Non-Scientist Young Earth Creationist Has Theories for you to Test

Thanks for the clarification. You probably already know this, but I should clarify that YEC do not believe in a “flood” in the typical way the term is understood. Look at the Hebrew Genesis 7:11 Interlinear: In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, in this day have been broken up all fountains of the great deep, and the net-work of the heavens hath been opened, it’s describing fountains deep in the earth breaking it apart. i’'m not a scientist - so plate tectonics on steriods :slight_smile: This action is what caused immediate climate change - rain for 40 days, and extreme climate change likely for 100s of years after. So words like “typically” are not relevant to the hypothesis that the Genesis account gives. Instead, what’s more relevant: what’s the amount of pressure that would take to form that rock, and what kind of extraordinary events would allow for that? If the probability of that extraordinary event is 0, then it’s posing a threat. (Hopefully I’m explaining that well.)

Sorry but nothing in the Bible describes plate tectonic movement or the lithification of sediment into sedimentary rock. Modern day YECs have tried to “back fit” modern knowledge of things like plate tectonics by extremely, er, creative :roll_eyes: interpretation of Bible passages. Sadly to do so requires them to misrepresent and/or ignore about 99% of the physical geologic evidence.

You can read about the physical processes by which sedimentary deposits are buried and subjected to tremendous pressures in order for them to lithify into rocks.

Sedimentary Rocks

All this has been common knowledge to Geologists for well over a hundred years. You can read much more detailed explanation in any good college level Geology text, or easily find more info online.

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My young boys love rocks. Now I can see why kids think they are cool, as I skimmed through that. And I’m really trying to gather some interest in studying them, but it’s really stretching my only recent interest in science. :upside_down_face: I will bookmark it to read when I am more motivated. Thanks!

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It’s definitely more than a year.

When you look at the successive layers in such rock formations, it’s common to find that the top surface of each of the layers contains features that were buried when the layer atop it was laid down. These can include not just features such as footprints and body fossils, but also structures that take time to form, such as plant root networks, burrows and water courses.

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One of difficulties is getting the material to begin with. There are geologic formations that are made up of life. Floods don’t produce massive amounts of life.

For example, there is the simple sea lily, also called a crinoid (which is actually an animal, btw):

image

When they die their exoskeleton breaks up into little chunks. Over time, those can build up on the sea floor, but only slowly.

What is amazing is that we can find deposits of crinoids that are THOUSANDS of feet deep:

That’s enough to cover the entire Earth in 3 inches of crinoid plates, in just one formation.

So how does a flood create so many crinoids that they create deposits thousands of feet thick?

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If you really want to see them go bonkers over science introduce them to fossils. :slightly_smiling_face: It’s cool to see the look of amazement as they can hold in their hand trilobite fossils over half a billion years old.

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This article correlates lake varves with tree rings and C14 dating. This general work is also supported by annual layers glacial ice cap analysis, cave stalactites/stalagmites, volcanic benchmarks, isotope ratios which are dependent on global climate temperatures, growth of coral reefs, and to use a catch-all, various other confirmations that just go on and on. Not that the data is perfectly complete, that is expecting too much; but the overall picture is pretty clear.

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

The faithfulness of the seasons have been going on for some time, and leaving a deep imprint on nature with each passing. We can read this in many ways.

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Thanks for this. The Sea Lily is absolutely gorgeous. To me, the question is very simple to answer, but you may not be very familiar with the idea of the biblical flood. :slight_smile: Genesis 7:11: "In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. Notice, the earth had fountains in its depths that do not exist in the same form anymore after the flood. The fountains bursting broke up the dry land / supercontinent and instant climate change, causing rain.

For further information, Proverbs 8: “The Lord possessed me [wisdom] at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.
23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. 25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth,
26 before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command"

I see it as sort of like starting a blender - stuff flies / drifts / gets pushed every which way by the moving water and land, some it cracks, some of it gets mashed together. For the water to recede, more mountain ranges and valleys formed and probably were still settling into place for a while after, as well as glaciers forming. I’m probably not explaining this very well scientifically, but that’s my layman’s understanding.

I think almost everyone who has a child has engaged in some sort of genetic or trait selection, subconsciously or not. We pick our partners for a number of reasons and I think many do consider what sort of children they may have. This is different from a society deciding what matches are preferred. And cultures/societies are configured to reduce the size of the breeding pool and that becomes a form of inadvertent selection (e.g. Amish).

The geologic record is not all mixed up. There are discrete layers with different species.

Also, that doesn’t explain how you get 2,000 feet of crinoids in one place. Crinoids are just the tip of the iceberg. There are also super thick chalk deposits made up of little coccolithophores which are fossilized single celled organisms. Floods don’t produce life.

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What you’re trying to tell her is that such a huge mass of crinoids couldn’t all have lived at the same time, or within a single year. I don’t think you’ve said that explicitly, which is why she may not understand your point.

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A serious trouble with “Waters of the Deep” and other Flood Geology theories is thermodynamics, or in plain language, too much heat. I will spare you the details, but the basic problem with these theories, if they actually happened, would generate enough heat to kill all living things, or even melt the surface of the Earth.

My only suggestion is to draw a line around this part of the Bible and try not to think about it as a literal event that needs a scientific explanation.

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Incidentally, also a problem with trying to fit radiometric dates into a young earth chronology, with or without a Flood.

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All the living things that lived and died after the flood of course, would also produce evidence in the geological record.

Of course floods don’t produce life. Maybe I’m missing what you’re saying. I’m suggesting the “blender” buried both things alive at the time of the flood, as well as reburied dead layers.

I’m trying to find a problem with the biblical flood killing all living things or melting the surface of the earth, but it sort of fits. :joy: Could a torrential downpour cool things back down? :wink: I’m teasing…sort of. :sweat_smile:

But not in flood deposited rocks (except where there is evidence of burrowing, rooting etc), only on top of them. If much of the fossil record is post-flood, then either the flood was a looooong time ago, or geological ages were implausibly short.*

The problem is that the fossil record contains evidence of so much life that there simply isn’t enough space on the Earth for it to have existed at the same time, even if you allow for 1500 years of life before the flood.

The 10,000 cubic miles of crinoid remains is just a small part of the problem. Europe has chalk deposits hundreds of feet thick made up of coccoliths, and massive limestone deposits comprising the shells of molluscs. The Karoo formation contains billions of reptile and mammal fossils. Coal seams are made up of fossilised plants. Marine deposits of brachiopods are just as large.

There simply is not enough space on the Earth to fit all these creatures into the YEC timeframe.

*cf David Tyler, who once proposed that the Silurian was just 22 years long.

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There wasn’t enough time in the before the flood in the YEC time frame to create 2,000 feet of dead crinoids. Also, these deposits are above what YECs would claim are flood deposits. You don’t get millions of years of crinoids living and dying during a flood.

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What is a crinoid? See here:

Where I come from, the rocks are chock full of crinoid stems (often individual rings), brachiopods, and bryozoans. Mississippian limestone, in other words. I believe there are plenty of exposures around St. Louis too.

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@jongarvey gifted me with a crinoid fossil from the UK when I visited him there last year. :slight_smile:

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