Flood Geology Cannot Explain Sedimentary Formations. Here's Why

Faith & Science Conversation
, , , ,
101

Yes, it will – you could cover the planet with water to a depth of 100km and the energy involved in all the tectonic movements required by YEC models would still vaporize the crust; the only difference would be that the water would become a ball of super-heated plasma instead of an insignificant puff or ions.

If you want the movement slowed down long enough to not vaporize the crust you need tens of thousands of years – “continued after the flood” is a non-qualitative excuse based on simplistic wishing, not on calculations.

The mountains due to uplift are hundreds of thousands of years old – that is just physical, mechanical fact that requires no assumptions, only laboratory measurements.

Besides which, earlier continental formations had their own uplifted mountains; they happen whenever two plate pieces collide.

No, you’ve made hand-wavy claims that do not stand up in light of the math involved in the physics. I’m no longer up to doing the calculations but they have been done here on Biologos before and they show that the heat involved would vaporize the crust and you couldn’t stack enough water on the planet to cool it off. You’re imagining something on the order of dropping a hot rock into a pot of water when a more reasonable comparison would be pouring an entire foundry crucible of molten iron into a backyard swimming pool, or more accurately dumping that swimming pool’s water onto that molten iron – the water wouldn’t even actually reach the molten iron, it would flash-vaporize before even touching.

The ability of water to cool something rests on its higher conductivity of heat, but in extreme heat the water ceases to be useful for cooling because it stops being a liquid – and with the heat that would come from the galloping continents YEC proposes it wouldn’t even be water vapor, it would be hydrogen and oxygen ions unable to absorb any more heat.

I know how they work – but they operate at temperatures a couple of thousand degrees lower than the planet’s crust would have in the scenario YEC proposes. If the heat of combustion in a race car’s engine was at 5,000K the engine would explode as the vaporizing metal of the cylinders and pistons shattered it.

You’re comparing mundane items to planetary energy budgets. This is why science uses math: comparisons from ordinary life just don’t work when the energies involved get large.

Um, what? The vaporization of the crust would happen because of radiation and heat exchange!

Now what are you babbling about? The only way the core could produce nuclear energy on that scale is if the YEC nonsense about nuclear decay speeding up happened – which even by YEC calculations would vaporize the planet, not just the crust!

Would someone with the actual numbers here take Adam back to high school science and math for a remedial lesson?

We absolutely do, unless God is a deceitful trickster: it was only very little different than it is today, because God is faithful and not named Loki.

The science involved in knowing that the movements of plates required in the YEC galloping continents scenario has nothing to do with “benchmarks” other than observable physics today. We know how much water will be vaporized by rock at 1000° C because it’s been done; we know how rock behaves at 3000° C because that’s been done in labs; putting the two together doesn’t even require higher math. We also know how much friction is generated by rock moving over rock, of all sorts of rock types, because those have been measured in laboratories, and the heat produced due to friction has been measured, and when you put it all together the YEC scenario vaporizes the crust.

Because the scriptures tell us so every time they talk about Creation proclaiming something about God!
Besides which, where does it say that “the environment is . . . corrupted by sin”?

102

My bad – I thought it would vaporize the crust. But still, all the water in the world wouldn’t be enough to cool it down!

I’m beginning to think that Adam never had a real science course where math was used to calculate things.

103

Note too that the related sped up radioactive decay would give Noah a beta-radiation dose (from the 40K atoms inside his own body, which for these purposes is basically all of the radioactive atoms inside a person) of about 50kGy per day (adding the background rate from the crust would up that to about 70kGy). Either way, that’s a fatal dose every few seconds.

That is an insane amount of radiation–10 times the dose inside the worst-contaminated parts of the Chernobyl reactor immediately after the meltdown. Except this lasts for 6 months.

3 Likes
104

That’s before we even calculate the heat generated by the radioactive isotopes dissolved in the water itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the Earth’s water would boil away just from the radioactivity dissolved in it.

1 Like
105

Put the car in a vacuum and it will overheat, assuming you still feed oxygen to the engine. It’s the heat exchange with our huge atmosphere that cools the car, something I have run into when a radiator fan breaks and causes the engine to overheat when not moving.

Water makes up 0.02% of the mass of the planet. This will definitely not cool the Earth when it is 22,000 C due to accelerated nuclear decay. This is even before we add in all the heat caused by accelerated decay of the isotopes already dissolved in water.

3 Likes
106

I had that thought, and wished for my programmable calculator.

107

Again for seawater, we can ignore everything other than 40K, as every other radioactive isotope is too rare to contribute anything significant. Seawater is about 0.04% potassium by mass, and potassium is about 0.012% 40K today. That gives about 7.5x10^15 40K atoms per kilogram of seawater today. Average decays are about 1.35 MeV, or 2.16x10^-13 J. We should multiply by a factor of about 12 to account for the number of half-lives that have to have gone by. That gives a total of 19.4 kJ; divided by six months is about 1.23 mW. Multiplied by the mass of the oceans (1.37x10^21 kg) gives 1.688x10^18 W. Plugging that into the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, and assuming that the surface of the ocean is the only direction in which it is radiating heat (as the crust would also be heating up), gives 546 K as the equilibrium temperature of the oceans. If we triple the surface area to account for the ocean floor, it would still be 415 K. Now, it wouldn’t be heating up very fast on it’s own, but it would get hot enough to boil.

1 Like
108

Like the titles for science fiction writer Frank Herbert’s arid planet Arrakis, deserts are associated with dunes. They are shaped by the wind and properties of the sand, which define the typical scale and slope or angle of repose under atmospheric conditions. Over time, these formations can lithify, and these features preserved for geological study. Geologists can then make a determination as to the depositional environment and distinguish between sandstones of desert or aqueous origin, although some cases are more clear than others. There is plenty of sandstone of both histories.

Deposits of both subaqueous and wind (aeolian) sandstone are then hardly surprising, as the occurrence of sand in deserts and under surf are familiar to everyone. However, YEC apologists proclaim that most sedimentary deposits were laid down in the flood, and it is obvious that deserts do not fit with the deluge.

In an article, The “Desert” Problem, Greg Neyman pretty much sums it up:

If one desert sandstone exists with a fossil-bearing ocean-deposited layer on top, it discredits the entire young earth creation science flood model, and proves the old age of the earth.

But far from just one, there are dozens of formations around the world which have been identified as aeolian.

2 Likes
109

At Drumheller, Alberta, you do not have to be a geologist to identify coal seams. Driving along river which flows by Drumheller, you can easily follow these exposed seams for miles. There are 13 of them in all, clearly separated by distinct shales, mudstones, and sandstones. The coal beds were laid down intermittently over a period of about 70 million years, with swampy episodes alternating with drier. The stratigraphic column here has been analyzed and characterized in detail due to the commercial interest.

YEC apologists posit that coal beds were the result of debris deposited by the flood. This is not a credible scenario anywhere even once, but even were that possible there is no reason on a flooded planet for this to occur multiple times in the same location.

Brief Intro - The Geology of Alberta’s Coal Deposits

Near Drumheller, my photo…

2013 Tyrrell museum (65)
2013 Tyrrell museum (65)1920×1440 222 KB

6 Likes
110

Just wondering: are there any dry dune layers from drier episodes?

1 Like
111

Pretty much all alluvial and inland sea. Sandy material from the rising continental divide.

2 Likes
112

YEC interest in coal pretty much begins and ends with concocting some rebuttal to geology, and as soon as the dogma of a young earth is shored up, there is little interest in further investigation. Somehow, creationists then seem to project the antithesis of this narrow focus on scientists, who they then perceive as intent on proving the Earth to be old. While the age of geological formations is of great importance, geology reports are concerned with the details of the history - the how and why the land was shaped. As in all science, curiosity is a big driver. But with deposits of commercial value, it becomes imperative to understand as much as is possible of the geological history.

YEC often comment that this is a red herring, that the role of geology in exploiting mineral resources is spurious, and that you just find it and mine it. This attitude is an insult to the actual effort and expertise involved, and trivializes the financial and safety considerations.

Company and regulatory geologists must assess the impact of the history of a formation on all aspects of underground mining activity. Ancient river channels sometimes cross seams, which were subsequently filled in, and these can be weak spots for roof cave ins, and even flash flooding from underground aquifers. Extra bracing and supports can be required. It is essential to distinguish a discontinuity which is due to a channel from one due to a fault. Similarly, the formation history is important to cost the impacts of coal seam splits and partings, intrusions into fissures, and hard permineralized inclusions which degrade equipment. All of this assessment has serious practical implications and is founded on an understanding of the geological history of the deposit. Nobody is thinking of Noah’s Flood with what is at stake.

John Nelson, Geologic disturbances in Illinois coal seams

The risks and the costs, especially in lives, are great for miners, mine owners, and mining communities. Locating, predicting, and controlling geologic hazards in coal seams depend upon knowing how they formed

4 Likes
113

I am often reminded of the much missed Glenn Morton’s testimony of his time working as a geologist which led to him abandoning YEC.

2 Likes
114

From a lay standpoint, I perceive that each attack on one of the five points relies on rationalization and refusal to understand the obvious implications of the evidence.

“But wait, there’s more.” Genesis 1:1,3 display G*D creating, from nothing, time itself, then space and matter, finally light, all happening at once. Today’s deep study of Creation concurs, and calls that event the big bang.
On the other hand we exist in a Creation with Earth, a globe 8,000 miles across, decorated by a thin crust of continents surrounded by relative films of water (seas). Earth also orbits the nearest star.
Yet Days 2, 3, and 4 describe a forever supply of rain set above the vault of the sky, while the sun, moon, and stars cross through the heights of the vault of the sky. This requires rain to fall past them. Plucking an 8,000 mile wide globe from within the single-digit mile depths of the seas also fails to match Creation.
That all is to say that the two Creation narratives in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 serve to illustrate the Creator. They “do poorly” in describing Creation.

Creation is of G*D. Studying Creation glorifies G*D.

David opens Psalm 19 by declaring that the skies speak great wisdoms nightly, yet in a manner that no mortal can comprehend. Mortals now have means to “hear” that wisdom, in the form of telescopes. These have disclosed the factual nature of those two verses, 1 and 3.
Verse 2 nestles between them, an homage to the pagan view of how things came to be. Consider the difference. Place Theology into that context to show G*D over against a crowd of killable godlets, each modeling one or more human shortcomings. That, versus the thousands of scrolls of abstractions inventing and defining many hundreds of novel Hebrew words, thus hiding the the contrast between holy all-creating G*D and the gods in the image of man chaos.

Creation displays such meticulous perfection that abiogenesis and evolution are baked into the design. They are deliberate features. Evolution was a known fact for long before we understood it or could explain it. The initial explanation appeared in 1859, long before we understood DNA and genes. G*D created a universe that is vast beyond measure.
[[ Light emitted by distant stars may never reach us, due simply to the universe’s continued expansion. Between our galaxy the Milky Way, and the most distant galaxies, the aggregate expansion exceeds the speed of light. The expansion of space itself is not limited by the speed of light. Light is limited by space, not the other way around.]]
Genesis is theology, presented in a way suitable to semi-literate Bronze Age survivalists, as well as to six-year-olds in Sunday School. The profound arrives on “little cat feet” that traverse meadows of indescribably delicate and exact detail that we, in this age of material knowledge (science) are privileged to be part of.

Net net, regarding the opening ten or so chapters of Genesis as fact worked as well then as it did before we were able to grasp the marvels of what G*D has made. Today we chew on Genesis with teeth, after the manner of three-year-olds who can eat the meat of such awe-struck understanding, where before the milk of credulous infants was enough, figuratively spitting up on Jesus’ loving shoulder.

115

This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.