I’ve checked pretty thoroughly and the last time you saw this was in late 2021 (and you saw it several times then but never did attempt an answer). Would you be sure enough of your increased geological learning since then to take a stab at a young earth interpretation of it now (and maybe fit it into flood geology as well)?:
You ought to vet your sources more carefully - it is best not to trust AiG and CMI, which are not reliable sources on fossil formation. Your statement is wrong in both directions - one that fossils cannot form under normal sedimentation rates, and two that rapid burials require a global flood.
Rapid burials are far from rare events. As long as there is gravitational potential energy, there will be slides. Just this past month a mudslide near my home covered both lanes of highway for a hundred meters, and that made only local news. Every year you can find stories of some home washing down a gully. 2021 saw many lives lost in Erftstadt, Germany, and Atami, Japan, to massive mudslides. Ocean landslides are also common, particularly off the continental shelves. Over geological time there would have been billions of landslides over the Earth, many minor, some enormous, so there is no shortage of rapid burials.
Your blanket assertion that fossilization requires rapid burial, while a common YEC troupe, is not justified either. While rapid burial commonly features in fossilization, that is not always the case. As mentioned above, anoxic water can preserve specimens long enough for even very slow sedimentation. While not fossils, wooden ships sunk in the Black Sea have preserved in astonishing condition for 2500 years, even though they would gone with scarcely a trace in a matter of a few centuries elsewhere.
But organisms in fact do sit on the ocean floor waiting to be fossilized as sediments slowly accumulate. Shellfish, from microscopic to beachcombing sized, can preserve their shells just fine under common conditions of depth, temperature, and ionic concentrations in the water. And as I discussed above, the progressive segregation of those fossils delivers a mortal wound to the global flood. To my knowledge, neither AiG or CIM have ever even attempted to address this evidence.
There is more. How are fossil footprints left by dead dinosaurs on top of sediments that were supposedly deposited by the flood which buried them? How are fossil burrows made in flood sediment by dead animals that were supposedly killed by the onslaught of that very mud and water? How were fossil nested eggs laid atop of flood sediment by dead creatures? When is comes to the fossil record, YEC does not just reinterpret the evidence but is completely removed from reality.
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Citation please, preferably from a geological paper or survey.
In any event, if those nautiloid shells were carried and buried by a high enery event, they would have been ground to powder, so that is not what happened.
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How about a similar literal take on verse 5 preceding?
He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.
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The nautiloid bed is compatible with old-earth processes, not young-earth ones.
Note that the argument about the bed assumes that one can in fact recognize distinctive beds and correlate them across long distances. It would be very difficult to prove that the exposure at Las Vegas is in fact the exact same layer as what is seen in the Grand Canyon, rather than two separate beds that independently preserve similar conditions (no matter whether one wished to draw young-earth or old-earth conclusions). But the ability to correlate layers is routinely slandered in young-earth claims. To build a credible position, it is necessary to be consistent. The standard young-earth approach is to throw out lots of arguments without any concern about whether they are contradicting each other (or even internally contradictory).
What kinds of nautiloid are present? It is a distinctive fauna, different from nautiloids and ammonoids in older and younger layers. Yet there is no reason for a single flood to sort out different species with similar shells. Empty cephalopod shells often float long distances; the different species should be mixed if both were deposited at the same time. Yet there is not one Mesozoic-type nautiloid or ammonoid, nor early Paleozoic forms, only the species that characterize a particular subset of the Mississippian. Meanwhile, the “Nautilus rock” of Alabama has only coiled shells, no straight-shelled cephalopods, and only relatively similar to the living Nautilus (mostly it’s Hercoglossa ulrichi) - no ammonoids at all. The ammonoids in the Whitmore bed are very simple, primitive forms, not approaching the suture complexity of later ammonoids.
For the shells to be generally aligned, there must be a consistent current. That means that they were not deposited by a tsunami, as invoked in some young-earth models. Rather, the shells need to be sitting on the seafloor and exposed to a current. (Incidentally, that’s another indicator that the claim that dead shells quickly break down on the seafloor is untrue.) In a flood geology model, there is no time for that. Violent currents rushing around the globe would keep any non-smashed shells floating until the water was vaporized by the huge amounts of heat produced in accord with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Why are there a bunch of shells? Perhaps there was some sort of mass fatality. This could be due to unfavorable water conditions. However, certain modern cephalopods die right after breeding, so it is possible that simply exceptional preservation of an area where multiple generations of cephalopods died could produce a rich bed also. Or it could just represent a long-term accumulation of cephalopod shells in an area that had a lot of them. Although a global flood could produce unfavorable water conditions, to put it mildly, those conditions should be global - you would wipe out ocean life generally, not just a regional cephalopod population.
The bed is in the Redwall Limestone. But a catastrophic global flood would mix all sorts of sediment; you should not get a reasonably pure limestone from a flood of the sort promoted by modern young-earth advocates.
It is perhaps telling that the first report on the layer made by the young-earth advocates did not actually mention any young-earth claims but instead presented it in the context of standard geology. The young-earth spin was added in its promotion to the fans of a young earth.
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The same way they are now. Right now there are similar rocks in different places being produced by different events. There are different coral reefs producing limestone, as one example. There are different deserts producing cross bedded sandstones right now.
It isn’t the number of scientists. It is the amount of evidence. We don’t accept Heliocentrism because of the number of scientists on the Heliocentrist side. We accept Heliocentrism because that is where the evidence points.
The very fact that you are calling for YEC’s to ignore the evidence says a lot. It says that the evidence isn’t on your side. Why would this be? If the Earth really is young and if there was a recent global flood then why shouldn’t we be able to demonstrate this with secular science? What is it about secular science that prevents it from finding what you claim is the true age of the Earth?
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So it is an assumption of geologic uniformitarianism that the present is the key to the past. You seem to say that this is a bad assumption.
You then make claims about what catastrophic flooding could do, and you base this on present lahar flooding such as that seen at Mt. St. Helens.
Do you see a problem here?
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“And you are correct, the YEC position is that neither the ocean floor was as deep nor the continental land masses were as high before the flood than they are now.”
“YEC “pretend” no such thing. But since the ocean floor and continents were completely remade during the global flood, all evidence of what they were like prior to the flood is gone.”
There are many YEC positions; the claim that “the YEC position” is something is not accurate. But it is a common part of young-earth rhetoric, which often claims that all true Christians (or other religious view) and all true scientists agree with what the speaker says. Accurately representing the variation in views would give a more honest picture of YEC, but it would require actually doing research rather than just making up or quoting whatever arguments sound good at the moment and claiming to be authoritative. (You are citing young-earth sources, not pretending to be the authority yourself, but should make an effort to check the claims.)
The claim that the ocean floor and continents were completely remade during the Flood contradicts Genesis 2, which describes the location of Eden relative to post-Flood geography. Even if flood geology were to provide credible explanations for geologic processes, the geologic processes have not completely remade the ocean floor and continents (well, not since the Earth was molten; if Theia crashing in counts as a geologic process, that did remake the surface.) Although the surfaces are gradually being remade, traces of the old structures remain (and are invoked in young-earth claims).
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As others have noted, its not that the marine fossils are on top of the himilayas, rather they are embedded within the tilted layers that make up the himilayas. Which is to say, they are a product of tectonic uplift. Example:
@cewoldt stated:
“And the “index” fossils. Their age is determined how? And then that age is assumed for other fossils in the same layers.”
Index fossils are in strata adjacent to beds that can be dated.
“If there was a recent global flood, we would find all kinds and sizes of animals mixed together, which we do. And sometimes we might find both marine and land animals and plants together, which we do.”
Not really. You might find a shallow marine environment, where terrestrial animals might live in the vicinity of marine animals, but you dont find say, marine species in terrestrial bedding where you have footprints or something definitively terrestrial.
"Its headline reads: “Debate over which mammals roamed with the dinosaurs: Genetic tree challenges fossil-based conclusion that placental mammals emerged only after mass extinction.” So now the fossil record shows mammals with dinosaurs in the fossil beds–and modern birds with beaks and bird feathers. And if a primate was found, would that be widely publicized? Maybe, maybe not."
Mammals have long been known to live alongside dinosaurs. He’s likely referring to cenozoic and modern mammals, such as people, or great apes. Primates are also already known to have lived alongside dinosaurs. Genetics analysis suggests that some primates such as lemurs were around at least 10 million years prior to the extinction of dinosaurs.
Contested proto-primates are also found prior to the cenozoic:
Regarding birds, the earliest birds had basal features, such as teeth.
Confuciursornis has clawed wings.
Enantiornithes are birds with teeth and clawed wings.
Hesperornithes had teeth. “Unlike modern birds, they retained a joint between the lower jaw bones”
Anyone can sit around reading about the hundreds of species out there of birds with dinosaur-like traits in the cretaceous and theropod dinosaurs that had bird-like traits. There are many, and they collectively, easily fill that period of time between early theropod dinosaurs and modern birds. Its just incorrect to suggest that there were modern birds predating or living alongside early basal/non-derived theropod dinosaurs.
But I think its worth noting that, YEC hinges upon the belief that the Biblical authors of Genesis were describing concepts that we might think of as “scientifically accurate and modern”. However, if you read Genesis closely, you’ll notice that it actually describes ancient near east cosmology.
So, as a simple solution to the issue of why the entire worlds scientific community seems to reject a young earth, I would suggest just reading about things like “Solid Sky Dome of Biblical Cosmology and the Ancient Near East” to understand that Genesis is not a science textbook.
To summarize the dispute. The Bible (manuscripts such as the dead sea scrolls) originated at least 2,200 years ago. And so its not really reasonable to view it as if its describing concepts that we would compare to 21st century modern geology. Just as the Bible never describes earth being a sphere, or heliocentrism, rather we find verses about earth being set on pillars and the sun stopping in the sky. Narratives of the mesopotamian apkallu, the gilgamesh epic and egyptian coffin and pyramid texts date back much further. Writings of ugarit are also older. But the point is that the context of the Biblical authors is not scientifically modern.
Isaiah 40:22,
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth
1 Samuel 2:8
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, And He set the world on them.
Job 37:18
Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror?
Or you could read Genesis 7:11 and Genesis 8:2, that describes windows or floodgates opening and closing in the raqia to release the waters above.
Just read Genesis closely and you’ll notice that its not written in a modern 21st century geologic context. Its written in the context of Biblical authors that lived in the ancient near east. Which shouldnt surprise anyone because ancient isrealites lived in ancient times. So why would they speak as if they were living, today?
The cosmological perspective of the Biblical authors was grounded in their point in time prior to the advent of what we would consider modern science.
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Using the biblical scriptures in an attempt to prove a scientific point is impossible. Literalism is a dangerous path to follow.
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The problem with young earth attempts to challenge “assumptions of geological uniformitarianism” is that they view the concept of “assumptions” as if it were some sort of get-out-of-jail-free card that let them hand-wave away any and every scientific discovery that they don’t like. It is nothing of the sort.
In order to challenge a scientific theory on the grounds that it makes assumptions, there are two things you must do. First, you must make sure that the theory really does make the assumptions that you are claiming that it makes. It is dishonest to claim that scientists make assumptions that they do not, or to claim that they overlook things when in reality they take them into account.
No professional geologist (or indeed, no scientifically literate person) believes that all processes in the past were slow and gradual in the way that young earthists suggest that they do; small-scale catastrophes such as Mount St Helens, and even larger-scale catastrophes such as the Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, are fully accounted for in their models.
Second, you must present a credible and self-consistent explanation as to how those assumptions could have been violated in such a way as to give exactly the same end results that we see in reality. Your explanation must account for the evidence in at least as much detail as the mainstream scientific account, with at least as much mathematical precision and accuracy, and with fewer outliers or corner cases. It must also account for correlations and patterns that we see in the data, such as the correlation between distance and radiometric age in places such as the Hawaiian islands.
The Mount St Helens eruption proves that finely layered sediments of volcanic ash can be laid down to a depth of more than 100 feet in a matter of hours. But it does not prove that finely layered sediments of shale or limestone can be laid down in a matter of hours, and certainly not to a depth hundreds of times greater and over a much larger area thousands of times greater in extent. These form by completely different processes that are much slower and that cannot be accelerated by any known mechanism. Similarly with plate tectonics: these are processes that cannot be accelerated from millions of years to just hours or days without releasing enough heat to vaporise the Earth’s crust many times over.
Miracles are not a get-out-of-jail-free card here either. We should expect miracles to (a) leave some evidence, at least initially, that they actually happened as described, and (b) serve some specific purpose. Invisible miracles that serve no purpose other than to accommodate a timescale that is otherwise contradicted with the evidence are deceptive in nature and are not consistent with what the Bible tells us about the character and nature of God.
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I just find it interesting that YEC’s will complain and gripe about uniformitarianism, and then they will turn around and use uniformitarianism in their very next argument. The only difference is YEC’s abandon uniformitarianism when it leads to conclusions they don’t like which is really an admission that the evidence isn’t on their side.
Imagine how silly it would be if people started using the YEC method to argue against YEC. For example, if they want to argue that flooding could lay down massive layers of sediment then they have to assume the density of water and rocks were the same in the past as they are today. Therefore, they can’t prove that rocks would settle out of water and form sedimentary layers, they only assume it. It’s a silly argument, but no sillier than the rest of the YEC arguments.
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Creationists like to present as being science positive, that they do not contest observational science. However, measurement of tectonic movement, radioactive decay rates, erosion, tree ring growth, sediment accumulation, mutation rates, stable isotope uptake, the Earth’s magnetic field, and whole lot more that have implications for Earth history, are all based on >>>>>>> observational science<<<<<<<!!! Of course, these observations are generalized to instances in the present and past, just like present observation of fish bones allows recognition of a fossil fish.
This presents a conundrum for creationists, how to dismiss all this observational science without appearing science hostile. While the rigor of applicability of present observations to the past might be challenged, for rhetorical purposes it is more effective to just relabel the good and pure “observational science” as the foreboding and sinister “uniformitarianism”. This is a properly colorless geological term, but the connotation as used in creationism conveys narrow minded, dogmatic secular scientists willfully blind to any evidence in favor of the flood.
While the uniformitarian principle is still referenced in geological literature, in the modern context it is not some school of belief geologists swear allegiance to. Most of geology is in fact shaped by routine processes which can be observed in the present. However, essentially all geologists recognize that this routine is interrupted by occasional sudden catastrophic happenings such as impactors, breaches of water containment, or volcanoes. The lesson of Mount St. Helens is that you do not require a global flood to have evidence of catastrophe. Important to recognize is that even catastrophic events happen within physical laws, physical laws which have been determined through observation.
If uniformitarian interpretations of geology are based on observational science, what are catastrophic Noah’s flood interpretations based on? Sweet nothing at all. The phenomena advanced for current YEC models, which as far removed from the Biblical story of rain and springs as they are removed from reality, involves processes at outlandish rates nowhere near the vicinity of anything ever observed, while at the same time being oblivious to necessary collaterals of observational science such as the heat problem. Just like that, creationists toss observational science into the waste bin in favor of observation free fabrication.
So creationists like to christen science that does not threaten them, observational science. Observations that do not fit their scheme, they relegate to uniformitarianism.
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Well, they’re not from any worldwide flood since it is irrefutably demonstrable that the Himalayas are at the very least several hundred thousand years old and more like millions, and that’s not from dating via fossils or radioactivity or anything else, it’s from examination of the rocks and comparing them to know rates at which various crystals and minerals can deform without breaking, rates known from laboratory testing. This knowledge can be used to give a minimum age to any rocks that have deformed without their components breaking.
Besides that, the fossils were demonstrably deposited in sediments that were near-level at the time of deposition and remained that way until they were turned to rock by pressure, and besides that were deposited in calm water and not by floodwaters. Again, this has nothing to do with radiological dating, it has to do with physical processes that can be and have been measured in laboratories.
Just BTW, these physical processes were the basis of several lab exercises in university geology courses where we were given rock samples and instructed to date them. We didn’t have access to any radiological dating equipment, so we were thrown back on physical measurements, which when we applied them told us that the rocks we were examining were many tens of thousands of years old. Those same methods, applied to the mountain ranges of the world, tell us that whatever ages other rocks might be, those in most mountains are hundreds of thousands of years old. This means that the Himalayas are not unique in their age; all mountains on earth (with the exceptions of a few volcanoes) are at the least a dozen times older than the YEC claim for the entire Earth – sort of like the issue when astronomers thought they’d found a star older than the universe, except that in the case of the Himalayas and other mountains the measurements are physical ones, not theoretical.
So the marine fossils in the Himalayas were deposited in sediments on top of rocks that were already at least hundreds of thousands of years old at a time when those rocks were in roughly level configuration, in conditions that BTW preclude any kind of flood or tsunami or any other even semi-violent situation.
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Nice – it was on sale at Barnes & Noble, for Nook! Love it when that happens; it’s now on my reading list of nearly four hundred books . . . .
“Similar” is nigh unto meaningless in geology.
There are various capes and other formations along the Oregon coast, all with similar rock layers, all with very similar lavas, so it was once thought that they all came from the same event. But when the lava deposits were examined chemically, they were found to be very distinct, differing by as much as 1%, and due to those differences they could be traced back to specific eruptions of specific volcanoes, eruptions separated in time by hundreds of thousands into the low millions of years.
Thinking that because certain rock formation are similar then they had a common origin is a powerful way to get things wrong in geology; “similar” is subjective, and objective analysis repeatedly shows that similar things are actually, down where it counts, quite different. In figuring out which volcanoes those lava flows came from the degree to which each flowed matched one specific volcano was around 99.8% or better, a degree of matching that has been used to trace the paths of those eruptions from the source volcanoes right to those capes.
So how could similar layers be deposited " in different regions of the earth… at different times by different events?" Quite easily, because “similar” is misleading – you need to do the actual science rather than wallowing in the subjective swamp of similarity.
LOL I would have to conclude that you don’t know many atheists!
If you’d written that on a certain oceanography test I recall from my university days, it would get a nice F because every assertion in it is wrong (despite containing a few bits of truth).
Funny that I can’t find that formation name in anything but YEC publications – but, wait! It’s name comes from a YEC professor who got a fake master’s degree and then his PhD from university dedicated to pseudoscience, so he named this layer of rock after himself and it probably isn’t an actual name at all.
Quite easily, actually. The “2-meter layer of rock” holds a big clue.
edit: I decided another hint is in order. I’ve hiked hundreds of miles on beaches, and noticed that when conditions are right sea shells from dead creatures line up pointing the same way when left behind as the tide is going out. A good mathematician could certainly come up with an equation or two that would describe those conditions nicely.
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Okay, that’s either a lie or the result of ignorance: Please note that the statement is in the present tense and that the statement is that the rising has “an easily measurable rate” – the fact is that the rise is being measured in present time; it has nothing to do with any assumptions.
I won’t comment on anything further because it’s the usual mix of either misrepresentation or ignorance that dominates YEC claims, besides which my primary concern with YECism is that it is a form of idolatry with no respect for the scriptures or the God who inspired them.
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Why hasn’t the original poster weighed in?
It hasn’t been an entire week yet. Maybe the OP is someone who can only spend time here once a week, or maybe is watching and assessing the replies, or something else.
(FWIW, he posted elsewhere here 18 hrs ago. ; - )