James Mahaffy
>Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 3:00 PM
>Let me ask a few questions so we can at least see how your model would
>apply to some of the coals (Herrin and Springfield Coal) that I know
>well.
>In my first point of my last post, I asked, "Is the model of rafted peat
>any better for explaining a sharp contact between coal and the clastic
>layers?" And you responded with Steve Austin's model of vegetation
>raining down organics and then as the water rose and the organic mat
>moved landward getting clastic sedimentation from the open water.
>Thanks for explaining the model but I see a few problems. Why would
>this result in a sharp transition and not a gradual transition at the
>top of the coal? Mind you sometimes there are more clastics in the
>upper part of coal seams but not that much. Also this ought to
>generally result in a dark shale immediately above the coal. While it
>differs in different areas, both the Herrin and Springfield Coals and a
>number of others have a grey (low in organics) non-marine shale right
>above the coal and then a marine back shale above that. It seems that
>Austin's model should have these reversed.
Austin's model also has another very severe problem that I have pointed out
before and received no satisfactory explanation for (which is why I don't
intend to do much debate with Bill). Until he can answer questions like the
one I asked the other day about the vast quantity of biological material in
the coal we observe--it couldn't come from one biosphere.
The floating mat theory has another observational problem. All the coal in
the world is on the continental platforms. That is not to say none is under
the oceans because continental platforms extend a bit beneath the oceans.
There is no coal in the deep deep water >600' water depth. If the
vegetational mats were floating around on the waters of the global flood,
why on earth does NONE of the material drop in the ocean basins. What
mechanisms restrict coal to the continents? This has absolutely no answer
within the Austin paradigm advocated by Bill.
The reason I see no need to debate Bill is not because I have never
seriously considered the YEC model (given that I was a publishing YEC for
years). It is because Bill, like many young-earthers, look at any
unexplained or difficult to explain item and think it proves their case
while at the same time they fail to see the bigger picture and failings of
their theory. For the purposes of determining if there was a global flood,
it doesn't matter what sedimentary features are there if there is too much
coal to be the result of the burial of one pre-flood biosphere or if the
model for coal deposition can't explain the geographic distribution. It is
quite clear to me, that the pre-flood earth can't be hundreds of thousands
of times more more biologically productive than the present one (or 45 times
more lush vegetationally). It is equally clear that if floating mats are the
source of coals, there should be at least 1 coal in the ocean basins yet I
have never encountered one in a deep water oil well. I have encountered
many coals on top of the continental platforms in wells. I wish someone
could tell me what it is that stops these vegetational mats from ever
straying over the boundary between continental platforms and the ocean
basin. Without that explanation, it is a waste of time to debate this as a
model for coal origin.
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
>Sioux Center, IA 51250
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