Did bones actually become fossilized in the sediments of "ancient" epeiric (inland) seas on continents?

Faith & Science Conversation
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There is one thing that every young earth science denier needs to understand.

“Assumptions” are NOT a get out of jail free card.

You cannot just hand-wave away scientific findings that you don’t like simply because they “make assumptions.” In order to challenge a scientific theory on the grounds that it makes assumptions, there are three things that you must do.

  1. State precisely and accurately what the assumptions are.
  2. Make sure that it really does make the assumptions that you are claiming that it makes, and that it hasn’t been superseded by a more up to date method that has found a way to side-step those assumptions.
  3. Provide a credible, evidence-based mechanism by which those assumptions could have been violated in such a way as to give the exact same results that we see in reality, right down to the precise measurements and the mathematical correlations between those measurements.

So for example, when we see that radiometric dating results increase linearly with distance in places such as the Hawaiian islands, and the rate matches very closely with direct modern day readings of continental drift measured through GPS satellites, you have to provide a credible explanation as to how nuclear decay rates and continental drift could have varied in exact lock-step with each other, by a factor of a billion. Without generating so much heat that it would have vaporised the earth’s crust many times over in the process.

And what you have pointed out demonstrates that you don’t know what the word “repeatable” means.

“Repeatable” simply means that when two or more methods give the same results despite their assumptions being different (for example, with nuclear decay rates and continental drift), it is evidence that those assumptions were in fact correct. You don’t have to have “been there to see it happen” to carry out cross checks such as these. So in the example I gave above, when radiometric dating gives a rate of continental drift that matches closely with modern direct measurements from GPS satellites, that is repeatability.

And no you can’t just hand-wave them away as “both making the same assumptions of uniformitarianism.” Repeatability is a test of assumptions, and tests of assumptions are not assumptions themselves.

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Can you explain the importance of the Kiabab uplift to this discussion? How did Colorado river cut through the it? Can you explain what is happening in the video?

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It speaks directly to the antiquity of the earth.
 

Very slowly, but fast enough.
 

The Colorado River is cutting through the leading edge of the uplift, but fast enough to stay below its more slowly increasing elevation.
 

(Do you have any questions about the Hawaiian Island/Emperor Seamount chain?) Both the Kiabab uplift and the volcanic mountain chain validate tectonic plate science and invalidate YEC claims… including ones in this thread.

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(Since you’ve left, you don’t need to reply. ; - ) I’ve never seen a YEC rebuttal to the extinct radioactive atoms argument (has anyone else?) cited above, but again here… (and it has nothing to do with radiometric dating of mineral or organic artifacts):

Radioactive Atoms – Evidence about the Age of the Earth - Ken Wolgemuth

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I remember the time when I was introduced to isochron dating.

I’d been introduced to the Three Basic Assumptions of radiometric dating a couple of years earlier when I first came across YECism when I was doing my A levels. I was a bit sceptical about varying nuclear decay rates, but the other two assumptions – knowing the initial conditions and no contamination or leakage – sounded like a pretty obvious and fatal flaw to me.

Fast forward two and a half years, and I was in a Bible study group at university being led by a geology student. The passage in question was Romans 1, and I asked if verses 20-23 could have referred to the “evolutionists” who must be wilfully ignoring such a massive and glaring problem in order to shore up their belief in deep time.

My Bible study group leader responded to me by showing me his lecture notes on isochron dating.

I remember sitting there in stunned silence for a whole ten minutes. What he had just pointed out to me was something that up until that point I simply hadn’t appreciated.

If a scientific technique has fatal flaws that are so glaringly obvious that they can be pointed out to teenagers, you can be absolutely certain that subject matter experts will be aware of the flaws and will either have figured out ways to work around them, or abandoned the techniques concerned altogether.

He also made another point to me at the same time. He described young earth “creation science” as a “joke” and “laughable,” explaining that they routinely draw extraordinary conclusions from tiny, unreliable data sets with huge error bars. I’d seen isolated instances of this myself – Barry Setterfield’s varying speed of light was the one example that came to my mind at the time – but he made the point that the problem is pervasive and ubiquitous throughout YEC literature.

I wondered at the time if the problem there was due to lack of funding, and perhaps if YECism were better funded they would be able to come up with some kind of “smoking gun” that really did conclusively show that the earth is young. But the RATE project has since put paid to that. At a cost of $1.25 million and lasting eight years, it was supposed to be the final, definitive rebuttal to radiometric dating once and for all. What did they come up with? More tiny data sets with huge error bars – and an admission that they needed so much accelerated nuclear decay that it would have vaporised the earth’s crust many times over if it had actually happened.

Since then, Answers in Genesis has spent $100 million building the Ark Encounter. That makes it quite clear that whatever difficulties YECism has in coming up with rock solid evidence for a young earth and against radiometric dating, a lack of funding is not one of them.

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interesting point this…i note the following from the gov website regarding this feature…

"The way in which the uplift of the Colorado Plateau occurred is puzzling. With uplift, geologists generally expect to see deformation of rocks. The rocks that comprise the Rocky Mountains, for example, were dramatically crunched and deformed during their uplift. On the Colorado Plateau, the rocks weren’t altered significantly; they were instead lifted high and flat.

Just how and why uplift occurred this way is under investigation. While scientists don’t know exactly how the uplift of the Colorado Plateau occurred" Geology - Grand Canyon National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

If they [secular scientists] don’t know how or why, cant we discount the ambiguity and hypothesis put forward.

I for the life of me cannot understand how a smart individual can take the words “we don’t know” as factual and a foundation for knowledge from the subsequent hypothesis (which is still claiming oh but we don’t actually know)? I am hearing this we don’t know for the start of the big bang, the uplift of the plateau here, for the reverse mutations of fish within a single generation when moved into a different environment (a change that is supposed to take hundreds of millennia if not, millions of years)

Why cant a Christian simply accept that perhaps the best explanation is a global flood as narrated by Moses in the book of Genesis? AIG has gone through these canyons and provided a very good explanation that fits with the biblical flood story…it is consistent with that story and also consistent with scientific methods and procedures. Add to this the discovery that fossilized triceritops horn has been found around 2005 that contains real tissue and proteins in it. How can a 65 million year old fossil possibly still have tissue? Its hard to enough for that to have lasted 4500 years.

What is wrong with this [the YEC] version exactly when the alternative one proposed starts with “scientists are puzzled and don’t actually know”?

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There’s something very important that you need to understand here.

Just because there are things that we don’t know, that does not provide a shred of justification to claim that the things that we do know could be wrong.

And sorry, but it is not “secular science” that tells us that the earth is old. The methods and principles that tell us that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and not six thousand have nothing whatsoever to do with “secularism.” They are simply the basic rules and principles of measurement and mathematics – rules and principles that apply equally to Christians and secularists alike.

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oh really, so let me put this to you…

lets say you are about to buy a new home that hasn’t been built yet. This house is predicted to cost 2 million dollars. Would you buy that house if the person who was selling it to you stated “I don’t know who or how this house is going to be built. I have never observed one being built, however, I want the money up front. There is also no refund should I be wrong because im sure im right”

Can you honestly say you would part with 2 million dollars under such circumstances? I know many individuals who wont even pay for a tradesman to perform maintenance work on their homes until after the work is done and shown to work effectively!

What you are claiming is not even consistent with current life habits by that vast majority of individuals. you are deeply flawed in your trust of anyone who claims “I don’t know I only have theories”. The reason for your error is because if one goes back to the very beginning…can you give me a reference for the big bang please. How did the big bang start and where did the energy and matter come from that started it?

What you will find is that the very foundation of all current scientific belief concerning the origin of the universe (a secular science theology that you ascribe too) starts off with exactly this statement “we don’t actually know…yet”

So here is how the secular scientific model goes…

hypothesis 1: Big Bang origin “I don’t actually know…yet”
hypothesis 2: blah blah blah…based on hypothesis 1 “I don’t actually know yet”
hypothesis 3: blah blah blah…based on hypothesis 2, based on hypothesis 1 “I don’t actually know yet”

this goes on and on and on. Its in all honesty the most deluded world view…how the heck can one believe that kind of nonsense when the very first link in the chain is missing. What holds the chain? “we don’t know”? Are you serious…you believe that?

Isnt it far easier to believe exactly what the bible, and YEC scientists have shown conclusively, is consistent with both the bible AND science,.

As a YEC Christian, i have a far more consistent world view because it does not conflict with either the bible or science!

The Kaibab uplift is just another problem that secular science does not have an explanation for. A creation scientist has a very consistent and easy explanation…one testable by science too. It was created by a catastrophic global flood. (the plate tectonics movement fits perfectly with the flood model because the deposition came whilst the flood waters were still high…the plate movement started when the fountains of the deep burst fourth. It is a logical, complete and testable truth. We already have a proven example in Mount St Hellens showing how quickly a canyon like this can be created so one doesn’t need millions of years and the colorado river to do it.

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They don’t have to know exactly why it occurred the way it did to know that it occurred that way! The little video illustrates that nicely.

And YECs are completely mute as far as I’m aware with respect to the Hawaiian Island/Emperor Seamount chain!

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That is because in reality it ignores science and the honest evidence from God’s creation. Christians who understand the science do not need to be conflicted because they understand that the Bible is not about science. It is quite possible to have a consistent worldview while trusting in God’s sovereignty.

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As someone who is in the process of buying a new home at the moment I can assure you that the analogy you are giving is patent nonsense.

In the case that you have outlined, there is nothing that we do know. The house builder is not even claiming to know anything either. We are not in the same situation with the age of the earth. We know vast swathes of things about the history of the earth between 4.5 billion years and six thousand years ago.

A more appropriate analogy would be the situation that I am in right now. The home is well and truly built and has been standing for six years now. I have my solicitor’s report, the results of all the local authority searches, and the contract ready to sign in the next few days. The only thing I haven’t done that I would have liked to do before completion is get a couple of up to date gas and electricity safety checks done. There were a couple done a couple of years or so ago, but it’s best practice to have them done every year.

YEC arguments are like claiming that just because the gas and electricity safety checks aren’t fully up to date, for all I know the property might not even exist.

Oh and one other thing. IANAL but buying a home does not work the way that you suggest. Nobody would pay – or even expect you to pay – two million dollars up front before the place is even built. Standard practice (here in the UK at least) is that you put down a deposit of 10% when you exchange contracts (by which time construction of the property should at the very minimum be well underway), the deposit is held in the custody of a third party for safe keeping, and you only pay the balance on completion (i.e. just before you pick up the keys and move in). And if the builder does turn out to be as clueless as you suggest, that would be a clear breach of contract, and you would be entitled to get your deposit back and possibly even sue them for any additional expenses occurred.

I’m sorry but again that is an invalid analogy.

Mount St Helens consists of straight canyons being carved through tephra and unconsolidated ash. The Grand Canyon consists of twisty and meandering canyons being carved through much harder layers of sandstone, limestone, shale, schist, and the like. The Grand Canyon is also 277 miles long, two miles deep and up to 18 miles wide in places – dozens of times the length, width and depth of the channels carved out at Mount St Helens.

Comparing Mount St Helens to the Grand Canyon in the way you are doing is like claiming that just because I can walk a quarter of a mile to my local Tesco Express in five minutes, I should also be able to walk from London to New York in five minutes. Patent nonsense.

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I think these are actually the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head which are a 60 miles or so to the west of Dover. Same deposit (as well as their counterparts in France).

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That is what is called honesty.

You brush aside that there is a great deal we do know for sure, and which
contradicts YEC.

Those explanations are what is called false witness.

Better honest uncertainty than duplicitous certainty.

If triceratops were on the ark, why do we not see them in zoos? Or at least have an intact carcass? Or at minimum have remains that were buried with modern species? Or at the very least have even one solitary dinosaur of the tens of thousands of fossils found, of any kind or species- you name it, found with a modern species?

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I am not sure what your point is here? Are you saying that a fossil buried less than 2 metres deep in the United States should be buried alongside a dog? (its about the same depth so using your claim, it should be right next to a dog in the dinasoar burial ground where the horn was found (along with thousands of other dinasoar bones). Is your claim that the triceritops horn is a fake? (there is no doubt about the tissue fibres in the horn either…these are real tissue published in about 2005)

Ark encounter have not made the claim that I am aware of that any very large dinasoars were on the ark. They have put forward, and I think quite rightly, that it was not necessary for any large animals to be on the Ark. The genetic information necessary to produce a variety of kinds of animals after the flood was contained within the species that were on the ark.

Also, baby animals grow into adult animals. Baby ones are significantly smaller than adult ones.
Why wouldn’t very young ones (of the large kinds of animals on the Ark) be the ones that were saved?
Do you have any factual scientific reason as to why it wasn’t baby ones that were saved on the ark?

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Simple. Animals that YEC claims lived together should be buried together.

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hmmm.
my recollection of the normal AIG claim is different. In order to remind myself…I am going to watch the following video again because I did not think that was the scientific consensus among AIG and YEC. My understanding was that marine animals for example, are not necessarily found buried at the same depth as land animals. And even depending on the size of the land animals, their depth would vary because some would have been able to attempt to go to higher ground and thus survive for longer in the flood event.

How Does a Global Flood Explain the Order of the Fossil Record? - Dr. Kurt Wise

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There are many mid sized dinosaurs the same size as rhinos and buffalo, there are many smaller dinosaurs the same size as dogs and bobcats. They shared the same range of habitats. Both modern animals and dinosaurs had species which were fast and not so fast. That the fossil record is segregated because of some race to higher ground is so contrived as to be farcical.

The KT boundary, identified with the Chicxulub Impact Event, is the boundary. Of the catalog of tens of thousands of dinosaur fossils, all without exception are beneath this boundary. All modern mammals are found above this boundary. There is no reasonable prospect that these animals were alive at the same time. And that is just the beginning. No trilobites are found with layers with aquatic mammals or dinosaurs, so they lived at a different era from either.

Who care what Kurt Wise thinks; what does Adam Jadgar think? Just try to visualize all these creatures living together, swept up by unprecedented floodwaters, then laid down neatly sorted into tidy layers. If that seems perfectly logical to you, do not complain that others find YEC makes no common sense, let alone present a scientific alternative.

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Many baby animals rely on their parents for food and to learn behavior. Some animals regurgitate food for their babies. Did Noah and family perform this task?

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Can you give me an example of this?
If I understand correctly what you are saying here, then this is just what I have done in this OP: I have appealed to “objective, physical observations”—viz., present day studies with whale falls—to test the hypothesis that marine fossilized bones were formed after these bones drifted down into sediments of ancient inland seas. Test results reveal that such bones would have been completely consumed bacteria within a few years. Therefore, this hypothesis is falsified. Right?

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Don, if assumptions invalidate the scientific method, YEC just evaporated.

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