Sorry it took me a while to respond. I was visiting family.
Thank you for the kind words below. Occasionally I don't live up to them.
At 11:25 AM 11/27/97 -0500, mullerd@chplink.CHP.EDU wrote:
>
> I post this to Mr. Glen Morton:
>
> Mr. Morton,
>
> I was taught the theory of evolution in public schools as
> fact. I have believed it as fact until I was a strapping 39
> years old. It was then that the loss of a loved one forced
> me to reevaluate the Scriptures and decide if there was
> Truth in them. I'm now 43 and believe in a literal 6 day
> Creation.
>
> I ask the following questions of you because of the respect
> I've developed of you. My only contact with you has been on
> this discussion group. While others supporting evolution
> have been harsh, cynical, and outright nasty, you have
> maintained a professionalism, authority, and a sense of
> humor. (I especially enjoyed your back and forth banter
> with Jim Bell).
I enjoy bantering with Jim, but he seems to have taken leave of late. He
must be swimming in the shark tank. :-)
>
> Now, just a few questions as to how do you as an old earth
> evolutionist reconcile the following:
> 1. New geologist theories about catastrophism and the
> Grand Canyon?
The only geologists I know who are advocating a catastrophic origin for the
Grand Canyon are those who believe in a global flood. Now, are these current
proposals workable? I don't think so. Here is why.
The catastrophic or rapid formation of the Grand Canyon is largly based upon
the concept that the erosion of the canyon occurred when the sediments were
still soft. But this can not be the case. The Redwall limestone has
collapsed caves which are filled by bits of Triassic Chinle formation.
These collapsed caves occur at a density of about 6 per square mile, which
is about normal for karsted terrains today. A karsted terrain is a region
where the surface limestone is being eroded by rainwater.
Considering that it is impossible to deposit big caverns in the sediment
during the catastrophic global flood, one is forced to conclude that the
limestone was deposited in a more normal fashion (i.e. hard) and then eroded
by fresh water. Seawater cannot erode limestone since it is fully saturated
with limestone.
The importance of the chinle formation is that it occurs above the Redwall
limestone in Utah but not in Arizona. The Triassic sediments, like the
Chinle, have been almost completely eroded off of the Colorado plateau.
Any catastrophic explanation for the Grand Canyon needs to explain why the
caves were in the Redwall. Conventional explanations have the limestone
being deposited normally, then caves cut into it just as happens today and
then the caves collapsing, causing some of the Chinle to fall into the sink
hole (just like happens in Florida today). A catastrophic explanation must
account for the 6 collapsed caves per square mile, filled with sediments
that are no longer covering the Grand Canyon.
It must also explain why there are huge erosional channels cut into the
Esplanade sandstone, Why there are worm burrows throughout the section, and
then finally it must account for why the erosion of the canyon took place on
a topographic high. The Colorado plateau was slowly uplifed (domed) and the
river cut into it as it was uplifted. Since rivers avoid topographic highs,
like this, any catastrophic erosional waters (as is envisioned by Steve
Austin) would not run across the top of the hill. The water would flow
around the hill, meaning that the Grand Canyon should not be where it is,
but rather on the edges of the uplift.
> 2. Moon dust. I've heard those mentioned above ridicule
> and belittle creationists who use the shallow depth of
> moon dust as an "Earth Clock", however, I've never
> heard them explain it.
I wrote the following before seeing Walter Hicks response. I agree with
what he said.
This argument comes from the first attempt to measure cosmic dust in the
late 1950s. Unfortunatley, creationists continue to cite the 1960 report of
this experiment. Hans Petterson estimates that 14,300,000 tons of meteoritc
dust landed on the surface of the earth each year. He arrived at that
number by placing dust pans on top of mountains. (See Petterson, Scientific
American 1960, p 132 The problem was that he could not always separate
earth originate dust from cosmic dust. He assumed that all nickel-bearing
particles were from space. This was not the case. His estimate of the
influx of dust was the largest, it was also the first estimate. Since then,
other researchers actually measuring the flux in outerspace, have found much
lower fluxes of dust. Brownlee reported only 26,000 tons of dust each year
(see Edward Anders, 'Pre-biotic Organic Matter from Comets and Asteroids,"
Nature Nov. 16, 1989) Using Brownlee's estimate of the dust flux, the moon
should have had a layer of dust 1.2 inches thick, close to what is observed.
Brownlee isn't the only one to arrive at such low values. Even before man
landed on the moon, Barker and Anders, ("Accretion rate of Cosmic Matter
from Iridium and Osmium Contents of Deep Sea Sediments," Geochim. et
Cosmochim. Acta, 32:627-645 ) arrived at an estimate of between 8000 and
100,000 tons of cosmic material entering the earth. The sad thing is that
all these estimates are available to any reasearcher who cares to go find them.
I would refer you to the young earth creationist article by Andrew Snelling
and David Rush, "Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar System," Creation Ex
Nihilo Technical Journal 7:1, 1993, circa p 39. They examine this problem
and conclude,
"Should creationists then continue to use the moon dust as apparent evidence
for a young moon, earth and solar system? Clearly, the answer is no. The
weight of the evidence as it currently exists shows no inconsistency within
the evolutionists' case, so the burden of proof is squarely on creationists
if they want to argue that based on the meteoric dust the moon is young." p. 39
> 3. Can and do human population projections, when
> reversed, project back to the people who disembarked
> the Ark, 6000 years ago?
Populations growth rates are not constant. The past 400 years have brought
the most rapid growth rates in history. Here is the data:
400 BC 162 million
1 BC 255 million .1% growth rate per year
500 AD 206 million -.03% growth rate per year
1000 AD 254 million .04% growth rate per year
1500 AD 417 million .1% growth rate per year
1750 AD 770 Million .3% growth rate per year
1970 AD 3637 million 1.6% growth rate per year.
~L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paoli Menozzi and Alberto Piazzi, The History and
Geography of Human Genes, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 68
Notice that the world population actually decreased between 1 B.C. and 500
A.D. This argument for dating the world depends critically upon the
constancy of the population growth rate and that has not been constant.
> 4. River deltas. Does the sediment accumulation in nearly
> all of the world's river deltas compute to approx.
> 10,000 years?
>
Here is the erosional data for various rivers.
erosion
rivers drainage sediment sediment yield
area 10^6 km discharge T/Km2/yr
10^6 T/yr
Amazon 6.15 1200
Colorado .64 .01 .02
Columbia .67 10 15
Congo 3.72 43 12
Danube .81 67 83
Ganges,
Brahmaputra 1.48 1060 716
Huanghe .75 1050 1400
Indus .97 59 61
Mackenzie 1.81 42 23
Mekong .79 160 202
Mississippi 3.27 210 64
Niger 1.21 40 33
Nile 3.03 - 40
Orinoco .99 150 152
Parana 1.83 79 30
St.Lawrence 1.03 4 4
~Scott M. Mclennan "Weathering and Global Denudation", Journal of
Geology , 101:2, p. 296
The Mississippi River spreads its sediment out over an area of about 120,000
square miles (310,000 square km). Currently there is about 40,000 feet
(12195 km) of sediment (at least) below the Mississippi mouth. 210 x 10^6
tons/year is spread out over 310,000 km. This is 614419 kg/sq. km / year.
Using a density of 2500 kg/m^3 and 1,000,000 m^2/km^2 we find that the
Mississippi River adds
.2 mm per year of sediment. Dividing this into the 40,000 feet (12195 m) we
find 49 million years were required for the deposition of this sediment.
Since there is some Cretaceous sediments down there, my guess is that the
present rate of deposition is slightly higher than the long term average.
But the conclusion of this is that the Mississippi River Delta could not be
deposited in 4000 years or even 12,000 years.
Lets look at an ancient delta, the Morrow delta from SE Colorado. Swanson
writes:
"Calculations based on regional cross sections show that
approximately 1,500 cu. mi. or 16 trillion tons of clastic
material was deposit in the upper Morrow delta. ... Analogy with
the Brazos and Colorado (Texas) Rivers and empirical relationship
between thickness of point bars and stream width and depth show
that the probable average annual discharge of the upper Morrow
stage C stream was between 10,000 and 20,000 cu. ft. per sec. and
that the stream system added between 30,000,000 and 50,000,000
tons of sediment a year. The Colorado River of Texas has an
average annual discharge of 4,374 cu. ft per sec and has added
material to its delta at the rate of 10,721 tons per year. The
Brazos River, with an annual discharge of 8,099 c. ft. per sec.,
is adding to its delta at the rate of 24,388,000 tons per year.
The limiting rates of 30,000,000 and 50,000,000 tons per year
gave 527,000 years as the longest and 316,000 years as the
shortest timespans respectively, in which the 1,500 cu. mi. of
upper Morrow deltaic sediments could have accumulated." ~Donald
C. Swanson, Deltaic Deposits in the Pennsylvanian Upper Morrow
Formation of the Anadarko Basin., Privately published., p. 163.
Thus, we see similar times being required for ancient deltas.
> I've included in this post, being as how I'm working on
> Thanksgiving, a line from Abe Lincoln's Thanksgiving
> Proclamation, (there's never an ACLU lawyer around when you
> need one - referring to that separation of church and state
> thing :) )
I know, those pesky ACLU guys are always absent when they are most needed.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm