The Flood, fossils, & the geologic evidence

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My next question is to the creationists who believe in the flood. Why is it when a line of evidence exists that destroys the flood hypothesis, that the creationist diverts and points to something as only possible due to the flood? I admit at one point in my life I could only believe that a flood was the only answer. Yet after so much evidence builds up against it I just had to let it go. At what point do you say "These guys are right, it doesn't add up"?

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Before I start. I take most creationists sites (Answers in Genesis) having few good articles but mainly as much science as Alice in Wonderland has.
The problem is when one says the Bible is over science they limit their thinking.The flood is a compliacted issue. It involves many factors and variables. I havent seen much evidence against the flood. Its a catastrophe which happened several thousand years ago (notice I didnt say it happened 4,000 yrs ago?). Which caused the world to change greatly.I find it amusing creationists will say; 'If the age of the Earth was 4.5 billion years old, the continents eroded away numerous amounts of times.'yet we believe in a frickin global flood that somehow caused things like the grand canyon, and there was little erosion?I dont personally believe that Mt Everest was a high as it is today. Why would it be? Anything can happen. I believe it more logical to believe catastophes change things very very quickly. A severe storm can change the morphology of a beach in hours. So to see that sand dunes increases 5 cm a year (just example) is rather limiting. Mt Everst may of had some intense volcanic activity, or tectonic activity, creating really tall moutains in the Himalayas.Anyways. I dont see much evidence against a flood. Its really how you look at it...

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My next question is to the creationists who believe in the flood. Why is it when a line of evidence exists that destroys the flood hypothesis, that the creationist diverts and points to something as only possible due to the flood? I admit at one point in my life I could only believe that a flood was the only answer. Yet after so much evidence builds up against it I just had to let it go. At what point do you say "These guys are right, it doesn't add up"?

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Before I start. I take most creationists sites (Answers in Genesis) having few good articles but mainly as much science as Alice in Wonderland has.
The problem is when one says the Bible is over science they limit their thinking.The flood is a compliacted issue. It involves many factors and variables. I havent seen much evidence against the flood. Its a catastrophe which happened several thousand years ago (notice I didnt say it happened 4,000 yrs ago?). Which caused the world to change greatly.I find it amusing creationists will say; 'If the age of the Earth was 4.5 billion years old, the continents eroded away numerous amounts of times.'yet we believe in a frickin global flood that somehow caused things like the grand canyon, and there was little erosion?I dont personally believe that Mt Everest was a high as it is today. Why would it be? Anything can happen. I believe it more logical to believe catastophes change things very very quickly. A severe storm can change the morphology of a beach in hours. So to see that sand dunes increases 5 cm a year (just example) is rather limiting. Mt Everst may of had some intense volcanic activity, or tectonic activity, creating really tall moutains in the Himalayas.Anyways. I dont see much evidence against a flood. Its really how you look at it...

I presented some concrete evidence against the flood in post #6 of this thread.Can you deal with that evidence? Or will you just try to "hand wave" it away somehow?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Hi solja247, and welcome to the fray, Open minded skepticism is the best way to treat any new information, especially when it may seem to contradict current beliefs. If you want to discuss ages, there is a good thread to look at what the evidence shows for the minimum age of the earth by various methods and the correlations between them: Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1.When it comes to evidence of a flood, we have to ask what kind of evidence is there? To which the geologist says "So?" as the evidence shows this as well. And the Grand Canyon is the wrong kind of erosion for some flood outlet flow. Some of the channels flow in the opposite direction of the main channel, for one. The evidence shows that the Grand Canyon was formed by slow erosion as the rock in the area rose, and the erosion pattern is consistent with this.A better example of the kind of erosion you should see is the Channeled Scablands in Washington State, where massive flooding after the last glaciers were released in a series of catastrophic outflows. These floods were minute compared to a world wide flood, and yet they carved channels that are over a kilometer wide and with square sides, a characteristic of flood outflow erosion. You are free to believe what you want to believe, however you must also realize that whatever you believe has no effect on reality. The evidence shows that Mt Everest is still rising due to plate tectonics, and that the current rate of rise is adequate to explain the current height in the time that this geological formation has been underway.You may also be interested to know that there are sea shells in the rocks at many elevations, including near the top. Sea shells that formed and grew to ages of 20 or 30 years in a placid environment similar to what we see on the sea floor today: some of the shells, such as for brachiopods, are attached by stalks to the bottom and the growth of plants and other animas around the shells are also preserved.You may be interested to know that such layers occur one on top of the other to substantial depth of sequential sedimentary deposits, one overlaying the other in such a way that only thousands of years of formation explains all the evidence -- there is no evidence of catastrophic overturning, breaking and mixing up of the shells and other life forms.Modern geology explains how former sea floor can rise to become mountains. A world wide flood cannot explain this evidence at all. As occurred in the Channeled Scablands. There are also isloated instances of catastrophic events, however they are not linked into any single world wide pattern.There is also a lot of evidence that many parts of the continents were underwater at some time, including the top of Mt Everest and many other mountains, but there is no evidence that the inundations were catastrophic, nor that they occurred at the same time.And it is not logical to believe that catastrophies can cause multiple layers of placid normal growth of complete mature developed ecosystems, and thus it cannot explain the actual evidence. Nope. Which is what has happened, over millions of years, tectonic activity that is still going on and still causing the Himalayas to rise more every year.If such activity were compressed into a few thousand years (and you would need to compress it into days) the friction would heat up the rock to the point where it would melt, and this changes the type of rock -- the sedimentary layers with the shells would no longer exist.If you are going to believe in a world wide flood, then you need to believe in some magical transformation of the world, at which point you can just believe that the water was made to flow uphill and cover all the land, however we still do not have any evidence that (a) this occurred (no universal silt layer for instance), and (b) that the geological explanation is wrong in any way. In essence you have to believe that all the evidence we can see is wrong. That is not logical.Enjoy.

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Could you be more precise about what you mean by "caused the world to change greatly"? If you can say what effects you think the Flood had, one might begin to think whether or not a flood would in fact have done that.Myself, I don't see how a mere forty days and forty nights of rain would have done much to the geological record. That's 960 hours of rain, or, to put it into perspective, slightly more than falls in Sydney, Australia every year.But let's be generous, and suppose that the rainfall during the Flood produced a hundred years' worth of rain in those forty days and nights. Well, what has the last hundred years' worth of rain done to the geology of the planet? Not much that I know of. And during the Flood, it would have done even less, since rainfall has no appreciable erosional effect on areas which are covered with water. However, if the flood story was true, then there would have been significant impact on biogeography and genetics. And we can easily rule it out on those grounds.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Can you deal with that evidence? Or will you just try to "hand wave" it away somehow?

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This doesnt disprove the flood. Infact it probabally makes the global flood older than what YEC think. In my understanding, carbon dating is rather inaccurate. Creationists and evolutionists use it, but it appears to be very limiting and inaccurate. Eg. Most fossils millions of years old are found with carbon - 14. This makes no sense as the furthest we can date back to is 50,000 years. So from an evolutionist perspective somehow this carbon - 14, is being replinshed. Other than that with carbon - 14 dating, dinosaurs died several thousand years ago.I Dont believe it to disprove the flood. It either disproves there was a massive flood 4,000 years ago or that the people who were dated 10,000 years was rather inaccurate.

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Hi solja247, and welcome to the fray,

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Thanks. I was reading some of your posts (Uranium halos) and you know a lot more science than I do.

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Open minded skepticism is the best way to treat any new information, especially when it may seem to contradict current beliefs.

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Yes very true. But these creationists cant be open minded, if they have already closed their mind.

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When it comes to evidence of a flood, we have to ask what kind of evidence is there?

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We have to ask another question what sought of geological and hydrological events were happening?Was there any massive underwater currents?Was there a lot of erosion?Was not much happening, just a large amount of rain?Was there Earthquakes, tusanamis, hurricanes or relatively quiet?You see, untill we know the exact conditions of the flood we really cant say what the evidence looks like or is.

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And the Grand Canyon is the wrong kind of erosion for some flood outlet flow. Some of the channels flow in the opposite direction of the main channel, for one. The evidence shows that the Grand Canyon was formed by slow erosion as the rock in the area rose, and the erosion pattern is consistent with this.

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I said before, untill we know what kind stress the flood caused we dont know what it created. The Grand canyon could of been created by God and then after thousands of years change slightly to what we know of today as the Grand Canyon.

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You are free to believe what you want to believe, however you must also realize that whatever you believe has no effect on reality. The evidence shows that Mt Everest is still rising due to plate tectonics, and that the current rate of rise is adequate to explain the current height in the time that this geological formation has been underway.

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So you dont think things cahnge? Do you think the water level has been rising for millions of years, or due to global warming the water level is rising?Any variable could change how much Mt Everst grew a year. Perhaps even 1000 years ago the tectonics under Everst had much more stress and were thus causing, the mountain to grow much more taller.

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You may also be interested to know that there are sea shells in the rocks at many elevations, including near the top. Sea shells that formed and grew to ages of 20 or 30 years in a placid environment similar to what we see on the sea floor today: some of the shells, such as for brachiopods, are attached by stalks to the bottom and the growth of plants and other animas around the shells are also preserved.

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Is evidence for a global flood finding marine life in places like Mount Everest.really? do you have a link or something?Yet, it is more logical to believe that massive frozen moons came crashing into Earth, causing what we know of today, as the ocean?

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If such activity were compressed into a few thousand years (and you would need to compress it into days) the friction would heat up the rock to the point where it would melt, and this changes the type of rock -- the sedimentary layers with the shells would no longer exist.

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How tall would Everst have to be for that to happen?

Sorry, it does disprove the global flood at the time the biblical scholars place it, that is, about 4,350 years ago. If you want to try and move the date of the flood then you need to argue with those biblical scholars, not with scientists. Your understanding is not correct. I deal with radiocarbon dating all the time, and have had to learn quite a bit about the subject. In fact, I have written on the subject for professional journals.It is easy to find carbon in things, such as diamonds and fossils, that are millions of years old--that is way past the limits of the technique! When dealing with such tiny amounts of C14 contamination and machine error become large factors. The diamond studies are a good example--one of those studies was done by the UC Riverside radiocarbon laboratory to test the limits of the equipment. The diamonds had no C14 in them--the C14 found was residual C14 within the equipment itself! Fine. It should be easy to produce some bones then. We routinely find bones of mammoths and mastodons and other creatures that have been extinct for 10,000 or more years. So where are the dinosaur bones (note that I said "bones" not "fossils"). Hint: dinosaur bones have never been found because dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago, leaving only fossils. What you believe is not relevant. It is what the evidence shows that counts. And the evidence, including the evidence I posted in #6, above, shows that there was no global flood within the last 10,000 years--the precise time when biblical scholars place it.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

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Could you be more precise about what you mean by "caused the world to change greatly"? If you can say what effects you think the Flood had, one might begin to think whether or not a flood would in fact have done that.

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Well pherhaps the seasons were caused by the great flood.

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Myself, I don't see how a mere forty days and forty nights of rain would have done much to the geological record. That's 960 hours of rain, or, to put it into perspective, slightly more than falls in Sydney, Australia every year.

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Me either. Why would heavy rain cause much change in the geological record? Its pretty much 100% theoritical.

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However, if the flood story was true, then there would have been significant impact on biogeography and genetics. And we can easily rule it out on those grounds.

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Why genetics?I believe all the fossil fuel is from the great flood, i dont see how it couldnt be.We see in the Permian—Triassic extinction event:

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251 Ma at the Permian-Triassic transition, Earth's largest extinction killed 53% of marine families, 84% of marine genera, about 96% of all marine species and an estimated 70% of land species (including plants, insects, and vertebrate animals). 57% of all families and 83% of all genera went extinct.[4] The "Great Dying" had enormous evolutionary significance: on land it ended the dominance of mammal-like reptiles.

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Sorry, it does disprove the global flood at the time the biblical scholars place it, that is, about 4,350 years ago. If you want to try and move the date of the flood then you need to argue with those biblical scholars, not with scientists.

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I dont have to argue with the Biblical scholars (I am one) I dont believe the flood was 4,000 years ago. (I dont know when it was).

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It is easy to find carbon in things, such as diamonds and fossils, that are millions of years old--that is way past the limits of the technique! When dealing with such tiny amounts of C14 contamination and machine error become large factors. The diamond studies are a good example--one of those studies was done by the UC Riverside radiocarbon laboratory to test the limits of the equipment. The diamonds had no C14 in them--the C14 found was residual C14 within the equipment itself!

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Although that is an amusing story I dont buy it. You cant say that every instance carbon -14 is found is due to the equipment itself. Many tests have been done on fossil fuels, dinosaur fossils etc finding caron - 14. So what do you think of that?

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Fine. It should be easy to produce some bones then. We routinely find bones of mammoths and mastodons and other creatures that have been extinct for 10,000 or more years. So where are the dinosaur bones (note that I said "bones" not "fossils"). Hint: dinosaur bones have never been found because dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago, leaving only fossils.

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You dont believe that catastrophic events can fossilise dinsoaurs much faster?

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What you believe is not relevant. It is what the evidence shows that counts. And the evidence, including the evidence I posted in #6, above, shows that there was no global flood within the last 10,000 years--the precise time when biblical scholars place it.

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So the biblical scholars are infallible?

How so?

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It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

Hi again solja247, Why not learn about it, and improve your understanding, before making statements like this?See Radiometric Dating

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Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective,
by Dr. Roger C. Wiens

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The cosmogenic dating clocks work somewhat differently than the others. Carbon-14 in particular is used to date material such as bones, wood, cloth, paper, and other dead tissue from either plants or animals. To a rough approximation, the ratio of carbon-14 to the stable isotopes, carbon-12 and carbon-13, is relatively constant in the atmosphere and living organisms, and has been well calibrated. Once a living thing dies, it no longer takes in carbon from food or air, and the amount of carbon-14 starts to drop with time. How far the carbon-14/carbon-12 ratio has dropped indicates how old the sample is. Since the half-life of carbon-14 is less than 6,000 years, it can only be used for dating material less than about 45,000 years old. Dinosaur bones do not have carbon-14 (unless contaminated), as the dinosaurs became extinct over 60 million years ago. But some other animals that are now extinct, such as North American mammoths, can be dated by carbon-14. Also, some materials from prehistoric times, as well as Biblical events, can be dated by carbon-14.

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Dr Wiens explains many of the various forms of radiometric (means any dating based on radioactive decay) methods commonly used for dating objects. You're right that it makes no sense, however that is because you are wrong (or someone has misled you) that 14C is used to date fossils. For one thing fossils no longer contain the organic matter that could be dated. Instead other radiometric methods were used to date such older fossils. Commonly several different methods are used to confirm dates. Precisely so, and the method of replenishment is well known and documented, and - curiously - without such replenishment the dating system would not work.A good site that explains this is How Carbon-14 Dating Works | HowStuffWorks Once again, what you believe is irrelevant, as your opinion is unable to alter reality in any way.If you want to discuss the innacuracies, then see Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 (second notice) and how they compare to layer counting methods.Your opening post suggested you were open-minded, yet now all you are doing is spouting old creationist PRATTs (points refuted a thousand times).This thread is about The Flood, fossils, & the geologic evidence and not about 14C or other radiometric dating methods, so if you want to discuss dating methods you need to go to one of the dating threads: Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 has already been recommended, however you can go to Dates and Dating and pick one. There are several old ones about 14C dating. fossils and carbon dating and Radioactive carbon dating are threads started by other creationists that had very little understanding of 14C dating methodology.Enjoy.

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This would require the Flood to tilt the Earth's axis by 23.4 degrees. If there are any physicists reading this, perhaps they could calculate how much force it would take to do this. Whatever the answer, it is clearly not the force exerted by forty days' and nights' worth of rainfall, or we'd notice something similar happening today. The animals went in two by two (hurrah! hurrah!) If this had happened within the last few thousand years (as per Biblical chronology) there'd be evidence of all terrestrial species undergoing a genetic bottleneck at that time. I don't see how it could be. What do you have in mind, natural gas falling out of the sky and burying itself in the ground? Along with oil, which floats in water? Please explain yourself further. If you're going to identify the P-T boundary as marking the Flood event, then what were all the other extinction events? And why weren't there any modern mammals living at that time? (or dinosaurs, for that matter?) Did they all evolve since the Flood?You're not painting a very clear picture here.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Perhaps, but I think the smart money is on axial tilt. And signatures of seasons are documented well past 500,000 years ago in a good selection of ice cores. And there's no signature of seawater in those ice cores whatsoever - one would think a global flood might leave one.

Let me know when you learn enough about radiocarbon dating to debate the issue.For now you are simply parroting what the creationist websites claim, and they tend to lie and misrepresent the facts when dealing with those fields of science that contradict their religious beliefs.Here is an article that discusses the diamond C14 findings. RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination?A couple of relevant paragraphs:

Taylor and Southon have also measured unprocessed diamond, finding a similar range of 0.005 to 0.03 pMC without background subtraction. They interpret this result as their instrument background, primarily due to ion source memory. Their ion source current varied, unintentionally, over about a factor of two, perhaps due to crystal face orientation or to conductivity differences between samples. The oldest 14C age equivalents were measured on natural diamonds which exhibited the highest current yields [4]. This important observation provides evidence about the source of the radiocarbon.

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If the radiocarbon were intrinsic to the sample, there would be no change in the radiocarbon ratio with sample current. The 14C, 13C, and 12C would change in unison. However, if the radiocarbon were coming from ion source memory or elsewhere in the accelerator, it should give a count rate independent of ion source current. Normalizing the radiocarbon count rate to the ion source current, which is predominantly 12C, would result in higher radiocarbon content for lower source currents, as observed. This data provides clear evidence that at least a significant fraction of the radiocarbon detected by Taylor and Southon in diamond measurements did not come from the diamonds themselves and thus could not be intrinsic radiocarbon.

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The lower values for unprocessed diamond and the current-dependent behavior find no explanation in Baumgardner’s intrinsic radiocarbon model. But these results fit well with the Taylor and Southon evidence that instrument background (specifically ion source memory) is material-dependent, with diamond exhibiting significantly less ion source memory than graphite. The radiocarbon detected in natural, unprocessed diamond measurements seems to be nothing more than instrument background.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.