Creationists PWNED

[Spiffor]

So it was true all along

[beingofone]

Originally posted by Spiffor
So it was true all along

Thats funny Spiffor.

One more and I am done.
This is why I do not believe we will always be at the top of the foodchain.

[Kuciwalker]

I see Boris and Co. have been holding the fort for me while I was away

[Urban Ranger]

Polystrate tree fossils

There was an objection raised by trev about "polystrate" tree fossils. These are fossilised trees that penetrate through several layers of stata. I just suddenly remembered the name of these things so I am posting a reply.

Here's a link to a TO article on the sujbect

[trev]

There was an objection raised by trev about "polystrate" tree fossils. These are fossilised trees that penetrate through several layers of stata. I just suddenly remembered the name of these things so I am posting a reply.

I have read the linked article and several secondary links within the article. These articles are offer very unsatisfactory answers to the problem of 'polystrate' tree fossils. In particular they offer no evolutionary answer to the issue of polystrate tree fossils that pass through one or more seams of coal, although they do offer a plausible solution to the case of polystrate tree fossils that pass through other sedimentary materials. This plausible solution suggests a rapid deposit of sedimentary material is needed to explain the phenomena.
As the rapid deposition of sedimentary material is most likely in a major flood event, it is not surprising that creationist's see this as evidence for Noah's flood, particularly as this can explain polystrate tree fossils through several coal seams as well.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by trev

I have read the linked article and several secondary links within the article. These articles are offer very unsatisfactory answers to the problem of 'polystrate' tree fossils. In particular they offer no evolutionary answer to the issue of polystrate tree fossils that pass through one or more seams of coal, although they do offer a plausible solution to the case of polystrate tree fossils that pass through other sedimentary materials. This plausible solution suggests a rapid deposit of sedimentary material is needed to explain the phenomena.
As the rapid deposition of sedimentary material is most likely in a major flood event, it is not surprising that creationist's see this as evidence for Noah's flood, particularly as this can explain polystrate tree fossils through several coal seams as well.

You clearly doesn't know anything about sedimentation. Every major river does this on a daily basis - good examples are Yangtze, The nile, Amazonas, Mississippi - the list goes on.

Try read a little here :

http://oregonstate.edu/~jeffersa/mississippi.htm

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by BlackCat


You clearly doesn't know anything about sedimentation. Every major river does this on a daily basis - good examples are Yangtze, The nile, Amazonas, Mississippi - the list goes on.

Mmm, I wonder why ancient civilizations had similar stories of floods.

What conditions could possibly have been common to all of them?


Did they exist on or near large river systems, on river flood plains, or near deltas?


Were the rivers prone to flooding large areas?


Did they thrive on or next to the coast?


Did they flourish downstream from large mountain ranges?


Let's see- Egypt. Yes, river, delta and seasonal flooding.

Greece- islands and coastal cities in an area where volcanic activity and earthquakes and waves generated by seaquakes occur.

The Indus Valley civilization- why yes, the Indus River, and melt water from a large mountain system, and seasonal flooding.


The civilizations of the fertile crescent? Well, Iraq's national anthem is 'Land of Two Rivers'- I wonder if that gives us some kind of clue.


And so on, ad nauseam.

Good grief, even the Neolithic sites in Orkney have been prone to inundation, and parts of the East Coast of England are even now being undermined and eroded by the action of the North Sea.

But let's just ignore that, and say it's divine judgment instead. And skip earth sciences as being just too hard.

[BlackCat]

Another good one is :

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~fjmagill/levees_espl.pdf

Look at page 10 - a deposition of more than 8.2 mill cubic meters of sand should be able to cover something, and this happend over a very short period (the 1993 flodding in US)

[trev]

Look at page 10 - a deposition of more than 8.2 mill cubic meters of sand should be able to cover something, and this happend over a very short period (the 1993 flodding in US)

This still DOES NOT solve the phenomena of polystrate tree fossils going through several coal seams, because coal seams require according to evolutionary theory thousands of years of vegetation buildup as peat, prior to covering by sediment and formation of coal. The tree WOULD NOT REMAIN THERE for that period of time.
The only time coal formation has been observed in nature has been rapid formation as a result of the Mt St Helens eruptions which destroyed forests, and the resultant ash/mud flows deposited the destoyed vegetation in the Spirit lakes resulting in the some coal formation and the obsevation of tree stumps with roots being deposited in the lakes in 'polystrate aspect'. But for some unknown reason, this evidence is totally disregarded by evolutionists as irrelevant in favour of theories deduced by their reasoning requiring processes that have never actually been observed in nature. Discounting the observed in favour of the unobserved is a very strange sort of logic and will not convince me

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by trev
These articles are offer very unsatisfactory answers to the problem of 'polystrate' tree fossils. In particular they offer no evolutionary answer to the issue of polystrate tree fossils that pass through one or more seams of coal, although they do offer a plausible solution to the case of polystrate tree fossils that pass through other sedimentary materials.

[emphasis added]

This is not an issue about evolution, it is about geology. YEC support it because they think polystrate trees point to a global flood. As it turns out, no such explanation is needed.

[Boris Godunov]

Since trev doesn't know the difference between evolution and geology, I'm a bit suprised it's still going on.

Trev, che already pointed out that nobody is ignoring those issues. On the contrary, geologists have more than adequate answeres for them. You yourself acknowledge that such coal seams can also be the result of volcanic eruptions.

I find your line about "Discounting the observed in favour of the unobserved is a very strange sort of logic and will not convince me" extremely amusing, because that's what YECs do all the time. You've not offered a single explanation for the things I mentioned should be visible in geology due to a global flood but aren't and have instead retreated to this coal seam nonsense, which you've indirectly acknowledged has a perfectly satisfactory non-flood explanation. Until you account for the massive amount of geological evidence against the flood, such retreats are hardly convincing. In fact, it seems to be a last, desperate stand.

And we realize any sort of logical argument and the use of facts won't convince you, because you're more interested in justifying a presumption rather than objectively considering the evidence.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by trev

This still DOES NOT solve the phenomena of polystrate tree fossils going through several coal seams, because coal seams require according to evolutionary theory thousands of years of vegetation buildup as peat, prior to covering by sediment and formation of coal. The tree WOULD NOT REMAIN THERE for that period of time.
The only time coal formation has been observed in nature has been rapid formation as a result of the Mt St Helens eruptions which destroyed forests, and the resultant ash/mud flows deposited the destoyed vegetation in the Spirit lakes resulting in the some coal formation and the obsevation of tree stumps with roots being deposited in the lakes in 'polystrate aspect'. But for some unknown reason, this evidence is totally disregarded by evolutionists as irrelevant in favour of theories deduced by their reasoning requiring processes that have never actually been observed in nature. Discounting the observed in favour of the unobserved is a very strange sort of logic and will not convince me

Have you read this page :

http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/earth/waton/s931.html

If the streams burst their banks before a forest could establish properly and a peat layer could develop from its detritus, the bases of the pioneer trees would be surrounded by the sheet sands from the crevasse splays and would be killed (Fig. 5,6). It is interesting to note that the former vertical tree trunks found at Joggins are invariably rooted in fine grained sediment although the base of the trunk is usually surrounded by a sandstone (Fig. 5B). Such trees would no doubt have their tops blown off once they had rotted. Sediment would accumulate around them and eventually spill into the hollowed interior once it had reached the level of the rim of the stump (Fig. 5D).

There are many variants to this general mode of infilling. The interiors of some trunks have a layer of charcoal-like material below the sedimentary infilling. This material is the remains of the vascular bundles of the tree stump which rotted and fe ll into its base prior to the sediment spilling over the rim and preserving it. Others have siderite (iron carbonate) filling in their bases and adjacent root systems. This was presumably precipitated from standing water in the hollow stump before it wa s filled in by sediment. Short stumps usually have well preserved root systems (Stigmaria) because they were filled in before the weight of accumulating sediment was sufficient to crush them. Tall stumps on the other hand have root systems which are difficult to see because they caved in under the weight of the overlying sediment long before it had accumulated enough to spill over the rim of the trunk and thereby enter the roots (Ferguson, 1988b).

The infilled stigmarian root systems are often exposed on the foreshore and in the cliffs complete with attached rootlets. These sizable fossils may be several metres long and up to 15 or 20 cm in diameter. Broken segments of Stigmaria are com mon on the beach.

It should be mentioned that horizontal tree trunks are rare in the Joggins section (but do occur in the base of some of the larger channels). Petrification of woody tissue is also extremely rare in the Joggins trees. Only one example has been found b y the writer in the last thirty-one years (Fig. 7).

When the surface of the accumulating sediment was flush with the rim of a hollow tree stump the stump acted as a very effective trap for any unwary amphibians or reptiles crawling over the forest or jungle floor. The first vertebrate remains found ins ide the Joggins tree trunks were discovered by Sir Charles Lyell and William Dawson in 1851. It was the discovery of these early reptiles which really put the locality on the map and made it world famous.

Up to thirteen vertebrate skeletons have been found inside one tree trunk (as successive levels of infilling) and it is obvious that the trunks provided an ideal situation for fossilization since the animals’ remains were destined to be "rapidly burrie d in a protective medium" as the accumulating sediment had already reached the rim of the trunk and was in the process of filling it (Fig. 5D). The trunks of the larger trees are almost a metre in diameter near their base and the reptiles and amphibians found inside them are appreciably less than that in length.

One of the well known early reptiles from Joggins (Hylonomus lyelli) appears on one of Canada Post’s fossil stamps issues in the spring of 1992. Another animal which is known to have been relatively abundant at Joggins is Arthropleura – a very large myriapod which is perhaps best compared to a giant woodlouse or sowbug. These attained a length of about two metres and were obviously able to avoid being trapped in the tree trunks as they would not be so prone to toppling in to them as wou ld be the quadrupeds. Only fragments of their exoskeletons have been found at Joggins, but their abundance is indicated by the frequency of the discovery of their distinctive trackways on the surface of some of the sedimentary layers (see cover picture a nd Figure 8).

[trev]

Such trees would no doubt have their tops blown off once they had rotted.

It should be mentioned that horizontal tree trunks are rare in the Joggins section

Where are the blown off tops? It should be noted that with dead trees, the rotting process occurs quickest at the point where the tree intersects with the ground. If the tree did not rot at this point which appears to be the situation here, then the sedimentation process must have been rapid, rapid enough to have preserved the tree tops as well ( I have spent many years employed as a Technical Assistant working in conifer forests, so I am well aware of how the rotting process works with dead trees). But the lack of horizontal logs is a serious problem with the explanations offered in the article. Therefore a scenario such as occured and has been observed at Mt St Helens seems much more likely where the tree tops were blown off by the initial volcanic eruption and resultant winds, and then later the tree trunks were washed down the mountainside in ash/mud slides with intact roots (as observed at Mt St Helens) into the Spirit Lakes where they settled and sunk in the vertical (polystrate) aspect. Incidentally this process also results in the vegation layers also being mixed with clay/ash layers, these layers have been shown to be necessary for the formation of coal. For the uninformed coal requires acidity (which the volcanic ash supplies) and a catalyst (many clays are suitable catalysts) for formation from decaying vegetation or peat as well as some pressure and warmth. Simply placing a layer of vegetation under a heavy sedimentary load will not form coal. Again I prefer to use an explanation that involves observed processes than just simple deductive reasoning which ignores the observations at Spirit Lakes and normal rotting processes for conifer trees

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I see Boris and Co. have been holding the fort for me while I was away

You were away?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by trev
It should be noted that with dead trees, the rotting process occurs quickest at the point where the tree intersects with the ground. If the tree did not rot at this point which appears to be the situation here, then the sedimentation process must have been rapid, rapid enough to have preserved the tree tops as well ( I have spent many years employed as a Technical Assistant working in conifer forests, so I am well aware of how the rotting process works with dead trees). But the lack of horizontal logs is a serious problem with the explanations offered in the article. Therefore a scenario such as occured and has been observed at Mt St Helens seems much more likely where the tree tops were blown off by the initial volcanic eruption and resultant winds, and then later the tree trunks were washed down the mountainside in ash/mud slides with intact roots (as observed at Mt St Helens) into the Spirit Lakes where they settled and sunk in the vertical (polystrate) aspect. Incidentally this process also results in the vegation layers also being mixed with clay/ash layers, these layers have been shown to be necessary for the formation of coal. For the uninformed coal requires acidity (which the volcanic ash supplies) and a catalyst (many clays are suitable catalysts) for formation from decaying vegetation or peat as well as some pressure and warmth. Simply placing a layer of vegetation under a heavy sedimentary load will not form coal. Again I prefer to use an explanation that involves observed processes than just simple deductive reasoning which ignores the observations at Spirit Lakes and normal rotting processes for conifer trees

And this proves a global flood how? If anything, it only proves what we've been sayng all along, that natural forces can account for the phenomenon that you ascribe to a great flood. Furthermore, considering that 'polystrate' trees are rare, and not found globally, and all in one section of the rock layer, that would argue greatly against a global flood.