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[_ Old Earth _] Did The Flood Cause A Continental Drift
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stovebolts
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I have a booklet that I got from the Creation Museum (Went there two weeks ago) and it had a ton of information about that. I don't know if sediment was the right term or not. Anyway, I'll try to dig up the page and post more on what they had to say tomorrow.
stovebolts
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Got it. This is from "A Pocket guide to... The Global Flood" Published by Answers in Genesis
I confused the sediment thingy from NY and England. The booklet was talking about the Chalk beds. Here is what it says.
The Cretaceous chalk beds of southern England are well known because they appear as spectacular white cliffs along the coast line. Theses chalk beds can be traced westward across England and appear again in Northern Ireland. In the opposite diretion, these same chalk beds can be traced across France, teh Netherlands, German, Poland, southern Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe to Turkey, tehn to Israel and Egypt in the Middle East and even as far as Kazakhstan.
Remarkably, the same chalk beds with the same fissils and the same distinctive strata above and below them are also found in the Midwest USA, from Nebrask in the norht to Texas in the south. They also appear in the Perth Basin of Western Australia.
The pamphlet then goes on to talk about coal beds across the globe, and how they also share the same fossils etc.
As far as the Grand Canyon, I don't feel like typing several pages, but here is a tidbit.
page 55
A third layer of sandstone higher in the strata sequence gives us a clue. The Navajo Sandstone of souther Utah best seen in the spectacular mesas and cliffs in and around Zion National Park is well above the Kaibab Limestone which forms the rim rock of the Grand Canyon. Like the Grand Canyon sandstones, this sandstone also consists of very pure quartz sand, giving it a distinctly brilliant white color, and it also contains remnants of "waves" {Me here, it talked prior about how the sediments were deposited by water as seen in it's wave uniformity}
Within this sandstone, we find grains of the mineral zircon, which is realatively easy to trace its source because zircon ususally contains radioactive uranium. By "dating" these zircon grains, using the uranium-lead (U-Pb) radioactive method, it has been postulated that the sand grains in the Navijo Sandstone came from teh Appalachians of Pennsylvania and New York, and from former mountains further north in Canada. If this is true, the sand grains were transported about 1,250 miles right across North America.
I confused the sediment thingy from NY and England. The booklet was talking about the Chalk beds. Here is what it says.
The Cretaceous chalk beds of southern England are well known because they appear as spectacular white cliffs along the coast line. Theses chalk beds can be traced westward across England and appear again in Northern Ireland. In the opposite diretion, these same chalk beds can be traced across France, teh Netherlands, German, Poland, southern Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe to Turkey, tehn to Israel and Egypt in the Middle East and even as far as Kazakhstan.
Remarkably, the same chalk beds with the same fissils and the same distinctive strata above and below them are also found in the Midwest USA, from Nebrask in the norht to Texas in the south. They also appear in the Perth Basin of Western Australia.
The pamphlet then goes on to talk about coal beds across the globe, and how they also share the same fossils etc.
As far as the Grand Canyon, I don't feel like typing several pages, but here is a tidbit.
page 55
A third layer of sandstone higher in the strata sequence gives us a clue. The Navajo Sandstone of souther Utah best seen in the spectacular mesas and cliffs in and around Zion National Park is well above the Kaibab Limestone which forms the rim rock of the Grand Canyon. Like the Grand Canyon sandstones, this sandstone also consists of very pure quartz sand, giving it a distinctly brilliant white color, and it also contains remnants of "waves" {Me here, it talked prior about how the sediments were deposited by water as seen in it's wave uniformity}
Within this sandstone, we find grains of the mineral zircon, which is realatively easy to trace its source because zircon ususally contains radioactive uranium. By "dating" these zircon grains, using the uranium-lead (U-Pb) radioactive method, it has been postulated that the sand grains in the Navijo Sandstone came from teh Appalachians of Pennsylvania and New York, and from former mountains further north in Canada. If this is true, the sand grains were transported about 1,250 miles right across North America.
lordkalvan
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If strata were laid during the same geologic timeframe, it is most likely that they will contain fossils from the same types of flora and fauna; this is true irrespective of when the strata were laid down, so this alone is insufficient evidence to attest to a global flood of biblical proportions occurring within the last 5 KY. As far as the chalk beds of Southern England are concerned, the White Cliffs of Dover (part of the formation you refer to) are around 100+ metres thick and composed largely of the bodies of plankton ranging from 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter, with a typical settling rate of 0.0000154 mm/sec. In a year of the flood, they would have deposited at most around half-a metre. The fossils at the base of this formation differ from those higher up, reflecting evolutionary and environmental changes that occurred over the scientifically estimated time required to deposit the chalk - 35 MY. So all in all, the Southern English chalk formations seem to attest against a global flood rather than for it.
Studies of zircon grains also show that the Colorado once flowed in a direction opposite to which it is flowing now, carrying the zircon at least 400 miles from the McCoy Mountains in SW Arizona. These two facts together seem incompatible with claims that a global flood could have been responsible for producing the Grand Canyon.
Source: n ews.discovery.com/earth/colorado-river-zircons.html
stovebolts
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Hello lord K,
I'm at a disadvantage, cause I'm no science wiz and have nowhere near the time invested into this old earth / young earth discussion that you or many others like you do. So please, bear with me.
According to the AIG article, they say the same strata above and below match... as do the fossils. Are you saying they are in error with this data?
The other AIG booklet that I haven't had a chance to fully read address your assertions. Maybe I'll have a chance to respond in a week or two on the matter? I dunno.
Anyway, how do you account for this?
I'm at a disadvantage, cause I'm no science wiz and have nowhere near the time invested into this old earth / young earth discussion that you or many others like you do. So please, bear with me.
LK said:
According to the AIG article, they say the same strata above and below match... as do the fossils. Are you saying they are in error with this data?
AIG Article said:
LK said:
The other AIG booklet that I haven't had a chance to fully read address your assertions. Maybe I'll have a chance to respond in a week or two on the matter? I dunno.
Anyway, how do you account for this?
AIG Article said:
stovebolts
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Hi LK,
Not trying to be impatient. Lord knows it takes me awhile to come back to some posts too. But like I said, this is all kinda new to me. Do you think you'll be able to address the AIG booklet I've posted?
Thanks!
Not trying to be impatient. Lord knows it takes me awhile to come back to some posts too. But like I said, this is all kinda new to me. Do you think you'll be able to address the AIG booklet I've posted?
Thanks!
lordkalvan
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Sorry for the delay, SB. I don't know whether they are in error or not with the data. What I am saying is that, irrespective of the timescales involved, strata deposited at the same time should include the same type of fauna and flora fossils. As evidence in and of itself, this fact does not support the conclusion of a global flood less than 10 KY ago.
Take your time.
Different areas of the earth will undergo "upwelling" at various times, such that altitudes that were once the same are now thousadns of feet different. A very exposed example of the is the plateau between Bryce Canyon in UT and the Grand Canyon. The area between had a massive uplifting, bringing strata that are currently at the top of the grand canyon (altitude-wise) up thousands of feet higher. You can see the fault lines where it lifted, and the colored stata - so beautiful - show exactly how it used to fit together.
Likewise the chalk cliffs of NM/TX (as you hike them, you can see the fossilized sea worms, it's very cool) show cliff that were once a massive reef in the ocean, while the rest of the sediment lies below (Guadalupe Mountain versus Carlsbad Caverns).
Now, note also that the continents have been drifiting and what used to be close together are no longer close together. But when they were close together, they formed as neighbors would.
Be careful of AiG's hypocrisy in this. The very radioactive "dating" techniques that they scorn in fossil finds, they are relying on to make this claim. So let's all notice that they actually *DO* agree to the evidence of radio-dating.
They do not say why these grains of this age could only have come from one place. Why could grains of this age not have been existing in more than one place?
If you are interested in contrasting some of the AiG info, take a look at TalkOrigins.org where they discuss the same stuff using the scientific evidence available.
stovebolts
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I can dig out their sources if you need them. They seem pretty good at leaving footnotes to their sources.
Anyway, isn't that what they are claiming? Arent they claiming that they are finding the same fauna and flora fossils within the same strata layers on a global scale?
That would seem to indicate a global catastrophie wouldn't it? How else could you explain that?
While I believe in a young earth, I'm not concerned with if you think this happened millions of years ago or thousands. That's not my point. I just think it's cool that this data seems to point to a major happening, more than likely before the continents were pulled apart, and most likely, it was a flood.
If there was a global flood, wouldn't this be the stuff we'd expect to find?
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stovebolts
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That makes sense, but when I pull a map of Pangea (sp), the puzzle doesn't line up. They say that the chalk beds run from Texas to Nebraska, yet that doesn't tie into Europe or the middle east with the pangea (sp) model I was able to find.
Maybe I'm just not finding the right map?...
I don't know that I would say that they are being hypocritical, although they did say "dating". When I read that, I did sense a smirk, but not at the data itself, but how the data is interpreted.
I think the point that they were trying to get across is that the data is consistent across the various regions which imply's that they were deposited within the same time frame. I would think that everyone would agree on that. Where the disagreement comes is was this time thousands of years ago, or millions?
Again, I'm the new kid here and I've got a lot to learn.
Thanks! :waving
Sorry, I did not mean to conflate the two. And I did mean to add earlier that I think the article is not saying the the same fossils are present both above and below, but rather that the same fossils below are present in both and the same fossils above are present in both.
I did not intend to imply that they were from the same spot, though. I apologize for a sloppy description.
Just as there is quite a bit of ocean space in a variety of places today, many will have fish that migrate along a long route. And that would have been true in the past as well. Meaning similar dead fish will occur in places that are far apart. Not perfect matches all along, but I would expect some similarities if the conditions were similar.
I think we agree on this... Yes, deposits in the same timeframe would tend to be more likely to have similar fossils...
This is where different dating techniques work together to create several measurements. Kind of like having one group measure a block with a ruler while another one measures it by water displacement and another measure it by wax casting and another measures it by weight and density and yet another measures it by laser reflection. If they all get the SAME number, you would be unreasonable to claim the data is questionable because wax casting has largish errors. It may have errors, but not the SAME errors as laser reflection. So if the seven or eight different methods all come up with the same number, the odds of them all being wrong is too small to use as a decision-maker.
Happy to share, and enjoy discussing!
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stovebolts
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Crazy week I'm telling ya! But I am enjoying this conversation!
Exactly! So, what would we expect to see in a global flood? Exactly what the fossil records across the globe show us. That is, the same uniform sediment layers with the same fossils across the globe, which is exactly what we're talking about ;)
I know that there are four different ways to date rocks, and they are all consistent in their data. In another AIG pamphlet I have, it shows the four different types of techniques and the consistency. For example, if you were to date two rocks, it might look something like this. If you want exact data, I can copy the book for you next week, but below are just generalities that I'm making up to simplify the specific data I don't have available to me right now.
Rock (R) Method (M) Age (A)
R M A
1 1 2 m
2 1 1.5 m
1 2 1.75 m
2 2 1.25 m
1 3 2.5 m
2 3 1.5 m
1 4 4 m
2 4 3 m
As you can see, the various methods produce different dates. However, if you look at the data above, Rock 1 always shows an older date then Rock 2 regardless of which method you use. This is the consistency that we see with both carbon dating and radioactive decay.
So, as far as raw data is concerned, it's not a matter of the data, but how one interprets that data.
In short, if the data shows signs that the world was one big continent with signs of a global flood, and it was dated to 4 million years ago or whatever, then the only disagreement would be if I said it was 4300 years ago. The argument isn't about "If" something happened, but "When" it happened.
I'm more concerned about "If" it happened.
I realize that some don't hold the bible in authority,and that others shrug it off as myth, but it's ironic that civilizations all across the globe have stories of a flood, so there has to be some truth in there somewhere. However, to dismiss the idea of a global flood based on a negative bias toward the biblical account... well, that's just blinding oneself isnt it? And no, I'm not accusing you of being blind, so please don't read my words in that light.
Genesis 8:2 speak about the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven in reference to what caused the flood and lasted 150 days. Does this give us an indication of how the earth was flooded?
If their was one big continent and it broke up into what we now have, water would have rose from the deep, massive tsunami's etc would occur.
So really, a flood (Any flood on a global scale) wouldn't have caused continental drift, but rather, the global flood would have been the effect of a radical continental shift.
Stovebolts said:
Exactly! So, what would we expect to see in a global flood? Exactly what the fossil records across the globe show us. That is, the same uniform sediment layers with the same fossils across the globe, which is exactly what we're talking about ;)
Stovebolts said:
I know that there are four different ways to date rocks, and they are all consistent in their data. In another AIG pamphlet I have, it shows the four different types of techniques and the consistency. For example, if you were to date two rocks, it might look something like this. If you want exact data, I can copy the book for you next week, but below are just generalities that I'm making up to simplify the specific data I don't have available to me right now.
Rock (R) Method (M) Age (A)
R M A
1 1 2 m
2 1 1.5 m
1 2 1.75 m
2 2 1.25 m
1 3 2.5 m
2 3 1.5 m
1 4 4 m
2 4 3 m
As you can see, the various methods produce different dates. However, if you look at the data above, Rock 1 always shows an older date then Rock 2 regardless of which method you use. This is the consistency that we see with both carbon dating and radioactive decay.
So, as far as raw data is concerned, it's not a matter of the data, but how one interprets that data.
In short, if the data shows signs that the world was one big continent with signs of a global flood, and it was dated to 4 million years ago or whatever, then the only disagreement would be if I said it was 4300 years ago. The argument isn't about "If" something happened, but "When" it happened.
I'm more concerned about "If" it happened.
I realize that some don't hold the bible in authority,and that others shrug it off as myth, but it's ironic that civilizations all across the globe have stories of a flood, so there has to be some truth in there somewhere. However, to dismiss the idea of a global flood based on a negative bias toward the biblical account... well, that's just blinding oneself isnt it? And no, I'm not accusing you of being blind, so please don't read my words in that light.
Genesis 8:2 speak about the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven in reference to what caused the flood and lasted 150 days. Does this give us an indication of how the earth was flooded?
If their was one big continent and it broke up into what we now have, water would have rose from the deep, massive tsunami's etc would occur.
So really, a flood (Any flood on a global scale) wouldn't have caused continental drift, but rather, the global flood would have been the effect of a radical continental shift.
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lordkalvan
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Well, no, we'd expect to see fossils all jumbled up together with no apparent sorting according to geologic time frames. In other words, we would indeed expect to find fossil rabbits in the Precambrian. More particularly, there is no reason, if Earth is less that 10KY old and dinosaurs were rendered extinct by the flood, why we should not find dinosaur fossils and human fossils (and evidence of human settlement) together in the same strata.
A minor point, but you can't date rocks with C14 dating. You can date organic remains that may be in the rocks, but as C14 is only accurate to around 50-70 KY, it's not going to be much help in determining the ages of strata or of fossils.
Well, there are certain scientific principles and tested hypotheses which determine how we interpret data. For example, we can determine that light from distant stars and galaxies shows no difference from light that reaches us from the Sun and it is therefore reasonable to presume that it obeys the same physical laws. Consequently, if a star is X thousand light-years distant, the light took X thousand years to reach us.
Only if the two dates could both be validly supported with relevant evidence.
As there is no evidence that a global flood occurred within the span during which humans have been present on Earth, there seems to be no 'if' about it at all.
Okay, the same point I was trying to make.
Well, yes and no. Floods are ubiquitous in human experience - think catastrophic floods in New Orleans, Japan, Pakistan, Australia all within a few years of each other. In cultures where the 'whole world' comprises not much further than you could walk in a day or two, even a catastrophic local flood would be viewed as world-destroying. More importantly, legendary tales remain exactly that unless physical evidence can be adduced to support them. Mesopotamia, for example, was most certainly prone to flooding, so how surprising is it that folk-tales of catastrophe feature floods as a central theme? If the region was in an area of volcanic activity, no doubt volcanoes would provide a similar theme.
Mostly we dismiss the idea of a global flood because there is no evidence to support the idea of such. 19th century clergymen-scientists went looking for exactly this evidence (check out the life and work of the Rev William Buckland, for example) and came to conclusion that no such evidence existed.
How? What are 'the fountains of the deep' and 'the windows of heaven'? What is the source of this water and where did it go? Where is the evidence for any of this?
Plate tectonics gives no indication that continents break up catastrophically, quite the reverse in fact.
First catch your rabbit: where's your evidence of 'radical continental shift'? What do you imagine the heat consequences of such 'radical' shifting would be for Earth's atmosphere, not to mention the seismic effects? Look what happened in Japan when ten miles of crust ruptured in a magnitude 7.9 earthquake. Multiply this by thousands of miles of rupturing and earthquakes off the magnitude scale and ask yourself how long it would take Earth's ecosystems to recover from such an event. Then ask yourself how civilizations such as Dynastic Egypt appear to have suffered this event without even noticing it.
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stovebolts
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LK said:
Forgive my ignorance, but why would we expect to see fossils from the Precambrian era if a global flood occurred? Aren't floods a major contributor to the fossils we now have?
LK said:
I don't think that all dinosaurs were rendered extinct by the flood. But you do bring up a good point about dinosaur fossils and human fossils being found within the same strata. Very intersting indeed. But this raises a question that I don't have an answer for. Do we have fossils that share the same strata?
I may not understand the science completly, but I am not talking about carbon dating rocks. That's one of the first things AIG teaches you, that carbon dating isn't used by rocks. I believe they date rocks by "radioactive decay". Something about lead, argone, etc. I really need a reference, but just to be clear, the 4 methods are all radioactive decay methods based on the isotopes, not carbon dating.LK said:
Anyway, I ran out of time. Hope to maybe touch on some of your other remarks next week.
Have a fun weekend!
But it's not uniform across the globe. It's uniform (or "similar", I really don't know if the chalk in dover has little worms like the chalk in texas) in some specific sites - Dover and Texas/NM. But it is not the same in Ireland, nor the same in New England (which is more like Norway). Nor is it the same as in the Grand Canyon, which itself is quite different from Japan.
So the fact that there are two areas which have a thick chalk layer with similar fossils below compared to each other and similar fossils above compared to each other, does not match what we would expect from a global flood because we don't see that everywhere. Nor does the depth of that chalk match the expected volume of dead sea critturs that would happen in a 150-day kill-off. There is WAY TOO MUCH chalk to have been deposited in 150 days.
(also note that if the biblical account of the flood were true, Noah's ark would have been battered with rains falling at over five feet per minute in order to cover the mountains in 40 days. Could a vessel stay afloat in that?)
Then you're in the right thread.
You are correct that the basic sketch of how consilience (agreement of different methods) can provide additional information or confidence.
But the "if" is sufficiently addressed if we don't use dating, I believe. So we should be able to get at your questions.
One common theme of all mammals and particlarly of humans is that they need water. In the very oldest times (whether it's 3 million or 3000 years ago), humans did not have the means to carry water very far. So they lived near water. This has a significant impact on the likelihood that every human tribe would have at some time experienced a severe flood. I would submit that until plumbing was invented, that EVERY human habitation experienced a severe flood at least once per lifetime. And the further back you go in time, the more likely that they needed to live closer to permanent (read: "deep") water sources which are likely to be at a confluence of several tributaries, increasing the risk of flood even higher.
Add to this the ability to predict weather (limited) and the ability to travel quickly (limited) and the experience of massive casualties and an impression of everything being underwater is magnified.
So the experience of most of mankind at catastrophic flood is pretty routine, all-in-all.
But there is no water under the continents. So it would not have welled up. The continents float on softened rock (not quite molten)
There was some interesting geologic research recently about the age of the straights of Gibraltar and the long-held theory that at one point the mediterranean was a dry bed and a breach in the wall at Gibraltar resulted in a massive catastrophic flood (I would give much to see a time-lapse of such an event, provided there were no loss of life to spoil the show!)
There are also several geological features that are known to have resulted from a massive glacial lake being suddenly breached - with a river completely changing its course and carving a completely new channel in a very brief time.
So massive floods would have been quite common, and even cataclysmic floods have happened repeatedly.
I agree that no flood is going to cause continental shift. And I submit that there is not enough water on or in the planet to cover all land to the depth it would take to inundate even the mountain peaks. Think about it - that would be THIRTY THOUSAND FEET of water. It's just not there.
But there is definitely enough water to inundate the places where humans lived, one here, one there, one per century until every tribe had an experience of it with no record keeping to actually say if the dates matched.
But the geology shows that there was not one all at once everywhere.
lordkalvan
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I think Rhea has given you a clear and comprehensive reply. Under a 'young' Earth model, there appears to be no reason at all why fossils should be arranged in a way that indicates sorting by age, so there is every reason to expect that 'modern' animals should be found fossilised in the same strata as 'old' ones.
So far there appears to be no reason to suppose that any of them were rendered extinct by the legendary biblical flood.
I don't understand your question. Various fossils share various strata. For example, we find sharks in the same strata as Ichthyosaurs and sharks in the same strata as dolphins, but no dolphins in the same strata as Ichthyosaurs - which has clear implications for when the animals existed.
My apologies. From your previous post it seemed that you might have thought this. Some YECS - Kent Hovind springs to mind - clearly seem to think you can. Dr Richard Wiens, a scientist and practising Christian, has an online paper about radiometric dating available. I will check the reference and get back to you.
You too!
ETA Here you go: w ww.asa3.org/ASA/resources/wiens.html
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stovebolts
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lordkalvan
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You should be aware that AiG's Statement of Faith, Article 4.6 states that
By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.
In other words, AiG as a matter of principle will ignore or deny any evidence that contradicts its particular theologically derived-view of Earth's history. The article you reference at best pays lip-service to the environmental consequences of the thermal effects of the kinds of phenomena proposed in the time-scale involved. Absent miraculous intervention, these would have been sufficient to render Earth unable to support life now, never mind 4,000 years ago. If miraculous supernatural intervention is required to 'explain' aspects of an event, then it becomes a rather pointless exercise to engage in the search for naturally-occurring evidence that supports that event occurring as postulated.