The Flood, fossils, & the geologic evidence

It has been replicated. However, the bones were mineralized and had to be subjected to an artificial process of "demineralization" in order to recover the tissues.To quote Schweitzer et al: Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I just discovered that Schweitzer used to be, in her words, a "hard-core young earth creationist". She'd studied science, she got her teaching qualifications, and then one day she decided to audit a class in evolution ...A few years later she was doing her PhD on dinosaur bones and found the first fossil red blood cells.She's kept her religion, apart from the antiscientific bits. About YEC she now says: Obviously if her own discoveries proved that she'd spent most of her life being right, she'd have been the first to appreciate the fact.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This is a strange category error. The geological column is not a thing, it's a summary of knowledge. You might as well ask how many legs the periodic table has and how many people you can seat at it.There are places in the world where there is sediment from every geological period, but that is not the geological column. Take their word for what?

Arguably they're not a good example of what creationists should be looking for, since they were caused by a natural dam breaking and a sheet of water sweeping laterally across the landscape.The question is, what results would Noah's flood have had if it had happened? I think not very much (in geological terms, biogeography is a whole other question).

Genesis 7:19 makes it clear that there were "high mountains" pre-flood; and Genesis 8:7 and 8:13 describe the water as drying up from the fac of the Earth, not flowing away.As for catastrophic tectonic events, might they not have been a little too catastrophic? I don't see what you're describing happening without tsunamis, which would have been inconvenient for Noah.Myself I don't think creationists need to try to hard to explain the how of the Flood, since your hypothesis involves a god with miraculous powers who can take care of these details. But the question of whether it happened at all is much more awkward.

So. After extensive work and hypothesis testing, real geologists have resolved the question of the quartzite conglomerates in the Beaverhead Group, having identified them as having been transported by rivers, and have identified the paleovalleys through which these rivers flowed: Meanwhile your creationists (Oard et al) have a completely different idea. Well, not a completely different idea. Having dismissed, for reasons which are (let's put this kindly) obscure, the reality-based hypothesis that the gravel was deposited by rivers, they propose that it was deposited by what would, in fact, be rivers. Water channelized into valleys, eh? Where do creationists get all these original ideas? However, they disagree with real geologists on two points. First, they claim that the origin of the water was magical. And second, per Genesis 8, their river would have been a temporary one that only flowed for a few months before running dry rather than a permanent one that flowed for millions of years.The radiometric evidence they ignore, because they are creationists. They might, perhaps, have said a little something about the fossil evidence. What, exactly, were dinosaurs doing in North America in the months following the flood to get themselves buried in the Pinyon conglomerate? I think we should be told.Amongst their whining about reality-based geologists, two passages are worthy of particular remark, not to mention contempt. First, they claim that real scientists "have been reluctant to publish much information" on the conglomerates, as though they were trying to hide something. They supply no basis for this accusation, because they're creationists. But where do they suppose that they are getting all their information from?Their webpages on these gravels are adorned with dozens and dozens of references and citations and quotations from real geologists, and if creationists really think that not enough research has been done in this area, then they should stop wasting their money on creation "museums" and replicas of imaginary boats, and offer to fund further geological fieldwork --- and see if geologists are really "reluctant" to pursue their profession.The second thing that made me snort with contempt was when they complained that "Janecke et al. do not provide any quantitative evaluation of their paleovalley hypothesis". Did Oard et al not collectively blush when they wrote this? If any creationist has ever performed any quantitative investigation into the purported effects of their supposed magical flood, it was not, on the present showing, Oard, Hergenrather, or Klevberg. This is the pot rebuking the kettle with a vengance.Oard et al have supplied no reason to suppose that the water that deposited the gravel was magical rather than non-magical in origin; and given the weight of evidence against a magical flood ever having taken place, and the general scarcity of magical events, it seems as though the non-magical explanation is to be preferred.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, we shouldn't; and I said explicitly that we shouldn't in post #265, where I wrote: Happy? Well, I wasn't dismissing it so much as describing it. The Flood is meant to be magical. Perhaps you would prefer the word "miraculous". Either way, it's meant to be an act of God using his godly powers, and not just a natural event where it just happened to rain a lot.The only thing I would say is that the onus of proof is always on someone who claims something has magical causes, because in our experience most things don't. But we should certainly not dismiss a magical explanation a priori.The question then is: have Oard et al presented sufficient proof that we are dealing with a magical event rather than a natural one? I say no. Deposition of sediment by rivers, and geological uplift, are things that happen today.Oard et al admit, after all, that the gravel was deposited by rivers ("channelized" water, in their argot) and that it got to elevated positions such as mountaintops, ridges, and plateaus by a process of geological uplift after it was deposited.Well, so do I. So do Janicke et al.So the difference between Oard and the geologists is that Oard et al think that the water had a supernatural origin and that the uplift happened at a supernatural (or at least wildly abnormal) speed. But they have not supplied anything remotely verging on a clinching argument. Unless they can show that a normal river couldn't deposit the gravel (and normal rivers do deposit gravel) but that for some reason a river resulting from the Noachian flood could, then the gravel does not constitute evidence for the Flood any more than a hoofprint constitutes evidence for a unicorn.Meanwhile there is strong evidence (which we can discuss at your leisure) that the Flood didn't happen at all and so wasn't responsible for anything --- including the gravels of the Beaverhead Group.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You are the winner of this week's Poor Choice Of Adjectives Award.

Well, that depends on what you mean by creationism. If you mean it in the broad sense that (as you put it) "Creation is the result of a Creator", then science and creationism are reconcilable --- creationism would tell you that God made the universe, and science would tell you what sort of a universe he made.But when creationists go further than that and start insisting on a young earth and fiat creation of species to fit in with their interpretation of the Bible, that's when things get messy. Science and creationism can't just "exist separately" because they're trying to occupy the same space. The only way to be a happy creationist in this narrower sense is if your pastor tells you that science has proved creationists right, and if you never investigate further and find out that this isn't true.