Flood Geology

Flood Geology, continued from Data that confirms creationism

Here I am going to pick up the discussion of flood geology where Josephus and I left it off in the other thread.

Before I get to the "predictions" of flood geology, I would like to point anyone who cares to look to the TalkOrigins FAQ on flood geology.

Sometimes we re-invent the wheel, but if you would rather skip the play-by-play, you can use the link above...

Josephus,

I promised you a point by point discussion of the evidence for the flood in our other thread. I am going to start with your predictions first:

This is problematic. If all of the available land space was completeley level, then the water on earth could cover it. Of course, it isn't, and there isn't any indication from the geological record that it ever was...
When do you think the flood took place? If the Rocky mountains did not appear until the end of the flood at that time, then the Appalachians must have already been there... the shape, height, and terrain of the Appalachians show that they have been there subject to water and wind erosion for many thousands of years longer than the Rockies.

Apart from the usual means of seasonal deposition of sediment, why would we expect additional layering? How much more layering should we find and where? I would think we would only find one extremely massive layer, in the same stratum world-wide, representing the excessive depositions that the flood produced, wouldn't you?

How are mounatins water and wind created? Water and wind serve only to erode mountains according to conventional geology. Wouldn't you expect to find water and wind-created land features even if there were no global flood? After all, we see new water and wind-created land features being formed now, without the help of a global flood.

Those we have, but what do they have to do with the flood?

The plates are moved around by movement of the magma in the earth's mantle. They are faulted (broken) by this movement, and by pressure from the magma beneath. A good place to learn about this is here:
http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/lo.../interior.html

Are there any scars or ruptures that bear signs of being formed by the eruption of water and that are large enough to accomodate as much water as you are talking about? I know of a few geysers, but they are peanuts compared to what it would take to flood the entire earth....

What would cause the massive uplift? Why did the weight of the water form vast ocean deeps in some places, but cause uplift in others? In other words, if the weight of the water pushed the atlantic basin down several kilometers, why did it not also push Denver, CO down several kilometers?

Ice ages occur regularly, one about every two hundred million years. Do all of them represent global floods, or just the most recent?

More importantly, why would a global flood be any more likely to produce an ice age as a runaway greenhouse effect? After all, if the entire surface of the earth was covered with water, the amount of water vapor that resulted would saturate the entire atmosphere...

Why would the glaciers form at the poles and inch their way to the tropics instead of forming everywhere at once and melting away as the earth heated back up? In the time it takes a glacier to move from the poles to the tropics, surely the cooling effects of the world-wide flood would have been long gone? Why would they not melt before they got to the tropics?

As far as I can tell, the Ice Ages represent long term climate changes, not brief catastrophic events.

Good one, but I do have to point out that conventional geology has a good explanation for marine fossils at the tops of mountains, that having to do with mountains being formed by upthrust of the earth's crust when plates collide.

And Alaska? Why would you expect oil fields from the flood?

There was an asteroid impact in Siberia in the early 20th century that left a similar scar. There are several such scars, but never more than one within a hundred thousand years of another. Wouldn't it take several asteroids to release all that underground water? Wouldn't all of that underground water have vaporized and caused even greater (than present) pressure on the earth's surface prior to the flood, erupting and escaping before being hit by asteroids?

You needn't itemize the evidence for asteroids. No one disputes their existence or their occasional intesection with the Earth's orbit. We agree on that. Now you have a long way to go toward proving there was water under-ground, that a lot of asteroids hit the earth at the same time, and that a global flood was the result, and as such the evidence of the existence of asteroids doesn't strongly confirm your theory.

Just a few notes:
There is no evidence of a recent barrage of large asteroid impacts on any planet.
Venus has an atmosphere, and has nothing remotely resembling nuclear winter. It more closely resembles a runaway greenhouse effect.
All of this about asteroids is pure speculation. A major barrage of asteroid impacts would, probably, cause global climate changes, and probably a severe ice age, but unless there was a LOT of water underground, it would only cause localized flooding and probably a large number of tsunamis.
Where is the evidence that any water was underground to begin with?

You've given a few things one might expect to find if there was a global flood, but that can be explained at least as well by less catastrophic natural processes that have been observed to take place. Now I will take you back to what we could most certainly expect to find if there was a flood... but we don't:

People have to eat. Without a viable ecosystem (not just one boatload of living things) all but the smallest and hardiest life-forms are doomed to quick extinction. That includes humans..

Yes, all over the world. Unless you are talking about a time 200,000 years ago or earlier, when humans were concentrated in Africa, that is. If you are talking about 4000 years ago, there is recorded evidence that Africa, East Asia, Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East were inhabited by humans.

Where is the stratum with the UNfossilized remains (as I should have said in my original post that I quoted here) of the modern organisms, human tools & homes? It should be the same stratum all over the world & should be easily recognizable by its thickness. It should practically be on the surface, too.


But they don't. Why not?

If all of life on earth today is descended from one boat-load of creatures 4000 years ago, either evolution occurs so rapidly we should expect to see MAJOR changes just within our life-span, or we should see very little genetic variability in the life forms that do inhabit the earth today.


All in all, the flood model has no good evidence supporting it, even though there should be some specific kinds in abundance. The only evidence that can be found supporting it can be explained by conventional geology at least as well. I imagine a trained geologist would tell you that conventional geology explains all of that evidence much better.

Good post, Jerry. About this particular point, I'd like to note that, really, all of the purported evolution must have occurred in substantially less than 4000 years becuase we have been observing/recording nature for almost that long and there have been no changes! Talk about hyperevolution!

I'm not sure where Josephus is going with this statement:

- Massive worldwide layering.

The problem is that we DON'T see any worldwide layering at all, much less 'massive worldwide layering.' He is correct in that this is what we would expect to see with a flood, but it simply does not happen.

I was curious as to what kind of layering he was talking about, but I assumed he meant stratification. I would disagree that we should expect that from a flood. I would expect more along the lines of one particular stratum that was particularly thick in most places and contained lots of remains and detritus from the time of the flood. This is certainly not found.. What did you think he meant by "layering"?

A short answer in regards to layering: I meant we would expect to see layers of sediment with NO EVIDENCE of topsoil between them.

Massive and extensive layering of this kind was observed during the Mt. St. Helens explosion. The resulting layers are consistent in form and observation as strata layers found elsewhere around the world - except they are older.

"[re: massive oil fields] Those we have, but what do they have to do with the flood?"

Oil is from the decay of fossils. Oil fields would theoretically then be a previous site of a massive organic fossil deposits. Logic would argue two possible scenarios: the fossils were gathered there due to gravitational forces of collecting basins when the debris from the flood drained into the oceans, or that they were evidence of massive organic deposits once flourishing in that region before they died, became fossils, and became the oil we now use. The idea that the Middle East is the cradel and start of civilization is nothing new. Expecting huge oil deposits in that region would be expected following 5000 years of human history, and at least 3000 years since everything in that region was once suddenly killed.

Ok, so you are looking for the kind of layering produced by a volcanic eruption? Why would you expect this particular kind as the result of a flood? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to model your expectations of a global flood deposits after the kinds of deposits made by local floods?

"Are there any scars or ruptures that bear signs of being formed by the eruption of water and that are large enough to accomodate as much water as you are talking about? I know of a few geysers, but they are peanuts compared to what it would take to flood the entire earth...."

Would you consider: The Mid-Atlantic Ridge as a big enough fissure? It's no wonder its in the CENTER of the Atlantic Ocean.

"Wouldn't it be more reasonable to model your expectations of a global flood deposits after the kinds of deposits made by local floods?"

No, because my theory begins with severe astroidal impacts causing volcanos to replace geysers, and oceans to replace low-laying basins as they erupted from the ground. I would also expect huge earth quakers, as a result of the tetonic plates being formed, and moving on top of magma for the first time.

It is definitely big enough. It isn't, technically speaking, a fissure. It does not show any signs of being produced by the eruption of water from beneath. It looks like subduction where two plates have collided, partly because it runs north-south along the boundary between two continental shelves.