YEC and Yosemite

Let’s see . . . I met Morris in 1976 or so, and by then his Genesis flood book had been in print for a decade and a half, which makes five decades till now, and his work rested on older material from at least twenty years earlier, some of it reaching back to the end of WWII or before, so that makes eight decades.
So yeah, he should think so, and so do I.

Then they should have used science, not YEC.

YEC has no problem with ignoring data, misrepresenting data, and flat-out lying – because YEC is not a biblical worldview. I’ve pointed out (with references; you can go back and look) at least a half-dozen blatant lies in YEC material (all but one AiG as I recall) and others have pointed out more than twice that many. A favorite is represented nicely by the Mt. St. Helens association with the Grand Canyon – the use of false equivalency, a technique, BTW, that was a favorite of communist/Soviet propaganda.

No, it doesn’t. Normal human language doesn’t work that way, nor does literature. All that can be established from His references is that He knew the audience was familiar with the stories.

I will point out again that you’re the only one here calling the Ark event an allegory. It’s pretty sad that you keep repeating this after it has been pointed out probably a dozen times now that you’re the only one saying it – which demonstrates that either you enjoy employing strawman arguments or that you’re not really paying attention.

In my university volcanology course we did field trips to the Oregon Coast Range, Mazama eruption deposits, the Three Sisters volcanic complex, Mt. Shasta, and St. Helens, examining multiple sites for each, including road/excavation cuts in each case. On the St. Helens trip (where a couple of the guys wore “pirate” gear “because we’re gonna see the la-harrrrrzs, matey”) we looked at road cuts through recent and old lahar material, through pyroclastic strata, and more (as we did at the others where such could be found) and it was striking how different the St. Helens lahar deposits were due to their thickness. But that very thickness pointed to why they can’t be compared to the Grand Canyon: it was plain to see that there is nothing in the Grand Canyon (visited during Spring break as a project) that really matches those lahar deposits since the GC has volcanic strata intermingled with different types of sedimentary strata – indeed layers of all three types, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary (as opposed to ignominious, metaphoric, and sedentary) all occur. Something YECists ignore is that crystals in the different types of layers behave differently, and those differences establish beyond doubt that the formations in the GC date back at least a few million years (crystal formation can give an age to a layer; add the layers up and the result is no less than several million years); then in turn the time needed to erode each type can be calculated in succession* and that time added on, which adds at a minimum tens of millions of years.

As a conservative Baptist pastor on the project trip visiting the GC observed, “God is a meticulous and extremely patient artist!” with an added comment that the next time you think you are a patient person, compare that to God watching His Grand Canyon develop over millions of years.


. * the age of the GC cannot be calculated in linear fashion because the different rock types were eroded at different rates; for a true age computer modelling is needed

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Mt. St. Helens herself “presents yet another unanswerable conundrum for YEC” – it’s only by ignoring 98% of the data the mountain provides that anything is useful to them.

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Up until recently? Scientific creationism goes back to George McCready Price in the early 1900’s.

The goal of science is to understand how nature works. That’s it.

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That explains a lot. You don’t seem to understand the difference between fiction and science.

You have yet to supply this evidence. You have pointed to lahars cutting through loose ash beds as if that can explain the erosion of unfractured, hard granite. That fails instantly.

Now you cite a fictional movie with no basis in science. Do we need to go over the problems with that claim?

So what is the evidence supporting YEC as it relates to Yosemite?

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And tread carefully – I spent half a day there once.

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It probably is worth posting a pic. Here is the one from the Panda’s Thumb article:

The left side of the photo is important here, which I am assuming is El Capitan. That’s 3,000 feet of eroded unfractured granite, one of the hardest rocks there is (not loose ash beds). One side of this mountain was eroded away, and not only eroded but polished. Even YEC organizations, like Answers in Genesis and ICR, agree with the conclusion that the Yosemite valley was carved out by glaciers.

Answers in Genesis:

Institute for Creation Research:

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IIRC most of my half day was spent hiking a trail that switchbacked the way up the tree-covered slope on the left. I didn’t quite reach the rocky area above the trees before I realized I needed to get back on the road if I was to make a later connection.

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The time it took to carve out Yosemite granite by glaciers cannot be fit into YEC timelines, but the geological formation itself is of course much older. Unlike volcanic eruptions such as Mt. St. Helens, granite forms from the slow cooling of confined magma underground. While this takes a long time, repeated cross cutting intrusions of magma indicate a very extended epochal history.

From Plutonism in three dimensions: Field and geochemical relations on the southeast face of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California

The map reveals a complex intrusive history involving eight distinct and overlapping intrusive episodes.
…Geologic map of the southeast face of El Capitan. … Age relations were determined from crosscutting relations and confirmed with geochronology.
…New U-Pb zircon geochronologic data (laser ablation and isotope dilution) demonstrate assembly of the El Capitan Granite and diorites of the Rockslides and North America between ca. 106 and 103 Ma.

Also, National Park Service site on Yosemite Granite

Granite is an intrusive igneous rock, which means it crystallized from molten rock, called magma, miles underground. At these depths, magma is insulated by the rocks around it and cools very slowly, growing large interlocking crystals.

and from the US Geological Survey, Geology of Yosemite National Park

This process of multiple pulses of magma is responsible for the many different types of granite seen in Yosemite today with most of the granitic rock forming between 105-85 million years ago. Once subduction ended, the volcanoes and metamorphic rocks were eroded away between 85-15 million years ago, revealing the granitic rock beneath.

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