Dr. Frank Wind- “Awash in Tales – the Biblical Story of Noah’s Flood and Other Flood Myths.”

Dr. Frank Wind, a professional geologist and storyteller, has been an active member of CDHS. His talk was entitled “Awash in Tales – the Biblical Story of Noah’s Flood and Other Flood Myths.”

Dr. Wind began by citing the famed 17th century calculation by Bishop Ussher that, based on the Bible’s chronology, the creation occurred in 4004 BCE – to be exact, on October 23 (there is argument about what time of day. Seriously). Noah’s flood was placed at 2348 BCE. (“BCE” is the same as BC, but is used by those who don’t wish to bring Christ into it). According to Dr. Wind, this sort of “young Earth” creationism had been pretty much quietly forgotten by most of Christendom, until its recrudescence as part-and-parcel of the late 20th Century American anti-evolution crusade.

What put the kibosh the 4004 BCE stuff – originally, at least – was unignorable scientific fact. Frank Wind discussed the work of Hugh Miller (1802-56), a Scottish scientist who authored The Testimony of the Rocks. Miller, like many other scientists of his time, had difficulty reconciling that evidence and the Bible; but in the end he came down on the side of scientific truth.

Miller was particularly intrigued by the fact that flood myths are ubiquitous in human cultures all over the world. While some have little resemblance to the Bible’s tale, apart from the water ingredient, many do entail striking parallels. One notable example occurs in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, which predates the Bible by around a thousand years. (In Gilgamesh, the hero was Utnapishtim. But Noah became more famous because his name was easier to remember.)

All this prompts the question of whether these flood stories all have a common ancestry – perhaps some big inundation whose trauma deeply impressed itself on the early human psyche. In his slide show, Frank Wind did present one slide entitled “Geologic Evidence for Noah’s Flood.” It was blank. Geological investigations in the Mesopotamian region, the “cradle of civilization,” more or less, have revealed evidence of only minor local flooding, but nothing like a cataclysmic world deluge.

However, there is another candidate: around 5600 BC rising waters after the last Ice Age may have smashed through a barrier between the Mediterranean and the theretofore inhabited basin that now became, suddenly, the Black Sea. While there is some suggestive evidence for this hypothesis, so far no smoking gun.

Meantime, Biblical literalists of course insist on the truth of the Noah story, and this entails some, well, difficulties. Like, how could an ark with the dimensions specified in the Bible have had room for every species? Some fundamentalists answer that the ark wouldn’t have had to – it could have taken aboard just every type – e.g., one pair to represent every variety of penguin. And then, after the flood, they would simply have diversified into all the different penguin species we see today. There is a word for that – dare it be whispered? – evolution! (However, not even the most rabid Darwinist would argue that so much evolution could occur in just a few thousand years.)

Furthermore, that little vessel would have had to contain not only the animals – some pretty sizeable, including dinosaurs, as shown in displays at Kentucky’s Creation Museum – but also food for them. One might suppose that for the predators, at least, that ark would have been one big buffet. But a creationist would set you straight on that: all the animals were vegetarians.

And trying to explain fossils has always been a bit of a nuisance for creationists. They are forced to insist that the entirety of fossils were all laid down in the flood – which of course (forgive the pun) won’t wash. They also have a spot of bother trying to explain who the Neanderthals could possibly have been. One hopeful theory is that this seemingly different species was actually the same as us except they lived for such vast ages that their bones changed. After all, some early Biblical personages did live quite long, topping out with Methuselah at a ripe old 969. (Too bad the Bible failed to record his health tips.)

But, per one of Frank Wind’s cartoon slides, science says “Here are the facts, what conclusions can be drawn?” Creationists say “Here’s the conclusion; what facts can we find (or, often, make up) to support it?”