The Flood

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n2thelight

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Dec 24, 2006
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Hello all Im currently in a debate on another forum as to weather the flood was worldwide,my positions is that it was'nt,any thoughts?
 
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Personally, I think the effects of Noah's Flood was experienced worldwide. But the great flood was in Genesis 1:2. That the term earth or land, tends to show the majority of Noah's flood occurred in the mediteraean, middle east region and along the fault lines of the oceans floors. That the majority of the flooding occured there, to kill off the fallen angels. I think in the discourse to Solon, it states that the earth was periodically burned and flooded and that 2 pyramids were built 1 to survive the flood and 1 to survive fire. The one in Egypt built to survive the flood still stands in Giza.The world probably couldn't be totally repopulated so quickly if everyone died. Ancient myth and fable also point to a limited induation. The majority of the earths surface is composed of sedimentary rock. Rock that is formed from water. The chalk layers of Dover and other places give us hints to Noah's flood. Also, celestial mechanics, having to do with the weight of the water on the surface off the earth, the pull of the sun and moon, have something to do with the evidence.If the earth was covered by a canopy or a firmament, this would explain alot about life spams, age and growth of biological organisms, and misconstrued timelines. If all these things occurred this maybe be one reason why layers of sentiment, earth and rock were layed down the way they were. And why a group of petrified trees could remain standing without being severed, while millions of years of earth was slowly desposited around them!If both the heavens above, and the depths below exploded at the same time, this would account for the rapid action the flood took as well as the means in which it was dispersed. If mist only fell to the ground before the flood, rain and clouds, and the present ecological system, could only be related to our time frame and circumstances. Preflood civilization, time and conditions would be much different.Also if Native Americans settled the new world 10,000 ago, did Noah pick them upon his way? Were the continents split by this flood? Lots of questions, the answers I believe will remain a mystery till Christ returns.
 

TallMan

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Jul 20, 2007
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If the flood was local, God's promise not to flood the earth again has been broken many times.If it was local, why did Noah have to collect all the animals?They could just have wandered & flown back into the flooded region.If it was local why didn't God just tell Noah & Co. to move instead of spending 120 years building an Ark?If it was local, where is the evidence for a flood al around the mountains of Arrarat and not further afield?How were other low-lying regions not flooded, the highest point in England is much lovwer that Arrarat so it's hardly local.It seems the continennts broke up after the flood.The red-indians would have been descendants of Noah's sons. The "Table of Nations" in Genesis 10 can account for all known people groups., you don't need 10,000 years to account for them.
 

Christina

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Apr 10, 2006
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There are stories from most all ancient civilizations of a great flood its in American Indian folklore,Chinnese folklore ect. I think for all intensive purposes it was World Wide .now does that mean literally every spot of dirt on earth was covered I dont know I dont even think it would be necessary. The point of the flood was judgement on the sins of Man and the Nephilim. The world was not as populated then so it may have only been a flood where any people lived. Was that literley the entire World? is like asking if a tree in woods falls does it make noise if no one is there to hear it? If all living people experienced a flood does it matter if some unpopulated area in the north pole for example did not flood. The bible is the story of God and his relationship with man. So if every man on earth experienced a flood it was for Gods intented purpose world wide.
 

tim_from_pa

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Jul 11, 2007
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(TallMan;14668)
If the flood was local, God's promise not to flood the earth again has been broken many times.If it was local, why did Noah have to collect all the animals?They could just have wandered & flown back into the flooded region.If it was local why didn't God just tell Noah & Co. to move instead of spending 120 years building an Ark?If it was local, where is the evidence for a flood al around the mountains of Arrarat and not further afield?How were other low-lying regions not flooded, the highest point in England is much lovwer that Arrarat so it's hardly local.It seems the continennts broke up after the flood.The red-indians would have been descendants of Noah's sons. The "Table of Nations" in Genesis 10 can account for all known people groups., you don't need 10,000 years to account for them.
I heard both the worldwide theory and the local. For the reasons you cited, I tend to agree with you, Tallman. In addition to those reasons, we noted that man in pre-flood time-frame lived to immense ages. After the flood, men's ages started to rapidly decline until we get to our "threescore and ten" as Psalms says.One theory for that was that the earth had a water canopy that broken, thus allowing the suns dangerous rays (and a deteriorating atmosphere) to age life here faster. This would only hold true for a worldwide flood as the atmosphere would be the same all over.If it was "local", I'd say it would have been a BIG "local" area, affecting the earth for all practical purposes. The reasoning is that in apocryphal literature that Adam had a prophecy of the earth being judged by water and by fire. Two (time-capsule) monuments were built. One was made of brick in Mesopotamia, and should the brick one be washed away by water, the stone one (the Great Pyramid) in Egypt would stand. I forget which book I have off the top of my head that speaks of evidence of the flood affecting the Great Pyramid. If these prophecies were true, then the flood covered at least from Mesopotamia to Egypt if not further since in those areas the waters were high enough to supposedly wash a brick structure (maybe like a ziggurat) away.
 

Wakka

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Jun 4, 2007
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Back then, the whole world was pretty flat. Without hills or canyons. I read somewhere that Scientists have measured that if you take our earth, make it flat, and fill it up with all of the water in the world, there would be a depth of around 8,000 feet. Of course back then, after the flood, the earth's geometry formed.
 

Jordan

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Apr 6, 2007
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I honestly don't believe that Earth was flat...There was another flood before Noah's time...there was no record in the bible that the Earth is flat. (as I'm aware of)Lovest thou in Christ Jesus (Yahshua) our Lord and Saviour.
 
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These are Excerpts From Several Global vs. Local Flooding Deluge sites. These are only a few points which they address, all the LOCAL sites should a least be skimmed over once. You should also probably visit a few of the Global sites like:http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/...ok/global10.asphttp://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c005.htmlhttp://www.gotquestions.org/global-flood.htmlhttp://www.creationapologetics.org/bibqanda/wasnoah.htmlhttp://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdf...k/chapter10.pdfEtc... EceteraI didn't include the Global sites in my post because most of there objections, are addressed on Local Flood Sites. Without going into more detail on my opinion, which is Localized. I think the globalists, have a profound weakness in there arguments scientifically, in the vast number of traditions about a Deluge, and even linguistically speaking as to what the words concerning Noah's Flood convey. The Bible should always be translated with the writer in mind, the context he is writing about, and to whom it is written and for what purpose. Instead of christian's stamping a "Global" seal on everything contained in the Bible I just ask, use a little common sense. The purpose of the flood was to destroy the fallen angels, who were trying to prevent Adam-Christ's line from existing and replacing it with there own. In that sense, the Flood of Noah is localized to one man's family. Also in this sense, they were "kin" to the offspring of Cain. Even the "gods" of old in myth, didn't mate with everything on the planet, they were selective. They did just enough to control, and eliminate competitors to have the greatest influence on people as was "inhumanely possible."Genesis 6:9 "Noah was a just man without blemish as to breed and pedigree in his contemporaries, and Noah walked habitually with God. According to Bullinger! See Apdx 23, 25 & 26.
 
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Was Noah's Flood Local or Global? by Darrick Dean http://www.geocities.com/darrickdean/noahsflood.htmlMany Christians interpret the flood account as being “global” as in the waters covering the entire surface of the planet. Skeptics point to this global flood of Noah as a reason not to trust the Bible because no consistent evidences exist for such an Earth-covering flood. Their belief, however, is contingent on whether or not the global flood interpretation is true. The global interpretation is not the exclusive interpretation of the Noah account. A lot of people hold to the global view simply because that is what they have been taught since they were young. The global flood viewpoint did not achieve its current popularity until the second half of the 20th Century. This came after much popularization by George McCready Price who was out to disprove Darwinian evolution. He was intent on keeping with the teachings and “visions” of 7th Day Adventist prophetess Ellen G. White, who preached a global flood and 24-hour creation. Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb’s book, The Genesis Flood futher intensified Price’s ideas in the 1960s, because of a science background that McCready lacked.Prior to this, a local flood and day-age theories had been more widespread in Christianity. They are now becoming dominant again as Christians realize that old age and geology do nothing to help naturalism and that the global flood interpretation has serious problems. First, we need to look at how misused geology fits into the picture.“Deluge Science” is largely a flawed knee-jerk response to this naturalistic science. The global flood is most often posited by young-earth creationists trying to explain away these geologic layers for two reasons. First, they see the layers as “evidence” used by naturalists. Second, such layers require millions of years to form, which violates the young-earth interpretation of Genesis. Even if geology does not support a global flood, why do many people believe that the Bible clearly teaches a global flood? Even a light reading of the account reveals problems reconciling global flood theories.Genesis 7-8 clearly state where the floodwaters came from (earthly sources including the atmosphere) and where they returned (into Earth). The water content on Earth today, even considering water vapor loss into space since the flood, is no where near the amount needed for a global flood. The flood account refers to “the earth” which may seem like it is referring to the entire planet. There is another usage in which “earth” can be literally translated to refer to a particular region. Ancient humanity was believed to be limited to Mesopotamia, so a local flood would still be “universal". ”There are numerous other examples of similar usage including Genesis 41:56-57 and 1 Kings 10:24. Ancient mankind was not aware of the existence of most of the world, so what was known was considered the entire Earth. The Hebrew word that always refers to the entire world is not used in the flood account. Only words that can refer to particular regions or peoples are used.A comparison of the pre-flood Genesis chapters to the post-flood chapters do not show the massive geological changes that a global flood would have caused. For example, the landscape has not changed at all. Noah did not seem lost. Rivers mentioned before the flood remained unchanged which would be kind of odd in a global flood that supposedly created geologic layers in only forty days. Is it not odd that in a global flood that the ark landed only a few miles from where it started? All the species in the world could not have come from those on the ark without invoking rapid, macroevolution. In fact, the only way young-earth creationists can account for all species being on the ark is by directly or implicitly requiring such a rapid evolution of animals that even evolutionists do not subscribe to. The fact is that the Hebrew is particular in the limited types of animals that were brought on the ark. This avoids the need to fit all of the animals of the world onto the ark. Thus a local flood would only require the destruction of animals closely related to man, i.e. the ones in the area where mankind lived.
 
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Old Earth Creation Science - Noah's Flood By Greg Neymanhttp://www.answersincreation.org/flood.htmThe global Flood of Noah is one of the centerpiece arguments for young earth creation science theology. Because of this, I have been asked what I believe the Flood of Noah was like. To answer this question, let us first look at what the Flood is not. It is not the event that has been described by young earth creationists. There is no possible way the Flood could produce the rock record we see, nor could the flood produce all the coal layers, oil reserves, or chalk layers that we see in the rocks. What is the author of Genesis’s point of view? He is writing the story from the viewpoint of the witnesses, or, mankind. At the time of the Flood, mankind was still limited to the Middle East. Therefore, if you wipe out mankind, which all existed in one geographic area, you could easily say the Flood was global, since everywhere that man lived, it was flooded. If the Flood was global, there is no proof that it covered the entire earth, either geologically or from writings, including the Bible. It was certainly ‘global’ from Noah’s viewpoint, but we can’t be certain that he completely circled the globe to prove that it was indeed global.In Genesis 8:11, the dove that Noah sent out brought back an olive leaf as proof of dry land. Let’s look a little closer at this from a young earth perspective. In order to prove the Flood, and the necessary erosion that took place in order to deposit all the rock layers we see today, two young earth creation science theorists, Baumgardner and Barnette, worked out a simulation of the current patterns and speeds if the entire globe was covered in water. The important thing to note here is that the water currents were at least 131 feet per second, or more than 89 miles per hour! At that velocity, all previously existing trees would have been torn from their roots, and there would be no living trees or plants to survive the flood. Since none of these trees could have survived, there would have been no plant food for any of the animals (or Noah) to eat. How did the plant-eating animals survive after they were released from the Ark? How did the meat-eating animals survive? They would naturally have to immediately feed on the plant-eaters, which would have made them extinct within a matter of weeks. The young earth global flood model fails to answer this.
 
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Genesis: Noah's Flood, Global or Local? http://www.bibleandscience.com/bible/books...esis/global.htmNoah is probably the same person as Ziusudra of Shuruppak in the Sumerian King List and Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh Epic. The Sumerian and Babylonian flood story is very similar to Noah's flood in the Bible. In Babylonian (Akkadian) the flood hero is named Utnapishtim. Dalley states, "it is just possible that an abbreviation of (Uta)-na'ish(tim) was pronounced 'Noah' in Palestine from very early times". (Ish means man in Hebrew also, Akkadian is very similar to Hebrew, my note.) The King Lists would put the flood about 2900 BC. Another very important flood story is Atrahasis because it parallels the first eleven chapters of Genesis. The Biblical story of Noah's flood has "God remember Noah" (Genesis 8:1) as the pinnacle of the poem.The Noahic flood was a local flood that covered all the known world at that time which was the Mesopotamian valley. When Luke 2:1 says that the whole world was taxed, it is not talking about the whole world as we know it which includes North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica. In Luke 2 "world" means only the Roman empire around the Mediterranean Sea. There are many places in scripture where "all the earth" does not mean the whole globe as we know it. The same is true of Noah's flood. Geology shows no evidence of a world flood at Noah's time but archaeology has found a layer of mud that probably is from Noah's flood of 2900 BC, in the Mesopotamian valley.See also http://www.answersincreation.org/floodlist.htm
 
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Noah's Flood: Global or Local? By Donald Hochner http://www.angelfire.com/ca/DeafPreterist/noah.htmlLuther maintained that the original location of the garden of Eden, though known to Adam and his descendants, was obliterated by the devastating effects of Noah's flood. The geographical conditions of that region had changed significantly,God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's daughters said "there's not a man in the earth (erets) to come in unto us" (Gen 19:31) We know that not every man in the world was killed ... only those in the area of the destruction. In Jeremiah 34:1, "all the kingdoms of the earth of his dominion, and all the peoples, fought against Jerusalem." There the phrase "of the earth" is limited to "his dominion," i.e., the dominion of Nebuchadnezzar. In II Chronicles 36:23, Cyrus' empire is said to have encompassed "all the kingdoms of the earth." But there were kingdoms in the Far East, Europe, Africa and the New World which were not included. Luke 2:1 refers to a decree which went out to tax "the whole world." But this was only refers to Romans who controlled the land of Judea. How did plants, trees, etc. survive in salt water that covered the whole earth. What about animal's like Australian Sloths who are tied to specific ecosystems. I could go on with a list of different animals from different environment, climate, etc. One cannot deny the existence of archeological evidence that many great civilizations existed in various parts of the world at the time of the Flood and continued through it. Would people who lived in Europe, North and South America, Austrailia, etc. have heard Noah's message about God's judgment? Suppose Noah had gone on an evangelistic campaign: by what sign could he have convinced them? Merely to mention that his family was at home constructing an huge ark for them? In other words, the building of the ark was a testimony only to those who could actually see it or have first hand knowledge of it. People can hardly have been scattered to the ends of the earth if this was to be a testimony to them. He also wrote, "After it stopped raining and the water began to go back down, the Bible implies the water receded at the rate of 15 cubits in 74 days (Genesis 7:20; 8:4, 5). A number of recognized commentators have mentioned this points. If we figure a cubit at about 18 inches, the water level would have dropped 270 inches during this time or, to round it off, 4 inches a day. If the flood depth was 29,050 feet (348,600 inches) and the water level dropped 4 inches a day, it would take 87,150 days to get back down to normal sea level. That would be almost 239 YEARS!"What more, how about feeding lions, leopards, tigers, cats, etc.? How much extra animals would be required for all the meat-eating animals? What about the elephants? One elephant eat 44 lbs of grain, 66 lbs of hay, 20 to 70 lbs of turnips, carrots, cabbage or fruit. If an elephant eat 170 lbs of food each day, this would be 62,050 lbs during the year in ark. Don't forgot to double that pounds to 124,100 for two elephants! Even some animals like panda (Asia), koala (Australia), three-toed sloth (South America) require a specialized diet. Did Noah and his family gathered some for them? What about the woodpeckers that peck wood or termites that eat the wood! That would be much trouble! =)What I find this very interesting from the writings of Josephus, the noted 1st century Jewish historian, believed the flood destroyed all people in the world. But some of his his writings seem to say otherwise. He is quoted from Nicolaus of Damascus: "There is a great mountain in Armenia ... upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved; and that one who was carried in the ark came on shore upon the top of it; and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. This might be the man about whom Moses the legislator of the Jews wrote." Josephus goes on to say: "Now the sons of Noah were three ... these first of all descended from the mountains into the plains, and fixed their habitation there; and PERSUADED OTHERS WHO WERE GREATLY AFRAID OF THE LOWER GROUNDS ON ACCOUNT OF THE FLOOD, and so were very loth to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their examples. Now the plain in which they first dwelt was called Shinar." In Noah's time, 120 years before the flood, the beginning of the warning to man that he would destroy the earth, Noah would have been 480 years old (for he was 600 at the time of the flood - Gen. 7:11). Later when Noah was 500 years old, his sons were born (Gen. 5:32). And it was later still, AFTER these sons had grown and married, that Noah was told to build the ark. "Make an ark...I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth...and you shall come into the ark, you, AND YOUR SONS, and your wife, AND YOUR SONS' WIVES WITH YOU" (Gen. 6:14-18)." "Clearly, then, it did not take 120 years to build the ark. It is possible that the legend handed down in the book of JASHER - that it took five years (Jasher 5:34) - is correct, but the Bible itself does not say how many years it took." With only 1.2 million cubic feet available on the ark, it appears Noah would have needed at least 43 arks to accomplish the job of storing all the animals and their required food. AND we have not considered all the vegetation and water for drinking and bathing.
 
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Noah's Flood: Global or Local? By Donald Hochner and Richard Anthonyhttp://ecclesia.org/truth/flood.html(A very Good Word Study on Noah's Flood)The Bible is regarded as infallible and the fundamentalists believe it must be read in a literal context. This is done out of a misguided reverence for the Bible. There are many types and shadows throughout the Bible which revolve around certain words. Water, ark, saved, world, fire, etc. Many of these symbolic words can be found in Genesis, Daniel, Revelation and many of the prophecies. To determine this, we might first look into the meaning of the word used for "earth" in the Genesis account of Noah's Flood. The word is #776 'erets (eh'-rets); from an unused root probably meaning to be firm; the earth (at large, or partitively land) KJV translates it: common, country, earth, field, ground, land, nations, way, wilderness, world. That, in itself, may not tell us very much. So we must look to the context of the surrounding scripture. There is another word which is also translated "earth" in these same passages concerning Noah's flood ... That word is : #127 'adamah (ad-aw-maw'); from 119; soil (from its general redness): KJV translates this -- country, earth, ground, husband [-man] (-ry), land. This word relates to Strongs #120 ADAM - So the scripture reads:Genesis 6:20, "Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth [#127 Adam's earth) after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive." Here is a case where the TWO Hebrew words are used in the same passage! Genesis 7:4, " For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth (erets #776] forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth (Adam's earth #127]." Would we be assuming too much to say that the usage of #127 "adamah" interdispersed with #776 "erets" would qualify that word? Would we be assuming too much to say that land affected was "Adam's" land, field, ground etc? (Opposed to Cain's or other tribes or nation's ground) The Flood of Genesis was a true historical event. According to historians, and Bible scholars, the date was from November in the year 2345 to November 2344 BC. These dates fall smack in the middle of the period in history known as the BRONZE AGE. (3000 BC to 1200 BC) This was a significant period in history. The technology to forge bronze increased trade routes, necessitated the domestication of draft horses, the invention of bellows, ox carts, potters wheels, as well as the invention of the plow for cultivating the soil. These were great advances. If there had been a global flood, it would have set civilization back to the Stone Age and it would have taken centuries to recover what was lost. God gave Noah 120 years to build the Ark (Genesis 6:3). If the flood was local, why go through the trouble of building a huge boat for 120 years? Migrating into the mountains, or to a different land, would have been far easier. Genesis 6:3 says nothing about God giving Noah 120 years to build the ark. This verse says God gave those men 120 years before they would die in the flood. God gave them space to prevent it by their repentance and reformation. But there is nothing in scripture that says it took 120 years to build the ark. The ark could have been built the last month of the 120 years, scripture does not say.Psalms 104:6-9 seems to describe the flood of Noah. It says "the waters stood above the mountains." If this was a local flood, only the mountains in the area would be covered with water. But Genesis 7:19-20 says that all the mountains “that were under the whole heaven, were covered,” not just some of the mountains in a local area. First of all, Psalms 104 is about the Creation, (Gen1:2 - my note) not Noah's flood: Psalms 104:5-6, "Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains."
 
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Study: oxygen bottleneck keeps bugs small www.chinaview.cn 2007-08-14 17:15:34 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-08/...ent_6530933.htm BEIJING, Aug. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Bugs were a lot bigger more than 250 million years ago -- millipedes longer than a human leg, dragonflies with wing spans like hawks -- and now a question that has long puzzled scientists has been explained. The reason there are no humongous insects now is because of a bottleneck that occurs in insects' air pipes as they grow larger. They were able to surmount the problem in the Paleozoic Era thanks to a high-oxygen atmosphere.Insects aren't like animals with backbones and deliver oxygen to their tissues directly and bloodlessly through a network of dead-end tracheal tubes. In bigger insects, this mode of oxygen transport becomes less efficient, but no one has been exactly sure why. Alex Kaiser of Midwestern University and his colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory and Arizona State University discovered the air passageways that lead from the body core to the legs turn out to be bottlenecks that limit how much oxygen can be delivered to the extremities, Kaiser said. The team also examined the passageways that lead from the body core to the head. "We were surprised to find that the effect is most pronounced in the orifices leading to the legs, where more and more of the space is taken up by tracheal tubes in larger species," he said. Kaiser and Argonne biologist Jake Socha also used the results to predict the largest size of currently living beetles. If data on the air passageways to the head were used as a limiting factor, they predicted a crazy-large, foot-long beetle, while the leg data predicted a beetle that matches the size of today's largest living beetle, Titaneus giganteus. The research is detailed in the Aug. 7 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This study is the first step toward understanding what controls body size in insects," Socha said.
 
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Despite the time discrepancies, If a preflood earth was different, Higher Oxygen Count and possibly less gravity, with some sort of water laden canopy this would line up with a pre-Noah's Flood world. Where life would be more abundant, live longer, etc ...