"Fatal Flaws of Flood Geology:" Old Red Sandstone -- the sheer madness of fantasy over fact

I found this article by a Chris Weber at a site called the National Center for Science Education, written in 1980 but I assume still relevant. He has collected some of what he considers to be the most unanswerable scientific claims that contradict the Flood. I want to put my mind to these as I get the time.

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Flood Geology

Flood Geology believes that most of the layers of rocks we see are a result of Noah's flood.

The Fatal Flaws of Flood Geology.

Flood Geology is impossible because of:

Desert Deposits
Fossil Forests
Earth's Crust
Coral Reefs
Evaporites & Shales
Fossil Species (not mixed)

He starts with fossil desert deposits:

Desert Deposits

You don't need a Ph.D. in geology to know that desert dunes and other desert deposits do not form under roaring flood waters. These require not only time, but also dry land. The Flood of Noah supplies neither.

Uh huh, but nobody SAYS anything "formed" under the Flood except the deposition of the sediments that were dissolved by the flood waters and redeposited, along with a plethora of living things that the Flood was intended to destroy. If you're going to refute the Flood it would be nice if you'd get a reasonable idea of what such a flood would have done. It could MOVE things of course, including all the sand from dunes and other desert deposits.

The Old Red Sandstone, which looks for all the world like a collection of fossilized desert dunes, was formed in Devonian times. It has outcrops extending from the British Isles to Poland and Russia's White Sea, and from Germany to Norway (Gilluly, Waters, and Woodford, 1968). Outcrops have even been found in Greenland and North America. In Devonian times, before North America and Europe drifted apart, these dunes covered an entire semi-arid continent.

Must object here that the Old Red Sandstone does not in the slightest "look for all the world like a collection of fossilized sand dunes." This is geojargontalk of some sort. Go look at pictures of the Old Red Sandstone. No dunes there. It's a huge expanse of red ROCK for pete's sake. He has certainly NOT seen "an entire semi-arid continent." That is the conventional geological INTERPRETATION. As usual we're being fed an interpretation and not the evidence itself, not facts from which we could draw our own conclusions.

I can only suppose that he means that the sand of which the sandstone is composed shows characteristics of sand normally found in "desert dunes and other desert deposits" but this is what they should SAY. Their fanciful landscapes are just that: fanciful. The Flood most likely simply transported a lot of sand with the characteristics he attributes to desert dunes and dumped it in this place. Perhaps it DID pick up sand from desert dunes somewhere. But landscapes on the surface of this earth do NOT simply get covered over with one kind of sediment full of dead things that turns to rock, nice straight horizontal rock too. Doesn't happen. This is ridiculous.

He goes on:

Several lines of evidence derived from this great geologic formation create difficulties for the flood geology model. For instance, the interfingering of these sandstones with marine sediments shows that the shoreline of this continent advanced and retreated several times. Thus the desert rocks are entangled with rocks that the flood geology model says were formed within the one-year-long flood.

Again, the problem with this sort of presentation is that we are given no way of picturing what he is talking about. As above where he says the red sandstone "looks for all the world like fossilized desert dunes" we have to say "Huh?" We have to surmise he's NOT talking about its "looking" a certain way to the naked eye but only about the interpretation that comes to mind for the educated investigator of the contents of the rock. But this becomes mystification for the non-geologist reading this stuff.

What does this interfingering look like? It doesn't sound to me like something that would pose a problem for a Flood interpretation because one would expect that different sediments would be "interfingered" at various places if I understand what he means by this. He quite blandly states that this interfingering "shows that the shoreline of this continent advanced and retreated several times," apparently unaware that this is nothing but the interpretive party line and begs the question. A Floodist needs to know more about the actual phenomena, not merely how geologists interpret it.

Also, redbeds, consisting partly of rust formed above sea level, are also found in this formation. These would not have been formed in any catastrophic flood.

Um, how about after the Flood laid it all down? As I've pointed out before, the idea that anything "formed" in the Flood is a little misleading. Sure, the claim is that the strata were formed by the Flood as it carried the sediments and deposited them with their cargo of dead things, but all the Flood DID was move things around.

The Old Red Sandstones also contain typical playas, complete with their characteristic cubic salt crystal deposits.

Oh please. This is a huge slab of red ROCK you are seeing these "playas" in. Get real. Describe for us exactly what on earth you mean by such a statement because just as you are not seeing desert dunes in that red rock you are also not seeing playas. You must be seeing something when you dig into the rock that is normally associated with playas and this is what you must describe if you really want to communicate anything useful.

These are desert salt-pan deposits formed after the rainy-season lakes evaporate. Today, in the Mojave Desert, playas can become lakes for a couple of weeks, only to dry out again, leaving a crust of salt deposits like those found in the Red Sandstone.

Aargh just more mystification. So what ARE you seeing? You've found some salt in the rock? In what form? How much of it? Show it to us. Explain how you get from whatever bits and pieces you've dug out of that rock to a "desert salt-pan deposit." Also, if the ingredients are specifically indicative of such an environment, what's wrong with the likely explanation that the contents of this red rock were transported from a site with such characteristics and dumped all together in the strata where it lithified under pressure from similarly transported sediments above?

Although a few freshwater ponds did exist on this ancient semi-arid continent, they dried up from time to time.

This is what is laughably called "science," a fantastic scenario they've built from something they found in this rock that he doesn't bother to describe. All we get is the scenario, we don't get the facts from which to draw our own conclusions. And he calls this exercise in imaginative cobweb-spinning FATAL FLAWS OF FLOOD GEOLOGY????

So, we find fossil mud cracks in the shales that came from the dried-up pond bottoms, and we find fossil lungfish, a type of fish that can survive drought by building a mud cocoon in the pond bottom and breathing air. Hundreds of square miles of fossil sand dunes in these deposits contain cross-bedding and sand-blasted pebbles (ventifacts) of the sort found in modern desert sand dunes, and in no other kind of modern sediment. These different independent lines of evidence converge to show that the Old Red Sandstones almost certainly formed over thousands of years in a dry climate, not in any kind of flood catastrophe.

Oh balderdash! So some sand from an area of already-formed dunes was transported by the Flood. If you aren't going to give us the facts how am I to know what you mean by any of this? I have to guess. My guess is probably right but it's still a guess and I shouldn't have to guess. Your fanciful notion about the supposed previous landscape on this very spot does not convince me. Landscapes do not turn into slabs of rock over time. Except in the imagination of geologists for some reason.

This is just going on and on of course and my answers are just going on and on in the same way. But right now I'm pausing this post, intending to come back to it later, and of course get to his other supposed "fatal flaws," oh groan.

The Grand Canyon contains fossil desert dunes and other sediments that to all appearances were deposited on dry land.

The Grand Canyon does not and cannot possibly "contain" fossil desert dunes. When you say "sediments that ... were deposited on dry land" no problem. I would assume that MOST of the sediments that ended up in the strata were ORIGINALLY part of the pre-Flood DRY land mass.

The Permian Coconino Sandstones in the upper walls of the Grand Canyon have the frosted well-sorted wellrounded sand grains found only in land-deposited sand dunes (Shelton, 1966).

Fine, now you have stopped that idiotic talk about sand dunes being seen or contained in rock and are referring to GRAINS. Fine. That permits me to opine that the grains were TRANSPORTED BY THE FLOOD rather than being formed in place. Which is really really an idiotic idea when you try to think about those flat horizontal slabs of rock as if they were once landscapes on the surface of the earth exactly where they sit. As if sand dunes just somehow get their hilly character flattened down and compressed into rock over time? How could that happen? Any sediment being deposited on top of them would have to come from a higher elevation than the highest part of the dunes. But dunes are usually the highest point in the area. And if some sediment did somehow get deposited on or over them they'd conform to the hilly shape of the dunes, they wouldn't just lie flat. What are you people thinking anyway? Are you thinking at all? This landscape idea is so absurd it's hard to believe anyone ever entertained it for a second.

Furthermore, many of the laminae of the cross-bedding contain fossil footprints that could only have come from reptiles or other quadrupeds climbing up the face of a slightly damp sand dune in the open air. (Those climbing down the slopes left no tracks because they simply slid.) ICR geologist Dr. Steve Austin has taught the theory that amphibians resting between underwater dunes made the tracks. His theory is very interesting, but rather implausible since the Flood must have been violently dumping several meters' worth of sediment per day.

Wouldn't have to be violent, just soon enough after the footprints were made to fill them in to preserve them. And it does suggest that there was some time lapse between the deposition of one layer of sediments and another during the Flood, in order for animals to run across them. But WHY DUNES AT ALL? There is no need to imagine anything shaped like dunes DURING OR AFTER THE FLOOD having anything to do with the formation of the strata. Whatever dunes had existed before the Flood would have long since been saturated and carried away.

The Canyon's Supai and Hermit Shales, found today beneath the Coconino Sandstones, look exactly like river deltas that formed above sea level (Shelton, 1966).

Well here's another one of those mystifications, an interpretation instead of fact, that can only perplex somebody looking at the walls of the Grand Canyon and seeing nothing but layers of stone, no river deltas. Exactly where and exactly how do these rocks look like river deltas? Puhleeze, show us so we can see them too.

Back in Permian times,

QUESTION BEGGING!! Give us the phenomena, the simple facts, not the interpretation. You mean ON THE SURFACE OF A PARTICULAR ROCK LAYER? What exactly do you mean?

many quadrupeds (probably reptiles) left their footprints in the soft delta mud. As the mud baked hard in the sun, it formed cracks. The hardness of the baked mud preserved the footprints and mudcracks until the flooded rivers of the rainy season buried them in fresh mud. These fossil prints and mudcracks are found today, as well as iron oxides that form in the open air, showing that these shales formed above sea level.

Why is it we get these fanciful SCENARIOS instead of a simple description of the bald facts at the site in question?? It is possible that the cracks in the mud occurred even after all the strata were laid down as the rocks dried. Possible, I say. WHERE is this iron oxide? SHOW it to us. How do you know it wasn't either carried there on the flood or formed there as the rocks dried?

The pure quarz Navajo Sandstones of Triassic and Jurassic times

Quartz Sandstones will do just fine descriptively, Triassic and Jurassic are meaningless impositions of interpretation over the facts, sheer mystification.

in Zion National Park, Utah, also look exactly like desert sand dunes (Gilluly, Waters, and Woodford, 1968).

No they do not look exactly like dunes. They look like ROCKS.

They contain extensive cross bedding of the type found in sand dunes, and the frosted sand grains and sand-blasted pebbles found only in dunes formed on the land.

See all my reasoning above. This is absurd.

Certain formations in western Wyoming look exactly like deserts that bordered a fitfully receding sea in Carboniferous times (Houlik, 1973).

"Look exactly like??" Geology destroys language and plays with minds, that's all I can say. No, they look like ROCKS and you are imposing your interpretation on them based on some characteristics of their contents. ANY SCIENCE THAT IS REALLY A SCIENCE SHOULD STRICTLY GIVE FACTS.

THIS IS CRAZY.

In particular, the Mississippian Lodgepole Formation contains the type of carbonate deposits and evaporites found forming in tidal flats today. The Amsden formation consists of sabkhas and desert dunes. Sabkhas are a kind of hardpan that forms in deserts after hard water seeps up through the ground by capillary action and evaporates leaving nodules of calcite, andhydrite, and other salts. They are seen forming extensively in Saudi Arabia today. Unless Houlik has grossly erred, these sabkhas, casts of evaporite crystals, and fossil dunes show that these Carboniferous deposits formed in a desert, not a flood.

Again, it's hard to know what is being talked about here because precious little actual fact, in fact NONE, is given about how this formation "contains" these carbonate deposits and evaporites, that is, what this looks like in the rock itself. What does a carbonite deposit look like IN THE ROCK? Is it encased solidly within the rock, is it scattered throughout the rock, is it in any relation to other parts of the rock that cause it to imitate this assumed former landscape? Does it occur on the surfaces or is there space within the rock where it occurs?

Knowing these things and no doubt many other facts that I'm unable to think of could tell me whether the substances in question could have been transported with the other sediments in the Flood, or perhaps developed in the rock or on the rock after it was deposited and so on and so forth.

If all I'm given is this fanciful SCENARIO that ASSUMES their having been developed on the spot I am deprived of any means of thinking about the phenomena themselves. Sometimes it seems this is the objective of such descriptions, but probably it's just that the interpreters are so enamored of and so believing of their interpretation it doesn't occur to them that it IS an interpretation and that the actual facts or phenomena are required of them. Some science!

Several times at the end of the Miocene epoch (six to eight million years ago), the Mediterranean Sea dried up, leaving extensive desert deposits on the sea bottom (Hsu, 1972).

See now, this too is just an interpretation, but an interpretation of what facts is withheld from us. What are the characteristics of the rock that stands for "the Miocene epoch" that led to the interpretation of "several times" of drying up of the Mediterranean, and how do they determine the "sea bottom" from this rock and how "desert deposits" were left on it many times, from just looking at the rock, which is apparently all they are doing! This is mystification or obscurantism to the max, this is not science!

The Straits of Gibraltar opened and closed, causing these complex changes, as the Glomar Challenger discovered in 1970 by using echo soundings and deep-sea core samples. Each time the Mediterranean slowly dried up, first calcite precipitated around the rim of the basin of the Balearic abyssal plain, then anhydrites and gypsum further in, and finally rock salt in the center at the deepest point. This is just the order that these salts would precipitate if you set out a large saucer of sea water to dry. Successive dryings of the Mediterranean produced hundreds of meters of evaporites. Not only did evaporites form, but also land deposits like sun-baked mud cracks, wind-blown sand, and sabkha anhydrite nodules. Since algae can only grow where sunlight reaches, the stromatolites (a common algae deposit) found in deep sea core samples show that the Mediterranean sea floor, now two miles deep, was once dry land. The Rhone and Nile rivers cut their canyons thousands of feet below current sea level to feed the desiccated Mediterranean basin. Desert-style alluvial fans accumulated from debris washed by cloudbursts down the slopes of Sardinia; now these deposits lie far under the water. After the Mediterranean refilled with water for the last time, at the beginning of the Pliocene, sediments began to accumulate over the evaporites; the weight of these sediments forced evaporites up through weak spots in the sediments to form salt domes. Some of these salt domes are a few miles across, and hundreds to thousands of feet high. Even though such structures may not be forming today, a dried-up Mediterranean could have easily formed them, whereas flood geology is hard pressed to account for such things.

Zowie wowie, this is one long paragraph of nothing but mental castle-building without a SINGLE FACT for a person reading it to hold onto. WHERE ARE YOU GETTING ALL THIS STUFF? WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS? ARE YOU LOOKING AT ROCKS? WHAT ARE YOU SEEING IN THE ROCKS? I'm supposed to take this fantastic imaginative scenario as refutation of the Flood? You must be joking! WHAT PLANET DO YOU GUYS LIVE ON ANYWAY?

This kind of "science" justifies the title of my blog perfectly, it is all fantasy being presented as if it were science, speaking of their fantasy of the past as if it were known fact! Biological evolutionism does this and so does geological old-earthism. These guys should get out of the field and write for Hollywood.

http://www.bibleandscience.com/science/ageofearth.htm

http://ncse.com/cej/1/1/fatal-flaws-flood-geology