bluefugue

Hang on. Patrick originally said:

The articles on this thread should be about geology, so that's fine. But randman should pick his favorite of those 8.

notto

withdrawn

Sorry Randman, Pick your favorite!

Valentine Pontifex

This the beginning of that article:
Snelling makes a false statment.

K-Ar does assume no radiogenic argon in the rock during formation of the rock. This is a major weakness of the method. (Though it is known what kinds of rocks commonly have this problem and those which do not. Furthermore, most of the time the error that results is small, usually no more than a few million years which is small compared to the age of most rocks.

However, Ar-Ar method, contrary to Snelling's statement does not make this assumption and has quite successfuly been used to correctly date rocks that did have would have given a false date from K-Ar.

He also mistates Dalrymple's data. Here is a scan from that paper:



What Snelling called the appearent ages turns out to be excess argon measured in units of 10^-12 moles per gram.

Vorkosigan

I'll take the second one, which is easy:

No wonder geologists are confounded by these microdiamonds! Perhaps the 'mystery' surrounding them would be easily solved if they abandoned their uniformitarian presuppositions. Maybe catastrophic plate tectonics during the biblical Flood is the better model for earth history?

Snelling claims that the microdiamonds cannot be explained using conventional models of geology, and says that catastrophic Flood models do better, although he offers no serious model for it. In any case, simply typing in "microdiamonds" in Google brought in a wealth of papers.

For example, microdiamonds are found in space,
<a href="http://www.astrochemistry.org/Microdiamonds.html" target="_blank">http://www.astrochemistry.org/Microdiamonds.html</a>
<a href="http://www.astro.washington.edu/dept/annual_report_2001/node3.html" target="_blank">http://www.astro.washington.edu/dept/annual_report_2001/node3.html</a>
The second paper also focuses on interstellar gas clouds, showing the microdiamonds need not even have originated on earth.

and on meteroites...
<a href="http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/LPSC98/pdf/1930.pdf" target="_blank">www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/LPSC98/pdf/1930.pdf</a>

Snelling misrepresents the depth of the problem as this article says:
<a href="http://fiatlux.ucr.edu/june2000/8.html" target="_blank">http://fiatlux.ucr.edu/june2000/8.html</a>
It is not a serious problem to find diamonds in crustal rocks, simply another interesting thing that the Earth does from time to time. A much more serious problem would be to find humans and their artifacts in situ with pelicosaurs or Devonian fishes....but we never do that, do we? Apparently the Flood was so clever, it sorted everything into the proper ages.

other research confirms the article above:
<a href="http://www.uwo.ca/earth/98anrep/sect08b.htm" target="_blank">http://www.uwo.ca/earth/98anrep/sect08b.htm</a>

• The dikes exhibit moderately high mg# (53.5-58.5), low Cr (87-141 ppm) and Ni (87-135 ppm), suggesting that the primary melt fractionated to a less primitive composition. Multi-element spider patterns exhibit enriched incompatible trace element contents (Ba, K, Rb and Sr) and LREE, and depleted HREE relative to N-MORB. A significant negative Nb depletion relative to the incompatible elements indicates a pattern similar to island arc basalts. It is inferred that the enrichment in incompatibles is subduction-driven having been derived as a result of mobilization of the incompatible elements in aqueous fluids.

Snelling's article mispresents the discovery in other ways. Microdiamonds have been known since the 1970s, not recently, as the article implies.

Snelling's "argument" is that:
In any case, the uniformitarian (slow-and-gradual) model of plate tectonics, which involves millions-of-years for continental collisions, is hard pressed to explain how crustal rocks could go down to mantle depths of 120 km and bob back up again.

Leaving aside that this is typical god-of-the-gaps argument with no real evidence, let's look at this:

<a href="http://www.geo.nsf.gov/geo/adgeo/press/pr9612.htm" target="_blank">http://www.geo.nsf.gov/geo/adgeo/press/pr9612.htm</a>

There is in fact other evidence that curstal rocks can head into the mantle. Scientists know that crustal rocks can head down into the mantle during the mountain-building process and other geological processes.

In fact, what we are witnessing with the changing view of the dynamics of crustal rock is good science at work; new evidence requires modification of an old theory. Note the interplay of theory and fact: the theory of plate tectonics enables geologists to understand how the mantle rocks became lifted up to form mountains; the relationship between the rocks enables scientists to modify the theory.

Meanwhile, the physics of Snelling's alternative is impossible:
On the other hand, catastrophic plate tectonics during the Flood year12 with metres per second crustal movements would have inevitably resulted in violent continental collisions, the tremendous forces involved buckling crustal rocks to the extent of ramming some portions down to mantle depths. However, this would be short-lived, for as the crumpled collision zone 'relaxed' very soon after the impact, the lower density continental crustal rocks thus rammed into the mantle would rapidly rebound.

No mechanism for continental movement, no accounting for energy released in the process...well, we needn't go on. If the continents were violently moved to form the current rock cover of the earth, how is it that so many rocks preserve delicate features of the earth's surface from long past?

This is the old "continents running all over the globe" scenario that has been invoked by creationists like Velikovsky long before AiG ever got into the act....and disposed of too. It's funny to hear Christian Creationists regurgitating the arguments of Jewish Creationists, and then to open Michael Cremo's Vedic Creationists regurgitating the arguments of Christian Creationists regurgitating the arguments of Jewish Creationists. Wonder who will be next?

I await your rebuttal, randman.

Michael

ps418

Randman, I think we've figured out why you never attended Harvard - because you can't read (or refuse to). I'm still waiting for you to single out the single best argument for a young-earth or for flood geology. Which one do you want to go with?

Patrick

ps418

Randman,

How does an article on punctuated equilibrium or therapsid fossils provide evidence for a young earth or for flood geology?

However, several of those links do deal with flood geology and the age of the earth. One discusses Berthault's sedimentation experiments, another the idea that sulphuric acid can rapidly produce karst topography, and several others which do not argue for flood geology or a young-earth per se, but which attempt to undermine the challenge posed by radiometric dating.

The thrashing cannot begin until you pick one. Which one do you pick?


Patrick

ps418

Let's look at one of the young-earth arguments posted by Randman. Remember, this is one of the 'best' ones he could find. The article is written by Michael Oard, and called Rapid Cave Formation by Sulfuric Acid Dissolution.

Oard makes the following claims:

It appears that sulfuric acid has been primarily responsible for the excavation of at least 10% of the caves in the Guadaloupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas.

Yes, 10% is not 100%, and the paper referenced by Oard [<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/279/5358/1919#B9" target="_blank">Age and Origin of Carlsbad Cavern and Related Caves from 40Ar/39Ar of Alunite </a>] clearly states that only 10 % of caves in general are hypogene in origin, and only some of these may have been facilitated by sulphuric acid dissolution:

. . . nearly 10% of known major caves worldwide are hypogene in origin

Which leaves about 90% of major caves with a supergene(?) origin in which only carbonic acid would be available for dissolution. Therefore, the 'argument' that follows applies only to a small percentage of cave systems, and does nothing to explain how major, non-hypogene karst systems could have formed in 4500 post-flood years. There's strike 1.

Oard:
This result is based on the discovery of the reaction products of sulfuric acid dissolution trapped in the cave. The sulfuric acid is formed by the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide in hydrothermal water.

Oard can't even read his source! His source states: "Caves formed by ascending hydrothermal or sulfuric acid-bearing waters are termed hypogene."

In the case of the Capitan hypogene caves, the authors do not implicate hydrothermal fluids:

The formation of caves in the Carlsbad area between 12 and 4 Ma was apparently influenced by tectonic and climatic control of the position of the water table in the permeable Capitan Limestone aquifer (18) and flow of hydrogen sulfide-bearing waters from the adjacent Delaware Basin. Hydrogen sulfide migrated upward along the base of the impermeable anhydrite of the Castile Formation in the basin. The caves apparently formed where the migrating hydrogen sulfide met the water table in the Capitan aquifer

So, the hydrogen sulfide was supplied by groundwater seeping through the Delaware Basin, not by a hydrothermal system. There's strike 2.

Oard again:
What this means for creationists is that cave formation, in at least some cases, was much more rapid, since sulfuric acid is much stronger than carbonic acid.


Now for the punch-line. To review, Oard's article starts with a quote from Strahler:

If it can be shown that either the excavation of caverns or their subsequent filling must require a vastly longer time to accomplish than the post-Flood limit, literal acceptance of the Genesis chronology is untenable.

The putative goal of Oard's article is to demonstrate that karst systems can in fact have formed within a mere 4500 post-flood years.

So, then, let's look again at Oard's own source, which uses 40Ar/39Ar dating of Alunite to constrain the dissolution history of the hypogene caves within the Permian Capitan Limestone of New Mexico. Does Oard's source show that these caves could have formed in 4500 years! Hardly!

In fact, the Alunite dates cited by Polyak et al. show that the hypogene caves in the Capitan formed over about 9 MILLION years. Their figure 5 shows this clearly, and shows that their is a clear relationship between age and elevation:




The formation of caves in the Carlsbad area between 12 and 4 Ma was apparently influenced by tectonic and climatic control of the position of the water table in the permeable Capitan Limestone aquifer (18) and flow of hydrogen sulfide-bearing waters from the adjacent Delaware Basin. Hydrogen sulfide migrated upward along the base of the impermeable anhydrite of the Castile Formation in the basin. The caves apparently formed where the migrating hydrogen sulfide met the water table in the Capitan aquifer (4, 8, 9). Cottonwood Cave, Virgin Cave, and other caves began to form 12 to 11 Ma near the border faults along the western edge of the mountains near Guadalupe Peak. Between 12 and 4 Ma, cave formation shifted progressively toward the east-northeast as the water table in the Capitan Limestone dropped, probably as a result of uplift of the Guadalupe block. Erosion of the Castile anhydrite was concurrent with uplift (or water table decline). Eventually, exposure of the more resistant Capitan reef limestone as an escarpment disrupted the hydrogen sulfide pathway (4, 9). Cave elevations indicate that, between 12 Ma and the present, the water table in the Capitan Limestone dropped 1100 m, which coincides closely with the estimated 1200-m maximum vertical fault displacement of the Guadalupe block (1).

Strike 3.

So, one of the 'best' arguments for a young earth bites the dust big-time. First, it applies to only 10% of all cases of karst (hypogene subsurface karst). Second, Oard's own source shows that the Carlsbad karst formed over about 9 million years, which is a bit longer than 4500 years. Third, though Oard suggested that all hypogene caves were formed by hydrothermal fluids, again his own example was not formed by hydrothermal fluids, but by sulphide-enriched groundwater from the Delaware basin evaporites (which would not give a very strong sulphuric acid!).

Was this the best young-earth argument you could find?

And you accuse OTHERS of promoting straw-man arguments?

Patrick

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notto

About the caves.

One of the things that I often find lacking in YE arguments is that although some of the things they point out may have happened rapidly, they often neglect to identify HOW LONG AGO these rapid phenomena happened.

Why don't we see these caves continue to rapidly form?

Why did the rapid speciation of kinds to get the number of species today stop?

Why did runaway subduction stop?

How come we don't see new rapidly forming fossils, coal, diamonds, volcanoes, varves, glaciers, etc today. Has this process slowed down?

In a way, I think Creationists often use their own form of gradualism that just insists that everything we see in nature happened rapidly (speed of light slowing down rapidly, caves forming rapidly, diamonds forming rapidly, coal forming rapidly, radioactive rates slowing down rapidly, population growing rapidly, sediments deposited rapidly) Isn't it too convienient that all of the rapid processes stopped just when we start to understand them and can see how they are at work today and we see that they are now rather slow?

Will the amount of things that are formed rapidly double in the next 6000 years as it has in the last 6000 years? Will there be twice as much coal and oil in 6000 years as we do now? This certainly would change our concern about natural resources wouldn't it?

Of course, the answer is "GOD DID IT", but that is hardly scientific.

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: notto ]</p>

MrDarwin

Patrick, my guess is that randman is either lazy, or doesn't understand the YEC issues in his links well enough to actually put them in his own words--possibly both.

randman

You guys are absurd.
1. I never said I was a YEC, not that I would engage in their arguments, nor that I would pick their best stuff, or any such thing.
I made the comment in passing that ya'll seemed to be avoiding AIG's better research while slammming an article awhile back. I don't even remember the article, but it seemed weaker, and in fact, it seemed ya'll were just engaging in a straw man argument.
What I do debate about is clearly defined, nameely the lies evolutionists have used to convince people of evolution.
One of those lies is that species exhibit evolution in the fossil record. That was what I was taught, and Americans are still taught, but that is in fact a careful and deliberate lie.
Species actually exhibit stasis, meaning that the fossils we have of species over a long period of time (theoritically) change around a median and thus the changes obse4ved are not properly called evolutionary.
The net effect is species exhibit stasis and sudden appearance in the fossil record.
The impression had been that populations would have a member mutate and if it was an advantageous mutation, then it would be gradually spread into the population, and thus the species would gradually change into another.
However, the fossil record does not bear this out. So what PE advocates have come up with is an idea that these mutations happened in an isolated and small groups, and came in relative bursts geologically speaking, and the net effect is that the species to species transitions are left out.
Of course, this is theoritically possible, but it is also true that it is possible that this scenario did not happen, that evolution did not occur, since the hard data, the fossil record, does not show this happening, and in fact, the more complete and lengthy fossils of a species we have, the less indication there is of evolution occuring.
This, guys, is a fact your side tries to cover up with the term "transitional" form, when in fact the transitions are not shown. What appears is a fully formed species without any evidence of where it came from. Your side places it in a chart based on similarities and calls it transitional.
But the fact still remains that if the transitions were shown, the fact of stasis would not be real, and many paleontologists have said it is real.
If you want to debate YEC geology, go to one of their boards. Write their scientists, and you can get into a fine technical discussion, which frankly, I am not technically a student in that field.
What I was taught, I know the concepts, and I see now where I was lied to by evolutionists my whole life, and aspects of that same deception are exhibited by many of you here.