Rock Layers Folded, Not Fractured: Flood Evidence Number Six

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

[GodGunsGuts]

Rock Layers Folded, Not Fractured

Flood Evidence Number Six

by Andrew A. Snelling

March 15, 2009

How could a series of sedimentary layers fold without fracturing? The only way is for all the sedimentary layers to be laid down in rapid succession and then be folded while still soft and pliable.

If the global Flood, as described in Genesis 7–8, really occurred, what evidence would we expect to find? Wouldn’t we expect to find rock layers all over the earth that are filled with billions of dead animals and plants that were rapidly buried and fossilized in sand, mud, and lime? Yes, and that’s exactly what we find...

[tacticalogic]

Fossilization takes time, tens of thousands of years at least except in extraordinary circumstances.

If the YEC accounts are correct, none of them have existed for the tens of thousands of years it would have taken.

[tractorman]

Teenagers are proof that evolution is impossible.

[OriginalIntent]

Fossilization takes time, tens of thousands of years at least except in extraordinary circumstances.

I am pretty sure YECs think the flood of Noah and its aftermath were quite extraordinary circumstances, causing extensive fossilization. In fact that is the exact claim they do make.

[GonzoGOP]

As far as being hit over the head by Niagara falls or the like, I have never heard anyone make that claim.

I'm just pointing out the flow rate necessary to flood the planet in 40 days. 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. I've been on the great lakes in a thunderstorm and I wasn't sure the big ferry was going to hold together. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a modern steel freighter 222m long was sunk by one of those storms in only a few hours. For your theory to be true a wooden boat must survive a storm 450 times worse that lasts for 40 days. Even if the mountains were only half the height they are now that is only 225 times worse than the worst thunder storms for 40 days in a wooden boat. That is not a leap of faith, but a suspension of reality.

[helpfulresearcher]

There is a gradation between sedimentary or igneous rocks into metamorphic rocks. The higher the pressure and temperature, the more metamorphic it is. Some metamorphic rocks are so altered that they look much like an igneous rock. Others have only a little alteration.

If it is not highly altered there can be fossils. Slate is a metamorphic rock which was originally shale, and fossils are found in slate. Most fossils are found in sedimentary rocks because the rock is less altered.

Sedimentary rocks can be folded with relatively little alteration and fossils are frequently found in folded sedimentary rocks.

[GonzoGOP]

Correction that is 8,848 meters not 8,844 kilometers. I just wanted to flood the world not boost it into orbit :)

[21twelve]

I have enjoyed your posts with the various estimations. Just a minor point, but I think it also says in the Bible that the earth opened up and water spouted out of the earth as well. (So not just rain). But - as you did with lowering Mt. Everest, assuming that only half of the water was rain - that is still a heck of a lot of rain.

And water gushing up out of the earth? Well, perhaps double the turbulance?

[OriginalIntent]

That's 9 meters of rain per square meter every hour for 40 days...

If the amount of rain were the determining factor your point would be valid.

However, the viewpoint of the YEC is that it was not so much the amount of rain (as in your thunderstorm scenario) as it were the amount of water from below which came up rapidly due to a one time geological disaster, (the biblical term for this subterranean water was 'the fountains of the deep or the great deep'...if I recall correctly).

The lion's share of the water did not come from the thunderstorm you outline, but instead came from water previously held under great pressure from below the earth's crust (most of which is now contained within the much larger ocean basins.)

Any YEC may correct me if I am mistating this and I do not say this is the claim of all YECs.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Just curious- does Amazon pay a commission on sales when you link them to a site?

If they do, it isn't to me!

[count-your-change]

What “accounts”? In the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’?

[Mmmike]

Hi guys, I would just like to point out that the Christian faith didn’t always come down to these questions about evolution. The faith is bigger and more rock-solid than that. God speaks to us in the Bible through other people in various ways. Different parts of it use different literary forms and serve different purposes. If you try to straightjacket the Bible it will not come out looking very good. The faith is a relationship between persons (us and God). We need to look at how the Bible came into being over the centuries to understand it better. We can’t do it all ourselves from the ground up, because there’s so much that we don’t know.

[GonzoGOP]

The lion's share of the water did not come from the thunderstorm you outline, but instead came from water previously held under great pressure from below the earth's crust (most of which is now contained within the much larger ocean basins.)

For sake of argument, given. Lets say 99% inflow and 1% rain. So that is a tsunami level turbulence while enduring a storm that is still 4 times worse than the worst thunderstorms. And lets figure the atmosphere gets a bit churned up, I mean fill a bottle with water and watch the air flow out of the top.

Moving mountains, upwelling seas, you say God can do it, and since it cannot be proven or disproven I'll ignore it for now.

The ark is a very different matter. God may have provided the blueprints, but it was built by Noah and his sons. It is a work of man, with mortal tools and materials. Wooden boats tend to hog (bend in the middle in high seas) especially if they are built to large dimensions. This opens up seams and weakens joints. Now the dimensions given in the bible seem to indicate a big barge. It is not going to maneuver well, if at all. That might do OK in calm seas, but if the water gets turbulent it is going to either break up or founder. There is a limit to how large a board can be cut and moved using manual labor. Noah didn't have modern cranes and a saw mill. He doesn't have bolts or probably even nails so this is mortise and tenon construction. Oh and no latex caulk for the seams, just pine tar and rope. And the caulking job better be good because there is no diesel generator to run the pumps.

So we are talking about a ship with millions of hand made joints and miles of caulked seams. All of which are not going to stay water tight for very long in rough water. Go watch the video Perfect Storm and keep repeating to yourself leaking wooden boat.

So you would need to take the boat the guy in Holland built, ballast it, then run it through a Hurricane every day for a month and a quarter. That still isn't a valid trial, as the turbulence in the biblical storm would actually be much worse, and the rain slightly heavier.

[demshateGod]

“I can only conclude those who do not wish to defend their positions are lying or willfully ignorant.”

That sounds like your average academia evolutionist, not allowing any challenge to their Religion. Debating with such people is a waste of time.

[OriginalIntent]

Moving mountains, upwelling seas, you say God can do it, and since it cannot be proven or disproven I'll ignore it for now.

Actually I am just correcting the innacuracies to the claims you are making for the YECs.

It is not my interest in this thread to concern myself with your personal faith or non-faith. Although I do think your zeal is not without a deeper motivation than our geologic history.

Historic events, even quite recent ones are close to impossible to detail.

Those who claim to know the details of events so long ago using only inference are doomed to endless error.

[GonzoGOP]

Although I do think your zeal is not without a deeper motivation than our geologic history

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. Also the rise of the Med, flooding of the Black Sea, washouts from the Green Sahara, or volcanic tsunami are all possible, explainable, and survivable concepts. I would say that this type of flood, capable of being the source of the Noah narrative is not only possible, but likely.

Note that the most important element of the story, for the purpose of religion, is that God warned the faithful man of impending disaster so that he could prepare and survive it. That theme dose not depend on the size of the flood. And as a testament to Gods power, a localized event (and by localized I mean only devastating the entire coastline of the Mediterranean or Black Sea) will do just fine. But when you say that there was an event so violent that is raised mountain ranges miles into the air, completely submerged all the land of Earth. That someone was able to survive that event it in a wooden boat. And further that there would be little or no surviving evidence of a mechanism that could raise mountains or flood the land, that is asking for a lot more than just faith.

In an earlier post I mention Moses, that was not a typo. Moses wrote down the first five books of the bible. Prior to that, for many generations, they had been an oral history. Your quote "Those who claim to know the details of events so long ago using only inference are doomed to endless error." But are you not the one insisting on the details of the story? Let me put forward two possibilities. The details of a chosen people's survival of a cataclysmic, regional flood because of warning from God were exaggerated as an oral history. Or that all the rules of fluid dynamics, atmospherics, conservation of mass, wooden shipbuilding, and geology have changed radically in less than 10,000 years? My faith is not diminished by the first option. My sense of reality does cause me to deeply question the second.

[Liberty1970]

I don't have any formal documentation, but the fossils I've seen have been almost exclusively of specimens of animals that no longer exist.

I've done some searching. No one seems to have the magic number (i.e., what proportion of fossils are members of living species), but several sites agree that around 250,000 species have been ID'd in fossils, compared to a couple million living species. Dr. David Raup, the well-known evolutionary paleontologist, and Steven Stanley, have some discussion at (http://books.google.com/books?id=1X8LzKQkr8cC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=percentage+of+fossils+of+living+species&source=bl&ots=Y9CTqazytO&sig=uF4Gfla7e6RWbNnKeXZHJiBm4a0&hl=en&ei=kQfASdrLKJPGM5rlqKUN&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result):

If I'm reading them right, they are saying that 100,000 of the 250,000 are from living species. They don't directly discuss the point of contention I have, that this is a huge proportion if life has a multi-hundred million year history on this planet. They estimate a 'species life span' under 3 MYA, which means that modern life should be around 1% of the fossil record if we were to assume no loss over time. Even with fossil loss over time (from plate tectonic subduction, for example), the proportion of living species in the fossil record should be very small.

[tacticalogic]

If I'm reading them right, they are saying that 100,000 of the 250,000 are from living species. They don't directly discuss the point of contention I have, that this is a huge proportion if life has a multi-hundred million year history on this planet. They estimate a 'species life span' under 3 MYA, which means that modern life should be around 1% of the fossil record if we were to assume no loss over time. Even with fossil loss over time (from plate tectonic subduction, for example), the proportion of living species in the fossil record should be very small.

"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.

[OriginalIntent]

Okay, I understand and believe you. I always appreciate honesty and have many friends with deeply held but widely differing opinions on certain topics which sharpens us all.

[stormer]

Surely even you can appreciate the irony of your response.

[stormer]

It's them thar nocturnal methanogens, I tell ya!