The Genesis Flood

John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris

The great influence of Whitcomb & Morris's "The Genesis Flood" on current evangelical denominations is a source of great dismay to me - I saw it's launch when I was in graduate school in physics at Georgia Tech and reacted to it as nonsense. Clayton, Ronnie and I as PhD students in physics argued about it with Robert Gentry, and the three of us never thought it would amount to anything. We were, sadly, very wrong about that.

Now I have in my possession the 50th Anniversary Edition of the book, with enthusiastic endorsements from John MacArthur, Ken Ham and Andrew Snelling. It has a new Foreword about the history of the work and a new Preface to the 50th anniversary edition in 2011 by John C. Whitcomb at age 87.

See review by Greg Neyman of Answers in Creation

xxxv. Introduction

"If a worldwide flood actually destroyed the entire antediluvian human population, as well as all land animals, except those preserved in a special Ark constructed by Noah (as a plain reading of the Biblical record would lead one to believe), then its historical and scientific implications are tremendous." The simple "If a worldwide flood" phrase makes it appear that they consider themselves at least somewhat original in investigating and looking for evidence of such a worldwide flood, and carries the presupposition that the Biblical text referred to the whole globe when such a concept was thousands of years in the future from those who first did the "plain reading" of scripture. Incredible! It also betrays either a total ignorance or a choice to disregard the fact that a whole century of geologists, many of whom were Christians and even clergy, looked at the whole world for evidence of a global flood and at the end of the 1700s had concluded that there was no credible evidence of such a catastrophic, world-changing flood. This story is told well by Montgomery in his "The Rocks Don't Lie". Ross discusses the presumptions in Ch 3 of "A Matter of Days".

The other chilling thing about this introductory statement in retrospect is that their phrase "plain reading of the Biblical record" has become a mantra for those who take the young-earth position in the face of overwhelming evidence for antiquity, refusing to consider evidence contrary to their presupposed meaning of the Biblical text.

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1. Basic Arguments for a Universal Flood

In arguing for a worldwide flood, the authors argue against Arthur Custance, who advocated a local flood.

The nature of their arguments against a local flood are

  • 371 day flood not supportable from a local flood perspective
  • If nothing but mountain peaks seen after 74 days subsidence, then flood must be global
  • Breaking up of fountains of the deep implies global flood
  • Size of ark implies global flood
  • Testimony of Peter
  • Global destruction of human race implies global flood

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2. Basic Arguments Against an Anthropologically Universal Flood

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3. Basic Non-Geological Arguments Against a Universal Flood

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4. Uniformitarianism and the Flood: A Study of Attempted Harmonizations

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5. Modern Geology and the Deluge

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6. A Scriptural Framework for Historical Geology

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7. Problems in Biblical Geology

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Appendix I: Paleontology and the Edenic Curse

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Appendix II: Genesis 11 and the Date of the Flood

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Windows of Creation
Evidence from nature Is the universe designed?
Reading Reference
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