Summations Only

Are you suggesting that the "global flood" occurred during the Carboniferous?Would this not be wrong in a few details, such as the dating? The Carboniferous is dated roughly to 360-300 million years ago. There were no humans around back then. They evolved close to 300 million years after the Carboniferous. Most biblical scholars place the global flood about 4,350 years ago.How do you explain the huge error?

As long as you are quoting St. Augustine, here is a quotation that may apply:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. -- De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim ("The Literal Meaning of Genesis")

Unfortunately, much of what you have posted concerning flood geology seems to be covered by this quotation.

Why are you still discussing the Carboniferous in relation to the global flood?As I pointed out in Message 42, the Carboniferous ended about 300 million years before modern humans evolved.How can you reconcile an error of that magnitude?

I saw that.In other words, he is ignoring a massive error while arguing an inconsequential point.But I would still like for him to address the issue instead of hand-waving it away.

It does no good to point out one date that does not conform, while tens of thousands of others provide consistent results. But that seems to be a typical creationist tactic.And links in Russian don't do me any good either.

The Permian is dated at some 300 to 250 million years ago.If your belief is to be correct, either our dating systems are off by a factor of about 60,000x, or we have misread the entire sequence of evolution.How do you explain this discrepancy?

OK, if you don't want to discuss scientific dating methods, we can work with dates provided to us by biblical scholars.The majority of biblical scholars place the global flood in close proximity to 4,350 years ago. I can provide a list if you want.In either case we are not dealing with the Permian or any other geologic eras. We are dealing with relatively recent history and sediments, not rocks. Accordingly, we should look to archaeologists and sedimentologists, rather than geologists.Archaeologists (of which I am one) find no evidence for a global flood ca. 4,350 years ago.We still have a discrepancy for you to explain.

Now that we've disposed of the Permian, can you provide me with a date for the global flood?Remember, this has to be in historic times, as it deals with modern humans and relatively recent technology.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are off by some 250 million years using the end of the Permian as your global flood date; there is no way you can just ignore that vast span of time and try to shoehorn reality into your belief system. It simply won't fit, and all the believing, wishing, and hoping won't make it fit.Following the end of the Permian we have the Triassic (divided into 7 ages), the Jurassic (divided into 11 ages), the Cretaceous (12 ages), Paleogene (9 ages), Neogene (8 ages), and finally the Quaternary (4 or 5 ages; this is still underway).If you assume the end of the Permian at about 4,500 years ago, as you do, and break that time down, that leaves about 90 years per age. Now each of those ages can be characterized by the evolution and development of various species. You need to ask yourself, "How does something develop and evolve through a full evolutionary span in just 90 years?"As an example, "The base of the Bajocian stage [one of the ages of the Jurassic] is defined as the place in the stratigraphic column where fossils of the ammonite genus Hyperlioceras first appear. A global reference profile (a GSSP) for the base is located at Murtinheira, close to Cabo Mondego in Portugal.[2] The top of the Bajocian (the base of the Bathonian) is at the first appearance of ammonite species Parkinsonia convergens." (Wiki)In the real world species don't just change like this in 90 years.Further, according to your time scale this was all going on during recorded history. If we step back about halfway toward the end of the Permian we have the Aptian age. This age would also be characterized by Romans as that is halfway back to 4,500 years ago. One of the characteristics of the Aptian age is pictured below. Surely the Romans would have noticed those guys running around, wouldn't they?By now, if you were working from scientific data, you would definitely have to change your opinions, but as you are working from belief... No problem with the 1,000 year span, I can work with that.In my career as an archaeologist I have tested perhaps 100 or more sites that span that time period in the western US. In none of them was there evidence for a flood of the magnitude you are describing, or any flood for that matter.Instead of a geological break (with erosional or depositional characteristics of flood waters) what we have instead is continuity: we have continuity of fauna and flora, depositional patterns, human cultures, and mtDNA. A prime example is a skeleton excavated from On-Your-Knees-Cave in southern Alaska. It was found to date back about 10,000 years and to have a particular (rare) mtDNA pattern. That same mtDNA pattern has been found in living individuals along the Pacific Coast of North and South America. This conclusively shows that there was no discontinuity in mtDNA patterns, with replacement from the Middle East/Near East, during the last 10,000 years.I have a similar example from my own work, but that has only 5,300 years between a skeletal sample and living individuals. Still, that one sample alone is enough to show there was no global flood between 5,300 years ago and the present.The conclusion from all of this is that trying to shoehorn 250 million years of time into 4,500 years simply can't be done. Your belief is clearly wrong.But, as Heinlein noted, "Belief gets in the way of learning," so I doubt you will accept this evidence. We understand what you are doing. You are attempting to make reality fit your belief system. So far it doesn't look very promising though, does it?========Now for your viewing pleasure, Minmi paravertebra. He's a little guy, only about a meter long. But surely the Romans or somebody would have noticed!??

The dating of the flood is a critical component, and you can't ignore it, try as you might. As it is, there is about a 250 million year discrepancy between your belief and reality. You can't just say that is what you believe and let it go at that, especially when all the evidence contradicts your belief.You have two big problems to deal with:--Either the flood was 250 million years ago, in which case you have to figure out how to completely rearrange the fossil evidence to place humans and a lot of other things back that far, or--If the flood was where biblical scholars place it, about 4,350 years ago, you have to figure out how to make all those layers and ages representing 250 million years compress into that short time frame, which incidentally happened during historic times without anyone noticing!Face it: your belief system runs contrary to overwhelming evidence, but you are willing to just ignore that evidence to maintain your beliefs. I believe there is a term for that...In either case I'll not be wasting any more time with you. You seem impervious to evidence and reality.

Radiocarbon dating is one of my specialties.There are a lot of ways carbon can sneak into specimens, especially when you are dealing with such tiny quantities.I wouldn't place too much hope in these few dinosaur dates.If you want to discuss this further, there are several radiocarbon dating threads where it would be on-topic.

It has been claimed several times that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. If that is the case, where are the bones?From dinosaurs we have fossils, but no bones. Where are the bones?We have bones from a host of critters now extinct, including mammoth and mastodon, horses, camels, etc. Google the La Brea Tar Pits for some good examples. Some of those sites include human bones as well.What we don't have are human and dinosaur bones (or fossils for that matter) found together.So the whole case for humans and dinosaurs co-existing falls apart completely on this one fact alone--we have no dinosaur bones.If you disagree, show me the bones!

I have worked with mammoth bones that were less than 30,000 years old and were mostly mineralized, as well as mastodon bones about 12,000 years old that were not mineralized at all, so I have some idea of how these things work. I have read most of these "science" links on the creation pages. They are so full of nonsense that it's laughable. They are belief-driven, not evidence-driven. St. Augustine would blanch at the ignorance displayed in those pages. Absolute nonsense. Humans and dinosaurs simply did not co-exist, and there is overwhelming evidence to document that. Anyone who believes otherwise is so far out on the fringe that they're living in a world of pure fantasy. And all of this happened tens of millions of years ago, not while the Egyptians were building pyramids.Face it, the biblical scholars place the flood some 4,350 years ago not 250 million years ago. This places the flood within the realm of archaeology and sedimentology, not geology. And both archaeology and sedimentology say it didn't happen.In an earlier post I described the archaeological studies I've done--over a hundred probably--which cross-cut that time period. There is no evidence of a flood in any of the sites I've excavated. What we do find is evidence of continuity of fauna and flora, human cultures, and mtDNA. You have yet to address this evidence (and don't say you believe there is a problem with the dating--that's just lame).

There's a little problem with the dating--you're off by just about 250 million years.Whoopsie!You can't just pull one little piece of information out and hold it up, shouting "Eureka!" while ignoring tens of thousands of contrary facts.That's creation "science," not real science.

Sure!Noah was born some 250 million years after the events you are ascribing to the flood.That is a serious problem, and you can't just hand-wave it away, nor put it off to discuss another time.If you don't consider dating and all the the rest of scientific knowledge--that incidentally contradicts your idea--you're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.