Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2004

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Claim CH401:

Source:

Response:

1. There is no way to hold up a vapor canopy of any great extent. (It could orbit, like the rings of Saturn, but that would not cover the earth like a canopy.)
   
   
2. If the canopy began as vapor, any water from it would be superheated. This scenario essentially starts with most of the Flood waters boiled off. If the water began as ice in orbit, the gravitational potential energy would likewise raise the temperature past boiling. When the canopy fell to form the Flood, everything on earth would be poached.
   
   If the canopy began as solid ice in orbit above the atmosphere, its gravitational potential energy would be converted to heat as it fell, superheating the atmosphere well beyond the ability of any life to survive (Brown 1995, 175).
   
   
3. A vapor canopy before the Flood would have made the earth unliveable. The greenhouse effect would have raised temperatures extremely. If a canopy holding the equivalent to more than 40 feet of water were part of the atmosphere, it would raise the atmospheric pressure accordingly, raising oxygen and nitrogen levels to toxic levels.

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