What Were the ‘Waters Above the Firmament’?
By Brian Thomas, M.S.
Evidence for Creation
Early ICR scientists hypothesized that the
“waters which were above the firmament” implied
a canopy of water vapor that covered the earth before the Flood.
However, later tests led researchers away
from this model. What changed their minds?
The vapor canopy theory helped explain why
God separated the Genesis 1:1 formless mass of water into two bodies, one
above and another below, with a firmament between them.
An
atmospheric vapor wrap gave a place for the waters “above the firmament.”
This canopy’s greenhouse effect might have
made the whole pre-Flood world tropical and helped people live for hundreds of
years.
But holes appeared in the theory.
Atmospheric physicist Larry Vardiman used
climate modeling software to construct a virtual vapor canopy.
When he input enough water vapor for the
first 40 days of rain during the Flood year, he found that Earth’s temperatures
would have soared due to an intense greenhouse effect.
His results required the sun to emit only 25
percent of its current intensity to keep Earth’s inhabitants from basically
boiling.
While Dr. Vardiman tested the vapor canopy,
physicist Dr. Russell Humphreys formulated a new model that placed the
firmament waters beyond the farthest galaxies!
Humphreys suggested that God miraculously
stretched out the heavens on Day Two of the creation week.
In other words, God pulled the upper waters
some 20 million light-years away from Earth-bound waters below, leaving a
firmament of heaven between.
Humphreys
wrote, “Another biblical problem with the
canopy model is Psalm 148:1-4,
which mentions the ‘waters above [the heavens].’”
According
to a literal translation of Genesis 1:20, the starry lights reside “in
the firmament,” but birds fly “on the face of the expanse of
the heavens.”
But if there never was a vapor canopy, then
what about that idyllic pre-Flood climate helping people live hundreds of
years?
Genesis
5:29 says, “And he called his name Noah, saying, ‘This one will comfort us
concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the
Lord has cursed.’”
Their hard toil for food confronts notions of
pre-Flood global paradise. By then the Garden of Eden was off-limits.
And genetics better explains the dramatic
decrease in life spans after the Flood.
A population bottleneck, like when the
world’s population shrunk to only eight on the Ark, would reduce later life
spans.
Responsible creation researchers test various
historical models, but basic Bible facts never change.
For
example, “in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all
that is in them,” and “the world that then existed perished, being
flooded with water,” regardless of where one places the creation
week’s upper waters.
http://www.icr.org/article/9296
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