In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the same day, all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.
Genesis 7:11
From where did the water come to cover the mountains?
To where did all the water go as the flood receded?
Personal Experience
In 1957, my third-grade textbook said oil and gas were fossil fuels that were the products of the decomposition of dinosaurs and other creatures. The text also predicted the United States would run out of oil in 20 years.
8 years later, in the summer of 1965, I worked as a roughneck for an offshore drilling company. We drilled through hundreds of feet of solid rock to complete a gas well, tapping gas reserves from three strata. Along the way, we also struck oil. The customer was Crown Central Petroleum. This oil company was wholly owned by ALCOA Aluminium. They wanted only the gas for their aluminum plant in Point Comfort, Texas. Enormous amounts of electrical power were essential to process aluminum ore.
It was then I first questioned my third-grade textbook. I asked myself, “How did all those dinosaurs get down there after they died?”
Old roughnecks related to me how some depleted oil reserves continue to produce oil.
Endless Oil and Gas
From Oil Price News, March 5, 2012
“There have been numerous reports in recent times, of oil and gas fields not running out at the expected time, but instead showing a higher content of hydrocarbons after they had already produced more than the initially estimated amount. This has been seen in the Middle East, in the deep gas wells of Oklahoma, on the Gulf of Mexico coast, and in other places. It is this apparent refilling during production that has been responsible for the series of gross underestimate of reserves that have been published time and again, the most memorable being the one in the early seventies that firmly predicted the end of oil and gas globally by 1987, a prediction which produced an energy crisis and with that a huge shift in the wealth of nations. Refilling is an item of the greatest economic significance, and also a key to understanding what the sources of all this petroleum had been. It is also of practical engineering importance, since we may be able to exercise some control over the refilling process.“
Diamonds Aplenty
Diamonds are igneous rocks produced deep within the Earth’s mantle. Kimberlite pipes transport diamonds to the surface.
“Diamonds are the most amazing of gems. Just as amazing, however, is how natural diamonds reach Earth’s surface. Diamonds are formed 150 (93 miles) to 700 km (435 miles) deep in Earth, and are then carried upward in a rare volcanic eruption of a kimberlite magma.” Excerpt from The Gemological Institute of America, Summer 2019, Kimberlites: Earth’s Diamond Delivery System
Let’s think of the Earth as a huge chemical factory. Are you familiar with a petroleum-cracking tower?
Noah’s Flood: Fact or Fiction?
How much more water than all the surface water on Earth would be needed? How much more would be needed to cover the surface of the earth above the height of the tallest mountains?
Andrew L. Seidel, a skeptic of Noah’s flood, estimated the volume of surface water on the Earth.
Mr. Seidel estimates all the surface water on Earth to be 332,500,000 cubic miles.
Again, the above number is from a skeptic of the Bible. He also states, “So for the biblical flood to have happened, the water on earth had to miraculously multiply by about 250%.“
A NOVA article published 2014 on the Public Broadcasting website Huge Underground Reservoir Holds Three Times as Much Water as Earth’s Oceans estimates the volume of the subterranean ocean as THREE TIMES the volume of the surface water.
Mister Seidel apparently did not read the full text of Genesis 7:11. “…all the fountains of the great deep burst open…”
Learn more about the ocean of water 400 miles deep within the earth from a PBS NOVA article published in 2014 titled: Huge Underground Reservoir Holds Three Times as Much Water as Earth’s Oceans
The Oversimplification Syndrome
Our thinking inclines toward gross oversimplifying. This habit leads to a mindless dulling of our intelligence as we avoid complexity. The simplification of complex matters into simply right vs wrong, black or white thinking does unimaginable harm. It impedes our relationships, deadlocks political discourse, and is fodder for conflict and war.
A truly open mind embraces complexity and confusion as it resists either-or thinking. Free from the need to be right, our thinking opens to the gifts of uncertainty and possibilities. From this perspective, curiosity is king and being too certain is questionable.
Climate alarmists oversimplify the ever-changing atmospheric phenomena.
One of my junior high school teachers, Mr. Roan, described people who oversimplify complex issues as Microcephalic Homo Sapiens.
Knowledge is power.
John White
Rockwall, Texas
John N. White 
Are you suggesting the biblical tale of Noah, the Ark and the Global Flood are historicak and should be considered as scientific fact?
As for the dinosaur part of your OP.
I am going to presume you are aware of the Time Temperature Index used in the exploration for oil deposits?
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On the subject of oil, my third-grade text book described oil and gas as fossil fuels. I had no reason to doubt this.
You may have experienced an easy life. My own was anything but easy. I began working at age 7 mowing lawns, By age 12, I was working in our local seafood industry, sorting shrimp on shrimp boats, canning shrimp in a local processing plant. At age 10, I was doing minor residential electrical work. An electrician across the street was my first mentor. In high school, I worked 12-hour nights in a gas station, another 12 on Saturdays for 65¢ per hour.
At age 17, I lied about my age to work on an offshore drilling rig, to this day, the most difficult work in all my life. It paid a little over 3$ per hour. This was summer work between 11th and 12th grades. The following summer and for months thereafter, I worked on offshore rigs from Galveston Bay down to the border with Mexico. I learned much from the old men.
The deepest well with which I had experience, bottomed out at 15,500 feet. The customer wanted only natural gas. On the way down, we had to seal off three oil-bearing strata. I began to ask my self how all that oil and gas got down there. I discarded the notion of dead dinosaurs turning into oil.
A couple of old roughnecks with many years working offshore in the gulf told me about depleted reservoirs refilling with oil. This knowledge spawned an interest in geology. I think my interests inspired my eldest son to become a geologist. He is a tenured professor in a major university, specializing in strombolian volcanoes.
My role as an engineer with an aerospace company in the 1970s was logistical support for our military customers: Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy. My assignment with the Navy was aboard an aircraft carrier in the Tonkin Gulf, 7 months, 1972 to 1973. On the occasion of going down close to the equator to effect major ship repair, my experience with “The Doldrums” ignited an intense interest in atmospheric phenomena. This led me to study all things related to ocean currents, the 6 atmospheric circulation cells, CO2 and more. On this topic, I get invited to speak before interested groups.
The more I learn about terrestrial atmospheric and geological phenomena, the more I find correlation in the Bible.
My studies focus on the topics that interest me.
For the record, I respect all opinions. And, I invite opinions contrary to my own. This is the nature of the scientific method.
Most opinions are hypotheses. I welcome challenges to my worldview because those challenges either strengthen my worldview or serve to challenge it.
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Interesting However neither question I asked was answered
Once again.
1. Do you consider the Noachian Global Flood tale to be historical fact
2. Are you aware of the TTI(Time Temperature Index)?
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I absolutely believe the Bible timeline. Do you know from where the water came to flood the earth?
On your second question, yes, as I am with conventional geological dating.
Crude oil and its usefulness has been known for a very long time. Here in Texas, the East Texas oil boom began in 1901.
Around my coastal town of Palacios, I remember in the 1950s how my mother would take the three of us children on a long drive as a relief from the summer heat. She would drive about 30 miles south on highway 35 to Port Lavaca. We drove at night with the headlights off. The glaring bare-bulb lights of innumerable drilling rigs illuminated the highway.
All US oil extraction was from shallow wells trapped atop enormous salt domes. Those wells “went dry” over time. Deep rotary drilling replaced earlier hammer drills.
The advent of rotary drilling facilitated deep drilling. My older brother Doyle was the lead driller on a 20,500-foot exploratory well near Sweeny, Texas, an area called “cow trap.” His rig hit natural gas, methane, but there wasn’t adequate surface equipment to control that magnitude of pressure. A rule-of-thumb is the shut-in pressure of a gas well is 1 PSIG per vertical foot depth. His shut-in pressure was 20,500 PSIG. That project lasted more than a year, ending with the well being “plugged” with cement and abandoned.
A few years later, I was working on an offshore drilling rig that sought only natural gas. This was for Alcoa’s petroleum company. Alcoa used enormous amounts of natural gas to power its electrical generating equipment in Point Comfort, Texas.
My well bottomed out at 16, 500 feet. We perforated the casing pipe at three different strata, intentionally avoiding three oil-bearing strata.
My brother’s well a few years earlier also encountered oil-bearing sands on the way to 20,000 feet.
Can you explain how all the dead animals found their way to those great depths thousands of feet below solid rock?
There are two general classes of drilling bits: rock bits with three conical rollers with sharp points to break through the first few thousand feet. The bits used to go deeper are diamond-studded bits.
On my drilling rig, we used diamond bits beyond 10,000 feet. Our progress was 40 feet per day.
How did enough dead animals get under all that hard rock?
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So you consider yourself as a Young Earth Creationist,is thus correct?
Your personal oil drilling tale is interesting but yet again you did not address my question.
Are you familiar with the TTI, Time Temperature Index?
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I view the time temperature index in the category of carbon 14 dating.
Geology, the result of a global flood, interests me. Theoretical geology does not.
I ask again, from where did the water come to cover the earth above the highest mountains?
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“I ask again, from where did the water come to cover the earth above the highest mountains?”
It didn’t.
And if you understand geology and plate tectonics then you will know why.
“I view the time temperature index in the category of carbon 14 dating.”
It is dissapointing that someone who worked in the field of drilling for oil asserts they understand the TTI yet seems to hold it in scant regard.
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I hold it in scant regard because most of the oil is discovered by exploration. Petroleum engineers learn from the initial findings the extent of an oil field for further development.
Evolutionists from before the time of Charles Darwin insist on an Earth billions and billions years old. the natural worldview of atheists.
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Then, I am sorry to say, you are simply a science denier.
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You did not give a direct answer to whether you are a Young Earth Creationist?
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What do you know about dinosaur herds buried in sediment? Link to one story out of Mongolia: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/young-dinosaurs-roamed-together-died-together
Millions of dinosaurs and other animals perished in the northwestern USA and up into Canada. https://www.livescience.com/8340-world-largest-dinosaur-graveyard-linked-mass-death.html
The two articles linked above were not written by creationists like me, but by secularist like you who subscribe to an ancient earth.
Back to my unanswered question, from where could there have been enough water to flood the Earth above the highest mountains? Are you curious?
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Dinosaurs: I don’t see what point you are trying to make with these examples.
Best you simply state what it is up front.
There was no mountain-engulfing global flood and if you took the time to understand geology and plate tectonics you would know why.
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I must apologize. I reread your reply and I noted you say you are familiar with the TTI.
If this is the case then how can you possibly believe the bible timeline?
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