gawilson@watdaisy.UUCP (Graham Wilson) (03/27/85)
I have heard alot on the net lately about the "vapour cloud" concept (originally put forth by the Quaker Issac Newton Vail at the turn of the century). The vapour canopy concept is the theory currently supported by Henry Morris and the ICR. But there are several obvious problems with such an idea: - the immense pressure at the base of such atmosphere would be so great as to be fatal to most forms of life on earth. - the latent heat released by this cloud when it evaporated in forty days and forty nights would be as much as the earth receives from the sun in two or three centuries. So, if you where not crushed and/or suffocated by the vapour canopy, you would be fried when it condensed (the above two points can be verified using any senior high school physics/chemistry text). Another problem with the flood is where did all the people come from? Morris claims that all people have descended from Noah and his wife: "...all people are descended from Noah and his wife, who according to the best biblical chronology must have lived about 4,500 years ago, then the average interval for doubling is 150 years, which is entirely reasonable." (Reference: That You Might Believe [Chicago: Good Books, Inc.], p.77). Note that the "interval for doubling" refers to population growth. Without thinking about Morris' comment, it might seem like a reasonable statement. Problems arise when it is carefully thought about (this seems true about alot of creationist 'pseudoscience'). For example, using Morris's mathematics(?), we find that when the Great Pyramid was built, the population of the earth was 16. I guess people were alot stronger back then (oh! the power the faith). Note: information and references where taken from the article "Creationist Pseudoscience", by Robert Schadewald. Graham Wilson University of Waterloo "The instructed Christian knows that the evidences for full devine inspiration of Scripture are far weightier than the evidences for any fact of science." - John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris