Did the Flood really happen?

Message 4 of 1255 (857070) 07-05-2019 9:14 AM

The only thing that wasn't there 4500 years ago was the Flood.

Ah, yes, the magic Flood. "Hurry, hurry, hurry, step right up ladies and gents and see the most spectacular water the world has ever known. It sorts, it cavorts, it lays down, it rises up, it deposits, it erodes. You name it, it does it."

There is no evidence of any world wide Flood 4500 years ago. The only sort of correct thing you said was about water creating layers. Deposition of sedimentary layers does occur on the floors of bodies of water.

You shouldn't be making comments about the thinking abilities of your fellow participants, or be saying anything about them at all.

Magma intrusions as well as lava and ash deposits are common in sedimentary layers. It is how the layers are often dated since sedimentary layers cannot be dated directly.

All the science sites say pretty much the same thing. Being original by making claims unsupported by the facts would be daft. The facts are the facts, and the conclusions from those facts are obvious to everyone but religious ostriches, heads buried in Bible instead of real knowledge.

The physical impossibility of your Flood scenarios have been explained many times.

--Percy

Message 89 of 1255 (857281) 07-07-2019 10:50 AM

Reply to: Message 71 by RAZD 07-07-2019 7:14 AM

And in regressions the opposite occurs since the active waters of the shoreline are the last to be on top.

Faith has never understood Walther's Law. She thinks it's a rapid process rather than a very slow one, that it describes a rapidly rising sea flooding the land and depositing fine-grained sediments in a stratified sequence.

--Percy

Message 115 of 1255 (857504) 07-08-2019 8:00 PM

Reply to: Message 96 by Faith 07-08-2019 3:41 PM

Since when is stuff you make up a fact? We don't doubt your ability to argue this all day long because we've seen you do it year after year, but you're never able to support your ideas with evidence constructed into a cohesive framework.

The evidence we do have says that water sorts objects through their interaction with the flow and energy of the water and according to their weight, density and size (shape is also a factor). Water doesn't give special treatment to biological forms, and certainly not by degree of difference from modern forms, which is irrelevant to sorting. There is no way a flood could know that Dimetrodons belong below Triceratops. The amount of water doesn't change these facts. Water flooding onto land doesn't change these facts.

Why do you keep raising issues from scratch as if they'd never been discussed before? This has been rebutted a thousand times. Things that happen leave evidence behind. If the evidence is sufficient then past events can be reconstructed.

Views based upon appropriate evidence are not speculation.

You mean increasing difference from modern forms with increasing depth? That's pretty obvious, nothing false about it.

Your ideas are speculations because they are unsupported by evidence, while science's views have validity because they have the support of evidence and weave together into a consistent fabric.

Wasn't the sorting what you called a false correlation just above? If you believe the fossil order of the geologic column is a false correlation, why do refer to the sorting order here as if you accept it?

Of course I could possibly know, because I'm familiar with basic scientific principles, like what happens to objects (from the very large to the minute) in water. We've frequently encouraged you to carry out the experiment of stirring a spoonful of soil into a glass of water and seeing how the particles deposit as the water slows from heaviest and largest on the bottom to lightest and smallest on the top. Have you ever done that?

This is why people have become so intolerant of your ignorance, because it has persisted over many years and through presentation of knowledge many, many times. It was quaint 18 years ago, but there's no excuse for it now and hasn't been for quite some time. How objects behave in water is not an "establishment explanation." It's a fact that you can prove to yourself should you ever choose to.

Then you reject something you can prove to yourself at your own kitchen table.

You just finished saying you reject it, so you're saying that while you're not ignorant of how sediments fall out off suspension you reject it anyway.

If you don't reject it then you've got a fatal contradiction if you know that particles fall out of suspension heaviest/densest first yet insist on a flood where that didn't happen.

It's the evidence supporting the scientific position that you're ignorant of.

But which has no evidence.

And here is more of your ignorance. First, your ideas about the geologic history of the Grand Canyon region breaks multiple laws of physics, and second, you've been provided much evidence that what happened around the rest of the world was not the same.

No, you haven't. This is something you frequently do, falsely claim to have presented evidence.

Your ideas could only be held by someone maintaining a studied ignorance and a lack of understanding of the evidence.

You can form all the unsupported hypotheses you like. Without evidence they are worthless. The best method we have of understanding our world is to gather evidence and interpret it within the context of the laws of the universe. If you're not doing that then you're doomed to failure.

Except you haven't argued it elsewhere. What you have done, and continue to do just as you admitted yesterday, is ignore the evidence people present and just repeat your views over and over again.

--Percy

Message 118 of 1255 (857508) 07-08-2019 8:21 PM

Reply to: Message 102 by Faith 07-08-2019 6:10 PM

You forget that as far as YEC views go, you're in a group of one. There aren't any YECs who agree with the specifics of your views regarding biology and the Flood.

--Percy

Message 120 of 1255 (857511) 07-08-2019 8:39 PM

Reply to: Message 119 by Faith 07-08-2019 8:23 PM

Read more carefully. I said there aren't any YECs who agree with the *specifics* of your views, like that many species in the wild can breed with each other, or that sediments turn to rock by drying, or that breeders create new species, or that the Grand Canyon Supergroup tilted while still buried without affecting the layers above, etc.

--Percy

Message 122 of 1255 (857514) 07-08-2019 9:05 PM

Reply to: Message 121 by Faith 07-08-2019 8:43 PM

Oh, posh, of course you have, all of it. I'm particularly amazed that you have the chutzpah to deny ever making those claims about rocks forming by drying and about Supergroup tilting, given the huge number of times you've made those claims.

You mean The Trump Presidency thread? You're the one who blew your privileges over there, tell him yourself in a PM.

--Percy

Message 141 of 1255 (857545) 07-09-2019 9:40 AM

Reply to: Message 124 by Faith 07-08-2019 9:08 PM

Really? You didn't say that rocks form through drying and that the Grand Canyon Supergroup tilted while buried beneath a mile of layers that were unaffected? Let's check your honesty.

From Message 487:

From Message 447:

Of course sediments on the surface do not turn to rock when they dry, and buried sediments cannot harden by drying because drying is an evaporative process, and water cannot evaporate from buried sediments. At an undetailed level, rocks form by compaction from the weight of overbearing material that forces out any water and eliminates pores resulting in cementation. Drying through evaporation has nothing to do with it.

From Message 303:

From Message 342:

Drying has nothing to do with lithification. Look it up.

Faith, you live in a region where you should have no trouble visiting extensive regions of sunbaked sediments just lying on the surface. It is bone dry and none of it has turned to rock. The only rock you'll find is rock that was already there.

Your claim that you never said the Grand Canyon Supergroup tilted while buried beneath at least a mile of layers and without affecting those overlying layers shouldn't need documentation, though it can easily be provided if you're still denying it. You've argued for this idea at great length many, many times over years. I'm sure it's indelibly etched on everyone's memory.

But let's say you no longer believe that the Supergroup tilted while buried. If that's truly the case, then how do you believe it happened now?

To summarize, you were neither misrepresented nor misunderstood. You said precisely what I said you said, and they are all examples of how the specifics of your views do not align with any other YECs. They certainly share your general view that the Earth is young and that a global flood is responsible for world geology, but they do not share any of your views of how it happened. In other words, your lack of understanding of how common physical processes work is not only clear to us, but even to other YECs.

--Percy

Message 142 of 1255 (857546) 07-09-2019 11:19 AM

Reply to: Message 129 by Faith 07-08-2019 11:07 PM

There is zero evidence for this idea. You're just making things up.

Here is a diagram of the age of oceanic crust taken from Age, spreading rates, and spreading asymmetry of the world's ocean crust. You need only look at the top diagram showing age (bottom diagram is essentially error bars). The Atlantic is roughly in the middle of the diagram.

The age of the Atlantic sea floor ranges from 0 years at the mid-oceanic ridge to around 140 million years at the North American and North African coastlines. The evidence of these ages comes from deep sea cores and magnetic sea-floor striping. They show that sea floor spreading rates have ranged between 1 and 5 cm/year for millions of years.

--Percy

Message 200 of 1255 (857676) 07-10-2019 10:05 AM

Reply to: Message 131 by Faith 07-09-2019 12:39 AM

Same analogy as before with the Flat Earther who would like his speculations accepted as interesting solutions to a problem, except the problem doesn't exist.

After pushing his flat Earth ideas for 18 years while not learning anything about the available evidence from physics, astronomy, geology or even photography, and simultaneously ignoring most feedback, and periodically castigating everyone who disagrees with him, how much tolerance and patience do you think people will have left?

--Percy

Message 201 of 1255 (857677) 07-10-2019 10:42 AM

Reply to: Message 146 by Faith 07-09-2019 12:32 PM

Not to change the topic to the Bible, especially since this is a science thread, but the Bible contradicts itself all over the place. The Bible's a big book, and whatever you need it to say, somewhere it says it or at least people will argue it said it. It's used to back opposite sides of many, many debates. Relevant to creationism, the Bible has two divergent creation stories and two divergent but interwoven Flood stories.

People write books (the Bible was written by people) to say anything they want to say, contradictory or not. But if the geology of the Earth is the result of a global flood 4500 years ago then, at least in science threads, you need to study the Earth and find evidence that that's what happened, not cite 2000 year-old religious texts.

The flood stories of the Bible are no more free of inaccuracies, distortions and fictions than the flood stories of any other culture.

Biblical inaccuracies, contradictions and errors have been described in many, many threads here. Only scientific observations of the natural world have a chance of tending toward inerrancy, though never achieving it because of tentativity.

--Percy

Message 202 of 1255 (857678) 07-10-2019 11:12 AM

Reply to: Message 152 by Faith 07-09-2019 12:42 PM

While flood myths are common amongst the cultures of the world, it is a creationist concoction that all cultures have flood myths, and those that parallel Noah's flood myth to any significant degree are very uncommon. The flood myth most like Noah's Flood, the more ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, was obvious source material in the construction of the Noah myth.

All these flood myths do hold one thing in common: a lack of evidence. Flood advocates who are sincere in their wish to be considered scientific must seek out evidence. Making up stories believable only to people with little or no science background, which is most people, will obviously make inroads in public perception, but convincing the public is not a measure of scientific validity.

--Percy

Message 204 of 1255 (857682) 07-10-2019 12:15 PM

Reply to: Message 144 by Faith 07-09-2019 12:17 PM

I'm afraid they did overturn widely accepted Biblical myths on scientific grounds.

Well now you're just making up stories again. Hutton relied upon geologic observations that have for the most part stood the test of time. His conclusion that the Earth is an ever-changing canvas perpetually worked upon by natural forces over very lengthy time periods is precisely what all the evidence continues to suggest.

You are making up accusations again. Saying untrue nasty things about ideas and people is as far as you can get from providing evidence-based rebuttal. Here's a link to Hutton's book: Theory of the Earth. Go to town, show us where he's unscientific or wrong given the evidence then available to him.

No one has any trouble understanding the magnitude of a world-wide flood: we need only look to the oceans, which already flood 71% of the planet.

The 2011 Japan tsunami provides more evidence. Helicopters and planes in the air provided us many birdseye videos of ocean inundating the land. Once the water receded we observed firsthand what such a flood can do. There were no stratified layers left behind other than sorting by size/weight/density. No pieces of land or ocean floor were transported intact from one place to another. No animals were running out on mudflats to leave their tracks behind between waves. No gophers or worms dug burrows or wormholes in the mudflats between waves. In fact, regarding waves, except at the coastline there were no waves. The successive waves just fed the wall of water flooding over the land.

This is just a collection of unscientific and unsupported claims. Incredulity is not evidence. As Sherlock Holmes said, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." On this basis we can eliminate pretty much all your ideas, and what remains has the support of all the available evidence. The Earth is ancient, and its geology that is constantly but very slowly changing often includes a fairly clear record behind of what went before.

--Percy

Message 228 of 1255 (857721) 07-10-2019 6:58 PM

Reply to: Message 172 by Faith 07-09-2019 3:40 PM

Chemical lithification? I had to look that up. From what I read it looks like chemical lithification is a term usually reserved for things like beachrock, a surface rock that doesn't take long to form because it's just sand and pebbles and shells glued together with organic material from coastal life. Compression isn't part of its formation, and usually it's pretty crumbly, though not always.

But we're talking about sedimentary rocks like sandstone, limestone, shale, slate, mudstone, etc., the types of sedimentary rock that comprise the vast preponderance of sedimentary layers and that only form at depth. They don't form through chemical lithification but through compression that expels water (due to the great weight of overlying layers) and through cementation. Some sedimentary rock evolves further through diagenetic processes (mostly additional chemical reactions).

Suppose you tell us how long sedimentary layers take to lithify, and how you know how long it takes?

JonF answered this already, but in case it wasn't clear, he was explaining that because water moves very, very slowly in lithifying rock that it rules out your very short timeframe.

I poked around the Internet for just a few minutes looking for an authoritative source stating how long lithification of the major types of sedimentary rock takes, but I couldn't find one. That's not to say it doesn't exist, but a short search didn't find it, and any answer would have to be highly varied given the huge variation within each type of sedimentary rock.

But I was able to find a video of someone using a giant press to crush sand into sandstone. This video is positioned at precisely the spot where he determines the hardness of the sandstone he created (if you want to see how he created the sandstone disk you'll have to watch from the beginning). You only have to watch 20 seconds to see how soft and crumbly his sandstone is:

But was the pressure of his press as much as the pressure of, say, a mile of overlying sediments? To produce his sandstone disk he set up his press to deliver 100,000 psi. A mile of overlying sandstone yields a pressure of only 5500 psi. So even though he compressed his sand about 20 times more than a mile of sandstone, it wasn't enough to produce any cementation. Obviously it takes compression plus time. We just haven't yet been able to find out how much time.

But as JonF said, it takes time to force the water out of the pores, and it takes more time for the chemical reactions of cementation (the diagenesis part of lithification) to occur. These facts would seem to make fast lithification unlikely, but it would be nice if we could find some research on it.

--Percy

Message 231 of 1255 (857725) 07-10-2019 7:31 PM

Reply to: Message 178 by Faith 07-09-2019 4:02 PM

I think the point is that a culture that didn't know that China even existed could not know whether it was flooded.

Let's say the flood was real, the ark was real, and it had lifeboats. How would Noah have enough crew to spare to row out in lifeboats to check if China (and Africa, and the Americas and other continents that they didn't know existed) were flooded? How would they position themselves over the peak of Mt. Everest to measure that the flood waters covered it to a depth of more than 15 cubits? How would they even know Mt. Everest existed? There's no indication they knew about it, since they seemed to believe Mt. Ararat a very tall mountain when it's dwarfed by Mt. Everest and the rest of the Himalayas. That is, how could Noah have ever established that the flood was actually worldwide and how high the waters rose?

Given all this, it doesn't seem possible for Noah and his family to have known how much of the world was flooded, and all indications are that they're mythical anyway. In a science thread you need a factual basis for your claims, not revelation.

Fun fact I discovered while looking up mountain heights: Mt. Ararat is higher than the highest mountain in either the Rockies or the Alps.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Punctuation, grammar.

Message 232 of 1255 (857727) 07-10-2019 7:49 PM

Reply to: Message 181 by Faith 07-09-2019 4:10 PM

You should be using a factual basis for your arguments, not revelation. As an aside, this paragraph includes a couple contradictions. How would later Bible editors know if the Genesis authors actually knew the true extent of the flood, and why would it matter to them if they were treating those writings as "God's own revelation"?

You have no factual basis establishing that there were no rainbows before the Flood, and no factual basis for the Flood, either.

--Percy