You are suggesting that tens of thousands of geologists, academic and prospecting, are so wrong about the essentials of their discipline that their entire work is invalidated? Geology is as much about process as it is about identification.
Geologist do not try to fit sequences into hundreds of millions of years. They are following the scientific evidence.
Och no, if I’d have put ‘So why the quotation marks?’ a clever chap like you would have known exactly what I meant. And still mean. I’m not aware of any creation scientists as that is an oxymoron. And no scientist would refer to ancient seas as “ancient” seas. See what I’m saying? I’ve got this word going round and round in my head, ‘dissimulation’. I wonder why?
Which “seas”? When?
Riiiight. Saulk. Mid-Cambrian. No whales. The marine transgression is from half a billion years ago.
And Clarey clinches it! For the ICR. Is there a disinterested real academic who agrees with him?
“40 days”? The Flood was spread out over about a year.
Did you read what I said? I said that Clarey’s data agrees with that of mainstream (evolutionary) scientists. He just disagrees with their time scale. In fact, their time scale has serious problems with it.
While their conclusions about the data have come under the heading of “science,” they are not truly empirical (that is, resulting from direct testing and observation) findings. Instead, they rely heavily upon assumptions, in keeping with the uniformitarian model.
“Dissimulation”? Oh my goodness. I’ve obviously lost you, but instead of simply saying you don’t understand what I’m talking about, you attack my character? And even Clarey’s character?
Enough! Biologos is about helping each other grow in knowledge–it’s not about attacking each other’s character if we disagree, or or confused about something said. Right?
Now, let’s back up. Are you familiar with sequence stratigraphy? With the six megasequences of the fossil record? With the series of ocean floodings throughout these megasequences that mainstream geologists are calling inland “seas”? Where do you need clarification?
The flooding occurred in the first 40 days, the rest of the time it was drying up. The total flood is secondarily noted to be 150 days
Yes.
Then he disagrees with almost everything. The time scale relates not only the duration, but the entire process by which geological formations occur. These scenarios are wildly different in every way, and there is next to nothing in terms of overlap. Unlike the YEC timescale, mainstream science is supported by the consilience of evidence with agreement between geology, paleontology, and dating techniques.
There is no assumption. Geology takes into account both uniformitarian and catastrophic processes, depending on the evidence. On the other hand, YEC is explicit in it’s earth history being a matter of dogma, and rejects uniformitarian explanations, which are based on empirical observations BY DEFINITION. Instead, YEC favors just making stuff up out of thin air without the bother of actually demonstrating that their ideas are even possible.
What’s Clarey’s character got to do with him being a non-scientist?
And if I need scientific clarification I consult scientific sources.
THAT’S the word. Not plenum. Cuh. Fuh.
Look at Genesis 7:17-24… The Flood waters continued to “increase greatly” and “prevail” until 15 cubits higher than the mountains of that time. Verse 24 says the waters then continued to “prevail”–that is, covered all things on the earth–for “150 days.”
After this, then in 8:3–“the water receded steadily from the earth.” By the way, this draining off of the continents well fits the 6th (last) megasequence (Tejas/ Cenozoic) towards the end, which testifies to a massive drainoff of ocean waters from the continents, producing such phenomena as “the Whopper Sands” in the Gulf of Mexico.
First, Genesis 7 says” 17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth.
Then, that the earth was flooded 150 days, thus my comment. May be a combination of the Yahwish vs Priestly accounts, but either way, 40 days of flooding, being flooded 150, then receding. But, feel free to take it as you will.
Clarey was employed by an oil company for several years as their geologist and hydrologist. And he worked with the data provided by boreholes down through the sedimentary layers–which provided a cross-section of the fossil record.
This data records the transgressing and regressing of ocean waters that deposited these sediment layers. And, if you have read up on sequence stratigraphy, you will see that it speaks of this same layering by transgressing and regressing marine water.
The only difference is, mainstream geologists stretch out this layering over hundreds of millions of years, while Clarey says it occurred over the biblical time scale of a year.
And, there are serious problems with the mainstream interpretation of hundreds of millions of years. It means the ocean waters flooded the continents at super slow rates–rates that cannot, in reality, account for the deposition of sediment layers found on the continents. They say it took several million years for the oceans to rise high enough to flood the continents (one source said .01 inch per week). Yet, they figure this provided the hydrodynamics to (in the Sauk megasequence) pick up, transport, and deposit across 75% of North America the three million cubic kilometers of sediments (1 to 2 mile-thick sedimentary layers) that we find upon our continent. Do you not see the problem with this?
And then, using the evolutionary time scale of hundreds of millions of years, ocean waters continued to flood this 75% of the continent for about 5 million years. During later megasequences, they say ocean waters flooded the continent for a 25 million year duration…then, in a later megasequence, 50 million years!
Now…just think about this scenario. How could most terrestrial life not become totally extinct if the continents were covered by ocean water for such extended periods of time? Evolution would have to reboot over and over, wouldn’t it?
Notice the diagram below, of a Sloss sequence chart: “West” is the Laramide orogeny. “East” is the Appalachian orogeny. The areas where there are broken lines represent periods of deposition–times when ocean waters were flooding the continent. At the right, you see the million-year time periods.
This data fits the catastrophic Flood model very well. But it simply doesn’t work for the evolutionary model.
They are assuming that .01 inch/week rate of ocean rise to flood the continents will have the hydrodynamic power to pick up, transport, and deposit millions of cubic kilometers of sediment across most of the continent. They certainly have not empirically tested to see if such a rate of rise in sea level would be sufficient to carry out such a deposition, have they? In fact, I would say their assumption ignores a lot of math!
And even their radiometric dating is based–not upon empirical (direct testing and observation of the results of such testing) evidence, but–upon assumptions. Namely, they must assume that the radioactive rate of decay remained constant over hundreds of millions of years. And they must assume that no leaching in/out of either the parent or daughter elements occurred over millions of years.
Most fossils do form under plain old ordinary sediment deposition. No flash flood or anything else drastic. If you go to a beach, many shells that you find are actually decades to centuries or more old. But most fossils are also not so impressive looking, at least without microscopy. Whale bones are not always broken down quickly. Bones and shells are hard and somewhat slow to break down, so it just depends on the relative speed of whatever is breaking things down versus how fast it’s getting buried. A geology paper reported finding an old chain about a meter down on a small island in the Bahamas. With visions of Spanish gold in their heads, they asked casually about the spot and found out that someone had put a chain their to anchor their boat a few decades ago. Areas close to large continents get lots of sand and mud eroding off the land. The North American interior seaway filled largely with sand and mud eroding off the mountains to either side, with a fair contribution from skeletal bits and some volcanic ash.
Storms and underwater landslides are relatively mundane events that produce fining upward packets of sediment. Coarsening upward sediment layers could be produced by water getting shallower, among other possible situations. Anywhere around the globe today, if any sediment is accumulating, you find sediment piling up on some days and not on others. That gives you layering. A global flood within one year, as proposed by modern young-earth claims cannot produce the layers that we see. The major sequence stratigraphic units are not explainable by a global flood. They have countless features that require slow deposition over huge amounts of time. For example, the Castille Formation in the Permian of the Delaware Basin in west Texas has alternating fine layers of salt minerals and organic-rich limestone. Salt deposition cannot occur during a global flood as envisioned in YEC models. If the water was salty enough to precipitate salt, it was salty enough to kill most aquatic life. Formation of each layer takes some time, and there are vast numbers of layers. The Castille alone has over 100,000 layers. The most likely explanation is that they reflect seasonal change - salt from the dry season and organic-rich in the wet season. And that’s just one unit with many deposits above and below. There are reefs occurring at many levels in the geologic sequence, which could not form during a YEC flood.
Giant waves as envisioned in the flood model you are proposing would not produce the observed patterns. (They would require enough energy that the earth would vaporize, though, making modeling their other effects somewhat pointless.) There are plenty of tsunami deposits that have been studied for comparison. The large-scale units of geologic layers are not tsunami deposits. The “Great Unconformity” below the Sauk transgression reflects erosion on the supercontinent of Rodinia, as well as the initial transgression of the succeeding ocean in some areas. In places, there are lake and glacier deposits. The unconformity could not possibly have been produced by a few catastrophic waves.
A tenable scientific model must carefully examine what it predicts and compare that to the evidence.
Sounds good.
And it certainly wouldn’t hurt either if you would focus a bit more on “the only thing…”
Thanks!
So, you have actually observed the formation of the fossils in the fossil record? And you saw that a slow and gradual–“plain old ordinary”–deposition of sediments on bones successfully fossilized them?
So, you have come across a “whale falls” study, where the bones were not consumed by bacteria in ocean sediments, over a few years’ time? If so, please give me the link to it.
And why do you think this?
Actually, they are only explainable by the dynamics of the biblical Flood. For example, the evolutionary model calls for a super slow rise in ocean levels–one source said, “.01/week.” Now think about that a minute… The Sauk megasequence alone deposited 3 million cubic kilometers of ocean sediments across North America. Do you, in all reality, believe that ocean waters rising at an imperceptible rate of .01 inch/week would have the hydrodynamics to pick up such a load of sediments and spread them out in layers (according to Walther’s Law) across 75% of North America?
In fact, the Tonto Group of sedimentary rock layers in the Grand Canyon are 1135 feet thick. And this group was deposited by the Sauk transgression. Would ocean waters rising at .01 in/week have the hydrodynamic power to have first picked up, then deposited, this load of sediment?
In fact, notice the distinct layering of these sedimentary rock layers, in accordance with Walther’s Law that calls for a “thinning up” of sediments in a transgressive flow: Muav LIMESTONE…on top of Bright Angel SHALE…on top of Tapeats SANDSTONE.
Yes, there are “vast numbers of layers”–of varying thicknesses. This is why sequence stratigraphy speaks of different “orders” of sequences. A first order sequence is the longest, down to 5th (and possibly even smaller) order sequences.
Such smaller, more frequent layers are what would be predicted by the numerous “pulses” of tsunami-like waves of the Flood. Scripture alludes to plate tectonics as a factor in the flooding as it describes seafloor rifting–rifting that would lead to seafloor spreading (contributing to the flooding of continents)…which would lead to ocean plates subducting beneath continental plates…which would not only produce numerous volcanoes (like the 452 volcanoes along the Pacific coast, called “the Ring of Fire”)…but would also set off numerous tsunamis–another product of subduction zones. And, there are over 30,000 miles of such zones…that’s a lot of tsunamis…which would explain the hydrodynamic power that transported the sediments. At least it would come much closer than “.01 inch/week”!
The Great Unconformity erosion zone–which includes even large boulders–can certainly be explained by the Sauk transgression. Such a transgression picked up, transported, and deposited 3 million cubic miles of ocean sediments across 75% of North America. So, it was plenty powerful enough to erode the basement granite, resulting in the Great Unconformity!
But I will tell you what definitely did not have the hydrodynamic power to erode basement granite–namely, ocean waters rising to flood the continent at .01 inch/week!
How come flowering plants are only found late in geological time? Were they able to run for high ground when the flood waters rose?
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-010213-135144
In deeper water, it takes many decades for the bones to be broken down completely. In shallower water, there is typically a higher supply of sediment, so they get buried quicker. Most fossil whale bones are random individual bones, scattered and buried after the death of the whale; skeletons are rather rarer. Yes, I have dozens of random fossil whale bones that I have collected. And you do sometimes find them on a beach, also. Sediment chemistry also plays a role - is it phosphate-rich? pH? oxygen levels?
Bacteria themselves are not so good at consuming bone - some can make tiny burrows in hard materials, and they will gobble up the organic material, but the break down of bone into pieces depends more on animals. Once the bone is buried, it is largely protected from further biological action.
You are going to double down on this?. That is trivially false. Continent crossing tsunami’s are not just speeded up oceanic ingression and regression brought about by ice cap variation and continental subduction. I stand by what I said. What Clarey proposes is completely at odds with mainstream geology, in terms of process as well as age.
Chevron has hundreds of geologists and hydrologists on staff. That Clarey has such a background means he should know better. By the way, have you read the late Glenn Morton’s posts on this site. He was also YEC at the beginning of a oil geology career, but that became impossible to sustain as he worked in the field.
You say you researched this, and you do not realize that the inland sea was flanked by dry ground on either side?
The bumbling know-nothing nuclear physicists still managed to build nuclear weapons that worked. Hey, but what do they know? So what is your theory? Show the math for your decay modes. How does changing force constants alter stellar dynamics? What do you do with the vaporizing heat from conversion of mass to energy? Think that potassium dating might have speeded up for the flood? What happened to the potassium in Noah’s body, as well as all the animals, over that time?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.