YEC and Yosemite

[T_aquaticus]

Panda’s Thumb has a great article on why Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is incapable of explaining geologic features created by glaciation. One such example is Yosemite, a valley carved out of solid granite by glaciers multiple kilometers thick over many ice ages and many millennia.

The problems for YEC are legion. Since these glaciers cut through what is considered flood deposits by most YEC’s, these ice ages had to happen after the flood, just 4500 years ago or so. They are going to have to explain how you get continent spanning glaciers kilometers thick. They are going to have to explain how solid, unfractured granite can be carved out in such short time periods. This was enough ice to lower ocean levels by 130 m, so it’s no small task.

This article focuses on a subject that has received not much in the way of consideration, the young earth creationist (YEC) view of the Ice Age that they propose followed the super flood. In this examination I am going to put some emphasis on one of the biggest canyons in these United States. Not the often discussed Grand Canyon – the reasons why that colossal ditch was formed as a classic riverine V-shaped valley over millions of years in rocks up to 1.25 billion years old, rather than suddenly cut by a super flood in short order in post-flood deposits, has been well detailed.

The valley focused on here is Yosemite. Yosemite has received notably little attention in either the anti- or pro- creationist literature. That is both despite, and precisely because, the California canyon poses overwhelming problems that YEC theory lacks practical means of explaining. This article also focuses on the apologetics of the top two creationist organizations, the Institute for Creation Research and, especially, Answers in Genesis headed by the most popular living YEC, Ken Ham.
The Big Chill: How Yosemite Valley and Other Glacial Examples Disprove the Way-Too-Short Biblical Creationist Ice Age

[SkovandOfMitaze (Mi)]

Earth use to be surrounded by rings of ice like
Saturn. After the flood, all the water that evaporated made the atmospheric humidity higher which warmed the rings enough giant chunks of ice feel to earth and slid around creating stuff like what you’re asking.

I was once told something like that about something. Obviously I don’t believe it because it’s stupid. But i imagine the argument is something like that. I once heard also ice rings for the flood water, and even ice rings acting like magnifying lenses destroying stuff.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

“The climate changed really fast”. No, not a good argument, besides being dishonest about the clear evidence that multiple intervals of glaciation and retreat have occurred in the Pleistocene and many other times at various points earlier in the geological record. More fundamentally, there is no effort to actually model the effects of the YEC idea and test that against the physical evidence.

[T_aquaticus]

@SkovandOfMitaze

Earth use to be surrounded by rings of ice like
Saturn. After the flood, all the water that evaporated made the atmospheric humidity higher which warmed the rings enough giant chunks of ice feel to earth and slid around creating stuff like what you’re asking.

YEC’s once proposed a vapor canopy that they claimed held all the water necessary to flood the globe. Once people pointed out that such a canopy would make the Earth more inhospitable than most autoclaves they changed their tune.