I think you missed a 'person' divider - you seem to move at this point from Roy's post to my own.
I would like to thank you up front for taking the time to try to address the issues raised in a calm and thoughtful manner. We may not agree after all is said and done, but a least it is a discussion and in that the possibility exists for information exchange.
Not really. First, approaching if from the side of fossils found in multiple layers is more of a obfuscation of the issue. There are valid and consistent explanations in both a long ages and a flood geology perspective for fossils that occur across a large number of layers. It's not some sort of special pleading case. It just means in the long ages side that these animals had a longer history on the Earth. But from a flood geology perspective it is a genuinely intractable problem to explain the worldwide separation of specific fossils to ONLY certain layers and ONLY certain surrounding groups that cross those same layers.
Even dinosaurs themselves are a sort of 'index' fossil, in that they only occur in sediments older that 65 million years from a long ages perspective. But within those layers ALSO are their own index fossils. So the problem for the flood geology perspective is that the index fossils that help us sort the 200 million years of dinosaur history ONLY lay within the larger swath that defines the dinosaurs themselves. They don't ever creep up into more modern sediments containing more modern animals. This just can't be dealt with in a flood scenario. The flood doesn't sort animals by type - only by buoyancy or location. And the turbid waters of a flood should tend to mix things together. We should not be able to use index fossils at all if a massive flood were the source. Because they would end up showing up basically anywhere in the sequence depending on the local conditions as the flood proceeded.
"Living Fossils" that have some sort of large gap if missing information (that gives rise to the term) tend to be rare and very localized where they are found today. This is not at all outside the scope of what would be expected in the darwinian scenario in term of the potential, in terms of possibility. But it is always newsworthy when we find some obscure pocket where a species thought to be long extinct is found to have actually survivied to the present day. An it would stretch credulity if is was a very common thing. But it isn't.
I don't think so. The kind of initiation of the flood you are proposing, to leave the evidence we have, would be TOO CATASTROPHIC - by many orders of magnitude. IOW, based on the impacts we know about, Noah and the animals would have needed far more than a wooden ark, and far longer than 1 year to survive. The other issues are things are far to stable in the solar system now for an event like a planet break-up that to have occurred just 4500 years ago. We'd still be getting slammed rather frequently by impacts if that were the case. The very fact the entire topic of asteroid impacts is so new to science is because these things just don't happen very often. The Asteroids themselves form orbital subgroups based on resonances with Jupiter - something that would not be stable just 4500 years following the breakup. I don't have the time to explore all the problems with proposing a planet breakup for a cause of the flood, but there is a reason it's not a popular option. It would not last long.
Well one critical aspect you are missing is the that aquifers destroyed by the impact in the impact area existed and were/are stable in the layers penetrated out side the area of the impact. Not sure how you are going to set up stable aquifers in flood borne deposition just 4500 years ago.
I'd like to see a self consistent explanation for penetration to the basement rock of LITHIFIED sediment DURING the flood. The asteroid did not punch through mud.
not THESE tidal waves! In a normal tectonic event producing a tidal wave, the actual movement might be the shift up or down of a column of water a few feet in height - or less. And as this small column of water racers into shallower areas, because it represents the entire length of the water column from the surface to the initiating event, that entire column bunches up as the wave reaches shallow water.
But THIS tidal wave is the result of the displacement and vaporization of cubic MILES of water. The crater diameter is 85 km (revised estimates say 40 as there is some speculation the 85km value represents slumping after the event), ALL the water above it would have been instantly vaporized. The wave itself wold be hundreds of feet tall even out at sea.
From the wikipedia article:
Chesapeake Bay 40
Look at the list I posted above. ALL of these during the flood year is the only way to explain what they did to the sediments they penetrated The largest ones would have shut down the planet's normal seasons and climate for years, not just 'a year'. That is why one of the major extinctions is associated with Chixulub. But the flood hypothesis REQUIRES they all happened in THAT year. And keep in mind, I'm leaving out several hundred other impacts that made craters at least the size of meteor crater in Arizona. You can put some of them more recent than the flood, but not very many of them. Anything that happened according to long ages dating before 2 million years ago (some what arbitrary pick) MUST be during or before the flood.
Well, we do know that impacts into the water produce deadly toxic gasses, that a mile or two of water means nothing to a 5 km wide asteroid coming in at 12 miles/second or more.
The shock and blast effects 400km from an event forming 105km crater look like a peak overpressure of 325 psi, winds of over 2000 miles per hour, clothing ignites, steal buildings are destroyed. The ark is gone. Noah and family are dead. Would Noah have been that close to anything that large? It does not appear so. So you could probably get away with claiming Noah and the ark would not have been immediately destroyed directly because of an impact based on where they occurred and the likely positions of the ark during the flood year.
So the real problems are going to remain the large tidal waves, massive climactic effects from so many in so short of time, difficulty recovering from those effects in any reasonable period of time - specifcally the Biblical flood timeframe.
[/QUOTE]
Ice age versus farming -- well, unless snowball Earth actually happened, Noah's landing in Mesopotamia already explains that issue.[/QUOTE]
Well that is one of the problems. So many impacts in so short a time ... the after effects that would be part of that scenario are not what the history implies.
Sure - Vredefort. over a billion years ago long ages scenario. Fresh 160 km basin over 1.5 miles deep flood scenario. How did it get virtually erased over the 4500 years between then and now as required if you are going to explain the sediments of the Earth by a global flood? And Chuxulub. And so on. Most of these big craters both penetrated and where buried by flood sediments in your scenario.
BTW - the chesepeake bay was an impact in to the ocean. Impacts into dry land tend to be a little different than impacts into the ocean because the ocean rushes back in after the impact. Many of the impacts clearly where not in an ocean - but they ALL had to be to have any chance of them not being noticed by humans if they occurred <6000 years ago.
We return to the issue of massive inconsistencies in the flood hypothesis. If you try to put them all DURING the flood, it doesn't add up. But if you try to put them all in the last 6000 years, but NOT during the flood, it still doesn't add up.
But if you let them fall over 4.5 billion years, with massive time gaps between impacts, and different geologies and environments where they fall, then it all adds up. It makes perfect sense. We don't have any records of these massive impacts because human civilization didn't come along until long after they fell. We didn't go extinct because of Chixulub likek the dinosaurs did because it happened 65 million years ago.
BTW - how do you get ALL the dinosaurs buried UNDER the K/T boundary in a flood scenario - but all the modern mammals above it ... ???
You can lay that OE bias thing to rest. The elements REQUIRED to show a formation is an impact can ONLY be produced by the massive heat and pressure of an impact event. Shocket Quartz, Shatter Cones, Tektites, eject fields. These things are very unique tells, and no-one will even consider calling a hole in the ground a meteor impact unless you find most or all of them there.
??? by bodies - do you mean the moon, mercury, mars, asteroids themselves, other solar system moons? If so - you have got is WAY wrong ...
No - that doesn't explain anything. The distribution on the Earth, the Moon. Mars etc do not support this at all. In fact, one of the big problems you have is that the number of impacts preserved on no-geologically active bodies is so LARGE compared to the Earth that there is no reasonable explanation AT ALL in a YEC scenario, flood or no flood. Why would the Moon literally be covered on literally every inch of its surface and the Earth - which is quite a bit larger in terms of a target, have relatively so few without very, very long periods of time being involved? The number of impacts the Earth would have absorbed and erased to account for what we see on the moon in just 6000 years would be insane to try to justify. The crust may well still be molten - so would the moon. This is just getting kind of silly when you've only got 6000 years to work with and you major explanation for all the geological activity necessary to erase them all and recover the Earth to a livable state is the flood.
I really don't think so. I am sure some of my statements might prove slightly exaggerated given intense analysis, some likely would prove understated as well. But I am quite certain you can't account for the cratering on the Earth in just 6000 years - flood or no flood. And I know you can't account for the surface of the moon with just a 6000 year history and not also completely decimate the Earth far beyond anything we've discussed so far . And I know you have no possibility of explaining the difference between the surface of the moon and the Earth in just 6000 years. You'd have to fall back to some sort of appearance of history thing to get the moon, mars, mercury no matter how hard you tried*. They where just made that way. Those lunar impact craters can't be part of the ongoing history from the 6000 year creation to the present. You just can't produce that surface in one year, or even 1000 years without some sort of super special shield over the Earth. Remember, the meteor storm to do that ... The earth and the moon are not sitting still. They are in orbit around the Sun. A swarm following the moon but avoiding the Earth - ???? No way. The Earth is bigger. These things are going to fall to Earth before they hit the moon. It's just wrong in so many ways.
Jim
*It is generally accepted that the reason the Earth and Venus are not ALSO covered with craters like the Moon, Mars, Mercury and all the solar system moons and asteroids is that their atmospheres and geologies allowed them, over the eons, to erase their scars. But the events that have made all of these rocky surfaces crater scarred are solar system wide. The Earth did not escape, it's just that it's surface has had time to be remade many, many times.
I would like to thank you up front for taking the time to try to address the issues raised in a calm and thoughtful manner. We may not agree after all is said and done, but a least it is a discussion and in that the possibility exists for information exchange.
Originally posted by logician bones
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Not really. First, approaching if from the side of fossils found in multiple layers is more of a obfuscation of the issue. There are valid and consistent explanations in both a long ages and a flood geology perspective for fossils that occur across a large number of layers. It's not some sort of special pleading case. It just means in the long ages side that these animals had a longer history on the Earth. But from a flood geology perspective it is a genuinely intractable problem to explain the worldwide separation of specific fossils to ONLY certain layers and ONLY certain surrounding groups that cross those same layers.
Even dinosaurs themselves are a sort of 'index' fossil, in that they only occur in sediments older that 65 million years from a long ages perspective. But within those layers ALSO are their own index fossils. So the problem for the flood geology perspective is that the index fossils that help us sort the 200 million years of dinosaur history ONLY lay within the larger swath that defines the dinosaurs themselves. They don't ever creep up into more modern sediments containing more modern animals. This just can't be dealt with in a flood scenario. The flood doesn't sort animals by type - only by buoyancy or location. And the turbid waters of a flood should tend to mix things together. We should not be able to use index fossils at all if a massive flood were the source. Because they would end up showing up basically anywhere in the sequence depending on the local conditions as the flood proceeded.
There's also the "living fossils" missing from layers above where they're found, though the sea examples could only be fossilized on present land when it's underwater in your worldview, so some can be explained.
Thanks for the interesting link. I've gone through the first post at time of writing this. You appear to prove conclusively that it is an asteroid impact, although I wouldn't know for sure about the exact velocities needed. From what you said just in the first post, this would be evidence for the impact initiation version of the Flood, consistent with the evidence for a single system-wide event on other solar bodies (such as perhaps the breaking apart of a planet between Mars and Jupiter orbits also explaining that asteroid belt where the material's direction didn't fall out of orbit enough). And technically it could work for the odd variant that has both events happening at the same time but without natural causal relation. (And I suppose we couldn't rule out a third possibility of some other cause leading to both at the same time, but no idea what that could be.)
So in that sense it looks like evidence against any other view of the Flood, but at least from what's in the first post, not evidence against the Flood. Besides, we would want to look for some kind of naturalistic cause for the Flood; the Bible does not clearly state that its cause was miraculous (unlike for example the animal pairs chosen to go on the Ark, or the prophecy of the Flood that lead to the building of the ark) -- at least as one possibility.
Pretty sure it has to be in-between, since it's near the coast and yet we still see it. Remember the initial recession stage would cause sheet erosion destroying the topmost deposition (inland too, to an extent, but especially at the coasts). And your diagram showed something atop the crater-affected layers which may include later Flood deposition (unsure offhand).
To your list of effects, switching to list style for now:
Tidal waves -- this isn't the only thing that causes those problems, but tidal waves actually tend to be barely noticeable in deep water. It's when they approach land that they become steep.
Tidal waves -- this isn't the only thing that causes those problems, but tidal waves actually tend to be barely noticeable in deep water. It's when they approach land that they become steep.
But THIS tidal wave is the result of the displacement and vaporization of cubic MILES of water. The crater diameter is 85 km (revised estimates say 40 as there is some speculation the 85km value represents slumping after the event), ALL the water above it would have been instantly vaporized. The wave itself wold be hundreds of feet tall even out at sea.
From the wikipedia article:
Of course, I am saying for other reasons Noah was probably inland quite a ways, and if this initiated the Flood, especially with an impact in the single ocean triggering the RS, this could add to the already-expected massive uprushing current -- if this could (I don't know) hit the Ark before it is lifted by gentler water (from both later rainfall and from the pump-action rising slowing down later), then it could possibly damage it enough to make it not possible to survive the year (or just kill from the impact kinetic energy of crashing into hills or whatever).
The description in the account seems to fit both the fountain effects and the floodgate effects happening at roughly the same time from Noah's POV, though that opens up all the previously mentioned issues about POV. But if that's the right interpretation, it would be consistent with his being far enough inland to have the initial waves from both causes not reach him.
The description in the account seems to fit both the fountain effects and the floodgate effects happening at roughly the same time from Noah's POV, though that opens up all the previously mentioned issues about POV. But if that's the right interpretation, it would be consistent with his being far enough inland to have the initial waves from both causes not reach him.
Obviously, exact placement of the Ark was always a sticky issue in any version of the global Flood view, even just from pure rainfall versions, since there would have to be a time when it could be mobile sideways and yet isn't high enough up to dodge hills in the area (2012... AHEM). Noah could have mitigated that intentionally (or accidentally on his part but intentionally by God) by building it in a plains area, especially one already near a lake, where he might for example be more likely to find boatbuilders to hire. (I've also argued that he may have built it away from population centers to have more trees right next to the build site... which makes sense if pre-Flood population tended to be hilltop as some post-Flood civilization was as added defense against more dangerous creatures and each other, given the violence described. This also hampers the "visible witness" argument.)
Stress issues -- Well, keep in mind the account confirms that the ark had to deal with these for a time, whatever the causes. The shape has been shown to be ideal for wave stress, and the other effects are known to be mitigated by ancient building techniques.
Climate -- I think the main issues are here, yes. But a lot here depends on the Flood model. Under the RS theory, we already expect a climate issue (matching observations) with the temporarily warmer oceans causing a period of more intense storm activity (we see this from consistent surface erosion of many of what would be islands at the time at the same level below today's ocean surface, as well as various effects on today's continental land and larger islands), and of course the ice age (due to the atmospheric effects of more cloud cover -- note that ice buildup is why the ocean level would be lower for a time causing the island surface erosion).
Stress issues -- Well, keep in mind the account confirms that the ark had to deal with these for a time, whatever the causes. The shape has been shown to be ideal for wave stress, and the other effects are known to be mitigated by ancient building techniques.
Climate -- I think the main issues are here, yes. But a lot here depends on the Flood model. Under the RS theory, we already expect a climate issue (matching observations) with the temporarily warmer oceans causing a period of more intense storm activity (we see this from consistent surface erosion of many of what would be islands at the time at the same level below today's ocean surface, as well as various effects on today's continental land and larger islands), and of course the ice age (due to the atmospheric effects of more cloud cover -- note that ice buildup is why the ocean level would be lower for a time causing the island surface erosion).
The question is if the impacts observed would actually cause effects enough to add to this that would not be "cleaned" by the intense steam, global water overflow, and global rainfall during the Flood itself. It seems highly unlikely that they would not be seriously hampered by these effects; the typical OE assumption of the effects is without the context of such a Flood, so it would be easy for them to miss this and just blindly import their expected effects on top of the Flood without considering how the Flood would alter it.
Deadly proximity -- Well, again, we've had some strikes that destroy areas in modern times, but how widespread are the effects? I don't recall accounts offhand of wide-ranging deaths from aftereffects. So, unless these are limited only to the sizes seen in the Flood, and again wouldn't be significantly stopped by the Flood itself, this won't get us anywhere (though obviously the direct destruction would scale up). Another problem with this argument is we know of no way to determine where on the original supercontinent Noah started out from.
So the real problems are going to remain the large tidal waves, massive climactic effects from so many in so short of time, difficulty recovering from those effects in any reasonable period of time - specifcally the Biblical flood timeframe.
[/QUOTE]
Ice age versus farming -- well, unless snowball Earth actually happened, Noah's landing in Mesopotamia already explains that issue.[/QUOTE]
Well that is one of the problems. So many impacts in so short a time ... the after effects that would be part of that scenario are not what the history implies.
Not sure what you mean about large scars reburied. Could you clarify?
BTW - the chesepeake bay was an impact in to the ocean. Impacts into dry land tend to be a little different than impacts into the ocean because the ocean rushes back in after the impact. Many of the impacts clearly where not in an ocean - but they ALL had to be to have any chance of them not being noticed by humans if they occurred <6000 years ago.
We return to the issue of massive inconsistencies in the flood hypothesis. If you try to put them all DURING the flood, it doesn't add up. But if you try to put them all in the last 6000 years, but NOT during the flood, it still doesn't add up.
But if you let them fall over 4.5 billion years, with massive time gaps between impacts, and different geologies and environments where they fall, then it all adds up. It makes perfect sense. We don't have any records of these massive impacts because human civilization didn't come along until long after they fell. We didn't go extinct because of Chixulub likek the dinosaurs did because it happened 65 million years ago.
BTW - how do you get ALL the dinosaurs buried UNDER the K/T boundary in a flood scenario - but all the modern mammals above it ... ???
Large vs. small. This is a more complicated one. One factor is that normal statistics would seem to predict what you describe (for the most part); if smaller ones are obscured at the same statistical ranges as larger ones, they're more likely to be completely eroded away (or the ones that aren't wouldn't be noticed today as easily), and only the ones that are in areas and times more akin to the footprint preservation conditions are left, but larger ones would be less likely to escape such erosion. And larger ones will automatically have more trouble escaping erosion as they can't "hide" in smaller regions left alone by the currents and so forth -- especially if they themselves will cause more turbulence! Another issue is that creationists have proposed that many larger craters are being misinterpreted and not yet researched enough to see if they are that due to OE bias. We may have better preserved large ones.
Another factor is the initiation event theory. It would presumably take an enormous impact to trigger oceanic plate subduction! Since the evidence on other bodies shows mostly a single momentary event,
one side of each body takes the biggest hits, including Earth. Presumably the land side was aimed away at the time of that impact. While some larger pieces could still come down later (and some smaller ones may have been accelerated faster due to the breakup so would have been hitting earlier too and were erased by the Flood onset), most of the later ones after the one or ones that triggered the subduction would be expected to be smaller and thus happen at gentler times during the Flood. (Or, again, have a greater statistical likelihood of hitting areas that were at the times they were.)
No - that doesn't explain anything. The distribution on the Earth, the Moon. Mars etc do not support this at all. In fact, one of the big problems you have is that the number of impacts preserved on no-geologically active bodies is so LARGE compared to the Earth that there is no reasonable explanation AT ALL in a YEC scenario, flood or no flood. Why would the Moon literally be covered on literally every inch of its surface and the Earth - which is quite a bit larger in terms of a target, have relatively so few without very, very long periods of time being involved? The number of impacts the Earth would have absorbed and erased to account for what we see on the moon in just 6000 years would be insane to try to justify. The crust may well still be molten - so would the moon. This is just getting kind of silly when you've only got 6000 years to work with and you major explanation for all the geological activity necessary to erase them all and recover the Earth to a livable state is the flood.
ox, you seem to be confirming that you're making the very mistake I pointed out above here -- that you're importing the side effects from your own view uncritically. Those conclusions are reached in your view because it does not have a global Flood! That's circular reasoning...
Jim
*It is generally accepted that the reason the Earth and Venus are not ALSO covered with craters like the Moon, Mars, Mercury and all the solar system moons and asteroids is that their atmospheres and geologies allowed them, over the eons, to erase their scars. But the events that have made all of these rocky surfaces crater scarred are solar system wide. The Earth did not escape, it's just that it's surface has had time to be remade many, many times.
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