A Creationist Appreciation of Darwin Part 1

Despite creationist objections to Darwin and to the theory of evolution that developed from his work, it really ought to be recognized and acknowledged that some of Darwin's observations have been of value to creationism, as well as to biology in general. I just realized this after some rereading of his Origin of Species and being reminded of the impression I had when I first read it back before I was a Christian. I enjoyed the book enormously then. I always enjoyed reading someone who could lead me through a well-presented argument and Darwin does that in his careful measured way. He's a genuine thinker. His observations are well described and well used in the service of his theory; his conclusions are logical and easy to follow.

This time around I have an entirely different perspective, of course. I notice things I wouldn't have noticed forty years ago; I have objections I didn't have then. But in spite of all that I find myself again impressed with his methodical presentation of evidence and clear arguments.

This time around I was also struck by some ideas for which I think he should even be thanked by creationists. The creationism of Darwin's day was a pretty subjective affair that needed the sharp kicks Darwin administered in his Origin. Special Creation as it was called then was such a feeble excuse for a scientific position it didn't take much to topple it, and even his first edition changed many minds, as he indicates in the Preface to a later edition:

Until recently the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created.

"Until recently" means "until the publication of the first edition of the Origin of Species."

I'm sure it seems that a creationist should grieve at the success of Darwin's argument for evolution, but the creationism he reveals in his book is not the creationism it should have been. For one thing, the idea of special creation of immutable species was used to explain anything and everything. Whatever was observed was attributed to the organism's having been created for that purpose. At the beginning of Chapter 9, Hybridism, for instance, Darwin says:

"The view commonly entertained by naturalists is that species, when intercrossed, have been specially endowed with sterility in order to prevent their confusion."

That is, sterility is observed in some hybrids and the explanation from special creation is that they were made that way for a purpose. It's the sort of answer that would stop all thought in its tracks rather than stimulate further investigation into the reason for the sterility.

In Chapter 13, Geographical Distribution, he says something that suggests that the belief in special creation included the unbiblical idea of continuing or periodic creation over time, which is far from the once-for-all-time creation as described in Genesis.

Here he's commenting on an island devoid of mammals and remarks:

"It cannot be said that there has not been time for the creation of mammals; many volcanic islands are sufficiently ancient...."

Of course there would be no question of the time needed if the prevailing creationist view was that all living things had been created at once as reported in Genesis 1 and not created for particular locations at later particular times.

And he goes on to demonstrate the uselessness, even the absurdity of the creationist understanding:

"Although terrestrial mammals do not occur on oceanic islands, aerial mammals occur on almost every island..." "Why has the supposed creative force produced bats and no other mammals on remote islands?"

He answers that the most probable explanation is they weren't created just for the islands, it's simply that bats could have flown the distance whereas terrestrial animals had no way to get there.

At the end of Chapter 5, Laws of Variation, he is objecting to an idea about the genus that includes horses that was prevalent in his time, that

"...each [equine] species was independently created with a tendency to vary ... so as often to become striped like the other species of the genus," and "created with a strong tendency, when crossed with species inhabiting distant quarters of the world, to produce hybrids resembling in their stripes, not their own parents, but other species of the genus.

To admit this view is, as it seems to me, to reject a real for an unreal, or at least an unkonwn, cause. It makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception; I would almost as soon believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells living on the sea-shore.

I have to say that I agree. Even back then it would have been far more reasonable to consider that the separate "species" in the genus were in fact varieties of the same species, and that the striping showed up as a reversion to a characteristic of the species closest to the original. It comes off as a cop-out, or intellectual laziness, to invoke God's purpose to explain such a phenomenon.

It looks like Darwin has done quite a good job of thoroughly trouncing some of the creationist ideas of his day, and it seems to me they needed to be trounced. The creationist ideas were subjective and silly, but more important, they weren't Biblical. They had already been much compromised by what naturalists of the day thought science had proved, which is always the big danger for creationism. Creationists had been rationalizing the Biblical revelation away to accommodate the current interpretation of the evidence, and this still goes on among some who consider themselves creationists. Seems to me Darwin illuminated a problem and to a great extent even solved it, so that biology could move in a more constructive direction and creationists could regroup from a Biblical perspective, which they must do if they are to hope for any success in answering evolution.

That same polystrate trees thread continues to accumulate hot air

What is the point of allowing this sort of tedious evasiveness to continue?

Dr A refuses to connect with what Just Being Real means about about the burying of the polystrate trees and I doubt that if JBR had said it even as precisely as possible he'd respond more to the point anyway:

JBR: No I totally get that you are saying the layers were laid down quickly, what I don't get is that they are sepperated by ...millions of years.

Dr. A: No they aren't. This is why no-one ever ever ever said they were.

JBR: That sir, I do not get at all.

Dr. A: The fact that the scenario which you have made up in your head seems implausible even to you might serve as a hint that it is not the scenario asserted by geologists.

Again, why is this kind of exchange allowed? Dr. A. and all the other evolutionists must know what the creationist objection is even if the creationist doesn't have all his i's dotted and t's crossed in his description.

The trees penetrate through TWO OR MORE LAYERS, layers that are normally identified by geologists by time period names that are assigned to periods of millions of years EACH. If the lower layer is supposedly 300 million years old and the layer above it supposedly 200 million years old then we have a time elapse of 100 million years between the two layers that no tree could possibly have survived intact if exposed to the elements for any part of that time. The lower part of the tree would have been fossilized in the lower layer, but the upper part would have had to wait for the upper layer to be deposited. Even evolutionists should be startled if they find part of a fossil protruding out of its "time period" into another.

THIS is what you should be answering, Dr. A. Your flat-out denial is actually against the rules at EvC, and someone should slap your wrist.

RAZD did give what may be the preferred geological explanation, which I note in the post on this subject below, that the first layer completely covered the tree and fossilized it at that time. Then, after becoming stone I assume (which itself is impossible without the weight of higher layers), it was eroded down to its current level and the next layer was deposited on top of it. That would fit the usual thinking of geologists who invent erosion between strata where obviously there was no erosion of any recognizable sort that normally occurs on this planet, the evidence against such a conjecture being the nice neat horizontal interface between the two layers.

No answers yet to the polystrate trees challenge, just the usual impossible fantasy answers and the usual flat-out bullheaded denials.

A little exercise in fantasy science

(This entry has been heavily rewritten since first posting.)

Typical "Scientific" Mystification as expressed at Wikipedia about the supposed formation of the Grand Canyon:

Geology of the Grand Canyon area
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The geology of the Grand Canyon area exposes one of the most complete and studied sequences of rock on Earth. The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon and in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old.

Considering the highly speculative history of determining the age of rocks you'd think they'd be a little more circumspect in their oh-so-definite assertions of this sort.

Most were deposited in warm, shallow seas and near ancient, long-gone sea shores in western North America.

Now I'm sure this is all based on an interpretation of some of the contents of the various strata but why do they only give us their conclusions in such flat-out assertive language instead of some discussion of how they arrived at it? What genuine Science talks like this? I'd really like to see the evidence for the warm shallow seas -- contents of the rocks that normally LIVE in warm shallow seas or what? And for the long-gone sea shores. Are there shoreline rings and that sort of thing somewhere? See, I'm a believer in the Flood, so I'm going to have a very different interpretation of whatever the evidence is that they interpret as warm shallow seas and sea shores. For instance, if it's the fossil contents of the rocks that lead to warm shallow seas because that is those creatures normal habitat when alive, the Flood interpretation would say that they were carried there and died there and didn't live on that spot. If there is evidence of old shorelines near the Grand Canyon, I have no doubt they represent a body of water that was left standing after the Flood for some period of time, long enough to leave the shoreline marks.

Both marine and terrestrial sediments are represented ...

Ah, a factual statement amidst the fantasy. That goes nowhere though. I'm sure they can say what makes the sediments marine or terrestrial, but if they were transported there on the Flood all that distinction refers to is their place of origin. It certainly wasn't the walls of the Grand Canyon.

...at least including fossilized sand dunes from an extinct desert.

And now back to speculative interpretion. You know this how? Your evidence is what? Any creationist writing like this would be scathingly dismissed as an idiot. Again, whatever the evidence that leads them to fossilized sand dunes, their sand had to have been transported on the Flood to their present resting place. And again, why don't they describe their evidence?

There are at least 14 known unconformities in the geologic record found in the Grand Canyon area.

Another of the very rare factual statements, presented without a hint as to their relevance or scientific import. Second thought: Depends on what sort of unconformity they're talking about. There is certainly a huge "angular unconformity" at the base of the canyon which I've discussed many times before, but there is also a purely fictional "unconformity" that is a "missing" layer, that is, a layer of fossilized sediment that their theory says is supposed to be there but isn't. Of course there isn't the faintest sign that such a layer was ever there; the strata are all just as neatly and tightly and horizontally stacked through those "periods" of "unconformity" as everywhere else in the column.

Uplift of the region started about 75 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny; a mountain-building event that is largely responsible for creating the Rocky Mountains to the east. In total the Colorado Plateau was uplifted an estimated 2 miles (3.2 km). The adjacent Basin and Range province to the west started to form about 18 million years ago as the result of crustal stretching. A drainage system that flowed through what is today the eastern Grand Canyon emptied into the now lower Basin and Range province. Opening of the Gulf of California around 6 million years ago enabled a large river to cut its way northeast from the gulf. The new river captured the older drainage to form the ancestral Colorado River, which in turn started to form the Grand Canyon.

You see how they talk as if this is observed fact rather than
interpretation of various geological formations. Obviously we're expected to just sit quietly and receive it unquestioningly as revelation from Those Who Know, without a discussion of how they arrived at it, without evidence or anything to engage us in thinking about it.

Anyway, again, I would really like to know what the evidence is for this mountain building period, and actually I don't doubt that there IS evidence, what I doubt is their interpretation of the evidence. Especially of course the time factork, how it got associated with a particular block of sediment layers. And I love thinking about this stuff. I've many times wondered about the formation of the Great Basin as well as the Grand Canyon, love to look at maps that show the topography clearly.

The interpretation from the Flood perspective includes volcanic and tectonic activity as part of the Flood event, perhaps causing it to some extent or caused by it, in any case associated with it. It's frustrating to read the descriptions from the establishment point of view that don't provide enough fact for a Floodist to think about. All you get is the Official Party Line. If I could afford a good geology book or an online course in geology MAYBE it would give the evidence behind such things? Or maybe not -- probably not part of a basic course. Ideally one could ask a geologist about all these things but they are a prickly bunch with creationists. For all their supposed interest in educating us stupid creationists at EvC, if you start asking questions to clarify such things for your own purposes, forget it, they don't want to give you a free education, go take a course.

Wetter climates brought upon by ice ages starting 2 million years ago greatly increased excavation of the Grand Canyon, which was nearly as deep as it is now by 1.2 million years ago. Volcanic activity deposited lava over the area 1.8 million to 500,000 years ago. At least 13 lava dams blocked the Colorado River, forming lakes that were up to 2,000 feet (610 m) deep. The end of the last ice age and subsequent human activity has greatly reduced the ability of the Colorado River to excavate the canyon. Dams in particular have upset patterns of sediment transport and deposition. Controlled floods from Glen Canyon Dam upstream have been conducted to see if they have a restorative effect. Earthquakes and mass wasting erosive events still affect the region

What might have some basis in reasonable deduction from evidence is so mingled with what is most likely sheer conjecture based on nothing but assumption, and the possibly reasonable deduction is presented so utterly devoid of evidence for it in any case, EVERYBODY should object to this sort of thing, not just creationists. But no, anti-creationists accept it as wisdom from on high and offered as science, expect a creationist to swallow it without question or else be branded an anti-scientific ignoramus. How ironic, how sad. I really want to see the signs of the lakes that were backed up behind lava dams, what traces did they leave? What is the evidence of ice involvement?

Well, the rest of the article goes on in the same vein, a mix of a few facts that just stick out like islands among one description after another of purely fantastical ancient deserts and seas and so on that of course nobody was there to witness and can therefore be nothing but speculation based on who-knows-what, and the who-knows-what is of course not given, because this is NOT science, this is Fantasy.

Sigh.

Here's a thread of my own at EvC that spun off one on the Grand Canyon, in which I take pains to be clear about what I mean about the difference between conjecture and fact. Unfortunately here and there I wasn't quite as clear as I thought I was being and I'd make some changes now, but the basic idea is still there. But all anyone did in response to my pains was make absurd straw man arguments.

I'll try to state it again now:

The reason references to ancient landscapes, deserts, inland seas and whatnot are conjecture as opposed to fact is that there is no way to validate (or invalidate) the interpretation. It conjures up a scenario in the distant past that is described almost as if it had been seen, but nobody witnessed it so there is no way to corroborate the conjecture; it remains forever a conjecture although they treat it as a fact.

There's nothing wrong with conjecture of course, it's the normal first step to a scientific explanation; perhaps it should be called a hypothesis. The problem is that any other possible interpretations of the same facts that led them to a particular conjecture are pre-empted when they don't bother to describe the facts and that renders the favored interpretation unfalsifiable.

Exactly what is the factual evidence that leads them to the scenario of an inland sea on the North American continent, for instance? I'd really like to know but that part they normally leave out of the discussion. Of course I suspect that "inland sea" would be well interpreted as a stage of the receding Flood. A slow-draining leftover body of water could probably explain the facts quite nicely if only the facts were available. Not a sea that stood for millions of years, but perhaps weeks or months or a few years.

Someone on that old thread compared my argument to an argument whether the claim that Henry the 8th was King of England was fact or conjecture. There is no comparison and it was irritating to have someone try to hang that on me. Henry the 8th had witnesses galore, histories written about him and no doubt all kinds of vestiges of his existence and influence remain in English institutions as well. Paintings of his royal self abound. Show me a photo of the ancient landscape you've conjured up. An "ancient desert" has NOTHING from its own time to show for itself. Henry the 8th had corroborating evidence; inventions of ancient scenarios have nothing to corroborate them. And really, it is STUPID to make such a comparison.

Where's the data that should be available to scientists who want to test your theory? Laboratory science is replicable by anyone. This kind of "science" remains conjecture forever although ordained as Fact.

Strata, Time Periods, Polystrate Trees and Evo Meanness

The insanity on the Polystrate trees thread at EvC is beyond me right now timewise and patience-wise. The sheer meanness is part of it, the obtuseness, possibly willful, another part. Just Being Real made a somewhat muddled but otherwise reasonable post on the subject and he's being torn to shreds. He hasn't stayed around and frankly I hope he never comes back. There's nothing positive to be gained from continual beating of a brick wall, and that's what they are there.

Just Being Real opened his post with this:

Many Geologists say that the strata layers of the geologic column are representative of millions of years of time. In this discussion I will refer to them as uniformitarian geologists, but with the understanding that not all conventional geologists are “strict” uniformitarians. In opposition is a group of geologists who believe that the strata was laid down during a world wide geologically recent global flood. I will refer to them in this discussion as creation geologists or YEC geologists.

It's a little garbled perhaps but you'd think by now after years of debate the evolutionists would know what he means to say and recognize it as a correct reading of what Geology teaches. But no, they have to deny that Geology ever taught such a thing as that the strata represent millions of years of time. The obtuseness with which they manage to distort this simple point is astonishing really, however typical.

Here's Dr. A's nastily obtuse rendering:

No-one, anywhere, ever, has claimed that a single distinct sedimentary layer in a sedimentary formation necessarily corresponds to millions of years of time.

JBR of course was not referring to a single distinct sedimentary layer but to a block of sediments assigned to a time period. But it's in Dr. A's sadistic interest not to be able to fathom JBR's somewhat vague way of putting it.

Here's Moose's:

All of those links go to illustrations of the geologic time scale (aka "THE geologic column").

There are no strata (rock) layers in those illustrations. They say nothing about sedimentation rates.

Well, there may not be any strata in those illustrations of the geologic column but there are in this one:




And in fact in this illustration there is a single distinct sedimentary layer ascribed some millions of years of time -- the Redwall Limestone = The Mississippian period lasting from 359 to 318 millions of years ago, or 41 million years according to Wikipedia.

Then Boof has no idea what might be meant by a "uniformitarian geologist."

If the communication problem is that bad there is no point in having a debate at all. By now all those responders should know what JBR is getting at and instead of just denying that it has any meaning discuss what they think Geology DOES really say. Dr. A accuses JBR and everybody else of ignorance of Geology but as usual doesn't offer one word of information about what he thinks Geology does say. Which always suggests it's one huge bluff really.

Then Pressie thinks he's finally understood something about how creationists must think a single sediment equals a time period,

Apparently creationists are required to know exactly what jargon Geologists use but evolutionists don't have to know anything about the history of the creationist side of the argument at all.

As usual lately I'm very tired and preoccupied with other things and wish I could spend more time answering this, hope maybe I can come back to it and get into more of it later.

Meanwhile, JBR really should stay away. There is nothing positive to be gained from that kind of treatment.

The Genetic Markers of the Flood Bottleneck

Here comes JAR with his usual wrongheaded assertions (no, no evidence here) against the Flood of Noah.

To mention "fossils" when talking about the Biblical Flood is of course simply silly. The Biblical Flood, if it had happened, was far too recent to have anything to do with fossils.

Too recent to have anything to do with fossils? 4500 years isn't enough time? Even though evolutionists claim that fossils are being formed every day in our own time in far more mundane circumstances than the global biblical Flood? Excuse me? The Flood buried bazillions of living things which would have been made into fossils in a lot less time than 4500 years. I've seen discussions, probably creationist of course since evolutionists are committed to not knowing such things, that show the process occurring in a matter of years in caves that drip calcium carbonate. If I find such a discussion I'll post it.

The Biblical Flood myths say that all the critters on land and in the air with the exception of those critters on the fictional ark were killed during a very short period.

If that were true, then every land and air critter living today, plant or animal, would be descended from the few critters on the ark.

Very true and they are.

That would leave a genetic bottleneck marker in EVERY single living species of plant of animal, and the marker would be only a relatively few generations back.

If the Biblical Flood happened, then that marker MUST be there.

It ain't.

Case closed.

I've heard this bit of evolutionist lore many times by now, but I have NEVER ONCE SEEN AN EXPLANATION OF EXACTLY WHAT "MARKER" WOULD POINT TO A BOTTLENECK. Perhaps I merely missed it but I've been looking for some time whenever this subject comes up and all that's offered is this assertion, perhaps some ridicule and choice epithets along with it, BUT NO CLUE AS TO WHAT THE MARKER MIGHT BE THAT WOULD DEMONSTRATE THE BOTTLENECK IN QUESTION.

Now that it's come up again perhaps I'll be motivated to make a more dogged search for such information.

But meanwhile I wanted to highlight JAR's post because of something I just learned about these things that opens up a new answer to the question. I've been rereading Morris and Parker's What Is Creation Science? over the last few days, one of the first books on creationism I read after becoming a Christian, and besides recognizing many points they make that I've made my own in this debate although I'd forgotten their source, I've also run across some points that illuminate some things I hadn't digested and am only now beginning to think about.

One of them suggests an answer to just what WOULD be the genetic indicators of the bottleneck at the Flood and they aren't the sort of "marker" that would jump out at you but something a geneticist today would simply take for granted as the normal state of the genome. Whenever I've gone that far into this part of the debate I find myself wondering about a formerly much bigger genome --polyploidy for instance, which never really fit but now I have a better understanding anyway -- from which it would be easier to imagine descent of all the life forms we see today and extravagantly more varieties before the Flood as well, which certainly must have been the case BECAUSE of such an extreme bottleneck.

No, not a bigger genome, but a different genetic situation along more ordinary lines:

Parker describes how all the varieties of humans and animals are easily accounted for by simple Mendelian genetics combining a given built-in array of genes for various traits. The example he gave was of two parents with "medium" or "average" skin color, expressed as AaBb, with the capital letters representing the darkest and the lower case the lightest, saying that EVERY shade of skin that we see on earth can be produced from those two parents, from the darkest African (AABB)to the lightest Scandinavian (aabb). When you think of every other trait as genetically expressed by the same formula, it becomes clear that an enormous variety of combinations would produce an enormous variety of types or varieties or races -- of people and animals of all kinds -- which would become characteristic of groups as they migrated and became geographically isolated from one another.

And all this incredible variety requires is normal sexual recombination AND HETEROZYGOSITY of the traits.

He also gave this statistic on page 112: "[evolutionist Francisco Ayala] says that human beings are "heterozygous" for 6.7% of their genes, on the average. That means that 6 or 7 times in a 100, the pair of genes for a given trait differ like the genes for brown or blue eyes, or for rolling or not rolling the tongue. Now this may not seem like much. But Ayala calculates a single human couple with just "6.7% variety" could produce 10 to the 2,017 children ...before they would have to produce an identical twin..."

He goes on to say that the whole spectrum of skin color we see today would be easily produced IN ONE GENERATION with just this 6.7% heterozygosity for that trait. Combining that with the same breadth of possibilities for size, hair or fur color, bone type, muscle type, and so on and so forth, would certainly yield an enormous variety of individuals within each created kind or type.

So I figure this 6.7% heterozygosity is what remained on average to all creatures after the Flood, or perhaps it was somewhat more then and has decreased since then. It's still enough to produce enormous variety, everything we see today.

Well, what does a bottleneck do genetically anyway? Doesn't it produce HOMOZYGOSITY for a number of traits? Isn't that what happened to the cheetah -- it has reached the point genetically where most of its genes are fixed and no variety is possible at all. Since the cheetah is of course descended from the cats on the ark, with their already drastically reduced heterozygosity -- perhaps comparable to the 6.7% of human beings -- a later bottleneck would have reduced it even further to the current state of almost 100% fixed loci, so that each individual is almost a clone of all the others, and further variation is as good as impossible.

THERE'S YOUR "MARKER" JAR. Not what you were expecting but there it is. It wouldn't be recognizable in the genome because nobody is looking for it. The average heterozygosity seen today would be accepted as the norm for all human beings for all time. It wouldn't be suspected as a marker of anything, although the basic principle is quite well known.

So instead of the genetic complexities I was trying to imagine to account for the necessity of an enormously greater variety among humans and animals before the Flood, I now appreciate that simple ordinary everyday heterozygosity can account for it all, but presumably there would have been much MORE heterozogosity for a much greater number of genes or traits before the Flood. 100% back at Adam and Eve? 50%?

And to that I would like to add another "marker" of the bottleneck, one of my favorite topics, JUNK DNA -- which makes up something over 90% of the genome. You wouldn't suspect that as a sign of the bottleneck at the Flood, would you, JAR? But if it's what I keep thinking it must be, the record of the genetic death brought about by that bottleneck, as well as all the accumulated death from other causes of course, then its mere existence in the genome is very glaring evidence of the Flood, now to be added to the other marker, the very low incidence of heterozygosity that resulted from all that death. This genetic junkyard or graveyard is a hint at enormously more genetic possibilities at the Creation than exist today.

May I please have my Nobel Prize now?

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.

============
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.

Fossilized Ripples

Another gem of self-convinced evolutionist "evidence" that evidences nothing against the Flood and quite a bit for it, from EvC:

Creationist says: That means if you know of just one example that shows how normal flood conditions (not catastrophic events like a 4 or above VEI volcano) could produce fossilized surface ripples, then I'd love to here it.

Evolutionist answers: You don't even need "flood conditions" to produce ripples.

Not to produce RIPPLES, no, but to produce FOSSILIZED ripples?

He goes on to give some pictures of different kinds of ripples both fossilized and unfossilized, which of course prove absolutely nothing against the Flood, since such phenomena would very likely have occurred as part of the Flood, and he gives no idea how they managed to get fossilized in "normal flood conditions," but the worldwide Flood is certainly a very likely suspect.

-----
GENERAL PRINCIPLE that never seems to be recognized in this debate: Often the Flood DOES account very well for the phenomena claimed for it but the evolutionists never acknowledge that, simply propose their own scenario to explain it, often local floods. They don't have any evidence that local floods can do what they say they can do but they insist on it anyway. Where's the evidence in anything Dr. A has said on that thread? He has offered none, but somehow this doesn't get noticed. Meanwhile the phenomena that Just Being Real attributes to the Flood of Noah are very well explained by such a flood. Even if the evolutionist can manage to come up with a more or less plausible alternative explanation it's still ONLY an alternative explanation, a possibility, a plausibility, not actual proof against the Flood interpretation. When he says that the sediment layers through which polystrates lie were laid down rapidly he hasn't accounted for the standard claim that the strata represent different eras of millions of years, simply ignored it. Sediments COULD have been laid down rapidly during any of the time periods in question, but no half-buried living thing is going to wait around for the rapid sedimentation of the next million-years period to begin before rotting away to dust. Dr. A needs to explain this.