Rock Layers Folded, Not Fractured: Flood Evidence Number Six

AiG ^ | March 15, 2009 | Andrew Snelling, Ph.D.

[GonzoGOP]

Chalk it up to the pitfalls of a Jesuit education. Look at me as friendly target practice. If you can't get past someone who believes the basics, but is cynical about the details, then the libs are going to tear you apart.

A good argument is always fun. For example the way to argue about the ark is to figure out how to build a ship to the dimensions given that can survive the ultimate white water rafting trip. It doesn't have to be "ark" shaped. IIRC The Bible only specifies length, width and material. See if by thinking outside the box, or ark, such a ship could be constructed. What about a Polynesian catamaran, or a cellular raft? I don't know how to run the numbers on that, but somebody certainly has a computer that can do it. If such a ship is not possible then you have to adjust other parts of the theory to calm the water and reduce the amount of rain.

Also it took me ten minutes to calculate the water flow rates. Surface of Earth times height of Mt Everest and divide by 40 days. The numbers are as pointed out daunting. It doesn't matter the ratio of rain to upwelling, any theory of sedimentation of fossil deposit that relies on still water is out of the question. Never throw out a theory that the other guy can knock down with simple math. Like I said i'm not saying it didn't happen, just that you will need to show me how it happened.

[OriginalIntent]

I like questions of a sincere nature and have many of my own. As far as the flood, it is a most difficult (if not impossible) event to nail down with great confidence in the detail. I do have my biases.

I will no doubt have to wait a few more years and then I will simply ask. Until that face to face encounter our natural curiosity prods most of us to venture our best educated guesses based upon our starting points.

[GodGunsGuts]

==Lets say you have a hole 1m x 1m x 8,848 km and want to fill it with water in 40 days. That’s 9 meters of rain per square meter every hour for 40 days. Over every square meter of the Earth. The worst thunderstorms can only dump .05 meters of water in an hour.

Where did all the water come from?

http://biblicalgeology.net/Answer/Where-did-all-the-water-come-from.html

[GodGunsGuts]

==Actually I'm normally on the other side of this argument. As i stated in my earlier posts, the idea that there was some kind of flood event in pre history is backed up by the facts. It appears in many different cultures all around the Med and Middle East.

Flood Myths from around the world:

Source:

http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html

[Wacka]

If the flood deposited all the fossils, and the real experiment showed that the larger solid particles settled out first, why aren’t the lowest layers populated with fossils of the largest animals, i.e. whales, brontosauruses, t-rex, elephants, etc?

[Fichori]

“I notice the evolutionists here have once again failed to respond to the article in question.” [excerpt]

As always.

[Liberty1970]

"Loss over time" is going to be proportional to the timespans involved. There shouldn't be any appreciable loss at all due to tectonic subduction in a 4,000 year timeframe.

I was arguing from the evolutionary perspective. My point was that even allowing for early fossils to have largely vanished from continental subduction, the vast majority of fossils should be of extinct species. Instead we find that a large proportion, at least 40%, are of living species.

In the orthodox creation model there was rapid plate subduction during the Kataklusmos (look up Catastrophic Plate Tectonics), but that would be largely irrelevant to living/extinct species distributions in a young-earth model. In the YEC model the still large proportion of extinct species in the fossil record would be due to two factors:

1. The fact that many species have in fact gone extinct, compared to the maximum diversity of the original creation.

2. The potential for rapid phenotypic and genetic change among the small post-Flood populations. Natural selection, genetic drift, founders effect, and, increasingly, evidence of directed mutations and expression of repressed genes would have resulted in rapid diversification after the Flood, causing many new species to develop even as original ones died out.

(None of this would require innovative, integrative mutations such as naturalistic evolution requires; these would have been neutral and degenerative trends, such as natural selection weeding out a broad variety of genes for a much more restricted genome.)

[tacticalogic]

My point was that even allowing for early fossils to have largely vanished from continental subduction, the vast majority of fossils should be of extinct species. Instead we find that a large proportion, at least 40%, are of living species.

If the vast majority of early fossils have vanished, why would the vast majority of the remaining fossils be of extinct species? It sounds rather counter-intuitive.

Placed in a Noachian timeframe, the vast majority of fossils should still be intact, being in the neighborhood of 4,000 years old, and currently living species should be in evidence in their proportion to their relative population at the time of the flood.

I'd also like a little more detail about the source of the 40% figure. Does that include plant species as well as animal species?

[BrandtMichaels]

You might want to check out www.creationscience.com. According to Dr. Walt Brown’s calculations mountains were originally no more than 1 mile high. Sub-terranean water broke forth from the great deep (10 mile thick granite crust uniformly enveloping the earth) and had support columns (mountains would form there) to hold the immense water pressure. The water was supposed to be twice as salty as our present oceans.

Also one of the science channels had a special on Noah’s Ark that showed the dimensions are inline with modern day barges and are purported to be the most stable type of boats in high seas.

Lastly, many moons ago FR had an article detailing how most animals can go into a hibernation state due to traumatic events, drought etc - not just bears in winter. Many assumptions regarding animal life on the Ark include the above idea along w/ very limited species (only a pair of wolves and cats not the several varied lines of domesticated and wild dogs/cats that we know of today), infant stages for all the pairs to minimize food needs and dispensing of waste (compost systems?).

Lastly, the Bible is unique among all other texts and is inspired Word from the Holy Spirit so not every event (esp. the flood) would be only natural events. IIRC there is a specific scripture regarding the Ark that God protected it w/ his hand.

Dr. Brown’s online book details his hydroplate theory (part II) regarding the cataclismic movement of the continents. Part I gives various and sundry problems with macro-evolution since Dr. Brown originally worked as an evolutionary scientist. His credentials are impeccable and his book provides references to most everything he asserts even though it is mostly presented in laymans terms he does include much of the math involved in his estimates.