Johnny Skeptic

Consider the following from the General Religious Discussions Forum:

Comments please.

+or-1

Wow.

LampreyMoose

Local catastrophes, yes. As far as I know, there is no indication whatsoever of a global cataclysm on the scale of The Flud in the strata or fossil record.

ETA: Punches himself a few times for stating the obvious.

Steviepinhead

Ah for the innocent comforts of an existence in which all time, and times, are telescoped into one: lots of small catastrophes, a fair few middling ones, and a couple or three planet-rocking ones, spread over four-and-a-half billion years, are the intellectual equivalent of ONE AND ONLY ONE MEGA-CATASTROPHE, a few thousand years ago.

If only one ignores all of time, and all those different times...

Look, rhutchin, around 65 million years ago, a sizeable extraterrestrial bolide encountered our planet in the vicinity of what is now the Yucatan Peninsula. It left a layer of iridium-enriched ash over many disparate parts of the globe. Dateable, by multiple consilient means, to the same time period. It may or may not have killed off the dinosaurs and released the mammals to run rampant, but it definitely made a big splash.

What you need to show is something similar, a worldwide sedimentary layer, containing an appropriate "fossil" assemblage (though there would hardly have been time for actual mineralization), consistently identifiable by objective criteria, consistently and consiliently dateable to several thousand years ago ...

(Not to mention a bunch of other stuff, but that's enough to be going on with...)

...Aaaannnd, you don't have that. You don't have ANY of that, much less ALL of that.

That's your problem. Now grow up and start dealing with the actual evidence, accomodate that to your religious beliefs (preferably in private, but whatever), and then let us know when you're ready to talk about some interesting stuff.

Mmm-kay.

biblethumping

There is nothing illogical about a series of local catastrophes generalized into one global cataclysm which occurred over some 4.5 odd billion years. So called scientist use generalization all the time to explain the complex, why should an infinitely more complex transcendent being do otherwise?

Straight Hate

Three years in a geology faculty and I've yet to encounter a single example.

FWIW

mrunicycler

Actually, this seems to fall into the logical fallacy (ie, making it illogical) of oversimplification.

Oversimplification

You can't pretend that 4.5 billions years worth of geology and astrophysics can be condensced down into a single catastrophe without oversimplifying.

Scientists use generalizations and analogies to explain things to laypeople. It keeps them from having to explain a decade's worth of training to someone who's never taken a single course in their field.

The language scientists use amongst themselves is very precise, and it's assumed that each member of the community has the training to understand the language, making simpifications, generalizations, and analogies counter-productive for them when they are truly trying to explain things to people who have the training to understand it.

Himantolophus

it's a simple as plural vs. singular...

there is evidence for numerous localized catastrophes over the history of the planet and a few more "global" catastrophes like asteroid impacts and Ice Ages. The key point here is that the evidence says that they were separated by vast expanses of time.

Now saying these events all happened 4000 years ago in the span of one year ignores common sense. Even a SINGLE one of these larger events was enough to cause a mass extinction. If all of the catastrophes (there must be thousands) are condensed into the span of one year, then it's quite simple... everything would be wiped off the surface of the Earth.
And before someone says "God did wipe life off the surface of the Earth", the Bible supposedly says that Noah and the Ark survived this, as well as the insects on floating vegetation, and the plants as seeds or fruits, and the marine creatures under the sea (since they weren't taken on the boat but still exist). NOTHING would survive, I doubt even most bacteria would make it. I guess the few surviving extremophile bacteria would "microevolve" into what we see today? lol

So YEC's have to explain how all of these catastrophes happened at once, where the evidence is that they happened at once, and how life survived if it all happened at once. They also have to explain why God made the evidence say that it DIDN'T happen at once...

biblethumping

Einsteins field equations aren't solved precisely, or rather the solutions they do have are huge simplifications like a black hole in an otherwise empty universe. You can't pretend the universe is just a black hole in empty space can you?

No that would be a vast oversimplification, however it's very useful tool for the science community - You know those guys with all that superior training in the langauge of science.

Now it's plausable a transcentdent being which has caused CONFOUNDATION on all of humankind will certainly use the "language of science" to explain the Flood, he is afterall talking to lay people from 3,000 years ago.

Straight Hate

In your mind it's plausible.

In our minds, there's nothing to suggest from the Bible that anything of the sort took place. And as the idea cannot be tested, it's mere speculation and not very useful.