Is there Pillow Lava on Mt Ararat and if so is it Evidence for a global flood?

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

The thread in which Ondaball claimed there is Evidence for a Global Flood contained a large set of links to alleged flood evidence. I have looked at most them and they are all easily refuted. Most are in the category of PRATTS, that is Points Refuted a Thousand Times. One point that I have seen before but have not seen as frequently refuted is the claim that there is "Pillow Lava" on Mt. Ararat. For instance

http://www.calvaryag.org/apologetics/apologetics_11-evidence_flood.htm

On Mount Ararat, a volcanic mountain complex, pillow lava is found at the 14,000 foot level. The United States Geological Society states: “Pillow lava is formed when basalts erupt underwater. Pillow lava’s are mounds of lava formed by repeated oozing and quenching of the hot basalt.”
Pillow lava must be extruded under water and is recognized by its high glass content caused by very rapid cooling. All of the igneous rocks examined on Ararat by geologist Clifford Burdick were highly glassy. Ararat apparently was submerged in water to above the present 14,000-foot level. This evidence gives further weight to the Biblical account of the flood. These evidences from geology and many more point to a violent, catastrophic past history of the earth. They imply a global flood with associated volcanic and mountain building activity which changed the face of the earth.

and
http://www.parentcompany.com/search_for_noahs_ark/sfna3.htm

At the 13,000 foot level Dr. Burdick also found pillow lava, which is lava that has been cooled under water, as indicated by circular marks on the rocks themselves.

http://creationwiki.org/Mt._Ararat

According to geologist Clifford Burdick Ph.D. much of the lava on Mt. Ararat is in rounded blocks called pillow lava indicating it flowed out while under water.(CRSQ Vol 4(3))

Burdicks claims are found directly here. I added the bolding.
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/sum4_1.html

During the Flood period at least three blankets of basaltic or andesitic lava were extruded over the original Ararat which may have only been about 10,000 to 12,000 feet high originally.

Much of the lava is in rounded blocks called pillow lava, having a conchoidal appearance indicating it flowed out from the fractures while under water. After subsidence of the flood waters, almost the whole north-east side of the mountain blew up forming the Ahora gulch. Rock fragments and ash from this eruption cover about 100 square miles.
Greater Ararat is covered with an ice cap down to the 14,000 foot level. This cap is hundreds of feet thick and divides into 12 "fingers" or glaciers
.

First let's dispense with the claim that fossils were found on Mt. Ararat by Abich. This is false the fossils were found on the planes "in view of Ararat" which is very different. This is debunked by Babinkski
Mountains of Ararat

and I found text by Abich on JSTOR which makes it clear that this particular YEC claim is not true.

What about Pillow Lava?

First what is Pillow Lava and how does it form?
Pillow lava usually forms when lava emerges flows out underwater. A solid crust forms on contact with the water, and this crust cracks and oozes additional large blobs or "pillows" as more lava flows ou.

Pillow lava can also form when lava flows out under ice. This is common in Iceland and when lava flows into a mountain lake so there could be some pillow lava on Ararat formed in this way.

Here is a picture of Pillow Lava from Wikipedia


Is there pillow lava on Mt. Ararat? Not according to the most comprehensive study of the area that I could find.

Geology of the quaternary volcanic centres of the east Anatolia

I read the entire article which describes extensive studies of the volcanoes and lava flows in the area. (You might only be able to read the abstract, I got the article through my university connection) I found no mention of pillow lava.

Let’s look at some quotes from the article. I added some bolding.

Large volcanic centres have been developed during the Quaternary which form significant peaks above the Turkish–Iranian high plateau. Among the Quaternary volcanoes, the major volcanic centres are Ararat, Tendürek, Suphan and Nemrut. Ararat (Ağri Daği) is the largest volcanic center and is a compound stratovolcano, consisting of Greater Ararat and lesser Ararat
Ararat (Ağri Daği) is the largest volcanic center and is a compound stratovolcano, consisting of Greater Ararat and lesser Ararat. The former represents the highest elevation of Anatolia reaching over 5000 m in height. Tendürek is a double-peaked shield volcano, which produced a voluminous amount of basalt lava as extensive pahoehoe, and aa flows. It has an ill-defined semi-caldera

So no pillow lava. Instead aa and pahoehoe lava. These lavas are defined on the Wiki article on Lavas.

It is particularly interesting that there is a lot of pahoehoe lava in the area. From Wiki

Pāhoehoe

(also spelled pahoehoe, pronounced /pəˌhoʊiˈhoʊi/, Hawaiian English, from Hawaiian, meaning "smooth, unbroken lava") is basaltic lava that has a smooth, billowy, undulating, or ropy surface. These surface features are due to the movement of very fluid lava under a congealing surface crust.
A pāhoehoe flow typically advances as a series of small lobes and toes that continually break out from a cooled crust. Also forms lava tubes where the minimal heat loss maintains low viscosity. The surface texture of pāhoehoe flows varies widely, displaying all kinds of bizarre shapes often referred to as lava sculpture.

and a picture



Now look at what Burdick said again.

Much of the lava is in rounded blocks

Here is another picture from Google Images.

It looks like Burdick may have mistaken pahoehoe lava for pillow lava if he says he saw a lot of it since other geologists studying the area have not seen significant pillow lava. The article I reference also discusses pyroclastic flows which are unlikely to have happened under a global flood.


I think the data are clear. There is no evidence from pillow lava or fossils for a global flood on Mt. Ararat. (If anyone wishes to discuss the claims that Noah's ark was found there I would like to please ask them to open another thread.

 

[Washington]

Quite telling is that Burdick, an ardent creationist, evidently didn't bother to take any pictures of this rather remarkable evidence, or if he did he never made them available to the creationist movement. Gotta wonder why.

Then there's this from

FIGMENT OR FACT?
THE INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY OF NOAH'S ARK
World Premier Showing: CBS Network February 20, 1993.​

To make a solid case for Mt. Ararat as the final resting place of Noah's Ark, it seems to us that it would be absolutely essential to have some proof that it was once submerged. The makers of the documentary apparently shared this concern. The evidence given however, is far from conclusive. An unidentified person is shown exhibiting a huge chunk of sea salt.12 The narrator then intones that large deposits of sea salt have been found on the mountain as well as pillow lava. If both are true it would seem like an air-tight case. The facts, however, are different than presented. To our knowledge, no sea salt has been found on the mountain, and the purported pillow lava is at best, debatable. Geologists who have seen it are doubtful, but do admit that it could be. One then has to ask: are these rocks the result of the extrusion of lava into water or snow? We think it is unlikely, since there are no other unassailable arguments that the mountain was ever under water. For instance, there are neither water formed sediments or fossiliforous rocks on the mountain that we are aware of.13 Those who are searching for the Ark on Ararat need to explain this glaring deficiency. When we broach this problem with Ark hunters, the general reaction is: "How can you be so skeptical when we have all these eyewitness accounts?"​

source​

 

[Elduran]

Of course, even if it were shown that this mountain was underwater at some point, would it really be that bit a deal (or even remotely surprising) to geologists based on what we know about plate tectonics?

The evidence for a global flood would only really show itself if you could find a host of analogous formations at the same geological level in several locations worldwide, and presumably at a level that occured within human history. Showing that a mountain was part-formed underwater is hardly new evidence for anything, but showing that several mountains were underwater at the same time despite having patterns associated with exposure to wind/river erosion immediately before and after such an event would be news.

I'm not a geologist, but this series of comments makes sense to me. Anyone else?

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Of course, even if it were shown that this mountain was underwater at some point, would it really be that bit a deal (or even remotely surprising) to geologists based on what we know about plate tectonics?

The evidence for a global flood would only really show itself if you could find a host of analogous formations at the same geological level in several locations worldwide, and presumably at a level that occured within human history. Showing that a mountain was part-formed underwater is hardly new evidence for anything, but showing that several mountains were underwater at the same time despite having patterns associated with exposure to wind/river erosion immediately before and after such an event would be news.

I'm not a geologist, but this series of comments makes sense to me. Anyone else?

The volcanoes that formed Ararat and the other mountains in the region date over a period ranging from 1.5 million years ago to 1840 for the last eruption of Ararat so it would be surprising if they had flowed out under water but there is no evidence that they did.

 

[Patashu]

Even if there was pillow lava on Mt. Ararat, couldn't it have been formed millions of years ago when the mountain was lower/non-existent then pushed up into its current height thanks to ol' plate tectonics?

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Even if there was pillow lava on Mt. Ararat, couldn't it have been formed millions of years ago when the mountain was lower/non-existent then pushed up into its current height thanks to ol' plate tectonics?

Possibly but it is more likely that it could have formed under the massive ice cap on the summit, if it flowed into the ice before the ice melted.

Here is some more from the paper I quoted above

Following the collision along the Bitlis–Zagros suture, a north–south convergence between the Arabian Platform and Laurasia has continued uninterrupted until the present. As a result, the continental crust has been shortened, thickened and consequently elevated to form the Turkish–Iranian high plateau. On the high plateau volcanic activity began during the Neogene, intensified during the late Miocene–Pliocene and continued until historical times. Large volcanic centres have been developed during the Quaternary which form significant peaks above the Turkish–Iranian high plateau. Among the Quaternary volcanoes, the major volcanic centres are Ararat, Tendürek, Suphan and Nemrut. Ararat (Ağri Daği) is the largest volcanic center and is a compound stratovolcano, consisting of Greater Ararat and lesser Ararat. The former represents the highest elevation of Anatolia reaching over 5000 m in height. Tendürek is a double-peaked shield volcano, which produced a voluminous amount of basalt lava as extensive pahoehoe, and aa flows. It has an ill-defined semi-caldera. Suphan is an isolated stratovolcano, capped by silicic dome. It represents the second highest topographic elevation in Anatolia, with a height of over 4000 m. A cluster of subsidiary cones and small domes surrounds the volcano. Nemrut is the largest member of a group of volcanoes, which trend north–south. It is a stratovolcano, having a well-defined collapse caldera and a caldera lake. Various volcanic ejecta have been extruded from these volcanic centres over the last 1 to 2 million years

Eastern Anatolia is a high region with more than half of the area lying at an elevation of about 1.5 km. The region as a whole has a plateau character belonging to the Turkish–Iranian high plateau. On the East Anatolian plateau young volcanic cones form conspicuous peaks

In Anatolia, the latest oceanic lithosphere of the Tethyan oceanic realm was eliminated when the Arabian platform collided with Laurasia during the middle Eocene (Yılmaz, 1993; Yılmaz et al., 1993). Despite the collision the sedimentation continued on a melange foundation in a progressively shallowing sea environment of the remnant seas, until the end of early Miocene period (Şengör and Yılmaz, 1981; [Yılmaz, 1990a] and [Yılmaz, 1990b]; Yılmaz et al., 1987). The post-collisional convergence across the collision zone of the Bitlis–Zagros suture resulted in the total elimination of the remaining seas from East Anatolia, at the end of early Miocene (Yılmaz et al., 1993). The continuing convergence began to be accommodated by crustal shortening and thickening across the orogen, and the consequent uplift of the East Anatolian–Iranian plateau. The post-collisional evolution is displayed by stratigraphic sections (Şaroğlu and Yılmaz, 1986) and the structural elements recorded in the region shown in Fig. 1 (Yılmaz et al., 1987). The basement is interpreted as an accretionary wedge largely composed of an ophiolitic melange of Upper Cretaceous to Eocene age (Şengör and Yılmaz, 1981), overlain by an olistrostrome (a wild flysch), formed from the melange materials during the late Eocene–Oligocene. These are followed by a flysch, which passes upward into a regionwide neritic limestone succession of Lower Miocene age. The shallow marine limestones are gradually replaced by the continental deposits during the middle-late Miocene (Şaroğlu and Yılmaz, 1986). During this period the East Anatolia was more or less a flat lying peneplain, as manifested by the regionwide conformity between the latest marine units and the overlying continental sediments. From the late Miocene to the present the sedimentation has been restricted to the local basins, delimited by the young faults or fold-induced elevations (Şaroğlu and Yılmaz, 1986). This suggests that the peneplain was interrupted by dominantly East–West trending depressions which were rapidly filled by coarse to fine detritial rocks, generally consisting of lacustrine and fluvial facies. Initiation of the widespread volcanic activity of the Turkish–Iranian high plateau corresponds to this stage, when the crust began to be excessively thickened under north–south compressional deformation. The first manifestations of the volcanic activity are intercalated with the middle-late Miocene continental deposits (Yılmaz et al., 1987).

So the whole area was uplifted by the late Miocene when some volcanic activity began and most of the volcanic activity is in the last 2 million years.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Here is a picture of some lava flow near but not on Ararat

To me this flow look pretty typical of aa Lava which the article mentions as one of the predominant lava types in the Ararat area.

Here is another picture of some aa lava from Oregon.

I wandered around in Oregon's country many years ago and have seen a lot of this stuff.

I found a website that a picture of both aa lava and pahoehoe lava forming HERE.

 

[Dale]

As I have pointed out in the past, it is transparently obvious that the intent of the Noah narrative is that Noah's Ark landed on the world's tallest mountain. The idea is that when the Flood waters started to recede, the tallest mountain would be the first to be exposed.

The ancient Hebrews thought that Mt. Ararat was the world's largest and tallest mountain. They didn't know about Mt. Everest or any other mountains outside their own Middle Eastern region.

The fact that Mt. Ararat is volcanic causes grave problems for modern Creationists, or it would if they wanted to be consistent. Creationists have argued that all of the world's volcanoes were going off during the Flood. If so, Noah would be stepping out of the Ark onto a recently formed volcanic mountain! Presumably the lava had cooled. Even so, the Bible pictures Noah stepping out into an area of fertile farmland, not uninterrupted volcanic rock.

 

[Baggins]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Frumious Bandersnatch again.

It is quite easy to distinguish between sub-aerially erupted pahoehoe, and sub-aqueously erupted pillow lava.

It is down to the speed of cooling; lava erupted underwater cooling very quickly, so much so that the outer layers vitrify - they turn to glass. A simple study of thin sections would be able to tell you if the lava was erupted underwater as the vitreous material is easy enough to spot even with the naked eye.

Anyone who would make a claim for pillow lava at that height without doing these simple tests would either be a fool or a fraud.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

It is quite easy to distinguish between sub-aerially erupted pahoehoe, and sub-aqueously erupted pillow lava.

It is down to the speed of cooling; lava erupted underwater cooling very quickly, so much so that the outer layers vitrify - they turn to glass. A simple study of thin sections would be able to tell you if the lava was erupted underwater as the vitreous material is easy enough to spot even with the naked eye.

Anyone who would make a claim for pillow lava at that height without doing these simple tests would either be a fool or a fraud.

Thanks.

I read somewhere that pillow lava and pahoehoe toes are sometimes confused at least to casual observation but I will certainly defer to your expert opinion here.

The picture below is labeled as pillow lava in one place and what appears to be the same image is labeled as Pahoehoe HERE. It looks like pahoehoe to me.

I suspect that Burdick misidentified a mixture of aa and rubbly pahoehoe flow as pillow lava, though there could be some small amount of pillow lava on a mountain with an ice cap hundreds of feet thick.

It turns out that Burdick is on the list of creationists with Suspicious Credentials so he probably just made a mistake.

 

[Washington]

Thanks.

I read somewhere that pillow lava and pahoehoe toes are sometimes confused at least to casual observation but I will certainly defer to your expert opinion here.

The picture below is labeled as pillow lava in one place and what appears to be the same image is labeled as Pahoehoe HERE. It looks like pahoehoe to me.

I suspect that Burdick misidentified a mixture of aa and rubbly pahoehoe flow as pillow lava, though there could be some small amount of pillow lava on a mountain with an ice cap hundreds of feet thick.

It turns out that Burdick is on the list of creationists with Suspicious Credentials so he probably just made a mistake.

I assume the "one place" you're talking about is not the one that accompanies your link, because it says:

"Pahoehoe (far left) is another Hawaiian term for basaltic lava that has a smooth, hummocky, or ropy surface. "​

It turns out that Burdick is on the list of creationists with Suspicious Credentials so he probably just made a mistake.

And not only suspicious, Burdick was such an academic fraud I've decided to feature him along with Kent Hovind in THIS thread.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I assume the "one place" you're talking about is not the one that accompanies your link, because it says:

"Pahoehoe (far left) is another Hawaiian term for basaltic lava that has a smooth, hummocky, or ropy surface. "

​

I found it on a google image search for pillow lava. With the caption Pillow lava is a variety of rock ...
Maybe it is just an error from google image search. In any case everything I have read about the lava on and around Ararat indicates that it is a mixture of pahoehoe and aa lava.
​

And not only suspicious, Burdick was such an academic fraud I've decided to feature him along with Kent Hovind in THIS thread.

OK, if I want to discuss him specifically I'll go there. Thanks.