You raised some interesting points. Most of this response is to the coal
issue but it is after a few comments about Wyatt.
At 10:24 PM 10/21/97 -0600, bpayne@voyageronline.net
wrote:
>I'm a geologist with Law Engineering in B'ham. I've been
>lurking your site for a few weeks. I'm very interested
>in evidence for the Flood as Glenn is. My particular
>interest is coal seams, which are by conventional
>geology said to usually be swamp deposits. However, no
>coal seam I have ever seen in AL exhibits any of the
>features expected in swamp deposits. They appear to have
>been formed of transported >organics deposited by water.
>
>Somewhere I have a picture published by Ron Wyatt of
>Wyatt Archaeological Research, 713 Lambert Drive,
>Nashville, TN 37220. The photo, taken by Ron, shows
>human skeletons and the gold leaf overlay of
>chariot wheels on the bottom of the Red Sea. The wood
>was so rotten that when touched it would desintegrate.
>The exodus really did occur, just as described in
>Exodus. And the parted sea really did close in and drown
>the Egyptian army.
I don't think that Ron Wyatt has the best credibility for
this claim. He is the guy who thinks that the basalt
formation near Ararat is the ark. I would suggest you
look at the letter by the young-earth creationist,
and global flood advocate, John
Baumgardner who worked with Wyatt and Fasgold. He
explains how they have ignored obvious cores into the
formation which show that it is nothing but basalt. The
note is at:
http://www.tentmaker.org/WAR/BaumgardnerLetter.html
Besides this, I would suggest that having a photo
somewhere of an unknown location is not a good reference.
What archaeological journal has this been published in?
>> I am saddened that the only response we have been able
>>to muster over the past 150 years to the challenge of
>>geological knowledge is to either say that all of
>>science must be wrong, or the scriptural account
>>doesn't imply that it actually occurred as described.
>
>Keep the faith, it ain't over yet. Many YEC scientists
>are working to develop a working model congruent with
>scripture. My opinion is that in these "last days" a
>model supported by empirical data will emerge. The
>YEC position will then be at least plausible, if not
>compelling, to an unbiased inquirer.
Bill, this is the great YETI search. We don't have an
answer YET but tomorrow we will have an answer. We have
been waiting for 167 years since Lyell for a workable
model. It is over 200 since Hutton. Are we that slow?
Or are we barking up the wrong tree?
Do me a favor. Since you indicate you are a coal expert,
please explain today three things about coal.
1.How a single flood could deposit the huge quantities of
coal we see.
2. Why do the huge piles of plant matter required for
coal formation, not affect the thickness of the sediments
above them.
3. What chemical process is capable of efficiently
extracting almost all the elements from plant matter
except carbon? And is capable of doing it in less
than a week's time.
1. According to John Hunt, there are 15 x 10^18 g of coal
in the world's coal deposits. In the entire biosphere,
there are only 3 x 10^17 g of carbon. This means that
the sediments, which you believed killed Remember that
the global flood requirese that only a single preflood
biosphere was destroyed. Yet we find enough coal for 45
biospheres! (see J.M. Hunt, AAPG, Nov. 1972 pp 2273-2277)
2. We start with the weight percent of living things: It
is
O 65% 4.06 moles/100 g of matter
C 18% 1.5 moles/100 g of matter
H 10% 10 moles/100 g of matter
N 3% .21 moles/100 g of matter
CA 2%
P 1%
others 1%
~Alvin Nason and Philip Goldstein, Biology, (Menlo Park:
Addison Wesley Publ. Co., 1969), p. 234.
I calculated the moles of each element in a 100 gram
sample of living matter. Coal is approximately 90%
carbon. In order for the organic remains of plants to
turn into coal most of the other elements must be
removed. (I do not claim that this is the way plant
matter is processed, I am merely trying to make the
assumptions favorable for Bill)
Taking the oxygen out of the above via water, leaves
C. 1.5 mole
H 1.88 mole
N .21 moles
Removing the Nitrogen via NH3 leaves
C 1.5 mole
H. 1.25 mole
Removing the remaining hydrogen via CH4 leaves 1.18 mole
of Carbon. or 14% of the original material is left. This
is the most favorable calculation of the carbon left from
the compaction of plant material. This value will become
important below.
I used to work Lee, Bastrop and Fayette Co. Texas. The
Wilcox strata there has lots and lots of coal scattered
throughout its 1200 feet. Approximately 10% of the
vertical thickness was coal ( 120 feet), but that was an
average. Some wells we drilled didn't see any coal and
other saw thicker. The biggest coal bed I saw in a well
was a 200 foot monster along the Lee/Bastrop county line.
It is embedded in a shale that lies on top and below
sandstones of which are uniform in thickness. The coal
extends about 1000 feet and is replaced by shale in all
directions. It looks like this:
---------------------------------------------------
sandstone
---------------------------------------------------
shale _______________________________ shale
\ coal /
\ ____________________________/
----------------------------------------------------
sandstone
----------------------------------------------------
Now, if this 200 foot coal was deposited during a global
flood, there are several serious problems which must be
explained.
1. As a geologist you know that sedimentation fills the
topographic lows preferentially. Less sediment gets to
the topographic highs. If the coal was plant matter,
then when the upper sandstone was deposited, the
uniformity of its thickness shows that there was no
topographic high or low where the coal is. Yet, if the
14% calculated above was applicable to the above, then
the plant matter required to form the coal must have been
1428 feet of plant material. This would have made a HUGE
topographic high on top of the ocean floor during the
flood. It would have looked like
sedimentation rates:
fast very slow fast
________________________________
| |
| |
| PLANT MATTER |
| |
--------- ---------------
\ /
\ ____________________________/
----------------------------------------------------
sandstone
----------------------------------------------------
This geometry would require that there be very little
sediments on top of the pile of plants. Then when the
plants were compacted, the thin sediments should form a
different pattern. It would look like:
----\ --------
sand \ / sand
----- \ / -------
\\ a hole waiting to be filled //
shale \\_______________________________// shale
\ coal /
\ ____________________________/
----------------------------------------------------
sandstone
----------------------------------------------------
Very little sand would lie on top of the coal.
Now, one cannot claim that this coal is post flood. Here
is why. In Bastrop/Lee counties, the Wilcox strata
containing the coal is about 3000 feet below the surface.
40 miles to the south, these same strata are 8000 feet
deep. One can follow the Wilcox strata southeast towards
Houston. Just NW of Houston, the Wilcox is 25,000 feet
deep and the deepest last downdip well encounters the
Wilcox on the NW edge of Wharton Co. If one wants to say
that these coals are post flood, then they must explain
how the 25,000 feet of sediment above it in Wharton
county were deposited in the past few thousand years.
One other item. In Lee and Fayette County there is
something like 20,000 feet of sedimentary strata. If all
this was deposited during a one year flood, that means
that 54 feet per day or 2 feet per hour of sediment must
be deposited on average. The part of the Wilcox strata I
spoke of above is approximately 400 feet thick and would
have taken 7 days to be deposited. This means that in 7
days time the huge volume of plant matter must have been
converted almost instantaneously to carbon. All of the
water, CO2, CH4 NH3 etc had to escape from the plant
matter and the plant matter be compressed before the
upper sandstone is deposited on top of it. If there was
still a bump (i.e. the plants were not compressed) then
the sandstone above would not be of uniform thickness.
I would appreciate an explanation of these facts from a
coal expert. I don't want to wait another 160 years for
an answer. I will be too old.
Tell me how the earth could fit the 45 biospheres of
plant matter into one preflood earth.
Tell me why we don't see tremendous thinning of the
sediments above the coal beds.
Tell me how plant matter can be processed and the
volatile gases escape in such a short time?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm