Could asteroids lead to the extinction of YECism ?

THIS IS OFF TOPIC IN A THREAD SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT ASTEROIDS BUT I'M NOT GOING TO LET IT GO UNANSWERED.

It's not as if there were any chance of it being true. Look at all the evidence against it. The tons of missing material.

There's so MUCH missing material at Siccar Point, in the foreground of every picture of the rocks, as well as all the layers that were once above it, very probably to a great depth, as they are in the Grand Canyon for instance, that it's silly to focus on missing material at the contact. All of it got washed away from wherever it was pushed to.

The eroded material from the lower strata, but none from the upper.

This is a strange illusion. At Siccar Point and at the Great Unconformity you see large clasts embedded IN the material laid down horizontally above the contact line, that famous quartzite boulder in the GC for instance, but also see the You Tube video of Siccar Point where this phenomenon is mentioned. These clasts are considered to be evidence of the erosion itself, but their being embedded in the upper sediment is also evidence that both were eroded. The lower buckled layers would naturally have been eroded more extensively and coarsely in the abrasive friction with the upper, which being horizontal would have provided more of a slippery surface. Still, the embedded clasts of the lower in the upper do show that the upper was also eroded. And why should there be loose clasts at all if the lower had been eroded clean long long long before the upper were laid down?

The sudden transition from deep folds, to none at all.

Don't know what you are referring to here. Deep folds where? You simply mean the fact that the lower is folded and the upper not at all? But this is exactly what would happen if the force were sufficient to buckle the lower beneath a different kind of sediment with a different enough texture to provide a slippage contact between them. No buckling at all should occur above that point.

All of it makes sense with Hutton's model but not with yours.

Beg to differ. And I'd also add the weathering factor in the case of Siccar Point. The rocks there are quite severely eroded simply from the severe weather at that location, surely you agree. But there isn't ANY difference between the degree of weathering between any of the vertical layers or between them and the upper horizontal layers, yet supposedly millions of years elapsed between them. There should be such differences between the vertical layers because they were supposedly laid down over millions of years too, as well as between that block of layers and the upper block, where it should even be more obvious. But it isn't.

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To dismiss a person's argument without even stating it, calling the person "ignorant" as the reason for ignoring it, is an ad hominem.

ABE: However, even as an insult, which you are willing to own, it's extremely bad form on a debate board.

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That doesn't make a lot of sense - given your scenario. How could it be pushed any distance, and how could it get washed away? It's all locked up underground.

At Siccar Point it's all exposed and the layers break off, they aren't continuous. At the GC I figure the rubble is somewhere under the strata outside the frame of the usual diagram. The strata of which the Great Unconformity was made must continue to exist somewhere too.

but their being embedded in the upper sediment is also evidence that both were eroded. No, it isn't - not in the absence if eroded material from the upper. It makes much more sense that the material you refer to was eroded out of the lower sediments and redeposited with the newer sediment.

No, the upper material WAS eroded but it maintained its finegrained character so that all you see is that material with the chunks of the lower material embedded in it. And in both cases, the GC and Siccar Point, the chunks are suspended above the contact line, which is NOT what you'd expect if they preexisted the deposition of the upper strata. And I can't even picture how that would happen if they were supposedly redeposited as you claim either. They'd already be there on the usual scenario, how do they get redeposited?

Please explain how different textures could have that effect.

Try Lyell's experiment with folded cloth, using folded flannel, terrycloth, cotton sheet, satin, velvet. Flannel will not slide relative to flannel but buckle together, and probably not relative to terrycloth either, though it's possible the terrycloth would buckle beneath the flannel, if I had some flannel I'd check, but flannel will slide relative to satin for sure, and you'd have to test the others but there should be similar effects between them.

First, I don't agree - and I wouldn't guess based on photographs either. Second as I keep having to point out (although it should be obvious) the weathering of a surface depends on the time that that surface is exposed to the weather. The differing dates of deposition simply don't give us this information. So even if you,re right your argument relies on an obvious misunderstanding.

The lower strata were presumably built up slowly over millions of years, tilted and eroded and submerged while the upper strata were deposited, if I'm remembering the sequence Hutton had in mind correctly. That means the lower were supposedly exposed a long long time before being submerged and if the weather was the same all that time there should be a difference in the effect from one layer to another. I see no differences among the vertical strata myself. And the vertical strata appear to be weathered in the same degree as the upper as well, and in that case since they were already supposedly severely weathered befpre being submerged they should continue to be far more weathered looking than the upper strata no matter how long they were exposed.

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Thank you VERY much for assembling all that information, I truly appreciate it and it's information I really need to know. From my point of view it's very sad but I still need to know it. My original post assumed, as I guess many do, that Christians holding Old Earth views must also be influenced by Liberal Christianity, that got started in Tubingen, because to my mind they both require bending the scripture to accommodate a worldly belief. So it's important to know that there are different sources of such ideas. Thanks again.

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The point should be recognized that it is only a hypothesis, that all they had in the end and still have is the idea that it looked to them like it must have taken more than 6000 years, and eventually others got persuaded and that's the so-called "evidence" you have. You are amazing Faith, it's like the 200 years since Hutton hadn't happened. There's 200 years of corroborating evidence from several different branches of science that the earth is old.

ALL your "corroborating evidence" is of the same kind, though, it can't be anything BUT hypothetical because there is no way to prove it, just as Hutton couldn't prove it. All the claims that the earth is old from all the sources are still hypothetical so all you are doing is adding together hypotheticals from various sources and calling it "corroboration." You suppose it about Siccar Point, you suppose it about the strata, you suppose it about the fossils, you suppose it about radiometric methods, and so on and so forth.

What Hutton thought, like what Darwin thought, is a matter of historic interest only.

His method is still all you've got for the age of the earth.

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You're right that I didn't take into account that the condition of Siccar Point now exposes a lot more than would have been exposed in the past and there's no way to tell how much when.

Faith knows your little word games and that there's nothing wrong with the word "proof" as I use it.

If those are angular conformities I'd explain them the same way I explain Siccar Point. But just making an incomprehensible list of names isn't an argument.

What are you going on about? Siccar Point is off topic in this thread, I've discussed it at length elsewhere and already got too far into it here. You are raising your endless questions and I'm not interested in pursuing them here. As I said, I've discussed this to death elsewhere. If you want to continue with your endless questions and demands and accusations please move it to one of the threads where we've already discussed it to death.

I'm glad to hear it. I wouldn't like to think they didn't have good reasons.

And to you too: This is off topic here. Maybe you and PaulK could combine your efforts and take it somewhere else.

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When I pointed out on the other thread that YECism was invented by SDAs, that should have been kind of a clue. What did you think fundamentalist Protestants thought before they were (as you suppose) enlightened by this non-Christian cult and their prophetess?

I would have said that YECism as you call it goes back to Ussher's dating of the age of the earth, I wouldn't have connected it with the SDAs. I thought, as I said, that anyone who accepted the Old Earth was thinking like a "liberal Christian" which was a theological trend that started in the mid 19th century in Germany. kbertsche's list includes some of the greatest names in orthodox Christianity that I wouldn't have expected to give in to the Old Earth.

ABE: One thing I did think, mostly from Darwin, was that the creationism in Darwin's time was pretty silly in a lot of ways and needed the criticisms and corrections his book made. it was probably much the same situation in Geology. And the problem with those creationist ideas was that they were unbiblical, a strange bunch of ideas that came from who knows where.

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As Bernard Ramm said just before "The Genesis Flood" was published, the Gap Theory had become the de facto orthodox position for the most conservative and fundamental of Protestant Christians. This included those who were strongly anti-modernism and those who were strongly anti-evolution (e.g. Wm Jennings Bryan, Charles Hodge, Harry Rimmer). It even included John Whitcomb himself, until a hydrologist persuaded him to accept an unscientific theory from a Christian cult (SDA) and to rework it into a form acceptable to conservative Evangelicals.

All interesting history that I didn't know about, though I loved the Genesis Flood and probably got most of my views from that and other similar books. I didn't know about the SDA connection and if there are problems with that book it would be good to know about them but my impression has been that they don't affect the main argument.

I know some of the reasoning for the Gap Theory and just find it unbiblical, an obvious attempt to bend the Bible to modern science, and even if it's held by very conservative Christians that's how it seems to me. In a way that is like Liberal Christianity which was an attempt to "save" Christianity from the effects of modern science.

Same with Day-Age and Theistic Evolution. You have succeeded in convincing me, however, that I should learn more about these views.

You'll find a lot more information on this history from Ron Numbers' book "The Creationists". Ron Numbers was raised an SDA so has the "inside story" on lots of the goings-on.

I'll check it out.

ABE: Just read the introduction at Amazon, where he's saying basically what you said here. It's a rather expensive book so I have to decide if its information is worth it.

ABE: I would like to know more about how those on your list thought, more than anything about the SDA background of Creation Science. Probably the links you gave earlier are the best guide to that information, rather than Numbers' book.

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If this does not make sense to you, you need to read up on the Gap Theory. The Gap Theory views the Days of Genesis as a recent re-creation, not the original creation. It views the original creation as occurring eons earlier and evidenced in earth geology.

Yes I do need to read up on all these things, but what you say here is pretty much the idea I did have of Gap Theory, that there is a gap between the first and second verses of Genesis that allows for the old earth, after which I wasn't clear what supposedly occurred so it's interesting that apparently Ussher's dates took off from there.

So what does this mean though? They apparently think of the creation of Adam and Eve as a special creation of God, and not as the culmination of evolutionary processes for starters, right? BUT they also, or some of them, Spurgeon apparently for instance, from the link you provided earlier, seem to think that animals had lived for millions of years before human beings were created. From what Spurgeon said that doesn't necessarily imply evolution, just many different kinds of animals that didn't exist in the present, which I suppose he gathered from the fossil record, understood already as a sequence of ages, but it does imply that animals did die during those millions of years.

ABE: The Wikipedia article on Gap Theory says that different ideas of the previous millions of years were held by different men.

It also says that the idea was invented to allow both science and the Bible to be true. Fatal temptation I would say. Or not fatal since it doesn't affect salvation but it shows the tendency to capitulate to old earth science on the basis of its mere plausibility rather than any supposed solid evidence that is always claimed for it.

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Oh it has its plausibility, but it's hard to get past the implication that all this was discovered in the text because of the challenges of the science of the time.

Those who held the Gap Theory were pretty strongly anti-evolution. They certainly did not see evolution in the re-creation (Gen 1:3ff), and I don't think they saw it in the original creation, either. They DID see death of animals over millions of years in the original creation, but I'm not sure what they ascribed this to. Satan hadn't fallen yet, so why did animals die? (I'm not an expert on the Gap Theory; this would be a good question to research.) In the re-creation, they probably did not see animal death until Adam's fall, but I'm not sure that they all viewed it this way.

There's nothing very clear about this in Spurgeon's view but if he took some of his belief in animals before the renewed Creation from the fossil record he'd have to be assuming death as part of the picture.

Yes, I'd be interested in finding out more about how they thought about all this. What bothers me is that although I can see how easy it is for people to think there really is hard evidence for the Old Earth and even for evolution, that "evidence" is really nothing but mental constructs, interpretations, assumptions, unvalidated hypotheses. These men believed all this before the only objective measure existed, radiometric dating, and that too is open to question, all kinds of errors being rationalized away. But the point is the whole edifice of the sciences of the past is built on speculation (it sure SEEMS the Earth must be very old) and little else that can't be explained in other ways, because there is no way to confirm it as the hard sciences can do, and yet it has persuaded the whole world. I'm sure you would dispute this as everybody else here does.

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All this is off topic but it's hard not to get into it since it's here.

Observation 1: the first thing created in Gen 1 is light (1:3), BUT a watery abyss (presumably over an earth of some sort) already existed (1:2). The creation of this water (and earth) is not described in Gen 1. When/how was it created? We aren't told.

No, but the way the text reads there is really no good reason not to read the next verse as following immediately.

Observation 2: the Fall of Adam & Eve was NOT the first sin in God's creation. Satan must have fallen earlier, since he was the tempter of Adam & Eve.

But the usual understanding is that the Earth was created FOR humanity, and in fact very likely in response to Satan's rebellion, as human beings are destined to replace the demonic realm in some way in the end, and what matters in this cosmic plan is the sin of Adam as the governor of Earth, not Satan's which long preceded it. EARTH is the focus here, not whatever existed before the Creation. [ABE In fact, now that I think of it, there didn't need to be anything before the Creation which began in Genesis 1 with "In the beginning." What there was is not clear but Satan and the angels didn't need the Creation, it was made for humanity. /ABE]

When did Satan fall?

Some time before the creation of the Earth.

How did the earth get into the desolate, empty state described in Gen 1:2?

As it is normally read the amorphous state was simply a stage of the creation. I see no necessary reason to interpret it any other way.

It's not TOO big of a stretch to ascribe this state to a cosmic judgment in the wake of Satan's fall. (Though this is completely speculative; there is no biblical suggestion that Satan's fall would have affected the physical creation.). Hence, the basic idea of the Gap Theory: God created the entire universe long ago (Gen 1:1), it was put in a chaotic state when Satan fell (1:2), and then it was re-created recently, in six Days (1:3ff).

All I see in this barely plausible scenario is the desperation of these men in the face of the science of the day that they were unable to criticize. I can't fault them for this, I just think it is very sad.

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