Polystrate Tree Fossils

john:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html

Jet Black said:

john:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html

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That link goes to a discussion about Nova Scotia. We were talking about the Kettles coal mines near Cooksville, Tn. Where the trees are found in the coal and in two different layers of the earth.

ir's a discussion about polystrate fossils john. they have been understood since the 19th century, and there is no problem with them being partially embedded in coal. go and get a geology book.

Jet Black said:

go and get a geology book.

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Have you ever taken a debate class? In the middle of a debate you don't say: I know I am right, go get a book and look it up. That is a sure way to lose points and most likely lose the debate.

Where are your helpers today? I know that there are people who post on this board that are geologists. I guess we will just have to wait for them to show up so they can defend their belief on this.

the whole point is, you are using isolated examples. I showed the link on polysrate fossils, and the article mentions fossils that cross multiple layers, so your example is a non-issue. unless there is something particularly important that you think is in that photo that you think needs addressing.

JohnR7 said:

The question is, how can a tree be found in two different geology layers. Esp. layers that are suppose to take thousands of years just to forum one inch.

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So, you think that geologists say every stratum took thousands of years to form? Where do you get this stuff? I recommend staying off the YEC websites for a while.

Have you ever taken a debate class? In the middle of a debate you don't say: I know I am right, go get a book and look it up. That is a sure way to lose points and most likely lose the debate.

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This isn't a matter of winning or losing points or debates; it's a matter of understanding the science behind the various claims. You don't suppose scientifically literate people were born knowing this stuff, do you? This sort of knowledge is gained by education and then by self-motivated reading and by asking questions and paying attention to the answers. You're asking someone to give you a primer in basic geology, which isn't all that hard to look up for yourself, and if the history of this board is anything to go by, you won't pay attention to the answer anyway. It makes people reluctant to embark on the lengthy process of spelling it all out in the first place.

JohnR7 said:

Where are your helpers today? I know that there are people who post on this board that are geologists. I guess we will just have to wait for them to show up so they can defend their belief on this.

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Okay, but I hope you are not wasting my time...

Geologists have known for a long time that some deposits are rapidly emplaced and others are slowly emplaced. It would be exceedingly hard not to notice debris flow deposits or storm surge deposits or sand bar deposits as YECs seem to think has happened. Taking the slowly deposited materials along with the fact that there are long periods of non-deposition and erosion, we come up with very long times for the deposition of an entire stratigraphic column.

Early geologists were pretty convinced that the geological record took at least 100my and up to 300my to be deposited. Lord Kelvin's calculation disagreed with that by estimating 25my to cool the earth from a molten to solidified crust. HOwever, Kelvin did not take into account any continuous source of heat such as radioactivity within the earth. All this was before or during the time that the TOE was being formulated.

The real kicker came in 1905 from Ernest Rutherford, a physicist with no ties to evolution, who realized that radioactive decay provided a tool for estimating the age of rocks. Suddenly the limits were raised to half a billion years, minimum. In subsequent years, with more analyses, the age of the earth has been measured to much greater limits.

Look at it this way... We know that some processes are episodic, such as human growth. Just because the overall rate seems to be quite slow, there are jolts in which the rate is much higher and a child seems to grow overnight. If your professional creationists were correct and we applied the high rates to the entire lifetime of a person, we should be all be 10 meters tall. Ridiculous!

Same thing with sedimentation. The overall progress is very slow, but there are many periods of rapid growth of the stratigraphic column. There are flood surges, flows and falls that cause rapid deposition, but they do not occur throughout the entire record. Therefor, it is very possible to have a debris flow or a storm surge or a sand bar that migrates into a swamp with trees growing in it. These may be responses to tectonic shifts or storms or volcanism or ice ages, but there is no evidence that a universal, global flood is responsible for any of it.

edgeo said:

Okay, but I hope you are not wasting my time....

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He is. I should point out that John isn't a young earth creationist. He neither accepts a 6,000 year old earth nor a global flooding event responsible for earth's geology. He has previously admitted that he does this just to get his jollies by provoking responses, so when he retreats into his defense of YEC for zero reason using already refuted arguments, it's best just to ignore him, as he's trolling.

Just take a look at the fact that the thread is practically three months old, and look who bumps it up with a three month late reply that is just meant for provocation.

Well, there might be some lurkers around who appreciate that lucid explanation, but if people think that scientific facts and conclusions are dependent on who's a more skilled debator, they're missing the point of the scientific method.

Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most prolific and known pro-spontaneous-DNA-complexification (macroevolutionist) writers, calls the testimony of the fossil record against accidental species transitions "the trade secret of paleontologists".

The polystrate fossils are very real, Gary Smalley quotes the professor in the class he took on geological dating on the subject as something they don't understand.

"..very long times..." Henh. I can measure the erosion of a (small) hillside during a dry decade and pronounce that it would have taken 34 million years to carve out the valley below. Along comes a very very very big rain, it messes up the calculation. What's so complicated about this that actual grown scientists ridicule it? Charles Darwin's mentor: "The present is key to the past". So they come up with spontaneous beneficial DNA generation in place of spontaneous generation. Duh. They forget the hidden implicit assumption clause: "...as long as the past works according to the assumptions we make."

When they have to come up with something, they imagine a comet or something. Anything but what the Bible says. It's a real comedy. Of errors.

Perhaps you could provide the source of that Gould quote? Surely this isn't going to be another "let's quote the wicked atheist out of context to pretend he said something he didn't really say" interludes, is it?

The polystrate fossils themselves may well be real. The creationist interpretation of how they got there is the thing we're having problems with.

truthteller said:

"..very long times..." Henh. I can measure the erosion of a (small) hillside during a dry decade and pronounce that it would have taken 34 million years to carve out the valley below. Along comes a very very very big rain, it messes up the calculation. What's so complicated about this that actual grown scientists ridicule it? Charles Darwin's mentor: "The present is key to the past". So they come up with spontaneous beneficial DNA generation in place of spontaneous generation. Duh. They forget the hidden implicit assumption clause: "...as long as the past works according to the assumptions we make."

When they have to come up with something, they imagine a comet or something. Anything but what the Bible says. It's a real comedy. Of errors.

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Evidently you fail to understand that geologists realize that differential erosion in different environments occurs and that geologists do not use erosion rates to determine ages. Furthermore, you fail to understand uniformity only taking one side of it. By using the present as a key to understanding the past, that includes both rapid and slow processes. Different environments can be seen in the geologic record, as can different erosional patterns. Sometimes change is slow, sometimes it is fast.

Mechanical Bliss said:

He is. I should point out that John isn't a young earth creationist. He neither accepts a 6,000 year old earth nor a global flooding event responsible for earth's geology.

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We are not talking about me and my beliefs, we are talking about Dr. Dino and his web site. People are begging for the chance to falsify him, so this is their chance. Why is everyone starting to side step the issue all of a sudden. Is Hovind harder to falsify than people thought?

He has previously admitted that he does this just to get his jollies by provoking responses, so when he retreats into his defense of YEC for zero reason using already refuted arguments, it's best just to ignore him, as he's trolling.

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Oh, now we are starting in on the personal attacks. Hovind must be a LOT harder to falsify that you guys though he was. Your getting desperate if you are ignoring the issue all together to turn it into a personal attack.

Hovind 3 Evolutions 0

They just refuse to examine the evidence of the volcano at Mt St Helens which has demolished Evil-oution theory entirely!!

edgeo said:

It would be exceedingly hard not to notice debris flow deposits or storm surge deposits or sand bar deposits as YECs seem to think has happened.

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We are not talking about sand bar deposits we are talking about Kettles coal mines near Cooksville, Tn.

Then why is it still a theory if it has been demolished?

Gould made that statement in 1982 at a evil-oution confrence I recall. Hay another good quote by Aldus Huxley the late & former UNESCO head on Public Broabcastion in the early 70's when asked why he thought Evil-oution was accepted so quickly said "because the idea of god interfers wityhour sexual morays", what a eyeopening statement as well as a devistating statement for the evil-outionists to deal with.

obediah001 said:

They just refuse to examine the evidence of the volcano at Mt St Helens which has demolished Evil-oution theory entirely!!

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That's it. They talk about what they want to talk about and try to sidestep the real issues and the real evidence that falsifys evolution.