Basic and Remedial Fossil Identification

A jury doesn't have the job of figuring out how something happened they already know happened. A creationist does.Or actually, gee, they do, don't they? They know a murder happened and they have to figure out how. Quite similar really. Only they are looking for a culprit and creationists are trying to prove a whole other theory wrong.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yeah I know. I corrected it. Looked at the tic marks incorrectly.

I rest my case. You tell that to the judge and see if he lets you serve on the jury.

Your "geological evidence" is merely that the various life forms are found in various layers of sediments. It is you who impose the interpretation of millions of years on these layers. My working hypothesis is that the layers were laid down in relatively quick succession and contain probably every kind of life form that existed before the Flood {edit: somehow sorted by various physical differences, such as habitat, mobility, etc.} So of course I'm going to associate different items in the same layer with each other and not bother about your millions of years.What are you arguing about anyway? You said ferns came first in the Devonian. On my chart I see ferns in a lower layer, the Ordovician. I don't know why you are going on about millions of years. Either they occur in this layer or not.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I think that in far too many cases what you describe really is what is happening. Biblical Creationists and YECs and Floodists do try to prove the conventional explanations wrong.The problemn with that is it does nothing to show that their models are correct. Even if they could be successful, they are an abject failure until they can create and present models that explain what is seen better than the existing models.For the idea of a young earth or flood or Biblical Creation to be taken with anything more than laughter, the folk like you are going to have to develop models that explain the specific evidence. They will have to be detailed, and supported by the evidence. They must be falsifiable, that is they must be stated so that you or anyone else can say "If XYZ is found then the Flood didn't happen."Finally, the supporters of YECism, Floodism, Biblical Creationism must be honestly ready and openly say, "If the evidence shows these models to be incorreect then I will abandon them. If the evidence shows that the conclusion (YEC, Flood, Biblical creationism) is wrong, I will cheerfully abandon it."

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It is a big deal because pollen and spores are evidence of the plant and they can quite specifically be matched up with the plant. We know what grass pollen and fern spores look like because grasses and ferns still exist. I am not sure where you get the idea that pollen and spores aren't found with the plants that produced them. They are. It is true that pollen and spores are also found without the plants sometimes. So what? Pollen and spores are more easily floated in water than a rooted plant so they are often carried by water - no need for a flood at all- and deposited in sediment. So for example the pollen present in sediment layers where a river flows into a lake can be used to identify the plants in the watershed.

In other words there is no problem at all with where the pollen and spores ended up on the flood model.

That's not how it works, jar. We KNOW the flood happened. In fact we have tons of good explanations for how it happened already, stuff that ought to make you guys sit up and take notice, but your minds are too far into your own paradigm for that to this point. But the creationists will keep plugging away, and if Jesus doesn't come sooner, eventually we'll hit on the incontrovertible evidence you are all insisting on.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Same layer, yes. I am not talking about the same layer. I don't know how to make it any clearer. The Devonian, the Ordovician, the other "chart divisions" are not made up of a single layer. They are each made up of multiple layers. Well my information said Devonian. But so what? It doesn't really matter. Someone may have found a fern fossil in the Ordovician. That still doesn't take away from the fact that within the geological column the flora and fauna are sorted from simple to complex life forms from lowest layer to highest layer. When a life form occurs in a layer, it is then found in the succeeding layers until (if) it goes extinct. Ferns appear and are then found all the way up. Many layers up dinosaurs appear and there are still ferns but no grasses. Many more layers up the dinosaurs disappear but now we find grasses and ferns all the way up. Many layers up from the first ferns but before the grasses conifers appear and are then found all the way up. Many layers later angiosperm trees appear and are then found all the way up. This evidence fits sorting based on the evolutionary model of the appearance of new (and increasingly complex) life forms through time. It does NOT fit the kind of sorting expected by a world wide flood, whether turbulent or not (which is it, by the way?) False choice. The Ordovician is NOT one layer. But I am repeating myself.

Au contraire. There is the very large problem that, if grass or other angiosperm plants existed at all before your Flood, their pollen would have blown into every lake and every nearshore bit of ocean on the planet, like it has been doing since the Cretaceous/Triassic here in the reality-based world. It would have settled to the bottom of water bodies, like it does today. "Pre-Flood" pollen would thus be found among the Ediacaran fauna and Cambrian trilobites and such.But it isn't. Ever.

Not sure how you get that but then I don't follow most of your logic so I guess nothing is new. The pollen and spores will not be in a layer that is lower than where the plants that they are associated with first appeared. I don't see how that supports the flood model.
If they did appear in a lower level you might have something.Edited by deerbreh, : quote format codes

Oh, wait! Let me supply you a possible argument!The breeze never blew prior to the Flood, so pollen just fell to the ground back then. It made it tough to pollinate other plants, but hey.....

"Simple to complex" is open to question actually, but the sorting simply happens to reflect the fact that the "simplest" occupy the lowest habitats and have the least mobility. Extinction is an interpretation. The actual physical fact is just that you find the life forms in certain layers and not in others. Just as plausible an explanation is that for some physical reason it was carried into those layers by the flood and for some physical reason or other was left out of the layers above and below. Ferns are found in a series of layers where they were carried by the flood waters on the basis of origin, habitat, or particular physical properties etc. Dinosaurs were able to flee to higher ground than plants and smaller animals, but some plants were nevertheless carried along with them to their watery graves. All this means is that for some practical or accidental reason they were buried within particular layers and not others. No doubt explained by their physical properties in relation to the flood action. No reason this can't be explained physically. The model has its merits but there's a lot of fudging going on (what makes a conifer less "complex" than other trees?), and the very disposition of things in layers at all is a huge strike against it. How would anyone know what to expect of a worldwide flood pray tell? It is only because I know there was such a flood that I can see it in the geologic column. Worldwide stratifications and worldwide amazing abundance of fossils, which require pecular conditions to form, might not be what anyone would have "expected" but are just about open and shut evidence against evolution. Certainly there are many questions. Those creationists are trying to answer. It doesn't matter.

I should be taking my own advice and ignoring this thread until I've thoroughly studied the Geo time table, because I don't know where the spores and pollen ended up. I just believe it makes no difference because their own special properties might have carried them to some separate resting place from their respective plants. Higher, lower, what does it matter?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But that's precisely what you DON'T see. No grasses or grass pollen are ever seen in anything below the latest Cretaceous or the Triassic. And if you find grass, you'll find its pollen. It matters because the actual distribution falsifies even the most fanciful Flood scenario you can concoct.