ps418

Actually, all of the most 'respectable' creation scientists, including Art Chadwick who actually has some background in palynology, pointed out 2 decades ago that the Precambrian pollen is nothing but modern pollen.

To quote from my webpage on the Colorado Plateau:

Modern Pollen in the Proterozoic Hakatai Shale: Disproof of Plant Evolution?

In a 1966 CRS article, creationist C. L. Burdick claimed to have found modern pollen in the Hakatai Shale (Microflora of the Grand Canyon. Creation Research Society 1966 Annual 3(1):38-50). This finding was lauded by creationists as definitive "disproof" of plant evolution, and even today is presented as such on numerous creation "science" web sites.

Unfortunately for Burdick and others who have promoted this claim, the supposed precambrian pollen is apparently nothing more than surface contamination. In 1980, another creationist, Arthur Chadwick of Loma Linda University, published an article in the journal Origins summarizing the results of his attempts to confirm Burdick's claims. Precambrian Pollen in the Grand Canyon - A Reexamination. Origins 8(1):7-12 (1981). He concluded:

"A total of fifty samples from the same strata which Burdick had studied were processed. All slides were completely scanned. No single example of an authentic pollen grain was obtained from any of these samples. In fact, the slides produced from the Hakatai Formation were in most cases completely free from any material of biologic origin, modern or fossil."

But what of Burdick's supposed precambrian pollen? Where did it come from? As Chadwick points out, the samples were taken from a surficially exposed portion of the Hakatai, and this immediately suggests contamination of modern pollen in Burdick's samples. This suggestion was amply confirmed by Chadwick, who notes:

"No rigorous attempt was apparently made by Burdick to evaluate personally the modern pollen rain in the Grand Canyon. A single sample of soil from near one of the collecting sites could have completely satisfied Burdick as to the source of most of the grains he has reported. A typical analysis of a site near where Burdick collected his Hakatai samples yielded the following profile: bisaccate pollen (conifers) 30%; juniper 12%; ephedra 16%; various species of angiosperms (42%) (Sigels 1971). Although the poor quality of the photographs in the plates of Burdick's first paper makes definite assignments impossible, one can approximate the composition of the flora he reports. Of the grains identifiable as pollen or spores in the two papers by Burdick (n=18), 7 or 37% are bisaccates, 2 or 11% are possibly juniper. Ephedra pollen constitute 11% and angiosperms and unassignable grains 34%. Thus even with this small sample size, Burdick's grains approximate the modern pollen rain found in surface samples in the area of the Grand Canyon where he collected his samples"

There are criteria for distinguishing between original pollen and pollen contaminates. For instance, ancient pollen should be darkly colored, not clear or yellowish like fresh pollen. In fact, the Hakatai was "baked" by intrusive igneous sills sometime after deposition. The pollen, if it was originally present, should be baked also. Chadwick again:

"The preservation of the grains which Burdick figures in his first paper is difficult to estimate because of the poor quality of the photos. In the second paper the grains appear nearly fresh. The complete absence of organic material other than the pollen and spores cited by Burdick makes comparisons difficult, but many analyses from other Precambrian rocks where organic remains are thought to occur reveal little more than carbon films. Considering the deep burial, lithification, and oxidized condition of the Hakatai shales, the state of preservation of these grains suggests that they were not a part of these sediments during their diagenesis. Incidentally, the red color of the grains, cited by Burdick as an indication of their antiquity, if not due to laboratory staining procedures commonly employed, is in any case not necessarily an indication of antiquity since the ferruginous stain in the rocks can be readily acquired (as any Grand Canyon hiker will testify)."

Which is the more likely scenario: a) the surface exposure of the Hakatai Shale in the Grand Canyon contains original pollen grains which just happen to match the pollen spectrum of the Grand Canyon area, while the overlying 10,000 ft of sediments contain no evidence at all of any metazoan life of any kind and the first indisputed pollen grains occur much higher still, or b) the supposed precambrian pollen grains are simply surficial contaminants which entered the exposed shale very recently, after the Hakatai bed was exposed by erosion?

Chadwick notes that "More difficulties are created than are solved by Burdick's report since it would require the explanation of the accumulation of all the Upper Precambrian sediments (10,000 ft.), their lithification and subsequent erosion before the first additional fossil forms were buried. Add to this picture the many thousands of macerations of lower Paleozoic and Precambrian rocks which have been carried out in scores of palynology laboratories around the world which have not supported Burdick's claims. There is a general absence of evidence for flowering plants below the middle Cretaceous. It is a responsibility and challenge to creationists to develop a model of earth history which explains this absence."


Last year I emailed Chadwick and asked him what he thought about the fact that AiG was still promoting this junk, and he told me that he thought the Precambrian pollen was as refuted as anything can be in science, and that he and Kurt Wise were wiring an article on the subject. I dont know if such an article has since appeared though.

ps418

Young has a nice book reviewing the history of "flood geology," called _The Biblical Flood: A Case Study in the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence_, or something close to that. Young has stated elsewhere that flood geology is bunch of embarrassing claptrap.

Oh, and the scriptures do in fact give a rough date for the flood, about ~2400BCE.

Patrick

Automaton

Ed, if you'd even bothered to read my previous post, you'd know that those characteristics must be the product of mutations or their population dynamics would be entirely different. Geez.

Ed

Hello Answerer. No, of all the stories of the flood, only the biblical one seems the most plausible. I never said I believed in winged humans and the scriptures do not teach the existence of winged humans. Angels are not winged humans and in fact do not even have literal wings.

Ed

Hello Patrick. As I have stated before, the hebrew usually translated "son of" can also mean "descendant of". For example, say Robert E. Lee's son was my great grandfather, therefore Robert E. Lee became the ancestor of Ed when his son was born at age 35.

lpetrich

I wonder for what reason. Because it's in the Bible?

Ed

Almost all biblical scholars, both christian and nonchristian.

Quote:

Ed on angels holding back winds in Revelation: Yes, but given that angels are spiritual beings taht cannot be detected by science, they could withhold wind by making some parts of the earth hotter than others and we would not be able to detect them. lp: However, the text clearly implies some picture of the winds like that in Homer's Odyssey, which features a bag with some winds inside. But according to modern science, winds are much more like the bubbling of boiling water.

While I am not sure exactly what verse you are referring to, the purpose of Revelation was not to teach meteorology. God had greater purposes in mind.

Quote:

Ed on the Grand Canyon not being the result of a single flood: There are some geologists that would disagree with you but me not being a geologist, I dont have the answer. My primary purpose of this post was to discuss the evidence for God not the flood. lp: The only "geologists" who maintain that the Grand Canyon's sediments were formed by a single flood are the sort who sign statements asserting in advance that they believe the literal truth of the Bible. It has been apparent for two centuries that the Earth's sedimentary rocks have a very complicated history -- apparent before Charles Darwin was born.

Mainstream geologists are required to adhere to an unwritten assent to the fatally flawed philosophy of Naturalism.

Quote:

Ed on viruses: In a biological sense they are not highly ordered. lp: Only in some relative sense. Try to manufacture a virus in a lab without referring to some known virus genome and see what you come up with.

Well, yes, somewhat, viruses are more like simple replicators and sometimes they replicate more complex entities.

Quote:

Ed on time travel: No, that is a logical impossibility, that is one of the problems with time travel. lp: How is that so?

Because then you would both be and not be, which violates the law of non-contradiction.

[b] Why?

Ed

I didn't say that the entire bible was symbolic. The bible is made up of several different types of literature, so it depends on what type of literature the text you are looking at is. The Book of Revelation is apocalyptic which is almost all symbolic, the gospels are written as historical narrative so almost none of it is symbolic, and etc.

Ed

No, you have got it reversed, reread Spetner.

lpetrich

I wonder how Ed figured that out.

Where is the disclaimer to that effect in that book?

How is that the case, Ed? And how is it "fatally flawed"?

And Ed, what would cause you to reject Flood Geology?

That's totally absurd, Ed. I don't see how that follows.

Because I don't have superhuman endurance; also, I have serious problems with anyone who insists on defending that atrocity.

Where in the Bible does it say: "Historical narrative begins here" and "Apocalyptic literature begins here"?

Also, if I had to classify the Gospels, I'd call them "hagiography".