The Evolution of a Creationist

Chapter 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 212°F. 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.^[1] 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.^[2]

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!"^[3] 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.^[4] In the summer of 1993 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 1993 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 930 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).^[5] 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.^[6] That means that carbon 14 dating techniques would be totally worthless after 5,000 years or so. More about dating techniques later.

[1] 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.

[2] 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).

[3] Petersen, Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation, pp. 28,29.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

[6] 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.