Paleobotany falsifies the Noaic Flood

I've never heard a sufficient answer to this so I thought I would start a new topic. I'm putting it here instead of "Geology and the Great Flood" because it's not really a geology topic.I contend that paleobotany falsifies the Noaic flood and the explanitory mechanism of hydrologic sorting. The standard Creationist model to explain the sorting of the fossil record in a way that suggests a progression of forms is that, as the floodwaters rose, more complex animals were able to escape the floodwaters longer, eventually succumbing at higher elevations. This would put simple, "dumb" animals at the bottom of the geologic column and complex, "smart" animals at the top, creating the fossil "progression" that evolutionists supposedly "misinterpret" as an evolutionary progression over time.The problem is that this doesn't work for plants, which do not move. Plants display the same degree of evolutionary development over time that animals do, according to the fossil record. Early plants are simple. Plants higher in the fossil column are more complex.What explains this sorting? Under the Noaic model the only explanation is that more complex plants took up root and ran alongside mammals to higher elevations. Is this ridiculous explanation to be believed? If not, how do Creationists explain the hydrologic sorting of plants?Clearly the evolutionary model of change over great amounts of time is able to explain the progression of plants in the fossil record. I invite Creationists to provide an alternate explanation from any source.

Frog:I know your question is serious, and that you are soliciting serious responses ... but["What explains this sorting? Under the Noaic model the only explanation is that more complex plants took up root and ran alongside mammals to higher elevations. Is this ridiculous explanation to be believed? If not, how do Creationists explain the hydrologic sorting of plants?"]I just can't help but share this mental picture I got while reading your questions ... and I fully anticipate that some creationist "scientist" will advance a theory that busy beavers and pre-Flood muskrats scampered around during the time of rapidly rising waters chopping away at vegetation and transporting it to higher and higher elevations in an attempt to reconstruct habitat for all the other perishing creatures.[This message has been edited by Abshalom, 12-25-2003]

Well, yeah, the muskrats, and then it's also well known that cypress trees have "knees". So they probably have feet, too, which makes it child's play for them to outrun some cruddy old seed fern.

Isn't anybody going to post a link to the Answers In Genesis article that surely "refutes" me?Is there one? Or is it possible that I have an argument AiG can't counter? Buz? John Paul? Willowtree? You guys seem so cocksure about creationism; I'm surprised none of you have posted here.

Posted for source material:"The fossil-bearing strata were apparently laid down in large measure during the Flood, with apparent sequencing attributed not to evolution but rather to hydrodynamic selectivity, ecological habitats, and differential mobility and strength of the various creatures." (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, pg. 327)"Selective sorting" may not fully address Frog's question regarding plant fossils, but I think an imaginative creationist may be able to use "hydrodynamic selectivity" in association with the weight of silt particles, the absorbtion characteristics of various vegetative materials, and the specific nature of the Flood waters themselves (with regard to the particular "firmament" source points of those waters) to explain the stratification of plant fossils. Anyone out there have any theories regarding pre-Flood and Flood water specific gravity or silt content weight and their potent effects on plant fossil stratification?Additionally, during a year-long flood, vegetative flotsom would become waterlogged or silt-coated in accordance with each species varying cellular characteristics. Has anyone developed a model by which to determine the effects of year-long extended standing water on flotsom?There also may be creationists out there who have worked out an understandable theory of the relationship between pre-Flood plants and their water sources. Remember, pre-Flood and Flood water sources were vastly different than post-Flood water sources. So pre-Flood marine and aquatic plants must have had much different rooting, absorbtion, and transpiration mechanisms compared to post-Flood plants. Any takers?And there may actually be some persons who will advance the notion that even plant life contained elements of evil that had to be eradicated from existence and that these evil elements had weight or mobility that we are not aware of, are not taking into account, or are not present in post-Flood models.For example, the appearance of willow trees and oak trees at the top of the sedimentary layers may explain the biblical admonishments regarding worshipping in groves of trees and on high places. Could this admonishment possibly be the result of pre-Flood tree groves with sufficient and inherent evil powers having physically uprooted large masses of bouyant peat humus and forest litter in an attempt to transport themselves to higher elevations, re-establish, and perpetuate evil? If so, thank goodness the Flood overtopped the potential rooting sites with sufficient depth and longivity to prevent the re-rooting of evil groves and high places in the post-Flood world!

Abshalom, I seriously doubt it. For example, why do angiosperms produce tree fossils relatively high in the GC, conifers first appear lower, & seed ferns (that also produce trees) disappear before the first angiosperms make an appearance? The flood simply does not offer a viable explanation that is consistent with other creationist explanations (why angiosperms appear so high in the fossil record due to their low density).Appearances & disappearances of plants mirror that of animals, & it does so in such a way that is independent of size/density etc. in both cases. In fact, were you to take the gc as a whole you get exactly the opposite of what you would expect as regards hydrodynamic sorting. The largest animals that appear highest in the gc should appear at the bottom, the smallest that should fall out of suspension last (bacteria), appear first.Clearly, the creationist explanations are ad hoc, & are not consistent with their own explanations. It's the same ol' story, the explanations are given hoping no one will look too closely. Unfortunately there are young eager minds already made up that are quite happy to swallow this nonsense.Mark------------------
"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

Abshalom writes:

quote:

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Remember, pre-Flood and Flood water sources were vastly different than post-Flood water sources.

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You mean pre-flood water was something other than H₂O? Or it was some other physical construction of the atoms (thus making it, perhaps, non-polar?)

Rrhain quotes Abshalom:
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Remember, pre-Flood and Flood water sources were vastly different than post-Flood water sources.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Then Rhrain asks, "You mean pre-flood water was something other than H2O? Or it was some other physical construction of the atoms (thus making it, perhaps, non-polar?)"--------------------------------------------------------------------------------To which Abshalom answers: No, I don't mean that pre-Flood water was something other than H2O, but was reminding creationists that some of them have described pre-Flood water as having attributes and sources as something other than normal precipitation and free spring ground sources.Now, Rrhain, factoring that into the urgings I posted to encourage creationists to explain millions of years worth of plant fossils laid down in orderly progression in nexus to equally ancient animal fossils now resting at high altitutes and with regard to Frog's original questions at the top of this thread ... wanna have a go at it?

It may have Bohr's aquosity Mayr judged is not existant. That may exist by direct imposition of forceless electrotonic affordances provided materially in velocity and displacement.

Yeah, Rrhain ... what Brad said.

lol

In a flood, don't creatures bloat, wouldn't less complex creatures tend to settle a bit faster, the trees, and vegetation, explaining the various types of coal, as the flood waters flowed back to the sea, there must of been massive amounts of various levels of floating debris, as the sediments within the flood waters settled, etc...

You suggest that some sort of settling mechanism sorted the plant fossils. But before going off and making things like this up why don't you have a look at the data you actually have to explain?You suggesting doesn't work! Not at all! It does NOT explain the actual fossil record.There have been large and complex plants of various sorts around for more than a couple of hundred million years. However, they were not the same type of plants we have now.Why don't you show why flowering plants are only in the latter rock formations and not ever in the lower. There are lots of plants that are bigger, smaller and whatever else you want than some flowering plants but they didn't "sort out" with or above them. You haven't touched on explaning that. You haven't even started.What makes you say "less complex creatures" (whatever that is) settle faster? What is "less complex"? What kind of creature will be below what other kind of creature.Let me give you a clue here. There are no criteria you can pick that work.------------------
Common sense isn't

What does it have to do with complexity?Gases are produced during the decay process, & that would bring a human to the surface in about 2 weeks of death, but the cadaver would sink again fairly quickly once those gases find release. There would be no floating animals left after the 40 day turbulence, meaning that hydrodynamic sorting would sort organisms in a larger to smaller ordering not seen in the fossil record.Your argument still has many, many exceptions. Why is a T.Rex buried before a mouse, for example?Mark

I hope this isn't too far off topic. Creationists try to explain the sequence of fossils in the geologic column through more "advanced" animals making it to high ground, or by some kind "hydrological sorting". But they seem to forget that they still have to explain how clam shells end up on mountain tops. It seems that any meteorological/geologic violence that could explain fossil clam shells on mountains would counteract any kind of sorting mechanism, and so each geologic stratum should hold a random jumble of fossil species.