Saturday, July 2, 2022

Different Creationist Views of the Timing of Volcanism, Plate Tectonics etc,.

Creationist Andrew Snelling giving the current creationist view of how the Flood occurred in relation to volcanism and plate tectonics. he also discusses problems with radiometric dating: ,br>

the idea is rthat the biblical "foundatins of the deep" that were broken up at the beginning of the Flood were volcanoes that broke up the cone continent that existed at the time into the continents we have today. This put the continents in motion on the tectonic plates which rought about further volcanism on the land and pushed up the high mountains etc.

So I see how that theory works but I keep remembering my favorite cross section of the Grand Syaircase to Grand Canyon area where a volcano at the far north of the Staircase clearly started after all the strata were in place, meaning after the Flood or at least at the very end of the Flood, rather than at the beginning.l Of course this could be a later volcano caused by the tectonic movement which was caused by the volcanism that began the Flood, but I \\it seems to me that there's too much turmoil in this scenario to explain how the strata could ever hve been laid down as apparently placidly as we see them in theat crsoss section. The way I put it together was that the strata were laid down by the Flood \, possibly by high tidees but also by precipitation out of the standing water at the height ofof the Flood, to account for their being laid down one on top of the other, and for the fact that all the disturbances I see everywhere occurred AFTGER the strata, the Geological Column, wwere all in place. this is demonstrated in theat cross section, but also the William Smith diagram of the strata of England, and various outher locations.

Snelling mentions that Steve Austin figured the Grand Staircase was carved by the receding Flood watgers, and that's the conclusion I came to also. Also the Grand Canyon itself. But the timning of the tectonic movement and the volcanoes is a different problem. I'm convinced it all occurred at the end of the Flood as I've explained emany times.

Thoughts on Ham-Nye Debate 3

Seems what Nye meant about turbulence was more about why we don't see a fish trying to escape the Flood by leaping up into the layer above. I'd guess that's because they were all dead by tghe time the layers were in place, encased in thick sedimentas as they were. Nothing was doing much leaping at that point. Some creatures that were still alive during the deposition of the sediments left their footprints in the wet sediments, and according to someone I heard recently, Snelling or Wise I suppose, their bodies were found after their footprints in the layer just above.

Is Nye being purposely obtuse when he keeps failing to understand Ham's point about historical versus observational science? It's so obvious. If you can't observe it all you have is imaginative speculations. We can observe variation within Kinds, but we can't observe evolution from species to species, that is merely assumed. So whedn Nye keeps carrying on about the importance of teaching science and conflating these obvious differences he's either being disingenuous or he's really that obtus4e.

I still think my own two arguments smash evolution to smithereens so that all the unanswered questions are for a future science without evolution. Evolution is dead if you recognize that the strata simply cannot be time periods but had to have been laid down in rapid succession, and certainly it's dead if you recognize that natural selection, or every kind of selection which inclucdes every kind of geotgraphic and other modes of ireproductive isolation, actually depletes the genetic potentials in any new population, because if evolution needs anything to be true it's an increase rather than a decrease in genetic potentials. Mutations have to be selectedd to and it's selection that utterly totally absolutely defeats evolution.

Thoughts on Ham-Nye Debate 2

Bill Nye's thirty minutes starts about an hour into the video. At about 1:05 pr sp he wonders why6 there isn't evidence of the turbulence he'd expect to see in the sedimentary strata if the Flood were true. Funny, I think thre should be evidence of disturbance to the strata if they actually epresent time periods of tends of millions of years but there's no such disturbbance. You can see this looking at the strata in the walslls of the Grand Canyon and you can see it on my favorite cross section of that area. Such nice neat straight parallel layers of sedimtary rocks, no sign of any appreciable disburbance to any of them. there is, however, turbulence galore durin gthe draining of the Flood, as I've argumed it, and he mentions that draining episode as a source of such turbulence alhtough that gets confusing, is he talking about the end of the Flood or during it or what? Anyway there is plenty of disturbance to the uppermost layers of the strata as shown on that cross section, the caring of the stairs of the Grand Staircase, the cuttin gof the Grand Canyon etc etc. All in present time, not a bit of it during the laying down of thestrata.

He sthinks there shouild be if the Flood were true. I'm not sure why. I guess we all imaginew it according to our own presuppositions and he likes ot imagine anything that disqualifies the idea, but the point is it's all imagination, there isn't anything but speculation or imagination that's possible with such a past event. However, I think it's been shown in a million ways that water lays down such layers, and there isn't any way at all to 3explain how long ages of time could do it and preserve it. A Flood would lay them down in rapid succession, the accumulated weight would preserve them.

then he goes on to wonder how the interestingly unique animals of Austrailia got there if the Flood story is true. Funny he doesn't mention Pangaea. Wasn't that idea current at the time? If all the contginents were together in one continent at the time of the Flood, which I argue, was the case, then for whatever reason those particular animals emigrated from the ark to that area and berfore it separated. This causes some problem for my own timing but I'll deal with that later.

Some Thoughts on the Ham-Nye Debate

Decided to watch this old debate, not sure if I saw it at the time, but wanted to get a sense of the categories used in such debates. I thought Ken Ham did a very nice job in his opening half hour presentation. He spent quite a bit of time on the distinction between observational and historical science, which is cruscial to this debate, and he covered the question of Kinds and how observationally there is plenty of evidence for them but no eviddence whatever for the idea that one Kind evolved into another. Which is an illustration of how we can know facts from observational science bu when it comes to historical science it's all speculation.

You'd think that much would be acknowledged b y now but don't we sstill hear this ridiculous idea that creationists reject Science, conflating the observational with the historical as if there were no distinction? Wes houldn't fly on airp.llnaces because we reject "Science."
But of course we don't remect science at all, we reject the sp[eculative raporiting os fhistoryical science, but accept the obvious factual basis for the observational or hard sciences. They really should give up that one.

KEN HAME- BILL NYE DEBATE 2=14

And they also insist on confounding what they regard as Microevolurtion with the idea of evolution from species to species although as Ham points out there isn't a shred of evidence for that idea. We observe the enormous variations that occur in many species but that's all we can observe. That's the end of what science can acrtually claim, bur that doesn't stop them from bgoing on to affirm their belief, faith in evolution from species to species based on no evidence whatever. They really need to stop claiming that there's a ton of evidence of evolutionary theory beause there is not. For variation yes, but not for the thoery of evolution. >