"Polystrate" Fossils

Faith & Science Conversation
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Yes. Thankyou. But you are free to disagree with the article you linked and cited.

However, I doubt you are surprised. And I doubt a surprised disappointment.

Thanks for getting back to the whale, which although it transects layers of sediment, does not seem to transect a variety of layers to the same extent as some other polystrate fossils.

The talkorigins link is already out of date as Snelling addressed these issues in his paper. Snelling addressed both the issue of the whale on his tale, and the issue of the more modern whale off the coast of California being buried as a comparison.

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Of course, your strategy is to focus on a polystrate fossil while *ignoring the vast consilience of evidence for a young earth, both in terms of massive quantity and impressive quality." We used this approach often at our “creation science” weekend events:

  1. Ignore the vast quantities of evidence for billions of years and, instead, focus on a single obscure topic, one at a time, which can be subjected to YEC obfuscation: radon haloes in granite or a whale fossil are two of the favorites.

  2. Cite a single YEC scientist who says science-sounding things about that one find or phenomenon.

  3. Declare a victory based on radon haloes or a buried whale.

  4. Leave the audience with the impression that the science academy has no substantive evidence for billions of years.

  5. If somebody in the audience actually knows something about the topic and asks an embarrasing question at the audience microphone during Q&A, tell him that your favorite scientist “knows all about that and has published a rebuttal. So it doesn’t matter.” (Yes, I was guilty of that too.)

It is a type of divide-and-conquer argument but it only works if the audience is unaware of why the evidence for a very old earth is absolutely overwhelming.

Meanwhile, those radon haloes and buried whales have failed to impress THE SCIENTISTS, the people who write the textbooks and make the discoveries. Protesters outside of the academy are ignored because their/our opinions don’t matter.

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Those who enjoy Potholer54’s videos warning people not to rely on the young earth arguments they find at various Young Earth Creationist websites will find a segment on polystrate fossils towards the end of this video:

He points out that scientists have known for a very long time that tree trunks have remained largedly intact and fossilized in place after sedimentary layers built up around them, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. (The eruption of Mt. St. Helens produced multiple strata in a matter of minutes. Of course, scientists have no difficulty recognizing that the strata are the same age.)

As I mentioned, audiences leave a “creation science” event convinced that polystrate fossils “pose some sort of a problem for evolutionists” but few know why. Why? Because they don’t. YEC ministries found the illustrations to use in their presentations within the science textbooks which explained how polystrate fossils are produced.

Correct. They simply aren’t all that interesting because they pose no sort of significant problem or mystery for anybody. Yet, as even Ken Ham has lamented, once a bad argument for a young earth finds itself on “Evidences for a Young Earth” compilations on YEC websites, they are very difficult to remove.

Meanwhile, there’s ice cores, dendrochronology, plate tectonics, comparative genomics, radiometrics, varves, and so many many many other phenomena which describe a history of the earth which science-deniers wish to ignore ON THEOLOGICAL GROUNDS. Unfortunately, the honesty of Young Earth Creationists like Dr. Kurt Wise and Dr. Todd Wood has had little impact on the ethics of most “creation science” ministry leaders.

Sadly, even the recorded history of Egypt totally destroys a 6,000 year old earth and Ussher’s chronology. Non-Christians do notice the ethics (and lack thereof) of science-deniers. The resulting stumbling blocks to the Gospel should cause those who focus on radon halos and polystrate fossils to consider the implications.

The last leg of my journey is about to begin so I’m about to lose my Internet connection—and my limited interest in this unfortunate topic.

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Look, arguments hardly ever are formed which please the opposition. I get that. But in your response, you have slid past the fact that talkorigins gave an out of date response, and that Snelling had already dealt with the issues. Let me summarize two of them. First, Snelling as a creationist, was embarassed by the fact that the “whale on its tail” was being used by creationists as propoganda, since they had not actually visited this site, which Snelling then did visit. Still he explained how the descriptions of the fossil by non-creationists led them to this mistake. However, Snelling presented cogent arguments with real data which countered the long-age dating methods of this diatomaceous sediment in the Monterey formation. He also demonstrated the non-parallel of the partially buried whale skeleton that was used as a comparison to explain slow burial. The partially buried whale skeleton was actually being buried much quicker than the estimated rates for the fossil whale, and the sediments were considerably different, and the the partially buried whale was more disarticulate than the fossil, and the partially buried whale had a multitude of clams, mussels, and other saprophitic organisms on it, which the fossil whale did not. He dealt with evidence which it seems you are happy to ignore.

Your generalizing about strategy and tactics is immaterial and irrelevant.

Actually, none of these things are ignored (not to call you a liar, but certainly you are mistaken). All or at least most of these things have been examined and dealt with. If you read the 101 objections to old age for example, you will see many of them mentioned.

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You’ll need to fill in some specifics here. Or, to use those words immortalised by Wikipedia, [citation needed]. Could you provide us with a link to Snelling’s rebuttal of the Talk Origins article for starters, please?

Unfortunately, most of the 101 objections to an old earth involve a great deal of hand-waving and simply do not meet the standards required by the scientific method.

About half of them are variations on the form “there’s not enough X in the sea.” The problem with these arguments is that they are based on quantities whose current rates (never mind their historic rates) are almost impossible to measure with enough accuracy to be meaningful. By contrast, conventional dating methods are based on quantities that can be measured to within a fraction of one percent, and which usually agree with each other to the same level of precision despite being based on completely independent assumptions.

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Hi John,

Hope you’re having a great day, John. After reading Snelling’s article, I’m scratching my head as to why you think it is relevant. He states that the fossil whale is “not polystrate in a vertical sense, as misunderstood thus far by many creationists.” He agrees with the standard conclusion that a whale fell to the ocean bottom and was fossilized in an anoxic environment. His only disagreement with the standard assessment is that he believes that the diatomaceous laminae (i.e., strata) were formed over a short period of time (years or decades, not millenia) as a result of volcanic activity. Moreover, he states that this fossil cannot be attributed to a global flood, but rather was the result of what he calls a local catastrophe (i.e., volcanic activity).

My point was simply that the strata that rapidly (in geological time) bury a tree or large animal fossil can be dated whenever they are sandwiched by non-sedimentary layers. Not all formations are found this way, but many of them (such as the Yosemite formation) are. Nothing in Snelling’s article contradicts this.

My understanding of the geology–namely, that “polystrate” fossils can be dated over the vast course of geological time and were created by local sedimentation processes (catastrophic or otherwise)–has not even been refuted, much less disproved.

Take care, my friend…

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Moreover, geologists have identified mechanisms such as subduction that cause minerals or sediment to be recycled into the crust. Ignoring those mechanisms makes the age analysis completely unreliable.

I could try to prove that my city only got 3 inches of rain over the past decade by saying that the puddle in my back yard is only 3 inches deep. That would of course ignore mechanisms like evaporation and drainage. Once I take those mechanisms into account, I can realize why my rainfall estimate was dramatically off, and accept the National Weather Service’s rainfall estimate.

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They don’t actually ignore those factors. They just claim that they’re insufficient to account for what is observed. However, my point still stands: the quantities we’re talking about are just way too imprecise to be able to realistically draw such a conclusion.

They don’t even attempt to quantify the limits to which they could have varied in the past – they just come up with hand-waving shenanigans about “being generous to evolutionists.” That alone is a major departure from scientific methodology. Real science establishes error bars on everything.

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The Whale Fossil in Diatomite, Lompoc, California, DR ANDREW A. SNELLING (CEN Tech.J. vol 9, No.2, 1995)

It’s not a rebuttal. It was written before the talk origins article, but already deals with the issues talkorigins brings up. Talkorigins is seemingly ignorant of the data presented. Talk origins is not a scientific journal, nor does it present scientific data per se, except incidentally… it;'s a talking place. Sometimes it does refer to scientific work, but in this case it is behind the times. I had already provided the citation earlier if you check in the earliest post referring to Snelling.

Your handwaving comment is itself mere handwaving, and certainly contains much less actual reasoning, logic, and reference to data than the 101 objections. These 101 objections have been rebutted in a wikipedia article, but these rebuttals have also had many substantial responses as well on the creation.com site, especially in the comments section after the 101 objections.

Conventional dating methods are based on accurately measured decay rates. But the amount of original composition is impossible to measure. These are estimates, and the apparent accuracy of dating methods entirely ignores the uncertainty of the estimates, or alternatively estimates that the estimates have a low uncertainty… but this is also an estimate.

In order to test the validity of these estimates, it is entirely legitimate to compare the methods to completely different methods, which a method such as calculating the expected salt content in the ocean would do. It should come close within a reasonable error rate. To argue that one unmeasureable estimate is more valid than another unmeasureable estimate begs the question.

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You provided a citation but not a link. Here’s a link. See my discussion of the article above. Take care…

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The point I guess is that it is post flood, and the sedimentary layers did not take eons to lay down. But the significant difference is that the methodology for dating sedimentary layers, based on all the evidence, is deficient, and inadequate to explain the condition of the fossil. When there is no contrary evidence to the dating methodology, it is often accepted, even though there is no way of knowing whether it is accurate or not. In this case, it is obviously wrong. This leads to a legitimate questioning of this method of dating such sedimentary layers.

While not polystrate in a vertical
sense, as misunderstood thus far by many creationists, this
Lompoc whale is nevertheless still polystrate in a horizontal
sense because the fossilised whale bones ‘pass through’ many
diatomite laminae. What requires explanation, therefore, is
how the diatomite was deposited catastrophically, complete
*with laminae.*Snelling.

However, the major likely source (of silica as a food source for diatoms) under catastrophic conditions would be volcanic activity, discounted in
conventional uniformitarian thinking.43 Yet Bramlette
reported:
…
44
‘Numerous beds of nearly pure volcanic ash occur in
the Monterey Formation . . . Most of the beds are from
less than an inch to a few inches, or at most a few feet,
in thickness, though in a few areas there are some of
much greater thickness.’
45
Furthermore, volcanic ash beds do occur in the Lompoc area
(Figure 3), and Bramlette reported the composition of one of
these vitric ash beds, ‘one of the most nearly pure and fresh
which was clearly rhyolitic, with a silica content of 72.11
per cent (Snelling).

Y

This is the assumption, yes. But it must correspond to other methods of dating. Ash can take quite a while to settle as it is moved by air, wind, and water far from the source. Thus it is possible for something to have died after the ash was emitted, but before the ash was deposited. This is also true for sediment which is deposited after the volcanic eruption, but before the ash lands on the water, and before the ash settles on the sediment.

As important is the estimation for settling of sediment. Did the sediment settle slowly over 800,000 yrs or over 9 my, or did it all settle within a day or two? The radio metric dating cannot answer this question. Radiometric dating cannot answer the question of whether a fossil is deposited a week before the “dated” layer, or a week after the previous “dated” layer. With a 9 my spread between these layers, the variability is huge, without even considering the variability inherent in the assumptions and estimates of original volcanic sediment composition.

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Thanks. I had to google it. A link would have been appreciated, especially since then I could have just scrolled up to the top of this discussion and got it from there, rather than wading through dozens of posts of tl;dr. (Thanks @Chris_Falter for providing the link already.)

I’ll concur that I didn’t explain exactly what I mean when I spoke about not meeting scientific criteria. I have at least three in mind here; others may wish to expand on this:

  1. As I’ve already stated, the evidence must establish definitive numerical limits (error bars) on all relevant quantities, both current and historical. Do any “not enough X in the sea” arguments do this? Do any of them say, “The current rate of inflow into the sea is X, plus or minus Y; the long-term historical average is A, plus or minus B”? If so, which ones? Please provide me with a link.
  2. The evidence must be peer reviewed by an expert in the field. This is to ensure that it proves what it claims to prove, and to reduce or eliminate the likelihood of mathematical or logical fallacies or confirmation biases.
  3. The evidence must be replicated by other researchers. This is to ensure that the research was carried out as described in the lab notes and that there was no cherry-picking of the data.

Not true. Isochron dating provides us with the original composition as well as the dates. Furthermore, not all conventional methods are radiometric; they include tree rings, lake varves, ice cores, and GPS measurements of the rate of continental drift, among others. The fact that these methods, whose assumptions are independent of each other, are all in close agreement (less than 1%) acts as a test to provide evidence that these assumptions are valid.

Not true either. Uncertainties are not estimated; they are measured. Scientists take several different measurements and calculate the average and standard deviation. This is the first thing you get taught in your first lab class as a physics undergraduate.

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[quote=“jammycakes, post:79, topic:386”]
Not true. Isochron dating provides us with the original composition as well as the dates. Furthermore, not all conventional methods are radiometric; they include tree rings, lake varves, ice cores, and GPS measurements of the rate of continental drift, among others. The fact that these methods, whose assumptions are independent of each other, are all in close agreement (less than 1%) acts as a test to provide evidence that these assumptions are valid.[quote]

Here is a response:

At the end of his paper, Zheng wrote:
‘In conclusion, some of the basic assumptions of the conventional Rb-Sr isochron method have to be modified and an observed isochron does not certainly define a valid age information for a geological system, even if a goodness of fit of the experimental data points is obtained in plotting 87Sr/86Sr vs. 87Rb/86Sr. This problem cannot be overlooked, especially in evaluating the numerical time scale. Similar questions can also arise in applying Sm-Nd and U-Pb isochron methods.’8
And as if to make the point even more succinctly and clearly, Zheng also wrote in the abstract (or summary) of his paper:

‘As it is impossible to distinguish a valid isochron from an apparent isochron in the light of Rb-Sr isotopic data alone, caution must be taken in explaining the Rb-Sr isochron age of any geological system.’9Zheng, Y.-F., 1989. Influences of the nature of the initial Rb-Sr system on isochron validity. Chemical Geology (Isotope Geoscience Section), vol. 80, pp. 1-1

johnZ:
or alternatively estimates that the estimates have a low uncertainty… but this is also an estimate.

Not true either. Uncertainties are not estimated; they are measured. Scientists take several different measurements and calculate the average and standard deviation. This is the first thing you get taught in your first lab class as a physics undergraduate.
[/quote]

Certainly mathematical uncertainties are measured statistically. However, assumptions cannot be measured, merely assumed. The original amount of parent/daughter compounds cannot be measured; it can only be assumed. We know that almost brandnew volcanic rock has been measured to have several hundred thousands years or even millions of years of daughter isotope, relative to parent isotope. But we cannot measure rock emitted by volcanoes in the past. We can only measure this old rock in the present. Therefore the uncertainty of the assumption can also not be measured.

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Did you understand what I said about multiple independent dating methods being used? That is how assumptions are verified.

I’ve addressed this claim before on this forum.The rock samples in question were sent by Steve Austin et al for K-Ar dating to Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who, at the time, stated this on their website:

Samples less than 5 M.Y. old, or containing less than 0.1%K will incur a 50% surcharge, reflecting the special care and additional analyses required. We cannot analyze samples expected to be younger than 2 M.Y.

It pains me to have to say so, but this kind of gaming the system is thoroughly dishonest, and no matter what we believe about the age of the earth, we must not give claims such as this any place whatsoever in our Christian witness.

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No. And no.

@johnZ, until you take the time to actually learn the fundamentals of the science—instead of just calling it “fraudulent”—you will remain in this cycle of denying what you don’t understand.

Investigate the word isochron and you will begin to see why your claim is exasperating to real scientists.

Dr. Todd Wood Laments YECism’s Honesty Problem

We should be empathetic towards those who get their “science” from YEC ministry websites. These are the very practices which Young Earth Creationists like Dr. Todd Wood lament in their blogs. Indeed, I recommend several of Dr. Wood’s classic essays including:

The truth about evolution

Evolution still not in crisis

(Yes, our topic is “polystrate fossils” but we all know why is an issue which evolution-deniers like to bring up.)

I remember reading Dr. Wood’s essay about his discouragement about counter-productive pseudo-science arguments which either misunderstand or misrepresent isochron dating methodologies. (Unfortunately, I don’t have that URL available to me at the moment.) Dr. Wood acknowledges that bad arguments often work well when preaching to the Young Earth Creationist choir----but long-term they entirely destroy any possible credibility the movement might have in influencing real scientists.

Sadly, Dr. Wood is heavily criticized and even despised by origin’s industry ministry leaders. Here is an example of his candor which got him a lot of flack from his own Young Earth Creationist brethren:

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Dr. Wood understands that honesty is a much better long-term strategy for the movement. He refuses to blindly defend the pseudo-science of origins industry leaders and so he regularly struggles for funding, even though he is among the very very few Young Earth Creationists who has a relevant and legitimate PhD in a field of biological science.

I still keep up with a few long-time friends from the Young Earth Creationist movement and when speaking privately they all lament their embarrassment at having to bite their tongues and allow “the non-scientist loons” (as one of them calls the big name leaders) to speak for the movement—or else their Christian college jobs would be in serious jeopardy. (Somehow, Ben Stein and the EXPELLED film crew never show up to defend their academic freedom!)

The Pitfalls of Misunderstanding the Perspicuity of Scripture

Yes, it’s fun to imagine that all of the world’s scientists are frauds and that God has endowed particular Christ-followers with special insights due to their choosing to be on the “right side” of the issues. It often arises from a misunderstanding of the Reformation emphasis on the perspicuity of scriptures. Whatever the causes, it has been a recurrent pitfall in the history of the Church. Later centuries of believers always judge it harshly—as they should.

Those who remain oblivious of history are doomed to repeat it applies to many facets of life.

Those who feel called to deny some area of science would do well to reallocate even a small fraction of the time they spend on denying the science to actually learning about the science.

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I think he already has, and I believe he’s right in saying that isochrons aren’t infallible. However, he has overlooked the element of cross-checking them against other dating methods as a means of overcoming the corner cases.

The article that I’ve found that gives the best and most comprehensive explanation of the nuances and intricacies of radiometric dating is Radiometric Dating, a Christian perspective by Roger C Wiens. It goes into a lot of detail about exactly what corner cases scientists run into and exactly how they work round them. It was written in 1994 and revised in 2002, so no doubt there’s a lot of new material that could be added from more recent research. However, I’m yet to see a YEC rebuttal of radiometric dating that raises an objection that it doesn’t address.

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Of course they aren’t “infallible”. That’s not a scientific term. We deal in probabilities. In and of themselves, no single methodology is the endall. It is the consilience of great many methodologies and types of evidence that gives us confidence in scientific discoveries.

As to “I think he already has”, that was my original assumption. But the more I’ve read his comments, I realized that they are gleaned from science-denial websites without an understanding of the underlying science. Many of the scientists posting on these threads have identified dozens of such clues.

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That was my whole point. My apologies if I wasn’t clear enough about it.

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No apologies necessary. I think the restatements and explanations will be helpful to readers who are new to these concepts. One of the didactic advantages of forum threads is the opportunities for readers to hear the same concepts restated in multiple ways. Textbooks rarely provide that.

Obviously, the term consilience is relatively new even though the concept is quite old. I try to reinforce it as often as I can. It is so essential to an understanding of modern science and it is a reality which science-denialists don’t want to talk about.

For example, with radiometrics, they want their readers who are not well informed about science to think that radiometrics is some casual and iffy set of presumptions. They ignore the fact that multiple scientific journals have for decades now focused on excruciatingly detailed and careful methodologies to maximize the accuracy and reliability of the procedures. So when scientists published papers explaining why mollusk shells dated the minerals of the surrounding environment and not the age of the mollusk, science-denialists spun the articles as failures of radiometrics! That’s not just ignorance. That’s deliberate lying!

Yes, I do want to give my Christian brethren the benefit of the doubt. But we are not called to do that to such extremes that church discipline becomes impossible and that to call out dishonest propagandists is not a duty of Christ-followers who care about honesty.

When I say that we have been remiss in failing to identify the liars and charlatans among us, I’m pointing the finger at myself, not just others. Even after I left the Young Earth Creationist “creation science” movement, I was quite content to “go along to get along” and to pretend that the blatant dishonesty was simply science ignorance and not deceit.

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That’s true. So a geologist who is expressing himself (or herself) carefully might say that a petrified tree in Yosemite is 50mya +/- 4.5my. Or better yet, after adding error bars for the dating of the non-sedimentary layers, s/he might say the petrified Yosemite tree is 50mya +/- 5my.

What the geologist would not say is that the tree dates to 7000 ya. That would be absurdly outside the boundaries established by the scientific investigation.

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