It Is Not Probable That the Genesis Flood Narrative Actually Occurred

I. Too Many Animals? We have no idea what the Bible refers to by "kind". Genesis was written some 3500 years before we had any system of taxonomic classification. Looking specifically at Genesis 6:19 that my opponent quoted, it says that ". .. two of all living creatures. .. " were on the ark. The best way to differentiate types of species would be by differentiation by species. Unless my opponent can provide some hard evidence that the Bible referred to "kind" as a modern Family, his point has no basis. However, more importantly, animals can only belong to one species. Taking only 1000 different "kinds" of animals on the ark would imply that only 1000 different species of animals would be on the ark as well. The only process by which we could get to the 8.7 million species currently seen on Earth would be by evolution, but evolution takes way too long for this to happen in just 4000 years. "Even though evolution is taking place all around us, for many species the process operates so slowly that it is not observable except over thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. "[1]II. Supporting the Animals? Even with a few thousand animals, I think my opponent is grossly underestimating the work that would have been required to maintain them in a very small space for over a year. The sheer mass of necessary food volume would take a significant area of the ark. And the sheer mass of waste the animals produced would be almost unmanagable for just eight people. Further, my opponent drops my points on food spoilage and variety, which are necessary to maintain organismal diversity. Further, this point relies on the fact that there'd be a few thousand animals on the ark. However, my opponent has not proved this claim at all. III. How Well Does the Ark Float? There are two problems I have here. One, I've done a quick search on a "3 pronged system" and have come up with nothing. I'd like my opponent to elaborate on what he means by it. Also, he needs to tie it to the Bible (i. e. make it compatible with the Biblical story of the flood). And two, difficulty is not the problem here. No matter how knowledgeable the people he used to make the ark were, they would not have been able to make an ark according to the Bible's specifications for the reasons I outlined in the last round - the sheer size, lack of reinforcement, and building material (wood) would have made the ark unstable from the start, never mind have it be able to last one year. IV. Where Did the Flood Come From? My opponent provides no mechanism for either there being more water in the atmosphere or there being a significant amount of water below the surface. The former idea is known as the vapor canopy model. Basically, it says that, before the flood, there was a significant amount of water in the air that came down as rain as the flood started. For one thing, by what mechanism would all this water be able to stay in the atmosphere? Right now, it is estimated that the atmosphere holds 12,900 cubic kilometers of water on average. That's 0.001% of the Earth's water. Looking back at the figure I quoted of 4.53 billion cubic kilometers, that's less than 0.000001% of the necessary water needed for the flood. Having the necessary amount of water in the atmosphere would have been completely unmanagable. [2]For another, even assuming the necessary amount of water were in the atmosphere, there'd be a myriad of complications that would have made the story of the ark impossible. "If a canopy holding the equivalent to more than 40 feet of water were part of the atmosphere, it would raise the atmospheric pressure accordingly, raising oxygen and nitrogen levels to toxic levels. If the canopy began as vapor, any water from it would be superheated. This scenario essentially starts with most of the Flood waters boiled off. Noah and company would be poached. If the water began as ice in orbit, the gravitational potential energy would likewise raise the temperature past boiling. A canopy of any significant thickness would have blocked a great deal of light, lowering the temperature of the earth greatly before the Flood. Any water above the ozone layer would not be shielded from ultraviolet light, and the light would break apart the water molecules. "[3]The latter idea is known (most famously; there are other less popular theories basically asserting the same idea with a few minute differences, but all feature the same fundamental flaws) as the hydroplate model. The most popular version of it is that there was a tremendous store of water about 10 miles below the Earth's surface the ruptured through the Earth's crust. It faces similar problems as the vapor canopy model did. The first is sheer possibility. As I explained in the last round, below the surface, the Earth is very hot. Any water would be turned into steam. Another is that rock doesn't float. There's no explanation for why the water, even if it was under there, stayed there, instead of going to the surface. And there were also complications that would have made the story of the ark impossible. "Even a mile deep, the earth is boiling hot, and thus the reservoir of water would be superheated. Further heat would be added by the energy of the water falling from above the atmosphere. As with the vapor canopy model, Noah would have been poached. " Finally, there's the issue of why there's no signs of the rupture, which must have been enormous. [3]All of the water currently present on the Earth would have been insufficient for a flood of the magnitude that is described in the Bible. Also, claiming that things like continental drift and mountains and valley were due to the flood is post hoc ergo propter hoc. There are other, better explanations for them. Finally, again, the water currently present on the Earth is about a third of what was required to cover the Earth. The other two thirds of the water could not simply have just disappeared. V. What About All the People's Groups? As I explained in the first point, there's no way natural selection could have produced all of the ethnicities that we see today. The rate of adaptation then would not have been any different. The evolutionary process has basically been the same in the over two billion years that life has been present on Earth. An animal as complex as the human would takes tens of the thousands of years to evolve even modestly, never mind evolving into all the different ethnicities. And Noah's family could not have produced seven billion people from just eight in 4000 years. Finally, as for contiental distribution, remember that, 4000 years ago, the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska was closed, meaning that there's no explanation for why there were peoples there. [4]As for inbreeding, my opponent is making a bunch of unreasonable assumptions. There's no reason why the animals on the ark would have had "perfect genetic information" (I don't think there could even be such a thing) and genes free from corruption or mutation. My opponent's whole point here seems to be predicated on this point, although he never spends time showing how it could be true. VI. Ice Cores While it's true that there could have been snow while the flood was on the Earth, it would have melted upon impact with the flood before it ever reached the ice sheets themselves. The ice cores could hardly have been affected by things above the flood. There'd obviously be something very different happen in the ice cores that are usually exposed to air being exposed to water for a full year. And that's even assuming that the polar ice caps that are the source of the ice cores would even have been possible. "Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions. "[3]VII. Did the Flood Happen? Attributing fossils to the flood is incorrect for a number of reasons. Among other things, it fails to explain why the fossil record is sorted, why the fossil record is sorted by age (the older the fossil, the lower down in the ground it is), why some organisms are found more often than others in comparison to the size of their populations, why no human artifacts are found expect in the very highest levels of the geological record, or why ecologically dependent organisms are found near each other and in the same timeframe. If the flood deposited the fossils, we'd expect randomicity with regards to what was found where. [3]The abolition of the concept of race is not a victory for the story of the flood either. It only shows that "race" simply represents the amount of melanin found in one's skin. All it shows is that all the "races" belong to the same species. And this still doesn't explain the extreme rate of evolution that needed to have happened among them. Yet again, the amount of water found on the Earth is less than the amount of water necessary for the flood as told in the Bible. Plus, this reasoning is again post hoc ergo propter hoc. VIII. What About Dating Methods and Such? I'm not entirely sure why my opponent makes this argument. I have made no arguments regarding dates. The only length of time I use is the 4000 years between Noah's flood in the Bible and today, as this is what the Bible indicates. While I could defend radiometric dating, I don't see a need to because it just seems irrelevant. If, for some reason, I bring them up in the next round, I will try to prove the method's validity. Sources[1]: . http://www.pbs.org...[2]: . http://water.usgs.gov...[3]: . http://www.talkorigins.org...[4]: . https://en.wikipedia.org...