Re: YEC refutation

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 14:57:25 -0500 (CDT) David C Campbell
<amblema@bama.ua.edu> writes:
> >Is there ONE argument that can be used to show clearly and
> convincingly
> to a nonscientific person that the earth really really is much older
>
> than a few thousand years?<
>
> Some simple examples of things that clearly look old:
>
> Rocks that show a history. I have a nice piece of Castle Hayne
> Limestone that contains fossils and pebbles. Some of the pebbles
> contain fossils and pebbles. These pebbles contain sand grains.
> The
> pebbles have phosphatic coatings on them. Thus, we have a series of
>
> events:
>
> Sand exists, is buried in carbonate mud.
> Mud hardens into rock.
> Rock broken into small pieces.
> Pieces worn down into round shapes.
> Phosphatic coating forms through a long period of sitting still on
> the
> sea floor; first set of fossil animals living.
> Pebbles and shells buried in carbonate mud.
> Mud hardens into rock.
> Rock broken into small pieces.
> Pieces worn down into round shapes.
> Phosphatic coating forms through a long period of sitting still on
> the
> sea floor; second set of fossil animals living.
> Pebbles and shells buried in carbonate mud.
> Mud hardens into rock.
> Shells dissolve away.
> Holes from shells filled with calcite.
> Several additional layers of different kinds of sediment with
> different
> kinds of fossils deposited on top of the rock (may overlap in time
> with
> dissolution and filling).
>
> Several underlying layers also have similarly complex histories for
> the
> rocks in them.
>
> Of course, the standard YEC explanation is that the Flood did all of
>
> that. However, it has to sequentially do several different things
> just
> to get this one small rock, and the earth has miles of rock layers
> that
> must be explained.
>
>
> Plate tectonics
> We can measure the current rate of plate motion-roughly equal to
> fingernail growth. Yet the geologic record shows extensive movement
> of
> the plates. Evidence includes the direction (both in the horizontal
>
> and vertical plane) of magnetic traces in the rocks; patterns in the
>
> sea floor (increasing sediment thickness away from spreading
> centers;
> decreasing crust temperature away from spreading centers); climate
> changes (the rich microfossil deposits associated with equatorial
> upwelling in the eastern Pacific occur further north and northwest
> the
> deeper you sample the sediment; equatorial conditions in Triassic
> deposits in southeastern North America; traces of late Paleozoic
> glaciation in what's now the Sahara; etc.); matches between
> structures
> such as old mountain ranges and ancient rock formations on different
>
> continents; biogeographic patterns (organisms in common in what are
> now
> widely scattered locations; drastic differences between what are now
>
> adjacent areas); and many other pieces of evidence. YEC responses
> include denial of the evidence and rapid plate tectonics. However,
> the
> latter is in gross violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
> At
> its current pace, plate tectonics produces most of the volcanism and
>
> earthquakes around the world. Speed it up and you have
> correspondingly
> more energy going into volcanism and earthquakes. Also, you need a
>
> power source to speed it up.
>
> For example, there was an ocean between northwestern Europe and
> northeastern North America. This ocean closed and then the modern
> North Atlantic opened. Also, North America has moved from
> equatorial
> to its present location during this time interval. Being
> conservative, that's about 9000 km of motion (1000 km of closing,
> 3000
> km of opening, and 5000 km north, making the unlikely assumption of
> a
> relatively straight route). Allowing the common YEC claim of an
> entire
> year for this to take place, that's about 1 km/hr as a very low
> estimate. The tsunamis caused by continents moving that fast would
>
> quickly sink the ark.
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Dr. David Campbell
>
>
David,
I fear you have not understood the impenetrability of the YEC skull. You
present scientific evidence. They will simply claim that the cataclysmic
waters of the Flood mixed up the pebbles and deposited them within the 40
day period. One bird explained the Flood as caused by the eruption of the
"waters under the earth" or "great deep" through the mid-ocean ridges.
You'd calculate the temperature of water at least a mile down and the
amount posited and say Noah got cooked. The proponent simply says it
wasn't that hot then--perhaps because the intense heat of the earth's
center had not diffused that close to the surface at the time of the
Flood. Don't tell him that it had billions of years to diffuse. He knows
better.

You consider problems with rapid plate movements and the 2nd law. They
take 30 mph plate movements in stride. Some hold the view that the 2nd
law did not apply before the Fall, so perhaps it was suspended for a
while during the Flood.

You refer to the changing magnetic field. I think every YEC knows that
the field is simply diminishing from its greater intensity at the
creation. Further, creation had to be recent or the field would have been
too intense to be believable.

The list could go on and on. Facts amenable to twisting are given shapes
beyond Mark Twain's "damned lies." Those not so amenable are ignored.
After all, their eternal salvation depends on the truth of Genesis as
they interpret it.
Dave
Received on Tue Jun 14 16:56:35 2005