On Sun, 25 Aug 1996, Steven Schimmrich wrote:
>
> Thomas L. Moore (mooret@gas.uug.Arizona.edu) wrote, in reply to my post, that:
>
> >> Incidentally, placing the flood/post-flood boundary at the K-T boundary
> >> would have some interesting implications...
> >
> > It certainly does - but in the YEC world, it gives them data they can
> > work with to look more like scientists, except they compress the time
> > scales...
>
> They compress 65,000,000 years into approximately 4000 years. Let's put
> this into perspective... That's like compressing a time span of 1 year into
> 30 minutes! That's a BIG compression!
>
I agree with you on that. Remember though that they don't believe in the
65 million year thing, but if the accept the K-T boundary, they have to
say the data accumulated over a 4000 year period and adjust the scales.
Of course, what all that neglects is that the processes that control the
data in the first place would have behaved differently and thus the data
would not mean the same thing on shorter time scales, such as the oceanic
18O record.
> >> - Dinosaurs died in the flood. This is the opposite of what other YECs
> >> like Ken Ham and Gary Parker claim (that dinos rode the ark).
> >
> > YEC answer - Yep, there was at least one pair on the ark (to them that's all
> > that's needed). Unfortunately, they couldn't survive the post-flood
> > conditions
>
> Fair enough, I'll concede that one.
>
Not to annoy anyone, but that argument could end up forcing one to
question God's wisdom. If he wanted dinos saved, they should have
survived. IF he didn't want them saved, they shouldn't have been on
board. Of course, this is all second guessing, but then so is their answer.
> >> - All of the large extinct Tertiary-Pleistocene mammals (most people don't
> >> realize how many existed) somehow developed after the flood (no earlier
> >> fossils) and then experienced the mother of all explosive evolutionary
> >> radiations.
> >
> > YEC answer - post-flood microevolution
>
> On an unprecedented scale never before or after seen on this good earth.
> If creationists allowed rates of evolutionary change this great, they should
> not have any problem with macroevolution! We're talking about thousands of
> species of mammals (many of them differing at the genus and family level)
> appearing in a few hundred years.
>
True, but as long as they keep calling micro - they feel safe. It
doesn't matter how much change was involved.
> >> - That leaves a period of time of mild climate between the flood (which
> >> is represented by Tertiary flora and fauna) and the great ice ages of
> >> the Pleistocene. I was under the impression that YECs called for ice
> >> ages immediately after the flood.
> >
> > YEC answer - It wasn't a mild climate. It was a rapidly cooling climate
> > with extremely high precip rates in polar regions - and the ice age (ONE)
> > started right away
>
> And the fossil flora and faunal evidence for milder Tertiary climates is
> ignored?
>
They can hand-wave around all that. They need a reason for a
catastrophic ice age, and their answer is the Flood. To do it in 4000
years, they need high initial temperatures, high precip (which only
occurs when it's too warm for snow according to Vardiman's models). And,
as I mentioned before, all the evidence used as a basis for all this was
time-compressed data such as ocean-based 18O data which would have
behaved differently under post-flood conditions so the interpretation
couldn't be valid anyway.
> >> In other words, they have a lot of work to do before they should have the
> >> gall to call this stuff "science."
> >
> > YEC's always have answers for any question we can pose and make them
> > sound scientific, which is why people believe them.
>
> And they ALWAYS aim their writings to the general Christian public who are
> usually completely ignorant of even basic science (as, according to recent
> polls, are most Americans).
>
And the books are designed to make money. Very few arguments of people
like Morris has changed in 20-30 years. Indeed, I could find many of the
arguments that Morris makes, even the same quotes (he uses one by Shea
that appeared in Morris and Parker [1987] except he cut it in half [the
quote in the 1987 book had an ellipse that cut 102 lines of text - I
counted them :)] and he still misrepresents the author's intent), in books
he wrote long ago. This is not to say all YEC's are doing that, but one
wonders.
Tom