Re: Morris, the Geologic Column, and Compromise

Steven Schimmrich (s-schim@students.uiuc.edu)
Sun, 25 Aug 1996 23:43:18 -0500 (CDT)

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!

>> - 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.

>> - 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.

>> - 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?

>> 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).

- Steve.

--      Steven H. Schimmrich           KB9LCG            s-schim@uiuc.edu      Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign         245 Natural History Building, Urbana, IL 61801  (217) 244-1246      http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/s-schim     Fides quaerens intellectum