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Author Topic:   Glenn Morton's Evidence Examined
Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
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Message 316 of 427 (791446)
09-15-2016 11:39 AM
Reply to: Message 306 by Faith
09-15-2016 1:27 AM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
Faith writes:
But I would say, concerning the canopy theory, which I haven't studied and don't argue one way or the other, that I don't trust any opinion that depends on calculations about basic physics in the distant past, which couldn't possibly be checked
How can you say that when all of your arguments rest on those same basic physical interactions? Basic physics state that when an animal walks on mud it will leave tracks. Are you saying that you have to throw out animals making tracks in the past?
Basic physics states that terrestrial animals can't breathe underwater, and your entire argument rests on this concept.
Basic physics says that eroded rock in water will settle out and form sediments. Do you also have to throw this out?
It seems to me that you only reject basic physics when it leads to conclusions you don't like. It is a complete double standard.
Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

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edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


(1)
Message 317 of 427 (791447)
09-15-2016 11:54 AM
Reply to: Message 316 by Taq
09-15-2016 11:39 AM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
It seems to me that you only reject basic physics when it leads to conclusions you don't like. It is a complete double standard.
Hyperskepticism is seldom applied to one's own viewpoint.
In fact, probably never.

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Faith 
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Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
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Message 318 of 427 (791448)
09-15-2016 11:57 AM
Reply to: Message 309 by kbertsche
09-15-2016 5:37 AM


deleted
deleted
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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14174dm
Member (Idle past 1109 days)
Posts: 161
From: Cincinnati OH
Joined: 10-12-2015


(1)
Message 319 of 427 (791451)
09-15-2016 12:38 PM
Reply to: Message 306 by Faith
09-15-2016 1:27 AM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
the cause of it I suppose enormous quantities of water pouring through spaces in and between the strata as the water receded
Groundwater doesn't rush like surface water. The pore spaces are tiny, the route is convoluted, and therefore friction is enormously high compared to surface flow. Groundwater moves in inches per hour in sand and fractions of an inch per day in clay.
If the water surface was above the ground level as in a receding flood, all the flow would be along the ground surface and none through the ground.

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edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


(1)
Message 320 of 427 (791453)
09-15-2016 12:39 PM
Reply to: Message 309 by kbertsche
09-15-2016 5:37 AM


Re: Burrows in the rock
The fossilization isn't the notable thing; fossilization merely allows them to be preserved. The notable thing is that they are burrows; they reveal the life of creatures in the past. These creatures made burrows in soft soil, not rock. This took months, not seconds. But if the Flood were depositing the thousands of feet of sediment and quickly compressing it to rock at the rate that YECs claim, there is simply not enough time for this to occur.
With this and many other evidences for an old earth, the notable thing is not simply evidence for age, but also evidence for history. We see evidence of how things happened; evidence for a sequence of events in the past. And we know that this sequence required time to occur.
A little google search turned up this diagram that shows different burrow types related to position in various water depths and various shoreline types.
Just a little more support for the idea that there are no truly 'unlivable landscapes'. The lower part of the diagram shows water depth (the water colored blue) and the upper part of the diagram shows a coastline with different types of shorelines (sandy, rocky, etc.).

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edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


(1)
Message 321 of 427 (791454)
09-15-2016 1:08 PM
Reply to: Message 319 by 14174dm
09-15-2016 12:38 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
Groundwater doesn't rush like surface water. The pore spaces are tiny, the route is convoluted, and therefore friction is enormously high compared to surface flow. Groundwater moves in inches per hour in sand and fractions of an inch per day in clay.
If the water surface was above the ground level as in a receding flood, all the flow would be along the ground surface and none through the ground.
Here is an article to reinforce your point:
Creation Science Articles, We've Done Rivers, Let's Do Canyons, Glenn Morton
It provides this seismic image of a dendritic drainage pattern formed and buried in the early Paleozoic in China, now situated 5000 meters below the modern surface. I believe that Glennn had referenced this article at some point in the past.
The argument is pretty compelling for anyone who has worked in the field. Mainly, it states that to carve such a valley in limestone would take an inordinate amount of time for the YEC viewpoint.
The other main point is that these patterns are recognized ONLY in subaerial environments. We do not see them in marine environments nor in karst (cave) systems.
You are correct that groundwater flow is normally exceedingly slow compared to the surface. There are karst systems that can move a lot of water quickly, but they are entirely controlled by fracture systems that can be mapped and look more like a trellis pattern.
My last point is that if a supposed underground river valley widens upward (which seismic data shows), it would ultimately be impossible to support a roof. Ergo, the valley has to be formed under the sky and then filled in later to form part of the geological record.
This is, of course, in opposition to Faith's suggested origin of buried valleys.
Edited by edge, : No reason given.

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Admin
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Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 322 of 427 (791459)
09-15-2016 2:43 PM
Reply to: Message 319 by 14174dm
09-15-2016 12:38 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
14174dm writes:
The pore spaces are tiny, the route is convoluted, and therefore friction is enormously high compared to surface flow.
I'm following through on my earlier expressed desires for a discussion based upon evidence. Faith asserts that channels exist in buried strata through which the flow of water can grow into entire river systems that cut canyons and river valleys and so forth, while you assert that only tiny pore spaces are available. Which way does the evidence point, and what is that evidence?

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Admin
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Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
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Member Rating: 2.3


Message 323 of 427 (791461)
09-15-2016 3:26 PM
Reply to: Message 321 by edge
09-15-2016 1:08 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
edge writes:
Here is an article to reinforce your point:
Creation Science Articles, We've Done Rivers, Let's Do Canyons, Glenn Morton
It provides this seismic image of a dendritic drainage pattern formed and buried in the early Paleozoic in China, now situated 5000 meters below the modern surface. I believe that Glennn had referenced this article at some point in the past.
The argument is pretty compelling for anyone who has worked in the field. Mainly, it states that to carve such a valley in limestone would take an inordinate amount of time for the YEC viewpoint.
I'm following through on my earlier expressed desire for a discussion based upon evidence. What is the evidence that it would take "an inordinate amount of time for the YEC viewpoint" to "carve such a valley in limestone"?
The other main point is that these patterns are recognized ONLY in subaerial environments.
How do you respond to the argument that these patterns are also recognized in buried strata but merely asserted to have formed in subaerial environments?
My last point is that if a supposed underground river valley widens upward (which seismic data shows), it would ultimately be impossible to support a roof.
I'd like to clarify this point. As a river descends into a river valley such as this:
The distance between the hills or mountains on each side of the river are much too far apart for a roof of rock spanning them to support itself, even if there were no burden of strata above it, which there is. For this reason no significant open cavity could ever form underground. Looking this up, the largest cave in the world, Hang Sơn Đong, is only 150 meters wide. The deepest cave in the world, Krubera Cave, extends only about 3/4 of a mile below sea level.
But descriptions of karsts seem to echo precisely what Faith is arguing happened during the Flood. From Wikipedia on karsts:
quote:
The development of karst occurs whenever acidic water starts to break down the surface of bedrock near its cracks, or bedding planes. As the bedrock (like limestone or dolostone) continues to break down, its cracks tend to get bigger. As time goes on, these fractures will become wider, and eventually, a drainage system of some sort may start to form underneath. If this underground drainage system does form, it will speed up the development of karst arrangements there because more water will be able to flow through the region.
Besides the resemblance to subaerial river systems and the impossibility of a large roof of rock, what evidence suggests that Glenn Morton's underground canyon formed just like karsts form?

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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kbertsche
Member (Idle past 2131 days)
Posts: 1427
From: San Jose, CA, USA
Joined: 05-10-2007


(1)
Message 324 of 427 (791462)
09-15-2016 3:48 PM
Reply to: Message 320 by edge
09-15-2016 12:39 PM


Re: Burrows in the rock
Here is a link to Glenn's old page on burrows through the "wayback machine". Some excerpts from his page are below:
quote:
Burrows and burrowing throughout the geologic column are a great challenge to the young-earth paradigm. If there was a global flood which laid down all the rocks in a one year period, then there should be little time for burrowing animals to burrow. and they should become fewer and fewer the higher up one goes in the rock record. This is because the animals should have been killed and buried down deep and they should not have lived to burrow in the later stages of the flood.
...
What does this burrow say about the 'global' flood? It says a lot. The animal which dug this spiral burrow was in no hurry to escape the flood. He dug down in a spiral and then up in a spiral. There were hundreds of these burrows in that shale. About the top of the central burrow, you can see a horizontal line. That is about the level of the former ocean bottom, where the burrowing animal came out of his burrow into the sea. You can see a very slight color difference (from greenish to orangish above) in the rocks above that level. They differ slightly in lithology.
These burrows are NOT escape burrows as is often claimed by YECs when faced with this data. Escape burrows are straight up. this thing is eating the organic matter in the mud. The maker of this burrow is not in a hurry.
Once again, young-earth creationism fails to explain this data. There are around 15,000 feet of sediment beneath this burrow and stratigraphically another 5,000 above it. To deposit 20,000 feet of sediment in a one year flood requires 54 feet of deposition per day. and that means 2.28 feet per hour. If sediment were raining down on that poor burrower while he was going down, he would have to then burrow further up to get to the ocean than the level at which he started. Clearly you can see that this isn't the case.
  —Glenn Morton

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein
I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. — Erwin Schroedinger

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edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 325 of 427 (791465)
09-15-2016 4:16 PM
Reply to: Message 323 by Admin
09-15-2016 3:26 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
I'm following through on my earlier expressed desire for a discussion based upon evidence. What is the evidence that it would take "an inordinate amount of time for the YEC viewpoint" to "carve such a valley in limestone"?
Well, first, it's fairly intuitive that streams erode slowly from our own lifetimes of observation; and it's pretty certain that this was a stream based on the morphology of the valley. But if you want an actual calculation of a downcutting rate, this reference has an example that derives a rate of for the Eel River in California:
Lb = 0.0027 ft/yr = 2.7 ft/ka = 0.8 m/ka = 0.8 mm/y
http://www2.humboldt.edu/...uts/erosion_rate_calculation.pdf
How do you respond to the argument that these patterns are also recognized in buried strata but merely asserted to have formed in subaerial environments?
They are not found anywhere. If someone has an example, we could look at it. In the meantime, we actually do see these patterns existing on the modern surface.
I'd like to clarify this point. As a river descends into a river valley such as this:
(image snipped)
The distance between the hills or mountains on each side of the river are much too far apart for a roof of rock spanning them to support itself, even if there were no burden of strata above it, which there is. For this reason no significant open cavity could ever form underground. Looking this up, the largest cave in the world, Hang Sơn Đong, is only 150 meters wide. The deepest cave in the world, Krubera Cave, extends only about 3/4 of a mile below sea level.
But descriptions of karsts seem to echo precisely what Faith is arguing happened during the Flood. From Wikipedia on karsts:
The development of karst occurs whenever acidic water starts to break down the surface of bedrock near its cracks, or bedding planes. As the bedrock (like limestone or dolostone) continues to break down, its cracks tend to get bigger. As time goes on, these fractures will become wider, and eventually, a drainage system of some sort may start to form underneath. If this underground drainage system does form, it will speed up the development of karst arrangements there because more water will be able to flow through the region.
Besides the resemblance to subaerial river systems and the impossibility of a large roof of rock, what evidence suggests that Glenn Morton's underground canyon formed just like karsts form?
The statement tells you.
The dissolution of limestone occurs along fractures, therefor the conduits tend to follow fracture directions in the rock and not a dendritic or meandering pattern that we see in the seismic data presented earlier.
Here is a map of an underground 'river'
This is Lechugilla Cave in New Mexico.
In the next image I have presented some preferred directions for dissolution caused by a fracture system.
This is not a dendritic pattern, but a trellis pattern. That would be obvious to most people, but I'm sure that there will be some dissent on this forum.
So, the conclusion is that, if we see a dendritic or meandering drainage pattern it was not formed underground as per the YEC scenario that we are discussing.

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Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 326 of 427 (791466)
09-15-2016 4:34 PM
Reply to: Message 325 by edge
09-15-2016 4:16 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
Thanks for the response, I need to followup on one thing:
edge writes:
How do you respond to the argument that these patterns are also recognized in buried strata but merely asserted to have formed in subaerial environments?
They are not found anywhere. If someone has an example, we could look at it. In the meantime, we actually do see these patterns existing on the modern surface.
I was thinking of Glenn Morton's example:
This is the familiar river pattern we see everywhere above ground, except that in this case it's in buried strata. What is the evidence that it actually formed in a subaerial environment and was only subsequently buried, as opposed to forming after being deeply buried.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 327 of 427 (791467)
09-15-2016 4:50 PM
Reply to: Message 326 by Admin
09-15-2016 4:34 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
I was thinking of Glenn Morton's example:
This is the familiar river pattern we see everywhere above ground, except that in this case it's in buried strata. What is the evidence that it actually formed in a subaerial environment and was only subsequently buried, as opposed to forming after being deeply buried.
Yes, this is a dendritic drainage pattern. The fact that it is dendritic indicates that it was formed subaerially, as per my previous post.
We simply do not see this pattern developed underground. The other points apply as well.
In fact, this is a clearer example of a dendritic drainage pattern, younger than the earlier one, IIRC; but still buried under later sediments.
ABE: Do you understand what I mean by 'dendritic'?
Edited by edge, : No reason given.

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PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(1)
Message 328 of 427 (791468)
09-15-2016 5:09 PM
Reply to: Message 326 by Admin
09-15-2016 4:34 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
I'm no expert and no more than a layman at geology and geography, but the way I see it, the dendritic pattern is a natural consequence of water flowing down from the hills into a river. It makes sense for rainwater flowing over a surface, from the high points down to the low.
Underground, water is still going to try to flow down, through a path of least resistance - and that means flowing through cracks in the rock. And it is not very likely to appear at multiple unconnected points, either. Even assuming the reverse direction is unhelpful, since you would need the cracks to follow the dendritic pattern, - I see no reason why they should - and raise the issue of where the water went.
Now Faith's scenario complicates things a bit by assuming that we don't have rock yet. But that is not going to help the pattern and it is going to make any channel collapse much more easily.

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Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 329 of 427 (791471)
09-15-2016 5:52 PM
Reply to: Message 327 by edge
09-15-2016 4:50 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
Oh, sure, I know what 'dendritic' means, but I think I see a circularity in your argument:
  1. Dendritic patterns only form subaerially.
  2. We know this because we do not find dendritic patterns underground.
  3. If we do find dendritic patterns underground, see point 1.
I know you said that "The other points apply as well," but this argument about underground river systems has come up before in multiple threads, and in this latest incarnation I'd like to make sure that geology's position is made absolutely clear. To that end I'd like to see the "other points" woven together with the point about dendritic patterns. I'll attempt this one myself, but I don't want to make too much a habit of making arguments as moderator.
River systems only form subaerially over long time periods because:
  1. Dendritic patterns only form subaerially. They represent the collection of increasing amounts of water descending from higher elevations across an existing landscape, a circumstance not found underground where fracture and stratigraphic patterns form a trellis pattern. Dendritic patterns are not found in aqueous environments, nor in karst (cave) structures.
  2. The wearing away of even just millimeters of rock by the continuous flow of water takes years at a minimum. Observing the flow of rivers and streams over a lifetime makes this clear. Even the incredibly energetic Niagara Falls cut back at only about three feet per year through limestone before engineering efforts slowed the erosion. Heavy sediment loads can increase erosion rates, but solid rock makes scarce contributions to sediment.
Please correct/expand as necessary.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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edge
Member (Idle past 1706 days)
Posts: 4696
From: Colorado, USA
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 330 of 427 (791472)
09-15-2016 8:22 PM
Reply to: Message 329 by Admin
09-15-2016 5:52 PM


Re: Maybe asking five whole questions was too much
Oh, sure, I know what 'dendritic' means, but I think I see a circularity in your argument:
Dendritic patterns only form subaerially.
We know this because we do not find dendritic patterns underground.
If we do find dendritic patterns underground, see point 1.
Mmmm, no.
We do not see such patterns that formed underground. We see them underground, but not necessarily formed underground.
If you find one that is formed underground we should look at the data.

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