Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
Did It Rain before the Flood? What Generated the Preflood Mist?
Genesis 2:5–6 suggests that it did not rain before the flood:
Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth; and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.1 [emphasis added]
Notice, these verses only say that after creation, it had not rained. How long did this condition last? Some believe that this mist began the evaporation-rain cycle. If so, the period of no rain was brief, and there was rain before the flood. But if the “no-rain condition” ended sometime before the flood, wouldn’t that have been mentioned? Let’s look for other clues.
Rainbows. God promised never again to flood the entire earth (Genesis 9:12–17), a promise marked by a “bow in the cloud”—a rainbow. Rainbows form when raindrops refract sunlight. This suggests that rainbows began after the flood, which would mean there was no preflood rain.
Others disagree, saying rainbows may have been visible before the flood, but afterward God simply associated His promise with rainbows. This would be similar to the symbolism of a wedding ring. Rings existed before a wedding, but afterward the ring recalls a solemn vow. However, if rainbows suddenly began right after the flood, the rainbow’s symbolic effect would have been more unforgettable and reassuring to the frightened survivors of the flood.
Some argue that rainbows would have formed before the flood every time water splashed and droplets refracted sunlight. This argument overlooks that God’s promise concerned rainbows “in the cloud,” not a relatively few drops of water several feet above the ground for a few seconds.
A Terrarium. The Hebrew word translated “mist,” in Genesis 2:6 is used in only one other place in the Bible—Job 36:27. There, it clearly means water vapor. So, did the preflood Earth act as a humid terrarium in which water vapor evaporated, condensed as dew without rainfall, and watered the Earth? Could an Earth-size terrarium produce enough water to supply major rivers, such as described in Genesis 2:10–14? (Two preflood rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, were evidently similar to and the basis for naming the mighty postflood rivers that today bear the same names. See Endnote 5 on page 552.)
Differences between the Preflood and Postflood Earth. If the hydroplate theory is reasonably correct, at least half of Earth’s water was under the preflood crust, so Earth’s preflood surface had less water than today. There were large seas, but no oceans the size of the Atlantic or Pacific. Also, tidal pumping continuously produced vast amounts of heat in the subterranean water chamber, about 60-miles below Earth’s surface. [See "Tidal Pumping: Two Types" on pages 612–613.]
As explained in Figure 237, by the end of the third creation day, the subterranean water was extremely hot (actually, supercritical). The lower crust was made porous by the ability of supercritical water (SCW) to dissolve certain minerals in the lower crust, such as quartz, which created sponge-like pockets. Those openings then filled with SCW and warmed Earth’s surface. (Water from the subterranean chamber did not rise high enough to mix with Earth’s surface water.) Eventually, the heat lost by the SCW in evaporating ground water equaled the heat added to SCW by tidal pumping in the chamber. At that point, temperatures and pressures no longer increased—a condition known as steady state. The evaporated ground water, was the mist of Genesis 2:6 that rose “from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground,” as heavy dew. Thus, vast amounts of heat were radiated into outer space, primarily each night, as heavy dew watered the ground.
Figure 237: Foundations of the Earth. On Day 2 of the creation week, the raqia (a Hebrew word sometimes translated “expanse” or “firmament”) was placed in the midst of the waters that covered the Earth.2 As explained on page 541, raqia means a pressed-out or pressing-out solid. The raqia had about a 1-mile thick layer of liquid water (mayim) above it and at least as much below it. No doubt the raqia varied in thickness and density along its length,3 so it would have sagged slightly in many places, as if forces (F1, F2, etc.) pressed on a uniform, but flexible slab of granite. Surface water would have flowed into those depressions, causing them to sag even more. That, in turn, allowed still more surface water to flow into the depressions, further deepening them. Eventually, portions of the crust, heated to some extent by the deformation, pressed against the chamber floor, establishing the firm “foundations of the Earth,” mentioned in seven places in the Bible.4
Although the crust was about 60-miles thick, it was 200,000,000 square miles in area, encircled the globe, and was underlain with water. Therefore, before the Earth’s foundations were established, the crust had great vertical flexibility. The points of contact between the sagging crust and the chamber floor will be called “pillars,” but notice they are not shaped like pillars we see in buildings today. They were “the beams of His Upper chambers that God laid in the waters.” (Psalms 104:3)
Because confined water was below the raqia, those downward forces also lifted dry land out of the water that covered the entire Earth on the first day of the creation week. Genesis 1:9–10 and II Peter 3:5b confirm this. About 2,000 years later, the subterranean water burst out and flooded the Earth—not only as heavy rain falling from the fountains of the great deep, but by the granite crust subsiding and forcing subterranean water up onto the Earth’s surface for weeks after the rain had stopped.
God gave Job a difficult examination which included a question most of us would not have been able to understand or visualize—let alone answer.
”Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? (Job 38:4)”
Had the foundations of the Earth not been established, Earth’s crust, resting entirely on subterranean water and subject to twice-daily subterranean tides, would have continually undulated. People and animals would have felt as if they were living on a giant, but stiff, “water bed.” As stated in Psalm 104:5,
He established the earth on its foundations, so that it will not totter forever and ever.
Powerful Heating of the Subterranean Water. A fixed volume of subterranean water was confined below the crust, so for every small volume of dense crust that subsided, an equal volume of less dense crust had to rise by an identical amount. (Energy lost inside one part of an isolated system is always gained in another part of that system.) That loss of the crust’s potential energy—dense crust falling while light crust was rising—added energy in the form of heat to the subterranean water. Surface water then flowed into and deepened each depression, forming the many prefloood seas. If at least one percent of the surface of the preflood Earth was dry land, the added heat would have made the subterranean water supercritical by the end of Day 3. [See pages 124–125 and Figure 75 on page 144.] That heat, plus the continual generation of heat by tidal pumping (as explained on page 612), is another example of the pressing action by the solid raqia. This system (without rain, storms or lightning) watered the preflood earth gently and uniformly, each night with pure liquid water (heavy dew).
If enough heat enters a drop of liquid water, the water becomes steam (water vapor). When heat is removed from water vapor, liquid water returns (condenses) as rain or dew. The heavy dew that settled and watered the preflood Earth each night returned liquid water to the Earth’s surface completing the water cycle. Today, water evaporation is driven almost entirely by heat from above Earth’s surface—heat from the Sun. Before the flood, water evaporation from the Sun may have been higher than today if there were no clouds, but evaporation was also driven by heat from below the Earth’s surface—heat produced by tidal pumping in the subterranean water chamber, and heat generated in the crust as it deformed. [See “What Triggered the Flood” on pages 477–483.]
Figure 238: Supercritical Fluids. Because supercritical fluids (first explained on page 237) are so important in understanding the lush conditions on the preflood Earth and the power of the fountains of the great deep, another, more intuitive, description of supercritical fluids will now be given.
The container on the left contains a hot liquid and vapor of a fluid. The fluid could be water, (liquid water in the bottom and water vapor, steam) in the top. Instead of water, it could be a liquid and vapor of another pure substance, such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, or even a substance that is normally a solid, but is so hot it is a liquid. The pressure inside this container is so great that the highly compressed vapor has the same density as the liquid. What would happen if a little gremlin lifted a drop of the liquid and placed it in the vapor? That drop would float, because the densities of the liquid and vapor are equal.
Because the temperatures are uniform within the container, for every liquid molecule that evaporates from the droplet, one vapor molecule, on average, will collide with and condense on the droplet. Vapor molecules that slam into the liquid in the bottom of the container act as our imaginary gremlin, because they splash liquid droplets up into the vapor until all the liquid in the bottom of the container is scattered as microscopic droplets floating throughout the vapor. Fluids in this state, are said to be supercritical.
Therefore, by the end of Day 3 of the creation week (as explained in Figure 237), the water in the subterranean chamber (an extremely high-pressure container) was supercritical—able to dissolve certain minerals in the chamber’s ceiling, such as quartz, making the lower crust porous, “like a thick sponge.” [See “Recorded Ancient History” on page 479.] Every drop of supercritical water in that subsurface ocean was also highly explosive, able to expand with unimaginable violence, as an upward jet, if the crust ruptured, allowing the pressure in the chamber to drop.
A subtle message in Genesis 2:5–6 is that the watering of the Earth by a mist was a steady, routine occurrence. Therefore, the heating that produced that mist also had to be steady. Since steady state had been reached, heat and pressure were not building up indefinitely in the subterranean chamber. Had steady state not been reached, the subterranean water chamber with its tidal pumping, would have been a ticking time bomb. On the contrary, everything that God created was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Creation did not include a ticking time bomb, nor any comets or asteroids aimed at Earth. Other important differences, already explained by the hydroplate theory, were Earth’s preflood topography. [See pages 113–150.] It was smoother than today, so rivers flowed more slowly, never flooded, and required less water condensation to keep them filled. Preflood mountains existed, but no major mountains such as the Rockies, Andes, or Himalayas. There were no volcanoes, glaciers, or polar ice caps before the flood. [See Endnote 35 on page 186.] The preflood Earth had greater land area, because so much water was below the crust, and Earth’s radius was slightly larger.6 Without major barriers—oceans, mountain chains, and glaciers—travel was easier. With so much water condensation, preflood forests were abundant and lush, enough to form today’s vast coal, oil, and methane deposits. This left little room for deserts. With 360-day years, days were slightly longer. As you will see, these preflood conditions prevented rain, but abundantly watered a thirsty Earth.
Wind. Most wind is produced by atmospheric temperature differences; wind then mixes air with different temperatures and moisture contents. The various “mixtures” give us weather: rain, snow, hail, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, fair weather, etc. Without today’s vast oceans,7 volcanoes, major mountains, and ice sheets, the preflood Earth had more uniform temperatures. Also, the abundant preflood vegetation moderated temperatures by evaporative cooling during the day and condensation (which always releases heat) at night. More uniform temperatures meant less wind 8 and fewer weather extremes.
Condensation Nuclei. Water droplets almost always begin with water vapor condensing on a solid surface. A common example is early-morning dew that collects on grass. Raindrops, snowflakes, and fog particles begin growing on microscopic airborne particles (even bacteria 9). These particles, called condensation nuclei, are typically 0.001–0.0001 millimeters in diameter—less than one hundredth the diameter of a human hair. Each cubic inch of air we breathe contains at least 1,000 such particles. Molecules of water vapor rarely collide and stick together; instead, a water droplet forms when trillions of water molecules collect on one of these microscopic particles.
If all sizes were scaled up, so a water molecule was the size of a ping-pong ball, a condensation nucleus would be a house-size “rock” and a raindrop would be 100 miles in diameter. When a gaseous water molecule strikes that “rock,” much of the molecule’s energy is transferred to the “rock” as heat. Because preflood humidity was high with all the mist rising each day from the Earth’s surface, the molecules would stick when the temperatures dropped below the “dew point” at night; condensation would begin. The “rock,” slightly warmer because of the added energy from colliding water molecules, warmed the surrounding air, causing slight updrafts. Moist breezes plus updrafts brought enough moisture to “the rock” for it to grow quickly into a water droplet.That “rock” and its growing water volume could not “float” in calm air for long, just as a grain of sand cannot float in still water. However, flowing water and air can suspend both. With more uniform temperatures globally and less preflood wind, condensation nuclei received less lift and stayed closer to the ground. There would have been no lightning, which requires trillions of very high, convecting water droplets. (Besides, lightning would have sometimes killed people, contradicting Genesis 1:31.) Clouds may not have existed.
A microscopic droplet growing in the air has a tiny volume, but a relatively large cross-sectional area. Therefore, rising, moist air carried the tiny droplet upward and added liquid water to it. As it grew, its weight increased faster than its cross-sectional area, so it quickly settled to the Earth, collecting other droplets in its path. We could describe this as mist rising from the Earth and then settling back to water the ground. (Sounds like Genesis 2:6, doesn’t it?)
It would be similar to morning fog rising on a still lake, but with several differences. First, before the flood, the earth had no polar ice and no snow-capped mountains, so less solar radiation was reflected back into space, and more of the Sun’s rays heated earth during the day. With more forests, few (if any) clouds, and slightly longer days, the sun evaporated more water than today—and the mist rising from the preflood earth kept relative humidity high. At night, with fewer clouds and longer nights, more heat escaped into space, so more water condensed. (Today, clouds reflect 20–25% of earth’s incoming radiation back into space and hold in much of the outgoing radiation.) Therefore, the preflood earth was watered much more abundantly and uniformly by daily condensation than by rainfall today. Unlike today, there were no long dry or wet spells, droughts, or local floods.
Heavy condensation before each sunrise kept moisture closer to the ground, further restricting cloud formation. Today, morning fog evaporates soon after sunrise, before the moisture can settle to the ground. With fewer, if any, high clouds before the flood, temperatures dropped more rapidly at night. This, coupled with more moisture in the daytime air, allowed water droplets to grow larger, settle to the ground faster, water plants abundantly, and soak into the soil before morning evaporation could begin.
Preflood fog droplets also grew larger and faster than today for another reason. Without today’s main sources of condensation nuclei (volcanic debris, sulfur compounds from volcanoes, man-made pollutants, lightning-produced fires, sea salt from ocean spray, or dust and bacteria kicked up by high winds) there were fewer condensation nuclei. Condensing more moisture on fewer nuclei meant fog droplets grew larger and settled faster.
We can only marvel at the simplicity and efficiency of the preflood system for uniformly distributing, each day throughout the earth, water, a most precious resource. Today, we have droughts and local floods. Equally marvelous was the automatic preflood system for keeping time—a 360-day year and a 30-day lunar month, described on pages 155–192 and 609 and visible to everyone on the possibly cloudless earth. Each marvel gives new meaning to the words, “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) We feeble engineers must exclaim to the Master Engineer, “Brilliant!”
First Rain. If it did not rain before the flood, how did the first rain form at the very beginning of the flood? As explained on pages 113–150, the drops of water falling at the beginning of the flood were not formed by condensing water. Instead, they formed by the upward-jetting spray from the fountains of the great deep.
Any credible flood explanation should explain why rain did not fall before the flood, how the fertile earth was watered, what supplied the rivers, how violent rain11 fell so rapidly at the beginning of the flood, and why the rain ended after 40 days, even though the flood waters rose until the 150th day when all preflood mountains were covered. Also, if the flood’s 40 days of rain formed by condensation, that rain should have stopped after a few days, because falling rain would have removed the condensation nuclei. The hydroplate theory answers all these questions.