Do creationists try to find and study fossils?

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Yes he discusses the crinoids from many locations, but what seems strange is his thinking of them as "covering the earth" before the Flood. Wouldn't they have been in the ocean? They are sea creatures, right?

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If you read in context then it isn't so hard to understand: The point is that the AMOUNT of crinoid fossils found - in this one formation (there are others as the article points out) - are ENOUGH to cover the Earth. There is no suggestion that they actually did cover the Earth (and if they did how could they be gathered into this one formation - and where did the crinoids from the other formations mentioned come from ? Your reading makes no sense).The fact that they could not cover the Earth because they only live underwater only adds to the problem you face.

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I was taking into account his further comments which added up to the total that would have "covered the earth," not merely the one limestone formation he first mentioned that would cover the land to a depth of a quarter inch. I certainly knew that he wasn't saying they DID cover the earth.

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Then what is the point of arguing that they couldn't cover the Earth because crinoids don't live on land ?

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And the point is still that if he is trying to demonstrate that such a huge amount of crinoids could not possibly have been the result of the Flood he can't make the point by picturing them on land (where he pictures that one formation as being enough to take up the room needed by the Karoo vertebrates), because they would not have been on the land but in the oceans where their abundance would not have been a problem.

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Because he's including the seas AS WELL. The entire planet. Really it's not that hard to understand.

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Including the VOLUME of the seas? Not as I read it.

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The typical fossil crinoid lived attached to the seabed. Surface area is rather more important than volume.

I've done a little check on Morton's calculation and i believe that I have discovered a mistake.The surface area of the Earth - land and sea - is roughly 200,000,000 square miles (in fact less than that)The volume of crinoid material in the formation is estimated as "at least" 10,000 cubic miles, according to the quote.So the entire planet would be covered to a depth of 1/20,000 miles - not a quarter of an inch. A quarter of a foot

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But also, are you talking about the surface of the LAND only or the entire surface of the globe which would include the surface of the oceans as well? SURFACE. If you consider the surface of the sea bed as the area in question rather than the surface of the water you might come up with a different quantity.

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It's the entire surface of the globe, and if you had read my post - the one Taq replied to you would know that. Context is important.

Then I suggest that you do that calculation - and then start to allow space for everything else that lives or lived on the sea bed.

I suspect that the original source is something earlier and more authoritative in Creationist circles. Taylor is likely just somebody repeating the error. It's hardly unusual for creationists (and cranks in general) to copy material from each other without doing any checks.My guess in this case is that a creationist claim got confused with a genuine quote from Romer and the error just got propagated again and again and again.

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I am unable to find the article in Natural History by Romer although supposedly it's there. I used the Search feature on his name and many phrases from the quote imputed to him. It may be that there is just too much material there for me to sort through but I could not find the article, that's all I know.

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I have had more success. The article is there. The alleged quote is not in it. It doesn't even look like it belongs there - the writing style is different enough that it isn't likely to have been written by Romer at all.

I think that an important point is that these examples require water saturated with calcium carbonate (from passing through limestone).These are not typical conditions, and I can't see any reason to believe that they would be typical after the supposed flood.Indeed, if study is what is called for, we should be seeing evidence-based arguments that conditions were suitable after the flood, and that many fossils did form in this way. I don't see anything that really qualifies.

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If that's your criteria nothing from Old Earth geology qualifies either because obviously there is no way to prove the conditions existed that either theory argues for, they being in the unobservable past.

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On the contrary, geologists have done a good deal of that sort of work. You might, for instance look at the stone produced in this way and compare it with older rocks.

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I can't PROVE that "conditions were suitable after the Flood," but based on the usual idea that the Flood created the strata in which the fossils are found, we can suppose that the conditions were: wet sediments, which if low enough in the column would have been under great pressure from the weight of sediments above, which ought to be ideal conditions for the formation of fossils. The minerals that are involved can be anything, not necessarily limestone but whatever is in the immediate vicinity. The wetness of the sediments would provide the conditions for filling the cavities of creatures with mineralized water which according to Wikipedia is how "permineralization" occurs

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In other words real fossils are produced by a number of different mechanisms,and there is no special reason to assume that the speed of the particular method you refer to would actually apply to all of them.

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In other words you don't have a clue how long it takes either.

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In other words the time taken is variable, and your assertion that all fossils were formed in the time your beliefs allow is unsupported.

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The idea that it takes millions of years is nothing but an artifact of Old Earth assumptions and evolution theory, you have no actual evidence for it.

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I never said that it took millions of years, but even if it takes only tens of thousands in some cases, the evidence is against you.

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Even if it takes different amounts of time for different kinds of fossilization to occur, there is NO reason to assume great aeons of time.

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Indeed, "great aeons of time" is NOT assumed - it is concluded from the evidence. The idea that the fossil record is the product of a single catastrophic event, on the other hand, IS an assumption - and one that does not sit well with the evidence (try explaining how a continent-stripping catastrophe can preserve relatively delicate surface features !) .

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In the permineralization example that is caused by minerals precipitated out of water, if you have bones compressed within wet sediments and all the water-borne minerals needed to do the work why should it take so long?

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Again, the question is study and evidence. Do you have the evidence, or are you just assuming that conditions were right ? In the examples you gave another important point was that the water was flowing, so that there was a constant supply of calcium carbonate. I'm not sure that we should expect water coming IN in your scenario at all!

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Give it a few hundred years if you want, I don't think it should take that long, even give it a few thousand, you aren't going to need more than that. More likely 50 years would be more than enough. AT THE VERY LEAST, the time since the Flood is MORE than ample for fossilization of ALL KINDS to have occurred.

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I am aware that that is your opinion, but where are the studies backing it up ? That is the question of this thread.

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On the contrary, I believe I've made a decent case for it.

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Given that the study to back up this belief appears to be absent, I'd say that you haven't made much of a case at all.

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But like all the numbers, that's one you simply pulled out of a hat. There is no reason why it should take more than a few years for any of the kinds of fossilization, hundreds max.

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In fact we know that that isn't true under normal conditions. Archaeologists find remains that are hundreds of years old and not fossilised often enough. Finding remains that were only hundreds of years old AND fossilised would be unusual. (I recently saw an abstract of a paper which presented partially fossilised 1500 year old bones as something unusual)

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The Flood explains the vast majority of the facts better than evolution; there will always remain some questions, but even those are usually answerable when discussed in some detail and not just thrown at a creationist in passing during another discussion.

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Of course that isn't true. Even in this thread you're reduced to denying facts that don't fit.

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Again, NOBODY has that kind of evidence of what happened in the prehistoric past, the best that's possible is reconstructing it imaginatively, and what I described is a very likely reconstruction, far more likely than those fantastic scenarios preferred by evolutionists. YOU have no way of studying how a particular layer formed EITHER, it's all pure speculation, so don't give me this "study and evidence" song and dance.

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If you don't do the studies all you'll have is pure speculation. If you think that your fantasies are more likely than scientific conclusions simply because they're your fantasies then I can only feel sorry for you.

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Which examples? At the links? But everybody kiboshed those, NOW you want to accept them?

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Nobody said that the items weren't real or formed as claimed.

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Stack of wet sediments, under pressure from the weight of those above, would have a constant supply of water trickling down from the upper levels and running between the layers until the whole stack dried out, and some underground sources may have remained as well.

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That doesn't make a lot of sense. The pressure would tend to force the water up, and the supply wouldn't be constant. And you need the water to be very highly saturated in minerals for it to work quickly.

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Where are YOUR studies since you insist on studies? You have none. There is no way to study what happened in the prehistoric past, all you have is conjecture just as I do, and mine is very reasonable, can't say the same for yours.

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Hey, the subject is creationist studies. If you want to admit that creationists only have conjecture instead of doing the work then thanks for the rare honesty.

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HIGHLY saturated in minerals is exactly what you would have in the scenario I described, from the water seeping through the stack.

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But which minerals, and how fast would they be picked up ?

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Why on earth would it seep UPward?

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Because the pressure is squeezing it out. WHere else can it go ? Not down because that's where the pressure is highest.

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But if it did then the same mineralizing would be present only coming from below.

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Which means that the minerals that formed the fossil must have come from below. Now there's something that could be studied. So why isn't that study being done ?

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Everything in the Grand Canyon I think demonstrates the Flood and the video of Garner's lecture covers most of it.

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Really ? Then I guess that you have come up with an explanation for the boulder in the video, discussed here. Message 186Personally I can't see a viable explanation that doesn't accept that the Shinumo Quartzite had been metamorphosed before the boulder was eroded out of it - and before the Tapeats had come close to being lithified. And quartzite is a hard rock, so that's some significant erosion there.

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Of course the Shunimo was metamorphosed first, which I would suppose took a lot less time than is normally supposed. My question is why the other layers with the Shinumo were NOT metamorphosed in the same time period.

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Given that you also need to explain the erosion and how the boulder got to it's present position I'd say you've got more problems than that. Especially when you're denying the very existence of such erosion.

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So I don't have an answer to that yet. Such unanswered questions don't threaten the overall interpretation of the other phenomena as Flood-caused, they merely need further understanding.

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It's stronger than anything you've come up with. So I guess that you've got no case at all.