Evolutionist duplicity, disingenuousness, evasion as usual.

Evolutionists are so often maddeningly duplicitous. The "debate" is laughable enough without such sleazy stuff. Here's our friend Dr A pretending the perfectly apt term "polystrate" has something wrong with it just because creationists invented it:

Another poster says: The only sites that seem to mention polystrate fossils are creationist sites.

Dr. A says: That's 'cos polystrate is a word creationists made up, not a term in real geology.

Well, it's obviously an accurate term for an object that penetrates vertically through two or more rock layers, so geologists would do well to adopt it, and if they weren't such hidebound stuffy evolutionists they probably would.

And another evolutionist has this to say about that:

I also think that they are the only people who claim that "geologists say that these sediments were deposited over millions of years".

I am a geologist and I don't.

Uh huh, but how disingenuous of you. Two peas in a pod you and Dr. A there.

Anyway.

Any normal person happening upon the many illustrations of the rock strata all neatly labelled ACCORDING TO WHAT GEOLOGISTS CALL TIME PERIODS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS -- dramatic case in point any diagram of the strata in the Grand Canyon -- ought to be treated with RESPECT for drawing the NATURAL INFERENCE that deposition must have occurred over those millions of years. Not to give that much basic respect is just a sign of the evolutionists lack of commitment to science and interest only in falsely calling creationists stupid.

HOWEVER, IF in the case of the polystrate trees you have SOME GOOD REASON to see the strata there laid down rapidly, THEN NOBODY AS YET HAS GIVEN THAT GOOD REASON BUT SIMPLY RESORTS TO NAMECALLING AND RANK-PULLING. Blech. AND, besides giving your reasons IN THAT PARTICULAR CASE for determining rapid deposition AND DISTINGUISHING THAT PARTICULAR case from other cases where the deposition is perhaps considered to be much slower, YOU ALSO MUST EXPLAIN how it is that two or more layers of rock, including a layer of coal, NORMALLY IDENTIFIED AS AGES OF MILLIONS OF YEARS, in this particular case are not to be so designated. BECAUSE: Even if the lower layer deposited rapidly, if it represents millions of years then the layer above it didn't BEGIN to deposit for those millions of years and that means the GEOLOGIC COLUMN ALL SO NEATLY LAID OUT IN TERMS OF SUCH MILLIONS OF YEARS PER SLAB OF ROCK IS BOGUS.

Oh but I don't expect an explanation from you. You like to posture and ridicule rather than make cogent points about such things, especially something that ought to be treated on the face of it as a SCIENTIFIC point for creationism.

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Next day: So some explanations are now being offered but first it's interesting to see that Pressie, the second evolutionist quoted above, really doesn't understand the creationist argument at all. I wonder how many evolutionists that's true of, because for all their arrogant sound of certainty they act as if they haven't a clue:

Sorry to interfere, but I’ve never understood creationist “arguments” on the so-called “polystrate” fossils. Maybe Just Being Real could enlighten me on this.

Just Being Real writes:

Each layer is usually said to be several million years old.

If the dating methods indicate that a “layer” is millions of years old, then that “layer” is millions of years old.

Just Being Real writes:

But this conclusion falls apart by the hundreds of polystrate fossils (like vertically fossilized trees) which pierce through the various layers. (Sometimes several layers)

This is the piece of creationist “argument” I really don’t understand. Why couldn’t a “layer” be deposited in a few days or weeks or years and is millions of years old now? Please Just Being Real, explain it to me.

He really DOESN'T get it. Amazing.

There is more than one layer, EACH separately designated by current Geology an era of time, EACH separately dated to some millions of years, the higher layer defined to be that many millions of years more recent than the lower. Any object that penetrates through BOTH layers, supposedly laid down so many millions of years apart from each other, would not have survived the wait for the upper layer to get laid down.

Pressie continues:

Just being real, I looked at your source here. Your source claims, in the second paragraph:

AIG writes:

Some geologists have claimed that even if all the vegetation on earth was suddenly converted to coal this would make a coal deposit only 1-3% of the known coal reserves on earth.

I see that there’s no reference to these “some geologists”. Do you have any reference, or is this a straw man being set up?

AIG writes:

Hence at least 33 Noah’s Floods are needed, staggered in time, to generate our known coal beds. Therefore a single Noah’s Flood cannot be the cause of coal formation.

I doubt that any scientist would even look into Noah’s flood, as there’s absolutely no empirical, objective evidence for it. The only people who would do this, would be Christian-creationists who abandoned the scientific method, but pretend to do science by using sciency-sounding terms.

Oh, and by the way, I see that your source didn’t even discuss the geology of coal deposits in any form in his religious article. He didn’t even mention the word “layers” (I might be mistaken, could you direct me to the word “layer” in that article?).

The word “layer” is a very bad layman’s term for some strata, anyway. How do you get to the words “strata layers” from that article? How does coal relate to "most" strata layers? In my country we have hundreds of thousands of strata, just in the coal-bearing sequences, with only very thin zones of coal-bearing strata dispersed amongs them.

Oh dear, these scientists can be so stuffy about their jargon. A layer IS a stratum. The one is English, the other is Latin.

The point, Dear Pressie, is in the AGES assigned to the strata. In many cases only one kind of rock is designated as a particular time period, in others there may be many layers within a time period. There can be many thin layers of coal interspersed between many kinds of sedimentary rock all designated as one time period. You fail to indicate what time period has been assigned to the strata in question in your country. The thickness or thinness of the layer is not important to the point being made. The question is whether there is a line of demarcation that separates one age or time period from another, and if an organic object is found to have penetrated through both "time periods" or more than two, it casts serious doubt on the very system of dating itself. That is, the polystrate fossils show that these are NOT time periods at all, but sedimentary layers all deposited within a brief period of one another. And they ARE rightly called layers, all of them. They are all found to have been laid down horizontally originally, sedimentary layers and coal layers both.

And now in the next post here comes RAZD to try to clear up Pressie's problem:

Hi Pressie

Sorry to interfere, but I’ve never understood creationist “arguments” on the so-called “polystrate” fossils. Maybe Just Being Real could enlighten me on this.

Message 189: I also think that they are the only people who claim that "geologists say that these sediments were deposited over millions of years".
I am a geologist and I don't.

Nice to see another geologist on the forum.

In essence what they are doing is (a) finding fossils that extend through several layers of deposition, and (b) claiming that each layer was formed "over millions of years" thus creating an apparent paradox for the preservation of the fossil.

Excuse me, but creationists are not "claiming" anything that has not first been stated by establishment Geology. If we understand FROM GEOLOGY that a particular layer or sequence of layers is designated by a particular time period name (say "Mississippian") and identified as having persisted for such and such millions of years, and identified as well by its specific fossil contents, which are said to have lived in that particular "era" or time period, which is what Geology says about the strata everywhere you look, we draw the LOGICAL CONCLUSION that any fossil found out of its particular time period calls in question the whole scheme of attributing time periods to the rocks at all. This is one of those phenomena that OUGHT to falsify the whole scheme, but evolutionists can always make up SOMETHING to rationalize it away.

The problem is that (b) hasn't been shown to apply to the cases that involve (a), AND there are other explanations for preserved fossils extending through many layers of sediment.

Right. When you find something that doesn't fit the scheme, simply declare that something to be an exception to the rule. But since ALL the other discussions of the strata assign time periods to them, paste the Geologic Timetable over them, it is rank duplicity to pretend that those that most clearly call the whole system into question are *really* outside that system.

You owe an explanation for this phenomenon and you are not giving one. In fact you owe EVIDENCE that anything of this sort occurred.

A fossil specimen can be buried by soft materials\sediments during the fossilization process, and this softer material can subsequently be eroded away before the next layer of sediment is deposited -- creationists often ignore (or are ignorant of) erosion as part of the process.

No, the fact is that there is not one SHRED OF EVIDENCE for the periods of erosion claimed by mainstream geology. ALL the strata, including all the coal bearing strata, sit flat one on top of another everywhere you look at strata, there is absolutely NOTHING between the strata to indicate erosion beyond the minuscule disturbance caused by runoff between the layers. In fact I find it so absurd that geologists make such a claim in the face of the glaring evidence against it you needn't ask me again why I don't "respect" science -- look no further.

There are preserved trees in Michigan that are covered by sand dunes and periodically uncovered and recovered. They are still standing upright.

What is your evidence for this? The pictures at the link prove nothing about anything.

http://michpics.wordpress.com/...-forest-sleeping-bear-point Several layers of sediment have and can continue to form around these trees, and if buried by subsequent processes, this can lead to the formation of polystrate fossils in these cases.

SUCH a handy little just-so story. Again, where is your evidence? Aren't you scientists supposed to be enamored of evidence? According to yourselves anyway. In reality you are really enamored of your own imagination.

Alternatively, a fossil specimen can be deposited on the bottom of an anaerobic pond or streambed and become mummified before it is fossilized, this then keeps the specimen intact as various layers of fine sediment are deposited in several layers around it. The fossils of fish in the green river varves show the characteristics of fossilized mummies with subsequent sedimentary deposits around them.See http://www2.asa3.org/archive/asa/199801/0011.html for and ex-YEC article on the Green River varves.

We aren't talking about evolutionist fantasies about the Green River here. Give some evidence for your claim that the polystrate trees were first fossilized in a depth of sediment that covered them completely and then eroded away before the next layer got deposited.

But there is no end to the scenarios you can imagine to rationalize your belief in evolution. It's all one huge edifice of fantasy without a shred of evidence. Utterly amazing.

But I DO note that RAZD uses the word "layer" Pressie, so get off your high horse in criticizing creationists for it.

Polystrate Tree Fossils

So I've been taking some side trips into other than my usual / favorite issues, and ran across the "polystrate trees." These are trees that have been fossilized in an upright position penetrating through MANY layers of sedimentary rock, or in terms of geological time, through millions upon millions of years, which of course is impossible. Yet this common creationist argument is treated by evolutionists as merely one of countless PRATTs, or "points refuted a thousand times." Of course they haven't refuted most of them, they are simply claiming they have. In the case of polystrate trees, as usual they act as if they've definitively answered the creationist argument but they've really merely sidestepped it.

As I discovered when I did a little reading on it:

At Wikipedia I found this completely evasive remark:

Geologists see no need to invoke a global flood to explain upright fossils. This position of geologists is supported by numerous examples, which have been found at numerous locations, of upright trees completely buried within either late Holocene or historic sediments. These buried upright trees demonstrate that conventional geologic processes are capable of burying and preserving trees in an upright position such that in time, they will become fossilized

Creationists certainly do argue for the Flood against the geologic time table of millions of years per flat horizontal slab of sedimentary rock, but referring to the Flood as if that were the only creationist argument about the significance of polystrate tree fossils completely evades the point.
The problem with polystrate trees is that given the enormous time spans assumed by current geology no tree could remain intact while the sediments were depositing, so as to appear whole after the millions of years it supposedly takes for them to deposit. But they do appear whole. Go look at the photos at the links. Their wholeness through what are supposed to be millions of years proves that the assumption of millions of years for sedimentation to occur is false.

[Later: It needs to be said in here that they claim that RAPID DEPOSITION occurred in the case of the polystrate trees. But rapid deposition of more than one layer normally identified as a time period of millions of years simply eliminates those millions of years altogether -- but it certainly fits the Flood, which somehow they manage not to notice. More on this farther down the post].

And yes, the far better explanation IS the worldwide Flood which would have rapidly buried them in a sequence of sediments in very short order, which is the necessary condition for fossilization of a whole upright tree buried in many layers of sediment.

Polystrate tree fossils DISPROVE THE TIME SCALE OF CONVENTIONAL GEOLOGY. This is "just another PRATT" only in the dreams of evolutionists.

I then went to the article on the subject at Talk Origins, probably the most famous website on the creation-evolution debate on the web, and found them being evasive in a more convoluted way (anything to mystify the reader I guess).

I next found a creationist discussing the Talk Origins article, which you can find at his site. Here he's elaborating the point I just made above:

...This argument craftily avoids the issues while claiming to explain them. The issues in question are:

1) How did the tree survive during multiple catastrophes without rotting or being knocked down?

2) How can anyone reasonably believe that a tree could stand for the length of time it takes to build up the additional layers?

3) How can a tree representing a short life span (on evolution’s geological time scale) stand erect through geological layers representing millions and often hundreds of millions of years?

This is not a problem for evolution? Regardless of how you slice it, the tree had to stand erect without rotting, falling or being knocked down for millions of years. The layers of strata have fossils representing different time periods according to the evolution model. It DOES pose a huge problem for evolution. If the tree was buried rapidly as Dawson hints toward and as creationists have said all along, evolution is out the window. If all layers were deposited together, then there is no such thing as millions of years. That would mean that all fossils were laid at the same time.

...If the trees were not covered rapidly, then there is no explanation as to how a tree could have embedded itself into layers of strata that accumulated over millions of years. The article does not attempt to answer any of these questions. Yet it claims (as all evolutionists do) to have the answers.

This writer also makes the intelligent point, which I unfortunately don't let myself believe sufficiently, that you cannot win the argument with an evolutionist. He won't listen to your argument for starters, he will simply bury you in his claims for "evidence" for evolution which he accuses the creationist of failing to appreciate and refusing to learn about, and aggressively drowns out all contrary ideas with as much abusive insulting language as he can muster.

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Here's DWise on this subject a couple years ago at EvC:

But even more telling was what that article said about rates of depositation. While Steve Austin was being paid by the ICR to get a post-graduate degree in geology (so that they could finally claim to have a degreed geologist on staff) he would write creationist articles for them using a pseudonym, "Stuart Nevins". As Stuart Nevins, he wrote an article in which he claimed that geologists believed that strata formed at a completely gradual and constant rate, even though even undergraduate geology students know full well that that is a complete and utter lie -- and Austin was writing that while he was a graduate student. He had to know better and yet he still repeated that lie!

Well, had Austin actually read that article (I learned to not make such an assumption about creationists with the ICR's NASA document moon-dust debacle), he would have learned what he should have learned years ago in his undergraduate classes: geologists can distinguish between layers formed by rapid depositation and layers formed by slow depositation. It's described in Broadhurst's article. Those "polystrate" tree stumps were buried in layers formed by rapid depositation.

Typical snide suspicious accusatory anti-creationist post from someone who hasn't the grace to give the benefit of the doubt on any point whatever, is willing to utterly trash anyone he disagrees with.

TELL US, MR. WISEACRE, HOW geologists distinguish between layers formed by rapid deposition and those formed by slow deposition. The question is HOW. Give us the "science" involved. You can't get away with a flat assertion and call it science. What exactly is it that tells them the difference? And give us all the independent tests that verify it too.

HOWEVER, since you admit that they were buried in rapidly deposited layers, THEN tell us how we are to distinguish the rock strata built up in such a fashion from those built up more slowly. Must be pretty subtle differences, Mr. Wise, of gossamer fine subtlety I suspect, mystifyingly fine just to stand back and look at a stack of strata and wonder which might have been which. Oh the ones with the polystrate trees in them, THOSE were rapidly deposited. Right.

HOWEVER AGAIN, we're talking about MANY LAYERS OF STRATA THAT ARE NORMALLY IDENTIFIED BY GEOLOGISTS AS ENORMOUSLY LONG TIME PERIODS. The "Carboniferous," the "Holocene" are specifically mentioned in connection with polystrate trees. Are these millions-of-years-long ages or not? Did the lower "age" deposit rapidly and then WAIT a few million years for the next "age" to start depositing, while the tree just sat there twiddling its thumbs instead of rotting away?

If you have three or four "time periods" all rapidly deposited around a tree trunk, guess what you have? You no longer have "time periods" at all, YOU HAVE THE WORLDWIDE FLOOD.

RAPID DEPOSITION IMPLIES THE WORLDWIDE FLOOD, and there is NO way they can talk their way out of the evidence of the polystrate trees against an Old Earth except of course by the usual evolutionist "scientific" methods of ridicule, accusation, snide put-downs, self-delusion and lies.