Noah's Ark's Occurence

In this final round I will focus on my opponent's closing arguments. I agree with his position that Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God and faith. This is because faith, religion and belief do not require fact, proof and scientific inquiry; it is individually determined, centered and reasoned. If however, religious beliefs are to be presented as a scientific fact in the public arena, then those facts must be held up to the rigors of scientific investigation and theory. The story of Noah's Ark may hold well as a belief, but it does not hold up under Scientific inquiry and the Scientific method. I would argue that it really isn't necessary or desirable to put Genesis into the Scientific arena in the first place. I have already provided ample evidence in the previous round demonstrating that websites such as "AnswersinGenesis" are propagating junk science by citing numerous books and a list of credible Scientific bodies that have public spoken out critically against "Creation Science". I consider AnswersinGenesis to be appalling because of my previous assertion that Creation Science begins with a conclusion and then works backwards to make the hypothesis fit a particular doctrine or agenda (a biased approach). In actuality, the posters on creationist websites are not "highly qualified doctors in that area" as my opponent claims, and in fact perform little to any Scientific research of their own: http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au... As my opponent's geyser concept: I have yet to find a plausible theory that could explain how enough water came out of the Earth's crust to cover the entire planet in 13,000 feet of water (or even 3,500 feet of water as mentioned in AnswersinGenesis) as you claim. The following illustration of the bare Earth along side its water portrayed as a separate sphere shows visually how the numbers simply don't add up: http://water.usgs.gov... According the The USGS Water Science School, 96.54% of the worlds water dwell in the oceans of today and 1.74% lay in icecaps/glaciers. That leaves less than 2% remaining to make up for the 13,000 foot global flood (or 3,500 feet of water as AnswersinGenesis claims). As I mentioned in round 1, this 2% plus the 1.74% of icecaps would lead to approximately 216 feet in global rise. These numbers demonstrate that a literal global Biblical flood is simply not possible. I am uncertain as to how to respond to your claim that the Earth isn't old enough to place fossils on the world's highest summits as you didn't specify how old the Earth was in your opinion. I will cite the following abstract where Professor Augusto Gansser wrote an academic paper for the Cambridge Geological paper discussing the fossils that were retrieved by climbers in the 60's from the summit of Mount Everest: http://journals.cambridge.org... I don't have the room in this debate to explain plate tectonics, the formation of mountains and fossils in this argument, but clearly a global flood did not deposit those fossils on the summit of Everest at 29,000 feet. In closing, I agree that there is no such things as "Religious Science", but only Science. While religion and Science can coexist quite peacefully in the manner I suggested in previous rounds, humanity is usually a major loser when religion stands in the way of Scientific Knowledge. The early Catholic Church was able to interfere with scientific discovery and progress for centuries in the name of protecting faith and God. This was clearly undesirable. I would argue that any damage or interference to credible Science caused by "Creationist Science" is also unfortunate and undesirable. Hyperbole such as the story of Noah's Ark may be both enjoyable and meaningful, but hyperbole is always a terrible method of conserving historical facts for posterity. Thank you to my opponent for this debate and for the civil tone. This was my first on DDO and I enjoyed it. Good luck.