More on the Flood, inadequate comparisons with local floods 2

People are still responding to that one post by Portillo about the billions of fossils as evidence of the Flood. Along comes Pressie now to make that same straw man objection he made earlier:

[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.

[Pressie]There's lots of areas all over the world with no fossils at all. Therefore, those fossils are not all over the world. Therefore, no such flood.

It is no problem for the Flood that there are places where there are no strata or fossils. Why should that be a problem? They object that such a flood wouldn't create strata or fossils at all, then they object that it would have created more than it did.

The next post is creationist ICANT making HIS ridiculous argument about the Bay of Fundy's very high tides, which he thinks demonstrates what a worldwide flood would have done -- pretty much nothing, no evidence, no destruction, nada. Then as I've noted in earlier posts Moose picked that up as a supposedly wonderfully refreshing creationist position which actually made me cry over the stupidity and irrelevance and how far this debate is from anything that could ever make any sense. Unfortunately a great deal of the silliness in this debate does come from the creationist side, and it just snowballs from there. I'm sure that is partly because there isn't an established creationist position on some of the questions, but only partly, because some of the creationist arguments at EvC, such as ICANT's, are so far out in neverneverland it makes that basic difficulty far worse than it has to be. However, I have my own hobbyhorse positions as well, which also differ from some of the main creationist organizations, so I guess I can't complain too much. Except of course I think mine make sense and theirs don't.

So of course many are now answering ICANT's claim. I'm not sure why Moose was so taken with it as most of the other evos can see what's wrong with the idea.

Panda eventually comes along and answers Pressie quite effectively:

There are flowers all over my lawn - but my lawn is not 100% covered in flowers.

Except of course he has to get in a dig too:

This 'wiggle room' will allowed the statement to be 'adjusted' whenever someone tries to pin it down.

I dunno,why should any wiggle room be needed?

But of course Pressie isn't giving up:

[Portillo writes]: If a flood occurred, what would you expect to find?

In one big global flood occurring at the same time all over the world, covering the entire world in water, I would expect to find at least one stratum of sedimentary deposits with comparative characteristics that covers the entire world. From pole to pole. It would contain unsorted debris all in one layer. In laymen's terms, all mixed up.

Sure, this is a version of the commonsense expectation. The problem is this isn't what actually happened as anyone can see. Probably most of us would expect something like a jumbled mess of both dead things and sediments, not the layering we actually see, but commonsense thinking about something in the distant past that nobody has ever seen the like of can't be trusted.

Also, the commonsense view really is an uneducated view. The ocean has powerful streams in it that can carry things quite a distance. It also has layers of its own. And currents and waves to boot. There is no reason to expect it to homogenize everything just because the land has been submerged for a few months. The ocean doesn't leave the same debris on beaches all over the world, it leaves specific things in specific places, specific kinds of sand for instance. Currents and waves in one place will have different effects from the currents and waves in other places. The ocean has many separate circulating systems going on in it, it isn't just one big mass of water.

But it's also something to think about that if we turn the tables and ask what should we expect of a planet that simply went on its daily business as usual for a few billion years, had some local floods but no worldwide flood, evolved all kinds of life from something primordial and so on, my answer would certainly NOT be stacks of sedimentary rocks that just happened to preserve a neat record of the stages of that evolution, it would be something just as chaotic as they are imagining for the Flood. Jumbles of things everywhere, maybe some fossils but not necessarily many, maybe some signs of bodies of water that came and went, but never would anyone dream up the strata and its contents for that scenario. Or in other words the strata and its fossils are really quite extraordinary with respect to anything we're familiar with or have normal means of explaining. They're always trying to claim they see the strata forming today. No they don't.

Floodists don't have to bother with commonsense guesswork, we can SEE what the Flood did even if conventional geology can't because they've got it all tied up in their false theory. No other agency could have created those strata but a worldwide Flood. No other agency could have produced the conditions for the burial and fossilization of so many living things. It could not have happened piece by piece over hundreds of millions of years. THE WHOLE POINT OF THE FLOOD WAS TO KILL LIVING THINGS. What more evidence do you want than the worldwide graveyard of the strata?

And yes it IS worldwide, in the sense Panda said -- it's everywhere just like the dandelions in his lawn, without implying it covers every square inch of the planet. However, much of the strata was broken up and washed away as the Flood was receding and draining away, which must account for some of that. And the enormous quantities of sediments that were washed away had to get strewn somewhere if they didn't all make it to the ocean which no doubt a great deal didn't. That would cover up layers downhill or downstream to a great depth in some places. Then the tectonic forces occurred in the final stages of the Flood or some time afterward, not entirely clear about the timing, and there had also to be places where for whatever reason layers didn't form. Also there are parts of the planet that look peculiarly like they were formed from water just spreading hither and thither in swirls and whatnot. I posted a satellite view of that sort of thing some time back.

There was also a lot of volcanic action that followed the stratification. We know it followed it because it vents upwards through the strata in every diagram I've ever seen, shoots up dikes of stuff through those strata and spreads out sills between the existing strata as well. (Shouldn't that make evolutionists wonder why volcanism waited so long, even until recent time* to occur? Is that accounted for in conventional geology or is it even noticed?

Same thing with tectonic distortion of great blocks of strata, clearly already in place for supposed millions of years, right? The most dramatic example of this kind of action AFTER all the strata were in place is the Grand Canyon-Grand Staircase area where clearly the volcanoes in the area erupted after the strata were all in place, up to "recent" time in the Staircase, and clearly all the canyons and the steps of the staircase were formed after all the strata were in place -- up to the "Permian" in the Grand Canyon. The strata beneath are all neatly horizontal throughout the whole area, only minimally distorted or tilted as a whole by the general uplift of the area.

Clearly no more of those horizontal strata will ever be laid in that region. None are being laid and none could be laid that would conform to the existing stack because of all the volcanism and tectonic disturbances that have made the area no longer quietly horizontal as it clearly was for those supposed billions of years until the canyons were cut. Why should strata stop being built if the geo time table is correct? Shouldn't the planet just go on accumulating these markers of the supposed time periods indefinitely? Well, clearly it's stopped in the GC/GS region and can never be resumed.

Shouldn't that make evolutionists wonder why all the disturbances, volcanic, tectonic, etc., WAITED until recent time to occur? Why the strata are all so neatly horizontal and undisturbed until recent time? It should, it should. Sure was one quiet planet for all those billions of years until all at once in "recent time" all that activity suddenly began to occur. This is a fact that makes no sense on conventional geology's time table and should be recognized to utterly trash it.

I started off that rant wanting to make the point that volcanic action would also destroy strata in some places. But what I got said instead is more important than that.

In fact I think I'll stop here. The rest of that EvC thread just goes on with silly meaningless posts from Pressie and ICANT and nothing sensible is being said anyway.
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*Need to clarify: I don't say all that volcanic action waited until say the "Permian" period which is the uppermost layer of the Grand Canyon because clearly the whole area was originally covered with strata up to the highest "recent" time period of the Grand Staircase to the north of the Grand Canyon, and all those upper strata were broken up and washed off the area of the Grand Canyon, leaving the Kaibab plateau (representing supposed "Permian" time) as the uppermost surface at its rims. The magma of course vented at that level because that's what was there after all the rest washed away, while at the Grand Staircase it climbed all the way to the uppermost "recent" level where the lava pooled.

There are plenty of places where it could be supposed that the tectonic or volcanic activity occurred in the supposed time period that forms the uppermost layer of a particular block of strata, but my argument would be that there had originally been strata above that level that washed off there too. That's a long argument of course, but at least this should make clear what I'm trying to get at. ALL THE STRATA all over the world were laid down BEFORE volcanoes erupted through the column or tectonic forces distorted it.

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.