Summations Only

But of course their first step would be to deny the efficacy of dating methods, so what do you do then?

And then we go down the rabbit hole ...

I think I've expressed my doubts about the Channeled Scablands before, but this is a new thread, so I'll do it again.The snag is that they were caused by the breaking of a natural dam so that a lot of pent-up water swept laterally across the landscape. Rather than by a lot of rain. Sure, it's a catastrophic flood, but is it a good model for the Flood?

Devastating, yes. Producing channeled scablands, no.

Why? Is mass fossilization the usual sequel in the locale of a localized non-magical flood? Please provide evidence that this is the case.If not, then I would have no such expectation.

I'm fairly sure that should have been addressed to Portillo.

Well, sure. It divides creationists into two classes. On the one hand, there are the creationists who take biblical chronology literally, and are wrong. On the other hand, there are the creationists who say that you might as well take Genesis 1 as a metaphor ... in which case they can join the rest of the Christians and admit that evolution happened.

Who would still end up on any particular point falling into one category or the other.It is in fact true that no-one is consistently a literalist, they'll always find out that the Bible doesn't say that the Earth literally rests on pillars no matter how often the Bible says so and despite the total lack of indication that this is a metaphor.But so long as you agree with Coyote that we should date Noah's Flood as though the Bible was true, then let's go from there. Anyone who thinks the Bible is false in this respect should stop being a creationist and accept evolution, 'cos why not?

You know how I asked for evidence? That was assertion. And that was more assertion.

Well that hasn't been shown either.

It's not clear. Corpes float, after all. Of course, later on they sink, but by then the sediment may have been laid down already.

Well, living organisms float. People do, if they keep still and don't thrash about. So do ducks. OK, that's a narrow range of samples.

Yeah, if something came on top of me and pushed me down, I'd be standing. 'Cos of down basically being the same as up for the purposes of creationist reasoning. Well, I'm gonna suggest that it happened non-magically, like everything else.For example ... maybe some of them ... froze to death? That would be compatible with them being dead. And frozen. The various frozen remains date to different times over spans of tens of thousands of years.

Question: if these mammoths were, as you imply, preserved in situ by this supposedly catastrophic flood --- does that mean that all the strata on which they're standing are pre-flood? Or is it your supposition that the flood waters picked up the mammoths, deposited the strata, and then carefully put the mammoths back down in lifelike poses?

What is it with these people?If we provide them with a naturalistic explanation for something which actually did happen, like the origin of stars or planets or species, they throw a fit about how this is evil atheist godless dogmatic materialism.But for this one thing that didn't happen --- Noah's flood --- they're falling all over themselves to provide a totally naturalistic explanation for it. Hovind with his comet, Henry Morris with his vapor canopy, they've just got to find a way to take God out of the picture.Now if there was actually evidence for a global flood and we came along and offered up naturalistic explanations, they'd throw a fit, wouldn't they.It's almost as if there's a sort of conservation of stupid in creationist arguments: they can explain real things by imaginary causes, or imaginary things by real causes, but they baulk at explaining imaginary things by imaginary causes.