What in the World Happened AFTER Noah Stepped off the Ark? - Dr. Kurt Wise

 

This video segment is from "Beyond Is Genesis History? Vol 1 : Rocks & Fossils," the follow-up to our feature-length film where we explore the impact of the global Flood on the Earth. Check it out on our website: http://bit.ly/BIGH-1.

At Fall Creek Falls, in Tennessee, Del Tackett and paleontologist Kurt Wise discuss what the world was like after the global Flood of Noah's day. They discuss how animals dispersed from the Ark to the far reaches of the planet, and how massive volcanoes, earthquakes, and even an Ice Age continued to reshape the earth for centuries after the deluge. In closing, Dr. Wise and Tackett address why some believers doubt or refuse to accept the Genesis account of Origins.

Dr. Wise earned his BA in geology from the University of Chicago, and his MA and PhD degrees in paleontology from Harvard University. He founded and directed the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College and taught biology there for 17 years. He then led the Center for Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for 3 years, before founding and directing the Center for Creation Research and teaching biology at Truett McConnell University for the last 7 years. His fieldwork has included research in early Flood rocks in the Death Valley region, late Flood rocks in Wyoming, and post-Flood caves in Tennessee.

For more information on Dr. Kurt Wise, please go to https://bit.ly/2zUN3U9.

Intro

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well kurt i'm going to

have to follow you around some more

because you're taking me to some awesome

places

this this is unbelievable that's

beautiful

where are we and what do we see well

we're at a place called fall creek falls

uh that particular falls there drops the

the greatest free fall distance of any

waterfall east of the uh

rocky mountains so we're in tennessee

eastern tennessee not too far from where

we were

looking at richland creek there about

20-25 miles or so

by the crow flies going to drive further

than that so what would

what would a geologist and a

paleontologist see

when you look around here rocks and

trees

there's something a lot more interesting

yeah everyone sees that

Underfit Creek

that sort of thing well what's

spectacular about this

about this particular canyon you can

only see a part of it here

is there's a huge u-shaped beautiful

canyon here yeah we're kind of standing

right on the edge right on the edge of

it and it goes straight

out from here into another canyon

perpendicular to it

and then they've got this little trickle

of water

going off the side of this thing in in a

very much larger canyon

like there's something funny about this

did that creek actually

cut this enormous canyon that really

doesn't make any sense at all

this is what we call an underfit river

or

underfit creek meaning that the canyon

itself

is made by something much bigger and

much different

than the creek that now runs through it

because it's the path of least

resistance so there must have been

a catastrophic event that formed this

rather than a long

slow process much bigger or something so

in fact

the shape of this canyon is consistent

with the idea

that that all of this material basically

slumped out

into the main canyon all in one shot

very quickly

how could that happen well the best

possibility is that that canyon

the main canyon across there was itself

cut extremely rapidly when this

whole area was waterlogged with with

water

all these rocks were full of water when

that canyon's cut

out very quickly then all the the water

in the rocks

in the surrounding that canyon push in

and want to collapse basically in and if

the rocks fail

they will slump into the main canyon be

washed that all that material be washed

down the canyon

leaving these u-shaped wide

deep canyons perpendicular to the main

canyon with a dead end in them just

like you see here if you started from

the main gorge

and walked this way you'd have this huge

cliff

that's uh that is the beginning of that

canyon

and so this indicates a period of time

when there must have been a huge amount

of water

that that was cutting the main canyon

and in fact waterlogged this entire

plateau

so with are we talking about uh time

during the flood or are we now

dealing with that post flood time the

rocks themselves that are being cut here

that slumped in are the rocks we were

looking at before that have evidence of

the flood itself

so these rocks have already formed

they've already

hardened enough to create cliffs and be

resistant so we must be talking about

the period

after the flood in addition this feature

is relatively small i mean it doesn't

look

as small as here but if you look at it

from a satellite

the flood sediments cross entire

continents

but what you find about these canyons

and uh the sediments that are formed

at the same time is they're very

localized they're in smaller

regions and and so it suggests we're no

longer in the global flood

we're in that period of recovery

following the flood that's part that's

that

that exponential curve we were talking

about yesterday

where where we've got a lot of tremoring

going on

trembling in in the earth exactly

whatever catastrophism is occurring

during the flood

it it eases off and gets less and less

catastrophic as time

passes following the flood so we're in

that period then we're in that period

the artifacting epoch

when uh the earthquakes of the flood

enormous earthquakes of the flood are

reducing in intensity

to smaller and smaller earthquakes the

volcanoes of the flood

enormous volcanoes of the flood are

getting smaller and smaller and less

frequent in time

and the wetness of the flood the flood

is obviously

water covering the entire earth that the

earth is drying

following the flood but immediately

following the flood the earth would have

been extremely wet

not just from the water of the flood but

actually

huge amounts of rain well kurt i think a

Artifacting Epoch

lot of people think

that after the flood you know we don't

have a lot of rain but you're talking

about kind of a wet environment then

yeah the the the arfaxed in epoch that

we're talking about is a period of

transition

from the time of the flood the

catastrophism the flood the destruction

of the world

and the present so you have a transition

from

a period with enormous volcanoes that

are incomprehensibly huge

to the volcanoes that we have today we

have enormous earthquakes

during the flood to the kinds of

earthquakes we have today

we have enormous rainfall it turns out

to cool the oceans

heated up in the flood to the drying of

the earth

and the production of deserts all the

way to

the present you've got organisms

for example the animals in the ark

you've got

just a few basic kinds of animals on the

ark

and this is a period when in a few

centuries those

kinds are going to diversify so that

within each kind you're going to produce

hundreds or even thousands of species

and then those animals are going to

spread across the earth to get to every

portion of the earth so this is

this is a transition period in

everything in geology

biology uh anthropology in

uh climate everything from the

destruction of the world to the presence

Transition Period

yeah

so there's a there's a lot of things

changing here

what's the biggest thing that's

happening as far as the earth geology is

concerned

biggest thing there is that during the

flood we believe

continents were moving horizontally back

and forth smashing into each other

producing mountains

moving sediment over large areas dumping

eroding in some places dumping sediment

and others what that did at the end of

the flood is leave

the earth unstable out of what we call

isostatic equilibrium

it's going to take a while for the ice

cubes if you wish to

to bobble back to where they're supposed

to be and that's

that's there's going to be lots of

earthquakes as rocks move against each

other

there's going to be a lot of effusions

of of lava

until things settle down in fact they're

still not settle down so they're still

in that process of

it's mostly vertical motions and small

adjustments well relative to the flood

yeah bad for us but but adjustments that

then

settle the earth back down to the way

ultimately to the way it was

very similar to the way it was before

the flood would that mean that we have

Ocean Levels

uh the ocean levels changing in the

midst of that and

what is that yeah there's so much of the

water from the ocean

that evaporated out of the ocean ends up

in ice but it actually drops the sea

level a total of 200 meters wow

which is a lot of law yeah and that and

so that connects like

europe to england connects siberia to

north america

it makes it possible for organisms to

spread out from the ark and get to many

places that

they'd have to swim to in the present so

that's part of that distribution

probably part of what god had in mind

in designing the world in such a way

that it could be filled

with organisms and with people well kurt

Ice Ages

the conventional paradigm would tell us

that we have a lot of ice ages

and looking at ice cores tells us that

oh we've got all of these layers that

means we've got

many many thousands of years from those

ice

cores what's your perspective on that

yeah the conventional wisdom is that

there are

multiple ice advances uh in

our model there's good reason to believe

there's only one

ice motion however the idea

is that the the ice that's collapsing

surging out is surging out in lobes

that uh intersect one another one lobe

would go out melt back another one would

come in

so you've got a succession of events but

they're probably only separated by a few

years

and so this is actually one collapse

event

so that might get appearance of several

ages yes there's a sequence of time

but it's not hundreds of thousands of

years or millions of years

well kurt that also brings to mind the

the woolly mammoth that we find

frozen in the ice so those were

creatures that are post-flood they're

not

creatures that were caught in the flood

that's correct they're all post-flood

creatures they would have

in the case of the mammoths there would

have been an elephant that got off the

ark

there would have been diversification of

elephants producing a whole bunch of

series of different species of elephants

within the created kind

of elephants and one of those

produced late in that process would have

been a mammoth a woolly mammoth

and they would have lived in siberia and

alaska at a time again when the oceans

were still

somewhat warm it's not as warm as right

after the flood but they've cooled down

considerably

but enough to support a cold temperate

or slightly warm temperate climate of

plants

so kurt after the the animals and the

people got off the ark

there must have been a rapid expansion

of life

Species Diversity

yes the organisms getting off the ark

were relatively few in number compared

to the number of species that we

currently have today

so one of the neat things i think is

cool about the

arfax city and epoch is that during that

period each created kind is going to

diversify

you're going to have one species

becoming

hundreds or even in some cases thousands

of species

in the few centuries following the flood

it's a wild and crazy period of time at

the same time

those animals are actually also

spreading away from the ark

so they're following the coastlines and

choosing a temperature that they like

they're crossing

what is now water barriers

because the ocean has been dropped

because of the accumulation of ice

they're crossing oceans on rafts of

vegetation

still floating on the on the oceans

after the flood

and getting to the various places on the

planet by that point also

we have dropped sea level it's it's

a couple centuries has probably elapsed

since the flood most animals have

already reached

all the distant locations on the on the

planet

and now humans move out uh so the apes

get there first then the humans

uh so you've got the sequence that some

people interpret to be the evolution of

apes to humans well it's

not that it's the apes got there first

but eventually the humans

go to all parts of the earth going

across land bridges but i suspect also

probably uh using ships i mean after all

noah

built a ship so you've got ship building

ability no it would still be alive

at that time at the time of the

dispersion from babel

and so probably some humans dispersed by

ship as well

Dispersion of People

well that dispersion of people

must really be an interesting story how

do we track

that it is an interesting story and i

think it's probably best to talk to an

archaeologist about that

okay so i guess we're off on another

yeah let's go okay

all right

well kurt this is all amazing i mean all

of that evidence points back

to the the history of genesis and the

flood but

you know and i know that there are a lot

of people who just see the same evidence

but they don't

they don't get it why not it's easy to

understand why unbelievers don't get it

ii peter tells us why ii peter tells us

they want to live in their sin

and so they're willingly ignorant of all

this because

i think you have to be willingly if you

if you can see it not everybody can see

it okay

it's when it's pointed out they can see

it but once

those people who can see it the reason

they don't get it

is because they don't want to get it

they're willingly ignorant of it

the real question that you're asking

though is what about believers what

about those who

would want this knowledge and want it to

be true

and that's what's frustrating isn't it

it is it is frustrating and and

part of that i think in this particular

society where

we're living i see far too much

science worship in our society it's the

way we

even teach about what science is you

learn in school

that's science i can remember the a a

picture in my mind

of a grade school has probably what

three or four

third or fourth grade i'm picturing the

page in the textbook and there's a bold

face

word science and in parentheses

following it uh derived from the latin

word

scientia meaning knowledge close

parentheses i said woo

knowledge truth so from early age

we're taught in the school that science

equals knowledge equals truth

people i i talk to people all over the

world they associate

science with something you could prove

you'd think proof

and science could be used in the same

sentence but it's not true

you can't prove anything in science we

can't prove

anything we can we have some educated

guesses

called theories but you can never know

for sure if the theory is actually true

you can't check around every tree and

every planet and every star

and ever really know the real status of

science which is exciting to me is you

you never really know you keep

discovering

you keep hoping you're getting closer

but you really don't know for sure

but most people learn that science is

proof

that whatever scientists say is proof so

i see christians all the world

saying well the scientists said it it

must be true i've got to believe

it and so they themselves close their

their minds their hearts to the

to the to what god has put in the

creation very evidently

to teach us about himself and to

confirm what he's claimed in his word so

The Source of Truth

when you say

worshiping science we essentially are

turning away from

the source of real truth and we're

substituting

for that source of truth not only the

the creation around us

as we see in romans 1 and the word of

god itself

and then we turn to science to be that

source of truth is that what you're

saying right that's right that's dead on

we got the god of truth who wrote

who inspired the word of god it is the

word

of truth it is the truth the eyewitness

the one who was there

it ought to be it is in scripture it is

to be our highest authority

it's where we go first in the garden of

eden god said don't eat of the tree

it should that should have done it that

should have been enough okay

but eve used her observation and her

brain

and says well looks good smells good

it's got to be good tasting it's good

for making me wise

so overrode the word of god

and went with human reason got us into a

lot of trouble

yeah i mean we see that thousands of

years later jesus is

tempted by the same serpent the same the

same satan

and his response is to quote god's word

jesus has the ability and that's he

created satan

he can outthink satan he could have the

ability to

out maneuver him intellectually but he

doesn't choose to do so

he simply quotes the word of god that's

what we ought to be doing that's what

believers ought to be doing

but for some reason we just don't

believe

uh we don't trust god's word we trust

human

observation and re and that's what

science is all science is human

observation

human reason coming to conclusions based

upon those things

we should be first as it was supposed to

be in the beginning

as it will be in the end trust the word

trust god's word

then from there fill in fill in the

blanks

complete the uh the understanding of

god's creation

it seems kurt that there is also another

The Spirit of Truth

piece of that as well

and that is that the believer who is

indwelt

by the spirit of god the spirit of truth

that part of is

is that the only side of the story they

hear

is the science side and for a lot of

them they've never

heard the evidence like we see here and

someone to talk to them

about that do you think that may be part

of us as well absolutely

we get into schools we've got public

schools they kick the prayer out of the

public schools they kick god out of the

public schools the bible's out of the

pub

so what do you what do you hear in the

public schools you hear

supposedly secular things in other words

the science that's all you hear

that if you go to the library and take

out books they're increasingly kicking

the

christian books out of the library too

internet full of there's much more

available on there

from unbelievers and from science so

there's many people who never hear the

truth there's a whole lot of pastors

scared to death of this

particular question they don't

understand science so they don't mention

in

in the sermons sunday school teachers

aren't comfortable with it so it's not

shared there

so you could potentially grow up all of

your life in

in the church the believer and never

hear

the truth yeah it'd be like in a trial

The Jury

where the jury

only hears the prosecution's case and

they never get to hear

from the defendants well the jury is

going to make an obvious

choice and that's for the prosecution so

it seems like we

and i know this is your heart as well

the part of this is we need to help the

body of christ see

all of this evidence that we've been

looking at yeah people need to hear

need to see just as people cannot come

to know christ without the word of god

i think people can't understand his

creation without the truth of that

creation being revealed to him not

everybody

is is designed to be able to read rocks

and read trees and read plants and

animals in the universe the stars and

and all that sort of thing it's got to

be it's got to be shown to most of them

Outro

well that's your specialty though that's

how god has made you he's given you that

gift and talent to see those things

and so and i know that is part of the

heart that you have

is to help people see that and i love

sharing it not that very many people

like to hear but i love sharing it

well i guess that's our task isn't it it

is we do everything we can to

help people see that evidence and and to

find that evidence

if there is oh there's always more

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