Noah and the Ark

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by pelathais

They have indeed. Leonardo Di Vinci remarked about fossils of marine animals that he found in the Alps.

But this is evidence that the rocks now making up the mountains were once loose sediments, sand and silt at the bottom of the seas and not evidence that the mountains themselves were covered by a global flood.

If the "fish bone fossils" had been put down by a global flood 4,000 years ago then we would expect to find them as litter on the surfaces of the rocks across the mountains and other landscapes. Instead, we find the fossils embedded within sedimentary layers and those layers are tilted and thrusted up to form the mountains. We find marine fossils deep within mines high up in the Rocky Mountains.

Here is a picture of a road cut along the Interstate not far from my home -



Notice the bands of sedimentary rock that were horizontal when they were laid down along the coast of a sea that disappeared long ago.

The sediments in the layers near the circle mark "1" contain fossils of creatures that are not found in the other layers. When the environment changed, the creatures disappeared right along with the circumstances that were responsible for that particular color of rock. Geologists call this the Triassic Period.

The sediments near number "2" contain creatures that are not found anywhere else in the other layers as well. This is called the Cretaceous Period.

If you get out of your car and follow the path up and around this ridge line you will get to a spot where dinosaur footprints are preserved in the slanted rock right on the surface.



This is at an elevation of about 6900 above sea level. The peaks farther west rise as high as 14,440 feet. That means these dino foot prints should have been covered by 7540 feet of roiling flood water while the ground was still mud. That much water would have obliterated the footprints! AND we have to ask how the dinosaurs managed to walk up such a steep and muddy slope without using a rope like the gentleman in the picture is doing - and he's standing on hardened stone.

Here's a picture taken off the Oregon coast at a depth shallower than 7500 feet for comparison:



The sea floor is covered with a light silt that rises as smoke if it's disturbed even a little bit. How could the footprints have lasted in mud such as this?

When settlers first came to this area they found the footprints in the stone just as they are today. The "fish bone fossils" are not just ON the mountains. They are IN the mountains. AND they are sorted out by layer according to the specific time period when that particular layer was first laid down under a sea millions of years ago.

How do we know the dinosaur tracks weren't laid down after the flood?

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Aquila

How do we know the dinosaur tracks weren't laid down after the flood?

The layers of volcanic ash can be dated via radio metric dating and are all older than 65 million years.

You appear to want a 4,000 year old global flood.

My comments, however, were really directed to the standard Young Earth Creationist claims. In order to facilitate the coal deposits and other geologic features along with the many "problems" of getting the dinos on the Ark, many of them balk at the idea that the dinos survived the flood.

Ken Ham is an exception. But his schemes of a "Vegan T-Rex" and all really stretches the imagination a bit too far. I can see Shem's wife pitching heads of iceberg lettuce into a T-Rex's mouth.

And, we've still got the problem of having triceratops rappelling up and down the slick mud of the steep slope without even leaving a single skid mark.

[notofworks]

Originally Posted by pelathais

The layers of volcanic ash can be dated via radio metric dating and are all older than 65 million years.

You appear to want a 4,000 year old global flood.

My comments, however, were really directed to the standard Young Earth Creationist claims. In order to facilitate the coal deposits and other geologic features along with the many "problems" of getting the dinos on the Ark, many of them balk at the idea that the dinos survived the flood.

Ken Ham is an exception. But his schemes of a "Vegan T-Rex" and all really stretches the imagination a bit too far. I can see Shem's wife pitching heads of iceberg lettuce into a T-Rex's mouth.

So Pel, do you give any plausibility to my college-days view that "In the beginning, God created...." and He made it exactly as it appears complete with aged appearances, coal, diamonds, etc.?

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by notofworks

So Pel, do you give any plausibility to my college-days view that "In the beginning, God created...." and He made it exactly as it appears complete with aged appearances, coal, diamonds, etc.?

If one thinks about it creation had to have an appearance of age. For example, if you walked into the garden of Eden you'd see two young adults, one male one female, trees, rivers, etc. You would date the young adults at being mid to late twenties. You'd date the river by erosion, flow, etc. and it would appear to have been there many many years. The trees of the garden would appear to have been growing for many decades. Just on the surface level you'd have to admit an appearance of age.

Science isn't always right. A discovery could be made tomorrow that would could throw the entire scientific establishment on it's head. But odds are you and I would never you hear about that discovery. These are issues of "forbidden archeology". You see, there are discoveries that just don't add up to the current model and these discoveries are typically labled, catagorized, and put into storage. For example there are stories of very high tech machinery being discovered embedded in rock supposedly millions of years old. Artifacts that indicate that ancient Egyptians were in the British Isles long before "traditional" history would want you to believe they were there. You have mysterious objects found places that they just shouldn't be. You have gigantic human skeletons. Deformed, modified, or just plan perplexing human skeletons. You have items like the crystal skull that science can't really explain. Most are chalked up to being anomalous oddities. I'm not so sure of that. There's so much more information that you and I aren't told. Discoveries that the evolutionary establishment squints at and tosses aside because they're so sure of their theory. If they did find the ark... I assure you we'd NEVER hear about it unless some researcher opened the story... and he'd only get time on late night talk radio and be discredited by his colleagues.

Of course those who study forbidden archeology appear to push for a more ancient mankind because evidence is found in supposedly more ancient locations, sediments, etc. But what if the truth is the other way around? What if it isn't that man is older than the establishment wants us to know... what if mankind is younger?

Just some food for thought.

[notofworks]

Originally Posted by Aquila

If one thinks about it creation had to have an appearance of age. For example, if you walked into the garden of Eden you'd see two young adults, one male one female, trees, rivers, etc. You would date the young adults at being mid to late twenties. You'd date the river by erosion, flow, etc. and it would appear to have been there many many years. The trees of the garden would appear to have been growing for many decades. Just on the surface level you'd have to admit an appearance of age.

Wouldn't this only be true IF the creation took place in 24 hour days? If a "Creative Day" were millions of years, then the aged appearance would be the real deal.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by notofworks

Wouldn't this only be true IF the creation took place in 24 hour days? If a "Creative Day" were millions of years, then the aged appearance would be the real deal.

And Adam would be a highly developed ape and there would be no need for God, natural processes would have been man's origin.

[notofworks]

Originally Posted by Aquila

And Adam would be a highly developed ape and there would be no need for God, natural processes would have been man's origin.

I disagree. I'll admit that the whole evolution/creation thing (Theistic Evolution) has been a bitterly tough pill for me to swallow but I don't believe God, AT ALL, is eliminated from the equation. For me, all this does is explain God and make Him more touchable.

If we eliminate God from the process, we would need to explain where all the "stuff" came from in the first place and for me, that can't possibly be done without God.

••And can I just add...this thread is the kind of thing that makes this a great forum.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by notofworks

So Pel, do you give any plausibility to my college-days view that "In the beginning, God created...." and He made it exactly as it appears complete with aged appearances, coal, diamonds, etc.?

The omphalos argument? No.

"Omphalos" is Latin for "belly button," as in "Did Adam have a belly button?"

For this theory to work we'd have to allow that Adam did have a scar on his abdomen (a navel) that gave the appearance that he had been in a womb prior to his birth/creation.

And, that he had the cross hatched patterns of wear on his teeth as if he had been chewing food for 30 years (or however "old" he was when he was created). Also, that he had the arterial sclerosis commensurate with a human being of that same age.

The trees all had rings - and not only that... they had the dead and decayed organic material around their roots that allow fungi to process nutrients into compounds that the trees can take up through their roots. Trees can't "eat" without fungi and the dead things the fungi live off of already in the soil.

God would have had to have place fossils in the rocks just to make it look like the earth had gone through billions of years of time. He would have had to go through every single one of the trillions and trillions upon trillions of mineral crystals and set the proportion of decayed isotopes in the proper ratio to the undecayed isotopes AND THEN...

... distributed these mineral crystals by layers in a complex pattern across the earth's surface to make it look like the earth was billions of years old AND that the surface of the earth had moved around, buckled and crumpled and was completely eroded away in places.

Why go through all of that trouble just to deceive us?

This question actually raises some very serious moral questions about the nature of God. Is he really an all knowing and all wise benevolent Creator Who actually wants the very best for His children? Or is He some sort of Loki - like trickster god who delights in deceiving His children at such a fine level of detail?

And I haven't even scratched the surface with the examples of the "appearance of age" and the problems with such a notion.

[notofworks]

Originally Posted by pelathais

The omphalos argument? No.

"Omphalos" is Latin for "belly button," as in "Did Adam have a belly button?"

For this theory to work we'd have to allow that Adam did have a scar on his abdomen (a navel) that gave the appearance that he had been in a womb prior to his birth/creation.

And, that he had the cross hatched patterns of wear on his teeth as if he had been chewing food for 30 years (or however "old" he was when he was created). Also, that he had the arterial sclerosis commensurate with a human being of that same age.

The trees all had rings - and not only that... they had the dead and decayed organic material around their roots that allow fungi to process nutrients into compounds that the trees can take up through their roots. Trees can't "eat" without fungi and the dead things the fungi live off of already in the soil.

God would have had to have place fossils in the rocks just to make it look like the earth had gone through billions of years of time. He would have had to go through every single one of the trillions and trillions upon trillions of mineral crystals and set the proportion of decayed isotopes in the proper ratio to the undecayed isotopes AND THEN...

... distributed these mineral crystals by layers in a complex pattern across the earth's surface to make it look like the earth was billions of years old AND that the surface of the earth had moved around, buckled and crumpled and was completely eroded away in places.

Why go through all of that trouble just to deceive us?

This question actually raises some very serious moral questions about the nature of God. Is he really an all knowing and all wise benevolent Creator Who actually wants the very best for His children? Or is He some sort of Loki - like trickster god who delights in deceiving His children at such a fine level of detail?

And I haven't even scratched the surface with the examples of the "appearance of age" and the problems with such a notion.

Your best statement in that, to me, was, "Why go through all of that trouble just to deceive us?" I think the word, "confuse" could also be used in the place of "deceive". My response (college days) to all the other points you made would have been, "Why sure, any God who could create all this stuff could also go to all the trouble to make it appear aged."

But ultimately, the one word question, "Why?" would make all that pointless.