I delivered a reply that involved questions that needed to be answered. Questions based on practical issues in geology. Both you two ignored the questions in order to simply assert (or reassert) your ignorance regarding geology and attack me with ad hominems.
I have agreed that people can use other techniques to "detect" oil, or even "find" oil. The question I am addressing is exploration, which is prediction of areas to look for new reserves that may not have other conventional means of detection or have not been tested in that fashion yet. That was addressed in Faith's article as the third tool of oil exploration. I will note that she decided to wholly ignore my pointing out it referred to radioactive dating. But let's get on with this...
Jazzns provided an example of one well log, if you did not understand what a well log was. He showed how OE paradigm can aid in understanding that one log. I was discussing map making using several logs. How do you build a MAP of largescale areas using well logs without an understanding or presuppostion of depositional rules from OE? I asked the question and I deserve an answer.
Most maps are based on assumptions derived from depositional models. A shake and bake, or YEC Flood model removes modern depositional models from being used. You cannot discuss shoreline recession and advancement. And you certainly cannot discuss burial of a sedimentary bed followed by tilting followed by AERIAL erosion followed by burial again. This is a concrete problem for you two to answer. Using a YEC model, how do you explain solidification, tilting, and then AERIAL erosion, before further burial during a flood?
Think that has nothing to do with making maps of an area based on well logs? Think that has nothing to do with estimating where new wells should be dug? Then you are thinking about something other than geology and oil exploration.
You want some citations to add to the discussion? Fine. I wish I could put on my old strat exercise books just to ask you to draw the maps and explain why you built the map you did, how you connected one well log to the next. But alas I will settle for looking at the use of OE vs YE models in geology and oil exploration.
First is a map of the US. This is a great map as it merges both topography and geology. Note that this map is referred to as a tapestry of TIME and terrain. You can play with this page and see how geologists have dated features as well as description of features. Oh yeah, I haven't even asked you for explanations of accreted terrain, but that ought to be interesting.
I would note that geologists would not need absolute dating to reach something beyond 6-10K age of earth, it is relative dating alone given how structures interact that built old earth paradigms, but you'll see that later.
Okay so, lets go back to Faith's citation of a
handbook on oil exploration. It points out and I have already agreed one can use other methods to detect the presence of or find pockets of oil. Those first two cover primary methods of oil exploration, and why shouldn't they? But what about speculation or reading well logs within a field? This time we'll avoid Faith's quotemining (which still didn't help)...
A
final method of exploration is the study of stratigraphy. Stratigraphic exploration consists of
establishing correlations between wells, matching fossils, strata, rock hardness or softness, and electrical and
radioactivity data to determine the origin, composition, distribution, and succession of rock strata. Sample logs, driller's logs, time logs, electrical logs, radioactivity logs, and acoustic logs
help geologists predict where oil bearing strata occur... This data is correlated with other information to enhance the chance of finding oil...
Radioactivity Logs, which record both gamma-ray and neutron values, have been in use productively since 1941. Because radioactivity can be measured with precision it can be used to identify different layers within beds....
Maps, including contour, isopach, cross sections, and three dimensional computer images, also aid the petroleum explorer in locating oil and gas. Contour maps give details of subsurface structural features enabling geologists to visualize three dimensional structures. Contour maps include information about porosity, permeability, and structural arrangements such as faults, pinch-outs, salt domes, and
old shorelines.
So stratigraphy, as I said and you denied, helps in oil exploration via creating maps by identifying rock beds, using among other things radioactive dating to match strata, and identification of their nature such as things like ohhhh let's say:
old shorelines. Once again I ask you to deal with the reality of geology in oil exploration. How do stratigraphers not use OE paradigms, when they construct large scale maps using radioactive dating (productively I might note) and concepts such as shorelines?
But let's look for more discussion.
Here is a page on petroleum geology. You will note that it says:
In terms of source rock analysis, several facts need to be established. Firstly, the question of whether there actually is any source rock in the area must be answered. Delineation and identification of potential source rocks depends on studies of the local stratigraphy, palaeogeography and sedimentology to determine the likelihood of organic-rich sediments having been deposited in the past.
But let's say abiogenesis of oil becomes the predominate theory and so source rock is no longer necessary, then that still leaves the search for reservoir rock...
The existence of a reservoir rock (typically, sandstones and fractured limestones) is determined through a combination of regional studies (i.e. analysis of other wells in the area), stratigraphy and sedimentology (to quantify the pattern and extent of sedimentation) and seismic interpretation.
Paleogeography should be obvious and lets dismiss it casually as being a creation of those evilutionists. What is
stratigraphy?
Stratigraphy, a branch of geology, is basically the study of rock layers and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. The subject was essentially invented and first rigorously applied by William Smith in England in the 1790s and early 1800s. Smith, known as the Father of English Geology, created the first geologic map of England and first recognized the significance of strata or rock layering.
Hmmmm...
Key elements of stratigraphy involve understanding how certain geometric relationships between rock layers arise and what these geometries mean in terms of depositional environment. One of stratigraphy's basic concepts is codified in the Law of Superposition, which simply states that, in an undeformed stratigraphic sequence, the oldest strata occur at the base of the sequence.
Note that I left in that last sentence as a nod (or thumb to nose) to your suggestion that lower equals older. Here we see that that is only true in undeformed sequences, and indeed it is things like erosion and deformation which give stratigraphers their jobs, and that requires understanding depositional environments!
And just to add to your understanding of geology, relative age dating, OE, and evolution, here is the following...
Biostratigraphy or paleontologic stratigraphy is based on fossil evidence in the rock layers. Strata from widespread locations containing the same fossil fauna and flora are correlatable in time. Biologic stratigraphy was based on William Smith's principle of faunal succession, which predated, and was one of the first and most powerful lines of evidence for, biological evolution. It provides strong evidence for formation (speciation) of and the extinction of species. The geologic time scale was developed during the 1800s based on the evidence of biologic stratigraphy and faunal succession. This timescale remained a relative scale until the development of radiometric dating, which gave it and the stratigraphy it was based on an absolute time framework, leading to the development of chronostratigraphy.
Now let's put this altogether. Stratigraphic mapping is based on concepts of depositional models. Stratigraphy at its inception accumulated relative age data of structures which itself refuted YE and suggested not just OE but because of the ordering of life in strata, evolution. This was later corroborated by radioactive dating.
Depositional models, which involve concepts foreign to flood hypotheses, and radioactive dating, which corroborates relative age dates beyond YE, are used by modern stratigraphers to make maps which can identify source or reservoir rock.
Okay, so who care about evidence for what those evilutionist stratigraphers say they use anyway, right? Evidence that geologists use creo models. especially successful models, would say something just the same. So where are they?
Here is an article on a guy that claims to have predicted a major oil find under the dead sea, and is looking for investors, based on YE/Flood models. The review is biased of course as the author is skeptical. But have a look. Maybe you want to invest. I have no idea of that regional geology, but personally I wouldn't put money in unless a depositional environment likely to trap or form oil was offered from an OE paradigm.
Now if this single guy is doing it, then there must be others, right?
Here's a guy that is supposedly a real geologist and YEC. who pitched YEC models to an oil company. Guess what the answer was...
When I was finishing my Ph.D. work, having developed a real love for petroleum exploration, I approached the research branch of a major oil company with a proposal. Pointing out that an exploration program based on old-earth/uniformitarian concepts doesn't work very well (only about one exploration well in 50 produces enough oil to pay for itself), I proposed that this company establish a team of young-earth creationist/catastrophists to see if a better exploration program could be developed.
To fund a research team of five or so creationist geologists for several years would cost about the same as one dry hole. Certainly we couldn't do any worse.
Unfortunately, my proposal was not accepted (maybe this was good, for I took a university faculty position and eventually ended up at ICR). I still don't know for sure if a Flood-geology approach would work better, but I think it could. At least it wouldn't be based on a wrong premise.
YEC geologists in oil firms. Are there figures for this? Not that I could find. But I sure did find
an interesting anecdotal account...
For years I struggled to understand how the geologic data I worked with everyday could be fit into a Biblical perspective. Being a physics major in college I had no geology courses. Thus, as a young Christian, when I was presented with the view that Christians must believe in a young-earth and global flood, I went along willingly. I knew there were problems but I thought I was going to solve them... I finally found work as a geophysicist working for a seismic company. Within a year, I was processing seismic data for Atlantic Richfield.
This was where I first became exposed to the problems geology presented to the idea of a global flood...
I worked hard over the next few years to solve these problems. I published 20+ items in the Creation Research Society Quarterly. I would listen to ICR, have discussions with people like Slusher, Gish, Austin, Barnes and also discuss things with some of their graduates that I had hired.
In order to get closer to the data and know it better, with the hope of finding a solution, I changed subdivisions of my work in 1980. I left seismic processing and went into seismic interpretation where I would have to deal with more geologic data. My horror at what I was seeing only increased...
The previous cited author who attempted to convince an oil company to do YEC research challenged this author at a conference. This author revealed the other author's claim to be working for an oil company to be fraudulent. Whoops. He goes on...
But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.
"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true? ,"
That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.
Well that sure was enlightening. You guys find me any geologist, especially an oil exploration geologist that does not end up using OE paradigms. I would seriously like answers to some of the issues I and this last author have found in the geological record, and are necessary for dealing with when making maps.
It seems to me you guys are making an argument along the lines of "No one really needs atomic theory to do chemistry, its just reading what's on the labels, using detectors of some kind, and looking at a periodical chart... which doesn't really have to mean anything about actual elements."
That is you are taking for granted, the products of models and tools which inherently include OE paradigms, and you just haven't figured it out because you don't go to the actual data to see how it gets processed for your use.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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