Just a little tour of evolutionist anti-Flood speculations they treat as fact

http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=652616

there's absolutely no geological evidence that water simultaneously covered all of continental Australia within the last 10 000 years. This negates the claims of a global flood within the last 10 000.

As the creationists have said on that thread there's plenty of evidence that all parts of the earth have been under water. How can you claim to know the time frame for this lack of something?

Creationist: 95% of the fossil record are marine inverbrates.

Evolutionist: That's because fossils form best in aquatic sediments, not because of any spurious flood.

OK, aquatic sediments. Just what you'd find a whole bunch of from the worldwide Flood. Amazing how they can give what is merely an alternative explanation that fits their own theory and treat it as fact in such tones of certainty and get nasty with the creationists who continue to maintain their own explanation.

In fact, it gives the lie to your flood geology; if fossils exist as a result of the great flood, we would see far more terrestrial animals in the sediments than we do. We ought to see many land-based animals mixed in with the marine. The fact that we generally see marine creatures in marine sediments and freshwater fossils in freshwater sediments ought to tell you that those sediments record a living ecosystem, that layed down its fossils over a period of years, not in a single catastrophic event.

But this is all speculation and he doesn't seem to recognize it. They have no idea what the Flood would have done, they just prefer their own scenarios.

Fossils are buried in mass sediments that sometimes cover several American states! What kind of streams are we talking about?

And fossils are buried in discrete layers that place the most ancient species at the bottom and the most recent at the top. Can you tell me how a flood would do that? Can you tell me how a flood could put all the trilobites toward the borttom of the pile, but leave all the whales close to the top?

Since it's all speculation you can dream up whatever you like. There is no evidence to prove you wrong. Or right. The very idea of a "most ancient" species is a product of theory, pure conjecture. On the Flood model all the fossils are from the same time period, none is more ancient than another. Why whales near the top? I don't know and neither do they.

The fossil record shows us a clear story of living things changing and diverging. It does not opresent the jumble that we might reasonably expect from a flood. That's just a fantasy.

Odd. What he "might reasonably expect" is pure conjecture his own fantasy. Again, they just make up what a Flood would and wouldn't have done to suit their own expectations. THAT's "fantasy." Sorry but since we KNOW there was a worldwide Flood some 4300 years ago, naturally we simply know your conjectures must be wrong. It may not be what you'd expect but obviously the Flood DID layer the sediments and sort the fossils.

And here comes somebody else's set of conjectures to explain away the same observation:

95% of the fossil record are marine inverbrates.

This is because land, being higher, tends to erode at the hands of the elements. The products of erosion from the land are carried by wind, rain, streams and rivers to the lowest points where they are deposited, which is usually, but not always, in quiet streams, rivers, ponds, lakes, seas and oceans.

Does this fit with the "aquatic sediments" conjecture or not? I can't tell. In fact I don't think I even know what this conjecture is trying to say. But anyway, whose conjecture shall we accept?

Simply on the face of it, the fact that 95% of the fossil record are marine invertebrates is excellent evidence for a worldwide Flood no matter how many scenarios they can conjure up to explain it away.

Fossils are buried in mass sediments that sometimes cover several American states!

You're not specific, but if you're referring to the states in the Colorado area, much of this region lay beneath a quiet sea for millions of years. It also spent some millions of years above sea level. The Grand Canyon contains a record of much of the geologic history of this region, showing when it was beneath a sea, and even when parts of it were coastal regions and how those coastal regions moved back and forth across the landscape as the region rose and fell. It also shows when an area was under a quiet sea, or was only some miles off a coast. And it shows when the region was above sea level, though these layers are more rare and typically not complete since land is often an area of net erosion.

Wonderful how they can go on and on with their completely made-up scenarios as if they were fact, all in the service of explaining away the Flood, call it all "evidence" and bully and insult the creationists who continue to see the same phenomena as better evidence for the worldwide Flood.

What kind of streams are we talking about? Sounds like a catastrophic extinction with lots of water.

Sediments would remain suspended in active flood waters. A flood would jumble everything up instead of producing a progression of gradual change

.

See it's all what WOULD have happened according to their own presuppositions. They like their scenariom, they can't prove it, but they can enforce it with ridicule and arrogant certainty.

Another offering to explain the creationist's statement:

Fossils are buried in mass sediments that sometimes cover several American states! What kind of streams are we talking about?

In answer we are now given the picture of North America's supposedly long-lived "interior seaway:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interior_Seaway

The Western Interior Seaway, also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, and the North American Inland Sea, was a huge inland sea that split the continent of North America into two halves, Laramidia and Appalachia, during most of the mid- and late-Cretaceous Period. It was 2,500 feet (760 m) deep, 600 miles (970 km) wide and over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long.

The Seaway was created as the Farallon tectonic plate subducted under the North American Plate during Cretaceous time. As plate convergence proceeded, younger and more buoyant lithosphere of the Farallon Plate started to become subducted. This caused it to subduct at a much more shallow angle, in what is known as a "flat slab". This shallowly-subducting slab exerted a traction on the base of the lithosphere, pulling it down and producing "dynamic topography" at the surface that caused the opening of the Western Interior Seaway.[1] This depression and the high eustatic sea levels existing during the Cretaceous allowed waters from the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Gulf of Mexico in the south to meet and flood the central lowlands, forming a sea that transgressed (grew) and regressed (receded) over the course of the Cretaceous.

Yes, but of course a creationist will look at that picture and see a phase of the Flood before it all drained away. And please note the only facts given here are some dimensions, but otherwise it is all interpretation and there is no evidence given for that. It's remarkable how they can talk so glibly about the unwitnessed past. All interpretation, all conjecture. Based on what? What leads them to identify it as "cretaceous" for instance? They don't say. They merely give their interpretive scenario and we're supposed to accept it uncritically. Probably the actual evidence is sound enough as description of this water formation except for the timing, but since it isn't given -- SO rare they ever give actual facts -- who can say?

One of the more spectacular dinosaur fossil finds of recent years was of a Late Cretaceous specimen of Oviraptor that was found in a sitting position directly over its nest. This find, a wonderful combination of trace fossils and a body fossil, represents one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for brooding behavior in dinosaurs. This fossil find is currently on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and was illustrated in a National Geographic article.

Nests that would have washed away in a flood.

Except that they didn't and therefore they wouldn't. And how might that have been? Probably because they were instantly buried as opposed to being subjected to rushing water. That's my reasonable guess. Well, guessing is all you do too. You guys can guess and make pontifical pronouncements about how thus and so would or wouldn't have occurred in the flood of your own imagination, and so can we and with far more justification.

Next guy wants to know why the creationist thinks the fact that 95% of the fossil record are marine inverbrates supports the great flood.

Surely under the flood scenario, in which (nearly) every living thing is killed we would expect to see a much greater proportion of other animals in the fossil record?

Just a minor quibble really given that none of the other scientific evidence supports the flood, but your use of that particular factoid piqued my interest as to your thought processes.

1) What he is calling "scientific evidence" that supposedly doesn't support the flood is what I've been showing here as nothing but their own assumptions and speculations and fanciful scenarios reified into Fact.

2) Why don't we see what you expect to see? Because we don't, that's all. I might expect to see other things that didn't happen myself, but what happened is what happened and all you or we can do is speculate about why, neither of us can prove anything definitively. It's a war of plausibilities. Too bad you guys won't acknowledge that but have to carry on as if you are in possession of Truth.

I KNOW the Flood occurred and the evidence for it out there is awfully obvious it seems to me no matter how many made-up scenarios you can invent to explain it away.

As for speculation the most obvious explanation why 95% marine fossils fits the Flood is that the Flood was the OCEANS covering the land for months on end. You know, MARINE stuff.

Why so relatively few fossilized land animals? I don't know.

I kind of think it has something to do with their having been on higher ground. Looks to me like the upper layers laid down in the Flood in the Grand Canyon area all washed away as part of the canyon-cutting event. Perhaps the land animals were exposed in the tumbling and rotted away, or got washed into the sea. Where the strata remained in place the fossils were preserved. Just my reasonable guess.

Fossils are found in sedimentary rock which is formed by flowing water ...

... with just a few exceptions, such as glacial till, aeolian sediment, volcanic ash, nearshore sediments, coal, siliceous ooze, calcareous ooze, pelagic clay, evaporites ...

Since you don't explain what you mean but require me to go look it up, forget it. Question: 1) How much of the fossil record is found in these forms of sediment? Question 2) Are they all formed in still water? Well, hey, there was no doubt plenty of that during the Flood year too.

Tell me something. It is clear that you have never studied geology. And you must know that you have never studied geology. In which case why do you not draw the obvious corrolaries that (a) you don't know anything about it and (b) you should therefore not presume to go around lecturing other people on it?

Because he has studied the Bible and that trumps Geology any day. I'm serious. He knows there was a flood and the geological evidence he IS aware of supports it: the abundance of marine fossils, in fact the abundance of fossils, period. All your theories are wholly inadequate to explain this abundance, plus the original horizontality of the sedimentary layers known as the Geo Time Scale. Your explanations are in fact idiotic to the max -- talk about ad hoc! -- while a worldwide Flood suffices quite nicely.

95% of the fossil record are marine inverbrates

.You figure that these sea-creatures drowned in a flood? Is that the usual effect floods have?

No, it's the effect a worldwide Flood would have.

Fossils are buried in mass sediments that sometimes cover several American states! What kind of streams are we talking about?

Obviously when a kind of sediment covers several American states, we're not talking about streams. We're talking either about deserts, seas, or major volcanic eruptions, depending on the type of the sediment. The Navajo sandstone, for example, extends over 400,000 square kilometers of northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. Analysis of its sedimentary structure shows that it's a former desert.

Yeah, well this is typical geological nonsense. I sometimes have a hard time believing that normally intelligent people believe this sort of thing --this sort of explanation for such a huge extent of horizontally laid down sediment, quite markedly and abruptly separated from sediments above and below it, which is simply not how anything happens in the real world especially over millions of years, but that doesn't bother you does it? It should but it doesn't.

Enough is enough. It just gets personal after this.