Given that the bottom of the Atlantic is dominated by igneous rock, we would only expect a skim layer of fossiliferous sediment. But you have big problems there as well. The outflow of basalt from the mid-Atlantic ridges preserves a geomagnetic record of the earth’s field stretching back millions of years, showing the history of magnetic strength and reversals.
Of course, creationists have cooked up a cockamamie response to this, and it is kinda a doozy. Freely decaying electric currents, a sort of white hot superconductivity in a resistive medium, is supposed to be responsible for the earth’s magnetic field, in violation of pretty much every formulation of electromagnetic law possible from ohm’s law up. The point of that is to then finangle rapid magnetic reversals, just like Moses said, particularly during the flood. What - an inertial current reverses??? How? Why? Apperently, in YEC two nonsenses make a sense. And to what purpose or reason? To deceive people into thinking the earth is old? Because there is no other reason offered. For anyone foolish enough to buy into this, please know that I’m a time traveler from the future, because that has more credibility.
I’m going with the geologist over the apologist on this one. Most states have their own public core repository. Instead of us itemizing the tens of thousands of cores available, why don’t you tell us some specific formations you think have been missed? Oh yeah, more apologetic hand waving.
While you are at it, how much of the antediluvian world do you think was devoid of pollinating plants, no coned or flowering trees, no shrubs, no grass, no wildflowers?
This has been twisted into yet another strawman. I never said we failed to find evidence for the global flood due to sample size. The evidence is staring us in the face. It is the fossil record itself and the largescale erosion. The issue with sample size would be to state with any degree of confidence what animals, plants and even pollen are not in said layers. We can certainly state what we have found and what we have not found in the less than 1% of material we’ve actually sampled, but to go beyond that is unwarranted extrapolation on a huge scale.
We don’t do that, but we have other means to find out about the fossils in the ocean floor. You may not be aware of this but there are thousands of deep boreholes in the Atlantic Ocean, drilled for industrial and scientific purposes (the latter as part of the famous DSDP/ODP/IODP programs). The samples from these boreholes confirm the widespread and consistent clear zonation of microfossils over huge swathes of the ocean. How can the global and violent flood that you advocate deposit these tiny shells in such an amazing and consistent organised way? Or, as I have asked you many times now without having received an answer, do you dispute the reality of this zonation?
There is not a single shred of geological evidence that supports a global flood that withstands any scrutiny. Geology is unambiguous in demonstrable evidence for an old earth. There is not a formation on the planet that does not have an ancient history. You have nothing.
And you cannot brush off the pollen problem just by closing your ears and going lalalala, because pollinating plants grow everywhere. Pollen winds up in ocean sediments, and embedded in deep cave speleothems, both of which scientists use to trend representative species to reconstruct climate back a million years. Furthermore, the pollen record matches the macro fossil record of vegetation, that conflicts with a global flood but fits with evolutionary history.
YEC like to present that they and mainstream scientists look at the same data, but creationist interpret that with a Biblical lens. But as we see have seen in this thread, creationism is hostile to all science, historical, observational, and here the data itself, set against reality whether found in scientific rigor or common sense.
The fossil record is very strong evidence against your Flood. Large scale erosion can’t be sensibly attributed to it either. So much for any claim that YEC is based on humility or intellectual curiosity.
Nathan, I will wrap this up by thanking you for bringing something to my attention that I had not previously been aware of. At the moment, I don’t know if this ‘pollen problem’ is a result of some kind of hydrologic sorting (or some other process), or if it could be an issue of it being there and us simply not having found it. I did point out at least one case where pollen was found where it isn’t supposed to exist evolutionarily speaking, and the answer was to resort to calling it contamination.
If it turns out this is just an unanswered question (for now), I’m totally fine with that. My trust in biblical history (based on solid evidence both of the reliability of scripture and the external evidence for the reality of the global flood) is not going to be shaken by an unanswered question about the fossil record like this one.
Whether I (or anybody else) can imagine how the flood could sort them that way is not really the point, since our imagination, or lack thereof, doesn’t trump reliable historical record. That is the real response to your question. You’re acting as if our ability to reconstruct events in the past that we cannot repeat is somehow a determing factor to whether or not they actually happened (and it isn’t).
The response of Abraham in Luke 16:31 would be applicable to this as well, I think.
He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”
In much the same way, I would say that if someone currently denies the testimony of scripture that there was a global flood, our coming up with some story to explain the distribution of pollen in the fossil record isn’t going to convince them, either.
I don’t know if this ‘pollen problem’ is a result of some kind of hydrologic sorting (or some other process)
Hundreds of species of pelagic forams are very similar in size, shape and mass. What possible “hydrological sorting” can order these into detailed layers that extend for hundreds of square miles of sea bottom beds?
I did point out at least one case where pollen was found where it isn’t supposed to exist evolutionarily speaking,
I once again refer you to the concept of a "representative sample’.
I’ll add to that the large number of 3-D seismic studies that cover thousands of square miles of undersea basins. And let’s not forget the 90,000 wells drilled in the Gulf of Mexico, or the 20,000 wells in the North Sea (to name a few).
Except that, once again, according to the faith statements put out by ministries like CMI and AGI, the historical record is ignored if it contradicts their specific Biblical interpretations.
A “reliable historical record” is clearly not the basis for a belief in a global flood.
To go beyond that is the topic of statistical inference. Calling it a strawman is simply a dodge from the doing the math for yourself. IF the evidence is “staring us in the face”, then it should be a simple matter to state a hypothesis, consider all the evidence, and make an inference to the validity of that hypothesis, rejecting or failing to reject the null. We might also go the Bayesian route and compare the posterior probabilities of global Flood versus gradual deposition (a Bayes’ Factor).
Again, not a strawman, just pointing to the available evidence and asking for a plausible interpretation that can be tested. Oilfield geologists test this evidence with great success, but they do not find evidence of the Flood.
It is the fossil record itself …
About that … The fossil record is a testament to things that were once living. LOTS of living things, and living things are made up primarily of Carbon. When creatures die, most of that Carbon is released back into the biosphere and recycled into more living things. Some of it is captured as fossils is what we observe in the fossil record. A global Flood requires an enormous number of creatures living all at once, so they can be buried together in the fossil beds we find. There is not enough Carbon on the planet to support the life that created the Redwall limestone of the Grand Canyon in less than hundreds of millions of years, much less all the limestone deposits found around the world. The very existence of a fossil record proves there was no such Flood.
Burdick, C. 1966. Microflora of the Grand Canyon. Creation Research Society 1966 Annual 3(1):38-50. and
Burdick, C. L. 1972. Progress report on Grand Canyon palynology. Creation Research Society Quarterly 9(1):25-30.
These studies were reviewed in Precambrian Pollen in the Grand Canyon:
A Reexamination, by Arthur V. Chadwick (2009).
In 1971, Drs. Chadwick and Burdick re-visited the sample locations used by Burdick in the Grand Canyon in 1966. They collected rock samples form Burdick’s original locations, as well as additional sites in the preCambrian outcrops.
Samples were carefully decontaminated in a “clean” laboratory, and then examined by various microscope techniques.
From the “Results” section:
A total of fifty samples from the same strata which Burdick had studied were processed. All slides were completely scanned. No single example of an authentic pollen grain was obtained from any of these samples. In fact, the slides produced from the Hakatai Formation were in most cases completely free from any material of biologic origin, modern or fossil.
Nathan, I will wrap this up by thanking you for bringing something to my attention that I had not previously been aware of… If it turns out this is just an unanswered question (for now), I’m totally fine with that.
You’re welcome, and thank you for this gracious acknowledgement. I will add that, as long as you remain convinced that Scripture unambiguously teaches a global flood, I want you to believe that. Personally I think the evidence against it warrants questioning that interpretation, and I find alternate interpretations plausible. But scripture should remain your ultimate standard.
I did point out at least one case where pollen was found where it isn’t supposed to exist evolutionarily speaking, and the answer was to resort to calling it contamination.
In future discussions, I would like to caution you against such statements. First, because it is overconfident. One counterexample against a sea of examples is likely to be a mistake a priori. At the very least, caution is rational. Second, because in this case even a YEC investigator ruled it contamination. Third, because your framing - “resort to calling it contamination” - implies dishonesty on the part of those doubt it.
Actually, that’s the most important point I’d like to encourage you to consider. Making arguments and impugning motives are very different things. If I argue “Ken Ham is wrong about flood geology because X”, that’s fair. If I said “Ken Ham promotes Young Earth Creationism even though he knows it’s false because he makes a lot of money doing it” (I do not believe that is true) that would be a serious charge, and I should be very careful not to bear false witness. I think you should exercise similar care when disagreeing.
Christians above all people should argue with “gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). I hope to do better there as well.
Because that is the way the evidence points - even if we exclude the fact that it is an incredibly rare outlier. The pollen was found in one location - near the surface, in rock with extensive microfractures, and ultrasonic cleaning removed it. Which is about what we’d expect if loose pollen had infiltrated the rock.
You really should be less credulous. Christian apologetics - especially of the Biblical Inerrantist flavour - is riddled with falsehood.
No, I am not. I am pointing out that your explanation for fossilized dinosaurs is the flood. Humans, who all allegedly died in the same flood, are not found in any of the same places, or even the same geological layers (using creationist claims about radiometry, even!), with dinosaurs, but your flood hypothesis predicts both, mechanistically. This is why I say that you reject the scientific method itself.
Of course. But SOMETHING that died in the allegedly global flood (people) SHOULD be fossilized, not just in the flood, but in the same places/layers at the dinosaurs.
There goes another irony meter. Paul, have you noticed that here, when we point you to evidence you nearly always claim disinterest or that someone else is responsible for curating it?
If the evidence is staring you in the face, don’t keep averting your eyes. It’s clear that you, and virtually all other creationists, require evidence to be filtered through those at the top of the creationist pyramid. You won’t examine evidence yourself.
Evidence is the stuff you can stare at, but don’t. It’s not a model or a YT video or what anyone else says about the evidence.
Followed the link to Duff’s Article on Academia. Duff’s entire argument assumes that a global Flood should distribute pollen like a worldwide stirred mixture. What flood model says this? The closest you will get is the old Hydroplate theory and even that has water slowly rising to submerge the earth over months like the Bible describes and not some giant wave crashing over the continents mixing everything together No flood model has that. Flood models rather say that sediments preserve ecological communities as they are buried in phases. Pollen is not preserved as a random sample of the whole planet. Rather it is concentrated where source vegetation, sedimentary basin, chemistry and rapid burial favor preservation depending on local sediments. The lower fossil record reflects early-buried wetland, coastal, and gymnosperm/fern-dominated ecosystems, this should be obvious and logical. While later angiosperm-dominated communities appear higher because their habitats were buried later. The Bible directly tells us that Adam was brought to Eden and eden was on a mountain, clearly elevated since waters flow from it and down forming rivers. Not sure why Joel even mentioned Eden knowing its location, it hurts his arguement
I’m not sure if you’re conflating these two things, but “inerrantist” and “Young Earth Creationist” are not the same thing. I personally affirm the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, but I’m not a young earth creationist. Nor were most of those who wrote and signed the statement originally. Even the original self-designated “Fundamentalists” were devoted to the “fundamentals” of Christian faith, like the bodily resurrection of Christ, not to a young earth or global flood.
Likewise, don’t paint all “apologists” with the same brush. I would commend someone like Gavin Ortlund: