Glenn Morton's Evidence Examined

This topic is running so many messages so fast that it's rather beyond moderation efforts.One thing I was not pleased to see, was Jar's bringing cosmological considerations into this topic. I do think the topic was intended to be Earth bound and geology oriented. It would be nice if the topic was not shotgunned by just anything one can come up with that is deemed outside of a young age creationist time frame.Cosmology and Dates and Dating have there own forums. Maybe we can try to more keep things cosmology and dates and dating to be in those forums?Any replies to this moderation message should go to General Discussion Of Moderation Procedures (aka 'The Whine List'). Not doing such might make the moose angry.Adminnemooseus

Glenn had lots of other evidence on his old website that he found persuasive as well, such as fossilized burrows. Some of these articles must still be around, or findable through the way back machine.I recall that while still a YEC, Glenn did a simple calculation disproving the "canopy theory" and presented this to his fellow YECs. (The "canopy theory" is the old YEC idea that enough water to cover the whole globe was suspended in a "vapor canopy" above the earth, which also supposedly had the benefit of shielding cosmic radiation and allowing much longer lifespans before the Flood. Glenn explained that if thousands of feet of water are above the earth in a vapor canopy, this would transfer pressure to the atmosphere and to the earth, and we would feel the same pressure as if we were thousands of feet underwater. We would not survive this pressure.)

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All I said was that location seems the likely explanation but that I wasn't going to argue it.

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And your reasons for thinking it "likely" exclude any thought of how it might possibly be true. That is a little way short of rational consideration, especially for something that is pretty obviously unlikely.

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Your comments about the ammonites are what is ignorant and irrational.

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Anyone who reads my post can see otherwise. I consider what is necessary to actually see what we need to see in the fossil record. You don't. And in response you have nothing of substance.

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Well, coyote, thanks for the personal note, but I don't see that I've failed to produce evidence or have denied evidence either.

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It is rather unfortunate that you can't see what you are doing.

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However, as usually happens at this point in a thread where everybody seems to me to be committed to utter irrational trashing of everything I say for no good reason whatever, I have a great desire to leave EvC and never come back. Too bad that desire never lasts.

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Refuting obviously bad arguments - and "trashing" them by showing real flaws is not irrational. And that IS what is happening. For instance I have pointed out obvious errors in your ammonite argument - Message 201 especially but also Message 151 - which have not been answered in any way. Yet you still insist that the argument - obviously indefensible as it is - is "grade A".If you want irrational trashing you can consider your response in Message 275That's it. Nothing more.

I would call that a dismissal.Typically, that would be the end of a conversation.

I've been using different pages at the Old Earth Ministries site for Morton's arguments, such as this page .I'm sure i won't try to take on most of them, but the articles on the ammonites and the tracks in the rocks inspired my arguments here so far.But I would say, concerning the canopy theory, which I haven't studied and don't argue one way or the other, that I don't trust any opinion that depends on calculations about basic physics in the distant past, which couldn't possibly be checked -- and not so much because the calculations themselves can't be trusted, though they surely can't, but because there are too many unknown variables that have to be overlooked from our vantage point today. How much heat some phenomenon would supposedly have generated, how much pressure, how much time something would take etc etc etc. There's no way we could ever have enough knowledge to calculate such things for the distant past, and I'm amazed that so many act as if it's possible. I can't say his calculations were wrong, but I don't know how anyone could say they were right either.As for the seismically pictured underground canyons, edge is right, I don't see any reason to suppose they ever were really canyons on the surface of the earth. So thinking in terms of how the Flood could have been the cause of it I suppose enormous quantities of water pouring through spaces in and between the strata as the water receded, which is how I suppose the Grand Canyon was cut too. I certainly don't think the strata were "hard" yet though, even if probably fairly compacted, but even then tectonic movement would break things up, create spaces, perhaps develop big karsts in limestone and so on as water ran through cracks. Water DOES run underground, even now, why not a huge amount of water at the end of the Flood? And if the canyon eventually got filled up with sediment as I recall is part of the explanation of that image, that makes sense too with strata collapsing above it and far less of an exit out the other end of it than would be expected for the Grand Canyon. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

How I wish.

Something about this is on that page I think but I felt like giving a quick comment now.First, how does a burrow get fossilized?Second, this is just another case like the tracks and the raindrops, a preserved impression of some living thing in that huge flat expanse of sediment that ended up as the rock in the stratigraphic column. Since that is the "environment" for all these impressions, they are not evidence of creatures living in their habitat in their time period, they are evidence of creatures stranded by the Flood on a great sediment plain before the next sediment-laden wave washed over them. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Glenn briefly mentions cicada burrows at this page from Old Earth Ministries, and briefly mentions burrows again here. I'll see if I can find more.The fossilization isn't the notable thing; fossilization merely allows them to be preserved. The notable thing is that they are burrows; they reveal the life of creatures in the past. These creatures made burrows in soft soil, not rock. This took months, not seconds. But if the Flood were depositing the thousands of feet of sediment and quickly compressing it to rock at the rate that YECs claim, there is simply not enough time for this to occur.With this and many other evidences for an old earth, the notable thing is not simply evidence for age, but also evidence for history. We see evidence of how things happened; evidence for a sequence of events in the past. And we know that this sequence required time to occur.Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.

Lithified burrow casts. We get those a lot. In real life all over the world.So easy. The present is the key to the past. Basic geology.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Nope. Faults form relatively straight lines. Just like faults do. That would not cause meandering systems, at all.

Correct. Old fumble fingers create appalin spallin.And it is also yet another issue still not addressed.

I see that once again the topic has been changed without going through the standard procedures here at EvC.That is a normal tactic of Creationists, the reason they created the Avoidance Schools, Colleges, Accreditation organizations, web browsers and media networks.If you cannot answer issues then the solution is to simply ignore them and make it impossible to even discuss them.No biggie. The issues still exist.

I see this thread as full of incomplete and partial arguments, so I am going to begin demanding arguments backed by evidence and accompanied by comprehensible explanations that stand by themselves and only assume familiarity with information common to the creation/evolution debate and awareness of information already in the thread. Please provide links to earlier messages that contain information necessary to your argument. This is especially important as the thread grows longer.I took a light-handed moderation approach in the The Geological Timescale is Fiction whose only reality is stacks of rock thread and felt ignored, so I'll be taking a more assertive approach in this thread.I have these comments and requests:

• The following will no longer be tolerated in this thread: picking fights with other participants; finding excuses to ignore participants; casting a host of accusations at everyone; demanding that others find evidence and make arguments for you; claiming outrage and abandoning threads; claiming fatigue and promising to respond in the future but never responding; accusing people of not making sense; asserting that ignorance has no impact on the validity of arguments; making up reasons to ignore arguments, such as that they're "too technical" or the person making them is too annoying, etc.; asserting that an answer might be out there somewhere or will be found one day; anything else that hinders productive discussion.
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• Because it tends to bring discussion to a halt, henceforth every expression along the lines of "I need a break" or "I have a great desire to leave" and so forth will be followed by a one day suspension in order to make sure that the needed break happens.
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• Concerning discussion of how livable habitats can rise in elevation while remaining livable, Faith can no longer argue against this in this thread. That discussion was taking place over in the The Geological Timescale is Fiction whose only reality is stacks of rock thread, but Faith appears to have abandoned it. Faith can resume that discussion by responding to Stile's Message 1144, and when that discussion has been completed then she can return to that argument in this thread while *keeping in mind* the arguments from the other thread.
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• Concerning ammonites, the Pod Mrcaru lizards, cattle breeds, and dogs, Faith cannot pretend ignorance of what evolution considers the primary driver of change over time, namely changing environmental pressures. She doesn't have to accept it, but she can't ignore it. She must either offer counterarguments or abandon this line of argument.
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• Concerning what is the true topic of this thread, Message 1 makes it clear that it is the evidence that convinced Glenn Morton to abandon YEC. I'm changing the title of the thread to reflect this - it will become Glenn Morton's Evidence Examined.
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• With this clarification of topic, Jar's arguments from Message 266 should be dropped from the thread, except for any that might be related to Glenn Morton's evidence.
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• Please leave the Bible and religion out of the discussion. The science threads here take seriously creation science's claim to be real science. I do not interpret messages saying that a position is based upon the Bible or religion as attempts to introduce them into discussion, but as statements concerning the absence of any attempt to offer scientific support.

Please, no replies to this message.

One perennial creationist claim is that the speed of light is slowing down (AKA "c-decay"), which would have the effect of changing the rates of radioactive decay, such that 6000-year-old rock would be false dated to be millions or billions of years.Of course, that claim is utterly false. Some lines of evidence disproving it are astronomical. I couldn't find Jar's NGC 6264 on Wikipedia, but Glenn R. Morton (would that make this on-topic?) discussed Supernova 1987A in his article, Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look:

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Supernova 1987A proves the speed of light has been constant for 170,000 years.

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If the speed of light has changed, then

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1. the rates of radioactive decay will also have changed.

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2. the energy of radiation emitted by an atom will change.

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In 1987 a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud exploded. Or rather, the light from the explosion reached earth. Nine months later astronomers discovered a ring of gas with a diameter of 1.37 light years around the former star. They also discovered the characteristic gamma ray emission of Co-57 and Co-56. These gamma rays had the same energy that we observe in an earth laboratory. This means that the speed of light was the same as it is today when the star exploded. Theoretical models of a supernova said that the decay of radioactive Co-56 and Co-57 would power the light given off by the supernova gases. The light curve has decayed at precisely the half-life as we measure in our labs for Co-56 and Co-57. This further confirms that the speed of light was the same as today when the star exploded. The time it took the light to travel from the supernova to the ring allows us to measure the size of the gas ring shown above. Knowing this and the angular size of the ring as seen in a telescope gives us a distance of 170,000 light years to the star. Thus, since the distance to the supernova can be trigonometrically determined, the speed of light has been constant for the past 170,000 years.

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Unless God created a grand illusion, then the universe is at least 170,000 years old.

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On that same page, Glenn R. Morton also discussed:

• Are Radioactive Dates Wrong? Woodmorappe quotemined through the scientific literature for bad dates. Morton points out that not only do they still track the right date, but a bad date is more likely to be too young instead of too old. Plus the dates aren't off enough to support a 6000-year-old-earth.
• Varves. Creationist alternative explanations for varves do not match the varves we actually find.
• Pollen in the varves.
• Carbon 14 and Varves.
• Buried River Channel.
• THE SHRINKING SUN. Includes good graph of a wide range of measurements made, such that a creationist arguing for the "shrinking sun" would have to cherry-pick most of them out of existence. If anything, the sun is slowly increasing in size.
• Supernova 1987A proves the speed of light has been constant for 170,000 years.
• 10 years of Root Growth from 7,000 feet down. So that buried layer not only had life growing on it in the past, but they had been living there for at least 10 years.