At 10:07 AM 7/9/98 -0400, bradburg@squared.com wrote:
>Actually, let's be honest here and excercise a little common sense when
>examining the fossil record and the geologic column. Discrepancies in the
>fossil record with what evolution would predict are abundant. For example:
>Stratogragrophic leaks - fossils are often formed in the wrong strata of
>rock, in other words, fossils are found millions of years out of place.
Please cite some specific examples. It is really unfair to make
proclamations with no examples which the reader can examine.
>Paraconformities - some rock layers representing millions of years are
>simply missing from where they are supposed to be. The wrong order of rock
>layers are sometimes found, such as in Glacier National Park, where a block
>of pre-cambrian limestone (supposedly 1 billion years old) is on TOP of
>cretatceous shale (supposedly 100 million years old).
Let's examine what you are saying here. You are citing the overthrusts,
which is what I was referring to when I said in my post yesterday,
"(the exceptions are so small and few as to be irrelevant)"
I am going to go over the field evidence that proves that overthrusts are
not deposited out of order. The entire reason that young-earth creationists
have fought against overthrusts has traditionally been with the aim of
showing that the sediments in the overthrusted region must have been
deposited in a flood.
But the field relations along these thrust faults rules out what these
men are saying. Consider the map. F is where the actual fault cuts the
surface of the earth. - is the region where the rocks are overthrust.
North
A..........................................A'
B....................F.....................B' 0 km of thrusting
---F
W -----F
-------F
----------F ===> direction of thrusting EAST
C..............------------F...............C' 50 km of thrusting
----------F
------F
---F
F
South
The A...A' etc are the locations of the following cross-sections. A cross
section is a vertical slice through the earth along the given line. When
you cut the earth at the location of maximum thrusting the rock layers look
like:
West
C 222222 C' East
22222 33333
top earth surface11111--------2 331111111111111111111
11111111111111111 222222 333/
22222222222 333/
22222222222222 3333 /22222222222222222222222222
33333333333 /
3333333333333333 /333333333333333333333333333333333
bottom
/=fault
In the above, Layer 1,2 and 3 have been pushed on top of their correlative
strata to the east
As one walks or drives north and comes to the region of B..B' the cross
section looks like,
West
B 111111 B' East
1111111 11111
top earth surface11111 22 1111111111111111111
11111111111111111 222222 222222
22222222222 22222
22222222222222 222222222222222222
333333
333333333333333333333333333 333333333333333333333333333
The rocks are just deformed and pushed up a bit. There is no fault and all
the rocks are in the correct depositional order.
If you go further north to A...A' the cross section is like:
West
A A East
top earth surface1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222
333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333
Now all the rocks are in proper order. The fact that one can find properly
deposited rocks north or south of the thrust, and then follow these same
layers into the thrust region, disproves what Morris and Price are saying
about the thrusts.
Price writes of thrusts (directions shown in map above):
"Real thrust faults differ fundamentally from the hypothetical faults
in the mathematical models. In the models, the thrust sheets undergo rigid
body translation, and the magnitude of the displacement is the same over
the entire
fault surface, but on real faults, the magnitude of the displacement
changes conspicuously, both along the direction of displacement and along
the direction perpendicular to the direction of displacement, and the rock
mass is not rigid but deforms penetratively during displacement."~Raymond
A. Price,
"The Mechanical Paradox of Large Overthrusts," Geological Society of
America Bulletin, 100(Dec. 1988):1898-1908, p. 1901
Unfortunately, Christian apologists never talk about the extreme edges of
overthrusts and what the rocks are doing there.
Polystratic trees
>(my favorite) - fossilized trees that cut across supposed millions of years
>of fossil record. Since the tree couldn't have fossilzed slowly, the
>obvious conclusion is that the entire fossil record was laid down very
>quickly by catastophism (not uniformitariasn), most likely during the
>Genesis flood.
Not so. There are several ways trees can be preserved for long periods of
time before burial and sometimes a flood dumps several feet of sediment on
trees, creating polystrate fossils. In 1993 the Mississippi River flooded
and dumped up to 8 feet of sediment on many forests and farm fields. The
trees buried by such a flood are future polystrate fossils and will be used
by future creationists to prove the global flood (in spite of the fact that
there was no global flood in 1993). Here is how it works. Take a tree
rooted in a clay soil. The Mississippi floods and dumps 8 feet of sand on
the tree. This will kill the tree and the part below the ground, will be
waterlogged by the water table and the part above the new ground surface
will rot. Thus the incipient fossil now straddles two levels. Next a new
flood, maybe a minor one dumps a few inches of shale. In the future the
tree will start in clay, the trunk will traverse a layer of sand and
truncate into a layer of shale. PROOF of the 1993 global flood.
>Mass burials and the cambrian explosion show the "sudden
>appearance" of complex life forms, rather than the gradual appearance of
>increasing complexity. This is described by G. Gaylord Simpson as "the
>major mystery of the history of life."
Gaylord's quote is quite old. You should look at more recent material. The
Cambrian is no longer an explosion. Lots of animals are being found in the
precambrian.
"The occurrence of soft-tissue preservation and of cellular structures in
the Wengan fauna indicates that animals lived 40 to 50 million years before
the Cambrian explosion. The phosphate deposits that encase this minute,
soft-bodied, and oldest fauna crop out over an area of about 57 km2 in
central Guizhou. These rocks provide a potentially inexhaustible resource
for understanding the early evolution of animal life." ~ Chia-Wei Li,
Jun-Yuan Chen and Tzu-En Hua,"Precambrian Sponges with Cellular
Structures," Science 279(1998):879-882, p. 882
See also: Mickhail A. Fedonkin and Benjamin M. Waggoner, "The Late
Precambrian Fossil Kimberella is a Mollusc-like Bilaterian Organism,"
Nature, 388(1997):868-871, p. 871; Martin Brasier, Owen Green and Graham
Shields, "Ediacarian Sponge Spicule Clusters from Southwestern Mongolia and
the Origins of the Cambrian Fauna," Geology 25(1997):4:303-306, p. 305
Early cambrian shelly faunal are now found in the Precambrian. (John P.
Grotzinger, Samuel A. Bowring, Beaverly Z. Saylor and Alan J. Kaufman,
"Biostratigraphic and Geochronologic Constraints on Early Animal
Evolution," Science 270, Oct. 27, 1995, p. 603-604 (598-604))
And there's other compelling
>evidence for the Genesis flood which I will only touch upon briefly. For
>example, the size and growth rate of the Mississippi Delta and the Great
>Barrier reef date them at approximately 4000 years old, precisely when the
>flood would have occurred.
Not so.
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.
>
>If you want a real-life, working model of catastophism as the model for the
>geologic features of the earth just take a tour of the Spirit Lake area
>around Mt. St. Helens. When the vulcano erupted, the lake surged up the
>hillside breaking off trees and dragging them back into the lake as the
>waters subsided. They floated around on the surface for a while and then,
>finally, settled bottom first on the bottom of the lake where sediment
>formed around them. This "laboratory" is remarkably similar to the fossil
>forest at Yosemite, demonstrating the same "rootless" trees being buried in
>very distinct layers of sediment. There is also a miniature "grand canyon"
>that formed rapidly in the eruption as water "blasted" through the earth,
>which exhibits the same, "distinct" layers of sedimentary strata that we
>see in the real "grand canyon". That reminds me of another point, the
>fact that the layers of strata in the earths crust are so very distinct
>makes the idea of them being laid down gradually over millions of years
>terribly suspect.
Not so. Mt. St. Helens output only one lithology, volcanic ash. There is
no limestone, no shale, no sand, no silt, no crinoidal hash deposits. The
grand canyon has all those lithologies and Mt. St. Helens doesn't. It
isn't analogous at all.
>
>While we're on the subject of fossils, Darwin himself said "... the state
>of the fossil evidence was the most obvious and gravest objection which can
>be urged against my theory." It's been more than 100 years and we have
>discovered billions of fossils and I'd have to say that Darwins statement
>is still true today.
You would say this based upon your reading of young-earth creationist
literature or upon your reading of paleontological literature?
>
>Yes, there's more than enough "evidence against evolution" to more than
>console those of us who believe the literal creation account in Genesis.
Tell me the data that disproves what I noted above.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm