I decided a while back that that was likely underlying Neller’s conversion. It seems to me that he - wrongly - insisted on seeing most to all geomorphology in terms of his specialisation. The clues are there in what Jeff has told us. And thus descent into crank theory lead him to the nonsense called Flood Geology.
“Plateau” section of Jeff’s first video (5 minutes long):
[Interviewer] Yeah. - As as water does anywhere, when it flows off something, it creates gullies or rills and those sort of things we see today, if it’s a much larger scale, it’ll have much more of an impact. - Yes, so that’s water gaps under fit rivers, 70% of the continents covered with sedimentary rock. So these were some of the things you were starting to find, and I believe there was a a number of other things as well. - Yes. For example, plateaus are common. 40% of the planet is essentially sedimentary plateaus, and the plateau is essentially a elevated, relatively flat area. Now, 60% of Africa is a plateau. And so I began to ask the question, how do you find plateaus of elevated areas with relatively uniform surfaces or slightly undulating surfaces that are meant to be hundreds of millions of years old? Surely they would’ve been torn apart at this stage yet to see it so prevalent as I flew around the world, you could be flying for an hour and still see the same plateau, and you’d ask, well, what happened over those hundreds of millions of years? - So Ron, for those of us that are not earth scientists, what’s the problem with a plateau? So just first of all, a plateau, if I’ve got it right, it’s an elevated flat area of land. And I guess, I think of is a rock in the middle of Australia? Is that a plateau? - No, a rock is actually a tilted sedimentary layer. - Oh, okay. - If you look at the great dividing range, - Yes. - It is actually a plateau. - Okay. So you’re talking a- - Big. - Much larger thing. - Big scale. Now we can have small plateaus. We’d call 'em different names, measles and buttes and those sorts of things. They’re the remnants of a larger plateau, but we have plateaus still. - Okay. - All around the planet. And they are elevated, they have been slightly eroded on top, but nowhere near the extent that one would expect. - Yes. - The erosion over that period of time. - Okay, so because one comes to mind, Tibetan plateau is another one. - That’s another example. - Would be a large one, I guess. So what you’re saying is the issue with them is that they’re raised and that they’re flat and there should be erosion. - There should be, yes. - There should be gullies or divots, or? - They should be continuous erosion over all of those millions of years. So I would expect to see a more undulating surface. - Got you, and you said 40% of the continents are covered by plateaus. - Correct. - So that’s a lot. We’re talking about a lot of plateaus and they’re- - Yes. - And if the long ages are true, then we should see undulations, we should see erosion. And what is that because of different weather systems occurring in the plateau? Like what if it was a uniform weather? Is that possible or? - No, that’s not possible. - Yeah. - Even in small plateau areas on the great dividing range, within a single catchment, we’ve monitored rainfall and erosion and so on. And depending upon where the rain falls on the day, it can have a significant impact or it could have no impact. So it depends on the interaction. As I come back to geomorphology, it’s the interaction of the actual geology with the atmosphere, with the biota as well. And so you get highly diverse reactions, but the fact is we don’t see it on the plateaus. - Yes. - So all those millions of years of weather patterns migrating, changing has had no, if that’s what occurred, have had minimal impact. - Got you. So seeing the extent of these plateaus, learning the extent of them made you think, well, the normal explanation for the, or the millions of years don’t fit with the plateaus. That’s what you’re saying. But how does the worldwide flood fit with the plateaus? 'Cause that was a conclusion you came to. - It’s the plateaus are made of sedimentary rocks. In other words, they’re torn up from other rocks. Now, to do that requires an erosional process, and erosion takes a lot of energy. Now, when you start looking at plateaus, that may be up to 12 kilometers deep in sediment from the top to the bottom. And on average there are about two kilometers worldwide. You’ve gotta ask, well, that’s a lot of sediment. Where did that come from? Why was it so beautifully packed? Why was it so, such sedimentary beds so extensive up to 10,000 square kilometers in the area? What river process could do that today? - Right, so just to break it down, you said up to two kilometers thick worth of- - That’ll be an average. - An average. - It’ll go deeper to 12 kilometers easily. These plateaus, easily.
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AI-generated geobabble. If this was written by one of my old Geo 101 class students, and I were in a merciful mood, I’d give them a drop slip before posting their “F”.
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Indeed. And in the words of radio reporter Herbert Morrison on May 6, 1937, “Oh, the humanity!”
You mean “Oh, the humidity!”
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Honestly, this “science-denialim” and potential “great societal harm” from people being YECs is baffling to me!
Allen, and @Dan_Eastwood: I’m believing you should be familiar enough with YEC to know that the fundamental stance (ignoring any “bad apples” among us) is a great appreciation for operational science. Which seems to be the issue here. That’s what it would mean to be a true YEC follower. I could elaborate, but I believe you get my point.
And to me, so is avoiding any discouragement to individuals wanting to believe the Word of God.
Sorry to rabbit trail, but for me I wanted to discuss both of these topics (this and your methological naturalism stance) before jumping into “evidence” discussions here (as I eluded to in my previous post).
BTW, I did see another thread get started, but that seemed to digress into politics.
Uggh, here I am way behind on my postings again.
And to make it worse, I just got assigned a huge project here at work (gone are the “bored at work" days that got be back to checking out PS to begin with). And right when someone did manage to post details (full script actually) on the topic I wanted to discuss: The plateau portion of those videos.
That does help, thank you.
Correct, I don’t mean philosophical naturalism (or strict diesm). I really mean methological naturalism with regard to origins (be it the universe, earth, life). In other words, something along the lines of:
“When studying origins, only natural processes can be considered.”
The Historical versus Operational Science argument is a rabbit hole I won’t follow, except to note there is no difference.
AND
So now we are getting to the nitty-gritty. There is nothing about science that discourages people from believing in God. (As evidence, most Christians are fully accepting of science). There is some contradiction to a literal interpretation of Genesis, but that interpretation is not doctrinal to Christianity.
There IS harm in science denial. (As evidence, the first two deaths in the US from Measles in a decade.) More generally, there IS harm in gaslighting people about the meaning of science. Science denial is a lie. It’s baffling to me (and others) that some people are so willing to accept that which is evidentially true.
At very least, people ought to be able to separate their beliefs about faith and science. YEC already do this for many aspects of science; they argue fiercely against evolution, but not against the laws of physics. Physics is a far greater problem for a Young Earth than is evolution.
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I’m on my way out of my office for a while but a quick reply:
I would amend that as follows:
“When studying origins as a scientist using the tools of science, only natural processes can be considered.”
“When studying origins as a philosopher or theologian, both natural and supernatural processes can be considered.”
Remember what i said about classical geometry, where I am restricted to a straightedge and a compass. But that doesn’t stop me from leaving the confines of classical geometry and exploring other types of geometry and topology.
That’s my stance. Indeed, that also concisely explains one of my beefs with “creation science.” It quickly demonstrates that it is not science at all. If they called it “creation philosophy” or “creation theology”, I would be fine with the label—even if I disagree with many of their conclusions.
I’m very familiar with it. And that entire argument they use about “operational science” versus “historical science” is among their lamest. (Yeah, it is a hard to avoid using the word “lame.”) It is largely a fabrication of the “creation science” community and rarely does one see science textbooks or the science academy using such terms as opposites. (The exceptions I’ve seen in scientific literature generally employ those terms quite differently from how YEC ministries use them.) The “operational science” versus “historical science” alleged distinction is a massive misunderstanding—or an outright gaslighting—of the nature of science. I try to be gracious to people like Georgia Purdom (who endlessly repeats it as a mantra) but it is hard to see it any other way. It sounds convincing to the general public but plants a giant face-palm with real scientists. (OK, I admit that I enjoy a good “pile on” sometimes and I hope the scientists on this forum reward me in that way.)
Yes, I admit that I look forward to the perspectives of the professional scientists on this forum about those terms.
I agree with you 100% on this! I have written extensively (including on PS) on how bad arguments and misuse of scriptures by the YEC community have discouraged people from “wanting to believe the Word of God.” Indeed, one of my biggest concerns when Ken Ham announced his Ark Encounter was that it lead countless young people visiting with their parents to eventually agree with Ken Ham’s false dichotomy of insisting that if someone doesn’t agree with his particular interpretation of the Bible, then they must dismiss everything the Bible says including the teachings of Jesus Christ.
I certainly “believe the Word of God”, including the Book of Genesis. It poses no problems for me.
I used to have a growing tension between what I saw in “God’s Book of Creation” versus “God’s Book of Scriptures.” [I’m using the terms which appear in theological essays.] Today I experience no such tension. I also can enjoy learning about each and every scientific discovery as more and more of the universe and its processes are explained. (I don’t know if I mentioned that I am also an ordained minister. Sure, lots of people on this forum disagree with my theology but because we all value evidence and the scientific method, we share a joy in the process of discovery and explanation.
Our science can indeed be “peaceful.” Hey, even an atheist (like @Patrick) can tolerate me (a retired seminary professor and a university science professor before that.) We can get along just fine. Right, Patrick? (We share interests in science.)
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I find all of these topics interesting. And I’m certainly fine if other moderators want to separate them to their own threads.
I particularly enjoy explaining to the Historical-versus-Operation crowd that ALL science involves observation in the past. It is just a matter of magnitude. This was driven home in my mind when I was in grad school and we had to study the physics of VLSI design. [Very Large Scale Integration on IC chips.] We learned first hand the distinctions between the drift speed of individual electrons and the speed of electrical signal propagation, the later of which we were told to use the rule of thumb: 8 inches per nanosecond. At that point it dawned on me that even in a simple laboratory experiment, the monitoring instruments “reports” which involve a signal path of 56 inches meant that I was “observing” (through logged data stored in memory) what had happened 7 nanoseconds prior. And if visually observing some experiment, one assumed that light travels about 12 inches per nanosecond. So if five feet away, there was a delay of about 5 nanoseconds to reach one’s eyes. (Of course, there are then bigger delays in how long it takes that information to go from entering the eye to being processed at various points to finally reach the brain and get processed some more.)
Anyway, it simply struck me how every experiment in science involves a recording delay from the past. Indeed, when viewing the sun through projection of the solar image onto a plane for marking sunspots, the image is about 8 and a third minutes old. That is, we are seeing what happened at the sun (e.g. a sunspot erupting) about 8 1/3 minutes in the past.) Looking at the sky at night, even with the naked eye, involves looking back in time by many many years. (Indeed, this is one of the most basic refutations of a young universe.)
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Try looking backward instead 
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That may be a comforting lie that YEC tells to itself, but I see absolutely zero evidence of this.
If we go by YEC’s actions, rather than its words, it has absolutely zero appreciation for science – neither for the scientific method, nor for science’s rigor.
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Indeed - and then there’s the operation of the human eye and the processing by the human brain to consider. There is no such thing as unmediated direct perception. The whole thing is a clear example of the anti-scientific nature of YEC.
While electronic detectors seem to have taken the place of cloud chambers and the like I feel they presented an even better example. Physicists would look at photographs of the tracks left by sub-atomic particles to deduce what was going on. That’s at lest two levels of indirection before getting to the human senses.
My thought on the matter is that there are two sorts of scientific questions - what happened in a particular case and what are the general “rules” underlying the events. And science needs both - indeed you cannot work out the general rules without knowing what happened in a significant range of cases. “Historical science” is just “what happened” type questions. The only relevant distinction is the amount and quality of evidence available. But even there we can confidently state that science shows that the Earth is far older than YECs claim and that Flood Geology just does not work as science.
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True enough! Thanks for the helpful link. Much appreciated!
[I’m still reading through that thread and it is definitely worth the read. A YEC writer @jeffb may have heard of was trying to defend the operational vs. historical science distinction and got trounced. Joshua Swamidass even pointed out that his rejection of having a way to study the past was a kind of post-modern nihilism. ]
@jeffb, have you ever noticed that virtually the ONLY people who insist on trying to discredit modern science by means of this bogus historical vs. operational science false dichotomy are Young Earth Creationists who think they MUST do so to protect their a priori cherished traditions about how Genesis should be interpreted? Isn’t it interesting that you can’t find a lot of non-YECs insisting that we “can’t know anything with any certainty about the past”? Indeed, I don’t know of any defense attorney who tries to convince a jury that “We can’t go back in time to observe the murder so this DNA evidence, and the ballistics report, and the carpet fibers linked to my client are of no value. They are based upon historical science, not trustable operational science!”
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A relevant fact is that train tracks have maximum curvatures.
This is because too rapid a change in direction will tend to derail the train.
Some might draw analogies from this latter fact.
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This operation vs historical debate is a waste of time. Especially when I would have thought that the “science-denialism’ concept related to medicine research, and climate change is more important (apparently important enough to elicit “great societal harm”). If it really was more important, you would have appreciated the distinction. I could elaborate…but I’m done with this topic.
In fact there are other things I’m done with here. Allen, I’m wanting to shift my emphasis in this thread, more towards the listeners. If you’re interested in more details of why I say that, I’d rather share them via PM.
And the “listeners” I’m referring to are first, the bible-believing Christians who are undecided on the age of the earth issue. That’s my focus here. I was there at one point. I know the struggle. It could be more challenging if you spend a good portion of your time in this forum. But…that can also make it more rewarding! It’s good to be challenged (and this is certainly the place for it!).
Also second, I’ll refer to fellow YECs here occasionally. For example when I see things like this:
I’d be willing to bet like me you (YECS) find comments like this sometime amusing, and even encouraging. It tells me that there are people here who don’t really get the YEC worldview. After years of research, I find belief in the young earth the most satisfying combination of first-and-foremost scripture, and second science. Scripture is my top priority. But also, my father was a science teacher when I was young, and he passed along to me his love for science. There’s a whole lot to unpack behind this following statement (and perhaps I’ll eventually get to it), but I’ve finally reached a point to where I’ve realized that I have a worldview that makes the scripture/science combination more satisfying than the others. It’s a great place to be when one does have such an “appreciate for science.” And that is why when I read “absolutely zero appreciation for science” by people who speak negatively about YEC in this forum, it encourages me because I realize just how little people know about it. BTW, that was not meant to sound arrogant!! because it took ME a long time to get to that point. So I’m not surprised when others don’t understand that sentiment.
Ok, that turned out longer than planned. But bottom line, fellow YECs, you can actually be encouraged, not discouraged when you read statements like that. I always am.
Given that @jeffb has claimed the Southern African Plateau as a “better” example of Neller’s ‘plateau’ claims, and Neller himself, in the first video Jeff posted, briefly alludes to Africa’s extensive plateaus, I thought it might be useful to see what the scientific literature has to say on the subject.
A quick Google Scholar search turned up three, reasonably-widely cited, articles that appear to be relevant:
Abstract
We present new sedimentary flux data confirming that a large pulse of erosion affected the Southern African Plateau in the Late Cretaceous and is likely to be related to a major uplift episode of the plateau. This short phase of erosion (i.e., less than 30 Myr in duration) has commonly been difficult to reconcile with a mantle origin for the plateau anomalous uplift: given its size, the rise of the African superplume is likely to have lasted much longer. Here we demonstrate by using a simple model for fluvial erosion that tilting of the continent as it rides over a wide dynamic topography high cannot only cause rapid uplift of the plateau but also trigger continent-wide drainage reorganization, leading to substantial denudation in a relatively short amount of time. The amplitude and short duration of the sedimentary pulse are best reproduced by assuming a strong erodibility contrast between the Karoo sedimentary and volcanic rocks and the underlying basement. We also present a new compilation of paleoclimate indicators that shows a transition from arid to very humid conditions approximately at the onset of the documented erosional pulse, suggesting that climate may have also played a role in triggering the denudation. The diachronism of the sedimentary flux between the eastern and western margins of the plateau and the temporal and geographic coincidence between the uplift and kimberlite eruptions are, however, better explained by our tilt hypothesis driven by the migration of the continent over a fixed source of mantle upwelling.
Abstract
[1] We investigate under what conditions the present-day long wavelength anomalous elevation (∼500 m) of the southern African Plateau can be attributed to Mesozoic plume events. The anomalous, long wavelength topography of the southern African Plateau cannot be easily explained by recent heating of the upper mantle, as opposed to other areas of the African Superswell, and geomorphological studies provide few hard constraints on the timing of the uplift. A Mesozoic origin for the plateau uplift is attractive in that southern Africa experienced several large magmatic events in the Mesozoic. We formulate numerical and scaling models to investigate if plume material ponded beneath cratonic lithosphere in the Mesozoic could produce 500 m of present-day elevation. We find that starting plume heads are ineffective at producing much long lasting uplift because the material spreads into a thin layer, tens of km thick. The ponded plume material also suppresses secondary convection by having a stable boundary at its base. Over time, heat continues to flow out of the top of the lithosphere, and a net imbalance of heat flow in the lithosphere develops, resulting in subsidence. Even after the plume material has cooled to the temperature of the mantle adiabat, secondary convection supplies less heat to the lithosphere than is lost upward by conduction. The cratonic lithosphere returns to its original thermal structure on a timescale of less than 200 m.y. Even two mantle starting plume heads, one at the time of Karoo volcanism (ca.183 Ma) and the other at the time of kimberlite eruption (ca. 80–90 Ma) in our models, cannot produce much (<200 m) of the present-day anomalous elevation. However, significant uplift can be generated by plume tails, provided they linger beneath the lithosphere for ∼25–30 m.y., and if the uplift effects of Mesozoic plume heads and tails are considered together, then it is possible to account for ∼500 m of present-day elevation. Consequently, a Mesozoic plume model for plateau uplift in southern Africa appears to be a viable model, if plume tails delivered heat to the southern African lithosphere over a period of 25 m.y. or more.
Abstract
The timing and causes of the >1.0 km elevation gain of the southern African Plateau since Paleozoic time are widely debated. We report the first apatite and titanite (U-Th)/He thermochronometry data for southern Africa to resolve the unroofing history across a classic portion of the major escarpment that encircles the plateau. The study area encompasses ∼1500 m of relief within Archean basement of the Barberton Greenstone Belt region of the eastern Kaapvaal craton. Titanite dates are Neoproterozoic. Apatite dates are Cretaceous, with most results clustering at ca. 100 Ma. Thermal history simulations confirm Mesozoic heating followed by accelerated cooling in mid- to Late Cretaceous time. The lower temperature sensitivity of the apatite (U-Th)/He method relative to previous thermochronometry in southern Africa allows tighter constraints on the Cenozoic thermal history than past work. The data limit Cenozoic temperatures east of the escarpment to ≤35 °C, and appear best explained by temperatures within a few degrees of the modern surface temperature. These results restrict Cenozoic unroofing to less than ∼850 m, and permit negligible erosion since the Cretaceous. If substantial uplift of the southern African Plateau occurred in the Cenozoic as advocated by some workers, then it was not responsible for the majority of post-Paleozoic unroofing across the eastern escarpment. Significant Mesozoic unroofing is coincident with large igneous province activity, kimberlite magmatism, and continental rifting within and along the margins of southern Africa, compatible with a phase of plateau elevation gain due to mantle buoyancy sources associated with these events.
These papers appear to offer a far more detailed treatment of the geology of this plateau, and present it as far more complex, than Neller’s simplistic treatment in the videos. Although I am not a geologist, even my layman’s reading of them would suggest that they present the geological issues with this plateau raises as radically different from what Neller claims.
A brief search could find no publications by Neller on the subject of the Southern African Plateau – or on any plateau.
Perhaps if you provide some evidence for a young earth they would cease to be undecided.
I suspect everyone here understands the YEC worldview which is, as you admit, that scripture overrules science.
If the YEC worldview matched reality, scripture and science would support each other, and there’d be no need to prioritise one over the other. That you have to choose between them should count against the YEC worldview.
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