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Time IS relative; how do YOU propose we measure time? "
Red herring. Time is relative for observers traveling at different speed relative to one another. The earth is one big object moving through spacetime and is therefore not subject. The difference in velocity due to differing rotational rates from the equator to the poles is insignificant and it much less than the rate of motion of the earth about the sun or the sun about the center of the galaxy.
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If the global covering of water (at whatever distance it was from Earth) -- you know, the one the evolutionists laugh at us about? Then what do you do when there is a period of time with life that does not absorb radiometric elements that can be measured--guess what? They look VERY OLD!
Of course, it will be said this doesn't fit with tree circles, or does it?"
Thanks for refuting your own post for me. Of course it would also not agree with lake varves or corals or ice cores. Nor would it match up with where items can be dated by both C14 and a uranium series. So observation shows us that your idea cannot be true.
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Does a global flood explain the large volumes of oil and coal?"
In a word, no.
We could talk about how if every landmass on the earth were covered densely in plants, there still would not be enough matter to make the proven reserves of fossil fuels. But we won'.
We could talk about how it cannot explain places were we see multiple coal seams on top of one another formed from multiple forest buried insitu. But we won't. (Or, ignoring coal for a moment, we could go down the road of the 27 forests completely buried in volcanic ash on top of one another in Yellowstone.)
Instead we will talk about the time required to make these fossil fuels. I know, this is where you trot out the experiments where somebody takes some cellulose and some water and heats it to some high temperature and pressure for a few weeks and comes up with some dark colored mass that at a glance vaguely resembles coal.
But that is not the real world. The problem is that coals formed at different temperatures have different chemical make ups. There is a better explanation than I could give at this coal bed methane site.
http://www.blackdiamondenergy.com/coalbed.html
Now there is an important chart on that site for our discussion. It shows how the maximum temperature at which coal is heated affects both its grade and the chemistry.
You will see that lignites and sub-bituminous coals are barely heated at all. Less than about 120 F for lignite and less than about 160 F for subbituminous. We would be able to tell if they were heated to a higher temperature because the rank of the coal would be different and the chemistry (OK, so those two are closely related) would be different.
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What happens in a world wide flood when sediment and living material is immediately covered with water and allowed a year to settle and compact? Would we find a fossil record that is stratified based on the cataclismic event that would completely mystify a naturalist?"
It would because you would find things so much different than what we see. You flood deposits have layers of sandstone interspersed! How do you get windblown dand between layers of the same flood?!? You have limestone layers. You have layers of volcanic ash. You have layes of material rich with iridium from meteor impacts. You have many layers (most layers?) that do not look as if they were produced by a flood. Baumgardner in working out his flood model says that the velocity of the flood waters would have been in the hundreds of feet per second. This is your own boy. That would not fossilize delicate animals, it would shred them. For that matter, it would do quite number on tougher animals too! That would not be able to deposit fine layers, they would stay in suspension. That would mix everything up so much that you would not even have layers of different material.
As far as the fossil record goes... First off a flood of such magnitude would be hard pressed to leave fossils to begin with because of the power. The fossil would also not be left in the manner that we see them. You can tell the conditions under which most fossils form. Some are covered in very fine silt and formed in still water. Some where buried in landslides. Some are covered in volcanic ash. These things just do not agree with your assertion.
Many fossils show signs of scavenging. Scavenging would be hard with everything being drowned at once. (Tooth marks can help identify the scavenger so you cannot just say fish.)
Yu will also remeber that I recent provided you a reference that shows how well which layers the fossil are found in (stratiography) matched the order of the fossil series (cladistics). Now, just how could this be?
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Think about water stored within the earth and sprayed from the fountains of the deep. What techtonic events would this cause? Assuming half of the water came from the inside of the Earth and half from above (just as an assumption)."
Ignoring physics here? Water under enough pressure to spray up in the type of fountains Helen (that is where that came from, right) advocates would be so hot that they would mostly flash by the time they got to the surface. What did not would boil the oceans while the latent heat released when this water condensed would be sufficient to heat the earth to incredible temperatures. The water from above would have a similar problem due to its potential energy being released. You should just supernaturally make the waterappear and disappear to avoid such pitfalls. When you start trying to come up with where the water could have come from it invariably fails.
[ January 19, 2005, 08:44 AM: Message edited by: UTEOTW ]