Wegener and Evidence for Continental Drift

TC: You want more data?What would the sediments look like in your scenario? I'm guessing the relatinship would be approximately linear with distance from the continental margins and with no discontinuity between continental sediments and pelagic. (other than at the 200 m mark).Is that correct? What do you do if the data contradicts this?

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While it the outline of what we would expect from conventional geology is pretty clear (similar fauna, diversifying as the continents seperate) I don't see what CPT would predict.

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--It would predict...the same thing! What have you been reading on CPT?

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My understanding was the CPT was a mechanism for Flood Geology and therefore proposed that the vast majority of fossils were formed during a year-long Global Flood.
Are you proposing that all the fossils showing the diversification date to after the Flood ? That would require a significant amount of post-Flood evolution and fossilisation to an extent which I would not expect to be acceptable to a YEC. But if not then how will this diversification be accomplished ?At the very least you need to explain how CPT makes such a prediction instead of just asserting that it does. Start with where you fit pre- and post- flood rocks and fossils, and explain the mechanisms of diversification - becuase at most you have a few thousand years to fit it into so you must have a different explanation than mainstream science. [quote]

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Certainly if we assume that the fossils are more or less in the place where the original animals and plants lived we should expect CPT to predict that the similarities to be independant of the geological age assigned to the rocks

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--Not necessarily, while in the YECist view radioisotopic dating does not indicate ages as given by the analysis from uniformitarian assumptions--it does represent a chronology. So as sediments were layed down, there would be an appearence of age with depth.

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This does not dispute the point I am making at all.
Since the fossils represent the fauna over a contiguous area (based on the explicit assumption that the fossils have not been moved a significant distance) at a particular time (the inital part of the Flood) then any sorting mechanism is extremely unlikely to sort fossils such that the fossils found on both continents are all found at or before the geological era when the continents were joined. There is simply no factor that should prevent fossils in higher strata from appearing on both continents.Ecological sorting does not apply (even if we assume different ecosystems each side of the continental boundary why should the species found in each not appear in higher strata as well as tose attribute to the tiem when the continents were joined ?)Hydrodynamic sorting obviously cannot make this distinction.Escape behaviour also should not produce a clean split correlating with the view of conventional geology. Surely some animals should go sone way and some the other depending on which side of the bundary they were on when the catastrophe started - not on which strata their fossils will end up in/.And that is all of the sorting mechanisms that I am aware of proposed by Flood geology.If you know of a sorting mechanism which would reasonably produce a pattern consistent with the expectations of conventional geology withour relying on ad hoc assumptions then please produce it.

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All later fossils have been transported significant distances ?

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--No.

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OK, so you agree with the assumption that the fossils represent the species present at the joined location. So take a species that according to conventional paleontology evolved after there was no reasonable way for the species to migrate between the continents involved. If it is found in strata that YECs attribute to the Flood then according to CPT we could reasonably expect to find such a species on both continents - in direct contradiction to the predictions of conventional geology. Therefore CPT predicts that at least some of these species should be found on both continents and conventional geology says that they shuld not.

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--No edge, that didn't seem like that was Percy's point because he wanted more evidence (thats why he considers sedimentary thickness to be good evidence all on its own)than just the example of radioisotopic dating.

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I was talking about the Wegener part of the discussion. It is clear that Wegener had several lines of clear evidence for continental drift that could be explained in a paragraph or so. All Percy, I think, wants is to know what your corresponding evidence is.

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--Looking back at where I made my comment, "All of the pre-flood oceanic lithosphere has been destroyed at its corresponding subduction zone" I'm not sure why I made the statement, but it isn't wrong.

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It is wrong. You neglect the fact that some 'pre-flud' oceanic crust is now incorporated into the continents. I have seen it in many diverse places. Such as Devonian oceanic crust in Alaska and Oregon.

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Sure, with every continent to continent collision (eg, the himalayan orogenesis) there are going to be remnants of the previously existing ocean floor, but not a significant portion of its lithosphere.

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You wrote: "All of the pre-flood oceanic lithosphere has been destroyed ..." The statement is demonstrably incorrect. The amount is not trivial when compared to the amount of information we can glean from it.

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--I don't know where this came from:

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Originally posted by Edge.
Not at all. First, we have taken actual sample of water and rock from the hot springs vent. Second, not all parts of a ridge are as active as the hotspots. Most of the ridge is quite cold at any given time. And temperatures drop off suddenly in the near 0deg seawater.

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You were talking about how difficult it would be to observe and sample the mid-ocean ridges. This was wrong also.

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--Unequivocal??

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Where did you get this? No one asked for unequivocal evidence. They asked for any evidence.

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I don't have any, I explained this earlier.

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Then what the XXXX are we doing here? Perhaps you need to stop making wild assertions about evidence for cpt.

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Sure there is abundant 'evidence' but not the kind that at the end of the day, you will care about.

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Try us. C'mon, TC, we'eve been waiting for over 60 posts! Humor us a bit.[This message has been edited by edge, 05-29-2003]

O/TTC:I can see you have your hands full here and I'm sorry I've added to your dilemma. I did want to say that although your lack of evidence and... ummm... understanding is rather frustrating to most of us, I respect your tenacity for having stuck around as long as you have. Kudos!

The first feature that comes to mind that CPT doesn't account for is the magnetic reversal patterns seen in modern oceanic crust. Plate tectonics explains them perfectly, though.There is no scientific basis for assuming that everything happened faster than what we see today. The only reason is that it had to happen faster to satisfy the Bible's 6000 year date.

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And no, sorry, I don't care about noah and the ark. I care about geophysics and the geodynamics of catastrophic plate tectonics.

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There is no reason to concoct a theory like CPT unless you want to prove that the flood created the geological features seen today. If you ignore Noah's Flood - and the entire Bible in fact - then plate tectonics is a perfect, working theory. Here's a piece taken from an interview with Dr Baumgardner:

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Dr. Baumgardner: I'm trying to understand what happened to the Earth in Noah's flood and put together a solid scientific case that supports the biblical account of a world- destroying catastrophic flood.

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The link for the interview is Revolution Against Evolution – A Revolution of the Love of GodThe interview shows that he didn't even consider that plate tectonics might be valid - he set out believing that the Bible was the only true account and somehow modern geological evidence supported it. I think this is called 'shoehorning' - I've seen it happen before in geology.And no, geophysics doesn't count. If he really wanted to know about plate tectonics he would have done a degree in geology - but that would have overturned his nice little view of the world.The Rock Hound

TC, man, you are in denial.

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There is sediment, but the sediment which is that near to the ridges is from local palegic sedimentation, and still that is immeasurable.

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How then has it been measured? You've been given several maps already.

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Were talking about less than 200m from the ridge.

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Why are we talking about 200m? Sediments traveled a thousand miles, give or take, and stopped 200m shy of the ridges? And THIS is your evidence? Your line of demarcation is 200m from the ridge?

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Because the data that I have looked at, I can infer that it isn't giong to even be relevant unless we are talking about km scales, not less than 200m.

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What are you talking about? The issue you have to deal with is that there is a pretty steady decrease in sediment depth from the continents to the ridges. You seem to be claiming that this is all due to runoff from the continents. That is, sediment travelled appr. a thousand miles in 4000 years. Do you have evidence for this rate? But wait... the sediments just don't get there, period. And the "local palegic sedimentation" is immeasurable. Yet, there is sediment, so what are you talking about?------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

There are a couple of ways to answer this. One is simply to ask what could possibly prevent sedimentation from occurring everywhere in the deep ocean, including near the oceanic ridges. The sediment would come from organic remains from the higher layers and from any particulate matter that happens to fall, perhaps blown from the continents.The other way to answer this is to simply provide the information. This is from an elementary geology textbook called The Earth's Dynamic Systems by W. Kenneth Hamblin, page 333: This tells us that on average there should be around 5 cm of sediment at the 5000-year distance of 200 meters from the ridge, and that the depth of this sediment should decrease as you move toward the ridge, and increase as you move away from the ridge. The sediment becomes linearly deeper with increasing distance from the ridge, until you get near enough a continent for continental runoff to be a factor, at which point sediment depths increase dramatically. This is precisely what PT predicts.CPT, on the other hand, predicts that sedimentation depth should increase linearly with distance from the ridge up until the 5000-year distance of about 200 meters, and after that should be a constant depth of about 5 cm, since that's all that has time to accumulate in 5000 years. This is absolutely *not* what we find.Here's more evidence for PT from the same page: This northward migration of the chalk line would not have time to happen in the CPT scenario, because there's far, far, far too much chalk to be accounted for by only a year's worth of plankton. Plus the sedimentation is fine grained, which couldn't happen on a sea floor moving at the rate of miles per day, plus the massive heat outflow would have boiled all the plankton, anyway.Another piece of evidence supporting PT is guyots. The sea floor sinks as it moves away from the ridge because as it cools it becomes increasingly dense. Guyots are volcanic islands that are eroded flat on top over time, then as they move further from the ridge and the sea floor on which they stand sinks their tops sink beneath the waves. The CPT scenario provides no time for the erosion of the flat tops on guyots. How can you deny that sedimentation depth increases with increasing distance from oceanic ridges in the first part of your message, then accept it and claim CPT supports it here. This is just as contradictory as your other nonsense about mid-ocean sediments coming primarily from continents that John picked up on in Message 55.Anyway, the Post #53 that you claim is by you is actually by PaulK, but looking over your posts I can see no explanation for how CPT accounts for this. Could you please explain it again? Including how fine grain sedimentary structure could have been laid down during a violent catastrophe, how so much biomass could have been living at the same time during a single year, how the different sedimentary layers could contain different fossil groups, and how the layers date older the deeper you go? And please don't just post a list of assertions, please support each argument with evidence. Elaborate on this? TC, this is just common sense. The effects of a motion carried out very rapidly are far different from the same motion carried out very slowly. Imagine the difference in effect if you extend your fist to someone's nose at the rate of 1 inch/second, and then do it again at the rate of 1000 inches/second. It would be a dramatic difference in outcome, wouldn't it? Well, same for almost anything else. If the sea floor was at one time produced at a rate of miles/day then it should have a very, very different appearance and structure from sea floor produced at a rate of a few yards/century. What kind of differences should we look for, TC?You're arguing very strangely. Instead of putting your energy into figuring out what evidence should exist and then seeking it out, you instead put all your energy into denying that any evidence for CPT exists. If there's no evidence for it, TC, then you can't know that it ever happened.A world formed by CPT should contain evidence for CPT and look very different from one formed by PT. The reason PT is the accepted view is because a world formed by PT should contain evidence for PT, and that's exactly what we find, copious evidence for PT. Where's the evidence for CPT? Can you show me how to be clairvoyant, too? Or are you a seer and soothsayer now? Arguments should be made in the messages themselves, you can cite your article in support if you like. Please describe your Venusian evidence for accelerated decay. Well, first of all, I think it's your job to develop the evidence supporting your views. You're the CPT expert, not me.But second of all, I've already given you evidence you should look for if CPT is the true explanation. Most of the seafloor away from continents should have a very shallow sedimentation depth averaging around 5 cm, because most of the sea floor is only 5000 years old. There should be a line of demarkation about 200 meters from all oceanic ridges - closer to the ridge the sedimentation depth should increase linearly, and further from the ridge the depth should be constant. We should not find any radiometrically old layers anywhere, not in the oceans and not on continents. Faunal fossil distributions in oceanic sedimentary layers should all reflect life that existed within the last 5000 years, nothing before that. We should not find progressions of fossils and should not find layer upon layer of fossils reflecting life that not only no longer exists, but doesn't even appear to have any living relative. Guyots should not exist, and submerged volcanic islands should all still have intact cones. And last but not least, all life on earth should now be extinct as of about 5000 years ago.--Percy

At several points in this thread, TC has determinedly pointed out that modern cpt enthusiasts are in a similar position to Wegener when he trotted out the original continental drift theory in the 30's. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Here is a quote from a book that I am presently in the middle of.According to 'Krakatoa' by Simon Winchester, continental drift became an obsession with Wegener:"He looked for support for the idea. He carefully examined the observations of other scientists and the conclusion of ther fields--he looked at geology, at paleontology, at paleoclimatology and (most importantly for this story) at Sclater's and Wallace's new-fangled zoogeography and biogeography. He wanted to see if there was any hard evidence to back his idea that the continents had somehow moved from their inital positons to where they are now.

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"And he found plenty, some of it hard and convincing, an some of it circumstantial and tempting , much of it vague and alluring. The easier evidence comprised those existing mountain ranges, coal deposits, and fossil appearances that were to be found on the far sides of the oceans, right across from the obvious 'fits': when maps of the continents were pushed together to fit properly. Then the ranges and outcrops of exploitable minerals and the lines of ammonites, trilobites an skeins fo graptolitic shales themselves also slotted together perfectly, like pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle."I think we can say that Wegener did his homework. He had some hard evidence, that was impossible to refute, but the general science community simply could not accept the idea that terra firma was not so firm. He had plenty of evidence but no mechanism and was roundly criticized. This is similar to the position that cpt supporters find themselves today, except that they have NOT done their homework and, as TC has admitted, they have NO hard evidence. Not even 'vague and alluring' evidence.

TC's assertion is that Wegener's evidence is eqally compatible with CPT.So far it is only an assertion and I haven't seen a lot of reasoning to support it - certainly not on the fossil record. And I can't see why the fossil record should look the same if it was mainly formed in 1 year, rather than over tens of millions of years.

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TC's assertion is that Wegener's evidence is eqally compatible with CPT.
So far it is only an assertion and I haven't seen a lot of reasoning to support it - certainly not on the fossil record. And I can't see why the fossil record should look the same if it was mainly formed in 1 year, rather than over tens of millions of years.

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Perhaps I misunderstood what TC meant. No surprise there. In that case, however, I fail to see the point. The CPT is compatible with the early notions of a theory from 70 years ago? Not much to recommend it, I would say.

I think his point was that it is still early days for CPT. That you can't expect it to be as advanced as PT when there have been more decades of work done on that.He misses that CPT isn't just less developed or has less evidence, it is demonstartably wrong.

Yes, he tends to ignore the negative information. Wegener really had no negative evidence against his idea other than the fact that no one could imagine a mechanism.

Roxrkool says:

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Have a look at this image on the NOAA site. (BTW, you can zoom in on that picture.)

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Now, of course, since I believe you have a problem with mainstream dating methods, you would have to calibrate the dating scheme used by NOAA to your own timescale. After that, and based on the age-relations observed, you should be able to pick the spot where the continents went from traveling across the ocean from several miles per day to today's rates (and that of the last 5,000 years) of a few cm/mm per year. Seeing as that is a HUGE difference in velocity, you should have no problems doing so.

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To advance the theory further, you would also need to present corroborating sediment thickness maps as well as structural and/or topographic data.

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And NosyNed says:

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What would the sediments look like in your scenario? I'm guessing the relatinship would be approximately linear with distance from the continental margins and with no discontinuity between continental sediments and pelagic. (other than at the 200 m mark).

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Is that correct? What do you do if the data contradicts this?

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--There are several factors we must consider before assuming that it is that simple. Firstly, all we have being deposited on the relevant ocean floor is pelagic and some air-fall terrigenous sediments. Ice rafting, authigenic sediments are irrelevant because they are highly localized and turbidity/slump sediments just arent going to get there. From the data that I had presented earlier:--We can see that sedimentary thickness is highly irregular even on small scales, varying by meters. This will cause problems for any reconstruction of the history of sedimentation/sea-floor spreading rates.--Another difficulty we have is considering the deceleration of CPT and rapid plate divergence--certainly it would not have been immediate. If the deceleration to current velocities was gradual, the sedimentary thickness discontinuity would likely be sloped.--Certainly there must be some form of discontinuity, but not nearly as readily noticable as Percy, et al. have assumed(if it would be noticable at all, given the difficulties I discussed). Either way, I just don't have the data to do such an analysis.ruxrkool says:

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Furthermore, all this data would need to adequately explain continental tectonics, ore deposits, oil accumulations, among a host of many other things.

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--Yup, indirectly, but sure.-------------------

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The evidence for continental drift - as I have pointed out - does not in itself support Flood Geology. So essentially you are still in the position of denying that Wegener had evidence for continental drift or producing evidence that is FOR Flood Geology.

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--Where did you ever think I was trying to deny that, "Wegener had evidence for continental drift"? Never is what I recall.

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If you want to use CPT rather than looking at issues like sedimentation or fossils (where we should reasonably expect to find evidence that a global Flood produced a large chunk of this material in a period of a year) then you need to produce evidence for CPT over conventional plate tectonics.

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--Thats nice, but I never tried to do this... I still have years of research to do if you don't mind--I'm sorry if I don't have super-human research skills.

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Of course as you know you are the one who raised CPT. I explicitly mentioned Flood Geology. And so far it seems to be agreed that I actually said is true - unless you HAVE evidence for Flood Geology ?.

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--PaulK, what are you trying to say? Just the fact that continental drift occurs is evidence for flood geology, since it predicts it.

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Why should it not be the subject under discussion ?

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You challenged me to start a thread to discuss it.

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--Yup, continental drift, not 'Flood geology' or even flood geology as a comparison. I should have pointed out the problem with your trying to do this with 'flood geology' instead of Catastrophic plate Tectonics (they are not synonymous) much earlier in this thread.

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Which means that you are discounting Grant - for no reason I can see, as well as the ICR graduate program, and no doubt other creationist geologists such as Steve Austin (who was active for some time under the nome de plume of "Stuart Nevins" before he openly announced that he was a creationist).

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--Even if I did count the research of those early "creation scientists", it is absolutely nothing in comparison to what is currently going on with Young earth geological developments, let alone with the quantity of scientists available to do research at the time of the conception of continental drift theory all the way up to now. I have very very few YECists work I can refer to for much anything having to do with geology, I have to read the literature myself and do my own analysis because there are so few people which have done this and are doing it now.

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That's a pretty damning criticism of "Creation Science".

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--I have been going about evc discussions for quite some time now and I still don't really know what "Creation Science" is, I prefer to leave it in the trash bin and just say that you either have science, or you don't have science.

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The second deals with a side issue intorduced in post 40. In addition to pointing out that you were not arguing against the statement the challenge is concerned with, the argument that you DID make still rested on an assertion which has yet to be substantiated and which I have reason to doubt (item 3 in post 40).

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And:

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All you are doing here is repeating your assertion and then - so far as I can tell - begging the qestion. Perhaps you can tell me why the evidence should be considered equal if it supported one hypothesis over another. Surely we must admit that the hypothesis with greater support has more evidence.

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--Your #3: "Even then, as I have pointed out earlier, TC has not even got beyond a bare assertion that the evidence Wegener had did not favour conventional plate tectonics over the catatrophic version." Is poor because if you were following what I have been saying you would note that I never argued this and would have been ridiculous of me to argue. All the evidence wegener had for conventional plate tectonics was merely evidence for the idea of 'continental drift' and is so ambiguous that it could not independently differentiate between any CPT or PT theory. All wegener demonstrated was the motion of the plates and the previous break-up of the Pangean continent, this doesn't say anything about the rate of divergence or anything of that likeness.------------------