Re: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

"What would necessarily happen is the raising of all glacial deposits off their bases, for ice floats."

But ice density is about 0.92, so it's not very buoyant. Ice also tightly grips the rock beneath it (think of cleaning it off windshields in subzero weather, or car surfaces in case of silver thaw; or, more appropriately, think of boulders plucked out of their matrix by alpine glaciers). And then the floodwater only stays a short time. If the ice started out much thicker than now, floodwater wouldn't even cover it until late in the game. Arguing as a YEC I'd guess it would stay put, except that God would be melting the stuff on top to increase water levels.

"A second requirement would have to be the brief disappearance of creatures from all land areas...."

I agree they would disappear, but we probably couldn't tell today that they were gone at that time. Absence of fossils means little. Animals could have been there but just didn't get fossilized. Happens all the time.

"...Waters...tore everything up and redeposited [strata] in what looks like the evolutionary order."

Yeah, right. This would take many astonishing miracles. First of all, since Earth is young, it wouldn't have much in the way of strata--unless God created them in situ to be much younger than they looked. So the rocks the floodwaters would be working on more than likely would be crystalline igneous--like granite, etc. So the next set of astonishing miracles is generating all the observed limestone, salt, anhydrite, etc. by means of the flood.

BUT on second thought, I'm no longer so sure it would be easy--see below--to detect flood-generated terrestrial sediments. The flood happened only a few years ago, so continental surface topography would be largely the same as now. This would mean floodwaters would mostly flow along river channels that exist today, and the flood-deposited sediments would be buried by subsequent mini-floods. They would still be detectable, but to establish the existence of a worldwide flood on this basis would require more time and money than anyone is likely to invest--especially since the risk of failure is, like, 100%. But it would be interesting, because the risk of local false positives would also be 100%.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: D. F. Siemens, Jr.
  To: dfwinterstein@msn.com
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 6:49 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

  What would necessarily happen is the raising of all glacial deposits off their bases, for ice floats. However, the Greenland ice cap has been there for tens of thousands of years, as has Antarctic ice.

  A second requirement would have to be the brief disappearance of creatures from all land areas rather that a continuous presence. If they were able to travel to all areas of the world on land (it's going to be tough for monkeys, tapirs, jaguars, and the other American species to swim across the oceans) because all the land was connected, then it is necessary to explain how the continents separated without producing incredible amounts of heat.

  Of course, the YEC claim is that almost all geological strata (very few spots retain the pre-flood structure) are the product of a waters that fore everything up and redeposited them in what looks like the evolutionary order. But it is notable that all difficulties are given ad hoc explanations which almost invariably turn out to contradict the requirements of other explanations. Consider the temperature at the time of the flood according to RATE: it would vaporize every terrestrial material while never reaching above 150 C.
  Dave (ASA)

  On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 02:22:52 -0800 "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com> writes:
    Well, if there was a worldwide flood (which I don't believe), it obviously didn't completely melt the polar icecaps. So maybe they were much thicker before. Maybe that's where floodwaters came from. : )

    What sort of "huge stamp" still detectable today would you expect? What I would expect is sedimentary evidence: not the generally fine-grained sedimentary rocks of marine origin we actually have in most places but instead huge deposits of river-borne terrestrial sediments practically everywhere, all of the same geologic age. Such evidence would be readily recognizable after analysis, but no one has found it.

    Don

      ----- Original Message -----
      From: Dehler, Bernie
      To: asa
      Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 11:40 AM
      Subject: RE: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

      "Even if there is evidence of a worldwide Flood, I'm not sure we'd recognize it for what it is"

      Holy cow-if such a worldwide major event happened (covering all the mountains of the world with water), it should leave a huge "stamp" on the earth, I think. Are all the polar ice-caps formed after the flood? If before the flood, why wouldn't they all have been washed away? If formed after the flood, they must have formed very rapidly. and then stopped.?

      All animals on the ark. must have been an awful lot of insects.?! Ants, spiders, flies, gnats, mosquitos, . did Noah bring food for them, too?

      .Bernie

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

      From: Don Winterstein [mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com]
      Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 10:31 AM
      To: asa; Dehler, Bernie
      Subject: Re: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

      No way can I speak for YECs, but I'm sure they would not claim that a divine miracle, apart from the encompassing miracle of the Flood, had any role in generating oil deposits. Given the Flood miracle, they seem to favor some kind of "natural" explanation for everything else. It's just that as a rule I find their "natural explanations" to be incompatible with real world observations. (However, I seldom read their literature, so I'm not familiar with many of their details. But I know beyond doubt that a chaotic event like a massive flood could not generate more than a tiny fraction of the features geologists and paleontologists have found in sedimentary rock.)

      Even if there is evidence of a worldwide Flood, I'm not sure we'd recognize it for what it is. The biblical account says the waters stayed only a short (geologically negligible) time, so features like shorelines and beaches would have been indistinct or absent. Most of the time water levels would have been either rising or falling. What we know from studies of geology is that a great many areas on continents that are now dry land were once shallow seas. For geologically long periods of time.

      Don

        ----- Original Message -----

        From: Dehler, Bernie

        To: asa

        Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 1:11 PM

        Subject: RE: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

        Don said:
        "The problem with trying to account for the world's sedimentary deposits in terms of a single massive flood, however, is that the mechanism is so astoundingly preposterous that it would require very large numbers of divine miracles, none of which would have an obvious connection to that plan of salvation. "

        Wait a minute. What exactly is the YEC claim? Is it that the oil deposits were formed by the flood (natural outcome of the flood), by miracle, or by both? If miracle had a part to play, for what purpose. just so we could have fuel? If so, God should have told someone, so they could have discovered it sooner. But maybe God wanted to see how long it would take for us to figure it out. after all, he doesn't have TV shows to watch, so we are his entertainment.

        It seems to me that if there was really a worldwide flood, there would be evidence. Apparently, there's no significant evidence for the flood (but evidence against it)... unless you figure in the actual ark that is on Mt. Ararat but forbidden for people to see.

        .Bernie

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Received on Mon Dec 3 05:22:30 2007