Glenn Morton's Evidence Examined

But it is not absurd. There is no minimum rate of phenotypic change in evolutionary theory, nor have you considered the other factors. Especially when we consider that there are other evolutionary changes going on in the ammonites. The suture patterns are chose because they are distinctive (and sometimes quite elaborate) and because they are not going to be the basis for any mechanical sorting - not because they are dramatic examples of evolutionary change.And in the other hand, on the face of it, your idea that the order is due to location certainly appears to be absurd. And the fact that you have no idea of how location could produce the sorting we see hardly makes it any less absurd.This is why making up excuses without regard for the truth is a losing strategy. You don't even know if your position really makes sense and trying to bluster your way through doesn't help either.

What happens to the rocks after they are deposited is irrelevant to the point I'm making about their original flatness. But the vast preponderance of the strata are STILL FLAT.

Your point was to argue that we did not see a normal landscape - just a flat surface, as you have argued before. The paleovalleys are rather obvious evidence to the contrary. (Consider also the sediment deposited in them, after they formed)

I, for one, have no idea what point you're trying to make about the original flatness. How does that support YE over OE?

With regard to fossil sorting, you said: So, if this is the case, could you please give us the mammal location on earth at the time of the trilobites?

No one is saying that the changes are not rapid, only that they took place a long time ago.

Well, I would assume they weren't occupying the same piece of real estate. You want more than that?But if they show up together in the same layer that doesn't prove they shared an original location if that's what you are implying; they just got put together during the Flood for some reason.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, Jon is serious. Glenn is a politically conservative libertarian-leaning Texan who works in the oil industry. He believes that much of climate science is politically driven rather than data driven, and that politically-motivated science is being forced on the public. He is somewhat tired of talking about the OEC-YEC issue, and is more interested nowadays in attacking the scientific establishment, science funding, peer review, etc.Glenn sees similarities between the ways that climate skeptics are attacked and the ways that YECs are attacked. Even though he is fully convinced that YEC is wrong, his libertarian leanings predominate here, and he wants parents to be allowed to teach their children what they wish (including wrong science). This is largely why he pulled down his website. He saw his work being used to attack such freedoms and to attack Christianity in general.[i don't have references, but Glenn is a personal friend of mine.]

Yeah I got it already. The idea is absurd that the changes would occur rapidly and then they'd not change at all for millions of years. Change is one of the most predictable things in biology it seems to me. Every single generation of offspring differs from its parents by some degree, even when it's very slow. Over not a LOT of time you should start to see the changes even in that case. Consider genetic drift. And let a bunch of them become reproductively isolated and you should get recognizable changes in very short order.

Nonsense.What happens after the sediments are deposited is important because that is when we see them in the rock record ... long after deposition.I have no problem with 'flatness', except that it results in the question:'What is 'flat'?And at what scale?In virtually all cases, true 'flatness' is impossible, at least in the regional sense. We know this because formations are not everywhere equal in thickness; that is, their upper and lower contacts must diverge.

Why would they change? So, tell us how fast that is. How long does it take to make a phenotypic change in a species and how is that preserved in the fossil record?

Of course.That would be evidence supporting your position. Well, then show us where mammals and trilobites are found together.In either case, there should be a Cambrian mammal location somewhere in the world if you are correct.

I don't think there is anything remarkable about sediments being 'flat'. In most cases, they were deposited in a gravitational field and being soft, could not support any other shape.If there are no disturbing factors, sure, the sediments have flat contacts and beds.What that has to do with anything else, who knows?

So, you admit that it's simply personal incredulity for you?

Nonsense yourself. What I said is true. What you see in the rock record is either flatness or tectonic deformation. It's tectonic deformation I'm saying is irrelevant because it changes the basic flatness of the rock when it was deposited and the point I'm making is about the flatnes. The point, starting back in Message 134 is about the featureless barren flatness of the original deposition, which ought to show that any tracks or other impressions found on it occurred on a vast mud flat and not in the sort of environment or landscape that OE geo theory imputes to the history of the rocks. EVERY rock where such surface impressions are found had to have been such a vast damp sedimentary surface and not a livable habitat. That calls the whole theory of former landscapes, environments and time periods into question. Supposedly it shows the wrongness of the Flood interpretation but actually it shows much more the wrongness of the OE interpretation. Long tides would provide time gaps for such impressions to have occurred during the Flood. Also as I explained somewhere earlier have somewhat dried out the mud so that the impressions would remain. I don't know why this is a problem at all. How could I ever mean "true" or perfect flatness? I know we're dealing with rocks and YECs impute thousands of years to them so how could I mean any kind of perfect flatness?I also know that thickness must vary along the extent of any layered rock. It was deposited, according to YE creationism, in the Flood after all, and there couldn't have been perfect evenness of sedimentary deposition. But Steno's original horizontality rules in the strata and I'm sure he too could see the variations he nevertheless had no problem calling horizontal. Why is this a question? The flatness is obviously relative, but it is obvious, it is visible, it's apparent in photo after photo of strata that have been posted here, as well as cross sections and other illustrations. The deviations from flatness are minuscule.The point I was trying to make is not affected by such minuscule variations in the flatness. We're still talking about a vast mud plain in which the tracks and the ripples and the raindrops and the burrows are to be found, NOT a livable habitat. It's a ROCK. It was a vast mud flat at one point. It was NEVER a "landscape."Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.