Evolutionary Propoganda - A True Story

DHK,

Did you actually read the article ?
It took thousands of years for the atmosphere to recover and killed 90% of plants and animals. That is not a flood but an atmospheric calamity.

If you go for the worldwide as opposed to regional flood you run into difficulties.

Consider the white cliffs of dovers, if all that calcium chalk was formed from the bodies of animals during a worldwide flood then how do we explain how all those animals all died on top of one another like that and have you any idea of how many animals it would take to be on top of one another for those cliffs to form ?!!!

Consider again all the coal deposits of the world, YEC's have to believe they were formed by the death of all the worlds animals in 1 year or so. Any idea how many animals must have had to existed per square meter for the current coal deposits to have formed from 1 years worth of flood ?

YEC's gloss over these immense problems....

Don't get me wrong I'm not in flood denial, but I do question if it was world wide.

 

Just to make a brief interjection again. It is not a 'universal' YEC belief that one flood was the only catastrophe on earth. It is not the opinion of many of us that the Flood was responsible for all, or even most of, the geologic strata.

I might mention, though, that since it has been figured that internal changes in a star will result in a restabilizing of the star in a matter of hours, it might be quite possible that the earth's atmosphere stabilized just a bit faster than the evolutionists/long-agers say it did.

The Bible clearly indicates the Flood was world-wide, and so does the sediment under the Cambrian strata:

http://www.setterfield.org/geology.htm

In particular, for the information on the strata under the Cambrian, please check the Snowball Earth article.

 

Hi Helen,
I'm always afraid to run up against yourself as your posts have been very good in the past

Re: the flood being universal , there are biblical arguments to question this -

Web Page > Was the flood universal ?

I don't know enough re Setterfields geology to discuss your other reference though.

God bless

Doug

 

Hi Helen,

from what I've been able to reference -

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#implications

6. Implications of a Flood
A global flood would have produce evidence contrary to the evidence we see.

How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?

How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.

Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]

References
Alley, R. B., D. A. Meese, C. A. Shuman, A. J. Gow, K.C. Taylor, P. M. Grootes, J. W. C. White, M. Ram, E. W. Waddington, P. A. Mayewski, & G. A. Zielinski, 1993. Abrupt increase in Greenland snow accumulation at the end of the Younger Dryas event. Nature 362: 527-529.

Becker, B. & Kromer, B., 1993. The continental tree-ring record - absolute chronology, C-14 calibration and climatic-change at 11 KA. Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 103 (1-2): 67-71.

Becker, B., Kromer, B. & Trimborn, P., 1991. A stable-isotope tree-ring timescale of the late glacial Holocene boundary. Nature 353 (6345): 647-649.

Johnsen, S. J., H. B. Clausen, W. Dansgaard, K. Fuhrer, N. Gundestrap, C. U. Hammer, P. Iversen, J. Jouzel, B. Stauffer, & J. P. Steffensen, 1992. Irregular glacial interstadials recorded in a new Greenland ice core. Nature 359: 311-313.

Stuiver, Minze, et al, 1986. Radiocarbon age calibration back to 13,300 years BP and the 14 C age matching of the German Oak and US bristlecone pine chronologies. IN: Calibration issue / Stuiver, Minze, et al., Radiocarbon 28(2B): 969-979.

7. Producing the Geological Record
Most people who believe in a global flood also believe that the flood was responsible for creating all fossil-bearing strata. (The alternative, that the strata were laid down slowly and thus represent a time sequence of several generations at least, would prove that some kind of evolutionary process occurred.) However, there is a great deal of contrary evidence.

Before you argue that fossil evidence was dated and interpreted to meet evolutionary assumptions, remember that the geological column and the relative dates therein were laid out by people who believed divine creation, before Darwin even formulated his theory. (See, for example, Moore [1973], or the closing pages of Dawson [1868].)

Why are geological eras consistent worldwide? How do you explain worldwide agreement between "apparent" geological eras and several different (independent) radiometric and nonradiometric dating methods? [e.g., Short et al, 1991]

How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution? Ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape fail to explain:

the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?
the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life. (Yun, 1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late Precambrian sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear that low in the geological column?)
why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in many geologic strata.
why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are still perfectly sorted.
why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high ground?
how coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long were preserved intact with other fossils below them.
why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid mechanics says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper strata.
why artifacts such as footprints and burrows are also sorted. [Crimes & Droser, 1992]
why no human artifacts are found except in the very uppermost strata. If, at the time of the Flood, the earth was overpopulated by people with technology for shipbuilding, why were none of their tools or buildings mixed with trilobite or dinosaur fossils?
why different parts of the same organisms are sorted together. Pollen and spores are found in association with the trunks, leaves, branches, and roots produced by the same plants [Stewart, 1983].
why ecological information is consistent within but not between layers. Fossil pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen hydraulically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic evidence is different for each layer?
How do surface features appear far from the surface? Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have originated only on the surface, such as:

Rain drops. [Robb, 1992]
River channels. [Miall, 1996, especially chpt. 6]
Wind-blown dunes. [Kocurek & Dott, 1981; Clemmenson & Abrahamsen, 1983; Hubert & Mertz, 1984]
Beaches.
Glacial deposits. [Eyles & Miall, 1984]
Burrows. [Crimes & Droser, 1992; Thackray, 1994]
In-place trees. [Cristie & McMillan, 1991]
Soil. [Reinhardt & Sigleo, 1989; Wright, 1986, 1994]
Desiccation cracks. [Andrews, 1988; Robb, 1992]
Footprints. [Gore, 1993, has a photograph (p. 16-17) showing dinosaur footprints in one layer with water ripples in layers above and below it. Gilette & Lockley, 1989, have several more examples, including dinosaur footprints on top of a coal seam (p. 361-366).]
Meteorites and meteor craters. [Grieve, 1997; Schmitz et al, 1997]
Coral reefs. [Wilson, 1975]
Cave systems. [James & Choquette, 1988]
How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?

How does a global flood explain angular unconformities? These are where one set of layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top. They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.

How were mountains and valleys formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids [Gansser, 1964].) If these were formed during the Flood, how did they reach their present height, and when were the valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind that many valleys were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow process.

When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces. It takes a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does granite erode very quickly. [For example, see Donohoe & Grantham, 1989, for locations of contact between the South Mountain Batholith and the Meugma Group of sediments, as well as some angular unconformities.]

How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed layering? One formation in New Jersey is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400 days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the Flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling per day. And yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly layered, with great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, etc.? [Zimmer, 1992]

How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle.

How could a flood deposit layered fossil forests? Stratigraphic sections showing a dozen or more mature forests layered atop each other--all with upright trunks, in-place roots, and well-developed soil--appear in many locations. One example, the Joggins section along the Bay of Fundy, shows a continuous section 2750 meters thick (along a 48-km sea cliff) with multiple in-place forests, some separated by hundreds of feet of strata, some even showing evidence of forest fires. [Ferguson, 1988. For other examples, see Dawson, 1868; Cristie & McMillan, 1991; Gastaldo, 1990; Yuretich, 1994.] Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below Mt. St. Helens as an example of how a flood can deposit vertical trunks, but deposition by flood fails to explain the roots, the soil, the layering, and other features found in such places.

Where did all the heat go? If the geologic record was deposited in a year, then the events it records must also have occurred within a year. Some of these events release significant amounts of heat.

Magma. The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 1024 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 1027 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat.
Limestone formation. There are roughly 5 x 1023 grams of limestone in the earth's sediments [Poldervaart, 1955], and the formation of calcite releases about 11,290 joules/gram [Weast, 1974, p. D63]. If only 10% of the limestone were formed during the Flood, the 5.6 x 1026 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters.
Meteorite impacts. Erosion and crustal movements have erased an unknown number of impact craters on earth, but Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest that cratering to the extent seen on the Moon and Mercury occurred on earth during the year of Noah's Flood. The heat from just one of the largest lunar impacts released an estimated 3 x 1026 joules; the same sized object falling to earth would release even more energy. [Fezer, pp. 45-46]
Other. Other possibly significant heat sources are radioactive decay (some Creationists claim that radioactive decay rates were much higher during the Flood to account for consistently old radiometric dates); biological decay (think of the heat released in compost piles); and compression of sediments.
5.6 x 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 1027 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.

Aside from losing its atmosphere, Earth can only get rid of heat by radiating it to space, and it can't radiate significantly more heat than it gets from the sun unless it is a great deal hotter than it is now. (It is very nearly at thermal equilibrium now.) If there weren't many millions of years to radiate the heat from the above processes, the earth would still be unlivably hot.

As shown in section 5, all the mechanisms proposed for causing the Flood already provide more than enough energy to vaporize it as well. These additional factors only make the heat problem worse.

How were limestone deposits formed? Much limestone is made of the skeletons of zillions of microscopic sea animals. Some deposits are thousands of meters thick. Were all those animals alive when the Flood started? If not, how do you explain the well-ordered sequence of fossils in the deposits? Roughly 1.5 x 1015 grams of calcium carbonate are deposited on the ocean floor each year. [Poldervaart, 1955] A deposition rate ten times as high for 5000 years before the Flood would still only account for less than 0.02% of limestone deposits.

How could a flood have deposited chalk? Chalk is largely made up of the bodies of plankton 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter [Bignot, 1985]. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec. [Twenhofel, 1961] In a year of the Flood, they could have settled about half a meter.

How could the Flood deposit layers of solid salt? Such layers are sometimes meters in width, interbedded with sediments containing marine fossils. This apparently occurs when a body of salt water has its fresh-water intake cut off, and then evaporates. These layers can occur more or less at random times in the geological history, and have characteristic fossils on either side. Therefore, if the fossils were themselves laid down during a catastrophic flood, there are, it seems, only two choices:
(1) the salt layers were themselves laid down at the same time, during the heavy rains that began the flooding, or
(2) the salt is a later intrusion. I suspect that both will prove insuperable difficulties for a theory of flood deposition of the geologic column and its fossils. [Jackson et al, 1990]

How were sedimentary deposits recrystallized and plastically deformed in the short time since the Flood? The stretched pebble conglomerate in Death Valley National Monument (Wildrose Canyon Rd., 15 mi. south of Hwy. 190), for example, contains streambed pebbles metamorphosed to quartzite and stretched to 3 or more times their original length. Plastically deformed stone is also common around salt diapirs [Jackson et al, 1990].

How were hematite layers laid down? Standard theory is that they were laid down before Earth's atmosphere contained much oxygen. In an oxygen-rich regime, they would almost certainly be impossible.

How do you explain fossil mineralization? Mineralization is the replacement of the original material with a different mineral.

Buried skeletal remains of modern fauna are negligibly mineralized, including some that biblical archaeology says are quite old - a substantial fraction of the age of the earth in this diluvian geology. For example, remains of Egyptian commoners buried near the time of Moses aren't extensively mineralized.
Buried skeletal remains of extinct mammalian fauna show quite variable mineralization.
Dinosaur remains are often extensively mineralized.
Trilobite remains are usually mineralized - and in different sites, fossils of the same species are composed of different materials.
How are these observations explained by a sorted deposition of remains in a single episode of global flooding?

How does a flood explain the accuracy of "coral clocks"? The moon is slowly sapping the earth's rotational energy. The earth should have rotated more quickly in the distant past, meaning that a day would have been less than 24 hours, and there would have been more days per year. Corals can be dated by the number of "daily" growth layers per "annual" growth layer. Devonian corals, for example, show nearly 400 days per year. There is an exceedingly strong correlation between the "supposed age" of a wide range of fossils (corals, stromatolites, and a few others -- collected from geologic formations throughout the column and from locations all over the world) and the number of days per year that their growth pattern shows. The agreement between these clocks, and radiometric dating, and the theory of superposition is a little hard to explain away as the result of a number of unlucky coincidences in a 300-day-long flood. [Rosenberg & Runcorn, 1975; Scrutton, 1965; Wells, 1963]

Where were all the fossilized animals when they were alive? Schadewald [1982] writes:

"Scientific creationists interpret the fossils found in the earth's rocks as the remains of animals that perished in the Noachian Deluge. Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in 'fossil graveyards' as evidence for the Flood. In particular, creationists seem enamored by the Karroo Formation in Africa, which is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate animals (see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61). As pseudoscientists, creationists dare not test this major hypothesis that all of the fossilized animals died in the Flood.

"Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota, has studied the Karroo Formation. He asserts that the animals fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the size of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A minute's work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion animals in the Karoo formation could be resurrected, there would be twenty-one of them for every acre of land on earth. Suppose we assume (conservatively, I think) that the Karroo Formation contains 1 percent of the vertebrate [land] fossils on earth. Then when the Flood began, there must have been at least 2100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense dinosaurs. To a noncreationist mind, that seems a bit crowded."

A thousand kilometers' length of arctic coastal plain, according to experts in Leningrad, contains about 500,000 tons of tusks. Even assuming that the entire population was preserved, you seem to be saying that Russia had wall-to-wall mammoths before this "event."

Even if there was room physically for all the large animals which now exist only as fossils, how could they have all coexisted in a stable ecology before the Flood? Montana alone would have had to support a diversity of herbivores orders of magnitude larger than anything now observed.

Where did all the organic material in the fossil record come from? There are 1.16 x 1013 metric tons of coal reserves, and at least 100 times that much unrecoverable organic matter in sediments. A typical forest, even if it covered the entire earth, would supply only 1.9 x 1013 metric tons. [Ricklefs, 1993, p. 149]

How do you explain the relative commonness of aquatic fossils? A flood would have washed over everything equally, so terrestrial organisms should be roughly as abundant as aquatic ones (or more abundant, since Creationists hypothesize greater land area before the Flood) in the fossil record. Yet shallow marine environments account for by far the most fossils.

References
Andrews, J. E., 1988. Soil-zone microfabrics in calcrete and in desiccation cracks from the Upper Jurassic Purbeck Formation of Dorset. Geological Journal 23(3): 261-270.

Bignot, G., 1985. Micropaleontology Boston: IHRDC, p. 75.

Clemmenson, L.B. and Abrahamsen, K., 1983. Aeolian stratification in desert sediments, Arran basin (Permian), Scotland. Sedimentology 30: 311-339.

Crimes, Peter, and Mary L Droser, 1992. Trace fossils and bioturbation: the other fossil record. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 23: 339-360.

Cristie, R.L., and McMillan, N.J. (eds.), 1991. Tertiary fossil forests of the Geodetic Hills, Axel Heiberg Island, Arctic Archipelago, Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 403., 227pp.

Dawson, J.W., 1868. Acadian Geology. The Geological Structure, Organic Remains, and Mineral Resources of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, 2nd edition. MacMillan and Co.: London, 694pp.

Donohoe, H.V. Jr. and Grantham, R.G. (eds.), 1989. Geological Highway Map of Nova Scotia, 2nd edition. Atlantic Geoscience Society, Halifax, Nova Scotia. AGS Special Publication no. 1, 1:640 000.

Eyles, N. and Miall, A.D., 1984, Glacial Facies. IN: Walker, R.G., Facies Models, 2nd edition. Geoscience Canada, Reprint Series 1: 15-38.

Ferguson, Laing, 1988. The fossil cliffs of Joggins. Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Fezer, Karl D., 1993. "Creationism: Please Don't Call It Science" Creation/Evolution, 13:1 (Summer 1993), 45-49.

Gansser, A., 1964. Geology of the Himalayas, John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., New York.

Gastaldo, R. A., 1990, Early Pennsylvanian swamp forests in the Mary Lee coal zone, Warrior Basin, Alabama. in R. A. Gastaldo et. al., Carboniferous Coastal Environments and Paleocommunities of the Mary Lee Coal Zone, Marion and Walker Counties, Alabama. Guidebook for the Field Trip VI, Alabama Geological Survey, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. pp. 41-54.

Gilette, D.D. and Lockley, M.G. (eds.), 1989. Dinosaur Tracks and Traces, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 454pp.

Gore, Rick, 1993. Dinosaurs. National Geographic, 183(1) (Jan. 1993): 2-54.

Grieve, R. A. F., 1997. Extraterrestrial impact events: the record in the rocks and the stratigraphic record. Palaeogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 132: 5-23.

Hubert, J.F., and Mertz, K.A., Jr., 1984. Eolian sandstones in Upper Triassic-Lower Jurassic red beds of the Fundy Basin, Nova Scotia. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, 54: 798-810.

Jackson, M.P.A., et al., 1990. Salt diapirs of the Great Kavir, Central Iran. Geological Society of America, Memoir 177, 139pp.

James, N. P. & P. W. Choquette (eds.), 1988. Paleokarst, Springer-Verlag, New York.

Kocurek, G., and Dott, R.H., 1981. Distinctions and uses of stratification types in the interpretation of eolian sand. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, 51(2): 579-595.

Miall, A. D., 1996. The Geology of Fluvial Deposits, Springer-Verlag, New York.

Moore, James R., 1973. "Charles Lyell and the Noachian Deluge", in Dundes, 1988, The Flood Myth, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Newell, N., 1982. Creation and Evolution, Columbia U. Press, p. 62.

Poldervaart, Arie, 1955. Chemistry of the earth's crust. pp. 119-144 In: Poldervaart, A., ed., Crust of the Earth, Geological Society of America Special Paper 62, Waverly Press, MD.

Reinhardt, J., and Sigleo, W.R. (eds.), 1989. Paleosols and weathering through geologic time: principles and applications. Geological Society of America Special Paper 216, 181pp.

Ricklefs, Robert, 1993. The Economy of Nature, W. H. Freeman, New York.

Robb, A. J. III, 1992. Rain-impact microtopography (RIM); an experimental analogue for fossil examples from the Maroon Formation, Colorado. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 62(3): 530-535.

Rosenberg, G. D. & Runcorn, S. K. (Eds), 1975. Growth rhythms and the history of the earth's rotation. Willey Interscience, New York.

Schadewald, Robert, 1982. Six 'Flood' arguments Creationists can't answer. Creation/Evolution 9: 12-17.

Schmitz, B., B. Peucker-Ehrenbrink, M. Lindstrom, & M. Tassinari, 1997. Accretion rates of meteorites and cosmic dust in the Early Ordovician. Science 278: 88-90.

Scrutton, C. T., ( 1964 ) 1965. Periodicity in Devonian coral growth. Palaeontology, 7(4): 552-558, Plates 86-87.

Short, D. A., J. G. Mengel, T. J. Crowley, W. T. Hyde and G. R. North, 1991. Filtering of Milankovitch Cycles by Earth's Geography. Quaternary Research. 35, 157-173. (Re an independent method of dating the Green River formation)

Stewart, W.N., 1983. Paleontology and the Evolution of Plants. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 405pp.

Thackray, G. D., 1994. Fossil nest of sweat bees (Halictinae) from a Miocene paleosol, Rusinga Island, western Kenya. Journal of Paleontology 68(4): 795-800.

Twenhofel, William H., 1961. Treatise on Sedimentation, Dover, p. 50-52.

Weast, Robert C., 1974. Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 55th edition, CRC Press, Cleveland, OH.

Wells, J. W., 1963. Coral growth and geochronometry. Nature 197: 948-950.

Whitcomb, J.C. Jr. & H.M. Morris, 1961. The Genesis Flood. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Philadelphia PA.

Wilson, J. L., 1975. Carbonate Facies in Geologic History. Springer-Verlag, New York.

Wright, V. P. (ed.), 1986. Paleosols: Their Recognition and Interpretation, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.

Wright, V. P., 1994. Paleosols in shallow marine sequences. Earth-Science Reviews, 37: 367-395. See also pp. 135-137.

Yun, Zhang, 1989. Multicellular thallophytes with differentiated tissues from Late Proterozoic phosphate rocks of South China. Lethaia 22: 113-132.

Yuretich, Richard F., 1984. Yellowstone fossil forests: New evidence for burial in place, Geology 12, 159-162. See also Fritz, W.J. & Yuretich, R.F., Comment and reply, Geology 20, 638-639.

Zimmer, Carl, 1992. Peeling the big blue banana. Discover 13(1): 46-47.

8. Species Survival and Post-Flood Ecology
"He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground," the Bible says (Gen 7:23). If the Flood was as described, that must have been an understatement.

How did all the modern plant species survive?

Many plants (seeds and all) would be killed by being submerged for a few months. This is especially true if they were soaked in salt water. Some mangroves, coconuts, and other coastal species have seed which could be expected to survive the Flood itself, but what of the rest?
Most seeds would have been buried under many feet (even miles) of sediment. This is deep enough to prevent spouting.
Most plants require established soils to grow--soils which would have been stripped by the Flood.
Some plants germinate only after being exposed to fire or after being ingested by animals; these conditions would be rare (to put it mildly) after the Flood.
Noah could not have gathered seeds for all plants because not all plants produce seeds, and a variety of plant seeds can't survive a year before germinating. [Garwood, 1989; Benzing, 1990; Densmore & Zasada, 1983] Also, how did he distribute them all over the world?
How did all the fish survive? Some require cool clear water, some need brackish water, some need ocean water, some need water even saltier. A flood would have destroyed at least some of these habitats.

How did sensitive marine life such as coral survive? Since most coral are found in shallow water, the turbidity created by the runoff from the land would effectively cut them off from the sun. The silt covering the reef after the rains were over would kill all the coral. By the way, the rates at which coral deposits calcium are well known, and some highly mature reefs (such a the great barrier) have been around for millions of years to be deposited to their observed thickness.

How did diseases survive? Many diseases can't survive in hosts other than humans. Many others can only survive in humans and in short-lived arthropod vectors. The list includes typhus, measles, smallpox, polio, gonorrhea, syphilis. For these diseases to have survived the Flood, they must all have infected one or more of the eight people aboard the Ark.

Other animals aboard the ark must have suffered from multiple diseases, too, since there are other diseases specific to other animals, and the nonspecific diseases must have been somewhere.

Host-specific diseases which don't kill their host generally can't survive long, since the host's immune system eliminates them. (This doesn't apply to diseases such as HIV and malaria which can hide from the immune system.) For example, measles can't last for more than a few weeks in a community of less than 250,000 [Keeling & Grenfell, 1997] because it needs nonresistant hosts to infect. Since the human population aboard the ark was somewhat less than 250,000, measles and many other infectious diseases would have gone extinct during the Flood.

Some diseases that can affect a wide range of species would have found conditions on the Ark ideal for a plague. Avian viruses, for example, would have spread through the many birds on the ark. Other plagues would have affected the mammals and reptiles. Even these plague pathogens, though, would have died out after all their prospective hosts were either dead or resistant.

How did short-lived species survive? Adult mayflies on the ark would have died in a few days, and the larvae of many mayflies require shallow fresh running water. Many other insects would face similar problems.

How could more than a handful of species survive in a devastated habitat? The Flood would have destroyed the food and shelter which most species need to survive.

How did predators survive? How could more than a handful of the predator species on the ark have survived, with only two individuals of their prey to eat? All of the predators at the top of the food pyramid require larger numbers of food animals beneath them on the pyramid, which in turn require large numbers of the animals they prey on, and so on, down to the primary producers (plants etc.) at the bottom. And if the predators survived, how did the other animals survive being preyed on?

How could more than a handful of species survive random influences that affect populations? Isolated populations with fewer than 20 members are usually doomed even when extraordinary measures are taken to protect them. [Simberloff, 1988]

References
Benzing, D. H., 1990. Vascular Epiphytes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Densmore, R. and J. Zasada, 1983. Seed dispersal and dormancy patterns in northern willows: ecological and evolutionary significance. Canadian Journal of Botany 61: 3207-3216.

Garwood, N. C., 1989. Tropical soil seed banks: a review. pp. 149-209 In: Leck, M. A., V. T. Parker, and R. L. Simpson (eds.), Ecology of Soil Seed Banks, Academic Press, San Diego

Keeling, M.J. & B.T. Grenfell, 1997. Disease extinction and community size: modeling the persistence of measles. Science 275: 65-67.

Simberloff, Daniel, 1988. The contribution of population and community biology to conservation science. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 19: 473-511.

9. Species Distribution and Diversity
How did animals get to their present ranges? How did koalas get from Ararat to Australia, polar bears to the Arctic, etc., when the kinds of environment they require to live doesn't exist between the two points. How did so many unique species get to remote islands?

How were ecological interdependencies preserved as animals migrated from Ararat? Did the yucca an the yucca moth migrate together across the Atlantic? Were there, a few thousand years ago, unbroken giant sequoia forests between Ararat and California to allow indigenous bark and cone beetles to migrate?

Why are so many animals found only in limited ranges? Why are so many marsupials limited to Australia; why are there no wallabies in western Indonesia? Why are lemurs limited to Madagascar? The same argument applies to any number of groups of plants and animals.

Why is inbreeding depression not a problem in most species? Harmful recessive alleles occur in significant numbers in most species. (Humans have, on average, 3 to 4 lethal recessive alleles each.) When close relatives breed, the offspring are more likely to be homozygous for these harmful alleles, to the detriment of the offspring. Such inbreeding depression still shows up in cheetahs; they have about 1/6th the number of motile spermatozoa as domestic cats, and of those, almost 80% show morphological abnormalities. [O'Brien et al, 1987] How could more than a handful of species survive the inbreeding depression that comes with establishing a population from a single mating pair?

Reference
O'Brien, S. J., D. E. Wildt, M. Bush, T. M. Caro, C. FitzGibbon, I. Aggundey & R. E. Leakey, 1987. East African cheetahs: Evidence for two population bottlenecks? Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 84: 508-511.

10. Historical Aspects
Why is there no mention of the Flood in the records of Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time? Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1, Gal 3:17, various generation lengths given in Genesis) place the Flood 1300 years before Solomon began the first temple. We can construct reliable chronologies for near Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, from many kinds of records from the literate cultures in the near East. These records are independent of, but supported by, dating methods such as dendrochronology and carbon-14. The building of the first temple can be dated to 950 B.C. +/- some small delta, placing the Flood around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egyptians (among others) have written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.

How did the human population rebound so fast? Genealogies in Genesis put the Tower of Babel about 110 to 150 years after the Flood [Gen 10:25, 11:10-19]. How did the world population regrow so fast to make its construction (and the city around it) possible? Similarly, there would have been very few people around to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, rebuild the Sumerian and Indus Valley civilizations, populate the Americas, etc.

Why do other flood myths vary so greatly from the Genesis account? Flood myths are fairly common worldwide, and if they came from a common source, we should expect similarities in most of them. Instead, the myths show great diversity. [Bailey, 1989, pp. 5-10; Isaak, 1997] For example, people survive on high land or trees in the myths about as often as on boats or rafts, and no other flood myth includes a covenant not to destroy all life again.

Why should we expect Genesis to be accurate? We know that other people's sacred stories change over time [Baaren, 1972] and that changes to the Genesis Flood story have occurred in later traditions [Ginzberg, 1909; Utley, 1961]. Is it not reasonable to assume that changes occurred between the story's origin and its being written down in its present form?

References
Baaren, Th. P., 1972. The flexibility of myth. Studies in the History of Religions, 22: 199-206. Reprinted in Dundes, A. (ed), 1984, Sacred Narrative, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Bailey, Lloyd R., 1989. Noah: the person and the story in history and tradition. University of South Carolina Press, SC.

Ginzberg, Louis, 1909. The Legends of the Jews, vol. 1, pp. 145-169, Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia. Reprinted as "Noah and the Flood in Jewish legend" in: Dundes, Alan (ed.), 1988. The Flood Myth, University of California Press, Berkeley and London, pp. 319-336.

Isaak, Mark, 1997. Flood stories from around the world. http://www.talkorigins.org/faq/flood-myths.html.

Utley, Francis Lee, 1961. Internationaler Kongress der Volkserzä in Kiel und Kopenhagen, pp. 446-463, Walter De Gruyter, Berlin. Reprinted as "The Devil in the Ark (AaTh 825)" in: Dundes, Alan (ed.), 1988. The Flood Myth, University of California Press, Berkeley and London, pp. 337-356.

11. Logical, Philosophical, and Theological Points
Are flood models consistent with the Bible? Creationists who write about the Flood often contradict the very story they're trying to support. For example, Whitcomb & Morris [1961, p. 69n] suggest that large numbers of kinds of land animals became extinct because of the Flood, while Genesis repeatedly says that Noah was ordered to take a representative sample of all kinds of land animals on the Ark to save them from extinction, and that Noah did as ordered. Woodmorappe [1996, p. 3] wants to leave invertebrates (i.e., just about "every creeping thing on the ground") off the ark. Why should we give credence to a story whose most ardent supporters abandon when it's inconvenient?

Genesis 6-8 speaks only of rain, fountains, and a flood; it makes no mention of other catastrophies which many Creationists associate with the Flood. Their proposed Flood models not only contradict geology, they have no Biblical support, either.

How can a literal interpretation be appropriate if the text is self-contradictory? Genesis 6:20 and 7:14-15 say there were two of each kind of fowl and clean beasts, yet Genesis 7:2-3,5 says they came in sevens.

How can a literal interpretation be consistent with reality? How could Noah have gathered male and female of each kind [Gen. 7:15-16] when some species are asexual, others are parthenogenic and have only females, and others (such as earthworms) are hermaphrodites? And what about social animals like ants and termites which need the whole nest to survive?

Why stop with the Flood story? If your style of Biblical interpretation makes you take the Flood literally, then shouldn't you also believe in a flat and stationary earth? [Dan. 4:10-11, Matt. 4:8, 1 Chron. 16:30, Psalms 93:1, ...]

In fact, is there any reason at all why the Flood story should be taken literally? Jesus used parables; why wouldn't God do so, too?

Does a global flood make the whole Bible less credible? Davis Young, an Evangelical and geologist, wrote [p. 163]:

"The maintenance of modern creationism and Flood geology not only is useless apologetically with unbelieving scientists, it is harmful. Although many who have no scientific training have been swayed by creationist arguments, the unbelieving scientist will reason that a Christianity that believes in such nonsense must be a religion not worthy of his interest. . . . Modern creationism in this sense is apologetically and evangelistically ineffective. It could even be a hindrance to the gospel.

"Another possible danger is that in presenting the gospel to the lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem to be false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has given. Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is done. . . ."

Another Christian scientist said, "Creationism is an incredible pain in the neck, neither honest nor useful, and the people who advocate it have no idea how much damage they are doing to the credibility of belief." [quoted in Easterbrook, 1997, p. 891]

Does the Flood story indicate an omnipotent God?

If God is omnipotent, why not kill what He wanted killed directly? Why resort to a roundabout method that requires innumerable additional miracles?
The whole idea was to rid the wicked people from the world. Did it work?
Finally, even if the flood model weren't riddled by all these problems, why should we accept it? What it does attempt to explain is already explained far more accurately, consistently, and thoroughly by conventional geology and biology, and the flood model leaves many other things unexplained, even unexplainable. How is flood geology useful?

References
Easterbrook, Gregg, 1997. Science and God: a warming trend? Science 277: 890-893.

Whitcomb, J.C. Jr. & H.M. Morris, 1961. The Genesis Flood. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Philadelphia PA.

Woodmorappe, John, 1996. Noah's ark: A feasibility study. Institute for Creation Research, Santee, California.

Young, Davis, 1988. Christianity and the Age of the Earth. Artisan Sales, Thousand Oaks, CA.

 

[the following is a response to his shorter post; I was unaware of the long one just above this until I had posted this. However, although I have not read it yet, I have to caution that Talk Origins is not a reliable source at all. We have seen too many times when material is mis-used and mis-presented. Far better to go back to original resources and more reliable writers.]

Hi Doug, and thank you for the compliment.

Let's leave Barry's work out of this as much as possible right now, at least in the area of physics, and concentrate on the Bible and geology itself.

First of all, in the Bible, there is a clue about something all the way back in Genesis 1 and 2. In Genesis 1, on day 3, we read that the waters were gathered into one place and the dry land appeared. If the waters were indeed gathered into ONE place, then the land must have been in the OTHER place -- and thus the Bible agrees with what modern geologists have only recently (in man's history) 'discovered': that there used to be one super-continent which later divided and spread across the asthenosphere (the layer under the crust made up of molten rock and water).

In Genesis 2, we read that initially the entire land mass was watered by mists, or steams, or fogs, or streams (choose your favorite translation) coming up out of the earth itself.

Please permit me to invoke the standard laws of physics as we know them: water does not travel upward under its own 'power.' In fact, we know that water coming up from the ground is water under pressure; and water under pressure is almost always heated to some degree. Thus the choice of what the earth was watered by is, in a sense, irrelevant, as warm waters will mist upwards, even from streams.

But the fact is that water was under pressure. Why?

We have learned recently that the initial radioactive elements in the earth were NOT on or even in the crust at the beginning, but underneath it. And no matter when the earth started, or was formed or created, the short and long half live elements would have all been decaying at the same time in the beginning, and this would produce enormous heat in the earth's interior.

One of the major minerals in the earth's crust today is olivine. Olivine is serpentine with the water driven out. Serpentine is about 13% water.

So we have evidence in the earliest part of the Bible of both one super-continent and water under enormous pressure; and evidence from recent physics that the initial radioactive elements were under the crust of the earth; and evidence from geology that a major component of the earth's crust is olivine.

All of this is aside from any argument about what 'eretz' means in Genesis or anywhere else.

The heating would have continued until a critical point was reached, when the water all over would have burst out. And that is exactly what Genesis 7:11 states: the fountains of the deep BURST, all at the same time, in a gigantic cataclysmic series of explosions. There may have been asteroid or meteorite hits in association with this, but if we pay attention to the Bible itself and to just a little physics and geology, we get a better picture than the erroneous ideas held by many regarding what a straightforward reading of the Bible entails.

There is another indication that something enormous happened which concerned the entire earth: the rainbow in the clouds. The rainbow was not invented following the Flood. Any spray of water in the sunshine would have produced a rainbow from the right angle. But the point made by God is that the rainbow was now to be set in the clouds.

At the VERY least, this means that up until that time it had not rained over land in the daytime. This means that there was a very different ecological system before the Flood than after, and this also would mean something worldwide.

Is there a Flood layer? There should be if it was not just a local event.

Yes, there is. But it is much lower than claimed by many YEC's or those who think they are quoting the YEC point of view. Underneath the Cambrian strata we have, with the sole exception of a portion of India, a completely worldwide layer of, first, cobbles and boulders in a cement-like matrix, followed by a couple of MILES of carbon-rich sedimentary material. This is the Flood layer.

The Flood was boiling, exploding waters, churning up with them pulverized debris and carrying it high into the air, from whence the cooled waters and junk came raining down all over the earth for forty days and nights. Because the fountains of the deep were most probably along the incipient plate boundaries, there would have been large areas not completely devastated, expecially in the (much larger at the time) mid-Pacific ocean, where water depth and the sparseness of crustal plate boundaries would have pretty much tamed the effects of the catastrophe itself. But on land the effects would have been devastating and sudden and would have totally wiped out most signs of life altogether. Scalding waters and churning debris do not fossilize anything; the burn it up, tear it apart, shrivel it, and pulverize it, too. That is why the Flood layer is so rich in carbon but lacking fossils.

On this layer, which you will see in the Snowball Earth article, are in situ algal mats called stromatolites. These take time to grow. They could not have grown during a Flood year. They require warmish, salty, still waters. On the last page of the article is a beautiful photo of some growing today in Australia.

Back to the Bible: because the Flood changed the entire world environment, very probably resulting in an axis tilt as well, and primarily because it was an explicit judgment of God on man, it is given quite a bit of space in the Bible. But there are two other catastrophes mentioned, which are also in the geologic record: what the Bible refers to as the Tower of Babel and the division of the continents themselves, remarked briefly on in Genesis 10:25.

Interestingly, in the geologic column, we have four main divisions, all over the world, separated by three major times of catastrophic extinctions: archaeozoic, paleozoic, mesozoic, and cenozoic.

This is exactly in accord with the Bible.

I would urge you to poke around on Barry's website. Don't worry about the speed of light stuff right now. That comes into play primarily, where we are concerned with this thread, with harmonizing Biblical dates with radio decay dates. But what is important right now is to understand that the Bible and geology itself give very good evidence of a major world-wide Flood.

It is interesting that Mars also gives evidence of the same, for the same series of events happened there, only without life. It also happened on the moon, Venus, and Mercury. All due to the rapid radioactive heating internally. The marks are all there.

Does this mean that man had no choice but to sin, since God had it all set up geologically and physically anyway? No, it does not mean that. But first remember that in Revelation 13:8, we read that Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation/creation of the world. That means God not only knew all along, but had already gotten the cure in place. So yes, the earth was formed with the geological time-bomb inside. God knew.

From what I have been able to study and read, it is not the catastrophes that have been miraculous -- they have been the results, I think, of entirely 'natural' causes. What we see in terms of God's direct and miraculous intervention are those saved through the various catastrophes, whether it is Noah and his family and zoo, or the Israelites crossing through the Red Sea, or Jesus calming the waves, or any of us being blessed with a new life in Him and salvation itself.

Please feel free to email with questions if you like. Barry is in Australia for three weeks looking after his sister and working with a mathematician there getting a paper ready for publication; so if I can't answer a question or direct you to where he has already answered it, I'll ask him on the phone and type his response for you.

In summary, a local flood denies too much of the Bible, not to mention geology!

1. It denies the straightforward meaning of the words (by the way, paleo-Hebrew is one of the oldest known languages and the original scriptures were written in this language. It was Hebrew rabbis themselves who translated the Alexandrian Septuagint (200+ years before Christ), taking the paleo-Hebrew and translating it into Greek. They chose the meaning of the Hebrew word, and it was definitely meant by them to be the whole entire earth).

2. It denies the common sense that Noah would not have needed a hundred years' warning for a local flood! A hundred years is PLENTY of time to migrate with one's stock.

3. It denies the meaning of the rainbow set in the clouds.

4. It denies the import of God's promise to Noah not to destroy ALL life again as He had just done.

5. It denies the meaning of the promise not to send another Flood like that. Since then we have had any number of major localized floods -- consider the monsoons in India, for instance. Quite devastating. But unless God was lying to Noah, these don't hold a candle to what Noah and his family experienced and lived through.

One last word: the fossils came later as plants and animals were trapped in geologically active zones and slides or windstorms covered them alive. We do have a few instances of fossil graveyards where evidence of severe water action sweeping all manner of animals together and crushing them occur, but there are also many fossils which seem to have been formed in conditions which were calm up until the moment of inundation.

 

I'm going to insert some comments in italics and snip the rest, OK? It's bedtime for this old gal...


6. Implications of a Flood
A global flood would have produce evidence contrary to the evidence we see.

The evidence is preCambrian and very clear. See above.

How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?

They were not formed at the same time. The youngest and sharpest of the mountain ranges were formed at the time of Peleg -- especially those bordering the Pacific ring of fire and the northern borders of India.

Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?

Ice core layers show series of storms, which we now associate with seasonal deposits. It was not this way after the three catastrophes. Wave upon wave of storms would have pummeled the far north and south, and this is what we see in the ice cores. These were formed after the Flood, which is why there is no evidence of Flood deposits in them.

How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.

Possible due to axis tilts and the ravaging series of storms involved. That is why Greenland could not form its ice cap today; it's too calm now.

Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?

Flood material is preCambrian, as mentioned. The different grain sizes are definitely found below the carbon-rich layer. PLEASE check out the Snowball Earth refutation here:
]http://www.setterfield.org/snowballearth.htm[/i]

Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]

Tree rings do NOT go back that far. Correlations between different trees make that attempt, but the presumptions involved are laughed at by those in forestry, among others. Start a new thread on this if you like.


7. Producing the Geological Record
Most people who believe in a global flood also believe that the flood was responsible for creating all fossil-bearing strata. (The alternative, that the strata were laid down slowly and thus represent a time sequence of several generations at least, would prove that some kind of evolutionary process occurred.) However, there is a great deal of contrary evidence.

You are missing the third, and biblical option here...

Before you argue that fossil evidence was dated and interpreted to meet evolutionary assumptions, remember that the geological column and the relative dates therein were laid out by people who believed divine creation, before Darwin even formulated his theory. (See, for example, Moore [1973], or the closing pages of Dawson [1868].)

They were also laid out by those making the presumption of gradualism! That has since been disproved.

Why are geological eras consistent worldwide? How do you explain worldwide agreement between "apparent" geological eras and several different (independent) radiometric and nonradiometric dating methods? [e.g., Short et al, 1991]

The agreements are primarily for the public eye. There are sharp disagreements in many areas, for instance between the anthropologists and the geologists regarding the Olduvai Gorge in Africa. If the geologists are right, the anthropologists are up a creek without a paddle where 'human evolution' is concerned!

How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution?

It's not at all convenient for evolutionists! All kinds of stop-gap explanations have to be manufactured! The trilobite's incredibly complex eye; in fact the eye itself is supposed to have evolved forty some times! Forms appear suddenly and fully-developed in the fossil record. Many are unchanged from what we see today. This is not good for the theory of evolution!

Ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape fail to explain:

the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?

This presumes one Flood did everything, which many of us disagree with. However the point here is good if someone is trying to promote the one flood did everything model.


the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life. (Yun, 1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late Precambrian sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear that low in the geological column?)

Because they were growing in water in geologically active areas! They were anchored stromatolites and other plants would have washed away or simply rotted when the stromatolites were covered. In other words, some of this nonsense from Talk Origins shows incredible lack of actually thinking in favor of a lot of random snipe shots.

And, since we actually do agree that hydrologic sorting really cannot account for the fossil record and do not hold to that, I will snip the part that follows concerneing the problems with it.


why ecological information is consistent within but not between layers. Fossil pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen hydraulically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic evidence is different for each layer?

While we agree that there are major strata divisions, there is some evidence that also needs to be considered:

a.-- Spores belonging to the Tertiary era were found in Permian Strata in New Zealand (Wilson, G.J. 1976. Permian Palynomorphs from the Mangarewa Formation, Productus Creek, Southland, New Zealand, New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics 19:137).

b.-- Foraminifers belonging to the Tertiary were found in the Cretaceous Strata in North Italy (Alvarez W. and W. Lowrie. 1981. Upper Cretaceous to Eocene pelagic limestones of the Scaglia Rossa are not Miocene Turbidites Nature 294:246-7).

c.-- Palm wood associated with the Tertiary was found in the Jurassic strata in Utah, U.S.A. (Scott, R.A. Willians W.L. Craig L.C., Barghoorn E., Hickey L.J., and U.D. MacGinitie. 1972. American Journal of Botany 59:886-96).



How does a global flood explain angular unconformities? These are where one set of layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top. They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.

We agree; one Flood could not do this. Snip some of the following as we have no disagreement with the fact that one Flood could not have accomplished what is mentioned.


How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle.

Many 'varves' are not annual or seasonal at all, but daily, having to do with tidal effects. The Green River Valley is not an example of varves, but of rapid and repeated sedimentation. The folks at Talk Origins are quite aware of this and this is one of the places where they are quite dishonest in presenting 'evidence.' For some other information on 'varves', here:
]http://www.setterfield.org/geology.htm#varves


Magma. The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 1024 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 1027 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat.
Limestone formation. There are roughly 5 x 1023 grams of limestone in the earth's sediments [Poldervaart, 1955], and the formation of calcite releases about 11,290 joules/gram [Weast, 1974, p. D63]. If only 10% of the limestone were formed during the Flood, the 5.6 x 1026 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters.

They were already boiling.

Meteorite impacts. Erosion and crustal movements have erased an unknown number of impact craters on earth, but Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest that cratering to the extent seen on the Moon and Mercury occurred on earth during the year of Noah's Flood. The heat from just one of the largest lunar impacts released an estimated 3 x 1026 joules; the same sized object falling to earth would release even more energy. [Fezer, pp. 45-46]
Other. Other possibly significant heat sources are radioactive decay (some Creationists claim that radioactive decay rates were much higher during the Flood to account for consistently old radiometric dates); biological decay (think of the heat released in compost piles); and compression of sediments.
5.6 x 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 1027 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.

I'm really tired now, but I remember Barry looking at this when it was presented before and laughing. Something is very wrong with the calculations. It may be in his discussion pages on his website. I'll try to remember to ask him if he responded in writing to this or only at a conference. But there is something totally wrong with the calculations there.


How do you explain fossil mineralization? Mineralization is the replacement of the original material with a different mineral.

Actually, no one can explain it and no one has been able to replicate mineralization in a lab, or controlled situation. And yet we have seen evidence in Australia that it has happened rather quickly.


Buried skeletal remains of extinct mammalian fauna show quite variable mineralization.
Dinosaur remains are often extensively mineralized.

...and sometimes they're not....smile....

I'm too tired for the rest, I think. I'll scan it quickly, but for the most part, since we disagree that one flood did everything, we find that some of the problems brought up are legit. Some are just silly, though. I'll see if there is something that I can comment on quickly in what follows...


8. Species Survival and Post-Flood Ecology
"He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground," the Bible says (Gen 7:23). If the Flood was as described, that must have been an understatement.


How did all the modern plant species survive?

Seeds; vegetation mats; etc. Some of the food stored by Noah would also have been seeds, and these would probably not have all been consumed during the year.

Many plants (seeds and all) would be killed by being submerged for a few months. This is especially true if they were soaked in salt water. Some mangroves, coconuts, and other coastal species have seed which could be expected to survive the Flood itself, but what of the rest?

I give up...I'll answer a little more. The early waters were not nearly as salty as now. When the fountains of the deep exploded, they would have brought up a good portion of the salts which are dissolved in the oceans today. However, as mentioned in the previous post, areas would have been relatively unaffected at first, particularly in the mid-Pacific, so the relatively fresh water in combination with the vegatation mats would have been quite sufficient for many plant seedlings or rooted cuttings, many seeds, and also many insects and amphibians as well.


Most seeds would have been buried under many feet (even miles) of sediment. This is deep enough to prevent spouting.

no arguement...

Most plants require established soils to grow--soils which would have been stripped by the Flood.

Au contraire -- Flood deposits would have been massive and quite rich. The world after the Flood would have been quite warm, steamy, boggy....plants would grow like mad!


Some plants germinate only after being exposed to fire or after being ingested by animals; these conditions would be rare (to put it mildly) after the Flood.

Rare is not a problem. Impossible is a problem. Rare is only rare...


Noah could not have gathered seeds for all plants because not all plants produce seeds, and a variety of plant seeds can't survive a year before germinating. [Garwood, 1989; Benzing, 1990; Densmore & Zasada, 1983] Also, how did he distribute them all over the world?

Who on earth said he did? Why would he have had to???


How did all the fish survive? Some require cool clear water, some need brackish water, some need ocean water, some need water even saltier. A flood would have destroyed at least some of these habitats.

Probably destroyed most of them. What we have is left-over, and those which were able to adapt to the changing conditions. Speciation generally narrows any populations' ability to survive outside its own particular environment; but the initial populations would have been far more capable of producing a variety of offspring, some of which could survive in a number of different conditions.

How did sensitive marine life such as coral survive?

It didn't. It grew afterwards in the numerous areas of shallow, warm waters which covered the earth then. Nor are coral growth rates 'known' under different conditions. There have been papers out in the past few years disputing a lot of what we thought we knew about coral. I know you will probably want references. Not tonight...smile.


How did diseases survive? Many diseases can't survive in hosts other than humans. Many others can only survive in humans and in short-lived arthropod vectors. The list includes typhus, measles, smallpox, polio, gonorrhea, syphilis. For these diseases to have survived the Flood, they must all have infected one or more of the eight people aboard the Ark.

Not necessarily. I always have to laugh when it is claimed that only what the evolutionists want to have mutated actually mutated. We have seen evidence of very rapid viral mutations with HIV, for instance, not to mention the various flu strains. We also have produced, as a human race, innumerable mutations which have compromised our abilities to deal with many problems and diseases. All of this should be taken into consideration before spouting off about it (directed at TO, not you.}

Other animals aboard the ark must have suffered from multiple diseases, too, since there are other diseases specific to other animals, and the nonspecific diseases must have been somewhere.

see comment above.


How did short-lived species survive? Adult mayflies on the ark would have died in a few days, and the larvae of many mayflies require shallow fresh running water. Many other insects would face similar problems.

1. Were they the same way then?
2. Please remember the vegatation mats. Noah was not instructed to take insects on the Ark. This is another area where the TO people are playing hit and miss snipe games out of their general ignorance of what the Bible says and even what evidence evolution really does have (speciation and variation; survival of the fittest, etc.)

How could more than a handful of species survive in a devastated habitat? The Flood would have destroyed the food and shelter which most species need to survive.

I'm quite sure it did. I think what we have on earth today are simply the remnants of a much greater diversity. However representatives of all the KINDS (think approximately family level taxonomically) of land dwelling animals and birds were on the Ark, so we do have some pretty good indications of the basic animal divisions that there have been from the beginning.

How did predators survive? How could more than a handful of the predator species on the ark have survived, with only two individuals of their prey to eat? All of the predators at the top of the food pyramid require larger numbers of food animals beneath them on the pyramid, which in turn require large numbers of the animals they prey on, and so on, down to the primary producers (plants etc.) at the bottom. And if the predators survived, how did the other animals survive being preyed on?

Another TO exhibition of ignorance. There was no predation before the Flood: Gen. 1:30. You will notice that the description of animals in that verse exactly matches the description of those to be taken on the Ark later...


How could more than a handful of species survive random influences that affect populations? Isolated populations with fewer than 20 members are usually doomed even when extraordinary measures are taken to protect them. [Simberloff, 1988]

Populations with fewer than 20 members suffer today because of the inbreeding problems which arise from the negative effects of a building genetic load (accumulation of negative mutations in a population). This would not have been a problem after the Flood. The parent populations would have had much more genetic variability available to them, and thus been able to produce a variety of offspring, some of which would have been able to cope in various situations.


9. Species Distribution and Diversity
How did animals get to their present ranges? How did koalas get from Ararat to Australia, polar bears to the Arctic, etc., when the kinds of environment they require to live doesn't exist between the two points. How did so many unique species get to remote islands?

They walked. The continents were not divided for several hundred years later, during the time of Peleg.

How were ecological interdependencies preserved as animals migrated from Ararat? Did the yucca an the yucca moth migrate together across the Atlantic? Were there, a few thousand years ago, unbroken giant sequoia forests between Ararat and California to allow indigenous bark and cone beetles to migrate?

Presumably there were several factors at work: those that did not stay with their complementary species did not survive, first of all; the 'migration' happened before the splitting of continents; and many areas of certain growth did not, in fact, survive. Of course, you also have to take speciation/mutations into effect. What TO is obviously ignoring is that no one is arguing speciation or variation! No one is arguing natural selection. We know this happens. Consider it when looking at a lot of their sniping essays and remarks. They ignore what they choose to ignore in favor of attacks, whether or not the attacks are founded or thought out at all. I have seen this enough to have lost all respect for them or their website.

Why are so many animals found only in limited ranges? Why are so many marsupials limited to Australia; why are there no wallabies in western Indonesia? Why are lemurs limited to Madagascar? The same argument applies to any number of groups of plants and animals.

First of all, the initial populations stuck together. And they could only migrate in one direction, not all. That is where they ended up! Sometimes we see evidence of non-surviving populations, such as marsupials in South American fossils, and that does indicate that there were migrations into other areas, but for the most part, how many directions can a small population migrate in at once?

Why is inbreeding depression not a problem in most species? Harmful recessive alleles occur in significant numbers in most species. (Humans have, on average, 3 to 4 lethal recessive alleles each.) When close relatives breed, the offspring are more likely to be homozygous for these harmful alleles, to the detriment of the offspring. Such inbreeding depression still shows up in cheetahs; they have about 1/6th the number of motile spermatozoa as domestic cats, and of those, almost 80% show morphological abnormalities. [O'Brien et al, 1987] How could more than a handful of species survive the inbreeding depression that comes with establishing a population from a single mating pair?

See the above. My personal guess is that the genomes of the animals coming off the Ark was almost perfect. Therefore inbreeding would not have been any more of a problem for them than it was for people. Remember that it was not only allowed, but preferable to marry within the family even for several generations after Abraham. It was not until the time of Moses that inbreeding among humans was forbidden. By that time the negative mutations were building up to a dangerous level.

There is an interesting thing to think about here. The ages of the people after the Flood cut in half immediately from those before. Why? Possibly exposure to the first radioactive elements which were brought up by the exploding waters of the Flood? It's a thought... They might have been responsible for some pretty dramatic mutations almost right away.


10. Historical Aspects
Why is there no mention of the Flood in the records of Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time? Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1, Gal 3:17, various generation lengths given in Genesis) place the Flood 1300 years before Solomon began the first temple. We can construct reliable chronologies for near Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, from many kinds of records from the literate cultures in the near East. These records are independent of, but supported by, dating methods such as dendrochronology and carbon-14. The building of the first temple can be dated to 950 B.C. +/- some small delta, placing the Flood around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egyptians (among others) have written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.

Please see this study: http://www.setterfield.org/scriptchron.htm

And yes, the Egyptians and other civilizations all record something about the Flood. TO knows that. There are sites all over the net with multitudes of collections of stories and legends. I think, personally again, some are mixed up with creation and later catastrophes, but with many the memory is very clear and very precise in many of the details.

How did the human population rebound so fast? Genealogies in Genesis put the Tower of Babel about 110 to 150 years after the Flood [Gen 10:25, 11:10-19]. How did the world population regrow so fast to make its construction (and the city around it) possible? Similarly, there would have been very few people around to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, rebuild the Sumerian and Indus Valley civilizations, populate the Americas, etc.

Longer life spans; healthier people; lack of genetic load -- all leading to much larger families and very little barrenness.

Why do other flood myths vary so greatly from the Genesis account? Flood myths are fairly common worldwide, and if they came from a common source, we should expect similarities in most of them. Instead, the myths show great diversity. [Bailey, 1989, pp. 5-10; Isaak, 1997] For example, people survive on high land or trees in the myths about as often as on boats or rafts, and no other flood myth includes a covenant not to destroy all life again.

The mythological elements, first of all, are quite clear in many of the other stories. They were passed down orally and added to through time. The Bible is different. In Genesis 5:1 we already see the claim that it is a written document. Therefore we can consider it stable and reliable in what it is saying. Consider also that we know it is the Word of God, and He does not lie. He doesn't even exaggerate!

Why should we expect Genesis to be accurate? We know that other people's sacred stories change over time [Baaren, 1972] and that changes to the Genesis Flood story have occurred in later traditions [Ginzberg, 1909; Utley, 1961]. Is it not reasonable to assume that changes occurred between the story's origin and its being written down in its present form?

You are a Christian, right? Why are you quoting this part of their garbage?


How can a literal interpretation be appropriate if the text is self-contradictory? Genesis 6:20 and 7:14-15 say there were two of each kind of fowl and clean beasts, yet Genesis 7:2-3,5 says they came in sevens.

I am puzzled why you are quoting their ignorance of the Bible. Two of each kind except for the clean kinds which were seven. It's quite clear.

How can a literal interpretation be consistent with reality? How could Noah have gathered male and female of each kind [Gen. 7:15-16] when some species are asexual, others are parthenogenic and have only females, and others (such as earthworms) are hermaphrodites? And what about social animals like ants and termites which need the whole nest to survive?

More of their ignorance. Please refer to Genesis 7:14-15 in particular and note also that in verse 9, the animals came to Noah. Noah did not go out to collect them.

Why stop with the Flood story? If your style of Biblical interpretation makes you take the Flood literally, then shouldn't you also believe in a flat and stationary earth? [Dan. 4:10-11, Matt. 4:8, 1 Chron. 16:30, Psalms 93:1, ...]

They are being totally ignorant, and I assume intentionally so, of the Hebrew indications of the words that were used here.

In fact, is there any reason at all why the Flood story should be taken literally? Jesus used parables; why wouldn't God do so, too?

First of all, Jesus is God. Secondly, the parables are clearly marked both by the recorder and by the grammatical structure as parables. Genesis is recorded in the manner of an historical document. It should be either accepted or rejected on its own terms and not on terms thrust upon it by unhappy readers.

Does a global flood make the whole Bible less credible?

No, despite the quote used, it doesn't. As the evidence accumulates, the Bible is proving itself right again and again. It is only people's ideas that are showing up needing correction. God's Word is just that: God's Word. Nor will a person be put off of Christianity by those who believe Genesis is true. That may be an excuse, but it is not the real reason. The real reason is that the person is choosing to rebel against God and wants to make his own life and decisions Himself instead of admitting himself a sinner deserving death and turning to God for help. This is the crux of the matter. To argue that Genesis put him off is only one more excuse among dozens. Those who want the truth and those who recognize themselves for what they are will be led by the Father to the Son, who will turn none of them away. And then, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, these people will all gradually come to know the truth from God in more and more areas. Genesis included. In heaven we will know for sure; but what I have found here on earth is that He has left quite a bit of evidence that we can believe the Bible as it stands, and so many of us do.

And, as Romans 2 reminds us, it is God's kindness that leads people to repentance, not philosophical or scientific arguments. It is Christ in us which shows God's character to others -- and shows the love we all have longed for before we found Him. If someone is trying to substitute philosophical or scientific arguments for character, then they have already destroyed their witness for Christ, and what they say means nothing either way.


Does the Flood story indicate an omnipotent God?

If God is omnipotent, why not kill what He wanted killed directly? Why resort to a roundabout method that requires innumerable additional miracles?
The whole idea was to rid the wicked people from the world. Did it work?

That does not appear to have been the idea at all, really. What we do see happened is a population bottleneck and much shortened life spans. As it is now, our lives are so short we can only have time to come to know Him (if we choose to die to ourselves!), have Him do some of His work through us, reaching out to people, having a few children, trying to leave something better than we found it, and dying. No time for one person to be five or eight hundred years worth of evil. And that is evidently what He was stopping!

 

Hi Helen,

What an excellent reply. Well done. You've supported your position very well. Good onya ( as they say in Australia ).

I'll need time to review your comments in greater detail to do your post justice.

Thanks for your reply.
God bless you and your family.

Doug

 

I agree with Doug--it's quite an impressive response for someone headed off to bed.

I will address only one tiny corner of it: I think you must be mistaken about your claim about Olduvai Gorge, though--I am aware of no disagreements there between geologists and anyone else. The dating and epositional history of Olduvai Gorge has been without controversy.

At any rate, it is unclear to me how any professional disagreements I am aware of (yes, there are some, but not at Olduvai with geologists) would spell trouble for anthropologists. Perhaps you could clarify.

 

Helen generally makes good posts and often lengthy. She seems to be rather well read, also. So this is not unusual for her. Good to have her back.

There are a number of items in her posts I would like to take issue with, but I do not really have the time now, I am on my way out the door to work. I'll try and get back to it, maybe after I get back in town from Thanksgiving. A few quick things however.

Not according to what I found in a quick search. "Olivine is found in ultramafic igneous rocks and marbles that formed from metamorphosed impure limestones. Mafic is a word that is used to define igneous rocks with a high iron and magnesium content. The "MA" is for magnesium while the "F" is for ferrum, the latin word for iron. The olivine minerals have a high melting point and are the first minerals to crystallize from a mafic magma. Forsterite crystallizes first with fayalite crystallizing last when other minerals such as the pyroxenes are just beginning to form. The early crystallization of olivine is the reason that molten lavas can contain already crystallized grains of olivine. Some ultramafic rocks can be composed of almost all olivine and these are called dunites or peridotites. Peridotites contain the same chemical makeup as the molten magma in the Earth's mantle. Thus peridotite could be called the most common rock by volume in the Earth, although on the Earth's surface and in the crust it is not nearly as well represented." From http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/silicate/olivine/olivine.htm . According to this, olivine is the first mineral to crystalize (OK, well it is not actually a recognized mineral) from magma. The article goes on to state that generally olivine is altered to serpentine, not the other way around. It does agree that olivine could be the most common rock in the earth.

But only the plants that like warm, steamy and boggy! I do not think that many of the plants that live in my neck of the woods, nor yours, would have done so well. That only allows a very narrow range of plants to grow, and stifles or prevents the growth of plants from most other environments.

[an aside for Helen. Speaking of your neck of the woods, I was in that general area back in September. A weeks vacation seeing as much as I could from Big Sur up to Calistoga and Point Reyes. Beautiful!]

Then some very rapid evolution of the traits needed for going from herbivore to carnivore in a very short period of time. I thought YECs claimed that there could not be new traints and "information" in the genome?

Where are the fossils of any of these who died on the way? Why are there groups that all seem to have evolved in isolation? The unique fauna of Australia for instance.

Well that is enough. Not time enough to really go into depth on anything but the first one. There is much to be mined in the area of heat problems though. The sensible and latent heat from all that pressurized water is a problem in addition to the heats of cooling and crystallization of all those rocks. Saying that "They were already boiling" does not really help you. You admit the waters were boiling, the extra heat would then have gone into providing the energy necessary to overcome the latent heat of vaporization in the process of boiling them away. Their latent heat then heats the atmosphere tremendously as they condense back to moisture plus the heating from the exchange of sensible heat between both the hot waters and the hot vapors. We are cooking Noah!

One last thing. Mainly an attempt at humor. How have we gone on for 22 pages in this thread without anybody pointing out that talking about how the Grand Canyon formed was Geologic propaganda and not Evolutionary propaganda?

 

from DM: I will address only one tiny corner of it: I think you must be mistaken about your claim about Olduvai Gorge, though--I am aware of no disagreements there between geologists and anyone else. The dating and epositional history of Olduvai Gorge has been without controversy.


The arguments are furious and undercover. I have recently edited two articles pertaining to this. I don't know where they were submitted to or when they will be published, but the referencing was extensive and my eyes were really opened. For any geologists here, extensive referencing of Holmes and Hay as well as the Leakey claims were in the paper.

==============

To UTEOTW:

First of all, thank you.

Regarding serpentine and olivine, I will defer to Barry's help when he wakes up. That will be a number of hours from now as he is in Australia and it is the middle of the night there! He is the one who has done the work in geology.

UTEOTW: But only the plants that like warm, steamy and boggy! I do not think that many of the plants that live in my neck of the woods, nor yours, would have done so well. That only allows a very narrow range of plants to grow, and stifles or prevents the growth of plants from most other environments.</font>[/QUOTE]Which is why we see what we do in the Paleozoic strata! Please do not forget, also, that plants have much more plastic genomes than do animals and are thus much more able to adapt in different environments.

[an aside for Helen. Speaking of your neck of the woods, I was in that general area back in September. A weeks vacation seeing as much as I could from Big Sur up to Calistoga and Point Reyes. Beautiful!

Beautiful, you are right. And dangerous, too! Funny how the two often go together, eh? Glad you enjoyed your trip, though. ]

UTEOTW: Then some very rapid evolution of the traits needed for going from herbivore to carnivore in a very short period of time. I thought YECs claimed that there could not be new traints and "information" in the genome?</font>[/QUOTE]In Revelation 13:8, we learn that Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Sin was obviously prepared for by God. It was prepared for in these animals, as well. There were no miraculous transformations after the Flood; there was simply a new use for the teeth and digestive systems they had had since the beginning. The teeth for tearing and the digestive systems for high protein content were challenged and satisfied by some kind of plant life in the antediluvian world.

I am always interested in the idea that evolutionists can posit all kinds of impossible changes themselves, but those who are Christian cannot see their way clear to understand God's provisions in the natural world.

UTEOTW: Where are the fossils of any of these who died on the way? Why are there groups that all seem to have evolved in isolation? The unique fauna of Australia for instance.</font>[/QUOTE]Most plants and animals do not fossilize. I'm sure you know that anyway, right? For instance, the bones of the cattle and horses that died on the trek west simply lay on top of the ground and were scavenged by vultures and coyotes and such. They were not fossilized. Let me ask you this, then: Why should the bones of anything in migration fossilize? Fossilization requires a specific and rare set of circumstances (talking about mineralization here, not imprints or casts -- although they, too, require specific events in order to fossilize). Migrations normally take place over the dryest ground possible, don't they? We are, after all, not talking about water-loving animals here! So why, on these dry grounds and pathways, should any of their bones have fossilized? Why should any of the plants growing there have fossilized? Why would anyone expect that or use that as an argument regarding migrations?

The heat thing I will refer to Barry. As mentioned before...smile.

As far as Grand Canyon goes, it was certainly cut quickly enough, just as Engineer's Canyon or the Columbia Gorge was. However we disagree strongly with the contention that the strata through which it was cut were laid down in one year.

 

That did not answer my question. I think you can provide some more details without delving into the body of the papers, such as the pertinent references to the mainstream literature. Those would be public access anyway, so you wouldn't be giving anything away. Merely saying names like "Hay" is meaningless--virtually any paper on the geology of Olduvai with zero controversy will reference Richard Hay, among others. Rest assured--if there is *any* sort of controversy about Olduvai among the professionals, it will *not* be that much of a secret, because historically the disagreements between the professionals in that field are almost invariably rather public and noisy. Most certainly it will be easy to find out about. Which is why your comment prompted my question--there has been zero on the grapevine about anything to do with Olduvai.

 

essentially the geologists argue for a much shorter age span for the strata due to evidence of volcanic activity and ash. Paleontology needs longer ages for evolution and thus denies the catastrophic argument. That's the sum of it.

 

Could you give me the basic bibliographic info (i.e. primary author name, dates, and publications) of the most recent mainstream geological references that were in your bibliography (say, within the last 5 years? I'd like to compare them to my own database. Thanks so much (it's already common knowledge that the sedimentation time is relatively short for some of those depositional intervals--that is not controversial and doesn't pose much problem for the fossils. That may not be what you are referring to, though. I'm really curious).

 

Here is the reference list for a paper I edited last spring. I do not know if it has been published. As you can see, however, the author is bilingual and also drawing from both some creationist authors as well as the mainstream journals and press. This particular author is employed in a relevent scientific field in a secular setting. I am extremely uncomfortable doing any more than this as a matter of ethics:

Andrews, P.J. 1978. A revision of the Miocene Hominoidea of East Africa. Bulletin of the British Museum for Natural History (Geology) 30(2): 85-224.

Arambourg, C. and R.G. Wolff. 1969. Nouvelles données paleontologiques sur l'âge des grès de Lubar ("Turkana grits") à l'oust du lac Rodolphe. Compte rendu sommaire des sances de la Société géologique de France 6:190-192.

Bacon, A.M. 1999. Les australopithèques. Pour la Science. p. 38-42.

Bellon, H. and A. Pouclet. 1980. Datation K/Ar de quelques laves du Rift Ouest de l'Afrique centrale; implications sur l'évolution magmatique et structurale. Geologische Rundschau 69(1): 49-62.

Berger, L. 1998. The dawn of humans: Redrawing our family tree. National Geographic 194(2): 90-99.

Berger, R. and W. Libby. 1969. UCLA radiocarbon dates IX. Radiocarbon 11(1): 194-209

Bishop, Walter. 1976. Thoughts on the workshop. In Coppens, Y., F.C. Howell, G. Isaac, and R.E. Leakey, editors, Earliest man and the environment in Lake Rudolf Basin: Stratigraphy, palaeoecology and evolution. A conference held at Nairobi, 1973. University of Chicago Press. 615 pp.

Bishop, Walter W., editor. 1978. Geological background to fossil man. Published for the Geological Society of London by the Scottish Academic Press. Edinburgh. 602 pp.

Bishop, W.W., J.A. Miller, and F.J. Fitch. 1969. New potassium-argon age determinations relevant to the Miocene fossil mammal sequence in East Africa. American Journal of Science 267: 669-699.

Brown, F.H., J.M. Harris, R.E. Leakey, and A. Walker. 1985. Early Homo erectus skelton from West Turkana, Kenya. Nature 316: 789-792.

Brunet, M., A. Beauvallon, Y. Coppens, E. Heintze, A.H.E. Moutaye, and D. Pilbeam. 1995. The first australopithecine 2,500 kilometers west of the Rift Valley (Chad). Nature 378: 273-275.

Chavaillon, J., N. Chavaillon, Y. Coppens, and B. Semet. 1977. Presence d'Hominidé dans le site Oldowayan de Gombore à Melka-Kunture, Ethiopie. Comptes Rendu de l’Academie des Sciences, Paris, série D. 285: 961-963.

Clarke, Ron. 1998. Discovery of the oldest ancestors of man, 3.2 to 3.6 Ma. old. Quoted by Le Figaro, Paris, France. December 11, 1998.

Coppens, Yves. 1999. Le genou de Lucy [Lucy's knee]. Odile Jacob. Paris.

Coppens, Yves. 1999. Une histoire de l'origins des hominidés - Pour la Science - Dossier spécial "Les origines de l'Humanité." French edition of Scientific American. p. 16-28.

Coppens, Y., F.C. Howell, G. Isaac, and R.E. Leakey, editors. 1976. Earliest man and the environment in Lake Rudolf Basin: Stratigraphy, palaeoecology and evolution. A conference held at Nairobi, 1973. University of Chicago Press. 615 pp.

Curtis, G.H., R.E. Drake, B.N. Cerling, and J.H. Hampel. 1975. Age of the KBS tuff in Koobi-Fora formation, East Rudolf, Kenya. Nature 258: 395-398.

Curtis, G.H., R.E. Drake, B.N. Cerling, and J.H. Hampel. 1978. Age of the K.B.S. tuff in Koobi-Fora formation, East Lake Turkana, Kenya. In Bishop, Walter W., editor, Geological background to fossil man. Published for the Geological Society of London by the Scottish Academic Press. Edinburgh. p. 463-469.

Dalrymple, G.B. and M.A. Lanphere. 1969. Potassium-argon dating: Principles, techniques, and applications to geochronology. W.H. Freeman. San Francisco. 257 pp.

Day, Michael H. 1971. Postcranial remains of Homo erectus from Bed IV, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Nature 232: 383-387.

De Bonis, L. 1999. A l'ouest, infin du nouveau. Pour la Science p. 17.

Evernden, J.F. and G.H. Curtis. 1965. The K/Ar dating of the late Cenozoic rocks in East Africa and Italy. Current Anthropology 6: 343-384.

Fitch, F.J. and J.A. Miller. 1976. Conventional potassium/argon and argon-40/argon-39 dating of volcanic rocks from East Rudolf. In Coppens, Y. et al., editors, Earliest man and the environment in Lake Rudolf Basin: Stratigraphy, paleoecology and evolution. A conference held at Nairobi, 1973. University of Chicago Press. p. 123-147.

Fitch, F.J., P.J. Hooker, and J.A. Miller. 1978. Geochronological problems and radioisotope dating in Gregory Rift Valley. In Bishop, Walter W., editor, Geological background to fossil man. Published for the Geological Society of London by the Scottish Academic Press. Edinburgh. p. 441-461.

Harland, W.B., A. Gilbert Smith, and B. Wilcock. 1964. The Phanerozoic time scale: A symposium dedicated to Arthur Holmes. Vol. 120 S A supplement to the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London. Glasgow.

Harris, J.H., F.H. Brown, M.G. Leakey, A.C. Walker, and R.E. Leakey. 1988. Pliocene and pleistocene hominid-bearing sites from west of Lake Turkana, Kenya. Science 139: 27-33.

Holmes, A. and L. Cahen. 1957. Géologie africaine 1956: Resultats acquis au 1er juillet 1956. Mémoires Académie Royale des Sciences Coloniales, Collection in 4º t. 5, fasc. I, 169 pp. Bruxelles.

Holmes, A. 1965. Principles of physical geology. Thomas Nelson. London. 1288 pp.

Hopwood, A.T. and J. Lepersonne. 1953. Presence de formations d'age Miocene inferieure dans le fossé tectonique du lac Albert er de la Basse Semliki (Congo Belge). Ann. Soc. Géol. Belgique 77: B84-B111.

Howell, F.C. and G. Ll. Isaac. 1976. Introduction [to part 3 - Paleoanthropology]. In Coppens, Y. et al., editors, Earliest man and the environment in the Lake Rudolf Basin. A conference held at Nairobi, 1973. University of Chicago Press. p. 471-475.

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Jäger, E. and J.C. Hunziker. 1979. Lectures in isotope geology. Springer-Verlag. Berlin, Heildelberg, New York. 329 pp.

Johanson, D. 1976. Ethiopia yields the first family of early man. National Geographic Magazine 150(6): 790-811.

Johanson, D. 1996. Face-to-face with Lucy's family. National Geographic Magazine 189(3): 96-117.

Julien, P.Y., Y. Lan, and G. Berthault. 1993. Experiments on stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures. Bulletin de la Societe Géologique de France 164(5): 649-650. See also the video "Experiments in stratification" by Guy Berthault, 1999.

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Leakey, Meave, C.B. Feibel, I. McDougall, and A. Walker. 1995. New four million year hominid species from Kanopoi and Allia Bay, Kenya. Nature 365: 565-671.

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Leakey, Mary D. 1978. Olduvai Gorge, 1911-75: A history of the investigations. In Bishop, Walter W., editor, Geological background to fossil man. Published for the Geological Society of London by the Scottish Academic Press. Edinburgh. p. 151-155.

Leakey, Mary. 1979. 3.6 million years old - Footprints from the ashes of time. National Geographic Magazine 155(4): 446-457.

Leakey, M.G., C. Felbel, I. McDougall, C. Ward, and A. Walker. 1998. New specimens and confirmation of an early age for Australopithecus anamnensis. Nature 393: 62-66.

Leakey, R.E. 1973. Skull 1470: Discovery in Kenya of the earliest suggestion of the genus Homo - nearly three million years old - compels a rethinking of makind's pedigree. National Geographic Magazine 143(6): 819-829.

Lemoigne, Y. 1978. Flores tertiaires de la haute valleè de l'Omo (Ethiopie). Paleontographica B165(4-6): 87-157.

Lubenow, M.L. 1992. Bones of contention: Creationist assessment of human fossils. Baker Booke House. Grand Rapids, MI.

Pickford, M. 1985. L'Ecologie des premiers grands Simges. La Recherche no 163. 188-198.

Shakelton, R.M. 1978. Structural development of the East African Rift system. In Bishop, Walter W., editor, Geological background to fossil man. Published for the Geological Society of London by the Scottish Academic Press. Edinburgh. P. 19-28.

Schrenk, F. T.G. Bromage, C.G. Betzler, U. Ring, and Y.M. Juwayweyi. 1993. Oldest Homo and Pliocene biogeography of the Malawi Rift. Nature 365: 833-836.

Senut, B. 1999. Les humains les plus environs. Pour la Science p.66-69.

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I am taking dictation from Barry in Australia right now. The rest of this post is from him:

Concerning the quote from the article about olivine and serpentine, what they are doing there is saying that if you add water to olivine then it becomes serpentine and this is the usual way it happens. But it is also true that if you drive out water from serpentine, it becomes olivine. So it's a two-way process. What is specifically being talked about in the quoted article is the origin of olivine from magmas and melts. The point that we are making is that the original composition of the earth was with minerals with high water content. This is seen in meteorites which are assumed to be the same composition as the material originally making up the earth.

With these minerals being heated, the water is driven off toward the surface, so these minerals now lack the water they originally had, but which is still found in the meteorites which are assumed to be of the earliest materials. This also means that there will be a high olivine content in any magma coming from the interior of the earth, as the water will have already been driven off.

Now about the heat: the problem that is being discussed here is that as the steam condensed to water, heat was given off, and this is presumed to have heated the atmosphere of the earth to unbearable levels. Two points need to be made here:

1. First of all, the extrusion of water from the interior was limited to what is now the mid-ocean ridges. It was not a world-wide phenomena.

2. Secondly, because of the pressure from the interior, this hot water was jetted to heights greater than fifteen miles. We have the same effect with volcanoes today. However the pressure in this case was much greater. As a consequence, the water was jetted above the troposphere, and therefore gave off its heat primarily in the stratosphere. The stratosphere is pretty thin and therefore the heat would be radiating into space to a large degree.

If the fountains of the deep had only bubbled up, then the temperature argument might be valid. But as it is, the Bible is quite clear about the bursting of all at once, which means enormous pressure was involved.

There is another point that needs to be made. Something was said about the immense amount of heat due to the cooling and crystallization of rocks. This was effectively non-existent, because the Flood layer we point to is sedimentary and not igneous. It was not a crystallization process.

I hope that helps.
Barry Setterfield

 

That's way more than I expected--thank you. And certainly I do not expect you to reveal anything in the paper itself.

It'll take me time to go over the material; I've been putting in 12-hour days for the past couple of weeks and I'm almost cross-eyed with fatigue. But you've gone above and beyond the call of duty. God bless.

 

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

But the pressure is your enemy. All that pressure means icredible heat, also, if you are to get any great fountains out of it.

First, let us think a little bit about water. You say you have all this water being driven off from the serpentine. Fine. Water is not a compressible fluid. So no matter how much pressure you build up with water, you cannot make it burst out of its own accord. (In inudstry, we use this to our advantage. If you want to pressure test a new vessel, it is vastly preferrable to hydro test it. You can fill it full of water and then with a small pump you can put enormous pressures on the vessel. If it ruptures, since there is essentially no energy stored in the water, it will just trickle out. If you were to do this with gas and the vessel failed, all the potential energy from the compressed gasses could cause the vessel to explode or other types of destructive failure.)

So how do you get water to burst out? You must have an expanding gas. In this case, you most likely would have steam. So let us take an example. The water was coming from deep below the surface. Let us use 1500 feet, though that is not very deep at all. (Getting to the really deep layers you suggest would force the pressure up to incredible levels but also would force up the energy to be dealt with to incredible levels.) Let us also use the method that seems to most follow your description. The water deep underground is heated to the boiling point. As the water flows towards the surface, the pressure becomes less. Some of the water flashes to steam. The expansion of the steam drives the rest of the water out. Much like what happens in a geyser. (Let's for now ignore the dissolved gasses that can also help add more fuel to the geysers. You have way too much water which leads to way too much dissolved gasses to account for.)

So a 1500 feet deep source of water would be under 1500 ft of head or 636 psig pressure. If heated just to the boiling point, the water would be at 495 F. (Again, for simplicity, let's ignore the dissolved salts in the water because they would simply raise the temperature of the boiling water. Not good for you.) When this water reaches the surface (and normal atmospheric pressure) part of the water would immediately flash to steam. (OK, it would actually be flashing the whole way up from down below, it's just that the flashing process would complete itself as the water reached the surface.)

A simple heat balance tells us that 31% of the water would immediately flash to steam. The rest of the water would continue to travel upward at the boiling point. So at this point you have released 74% of the heat at the surface.

So much for getting the water up to the stratosphere to radiate the heat. Oh, and about that. Assuming that there is no loss due to air resistance, getting that water up to the height of the stratosphere requires an initial velocity of 900 mph to reach the minimum height found at the poles and 1260 mph to reach the height at the equator. I really doubt that there is enough potential energy in the expanding steam to propel water that high. But maybe you could show me an energy balance that can.

Now we get into the fun part, all this water flashing to steam. If you start dividing out using the mass of the atmosphere and the density of liquid water you will find that once you have released enough liquid to add 100 feet to the depth of the water covering the earth, you will have released the same mass of water vapor as the entire mass of the atmosphere. Not good for breathing. (We are also ignoring that as the water travels up through the atmosphere, the pressure continues to decline, lowering the boiling point and flashing more water to steam. By the time you reach the low pressures of the stratosphere, most of the water would have turned to vapor.)

But then all this water starts to condense. Massive heat problems. First of all, you are not going to be condensing any (well, essentially) of this water up in the stratosphere, there the pressure is too low. Plus you are going to have great difficulty radiating any of the heat into space because water vapor (not clouds, that is a different issue) is a very good greenhouse gas. You have stated previously that about half of the surface water came from the flood. So multiplying and dividing everything through, a volume of water equilelent to about 4300 feet of additional water depth would have been released. So this example first 100 feet gets you about 2% through the total volume of water released.

Of course, all this is thrown off a bit because what was happening "was limited to what is now the mid-ocean ridges" because then the water would have been bursting up into water rather than atmosphere and all of its heat would have been transferred to the oceans. There is enough heat involved that you essentially would be boiling the oceans away at the point of eruptions with water pouring in from around the globe. Very good mixing to distribute the heat around, not to mention the violence of the atmosphere with that much energy pouring into it.

Now, about condensing that water vapor. About 1000 BTU/lb released to condense steam. 1 Btu of heat will raise the temperature of a pound of air by about 4 degrees F. You are condensing roughly 50 times the mass of the atmosphere in water vapor. I think we still have a heat problem. (Of course, once the atmosphere reaches boiling point of water, no more condensing. Just heating from those hot springs.) The ark is now riding on a boiling ocean, in an atmosphere which is essentially water vapor and at a temperature of hundreds of degrees. Boiled, baked, and suffocated. You just cannot cheat thermodynamics.

 

And for the other scattered topics...

OK. I am not very good at geology so let me ask a few questions and then try and answer them myself. You can let me know how I did.

Is there any evidence of the two minerals being altered from one to the other? Do we have samples that show this to be so? Why was the water in the meteorites not driven off?

As far as the materials being altered from one to the other, there should be evidence of this happening or else you and the geologists would not both be claiming it has happened. Specifically speaking of serpentine to olivine, I would think there would be some indications. As the water escaped, there might be some sort of micro-fracturing as the water forced its way out. There might be impurities dissolved by the water that might plate out along the cracks or that might leave voids in the rocks. There might also be unaltered serpentine left in the middle of the the rocks altered to olivine.

I also suspect that since this is a material found at deep layers of the earth, that there probably are not a whole lot of samples that you can actually look at to determine if this is the case. So we are left with a lot of olivine in the mantle, but no good way to tell if it really is the product of cooling magma or if it really is the product of altered serpentine.

You say that the water in the earth was driven off by the decay of radioactive isotopes. What about the water in the meteorites? As I see it, there are a few possibilities. One, the radioactive decay was physically separated from the serpentine. But this runs into the problem of conducting the heat from where it was generated to where it was used in a reasonable period of time. Two, that the radioactive decay happened in close proximity to the locations of the serpentine. The problem with this is that you would then expect the meteorites to also be dry. Maybe you can find a way to very quickly radiate the heat into space. It might work if the objects are small enough. But it only takes a little heat, about 120 F from what I have read, to dry the meteorites out. There is also a tiny correction to be made. The small fraction of meteorites that actually have significant water are close in composition to the sun rather than the terrestial planets.

Also, all this radioactive energy being released in short order. I would expect that all those alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron particles would leave clear evididence in the rocks around them. Any data to support you here?

I am more concerned with particular groups of fauna that are related in the evolutionary sense but that certainly would not be considered the same "kind" that all seem to end up in the same geographic location. I used Australia as an example because its unique fauna is at least generally familiar to most people. But there seems to be evidence of ceratin groups that have been geographically isolated for long periods of time.

First, Ithough that the Paleozoic was mild for most of the time, only hot and muggy during the Pennsylvanian
Mississippian periods in the middle. Second, a lot of the types of plants available today simply did not exist then. Conifers only came in with very primative type at the very end on the Paleozoic. Most are only found in higher strata. Grasses are only found later. Most crucially, angiosperms did not develop into much later. The arrival and diversification of angiosperms is a bit more than adaptation. You are talking all flowering plants from roses to oaks. Not just speciation from a "kind."

Fine. The flood layers are sedimentary. All those magma inclusions came later and still had to cool and crystallize. You have just changed the timing a bit. Still too much heat to get rid of.