Young Earth Creationists believe in a young earth, followed by a literal global flood based on the belief that Scripture is written as history. Often, in comments, discussion forums, and discussions in general, they will refer to "overwhelming physical evidence" that backs up their theological belief.
What phsyical evidence do they teach or believe can be interpreted as consistent with the idea of a global flood?
The Answers in Genesis website has an article that covers historical records of the flood - Comparison of secular historical records, where they look at 200 flood traditions from across the world. 95% of the traditions had common elements with the Genesis account and described a worldwide flood.
Answers in Genesis also provides a number of articles describing geological evidence for a worldwide flood: Geological Links
"If you are the Christ, tell us." But he said to them, "If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I ask you, you will not answer." (Luke 22:67-68 ESV)
I can provide evidence that suggests a global flood when taken together, but you can never really prove something that happened in the past.
Fossils. The fact that so many fossils are found, and often in large collections, is kind of odd if you believe the flood didn't happen. Normally dead animals rot away, are eaten by other animals, or otherwise have their remains scattered by the elements. Flood conditions that bury the animals whole, are very desirable in producing fossils (you have to have the right minerals from soil and water encasing an object before it will fossilize).. Just think for a second how silly it would be to say that the larger fossil collections were not caused by a flood or simular catastrophe, that's how the arceologist explain allot of them, by some sort of local flood for each deposit. So why not accept the global Flood? That explanation was written well before anybody had a reason to explain them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fossil_sites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fossil_Parks
History. While I know there are definitely exceptions, all around the world ancient civilizations record a global flood (but it of course is usually dismissed as part of their mythology). Interestingly enough many of them include a story about people in a boat with names very similar to Noah and his family. http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/flood.html
The geologic column, and fossil record. It just happens that the order of materials in the geologic column, and the order fossils are generally* found, are the order those materials hydraulically sort into if mixed in flowing water and allowed to settle. (Don't take my word for it, try it!)
Polystrate fossils. That is to say, fossils that that span multiple layers in the geologic column. All over the world entire forests of trees are found petrified joining multiple geologic era's, so either they stood still for millions of years while the layers formed around them so they could be petrified. (In the upright position, without rotting), or they were petrified by being buried in some catastrophic event.
To Be Continued later..... **
*And don't be fooled, although I hear claims to the opposite all the time, fossils do end up in layers they supposedly shouldn't be in frequently.
**Also I am staying on topic and only talking about some of the evidence of a global flood, others may come and hijack this thread to talk about their old earth 'science', I'll address those in the appropriate threads.
I am no archaeologist even today, but even as an child I found one piece of evidence to contribute.
When I was a kid my dad always used to complain that he could never find his tools. That's because half of them were strewn about in the woods where I had absconded with them. He never could keep a hatchet around, but one of the other tools I loved was a sledge hammer. Where we lived there wasn't much dirt, maybe 6" if you were lucky, then you hit limestone bedrock. I used to smash every bit of rock I could get loose into bits.
Why? Because inside every single sample were fossils ... specifically fossils of sea creatures. I collected literally hundreds of sea-shell fossils.
We lived on on the top of of a ridge at 7,500 feet elevation in the middle of the Rocky Mountains in the middle of a continent.
Has done a significant amount of research and study on this topic. He graduated from MIT and ended up retiring from the Air Force as a Colonel.
I think that you'll find his theory incredibly compelling, His Website.
Basically he says that the earth was created relatively flat. Not flat in the sense of non-spherical, but flat in the sense of no mountains, valleys or oceans. Then the flood happened and caused some major devastation.
It ends with the idea that the oceans are the evidence of the flood, the mountains are the evidence of the flood, the fossils, the tilt of the earth's axis, the seasons, all of this is evidence of what happened in Walts theory. It really explains everything in a very logical argument.
Scientists study cause and effect. If there was a world-wide flood over the earth, then it would have left striking marks upon the earth. By piecing together many different discoveries over time, scientists have been able to construct a possible scenario of Flood events. In the Beginning, by Walt Brown, chronicles many of these studies. Here are a few memorable highlights.
According to the Bible, the "fountains of the deep" broke up. Water spurt out of the ocean with such force that it escaped our atmosphere and kept going. That's where we get our comets, which have the same water type as our oceans. (No comets have ever been observed to come from outside our solar system - only from within.)
Much of that water rained back down, some as snow upon the north where the mammoths were snowed under, food still in their mouths and bellies, uneaten or undigested. No mammoth can live in snow - modern elephants must keep moving around to hunt for food in order to grow, so how much more an elephant-like mammoth? There is just not enough food in the frozen tundra to keep any mammoths alive, much less grow to such a great size. In the past, the far north was warm and food was plentiful for them.
Every major mountain range on earth contains fossilized sea life - far above sea level. The author has found fossils of sea life a few miles from Mount Ararat, more than a mile above sea level. Several states above the Grand Canyon were filled with water for some time after the Flood. A dam in the south finally broke, gushing gigantic torrents of water southward. That water plowed into ground still somewhat softened after the Flood, and easily carved its way south to form the Grand Canyon.
These findings and more are still accumulating as scientists pursue this fascinating subject of the Flood aftermath.
Amber, which is fossilized sap, has been found to contain air bubbles with double the amount of oxygen in our present atmosphere, showing that there has been a different environment on earth in the past, but contradicting the evolutionist idea that oxygen has increased and so become able to sustain life. An atmosphere with a larger amount of oxygen would be able to support the larger species of animals whose fossils have been found, which today we think of as giants of their species.
Mammoths and other large creatures are not the only things to have been fossilized. Leaves and insects have also been found fossilized in rock; something that could only happen at great speed under colossal pressure, the exact conditions of the Flood
