More on the Flood, inadequate comparisons with local floods

There have been half a dozen posts at EvC recently, mostly on the Flood, that I've wanted to respond to but haven't been able to get to them, don't know if I will yet. But here's a new one:

Portillo says: Billions of dead things, which we call fossils, laid down by water all over the world.

And Panda answers: Although true: that is far too a general statement to be useful.

The following sentence is also true:

If 1000's of small floods occurred over millions of years, what would you expect to find? Billions of dead things, which we call fossils, laid down by water all over the world. And what do we find? Billions of dead things, which we call fossils, laid down by water all over the world.

Sorry, but this sentence is NOT true. Perhaps Portillo should have been more detailed in his remark but that probably wouldn't faze the sophists at EvC either. But anyway, No, from small floods even in the millions we could NOT get the billions of dead things that we find as fossils in the worldwide strata and we certainly do not get the depth and extent and amazingly consistent appearance of the strata themselves, an appearance that suggests to anyone really thinking that they all had to have been created in ONE event, not a series of events, and not a hodgepodge of little floods over time. This is just evo sophistry run amok.

There needs to be something to separate your claim from the more mundane floods that we see regularly, all over the world.

So, although correct, you statement needs to be more specific to rule out the everyday events.

As I've stated above.

And Dr. A adds his own two cents in the next post:

[Portillo]If a flood occurred, what would you expect to find? Billions of dead things, which we call fossils, laid down by water all over the world.

[Dr. A]Why? Is mass fossilization the usual sequel in the locale of a localized non-magical flood? Please provide evidence that this is the case.

If not, then I would have no such expectation.

Interesting. He's implying a disagreement with Panda's implication that local floods COULD have produced all those fossils. He's right, they could not. Mass fossilization is NOT the usual sequel to local floods, there is no comparison, which just highlights Panda's sophistry.

But he's also committing the error of thinking the Flood of Noah can be compared to local floods. About the only effect that they can be used to demonstrate is the destructiveness of even small floods, which ought to get across that there had to be huge effects from the worldwide Flood. And there are: The entire world has a wrecked and tumble-down appearance, but also the strata and the fossils around the world testify to it to anyone with eyes to see. NOTHING could have created all that BUT the Flood of Noah.

Earlier in the same thread Dr A responds to someone's claim that the Channeled Scablands of Washington show what would happen in the Flood:

[Coyote]One example of this is the evidence left by the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington.

[Dr. A] I think I've expressed my doubts about the Channeled Scablands before, but this is a new thread, so I'll do it again.

The snag is that they were caused by the breaking of a natural dam so that a lot of pent-up water swept laterally across the landscape. Rather than by a lot of rain. Sure, it's a catastrophic flood, but is it a good model for the Flood

And in another post down a bit:

[Coyote] The massive amounts of rain would quickly seek lower levels, and we know from recent disasters how devastating that can be.

[Dr. A] Devastating, yes. Producing channeled scablands, no.

And if I'm following this correctly -- it's not as clear as it might be-- he's right, the Flood would not have created the Channeled Scablands. The Flood wouldn't carve land like that, simply destroy it, at least in the initial stages from the heavy rains -- but the Flood and ONLY the Flood could have deposited the strata -- in a later stage. As current Geology convincingly says about the Scablands, they were created by the breaking of a dam that released a massive amount of water from a standing lake. THAT kind of water flow COULD carve such channels.

However, in a sense it IS still all the Flood's doing, as a Floodist regards that enormous lake, known as Lake Missoula, to be water left after the Flood had drained away, along with other giant lakes such as Lahontan and Bonneville in the same general area. It's also seemed to me that a trigger for the breaking of the dam and the release of the water from not just Missoula but all the lakes could likely have been the tectonic forces that came into play some time after the Flood. They built the Rockies, pushed up the land, could have dumped the lakes as well. Something like that is surely what carved the Grand Canyon and Grand Staircase area. The canyon appears to have been formed first by deep volcanic eruption which raised the land in that area and cracked the upper strata which had been laid down to a depth of two miles or more originally. That admitted the residual standing Flood waters as an enormous cataract pouring in from all sides of the crack. Certainly something like that had to have been the case. The Colorado river even swollen to the max could not have done such a thing in billions of years.

LATER ADDITION:
Then Coyote, who repeats his mantra about the age of the strata and the fossils because he can't think any other way. He regards it all as fact to such an extent that his mind can't even produce a contrary thought.

Anyway, here's his comment:

If a flood occurred, what would you expect to find? Billions of dead things, which we call fossils, laid down by water all over the world. And what do we find? Billions of dead things, which we call fossils, laid down by water all over the world.

One problem with this scenario is that these fossils are spread over a billion or so years; they are far from being the same age.

Sorry, we believe your methods of dating are all wrong, don't believe a word of it. They ARE all the same age, you just have to learn to see with new eyes.

Another problem is that we can see evolution in the fossils. These layers of different ages show a progression of critters from older to younger. This progression had to take a lot of time to develop.

They SEEM to but you are of course ignoring anything that contradicts that perfect scenario and you are INTERPRETING the differences between varieties of the same type to be evolution of that type when all they are is VARIETIES that form from the BUILT-IN gene code for that species. Trilobites for instance obviously had a broad range of variation possible built into their genome. And there is really nothing about them to justify your categorizing those higher in the strata as younger or "more evolved" than those lower, that's just an artifact of your theory / figment of your imagination. I'm sure you can rationalize it but without any real justification, only by noting certain factors while ignoring others. And if you are talking about different species in the sense of Kinds (they're called something different from the other species) being older or younger with respect to each other, again that is PURELY an artifact of your theory, something you can possibly rationalize by making certain comparisons and ignoring others, but in reality they are simply SEPARATE SPECIES with their own species-specific gene code.

Also, floods don't produce fossils.

That is true, the ordinary everyday floods that go on in our time do NOT produce fossils. But the Flood of Noah did, because it moved such prodigious amounts of sediments and living things and deposited them in such thick layers all over the earth it created the ideal conditions for fossilization.

Shellfish fossils are produced in oceans, and sometimes lakes or marshes.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT? Meaning what is your evidence. But of course one would expect seashells to come from the ocean so that part's obvious. But the FLOOD WAS AN OCEAN FER PETE'S SAKE. You know, ALL THE WATER ON THE PLANET KINDA SORTA MINGLED TOGETHER IN THAT EVENT. As for "sometimes" lakes or marshes, HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT? Kindly give us the evidence that any lake or marsh since the Flood has produced a fossil. I don't say it's impossible, only that any of the billions of fossils in the strata were NOT produced by a lake or a marsh.

The most a flood could do is move a fossil.

This was not just "A FLOOD," this was THE Flood to end all floods. It did not MOVE fossils, it MADE fossils.

Ignoring the two problems above, what are the odds that the fossils could be ripped up from their original locations and sorted out by time and type in their new locations by chaotic flood waters?

The fossils weren't, but the question applies somewhat to the living things themselves that were buried by the Flood. The TIME element of course does not apply, that's just your usual presupposition that you can't seem to suspend even for a moment's consideration of another point of view, but the sorting by type is mostly a SEEMING sorting by type as I say above. However, the Flood wasn't as chaotic as you seem to think. Ocean water has layers and currents and streams in it and these carry things. We can only suppose that the living things were sorted by some physical factors as well as their original habitat and their having been found all together in one place at the time of the Flood.

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And now Nuggin following Coyote:

If a flood occurred, what would you expect to find? Billions of dead things, which we call fossils, laid down by water all over the world. And what do we find? Billions of dead things, which we call fossils, laid down by water all over the world.

When floods occur, they kill everything that can not get away. They sweep all the dead things downhill to form giant piles of dead things.

As is the case with most here, you are picturing an ordinary flood limited in space and time compared to THE Flood which covered the entire planet and lasted a year. It rained 40 days and 40 nights during which time mudslides would have occurred and living things would have sought higher ground, most likely flocking together in their own groups. When they are swept up in a mudslide they are all together with perhaps the odd misfit as well. They do not form just a bunch of giant piles because there is too much water. Some may stay buried but as the water rises it's going to continue to erode away the land including all the mud with the dead creatures in it and carry them in the water along with the sediments. We know water sorts sediments, and apparently there was enough of it in the Flood that it also sorted everything else and carried it along in its layers and currents and streams until whatever law of physics came into play at whatever was the right phase of the Flood and dropped them on the now-denuded land mass in interestingly separated layers of sediments with their peculiar creaturely contents.

Those dead things are not sorted.

Not in an ordinary little local flood. Think bigger, Nuggywuggy.

If you flood Upstate New York, you are going to get dead people, dogs, cats, horses, cows, deer, coyotes, raccoons, mice, rats, snakes etc. All the things in the environment.

When we look at fossil beds we do not see a vast collection of "everything". We see certain groups of things clustered together and then other groups of things clustered together in different strata.

If "The Flood" were to occur, we'd expect to find elephants AND mammoths AND mastadons AND rabbits AND T-Rex AND zebras all in one big piles
We never find that. Ever.

So, unless "The Flood" included magic sorting water, your claim just doesn't.... carry water.

. Yeah well you've got the usual commonsense notion based on no knowledge whatever or even a reasonable imagination of what a worldwide Flood would do that lasted an entire year, just the usual itty bitty flood you've seen with your own eyes on television. And it has its plausibility as an exercise of fallible human imagination but that's all it has.

Actually your objection to the way things are sorted is just as much an objection to the evolutionist explanation. OK you've got the strata sorted VERTICALLY into time periods so you can get away with explaining the sorting of the fossils in terms of time, but there's nothing in evo theory that accounts for the HORIZONTAL sorting that is also seen in the strata. There is some mixture, sure, but there are also whole beds of one family of creatures from trilobites to dinosaurs, sometimes so ridiculously packed together the idea that they died in anything other than an enormous catastrophe is just ludicrous. Why should that be? Do animals all go to the same place to die? Not in our world. They die willy nilly just as you picture those creatures from New York dying in your tiny little flood.

No, SOMETHING sorted all of it. Seems to me the Flood is the only reasonable explanation. Something to do with the characteristics of a huge body of water, not magic.

RAZD/Zen Deist's strange argument against the Flood

I absolutely do not understand what RAZD/Zen Deist is thinking of when he writes this stuff as supposedly a proof against the Flood:

Seashells cannot be evidence of a global flood, because:

•The seashell fossils found, range in age from 1 to 30 years old.

How on earth does this argue against the Flood? What is he imagining? Why wouldn't ALL the creatures that died in the Flood be of all ages the way all creatures are in life after all? What IS he imagining?

•The seashells are found in multiple layers.

Perhaps he has in mind one of the creationist notions that the Flood occurred at only one layer or below a certain layer or that sort of thing. Then perhaps he would have a point. But those notions make no sense. ALL the layers MUST have been laid down by the Flood as they are all identical in form and no other process could possibly have done it.

•Each layer shows mature marine growth of entire ecosystems.

Yeah, and the Flood picked up the whole array of ecostuff and moved it and buried it, what's the problem?

•Later layers grow on the debris of previous layers.

I have no idea what this refers to factually. Need a description of what is actually seen. This is just a flat assertion. Evidence evidence evidence! Was any given in the body of the thread?

•Layers of seashells extend deep inside mountains.

As they should if the strata were laid down in the Flood chock full of sea creatures, hardened and then raised into the mountain.

•The combined age of the layers extends into decades if not millenia.

Based on what? No, the whole kaboodle was laid down in the same event, over days, weeks, months perhaps, but the same event. Evidence evidence evidence! HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS! (This is the sort of thing Dr. A needs to address above all in his geology course, just another flat-out claim without anything to back it up).

•The purported duration of the biblical flood (~100 days) is too brief for any marine growth to occur, other than what one would see on a ship (some weed and slime).

Here's that silly idea spelled out in so many words. Why is he expecting GROWTH to occur at all in a Flood? The whole point of the Biblical Flood was to destroy all living creatures because of sin, nothing GREW in it.

•The type of growth on ships in a 100 day period is not the type of growth seen in the fossil seashells layers.

Same silliness. Is anybody going to point this out there?

Just more restatement of the evolutionist faith about mutations and transitionals

Dr. A objects to creationist doubt concerning transitionals, as in why do we see distinct species then, or things producing the same things:

But we don't see things producing the same things. We see reproduction with variation.

Within the species only, where it was designed to stay.

Now it is trivially the case that enough mutations will turn any genotype into any other genotype.

Mutations are changes in the genes that belong to the particular species. Mutations do not create new genes, which would be the minimum task for evolving a new species from an old. Not to mention that the vast majority of mutations are deleterious -- there is a long long list of genetic diseases which are the known result of mutation, while the whole idea that mutations ever produced anything useful to any organism is only an article of faith, an assumption.

Obviously we do not see, in our own lifetimes, the quantities of evolution which (given the rate at which mutations occur) must necessarily take millions of years. But we do see exactly what we would see if this had occurred, in terms of morphology and genetics and embryology and biogeography and the fossil record and behavioral ecology and so forth. The inference is as clear as, for example, inferring that a man with a bullet in him, and an entry wound in a corresponding position, and power burns on his clothing around the wound, and a smoking gun lying next to him, has been shot. We don't need to have seen it. We see the evidence. Now if someone wanted to assert that the man had been struck down by a miraculous act of God, he would also have to assert that God had deceitfully covered his tracks to make it look like an ordinary shooting.

If it were that clear we'd all see it. But contrary to Dr. A's sense of certainty, the evidence fits the creationist assumptions better. 1) There are distinct species, which even evolutionists have to recognize (this is acknowledged by Darwin and by Jerry Coyne at least), that have never been anything but those distinct species; it is only theory/faith/fantasy that they were or could be anything else. 2) We don't see mutations doing what the theory says they are supposed to do because the genetic structure is built into the organism and did not evolve, which is what the creation model assumes. What we do see is the deterioration of the genetic structure brought about by mutations, which are mistakes, not any kind of engine that could drive evolution but an agent of the breakdown of the built-in genetic code as the Fall works its death in every species.

This piece of fantasizing by Dr. A is on that thread that introduces the video interview with David Berlinski on the preposterously nonscientific character of evolutionism. Others on that thread have offered their own fantasies in answer to Dr. Berlinski. Really pretty funny some of it.

Berlinksi muses that the changes required to turn, say, a cow into a whale are mathematically impossible, and our intrepid evos simply answer with the typical mode of fantasizing that evolutionism is known for, as if their simple ability to imagine a sequence makes it reality. Dawkins does this kind of thinking all the time, and they call that stuff Science. Hey instead of a cow, they offer, picture a land mammal that already looks sort of like an aquatic beast, then you can imagine it evolving into a whale easier than a cow could. I don't know, ask Berlinski how many structural changes he thinks evolution would have to accomplish between the -- what is it, an otter or a weasel or what? -- and the whale and whether THAT is any more mathematically possible than the cow.

On that same thread, and in fact in Dr. A's post, another article of the evo faith is asserted, that transitional types are quite sufficiently demonstrated to answer all the objections on that account. But Darwin recognized that a superabundance of transitionals should be seen in the fossil record if evolution were true and his lame answer was only that the fossil record is incomplete. But the fact is that the fossil record shows distinct species with variations among them just as today's living creatures do. This is such an easily recognizable fact that Stephen Jay Gould and others felt it necessary to postulate genetic LEAPS from one species to another instead of the infinitesimally small gradations originally expected. There is no such evidence, there is no evidence of the transitional types that evolution requires despite the assertions of such as Dr. A.

Dr. A's course in geology

Glossary: to be updated as needed

#1 Minerals & Rocks: Definitions

Pressie's definitions.

#2 Silicate Minerals

#3 Rocks: Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic

Comment so far: I've already picked up a fair amount of this information from my own internet researches on geological questions, but it gets more detailed than I have an interest in learning, so I'll just keep the posts for reference in case they're useful later.

My overall impression of Dr. A's teaching style is that he's doing a good job. But he doesn't explain enough for the novice. For instance, we need more of a definition of felsic and mafic. What does a felsic or mafic mineral look like? How would I recognize it in the field? Such words should be defined more than once in such a study if we are to really learn what they mean.

Similarly, putting up a chart with names of minerals doesn't help the person who isn't familiar with those things in the real world. I've many times looked up rocks and minerals myself to see pictures of them, and in a study like this one you should at least give links to pictures since you can't bring the objects to school to pass around. Names are meaningless without some idea of what they look like in reality.

The only controversial point so far is in the Rock Cycle diagram in #3 on the three classes of rocks. There's no problem with the basic formation of the rocks, knowing them by their history, only with 1) the implication that the earth repeats this cycle over and over to account for the millions of years of the assumptions of establishment geology, and with 2) the implication that sedimentary rocks of the vast extent we see in the Geologic Column could have been formed by the small local processes implied.

Here's a page geared to children on the subject of the Rock Cycle, with the parts a creationist would question bolded:

The Rock Cycle is a group of changes. Igneous rock can change into sedimentary rock or into metamorphic rock. Sedimentary rock can change into metamorphic rock or into igneous rock. Metamorphic rock can change into igneous or sedimentary rock. Igneous rock forms when magma cools and makes crystals. Magma is a hot liquid made of melted minerals. The minerals can form crystals when they cool. Igneous rock can form underground, where the magma cools slowly. Or, igneous rock can form above ground, where the magma cools quickly.

When it pours out on Earth's surface, magma is called lava. Yes, the same liquid rock matter that you see coming out of volcanoes.

On Earth's surface, wind and water can break rock into pieces. They can also carry rock pieces to another place. Usually, the rock pieces, called sediments, drop from the wind or water to make a layer. The layer can be buried under other layers of sediments. After a long time the sediments can be cemented together to make sedimentary rock. In this way, igneous rock can become sedimentary rock.

In principle I suppose there's nothing wrong with this description, except that it implies that such slow and unpredictable processes could have formed the vast rock layers of the Geologic Column, which is just plain impossible.

All rock can be heated. But where does the heat come from? Inside Earth there is heat from pressure (push your hands together very hard and feel the heat). There is heat from friction (rub your hands together and feel the heat). There is also heat from radioactive decay (the process that gives us nuclear power plants that make electricity).

So, what does the heat do to the rock? It bakes the rock.

Baked rock does not melt, but it does change. It forms crystals. If it has crystals already, it forms larger crystals. Because this rock changes, it is called metamorphic. Remember that a caterpillar changes to become a butterfly. That change is called metamorphosis. Metamorphosis can occur in rock when they are heated to 300 to 700 degrees Celsius.

When Earth's tectonic plates move around, they produce heat. When they collide, they build mountains and metamorphose (met-ah-MORE-foes) the rock.

The rock cycle continues. Mountains made of metamorphic rocks can be broken up and washed away by streams. New sediments from these mountains can make new sedimentary rock.

Sure, on a small scale, but not on the scale of the Geologic Column. And the idea that any mountain has ever eroded down to the flat plains so often shown in geological diagrams, nothing but wild theory. Never happened. Couldn't even really happen with millions of years to accomplish it.

The rock cycle never stops.

So ALL the rocks ALWAYS get recycled according to this theory and the earth is just being constantly changed from one to the other. Highly unlikely. Of course in principle they no doubt can and do go through all the changes illustrated, but not any great proportion of them as imagined by Old Earth geology.

As usual, among the facts that really are facts and the science that really is science there is this indigestible lump of theory or really, bald assumption, that's just *there* with nothing to support it, no discussion of it. Will Dr. A at some point address the question "How do we know?" with respect to this?

David Berlinski, a non-Christian critic of evolution

Wonderful! Never heard of him before. He's great.

Chuck77 introduced the videos of an interview with him. This is the first of three and there are some shorter ones at You Tube as well to follow up with.

Another interview with Berlinski by the Discovery Institute. Apparently he was in the film "Expelled" which they are discussing. I guess I'll have to finally see that.

Also saw some bits of a debate between Berlinski and Hitchens in which Hitchens waxes indignant to the max at Berlinski's saying Nazism was inspired by Darwinism, and carries on at a fever pitch about all the Christian trappings of Nazism. Which were in reality just Hitler's attempt to keep the Christians under his control.* Darwin WAS a main inspiration of Nazism. So was Nietzsche. Margaret Sanger's eugenics program that became Planned Parenthood was directly inspired by evolutionism, as she advocated ridding the human race of inferior types, most of whom were black. That bit of history has of course been swept under the rug since. But the affinity between her thinking and Nazism's eugenics program of ridding the world of Jews, Slavs and others they defined as inferior is quite straightforward. Simple historical fact.

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* July 2012 I've become aware since this post, thanks to Chris Pinto, that the "Christian trappings of Nazism" should be attributed to the influence of Roman Catholicism on Hitler and Nazism, fascism in general for that matter. Darwinism was part of that too.

Index Fossils continued: evidence or interpretation?

On that same thread about index fossils I posted on below, Percy as Admin responds to Dr. A:

Dr Adequate writes:

Fossils Are Dated By Theory

But you see this is nonsense from beginning to end; as its author could have found out by some such expedient as reading a beginners' textbook on geology and noticing what it actually said.

[Percy writes] You may be implying the same thing, I can't be sure, but to me it seemed that Buz was confusing evidence itself with the interpretation of evidence within a theoretical framework.

Dr. A should have been called down for not describing what exactly was wrong with the information linked by Buz, as should Rox and Paul K too for that matter, as it's impossible to know what they think they were saying. Exactly HOW is it "nonsense" Dr. A? What on earth do you think a geology textbook would say that contradicts what the creationist said? It's a fact that certain fossils are used to identify the age of rocks, you certainly can't object to that.

But to respond to Percy's point about confusing evidence with the interpretation of evidence, I'd say that's not Buz's problem or the creationist's at the site he linked either, I'd say it's the old-earther/evolutionists' problem. The website was not wrong about the facts as I show in my previous post: the fact is that certain fossils are identified as index fossils that can be used to identify the age of a certain layer by their appearance there. That is fact, Buz didn't get that wrong, neither did the creationist who wrote the article at that link.

What you all must be objecting to is how that fact is used within the creationist paradigm. It's YOUR confusion, not the creationists.' That is, from the creationist perspective the Geologic Column that defines the supposed ages of all the strata and their fossil contents is wrong, at the very least a huge unproven theory. The Flood explains the strata and the fossils. And the evidence for the time periods of the conventional geological model is just about nonexistent. But they take it as proven fact to the extent of identifying these particular fossils for the purpose of defining the age of any particular rock they happen to be found in. It's the AGE question that's the unproven theory. On the creation model the strata and their contents are to be identified in terms of their position in relation to each other, their depth, their location. They were all laid down in the same event so age is not relevant.

However, it's interesting, I think, to consider that the index fossils that identify age according to conventional geo theory COULD be used to identify depth or location on the creationist model just as they are used to identify age on the old earth model. That is, there is enough predictability of the location of certain fossils to make the chosen ones useful for identifying the kind of rock you are looking for that normally occurs at a certain depth in the strata. It's not AS predictable as they usually claim but it is nevertheless predictable ENOUGH for that purpose whether to define the age of a rock or simply its depth. Either concept should be just as useful for finding whatever you are looking for, whether oil or coal or whatever. What is important is identifying the right rock at the right level.

What the creationist is objecting to is the circular reasoning that supports the age interpretation. He's right.

Another example of paradigm collision in which the creationist is defined out of the picture: Buz got it right about index fossils

Referring to a previous post by Buz, Rox says to Buz:

Buz, that link does not at all help your case here. It is nothing but a declaration of ignorance by someone who hasn't a clue as to how geological studies are actually conducted. There is not one ounce of truth there. It wouldn't take but a few short minutes of Googling *just* USGS reports on paleontological studies to show you how asinine the link's and your conclusions are, but I don't want to waste my time. I am truly embarassed for you.

As such, I'm with jar in that I think there is much value in providing the willfully ignorant with a stage. The audience has an excellent opportunity to compare and contrast faulty and ignorant arguments with ones that are well reasoned and well supported.

So now I'm curious. What link did Buz offer that was so embarrassingly unscientific anyway?

Well, here's Buz's offending post: Turns out the link is to a creationist site where evolutionist views of fossils are being criticized, from which Buz took the remarks about "index fossils" as a dating method used by evolutionists that claim the method is nothing but circular reasoning that depends upon theory, not anything that could be considered to be empirical science.

Here's that offending link he put up which so many on that thread are objecting to, from which he quoted this:

FOSSILS ARE DATED BY A THEORY—But now comes the catch: How can evolutionist geologists know what dates to apply to those index fossils? The answer to this question is a theory! Here is how they do it:

Darwinists theorize which animals came first—and when they appeared on the scene. And then they date the rocks according to their theory—not according to the wide mixture of fossil creatures in it—but by assigning dates—based on their theory—to certain "index" fossils.

—That is a gigantic, circular-reasoning hoax!

"Fossils provide the only historical, documentary evidence that life has evolved from simpler to more and more complex forms."—*Carl O. Dunbar, Historical Geology, 2nd edition (1960), p. 47.

The conclusions about which fossils came first are based on the assumptions of evolution. Rock strata are studied, a few index fossils are located (when they can be found at all), and each stratum is then given a name. Since the strata are above, below, and in-between one another, with most of the strata missing in any one location,—just how can the theorists possibly "date" each stratum? They do it by applying evolutionary speculation to what they imagine those dates should be.

This type of activity classifies as interesting fiction, but it surely should not be regarded as science. The truth is this: It was the evolutionary theory that was used to date the fossils; it was not the strata and it was not "index fossils."

"Vertebrate paleontologists have relied upon ‘stage of evolution’ as the criterion for determining the chronologic relationships of faunas. Before establishment of physical dates, evolutionary progression was the best method for dating fossiliferous strata."—*J.F. Evernden, *O.E. Savage, *G.H. Curtis, and *G.T. James, "K/A Dates and the Cenozoic Mammalian Chronology of North America," in American Journal of Science, February 1964, p. 166.

On that same thread, before Rox's comment, Dr. Adequate says this about that site:

But you see this is nonsense from beginning to end; as its author could have found out by some such expedient as reading a beginners' textbook on geology and noticing what it actually said.

And PaulK had this to say:

Seriously, anybody who honestly thinks that rocks are only dated by index fossils and index fossils are dated solely by evolutionary theory is scarcely any less ignorant and deluded than Buz. (And that only because index fossils are one method of relative dating).

So apparently this is an egregious offense against science committed by the creationist Buz quotes and by Buz in quoting him.

HOWEVER, I WOULD POINT OUT THAT EXCEPT FOR PAUL K BUZ'S CRITICS DO NOT DISCUSS THE CONTENT OF THE ARGUMENT AT ALL, SAY NOT A WORD ABOUT WHY IT'S WRONG ABOUT INDEX FOSSILS. ALL ROX DID WAS ACCUSE BUZ OF IGNORANCE, GAVE NO CONTENT WHATEVER. Paul K at least gives the hint that the objection may be to the implication that

that rocks are ONLY dated by index fossils and index fossils are dated SOLELY by evolutionary theory.

Well, is this the substance of everybody's objection or not? Why is it so hard to get anything truly SCIENTIFIC out of these people anyway? They posture and prance about how unscientific the creationist is and GIVE NO CLUE AS TO WHERE HE FAILED AT THAT.

Poor Buz has been raked over the coals for weeks now for his supposed inability to grasp what evidence is. But truly as I recall that's all anybody has had to say: Buz doesn't know what evidence is. It's a mantra, a chant. I haven't followed those discussions very far so I don't really know much of what he's been arguing with them, and I still don't know HOW Buz has failed to understand what evidence is. For some reason they leave that part of the accusation out.

But I did follow up this topic of index fossils a bit.

Here's what Wikipedia has on the subject:

Index fossils (also known as guide fossils, indicator fossils or zone fossils) are fossils used to define and identify geologic periods (or faunal stages). They work on the premise that, although different sediments may look different depending on the conditions under which they were laid down, they may include the remains of the same species of fossil. If the species concerned were short-lived (in geological terms, lasting a few hundred thousand years), then it is certain that the sediments in question were deposited within that narrow time period. The shorter the lifespan of a species, the more precisely different sediments can be correlated, and so rapidly evolving types of fossils are particularly valuable. The best index fossils are common, easy-to-identify at species level, and have a broad distribution—otherwise the likelihood of finding and recognizing one in the two sediments is minor. . .

Geologists use both large fossils (called macrofossils) and microscopic fossils (called microfossils) for this process, known as biostratigraphy. Macrofossils have the advantage of being easy to see in the field, but they are rarer, and microfossils are very commonly used by oil prospectors and other industries interested in mineral resources when accurate knowledge of the age of the rocks being looked at is needed....

Here's this notion that to find oil, or coal, or perhaps other items known to occur in certain strata, you need to know the AGE of the rocks, and they are so used to operating this way their minds are closed up tight against any suggestion that age has nothing to do with it. The Old Earth presuppositions work for them and that's all they care about. Well, that makes sense. But a creationist knows that what they think of as age is merely depth or location of the rocks they want. It's the same thing as far as finding the right rocks goes, but the whole idea of age is eliminated. ALL the rocks were laid down in the Flood, associated with particular fossils in many cases, and it shouldn't be any less useful to think in terms of location and depth than age. But that's a side point in this context.

Rox suggested that Buz should check with USGS (US Geological Survey) information only so I went here and found the same chart I found at Wikipedia with this intro:

Keyed to the relative time scale are examples of index fossils, the forms of life which existed during limited periods of geologic time and thus are used as guides to the age of the rocks in which they are preserved.

Also this from the USGS:

Mollusks have many of the properties of good index fossils: The hard shells of many mollusks means they are generally well-preserved, and they are often one of the few fossils found in certain environments. Sometimes they are only preserved as molds or casts in ancient limestones, but they can still be identified and used to establish the age of the rocks.

Another USGS page had a broken link for index fossils so that one I couldn't follow out, but what I've noted above ought to be sufficient, it seems to me, to demonstrate that the creationist Buz linked to got his facts right.

That is: Certain fossils ARE used to date the strata. THIS IS SIMPLE FACT, confirmed by the references above, not creationist interpretation, so what on earth are all these people objecting to anyway? That it leaves out the fact that other methods are ALSO used? That's pretty lame if so. Clearly index fossils are considered to be a very useful method of dating strata no matter what other methods are also used, and the impression I get is that they are the SOLE method of dating in most circumstances.

And what the creationist said about this method is of course true: THE AGE OF THE INDEX FOSSILS IS DETERMINED COMPLETELY BY THEORY, BY THE THEORY OF THE GEOLOGIC TIMETABLE. On the geologic timetable THE AGE OF EVERYTHING IS DETERMINED STRICTLY BY THEORY because that's what the Geo Timetable IS -- a representation of the THEORY OF AGES IN WHICH THE CREATURES REPRESENTED BY THE FOSSILS SUPPOSEDLY LIVED as decided by where they are usually found located in the strata. ACCORDING TO THE THEORY CERTAIN FOSSILS, BEING FOUND PRIMARILY IN CERTAIN STRATA MORE THAN IN OTHERS, CAN BE RELIABLY DATED TO THE AGE THAT THE THEORY HAS DETERMINED FOR THAT STRATA AND CAN THEREFORE BE USED AS A DATING MARKER THEMSELVES.

There's nothing wrong with what Buz linked to, there's nothing wrong with what the creationist said.

The problem must be that the evolutionists don't know that the Geological Timetable is nothing but theory for which creationists have a perfectly legitimate completely different explanation. Evolutionists like to call their theory "fact." That has to be the problem here. Thus do the presuppositions of the evolutionists determine what can be called Science, simply precluding all creationist interpretations a priori. The creationist at that site Buz linked to is quite right: it's all circular reasoning -- enforced by aggressive ridicule and chest-beating on behalf of what they laughably call Science -- and there's no way out of it except by being COMPLETELY outside it as creationists must be.