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Stop lmputing to me opinions of your own that I do not share, and certainly stop accusing me of some kind of sin for simply disagreeing with you.

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I’m not doing any of that. Why don’t you try being honest for once?

Yawn. It is a fact that the abundance of fossils is too great to be reasonably explained by the Flood, and it’s certainly come up here before - in threads you have participated in - and you have no reasonable answer. It is certainly NOT true that the Flood is any better than the conventional explanation and you have no argument for that either despite presenting it as a fact.It is a fact that there is an order to the fossil record that rules out the Flood as a viable explanation and you have no reasonable excuse for not knowing that after the discussions you have participated in.Likewise it is a fact that the Flood fails to explain the geological record. Evaporites, for instance are not exactly likely to form in the middle of a Flood at all. And you should know that too from past discussions here.

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You have NO idea what number of fossils is "too great" for the Flood, and you certainly aren't taking into account the Biblical context which allows for many times what lives today, because the entire land mass was livable then as it now is not, and immensely more fertile.

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As I said this has previously been discussed. I note that - despite making the initial claim - you have produced no reason to think that the abundance is what we should expect from the Flood. Making ad hoc claims about the Biblical context hardly helps you - and I note that the idea that the entire land mass was livable is hardly relevant to crinoids, the example I mentioned.

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No ice caps either as I understand it, suggesting more livable space for marine life as well

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At the cost of reducing the amount of space for land life.But you are still arguing in generalities, without making any real case. At the least you have demonstrated that you have no sound basis for your original claim. You would think that after years of making that particular assertion you would have something better than that.

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Oh it is a MUCH better explanation than the standard Rube Goldberg idiocies that imagine whole living scenarios within what is now nothing but a sedimentary rock, one on top of another yet for hundreds of millions of years. Physically it's impossible.

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Your inability to understand the conventional view is hardly an argument in your favour. Spouting nonsense is not a convincing argument either.

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Evaporites precipitate out of the layers, what's the big deal? You can tell all the layers were deposited at the same time too, because they are all parallel to each other even when they've sagged to a great depth because of the salts that are pushing up through them.

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Evaporites only form when large amounts of salty water evaporate. That is not going to happen during the Flood, Nor is it likely to happen underground.

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The fossil order is just a made-up concept.

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And that is an outright lie. The order is an observed fact.

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There was never any evolution, there was never an "earlier" life from which "later" forms of life evolved, there is no earlier or later, all living things were formed as themselves, each after its own Kind, at the Creation, and all the changes that have occurred since have accorred within each Kind, which is what microevolution is.

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None of these assertions change the fact that there is an observed order in the fossil record.

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Fossil order is a clever idea but it's not true, it's just the work of the fallen human mind.

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If you could actually show that you would be addressing the topic of the thread!So come on. Let’s have an actual argument against the existence of the order in the fossil record. Or are you just going to go on with denial and excuses ?

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Oh honestly, the point is clear: the enormously greater habitable land -- and ocean for that matter - along with the enormously greater fertility of the land and the absence of difficulties in the production of food both domestic and natural would have made for a teeming abundance of living things not possible in today's fallen world.

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It is quite clear that it is an ad hoc assumption. It is quite clear that you are making no attempt to quantify how much additional life should be present. And certainly you are making absolutely no attempt to show that the Flood is in any way a better explanation of the abundance of fossils.

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I'm just as tired of arguing this as you are. I wish I had the energy to muster all the points I've made on the subject over all those years you mention, but unless my new plant based diet does the miracle improvement in health so many claim for it I'm not up to it, but it's all there.

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That is my point. You are repeating assertions that have been thoroughly discredited in past discussions. It IS all there. You have no reasonable answers. You aren’t doing anyone any good.If you haven’t got anything worth saying, better to not say anything.

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No reason to think so since the volume of water before the Flood is unknown and the volume added by the Flood also unknown.

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That’s just silly. For a start the specific example I gave was crinoids that live on the sea bed. You can’t expand the sea bed without covering land. And of course, if you have more water - all else being equal - it will cover more land. Just more ad hoc excuses.

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You are repeating what has already been answered by me, don't pretend you won the debate just because you made some silly rejoinder to my argument

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That is untrue. You have NEVER made any serious analysis of fossil abundance, not attempted to show that the Flood is a better explanation for it.In your edit you quote a figure of 43% more land space - although there is no sign that figure is based on anything more than assumption. Even if it had a solid basis it is meaningless until related to the actual fossil abundance, which you have not done.

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This debate has been argued over and over and over because you refuse to acknowledge my claims, and I certainly refuse to acknowledge your silly stuff.

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In other words you expect us to accept your assertions even if you cannot support them and even if we have solid grounds for rejecting them.Pointing to an observed fact, like the order in the fossil record is not silly. Calling it an illusion or a made-up concept - without any support whatsoever IS silly. Very silly.

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What you are saying about crinoids is so nonsensical I have nothing to say about it

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Really ? What is nonsensical about the fact that crinoids are very common fossils or that they lived on the sea floor ?

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The 43% more habitable land mass pre-Flood is based on the estimate of 57% UNinhabitable land mass estimated for today's planet due to our deserts and high mountains, an estimate given in Message 662. I didn't make it up, it's apparently a reasonable sound estimate so you have to question that, not me.

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As I said, it’s based on assumption. You haven’t shown that there were no deserts or high mountains (and where would species adapted to those environments live if there were none ?)

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Then I added the fertility factor to that additional 43% of habitable space and conclude that there was more than enough abundance of life to account for all the fossils.

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So you jumped to a conclusion without checking the facts. This is supposed to help your case ?

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Really all the calculations aren't necessary, the sketch of the differences alone should be enough to make the point.

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It’s enough for you because you aren’t interested in the truth of the matter. If you were then of course you would need to consider the actual abundance of fossils.

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Since you have no idea what number of fossils can be supported by what amount of fertile land mass, or even what number of fossils actually exist anyway, you had no right to even suggest that the current count couldn't have been produced by the Flood in the first place.

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You are making assumptions about the state of my knowledge, ignoring past discussion and displaying a remarkable degree of hypocrisy. Unless you know these things - and you clearly don’t - what right do you have to claim that the Flood is a good explanation of fossil abundance ?

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There is plenty of reason to think that whatever number you imagine should exist can be multiplied many times over for the Flood.

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Really ? What reason would that be ?

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As I said, the lack of uninhabitable deserts and mountains is an inference from a few biblical descriptions that imply a milder fertile more life-enhancing planet at the Creation and a hostile environment afterward. It's a very reasonable assumption.

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I don’t think that relying on highly questionable inferences from the Bible is at all reasonable in the context of this discussion. Not that it matters when you still have no figures anyway.

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But I realized while about to go to sleep that I got the 43% wrong, it would be the current 57% of the land mass that is uninhabitable that would have been habitable and much more fertile in the pre-Flood world. That increases the abundance of living things quite a bit which would account for an even greater abundance of fossils left by the Flood

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But they are not uninhabitable by animals at all. They may be less hospitable but animals do live in mountains and deserts today, and the fossil record certainly shows animals found in desert environments in the past. The guy you quoted was very likely referring to human habitation - and likely large-scale human habitation at that.

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A few animals adapted to hostile spaces hardly compares to the huge numbers that could live easily in the fertile spaces of the original Created world.

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Regardless the number needs to be taken into account (and not just with convenient guesses)

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It doesn't help your argument to split hairs and ignore the salient point of the argument.

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What salient point ? You certainly haven’t produced any figures for fossil abundance or offered any reason to think that the actual abundance is better explained by the Flood. You would think that after repeating this claim for so many years you would have something more than a guess.

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The evidence pf the Flood in bazillions of fossils in a miles-deep stack of water-deposited sediments over thousands of square miles is in-your-face evidence.

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No it isn’t. And we know that. If you take a very superficial look at the fossil record it looks like something the Flood might have done. But that’s it. And you know that. That is the whole of your case.It’s hardly adequate even as it stands. There’s nothing in it that you wouldn’t reasonably expect if the mainstream view were true. And if you don’t realise that you must be remarkably dim.But, of course taking deeper look at the evidence - which needs to be done if you are to make a real case - explodes your claim. So of course you don’t do that, you refuse to talk about it. Instead you resort to this arrogant bullying deception.

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It takes a bizarre level of denial to pretend there isn't any.

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It takes a bizarre sort of mind to think that this aggressive dishonesty will work here when it has failed so often before.

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The exact mechanism may not be clear but it is SO obvious that bazillions of fossils fit the purpose of the Flood to perfection, and that explaining them on the Old Earth scheme takes a Rube Goldbergish system because fossilization needs particular conditions to occur;

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Well that’s pretty ridiculous to start with. You might as well count the graves in a large cemetery and attribute it to the Flood. And fossilisation doesn’t need any system other then the ordinary workings of nature. Call it Rube Goldbergish If you like but the fact that it exists makes it a foolish objection.

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and the strata which are made up of DIFFERENT KINDS of sediments often strikingly sharply segregated from one another is something water does

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You seem to forget that most strata are deposited by water in the mainstream view, too. But the sequences produced by transgression and regression, for instance speak of long timescales, not a single year-long Flood. And there’s plenty more.

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And there is no way for whole life scenarios of plants and animals to have occupied the space of each sedimentary layer for millions of years as the standard scenario requires

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Let us know if you ever come up with any remotely sensible support for this silliness.

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Turns into rock and another totally different living scenario presents itself?

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Certainly not. Inventing silly strawmen hardly helps your case. Perhaps you should try remembering past discussions where various people have attempted to explain it to you.

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Really, the whole thing is so preposterous that if any of you could put aside your evo convictions and give it some truly serious thought you'd have to see how preposterous it is

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And there is a complete inversion of the truth. If you could set aside your crew convictions and actually think about it you would see that you are the one posting preposterous nonsense.

Since Faith is complaining that her arguments don’t get fairly treated I am going to look at this one again.

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...there is no way for whole life scenarios of plants and animals to have occupied the space of each sedimentary layer for millions of years as the standard scenario requires. Turns into rock and another totally different living scenario presents itself? Really, the whole thing is so preposterous that if any of you could put aside your evo convictions and give it some truly serious thought you'd have to see how preposterous it is

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Now in actual fact buried landscapes only turn into rock when they are deeply buried. This takes a long time. Way above it on the (then) present-day surface is where the animals will live. And yes it could be quite different. The landscape does change over time. Deserts expand, the sea transgresses the land or regresses to expose areas which were underwater, glaciers roll across the landscape carving valleys and so on.Now I certainly can’t see anything preposterous there and Faith certainly hasn’t thought about it. I remember her question of where will the animals live? Which animals? The ones who used to live on the buried landscape and died long, long ago? The animals that are happily leaving on the then-present surface, who will be completely unaffected ? Now THAT is preposterous.Of course the fraction that Faith actually puts this forward when she doesn’t actually have any real criticism - or understanding of the view she calls preposterous is a pretty clear indication of how reliable her judgements are.Faith’s reaction to this is fairly predictable. But I can bet that the one thing it won’t involve is serious thought. It should. She should seriously think about just how much her own prejudices and lack of thought cause her to go so badly wrong. But she won’t

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OK. Now do you have an explanation for how the buried landscape that becomes a rock becomes a very flat slab of rock that in many examples in the stratigraphic column are quite horizontal and of a fairly uniform thickness? That is, I would expect a deeply buried landscape that turned to rock to be quite lumpy and irregular, about as far as you could get from a flat slab.

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As you know there are buried landscapes that are very far from flat. While the compression of lithification should reduce the relief somewhat, I’d expect only those landscapes that were flat when buried to remain flat. Even then, river channels, for instance are hardly rare. And don’t forget that high areas are typically subject to erosion rather than deposition.As most strata represent seabed rather than landscape this really is rather a silly question without actual examples.

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Surely all the buried material is turning to rock above and below it as well, so how does this one particular landscape become so identifiable as we see the sediments of the stratigraphic column are

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Likely because of the terrain features that you’re ignoring. The type of rock is also relevant, no doubt.

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Those strata are often of very particular sediment too, say all sandstone like the Tapeats for instance. How would such a layer become so clearly differentiated from layers above and below it, which are often of some completely different sedimentary rock, say limestone, separated by what is often a very straight flat surface between them

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As you should know from the discussion of Walther’s law, different environments produce different types of sediment. Although it should be pointed out that formations and even strata can contain multiple types of rock.

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A very irregular surface such as we see at the surface today I would assume, and composed of a mixture of sediments, nothing that would ever become a rock of the form found in the stratigraphic column..

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Your assumptions about the geological record are wrong. And you really ought to know that by now.

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But not normally from one kind of sediment to another completely different sediment, with little or no mixture, in a form that could harden into a flat rock of the kind seen in the stratigraphic column, one on top of another all quite similar in form.

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The sequences associated with transgression do exactly that, don’t they?

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Why would I think about something so utterly irrelevant to the stratigraphic column? Normal earth surface could not possibly ever become a stack of disparate sedimentary rocks, or even one flat sedimentary rock in such a stack, nor would burying it fifty miles deeo change its normal irregularity into a flat rock. It's you who haven't thought through the requirements of the task you seem to think you are describing.

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I may be required to explain features of the actual geological record, which includes buried features like large monadnocks, canyons and riverbeds. But I am not required to explain your imaginary version of it. Perhaps you should have thought of that before making a fool of yourself.

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Yes it is. But it has absolutely nothing to do with my question.

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It is certainly associated with it - even in the recent quote where you suggest the land suddenly turning to rock while the creatures are living on it. But thanks for admitting that you have proposed truly preposterous arguments - that even you could have seen were preposterous, if you had bothered to think about it.

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You have to account for how a diferent sedimentary rock got laid on top of that deeply buried one but at the moment you've got a deep accumulation of who knows what between them, the lower parts of which must also have turned to rock on top of your original buried landscape, of a dfferent sediment or mix of sediments I would suppose and yet your buried rock has to be straight and flat and look like one of those in the stratigraphic column

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Different sediments are not a problem, as you really ought to know. And no, the buried rock doesn’t have to be straight and flat because not all the real strata in the geological column are straight and flat.

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The question about the animals had to do with the fact that they couldn't live ON a bare rock and that would have to occur at some time in this process you are describing, it's a phase that can't be escaped and in that phase you can't account for the animal life. You really are not thinking at.all. No fair hearing at all as I said

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Amazing. Right after I explained exactly how it is escaped, after you admit that your argument was preposterous you repeat it! There is no bare rock in the scenario described. The material turning to rock is deeply buried - the pressure from the burial is an essential part of the process - and the present day surface is NOT deeply buried and NOT turning to rock.Now maybe your idea of a fair hearing requires me to believe idiotic falsehoods that I have just refuted, but unless it does you have no complaint here!

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This level of mental incompetence is scary.

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You’ve just repeated a ridiculous falsehood that I had exposed as a ridiculous falsehood and complained that you weren’t getting a fair hearing because I didn’t believe it! Now THAT is mental incompetence. Disagreeing with your false assumptions is not (although I would love to see you try to explain why it is - am I meant to suppress knowledge that you don’t like or just lie for you ? Which is it?)In the end I must congratulate you for an attempting a reply - it is more than I expected of you, although the ridiculous final attack was exactly what I expected.Too bad for you that you didn’t bother to think things through properly and ended up embarrassing yourself badly - again.

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Again you absolutely failed to address the actual physical situation I'm talking about, denying essential features and missing the whole point.

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In reality I requested that you showed that there was an actual physical situation that matched your claims, since we know for a fact that - to be generous to you - there are things that appear to be buried terrain features and sometimes very large ones. That IS the actual physical situation and you are the one ignoring it.Now maybe there is a supposedly-terrestrial formation or stratum that is unreasonably flat and of implausibly constant thickness. But I don’t have to deal with things you think might exist. So I asked for examples. This is how debate works. You have to support your claims, not attack your opponent for disagreeing with your unsupported opinions.

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Never mind, I'm done here.

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Which just shows that you can’t take a fair and honest assessment of your arguments.

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PaulK started from a landscape that gets deeply buried. How does that landscape possibly become a flat sedimentary rock? Burying it isn't going to make it all one sediment but most of the rocks in the column are identifiable single sediments, not all but most.

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As usual you are jumping the gun and talking in generalities that may well not apply.Surely it is better to talk about actual examples so we can get the facts right.

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How could any landscape be composed of a single sediment, or for that matter of any identifiable collection of sediments?

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Is mud a single sediment ? If not then what do you make of mudstone ?

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And how could burying it flatten it to the flatness of those stacked in the stratigraphic column?

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It seems that I have to point out again that not all strata are flat - some of them to a quite dramatic extent. Also that the places that will be buried will tend to be flat, because they are areas of deposition, not erosion.

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Some of the strata extend for thousands of square miles, all flat as a pancake

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Again you are being too vague to show any real problem. Are any of these terrestrial deposits at all ? If they aren’t now can they be relevant ?

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And in the scenario PaulK describes, what is it buried under?

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Why would that matter ? If it isn’t buried it isn’t going to become rock anyway.

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More areas of single sediment, or something more like the surface of the earth now, which is more likely to be a mixture of sediments and soils and so on

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Because obviously we don’t get beaches or deserts or oolitic ooze or swamps etc etc etc on the planet you come from.

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Please remember the context: drawings of landscapes with animals in them that look like today's earth surface, not a mudflat or a single-sediment situation, just normal earth surface..

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And you are going to point at an ancient seabed and demand that I explain how a landscape turned into that when it was never anything of the sort ? No. Real examples please, not unfounded assumptions.

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And all the strata are flat without exception. Some gently grade to different thickness but they are still flat.

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I realise now that you have serious mental problems so I shan’t call you a liar. Nevertheless that is certainly not true. Remember that the Shimuno quartzite includes monadnocks up to 240m high. 790 feet in Imperial measures. That is not, by any means flat.

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There is no point in continuing this discussion with you because you refuse to understand what I'm talking about.

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By which you mean that you are going to run away because I won’t mindlessly agree with your false assertions. Oh you probably deluded yourself into believing that you aren’t running away because you don’t have a real case and you are going to get crushed again. But that’s what you are doing.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.