I think what you are referring to is a Thrust Fault where older rocks are fractured and pushed onto younger rocks. This is often misrepresented by only mentioning the two strata in contact and making the claim that the supposed older rock is above the younger rock. What they fail to mention is that the layers in each block are in the proper order, it is just that older set is on top of the younger. The Lewis Overthrust is one of the more famous of these.
Yes, the question is as you expected and the Lewis Overthrust is an example of my question.
I'm trying to figure out the sort of oddity this is so I don't get myself into trouble talking about how consistent the layers actually are.
I have to be able to work good science into the program without getting that knee jerk anti-OE reaction and I think what might help that is to stick with relative ages for a time. If I can get them to understand the consistency of the fossil record, that's as good start.
I apologize in advance if someone has already linked me to something relevant, but I've search the thread/forum and come up empty so I return to the well of knowledge.
I'm spending a lot of time currently learning about fossil sorting and while I find many good descriptions of the fauna side of things, I haven't found a good source on the flora side.
It seems to me that if plant fossils are as well sorted as the animals are (and I'm highly confident I'll learn that to be true), that this evidence would be an even simpler nail in the WW Naohic flood than the animal side.
After all: 1: plants can't run. 2: in a WW flood plants would either: __a: be buried in situ in one vast original layer (in the unlikely even they could remain rooted) __or __b: float on the surface in mats, becoming entangled until water logged (or not)
#1 blows any 'mobility/differential excape' argument. 2b would result in massive fossil record in one (original) layer while #2a creates an extremely chaotic 'hydrodynamic sorting' situation blowing that argument. All that would remain would be the 'ecological zoning' argument and I suspect that has been readily dealt with.
Please remember that what I write above it based on very little knowledge so I'm not proposing, just thinking out loud.
Can anyone recommend any good links related to the plant side of fossil sorting?
A young-Earther was going to publish an article about how there was no sign of overthrust at the interface. A couple of old-Earthers (still creationists) realized that he was looking a few hundred yards too low, and actually took him up the mountain and showed him the rocks. But the article had been typeset, and YECs are not notoriously scrupulous ....
Yes, that was Lammerts who was a near neighbor of mine for many years in California.
Through his founding, funding and management of CRS and editorial power over the CRSQ, he was responsible for more bad science in his life than most will ever know. In just one facet of this bad science mess, Lammerts was the primary enabler of Clifford Burdick in spite of his regular knowledge of Burdick's 'loose with the truth' escapades.
Thanks for that excellent link. One question: I can't tell from that site if those fossils are unique to the era they ascribe them to - in other words, are each of those plant species ONLY found in that particular era? If so, your link was the exact information I needed.
You may not have that answer and I understand that. For me to explicitly state that there is no jumbling of these fossils, I need to make sure I've picked the right set to use.
TTBOMK, yes, those plants are examples of ones found during a particular period. That does not mean that there are not similar plants found earlier or later, as always the devil is in the details. Like animals, plants evolved over time.
Thanks, and yes I get that details are important in that distinction.
I think the Gish Gallup is a genetically encoded response for most YECs (to Faith's credit, she actually is able to stick to one topic at a time so respect to her for that).
Yesterday I spent about an hour or so with one of my older (50s) friends from the cult days. Pretty much his entire family is still living the indoctrination and his Dad is a local SDA minister to this day. 100% due to my efforts over the last year or so, his sister (also in 50s) announced to her family of origin a few days ago (including Minister Dad) that she wasn't so sure about YEC anymore and that has shocked the family. Brother is not the type to shy back but to engage so we did. They are of course worried for her salvation (and her kids salvation since they know the kids are also hanging around and learning from me).
After trying the Robert Gentry angle on me (I was well prepared for that), he handed me a paper called "Dissecting Darwinism" by Joseph A. Kuhn. I told him I would look at it and get back to him. And so I've read it and researched it extensively (8-10 hours worth). It's all a gallup of DI PRATT - along with some really entertaining statements about "invertebrate species of plants..." found in the "carefully preserved fossil fields in Japan, Malaysia, and Asia". Priceless comedy.
Now this brother is a perfectly bright guy, but has no science education whatsoever (he was schooled the same way I was growing up). I'm tempted to simply ask him this when I return the paper ... "What arguments in the paper were compelling to you?" I pretty sure he'll mumble something about 'it's from a guy who knows things and says evolution is impossible'. I have zero confidence that he can point to anything he considers scientific in the paper that convinced him of anything - he just doesn't know science well enough to do that.
I know this guy and he will gallup me to death and I'll waste a TON of time and NONE of my responses will mean a thing to him because none of what he'll throw at me means a thing to him (meaning he doesn't even understand what he's throwing). I want to be responsive, but still be able to guide the conversation enough to stay on track.
Even though I have no hope whatsoever with him (never ever), I think I'm going to use him as another one of my curriculum guinea pigs and see how it goes. I'm going to tell him I'll engage with any topic he wishes as long as he can demonstrate to me that he understands the topic he wants to engage on. If he wants to engage on irreducible complexity, he needs to demonstrate that he can understand the positions and the arguments (he doesn't and won't). Otherwise and if he still wants to engage, he'll have to engage on the topics that I choose until he CAN understand scientific arguments.
They say learning is like filling up a vessel -- in this case if I can't get him to take the lid off, trying to fill it up will just make a mess all over the table and piss everyone off.
What you will often find is that YEC's have no recourse but to admit that their position is completely dogmatic and really doesn't consider the evidence.
Yes, that was my conclusion from yesterday -- he doesn't have a clue regarding what he's galloping on about, he just knows it agrees with his (unconscious) dogma so he gallops on at full speed.
But that last possibility, "that his knowledge of the claims is only sound-bite deep", is far too common. They get fed all these claims, but they don't understand them. They'll read books and web pages and go to classes all for the purpose of "gathering ammo" to use in their street proselytizing, but without understand any of it. They can usually get away with it because their intended victims are as ignorant as they, but when they encounter someone knowledgeable then that can devastate them, as Answers in Genesis has warned creationists.
He's this one here ^^^.
I strongly suspect that he will decide pretty quickly that he doesn't want to engage on the topic. He's sort of been the family 'big dog' on the block when it comes to how thing work (from science to scripture interpretation) and he's not used to someone having answers that leave him with no out.
As I read more about this, I find it mind-boggling the amount of research that is done on land, sea, and ice cores.
Yeah, my mind has been blown as well over the last year or so of research. Just studying Dr Adequate's awesome mini geology book and realizing that it must be like a Cliff Notes version of Cliff Notes themselves - there must be entire libraries of material that he reduced down to that one informative piece. They just don't realize how much knowledge is out there.
To get through to these folk, we have to figure out how to awaken them to the fact that unlike the GRI (60 years in existence and zero contributions to science), scientists have been crawling all over this planet spending BILLIONS on research and actually learning how things work.
The consilience/convergence of evidence -- somehow I have to figure out how that principle can be unleashed in their minds.
That led him to the large room that was filled with such journals, which he started to read. Including detailed articles on fossils that "creation science" had taught him did not exist and could not exist
YES!!
They have such a hard time breaking free of the notion that science is just like religion where someone studies as single book (or doesn't) and then makes proclamations.
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