Tim, I enjoy vibrant discussion. As with my past experience you have been an adult in the room expressing yourself with respect for others. I should have known better than to engage joao.
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The use of âdenialistâ is at the outset antagonistic. If thatâs your intent then fine, but if not you may want to rethink your presentation.
Iâm not offering a position on young or old, but I do see questions raised by both sides which are not answered well. Simply stating that âserious geologists donât have a problem with polystrate fossilsâ does nothing but insult the one inquiring. Again, if youâre going for insulting youâre right on track. Oddly, when questions are answered with insults itâs a good sign that the answer is not nearly so clear and easy as claimed.
Said another way, your dismissive non-answer gives life to the question.
Perhaps it should inspire righteous indignation and anger. But arenât we admonished to be slow to anger? Quick to compassion and forgiveness? Wouldnât it be better to take that angry student and teach them not only another way of understanding origins and the Gospel, but compassion for those who at least told them of Jesus? What an opportunity to live the Gospel, not just teach it. How much better a lesson is love then evolution? How much better a solution is forgiveness than resentment?
Perhaps itâs ok to be angry, but I hope you remember to temper that with compassion and understanding. Did Jesus let his disciples forbid others to cast out demons in his name? (Mark 9:38) Why would you forbid a YECist to preach the Gospel of Christ?
As a father and youth group leader, I learn all I can on this subject. I donât offer my kids absolute understanding on this or any subject, I try to teach them how to learn and question. I can tell them of my savior but until Heâs their savior they canât understand it really. I can tell them the arguments for both young and old earth. Most important, they know itâs not the most important issue.
Jon Doe, the problem is that Neutral YECs like yourself are a rarity. Most YECs I know wouldnât just casually say things like, âYeah the earth could be old, but I donât think it is.â ⌠Usually itâs more like, âIf the earth is old that means the Bible is wrong and the entirety of the gospel has been compromised.â
I think youâre right in teaching your kids to ask questions, and think for themselves in that sense. But judging from the YEC seminars that Iâve seen, many of the head-hancho types actively discourage their audience from looking at Old Earth organizations to see if their scientific or biblical arguments are actually valid. Some Iâve noticed even resort to outright mockery of bible scholars when it comes to more trivial matters such as the description of Behemoth in Job 40.
Itâs THAT kind of YECism that I would describe as unhealthy ⌠And it seems like you might agree with me, but Iâm not sure. And if YECs are making bold claims like the gospel is compromised by an old earth then that can have devastating impacts later in life. They get introduced to Old Earth evidence and then their Christian Faith goes down with the ship so to speak ⌠Because theyâve been given the impression that the young earth doctrine and the Gospel are super-glued to each other,
Again ⌠Iâm not saying that ALL YECs are like that. But that is general impression that I get from them ⌠And itâs a rarity to find someone like you not pinning the Gospel message to the Young Earth message, and can actually deal with them as separate issues.
I think that Christians should be encouraged to be free-thinkers in the sense that they can actively pursue other viewpoints from diverse Christian perspectives. Rather than just being taught that they should âtake it on faith that their pastor is infallibleâ⌠Or be discouraged from even investigating the matter on their own ⌠As if youâre playing with fire.
You can still do this while simultaneously taking the Bible seriously. You can investigate the scientific literature with a balanced mind, without the constant thought in your head that the scientists are actively trying to destroy Christianity. You can also investigate the evidence for yourself and know that if God really did write Two Books (the Book of Creation and the Book of Scripture) then He would not expect one book to be contrary to the other ⌠And that both can be investigated, and both are subject to human error.
These are things to think about.
-Tim
They donât have to. But almost everyone does. And itâs ridiculous to think that in an ideal world, everyone would do meticulous primary research on everything they wonder about instead of consulting a pre-digested version somewhere. We would end up dumber with that strategy.
Most people have spouses, kids, jobs, hobbies, Facebook, netflix queues, and any number of things that take precedence over reading primary sources for themselves because they were slightly curious about something they know nothing about.
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[quote=âChristy, post:44, topic:386â]
They donât have to. But almost everyone does. And itâs ridiculous to think that in an ideal world, everyone would do meticulous primary research on everything they wonder about instead of consulting a pre-digested version somewhere. We would end up dumber with that strategy.[/quote]
Christy, Iâm not saying one has to examine ALL the evidence! A sample will do. But if one is going to claim that the experts are wrong, hearsay just doesnât cut it.
Itâs important to note that the scientific method does not require that the empirical data from tests of oneâs hypothesis be unknown to everyone, merely unknown to you.
[quote]Most people have spouses, kids, jobs, hobbies, Facebook, netflix queues, and any number of things that take precedence over reading primary sources for themselves because they were slightly curious about something they know nothing about.
[/quote]But if one of those people is going to write pages about polystrate fossils without ever advancing a hypothesis that makes empirical predictions, none of those apply.
As I told Tim, there is a simple shortcut. Identify the side that produces all or nearly all of the new data. Thatâs not hard at all. This idea that âboth sides are looking at the same dataâ and present their âargumentsâ to allow laypeople to decide between them is silly. Moreover, anyone who makes claims about who is interpreting which data must necessarily be familiar with a huge body of data to be credible.
It is if youâre not bothering to do the first two, which are really the same thing. Youâre not looking for truth.
Why are the conclusions so important? Canât you advance a testable hypothesis from your examination of the data?
@Joao
I understand your point. But there are lots of places on the information continuum between hearsay and primary data. Almost no one is actually going to sit down and wade through journal articles outside their field in order to meet this silly standard that says unless you have personally examined the relevant evidence you are not entitled to open your mouth and have an opinion or claim to know something. Are you allowed to roll your eyes and immediately dismiss someone elseâs opinion or assertion as ignorant and uninformed? Of course. But the whole inquisition-style dissection of another personâs post which seems designed to make it perfectly clear that they have been weighed, measured, and found wanting and should now repent of the audacity of speaking in your presence gets obnoxious. Maybe that is not an effect you are intentionally aiming for, but it comes across that way.
To everyone else: Contrary to the vibe you may get from some threads, it is not necessary to read the collected works of Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin before voicing a theological thought, it is not necessary to have mastered Plato and the Enlightenment canon to say something about philosophy, you donât have to have read everything ever written by an âID leaderâ to have an opinion about ID, and you donât have to cite a relevant Nature article or have your own personal lab results in hand to say something about science on an informal discussion board.
It would be helpful, for the sake of discussion, when you are referring to specific debatable claims, to cite where you got your information so other people can judge for themselves whether they think it is credible. But letâs keep in mind that people rarely change their minds because someone insults their intelligence or casts aspersions on their character. And if the reason you are here is not to explore ideas or help other people explore ideas, if you are here to feel big by making other people feel small, or to feel righteous by judging other people as unrighteous, you are here for the wrong reasons. (And perhaps someone can suggest a helpful ABC After-School Special to help us work through our community issues. 
)
[quote=âChristy, post:47, topic:386â]
I understand your point. But there are lots of places on the information continuum between hearsay and primary data. Almost no one is actually going to sit down and wade through journal articles outside their field in order to meet this silly standard that says unless you have personally examined the relevant evidence you are not entitled to open your mouth and have an opinion or claim to know something.[/quote]
Iâm not sure you do understand my point, as I have never, ever put it in that way, Christy.
My standard is that if you portray your claim as evidence-based it should actually be based on evidence. If you claim that both sides are looking at the same evidence, you should be very familiar with the evidence. If you claim that the experts are misinterpreting the evidence and accuse them of confirmation bias, you should be familiar with the relevant evidenceâotherwise you have zero basis for seeing confirmation bias.
Do you disagree with any of those standards?
And does that remotely resemble what I wrote to Mervin at my entry here, âNon-experts do not have to limit themselves to hearsay. Anyone can, and should, directly examine the evidence for themselvesâ? I am presenting science as something anyone can do, not some activity restricted to elites.
However, old timer, this is patently untrue. It was not settled long ago. In fact, what was thought to be settled, was found to be false. Long ago, it was thought that most sediments were laid down slowly and gradually by erosion by wind. This was found to be false, and that instead, almost all sediments were laid down by water. The science was not settled long ago. The theory did not survive 150 years of challenges, but rather it changed chamelionlike to adapt itself to the new discoveries. As a theory, it evolved to change rather than survive as it was. Because the science was not settled, but new discoveries were being made.
It is clearly not settled today. It has only arrived at a temporary general consensus, which is a much different thing. Further, it is not a foundation of modern biology, but it is only a framework in which modern biology is taught. We neither practice evolution, nor are we dependant on it, nor does it force us to confront it in any way other than a philosophical approach; this is of course realizing that mere mutations and selection are not by themselves equal to evolution.
A couple of years ago in 2013, a huge volcano was discovered under the pacific ocean near Japan. The biggest in the world. But wise were the scientists who cautioned that more work would need to be done to see if this was one volcano or many. And that there might be more on the ocean floor. The science is not so easily settled.
Sorry to have been away from thread ⌠And am still limited to typing responses on tiny iPad keyboard here where I amâŚ
Joao, your point well taken that examining evidence directly is always better. We try to do that In pHysics class via labs as much as we can (thanks Albertus Magnus, Galileo, and countless others for those imperatives towards empiricism). Meanwhile since our class doesnât have any magic school buses handy, and the reality of resources and time prevent us from traveling the world to see everything directly for ourselves or even (as Christie ably explained), from delving completely into primary sources. Still, we will strive to rely on these next best things: testimonies from those who have examined things directly (thanks Gutenburg, consequent communications industries, up to the Internet now). We may not travel there physically, but our informed imaginations can as never before. Not a bad proxy, that.
Finally, Joao, I also must disagree that you can simply dismiss âargumentâ as if it were somehow a different and inferior category to that thing called âevidenceâ. When you write âit should rest on evidence, not argumentsâ, the âitâ you were referring to was in reply to my phrase âtentative acceptance or dismissalâ, and what is that, but an argument? In short, a pile of rock is nothing more than a pile of rock until somebody applies some interpretation (an argument). Only then does it become âevidenceâ in any sense at all.
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Itâs true, and now we can be engaged more easily than ever before, and at little or no cost. There are museums, of course. Many libraries have science magazines available, and these are often online. Coursera offers great science courses at no cost (or low cost if you want college credit). And science lectures are often put online for free viewing, such as the sci-cafe talks at the AMNH.
no geologist worth his salt⌠this is true. But, these polystrate fossils often transect many many thin layers of sediment, which sometimes contains significantly different material, sometimes including coal. Itâs not just a few layers. The discussions of varves and ice layers all seem to assume a consistency of thin gradual layers laid down annually or even more slowly, when these fossils indicate a much more rapid deposition, including in some cases trees obviously being deposited, not grown in place as well. Since sedimentary layers cannot be directly âdatedâ, their age is always a conjecture based on placement and interpretation. A geologist worth his salt will know that a polystrate fossil indicates a more rapid burial and sedimentation, for all those cases where polystrate fossils clearly indicate this, but will not necessarily apply this principle to cases where there is no clear polystrate evidence. Yet, there is no reason not to.
In addition, there are many cases, where geology applies gaps of hundreds of millions of years between various layers which are intersected by a flat planar boundary. Yet there is no evidence of age at this boundary⌠no significant erosion channels that would accumulate over time. The evidence would indicate either that there was no time for erosion to occur, or no rainfall to cause it during millions of years, or would indicate no gap or time between the layers. Thatâs the evidence which can be clearly seen wherever it is exposed by present day erosion.
> Only about 1 out of 50 trees is preserved with both its roots and rootlets intactâthus indicating that very likely none of these fossil stumps are âin situâ (i.e. in their original growth positions). Further evidence of this is the fact that many sections of this strata possess rootlets that were at one time attached to a tree, but were buried individually creationwiki.org/Joggins,_Nova_Scotia⌠the same types of deposits, with the same types of (now extinct) fossil trees and other plants, and coal seams, are found in various locations in the United States, England, France, and Germany. âŚâŚthis also rules out the âSpirit Lakeâ scenario that some Creationists have mistakenly pointed to as an analog to the Joggins deposits. The Mt. St. Helens Catastrophe and the subsequent log mat in Spirit Lake undoubtedly has profound implications for the polystrate forests we find around the world, like Specimen Ridge, Axel Heiberg Island, etc⌠However, this scenario applies to trees, not giant, hollow reeds. The trees at Joggins are prostrate, the giant reeds are polystrate, and sometimes in the same layer!âŚnumerous Cordaitales tree trunks found throughout the formation usually exhibit both coalification (of the outside bark) and petrification of the wood core. Sometimes, as can also be seen in the polystrate fossil trees in coal mines in Alaska, the tree rings alternate between coalified and petrified. It appears that coal requires soft wood and bark, not peat.
The response from evolutionists is that polystrate fossils are rare, are usually grown in place, are buried rapidly by water, and that in some cases may not even fossilize when they are assumed to be as much as 24,000 years old (which is questionable). However, the main point of evidence is that there are many layers of sediment around these trunks, not just one or two, and that limits the age of these layers to something that would not result in the erosion or degradation of these trees or reeds before they would become fossilized, for which they would have to be buried in sediment. It has been shown in the lab that water can lay down many layers of sediment, either horizontally or even angled at a slope, in a short period of time. It can be assumed that thin layers of coal (plant material) could be deposited (as at Joggins and elsewhere) quickly by water, and not slowly by repeated inundations over eons of time. It would be interesting to see why tree logs were buried horizontally, while reeds were buried vertically, perhaps because they had some mechanism of weighting down the root end while floating/raising the tops, immmediately after submergence in sediment lain water.
John, part of the response to the polystrate challenge as Iâve understood it is that such fossils would present a major problem if indeed they had roots in one coal seam, crossed through another, and ended in one above; and according to Glenn Morton in this ASA exchange, not one example had been provided (at that time). To my limited understanding, I think this was because the rapidly accumulating (course grained) sediments between the slower accumulating layers would be expected to host many such fossils. But if one were to have roots extending into one (where they could grow âin situâ), through another and still extend above (Iâm not sure why he thought the third seam necessary) --then this would be a puzzle to defy standard explanations. It sounds like youâve spent more recent time looking at this than I have, so I provide the link to see if it does a better job addressing your question than my meager attempt here. I could refresh my non-native âexpertiseâ as time may allow, but will shortly be away again and may not have much time to delve into this again as I had many years ago. Thatâs why I tend to listen when geology experts (who had at one time been strongly motivated to show otherwise) say there has not been any problem demonstrated here. I know this earns the disapproval of nearly everyone here who (very rightly) warn us all about simply trusting experts. But again ⌠I live in the real world where other obligations exist.
I hope to glean, in turn, challenged perspectives in your own more extended and recent delvings. Perhaps you will find at least in part some response to your original question here (which I donât even remember at that was at this point! --but maybe this hits on it.)
Blessings to you and yours this Thanksgiving break.
Many polystrate fossils could be explained away, and have been, by evolutionists simply agreeing that many layers can be laid down in a relatively short period of time, say ten years or a thousand years. The explanation becomes localized, that is, these things become âexceptionsâ or rapid layering does not apply to most other situations. But of course, rapid layering could have occurred even where polystrate fossils do not provide conclusive proof. There are a variety of situations. There are reeds, there are trees, there are trees apparently with a root system and other trees with no roots whatsoever, and trees with apparently crushed roots. Some look like trees moved in place. I believe some plants look like they had several sets of roots after being partially buried. I have not seen photos of very tall trees such as the Redwoods, but mostly to a limit of about twenty feet tall.
> Geologists see no need to invoke a global flood to explain upright fossils.
This is a statement from wikipedia, which is typical of many responses to polystrate fossils. Of course, a polystrate fossil does not prove a global flood. It only demonstrates that sediments were 1. laid down by water. 2. laid down quickly, not over millions of hundreds of thousands of years. So in that sense, this is explainable by a global flood and consistent with a global flood, although other explanations are possible. Some type of flood would have caused it, since airborne sediment would have destroyed it or allowed it to decay before being covered and permineralized. But these fossils remove the argument that layers of sediment represent long periods of time. In addition, some of the layers that are called paleosols apparently are nothing more than massive unstructured, unformed soil, not a true soil layer with distinct horizons and differentiated organic material. This means that those layers did not need a long period of time to form, but only a quick accumulation of material deposited by water.
âPolystrate fossilsâ were explained long ago. Various origins ministries (Kent Hovind did a lot to popularize them) have tried to convince people that they pose some sort of mystery or contradiction to the geologic column and billions of years of earth history. They donât.
I challenge anyone to cite a specific example of a polystrate fossil which they believe is not easily explained by the geology textbooks used on any major university campus. (The fact that layers of debris from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens are intruded by tree trunks, for example, is neither surprising nor mysterious. Iâll mention that one in advance because I received that one in an email response to an article I wrote on this subject.)
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It is true that polystrate fossils were explained years ago by evolutionists. But the significance of polystrate fossils is not that they are a direct proof that evolution is false. That is not the point. The point is that the individual layers of sediment surrounding the fossils can be laid down in a relatively short period of time, before the fossil source has time to degrade, rot, or erode. In addition, not only is the sediment laid down relatively quickly, it is laid down by water, and considering what we have actually seen in the deposit of potential fossil sources, the fossils themselves can be laid down in a sequential pattern over a period of months rather than years, in contrast to being laid down over thousands of years. What we have actually seen happen contradicts the theories of this type of fossil deposition over millenia, which we have not seen.
It doesnât matter whether Mt. St. helens is surprising or not to some people in terms of tree trunks in sedimentary layers. The quick deposition of such trees was not a well-known phenomena, and was not a common explanation for this type of fossil, and in fact, the slow deposit of upright tree trunks in sedimentary layers is still strongly defended as the most common explanation.
Often sedimentary layers are bracketed by igneous or metamorphic layers, which allows geologists to use radiometric dating on the non-sedimentary layers. They then infer the upper and lower bound of the age of the sedimentary layer from the ages of the non-sedimentary layers.
The Yellowstone formation contains polystrate petrified forests. These petrified fossils are located amidst many igneous layers, allowing them to be dated at roughly 50 mya. Of significance to our discussion is the fact that the fossilization of the trees clearly resulted from burial in volcanic ash.
Since I am not a geologist, I welcome any clarifications from practicioners or publications from that scientific discipline.
Forgive my confusion here, but what exactly are polystrate fossils supposed to prove?
Are they supposed to differentiate between a global Flood and, say, local landslides/localised flooding etc? If so, do they actually do so? If so, how?
Or are they supposed to falsify conventional dating methods? If so, are there specific examples of such fossils where the strata of the top are dated differently, i.e. outside the range allowed for by experimental error, from the strata at the bottom? If conventional geologists have explanations for such differences, have these explanations been falsified by young-earth advocates with hard facts and figures?
Or can they given either a young-earth or an old-earth interpretation? If so, then they donât prove anything.
They became important to various Young Earth Creationist ministry leaders when they thought that they âdebunkedâ Uniformitarianism and millions of years. They claimed that a fossilized tree trunk spanning several geologic strata required all of those strata to be the same age and thereforeâ ta-daa!!! â the earth is only a few thousands of years old. This tactic was assumed to appeal to uninformed audiences who would presume that adjacent strata are always measured by scientists to be of vastly different ages.
What has often been amusing about âcreation scienceâ quote-mining involving polystrate fossils is that YECs like Kent Hovind appropriated hand-drawn illustrations from geology books which explained polystrate fossils and which totally contradicted what Hovind claimed geologists were saying about them! (Of course, Hovind and friends assume that their audiences will never bother to track down their citations and sources. If they did, they wouldnât be confident creation science fans for long.)
Watch for mention of polystrate fossils among many of the same people who think that because Mt. St. Helens was a catastrophic geologic event which created new geologic strata in a matter of minutes, the Grand Canyon must thereby also have been created in a short time (i.e., a little more than the one year of the Noahic Flood.) The fact that the word âcanyonâ is often applied to both geologic phenomena is enough to make them the same, at least in the minds of some.
Sounds like hand-waving to me.
The thing about polystrate fossils is that this is an argument where you can and should expect the evidence to be backed up with hard numerical data. If they are really serious about presenting a case, they should be saying something along the lines of âThis fossil straddles strata A, B and C which have been dated using methods E, F and G to be X, Y and Z million years old, with errors of J, K and L respectively. Since the difference in these ages exceeds the errors by a factor of Î or more, they must be flawed.â
Unfortunately Iâve seen a lot of YEC arguments like that â arguments which fail to completely enumerate evidence that can and should be established numerically.