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[Administrator]

This post is in response to an April 10, 2018 article by Dr. Michael Heiser, titled, "How To Argue From the Biblical Text for a Local-Regional Flood Instead of a Global Flood". His article links to a poorly-researched article by retired geologist Dr. Lorence G. Collins, titled, "Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened".

This post will consider only arguments from the Genesis flood story, and leave the many arguments from other parts of the Bible to others.  It begins:


1.  Man had become very wicked:

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." -- Gen 6:5-6 KJV

2. The earth was filled with violence, and all flesh had corrupted it's way:

"The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth." -- Gen 6:11-12 KJV

3. God said he would destroy all flesh on the earth (but Noah found grace):

"And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." -- Gen 6:7 KJV

"And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." -- Gen 6:13 KJV

"And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." -- Gen 6:17 KJV

4.  God told Noah to build a huge ark, rather than flee to high mountains in neighboring areas until the flood waters subsided:

"Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits." -- Gen 6:14-15 KJV

5.  God said the flood would destroy all flesh, except for Noah's family and representative animal kinds.  The animal kinds to be saved included birds, which surely could have survived a local flood:

"But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them." -- Gen 6:18-21 KJV

6.  The water rose until it covered all the high hills and mountains:

"And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered." -- Gen 7:19-20 KJV

7.  All flesh died upon the earth:

"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." -- Gen 7:21-23 KJV

8.  The water remained upon the earth for nearly a year:

"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." -- Gen 7:11 KJV

"And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days. And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged; The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;" -- Gen 7:24, 8:1-2 KJV

"And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry." -- Gen 8:13 KJV

9.  God promised to never again destroy the earth with a flood:

"And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." -- Gen 9:11 KJV

Now, in the above narrative and biblical passages, replace "flood" and "water(s)" with "local flood" and "local flood water(s)", respectively, and see if it still makes sense.

Dan

[FaithIsKey]

Now, in the above narrative and biblical passages, replace "flood" and "water(s)" with "local flood" and "local flood water(s)", respectively, and see if it still makes sense.

This makes sense, doesn't it?

9.  God promised to never again destroy the earth with a local flood:

"And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a local flood; neither shall there any more be a local flood to destroy the earth." -- Gen 9:11 KJV

No, I guess not.

Faith

[Brenda]

This post is in response to an April 10, 2018 article by Dr. Michael Heiser... His article links to a poorly-researched article by retired geologist Dr. Lorence G. Collins, titled, "Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened".

Dan, I read the 21 reasons in the article. Why are they poorly-researched?

Brenda

[Administrator]

Dan, I read the 21 reasons in the article. Why are they poorly-researched?

Brenda, let's begin with the 1st "reason".  Dr. Collins wrote:

"The stair-stepped appearance of erosion of sedimentary rocks in the Grand Canyon with sandstones and limestones forming cliffs and shales forming gentle slopes cannot happen if all these rocks were deposited in less than one year. If the Grand Canyon had been carved soon after these rocks were deposited by a worldwide flood, they would not have had time to harden into solid rock and would have been saturated with water. Therefore, the sandstones and limestones would have slumped during the carving of the canyon and would not have formed cliffs (Hill et al. 2016)."

As you can see he bases his "reason" on the assertion that the sediment would not have time to harden before the receding flood waters cut the canyon.  Let's assume the canyon was cut by the receding flood waters, as some geologists speculate, rather than by a flood of water from a massive lake (left by the flood or melting ice) when its natural dam burst, as other geologists speculate.

This first article mentions ongoing PhD thesis research on "microbial biocement" at Murdock University:

Biocement for Sandcastles

This is the actual 2004 PhD thesis on "microbial biocement":

Microbial CaCO3 Precipitation for the production of Biocement

This is a 2009 report on scientists at the same Murdock University developing a method for rapid hardening of sand layers, even to the point of resembling marble:

Scientists turn sand to stone

Those three references are cited in this 2009 article by Dr. David Catchpoole:

From sand to rock -- quickly!

There is ample evidence of carbonate-forming bacteria at the time the strata was deposited.

One other point: fossilization is a tedious process which requires the organism to be quickly buried to prevent it from being destroyed by bacteria and/or scavengers. Any notion that a fossilized layer formed over long periods of time is unscientific.


A linked article by Dr. Tas Walker cites similar research using natural chemical cement:

Rapid Rock

When I get time I will tackle the others; or perhaps some of the other creationists on this board can rebut some of them.

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 2^nd reason:

"Salt and gypsum deposits, more than 200 feet thick, occur in the Paradox Formation in Utah just 200 miles north of the Grand Canyon, and these deposits are the same age as the Supai rocks in the Grand Canyon that were supposedly also deposited by Noah’s flood. Similar salt deposits, up to 3,000 feet thick, exist in various places on all continents and in layers of all geologic ages, and these deposits can only be produced by evaporation of sea water. Such evaporation could not have happened in repeated intervals in the midst of the forty days and forty nights of raining and during the supposed continuous deposition of sedimentary rocks by a worldwide flood and in which the only drying and evaporation is said to have occurred at the end of the flood (Collins 2006; 2009; 2012; Hill et al. 2016)."

That is a ridiculous claim, but common among those who reject the biblical narrative. Salt deposits are generally far too uncontaminated to have been produced over millions of years of evaporation. These articles by Stef J. Heerema explain the origin of salt formations:

A magmatic model for the origin of large salt formations

A theistic evolutionist named Kevin Nelstead critiqued and attempted to refute Stef's research, here:

A young-Earth creationist magmatic model for the origin of evaporites

Stef rebutted Kevin's critique, here:

Clarifying the magmatic model for the origin of salt deposits

Stef also has a short video lecture on the igneous origin of salt formations at:

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 3^rd reason:

"Sand dunes with giant cross bedding occur in the Mesozoic rocks in Zion National Park and are further evidence that desert conditions occurred at the time of the supposed flood (Senter 2011; Collins 2017)."

Sand dunes also form underwater, as witnessed in many areas, including those in San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge.

This article by Dr. Tas Walker discusses the historical debate, the nature of cross-bedding, and a sandstone formation that contains ancient water channels:

Shifting sands

However, it was research by creation scientist Leonard Brand (PhD Biology, Cornell University) on footprints in the Coconino Sandstone of the Grand Canyon that is difficult for old-earther's to scientifically refute:

Footprints in the Grand Canyon

Another good article on the Coconino Sandstone, by geologists Dr. Andrew Snelling and Dr. Steven Austin, includes a discussion of Dr. Brand's research:

Startling evidence for Noah’s Flood: Footprints and sand ‘dunes’ in a Grand Canyon sandstone!

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 4^th reason:

"Fossilized mud cracks occur in the Cambrian Tapeats Formation on top of the Precambrian Vishnu schist at the bottom of the canyon and indicate that drying conditions existed during the alleged worldwide Noah’s flood, and these drying conditions occurred at the very beginning of this supposed flood. Although mud cracks can also form in mud under water by compression that squeezes out water from the mud, such compression is not likely to occur during a flood. Moreover, fossilized mud cracks are found in other formations that were supposedly deposited during Noah’s flood, and these mud cracks occur in red shales that coexist with salt and gypsum layers. Therefore, these mud cracks were likely formed in deltaic mud flats that were exposed to the atmosphere where their iron-bearing minerals reacted with oxygen in the air to form red hematite (Collins 2006; Senter 2011; Hill et al. 2016)."

This article by William A. Hoesch, M.S., titled, Mudcracks and the flood, explains that mud cracks, or "shrinkage" cracks, while not fully understood, can occur under three conditions:

1. In the open atmosphere ("sub-aerial")
2. Underwater (sub-aqueous)
3. While buried (sub-stratal)

He concluded by explaining, "Mud cracks provide no evidence of 'droughts' during the Flood."

John Woodmorappe, in a book review of one of the references cited by Collins, titled,"The Grand Canyon in the thralls of shallow, doctrinaire uniformitarianism: A review of The Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth (Hill et al. 2016)", wrote,

"The authors trot out the old argument that mud cracks, in the fossil record, are conclusive evidence of long-duration subaerial exposure, and that they are distinguishable from syneresis (subaqueous shrinkage) cracks. They are not. Recent research confirms earlier studies that demonstrate that there is no clear-cut morphological distinction between subaerial desiccation cracks and syneresis (subaqueous) cracks."

The other Collins' "mudcrack" reference is this article by Phil Senter, writing for the anti-creationist site, NCSE:

The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology

Woodmorappe cited this secular article by Kilibarda &  Doffin:

Mudcracks, Bird’s-eye, and Anhydrite in Intertidal/Supratidal Late Silurian Kokomo Limestone, Indiana

My comment. Collins, Hill et al., and Senter assume those were atmospheric mud cracks; but the same cracking occurs underwater when the sediment shrinks. Since the process is not completely understood, this appears to have been an attempt by Collins to muddy the waters.  Collins' careful choice of the words, "these mud cracks were likely formed in deltaic mud flats that were exposed to the atmosphere", provides him the kind of "out" typically found near the bottom of a NYT or WP hit piece.

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 5^th and 6^th reasons:

"Raindrop prints occur in many places around the world, which could not have been formed or preserved if the muds (now in shales) containing these prints were deposited under water during Noah’s flood (Senter 2011; Hill et al. 2016)."

"Nests of dinosaur eggs are found in several places around the world, and it is illogical that dinosaurs could have had enough time to create these nests and lay their eggs while they were fleeing from rising waters to reach higher ground (Senter 2011; Hill et al. 2016)."

These "reasons" by Dr. Collins border on childishness. No serious geologist would even pretend those "reasons" either prove or disprove the flood model. But for the sake of argument, below are two responses by flood geologists:

"Many argue that fossil animal tracks, burrows, and nests indicate long periods of time of sedimentation. However, these and other ephemeral features can be explained as products of the early phases of the Flood. These features could have formed in areas where sedimentation was rapid and heavy, and where abrupt changes in base level (whether from eustatic change or tectonism) would have exposed an extensive flat bedding surface. For example, dinosaur tracks, nests, and eggs are often seen as arguments that surrounding rocks were not produced during the Flood. But if sedimentation was ongoing, newly deposited sediments could have served as substrate for animal tracks. With more sedimentation, multiple layers of track-bearing rocks would have quickly accumulated. These briefly exposed diluvial sediments would be ideal environments to preserve ephemeral traces like tracks, as well as nests, eggs, and scavenged carcasses. At the same time burrowing organisms would have been active, introducing more conventional trace fossils. Other exotic features, such as mudcracks and raindrop imprints, could have been preserved in the same way." [Reed & Oard, "Three Early Arguments for Deep Time - Part III: The Geognostic Pile". Creation Ministries International, 2012]

"This brings up the question of how tracks, raindrop impressions and other special features that indicate exposed land could have been formed on Flood sediments early in the Flood. I believe it is the same principle that can account for dinosaur tracks, eggs and unique features of some bonebeds in the Rocky Mountain region and the high plains, which I previously reported. In areas of rapid sedimentation, the distance between the water surface and the bottom will become less and less. Then fluctuating sea level at numerous temporal scales would briefly expose the newly-deposited Flood sediments during a relative drop in local or regional sea level. There are at least four reasons why sea level would fluctuate during the early part of the Flood: (1) tectonics, (2) tsunamis, (3) tides on a mostly flooded Earth and (4) the dynamics of shallow Flood currents, less than 1,000 metres deep, on submerged continents at least 2,500 kilometres wide." [Michael J. Oard, "Response to the post-Flood lake model for the Green River Formation". by Michael J. Oard." Creation Ministries International, 2006]

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 7^th reason:

" The White Cliffs of Dover on the eastern coast of England consist of chalk layers, up to 350 feet thick, that are composed of fossilized coccoliths (a kind of algae), and these layers are the same age as the sedimentary rocks that overlie giant cross-bedded sandstones in Zion National Park. Therefore, they were supposedly also deposited by Noah’s flood. But coccoliths are very tiny and have chloroplasts that require sunlight and must float close to the ocean surface to get energy from the sun. Because of this, all of them could not have been living at the same time to depths of 350 feet in the one year in which the flood is said to have occurred because that many organisms in the water at the same time would have blocked out the sun from organisms below the near-surface (Collins 2015a)."

There are several competing theories on the formation of thick chalk/carbonate layers; but I go with algae/bacteria bloom theory. This is Dr. Andrew Snelling, PhD Geology, Univ. of Sydney:

"... even today coccolith accumulation is not steady-state but highly episodic, for under the right conditions significant increases in the concentrations of these marine microorganisms can occur, as in plankton ‘blooms’ and red tides. For example, there are intense blooms of coccoliths that cause ‘white water’ situations because of the coccolith concentrations, and during bloom periods in the waters near Jamaica microorganism numbers have been reported as increasing from 100,000 per litre to 10 million per litre of ocean water. The reasons for these blooms are poorly understood, but suggestions include turbulence of the sea, wind, decaying fish, nutrients from freshwater inflow and upwelling, and temperature.

"Without a doubt, all of these stated conditions would have been generated during the catastrophic global upheaval of the Flood, and thus rapid production of carbonate skeletons by foraminifera and coccolithophores would be possible. Thermodynamic considerations would definitely not prevent a much larger biomass such as this being produced, since Schadewald who raised this as a ‘problem’ is clearly wrong. It has been reported that oceanic productivity 5–10 times greater than the present could be supported by the available sunlight, and it is nutrient availability (especially nitrogen) that is the limiting factor. Furthermore, present levels of solar ultraviolet radiation inhibit marine planktonic productivity...

"Quite clearly, under cataclysmic Flood conditions, including torrential rain, sea turbulence, decaying fish and other organic matter, and the violent volcanic eruptions associated with the ‘fountains of the deep’, explosive blooms on a large and repetitive scale in the oceans are realistically conceivable, so that the production of the necessary quantities of calcareous ooze to produce the chalk beds in the geological record in a short space of time at the close of the Flood is also realistically conceivable. Violent volcanic eruptions would have produced copious quantities of dust and steam, and the possible different mix of gases than in the present atmosphere could have reduced ultraviolet radiation levels. However, in the closing stages of the Flood the clearing and settling of this debris would have allowed increasing levels of sunlight to penetrate to the oceans.

"Ocean water temperatures would have been higher at the close of the Flood because of the heat released during the cataclysm, for example, from volcanic and magmatic activity, and the latent heat from condensation of water. Such higher temperatures have been verified by evolutionists from their own studies of these rocks and deep-sea sediments, and would have also been conducive to these explosive blooms of foraminifera and coccolithophores. Furthermore, the same volcanic activity would have potentially released copious quantities of nutrients into the ocean waters, as well as prodigious amounts of the CO2 that is so necessary for the production of the calcium carbonate by these microorganisms. Even today the volcanic output of CO2 has been estimated at about 6.6 million tonnes per year, while calculations based on past eruptions and the most recent volcanic deposits in the rock record suggest as much as a staggering 44 billion tonnes of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere and oceans in the recent past (that is, in the most recent part of the post-Flood era)."

[Andrew A. Snelling, "Can Flood Geology Explain Thick Chalk Beds?". Creation Ministries International, 1994]

Dr. Kurt Wise, PhD Geology, Harvard, also supports the "algae bloom" theory, as explained in this video lecture segment. He specifically mentions algae blooms as the possible cause of thick chalk layers at about the 1:10:02 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882fmumdm9A&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=12&t=01h02m21s

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 8^th reason:

"Up to 4,590-foot thicknesses of radiolarians occur on the Pacific Ocean floor. Radiolarians are tiny marine organisms with silica skeletons; they contain chloroplasts and must float near the ocean surface to obtain sunlight. The rate at which dead radiolarians settle to the bottom of the ocean is too slow for that thickness and number of radiolarians to accumulate in the 4,500 years since Noah’s flood. Although radiolarians are not found in the sedimentary rocks of the Grand Canyon, fossilized radiolarians are common in sedimentary layers in other parts of the world of the same geologic age, and each of these layers contains distinctly different radiolarian species that are among more than 4,000 different species that have been identified. Chaotic rushing waters of a tsunami in Noah’s flood would have been unable to sort out these different species in different geologic ages from those living early in the flood to those created late in the flood (Collins 2015a)."

Dr. Collins applies the uniformitarian model in assuming the rate of radiolarian settling in the past is the same as today's rate. This is geologist Michael J. Oard with alternatives that challenge Collins' assumption:

"A few comments made by Racki and Cordey and Pettijohn on the origin of bedded chert and radiolarian chert offer a basis for an alternative hypothesis of catastrophic formation during the Genesis Flood. Pettijohn remarked that many scientists believe bedded chert was directly precipitated from silica-supersaturated water and that the radiolarians in the chert are incidental. Moreover, Racki and Cordey suggest that volcanic and hydrothermal processes may have quickly increased the silica content of the water. The silica concentration of hydrothermal water can be over a thousand times that of ambient seawater.

"So a Flood scenario can be envisioned in which volcanic/hydrothermal processes added great quantities of hot, silica-rich fluid to the water. The additional silica would sometimes cause a huge radiolarian bloom, depending upon whether live radiolaria were floating above the silica rich waters.

"Changes in temperature or chemistry of the water could force the rapid precipitation of silica over a local or regional scale, sometimes with radiolarian organisms within the precipitate."

[Michael J. Oard, "The Uniformitarian Mystery of Radiolarian Chert". Creation Ministries International, 2002]

Refs cited:

Racki & Cordey, Radiolarian palaeoecology and radiolarites: is the present the key to the past?, Earth-Science Reviews 52:83–120, 2000

Pettijohn, F.J., Sedimentary Rocks, 3rd Edition, Harper and Row, New York, 1975.

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 9^th reason:

"None of the sedimentary rocks in the Grand Canyon contains fossilized pollen grains that are produced by grasses, pines, and flowering trees and plants, whereas these same rocks in the canyon contain only spores of algae, ferns, moss, and fungi. A worldwide flood would be expected to mix these tiny structures if all were alive at the same time of Noah’s flood, and this mixing did not occur. How can a rush of water in a tsunami sort out and separate such tiny reproductive structures from each other? (Hill et al. 2016)."

If pollen is found in the lower strata, the evolution model falls apart. Several researchers claim it has been found, but evolutionists refuse to accept it.

Dr. Don Batten, PhD Plant Physiology, Univ. of Sydney, has these comments on Genesis-era pollen:

"Researchers have reported finding several types of pollen from flowering plants in ‘dinosaur rock’ (Middle Triassic).¹ On the evolutionary timeline this puts the origin of flowering plants ‘100 million years earlier’ than previously accepted. Although such extensions in fossil ranges happen quite often, this one negates a long-held dogma of the evolutionary storyline. That is because these fossils would mean that flowering plants were present even at the beginning of the supposed dinosaur era… one finds pollen all the way down in Precambrian strata (supposedly more than a billion years before dinosaurs!).³ Pollen, and many other fossils dramatically ‘out of place’ in relation to evolution’s supposed ‘timeline’, present a major problem to defenders of Darwin’s ideas. [Don Batten, "Pollen problem".  Creation Ministries International, 2014]

Dr. Emil Silvestru, PhD Geology, Univ of Cluj, Romania, suggests a coverup of pollen discoveries:

"Microfossils have been reported from the Roraima Formation (RF) in British Guiana as early as 1964,⁵ soon after its Paleoproterozoic age was ‘established’. They were described as sponge spicules and possible remnants of foraminifera and radiolaria. The previous year well-preserved pollen and spores were found in rocks from Cero Venamo (composed of the same RF rocks) by botanist Dunsterville. His discovery was treated with suspicion, given the Precambrian age for the formation. Then in 1966, Stainforth ⁶ announced the discovery of pollen and spores (henceforth called ‘microfossils’) in the same formation at Paruima. The microfossil assemblage is described as different from the present local floral association and is most likely ‘Tertiary’ (Stainforth mentions some authors who place it in the Miocene). Although no palynological inventory is presented, angiosperm pollen must be included. I have not been able to identify a single palynological study published on this topic, and this strongly suggests a reluctance on the part of the scientific establishment to get involved in topics challenging evolutionary dogma." [Emil Silvestru, "The evolutionary paradox of the Roraima pollen of South America is still not solved". Creation Ministries International, 2012]

Dr. Carl Wieland, MD, Adelaide University, states CMI researchers have found pollen in the Grand Canyon:

"From the nine samples taken (three from each formation), 43 slides were made. Sixteen of these showed the pollen of seed plants and/or cells of cryptograms (spore-bearing plants; a fern, moss or fungus is a cryptogram). Identification was assisted by the independent assessments of a professional palynologist (someone who studies pollen) who did not know that the specimens came from ‘Precambrian’ rock. The accompanying photo shows just one of the finds. Interestingly, all the pollen was found in the Hakatai Shale specimens. One would expect air-borne contamination to have an equal chance of contaminating specimens from all three layers." [Carl Wieland, "Fossil pollen in Grand Canyon overturns plant evolution". Creation Ministries International, 1989]

Refs cited:

1. Hochuli, P. and Feist-Burkhardt, S., "Angiosperm-like pollen and Afropollis from the Middle Triassic (Anisian) of the Germanic Basin (Northern Switzerland)", Frontiers in Plant Science, 1 October 2013"

3, 6. Stainforth, R., "Occurrence of pollen and spores in the Roraima Formation of Venezuela and British Guiana", Nature 210(5033):292–294, 1966

5. Bailey, P.B.H., "Possible microfossils found in the Roraima Formation in British Guiana", Nature 202:384, 25 April 1964.

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 10^th reason:

"The Redwall limestone in the Grand Canyon contains billions and billions of jumbled sea lily (crinoid) fossils in multiple layers, and such marine animals would have had to grow on stalks on the ocean floor and cover the whole Earth at space intervals of one foot apart if all were alive at the same time during Noah’s flood. That distribution and abundance is extremely unlikely in less than one year’s time. Moreover, there would have been the need for already available, precipitated, calcium carbonate crystals somewhere to be carried into the Grand Canyon area to be deposited as limestone to host these fossils. This seems highly unlikely because the source of the calcium requires long periods (tens of thousands of years) of chemical weathering of calcium-bearing rocks, such as basalt lava flows, to produce such a large volume of limestone that extends, not only in the Grand Canyon, but also in the Redwall limestone across most of western and central United States in buried sedimentary layers (Collins 2015a; Hill et al. 2016)."

Evolutionists love to play the "numbers game", and especially with numbers that are impossible to prove, such as "billions and billions of crinoid fossils in the Grand Canyon", as Dr. Collins touts. That does serve the purpose of detracting from the real issue, which is how those fragile, broken crinoids ended up there in the first place. 

Creation scientists, on the other hand, do not seem to be concerned about those numbers since they know the sea was swarming with life prior to the flood (Gen 1:22).  Rather they tend to focus on the evidence of rapid deposition of sediment (for example, by a catastrophic flood) that fossilized those broken critters prior to decomposition.

Dr. Steven A. Austin, PhD Geology, Penn State University, has this to say about Redwall Limestone crinoids:

"Evidence of rapid deposition and burial of fossils is found in the Redwall Limestone. Along the Colorado River at Nautiloid Canyon, just north of Grand Canyon, the Redwall Limestone contains large fossils of nautiloids—"squid like" marine animals that possessed a straight shell, sometimes over two feet long. The long, slender shells of numerous nautiloids, in Nautiloid Canyon, have a dominant orientation, indicating that current was operating, as "fine grained" lime mud accumulated.¹³

"Not all limestones of Grand Canyon are fine grained. Some contain coarse, broken fossil debris, which appears to have been sorted by strong currents. The Redwall Limestone contains coarse, circular disks (columnals) from the stems of crinoids—marine animals which lived in a cup, or head, attached to the stem. Evidently, water currents winnowed the finer sediment away, leaving a "hash" of crinoid debris. Occasionally, the heads of crinoids are found embedded in the coarse, circular disks. Sometimes these occur in deposits of inclined bedding (cross beds), which imply strong currents. Because modern crinoid heads in today's ocean are susceptible to rapid breakdown when these organisms die,¹⁴ we conclude that rapid burial is needed to produce fossil crinoid heads.

"Evidence of current transport of lime sediment is provided by quartz sand grains, which are found embedded in the fine-grained matrix of many limestones. These quartz sand grains are common in the Kaibab Limestone of Grand Canyon. They are even known in the Redwall Limestone. Because the quartz sand grains cannot be precipitated from seawater, they must have been transported from some other location. Any water current fast enough to move sand grains would be able to move lime mud, as well. These quartz sand grains argue that the Kaibab Limestone was accumulated from sediment which had been transported by moving water, not simply deposited from a slow, steady rain of carbonate mud in a calm and placid sea."

[Steven A. Austin, "Were Grand Canyon Limestones Deposited by Calm and Placid Seas?". Institute for Creation Research, 1990]

Refs cited:

13. Observation of Steven A. Austin in Nautiloid Canyon, April 1989.

14. D.L. Meyer and K.B. Meyer, "Biostratinomy of Recent Crinoids (Echinodermata) at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia", Palaios 1 (1986): 294-302.

For the record, Dr. Austin has performed extensive research over the decades inside the Grand Canyon, and in particular on the Redwall Limestone.

Dan

[Administrator]

From Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened: the 11^th reason:

"If all limestones were deposited by Noah’s flood during a giant tsunami, then all limestone layers should show evidence of fossils being jumbled by rushing water. This is not the case. The presence of Silurian limestone layers that are older than the Redwall limestone occur with consistent sequences at constant thicknesses over hundreds of square miles in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and they lack any fossils in a jumbled array. These consistent thicknesses indicate that these limestone layers could not have been deposited by a tsunami, and these layers could only have been formed in quiet water by slow chemical precipitation of the calcium carbonate during tens of thousands of years. Thus, the limestones around the world, alleged to be deposited by Noah’s flood, were not deposited by a rush of flood water in a tsunami in less than one year. Many other examples occur in sedimentary rocks around the world where fossils of communities of many different marine animals are totally undisturbed (Senter 2011; Collins 2015a; 2017)."

Major problems with the anti-Moses, old-earth hypothesis of slow sedimentary deposition over long periods of time include bioturbation (mixing by boring animals), folding of the layers, and the lack of erosion.

For example, virtually everywhere you look, the sedimentary rock layers are flat with no erosion or bioturbation:






Multiple flat layers folded without breaking, which implies they were still plastic when the geological upheavals occurred:






In response to Dr. Collins straw-man argument that the flood model claims "all limestones were deposited by Noah’s flood during a giant tsunami", one could assume Collins has never studied the flood model, has never heard of megasequences, and is clueless about how sedimentary layering is actually formed.

I have learned over the years that it is virtually impossible to learn the flood model from old-earther's. Therefore, let us hear Christian geologist Dr. Kurt Wise (PhD Harvard) explain flood-layering in his lecture titled "90 Minutes of Evidence for the Global Flood". Topics include:

1) The lithostratigraphic column:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882fmumdm9A&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=12&t=24m40s

2) The  direction of paleocurrents as determined from cross-bedding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882fmumdm9A&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=12&t=32m20s

3)  Lamination and bioturbation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882fmumdm9A&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=12&t=38m42s

4)  Megasequences and erosion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882fmumdm9A&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=12&t=47m39s

5)  The Great Unconformity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882fmumdm9A&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=12&t=59m14s

6)  Carbonate layers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=882fmumdm9A&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=12&t=01h02m20s

Other serious contradictions to the old-earth hypothesis are the characteristics of coal seams and the presence of coal seam benches.  Coal seams are virtually flat, top and bottom, as shown here:






The presence of thin, flat coal seam benches (thin mud layering between coal seams), as shown below, rules out the possibility that coal was formed in a swampy environment over millions of years, as speculated by old-earthers and as taught to our children as fact:






Additionally, the presence of polystrate (upright) fossilized trees projecting upward through "millions of years" of sediment layers (even through multiple coals seams), renders the geological timeline as little more than a joke, or a bad dream:






Dan

[Brenda]

The presence of thin, flat coal seam benches (thin mud layering between coal seams), as shown below, rules out the possibility that coal was formed in a swampy environment over millions of years, as speculated by old-earthers and as taught to our children as fact:

I don't understand that part, Dan.

Brenda

[Administrator]

The presence of thin, flat coal seam benches (thin mud layering between coal seams), as shown below, rules out the possibility that coal was formed in a swampy environment over millions of years, as speculated by old-earthers and as taught to our children as fact:

I don't understand that part, Dan.
Brenda

The video lecture by Dr. Wise, titled, "70 Minutes to Understand the Fossil Record", contains a long segment on coal and coal seams at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCdt6LjvFvA&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=11&t=51m46s

His narrative on coal seam benches begins here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCdt6LjvFvA&list=PLEVsU6O-XMpEhuWJDZeYEH5RJpIjOwGju&index=11&t=55m17s

I found that to be a fascinating presentation by Dr. Wise.

Dan

[LXXResearcher]

The presence of thin, flat coal seam benches (thin mud layering between coal seams), as shown below, rules out the possibility that coal was formed in a swampy environment over millions of years, as speculated by old-earthers and as taught to our children as fact:

I don't understand that part, Dan.

Brenda, the following links are to two segments of an older video titled "Evolution - Fact or Belief". Both segments are a real eye-openers. 

The first segment documents the results of some of the research of a 19th century German geologist, Johannes Walther, famous for "Walther's Law of Facies":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcFHaWs3-7Q&t=24m49s

The second demonstrates laboratory experiments on stratification by the French sedimentologist, Guy Berthault:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcFHaWs3-7Q&t=33m47s

Guy Berthault has a great website, here:

http://www.sedimentology.fr/

LXX

[LXXResearcher]

Brenda, a more technical video by Guy Berthault, titled, "Experiments in Stratification", reveals the evolutionary geology "Principle of Superposition", which assumes sedimentary layers form on top of each other over time, applies only in conditions of fine sediment in little or no current (that is, rarely):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFST2C32hMQ&t=17m26s

In other words, the so-called "Geological Column" evolutionists use to date rocks and strata is unscientific hogwash.

LXX

[Ron Black]

Brenda, a more technical video by Guy Berthault, titled, "Experiments in Stratification", reveals the evolutionary geology "Principle of Superposition", which assumes sedimentary layers form on top of each other over time, applies only in conditions of fine sediment in little or no current (that is, rarely):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFST2C32hMQ&t=17m26s

In other words, the so-called "Geological Column" evolutionists use to date rocks and strata is unscientific hogwash.

That is a stunning, LXX!  I will be watching the entire video. Thanks.

And, Dan, thanks for all the research.  I had no idea there were so many issues with evolution.

Ron