Flood Geology? Really?

[philadiddle]

Grass, it exists all over the world, in different species, and in different environments. Grass cannot run from floodwaters, so if there was a flood, it would be buried where it lives.

Now lets consider a global flood. There is grass all over the world, and not only is the entire world flooded, but all of the lands are mixed up and the strata are created. Now, we could predict that grass would be found throughout the strata layers, if the global flood happened. But here's the problem, we don't. In fact, grass fossils only pop up in the Cenozoic era. (Source) This is a very tiny fraction of the strata found in the earth. It's just near the very top. To see the scale, check the first picture on this link, it's the bright yellow section on the far right.

To further show how this is a problem, consider the fact that there are many other plants found further down in the earth, so we know that areas with plants have been fossilized, but no grass can be found.

The alternative to a global flood is that grass evolved as the theory of evolution predicts. Thus far, the fossils for grass, as well as every other plant fossil found, gives overwhelming support for this view.

 

[laptoppop]

Good try - but no. Grasses don't do well in *local* floods, so why would you expect them to do well in the more varied dynamics of a global flood?
Also - they have been found in many other locations -- even in dino dung, which is problemmatic for the conventional timescale.
http://www.icr.org/article/2971/

Plant parts and even modern pollen have been found in precambrian strata in various sites -- this is yet another problem for the conventional model.

The fossil record is by no means as clean as you appear to think of it as. What you commonly find is some small subset of "layers" of the entire assumed geologic column. Often, there are fossils that don't belong in a particular layer -- conventional geology has a whole set of terms dedicated to these out of place fossils - flood geology expects them. You have layers, sometimes stretching hundreds of miles and miles thick, which are out of order, and need to be described as overthrusts or underthrusts. You have folded layers, such as in spots in the Grand canyon, where the layers are bent -- but not broken. They were bent while still pliable.

Before you ask to discuss these - please do a forum search first. We've gone around and around on many of them.

 

[archaeologist]

here is something else: (i agree with laptop by the way)

to prove a global flood, we would have to dig all over the earth, in every city (as some would not be satisfied if we didn't), every valley, mountaintop and so on, which is impossible.

then you would have to decide how deep to dig? along with that you would have to decide: is the evidence even or broken up? what would it look like? how do we know if we found it?

if we found evidence on the side of the mountain then more dep in a valley, critics would not accept such finds as it is to different.

so critics need to decide what they want as evidence, what they will and won't accept, where do we dig and how deep.

then a consensus would have to be drawn up to determine which evidence belonged to a local flood which happens yearly and which belonged to the global flood.

this could go on and on. God is not going to allow us to find evidence which would destroy faith, so how much evidence would we find? would it be accepted for a global flood?

after all that, we find ourselves right back where we started: sme people believing it was global and some believing it was local.

so lets forgo all the extra work and discussions and bring it down to the simple--- what do you believe and why?
then, are you accepting secular theories as proof or God's word? and...

do you believe God or science?

faith would demand the former not the latter so it is up to you what you want to believe but if you want to make an impact for God---then choose wisely.

 

[Mallon]

I hear a lot of talk but, predictably, no one has been able to meet philadiddle's original challenge of accounting for the restricted appearance of grass in the fossil record. So despite all the hand-waving and side-tracking, the question still stands:

Why is grass stratigraphically limited to the Cenozoic?

pop, lately you've been very vocal about the ability of Flood geology to explain geological phenomena better than evolutionary theory. This is your chance to back prove yourself!

 

[juvenissun]

Grass, it exists all over the world, in different species, and in different environments. Grass cannot run from floodwaters, so if there was a flood, it would be buried where it lives.

Global flood has some hard times to explain something. But this one is easy:

grass sticks to soil. And soil could not resist water erosion. So you know the rest of the story.

 

[juvenissun]

Plant parts and even modern pollen have been found in precambrian strata in various sites -- this is yet another problem for the conventional model.

Hey, Laptoppop. This is interesting. Could you give me the reference?

 

[juvenissun]

I hear a lot of talk but, predictably, no one has been able to meet philadiddle's original challenge of accounting for the restricted appearance of grass in the fossil record. So despite all the hand-waving and side-tracking, the question still stands:

Why is grass stratigraphically limited to the Cenozoic?

pop, lately you've been very vocal about the ability of Flood geology to explain geological phenomena better than evolutionary theory. This is your chance to back prove yourself!

If you dig into the strata and found some carbonized stuff, that could be fossil grass. In fact, it is something one could find in 80%sedimentary rocks. To be more rigorous, the "paleosol" (burried soil) is the thing you talked about. And there are plenty of them.

 

[Mallon]

If you dig into the strata and found some carbonized stuff, that could be fossil grass.

That's an ad hoc argument, though. Carbonaceous layers could be the remains of any number of organic plants or animals.

To be more rigorous, the "paleosol" (burried soil) is the thing you talked about. And there are plenty of them.

Paleosols aren't evidence for grass. Soil forms in the absence of grass. I don't know why you would even bring up paleosols as evidence for grass, since you just stated above that such soils are not resistant to erosion. You're contradicting yourself.

 

[Galle]

Oh, is this the thread where we let laptoppop explain geological formations and features better than conventional geology?

Angular unconformities: another problem for a global flood.
http://www.christianforums.com/t36392 (this thread is also painfully instructive on creationist tactics and honesty)

 

[Deamiter]

dang lost my original post.

In short, the article describes how grasses were found in fossilized dung pushing the origin of grasses back well past 80 million years ago as opposed to 55 million years ago (for fossilized grass itself). I'm not sure where the Cenozoic fits in there though.

The article was apparently from Science in 2005.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/248836_dino18.html

As for pollen in old rocks, the creationist community can't agree that they've ruled out contamination. When an old-earth creationist used standard practices to remove any potential contamination, the group that claimed to have found fossilized pollen in rocks much earlier than pollen existed claimed that the techniques would have removed even fossilized pollen.

 

[Galle]

Bump so creationists have a chance to show how Flood Geology can explain this. I've never heard a decent explanation of why fossil organisms aren't found throughout nearly every layer, with trilobites and angiosperms and apes and dinosaurs all mixed together.

After reading laptoppop's link, I had to laugh that he thought this somehow answered this issue. If grasses were suddenly found throughout the fossil record, that would be one thing. But apparently all that happened was that researchers were surprised to push back the date. Which is indeed interesting, but not an answer that helps creationists.

I'm afraid that the fact that actual scientists do research does not vindicate creationism. Neither does the fact that actual scientists will revise their theories in light of new evidence. In fact, these things are what make science useful and the lack is what makes creationism such absurd nonsense.

 

[philadiddle]

In short, the article describes how grasses were found in fossilized dung pushing the origin of grasses back well past 80 million years ago as opposed to 55 million years ago (for fossilized grass itself).

This is an interesting point that gets overlooked. The process of science takes evidence and makes a theory based on all available evidence. If new evidence comes to light, like grass found earlier then previously thought (a 25M year difference is small in a 4.5 billion year history), then the theory is revised, unless the evidence outright contradicts the theory.

Creationism however, doesn't work by this method. They try to fit the evidence to the already believed and unchangable theory. Evidence that outright contradicts creationism is usually ignored.

As for pollen in old rocks, the creationist community can't agree that they've ruled out contamination. When an old-earth creationist used standard practices to remove any potential contamination, the group that claimed to have found fossilized pollen in rocks much earlier than pollen existed claimed that the techniques would have removed even fossilized pollen.

Do you have a source for this? I really need one. There is a creationist from creationontheweb.com who comes by my town every couple years to promote their magazine. He's used the pollen argument last time I was there but I hadn't heard it before. I'd like references for next time he's here.

 

[laptoppop]

Actually, plant fragments have been found in virtually all layers -- even so-called pre-cambrian. *Modern* pollen has also been found in pre-cambrian strata, and the find has been replicated several times, and in several places. People who don't want to find such evidence point to a single researcher who used the wrong type of technique and didn't find pollen. His technique would have dissolved the pollen fossils - they are very fragile. The repetitive experiments have taken extreme care to avoid contamination, and have deliberately tried to induce contamination in controlled ways.

The consensus geologic column assigns layers and dates based on the index fossils within the formation. Radiometric dating is extremely expensive and often gives statistically varying results from samples taken a different points in the same strata (it is very consistent on parts of a single sample)- so index fossils are more often used.

Why do we see different critters in different places? That's pretty easy to explain - but one must look at each site differently, as opposed to trying to link sites around the world to the same date. One must examine the strata found in a single location - and then there's work to determine what is pre-flood, flood, immediate post-flood (100 years), and long term post flood from each formation.

First - Guy Berthault has proven that multiple layers can be deposted simultaneously. I did an extremely simple experiment with a 10 gallon aquarium in my front yard that proved the same thing. Interestingly, the layers are not sorted coarse to fine -- they ended up with multiple layers of different composition created all at once.

Second - one must understand the dynamics of a global flood. Local floods vary greatly, both in time and in location. A global flood would naturally be expected to vary even more, given the enlarged area and scale. ICR.org has done some computer modeling of the hypercanes that could be expected, the flow of water over the continents, etc. This is ongoing. So, a global flood model PREDICTS that you will find lots of layers (check out the many layers that formed in the flood following the eruption of Mt. Stt. Helens in Oregon, USA). It PREDICTS you will find periods of deposition and periods of erosion. Hydrodynamic deposition depends on a number of factors, including temperature, speed of water flow, amount of dissolved solids, amount of undissolved solids (mud flows, etc.), etc. Under some conditions the flood will deposit material. Under other conditions the same flood will erode material. The global flood model PREDICTS this will vary both spatially and temporally during the event and afterwards for a long time.

The positioning of the critters within the strata is determined by a large number of things. some examples are Ecological zonation, motility, mass, specific weight (for example, Dinosaurs are often big and heavy overall, but their bones resemble bird bones -- for their size one would expect them to be higher in the record because of their specific weight), succession of events, and even intelligence. Many of these factors would work similarly in different locations. Sometimes they would not, creating the out of order strata that is often found out in the real world. (some of the out of order strata is legitimately moved after deposition, while others were not)

This also explains various unconformities, in that there is no problem with the global flood model for there to be erosion layers between other layers. However the unconformity I find most interesting is the paraconformity, where conventional geology declares there must be a gap here because the ages of the fossils don't work out right -- even though there is no physical evidence for a gap, sometimes of millions of years.

 

[laptoppop]

Do you have a source for this? I really need one. There is a creationist from creationontheweb.com who comes by my town every couple years to promote their magazine. He's used the pollen argument last time I was there but I hadn't heard it before. I'd like references for next time he's here.

Here's a link to much of the research:
http://www.rae.org/pollen.html

A bit older, but still informative:
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/36/36_3/plantfossils.html

You can find a lot more just by googling pollen and precambrian
Fewer responses by adding shale
Of course most of the google responses are hostile to the findings - but that is normal.

 

[Mallon]

I just googled "Precambrian pollen" myself and came across the following:

http://www.asa3.org/archive/ASA/199709/0101.html

It is worth noting that YEC proponent Arthur Chadwick could find no evidence of pollen in Precambrian strata, and that later, ICR staff wrote the following while reviewing a subsequent YEC study supporting Precambrian pollen: "Less care was taken than by Chadwick to avoid contamination, but the procedure appears adequate." Sounds might suspicious to me.

 

[laptoppop]

Yah yah - Chadwick. He's the guy I mentioned that used methodology likely to dissolve the pollen fossils. Read the rest of the research, starting with the links I provided. Next?

(I'm sorry I can't find it offhand -- but the specific posting has been responded to by the researchers. For example, he talks about surface contamination -- whereas the authors describe in detail the things they went through to eliminate that possibility, etc.)

 

[philadiddle]

Actually, plant fragments have been found in virtually all layers -- even so-called pre-cambrian. *Modern* pollen has also been found in pre-cambrian strata, and the find has been replicated several times, and in several places.

There must be other *modern* plants in the precambrian as well. Do you know of any?

First - Guy Berthault has proven that multiple layers can be deposted simultaneously. I did an extremely simple experiment with a 10 gallon aquarium in my front yard that proved the same thing. Interestingly, the layers are not sorted coarse to fine -- they ended up with multiple layers of different composition created all at once.

Yes, multiple layers can form simultaneously, based on size/weight/current ratios. We don't see the earth sorted that way.

A global flood would naturally be expected to vary even more, given the enlarged area and scale. ICR.org has done some computer modeling of the hypercanes that could be expected, the flow of water over the continents, etc.

Wait a minute, did you just say "computer model". It's funny, cause whenever someone makes a computer model for evolution ICR is like "Whatever, it's just a computer model, it doesn't prove it happend, there are differences in real life." And the ICR turns around and says "If you look at this computer model of the flood..."

This is ongoing. So, a global flood model PREDICTS that you will find lots of layers (check out the many layers that formed in the flood following the eruption of Mt. Stt. Helens in Oregon, USA).

The layers created by Mt. St. Helens were very thin, and the materials were ash and materials recognizable to a volcanic eruption. The lake also helped sort them by weight and density. The strata that were allegedly laid down by a global flood are very different. They are not sorted in the same way. They were put down slowly over time. Please don't compare Mt. St. Helens to the geologic column, it's too easy to refute.

It PREDICTS you will find periods of deposition and periods of erosion. Hydrodynamic deposition depends on a number of factors, including temperature, speed of water flow, amount of dissolved solids, amount of undissolved solids (mud flows, etc.), etc. Under some conditions the flood will deposit material. Under other conditions the same flood will erode material. The global flood model PREDICTS this will vary both spatially and temporally during the event and afterwards for a long time.

But again, the strata of the earth don't appear to have been put down that way.

The positioning of the critters within the strata is determined by a large number of things. some examples are Ecological zonation, motility, mass, specific weight (for example, Dinosaurs are often big and heavy overall, but their bones resemble bird bones -- for their size one would expect them to be higher in the record because of their specific weight), succession of events, and even intelligence.

Animals are not sorted by weight, this is getting rediculous. They seem to be in a nested hierarchy, not sorted by weight. Don't make me list the many examples.

This also explains various unconformities, in that there is no problem with the global flood model for there to be erosion layers between other layers. However the unconformity I find most interesting is the paraconformity, where conventional geology declares there must be a gap here because the ages of the fossils don't work out right -- even though there is no physical evidence for a gap, sometimes of millions of years.

What about erosion caused by wind? Should that be found between layers? Wind leaves different erosion marks then water, so it's easy to identify.

 

[Mallon]

The positioning of the critters within the strata is determined by a large number of things. some examples are Ecological zonation, motility, mass, specific weight (for example, Dinosaurs are often big and heavy overall, but their bones resemble bird bones -- for their size one would expect them to be higher in the record because of their specific weight), succession of events, and even intelligence. Many of these factors would work similarly in different locations

I'm definitely going to remember this post next time someone says that dinosaurs do not resemble birds.

For what its worth, none of the above mechanisms, either in combination or in isolation, describe the relative positioning of sea turtles. I have yet to see the above hydrological sorting mechanisms used to predict the biostratigraphic order of a given formation. If any YEC would like to give it a try, please let me know. Nor do any of the above mechanisms explain why vertebrates are arranged in the fossil record according to subtle morphological progressions (in the development of the inner ear, for example, or in the pattern of skull bone sutures) that would not influence their settling in the water column.

 

[laptoppop]

There must be other *modern* plants in the precambrian as well. Do you know of any?

Actually, they did find other plant pieces -- read the articles. The prime focus has been on the pollen however. Most plants would tend to float, and get all mixed around. Some would be mangled and end up low - and that's what we wee.

Yes, multiple layers can form simultaneously, based on size/weight/current ratios. We don't see the earth sorted that way.

I strongly disagree. Even the little example I did in my front yard (I've posted details and pics in this forum before) ends up looking extremely similar to what I've seen in the field, and in photographs.

Wait a minute, did you just say "computer model". It's funny, cause whenever someone makes a computer model for evolution ICR is like "Whatever, it's just a computer model, it doesn't prove it happend, there are differences in real life." And the ICR turns around and says "If you look at this computer model of the flood..."

Mallon wants me to have a non-possible perfect model, you want there to be no model. sheesh! I have yet to see a computer model that really models all of the biological processes involved. Heck, we're still probing into how a single cell works with its amazing combinations of molecular machines, protiens, dna, rna, enzymes, etc. For really modeling evolution with mutations at the dna level requires understanding all of these processes and no one fully does. It is absolutely amazing the complexity the Designer put into each cell! Modeling things like currents and atmospheric events is easier -- but I will say that even that modeling is not perfect.

The layers created by Mt. St. Helens were very thin, and the materials were ash and materials recognizable to a volcanic eruption. The lake also helped sort them by weight and density. The strata that were allegedly laid down by a global flood are very different. They are not sorted in the same way. They were put down slowly over time. Please don't compare Mt. St. Helens to the geologic column, it's too easy to refute.

Thin? Since 1980 sedimentation in some areas is over 400 feet thick. http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=261

No, they were not all sorted by weight and density. They exhibit classic multiple layers with repetitions and multiple sorts.

Obviously - I do not believe the flood layers were put down slowly over time. As a matter of fact, I have yet to hear a good solid explanation of the millions of large local floods it would take to lay down the column around the world. Thick layers are particularly hard to account for in a uniformitarian model because of the mass of material that needs to be transported. A global flood model handles it nicely.

But again, the strata of the earth don't appear to have been put down that way.

Care to support that with data? Obviously a number of PhD geologists disagree, let alone me, a little amateur.

Animals are not sorted by weight, this is getting rediculous. They seem to be in a nested hierarchy, not sorted by weight. Don't make me list the many examples.

Don't try to reduce my argument to a straw man. I did not say sorted by weight, I said that specific weight was only one of the many factors involved. If you don't understand the difference between weight and specific weight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_weight

Basically what I am saying is that the density of the material affects how well it floats. AFAIK, dinosaurs had hollow bones, much like birds, so while their overall weight could be big, their specific weight would be less.

What about erosion caused by wind? Should that be found between layers? Wind leaves different erosion marks then water, so it's easy to identify.

Actually, you are right and wrong at the same time. Wind leaves different erosion markings than plain water. However, water with a high degree of material in it scours the surface very much like wind. You can think of either of them as sandpaper, with different carriers, but the grit does the work.

 

[Mallon]

I strongly disagree. Even the little example I did in my front yard (I've posted details and pics in this forum before) ends up looking extremely similar to what I've seen in the field, and in photographs.

Could you please link me to those pics, pop, or at least post them again? I would like to see the experiment you ran. You've mentioned it here a number of times.

Mallon wants me to have a non-possible perfect model

Nope. Just one that predicts a priori what we should be able to verify with ground truth. I would like to see a model that predicts biostratigraphy, for example.

Basically what I am saying is that the density of the material affects how well it floats. AFAIK, dinosaurs had hollow bones, much like birds, so while their overall weight could be big, their specific weight would be less.

Saurischian dinosaurs do indeed have hollow limb bones and reduced specific weight. But for some reason, they are found lower in section than the much denser, aquatic mammals. Which of your mechanisms account for this? Alternatively, which of your mechanisms account for the fact that the densely-boned ornithischian dinosaurs occur in the same strata at the lightly built saurischian dinosaurs?

However, water with a high degree of material in it scours the surface very much like wind. You can think of either of them as sandpaper, with different carriers, but the grit does the work.

Source? Are there any subaqueous procesesses that mimic, say, eolian cross bedding?