Glenn Morton's Evidence Examined

You made a lot of accusations in that post. Please support even one of them from anything I've argued.

I don't want to get too off the subject of the thread, but one prime example is that YECs can't accept the results of a dozen or more different forms of dating that all agree, and all point to the same conclusion--an old earth.

kbertsche said otherwise.

Actually, I'm not sure that I said anything that conflicts.

You didn't answer him either. Just passing the question off to the oil companies is avoiding the question. Why can't you answer it?

I didn't know there was a question.

As I have said several times, anyone could find some oil drilling a grid pattern all over the world with no thinking whatsoever. Impossible to raise money.

And there is a reason for that.

I have also said that drilling around oil seeps or accidentally discovering oil while drilling for water is not a big shock.

What I have said is that it is impossible to convince anyone to drill for oil without as much geological information as possible and, in many cases, direct use of evolutionary thinking is necessary.

In other words, it's all a matter of opinion.

However, if you use economics, drilling with YEC or flood geology is a loser. Big time.

Faith writes: We expect to understand WHY the order exists eventually;...

The goal is a fact-based discussion. In the absence of fact-based Flood explanations for fossil evidence, instead of claims of what Floodists will show in the future it might be better to focus on evidence against the explanations of conventional geology. Proving geology wrong wouldn't prove the Flood right, but it would at least give you a factual basis for rejecting modern geology. In essence you'd be arguing, "I don't know how the geological formations we see today happened, but the explanations of modern geology are wrong because...<fill in the blanks>..."

The published book containing Copernicus's evidence for a heliocentric solar system did not claim it represented fact, just that its calculations worked, making it possible to accurately calculate the date of Easter. For the succeeding couple decades astronomer/mathematicians used his math while rejecting his theory. Though heliocentrism gradually came to dominate scientific views of the solar system, geocentrists and flat-earthers and so forth continued to exist and still exist today, but their inability to muster scientific evidence for their own views or against scientific views leaves heliocentrism's validity virtually unchallenged.

If Floodists today are not in the same ark with respect to modern geology as geocentrists and flat-earthers were for the Copernican Revolution then they must show themselves distinct by presenting evidence and argument for their positions. Notice that I didn't say just "evidence" or just "argument." Its essential that arguments be supported by evidence. For example, if tides during the Flood caused certain geological formations, what is the evidence for those tides and that they operated in that way? If the Flood laid down the geological layers we see today, what is the evidence that floods work in that way? If landscapes experiencing erosion or deposition become uninhabitable, what is the evidence?

This last one about landscapes becoming unlivable forms a significant part of the foundation for your claim that only the flood could explain the evidence, and yet you haven't returned to your dialogue with Stile over at the The Geological Timescale is Fiction whose only reality is stacks of rock thread. Stile's Message 1144 is still unanswered. I'm disallowing supporting your positions with arguments whose discussion you seem to be avoiding. Though I think it best to resume the discussion with Stile you can actually discuss this topic with anyone, since I've also disallowed the pattern of claiming offense to avoid responding.

If a post doesn't make sense to you then help the person work out where the problem lies - do not merely respond, "Please forgive if I have to say that makes absolutely not one iota of sense to me," as you did in Message 372. This seemed to effectively end the discussion.

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Edited by Admin, : Minor change.

Edited by Admin, : Grammar.

Faith writes: Having an explanation is of no value whatever if it's the wrong explanation.

You can't just declare it the wrong explanation. You have to show it the wrong explanation, using evidence and argument.

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Faith writes: Besides, this explanation works. So you and others keep saying, but so far not a shred of evidence that it works to find oil.

This is so far beyond the pale of constructive discussion or even reality that I'm suspending you for 24 hours.

AbE: Explaining my action in more detail, the portion I'm very concerned about is where you say there is "not a shred of evidence," when my most important goal is an evidence-based discussion. Though in very general terms, in this very thread you've discussed the geologically derived rules for where to find oil and described your belief that they can be followed like cookbook recipes that work but whose other real world implications are false, while at the same time ignoring that theories that don't correspond to reality shouldn't work at all.

Please avoid declarations that there's no evidence - they're not just untrue, they're very provocative. You've said many times that you understand the scientific evidence but have a different interpretation. Please discuss that evidence and how it leads you to a different interpretation. Please avoid declarations like (paraphrasing), "Sedimentary layers could only be formed by a global flood, especially ones with tracks and burrows," unless they're followed by argument for how the evidence supports them. For just a couple examples, you could describe the evidence for mammals digging burrows on mud flats between tides, and the evidence that such burrows are found in sedimentary layers that formed from mud flats.

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Edited by Admin, : AbE.

Discussions like this belong more in the Is It Science? forum. I'm trying to get the focus back on Glenn Morton's evidence.

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Faith writes: ... to be a geologist and study the rocks is all it takes to learn what's necessary to finding oil, and that doesn't involve OE theory.

If that was true, the oil companies could save a lot of money by hiring high school dropouts instead of geologists and just giving them a Finding Oil for Dummies handbook.

In a way, the OE theory is incidental to finding oil - but to find oil it is necessary to understand how the rocks formed, how they changed after they were formed, etc. Finding oil comes from that understanding and so does the realization that the rocks must be old.

In a way, the OE theory is incidental to finding oil - but to find oil it is necessary to understand how the rocks formed, how they changed after they were formed, etc. Finding oil comes from that understanding and so does the realization that the rocks must be old.

Good point. One could say that it's not so much the use OE geology, but a repudiation of YE geology that is necessary.

Faith writes: So you and others keep saying, but so far not a shred of evidence that it works to find oil.

quote:

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But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.

"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true? ,"

That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.

--Glenn Morton

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Yes the FOUNDATION of YEC attempts to explain the physical world IS the scripture, but you miss the main arguments YECs make, that make NO use whatever of scripture but argue completely from the physical facts as they present themselves. I argue for the Flood because scripture tells me there was a Flood and when it was and all that, but HOW I argue for the Flood is based completely on the physical facts I find presented by geology and presented at EvC. I make my case entirely from those facts, I do not use scripture as part of my argument AT ALL.

Let's start with the fact that a flood couldn't have produced the observed fossil record. For example, we have deposits thousands of feet thick in some places made up almost entirely of dead animals and plants. A flood doesn't do that. A flood deposits eroded material, not life.

Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

I argue for the Flood because scripture tells me there was a Flood and when it was and all that, but HOW I argue for the Flood is based completely on the physical facts I find presented by geology and presented at EvC. I make my case entirely from those facts, I do not use scripture as part of my argument AT ALL.

Nevertheless, your adherence to scripture, forces a certain interpretation of the facts.

So, it is not the facts themselves which dictate your position.

And, frankly, you have not done well at all in supporting your position. For instance, we only have to go back to your admission that you have no idea how the fossil record came to be the way it is other than it 'must have been'. That is a pretty weak argument.

As I believe I've said many times, I focus on some issues and not others. Nobody tries to argue every point in this debate. I don't argue dating and I don't argue the fossil record. I expect to make my case with the issues I argue well. From the physical facts alone. And I believe I've done that.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't argue dating and I don't argue the fossil record. I expect to make my case with the issues I argue well. From the physical facts alone. And I believe I've done that.

Except that such a strategy cannot work for you because dating alone rules out any and all of your "interpretations". The fossil record works against you in a similar fashion. Ignoring that set of counter arguments is not addressed by any number of unrelated arguments.

Oh you are wrong. If it is true that there is a natural end to evolution as I've argued many times, your dating methods are therefore wrong and your fossil order an illusion. If it is true that the strata were laid down rapidly which many of my arguments and standard creationist arguments have shown, again goodbye to the supposed fossil order and to the supposed ancient dates. I believe these things have been proved. You don't of course but if they are proved then they do falsify the fossil order and the OE dates.

If it is true that there is a natural end to evolution as I've argued many times, your dating methods are therefore wrong...

The many different dating methods are entirely separate from the theory of evolution.

And in fact, each of those dating methods relies on a different set of circumstances, mostly independent from one another!

For them all to show the same results, and all to be wrong, would mean that all of physics and chemistry are wrong. [That would mean nothing would work, including your computer and your body, let alone the rest of the universe.]

You can't pick and choose what you like and what you don't like from a very intensely inter-correlated and inter-related set of disciplines without disrupting the entire thing.

Is that what you really want to propose?