Hello everyone

This is awfully reminiscent of Hugh Ross's laughable claim to have taken a year off at age 18 to read all the holy texts and in doing so determined that all religions except Christianity were false religions.You keep going on about how we can't trust our interpretations of past events (despite the fact that they seem to line up with present observations) and how we must give precedence to the "eyewitness" testimony in the Bible. But don't the holy texts of all the other religions also contain eyewitness testimonies for their particular mythologies? Shouldn't you be giving those eyewitness testimonies as much credence as you do with your own mythology? If not, why not? If you feel the topic is too big to get into here, feel free to start a thread that proves why Christianity is the one true religion and all others are the product of human fallibility. I'm guessing you won't do this, however. It's much easier to assert that your mythology is the only correct one rather than proving it.

Demonstrably false. Sounds like you have about as much integrity as Hugh Ross. From the Qur'an:

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Your Guardian-Lord is Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then He established Himself on the throne [of authority]: He draweth the night as a veil o’er the day, each seeking the other in rapid succession: He created the sun, the moon, and the stars, [all] governed by laws under His command. Is it not His to create and to govern? Blessed be Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds. (Al-A`raf 7:54)

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That is a description of the creation event as the author believes it to have occurred based on divine revelation; this is no different from Genesis. Same goes for Hindu descriptions of creation:

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Brahma raised his arms, and the wind died. The sea fell back and was calm again. He stood up,
and with a sweep of his arms divided the lotus into three parts. The first part was heaven, the next
earth and the next sky. In a single moment, the world had begun.

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Brahma clothed the new earth with plants: grass, trees, flowers, vegetables and fruit. To them he
gave the sense of touch. Then he created animals and insects - large and small, in land, sea and
air, some with fur, some with feathers, some with shells, some with scales; large and small, fierce
and timid, fast and slow. To them, as well as the sense of touch, he gave sight, smell, hearing - and above all, the power of movement.

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At once the world filled with flurry and bustle. With crashing of branches, clatter of hooves, swishing and swooping, flailing and flapping, the new creatures set off to find homes. Trumpeting, braying,
whistling, chattering, squealing, they ran and wriggled and hopped and flew into every corner of creation. http://web.sis.edu.hk/...ignment%20Y7%20Hindu%20Creation.htm

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Here: Norse Creation Myth you can read the Norse creation storySo clearly you are either lying or ignorant when you claim that no other religion offers an explanation of how creation came about. Simply saying that the Bible tells you that all those other religions are human or demon in origin in no way constitutes an actual argument for why your creation myth is the right one. It's the circular reasoning you guys always use; the Bible is true because the Bible says it is true.

Uniformitarianism is fundamentally the assumption that physical laws in the past operate the same way they have ALWAYS bee observed to work. Deniers of this principle such as yourself never offer a reason or evidence that physical law as observed today is different than physical law in the past. You are forced to reject the entirety of human observation in favour of no observation whatsoever. And don't tell me you have the Bible to guide you. Apart from that being convincing only to you, the Bible doesn't mention decay rates and dendrochronology. Therefore to dispute such lines of evidence you have absolutely nothing to base such disputations upon. I see you've run away now. As I predicted, you are perfectly willing to spray us with your bald assertions but very reluctant to provide support for them.

I think I misinterpreted this statement. I took "before witnesses" to mean "before there were witnesses" whereas I think now that you meant "in front of witnesses". In any case you are begging the question with the premise that eyewitness accounts as recorded in the Bible are proof of the authenticity of its contents. Using the Bible as an authority to prove that the Bible is true may be sufficient to convince you, but it is fundamentally no different from any other holy text that claims its contents are the true word of God. You have your silly myth about how man was made of mud and woman from his rib, Norse mythology tells of how Odin created the first man and woman out of a pair of trees. You're trying to say that your myth is more credible because the source of that myth also purports to contain eyewitness accounts of other magical feats. Are you saying that if Norse mythology also purported to have eyewitness accounts of supernatural doings it would be on equal footing with Christian mythology?

Nope. If the rock record is the product of the flood, explain the existence of unequivocal desert deposits. There is absolutely no way to reconcile the assertion that the rock record was produce by the Flood with the existence of desert strata unless you're prepared to get completely extra-biblical. That would of course be hypocrisy as you believe the Bible to be the only reliable record with which to explain geology. I sense you're trying to avoid having to support your assertions about the Flood now that you've blurted them out without a shred of substantiation. Nice integrity there.And what do you mean when you say that only water could cause "strangely familial groupings of fossils"? It sounds very much like nonsense.I see others have dealt with your mischaracterization of uniformitarianism. You can try to redefine the principle but that is dishonest. But I suppose you must realize that it is easier to make uniformitarianism mean something different than to explain why all available observations of physical law in action are unreliable for inferring its action in the past. I see you have already been referred to RAZD's thoroughly researched and supported posts on the reliability of dendrochronology. Ignore them if you want, but your lack of intellectual integrity will not alter the reality that all our observations point to the conclusion that tree rings formed annually in the past as they do now.

I'm not trying to say Islam is the one true religion, I'm saying that your myth and the Islamic myth are on equal (shaky) footing. And saying that the Bible has many authors doesn't resolve the circularity of using the bible to support the truth of the bible. I don't really see the point of debating this with you if your position boils down to "the Bible is true because it says so". But I'm still interested in seeing how you reconcile the existence of desert-deposited strata with the story that the Flood produced the rock record.

You contradict yourself. Either the strata are completely flat: Or they display crossbedding: You really need to rethink this statement about cross-bedding. Either you don't know what it is or you have badly misspoken. Are you really trying to say that the cross-bedding was already formed and then the Flood picked the cross-beds up as a unit and redeposited them in the same configuration? This being the case, you must have worked very hard in the past to avoid absorbing any of the information presented to you. You don't have to believe in an old earth, but you should at least be familiar with the actual evidence instead of your misconceptions thereof.Anyway, how does a catastrophic flood preserve a dinosaur sitting on its nest?" http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/...2008/12/ovirpatornest.jpgAdd to this other evidence of desert environments like faceting or angle of repose and your contention that it's just a misinterpretation becomes even weaker. We know that water weathers clasts to become increasingly rounded; it doesn't produce the wear facets seen on the grains of desert-deposited sand. And what of the angle of repose of the cross-beds? In dry conditions the angle of repose for sand is 34 degrees. In water it is 45 degrees. To refute this evidence from the angle of repose you must make the unfounded assertion that physical law today is not the same as physical law in the past. So you think mass death assemblages are only possible as the result of a global flood? You are perhaps unaware that mass death assemblages occur today? For example in 1994 10 000 caribou drowned trying to cross a river in Qubec. No global flood involved. And perhaps you should clarify what you mean by the second half of that quote. Because it is not these mass death assemblages or "familial groupings" that leads to the conclusion of evolution; it's the pattern of morphological similarities and differences. If you object to the use of morphology to infer relatedness, please explain this. I started a thread a couple weeks ago challenging creationists to explain just that contention (Creationist inconsistency when inferring relatedness). No takers so far. Oh poor little you. Maybe if you could provide evidence for your statements you could have things your way once in a while. Instead you will choose to ignore the evidence presented in order to maintain your fantasy. While you're taking your "long break", try reading the Great Debate thread for some well-researched and supported arguments for the fact that the earth is much older than the Bible claims. Try actually reading them instead of just dismissing them because you "know" you're right.

So you accept that the rock record contains wind-deposited (aeolian) strata? How does that fit with the Flood model? And I still don't understand your problem with the rock record. You think the flat contacts between the strata prove it was deposited in a global flood? Please elaborate.In any case, the implied assertion here that aqueous and aeolian deposits cannot be distinguished from one another is pure fantasy born of ignorance. Given your professed familiarity with this topic, I must conclude that your ignorance has been carefully cultivated. The people who actually study these things seem to have noticed some differences between aqueous and aeolian deposits

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Hunter (1976, 1977a, 1977b) has established the foundation for such distinctions by his differentiation of modem eolian dune cross-strata into their component stratification types. Each stratification type described by him is the result of transport of sand on dunes by a particular aeolian process. Some of these processes leave telltale characteristics that are uniquely eolian, allowing for definite interpretations of ancient cross-strata.

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-Kocurek and Dott, 1981 - Dinstinctions and uses of stratification types in the interpretation of eolian sand Page not found | Geosciences

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I've provided the link. You can read the paper yourself but I suspect you'd rather ignore it so you can keep pretending the geologists are cluelessAeolian deposition has other telltale sings like faceting, frosting, angle of repose and grain sorting:

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Diagnostic dune features:

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Very well-sorted frosted grains.
Slip faces appear as very large scale cross beds.
ripples marks

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Reverse grading: smaller particles blown across the dune crest tend to travel farther than large ones. The result is that dunes deposits show a coarsening upward sequence.

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Abrasion (sandblasting): impact of saltating grains causes objects in eolian envoronments to have a frosted patina, like the frosting of glass infancy restaurant windows. Indeed, grains of eolian sand deposits are called frosted grains because of their texture.

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Ventifacts: The products of the abrasion of larger objects by sand. These include pebbles, cobbles, boulders faceted by the wind.

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-Typically of fine grained structureless rock like chert or quartzite.
-planar faces that meet at sharp ridges
-Facets eroded on windward side , but storms roll or rotate, expose new side. http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/geol100/lectures/34.html

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As the sand mound grows, the point of maximum sand deposition on the leeward face moves closer to the summit, causing a steepening of the leeward face relative to the windward face. The steepening and growing dune now forces wind out over the top of the dune rather than down the leeward face. The saltating sand drops out at the crest and further steepens the leeward face until it reaches its angle of repose (about 32 to 34 degrees for dry sand), at which time gravity may pull sand from the crest down the leeward slope in the form of either isolated slow-flowing avalanches or the shearing and slumping of whole blocks of sand. http://digital-desert.com/natural-formations/sand-dunes.html

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Aolian deposits are also characterized by a coarsening upward sequence in grain size and are generally finer grained than aqueous deposits.To refute these various indications of aeolian deposition you must take the as-yet unsupported position that physical law today is not the same as physical law in the past. Observations show that aeolian deposits have certain distinct characteristics so it is absurd to maintain that when these same characteristics are observed in the rock record they are actually the product of aqueous deposition. Wow, nice rebuttal. I'm guessing you're aware that a catastrophic flood would not preserve a dinosaur sitting on its nest so you're forced to insist based on absolutely nothing that it isn't really sitting on a nest. Unfortunately just expressing doubt is insufficient to substantiate it. In Norell et al., 1995 A nesting dinosaur they make their case. Now you make yours. This betrays such a lack of understanding of the nature of the fossil record that I really have no idea where to start. Because it also contains several assertions (I count five at a cursory glance) about what is and is not possible and why only the Flood could have deposited fossils in this way, I think I'll just ignore it until you produce some sources as I have done. I'm perfectly willing to address your points when you can provide some evidence that they are more than just fantasy. If you really don't understand why you're not treated with respect, I'll tell you now it is likely because your idea of debate seems to be to spray unsupported assertions instead of backing up what you say. Note the tone of this thread: Creationist response to cetacean femur, leg atavism, and limb bud. where Aaron is generally treated with respect because, while his interlocutors disagree with him, he is actually trying to provide reasoned arguments and support for his position. Maybe if you try to support your arguments like Aaron did you will be met with less scorn. Does that mean then that you don't object to using morphology to infer relatedness? Or were you just trying to avoid the issue? If you do object to using morphology to infer relatedness then you should post your reasons (ideally with supporting references) in the Creationist inconsistency when inferring relatedness thread. I'll take what you say seriously when you can support statements like that. So far you haven't cited a single reference. This would be an example of one of those unsupported statements I'm talking about. I've provided several sources that show the aeolian deposits are distinguishable from aqueous deposits while you have provided nothing but your opinion that they are indistinguishable or that the rock record is the result of the Flood.Edited by Atheos canadensis, : added linkEdited by Atheos canadensis, : formatting

I may be new here, but it is apparent that Faith gets quite huffy about not being taken seriously but refuses to address the cause of this, i.e. that she never seems to support her arguments.

I am 100% certain this is false. Please feel free to link the messages in which you have provided "ample support". Note that your repeated assertions don not constitute such support; you need to provide some citations here. You seem to be loosing your train of thought. You started with the position that what geologists identify as desert deposits are really the result of the Flood. I provided evidence that supports the conclusion of aeolian deposition. This is not at all irrelevant. Now, according to the above quote, your point is that the grains weren't formed in situ. Talk about irrelevant; I never argued that they were. The point is that there are rock strata that contain features that are characteristic of aeolian deposition. Do you understand that for your Flood model to be true we should find no evidence of aeolian depositional environments?Put simply, I have provided evidence that at least some of the rock record was deposited in a terrestrial, not aqueous, setting and this refutes the assertion that the rock record is the product of the Flood. First, this doesn't make any sense. Of course the deposits formed in situ. Perhaps you're referring to the fact that the individual grains were not formed in situ, a point which would be truly irrelevant. Again, my argument is not that the Flood didn't happen because aeolian strata were deposited in situ. My argument is that we have diagnostic features that characterize aeolian deposits and allow us to distinguish them from aqueous deposits. The fact that we can identify aeolian deposits refutes your contention that all strata were deposited aqueously during the Flood. I don't recognize this "fact" because it is no more than a baseless assertion you keep repeating. Provide some evidence for this claim and I will take it seriously. So far all you've done is say "Strata have flat contacts so the must have been layed down by the Flood". Provide evidence that the nature of the strata a) disprove non-Flood models and b)support a Flood model. You haven't (and I daresay won't) provided such evidence. So again, what about that dinosaur on its nest? How does that square with the Flood? Try less evasive handwaving and more explaining. You have to no degree shown this. Again, link me to the messages in which you present your compelling evidence. You have not supported the statement that the Flood is a reasonable explanation for the rock record nor the statement that the "evolutionist" explanation is wrong. So you're being respectful of fellow human beings when you repeatedly refer to proponents of evolution as idiots? Interesting. Again, look at that thread on cetacean limbs and you will see that respect is given to Aaron because he tries to support his arguments. All you've done is claim you're right without ever citing anything beyond your own assertions and this is what makes you the target of scorn.

Heh, I see now why you get no respect here. You are posting on a forum whose rules explicitly state that

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Points should be supported with evidence and reasoned argumentation. Address rebuttals through the introduction of additional evidence or by enlarging upon the argument. Do not repeat previous points without further elaboration. Avoid bare assertions

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So when you make posts that are merely "bare assertions" without either "evidence or reasoned argumentation" you are obviously not going to get respect from people who take the time to support their points. Simply saying that your point is so obviously right that you don't need to support it is laughable. Providing credible citations that corroborates your statements demonstrates that your "logic and honest observation" are actually logical and honest. You're basically saying that your lack of supporting points is actually a laudable quality in your arguments. And then you get all huffy about how people don't take you seriously. You say things like this: And then you expect me to just accept that as a logical and honest assessment because you say so? Please explain what about the rocks' contents prove that it must be a flood deposit. Is it the dinosaur on its nest? The one that "shows no evidence of transportation after death" (Norell et al 1995)? How do such contents support the hypothesis of the Flood depositing the surrounding sediment? How do such contents prove ridiculous the conclusion that the rocks record the product of aeolian, not aqueous deposition? I know you won't (and can't) provide citations for your assertions, but you haven't even been able to explain your reasoning. It is of course conceivable that grains weathered in a desert environment could be redeposited elsewhere by water. But when you try to argue that such reworked sediments also contain a clearly in situ dinosaur on a nest it strains credulity that they were deposited in the Flood. Add to this the bedforms (not grain weathering pattern) described in the paper I linked that are found only in aeolian deposits and your fantasy becomes less plausible still. Plus there's the angle of repose, which you haven't been able to explain away. Sand deposited in dry conditions has a 34 degree angle of repose. Sand deposited in water has a 45 degree angle of repose. Therefore when we find cross-bedded sand with a 34 degree angle of repose we can logically conclude that the sand was deposited under aeolian conditions, not aqueous conditions. Unless you're prepared to argue that physical law operated differently at the time of the Flood and allowed wet sand to be deposited with an angle of repose characteristic of dry sand. You'll have to argue that certain deposits are composed of grains that display signs of aeolian weathering and are bedded in a way characteristic of aeolian environments and contain in situ terrestrial fossils all by coincidence because they are really reworked sediments deposited by the Flood? Is that the logic that you feel is so iron-clad that you don't need to provide citations? I have provided sources that corroborate my statement that aeolian deposits are identifiable and present in the rock record. The best you can manage is this: Wow, what a shock. You not providing a source for your assertions? Do you realize you're contradicting yourself? If a rock does not record a depositional environment then how can it also be evidence of the Flood? You seem to be making the (at least to me) novel argument that the rock record contains no evidence of any depositional environments (false) but that it shows the depositional environment was the Flood (false and contradictory). Maybe it's because I'm new, but I can't believe you're really trying to pass off your complete lack of support for your assertions as a virtue.I see you've also abandoned your contention that it is their relative positions in the rock record that allow us to group fossils in a way that supports evolution. This is good because any amount of honest research would tell you that the organisms' morphologies are generally much more important for assessing relatedness than are their relative positions. You would then be stuck with going to the thread I started and providing your answer to the question there and I suspect, based on the caliber of your posts thus far, that you would that task a bit beyond your ability.

Nobody is giving any credence to your posts because they all boil down to "I'm right, OBVIOUSLY, so you must be wrong". Simple is right, but not in a good way. And you're harping on people for changing the subject and not responding to your posts, but I notice you seem to have forgotten to respond substantively to this point I made: Your reply consisted of something like "I'm right and you're wrong. Furthermore, you're wrong and I'm right. OBVIOUSLY." Come on Faith. Explain why we find deposits that have grain morphology that looks like it's from a desert as well as bedforms that show distinctive traits of deserts and contain in situ remains of terrestrial animals. Try to do better than "They aren't desert deposits because they aren't desert deposits", which is the best argument you've squeezed out so far. Explain why the bedding is at a 34 degree angle, something that only occurs in dry sand and thus refutes your position that the sediments were deposited by water. I know you won't do this because you'd actually have to provide reasoned argumentation instead of merely claiming to have done so (still waiting on those messages where you provided all those great arguments). Surprise! More unsupported nonsense. Explain why lithification is problematic for the old earth and uniformitarianism models. Are you going to say its because only the Flood could have deposited the required sediment to compress the underlying sediments? If so, that would be another example of a worthless assertion that no one will take seriously because you have no support for this statement.

So here you're assuming that the old earth theory assumes that no deposition occurs to bury sediments over the course of "long long long ages". This is an obvious mischaracterization of the theory. It's easier to pretend a theory is nonsense when you rewrite it until it is, but it's not a real argument. I assume by this you mean what you said in other posts, i.e. that the rock record does not contain evidence of any depositional environment. So how can the rock record be evidence for the Deluvian depositional environment? You've made 115 posts on this thread, a large proportion of which are about this topic. Yet in all those posts you have not once provided an argument more substantive than the one above. You provide no citations or evidence that what you state is true, nor even an explanation for why the horizontality of the strata prove that they were deposited by the Flood. I guarantee that you can't link a single message here that explains your argument in any more detail than what you've posted here.And you are still avoiding responding to my point. You sit on your high horse, telling us we all have our blinders one while you tie on a blindfold. So again, if all strata were deposited by the Flood, why do we find strata that contain all the physical features of aeolian deposits, features that would not be produced by aqueous deposition? I'm sure you've scrubbed these features from your mind so you don't have to deal with them, so I'll reiterate quickly:Features of aeolian deposits found in rock record:1. Frosted grains
2. Faceted grains
3. Angle of repose of 34 degrees (impossible for sand in water)
4. Various uniquely aeolian stratification types (Kocurek and Dott, 1981)
5. Coarsening upward grains (aqueous deposits, particularly those deposited in floods, display a fining upward sequence)
6. In situ terrestrial fossilsAs you've pointed out, those first two could have been the result of aeolian sediments being redeposited by the Flood. That explanation does not account for the rest of the list. So go ahead and explain how it is logical and honest to conclude that the presence of all these features that are characteristic of aeolian deposition are actually evidence of the Flood. I'm 99% sure you will fail do even try.

Does anyone else find it hilarious that Faith is trying to support her position by saying "Look at the evidence...but too closely"? I sure do. Sure, when you look at strata from 50m away they look flat and undisturbed, but when you look up close it is possible to identify unconformities. I assume you don't know what the word "disconformity' means. It is by definition an indicator of erosion or non-deposition. If you accept the existence of such features then you accept that the stratum above which they occur was exposed for long periods of time. Plus you still have never presented evidence or reasoning that indicates that on the the Flood could have laid down strata horizontally. Dr. A showed you pictures of modern beach strata, several of which were perfectly flat.

You're right, tons of sediment are required. And observation of modern deposition regimes reveals that tons of sediment are being deposited. You did look at the pictures Dr. A posted, right? That was a lot of sand stacked up there, and more is being deposited all the time. Thus the requirement for large amounts of overlying sediment to compress and lithify underlying sediment is met without invoking the Flood. This is another of those statements that require citations to prove you aren't just making stuff up. You've been shown pictures of modern, horizontally-deposited strata that have been buried flat. And then what about the pictures you've been shown of strata that are very distorted and folded. According to your above reasoning, this means that they were exposed for "long periods" and "couldn't maintain their flat even horizontality". This is wrong of course (there are other processes at work to cause the folding), but it does illustrate the inconsistency of your "logic". Or are you going to argue that the flatness of the strata proves they were deposited by the Flood because if they were the result of slow deposition they would be distorted while simultaneously maintaining that the warped strata also prove the Flood happened? Just as I predicted, you were completely unable to produce a post that provided more support for your argument than "Look at how flat the strata are. Must have been the Flood!" You may "expect this description to be clear enough", but that expectation is not a sufficient replacement for providing actual reasoning. You keep asserting (but not supporting) that the rocks can't be an ancient landscape. So how do you explain the existence of an in situ TERRESTRIAL dinosaur sitting on its nest? You've avoided even acknowledging the existence of such a fossil for several posts now. This is obviously because you have no way of explaining it in terms of your imaginary Flood. I guess I'll keep pointing it out until you respond with a real answer. Ha! So your best explanation for why we find structures characteristic of aeolian deposits is that we don't find such structures. Brilliant. Unfortunately for you, just wishing the evidence didn't exist won't make it disappear. You may disagree that the strata actually do represent an aeolian depositional environment, but you can't reasonably disagree that the features of that environment are found in the rock record because they have been observed and well-documented! You need to explain why such features were produced by the Flood instead telling yourself they don't exist. This: Is barely coherent, let alone an explanation. I think you're trying to say that the shape of aeolian grains causes them to settle in the shapes associated with aeolian depositional environments even though they were really deposited by the flood. This is a convenient fantasy, but not something that is actually supported by physics. The shape of sand does not noticeably affect the pattern in which it is deposited. I'm going to post the aeolian characteristics again for you to respond to. This time see if you can produce something a smidge less laughable than a caps locked statement that the rocks are flat that doesn't address any of the points.1. Frosted grains
2. Faceted grains
3. Angle of repose of 34 degrees (impossible for sand in water).
4. Various uniquely aeolian stratification types (Kocurek and Dott, 1981)
5. Coarsening upward grains (aqueous deposits, particularly those deposited in floods, display a fining upward sequence)
6. In situ terrestrial fossilsNote that saying "The rocks are flat!" does not address these points. Your claim is that all strata were deposited by the Flood. Therefore you need to specifically address evidence that indicates that they weren't deposited in an aqueous environment. Explain why aeolian bedforms formed in an aequous environment. Explain how the laws of physics took a break and allowed wet sand to be deposited at the 34 degree angle of repose characteristic of dry sand as opposed to the 45 degree angle of wet sand. Explain the coarsening upwards pattern. And again, explain the presence of an in situ, terrestrial dinosaur sitting on its nest. Go on. Give it a try. I'm guessing however that you'll stick to keeping your eyes closed and repeating that "The rocks are flat so I'm right!"