Was it really necessary to dig up this fossilized forum thread? 
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Prode, the BioLogos position is nothing to do with treating the âbook of creationâ as sacrosanct and âtrumping the book of Scripture.â Nor is it anything to do with âaccepting the statements made by the atheistic religion as their authority.â Itâs about making sure that your facts are straight. You donât have to accept the scientific consensus on the age of the earth and evolution, but you do need to make sure you correctly understand why itâs the scientific consensus. Rejecting science may be faith, but misrepresenting science is lying.
The fact remains that the age of the earth is determined by measuring things. It is not based on âatheistic religion,â nor on guesswork, nor on circular reasoning, nor on âevolutionary presuppositions.â Anyone who tells you that it is, is either lying to you or doesnât have a clue what they are talking about.
Yes, measurements have to be interpreted. But when attempting to interpret the measurements within the constraints of a six thousand year timescale repeatedly degenerates into either science fiction absurdity (for example, with the RATE projectâs claims of accelerated nuclear decay on a scale that, by their own admission, would have vaporised the earth if it had any basis in reality) or flat-out lying (for example, with the YEC claims about bent rock layers in the Grand Canyon), we can quite safely conclude that the evidence simply cannot be interpreted as being consistent with a young earth, that âcompromiseâ and âatheistic religionâ have nothing whatsoever to do with it, and that to fling such accusations around is nothing more nor less than Pharisaic legalism. It is tying a heavy load up on peopleâs shoulders without lifting a finger to help, and nullifying the Word of God with your tradition.
The fact remains that the only way that the earth can be six thousand years old is if it were created with evidence for 4.5 billion years of detailed history that never happened. The Bible clearly teaches us in 2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4 that a day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. I realise that as a YEC you probably donât think that thatâs much to go on, but at least in terms of long ages, the Bible gives us something. In support of creation of evidence for a history of events that never happened, the Bible gives us nothing. As for any suggestion that the evidence can legitimately be reinterpreted to fit within a 6,000 year timescale â Iâm sorry, but that is simply not an honest option.
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Perhaps it should have been closed off after no replies were received after a year.
Talking of this â whatâs the logic behind automatically closing threads on this forum? Some of them are set to auto-close six days after the last reply, but others remain open indefinitely. What determines which are which?
Since Iâm not familiar with any other SIGNIFICANTLY polystrate fossils, I really canât answer that. Itâs not uncommon for small fossils to be reworked either downward in a sedimentary sequence (e.g., through animal burrows) or upward (by erosion and redeposition at a much later date). But when itâs something as large as a whale skull or other skeleton â be sure to check the present orientation of the strata!
What @Prode, or anyone else trying to make a YEC case from polystrate fossils, need to do is to come up with an example of such a fossil in which both the top of the trunk and the bottom of the trunk are embedded in strata that can be dated radiometrically, and which have actually been dated as being millions of years apart.
Until and unless they can actually do so, they can not honestly claim that polystrate fossils prove anything.
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Good question. I know the homeschool forum posts stay open indefinitely. I think the threads that accompany BioLogos blog posts stay open indefinitely too. The BioLogos Facebook page often posts links to past articles, so that might be how they are sometimes resurrected.
Iâm so sorry you didnât find what you were looking for in that thread. As I recall (and this was an old closed thread from many months ago now) â it was one of our longer threads that probably meandered down quite a few rabbit trails along the way. In any long thread you would have a lot of chaff to clear away in searching for any grain. Our forums are open to anybody, so all types participate here and despite our efforts (and policy!) to keep the dialogue gracious, we often fall short.
Perhaps this actual Biologos article in which Ted Davis introduces a book on Fossils and Christianity by Davis Young might help with some information? I canât promise that there are absolutely no references to talkorigins in the article (it does refer to wikipedia on some links, as well as to ICR friendly sites too); but it is definitely an article written from an old-earth perspective as well as in a professional manner without the acidic animus. When Ted Davis calls a book excellent, many of us here tend to sit up and listen. Hanging around here much, one begins to recognize names of folks who provide deep knowledge in a professional and kind manner and in a thoroughly Christian spirit. Ted is one of those. Would that we were all like that!
Anyway, I do hope you find something of use in your own quest.
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I should add, @mike_enders, that the article is actually an excerpt from Youngâs book (only being brought to our attention by Ted Davis). The mention of âpolystrate fossilsâ is about two-thirds of the way down, and is itself a link to the wikipedia article on the same. And that is followed by a creation wiki link on the subject as well. So they certainly arenât trying to muzzle opposing views on it.
I have read the book and I am pretty sure there wouldnât be any references to talkorigins. Young and Stearley address polystrate fossils on page 290-291 from both perspectives. There are some references there. If you are on the fence the geology presented in this book will probably knock you off.
Joel Duff has an article at
His web site is a treasure trove of geologic information. If you contact him perhaps he can provide you a list of known sites.
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And as a further piece of information, @mike_enders, this âpolystrate fossilsâ thread is only showing a small fraction of what I think the original thread must have shown. For one thing, it goes back to an inconsequential post of my own as the âopening postâ which I know isnât right. I never started the thread, and my little reference to a talkorigins article there was already well into a very long conversation. I think you only caught the last tip of the massive polystrate iceberg which involved a lot of good converation with âjohnZâ prior to the first post shown here. Iâm not sure why that thread got split like it did or why my post shows as the âOPâ. Will have to look into that as a mod âŚ
[The thread does show a real propensity to keep coming back from the grave, though! I think it has been locked down several times by now. Apparently our locks arenât very good around here.]
@mike_enders a belated welcome to this little corner of the internet.
A search for polystrate (the magnifying glass at the top of the page) returns 15 threads where it was mentioned. One of them may well have been the father of this thread.
Well if thatâs the case, then itâs simply that polystrate fossils do not provide enough data to differentiate between young-earth Flood geology models and old-earth alternatives. If it really can be interpreted either way then it is ambiguous and as such doesnât constitute evidence for either position.
Iâd actually concur that we need to be careful with Talk Origins. It does seem to me that it all too frequently goes beyond its remit of acting as a fact-checking resource for anyone discussing creation and evolution and descends into attacks on Christianity in general. Having said that, some of the information on it is quite important, so donât throw out the baby with the bathwater.
(Another problem with TO is, of course, that it hasnât been updated for several years now. It also doesnât support HTTPS, which is a major failing for a security-conscious software developer like meâŚ)
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Thanks. If Iâm not mistaken nearly all 15 of those postdate the above âPolystrateâ thread in its present state, and the last couple only date back to March 2015 (same month as the first post of mine above). And according to their titles they donât look like good prospects as the original thread. Iâm wondering if some sort of Biologos âauto-trash removalâ setting didnât jettison material that reached a certain age. (not meant to be commentary on the quality of said thread, but only on its possible age!) Maybe other insights/corrections/confirmations will materialize.
@mike_enders Then contact @Joel_Duff . If such a list of sites exists he can probably provide it. My guess is there arenât that many and it may be that what you have seen is all there is.
Here is my take. If the YEC explanation is correct then polystrate fossils should be quite common. They literally should be everywhere. And yet they are not.
Young does point out that intact root systems are quite common and have been studied extensively.
Do you have a reference to this article?
I share in your frustration over the high âheat-to-lightâ ratio that nearly every venue has with these issues. Those who simply would like to just learn more about reality while leaving all the animus and triumphalism behind have a hard time finding those rare corners where they can grow in knowledge instead of anger, fear, and malice. Or at least I know thatâs how I have felt. It sounds like you are in a similar place.
One solution is to strive to be such a refuge yourself. Let the fruits of your already hard-won findings become patient educational fruit for others. You arenât alone.
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There are 2 major points:
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The Bait and Switch. YECâs are being dishonest with their audience. They make the argument that geologists point to geologic layers that are separated by millions of years. The YECâs then make the dishonest claim that this applies to all layers, which it doesnât. There are geologic layers that geologists think are separated by a single year or even 6 months in the case of varves. I am unaware of a single verified polystrate tree that has been confirmed to go through multiple layers that are separated by millions of years as measured by radiometric dating, and I have yet to find a YEC who can point to one.
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Nature of Evidence. If a geologic feature could have been produced by local flooding millions of years ago, then it isnât evidence for a recent global flood. We can observe polystrate fossils being formed right now from local floods and local processes. These same mechanisms would have been active in the past, even millions of years ago. Therefore, there is no reason to think that any polystrate fossil required a global flood nor a recent flood.
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Hi Mike,
You need to realise that just because some fossils are dated based on where they fit into the fossil record doesnât mean that all of them are. Youâre probably thinking of the YEC claim that âfossils are used to date rocks and rocks are used to date fossilsâ here. You need to realise that that particular claim is a half-truth, and a very misleading one at that. While itâs true that some fossils are used to date rocks, and that some rocks are used to date fossils, the two techniques are never used together in ways that are circular in the way that they imply. You need to view these techniques â and polystrate fossils as well for that matter â in the wider context of the whole body of data. There are tens of thousands of radiometric results published in the scientific literature every year, for example, and in the best cases, they can be as tightly constrained as one part in ten thousand. And thatâs just one discipline among many.
Thereâs one important thing you need to realise here. Those of us who have studied science to university level are aware that there are stringent rules that interpretations of the evidence have to meet. They have to be free from arithmetic error. They have to respect the basic rules and principles of how measurement works, including calculating error bars correctly. They must not quote mine, cherry-pick data, or exaggerate. Your equipment has to be calibrated correctly. There are even strict protocols about how you have to keep laboratory notes. And on top of that, there are all sorts of rules about health and safety thrown into the mix as well. When you do a science degree, you have to take practical exams and classes where you are assessed and graded based on your ability and willingness to adhere to these protocols and standards. And when you get out into the workplace, you very often end up in situations where not following the rules will result in people getting killed.
Hereâs the problem. Young-earth âevidenceâ simply does not follow the rules. Everywhere I turn in young-earth âscience,â I see tiny samples with huge error bars being proclaimed as âoverwhelmingâ evidence for radical new laws of fantasy physics that they themselves admit would have vaporised the earth if they had any basis in reality. (Read up about the RATE project if you donât know what Iâm talking about here.) I see discrepancies in conventional dating methods of just 20-30% in a minority of cases being cited as evidence that all radiometric results are consistently out by a factor of a million or more. This isnât anything to do with âsecular naturalismâ or âcompromiseâ or âjust so rebuttalsâ or anything like that â if you applied that kind of thinking to any other area of science, you would kill people.
Well I too would like to assume good faith with YECs as far as I can. Most rank and file YECs are honest and sincere people who merely lack the skills and technical know-how to be able to fact-check their claims. Iâd much rather believe that they were just getting carried away with themselves, or that theyâd misunderstood things, rather than accusing them of lying. But one does have to draw the line somewhere, and when I see a PhD geologist claiming that rock layers in the Grand Canyon are bent without fracturing, and backing up his case with an out-of-focus photo of a rock formation with people in front of the very fractures that he claims do not exist (and which can be seen clearly on other photos elsewhere on the Internet, some of them even on the same website), if that is not conscious and deliberate lying, then what on earth is?
This isnât about âYEC versus OEC warsâ or anything like that. This is about making sure your facts are straight. Nothing more, nothing less.
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In particular I like the photo of Snelling studing a rock layer and clearly visible over his shoulder is a crack in the rock of the type which he says does not exist. He must not have proofed the photos for his article.
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Argument from silence. If they were everywhere the YEC folks would be sure to let everyone know. Instead they stay with the few known locations. BTW, they donât discuss the known fossil forests (trees buried in volcanic ash) because they donât fit in their model.
The evidence against a global flood is massive, to me at least. Discussing polystrate fossils is just a distraction for both sides. I have read YEC papers and have never found one that didnât have problems.
If you can suggest one that is really solid I would love to read it.
If a thread has been split off from another thread, the original thread always shows as a link under the first post of the spin-off thread. So in this case, it was: Is There a War on Science? Reflecting on National Geographicâs Cover Story | The BioLogos Forum
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