I met a relative who was still brainwashed by his school that the global flood, as described in the Torah, was an actual event. A simple reading of the narrative indicates that the narrative is simply the inability to understand reality.
First, there currently are 1386 million cubic kilometers of water in the oceans. Mount Everest is just short of nine kilometers high. The radius of the world is 6371 kilometers. Consequently, to create a flood where
The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; 20 the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.
Thus, Mount Everest was covered by approximately seven meters of water. 15 cubits or seven meters is 0.08% the height of Mount Everest; Yahweh must have been very careful as to when to turn off the fountains of the deep and close the windows of the heavens. The amount of water thus required is 4πr²d, where r is the radius of the Earth, and d is the depth, all minus the volume land currently above water. As 29% of the Earth is covered in land and the average elevation is 840 m, it follows that our formula becomes 4πr²(d - 0.29×0.840). Thus, to cover Mount Everest, we would require another 4466 million cubic kilometers of water, or 322% more water than currently exists in all of the oceans. That is a lot of water, and there is no scientifically justified origin for so much water. There is, however, a biblical justification:
The authors of the stories that would ultimately be collated together to be the Torah were not aware of any of the actual properties of the Earth. For them, the Earth was flat, and as the creation myth was plagiarized from the Babylonian creation myth where Tiamat was killed and her body was split to form the waters below the earth and the waters above. Seeing blue skies, this would be explained as being the waters above from which rain came (evaporation, convection, adiabatic lapse rates and condensation were concepts unknown to the authors). This is paralleled (sans Tiamat) in Genesis 1:
And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky.
This belief is perpetuated throughout scriptures including New Testament epistles.
When the flood comes, this parallel with waters above and waters below is emphasized:
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
First, no plants could survive such a flood: most plants cannot tolerate saltwater, and with the rising oceanic waters mixed with any rainwater would be too salty for most plants to survive. Perhaps by the time the waters were six kilometers deep, they may have been sufficiently dilute so as to not harm plants from the concentration of salt, but by that point we're so high up so as to make no difference.
Next, what happens to all the ice in all the glaciers? Water is circulating around the globe, and glaciers would break off and become icebergs, and yet, you can drill deep into the . The planet would likely be denuded of all glaciers, and yet today you can
Also, the maximum recorded rainfall is 305 millimeters per hour or 0.305 m/h. To reach a depth of 9 km, this would require 29500 hours, or more than three years and four months. Thus, for this much water to fall in only forty days, the rate of rainfall would need to be thirty-one (31) times greater than the greatest previously recorded record rainfall. Thus, in addition to killing all plants, this would also wash away all soil.
Thus, Noah and his family would have come back to a barren Earth devoid of animal life, plant life, fresh water or even soil. The environment that remained would be saturated in salt. Thus, herbivores would have nothing to eat, and plants
There are claims that the flood was the phenomenon that created, for example, the Grand Canyon. Seriously, though, this is entirely possible given the absurdities in Genesis:
A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, 12 and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
Everything is dead
To emphasize, we will recall that everything else on the Earth is killed.
And died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings; 22 everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those with him in the ark.
Let us look at three remote islands: Australia, New Zealand and Madagascar. There are many animals that are unique to these islands, and despite the proximity of Australia and New Zealand, there are never-the-less
A rainbow?
Following the flood, we have
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
In summary, it would have been easier for Yahweh to simply kill all those people he did not like.