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Author Topic:   Fossils, strata and the flood
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 13 of 163 (558363)
04-30-2010 7:58 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by subbie
04-30-2010 5:29 PM


Re: Re fossils
Hi subbie,
Fossils on mountains are only evidence of a Noachian flood if you assume that the mountains have always been that high.
And that the flood lasted for hundreds of years, so that the multiple strata could be built up, generation after generation after generation.
Along with the slow change in species from layer to layer, perfectly sorted.
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by subbie, posted 04-30-2010 5:29 PM subbie has seen this message but not replied

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 45 of 163 (558459)
05-01-2010 1:28 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by Faith
05-01-2010 12:27 AM


Re: Flood evidence is everywhere you look
Hi Faith, it's a matter of simple logic, yes?
There were no high mountains before the Flood.
Everything points to a worldwide Flood on Earth for a rational person who just looks at the evidence.
So we agree that the mountains grew in height, and that the land that became mountains was underwater before the mountain growth occurred.
The fossils on mountains show complete ecosystems that have grown to maturity, with layer after layer of deposition of shells and other remnants as individuals died of old age at different times. Each undisturbed layer of mature ecosystems takes hundreds of years to form with the complexity shown in the evidence, with almost all of the organisms in the fossils being more than a year old. Many of the fossils are of mature organisms that were 30 to 40 years old (as shown by their shells) when buried. Many of the fossils of are organisms that grow in one place, attached to the bottom. Some corals are hundreds of years old, forming layers over layers of coral shell. Corals, sea fans, brachiopods, oysters, mussels and many other forms of sea life grow attached to the bottom.
Layers of such fossils that are many feet thick are common, accumulated from many generations of organisms living one after the other, with the shells of dead organisms becoming part of the bottom ecology for the next generation to grown on.
Fossil Shell Beach
quote:
The shell graveyard at Ban Laem Pho was once a large freshwater swamp, home to a kind of snail. Over eons dating from the Tertiary Age, about 40 million years ago, these snails lived and died by the million, to the extent that the dead snails formed a layer upon which existed the living.
Multiple layers growing on top of each other as old individuals died and new generations were born, grew to maturity and died, generation after generation.
quote:
These gastropods with Bivalves, spores and pollen are carefully preserved in calcareous clay stone while various sedimentary deposits then separate these layers over the eras. Tests have interpreted such deposit were made in the freshwater laccustrine environment.
And we see that the same kind of fossil shell evidence exists for fresh water species as for salt water species. Did the flood somehow segregate water into fresh and salt areas while these organisms grew?
Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci figured it out:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/vinci.html
quote:
In Leonardo's day there were several hypotheses of how it was that shells and other living creatures were found in rocks on the tops of mountans. Some believed the shells to have been carried there by the Biblical Flood; others thought that these shells had grown in the rocks. Leonardo had no patience with either hypothesis, and refuted both using his careful observations. Concerning the second hypothesis, he wrote that "such an opinion cannot exist in a brain of much reason; because here are the years of their growth, numbered on their shells, and there are large and small ones to be seen which could not have grown without food, and could not have fed without motion -- and here they could not move." There was every sign that these shells had once been living organisms. What about the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible? Leonardo doubted the existence of a single worldwide flood, noting that there would have been no place for the water to go when it receded. He also noted that "if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers -- as we see them now in our time." He noted that rain falling on mountains rushed downhill, not uphill, and suggested that any Great Flood would have carried fossils away from the land, not towards it. He described sessile fossils such as oysters and corals, and considered it impossible that one flood could have carried them 300 miles inland, or that they could have crawled 300 miles in the forty days and nights of the Biblical flood.
This evidence shows that this growth occurred over periods of hundreds to thousands of years.
If the growth occurred during the flood, can you explain how multiple generations of decades old individuals happened in less than a year?
Can you explain how anything can be more that 1 year old in no more than one layer (or less if there are multiple layers)?
Note that many of the organisms are intolerant of silt in the water, many are fragile.
Flickr
If the growth did NOT occur during a relatively brief flood, can you explain how any of this is evidence of the flood?
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : clrty

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by Faith, posted 05-01-2010 12:27 AM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by Flyer75, posted 05-01-2010 2:18 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 54 of 163 (558481)
05-01-2010 4:49 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by Flyer75
05-01-2010 2:18 PM


AIG Paper misleading hooey (the old shell game?)
Hi Flyer75,
I'll admit, I don't know allot about the author other then that he's a professor of geology at Cedarville University.
Not that it matters much.
Dr. John Whitmore | Answers in Genesis
quote:
Dr. John Whitmore received a B.S. in geology from Kent State University, a M.S. in geology from the Institute for Creation Research and a Ph.D. in Biology, Paleontology emphasis from Loma Linda University. Currently an Associate Professor of Geology, he is active in teaching and research at Cedarville University.
An MS from the ICR?
Institute for Creation Research - Wikipedia
quote:
The ICR has attracted much opposition as it seeks approval to operate a master's degree program in the field of science education in Texas.[34] An April 2008 survey by Texas Freedom Network showed the majority of science faculties in Texas are opposed to ICR's request to issue science degrees with 185 (95% of respondents) opposed to certifying the program and 6 (3%) in favor.[51] Officials of the institute state their goal is to integrate Biblical creationism with science.
And that's in bible friendly Texas.
Loma Linda University - Wikipedia
quote:
Loma Linda University (LLU) is a Seventh-day Adventist coeducational health sciences university located in Loma Linda, California, United States. Eight schools and the Faculty of Graduate Studies comprise the university. More than 100 certificate and degree programs are offered by the schools of allied health professions, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, religion, and science and technology. Curricula offered range from certificates of completion and associate in science degrees to doctor of philosophy and professional doctoral degrees. LLU also offers distance education. The university is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Its on-campus church has around 7,000 members. Loma Linda Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist K-12 school, is located nearby.
Not what I would call a hot school for getting a degree in biology, certainly not for a PhD with "emphasis" on Paleontology (what ever that means).
Apparently all he has written is four articles for AIG (in four years), and a childrens book. Not a stellar curriculum vitae if you ask me, however who he is does not mean what he writes is hooey.
What makes it hooey is statements like what you quoted:
"In modern oceans, shells gradually dissolve in sea water or are consumed by other organisms. Experiments have shown that many shells, especially thin and fragile ones, disappear completely in a short period of time.
If the fossil record formed slowly, with individual rock layers taking hundreds or thousands of years to accumulate, you would expect fragile shell material to be relatively uncommon. Most of what we find should be thick and durable."
Any instance that would cause local burial of shells would preserve the shells buried, and curiously, there are many instances of silt and sand slides every year, particularly at deltas, where shells of shallow ecology organisms would be abundant. This would preserve thick and thin shells in relatively similar proportions to their proportions in life.
He makes this statement:
quote:
Rapid decay of hard shelly material in modern oceans has created a paradox for old-age, uniformitarian thinking. Taphonomist Thomas Olszewski is puzzled by the apparent discrepancy between modern studies and the fossil record:
Actualistic studies show that taphonomic destruction of the remains of shelly marine organisms can be completed on the order of days to years. Yet, radiometric and amino-acid age dating show that shells in settings where taphonomic destruction is ongoing can be 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of years old. In order to resolve this seeming paradox, a number of authors have suggested that shells survive to great age by being sequestered temporarily from taphonomically destructive conditions and then reintroduced to the taphonomically active zone (that part of the sediment column in which a fossil can be modified or destroyed) by sedimentary mixing processes. [4]
Note the suggestion that shells must be sequestered from decay for many years in order to resolve the paradox between belief in old age and the observed rapid rate of shell disintegration.
Note that the actual measured age of the shells is ignored, and the quote is picked to suggest that "Taphonomist Thomas Olszewski is puzzled by the apparent discrepancy between modern studies and the fossil record" ... a typical ploy for a quote mining creationist.
The paper this is quoted from is available on line at
http://palaios.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/full/19/1/39
Let's look at the conclusions of this paper:
quote:
The model does show that sequestering of fossils from taphonomic destruction can account for post-mortem shell ages of 100s to 1000s of years found in modern settings. Importantly, it also makes clear that the TAZ need not be equivalent to the DFB. The separation of these two concepts is critical to understanding the sequestering process that allows shells of very different ages to be mixed into a single fossil accumulation.
No puzzlement left, no discrepancy, just normal stochastic processes. Not surprising, as what was quoted by Dr. John Whitmore was from the introduction, rather than the conclusion. Introductions frequently set out the issue that the paper then proceeds to explain.
quote:
One explanation that they did not consider, that would readily explain their results, is the catastrophic formation of much of the fossil record. The Flood would have indiscriminately buried both fragile and durable material together.
Conclusion
Creationists have correctly argued for a long time that preservation of soft body parts requires special conditions or even catastrophic processes. Now we can make the same argument for many of the hard parts found in the fossil record.
The biggest problem facing Dr. John Whitmore is that his model is completely incapable of explaining the fossil shells of different ages - in his model there cannot be shells that are "10s, 100s, or even 1000s of years old" - they could only be the same age for a single event burial.
Thus we have a failure to show that normal processes can explain why the shells in question are fossilized, and we have a total failure to explain all the evidence.
So RAZD, wouldn't this make sense. If the fossils (former sea shells) were fragile and little, wouldn't they stand a better chance of being fossilized quickly in a catastrophic event as opposed to over thousands of years where yes, they would fall victim to the ocean silt and predators? I'm not an expert on this so I'm really just presenting the other side and throwing it out for discussion.
It makes sense that the shells are buried, it does not make sense that only one burial event occurred, and it does not take an extraordinary catastrophic event to cause something that is observed to happen every year, with small silt and sand slides, year after year for billions of years.
Nor does the simplistic concept of Dr. John Whitmore explain multiple layers of shells showing undisturbed habitat and mature ecology with the sessile fossils buried in situ, and then covered by another layer of the same, and another, and another ....
Nor does the simplistic concept of Dr. John Whitmore explain the gradual change in morphology of shells from layer to layer to layer.
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

This message is a reply to:
 Message 46 by Flyer75, posted 05-01-2010 2:18 PM Flyer75 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 55 by Flyer75, posted 05-01-2010 5:02 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 98 of 163 (558579)
05-02-2010 1:51 PM
Reply to: Message 55 by Flyer75
05-01-2010 5:02 PM


Re: AIG Paper misleading hooey (the old shell game?)
Hi Flyer75, sorry for the delay - yesterday was too nice to spend indoors.
I have zero clue what the age or lifespan of a shell could be. Is that what we are referring to here or is it something else? If it is actual age, why could there NOT be more then one or more generations found together from one major event?
There are two basic issues here: the age of the shells when fossilized and whether mature shells on mountains are evidence of a flood.
The Age of the Shells
Dr. John Whitmore, in his article Should Fragile Shells Be Common in the Fossil Record? states:
quote:
In modern oceans, shells gradually dissolve in sea water or are consumed by other organisms. Experiments have shown that many shells, especially thin and fragile ones, disappear completely in a short period of time.
...
One explanation that they did not consider, that would readily explain their results, is the catastrophic formation of much of the fossil record. The Flood would have indiscriminately buried both fragile and durable material together.
Curiously, the problem Dr. John Whitmore ignores, is that EITHER:
  1. IF there was one and only one burial of the shells (during this flood event) to make the fossils, THEN they should all be less than the age where they dissolve or are consumed, OR, conversely
  2. IF there were multiple burials, THEN the shells being buried, uncovered and buried again, are not evidence that a single event (global or otherwise) occurred, rather they are evidence of multiple independent burials of unknown degree , extent and scope, and unknown time (other than the age of the shells) between such events.
Dr. John Whitmore's simplistic concept does not explain the different ages of the shells prior to burial that are much too old ("10s, 100s, or even 1000s of years old").
The actual evidence shows that shells are of many different ages, often much older than they should be according to the claim that all such shells are "dissolve in sea water or are consumed by other organisms" and that, especially in the case of fragile shells, this normally occurs in less than a year unless the shells are buried and uncovered and buried again. Therefore multiple independent burials occurred. The simple fact of burial does not tell us the degree, scope or extent of the burial in question, as it does not distinguish one event from the other, and thus it is not evidence that it was global rather than local.
Further, if there are more than one burial event then ONE at least must be local, and if EACH ONE is indistinguishable from the others, THEN they are all likely events of similar degree, scope or extent.
Multiple local burial events explain the evidence much better than one single burial event.
Are mature shells on mountains evidence of a flood?
The noachin myth says the flood lasted less than 1 year, correct? So any evidence for the flood could only occur during that period of time.
The problem once again is that EITHER:
  1. IF the land that has fossils was covered by water one and only one time (during this flood event), THEN the shells etc could only grow during the period of the flood, and therefore could not be more than 1 year old (note that most of the sessile shell organisms have a larval stage of up to 1 year before they settle to the bottom and attach themselves and start to grow a shell), OR, conversely
  2. IF the land that has fossils was covered by water multiple times, THEN the shells are not evidence that a single event (global or otherwise) occurred, rather they are evidence of multiple underwater periods, periods of unknown duration (other than the ages of the shells and development of the ecology), and of unknown degree , extent and scope, of time between such events.
Again, the actual evidence shows that shells of sessile organisms much older than 1 year occur in multiple layers, on mountain after mountain (including Everest). These fossils all show that the organisms involved lived for much more than 1 year, and that generation after generation of such organisms lived in a mature fully developed ecology. The evidence shows that this occurred multiple times in many different locations. Therefore they are evidence that each location was underwater for hundreds to thousands of years, at several different times.
Further, if there are different numbers (all more than one)of underwater events in different locations, then ONE at least must be local, and if EACH ONE is indistinguishable from the others, THEN they are all likely events of similar degree, scope or extent.
Multiple eon long duration underwater events explain the evidence much better than one single short year underwater event.
Conclusions
The evidence shows multiple burials has resulted in shells of different ages being fossilized, including shells that are much older than would occur if they were not buried.
A single flood of 1 year or less duration does not explain the evidence of shells that are much older than would occur if they were not buried.
The evidence shows multiple layers of mature ecosystems along with shells of sessile organisms that are much older than 1 year old, and that they grew over periods of many generations, for hundreds to thousands of years duration.
A single flood of 1 year or less duration does not explain the evidence of generations of shell growth, with individual shells that are much older than could occur in 1 year in each generation.
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 55 by Flyer75, posted 05-01-2010 5:02 PM Flyer75 has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 105 of 163 (558594)
05-02-2010 6:38 PM
Reply to: Message 104 by Dr Adequate
05-02-2010 6:27 PM


Another good one is Ayers Rock
Which also shows wind erosion patterns similar to those seen in the Grand Canyon upper tiers.
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 104 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-02-2010 6:27 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 106 of 163 (558595)
05-02-2010 6:43 PM
Reply to: Message 101 by Percy
05-02-2010 5:26 PM


small detail
hi Percy,
First, just to make sure you understand there's no claim that there's no such thing as horizontal and neatly parallel strata, here's an image of strata from the Grand Canyon. Obviously these strata are largely undisturbed by tectonic forces:
Except uplift ... and the fact that the whole plateau slopes gently to the south (ie generally perpendicular to the canyon and why the north side is generally higher than the south side)
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

This message is a reply to:
 Message 101 by Percy, posted 05-02-2010 5:26 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by petrophysics1, posted 05-08-2010 9:54 PM RAZD has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 128 of 163 (562800)
06-01-2010 8:53 PM
Reply to: Message 126 by Percy
06-01-2010 6:30 AM


Re:
Hi Percy,
Rhetorical question: How could a real architect be unaware of such simple facts about the strength of materials?
Answer: because they hire engineers to make their designs work. All the architect needs to do is draw pretty pictures and sell the pitch to the client.
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 126 by Percy, posted 06-01-2010 6:30 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 131 of 163 (562851)
06-02-2010 7:30 AM
Reply to: Message 130 by roxrkool
06-02-2010 12:49 AM


Re:
Hi Roxrkool,
My main beef with architects is their penchant for ...
... taking rocks for granite?
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

This message is a reply to:
 Message 130 by roxrkool, posted 06-02-2010 12:49 AM roxrkool has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 132 by roxrkool, posted 06-02-2010 11:29 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
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