The Flood

[papakapp]

Edit: Welp, upon further consideration of your opening statement, it appears that what you've outlined may or may not be your personal favorite theory. If it is, great, and I await your comment. If not, that's cool, I'll just hang on for Juve or whoever else to take a whack at this. Thanks!

I moved the last part of your post up to the top because it seems relevant at this time. I don't really have a problem with the theory. But I doubt it has everything explained perfectly. What I do have a problem with is "conventional" science and its methodologies. Warren Beaty says it much better than I could though.
The Rules of the Game
The guy is brilliant. Some of the problems I have with the way science is done in the US today is that the people who are good at getting published and funded are not necessarily the smartest or most qualified individuals. I also dislike that whatever "current" research says, all the new research must agree with 90% of current research because it is just assumed that current research could not be off by more than 10%. I don't buy that and I think it is very limiting to true learning.
So I guess what I would have a problem with is a mindset that is sort of married to whatever is conventional, even when what is conventional does such a poor job of explaining all the observations, as in this case. Which, hopefully will be shown.

First, tell me more about these black and white sand thingies. They sound interesting.

TRANQUIL SANDS Notice the erratic deposition. That will be relevant later. If you want a real world example of the same thing, http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Mount-St-Helens-and-Catastrophism.pdf and search for the word "fluidized"

Second, if hydraulic sorting was responsible for the deposition of the geologic column, we should see an overall fining upward trend. This is in no way the case. Failing that, there should at least be some segregation based on grain size. We do not see this either. There are conglomerates with meter-size and larger boulders in a silty matrix. Any hydraulic sorting whatsoever would eliminate this.

No, we are not talking about simple lamination. where solids were allowed to settle out without any other influences such as tidal or ground movement. Think of semi-coagulated mud sloshing around, not a highly viscous, mostly water solution. No version of the flood model predicts uniformity in that regard afaik Everyone postulates cross-lamination. But speaking of anomalies in the layers, how does the uniformitarian postulate deal with stuff like that? If all the layers are millions of years apart, then all the layers except for the first one had to come from somewhere. Suppose if 50% of the earth is stratified then we would have to assume that all the erosion occurred on the 50% of the earth that was unstratified so that we would have material to stack on top of the stratified portions. The problem is we have no mechanism to prevent half of the earth to remain uneroded for a billion+ years while it sat around and waited for the eroding portions to deposit more layers on top of them.

Not to mention the fact that there are intact carbonate systems, entire reefs preserved in strata of virtually every age. If the flood occurred in a year's time, there is no way these systems could possibly originate, grow, flourish, and the be buried and preserved. Have a look at the Permian Capitan reef complex for one of the more spectacular examples.
Also: Preserved eolian dune complexes (view the Colorado Plateau for outstanding examples), paleosols, and the preservation of ichnofossils (Early Cambrian to recent) and root traces (Silurian to recent) would not be possible were the flood theory of sediment deposition true.

I don't have a problem with these occurring after the flood at different times. Particularly because silt builds up quickly. and wind moves sand quickly. In fact, it seems to me that the same phenomenon, which I think the young earth model handles quite elegantly seems like more of a problem for the uniformitarian. The rate of silt deposition at river deltas occurs far too quickly. Yeah, those reefs probably got buried at different times, but if you calculate how rapidly rivers create sedimentary deposit, you realize you dont need millions of years to bury them. If the earth were very old, it would be much flatter. For example, the entire gulf of Mexico should be filled in by now and the Mississippi River should be the Mississippi bay. Oh yeah, subduction. Too bad the rate of continental drift is not rapid enough for subduction to be the answer.

Of course one need only look at the fact that there are innumerable faults that cut some sedimentary layers and not others, and growth structures adjacent to some faults to see that this theory is not true.

And that's not even going in to angular unconformities or dikes that cut through sedimentary strata.

I dont have a problem with any of that.

From where? Were there large reservoirs of water in the subsurface? If so, please point out the exit points, as well as explaining structurally how the crust could support these large cavities, both pre- and post-flood.

http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/pg/fig1_grav.gif
The exit points (if there were any at all) were most likely the red parts on that topographical map of the ocean floor.
Regarding the question of structure. The theory suggests that it only held up for 1000 years or so. Theat doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. If the earth is billions of years old though, then why was oil oozing up out of the ground in the US only 100 or so years ago? Yeah, we pumped it all out now, but did we just get really lucky and happen to settle here right in that sliver if time when it started coming out? We don't even have a mathematical explanation as to how the oil could have withstood the pressure of the earth for 1,000,000 years. Let alone a billion. I wouldn't make too big of a deal of the water thing unless you have a really good explanation for the oil. And if you do have a good explanation for the oil then you probably also just explained the water.

Please point out these 'dirt filled voids'.

Think of them as sinkholes. The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans

The earth was not perfectly flat, since the bible mentions mountains and hills prior to the flood.

Marine fossils on the tops of mountains (Actually, let me correct this: the fossils are not ON the mountains, they are, in fact MAKING UP the mountains)are evidence that
a. The flood did not deposit our sedimentary column (how would the sediment be deposited, lithified, and then uplifted in one year?), and

How do you explain these? http://preachrr.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/foldedlayers.jpg http://preachrr.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/folded_layers_tapeats_sandstone.jpg
The most logical answer I can come up with Is that it was deposited in water, in a horizontal orientation. And then was erratically displaced before it had time to solidify. this means that
a) the last layer was deposited before the first layer was hard
b) It moved at a pace rapid enough that the movement was complete before it got hard enough to crack.

b. That plate tectonics functioned in the past and are still functioning in a way similar to that observed and theorized by the geologic community.

Again, check out the stuff by Bill Beaty. http://amasci.com/freenrg/mavskep1.txt is another good article he did. They may be right or they may be wrong but it is not useful to appeal to them as individuals. It is only useful to appeal to their research. Personally, while it may exist, I have not yet seen any evidence from any research that suggests that what it is doing now is what it has always done.

The geography in the bible is essentially identical to the geography today.

source?

If, as I think you are hinting at, the 'catastrophic plate tectonics' theory supplied by so many creationists were true, this would not be the case.

You know. That, and the whole 'if catastrophic plate tectonics was true, it would have produced enough heat to sterilize the surface of the earth' thing.

I would be interested in seeing the math on that.

Yep, I was right. Catastrophic plate tectonics. Already discussed that, so we'll move on.

I've actually never heard the term before now. But if you want to persuade me, or anyone you might want to put up some evidence for why it must be false.

Which ice age was this? The most recent one? The one before that? There are quite a few preserved in the rock record (Oh! Another refutation of the 'flood strata' theory!) If you say the most recent, then bummer, the animals were all over the place already. If you say the one before that, bummer again! Still got animals all over. I think that's pretty much the case unless you go back to the Neoproterozoic ice age. But wait. If that were the correct one, then why weren't all the other ice ages documented in the records of the civilizations present post-flood?

So which was it?

propably the only one there ever was. You are limiting yourself when you think of this as a limitation of the flood strata theory. Remember, the flood strata theory postulates that all layers were deposited at the same time. In addition both that and uniformitarianism postulate that lots fo stuff changed and nobody expects everything to be laboratory-perfect anywhere, let alone everywhere. So if you say one glacier carved through this layer and another glacier carved through that layer, you aren't going to persuade anybody because you are only starting with your own bias that presumes the layers are different ages.

Yes, there are many extinct species. We find them (and their roots and root traces) dispersed throughout the sedimentary record (Rats. There's that darn record again, screwing with our flood). So all these seeds floated about in the waters of the flood for at least 40 days, but more likely a year, and then they plopped down on the ground and started growing happily.

1. On water logged soil? I don't think so. Of course, none of that soil would be in place if the flood was as energetic as floodies hypothesize (waters of the deep, depositing the whole sedimentary record, etc. etc.), it would have been stripped away but the currents.

2. Let's assume the soil survived and was miraculously not water logged. The seeds sloshed and swooshed around in the currents of the flood for a month or a year or whatever you'd like, then settled down and grew happily. But, since they floated around so much, they all got mixed up and fell randomly on the ground, causing species from all over to grow near each other. Do we see this today? No, because of course the seeds lucky enough to fall on their native ground out-competed the other plants, re-establishing their old habitats. So we should see evidence for this initial homogeneity and subsequent takeover by native species. Do we? Nah. So there's only one option left:

3. Calm flood! The seeds got picked up floated straight up, hung out for a while, then floated right back down into their natural environments. Problem solved! Except that by gosh we couldn't have deposited a sedimentary column in a calm flood. Dang. Back to square one.

You can tell me how it was done, right?

I await your comment.

I really don't think anyone would have the slightest problem with plant life. If we assume 100,000,000 discrete samples of each genus in an antediluvian world. now, lets assume the odds of any one discrete seed surviving a one year flood are 10,000,000 to one. Maybe a fir tree would have better odds since a pinecone could float around attached to a branch, and some buckwheat plant would have worse odds, but I'm just pulling these numbers out of thin air anyway. But they don't seem that troubling to me. Yeah, it's unrealistic that any one seed should survive. But it is even more unrealistic that all seeds should die.

 

[shernren]

Actually, Mallon, the kid is fundamentally wrong on many levels. Firstly, his "toting up the teslas" approach is completely wrongheaded. A tesla is a unit of field strength. It's like this: let's say we have one man holding up an elephant, and ten women holding up ten elephants. Wow! Ten elephants being held up! Does that mean each woman has to be ten times as strong as the man? Nopes, each woman only has to be just as strong as the man.

It is true that it would require a lot of magnetic flux to hold up a water canopy (and, as we will see later, that is an utter, complete strawman). However, canopyists are proposing that the canopy is being held up over the surface of the entire earth. Large flux divided by large area means that the local field strength doesn't need to be much stronger than it takes to levitate a single water droplet (just as ten women don't need to each be as strong as ten men to carry ten elephants).

Secondly, not all metals would be unmovable. Only ferromagnetic metals respond strongly to magnetic fields; non-ferromagnetic metals wouldn't, and copper, aluminum, gold and silver in particular would still have been readily usable in antiquity. Also, the iron in our blood does not exist in metallic form; it is individual ions in hemoglobin proteins, which does not have an appreciable magnetic response. (Similarly, red rust doesn't respond to magnetic fields.)

Thirdly, the whole magnetic field thing is a red herring the size of the Atlantic. Water levitates in a magnetic field because it is weakly diamagnetic; that is, it tends to produce its own magnetic field opposing an external field. Now which way do compasses point? They are aligned north-south, not up-down. (Yes, there is a vertical component, but it is negligible.) Thus, if the earth's magnetic field was strong enough to evoke a bulk diamagnetic effect in water, the water would not be levitated above the surface of the earth, except at the magnetic North Pole (or is that the South?); it would instead flow from north to south along the ground subject of course to all the other forces that affect its movement (gravity, erosion, etc.).

So no self-respecting canopy theorist should propose magnetic fields as the means of levitation. It could be as simple as saying a canopy is like a cloud writ large; that's certainly not physically impossible. What is impossible, however, is the amount of heat that would be produced were a canopy surrounding the Earth of any appreciable thickness to all fall down to Earth.

 

[upabove]

Wow, this is really good!!! Good debate material..

 

[Mallon]

Actually, Mallon, the kid is fundamentally wrong on many levels. Firstly, his "toting up the teslas" approach is completely wrongheaded. A tesla is a unit of field strength. It's like this: let's say we have one man holding up an elephant, and ten women holding up ten elephants. Wow! Ten elephants being held up! Does that mean each woman has to be ten times as strong as the man? Nopes, each woman only has to be just as strong as the man.

It is true that it would require a lot of magnetic flux to hold up a water canopy (and, as we will see later, that is an utter, complete strawman). However, canopyists are proposing that the canopy is being held up over the surface of the entire earth. Large flux divided by large area means that the local field strength doesn't need to be much stronger than it takes to levitate a single water droplet (just as ten women don't need to each be as strong as ten men to carry ten elephants).

Secondly, not all metals would be unmovable. Only ferromagnetic metals respond strongly to magnetic fields; non-ferromagnetic metals wouldn't, and copper, aluminum, gold and silver in particular would still have been readily usable in antiquity. Also, the iron in our blood does not exist in metallic form; it is individual ions in hemoglobin proteins, which does not have an appreciable magnetic response. (Similarly, red rust doesn't respond to magnetic fields.)

Thirdly, the whole magnetic field thing is a red herring the size of the Atlantic. Water levitates in a magnetic field because it is weakly diamagnetic; that is, it tends to produce its own magnetic field opposing an external field. Now which way do compasses point? They are aligned north-south, not up-down. (Yes, there is a vertical component, but it is negligible.) Thus, if the earth's magnetic field was strong enough to evoke a bulk diamagnetic effect in water, the water would not be levitated above the surface of the earth, except at the magnetic North Pole (or is that the South?); it would instead flow from north to south along the ground subject of course to all the other forces that affect its movement (gravity, erosion, etc.).

So no self-respecting canopy theorist should propose magnetic fields as the means of levitation. It could be as simple as saying a canopy is like a cloud writ large; that's certainly not physically impossible. What is impossible, however, is the amount of heat that would be produced were a canopy surrounding the Earth of any appreciable thickness to all fall down to Earth.

At least someone knows what they're talking about on the subject! Thanks, shern.

 

[Mallon]

You have to read in context and check the Hebrew. There are multiple meanings for erets: earth, dry land, land, country. So the word translated 'Earth' i.e the planet with a capital 'E' is sometimes a mistake, as the Hebrew can simply be a localised small area of land, not the whole planet or world.

Here's an example (2 Chronicles 36:23):

''Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth...''

Obviously the Persian Empire did not cover the entire earth. The earth here only relates to a specific area of land of territory.

Therefore if you read in context and understand the Hebrew, it is clear the flood was only local to the Mesopotamian region.

Note that Genesis 9: 13 - 14 states that a raindow after the flood would be seen above the earth. Obviously if the flood was over the entire planet this would make little sense, as a rainbow cannot cover the entire planet - it only pertains to the earth in the sense of the Mesopotamian region. And the rainbow would cover the earth (erets) only in that specific region.

I agree with all that.

As for the claim the Bible teaches a flat earth, most countries/lands appear flat without hills and are just flat grasslands. Look at vast areas of the Pontic-Caspian steppe region for example.

If you're arguing that the ancient Hebrews called the earth flat because that's how they perceived it from their limited, human POV, then I agree.

However the Bible nowhere states the Earth in the sense of the entire planet or world is flat. There is some clear evidence it teaches it is spherical, i have some quotes i will find.

I highly doubt that, but I'd be curious to see your verses. Hopefully they don't refer to the "circle of the earth" because a circle is flat.

And the 'pillars of the earth' just means the strata of rock. If you check the Hebrew for pillars it comes from a root meaning 'molten, rock'.

When the Bible refers to the 'pillars of the earth', it uses the Hebrew word `ammuwd, which literally means pillar or column.

 

[juvenissun]

This argument of yours has already been shown to be lacking, so I'm not going to address its weaknesses here. But on EARTH, on EARTH's timeline, man did not exist several million years ago. Period.

Not so fast. How about if another time line intersected the earth's time line? A way to see it is at the place topo contour lines intersected or overlapped.

You don't have to continue if you do not know what to say.

 

[Mallon]

Psalm 90: 2 (translated by Ferror Fenton) -

''Or the Earth and World rolled into their spheres.'' 1

A note by Fenton:

1 Psalm 90. v. 2 - This passage clearly shows that Moses understood the true system of astronomy and that the Earth and Planets resolved around the sun in sphere or circuits. Hebrew: kholl to dance, to turn in a circle as the Earth does, or spin and Thebel, the substantive form of Yebel, to flow along, or diffuse, are equivilant to ''the floaters in Space'' that is the Planets around the Sun. The idea of the Sun and Planets and Stars circling around the Earth is a Heathen, not Biblical one. - F. F

That's easily one of the most strained interpretations I've seen. The word used in Psalm 90:2 is "chuwl", which means to dance, twist, fear, be born, or bring forth. Even if we reject all previous interpretations of the word in this context as "formed", there's still nothing there about the world being a sphere. I'm definitely not convinced on this one. There are many Bible verses, on the other hand, that call the earth a circle, which is not a sphere, and is a 2-dimensional object.

Psalm 89: 12 also reads:

''You formed the World's sphere and its times''

Whaaaat? Again, that's emphatically NOT what the Hebrew says. A much more accurate translation is "The north and the south, you have created them". There's nothing in the Hebrew that refers to the word sphere (or "dur"). I would highly recommend that you stick to a better translation.

Basically the Psalms are filled with the mention of the world being a sphere and rotating or ''dancing''.

Except they're not.

 

[theFijian]

Psalm 90: 2 (translated by Ferror Fenton) -

''Or the Earth and World rolled into their spheres.'' 1

A note by Fenton:

1 Psalm 90. v. 2 - This passage clearly shows that Moses understood the true system of astronomy and that the Earth and Planets resolved around the sun in sphere or circuits. Hebrew: kholl to dance, to turn in a circle as the Earth does, or spin and Thebel, the substantive form of Yebel, to flow along, or diffuse, are equivilant to ''the floaters in Space'' that is the Planets around the Sun. The idea of the Sun and Planets and Stars circling around the Earth is a Heathen, not Biblical one. - F. F

Psalm 89: 12 also reads:

''You formed the World's sphere and its times''

Basically the Psalms are filled with the mention of the world being a sphere and rotating or ''dancing''.

Why does Fenton add in a word which isn't present in the original Hebrew?

 

[juvenissun]

Whaaaat? Again, that's emphatically NOT what the Hebrew says. A much more accurate translation is "The north and the south, you have created them". There's nothing in the Hebrew that refers to the word sphere (or "dur"). I would highly recommend that you stick to a better translation.


Except they're not.

This may be the side point, but since you make a point on it:

Do you know why would King David say "north and south", rather "east and west"? If we want to praise God, using east-west actually makes more sense.

 

[gluadys]

This may be the side point, but since you make a point on it:

Do you know why would King David say "north and south", rather "east and west"? If we want to praise God, using east-west actually makes more sense.

Actually, he may have. The Hebrew word translated as "north" is Zaphon, which was also the name of a mountain to the north of Israel. Tabor and Hermon mentioned in the next verse are also mountains, I believe. I wonder if the word translated "south" (Yamin) is also a place name. Perhaps another mountain.

I don't know the biblical geography all that well, but if all of these are place names he could be using all the place names to refer to the four directions.

 

[Steven Knoll]

The idea of a worldwide flood used to be taught more, but since learning more about the world most people have accepted the idea of a local flood. Some even see the idea as a complete analogy - a sort of parable like Jesus taught.

 

[juvenissun]

Actually, he may have. The Hebrew word translated as "north" is Zaphon, which was also the name of a mountain to the north of Israel. Tabor and Hermon mentioned in the next verse are also mountains, I believe. I wonder if the word translated "south" (Yamin) is also a place name. Perhaps another mountain.

I don't know the biblical geography all that well, but if all of these are place names he could be using all the place names to refer to the four directions.

Good idea. Thanks.

 

[Assyrian]

Actually, he may have. The Hebrew word translated as "north" is Zaphon, which was also the name of a mountain to the north of Israel. Tabor and Hermon mentioned in the next verse are also mountains, I believe. I wonder if the word translated "south" (Yamin) is also a place name. Perhaps another mountain.

Yemen?

 

[gluadys]

Yemen?

That sounds plausible.

 

[Orogeny]

Sorry I didn't reply to this before now. A couple of grant proposals came due in the last couple days, so I had my hands full dealing with actual science instead of internet forum science.

What I do have a problem with is "conventional" science and its methodologies. Warren Beaty says it much better than I could though.
The Rules of the Game

Wow. If you believe that these 'rules' are what govern scientific research, you've got bigger problems than I can help you with. Most of them are not only patently false, but are actually the exact opposite of how one is supposed to approach science. 'Maintain the status quo?' A scientist's quickest path to renown, riches and respect is to DISPROVE the status quo! A scientist who could disprove the theory of evolution or an old earth would be rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams. I would absolutely LOVE to be the guy to do either of those things.

Put those 'rules' out of your head. They are propaganda.

Some of the problems I have with the way science is done in the US today is that the people who are good at getting published and funded are not necessarily the smartest or most qualified individuals.

And you know this because you've tried to get funding and publish? Or did you read this somewhere? Doing research that addresses unique aspects of a topic is what gets you funded, and doing this research well is what gets you published. This isn't the case just in the US. This is the case around the world.

I also dislike that whatever "current" research says, all the new research must agree with 90% of current research because it is just assumed that current research could not be off by more than 10%. I don't buy that and I think it is very limiting to true learning.

Funny... I've been doing research for a while now and I've never heard or seen a rule wherein my research must have a certain percentage of 'conformity' to the research of others. Please tell me: How would one MEASURE this conformity? I've NEVER 'assumed' that the research of others was 'not off by more than 10%'; it would be fatal to one;s work to do so. That is unadulterated poppycock.

So I guess what I would have a problem with is a mindset that is sort of married to whatever is conventional, even when what is conventional does such a poor job of explaining all the observations, as in this case.

But it doesn't. It explains them quite thoroughly, and with evidence to boot!

TRANQUIL SANDS Notice the erratic deposition. That will be relevant later. If you want a real world example of the same thing, http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Mount-St-Helens-and-Catastrophism.pdf and search for the word "fluidized"

That is a fun little trinket. I'm still not clear on exactly how they work, as the site is a bit lacking in description, but it is not by liquefaction, or flow via dispersive force, which is what the 'paper' you've posted means by 'fluidized'.

No, we are not talking about simple lamination. where solids were allowed to settle out without any other influences such as tidal or ground movement. Think of semi-coagulated mud sloshing around, not a highly viscous, mostly water solution.

So the flood wasn't water, it was mud? Hello Bible revisionist. Anyway, if it was 'semi-coagulated mud', we would not see quartz arenites, oolitic grainstones, or boulder conglomerates, would we? We would see a fairly massive pile of mud. So you've gone from one problem to the other. Instead of being able to explain good sorting, all you can explain now is POOR sorting. So. How would you deposit a pure, fine-grained quartz arenite or an oolitic grainstone from a 'semi-coagulated mud'? How would you deposit a chalk made almost exclusively of coccoliths? How would you form deposits that are identical to those being formed by fluvial systems today from a 'semi-coagulated mud'?

No version of the flood model predicts uniformity in that regard afaik Everyone postulates cross-lamination.

Do they all postulate lacustrine deposits in strata of every age as well? Do they postulate tidal flats of every age? How about evaporite deposits of every age? What about stromatolites of virtually every age (Stromatolites require light because they are formed by photosynthetic cyanobacteria. This is only possible in shallow, clear water, which a 'semi-coagulated mud' certainly would not be)?

But speaking of anomalies in the layers, how does the uniformitarian postulate deal with stuff like that?

Quite easily.

If all the layers are millions of years apart

Which they are not; that is simply a creationist strawman.

then all the layers except for the first one had to come from somewhere.

They all did come from somewhere. Oh, and so did the first one.

Suppose if 50% of the earth is stratified then we would have to assume that all the erosion occurred on the 50% of the earth that was unstratified

Oh really? Sedimentary strata are not subject to erosion? Submitted for your approval:

Ok. Nothing like demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of sedimentology and stratigraphy in a discussion of... wait for it... SEDIMENTOLOGY AND STRATIGRAPHY!

Protip: Grab a copy of Sam Bogg's book 'Principles of Sedimentology and Stratigraphy'. It contains great explanations of how sedimentary structures and strata form using examples from the recent and the ancient. If you actually care about this topic, you would do well to learn some basics.

The problem is we have no mechanism to prevent half of the earth to remain uneroded for a billion+ years while it sat around and waited for the eroding portions to deposit more layers on top of them.

You're darn right we don't, because that would be ridiculous, and nowhere is this postulated in old earth geology. Yet another strawman.

I don't have a problem with these occurring after the flood at different times.

But your original premise (it was even the first one you posted!) was that THE ENTIRE GEOLOGIC COLUMN is a flood deposit. Now there are some after the flood? Care to differentiate between the two?

Careful. You're starting to shift those goalposts.

Particularly because silt builds up quickly.

How quickly? Gimme a number.

and wind moves sand quickly.

Again, how quickly? And why does this matter?

In fact, it seems to me that the same phenomenon, which I think the young earth model handles quite elegantly seems like more of a problem for the uniformitarian. The rate of silt deposition at river deltas occurs far too quickly.

How quickly is that? And are you making the faulty assumption that all sediments deposited in an area remain in that area? Remember, as you said, wind moves sand quickly. And water moves it even more quickly.

Yeah, those reefs probably got buried at different times

Wait, I thought the entire sedimentary column was the result of the flood? Do you mean 'at different times during the flood'? Because that still doesn't solve the problem of how they originated, flourished, and then died.

In fact, this goes for nearly all carbonate sediments. The vast majority of carbonate systems are dependent on photosynthetic organisms for production of their sediments. If your 'semi-coagulated mud' flood were true, there could be no subtidal photosynthesis, as I've already pointed out. So unless you're saying that all those carbonate sediments were already laying around (But you're not, because then the entire geologic column wouldn't be a result of the flood), your flood model cannot reconcile carbonate systems.

but if you calculate how rapidly rivers create sedimentary deposit, you realize you dont need millions of years to bury them.

But the whole geologic column is from the flood, remember? Not from rivers. So were the flood explanation for the geologic column true, there should be no fluvial deposits. Plus, the reef systems generally aren't buried in fluvial deposits. Most of the time they are encased in basinal shales, which have exceptionally LOW sedimentation rates.

If the earth were very old, it would be much flatter.

How does this follow?

For example, the entire gulf of Mexico should be filled in by now and the Mississippi River should be the Mississippi bay.

This is a creationist strawman that ignores delta lobe switching and basin floor subsidence. PRATT. Try again.

But, just for fun, here's a quick refutation: The Mississippi river delta is currently 7 miles thick. The flood is supposed to have occurred about 4,000 years ago. That means that the average sedimentation rate for that system since the flood (when the river would have begun flowing, and this depositing sediment, assuming your model) is 9'3" per year. A paper from Adams and Roberts (1993) puts maximum annual sedimentation rate on the Mississippi delta at 15cm/year (~6"/year). This rate assumes no basinward transport via slope failure and sediment density flows, both of which occur on the delta. So the current delta could not have formed if your flood model was correct.

Oh yeah, subduction. Too bad the rate of continental drift is not rapid enough for subduction to be the answer.

Luckily it doesn't need to be.

I dont have a problem with any of that.

You may not, but your flood theory does. I'll take your unwillingness to address these problems as an inability to solve them until you prove otherwise.

 

[Orogeny]

Part 2...

http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/pg/fig1_grav.gif
The exit points (if there were any at all) were most likely the red parts on that topographical map of the ocean floor.

'If there were any [exit points] at all?' How would water come from below the earth without exit points? You're just making random guesses here. Which is essentially par for the course for YEC's. 'When all else fails, GUESS!'. No wonder nobody in the scientific community takes you guys seriously.

BTW, if you're saying that mid ocean ridges (the red parts) are where the water came from, then I guess you're retracting this statement:

The earth is probably lumpier (more mountainous) due to the dirt filling voids where the water used to be.

You know. Because mid-ocean ridges most certainly aren't full of dirt.

Regarding the question of structure. The theory suggests that it only held up for 1000 years or so.

Ok, and HOW did it hold up? Structural explanation, please. And when it collapsed, what happened? We have earthquakes today that are caused by very minor plate movements. What was the effect of large, hollow chambers in the crust collapsing, and why weren't these effects (which would have been catastrophic) documented when that happened?

By the way, unless the 'waters of the deep' were in VERY shallow (But they weren't... they're the waters of the DEEP, right?) reservoirs, the geothermal gradient dictates that the water would likely have come out boiling hot. Thjs probably would have been an issue for the arc and its inhabitants, and it certainly would have sterilized most seeds entrained in it.

Theat doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me.

That doesn't change the fact that it's a major hole (lol) in your theory.

If the earth is billions of years old though, then why was oil oozing up out of the ground in the US only 100 or so years ago? Yeah, we pumped it all out now, but did we just get really lucky and happen to settle here right in that sliver if time when it started coming out?

You know, if you're trying to make a scientific argument (are you?), it would be a good idea to understand what you're arguing against. I don't know if you're reciting a strawman here or if you're just grasping at straws, but at least ATTEMPT to understand the petroleum system before you start trying to discredit it. No one, and I mean NO ONE thinks that petroleum was present upon accretion of our planet. Petroleum is generated by thermomaturation of organic matter subject to heat and pressure at depth. Since sediments are constantly being deposited and buried, organic-rich sediments are constantly moving into and through the oil window, oil is constantly being generated, migrating into reservoirs, and yes, sometimes leaking out at the surface.

We don't even have a mathematical explanation as to how the oil could have withstood the pressure of the earth for 1,000,000 years. Let alone a billion.

Explain why we need one. Organic matter+heat+pressure+time=hydrocarbons. If the sediment is deposited and doesn't enter the oil or gas window for 5,000,000 years, there are no hydrocarbons produced. Please understand that time is not the controlling factor for hydrocarbon production; it is just one of the factors.

I wouldn't make too big of a deal of the water thing unless you have a really good explanation for the oil. And if you do have a good explanation for the oil then you probably also just explained the water.

Hydrocarbon generation is VERY well understood. Every major (and every minor) oil company relies on an old earth model of the hydrocarbon system to find and recover petroleum. This is geology applied. If it didn't work, they wouldn't use it, and it obviously works, because petroleum companies are some of the most profitable on earth. So I wouldn't make too big a deal of the oil thing unless you'd like to explain to ExxonMobile, BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell, BHP Billiton, PetroBras, Marathon, Hess, Devon, Anadarko, EnCana, and hundreds of other public and private oil companies that their entire business model is wrong.

Also, clearly your equivocation of subsurface oil and water is mistaken. Good effort though.

Think of them as sinkholes. The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans

Ok, so then you're backing away from this statement:

The earth is probably lumpier (more mountainous) due to the dirt filling voids where the water used to be.

Because the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans are not 'dirt filled voids'

How do you explain these? http://preachrr.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/foldedlayers.jpg http://preachrr.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/folded_layers_tapeats_sandstone.jpg

The first picture appears to be from the Canadian Rockies. Since this is an orogenic province (as is virtually every mountain range), it's pretty common to get folding at very short wavelengths. There are very good structural explanations for folding of this wavelength. A brief google scholar search will bear this out. The second picture appears to be be simple parasitic folding.

The most logical answer I can come up with Is that it was deposited in water, in a horizontal orientation. And then was erratically displaced before it had time to solidify.

Then you clearly have little to no experience with structural geology. Pick up a Twiss & Moore structural geology book. It's pretty easy to understand.

this means that
a) the last layer was deposited before the first layer was hard
b) It moved at a pace rapid enough that the movement was complete before it got hard enough to crack.

a)Probably.
b) Or it moved slowly enough that it was able to deform plastically. We have a mechanism for that. Care to provide a mechanism for your way?

Again, check out the stuff by Bill Beaty. http://amasci.com/freenrg/mavskep1.txt is another good article he did.

Wow. Any more propaganda you'd like to post?

My favorite one:

PRO Conventional researchers maintain high standards for the testing
of new theories.

CON Conventional researchers suppress maverick ideas by forever
demanding more and more stringent tests.

Oh boy, wouldn't want to over-test an idea, would we? One test is fine. Because if it's true in one situation, it must be true in every situation.

They may be right or they may be wrong but it is not useful to appeal to them as individuals. It is only useful to appeal to their research.

Truth. I'll go ahead and appeal to the vast library of structural and tectonic research that has been done over the last 50 years, and which provides the basis upon which most companies that successfully apply geologic concepts are founded. You know, like those companies I listed earlier. The ones that are fabulously successful.

Personally, while it may exist, I have not yet seen any evidence from any research that suggests that what it is doing now is what it has always done.

Then you've never done a lick of research on tectonics. Just type 'plate tectonics' into google scholar. You'll come up with 178,000 results.

source?

Assyria, the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile rivers are all in the same place they were before the Flood, to name a few.

I would be interested in seeing the math on that.

I haven't got the math, but I've got an article that cites your fellow YEC boys Baumardner and Austin as agreeing with this:
Flaws in a Young-Earth Cooling Mechanism

Also, if catastrophic plate tectonics were true, then faults active during this period (most of them) would have moved very quickly. When faults move quickly, the frictional energy between the fault blocks melts the rock along the fault plane, producing a glassy rock along the fault. This glass is called pseudotachylite. It is rare along fault planes. It should not be if rapid plate movement was in effect.

I've actually never heard the term before now. But if you want to persuade me, or anyone you might want to put up some evidence for why it must be false.

Done! Not to mention the refutations provided by talkorigins.com:

CD750: Catastrophic plate tectonics

propably the only one there ever was.

Oh boy.

You are limiting yourself when you think of this as a limitation of the flood strata theory. Remember, the flood strata theory postulates that all layers were deposited at the same time.

Of course, you've already backed away from this postulate in this very post.

In addition both that and uniformitarianism postulate that lots fo stuff changed and nobody expects everything to be laboratory-perfect anywhere, let alone everywhere. So if you say one glacier carved through this layer and another glacier carved through that layer, you aren't going to persuade anybody because you are only starting with your own bias that presumes the layers are different ages.

Unless there are known glacial deposits from the Paleoproterozic which are covered by marine deposits, glacial deposits in the Neoproterozoic (there are), which are covered by marine deposits of the Cambrian, and glacial deposits in the Ordovician, Permian and Neogene. There's no bias in the observation that there have been multiple periods of glaciation. We see the deposits in multiple ages and we see glacial striation in multiple ages. This is not interpretation. This is observation.

I really don't think anyone would have the slightest problem with plant life.

I do, and I've given multiple reasons why.

If we assume 100,000,000 discrete samples of each genus in an antediluvian world. now, lets assume the odds of any one discrete seed surviving a one year flood are 10,000,000 to one. Maybe a fir tree would have better odds since a pinecone could float around attached to a branch, and some buckwheat plant would have worse odds, but I'm just pulling these numbers out of thin air anyway. But they don't seem that troubling to me. Yeah, it's unrealistic that any one seed should survive. But it is even more unrealistic that all seeds should die.

You'll notice that my argument does not even deal with survival of the seeds in flood water (although this is an issue, as I've shown in this post). My argument is based on the substrate upon which the seeds would fall, as well as the historical vegetative record. You haven't addressed any of these arguments; you ignored them and addressed an argument I didn't even make.


____________________


So let's summarize, shall we? You've made several strawman arguments, several appeals to 'logic', and several arguments from ignorance. You've also made no arguments that cannot be refuted by old earth geology. You've moved some goalposts, backed away from some of your original statements, posted propaganda that in no way accurately characterizes the scientific community, and you've made several rambling comments about 'bias'.

Pretty par for the course for a YEC, and nothing that hasn't been dealt with hundreds of times before.

 

[Mallon]

Thanks for taking the time to set the record straight, Orogeny.

 

[philadiddle]

papakapp,

I'm wondering if you could respond to post #21, there's been a lot of talk of the science and I'm wondering how you deal with the theological problems of your stance.

 

[Orogeny]

Not so fast. How about if another time line intersected the earth's time line? A way to see it is at the place topo contour lines intersected or overlapped.

You don't have to continue if you do not know what to say.

I do know what to say: You're just making things up. And you know it. There is no basis for this in reality, and you're just trying to leverage your atrocious misunderstanding of theoretical physics into a 'theory' so that you don't have to admit you're wrong. Never in the entire time I've been reading your posts have you displayed even a basic understanding of biology, chemistry, or geology, much less physics. Your relentless 'theorizing' is a discredit to the creationist community and shows just how far and how low many of you will go to avoid admitting that you are wrong.

It's ok, you don't have to be embarrassed. I'm embarrassed enough for you.

 

[Orogeny]

Thanks for taking the time to set the record straight, Orogeny.

My pleasure, Mallon. If I missed anything, feel free to jump in.