When I was a 12-year-old, back in 1960, My Dad took me on a trip to Yellowstone Park, where we came upon a formation named "Specimen Ridge." The explanatory plaque there informed us that at Specimen Ridge there are 27 different petrified forests resting one atop the other. My father, a plumber, a fundamentalist with an 8th grade education, studied this for a while. Then he said, "Do they have any idea what the odds of that are? This is bunk."His attitude toward evolution (what you would probably call "godidit") enabled him to not only doubt, but to seek rational argument in mathematics. My father, with his 8th grade fundamentalism was thinking critically, while the worlds's "experts," with their U/Chicago and Harvard PhD's, were uncritically amazed at the explanatory power of "modern science." It turns out my Dad was right. The scientific establishment was wrong, though they did come around to his view (not that they ever heard of him!).
What exactly do you mean by this? What exactly did your father think was bunk? And how exactly did mainstream scientists' explanation of the petrified forests change?
"What exactly do you mean by this? What exactly did your father think was bunk? And how exactly did mainstream scientists' explanation of the petrified forests change?"
Well, he said the 27 forests growing up, dying, then petrifiying in sequence was bunk. I think his reasoning was something like: A. Petrification of a standing forest is rare, almost impossible to conceive of. B. How does this happen 27 straight times without any intervening stratification?). [at this point, the evolutionary geologist would have said "you can't argue with the facts discovered in situ!!]
Mainstream geology has come to a similar conclusion, interpreting the stratification as the result of seasonal flooding of a single forest. If you are worried that geologists have based this new interpretation on an analysis of the book of Genesis, I think you're still safe.