea level by being underwater. It just does not happen.
Also, the types of rock and their sequence of layers precludes a formation like you describe. There are layers of igneous rock interspersed with layers of metamorphic and sedimentary rock that cannot be explain as the result of “flood waters.” Among other things, the size of mineral crystals in a rock also tell us how quickly they formed (larger ones form more slowly, for example). Index fossils do not look like they were all deposited together in a jumbled flood or “shaken jar of dirty water that settles out” model like Creationists insist.
The release of energy needed to reshape the crust of the Earth in as short a time as the Flood model requires would liquefy it, boiling the newly-created seas and cooking the Ark inhabitants alive. You may have noticed that repeatedly bending and folding a paperclip to the breaking point also heats it up enough to burn your finger if you touch the broken tip. Imagine the energy required to do that to solid rock. All the energy used to move things is eventually turned into ambient heat. Reshaping the entire surface of the Earth would create so much heat that you and I would not be here talking about it.
The same applies to sedimentary rock solidifying (the phase change of substances from liquid to solid releases energy, i.e. heat). Think of freshly-mixed plaster getting warm as it sets. Turning lime water into limestone or dead plants into coal is a process that heats things up. It normally doesn’t matter much because it happens so slowly and gradually. Trying to make certain limestone or coal beds the result of Noah’s Flood implies that they happen too fast and would release enough heat to cook anything near them.
It’s claimed by Young Earth Creationists that features like the Grand Canyon in the US were produced by water running off as the flood receded. That’s physically impossible, and the layers of the Grand Canyon’s strata show us how it was actually formed. There are igneous rock intrusions that cannot be explained as a result of sedimentary deposition.
You’re also ignoring the larger point of Simon and his guest: we already KNOW what flood-created land features look like. It doesn’t match what we see with the rest of the world.
A “Young Earth” model requires so many miraculous divergences from regular geology that it simply can’t produce reliable, repeatable results when used as an assumption. That’s why geologists no longer do. “Flood geology” had its chance to prove itself useful and it failed.
2) Any physical mechanism for producing enough water to flood the surface of the world would involve turning potential energy into kinetic energy. Again, this is just basic physics. The amount of energy released, no matter which version you try to model (water from the center of the Earth, an ice crystal canopy above the atmosphere turning into rain, etc. etc.) would be enough to overcook anything and anyone on the surface of the Earth. Yes, even people inside a big wooden boat. Noah and all the animals would be steamed well past done.
3) Genesis doesn’t make exceptions for invertebrates. And all the fossil vertebrates we have magnify the existing problem of there not being enough space on the Ark for all of them. There is already not enough room for living species, let alone piling on the a pair each of the diplodicuses and megatheriums and brachiosaurs and every kind of extinct mammoth, mastodon, or gomphothere or kentrosaurus. Physically impossible. To say nothing of the time needed for the creatures to disembark, spread across the world somehow, diversify into new forms, and somehow not have kangaroos in Africa. There is no plausible explanation in the Flood model for the patterns of fossils we see, in space or in time.
As for great danes and chihuahuas, the kinds of differences between fossil species is both different and more numerous than the kinds of differences between dog breeds. The presence or absence of certain bones, different places of muscle attachment, the structure of the braincase, etc. etc. All require deeper changes than the kinds of surface-level differences between modern breeds of dog.
Dogs are also exceptionally “plastic” in terms of their DNA and the ability to create specific breeds. We don’t see the same variety in other domesticated animals. Even Darwin’s fancy pigeon breeding didn’t produce the level of difference we see in breeds of dogs. Most animals are not as easily “manipulated” as dogs, it seems. Scientists have said “The amount of morphologic variation observed in the dog is reported to surpass that of all living land mammals.”
So dogs are fairly unique and NOT like other animals. This is only possible due to a few genetic quirks unique to dogs and tens of thousands of years of selective breeding exclusively and intensely controlled by humans (longer than the age of a Young Earth).
There are many more problems, far more than I can describe in a comment here. Couple of brief, big-picture discussion of some of them can be found here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
And here, with examples to the geology of North Dakota:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/
The National Center for Science Education has a second, independent critique of “Flood Geology” here:
https://ncse.ngo/fatal-flaws-flood-geology
Nothing in biology or geology works if we try to shoehorn the Young Earth Creationist model into those fields. That’s why scientists don’t use it anymore.
You might be tempted to say that God simply miracles these physical consequences away; rain to flood the world magically doesn’t release heat like other falling waters do, or maybe the water just magically appeared by God creating it on the spot, or all the world’s animal species were selectively bred by God over the generations and his breeding program was just magically better than ours. But at this point you’re inserting so many miracles that nothing “makes sense” anymore. Things don’t happen as a consequence of other things happening, they happen because sometimes God interferes. It would have to happen often enough that we could never be confident in drawing conclusions, about anything. It would get to the level of not being able to rule out God as the culprit behind those socks that go missing in the dryer. Cause and Effect would be silly ideas in such a world.
And I know it’s hard to appreciate for those of us who haven’t spent a career studying a particular niche in the natural world like geology or biology, but the reality is that all of the little pictures being discovered by science (how plants grow, how rocks change over time, how to split atoms, what happens when we mix two chemicals and why) are all building a very CONSISTENT picture.
It’s called “consilience.”
Each field lends evidence to support ideas in another field. The world as described by science makes more and more sense with each new discovery. This why ideas in science like Deep Time (an Earth that’s billions of years old, a Universe that’s almost 15 billion years old, etc.) become so widespread: they just make sense, even if we’re only asking how snow works. Because in the scientific view, everything plays by the same rules. This is why geology and chemistry are united consistently in fields like “geochemistry.”
The amount of “actually, reality DOESN’T work like that!” required to accept a literal reading of Genesis violates all of that. Things suddenly make no sense. Things that we KNOW (and can demonstrate) are true in physics would have to be false, and so bending a paperclip to the breaking point could NOT make it hot enough to burn you if Noah’s Flood really happened. We can’t have had such a global flood 4-6,000 years ago and also have polar ice caps today.
I hope that even if I haven’t convinced you that the Flood isn’t workable, I’ve at least given you some interesting things to think about. And I hope you have a pleasant day.
I’m confused. I thought Dr Simon first said Egyptus was the wife of Ham, not his daughter, which would better explain a Cain descent. The church website slide says “daughter.”
Near Line 25 of the church statement on the slide it refers to Egyptus as the daughter of Ham. (Amateur edit work, apparently).