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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Motley Flood Thread (formerly Historical Science Mystification of Public) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
June 1 about 3 pm changing the title from
The Methods of Historical Science to mystify the public: Assertion, no evidence because there's no way that describes it at post 243 -======================================Kind of as a reaction to jar's thread demanding that believers in the worldwide Flood be able to explain every single geological event that ever happened on the planet or else trash the whole Flood idea, I would like to talk about what evidence geologists have for their Geological Time Scale landscapes which are based on a stack of rocks with dead things in them that are best explained by the Flood. Oh I know they have evidence, I just want to see it spelled out because the usual presentation to the clueless public makes bald assertions about things they couldn't possibly know about, apparently based on some bits and pieces of this and that found in a flat sedimentary rock or assemblage of such rocks found in a stack of flat rocks, each supposedly pertaining to a landscape in a particular time period, a wonderful gift of the gods of science I assume to help us understand the history of the Earth. They can only get away with this bald assertion of "fact" because in the historical sciences there is no way to confirm or disprove anything they say. There are plenty of examples of this kind of "science" but here's a typical one from National Geographic:
JURASSIC PERIOD During this period, Earth's climate changed from hot and dry to humid and subtropical. So here is one of those typical assertions in the Name of Science written as if someone had actually been there and experienced this supposed climate change, without one mention of what evidence led to this obviously perfect knowledge of the climate on earth 150 to 200 million years ago. So I'm asking what's the evidence this is based on? And since we're supposedly having a climate change right now that's occurring over a matter of decades, or make it centuries to be on the conservative side, how does it make any sense to talk about a change over a time span of fifty million years? In fact there are many things that occur much more rapidly in our present time than is imputed to similar events in the supposedly very distant past. But maybe that will come up later in the thread if the topic goes anywhere at all. Next we have an imaginative illustration of one of those landscapes I've so often referred to, this one of course illustrating the "Jurassic Period," (and since there seems to have been some objection to my use of the term "landscape" allow me to point out that National Geographic uses that term here just as I do).
[caption] JURASSIC LANDSCAPE The Jurassic period (199.6 million to 145.5 million years ago) was characterized by a warm, wet climate that gave rise to lush vegetation and abundant life. Many new dinosaurs emergedin great numbers. Among them were stegosaurs, brachiosaurs, allosaurs, and many others. So this is another example of a flat assertion of what purports to be fact. Nothing tentative here, no consideration of different possible interpretations, just "this is the way it was" and that's it. We don't even have that kind of certainty about what happened a hundred years ago let alone millions. So at every such assertion I'm going to want to know HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS? WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE? Perhaps the above is enough for now, but I'll quote the rest of the article and the same questions can be raised about it in their turn.
A SHIFTING CLIMATE AND DEVELOPING OCEANS At the start of the period, the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea continued and accelerated. Laurasia, the northern half, broke up into North America and Eurasia. Gondwana, the southern half, began to break up by the mid-Jurassic. The eastern portionAntarctica, Madagascar, India, and Australiasplit from the western half, Africa and South America. New oceans flooded the spaces in between. Mountains rose on the seafloor, pushing sea levels higher and onto the continents. All this water gave the previously hot and dry climate a humid and drippy subtropical feel. Dry deserts slowly took on a greener hue. Palm tree-like cycads were abundant, as were conifers such as araucaria and pines. Ginkgoes carpeted the mid- to high northern latitudes, and podocarps, a type of conifer, were particularly successful south of the Equator. Tree ferns were also present. The oceans, especially the newly formed shallow interior seas, teemed with diverse and abundant life. At the top of the food chain were the long-necked and paddle-finned plesiosaurs, giant marine crocodiles, sharks, and rays. Fishlike ichthyosaurs, squidlike cephalopods, and coil-shelled ammonites were abundant. Coral reefs grew in the warm waters, and sponges, snails, and mollusks flourished. Microscopic, free-floating plankton proliferated and may have turned parts of the ocean red. HUGE DINOSAURSOn land, dinosaurs were making their mark in a big wayliterally. The plant-eating sauropod Brachiosaurus stood up to 52 feet (16 meters) tall, stretched some 85 feet (26 meters) long, and weighed more than 80 tons. Diplodocus, another sauropod, was 90 feet (27 meters) long. These dinosaurs' sheer size may have deterred attack from Allosaurus, a bulky, meat-eating dinosaur that walked on two powerful legs. But Allosaurus and other fleet-footed carnivores, such as the coelurosaurs, must have had occasional success. Other prey included the heavily armored stegosaurs. The earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx, took to the skies in the late Jurassic, most likely evolved from an early coelurosaurian dinosaur. Archaeopteryx had to compete for airspace with pterosaurs, flying reptiles that had been buzzing the skies since the late Triassic. Meanwhile, insects such as leafhoppers and beetles were abundant, and many of Earth's earliest mammals scurried around dinosaur feetignorant that their kind would come to dominate Earth once the dinosaurs were wiped out at the end of the Cretaceous. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Typo in topic title.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
...this is generally accepted science for scientifically literate people and the background does not need to be regurgitated, because it is understood. But others on the thread are saying the opposite, that my information is from a popular source where we shouldn't necessarily expect to find scientifically literate readers, so I'm directed to more scholarly sources where the background information is available. But my objection is that the public is being presented with a flat out assertion on the level of known fact without even a smidgen of tentativity, factual knowledge that nobody could possibly have about a time millions of years ago. And that shouldn't be the case with scientifically literate readers either if science is what it is claimed to be. The NG writeup is TYPICAL, that's my point. There are LOTS AND LOTS of examples of this flat out assertive way of presenting both Old Earth Geology and the Theory of Evolution, which has been driving me crazy since before I became a Christian or knew anything about creationism. I hope to get to providing some examples of this. I don't buy the explanation that you can't treat the public with the respect of giving some explanation instead of acting like you know it all and they just have to submit. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Faith should abandon the popular literature for information on geology and evolution and go straight to the scientific literature. That's fine as long as it's not extremely technical. Perhaps you could recommend the best sources for someone like me. But I'm hoping we'll get more information about the evidence I asked for. Percy provided some so I'll go there next.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You make magazines sound like the Gestapo. Magazines print articles that appeal to their audience. That's as it should be and is not going to change. Maybe I'm misrepresenting my own concerns here. It is true that I've felt cheated and misled by many articles on evolution and OE geology over the years, articles for the public since I never had an inclination to get deeper into the science questions, until this forum has led me to find answers to some particular questions. Otherwise I've just wanted to get a general idea of what science says about these things, and in this thread I wanted to give examples of this habit of flat out asserting an interpretation as if it were a fact. There are tons of them. But the background of the thread is my objection to the whole idea that there are any time periods at all, that there is such a thing as a Jurassic Period, that there is such a thing as the Geological Time Scale. This makes the continual encounter with flatly asserted supposedly scientific knowledge about the ancient past doubly deceptive to my mind. Just statements I'm supposed to swallow without any reason given for it, and then later on when I've learned some creationist views I've acquired the extra cynicism of recognizing that the evidence for all of it is just a few things found in a rock. Over all these years at EvC (and by the way it's only been about ten overall since there were very long gaps in my presence here) I don't recall anyone pointing out this evidence I'm asking for either, the whole discussion is always just an assertion: Oh yes the Cambrian in the Grand Canyon was originally a beach with pebbles on it and such and such a climate and so on and so forth. I may be forgetting a very rare case or two where the evidence was seriously argued for the interpretation, but mostly I have the impression that the Tapeats is either being called a beach or the Cambrian is being described in terms of a transgression or something or other, reifications of interpretations without any discussion of the connection between the actual evidence in the rock and the interpretation, let alone any attempt to justify this methodology. So it's seemed to me I'm the only one here who mentions that the time periods are interpreted from a mere flat rock and its contents. That's why it's good to get ANY acknowledgment that it is indeed the stuff in the rock that is interpreted into the time period landscape. And I know you mentioned one source in an earlier post, a marvelously unique recognition in my experience, about how salts and coal in the rocks indicate the climate and swampy conditions ascribed to the Jurassic period. That is RARE it seems to me. I'll go to that post next. But I also still think it's all a crock. Nevertheless I think it should be made a lot more explicit exactly what stuff in what rock is interpreted as evidence of features in the supposed time period. The connection should be made explicit in every case. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
There are LOTS AND LOTS of examples of this flat out assertive way of presenting both Old Earth Geology and the Theory of Evolution, which has been driving me crazy since before I became a Christian or knew anything about creationism. This confirms what we've suspected for some time now - you never really accepted geology and evolution. Well, but I DID accept evolution -- I wasn't reading anything about geology, that was a brand new discovery for me when I started posting here -- I accepted evolution but did have questions, and trying to track down the reasoning for it was extremely frustrating. I thought it should be available to the average interested person, I wasn't planning to get any deeper than that. Beyond that you shouldn't have to "suspect" I don't accept geology or evolution, it should be obvious. I mean HISTORICAL geology, I know edge knows a lot about the physical world and I accept that and try to benefit from his knowledge, until he interprets it in Old Earth terms. Evolution I no longer accept at all and never will. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Respect should be automatic toward any human beings who read their magazines. Readers shouldn't have to qualify for respect.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Any large formation made of sedimentary layers was formed by the Flood. I don't know how the reef was formed. Half Done wasn't formed by the Flood but by the volcanism after it. That's all you're getting from me.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
1. I disagree that believers in the Flood need to try to deal with all the questions about how the Flood did this or that, and agree with mike the wiz on that subject. That's why I wasn't interested in that thread. I think it will eventually be conclusively shown beyond a doubt that the Flood did occur, even shown with a minimum of evidence, so that all the other questions become irrelevant for that purpose, questions to be answered in the new context that assumes the Flood occurred, rather than as evidence for its occurrence.
Since this is how I approach the subject, most of your questions are also irrelevant, but since you continue to nag me about them I will make some comments. From 1 to 4 I don't know.
5. In stratigraphic columns, why do fossils appear increasingly different from modern forms with increasing depth? This is an overgeneralization since there are some very odd creatures in the recent periods. The following is from Historical Geology which I believe was written by our own Dr. A: I've emphasized some of the oddities:
Quaternary Marked by the existence and spread of modern humans and the decline and disappearance of many groups of large fauna extant in the Neogene. NeogeneSkull of a Smilodon (commonly known as a "saber toothed tiger"). Contains recognizable horses, canids, beaver, deer, and other modern mammal groups. The Neogene also contains many large mammalian fauna no longer extant: glyptodonts, ground sloths, saber-toothed tigers, chalicotheres, etc. First hominids found in Africa. PaleogeneMarked by the diversification of mammals and birds. Among the mammals we see the first that can be easily identified with modern mammalian orders: primates, bats, whales, et cetera. Similarly representatives of many modern bird types are identifiable in the Paleogene, including pigeons, hawks, owls, ducks, etc. Now-extinct groups of birds found in the Paleogene include the giant carnivorous birds known colloquially as "terror birds". But there are a lot of "modern" creatures in the Paleogene with a few strange ones, but even more weird creatures above it in the more "recent" period. Mammals and birds, but not "modern" ones. Reading on in the list there are a few I probably have an answer to but now I'm tired from putting together the above reference so I will come back to it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You accepted evolution based on what? Based on the standard public school indoctrination along with their inadequate explanations, the way most people accept it.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I didn't say anything about respecting the reader's "opinion," but they should be given the basic respect for their intelligence of not expecting them to buy into a flat assertion without any justification as if they were children.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
OF COURSE NOT. I expect just enough information on the evidence so people know something about HOW THE CONCLUSION WAS ARRIVED AT (maybe even how stupid it is) and aren't kept in the dark and have enough motivation to look up more information at the public library or whatnot.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Faith, I believe I’ve mentioned Dan Wonderly to you before. He was a very gracious man who I had the pleasure of meeting years ago. Wonderly wrote a couple of books to try to explain some of the evidence for an old earth in layman’s language (God’s Time-Records in Ancient Sediments, and Neglect of Geologic Data). One of the evidences that he liked was coral reefs. His argument goes like this:1) coral reefs are formed by living organisms that grow on the submerged skeletons of their dead ancestors. 2) we have no reason to think that the basic laws of physics, chemistry, and biology would have been different in past ages, so we believe that basic coral metabolism would have been the same rate then as it is now. Environmental conditions would have been much more favorable to living things before the Flood to make a difference in rate of growth. That doesn't involve any differences in physics, chemistry or biology, just circumstantial things like temperature and food availability.
3) actual growth rates of coral reefs in the Pacific have been measured at up to 8mm per year, but 1-2 mm per year is more normal. Also, as a coral reef forms, there will be periods where the coral is above water and no coral will grow. 4) coral reefs in the Pacific (at the Eniwetok Atoll) exist more than 4600 feet thick. 5) at the maximum measured growth rate, this gives a lower bound (minimum) age of more than 175,000 years for the Eniwetok Atoll. More details here. Again it doesn't sound like he took into account the usual idea that the pre-Flood environment was much more favorable for living things than conditions after the Flood, which should have been true for corals as well as everything else. There are other time arguments anyway, tree rings and varves and so on so just add corals to the list. But I try to stick to arguments I think could prove the Flood, and arguments I understand well enough for that purpose, and try to avoid getting into other things. That means I have to prove the Flood with a few arguments if I can and all the rest would have to be dealt with later. In any case I don't want this thread to become another Flood thread. I want to get back to the Time Periods argument when I can.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I'm really trying to make a bigger point, edge: I think this way of handling the idea of time periods reflects the basic unscientific and irrational character of the whole theory. There is no reason why that NG article couldn't just point out with each description of supposed conditions or features in the Jurassic time period, how this or that interpretation was based on this or that element found in a particular rock in a particular location. You'd be adding a sentence to each point at most and being a lot more honest, speaking of being honest, than the usual pontifical declaration of dogma.
AND I think once it became clear what big pictures are based on what little evidence, and anyone not dedicated to Geology took the time to really look at that evidence in those rocks, people would fall over laughing. Maybe that's why the pontifical method is preferred. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
6. In stratigraphic columns, with increasing depth why are there first no mammals, then no dinosaurs, then no reptiles, then no amphibians, then no fish, then no multicellular life?
I don't know 7. Why do you think the Grand Staircase region's geology to be representative of all geology worldwide? Because I believe it can be shown the Flood caused it all. 8. If the Paleozoic layers were already present when the Supergroup layers tilted, why do the faults associated with the Supergroup extend down into the Vishnu Schist but not up into the Paleozoic layers? Because of the horizontal movement I believe occurred at the Great Unconformity. 9. If the Supergroup layers actually tilted, where did all the missing cubic miles of rock go? I believe it became the schist though some is what is called "erosion." 10. If the Grand Canyon had been cut suddenly then the canyon walls would be vertical. How do you explain the sloping walls of the Grand Canyon? I don't think it had to have been cut vertically. The receding Flood volume would have been greater at first, cutting a wider area, then narrower as it cut deeper into the area and its level dropped. 11. Why is the rate of slope retreat at the Grand Canyon consistent with an age of millions of years? I don't know. 12. What is your evidence that all tectonic activity worldwide occurred after deposition of sediments? Various cross sections from different locations. 13. Given the randomness of floods, why has no fossil ever been found in the wrong strata evolutionarily? I don't know, For some reason the layers are consistent. 14. How did the flood leave behind cross bedded sand dunes with animal tracks in the Coconino? why are you asking these questions I've answered many times before? Those aren't sand dunes, they are sand that the water cross bedded. Animal tracks occurred between waves and/or tides. 15. How did the flood transport and deposit sediments that include burrows, termite nests, worm holes, etc.? It didn't, it overran the nests and buried them, perhaps moved them some distance, burrows and holes were formed by the animals between waves or tides. 16. What is the definition of kind? Animals that share a basic genome. 17. How can you argue about kind without a definition? If you notice, I am usually in the process of defining it in the argument. 18. Why, if you believe the Bible is God's inerrant word, do you think there are exceptions to God's claim to have "destroyed all living creatures" in Genesis 8:21? [/qs] I read it as referring to air-breathing land-dwelling crfeatures. You may count sea creatures, I don't think the Bible does. 19. How did the ocean keep all the sedimentary types separate? Well, there are examples of that happening in the Berthault film I posted sometime back. Walther's Law demonstrates that the rising sea deposits clearly separate sedimentary layers. What's the problem? 20. Since floods only sort continuously by size/density of sediment and do not create sharp contacts, what is it about strata that says "flood" to you? Mostly their scale I think, their hugeness. but Walther's Law dealsz with layers that look like they have sharp contacts. 21. How did the deposition of sediments by a series of waves leave no evidence of that process behind? Why should it? Each layer covered up the one under it. And besides I don't think ALL the layers were deposited by wavers, I think when the water was deep enough the layers precipitated out. 22. If the flood rains washed all the land sediment into the sea, how was life left behind on the denuded landscape to leave tracks when waves deposited new sediments? Obviously it didn't wash ALL the land into the sea. I've answered so many of these already, what a tedious project this is. 23. Why do you think Bertault's views relevant since his experiments deposited sediments at an angle of 45 and required a flume? It demonstrates that water makes neat flat sedimentary layers, the specifics aren't important at this point. ABE: In fact early in the film a flooding creek was shown to make a neat stack of layered sediments; whereas it was being argued that "floods" don't do that. /ABE 24. Since 3/4 of the globe is currently covered by water, how is a truly global flood that covers the remaining quarter much different? Don't understand the question. 25. Why did no fishermen survive the flood? Probably ran for cover when the rain started? 26. How was the original salinity of the ocean restored after the Flood? Don't know how much salinity there was before or after and neither do you. 27. If the fountains of the deep were undersea volcanos, where is the evidence that many undersea volcanos erupted 4500 years ago? I don't know if the fountains of the deep were undersea volcanoes, I think it rather unlikely myself. This is tedious because I've already answered many of these. Also the next list. I will have to come back to that. And meanwhile all this stuff about the Flood is really OFF TOPIC here so I don't want to continue it after I've answsered the lists. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1634 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You insist on not getting the point so I'll drop it. But I really do think if even you yourself took some time to think it through based on what I've been saying, you, even you, would have to see that the system of creating whole landscapes/time periods with particular climates and geographical features out of salt and coal found in rocks dpesn't hold together.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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