Noah's Flood

Last updated: February 2, 2026

Concise, evidence-based summary of why a single, year-long global flood is not supported by scientific data.

Introduction

Claim: a single year-long global flood produced the global rock and fossil record. Summary conclusion:

Physical mass/energy constraints make a global ocean over the continents impossible.
Multiple independent geologic and paleontological records document continuous processes spanning thousands to millions of years.

Required water volume and energy calculations show the scenario is physically impossible:

Water volume to cover highest mountains >3 billion km3 (exceeds Earth's available water).
Associated thermal/kinetic energy would vaporize oceans and destabilize the crust.

Desert dune cross-bedding (e.g., Coconino Sandstone) records aeolian deposition, not submarine.
Paleosols (buried soils) and in-place rooted horizons require exposure and soil formation intervals.
Evaporite sequences and extensive coal seams record long-term, stable environments.
Stacked fossil forests and coral reef growth rates indicate multi-generational formation, not instantaneous burial.
Major unconformities (e.g., Grand Canyon) represent long hiatuses and erosional events between depositional episodes.

Fossils appear in consistent, global order (no wholesale mixing of distant-age taxa).
Trace fossils and intact ecological assemblages show organisms living in situ, not transported and mixed.
Regional sequences (e.g., Karoo) display distinct, non-overlapping fossil zones.

Ice cores: >800,000 annual layers with consistent seasonal signals (Greenland/Antarctica).
Tree-ring chronologies exceed 14,000 years in some regions.
Lake varves and speleothems record continuous annual deposition over long intervals.
Seafloor magnetic striping and spreading rates record multi-million-year histories.

Multiple civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, China) show continuous records across the proposed flood interval.
Regional cultural and technological sequences lack a global break consistent with a worldwide catastrophe.

Biological: Rapid post-flood speciation from a few 'kinds' is unsupported by genetics and observed rates.
Biogeography: Present-day endemic distributions (e.g., marsupials, lemurs) differ from patterns expected under rapid post-flood dispersal.
Thermodynamics: Proposed accelerated decay or global rainfall scenarios produce unsupportable heat and energy budgets.
Sediment budget: Global sediment volumes and stratigraphic architecture differ from patterns expected in a single-year depositional event.

Physical mass/energy constraints make a global, year-long flood impossible.
Geologic features (paleosols, aeolian dunes, evaporites, reef growth, unconformities) record multi-stage histories incompatible with single-event deposition.
Continuous natural records (ice cores, varves, dendrochronology) show uninterrupted time series across the proposed flood interval.
Archaeological records show cultural continuity with no global interruption.