Allan Roy wrote of the salinity problem:
"AR: Woodmorappe has address all this in his book "Noah's Ark, a
feasibility study." There is no reason for me to respond to this for it has
already been done and anyone attempting to discuss models with Creationary
Catastrophists should already be familiar with his comments. "
Allen, He doesn't solve this problem at all. He arm-waves. He says,
"For instance, among FW fish, the median salt toxicity for Lepomis
cyanellus was reported as just over one-tenth the salinity of SW, yet some
individuals of L. cyanellus were found to be able to tolerate at least
one-fourth of the salinity of SW. The salinity tolerance of largemouth bass
(Micropterus salmoides) also varies by indivual: ranging from one-fourth to
almost one-half the salinity of SW." P. 147
Woodmorape stacks the deck by making ASSUMPTIONS FOR WHICH THERE IS NO
EVIDENCE in order to account for the survival of the fish. He notes that
freshwater today is about 1% of all global waters. This is about right. So,
Woodmorappe changes the game to a more favorable position (below ppt=parts
per thousand):
"Suppose for illustrative purposes, that the antediluvian marine water was
only 20ppt saline (instead of the 35 ppt today), and that FW before the
Flood accounted for 50% of all earth's surface water (instead of the tiny
percentage today). During the Flood, if completely homogenized, the
resulting mixture would, of course, have been 10ppt saline (or just under
1/3 of the salinity of contemporary SW). Let us now allow for minor
nonhomogeneities in the salinity of the shoreless ocean, conservatively
assuming that the difference in salinity in different layers of floodwater
and/or different geographic regions of floodwater was only on the order of
plus or minus 5ppt (parts per thousand). This means that he floodwaters
would have had a salinity range of 5-15 ppt dissolved salts. As we have
seen, the vast majority of stenohaline SW and FW fish could have survived
the Flood in waters of such a salinity range, even without taking into
account any considerable microevolutionary changes since the Flood,nor any
strong stratification of floodwater layers with respect to salinity, which
is discussed next." ~ John Woodmorappe, Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study,
(Santee: Institute for Creation Research, 1996),p. 148
What he ignores and doesn't tell the reader is the consequences which arise
from having a global flood at all. Given that YECs like Woodmorappe believe
that all the sedimentary layers were deposited from the waters of the
global flood within the flood year, this would include all the salt that we
find sandwiched in the sedimentary rocks. Sedimentary salt must also have
been contained in the flood waters at the very beginning of the flood. The
reason for this is that there are fossils below the salt and fossils above
the salt and according to YEC dogma, fossilization can't occur unless there
is a catastrophic sedimentation. Thus the existence of fossils in rocks
covered by the salt deposits and in rocks covering the salt proves that the
salt was deposited in the middle of the flood.
Now here is the problem. If all this salt was in the flood waters, the
salinity would NOT BE LESS THAN THAT OF TODAY. Indeed, the salinity of the
flood waters, during the erosive period would have to actually be greater
than today. This is because the erosion all over the earth would dissolve
the salt on the pre-flood continents. And since the salt we see on the
continents sandwiched in the rocks today had to have been removed from the
flood waters, the only inescapable conclusion is that the flood waters were
MORE salty, not less.
Consider how salty they must have been. We know that the salt in the
sedimentary column is about 30% of the salt in the oceans. Thus, the oceans
must have had at least 30% more salt during the flood. Here is what a
reference sent me by Steve Austin said:
"Holser (personal communications, 1981) has estimated that the entire
inventory of halite in sedimentary rocks of all ages amounts ot ca. 30% of
the NaCl content of the oceans. There is no disagreement between the two
estimates." ~ Heinrich D. Holland, The Chemical Evolution of the
Atmosphere and Oceans, (Princeton Univ. Press, 1984, p. 461
This has two consequences for YEC. First, the concept that one can date the
oceans by means of the salt content is out because there is a limit to how
much salt can be sent back into the ocean and two, the salt we see had to
have been originally dissolved in the flood waters.
Since NO freshwater fish mentioned by Woodmorappe can survive more than 50%
of the current ocean salinity, it is highly unlikely that they could
survive an ocean with 30% more salt.
Allen, you need a new apologetical model.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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