No Stone Age or Bronze Age in Genesis

Job 33:6

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I indeed recognize and acknowledge my knowledge of geology and paleontology is limited. But am I wrong in asserting that much of those studies, especially paleontology, is built on the foundational assumption that modern life evolved from a microbe?

As I said, that's the whole ballgame. If you removed the faith in evolution and only base analysis on known science, wouldn't both of those be badly damaged?


You believe by faith that a fish evolved to walk on land. There's no evidence of that. "It exists, therefore it evolved" is not science. In fact, there's no reason to not accept that the original design could walk.


You believe by faith that a reptile evolved to fly. There's no evidence of that. "It exists, therefore it evolved" is not science. In fact, there's no reason to not accept that the original design could fly.


I don't think you see it yet. That example you posted changed one nucleotide which changed one amino acid in one protein. How many changes would have been needed to give a fish the ability to walk or a reptile to fly? A number of muscles would have to change or be added. The shape, location and number of fins would have to change significantly. All these changes would have to be integrated into the nervous system so they could be controlled. That's a lot of changes in an effectively infinite universe of possible changes.

It boggles the mind that people are willing to put such blind, unthinking faith in this process. If natural selection made it through selecting so many changes that in the end were judged to be beneficial, wouldn't there be billions of fossils with rejected false starts? And it would't be able to either walk or fly until it could, so how did natural selection know to preserve the many many changes that it ultimately needed?

What you're providing is a response of personal incredulity.

First you came up with some strange ideas about polystrate fossils and the theory of plate tectonics, You've abandoned those ideas after being shown that you're wrong, and then you moved on to suggest that there's no such thing as a beneficial mutation that's not detrimental to species, now you're dropping that after being shown that you're wrong and you're moving the goal post again.

You need to educate yourself on those topics before coming to forums and throwing out a bunch of baseless claims.

Youre not in a position to tell anyone here anything, you should be asking questions not making and dropping baseless claims over and over.
 
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KenJackson

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If you removed the faith in evolution and only base analysis on known science, wouldn't both of those be badly damaged?
Let me restate this. Paleontology depends on life evolving from a microbe, so if life did not so evolve, many of the findings of paleontology are in trouble.

You can at least agree with this conditional statement. So the only issue is whether life could have so evolved and is even capable of living for millions of years. So I tend to not dive in to discussions about geology and paleontology but rather stick with the crucial thing they depend on--evolution from a microbe.

What you're providing is a response of personal incredulity.
That's what evolutionists say when they feel trapped. They just fallback on that old saw. Sadly, it often signals that they've checked out and will no longer even try to think. But please think.

In fact, I find that those who have total faith in evolution always refuse to discuss permutations. Mutations are random in a universe of permutations that is so large that it really is effectively infinite. There is no difference between "infinite" and "effectively infinite" in any practical discussion.

There are 10^130 (ten to the 130 power) possible arrangements of the 20 kinds of amino acids (aa) in a small chain of 100. But there have been less than 10^18 seconds since the big bang (if that happened). Just think about those two numbers.

And one final detail. Think about natural selection. It selects based on advantage or benefit. But how can it possibly select and conserve a component that has no advantage by itself but only as part of a structure, or molecular machine? Remember the effectively infinite universe of mutations.

If life were made of cells of jelly, as Darwin believed, evolution would probably be possible because every tiny little change would be beneficial or detrimental on its own without being part of a larger whole. But now we know that belief is wrong.
 
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Job 33:6

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"Let me restate this. Paleontology depends on life evolving from a microbe, so if life did not so evolve, many of the findings of paleontology are in trouble" - @KenJackson

Why do you think that paleontology depends upon life evolving from a microbe?

Do you think that the fossil succession would disappear if evolution were not true?

"There are 10^130 (ten to the 130 power) possible arrangements of the 20 kinds of amino acids (aa) in a small chain of 100. But there have been less than 10^18 seconds since the big bang (if that happened). Just think about those two numbers.

And one final detail. Think about natural selection. It selects based on advantage or benefit. But how can it possibly select and conserve a component that has no advantage by itself but only as part of a structure, or molecular machine? Remember the effectively infinite universe of mutations
."

In the case of the above mutation that reduces cardiovascular disease, natural selection would select and promote the mutation via survival of the host that doesn't die from cardiovascular disease. Not dying from cardiovascular disease is an advantage.
 
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KenJackson

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Do you think that the fossil succession would disappear if evolution were not true?
Evolution isn't true and there is no "fossil succession", so it's hard to answer that question. Much of layer dating is done by finding "index fossils", that is, they find a particular fossil that is "known" to have lived at a "known" time in the past. So when they find one, they think they know that layer is that old. But in truth most fossils were fossilized within a few days, or maybe weeks, of each other worldwide. If they knew that, wouldn't that just mess up their whole belief structure?

In the case of the above mutation that reduces cardiovascular disease, natural selection would select and promote the mutation via survival of the host that doesn't die from cardiovascular disease.
This single nucleotide change (SNP) fits well within the what I said no one argues about. But that tiny change is not a step toward a totally new protein or a new molecular machine or a new organ, so it doesn't help your case for microbe-to-man evolution. It simply changes something about the way that existing protein works.

BTW, that change "caused a reduction in HDL levels and an increase in triglyceride levels." Both of those are generally considered bad, so it's odd that it would lower heard disease. I wouldn't put a lot of weight on the findings of a study of three patients.
 
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Job 33:6

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"Evolution isn't true and there is no "fossil succession", so it's hard to answer that question. "

Oh boy. Alright. You're way too far off at sea for me. Looks like someone got their education from Kent Hovind University.

If you ever change your mind and are willing to learn, feel free to let me know. But so long as you're in this intellectual dark pit of denialism and aggression, there isn't anything I can do for you.

I'll wish you the best and you're welcome to have the last word. I'll save my time for those more sincere (or at least familiar with science).
 
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KenJackson

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Oh boy. Alright.
I notice you ignored the permutations. Those with faith in evolution usually do. It's really difficult grasp irrationally large numbers, but it's perhaps the best indication of the problems with evolution.
 
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Dale

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Animals died in tar pits, so?
the La Brea pits have over three million fossils, representing more than 565 different species as well as hundreds of human artefacts.
Animals didn't just wander in and die and become fossils, fossilization requires rapid burial. There are mountains of crushed bone fragments flung every which way. sounds like a big catastrophe, wonder what that could be, perhaps a huge flood.
Lessons from the La Brea Tar Pits



And animals were also preserved in Amber, am I supposed to be concerned by that fact?
Amber needs lots of, guess what? Water.
Did you know a lot of aquatic organisms can be found in amber?
Lace bugs (Tingidae) still alive today look just the same as those found in Caribbean amber dated as being millions of years old. That's because they are not millions of years old and evolution didn't happen.

I have no issue with fossils, I only have issues with the assumptions people place upon them.


Coffee: "Amber needs lots of, guess what? Water."

Where did you get that from? No, fossils embedded in amber don't require water. All they require if for an insect or whatever to stick in resin oozing from a tree, and be engulfed and preserved.

Coffee: "Did you know a lot of aquatic organisms can be found in amber?"

The only thing that is necessary for an aquatic organism to become an amber fossil is for a tree, or even a branch off a tree, to fall into a body of water. If a tree is growing near the water, a hurricane or a tornado can knock it into the water. Or a tree can be growing on shaky, unstable ground.

Coffee: "Lace bugs (Tingidae) still alive today look just the same as those found in Caribbean amber dated as being millions of years old. That's because they are not millions of years old and evolution didn't happen."

Many amber fossils show species that are now extinct. Take a look at this example.


<< 'Alien' insect in amber from 100 million years ago >>

upload_2020-8-9_22-14-43.png




"Around 100 million years ago, an alien-looking insect with a bizarre head and long thin legs likely crawled around on trees in what is now Burma."

"The insect is so strange that researchers say that it is not only a new species, but also belongs in its own new scientific order. Living in the time of the dinosaurs, the insect was tiny and wingless. Just two specimens of this new species exist, both of them preserved in Burmese amber."


Link
The Eight Most Incredible Fossils Preserved In Amber
 
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Job 33:6

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Do you know how this date was determined? Radiometric? Index fossil?

There are many avenues that collectively point to the same direction with respect to Earth's dating.

Many ways of cross checking a validating the age of a formation.

Among these means, I'll briefly present a few:

One example was posted here:
Old Earth Geology

"

Averages change depending on where you are on the planet, but often you get tectonic plate movement between maybe 2-5 cm per year.

If we measure from the center of the atlantic to the east coast US, you get near 300,000,000 cm. Divided by 2 cm per year and you get 150 million years, which just so happens to be pretty close to the age at which east coast mesozoic rocks are dated (see my palisades comment above). And this is just a rough estimate that involved me pulling up the measuring tool on google earth.

people can try to criticize radioactive dating all they want, but the evidence is compelling. So yes, devonian is devonian, but that 400 million years comes with specific support. It isnt just a random arbitrary number. It is relatively dated, in ways which correlates with absolute dating, fossil succession dating and further relative dating.

And this is how the geologic timescale has come to exist. Its a combination between superposition, the law of inclusions, and lateral continuity, along with chemistry and physics used to absolute date it. Uniformitarian geology is a summation of correlating dating among various independent fields of research.
"

Which is to say that, one means of corroborating radiometric dating, is to simply pull out a tape measure and divide total distance of travel by the modern rates of tectonic motion.

Another means of corroborating radiometric dates is by using samples from other localities of the same bed (even samples from the other side of the planet of the same bed), and by using numerous independent methods regarding various different isotopes in various different samples:

Screenshot_20200810-090100.png


Why do you feel a NEED for theistic evolution?

Radiometric Dating Does Work! | National Center for Science Education

There are a few tables in the above link that note the following:

1. Dates that corroborate one another.
2. Corroborating dates collected from various samples (even samples from all around the world of the same layers such as the K-T boundary)
3. Corroborating dates from various samples all around the world, via use of varying methods (see the K-T tectites table 2, note use of Ar/Ar, K/Ar, Rb/Sr, U/Pb).
4. Note consistency in results from various teams looking at various samples from various parts of the world, using various methods and machines, all showing the same results. This is something scientists have, that creation research doesn't.

Another means of corroborating radioactive dates, is merely by investigating the isotopes themselves and how their structure exists within a rock:

The popular Allende meteorite for example has daughter isotope locked into a definite crystal lattice of surrounding mineral. More specifically there is decayed aluminum to magnesium entrapped in anorthite. Meaning that the meteorite originally formed with aluminum within it, and decayed to magnesium at a later date. The decay of aluminum having a half life of 730,000 years means that the complete absence of aluminum and presence of magnesium in the meteorite today, suggests the passage of millions of years. No daughter material was added nor removed later than the meteorites formation as observed in the definite crystal lattice of the anorthite. Rather, the parent element formed in conjunction with it's surrounding lattice and later decayed in-situ, almost like how a spy might infiltrate a conference by walking into open doors (parent joins the rock during formation), only to later remove their disguise (decay), while inside the building of closed doors (the definite crystal lattice). Whereas if it had decayed beforehand, it would not have fit into the lattice (much like a spy would be rejected from the conference if he didn't have on his disguise). Meaning that radioactive dating again confirms an ancient earth.

But the posts above then leads to another point worth understanding.

When it comes to index fossils, an index fossil is only as good as the relative dating conducted prior to it.

Three things make index fossils, abundance, geographical expanse, and a refined temporal position in the stratigraphic column (ideally isolated within single periods or less).

The last one is important because it suggests that index fossils in reality are dependent upon relative dating of rocks.

Meaning that index fossils and their use are ultimately based on superposition, cross cutting relations, the law of inclusions, original horizontality and things of the like.

And if anyone really has a problem with an index fossil, the simple solution is to use relative dating to demonstrate that it isn't temporally refined.

And these are very simple and fundamental concepts that nobody is in a position to dispute. Older rocks are on the bottom, younger on the top.

And note that rocks are also typically laterally continuous, as discussed early as a product of oceanic transgressive and regressive sequences, which means that some rocks cover hundreds of miles, even if a river has eroded part of it away, or even if rocks above or below it are absent in some places. Meaning that as long as someone has a 5th grade education and can do connect the dot puzzles, they can also observe the geologic column and associated faunal succession.


Screenshot_20200810-095942.png


Screenshot_20200810-100410.png


Let's see how the pictures come out.

The above just points out that there are many ways of corroborating dating methods. And none of the above includes the other dating methods that conclude an old earth, fission track dating, electron spin resonance dating, ice core dating, tree ring dating, varve dating, luminescence dating, among other methods of corroboration. Some say that perhaps multiple varves could form in a single year, but when you have 5 million varves, young earthers enter a strange dimension where they are trying to explain how one giant flood could lay down 5 million repeating thin-thick sequences (perhaps thousands per day?), all in the shape of a geographically radial lake that just so happens to only contain lacustrine fauna (the young earth creationist denial could not be more extreme). Old Earth Geology Part 3 (Green River Formation)

And in order to effectively deny radiometric dating and the faunal succession, a person basically has to deny literally all of physics and chemistry, geology, paleontology, biology and even geography. And this isnt an exaggeration. I digress.
 
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Dale

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Animals died in tar pits, so?
the La Brea pits have over three million fossils, representing more than 565 different species as well as hundreds of human artefacts.
Animals didn't just wander in and die and become fossils, fossilization requires rapid burial. There are mountains of crushed bone fragments flung every which way. sounds like a big catastrophe, wonder what that could be, perhaps a huge flood.
Lessons from the La Brea Tar Pits



And animals were also preserved in Amber, am I supposed to be concerned by that fact?
Amber needs lots of, guess what? Water.
Did you know a lot of aquatic organisms can be found in amber?
Lace bugs (Tingidae) still alive today look just the same as those found in Caribbean amber dated as being millions of years old. That's because they are not millions of years old and evolution didn't happen.

I have no issue with fossils, I only have issues with the assumptions people place upon them.


Coffee: "Animals died in tar pits, so?
the La Brea pits have over three million fossils, representing more than 565 different species as well as hundreds of human artefacts.
Animals didn't just wander in and die and become fossils, fossilization requires rapid burial. There are mountains of crushed bone fragments flung every which way. sounds like a big catastrophe, wonder what that could be, perhaps a huge flood."



Any animal that falls into a tar pit and dies gets "rapid burial."

On the "crushed bone fragments," I'm not sure about that.

The La Brea Tar Pits give us a remarkable picture of the ecosystem of the Ice Age. Do creationists believe in an Ice Age? As far as I know they don't. I could do a thread, No Ice Age in Genesis.

The La Brea Tar Pits captured animals and from around 50,000 BC forward. There are no dinosauars, no animals from the age of the dinosaurs or before. There are saber tooth tigers, mammoths and giant sloths because those animals were around during the Ice Age.

Creationists believe that all animals were created at the same time. The most primitive animals, early vertebrates, dinosaurs, Ice Age animals and humans were all there at once, at some time in the past. I can't picture what that world would look like and there is no sign the creationists can either. This is not what we see in the La Brea Tar Pits. They show exactly what the standard scientific timeline predicts. The pits contain Ice Age animals and plants. They do not contain anything from earlier ages. There are no dinosaurs, small or large.
 
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coffee4u

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Coffee: "Animals died in tar pits, so?
the La Brea pits have over three million fossils, representing more than 565 different species as well as hundreds of human artefacts.
Animals didn't just wander in and die and become fossils, fossilization requires rapid burial. There are mountains of crushed bone fragments flung every which way. sounds like a big catastrophe, wonder what that could be, perhaps a huge flood."



Any animal that falls into a tar pit and dies gets "rapid burial."

On the "crushed bone fragments," I'm not sure about that.

The La Brea Tar Pits give us a remarkable picture of the ecosystem of the Ice Age. Do creationists believe in an Ice Age? As far as I know they don't. I could do a thread, No Ice Age in Genesis.

The La Brea Tar Pits captured animals and from around 50,000 BC forward. There are no dinosauars, no animals from the age of the dinosaurs or before. There are saber tooth tigers, mammoths and giant sloths because those animals were around during the Ice Age.

Creationists believe that all animals were created at the same time. The most primitive animals, early vertebrates, dinosaurs, Ice Age animals and humans were all there at once, at some time in the past. I can't picture what that world would look like and there is no sign the creationists can either. This is not what we see in the La Brea Tar Pits. They show exactly what the standard scientific timeline predicts. The pits contain Ice Age animals and plants. They do not contain anything from earlier ages. There are no dinosaurs, small or large.

The tar pits are a jumbled mass of parts, flung every which way. So there weren't any dinosaurs there. Different types of animals have different habitats.

Picturing it isn't difficult if you picture it how it actually would have been and not some ridiculous Jurassic park movie.

At creation everything was tame, ate plants and nothing died- nothing with a soul. God says when he remakes the world it will look like that again. The Bible gives a good picture of what that will look like.

Isaiah 11
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

That is a pretty good picture of what it would have been like before the fall too. Man and animals together without fear.

Then the fall happened and the whole creation was cursed. After that came death and bloodshed. I think any bloodshed was humans towards animals for sacrifice and for clothes/bone/sinuew etc. Man was not allowed to eat meat at this point and animals were not scared of man or aggressive towards man. It is not until after the flood that changed.

15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”
At this point animals were still no threat to mankind since it was their job to bring them off the ark.

9 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

At this point animals and humans became fearful of each other, but the animal population and human population were small and had to build up from what came off the ark. You also realize the dinosaurs that came off the ark were small not huge. Only a few ever grew huge and that only occurred before the flood after living for a very long time. After the flood everything had shorter lifespans and less time to grow. Just because they could eat meat doesn't mean they did so exclusively, they probably ate vegetation to stay alive as well. At this point, many animals may have perished and gone extinct. I doubt they stuck around Noah and his family, they would have fled. Most wild animals would still rather run than confront a human because no matter how fierce an animal is, the greatest hunter is mankind. Even without a gun, man would quickly fashion weapons, build traps and use his far great intellect to hunt including the use of fire.

Then we have verses about behemoth and leviathan.

“Look at Behemoth,
which I made along with you

and which feeds on grass like an ox.
16 What strength it has in its loins,
what power in the muscles of its belly!
17 Its tail sways like a cedar;
the sinews of its thighs are close-knit.
18 Its bones are tubes of bronze,
its limbs like rods of iron.

Leviathon
Can you fill his skin with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
8 Lay your hands on him;
remember the battle—you will not do it again!
9 Behold, the hope of a man is false;
he is laid low even at the sight of him.
10 No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.


God would not have mentioned these animals to Job unless he knew of them and also knew that man would try and hunt them. Leviathon would be one that most men would not want to meet and it appears to be a sea creature.

Man can coexist with the fiercest of animals but they don't generally come into established human areas and we don't normally interact with them. The world is large enough for humans and animals. We have any number of killer animals on the planet right now. The Sydney funnel-web spider can kill a man in 15 minutes and is probably way more dangerous than any meat-eating dinosaur because of its size and ability to creep in unnoticed, but still, a well-aimed shoe could kill it in a few seconds.
Dinosaurs start as eggs, no threat there and would have made good eating. No wonder they went extinct because they were a protein food source and people probably wanted them gone. I can easily imagine hunting parties to gather eggs and kill young ones and even elaborate traps to kill larger ones to feed a whole village.
If you can't imagine existing on a planet with a few dinosaurs how do you exist with funnel webs, sharks, tigers, hippos and other deadly creatures?
 
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Job 33:6

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There are many avenues that collectively point to the same direction with respect to Earth's dating.

Many ways of cross checking a validating the age of a formation.

Among these means, I'll briefly present a few:

One example was posted here:
Old Earth Geology

"

Averages change depending on where you are on the planet, but often you get tectonic plate movement between maybe 2-5 cm per year.

If we measure from the center of the atlantic to the east coast US, you get near 300,000,000 cm. Divided by 2 cm per year and you get 150 million years, which just so happens to be pretty close to the age at which east coast mesozoic rocks are dated (see my palisades comment above). And this is just a rough estimate that involved me pulling up the measuring tool on google earth.

people can try to criticize radioactive dating all they want, but the evidence is compelling. So yes, devonian is devonian, but that 400 million years comes with specific support. It isnt just a random arbitrary number. It is relatively dated, in ways which correlates with absolute dating, fossil succession dating and further relative dating.

And this is how the geologic timescale has come to exist. Its a combination between superposition, the law of inclusions, and lateral continuity, along with chemistry and physics used to absolute date it. Uniformitarian geology is a summation of correlating dating among various independent fields of research.
"

Which is to say that, one means of corroborating radiometric dating, is to simply pull out a tape measure and divide total distance of travel by the modern rates of tectonic motion.

Another means of corroborating radiometric dates is by using samples from other localities of the same bed (even samples from the other side of the planet of the same bed), and by using numerous independent methods regarding various different isotopes in various different samples:

View attachment 282558

Why do you feel a NEED for theistic evolution?

Radiometric Dating Does Work! | National Center for Science Education

There are a few tables in the above link that note the following:

1. Dates that corroborate one another.
2. Corroborating dates collected from various samples (even samples from all around the world of the same layers such as the K-T boundary)
3. Corroborating dates from various samples all around the world, via use of varying methods (see the K-T tectites table 2, note use of Ar/Ar, K/Ar, Rb/Sr, U/Pb).
4. Note consistency in results from various teams looking at various samples from various parts of the world, using various methods and machines, all showing the same results. This is something scientists have, that creation research doesn't.

Another means of corroborating radioactive dates, is merely by investigating the isotopes themselves and how their structure exists within a rock:

The popular Allende meteorite for example has daughter isotope locked into a definite crystal lattice of surrounding mineral. More specifically there is decayed aluminum to magnesium entrapped in anorthite. Meaning that the meteorite originally formed with aluminum within it, and decayed to magnesium at a later date. The decay of aluminum having a half life of 730,000 years means that the complete absence of aluminum and presence of magnesium in the meteorite today, suggests the passage of millions of years. No daughter material was added nor removed later than the meteorites formation as observed in the definite crystal lattice of the anorthite. Rather, the parent element formed in conjunction with it's surrounding lattice and later decayed in-situ, almost like how a spy might infiltrate a conference by walking into open doors (parent joins the rock during formation), only to later remove their disguise (decay), while inside the building of closed doors (the definite crystal lattice). Whereas if it had decayed beforehand, it would not have fit into the lattice (much like a spy would be rejected from the conference if he didn't have on his disguise). Meaning that radioactive dating again confirms an ancient earth.

But the posts above then leads to another point worth understanding.

When it comes to index fossils, an index fossil is only as good as the relative dating conducted prior to it.

Three things make index fossils, abundance, geographical expanse, and a refined temporal position in the stratigraphic column (ideally isolated within single periods or less).

The last one is important because it suggests that index fossils in reality are dependent upon relative dating of rocks.

Meaning that index fossils and their use are ultimately based on superposition, cross cutting relations, the law of inclusions, original horizontality and things of the like.

And if anyone really has a problem with an index fossil, the simple solution is to use relative dating to demonstrate that it isn't temporally refined.

And these are very simple and fundamental concepts that nobody is in a position to dispute. Older rocks are on the bottom, younger on the top.

And note that rocks are also typically laterally continuous, as discussed early as a product of oceanic transgressive and regressive sequences, which means that some rocks cover hundreds of miles, even if a river has eroded part of it away, or even if rocks above or below it are absent in some places. Meaning that as long as someone has a 5th grade education and can do connect the dot puzzles, they can also observe the geologic column and associated faunal succession.


View attachment 282560

View attachment 282562

Let's see how the pictures come out.

The above just points out that there are many ways of corroborating dating methods. And none of the above includes the other dating methods that conclude an old earth, fission track dating, electron spin resonance dating, ice core dating, tree ring dating, varve dating, luminescence dating, among other methods of corroboration. Some say that perhaps multiple varves could form in a single year, but when you have 5 million varves, young earthers enter a strange dimension where they are trying to explain how one giant flood could lay down 5 million repeating thin-thick sequences (perhaps thousands per day?), all in the shape of a geographically radial lake that just so happens to only contain lacustrine fauna (the young earth creationist denial could not be more extreme). Old Earth Geology Part 3 (Green River Formation)

And in order to effectively deny radiometric dating and the faunal succession, a person basically has to deny literally all of physics and chemistry, geology, paleontology, biology and even geography. And this isnt an exaggeration. I digress.

And I just wanted to add one more idea to this.

The earth was actually understood to be old, long before radioactive dating existed. Literally scientists of the 1700s and 1800s were publishing on an old earth, while radioactive dating is more of a recent tool of modern technology.

And some might ask, well how could they possibly have known that the Earth is millions of years old?

The answer is that, the structures of the earth, are logically suggestive of an extreme expanse of deep time.

For example, if we have foot tracks in a rock, we might expect Time to have passed for mud to be deposited and then for an animal to walk through the mud, then for the mud to harden. Each even taking its own amount of time that we could imagine in our heads.

Now what if that layer of rock were tilted vertically? Well now We have the amount of time for the original deposition of the mud plus the amount of time for the animal to walk through it plus the amount of time for it to lithify and harden, plus the amount of time for orogenesis to turn in on its side.

And beyond that if we have a horizontal layer with foot tracks on top of a vertical layer of foot tracks, We could then try to imagine how many individual events it would take to get there as well. Time for the mud to be deposited, Time for the animal to walk through the mud, time for the mud to harden and lithify, time for orogenesis to turn the lithified stone on its side, Time for the vertical bed to be eroded to a flat horizontal surface, Time for more sediment to be deposited over top of that in a horizontal fashion, Time for a different animal to walk through the newly deposited mud, Time for the newly deposited mud to lithify and harden etc.

And we could even go even further with a double turned angular unconformity. Take all of the above and turn it on its side 90° again.

These are some of the structures that geologist of the 1700s saw, and it became apparent to them that, along with many other features that are suggestive of deep time, things like ophiolites or the complexity of trace fossils in the fossil succession, or erosional features or the present of fault gouge or propagating faults or strained and axially deformed trilobites, 5-10 successive yet independent ice ages of the late cenozoic alone etc.

All of these things collective just cannot be explained through a young earth paradigm, and these geologists of the 1700s knew this even 250- 300 years ago.
 
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Dale

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Before you can even begin making sense of all those bones and artifacts, you have to decide whether there was a worldwide flood or not. That decision can't help but be important to the analysis. But I fear that you've dismissed any thought of any such flood and started with the absolute unquestioning assumption that there was none.

Another important point to consider before analysis is whether it is even remotely possible for man (or his ancestors, if you believe he evolved) to have existed for several hundred thousand years, as you've suggested. The fact that damaging mutations accumulate with every generation makes that highly questionable. Again, I fear you haven't even considered this problem.

And finally, if there's a chance that these bones might not be human, it would be important to consider if evolution is even possible. The biology considerations I mentioned above and many more convince me it could never work. Of course I'm not talking about the damaging mutations that are observed today to produce new species, but rather I reference the hypothetical development of proteins, molecular machines, organs and hierarchical systems. If that's impossible, as the evidence suggests, then it most definitely affects the analysis of these bones and artifacts.


KenJackson: "Before you can even begin making sense of all those bones and artifacts, you have to decide whether there was a worldwide flood or not. That decision can't help but be important to the analysis. But I fear that you've dismissed any thought of any such flood and started with the absolute unquestioning assumption that there was none."


Be careful before you accuse me of being rigid. For the Flood waters to cover the top of Mt. Everest would require seven times as much water as there is on earth today. Did God create this massive amount of water from nothing, then send it back to nothing when the Flood was over? If fresh water came from the sky, the fish in the ocean would die because the water wouldn't be salty enough. If salt water covered the land, the land would be infertile, nothing could grow, no crops could be raised.

I have had many problems with taking the Flood story literally. In 2017, I did a thread Noah's Ark Would Have Broken in Half. Take a look at it.


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Noah's Ark Would Have Broken in Half
 
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KenJackson

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Didn't mean to offend. Most people I discuss this stuff with have total faith in what they've been taught.
For the Flood waters to cover the top of Mt. Everest would require seven times as much water as there is on earth today.
That would only be true if plate tectonics didn't shove Everest up after the start of the flood. There is thinking that all of the plate tectonics activity that's been identified did take place, but took place in one year--a year which was hell on earth and reshaped everything.
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Also, there's a principle of geology, isostasy, that says after the water was released (perhaps from aqueous ringwoodite in the mantle) the land that is now at the bottom of the oceans sank. So even less water was needed.
 
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KenJackson: "Before you can even begin making sense of all those bones and artifacts, you have to decide whether there was a worldwide flood or not. That decision can't help but be important to the analysis. But I fear that you've dismissed any thought of any such flood and started with the absolute unquestioning assumption that there was none."


Be careful before you accuse me of being rigid. For the Flood waters to cover the top of Mt. Everest would require seven times as much water as there is on earth today. Did God create this massive amount of water from nothing, then send it back to nothing when the Flood was over? If fresh water came from the sky, the fish in the ocean would die because the water wouldn't be salty enough. If salt water covered the land, the land would be infertile, nothing could grow, no crops could be raised.

I have had many problems with taking the Flood story literally. In 2017, I did a thread Noah's Ark Would Have Broken in Half. Take a look at it.


Link
Noah's Ark Would Have Broken in Half

As has already been started Mount Everest was not that high before the flood. So it's pointless to talk about the biblical water level above the mountains without also taking into consideration the mountains were lower and we don't even know how low.
It isn't Biblical water level + mountain height of today.
Its Biblical water level + mountain height at that time.

Secondly, the flood was a supernatural event. Like the 3 men who walked around inside a fire without being harmed, the ark and those aboard were protected by God. Would have been a bit silly for God to have had Noah build a huge boat over 100 years, bring all those animals and seal the door to just leave them to their fate.
 
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If fresh water came from the sky, the fish in the ocean would die because the water wouldn't be salty enough.
It's my understanding that the rain falling on land is constantly leaching a little salt into the oceans, so ocean salinity goes up a tiny bit every year. It's probably been doing that for 5000 years. So the oceans weren't nearly as salty back then as they are today. Fish adapted to saltier water gradually.
 
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coffee4u

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Did God create this massive amount of water from nothing, then send it back to nothing when the Flood was over? If fresh water came from the sky, the fish in the ocean would die because the water wouldn't be salty enough. If salt water covered the land, the land would be infertile, nothing could grow, no crops could be raised.

Water came from the sky and from under the ground and sea. It would have been of a mixture of fresh and saltwater.

It's more than likely that fish were created to live in both fresh and salty water and simply lost the ability. The creation model is perfection> Loss of information >specilized animals.
 
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Dale

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You don't seem to have even attempted to make the case that fossils imply evolution. Or do you just assume it? There are fossils, therefore they evolved?

Fossils are much better explained by the flood than by evolution. Why would there be so many fossils if there were no flood? Fossils don't normally form. But the real problem with evolution is in the details of biology.

Life is made up of complex, hierarchical, interdependent systems. Do you know what hierarchical means? It means your heart has no value by itself. It requires blood to pump. It requires your body to be laced with veins, arteries and capillaries to pump blood through. To be useful, it requires lungs, liver and kidneys to scrub the bad and add the good for distribution.

Each of these complex organs has no value by themselves. And they are each constructed of many complex components that have no value by themselves. The complexity by itself is not the issue. But it presents a big problem to natural selection. A change must have an advantage or benefit to be conserved. But the components of any complex mechanism would have to have lots and lots and lots of changes conserved over a long period before there was any benefit at all.

Errors (mutations) don't accumulate to form complex, hierarchical, interdependent systems. Life was clearly designed.


KenJackson: "Fossils are much better explained by the flood than by evolution. Why would there be so many fossils if there were no flood? Fossils don't normally form."


You seem to think that formation of fossils is a really extraordinary event. It's really just a matter of having the right conditions. When I toured the Smithsonian Institution in around 1980, they had a fossilized human body on display. The man lived at the time of the American Revolution in the late 18th century. He died and was buried but after his coffin rotted a flow of heavily mineralized water petrified his body. It is a rather gross exhibit for some people. It does mean that the body of an animal or a person can petrify, and so fossilize, in less than 200 years under the right conditions.

You seem obsessed with the notion that fossils are incredibly rare, they "don't normally form." It is my understanding that there are zillions of fossils out there that we haven't found. There are fossils buried in soil and rock, mountains and hillsides. Often we only find them when there is erosion and they wash into a creek or a river. It's not that fossils aren't there, our ability to find them is limited.
 
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KenJackson

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I heard about that petrified man. But he was petrified after death over a period of time. Most of the fossils that are found appear to have been alive at the time of the disaster.

Clam shells open when the clam dies, but the world is covered with closed clam fossils. Many dinosaurs were arcing their necks back to try to get a breath. Some fish were halfway through actually eating another fish. Some animals were even caught giving birth. If the organisms were dead, there should be a lot of decay, but how many fossils of decayed animal have you seen?

You seem obsessed with the notion that fossils are incredibly rare, they "don't normally form."
The point of that notion is that they form so very infrequently today that we shouldn't see them all over the world, but in fact, as you point out, "there are zillions of fossils out there". So if there was no worldwide flood, why oh why are there so many fossils?

Also, if fossils just capture an animal here and there through time as animals evolved, as evolution claims, why do so many appear fully formed suddenly at the start of the so called Cambrian Era? Shouldn't we see a progression of slowly developing forms?
 
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