"Why Bother About Creation Science, the Flood was a Miracle, and Miracles are Miracles, Right?"

I have seen a man change his opinion on the Flood, from local / regional to global.

His perspective was entirely supernatural. Who cares where the water came from and where it went, God can do miracles.

It is obviously better to believe this way than to take cop-outs like a local/regional flood because of "the evidence" even if it contradicts the Bible. However, it is also not quite correct. I refer to my essay What is a Miracle? What Does it Take? and cite one paragraph:

A miracle, by contrast, is caused by a mind, but by a mind other than the mind experiencing them. They have no physical causes, but - unlike illusions - they do have physical effects.

The bread and fish to feed 5000 men, not counting women and children, had no adequate physical cause to exist, only God's omnipotence. It did however have physical effects, the crowd mentioned had bread and fish to digest and twelve baskets of leftovers were filled.

This might tend to suggest that the water that covered even the highest mountains still is on Earth today. However, a certain Hugh Ross finds this problematic.*

Sorry, a certain Steve Sarigianis, but the same site, Reasons to Believe:

A regional flood interpretation fits the scientific facts about the quantity of water available in Earth’s crust and atmosphere. Genesis 7:11-12 indicates that the floodwaters came from Earth’s aquifers and atmosphere and eventually (according to Gen. 8:1-5), returned to those places. Physical scientists can calculate that Earth contains only 22% of the water required to cover every mountain on the planet.

Some interpreters have postulated radical geologic changes over the entire Earth during the Genesis flood year as a way to reduce the required quantity of water. However, such monumental rates of plate tectonics and erosion defy all geologic evidence collected over the last 200 years. Additionally, the ark could never have withstood the catastrophic forces generated.

In other words, the Earth contains 22 % of the water necessary to cover Mount Everest, which is the highest. Was it the highest?

I take the view of Answers in Genesis and of Creation Ministries International on the erosion, grosso modo. If they accept some ichtyosaur was covered in Flood mud while giving birth, and didn't disintegrate despite erosion levels, because luckily covered in a spot no further eroded, they can obviously accept a similar view, in principle, even if they are not doing so currently, on Neanderthal burials and Homo erectus cannibal remains (like skulls divided).

But on tectonics, I actually take a more conservative view. The four rivers of Paradise can still be localised, since covering large world scale fluvial basins in new sediment can easily still leave them as large world scale fluvial basins.** And Mount Everest rose to present height, not in the Flood year, but was still not fully that height centuries after.***

The forces generated, somewhat more modest on my view than on CMI's, I suppose, would primarily have affected the sea bottom where things were eroding and sedimenting from super-saturated mud flows. The surface of the then world wide ocean would have been calmer.

Was the Ark Too Long for a Wooden Ship? Local Flood—Yes. Global Flood—No.

The takeaway would be, as I've said previously, it's significant that SS Wyoming sank close to land, in Nantuckett Bay, where the medium depth or shallowest depth (forget which) is c. 9 meters. It's equally significant that the Kon Tiki didn't sink over the Pacific Ocean. Now, a Global Flood, if pre-Flood mountains aren't all that high and if "15 cubits above" was not the highest level, but the highest level Noah could know, since he had built the Ark on top of the Highest Mountain and the water line was 15 cubits, in other words, a water level 1—2 km above the ground and the Seas and not much shallower over the highest mountain while it last, that is a lot like a Pacific Ocean. But a Local Flood is necessarily if not as shallow as Nantuckett Bay, at least too shallow for the Ark to be safe.

In this essay, I cite wooden ships that sunk and where they sunk, provided they didn't burn first. It's consistently in shallow water.

But as Saragianis took up impossibilities, how about his view of why the local Mesopotamian flood didn't run off sooner than in a year?

From 400 miles northwest of Ur to Ur (the location of the Persian shore at the time of Noah), the Euphrates and Tigris rivers drop just 300 feet in elevation. This drop provides a grade of only about 0.01 percent. With that gentle a slope, the Flood waters would have moved very slowly out to the Persian Gulf.

This is actually a passage added by Hugh Ross. These 400 miles NW of Ur would be SE of Ninive:

The approximate distance from Nineveh to Ur is about 1,142 kilometers (or 710 miles).

And to get even from Ninive, let alone sth SE thereof, to the Mountains of Armenia, by boat ... just good luck! Mosul, near Ninive, has an elevation of 223 m (732 ft).° Meanwhile, Mount Nisir is 2,588 m (8490 ft.)°° Mount Judi is 2,089 m (6,854 ft)°°° Anything SE of Mosul is considerably lower.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. John Bosco
31.I.2026

Augustae Taurinorum sancti Joannis Bosco, Confessoris, Societatis Salesianae ac Instituti Filiarum Mariae Auxiliatricis Fundatoris, animarum zelo et fidei propagandae conspicui, quem Pius Papa Undecimus Sanctorum fastis adscripsit.

* Noah’s Flood: A Bird’s-Eye View
July 1, 2002, by Steve Sarigianis
https://reasons.org/explore/publications/facts-for-faith/noah-s-flood-a-bird-s-eye-view

** Answering Carter and Cosner on Eden and Trying to Break Down "Reverse Danube" or "Reverse Euphrates" Concept

*** Himalayas ... how fast did they rise?

° Mosul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul

°° Mount Nisir
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Nisir

°°° Mount Judi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Judi