The Flood = many coincidences

Peg, for yet a third time, "You might be wrong," is not a valid argument. Discussions like this should be about the evidence.It's all well and good to throw out ideas, scientists do it all the time. "This could have happened," they'll postulate, "Or perhaps that might have happened." The research part of science is all about gathering evidence and figuring out what actually happened.So if, for example, fish fossils on mountain ranges are the result of a flood, then examination of the evidence should tell us that they are indeed the result of a flood. So what does the evidence tell us? That the fish fossils are in deep layers, sometimes hundred of feet thick, that show change over time that has nothing to do with size or density. That many of the layers are of sea bottoms that persisted for a long time. That the layers date to millions and millions of years old. That the amount of life indicated by the layers is far more than could have existed at one time. Oh, and also that the layers do not in any way resemble flood sediments.--Percy

Minnemooseus has already addressed this, so I just want to express my gratitude for this fine example of the paradoxical combination of confidence and ignorance. There's nothing wrong with not knowing something, we are all ignorant of most things, but to declare your ignorance with such confidence, well, it just takes the breath away. Thanks.More seriously, it doesn't make sense that you know about the relative youth of the ocean floor without being aware of the geological processes that are involved, so someone or some web site or some book is misleading you. Could you tell us where you got your information?--Percy

Hi Architect-426,Your claim was that the flood was responsible for many collapsed volcanic calderas spread numerously about the sea floor. Minnemooseus wasn't questioning the existence of collapsed volcanic calderas. He was questioning your claim that they were caused by the flood. I only had to look at your first link: This link says: This completely contradicts your claim of flood causation.Do you have any examples supporting your claim?Please don't provide a list of bare links again. Here at EvC Forum you're expected to provide arguments in your own words and provide links only as references.--Percy

You didn't understand anything Minnemooseus told you, did you.No one was trying to tell you there's ocean crust older than a couple hundred million years. That you can't even understand the simple explanations provided to you says a lot. Generally, ocean crust cannot be older than the time it takes sea floor to travel from oceanic ridge to subduction zone. You seem completely ignorant about geological theories of how sea floor is formed and destroyed.You express great confidence that there is a great geological paradox while displaying a profound ignorance of geology. How can you detect a paradox in something you don't even understand? All I can say is that this is very entertaining.--Percy

Before you start slicing the baloney you might want to look at my reply in Message 30.--Percy

I don't know how you keep going wrong, but once again, no one was telling you there are ocean basins older than around a couple hundred million years. No one was telling you there are ocean basins billions of years old.If you can't even properly interpret simple statements like these, then you can never hope to understand anything, as is apparent in this thread. I can't reply to much of the rest of what you wrote because you apparently wrote it under the misapprehension that I believe the ocean crust is older than a couple hundred million years, but I can address a couple things. While it is theoretically possible for oceanic crust produced in opposite directions at the same oceanic ridge to eventually collide, I don't think there is anywhere in the world today where this is happening, and the possibility isn't germane to the basic principles of plate tectonics. There's nothing wrong with this picture. Your passages of glib nonsense reveal that although you're able to use terms like plate tectonics and subduction and oceanic ridges, you don't understand the associated geologic processes.--Percy

Hi Architect-426,In general, continental crust is far older than oceanic crust, and probably very little oceanic crust is older than a couple hundred million years because it is eventually consumed in subduction zones. As you probably already know, the North and South American continents were once joined to Europe and Africa. There was no Atlantic Ocean. Then about 130 million years ago they broke up along a roughly north/south ridge of rising magma and the Atlantic Ocean was born. Here's a visual from Wikipedia: The Altantic Ocean crust to the west of the mid-oceanic ridge is part of the North and South American plates. That's why there's no subduction zone on the east coast of the Americas.In the same way, the crust to the east of the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge is part of the European and African plates, which is why there's no subduction zones there, either.The parts of the Indian Ocean near India are part of the Indian plateMost of the Arctic Ocean is part of the North American plate.Here's a map of the continental plates from Wikipedia: Moving on: Since the size of the earth cannot change, the growth of some plates by contributions of new sea floor from oceanic ridges can only be accommodated by the shrinkage of other plates through subduction. Referring to the Wikipedia map, the African plate is growing in size, but the Nazca and Pacific plates are shrinking.AbE: Plates can also shrink in terms of the area delineated by their boundaries by compression, folding and uplift, such as is occurring with the Himalayas. The motion of continents has cut the Mediterranean off from whatever ridges it formed from. If you focus on just the Mediterranean region in the animated GIF I provided above, you'll see that the Mediterranean is a small portion of a much larger ocean that was snipped off when the African and European plates collided. Wikipedia has a pretty good article about it: Mediterranean GeologyYou'll have to be specific about this before I can respond.About the Mariana Trench, oceanic trenches like this one represent subduction zones. They aren't static holes in the ocean crust that can fill up. Ocean crust entering the subduction zone is carried down into the earth. The trench is formed and continually maintained by the subduction process, the crustal surface being dragged down to form a sharp depression. No one is arguing any differently. Of course the details are a lot more complex. For example, much of the western United States is relatively young continental crust that accreted in a scraping off kind of process from the lightest portions of subducting oceanic crusts. Many ancient Pacific islands probably accreted onto the western United States over the past couple hundred million years.You claim to have looked at a number of geology books, and they probably contain all the answers to your questions.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add AbE section.

Maybe I'm lost, but I thought Catholic Scientist was arguing against the smooth Earth model. It's an exaggeration of the "no tall mountains" model, and I thought he was using it both to make the argument more clear and for emphasis.--Percy

Neal Adams. He has a series of fascinating and highly professional videos on YouTube describing his growing Earth theory, just search on "Neal Adams". Obviously an artistic genius, as a scientist he's a loon.I don't know which of the videos should be first, but here's one that seems to get his ideas across: --Percy

The excerpts you quoted are accurate descriptions consistent with the data, so the problems more likely lie with your own misconceptions about plate tectonics. If you describe where you think you see contradictions we could discuss them.But I think one of your misconceptions is pretty clear. You think that ocean and continental crust should be the same age. The reason they're not is because ocean crust forms at mid-oceanic ridges and travels toward subduction zones where it disappears back into the earth. No ocean crust can be older than the time it takes to travel to a subduction zone, which is seldom more than 200 million years.--Percy

The evidence that drove development of the theory of plate tectonics derived from two primary sources: magnetic striping of the sea floor, and magnetic orientation of continental rocks. GPS measurements of plate motions constitute a modern confirmation of plate tectonic theory but had nothing to do with its development.--Percy

Since you never responded I'll repeat my message of around a hundred messages ago: The evidence that drove development of the theory of plate tectonics derived from two primary sources: magnetic striping of the sea floor, and magnetic orientation of continental rocks. GPS measurements of plate motions constitute a modern confirmation of plate tectonic theory but had nothing to do with its development.Discussion should focus on the evidence. This website from JPL seems to have a lot of data: You seem to have concerns about the accuracy of GPS measurements. If you have a smartphone then likely it contains a relatively cheap GPS. There's an app from Google called My Tracks that will track your changing location and print your walk on a Google map. Give it a try. You'll find that while not perfect it's pretty amazing, accurately tracing your walk within what looks like a meter or two. And this is the cheap GPS in a smartphone that uses a minimal number of satellites.There are around 30 GPS satellites in orbit around the Earth, and the GPS units that track plate motions use as many as possible to get as accurate a measurement as they can. Here's the first five latitude measurements from 1999 from a location somewhere in Russia that is abbreviated as ARTU: The two long numbers correspond to latitude measurements beginning on August 7, 1999. You can see how on the following 4 days the measurements are not the same. They vary a bit, but not by much.Now here's the most recent data from the same file for five days beginning on October 17, 2010: While the day to day measurements bounce around, the variation is within a narrow range. As you can see, between 1997 and 2010 the range of values in the first numerical column increased from around -7.0 to around 0, and the range of values in the second numerical column decreased from around .1 to around .075.It would be very helpful to have more information about what these numbers mean, maybe someone knows where it's described? Or maybe there's another site where the data is documented better?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Correct miscalculated value of .9 to be .1.Edited by Percy, : Typo.Edited by Percy, : Fix links.Edited by Percy, : Fix link.

Hi Architect-426,I'm trying to find more detailed information for you about how GPS is used to make accurate estimates of the position and velocity of continental plates. The page that you quoted from, GPS Accuracy - How Accurate is it? - Maps Gps Info, includes some of the information. GPS as originally implemented can be inaccurate, but that page goes on to describe three technologies (AGPS, DGPS and WAAS) that greatly improve GPS accuracy. Go back to that page to read a few details about each of them.Positions and velocities for plate tectonics do not suffer from some of the problems associated with moving vehicles. If you want to know the current position of a car or plane you only have one shot at it, but a continental plate moves so slowly that you can repeat the same measurement over and over and over again. Here's a brief quote from SCIGN Module Redirect | Southern California Earthquake Center about how accurate plate position measurements can be: From what I'm able to piece together, the process operates like this: Each GPS station makes repeated measurements of its position 24 hours a day. Those positions are recorded and analyzed to produce a single position for each day that has millimeter accuracy. Errors average out.I found a slide set that confirms this (Page not found – UNAVCO), see slide 5 that states:

• Position data collected every 30 seconds
• One position estimate developed for each day
  • North
  • East
  • Vertical

AbE: You mentioned Iceland. I found a webpage with data from eastern and western Iceland (http://cws.unavco.org:8080/...heet_Iceland_GPS_2010Jul19.pdf). The western end of Iceland is moving northwest, while the eastern end is moving northeast. In other words, the two ends of Iceland are getting further and further apart.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add Iceland information.Edited by Percy, : Typo.Edited by Percy, : Another typo.

You're making two arguments:

• Velocities on the order of centimeters per year are so slow that they can be effectively assumed to be zero.
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• Objects with no velocity possess no kinetic energy and so cannot be the source of the energy that builds geologic structures like mountains.

About your first argument, that plate motions of centimeters per year can be approximated as zero, let's say that you're an architect/builder and that you design and have constructed a house, and a year later the owner tells you that one end of the foundation of the house is sinking at a rate of 4 centimeters/year, roughly the same as the velocities of the plates in the Atlantic ocean. You tell him that 4 cm/year is so slow that it can assumed to be zero and that he can ignore the problem. He doesn't accept this, but you ignore his continued requests that you pay for remedial action, so he sues you. What do you think your chances will be in court when you argue that a foundation sinking at a rate of 4 cm/year is not really moving and that the problem can be ignored?Regarding your second argument, that the kinetic energy of plates must be zero because the velocity is so close to zero, I don't think the kinetic energy of a plate is a primary contributor to the formation of geological structures. As an example let's use a small hypothetical plate that is roughly square and 1000 km on a side. Using the 4 cm/year velocity of Atlantic plates, and assuming an average plate thickness of 10 km and a continental crust density of 2.7 gm/cm³, the kinetic energy of the plate would only be about 22 joules. A kilowatt-hour of electricity is 3.6 million joules, so 22 joules is a very small amount. There is obviously very little kinetic energy in a continental plate.Most of the energy for the construction of significant geological structures must come from the same energy that drives plate motion. This is just a bald assertion with no supporting evidence. In the message you're replying to I supplied GPS evidence that plates do actually move. Can you provide any arguments based upon evidence that the plates do not move? In case it helps you, here are the links again, and you can refer to the original messages (Message 269 and Message 270) for the original context and arguments: I'm also curious how "spherical mechanics and displacement completely negate" lateral motion.--Percy

My guess was that Architect was really referring to a coordinate system when he said "spherical mechanics," as if choice of coordinate system could make any difference.I long for the days when we had creationists who had thought through at least some things, instead of those here now who seem to post merely because they're offended (or outraged or whatever) by challenges to some of the specific details of their religious beliefs.--Percy