Seashells on tops of mountains.

I nearly spit out my drink, reading that. lolHave any Creationists that spout this nonsense even seen what fossils look like in situ? I seriously doubt it.It's not like the fossils are laying loose on the surface of the ground. They are embedded in rocks. Rocks that can be tens of thousands of feet thick.Just how long do Young Earth Creationists think it takes sediment to lithify? And just where did all that sediment come from? The Flooding rains would have had to annihilate entire mountain ranges thousands of feet high... in 40 days.Not only are we seeing individual fossils or colonies of fossils, we see entire reef systems. Such as coral, sponges, and many of the other associated organisms typically found in modern reef systems. And these reef systems, they are not a few inches or even a few feet thick. They can be hundreds of feet thick.Just how long do Young Earth Creationists think an entire reef system can develop?

Depends.What sort of time scale are you considering?What are the mountains composed of?How high are the mountains?What's the climate like?You're not going to erode the Rockies down to their cores in 40 days regardless of the amount of rain; but the Black Hills will certainly take a beating.Edited by roxrkool, : No reason given.

I had to look it up, too.

Absolutely not.First of all, uplift combined with "catastrophic" flooding of such immense proportions will not deposit anything on the tops of mountains. These two processes together will result in erosional systems, not depositional ones. Therefore, the tops of mountains will lose material to lower elevation and lower energy environments. All your marine fossils I would expect to find in basins in a jumbled, incoherent mess.Instead, we find that fossils all over the planet appear in the same vertical succession and in the same lithologies, regardless of size, density, or shape -- characteristic properties that affect hydraulic sorting.Then, of course, you'd have to explain the presence of fossilized, fully developed paleoreefs we find in a variety of stratigraphic positions all over the planet. All of which have been affected differently due to growth and development under distinct environmental conditions.From AAPG (AAPG Bulletin; October 1999; v. 83; no. 10; p. 1552-1587):

quote:

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Paleoreef maps; evaluation of a comprehensive database on Phanerozoic reefs

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Wolfgang Kiessling, Erik Fluegel, and Jan Golonka

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Universitaet Erlangen, Institut fuer Palaeontologie, Erlangen, Federal Republic of Germany

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To get a better understanding of controls on reef development through time, we created a comprehensive database on Phanerozoic reefs. The database currently comprises 2470 reefs and contains information about geographic position/paleoposition, age, reef type, dimensions, environmental setting, paleontological and petrographical features, and reservoir quality of each buildup. Reef data were analyzed in two qualitatively different ways. The first type of analysis was by visualization of paleogeographic reef distribution maps. Five examples (Late Devonian, Early Permian, Late Triassic, Late Jurassic, middle Miocene) are presented to show the potential of paleoreef maps for paleogeographic and paleoclimatological reconstructions. The second type of analysis was a numerical processing of coded reef characteristics to realize major trends in reef evolution and properties of reef carbonates. The analysis of paleolatitudinal reef distributions through time shows pronounced asymmetries in some time slices, probably related to climatic asymmetries rather than controlled by plate tectonic evolution alone. The dominance of particular reef builders through time suggests that there are seven cycles of Phanerozoic reef development. First curves for the Phanerozoic distribution of bioerosion in reefs, bathymetric setting, and debris potential of reefs are presented. The observed pattern in the temporal and spatial distribution of reefs with reservoir quality may assist in hydrocarbon exploration. Statistical tests on the dependencies of reefal reservoir quality suggest that large size, high debris potential, low paleolatitude, high amount of marine aragonite cement, and a platform/shelf edge setting favor reservoir quality. Reefal reservoirs are significantly enhanced in times of high evaporite sedimentation, elevated burial of organic carbon, low oceanic crust production, low atmospheric CO 2 content, and cool paleoclimate, as well as when they are present in aragonite oceans.

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If you want to learn about geology, then read geology textbooks. In college, we start out easy taking Historical Geology courses and ones on petrology and mineralogy. Don't start out reading Creationist propaganda written mostly by people who do not really know much about geology or who have an ideological agenda. They write little blurbs here and there about specific topics that can be taken out of context and twisted to suit their own needs. And they know that people like you, ignorant of even the most basic geology and science, will swallow it hook, line, and sinker.Creationists will often accuse non-Creationists of bias and having their own atheistic agenda. False. In truth, geologists, like the rest of the general population, could not care less about the religious implications of their work. Yes, many of us are atheists, but we don't have time to sit around coming up with ways to ruin Christianity. We are nerds. We don't care about religion. We sit around arguing whether skarn is a rock or an alteration and how it should be coded it in our models.Something to consider... who makes money off geology? Professional geologists. We do not EVER use 'Creationist geology' to find economic deposits of oil, gas, or minerals. We use traditional, old earth geology because it works and it makes us billions of dollars. We use ancient depositional systems and tectonic terranes to guide us in finding the next major gold deposit, not Flood Geology.So if you found yourself in a position of having to find a rare earth deposit in order to save your country (you are the leader of a small country!), who would you choose to help you do it --- a team of Creationists or a team of professional economic geologists with proven records of finding other RE deposits?That should answer your question as to who you should listen to.

I'm a bit confused by this statement. Can you elaborate?Edited by roxrkool, : No reason given.

Do you have evidence that limestone, which has specific depositional requirements, can form under catastrophic upheaval and massive flooding conditions? Because much of the world's fossils occur in limestones, which can be found anywhere in the world from the highest mountains to the lowest valleys. Are you suggesting that the American Cordillera has no fossils? While not exceedingly common, fossils do exist (See below: 1 - 4). Where they may not exist are in intrusive igneous rocks, which of course never have fossils. And igneous plutons and batholiths form the core of much of the Sierra Nevada.Please provide physical evidence that the American Cordillera "exploded?"************************1. Early Cambrian Ediacaran-Type Fossils from California (PDF document)2. Significance of "Tethyan" Fossils in the American Cordillera (PDF document)3. Localities of the Cambrian: The White-Inyo Mountains4. Rare Fallotaspis Trilobite from Inyo-White Mountains

You're welcome! I think you will enjoy it. It's a fantastic site.

I don't think it's working out so well...