Pappy Jack

Nice one, MB. :thumbs:

Mike PSS

Facelicks all around.

Good job MB me-old flatulence. :devil1: :notworthy: :wave:

I think Dave should stick to ignorance and avoidance. This whole knowledge and education game just doesn't seem to be working out. :Cheeky:

shirley knott

Well of course it's not working out -- he's not even trying for education or knowlege. The only games dave knows are ignorance and avoidance.
The evidence is overwhelming, and the verdicts are in.

hugs,
Shirley Knott

Dave Hawkins

Wow ... a page to bookmark! Thanks, Sir Mungbeanus for the excellent pictures. I will study these and comment. Pappy Jack ... thanks for the second attempt at "nutshelling." I will get back to you on that also.

mung bean

You're welcome, Davey boy.
I'll tell ya what the problems are as I see it, just so you have an idea what sort of arguments I'm likely to throw at you.
I'm in a sporting mood, you see.

I think this whole little kaboodle has the potential to be iconic in showing up YEC for what it is, because Egypt is iconic. After all you have the Biblical legends (and sorry Dave, that's all they are according to current archaeology) of the slavery in Egypt, the plagues, the exodus, etc. Then of course the pyramids are iconic and the ancient Egyptian society in general is, by our standards, quite exotic and interesting.

So Egypt sucks people in whether they're YEC's or not. Now you like to go on about Smyth and Rohl and theoretical population growth rates, all of which can sound plausible to someone who wants to believe it. They are, to some extent at least, arguments about things that are hypothetical.
The Nile valley canyon on the other hand is not hypothetical. It is demonstrably in existence.
Not only is it demonstrably in existence but it is far larger than that other icon of YEC's, the Grand Canyon of the US.
Yes Dave, I'm sorry to have to tell you this but things aint always bigger in America.

Anyway since this canyon is there it poses a problem for you and for the likes of AIG. However, and you must clearly understand this, it poses no problem at all for mainstream palaeogeology. It is well understood in mainstream science and has been for years. Not only is it well understood in mainstream geology but the principles behind it are easily comprehensible for the average layperson (of which I am one) so it is difficult to obfuscate. In other words Dave, your primary target audience will have no problem getting their heads around it and indeed will likely find it fascinating.

You are on record as taking the standard YEC position that the earth was gently contoured and had a universally lush and temperate biosphere before the legendary Flud. You are also on record as taking the standard YEC position that because of the tight timeline constraints the society of the pharoahs must have been founded shortly after the Flud. This is where you're stuffed. This is why I recommended you start reading up and contact your YEC buddies so they can prepare some obfuscation.
Incidentally I've given Glenn Morton a link to this thread so he can satisfy his curiousity and I'll be recommending that when he has the time he add a nice solid article about all this to his website.

Now as I've already mentioned the nasty topic (for you and yours) is what's grandly known as the Messinian Salinity Crisis. This just basically means the Mediterranean Sea dried up. All of it. In other words, in your supposedly lush pre-Flud biosphere there was a massive sunken salt plain where the Mediterranean now is. A huge and incredibly inhospitable desert, right off the current coasts of Egypt and Israel. The climate down in that desert would have been utterly horrendous and that, for a start, punches a large hole in your stories of the pre-Flud biosphere. In some places the salt deposits are thousands of feet thick and for those to form would have taken a very long time. Then you have the Nile canyon, which of course is cut so deeply because the Nile was draining into the floor of the Mediterranean basin. You can't claim that it was cut by draining floodwaters because in a global Flud the Mediterranean basin would not be empty. It would already be full and consequently there'd be stuff all drainage happening.

Then you have the problem that the terrain in this region was obviously not gently rolling with low differences in elevation, so that punches another hole in your arguments about pre-Flud terrain. The difference is elevation between the Egyptian plateau and the lowest part of the Mediterranean basin is about 9,000 feet. You can't claim it was less pre-Flud because the Nile canyon continues offshore and clearly shows the ancient drainage pattern.

Now, in your timeline all of this had to be pre-Flud because there would have been no plains around the Nile where Egypt as we know it is based. So not only do you have to account for the formation of the canyon but you also have to account for it getting nicely filled in before Pharaoh wanted to start building stuff. That's a lot of filling in Dave and in geological terms there's next to no time available. Remember that at Aswan, 780 miles upstream from the present day coast, the canyon is incised below the current ground level 900 feet into solid volcanic granite. The sediment filling it is in two distinct layers, the lower of which is marine and the upper freshwater alluvial.

Anyway there's stacks of arguments that I or any other interested layperson can tie to all of this. I won't bother going into all of them now. I'm sure you can see the scope of the problem for your views. Have a think about it.
Cheers.

SAWells

Ooh, ooh, I got it! See, the Mediterranean basin is actually the site of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the layer of salt is actually the remains of Lot's wife, after all Genesis doesn't say she was turned into a small pillar of salt, so clearly it's totally possible that she was turned into a pillar three miles deep and a thousand miles wide, which is a totally reasonable interpretation of pillar because geologists talk about the geological column, and all of that about the drainage of the Nile is just your materialistic atheistic hydrological assumptions which Dave can refute with a small glass of water and some sand.

:blush:

Man, I scare myself sometimes.

:devil1:

Dave Hawkins

MB ... I have yet to study your pictures in detail, but I did read your latest post. Do you realize that we YECs propose not just a flood with rain, but a humungous tectonic, hydraulic and volcanic cataclysm which completely resurfaced the entire globe? So I'm having a hard time understanding how you know that there used to be a massive salty desert where the Med is now.

mung bean

You haven't had time to study the pictures in detail?
Dave, I'd studied them in detail after I'd spent thirty seconds looking at each one. There really isn't that much information to assimilate.

As for your cataclysm, of course I know your views. Resurfacing is precisely my point.
The surface of Egypt as we know it didn't exist when the canyon was cut.
You have to explain how it was cut and how it got filled in again.

It is eroded through bedrock, Dave. At Aswan the bedrock is granite, which apart from being as hard as buggery is, of course, igneous rock. It would have taken a long, long time to erode. Then it had to fill with sediment. First marine sediment and then freshwater sediment.

To take just one little point, you claim no volcanism before your Flud so how was the canyon eroded into volcanic rock?

SAWells

Oh for pity's sake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_Salinity_Crisis

Especially section 3, "Evidence".

mung bean

Try these too:
http://www.semp.us/publications/biot...php?BiotID=403
http://www.semp.us/publications/biot...php?BiotID=350

SAW, that link goes to a dead end. Use this one instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_Salinity_Crisis