RE: The oldest living plants

From: Glenn Morton (glenn.morton@btinternet.com)
Date: Fri Feb 01 2002 - 22:50:14 EST

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    David wrote:

    >-----Original Message-----
    >From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
    >Behalf Of bivalve
    >Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 9:04 AM

    >
    >>How does radiocarbon dating apply to living organisms? <
    >
    >Most wood is dead and thus no longer taking up 14C from the environment.
    >Although the existence of the plants enumerated by Glenn should
    >pose problems for YECs, there are two obvious dodges for advocates
    >of a recent global catastrophic flood. Denial of the merits of
    >radioactive dating is already popular. Secondly, I believe that
    >older parts of a creosote plant die off completely as the plant
    >grows, so that a hollow ring or part of a ring results (sort of
    >like the mushroom rings you see on lawns). Thus, there is
    >extrapolation involved.

    David is correct that YECs look for rates which they can question like
    lawyers look for loopholes. And they do this on anything that they disagree
    with. Yet they are quite content to use extrapolations when it suites their
    purposes. When it comes to the supposedly shrinking sun, they use a wild
    extrapolation to hold to that:

    "One must remember that the 20 million year B. C. date is the
    extreme limit on the time scale for the earth's existence. The time
    at which the earth first emerged from the shrinking sun is 20
    million B. C. A more reasonable limit is the 100 thousand year B.
    C. limit set by the time at which the size of the sun should have
    been double its present size." ~ Russell Akridge, "The Sun is
    Shrinking," Impact Series, #82, April, 1980, p. ii

    And I think my favorite YEC extrapolations concerns the deltas of the world,
    which must be explained in a 1 year flood. So, Henry Morris takes a lab
    experiment and extrapolates it out to 'delta-type deposits' and doesn't tell
    readers a very important piece of information. Here is what Henry says:
    (5) Phenomena of Stratification. Not only do the fossils contained in the
    sedimentary strata demonstrate the necessity of catastrophic deposition, but
    the very strata themselves indicate this. As already noted, most of the
    earth's surface is covered with sediments or sedimentary rocks, originally
    deposited under moving water. This in itself is prima facie evidence that
    powerful waters once covered the earth. Furthermore, as already mentioned,
    even under modern conditions most sedimentary deposits are the result of
    brief, intense periods of flood run?off, rather than slow uniform silting."
         "Laboratory evidence that a typical sedimentary deposit may form quite
    rapidly is found in the work of Alan Jopling at Harvard, who made a long
    series of studies on delta?type deposition in a laboratory flume and then
    applied the results to the analysis of a small delta outwash deposit
    supposedly formed about 13,000 years ago. His conclusion was as follows:

    "It may be concluded therefore that the time required for the deposition of
    the entire delta deposit amounted to several days. . . Based on the computed
    rate of delta advance and the thickness of the individual laminae, the
    average time for the deposition of a lamina must have been several minutes."
     ~ Alan V. Jopling, "Some Principles and Techniques used in Reconstructing
    the Hydraulic Parameters of a Paleoflow Regime,", Journal of Sedimentary
    Petrology, 36:1, (March, 1966), p. 34, cited by Henry M. Morris, Biblical
    Cosmology and Modern Science, (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1970), p.
    104.

    What he doesn't tell his readers, who are obviously thinking about the
    Mississippi Delta is that Jopling's delta is 20 feet long and 1 foot deep!

     Jopling actually writes,
    "It may be concluded, therefore, that the time required for the
    deposition of the entire delta deposit amounted to several days. .
    ."p. 34

    How big was the delta?
    "The thickness of the deposit ranges from 12 to 16 inches depending
    on the irregularities of the basin floor." p. 17

    It was 20 feet long p. 17

    "Potter and Pettijohn (1962) would probably classify the deposit as
    microdelta." p. 17
     ~ Alan V. Jopling, "Some Principles and their techniques used in
    Reconstructing the Hydraulic Parameters of a Paleo-flow Regime,"
    Journal of Sedimentary Petrology , 36:1, 1966, p. 5-49

    And from this, Morris extrapolates that there is no problem with
    delta-formation in the flood!!!! How sad!

    glenn

    see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
    for lots of creation/evolution information
    anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
    personal stories of struggle
    >



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