Fish Studies Answer Flood Question

ICR ^ | March 9, 2009 | Brian Thomas, M.S.

[GodGunsGuts]

Fish Studies Answer Flood Question

by Brian Thomas, M.S.*

According to the Bible, the world before Noah’s Flood, including the oceans, must have been idyllic. That was destroyed by the year-long global deluge, during which the earth’s land mass broke into continents, massive amounts of sediment were deposited and then partially eroded, and new and perhaps deeper oceans became more salty from continental runoff. If this historical picture is accurate, then at least one area of confusion needs to be addressed: How did “saltwater fish” live through all that?...

[RobRoy]

My response is not to that comment.

[RobRoy]

Yeah, I agree.

[RobRoy]

My response was to the “what happened to the 40 days and 40 nights?” comment, which is why I quoted it in that response.

[Oatka]

“Year-long”...? What happened to 40 days and 40 nights?

There's an old joke about a pioneer who claimed he could count in Indian. When pressed for proof he said, "One, two, three, many."

Same with the Middle Eastern myths. "Forty" was the equivalent to "many". Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, rained for 40 days/nights, Moses on Mount Sinai for 40 days/nights, Elijah fed by ravens for 40 days, Jesus fasted for 40 days, and was seen 40 days after his resurrection, etc.

[Natufian]

If sea levels rose to cover mountains in 40 days and the continents split apart as a result, the salinity of the water for fish would be the least of their problems.

BTW, what does the R stand for in ICR? It says ‘Research’ on the website that’s gotta be a typo. They seem to spend all their time waiting for someone else to do some real science before drawing wild and unsubstantiated conclusions from it.

If they spent a fraction of the time actually doing what they claim to do instead of yelling from the bleachers, maybe they could put some evidence together to account for continents moving 5,000 kilometers in a few months or the claim that T.Rex, lions and sharks weren’t carnivorous to begin with.

But I shouldn’t hold my breathe, right?

[SunkenCiv]

Evolution in Your Face
by Patrick Huyghe
Omni

Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, is home to more than 300 species of cichlids. These fish, which are popular in aquariums, are deep-bodied and have one nostril, rather than the usual two, on each side of the head. Seismic profiles and cores of the lake taken by a team headed by Thomas C. Johnson of the University of Minnesota, reveal that the lake dried up completely about 12,400 years ago. This means that the rate of speciation of cichlid fishes has been extremely rapid: something on average of one new species every 40 years!

The Origin of the Oceans
by Immanuel Velikovsky

It must have been at the very beginning of my occupation with the problems later developed in my books and in not yet published manuscripts, that I came upon the question of the origin of salts in seas and oceans. The common salt is a substantial ingredient of the oceanic content, or, said differently, the water of the oceans and seas contains a substantial solution of NaCl, or sodium chloride. Even though our blood and tissues abound in sodium chloride, man and animals are not adapted to drink salty water, and life on land could develop only thanks to the evaporation of the water from the surface of seas and oceans, or to distillation -- the evaporating water is free from salts. Falling as rain or snow or dew, it feeds underground sources and also glaciers, and through them the brooks and rivers and lakes, and is delivered to our use usually through concrete tubes and metal pipes.

Of the salts of the seas sodium chloride is by far the most abundant. The provenance of it is, however, a riddle. It was, and still is, assumed that the salts in the oceans originated mainly through importation from land, having been dissolved from rocks by flowing rivulets and rivers, themselves fed by underground sources, and the same process working on the rocks of the seabed. Terrestrial formations are rich in sodium, and in eons of time, it is assumed, the sodium washed out of the rocks supplied its content to the oceans; the seas evaporate and the concentration of these salts grows. But the rocks are by far not so rich in chlorine, and hence the problem -- from where did chlorine come to contribute its abundance to oceanic water?

On Saturn and the Flood
by Immanuel Velikovsky

With the end of the seven days of light the Earth became enveloped in waters of cosmic origin, whether coming directly from Saturn -- and Saturn is known to contain water -- or formed from clouds of hydrogen gas ejected by the nova, which combined, by means of powerful electrical discharges, with the Earth's own free oxygen. There are definite indications of a drastic drop in the atmospheric oxygen at the time of the Deluge -- the survivors of the catastrophe are said in several sources to have been unable to light fires. The Midrashim and other ancient sources describe the waters of the Flood as being warm; in addition the waters may have been rich in chlorine, an element which in combination with sodium forms common salt. Marine geologists are unable to trace the origin of the huge amounts of chlorine locked in the salt of the Earth's oceans, the Earth's own rocks being rather poor in this element and incapable of supplying it in the needed quantities. Chlorine may thus be of extraneous origin; being a very active element...

Hydrogen and Oxygen
by Immanuel Velikovsky

According to rabbinical sources, before the Deluge man was vegetarian; but the post-diluvian population did not continue the vegetarian habits of the "sinful" population of the earth. The Talmud and the Midrashim narrate that after the Deluge a carnivorous instinct was awakened in animal and man, and everyone had the impulse to bite.

[tpanther]

...how it's supposed to happen rather than a true understanding of the theory. Not surprisingly, the theory then looks ridiculous to them.

It looks so ridiculous to normal people that the cultists rely on the courts to enforce their views so it won't look so ridiculous.