A scientific theory for creation

I assume the "500" is a typo and that you meant 50? That would at least put Wegener, who died in 1930, in the right century. As has already been pointed out, Wegener's views are consistent with an ancient earth, so you can't claim Wegener for support.Proposals that the breakup of the continents was recent is a common YEC theme, usually associated with the flood. The continents are proposed to have moved at a rapid clip during the flood year. In order to set your proposal apart from these other very similar proposals it must be supported by evidence.--Percy

And what evidence led you to choose your model over the existing one? The dating of the breakup of Pangaea is based primarily upon the direction of magnetization of dateable layers (that's dateable by whatever means, but ultimately radiometric). This fallacy is for Sunday school. I don't know if it's even worth rebutting, and it's false in so many ways, where do you start?If the tide kept coming in for 200 million years you'd be covered under miles of water. Some coastlines are being eroded a little, some a lot, some are being deposited a little, some a lot. Some volcanic islands were born in a day (Surtsey, Iceland, November 15, 1963), some over millions of years (Hawaiian chain). Sometimes a storm erases a sandbar, sometimes it creates one.Looking at your eroding coastline and concluding that your coastline has always been and will always be eroding that at that rate, and that all coastlines everywhere are also eroding at the same rate, is obviously wrong, primarily because it is so uninformed by evidence, much of which you probably already knew, so it makes no sense that you even said this.--Percy

That's nice. And what evidence led you to choose your model over the existing one? What assumptions? Oh, what the heck, go ahead and explain to me why you choose to ignore the radiometric data. No, I was providing examples while explaining to you that geologic processes are not regular or uniform in either rate or direction. Uniformitarianism refers not a theory that geologic processes are constant over time, but rather to a theory that the same array of forces have always been at work transforming our planet. The uniformity is in the array of geologic forces in play, not in their rate or direction. The sand from erosion of coastline is often deposited elsewhere along the coast. River deltas like the Mississippi extend continents out into the ocean. And come visit the eastern US where dozens of miles from the coast the terrain becomes basically sand. And in California where the Pacific plate subducts under the American continent any rise above sea bottom accretes onto the continent and extends westward the American coastline. What were those assumptions again?--PercyPS - If you're having trouble with the UBB codes for quoting you might want to look at this Guide to UBB Codes. The link to it is also to the left of the text box for typing messages.

Science doesn't work this way. One does not propose a theory according to personal inclination and then hold it until falsified. One instead builds a theory around bodies of evidence. In the case of your theory, it appears to have been constructed in the absence of evidence. I think you just got taken regarding your "continents can only get smaller" theory, you've just chosen to ignore it.--Percy

So in other words, you have no new evidence, you're just ignoring already existing evidence. Perhaps you can explain for us why you're ignoring the radiometric data. The North American continent has grown significantly during this period due to accretion on the western coast where the Pacific plate subducts under the North American plate. I mentioned this in the earlier post (Message 23).Also, I was not arguing that continents only grow larger. You were arguing that continents can only grow smaller, and I provided examples of processes which contribute to continental growth. I mentioned the Mississippi delta in my earlier post - it's important to keep in mind that the constant erosion of the interior is delivered to the margins by rivers.Whether in an overall worldwide sense the continents are growing or shrinking I do not know, but the contention that they can only shrink is clearly false. Your example of your own eroding coastline made several false assumptions, among them that your local situation was the general case everywhere, that the process's rate had been and would always be at its current rate, and that the direction of the process would never reverse. A similar bad example would be to say that mountains are only eroding and can only get shorter, ignoring uplift. In fact, we can now measure mountain growth. For example, we know that the Himalayas continue to elevate at about 2.5 inches/year (No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.extremescience.com/HighestElevation.htm).--Percy

Hey, you brought it up! It was part of your evidence for a young earth. You said erosion had not changed the shapes of the continents sufficiently for 200 million years to have passed. If you look at a world map you'll see the shapes of the continents match in broad view, but when you start comparing specific shapes it is clear the coastlines have changed significantly. Just from visual inspection it is difficult to tell whether the net is an increase or decrease in continental area. I have a series of maps showing the evolution of the continents since before Gondawana, and it appears from these maps that there is more continental area now than then. ????Let me get this straight - you understand "the principles and assumptions of radiometric dating," but you want me to explain to you how it works? How does that make any sense? That's like saying, "I know the way to your house, can you tell me how to get there?"I can explain radiometric dating to you if that's what you want (so can any number of other people here, plus there are plenty of websites and the library), but what I'd like to know first is, if you didn't already understand how radiometric dating works, then how could you consider yourself sufficiently informed to reject radiometric dating, let alone write a book?--Percy

Well, that's a nice opinion, but to be scientific it has to explain the evidence. The evidence we have says there have been many cycles of mountain building and erosion over millions of years. You say your evidence is the same as the mainstream evidence, so can you explain how you fit this evidence into a young earth scenario? I'd be glad to explain this, but something still doesn't quite add up here. Back in Message 22 you said: Sounds like you've got a pretty good handle on it to me. You're so familiar with it, in fact, that you were able to identify "a lot of assumptions."In light of such comments your current questions don't make sense. Either you don't understand it, in which case your prior comments lent a false impression, or you do understand it, in which case your current questions make no sense. In any case, I don't see how you could have arrived at an informed opinion if you didn't already know the answers to the questions you're now asking.--Percy

I think you're reading more into my question than was there. To repeat, how do you fit the available evidence into your theory? Are you trying to sell books or have a discussion? Is that why you're being so close-lipped, you're hoping people will become curious and buy your book? This certainly makes things clear for me! No, I avoided wasting my time answering a question for which there was strong evidence you already knew the answer. And what do you know, you *did* already know the answer to your question! So tell us, why is science is wrong about the age and motion of the continents?--Percy

Hey, I dropped a clanger over at the New abiogenesis news article 4/12/02 in Message 43 when I was dead wrong about Michael Denton. Let he who is perfect bonk the clangers among us.Why not just answer the questions? You've obviously got a point of view, but after your first couple messages you became extremely coy. I believe that the person who comes out on top in discussion will be the one who best marshalled the evidence in support of his position, and not he who was best at playing sly debate games, since after all it quickly becomes obvious to everyone that that's what's happening.So if you think you've found a circularity in the argument and/or evidence for the movement of continents why don't you tell us what it is?--Percy

Hi, LRP!I've been waiting to see if anyone would reply. Maybe you've received some emails, or perhaps replies will come, but let me reply to this for now: I just don't buy this, not one little bit. The basic principles of many complex topics, such as relativity, evolution and geology, can be summarized in a paragraph.But no one wants you to type your book into the discussion board. Who would want to read an entire book in glowing-phosphor form anyway? Perhaps we could just talk about the nature of the circular argument you've detected in the evidence for roving continents.--Percy

Assuming you're talking about the lithospere, this is just mainstream geology, so I agree with it. The rest sounds fine too. I don't know if it matters to your discussion, but there's also oceanic crust, which is denser than continental crust.I accept mainstream geology, so there's really no need to confirm agreement on all the non-controversial details.--Percy

Your approach to explaining this is sending off alarm bells. The validity of your ideas is independent of the style of presentation, and I don't want to encourage rhetorical games.It all sounds fine except for the part about the oceanic lithosphere underlying the Moho discontinuity.Could you hurry this up a bit? I'm not a young guy!--Percy

I wasn't trying to rush you time-wise, just number-of-posts-wise.Did you accidently hit ctrl-W (Close Window) while entering your reply? I do that all the time, which is one reason why I only enter long replies in an editor. My editor of choice is emacs where I've defined ctrl-W as "Delete Backward One Word," and sometimes I forget I'm in the browser text window. Why don't I change my ctrl-W definition? Hey, I had it first (1985), so the rest of the world has to change! There, *that* should win me the Don Quixote for hopeless quests. --PercyPS - Also, the "ctrl" key is in the wrong position, but one battle at a time.

I concur with the responses from edge and TC, and won't touch on anything they've already addressed.Much of what you wrote is merely argument from person skepticsim, eg, "I cannot see how..." and so forth. Edge's question about whether you've ever taken a geology course (a book or two would also suffice, I suppose) was the same question that occurred to me. Instead of informing yourself of the geological information on your questions, you've instead simply asked your uninformed self if you can see how it could happen, answered that you could not, and let that conclude your study. The last part about melting episodes and isochron dating sounds like you're confused about something, hard to tell what. It isn't the reversals that are recorded, but the direction of the magnetic field at the time the rocks solidified. There was recently a scientific paper that received a lot of attention because they had found a series of volcanic deposits that apparently occured just before, during and just after a magnetic reversal. Sorry I don't have a link, but I can probably track one down if this is something you're interested in.--Percy

The layers are dated radiometrically. The direction of magnetization of the layer tells where latitudinally on the planet the layer was when it cooled, as well as it's orientation.When the paleomagnetic data was first being gathered and correlated it was realized that they indicated the continents had not always been at the same latitude with respect to the magnetic pole, and two possibilities were considered: a) the poles drift; b) the continents drift. The question was quickly resolved when it was discovered that paleomagnetic data from different continents indicated different polar wanderings. Locking the poles for all the continents together at a single point become the only way to make sense of the data, and once that was done the resulting derived continental motions just happened to agree with Wegener's proposals.Wouldn't it make more sense to make up your mind after you knew this instead of before?By the way, about the rotating earth turning oval, a couple points. First, the earth is an oblate spheroid - it bulges at the equator. Second, the earth is plastic on a planetary scale and bulges just as much now as it would were it molten.One last thing. Your geologist friend must be humoring you. The level of sophistication of the questions you're raising is gradeschool stuff, and not only would any graduate in geology know the answers, many with a scientific bent would, too.--Percy