"In order to answer the question, we have to look at the pre-flood atmospheric conditions. First of all, we know that there was no rain until the flood occurred. Instead of rain, the earth had a heavy mist encircling the globe, which kept everything lush and green (which is why we always picture dinosaurs in a jungle-like, lush environment--the world was much more beautiful back then because it was fresh from creation!)."

We know nothing of the sort. There is no evidence for this. there is not even evidence in the Bible.

There is, however, evidence for earlier atmospheres which were not nice at all. Materials found in rocks identified as most ancient are indicative of a reducing atmosphere - that is one without oxygen. The change into an oxidising atmosphere can be traced in succeeding formations.

"¬Second, the world didn't have huge mountains like we have today (since modern mountains and mountain ranges were formed by volcanic activity and sedimentary rocks. This is a vital point, because if the mountains back then weren't as high as they are now, then it wouldn't have taken an impossible amount of water to cover them! As it is, if we took all the water in the oceans today we could cover the whole earth (were it smooth) quite a ways (I can't recall the exact number, but it was at least seven thousand feet)."

Again, you have stated as fact something for which there is no evidence. Where is the evidence for the lack of mountains? Ranges are actually formed by the motions of plates pushing up the sedimentary rocks, and others, and there is evidence for ranges which have existed in the past but have since been eroded, such as the Variscan or Hercynian range across the south of Britain. This evidence is the folded rocks, the metamorphism from deep burial and heating with intruded igneous rocks, changes which could not have happened at the surface. The conditions required to form such rocks can be reproduced in laboratories. The time taken to erode these ranges has to be greater than that allowed for in YEC.

I would ask you for you evidence for a smooth Earth surface. I don't recall it being described as such in the Bible.

I acknowledge that there is enough water to flood a totally smooth Earth, but there is no evidence for this condition having existed in the past.

"Since there was no rain before the flood (and yet there *were* rivers), it makes plain sense that there were underground reservoirs of water which fed springs. When these underwater lakes were broken, there would have been a lot of water geysering out of the ground."

Still assertions without evidence. Current aquifers, by the way, are not reservoirs in the sense of lakes, but porous rocks which hold water between the rock particles. These rocks are usually sedimentary, but there are volcanic aquifers. You maintain that neither of these rock tyoes existed before the flood. (Incidentally, while fact checking, I discovered a paper which suggests that the conditions in volcanic aquifers could have contributed to the formation of organic compounds and possibly even RNA, the building blocks of life. This probably means that the state of the water would not have been good for supporting any life which drank it.) So where is the evidence for these lakes which you adduce through conjecture? What is the actual location?

There is evidence for rainfall in the PreCambrian (e.g. Long Mynd, Shropshire, England,) where raindrops have left impressions in rocks identified by other means as very old. (565 my in the Long Mynd case.)

"The oceans were likely much warmer back in the pre-flood days, which would have created ideal conditions for gigantic hypercanes and other disasters. Couple with that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, overflowing rivers and geysers, huge torrents of water sheeting from the skies, giant tsunamis destroying the civilized world --havoc reigned."

During which havoc, there were large areas of such calm clean water that huge depths of almost pure limestone was laid down as chalk, in both the northern and southern hemispheres. You haven't anwered my earlier points about this rock type.

As for the oceans being likely to have been much warmer, where is your evidence, and how does this counter that from glacial dropstones being found in low latitude sediments in the Early Cambrian?

"Again, what is given as evidence against the flood, when we take all factors into account, actually support the Flood of the Bible."

You haven't taken all the factors into account. There is, for example, the neat way in which rocks dated by radioactive decay of various elements as very old tend to lie under rocks dated as younger, and where they don't, clear mechanisms in the form, for example, of large thrust faults can be identified. There is the way in which fossils clearly of earlier forms tend to be found in rocks older and lower in the geological column than later forms, and that no-one has ever found chronologically confused assemblages of fossils such as a dinosaur, a placental mammal, and a Burgess shale creature lying together in a group clearly emplaced together as corpses, or even better, living together and suddenly buried in a catastrophy. If you do actually look, clear eyed and open minded, at ALL the evidence, there is absolutely no way it can be made to support that Flood.

And that even includes the evidence in the Bible itself, which simply does not go into the detail which you are citing.

I do think you have a problem with scale. If your description of the turmoil of the Noachian flood is correct, and it is probably rather mild when you argue that all the sedimentary, volcanic and metamorphic rocks were formed during it, and all the plate tectonic moveents which can be traced depend on it, the disruption would have been unsurvicable by anyone. The Ark may have been larger than most people imagine, but it would not have been able to survive what you are postulating. And BTW, there is no Biblical support for the hibernation supposition. You either use the Bible as a source and stick to it, or you are doing what you accuse others of, and making special arguments.

Penny