The Evolution
of a
Creationist
7 EARTH'S
PRE-FLOOD
WATER CANOPY
I can remember one particular lunch period
sitting in my
office at Baylor College of Dentistry studying Genesis 1. Those
dental
students had asked me to explain to them what God meant in
verses 6-8a.
How often we read the Bible but don't really think about what it
says.
As I studied these verses, I realized that I didn't know quite
what they
were saying. Here is what the Bible says:
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the
midst of
the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God
made the
firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament
from
the waters which
were
above the firmament: and it was so.
And God
called the
firmament Heaven." (Gen.1:6-8a)
It says God divided the waters and put some
water above
the firmament (heaven 1:8a) and left some water under the
firmament.
What is this firmament? Genesis 1:20 reads:
"And God said, Let the waters bring forth
abundantly the
moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the
earth in
the open firmament of heaven."
The expanse or firmament of Genesis 1:7 may be
the open
heavens of Genesis 1:20 where the birds fly around. Now, there
are
several views and different interpretations in these Genesis
verses, but
the one that seems to make the most sense to me is this: God
separated
the waters that covered the earth in the beginning and left some
on
earth and put some up above where the birds fly. If this water
was in
the form of water vapor, it would have made the heaven and earth
system
#1 similar to a giant terrarium. There would have been no rain!
And what
does the Bible say? Genesis 2:6: "But there went up a mist
from the
earth, and watered the whole face of the ground." That is
the exact
effect expected if the earth was surrounded by a water vapor
canopy: a
morning mist would form. Genesis 2:5b is more specific: "...for the Lord God had
not caused
it to rain upon the earth." No rain, therefore no rainbow!
Heaven
and earth system #1 was obviously different from our present
system,
system #2.
The rainbow was the perfect object for God to
use as the
sign of His covenantal promise of no more global floods. Noah
had never
seen a rainbow in the clouds before the flood, because it
had
never rained. After the flood, when the canopy had collapsed
during the
forty days and nights of rain, Noah was in heaven and earth
system #2,
and was therefore experiencing our weather: rain and rainbows.
He also
would experience the difference between pre-flood system #1's
heavy
atmospheric pressure and system #2's post-flood lighter
atmospheric
pressure -- the latter causing rapid fermentation of alcohol and
quite
possibly the reason for Noah's drunkenness.
This pre-flood canopy probably consisted of
water vapor.
There are other theories, but we must keep in mind that the
birds were
flying in the expanse under this water, and one must be able to
see
through the water. The sun, moon and stars were visible to Adam
and to
Noah, in view of the fact that Genesis 1:14 states that they
would serve
as signs.
Water vapor is clear, unlike clouds or steam. A
little
experiment to prove this point can be accomplished in your
kitchen by
filling a tea-kettle with water and putting it on the stove to
boil.
When steam begins coming out of the spout, look closely at the
very tip
of the spout. You will see about one-half to one inch of clear
212B0F. water vapor before it
becomes
cloudy steam. This may have been the form of the water that God
put
above the firmament in which the birds flew around.
THE GREENHOUSE
EFFECT
With a water-vapor canopy, heaven and earth
system #1
would be considerably different than our present system (#2). A
greenhouse effect would be expected due to the heat generated by
the
sun-warmed canopy. Is there any evidence that greenhouse warmth
once
surrounded our globe? Palm tree fossils have been found in
Alaska and
broad leaf ferns in the Arctic. How could a palm tree fossil be
in
Alaska? Some scientists have postulated they travelled there on
the
tectonic plate (earth crust) movement over millions of years.
But these
trees are not millions of years old! A creationist would say,
"No
problem, palm trees grew in Alaska in the tropical world before
the
Flood." These trees were buried during the Flood of Noah's day
resulting
in their fossilization.
Scientists have found tropical forests and coal
deposits
in Antarctica. Ninety-foot plum trees which were quick frozen
and over
ninety feet in height with green leaves have been found in the
New
Siberian islands where, today, only one-inch high willows grow
[see
Charles Hapgood, The Mystery of the
Frozen
Mammoths; from Bassett Digby, The Mammoth and Mammoth
Hunting
Grounds in Northeast Siberia (N.Y.: Appleton, 1926), pp.
150-151].
In these frigid zones many trees, some
fossilized and some
quick-frozen, have been found with rings, signifying rapid, warm
temperature growth. The Evolutionist asks, "How did they get
here?" The
Creationist says, "They grew there before the Flood when the
earth was
pole to pole greenhouse warm."
The water vapor canopy may have more than
doubled
atmospheric pressure on earth. In this environment of heavier
atmospheric pressure, healing would be more efficient. Many
hospitals
have pressurized rooms called Hyperbaric Rooms. Into these rooms
oxygen
is pumped under pressure and healing is miraculously speeded up.
Very
sick people and the severely burned are treated in this high
pressure
environment. in
the pre-flood, high efficiency atmosphere, reptiles could have
grown to
immense sizes, giant flying creatures could have flown more
easily, and
gigantism would have been much more likely.
THE
GREAT DINOSAUR
MYSTERY
Evolution has a problem called The Great
Dinosaur Mystery.
Where did the great dinosaurs come from; how did they grow so
big; and,
if it is "survival of the fittest", why did these powerful
creatures
become extinct?
A creationist would answer, "no problem". God
created the
giant reptiles and may have referred to one or two of them which
existed
in Job's day (see Job 40:15 - 41:34). Reptiles do not have a
built-in
growth inhibiting factor like other animals and man. The
dinosaurs would
have continued growing as long as they lived. The older they
got, the
bigger they grew. Reptiles function best, as cold-blooded
animals, in
warm temperature climates. God created large reptiles which kept
growing
in an efficient high pressure atmosphere with plenty of warmth
and
unlimited supplies of lush vegetation to eat and nothing to eat
them.
The Bible says,
"And to every beast of the earth, and to every
fowl of the
air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein
there is
life, I have given every green herb for meat...." (Genesis
1:30)
This indicates that all animals ate plants, not
flesh,
before the Flood. Plants themselves are a testimony to God's
creative
genius. They start as a seed and take dirt, water, air and
sunshine and
are converted into roses, rubber and rhubarb! And these
incredible
factories not only do not pollute the environment, but they
silently
clean the air and replenish it with life-supporting oxygen. Oh,
the
wonders of the God of all creation! It was only after the flood
that God
gave permission to eat flesh "Every moving thing that
liveth
shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you
all
things" (Genesis 9:3). Nothing ate the dinosaurs before the
Flood,
and they had bounteous vegetation as food. They, therefore,
could grow
to great size during a long lifetime of hundreds of years. Even
Tyrannosaurus rex ate plants, not other dinosaurs, before the
flood. The
textbook pictures of this great dinosaur eating another reptile
are not
based on scientific method and are not supported with factual
information. The three to five inch long teeth of the
Tyrannosaurus rex
have roots which are too short to support a meat-tearing,
bone-crunching
diet. Tyrannosaurus most probably was a vegetarian (at least
before the
flood of Noah, Genesis 1:29, 30) and used his long sharp teeth
to strip
leaves from plants. After the flood, these reptiles could never
grow so
huge. The lighter atmosphere (the weighty canopy came down as
rain water
at the flood), cooler average temperature and predators would
prevent
long life and excessive size.
By the way, did you know that there never was a
dinosaur
called "Brontosaurus"? Brontosaurus fooled the scientific
community for
many, many years. It turned out to be the head of one creature
and the
body of another. The evolutionary community was too embarrassed
to admit
this mistake for more than fifty years. Brontosaurus does not
appear in
most new textbooks.
In recent years some evolutionists have
postulated that
dinosaurs were warm-blooded, not cold-blooded creatures.
Warm-blooded
dinosaurs have been proposed because scientists are beginning to
realize
that 300,000 pound cold-blooded creatures do not and could not
exist in
our environment. There is not enough air pressure to enable
their blood
to circulate properly. Somehow an important fact has escaped the
notice
of these evolutionists (or they are "willingly ignorant," II
Peter 3:5).
The fact is these huge reptiles would have had no problem
thriving in
the warm, high pressure atmosphere of system #1. The big ones
went into
extinction after the Great Flood. It is not politically correct
for an
evolutionist to believe that the universal Flood of Noah's day
actually
happened. Belief in the Flood is grounds for dismissal from your
job or
cancellation of your grants. So the evolutionist is left to
speculate
regarding "The Great Dinosaur Mystery", whereas the creationist
has a
valid, scientifically testable position -- the environmental
differences
between system #1 and system #2.
Evolutionists may have theorized that
warm-blooded
dinosaurs would solve their dilemma, but recent research
indicates that
the giant reptiles were cold-blooded as are all reptiles to this
day.
The Dallas Morning News of March 21, 1994 (p.9-D)
reported that
three University of Pennsylvania paleontologists have published
their
view (in Nature magazine) that ..."dinosaurs...were
probably
cold-blooded..." This is a blow to the evolutionist's dream of
solving
the mystery of these huge creatures! Of course if you wait a few
days
some other evolutionary scientists will refute his colleagues'
position.
Evolutionists keep batting this "warm-blooded" or "cold-blooded"
idea
back and forth. The Dallas Morning News of July 11, 1994
(page
7-D) published a review by science reporter Matt
Crenson of a July 1994 Nature magazine article. The
review is
partially quoted here:
"Tyrannosaurus
rex had a
stable body temperature, a new study shows, suggesting that the
largest
terrestrial carnivore was warm-blooded.
Reese E. Barrick
and William
J. Showers of North Carolina State University in Raleigh studied
Tyrannosaurus bones uncovered in the rocks of the Hell Creek
Formation
in eastern Montana...
The remarkable
consistency
of the oxygen isotopes in the dinosaur's bones demonstrate that
its body
temperature never varied by more than about 7 degrees
Fahrenheit, the
North Carolina researchers wrote last week in Nature. If
Montana's seasons were anywhere near as variable 70 million
years ago,
when Tyrannosaurus lived, as they are today, a creature with
such a
stable body temperature would have had to be
warm-blooded."
A creationist might say that a stable body
temperature in
a giant cold-blooded reptile is consistent with the creationist
view
that the earth's temperature was uniformly warm in the tropical
pre-Flood heaven and earth system number one. Creationists would
expect
to find "...remarkable consistency of the oxygen isotopes in the
dinosaur's bones...". Apparently these evolutionistic
researchers would
rather pretend that cold-blooded reptiles were actually
warm-blooded
than to consider the pre-Flood pole-to-pole greenhouse warm
condition of
earth (6,000 years ago, not 70 million years ago) as presented
by the
creationist model.
The giant flying reptiles such as the pterosaurs
(pterodactyls and pteranodons) would be unable to fly in our
present
atmosphere. They needed a heavier atmosphere to get enough air
to lift
them with their 40 to 50-foot wingspans. Heaven and earth system
#1
would have provided the heavier atmospheric pressure necessary
for the
flight of these huge creatures. Evolutionists say we don't know
how
these giant reptiles could have flown in our atmosphere. To a
creationist, this is not a problem. Heaven and earth system #1,
before
the water canopy came down at the flood of Noah's day, would
have
provided the air density needed for these huge creatures to fly.
in
order to protect their jobs the evolutionists dare not even
suggest the
global flood of Noah's day as part of the solution to their
problems,
and yet the Flood supplies the explanation for what we "see". We
even
read in our older history books about ancient cultures which
taught a
global flood.
Gigantism was common in the heavy pre-flood
atmosphere.
Fossil dragonflies with a 32-inch wingspan have been discovered
and
would be a frightful bug to hit your windshield! The hornless
rhinoceros
grew to about "...seventeen feet high and nearly thirty feet
long!"
Giant sabre-toothed tigers, mastodons and woolly mammoths roamed
the
earth side-by-side with the great dinosaurs.
Man lived during the age of the dinosaurs. In
cretaceous
rock strata of the Paluxy River bottom near Glen Rose, Texas,
human and
dinosaur footprints have been found crisscrossing each other.
Much has
been said about these footprints because, if authentic, they
prove in
solid rock that man and dinosaur lived at the same time. If
accepted as
genuine, they are a fatal blow in rock to evolution. They are
proof that
evolution is a false speculation of man! Most textbooks claim
that the
dinosaurs became extinct about 60 or 70 million years before man
stepped
onto the scene and into his footprints. Dinosaur and human
footprints
crisscrossing each other in the same rock strata destroys the
evolutionary belief that over a period of millions of years man
evolved
from his ancient reptilian ancestors!
Two Texas scientists have sectioned (cut into
slices of
rock) one of these human footprints. Carl Baugh
and Don Patton discovered that the rock under the footprints
shows
pressure structures (called laminations). These pressure
structures are
exactly what a scientist would expect to find surrounding a
human
footprint! The human prints (and there are many) are not
"carved" into
the river-bed and neither arethe dinosaur prints.
In the summer of 19 Drs. Patton and Baugh
noticed eleven
and one-half inch long human footprints (people have feet that
big
today) stepping along - left, right, left, right - inside giant
three-toed dinosaur prints. Someone was walking in the soft mud
of fresh
dinosaur tracks! One of the tracks shows in rock the human
footprint
beside the dinosaur track. Apparently the person got
"side-tracked" and
missed one dinosaur print, but got back "on track" for his next
step.
These footprints are conclusive, hard, observable evidence that
man and
dinosaurs walked the earth simultaneously. For a while The
Humanist magazine had discredited these Paluxy River
footprints to
the extent that creationists withdrew their articles and films
(a good
film documenting the footprints is entitled Footprints in
Stone).
The summer of 19 work by Drs. Baugh and Patton should put the
shoe
back on the other foot! Contact Dr. Don Patton for the
incredible
account of how several of the footprints (but not all) were
destroyed by
an overly threatened evolutionist attempting to "...suppress the
truth...".
Proverbs 14:12 tells us that "There is a way which
seemeth right
unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."
Evolutionists travel to Glen Rose, Texas and examine the
human and
dinosaur footprints side by side or overlapped with each other
in
cretaceous rock, and they concoct foolish speculations rather
than bow
their knees and heads before their Creator who told us all that
dinosaurs and humans existed together on the sixth day of the
creation
week. The Bible teaches that man and dinosaur shared the same
earth at
the same time (Genesis 1). This presents no difficulty since
those giant
creatures ate only plants before the Flood! In the early days of
His
creation, God prevented animals from eating each other or man,
since He
purposed to fill the earth with His creatures.
Another evidence to support the fact that people
and
dinosaurs lived at the same time in history is the cave
paintings of
dinosaurs. How could a "pre-historic" man or woman paint a
picture of a
dinosaur if he or she had never seen one? The Institute for
Creation
Research (ICR) circulates an excellent video documenting the
cave
drawings of dinosaurs.
LONGEVITY OF
LIFE
Another result of the water (vapor?) being above
the
firmament in which the birds fly would be the shielding effect
from
cosmic radiation. Scientists have studied how much solar
radiation is
filtered by water. Their conclusions are reported by Dr. Joseph Dillow in his book, The Waters
Above:
Earth's Pre-Flood Water Vapor Canopy. In heaven and earth
system #1,
people could live to be very old. One of the primary aging
factors is
solar radiation. By filtering out the harmful radiation (as a
water
canopy would do) humans might be able to live close to l,000
years.
The Bible reports that Adam died at 0 years of
age and
Methuselah lived almost l,000 years. After the flood, the ages
of people
dropped off drastically to an average of 70 to 80 years. A lot
of people
think that you cannot believe the Bible when it says people
lived to be
800 or 900 years old -- that it must be a different kind of year
or the
writer did not know quite what he was talking about. Those old
ages are
360-day years just like the Bible says (compare Genesis 7:11 and
8:3,4). You
can believe the Bible as it is written. Some present-day
researchers who
study longevity of life believe that humans could live that long
again
if we were sheltered from the harmful effects of the sun and the
now
polluted air.
Solar shielding by the water canopy above the
atmosphere
where the birds fly would also affect dating techniques.
Negligible
amounts of carbon 14 would have formed before the flood. That
means that carbon 14 dating techniques would be totally
worthless after
5,000 years or so. More about dating techniques
later.
For more
information
about "Hyperbaric Therapy" see: J. C.
Davis,
"Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy," Journal of Intensive Care
Medicine, 4 (1989), 55-57. Also: Textbook of Hyperbaric
Medicine,
ed. K. K. Jain (Toronto: Hogrefe and Huber Pubs., 1990), p. 492.
Also:
Hyperbaric Oxygen
Therapy: A
Committee Report (UHMS PUB 30 CRHOB), ed. J. T. Mader
(Bethesda:
Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, Inc., 1989), p.
90.
Most of my comments about
the effects
of the vapor canopy came from Dr. Joseph
Dillow's
excellent discussion of the effects of the vapor canopy in The Water's Above: Earth's
Pre-Flood
Water Vapor Canopy (Moody Press, 1982).
Petersen, Unlocking the Mysteries of
Creation, pp. 28,29.
For more
information
about Glen Rose and the human footprints, contact: Dr. Don R. Patton at the Metroplex
Institute of
Origin Science, Inc. (MIOS), P.O. Box 550953, Dallas, TX
75355-0953 and
Dr. Carl E. Baugh at the Creation Evidences Museum and
Archaeological
Excavations, P.O. Box 309, Glen Rose, Texas 76043 (817)
897-3200.
In Genesis
7:11, the
flood began on the seventeenth day of the second month and in
the
seventh month on the seventeenth day (five months later) as
recorded in
Genesis 8:4, the ark rested on Ararat. According to Genesis 8:3,
these
five months included 150 days -- 150 days divided by five months
= 30
days in a month; 30 days x 12 months 360 days in an Old
Testament
year.
The
Institute for Creation Research is most helpful and has several
different publications dealing with dating techniques. Every
family
should subscribe to the I.C.R. monthly newsletter, Acts and Facts,
Institute for
Creation Research, P.O. Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021 (619)
448-0900.
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