World Wide Flood Of Noah

[shalamabobbi]

Well, there is this...

and this....

These might help. The material we are covering here is not new ground, but like McDonald's hamburgers they have been processed over and over again.

Thanks Ron Beron,

I see that most posts don't address issues but are rather people arguing back and forth without the presentation of data and possible interpretations. I may pick out all the actual data and compile my own summary page for future reference.

What seems to be the main theme between believing church members is not whether God could pull off the flood globally or not but the fact that some evidence is against it where some members argue against that understanding of the evidence without providing a self-consistent interpretation that favors their view.

As a very simple example we have Franktalks assertion of 500ft tsunami waves carrying away trees to create coal seems, etc. This is a YEC attempt to account for everything in a short time frame. Yet:

What was used to waterproof the ark? We are told that God instructed Noah to coat the ark inside and out with the naturally- occurring hydrocarbon pitch, which causes a bit of a problem since, according to Whitcomb and Morris, all oil, tar and coal deposits were formed when organic matter was buried DURING the flood.

So we see these kinds of contradictions all the time in YEC thinking.

[Rob Osborn]

Ok, I gotcha I think. What in the following article do you disagree with?

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/earth/Mass.shtml

better add this too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment

I do not disagree that one can measure the mass % of relative objects and the force of attraction they exert on each other. The experiments and math of the links shows various methods used to determine the relativeness attraction forces that are measurable of two masses.

What this does not explain (as I have been saying all along) is if you can use these experiments and math calculations to determine if or if not a sphere such as ours is solid or hollow. There is much we still do not know about gravity and exactly what forces on a planet (not mere suspended experimental balls hanging on wires) are involved. Also, we do not know exactly how much or if at all the entire planets mass can or is attracted to any small object such as ourselves. Is there any cancelaation effect due to magnetism? we just cannot know at this time.

Whereas I see the experiment on the link you posted as a novel idea, the planet earth is a completely different machine with many moving parts on the surface and interior that - yes, do effect gravity. The experiment showed the attraction force applied to a small object and it's relationship with that. Yes we can measure the force as "weight", but what we cannot tell is what percentage of the earth's mass is really acting upon that object. For all we know, there could be quite a bit of elctromagnetic interferance between the pole areas, with moving magma underneath teh earths surface, etc. that cancel out each other's attraction forces

Edited September 3, 2011 by Rob Osborn

[shalamabobbi]

The following may be something new that hasn't been posted before:

Young-earth creationists believe that the entire geologic column was deposited in a single year. But there is a problem that if this is true, then Noah and company, would be choked to death on noxious gases. Volcanoes produce lots of sulfuric acid and if all the volcanic rocks on earth are the result of a single year's worth of eruptions, how much sulfuric acid was placed into the atmosphere? Three volcanoes provide the data for this calculation (de Silva and Zielinski, 1998).

Tambora erupted in 1815 and threw 20 cubic kilometers into the air. It also threw 200 megatons of H2SO4 into the stratosphere. This is 10 megatons of sulfuric acid for each cubic kilometer.

Huaynaputina erupted in 1604 and 1605 and threw up 19.2 cubic kilometers of ash and rock and 50 megatons of sulfuric acid. This is 2.5 megatons of acid per cubic kilometer.

Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 threw 10 cubic km of rock and 30 megatons into the atmosphere. This is 3 megatons of acid per cubic kilometer.

We will not use an average but we will use the lower value of 2.5 megatons of acid per cubic kilometer as the value for the following calculation.

There are huge lava flows on earth, called volcanic traps, which must have occurred during the flood year because they lie on top of supposed flood deposited sedimentary rock and beneath flood deposited sedimentary rock. So if the geology requires that they be extruded during the flood, how much sulfuric acid must come with them? Here are some of the volumes of rock extruded to the earth's surface during such episodes:

Volcanics flood basalt flows (Coffin and Eldholm).

DATE VOLUME

Ontong Java/Nauru 121-124 my 38-55 x 106 km3

Kerguelen Plateau/ Broken Ridge 114-109.5 my 15-25 x 106 km3

North Atlantic 57.5-54.5 my 6.6 x 106 km3

Deccan Traps 65-69 my 8.2 x 106 km3

Siberian Traps 250-216 my 2.3 x 106 km3

Central Atlantic Magmatic Province(CAMP) 200 my 2 x 106 km3

Columbia River 6-17.5 my 1.74 x 105 km3

Ethiopian Traps 7.5 x 105 km3 before erosion

(estimated from the data of Mohr and Zanettin, 1988, p. 63; Siberian Traps from Reichow et al, 2002, p. 1849; CAMP from Marzoli et al, 1999, p. 618).

Other Basalt flows Volcanics flood basalt flows (Hess, 1989)

DATE Area

Snake River Plain 16 my .5 x 105 km2

Parana Plateau Brazil 119-149my 12 x 105 km2

Karoo Basalts 166-206 my >1.4 x 105 km2

Assuming a 1 kilometer thickness for the second list of traps this adds up to as much as 1 x 108 cubic kilometers.

Given a production of sulfuric acid of 2.5 megatons/cubic kilometer of extruded material gives 2.5 x 108 megatons or 2.5 x 1014 tons of sulfuric acid that must have come out of the earth during that single year. A ton is 1016 kg so this represents 2.34 x 1017 kg. This is 2.46 x 1017 kg of acid! The atmosphere has a mass of around 1018 kg. This means that 1/4th of the atmosphere would have been sulfuric acid at the end of the flood. This level of acidity would destroy Noah and the ark occupants.

Carl Froede (personal communication July 20,1998) stated the he 'would agree with Morton if there were no global flood to absorb all the gases and ash!' He further suggested that all the volcanic rocks were deposited underwater (Froede, 1996, p. 116, 123) and the acid ate away at the limestone creating karsts and caves. So if the young-earth creationist position is that H2SO4 is absorbed by the flood waters and thus the acid was kept from the atmosphere, there are other implications.

First, the volcanic traps, I cited show little lithological or textural of having been extruded under water. Magma, when extruded underwater, most often is quenched into pillow shapes. That is why underwater extruded lava are often called pillow lava. While there are some subaqueous sheet and lobate flows (Gregg and Fink, 1995), subaqueous lava tubes (Haymon, et al, 1993), they are not as extensive and uniform in thickness as those observed in some of the volcanic traps which are believed to have been subaerial flows. Also, along the edges of subaqueous flows, where the rate of lava movement is slowed, pillow lavas almost always form. The volcanic traps don't have pillow lava and thus look like subaerial flows. One of the flows studied by Steven Austin in his former life as Stuart Nevins from the Eocene John Day formation concluded that it had to have been deposited subaerially. He wrote (Nevins, 1974, p. 225)

"One of the most perplexing difficulties presented by the Mesa basalt is its horizontal extent compared to thickness. As an illustration of the remarkable thinness of the Mesa compared to its widespread flow, imagine that the actual thickness of the flow were reduced in scale to this thickness of a page of this Quarterly. In order to represent to scale the maximum horizontal dimension of the flow, the page would have to be 20 feet long!"

The Mesa basalt is 30-40 feet over 100,000 square miles (Nevins, 1974, p. 225)

Austin further states (Nevins 1974, p. 225),

"It is the opinion of the author that the Mesa basalt as well as many other Cenozoic basalts flowed after the Noachian Flood. The Mesa basalt could not have flowed during the flood otherwise it would have been 'quenched' by the waters and could not have spread so broadly."

So if young-earth creationists are to believe Austin, then Austin's data would imply that many volcanic flows found in the geologic record must have been deposited subaerially. Individual flows of other areas are also equally thin compared to their extent.

While H2SO4 can be absorbed by water, this is irrelevant if the H2SO4 comes from subaerially deposited lava flows. The volcanic traps were extruded under the air not under the water. Thus, Noah must have dealt with. sulfuric acid.

Austin, Baumgardner et al, in "Catastrophic Plate Tectonics," 3rd ICC pp. 609-621 suggest that the entire motion of the continents was accomplished in the flood year. This means that a 5 km thick layer of basalt was extruded onto the ocean floor. Five kilometers is the thickness of the oceanic crust.

The ocean area is 361 x 106 km2 and the volume of basalt extruded during the flood is

5 km x 361 x 106 km2 = 1.805 x 109 km3

Since there are 2.5 megatons of H2SO4 per km3 we find that the rapid continental drift would release

2.5 x 1.805 x 109 = 4.5 x 109 megatons or 4.5 x 109 megatons x 106 tons/megatons = 4.5 x 1015 tons.

Multiplying the tonnage by 1016 kg/ton we find that continental drift released

4.584 x 1018 kg of H2SO4

The mass of the ocean is 1.4 x 1021 kg. Thus you have a .3% solution of acid (by weight) in the oceans.

Conclusion

I am not a chemist, a friend who works for the Tennessee Department of Geology (Jim Moore, personal communication, July, 1998), calculated that that much acid would cause the ocean to have a pH of 2.2. Froede, who works for the EPA, admitted that such a pH would not be good for the fish. The young-earth advocates need to ask themselves if the EPA would allow a factory to discharge enough acid to turn the river into a .3% solution (by weight)? Fish can not live in such highly acidic waters. Since during the global flood, the fish were not protected by the ark they would be unlikely to survive the flood. Acid is as bad for the gills as it is for the lungs.

There is direct observation that the above calculation might not be too far wrong. A deep sea dive along the East Pacific Rise was able to observe an actual undersea volcanic eruption. They measured the pH of the water just above the magma. They measured a pH of 2.5 which is not far from what is stated above. (Haymon et al, 1993, p. 85)

Also, if the acid is used to eat away the limestone that the flood was busy why wouldn't it eat the shells of shellfish? Shellfish also were not protected by the Ark and would also be subject to this highly acidic water. They too would die. The global flood is incompatible with the survival of oceanic life. The young-earth creationist needs to realize that his model of the flood would turn the oceans and atmosphere into an acidic cesspool.

Note Added in Proof:

John Baumgardner criticized this for only using eruptive volcanoes and suggested that I should use Kilauea-type volcanism. That data confirms what I am suggesting. According to Vincent Courtillot, (1990, p. 89) the Deccan Traps (using Kilauea as a model) injected 6 x 1012 tons of sulfur into the atmosphere. This would make 1.8 x 1013 tons of H2SO4. The Deccan traps are 8.2 x 106 km3. Thus, this represents 2.2 megatons of acid/km3 for the Deccan traps. This is not far from the 2.5 megatons/km3 I used.

Source: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/acid.htm

[shalamabobbi]

I do not disagree that one can measure the mass % of relative objects and the force of attraction they exert on each other. The experiments and math of the links shows various methods used to determine the relativeness attraction forces that are measurable of two masses.

What you haven't stated is whether you agree that the actual mass of either object can be determined in your view, not just the ratio of two masses. If not, why not. This is very important. Please respond to this and then we'll get to the hollow versus solid idea.

What this does not explain (as I have been saying all along) is if you can use these experiments and math calculations to determine if or if not a sphere such as ours is solid or hollow. There is much we still do not know about gravity and exactly what forces on a planet (not mere suspended experimental balls hanging on wires) are involved. Also, we do not know exactly how much or if at all the entire planets mass can or is attracted to any small object such as ourselves. Is there any cancellation effect due to magnetism? we just cannot know at this time.

We do know masses of objects and we can calculate densities of materials. The vindication again is that the results of the predictions of all this knowledge work as predicted in calculating the arcs and trajectories of fired ordnance, flights of space craft through the cosmos, orbits of planets and comets. If it didn't work your assertions would hold some weight, but Newtonian mechanics works just fine which contradicts your assertion that there is something we don't know. We know it to such a fine degree that we had to polish Newtonian mechanics and upgrade it with relativistic mechanics.

Cancellation effect due to magnetism?? Magnetic fields affect other objects with magnetic fields. If you do not possess a magnetic field, you remain uninfluenced by a magnetic field.

The other way to create a magnetic field is with relative motion of an object with a net electric charge. That's it. This is all quite well understood and for quite awhile now.

Whereas I see the experiment on the link you posted as a novel idea, the planet earth is a completely different machine with many moving parts on the surface and interior that - yes, do effect gravity.

Not so. You assume magnetism has an effect but as stated only on other magnets and not much of an effect at that.

The experiment showed the attraction force applied to a small object and it's relationship with that. Yes we can measure the force as "weight", but what we cannot tell is what percentage of the earth's mass is really acting upon that object.

Hint: all of it. Gravity has been upgraded since Newton who simply described it's effects with a mathematical model. Try some Einstein. You may have heard of him. He lived a bit more recently than Newton and described how mass warps spacetime to cause the effect known as gravity.

For all we know, there could be quite a bit of electromagnetic interference between the pole areas, with moving magma underneath the earth's surface, etc. that cancel out each other's attraction forces.

You need to master static fields before moving on to electromagnetism buddy..

garbage in, garbage out..

Be careful what you feed your mind because it really does matter, just as diet affects the body's health..

[Franktalk]

The following may be something new that hasn't been posted before:

Young-earth creationists believe that the entire geologic column was deposited in a single year. But there is a problem that if this is true, then Noah and company, would be choked to death on noxious gases. Volcanoes produce lots of sulfuric acid and if all the volcanic rocks on earth are the result of a single year's worth of eruptions, how much sulfuric acid was placed into the atmosphere? Three volcanoes provide the data for this calculation (de Silva and Zielinski, 1998).

Tambora erupted in 1815 and threw 20 cubic kilometers into the air. It also threw 200 megatons of H2SO4 into the stratosphere. This is 10 megatons of sulfuric acid for each cubic kilometer.

Huaynaputina erupted in 1604 and 1605 and threw up 19.2 cubic kilometers of ash and rock and 50 megatons of sulfuric acid. This is 2.5 megatons of acid per cubic kilometer.

Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 threw 10 cubic km of rock and 30 megatons into the atmosphere. This is 3 megatons of acid per cubic kilometer.

The problem with this thinking is it rests on progressions. I do not think we live on an earth that works that way. At some point God will intervene and place bounds on the events. This is clearly described in scripture. Or is this another area that you toss aside and prefer man's knowledge?

Job 38 7When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

8Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?

9When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it,

10And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors,

11And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?

12Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place;

13That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?

14It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand as a garment.

15And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall be broken.

16Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?

17Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?

18Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.

I always assumed that God had a purpose for us on this earth and He was not going to let things get out of hand to derail that purpose. I also read these verses like God is speaking to me. He is asking me if I know how He did the creation. He is asking me if I know the bounds placed on the processes on the earth. Clearly I don't know. Job did not know either. Are you willing to stand before God and tell Him you know the bounds and the methods He used to create the earth and the heavens?

And this passage which says that God has placed the earth in stasis waiting for the day of judgment by fire.

2 Peter 3: 6Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

I always assumed that kept in store means kept in store. How silly of me. So why don't you give me a Biblical lesson and tell me what this means. I mean you already have said that you disagree with verse 6. So what of verse 7?

This was in Greek so world is Cosmos. Although it can be limited in scope I do not think that with the rest of scripture this is local. You know like cosmos valley or something.

As for sediments you yet again try to lump me into a fixed way of thinking. Although it may not seem like it to you I am way more open to data than you are. I am way more open to new ideas than you are. You are a fixed stone parroting back the accepted mantra. Since the flood occurred around 3554 BC and it is now 2011 we have 5500 years worth of erosion. I also believe that the earth divided around 2800 BC although it probably started in the flood. Now I feel that erosion is quick and massive tidal waves would shift large amounts of sediment. But even with out giant tsunamis flooding the continents we still have large amounts of sediments moving around. The study I posted about sediments measured 80% of movement from one place on a continent to another. So large volumes of sediments move. The exact history of the geologic column is unknown. YEC or not.

[shalamabobbi]

The problem with this thinking is it rests on progressions. I do not think we live on an earth that works that way.

Your comment is unclear to me. What do you mean?

You seem to allow God the ability to violate current scientific law when performing a miracle, as do I. We know nothing of higher realms and their laws.

The issue as with radiometric dating is not the violation of laws but rather data that contradicts a possible occurrence. As lakes varves that are undisturbed by a flood, etc. Assuming the flood is global, these could only be as they are, not only by the operation of some higher law, but as the result of a deliberate placement and intervention on the part of God to create false data. Data that will be interpreted to mean a scenario other than what actually occurred. This is the divide between members of the church as I understand it.

You are claiming that there is another interpretation but you haven't given one. Neither has anyone else. The unlearned read pseudo-scientific garbage from the likes of Kent Hovind or ICR and think their view is substantiated without realizing that the arguments proposed from these sources are complete and utter nonsense.

What you claim I do is follow the strict "party line" when it has absolutely nothing to do with authoritarianism at all. It is rather the result of the only possible conclusions to be drawn from ALL the evidence. Evidence which I believe you haven't yet even fully considered.

[shalamabobbi]

Geological effects of the flood:

* How were mountains formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids [Gansser, 1964].) If these were laid down during the flood, how did they reach their present height, and when were the valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind that many valleys were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow process.

* How does a global flood explain angular unconformities, where one set of layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top? They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.

* When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces. It takes a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does granite erode very quickly. [For example, see Donohoe & Grantham, 1989, for locations of contact between the South Mountain Batholith and the Meugma Group of sediments, as well as some angular unconformities.]

* How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution? Ecological zonation and hydrodynamic sorting fail to explain:

1. the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?

2. the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life. (Yun, 1989, describes beautifully preserved algae from Late Precambrian sediments. Why don't any modern-looking plants appear that low in the geological column?)

3. why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in many geologic strata.

4. why organisms (such as brachiopods) which are very similar hydrodynamically (all nearly the same size, shape, and weight) are still perfectly sorted.

5. why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high ground?

6. how coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long were preserved intact with other fossils below them.

7. why small organisms dominate the lower strata, whereas fluid mechanics says they would sink slower and thus end up in upper strata.

Some Flood proponents claim that the flood is responsible for the fossil record. But the fossils are sorted in the Geologic Column with the simpler creatures on bottom and more complex creatures higher up. Flood proponents explain that they are sorted this way because the larger more intelligent animals were able to make it to higher ground before dying. But this doesn't fit the facts. Did plants pull up their roots and climb to higher ground? Remember, they are sorted in the geologic record as well. Shouldn't there have been some sick or lame humans who were stuck at lower levels? Wouldn't elephants, rhinoceroses, and dinosaurs all be together? Also, the water was being added at a tremendous rate. This churning would have completely jumbled the bodies so that they would have been thoroughly mixed. Some claim the waters were calm, but if that were the case then the heavier larger creatures should have sunk to the bottom. Neither scenario is supported by the physical evidence. What is found is a sorting from simple to complex creatures, not a sorting by size, not completely mixed, and not a sorting by mobility.

* How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed layering? One formation is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400 days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling *per day*. And yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly layered, with great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, followed by thirty minutes more of .... well, I think you get the picture. [From: Bill Hyde; see also Kent & Olsen, 1992]

* How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle. [From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys)]

* How do you explain worldwide agreement between "apparent" geological eras and several different (independent) radiometric and nonradiometric dating methods? [short et. al., 1991]

* Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. All such evidence is lacking in annual layers dating back 40,000 years.

* How were limestone deposits formed? Limestone is made of the skeletons of zillions of microscopic sea animals. Some deposits are thousands of meters thick. Were all those animals alive when the flood started? If not, how do you explain the well-ordered sequence of fossils in the deposits?

* How could a flood have deposited chalk? Chalk is largely made up of the bodies of planktonic animals 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter [bignot, 1985]. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec. [Twenhofel, 1961] In a year of the flood, they could have settled about half a meter. [From xdegrm@oryx.com (glenn r morton)]

* Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have originated only on the surface, such as:

o rain drops;

o river channels;

o wind-blown dunes [Kocurek & Dott, 1981; Clemmenson & Abrahamsen, 1983; Hubert & Mertz, 1984];

o beaches;

o glacial deposits [Eyles & Miall, 1984];

o burrows;

o in-place trees [Cristie & McMillan, 1991];

o soil [Reinhardt & Sigleo, 1989; Wright, 1994];

o dessication cracks;

o footprints. [Gore, 1993, has a photograph (p. 16-17) showing dinosaur footprints in one layer with water ripples in layers above and below it. Gilette & Lockley, 1989, have several more examples, including dinosaur footprints on top of a coal seam (p. 361-366).]

o How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?

* How could a one-year flood deposit explain stratigraphic sections showing a dozen or more mature forests layered atop each other, all with upright trunks, in-place roots, and well-developed soil? Such layers of forests appear in many locations. One example, the Joggins section along the Bay of Fundy, shows a continuous section 2750 meters thick (along a 48-km sea cliff) with multiple in-place forests, some separated by hundreds of feet of strata, some even showing evidence of forest fires [Ferguson, 1988]. For other examples, see Dawson, 1868; Cristie & McMillan, 1991; Gastaldo, 1990; Yuretich, 1994.] Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below Mt. St. Helens as an example of how a flood can deposit vertical trunks, but deposition by flood fails to explain the roots, the soil, the layering, and other features found in such places.

* How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? Why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalacians during the flood?

* How do you explain fossil mineralization - the replacement of the original material with a different mineral?

o Buried skeletal remains of modern fauna are negligibly mineralized, including some that biblical archaeology says are quite old - a substantial fraction of the age of the earth in this diluvian geology. For example, remains of Egyptian commoners buried near the time of Moses aren't extensively mineralized.

o Buried skeletal remains of extinct mammalian fauna show quite variable mineralization.

o Dinosaur remains are often extensively mineralized.

o Trilobite remains are usually mineralized - and in different sites, fossils of the same species are composed of different materials.

o How are these observations explained by a sorted deposition of remains in a single episode of global flooding? [From: jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)]

* How could the flood deposit layers of solid salt, sometimes meters in width, interbedded with sediments containing marine fossils? This apparently occurs when a body of salt water has its fresh-water intake cut off, and then evaporates. These layers can occur more or less at random times in the geological history, and have characteristic fossils on either side. Therefore, if the fossils were themselves laid down during a catastrophic flood, there are, it seems, only two choices: (1) the salt layers were themselves laid down at the same time, during the heavy rains that began the flooding, or (2) the salt is a later intrusion. I suspect that both will prove insuperable difficulties for a theory of flood deposition of the geologic column and its fossils. [From: marlowe@paul.rutgers.edu (Thomas Marlowe). See also Jackson et al., 1990]

* How were sedimentary deposits recrystalized and plastically deformed in the short time since the flood? The stretched pebble conglomerate in Death Valley National Monument (Wildrose Canyon Rd., 15 mi. south of Hwy. 190), for example, contains streambed pebbles metamorphosed to quartzite and stretched to 3 or more times their original length. Plastically deformed stone is also common around salt diapirs [Jackson et. al., 1990].

* How were hematite layers laid down? Standard theory is that they were laid down before Earth's atmosphere contained much oxygen. In an oxygen-rich regime, they would almost certainly be impossible.

* How are the polar ice caps possible? Such a mass of water as the flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds. No way to drop them exactly back onto their original location, or to regrow them. (In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.) [From: Bob Grumbine rmg3@psuvm.psu.edu]

* A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?

* When did impact craters on the earth occur? Geological evidence indicates that they would have formed in sediments early enough for erosion and crustal movements to partially erase them. Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest they occurred during the year of Noah's flood. But the heat from all those impacts concentrated in one year would have vaporized the flood waters. [Fezer, pp 45-46]

* And before you argue that fossil evidence was dated and interpreted to meet evolutionary assumptions, remember that the geological column and the relative dates therein were laid out by creationists before Darwin even formulated his theory. (See, for example, Moore [1973], or the closing pages of Dawson [1868], who was cited above.)

source: http://members.shaw.ca/tfrisen/evolution/Creationism/flood.html

[Hughes]

What you claim I do is follow the strict "party line" when it has absolutely nothing to do with authoritarianism at all. It is rather the result of the only possible conclusions to be drawn from ALL the evidence. Evidence which I believe you haven't yet even fully considered.

Since this statement is false, and other scientists as smart as yourself, disagree, based on their evaluation of the evidence, your statement can only be seen as biased. And bias is the point that Frank and others are pointing out as the main problem.

I posted a link to a Global Flood Model (written by scientists by the way), it answers most if not all the questions you are bringing up.

[shalamabobbi]

Since this statement is false, and other scientists as smart as yourself, disagree, based on their evaluation of the evidence, your statement can only be seen as biased. And bias is the point that Frank and others are pointing out as the main problem.

I posted a link to a Global Flood Model (written by scientists by the way), it answers most if not all the questions you are bringing up.

Yes I read that, post 464, all 8 pages of actual text. Rather short don't you think? Maybe you'd have no problem referring to that model and explaining how it addresses the points made above?

How did it address radiological dating? Oh that's right, by not addressing it at all. Yep, very *scientific*.

[Hughes]

Yes I read that, post 464, all 8 pages of actual text. Rather short don't you think? Maybe you'd have no problem referring to that model and explaining how it addresses the points made above?

How did it address radiological dating? Oh that's right, by not addressing it at all. Yep, very *scientific*.

Radiological dating? If you're talking about dating rocks, then of course that is based on an evolutionary model since, it uses index fossils. No sense is refuting an idea that is false from the outset.

edit to add:

My only point though is this statement demonstrates your bias.

"It is rather the result of the only possible conclusions to be drawn from ALL the evidence."

Edited September 3, 2011 by Hughes

[Franktalk]

Geological effects of the flood:

Why do you continue to throw man's ideas at me. They mean something to you but mean nothing to me.

When geologist study the world they look for nature making what they see in front of them. They are not seeking evidence of a miracle. So what ever they write it will be Godless. I do not live in a Godless world. I live in a world where God and I talk with each other often. I study the scriptures so that I may have a better understanding of God and to know the rules that He wants us to live by. One of those rules is to not let the world rule over us and not to worship the world. I set the boundary at the world ruling over me very close. I do not let much at all become part of me. I do not use the world to enhance my relationship with God. It seems that it gets better as I reject the world. Not one time has God revealed to me some detail about the world. But He has confirmed that scripture is correct. It is not error prone to the point where the message is gone. The message is there for us all to see.

I seek not the approval of man. I seek the approval of God. So when I see all of these ideas of men I give them no weight and I do not associate these ideas with truth. Truth is reserved for God. It is so simple to live this way. Yet I have found that most do not. I find it interesting how many people try and educate me in the ways of man. I spent ten years in college off and on studying engineering and business. I spent the next 40 years studying how things work. I am curious. Yet that worldly man does not exist anymore. Oh I have retained all that I have learned. I have near photographic recall, well at least for most of my life I did. But none of that means anything to me anymore.

I see that you have no respect the men at ICR. You mock them as if they are stupid. Yet they at least have their goal correct. Their goal is to honor God. Now between you and them I think you both are wrong. Neither you nor them include supernatural events. To me that is just silly. But both you and them think that you can connect some hidden series of dots that will lead to God. It does not work that way. God has made the world in such a way that we can't go to Him by a series of steps and data. We are to go to Him by faith. A world in which evidence leads directly to God is not in His plan. Where many feel that things left laying around tell a story let me tell you there may be no story.

If I have a bowl of soup and I stir it, then stir it again and again. If I look at the soup does it tell me a story? Why is the world assumed to tell us something. Maybe the world is like a bowl of soup. A bunch of parts but no story. It is man who has the need to make a story from the parts. I have found that things important to man are not the same things important to God. Should we arrange our life around those things important to God?

[shalamabobbi]

Radiological dating? If you're talking about dating rocks, then of course that is based on an evolutionary model since, it uses index fossils. No sense is refuting an idea that is false from the outset.

edit to add:

My only point though is this statement demonstrates your bias.

"It is rather the result of the only possible conclusions to be drawn from ALL the evidence."

Yes that's called a constraint in science and in math. Place a single point on a piece of paper and draw as many lines through it as you like. Place two points on a page and now only one straight line can be drawn through them. A line is constrained by only two points.

Conclusions about data work the same way when the picture they represent has to be one and the same for all the data. Bias indeed.

Another post on the way to correct your creationist website misinformation about radiological dating.

[shalamabobbi]

Radiometric Correlations

We've touched on radiometric dating methods now, starting where we were not concerned with the derived age but what that meant for the amount of Carbon-14 in the samples, and then where we showed that the theoretical basis is valid. There are other correlations between radiometric dating methods, all showing broad consistency in results when properly applied, from "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective"(5):

* There are well over forty different radiometric dating methods, and scores of other methods such as tree rings and ice cores.

* All of the different dating methods agree--they agree a great majority of the time over millions of years of time. Some Christians make it sound like there is a lot of disagreement, but this is not the case. The disagreement in values needed to support the position of young-Earth proponents would require differences in age measured by orders of magnitude (e.g., factors of 10,000, 100,000, a million, or more). The differences actually found in the scientific literature are usually close to the margin of error, usually a few percent, not orders of magnitude!

Let's look at some of those numbers. First, from "Are Radioactive Dates Consistent With The Deeper-Is-Older Rule?"(4):

However, there is an easier way to check if a method is reliable. We can see if it gives consistent answers against some other method.

For example, Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) dating was tested against the Cenozoic-Era North American Land Mammal ordering. By ordering, I mean that rock layers were given numbers, with bigger numbers at greater depth. Each fossil was given the number of the rock layer it was found in. (Geologists call this stratigraphic order.) Here are the results:

Stratigraphic

K-Ar Date # Samples

Position Name of Age (millions) Dated

1 Irvingtonian 1.36 1

2 Blancan 1.5 - 3.5 7

3 Hemphillian 4.1 -10.0 8

4 Claredonian 8.9 -11.7 16

5 Barstovian 12.3-15.6 9

6 Hemingfordian 17.1 1

7 Arikareean 21.3-25.6 4

8 Orellian --- 0

9 Chadronian 31.6-37.5 9

10 Duchesnean 37.5 3

11 Uintan 42.7-45.0 2

12 Bridgerian 45.4-49.0 2

13 Wasatchian 49.2 1

14 Puercan 64.8 1

The standard geological idea is that "deeper is older". (It's called the Principle of Superposition, and was invented two centuries before Darwin.) In this table, Superposition and K-Ar dating are mutually consistent.

Layer by layer the stratigraphic measures older by radiometric dating, entirely consistent with the long term deposition of sedimentary layers (and not some jumbled debris of some fantasy flood scenario). None of the K-Ar Dates overlap into the wrong sedimentary layers. This is similar to the layer by layer correlation between Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 with the calcite layers in Devil's Hole.

There is also one layer that is not measured - the Orellian - and here is dated by the "sandwich" method (layers above and below) to 25.6 to 31.6 million years ago (this essentially makes a prediction that dating will fill this gap within this range). This demonstrates how this type of dating of objects works.

From "Radiometeric Dating Does Work!"(2):

One of the most exciting and important scientific findings in decades was the 1980 discovery that a large asteroid, about 10 kilometers diameter, struck the earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The collision threw many tons of debris into the atmosphere and possibly led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other life forms. The fallout from this enormous impact, including shocked quartz and high concentrations of the element iridium, has been found in sedimentary rocks at more than 100 locations worldwide at the precise stratigraphic location of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary (Alvarez and Asaro 1990; Alvarez 1998). We now know that the impact site is located on the Yucatan Peninsula. Measuring the age of this impact event independently of the stratigraphic evidence is an obvious test for radiometric methods, and a number of scientists in laboratories around the world set to work.

In addition to shocked quartz grains and high concentrations of iridium, the K-T impact produced tektites, which are small glass spherules that form from rock that is instantaneously melted by a large impact. ... The results from all of the laboratories were remarkably consistent with the measured ages ranging only from 64.4 to 65.1 Ma (Table 2). Similar tektites were also found in Mexico, and the Berkeley lab found that they were the same age as the Haiti tektites. But the story doesn't end there.

The K-T boundary is recorded in numerous sedimentary beds around the world. The Z-coal, the Ferris coal, and the Nevis coal in Montana and Saskatchewan all occur immediately above the K-T boundary. Numerous thin beds of volcanic ash occur within these coals just centimeters above the K-T boundary, and some of these ash beds contain minerals that can be dated radiometrically. Ash beds from each of these coals have been dated by 40Ar/39Ar, K-Ar, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb methods in several laboratories in the US and Canada. Since both the ash beds and the tektites occur either at or very near the K-T boundary, as determined by diagnostic fossils, the tektites and the ash beds should be very nearly the same age, and they are (Table 2).

There are several important things to note about these results. First, the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods were defined by geologists in the early 1800s. The boundary between these periods (the K-T boundary) is marked by an abrupt change in fossils found in sedimentary rocks worldwide. Its exact location in the stratigraphic column at any locality has nothing to do with radiometric dating — it is located by careful study of the fossils and the rocks that contain them, and nothing more. Second, the radiometric age measurements, 187 of them, were made on 3 different minerals and on glass by 3 distinctly different dating methods (K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar are technical variations that use the same parent-daughter decay scheme), each involving different elements with different half-lives. Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible.

That's 187 results between minimum 63.1 million years ago and maximum 66.5 million years ago, from a number of different sources and techniques.

From "Are Radioactive Dating Methods Consistent With Each Other?"(3):

To check, we need one single event which has been dated by several methods. A nice example is the Triassic multiple-impact event, which formed a 4500-kilometer-long chain of huge craters. (There must have been a train of big objects from space, which hit the spinning earth, one by one, across several hours. Much like the way comet Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter in 1994.)

Here are the five confirmed craters:

Crater Country Diameter 10^6yrBP Dating Method

Manicouagan Canada 100 km 214 ± 1 U-Pb on zircons

Saint Martin Canada 40 km 219 ± 32 Rb/Sr

Rochechouart France 25 km 214 ± 8 Ar/Ar laser spot fusion

Obolon Ukraine 15 km 215 ± 25 stratigraphic

Red Wing USA 9 km 200 ± 25 stratigraphic

"Stratigraphic" dating means that the crater itself has not been dated. Instead, the rock strata above and below the crater was dated. (By now, the Red Wing crater is under 1.5 kilometers of sediment.)

One multiple impact event with 5 different craters, independently dated, where all of those ages overlap within the margins of error for each method - an actual age of 214x10^6 years BP is consistent with each one.

From "Radiometeric Dating Does Work!"(2):

Some meteorites, because of their mineralogy, can be dated by more than one radiometric dating technique, which provides scientists with a powerful check of the validity of the results. The results from three meteorites are shown in Table 1. Many more, plus a discussion of the different types of meteorites and their origins, can be found in Dalrymple (1991).

There are 3 important things to know about the ages in Table 1. The first is that each meteorite was dated by more than one laboratory — Allende by 2 laboratories, Guarena by 2 laboratories, and St Severin by four laboratories. This pretty much eliminates any significant laboratory biases or any major analytical mistakes. The second thing is that some of the results have been repeated using the same technique, which is another check against analytical errors. The third is that all three meteorites were dated by more than one method — two methods each for Allende and Guarena, and four methods for St Severin. This is extremely powerful verification of the validity of both the theory and practice of radiometric dating.

In the case of St Severin, for example, we have 4 different natural clocks (actually 5, for the Pb-Pb method involves 2 different radioactive uranium isotopes), each running at a different rate and each using elements that respond to chemical and physical conditions in much different ways. And yet, they all give the same result to within a few percent. Is this a remarkable coincidence? Scientists have concluded that it is not; it is instead a consequence of the fact that radiometric dating actually works and works quite well. Creationists who wants to dispute the conclusion that primitive meteorites, and therefore the solar system, are about 4.5 Ga old certainly have their work cut out for them!

(Note image used is originally from this website and was only copied to a mirror site to reduce bandwidth traffic on the original source).

Excluding the Sm-Nd isochron (4 points) dating of St. Severin meteor - which runs from 4.22 billion years ago to 4.88 billion years ago - that's 16 results between 4.34 billion years ago and 4.61 billion years ago (and also within the envelope of the St. Severin meteor

Notice that these correlated dates all imply an age for the earth of ~4.5 billion years. This is one piece of evidence of the extreme old age of the earth. From "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective"(5):

Most of the rocks we have from the moon do not exceed 4.1 billion years. The samples thought to be the oldest are highly pulverized and difficult to date, though there are a few dates extending all the way to 4.4 to 4.5 billion years. Most scientists think that all the bodies in the solar system were created at about the same time. Evidence from the uranium, thorium, and lead isotopes links the Earth's age with that of the meteorites. This would make the Earth 4.5-4.6 billion years old.

Matching data on the earth, on the moon and from meteors.

The essential element of measuring the age of the earth is NOT finding evidence that the earth is young - that is easy on an old earth - but in finding the oldest available evidence - evidence of age that just cannot be made compatible with any young earth creation model no matter how hard the creationists try.

The age of the earth ~4.5 billion years based on this data.

For comments related to common creationist arguments against radioactive dating techniques see Chris Stassen's comments at "Feedback for January 1999"(1).

Enjoy.

References:

1. Anonymous "Feedback for January 1999." The Talk.Origins Archive. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/jan99.html

2. Dalrymple, G. Brent "Radiometeric Dating Does Work!" National Center for Science Education. Originally published in RNCSE 20 (3): 14-19. The version on the web might differ slightly from the print publication. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/4180_radiometeric_dating_does_work_12_30_1899.asp

3. Lindsay, Don "Are Radioactive Dating Methods Consistent With Each Other?" Don Lindsay Archive. Last modified: 2 April 2000. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/crater_chain.html

4. Lindsay, Don "Are Radioactive Dates Consistent With The Deeper-Is-Older Rule?" Don Lindsay Archive. Last modified: 2 April 2000. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/confirm.html

5. Wiens, Roger C. "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective." The American Scientific Affiliation: A Fellowship of Christians in Scientists. First edition 1994; revised version 2002. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

source: RAZD's link I provided earlier which Hughes apparently didn't bother to read.

[shalamabobbi]

Why do you continue to throw man's ideas at me. They mean something to you but mean nothing to me.

When geologist study the world they look for nature making what they see in front of them. They are not seeking evidence of a miracle. So what ever they write it will be Godless. I do not live in a Godless world. I live in a world where God and I talk with each other often. I study the scriptures so that I may have a better understanding of God and to know the rules that He wants us to live by. One of those rules is to not let the world rule over us and not to worship the world. I set the boundary at the world ruling over me very close. I do not let much at all become part of me. I do not use the world to enhance my relationship with God. It seems that it gets better as I reject the world. Not one time has God revealed to me some detail about the world. But He has confirmed that scripture is correct. It is not error prone to the point where the message is gone. The message is there for us all to see.

I seek not the approval of man. I seek the approval of God. So when I see all of these ideas of men I give them no weight and I do not associate these ideas with truth. Truth is reserved for God. It is so simple to live this way. Yet I have found that most do not. I find it interesting how many people try and educate me in the ways of man. I spent ten years in college off and on studying engineering and business. I spent the next 40 years studying how things work. I am curious. Yet that worldly man does not exist anymore. Oh I have retained all that I have learned. I have near photographic recall, well at least for most of my life I did. But none of that means anything to me anymore.

I see that you have no respect the men at ICR. You mock them as if they are stupid. Yet they at least have their goal correct. Their goal is to honor God. Now between you and them I think you both are wrong. Neither you nor them include supernatural events. To me that is just silly. But both you and them think that you can connect some hidden series of dots that will lead to God. It does not work that way. God has made the world in such a way that we can't go to Him by a series of steps and data. We are to go to Him by faith. A world in which evidence leads directly to God is not in His plan. Where many feel that things left laying around tell a story let me tell you there may be no story.

If I have a bowl of soup and I stir it, then stir it again and again. If I look at the soup does it tell me a story? Why is the world assumed to tell us something. Maybe the world is like a bowl of soup. A bunch of parts but no story. It is man who has the need to make a story from the parts. I have found that things important to man are not the same things important to God. Should we arrange our life around those things important to God?

All the patterns in the world agree and tell the same story Frank. Hardly a bowl of soup!

What should I accept. All the data of the planet or Frank's hyper literal interpretation of scripture?

Difficult choice..

Edited September 3, 2011 by shalamabobbi

[Hughes]

Yes that's called a constraint in science and in math. Place a single point on a piece of paper and draw as many lines through it as you like. Place two points on a page and now only one straight line can be drawn through them. A line is constrained by only two points.

Conclusions about data work the same way when the picture they represent has to be one and the same for all the data. Bias indeed.

Another post on the way to correct your creationist website misinformation about radiological dating.

Since two points of data aren't all that are considered, your bias is exposed by your unconstrained statements.

Edit: For example, this false statement: "All the patterns in the world agree and tell the same story Frank"

Edited September 3, 2011 by Hughes

[Calm]

Yes of course the other mass around you is a force of attraction, but just because it is there doesn't mean it cancels out the force directly under your feet where you are mostly attracted to because of the close proximaty of that mass.

Yes, yes it does (we are talking about spheres, not random bodies of random mass).

A similar issue that is more straightforward and therefore easier to 'see'.....think about a level and how if the fulcrum is close to one size, it takes a huge mass on that end to counterbalance a small mass on the other end...once the fulcrum is moved equal weights do not balance out.

In a sphere, you are close to only a small proportion of the mass of the sphere when the location is on the inside surface of the sphere, the majority of the sphere's mass is in the opposite direction, thus allow the opposite mass to exert the same amount of force even though it is farther away.

Edited September 3, 2011 by calmoriah

[Calm]

The problem with this thinking is it rests on progressions. I do not think we live on an earth that works that way. At some point God will intervene and place bounds on the events.

If you end up appealing to God stepping in and controlling the process, why bother with trying to use physical facts at all?

[shalamabobbi]

Since two points of data aren't all that are considered, your bias is exposed by your unconstrained statements.

Edit: For example, this false statement: "All the patterns in the world agree and tell the same story Frank"

Oh Lord, lock me in a room filled with YECs that they may gnash upon my body and I may die as Stephan of old, a martyr and behold thy Son standing upon thy right hand before passing from this vale of tears. For I have born faithful witness of thy creation and its operation and my testimony is complete. Living here below amongst such ignorance is a burden too great to bare. Let me return to rest with thee I beseech thee now..

No need to repeat. Did you read Katherine's post #247?

Evidence against a worldwide flood in historic times extends across many different disciplines: Geology, Botany, Anthropology, Archaeology, Genetics (just to name a few.) When you talk about a worldwide flood as literally written about in the Bible, the implications are absolutely enormous. We would see genetic lines of every species dating back to a single breeding couple (or three or four for humans) who lived 5-6 thousand years ago. We would see evidence everywhere on the planet in the rocks. We would see pottery, weapons, buildings, bodies distributed in a particular way all dating from exactly the same year. We would have all of the animals which are completely unique to Australia (and shown to have an unbroken record of life there for many tens of thousands of years) living in the Middle East or at the very least, show that they once lived in the Anatolia area (or wherever Noah's Ark landed.) There would have had to have been penguins, kangaroos, three toed sloths, Pandas, (you get the picture) which somehow managed to migrate back to where they originally were from without leaving any evidence of their existence behind, and evidence that they did NOT exist in their native lands for a period of time. I must say that I have a very difficult time understanding how any thinking, educated human being can simply discard everything that seems to be in order to believe in the literal interpretation of an ancient story (which was recorded by people who's knowledge of the world was much smaller and very different from our own. Now, a local flood is an entirely different scenario. The flood of the Black Sea was in the right place and at the right time. It most certainly would have seemed like a worldwide flood to the people (Noah and his family perhaps) who survived it because that probably was the only world they knew. If I were God, I would most likely teach my people about Me and the important lessons I want them to understand by using methods they would understand. I think some of the early stories of Genesis fall in to this category. The lesson is the important thing and these lessons seemed to have been pointed at the people of the covenant of Moses.

[Franktalk]

If you end up appealing to God stepping in and controlling the process, why bother with trying to use physical facts at all?

But God does not step in all of the time. The Bible is clear that for the most part God allows us to wander around. But when something happens like fallen angels taking on human form to mate with women He steps in and takes care of business. The flood was one such event. But if you were to jump off a bridge do you think that God would catch you on the way down or would He let you have your free will? God has a plan for mankind and for you but He respects free will. So at the margins He will do what He needs to to keep this earth in store waiting for the day of fire. And of course a physical fact is not the same as a theoretical projection.

[Calm]

But God does not step in all of the time.

I most definitely agree, but if he stepped in at some point in the Flood, why bother with attempting to isolate that moment by arguing up to what point the 'science' works and then it doesn't (especially if the argument requires "science" that is not "mainstream science")? Seems a lot of effort that is unnecessary when one can simply say from the start "it is a matter we need to take on faith" since at some point in the argument that is what you end up saying anyway.

Edited September 4, 2011 by calmoriah

[Franktalk]

I most definitely agree, but if he stepped in at some point in the Flood, why bother with attempting to isolate that moment by arguing up to what point the 'science' works and then it doesn't (especially if the argument requires "science" that is not "mainstream science")? Seems a lot of effort that is unnecessary when one can simply say from the start "it is a matter we need to take on faith" since at some point in the argument that is what you end up saying anyway.

If this thread was like the thousands of others no one would read it. I have tried to keep the subject about faith and how we rely to much of the opinions of men. I challenged people to list their beliefs about some events in the Bible. Unless I missed something no one has responded. Now should I assume that there is some kind of meaning in the lack of response? Should I write what I think it means? Or is the lack of response in itself enough to make the point I was trying to make?

God has transported people in time. God has stopped the rotation of the earth for a battle. God has rained fire from heaven. Is all of this acceptable but a little water on the earth is too much? I think it is time for people to examine what they actually believe. I know it is hard but I think it is well worth it.

When men think they know something they hold onto that idea like it has great value. So transporting someone in time does not interfere with what man thinks he knows. But let us flood the world and all of sudden scripture is just not reliable in the flood area. And why would that be so? Because man thinks he has the past geology all figured out. So the ideas of man win out over God. Does it seem odd to you that the flood which is simple is fought against yet time travel is not even questioned? Why not use the same standards on all of scripture? Why we could just cut out all of those things that we think could not have possibly happened.

When we go down this path each thing we toss makes the job of tossing things easier. If I hold to the Gospel then I hold to the creation of Adam. I will not take that first step towards the ditch. If I am blind let me be blind to the wisdom of man.

Yes we should take on faith God and His Word. But some say we don't have to take all of it just the core. Maybe 10% of the Word is acceptable and the rest we arm wave away. I don't believe in a God that writes scripture and only 10% is correct.

Edited September 4, 2011 by Franktalk

[Hughes]

Oh Lord, lock me in a room filled with YECs that they may gnash upon my body and I may die as Stephan of old, a martyr and behold thy Son standing upon thy right hand before passing from this vale of tears. For I have born faithful witness of thy creation and its operation and my testimony is complete. Living here below amongst such ignorance is a burden too great to bare. Let me return to rest with thee I beseech thee now..

No need to repeat. Did you read Katherine's post #247?

I did read it, thanks.

Your satire doesn't help. Your dogmatic, "all is this way..." sorts of statements about the past reveal your bias. I don't care if we disagree on the interpretation of the data. However, I agree with those scientists whom you disparage. And any model of the past has difficulties to overcome. Even Old Earth ones. To deny this is to turn a blind eye to the difficulties. My only point is that your bias seems to be blinding you, based on these statements you've been making.

Edited September 4, 2011 by Hughes

[shalamabobbi]

I did read it, thanks.

Your satire doesn't help. Your dogmatic, "all is this way..." sorts of statements about the past reveal your bias. I don't care if we disagree on the interpretation of the data. However, I agree with those scientists whom you disparage. And any model of the past has difficulties to overcome. Even Old Earth ones. To deny this is to turn a blind eye to the difficulties. My only point is that your bias seems to be blinding you, based on these statements you've been making.

When you read the data and base a judgment upon that data it is not bias nor dogma. When you hold to a view that contradicts that data THAT is holding onto dogma because of bias.

Matter is eternal. I think that means it belongs to God rather than it is immortal. It can be placed into a condition of immortality but we don't know anything about that now.

Matter is held together and behaves in a certain manner with a rather sparse description of what are termed laws of physics. It is rather remarkable that such should be the case.

Quantum Mechanics is one of those laws. Some object to the seeming random nature of the law but that may be due to an as yet shallow understanding of the deep nature of time. Anyway without that random aspect we'd all be doomed as the universe would not function in a manner to support life as we know it.

In the world of the quantum, potential barriers are allowed to be penetrated even though the particle in the well has less energy than necessary to do so. This is where probability steps in. The smaller the difference in the energy needed to escape and the particle's actual energy the greater the probability that the barrier will be penetrated.

Radioactivity is an example of this phenomenon. Without the barrier all radioactive nuclides would immediately disintegrate and the planet would be dead without the heat energy to yield a molten core. Without this there would be no planetary magnetism. Without the planet's magnetism our atmosphere would long ago have been stripped away as has happened to Mars. The same can be said if the random nature of Quantum Mechanics did not exist. Barriers would never be penetrated and there would be again no radioactivity to heat the planet's core.

The rate of radioactivity is directly related to the various heights of these potential barriers and as a result different isotopes of the various elements disintegrate at differing rates. Change the rate of decay will you? Then you need to lower the barrier which changes the energy of the decay particle.

Uranium halos exist as the result of constant energy decay particles. Change the energy of the decay particle by changing the rate of decay and the halo would be smeared and out of focus. Since the halos exist and are sharply defined their energy is constant which in turn means the potential barrier is constant which means the decay rate is constant.

As dice in Vegas have no memory neither does the random nature of this process in atoms. The longer an atom is around without decaying has no effect upon the probability of decay of that atom.

This is the greatest challenge to the idea of changes in the laws of physics that I am aware of. If the laws were changed by God in the past in a manner to affect the decay rate of atoms then the energy of decay would be different as well. This evidence does not exist in any of the rocks that have been studied. No where is there any evidence of smeared halo energies. Therefore we can lay this myth to rest.

Besides this, a study has been made into what would happen if even tiny changes in these constants of nature were to occur and the results would be disastrous for life as we know it. This is the finely tuned universe argument and I believe it has merit.

[Franktalk]

Uranium halos exist as the result of constant energy decay particles. Change the energy of the decay particle by changing the rate of decay and the halo would be smeared and out of focus. Since the halos exist and are sharply defined their energy is constant which in turn means the potential barrier is constant which means the decay rate is constant.

Please provide a link which describes the observation of decay rates changing and how that smears the halo? If indeed you are guessing with absolute correctness then why did we build CERN since we already know everything.

[shalamabobbi]

Please provide a link which describes the observation of decay rates changing and how that smears the halo? If indeed you are guessing with absolute correctness then why did we build CERN since we already know everything.

We did not build CERN to re-establish century old nuclear physics. If you don't believe me, a college physics professor should be able to field this question for you at a local campus. Be careful not to mention your pet theory though if you expect to be given any of his/her office time.

Here you go:

A real anomaly is the beta emitter rhenium-187. ..Neutral rhenium-187 has a half-life of 42 × 10^9 years, the authors measured fully ionised rhenium-187 to have a half life of just 33 years! They discuss the cosmological implications of the altered half life of rhenium-187 in various degrees of ionisation in stellar interiors.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/decay_rates.html

Beta emission is the emission of an electron from the nucleus. So by stripping the electron cloud from the atom the coulomb barrier has been lowered and the rate has been changed.

This is the only known case with such a dramatic change. The next largest is under a percent. There is no change measurable for alpha decay though.

The Uranium halos would smear as a result of the less energetic particle which would not travel as far through matter. The energy would be less due to a lower barrier BY DEFINITION. This is really all very basic stuff.

Remember I am allowing God to hypothetically lower the barrier, we can't do that! Why He would do so is your guess, which ironically cannot be answered at CERN or anywhere else in the real world. Maybe He did it as an afterthought so literalists would not lose faith in Him. And maybe before the less energetic particles created an unfocused halo He gave them a little nudge and restored their lost energy to keep the halos crisp and sharp. Any guesses as to why? Again these would be yours. I like to think if this is the way God behaves He's a great practical joker..

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF210.html