Survey about creationism

[Lincoln]

I guess you didn't read my previous posts UR. Why don't you read them and get back to me? Clue: The God of the Bible claims to operate in the supernatural. Now give me your supernatural (or even natural) evidence that he doesn't?

And the geologists (both creationists and atheists) know that there was a river there. But some do not believe that it wore through several thousand feet of earth like some fanatics suppose it did (unlike similar ancient rivers in the area that have only worn through less than a hundred feet). The canyon is a monument to upset geology. A river does not turn things upside down to that degree unless there is other factors such as earthquakes and volcanic activity. I have been to the Grand Canyon and seen some of the evidence first hand, have you?

[Lancer]

EVERYTHING is at LEAST 45 years old.

[St Leo]

EVERYTHING is at LEAST 45 years old.

No, God created the Universe 5 seconds ago and implanted all of us with artificial memories of the past.

Disprove that!

[Lancer]

I farted 10 secs ago and still smell it.

[St Leo]

God created that smell and implanted memories of that fart into you, heathen.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Violate every law?
Hardly.

Violate one or two?
Perhaps.

One or two?!

How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?

How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.

Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]

How does a global flood explain angular unconformities? These are where one set of layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top. They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.

How were mountains and valleys formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids [Gansser, 1964].) If these were formed during the Flood, how did they reach their present height, and when were the valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind that many valleys were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow process.

When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces. It takes a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does granite erode very quickly. [For example, see Donohoe & Grantham, 1989, for locations of contact between the South Mountain Batholith and the Meugma Group of sediments, as well as some angular unconformities.]

How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed layering? One formation in New Jersey is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400 days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the Flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling per day. And yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly layered, with great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, etc.? [Zimmer, 1992]

How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle.

How could a flood deposit layered fossil forests? Stratigraphic sections showing a dozen or more mature forests layered atop each other--all with upright trunks, in-place roots, and well-developed soil--appear in many locations. One example, the Joggins section along the Bay of Fundy, shows a continuous section 2750 meters thick (along a 48-km sea cliff) with multiple in-place forests, some separated by hundreds of feet of strata, some even showing evidence of forest fires. [Ferguson, 1988. For other examples, see Dawson, 1868; Cristie & McMillan, 1991; Gastaldo, 1990; Yuretich, 1994.] Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below Mt. St. Helens as an example of how a flood can deposit vertical trunks, but deposition by flood fails to explain the roots, the soil, the layering, and other features found in such places.

Where did all the heat go? If the geologic record was deposited in a year, then the events it records must also have occurred within a year. Some of these events release significant amounts of heat.

Magma. The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 1024 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 1027 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat.
Limestone formation. There are roughly 5 x 1023 grams of limestone in the earth's sediments [Poldervaart, 1955], and the formation of calcite releases about 11,290 joules/gram [Weast, 1974, p. D63]. If only 10% of the limestone were formed during the Flood, the 5.6 x 1026 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters.

Meteorite impacts. Erosion and crustal movements have erased an unknown number of impact craters on earth, but Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest that cratering to the extent seen on the Moon and Mercury occurred on earth during the year of Noah's Flood. The heat from just one of the largest lunar impacts released an estimated 3 x 1026 joules; the same sized object falling to earth would release even more energy. [Fezer, pp. 45-46]

Other. Other possibly significant heat sources are radioactive decay (some Creationists claim that radioactive decay rates were much higher during the Flood to account for consistently old radiometric dates); biological decay (think of the heat released in compost piles); and compression of sediments.

5.6 x 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 1027 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.

Aside from losing its atmosphere, Earth can only get rid of heat by radiating it to space, and it can't radiate significantly more heat than it gets from the sun unless it is a great deal hotter than it is now. (It is very nearly at thermal equilibrium now.) If there weren't many millions of years to radiate the heat from the above processes, the earth would still be unlivably hot.

Those are just a small fractions of the problems with the Flood that God would have to use supernatural miracles to overcome.

I would like to see you try coming up with an alternative scenario, that accomplishes the same things.

Uh, I did, you seem to ignore. God doesn't like wicked people? Just smite those that are wicked. What was accomplished by the massive flood that destroyed everything except the Ark?

So it's a local flood then. Why do you hold this portion of the bible to a literal interpretation?

BECAUSE THIS IS A DEBATE OVER WHY THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION IS DUMB. That's the whole point--can we take it literally? And my position is NO, because the global flood simply defies everything we know about science and nature.

What is the average size of these animals?

Doing the math of 30,000 animals, I'd bet the average size would be less than 1 cubic foot.

The total volume of the ark would be 1,518,750 cubic feet.

This would give 50.625 cubic feet on average for each animal. Plenty of room.

Okay, so did they stack these animals? How did they keep the insects, which would have to be in some sort of container? Remember the Ark was divided into rooms, so all those partitions take up space. How many decks did it have? Decks and their supports will take up that space. The hull is going to have to be very thick if it's wooden, and there will have to be huge lateral trusses to support the ship. This eats up a lot of that cubic feet.

Then you have to account for storage of food. What did these animals eat for the months they were aboard? You have to store the plants to feed the herbivores--and somehow keep them fresh--and then you have to account for the animals, like reptiles, that only eat freshly-killed meat. Then you have to account for the animal waste. That many animals would be generating massive amounts of feces constantly. The Bible specifies there was only one small hole for ventilation in the ENTIRE Ark! How did the animals below even breathe, being packed in like that? I am reminded of the boxcars to Auschwitz.

Now, considering Noah and his family loaded the Ark in ONE DAY (Gen. 7:13-14), that meant loading at least 40 animals per second continuously. And not just loading them, but making sure they go exactly where they are supposed to go (can't have carnivores mixing with herbivores, can we?). How was this possible?

There are a few problems Boris, with the Biblical account.

Understatement of the year!

First off, not much information is provided about the type of wood used for the boat. This plays a huge factor as to whether or not the wood will rot and how fast this will occur.

I thought someplace specifically referred to cypress wood? People like that because it is a relatively resilient wood. But given 100 years exposure to the elements, cypress would still rot enough to make the Ark unseaworthy. The wood would warp, especially on a wooden ship so big. Again, the longest wooden vessels ever made, WITH iron reinforcement, were only 350 feet and had horrible leaking problems. Wood isn't that strong a material.

Secondly, we don't know the contents of the word translated as 'pitch' to treat the wood. It is entirely reasonable for the people of these times to coat the wood with a substance that will withstand rot.

Such treatment processes were not known back then. Remember, the wood doesn't have to rot completely, just enough to make the vessel unseaworthy. 100 years of exposure to the elements is amble time to make even the sturdiest woods weaken to this point.

Thirdly, we do not know whether Iron reinforced the hull or not. There is nothing in the biblical account that confirms or denies this addition.

Iron was not used in shipbuilding until very recently. We have archeological remains of ships going back many thousands of years, and they don't use iron to reinforce the hulls.

Dispersed over the entire surface area of the earth? You have to take this into account.

Enough water, falling in 40 days, to cover the entire earth up to 15 cubits over the top of Mt. Everest! That's an ENORMOUS amount of water to fall in so short a time period. This amount is enough to completely destroy the atmosphere of the earth. It had to have come down as heavy as a waterfall. And WHERE did it come from?

Sure wish we had the purported 'Book of Noah,' now lost. I'll bet that we would have better answers to some of your questions.

Since the Noah story is fiction, I doubt any such book (and who purports it to exist? Wishful creationists?) would shed any light on how the laws of nature were turned on their head non-stop for such a long period of time for what seems to me to be a pretty irrational thing. The worldwide flood myth is a ludicrous as the tooth fairy.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Lincoln
I guess you didn't read my previous posts UR. Why don't you read them and get back to me? Clue: The God of the Bible claims to operate in the supernatural. Now give me your supernatural (or even natural) evidence that he doesn't?

In other words, your beliefs have no more rational explanation than the tooth fairy, Santa Claus or the Greek Gods. Why should we think yours are any more valid than those? They are also easily explanable by magical, supernatural powers. One can say that about anything to the ends of rationality.

All praise to Osiris!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Lincoln
I guess you didn't read my previous posts UR. Why don't you read them and get back to me? Clue: The God of the Bible claims to operate in the supernatural. Now give me your supernatural (or even natural) evidence that he doesn't?

You are saying that your god, who can suspend a staggering amount of water in air while simultaneously change all the laws of physics to keep lifeforms underneath from being crushed, cannot defeat iron chariots.

That is amusing, to say the very least.

Originally posted by Lincoln
And the geologists (both creationists and atheists) know that there was a river there. But some do not believe that it wore through several thousand feet of earth like some fanatics suppose it did (unlike similar ancient rivers in the area that have only worn through less than a hundred feet). The canyon is a monument to upset geology.

"Hey look, something science can't explain. Look, God!"

The thing that really puzzling about this whole thing is instead of admitting we don't know everything, but we will try to find out, Creationists instantly jump to the conclusion that science has failed and it's Yahweh at work.

Originally posted by Lincoln
A river does not turn things upside down to that degree unless there is other factors such as earthquakes and volcanic activity. I have been to the Grand Canyon and seen some of the evidence first hand, have you?

This comes from a source that says a canyon has/had tributaries. That's not a mistake even somebody who has a basic knowledge of geography will make.

[Master Zen]

Another religious thread...

I'm not going to waste time arguing about these things again since the creationists will still believe that nonsense no matter what convincing arguments we say.
So, as always, I end with my quote:

A believer will only stop believing if God himself comes up to him and says He doesn't exist

[Ben Kenobi]

Molly Bloom:

What did the animals eat? Air?

Darn. I hoped Boris would not think of this point. Should still be room for grain for the animals, considering the average size of the animals, and the size of the ark.

Some animals will eat voraciously, most will not.

Also- if god could test Job without resorting to slaying the rest of humanity, why not do the same with Noah?

False analogy. In Job's case the test involved the relationship between God and Job. If Job failed, Satan could claim that all men only loved God for the blessings. The flood was quite different. It seems here that God wanted to punish all the wicked people on Earth at once, while preserving Noah's family, and some of the animals.

The secondary problem, is that God seemed to want to test Noah before allowing his family to survive. Both of these desires need to be recognised. The Flood was God's solution, so the burden still rests on you and Boris to come up with an alternative solution, that will still allow God to punish the wicked, and to test and preserve Noah.

[Ben Kenobi]

Lincoln, obiwan, could you kindly resolve these nagging problems with regards to a global flood?

UR:

First off, we need to examine your assumptions. You are assuming that the highest mountain on Earth at this point in time is Mt. Everest at 8900 metres. We have no firm date on the Flood, or when the Flood occurred. One possibility is that the highest mountain is much smaller that Mt. Everest.

(will finish this post later, gtg for now.)

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by obiwan18
First off, we need to examine your assumptions. You are assuming that the highest mountain on Earth at this point in time is Mt. Everest at 8900 metres. We have no firm date on the Flood, or when the Flood occurred. One possibility is that the highest mountain is much smaller that Mt. Everest.

(will finish this post later, gtg for now.)

Think of it this way.

Even if the tallest mountain was way shorter than Everest, you are not going to have anything less than 100 additional ATM's.

Furthermore, Mt. Everest had appeared way before humans did.

[DinoDoc]

I just thought that I would interject that a belief in God doesn't require a rejection of evolutionary theory.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I just thought that I would interject that a belief in God doesn't require a rejection of evolutionary theory.

Tell that to the Creationists.

[Ben Kenobi]

UR:

Sorry for the delay:

I'll accept 1500 metres as the size of the largest mountain. Using this number we get about 7x10^8 cubic kilometres of water.

I don't get your pressure argument. Why would the people on Earth be crushed by the water above them? Does this depend on the distance between the water and the Earth, as well as the distribution of the water in the Atmosphere?

Tell that to the Creationists.

That's the sad thing about this argument. All you can show is the scientific plausibility of a local flood interpretation over a global flood interpretation. Nothing more and nothing less.