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What's the evidence for a world wide flood?

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AGelbart

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Dec 31, 2000, 11:23:00 AM12/31/00
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Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood. What evidence
do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?

Mark Isaak

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Dec 31, 2000, 11:37:53 AM12/31/00
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In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,

AGelbart <agel...@aol.com> wrote:
>Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood. What evidence
>do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?

Genesis 6-9, of course. What else would even qualify as evidence to a
creationist?
--
Mark Isaak atta @ best.com http://www.best.com/~atta
"The commonest fallacy is to suppose that since the state of doubt
is accompanied by a feeling of uncertainty, knowledge arises when
this feeling gives way to one of assurance." - John Dewey

Stew Dean

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Dec 31, 2000, 12:00:40 PM12/31/00
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On 31 Dec 2000 11:23:00 -0500, agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) added to
the meme pool:

>Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood. What evidence
>do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?

Sedimentary deposits I suppose. There is plenty of evidence of local
flooding but none for a global flood. Some literalist claims are just
silly - for example I've heard all the strata are laid down by a
global flood (including those that include sea fossils near the top of
mountains). I've heard the grandcanyon was created by drain water
after the flood. I've heard all kinds of wonderful things but they
don't really relate to reality.


Stewart Dean - ste...@webslave.dircon.co.uk
alife guide - http://www.webslave.dircon.co.uk/alife

and...@my-deja.com

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Dec 31, 2000, 12:58:56 PM12/31/00
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In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,

Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They cite
mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
but not so easily explained otherwise.

They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD 1650
there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
thousand years BC.

Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a
worldwide flood. Without the current topography, there's plenty of
water in existing oceans to cover the world.

Andy

Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/

Mark VandeWettering

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Dec 31, 2000, 1:55:14 PM12/31/00
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On 31 Dec 2000 12:58:56 -0500, and...@my-deja.com <and...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
> agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood. What
>evidence
>> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
>
>Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They cite
>mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
>but not so easily explained otherwise.

Let's see, we can add "plate tectonics" to the long laundry list of

>that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD 1650

things that Andy apparently knows nothing about.

>They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests

>there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
>small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
>thousand years BC.

Add to that "understanding of why extrapolation isn't a good thing".

>Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
>very large regional floods.

I think you meant that Scientists have PROPOSED and cautiously begun
to accept the likelihood of very large regional floods where evidence
can be found.

>Not much difference between those and a
>worldwide flood. Without the current topography, there's plenty of
>water in existing oceans to cover the world.

I suppose the global flood _built_ all this topography? Topography
that would be significantly above the floodline should this global
deluge reoccur?

I'm beginning to understand why you don't argue points of actual
science and evidence, Andy.

>Andy

--
/* __ __ __ ____ __*/float m,a,r,k,v;main(i){for(;r<4;r+=.1){for(a=0;
/*| \/ |\ \ / /\ \ / /*/a<4;a+=.06){k=v=0;for(i=99;--i&&k*k+v*v<4;)m=k*k
/*| |\/| | \ V / \ \/\/ / */-v*v+a-2,v=2*k*v+r-2,k=m;putchar("X =."[i&3]);}
/*|_| |_ark\_/ande\_/\_/ettering <ma...@telescopemaking.org> */puts("");}}

PZ Myers

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Dec 31, 2000, 2:11:24 PM12/31/00
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In article <92ns4s$evu$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, and...@my-deja.com
wrote:

> In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
> agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> > Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide
> > flood. What evidence do they claim to have for a worldwide
> > flood?
>
> Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains.
> They cite mountains themselves, which are easily explained by
> a worldwide flood but not so easily explained otherwise.

Whoa, that's news to me. I thought mountains (and the
distribution of those fossils) were nicely explained by
conventional geology, and that a global flood doesn't say much at
all about why the Rocky Mountains exist.

>
> They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards
> suggests that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of
> people. In AD 1650 there were only about 650 million people,
> and working backwards at a small population growth rate
> results in very few people circa a few thousand years BC.

I thought you claimed to know something about statistics and
mathematics? You should know, then, that those calculations are
rather grossly flawed...among other things, they lead to rather
bizarre underestimates of world population during fairly well
documented historical periods, such as that of the Roman Empire.

>
> Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the
> likelihood of very large regional floods.

No more reluctantly than they accept any other hypothesis -- all
it takes is evidence.

> Not much difference
> between those and a worldwide flood.

No? What a weird universe you live in, Andy.

> Without the current
> topography, there's plenty of water in existing oceans to
> cover the world.

Well, gosh, if the world were flattened out perfectly smooth, you
could probably flood the entire place with the contents of one
lake. You're just replacing one problem (the source of the water)
with another non-trivial problem (changing the shape of the
entire planet).


I thought you were pretty moronic before, but the fact that you
think these incredibly stupid and superficial creationist
justifications for a global flood have some credibility has just
knocked you down a couple of more notches in my estimation.

So, I take it you are a YEC?

--
PZ Myers

Jon Fleming

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Dec 31, 2000, 2:50:41 PM12/31/00
to

Watch and learn, AGelbart. That's typical creationist "evidence".
They claim that easily-explained phenomena are unexplained. They make
unwarranted wild extrapolations and ignore the consequences of those
extrapolations (calculate the number of people on Earth at the times
of various Biblical and historical events in the centuries after the
supposed flood using Andy's proposal). They present ad-hoc
hypotheses, ignore the questions raised by those hypotheses, and don't
go looking for evidence for or (Heaven forbid!) against those
hypotheses.. They misrepresent (sometimes willingly, sometimes merely
from ignorance) the state of scientific knowledge and thinking.

It appears they do this because they are convinced that they know all
the answers already, and mere reality should not be consulted.

--
Change "nospam" to "group" to email

Gyudon Z

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Dec 31, 2000, 4:39:34 PM12/31/00
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From andysch:

> agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood. What
>evidence
>> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?

>Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They cite
>mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood

How are they explained by a worldwide flood?

>but not so easily explained otherwise.

Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion years.

This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible obtusity". When
one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes, the whole
system goes down.

>They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
>that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD 1650
>there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
>small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
>thousand years BC.

But the growth rate they use is about +.59% a year. The growth rate was never
that high until around 1850.

For further details, see

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_ar
guments/population_growth.html

>Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
>very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a
>worldwide flood.

Yes there is. 1. The volume of water required differs by orders of magnitude,
2. The bible describes a global flood, and 3. What are the odds of enough
regional flood to occur close enough in time to replicate the effect of a
global flood?

>Without the current topography, there's plenty of
>water in existing oceans to cover the world.

But there is no reason to doubt the current theories of why mountains exist, in
the sense that we observe mountain-building events (or earthquakes) at tectonic
borders with regularity.

Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain building event
(better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume that the
planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six thousand years,
and then inexplicably stopped.

And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the flood...well. Who
here knows what a tsunami is?

And if you go to deja's archives, you can find some other interesting stuff on
the structural integrity of the ark itself.

And, for some other problems with the flood, you can also visit

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/flood.html

"Between true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle."
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Dick C.

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Dec 31, 2000, 6:41:17 PM12/31/00
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and...@my-deja.com wrote in <92ns4s$evu$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>:

>In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
> agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood. What
>evidence
>> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
>
>Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They cite
>mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
>but not so easily explained otherwise.

Actually, they are not explained at all by a flood, but are explained
by current theories. Explained quite well, and the theories explain
a lot else besides.

>
>They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
>that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD 1650
>there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
>small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
>thousand years BC.

I did that one time and came up with a date shortly before Columbus
sailed to the new world. That kind of extrapolation is useless and
silly.

>
>Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
>very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a
>worldwide flood. Without the current topography, there's plenty of
>water in existing oceans to cover the world.

Not much difference except in area covered, volume of water needed,
effects of said floods, and, of course, topography. And we know
the topography has not changed that drastically in just 4K years.
Simple physics tell you that.

>
>Andy
>
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com
>http://www.deja.com/
>
>


--
Dick #1349
People think that libraries are safe places, but they're not,
they have ideas.
email: dic...@uswest.net
Homepage http://www.users.uswest.net/~dickcr/

and...@my-deja.com

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Dec 31, 2000, 8:48:09 PM12/31/00
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In article <slrn94v0cc...@peewee.telescopemaking.org>,
ma...@peewee.telescopemaking.org (Mark VandeWettering) wrote:
> On 31 Dec 2000 12:58:56 -0500, and...@my-deja.com <andysch@my-

deja.com> wrote:
> >In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
What
> >evidence
> >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
> >
> >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
cite
> >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
>
> Let's see, we can add "plate tectonics" to the long laundry list of
> >that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD
1650
> things that Andy apparently knows nothing about.
>
> >They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
> >there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
> >small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
> >thousand years BC.
>
> Add to that "understanding of why extrapolation isn't a good thing".

I agree that extrapolation is inexact. Still, we're talking about
orders of magnitude here. Given humans 100,000 years and there should
be orders of magnitude more people than there are now, in the absence
of enormous catastrophe(s).

> >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
> >very large regional floods.
>
> I think you meant that Scientists have PROPOSED and cautiously begun
> to accept the likelihood of very large regional floods where evidence
> can be found.

I said "reluctantly". And evidence is being found. I think the NY
Times had a report on this.

> >Not much difference between those and a
> >worldwide flood. Without the current topography, there's plenty of
> >water in existing oceans to cover the world.
>
> I suppose the global flood _built_ all this topography? Topography
> that would be significantly above the floodline should this global
> deluge reoccur?

Sure, you could get mountains rising above a floodline due to the
enormous water pressure. How else does one explain all the high
mountains -- and the fish fossils found high up in them?

> I'm beginning to understand why you don't argue points of actual
> science and evidence, Andy.

It's New Year's Eve, Mark. Good time for us to lighten up a bit, don't
you think?

Gyudon Z

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Dec 31, 2000, 8:57:49 PM12/31/00
to
From andysch:

Except that over most of earth's history, the human growth rate has been barely
greater than zero, and was negative in the fourteenth century thanks to the
Black Death.

For further details, see

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_ar
guments/population_growth.html

>> >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
>> >very large regional floods.

>> I think you meant that Scientists have PROPOSED and cautiously begun
>> to accept the likelihood of very large regional floods where evidence
>> can be found.

>I said "reluctantly". And evidence is being found. I think the NY
>Times had a report on this.

Again, there is a difference between a flood of Biblical proportions and a
piddling little local flood.

>> >Not much difference between those and a
>> >worldwide flood. Without the current topography, there's plenty of
>> >water in existing oceans to cover the world.

>> I suppose the global flood _built_ all this topography? Topography
>> that would be significantly above the floodline should this global
>> deluge reoccur?

>Sure, you could get mountains rising above a floodline due to the
>enormous water pressure. How else does one explain all the high
>mountains -- and the fish fossils found high up in them?

Tectonics responsible for the mountain-building.

>> I'm beginning to understand why you don't argue points of actual
>> science and evidence, Andy.

>It's New Year's Eve, Mark. Good time for us to lighten up a bit, don't
>you think?

This is a version of the standard Gish evasion. One wonders why you don't want
to be taken to task for mangling fact and theory this badly.

and...@my-deja.com

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Dec 31, 2000, 8:58:25 PM12/31/00
to
In article <myers-AECC1F....@news.newsguy.com>,

PZ Myers <my...@mac.com> wrote:
> In article <92ns4s$evu$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, and...@my-deja.com
> wrote:
>
> > In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> > > Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide
> > > flood. What evidence do they claim to have for a worldwide
> > > flood?
> >
> > Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains.
> > They cite mountains themselves, which are easily explained by
> > a worldwide flood but not so easily explained otherwise.
>
> Whoa, that's news to me. I thought mountains (and the
> distribution of those fossils) were nicely explained by
> conventional geology, and that a global flood doesn't say much at
> all about why the Rocky Mountains exist.

Sure it does. The enormous water pressure -- and very large lakes --
could push down on the earth, pushing the earth up to form mountains.

I'm not saying this happened. If you've think mountains and their fish
fossils are "nicely explained by conventional geology," then please
provide that nice explanation and I'll look at it.

> > They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards
> > suggests that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of
> > people. In AD 1650 there were only about 650 million people,
> > and working backwards at a small population growth rate
> > results in very few people circa a few thousand years BC.
>
> I thought you claimed to know something about statistics and
> mathematics? You should know, then, that those calculations are
> rather grossly flawed...among other things, they lead to rather
> bizarre underestimates of world population during fairly well
> documented historical periods, such as that of the Roman Empire.

Please explain. The only gross flaw I see is how humans could have
arrived 100,000 years ago and yet we only have about 6 billion persons
now.

[snip]


> > Without the current
> > topography, there's plenty of water in existing oceans to
> > cover the world.
>
> Well, gosh, if the world were flattened out perfectly smooth, you
> could probably flood the entire place with the contents of one
> lake. You're just replacing one problem (the source of the water)
> with another non-trivial problem (changing the shape of the
> entire planet).

What do you think happens to the shape of the earth as the water
evaporates?

> I thought you were pretty moronic before, but the fact that you
> think these incredibly stupid and superficial creationist
> justifications for a global flood have some credibility has just
> knocked you down a couple of more notches in my estimation.

Darn it. What can I do to redeem myself? Say my arguments are "not
non-Darwinian" like Gould???

[snip]

and...@my-deja.com

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Dec 31, 2000, 9:05:22 PM12/31/00
to
In article <n63v4t008b9uv06ov...@4ax.com>,

Watch and learn indeed, AGelbert. I raise a couple of common sense
issues, like human population, fish fossils in mountains, and mountains
themselves, and cite recent scientific endorsement of large regional
floods. In response, there's nothing substantive by any evolutionists
in opposition to a worldwide flood.

Gyudon Z

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Dec 31, 2000, 9:11:54 PM12/31/00
to
From andysch:

>In article <myers-AECC1F....@news.newsguy.com>,
> PZ Myers <my...@mac.com> wrote:
>> In article <92ns4s$evu$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, and...@my-deja.com
>> wrote:
>>
>> > In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
>> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> > > Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide
>> > > flood. What evidence do they claim to have for a worldwide
>> > > flood?
>> >
>> > Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains.
>> > They cite mountains themselves, which are easily explained by
>> > a worldwide flood but not so easily explained otherwise.
>>
>> Whoa, that's news to me. I thought mountains (and the
>> distribution of those fossils) were nicely explained by
>> conventional geology, and that a global flood doesn't say much at
>> all about why the Rocky Mountains exist.
>
>Sure it does. The enormous water pressure -- and very large lakes --
>could push down on the earth, pushing the earth up to form mountains.

Except that dense liquids (such as the liquid core of the earth) are not very
compressible, so the weight of the water (which, for the smooth-earth model, is
pretty much evenly distributed) would just end up leaving the surface of the
Earth squashed pretty evenly.

At the very least, you'd need a lot longer than a year.

However, there is the issue of where the water came from. You can't have more
than the equivalent of ten or fifteen meters of additional water vapor in the
atmosphere; the resulting air pressure (under the demonstrable physics
principle that pressure is additive) would make it impossible for humans to
breathe.

>I'm not saying this happened. If you've think mountains and their fish
>fossils are "nicely explained by conventional geology," then please
>provide that nice explanation and I'll look at it.

Greatly simplified, the fossils used to be underwater, but plate tectonics, in
their usual mountain-building work, raised them into the air along with the
rock around them.

>> > They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards
>> > suggests that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of
>> > people. In AD 1650 there were only about 650 million people,
>> > and working backwards at a small population growth rate
>> > results in very few people circa a few thousand years BC.

>> I thought you claimed to know something about statistics and
>> mathematics? You should know, then, that those calculations are
>> rather grossly flawed...among other things, they lead to rather
>> bizarre underestimates of world population during fairly well
>> documented historical periods, such as that of the Roman Empire.

>Please explain. The only gross flaw I see is how humans could have
>arrived 100,000 years ago and yet we only have about 6 billion persons
>now.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_ar
guments/population_growth.html

>[snip]

>> > Without the current
>> > topography, there's plenty of water in existing oceans to
>> > cover the world.

>> Well, gosh, if the world were flattened out perfectly smooth, you
>> could probably flood the entire place with the contents of one
>> lake. You're just replacing one problem (the source of the water)
>> with another non-trivial problem (changing the shape of the
>> entire planet).

>What do you think happens to the shape of the earth as the water
>evaporates?

Nothing. Why would it?

And how much water evaporated. Remember, we would eventually run into the
greatly increased air pressure problem.

>> I thought you were pretty moronic before, but the fact that you
>> think these incredibly stupid and superficial creationist
>> justifications for a global flood have some credibility has just
>> knocked you down a couple of more notches in my estimation.

>Darn it. What can I do to redeem myself? Say my arguments are "not
>non-Darwinian" like Gould???

You can at least try to give your arguments some semblance of being at least
partially thought-out.

Gyudon Z

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Dec 31, 2000, 9:22:47 PM12/31/00
to
From andysch:

Which have been pretty thorougly refuted.

>In response, there's nothing substantive by any evolutionists
>in opposition to a worldwide flood.

Try

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/flood.html

and...@my-deja.com

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Dec 31, 2000, 9:26:35 PM12/31/00
to
In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,

gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> From andysch:
>
> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
What
> >evidence
> >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
>
> >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
cite
> >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
>
> How are they explained by a worldwide flood?

The mountains were underwater, so the fish fossils lodged there.

As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
mountains (and valleys) would be formed.

> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
>
> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion years.

That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains. Nor would the pressure
be as great as water pressure. Finally, if plate tectonics were the
cause, then man would have observed something analogous. Instead,
we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a mountain.

> This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
obtusity". When
> one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes, the
whole
> system goes down.

Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood theory is
what's now under water, so to speak.

> >They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
> >that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD
1650
> >there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
> >small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
> >thousand years BC.
>
> But the growth rate they use is about +.59% a year. The growth rate
was never
> that high until around 1850.

You can use much smaller growth rates and still reach the same
conclusion: man hasn't been around for 100,000 years unless an enormous
catastrophe(s) killed most of the population.

>
> For further details, see
>
> http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
earth/specific_ar
> guments/population_growth.html

I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism. It
claims that population growth of humans would be zero without
technology. Zero population growth requires that the average woman
have only 2 children who reach maturity. All observed pre-technology
rates are much higher than that.

> >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
> >very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a
> >worldwide flood.
>
> Yes there is. 1. The volume of water required differs by orders of
magnitude,
> 2. The bible describes a global flood, and 3. What are the odds of
enough
> regional flood to occur close enough in time to replicate the effect
of a
> global flood?

There's plenty of water in the existing oceans to support a global
flood, if the topography of the world were more flat.

> But there is no reason to doubt the current theories of why mountains
exist, in
> the sense that we observe mountain-building events (or earthquakes)
at tectonic
> borders with regularity.

Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even remotely
similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.

> Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain building
event
> (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
that the
> planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
thousand years,
> and then inexplicably stopped.
>
> And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
flood...well. Who
> here knows what a tsunami is?
>
> And if you go to deja's archives, you can find some other interesting
stuff on
> the structural integrity of the ark itself.
>
> And, for some other problems with the flood, you can also visit
>
> http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/flood.html

Your closing comments here are just an emotional attack on
creationism. It helps explain why scientists are so reluctant to
accept the possibility of large floods, but does little to address what
likely happened.

Gyudon Z

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 9:58:47 PM12/31/00
to
From andysch:

>In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,
> gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
>> From andysch:
>>
>> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
>What
>> >evidence
>> >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?

>> >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
>cite
>> >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood

>> How are they explained by a worldwide flood?

>The mountains were underwater, so the fish fossils lodged there.

In a manner of speaking, that's how the mainstream understanding of biology
works.

It's just that the underwater rocks weren't part of a mountain yet.

>As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
>thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
>mountains (and valleys) would be formed.

I fear that this effect would not be as pronounced as you may like to think.
Since water on this planet generally positions itself so that its surface is
perpendicular to the local radius to the center of the Earth, you would get
just as much pressure pushing down on a forming mountain as you would trying to
form it. Same with valleys; you would get just as much pressure resisting the
displacement of the stone as you would for the displacement itself.

>> >but not so easily explained otherwise.

>> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion years.

>That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.

Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air during the normal
mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.

>Nor would the pressure
>be as great as water pressure.

We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the Himalayas into the
air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the flood consisted
of all the water in the world's oceans).

On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water can exist in
the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure would make it


impossible for humans to breathe.

>Finally, if plate tectonics were the


>cause, then man would have observed something analogous. Instead,
>we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a mountain.

We've seen mountain-building events that raise existing mountains by some
distance. In fact, even before Darwin's time geologists used the slow rate of
geological processes to conclude that the earth was extremely, extremely old.

>> This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
>obtusity". When
>> one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes, the
>whole
>> system goes down.

>Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood theory is
>what's now under water, so to speak.

We don't oppose any flood theory. We are quite opposed to the global one.

>> >They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
>> >that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD
>1650
>> >there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
>> >small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
>> >thousand years BC.

>> But the growth rate they use is about +.59% a year. The growth rate
>was never
>> that high until around 1850.

>You can use much smaller growth rates and still reach the same
>conclusion: man hasn't been around for 100,000 years unless an enormous
>catastrophe(s) killed most of the population.

Or, unless the population growth rate was approximately equal to zero.

And one such catastrophe occurred in the fourteenth century. It was called the
plague. It would not surprise me to hear that the growth for that century was
negative as a result.


>> For further details, see

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
>earth/specific_ar
>> guments/population_growth.html

>I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism.

Yes. It is an attack on the ridiculous creationist thinking that could even
conceive of the possibility of six billion people arising out of four mated
pairs in a mere four thousand years.

>It
>claims that population growth of humans would be zero without
>technology. Zero population growth requires that the average woman
>have only 2 children who reach maturity. All observed pre-technology
>rates are much higher than that.

1. Define technology.
2. What observed pre-technology rates are we talking about?

>> >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
>> >very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a
>> >worldwide flood.

>> Yes there is. 1. The volume of water required differs by orders of
>magnitude,
>> 2. The bible describes a global flood, and 3. What are the odds of
>enough
>> regional flood to occur close enough in time to replicate the effect
>of a
>> global flood?

>There's plenty of water in the existing oceans to support a global
>flood, if the topography of the world were more flat.

What evidence have we that the topography of the world ever was more flat?

Apart from which, why bring up the possibilities of local flood when you were
talking about a global one?

>> But there is no reason to doubt the current theories of why mountains
>exist, in
>> the sense that we observe mountain-building events (or earthquakes)
>at tectonic
>> borders with regularity.

>Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even remotely
>similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.

Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us suppose that we
have a number of these earthquakes.

Why are creationists so obsessed with the one-shot-or-nothing approach?

>> Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain building
>event
>> (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
>that the
>> planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
>thousand years,
>> and then inexplicably stopped.

No answer for why the earthquakes would magically stop?

>> And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
>flood...well. Who
>> here knows what a tsunami is?

No answer for this problem with the flood?

>> And if you go to deja's archives, you can find some other interesting
>stuff on
>> the structural integrity of the ark itself.

>> And, for some other problems with the flood, you can also visit

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/flood.html

>Your closing comments here are just an emotional attack on
>creationism.

Did you read the entire page? The opening is an attack on ridiculous
creationist thinking, but the next eighteen printed pages detail problems with
the flood.

>It helps explain why scientists are so reluctant to
>accept the possibility of large floods,

Because the empirical evidence does not support them.

>but does little to address what
>likely happened.

So, can you answer any of the scientific objections to the flood? Any five
answers to the twenty-eight numbered ones that open the article, that stand up
to our scrutiny, will suffice.

stev...@my-deja.com

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Dec 31, 2000, 10:29:30 PM12/31/00
to
In article <92opsq$4f4$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,

and...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,
> gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> > From andysch:
> >
> > > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> > >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
> What
> > >evidence
> > >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
> >
> > >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
> cite
> > >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide
flood
> >
> > How are they explained by a worldwide flood?
>
> The mountains were underwater, so the fish fossils lodged there.
>
According to the Bible, the flood lasted ca. one year (and taking the
Masoretic text of the Old Testament as correct, and tying it into known
historic dates such as the Assyrian invasion of Israel in 722 BC, we
get a date for the flood of ca. 2350 BC. That's a century or four
after the Great Pyramid -- with no signs of water damage -- was
built). Is it plausible that mountains were raised that fast (or ocean
basins sunk that fast) with no signs of MASSIVE geological fracturing
withing historic times?

>
> As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
> thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
> mountains (and valleys) would be formed.
>
> > >but not so easily explained otherwise.
> >
> > Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion years.
>
> That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains. Nor would the
pressure
> be as great as water pressure. Finally, if plate tectonics were the
> cause, then man would have observed something analogous. Instead,
> we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a
mountain.
>
Sure it does. The fish were buried and fossilized when the rocks in
the mountains lay flat on the sea floor. As the continental plates
played bumper-car with each other, the plate edges crumpled and folded,
forming mountain ranges -- with the fish fossils now elevated thousands
of feet above sea level.

>
> > This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
> obtusity". When
> > one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes,
the
> whole
> > system goes down.
>
> Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood theory
is
> what's now under water, so to speak.
>
"Conventional geologists" would be better than "evolutionists" in this
context. The belief that the Earth is very old, and that the matter in
it has obeyed the same physical laws for its entire history, is
essential background to the idea of biological evolution. However,
biological evolution is of virtually no importance to establishing the
age of the earth, or the non-occurance of a global flood.

>
> > >They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
> > >that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD
> 1650
> > >there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at
a
> > >small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
> > >thousand years BC.
> >
> > But the growth rate they use is about +.59% a year. The growth rate
> was never
> > that high until around 1850.
>
> You can use much smaller growth rates and still reach the same
> conclusion: man hasn't been around for 100,000 years unless an
enormous
> catastrophe(s) killed most of the population.
>
No catastrophe (at least, no single, spectacular catastrophe) is
needed, although there may have been some (think of the Black Death of
the 14th century). No species, humans included, can achieve a higher
population than it can feed, no matter how fast they can breed. Once
humans had colonized all the habitable regions of Earth, increases in
population could only occur if there were improvements in agricultural
technology. No matter how many children people have, no more can live
to adulthood, or produce children of their own, than can find food for
themselves. And you know, I think, how slowly technology and
agricultural science progressed until recent centuries. If you don't
keep this in mind, the actual growth rates will seem impossibly small.

>
> >
> > For further details, see
> >
> > http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
> earth/specific_ar
> > guments/population_growth.html
>
> I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism. It
> claims that population growth of humans would be zero without
> technology. Zero population growth requires that the average woman
> have only 2 children who reach maturity. All observed pre-technology
> rates are much higher than that.
>
No, absolute birth rates are much higher than that, but this is correct
for the number of children who reach maturity and have children of
their own. Infant and childhood mortality were staggeringly high by
modern standards (I've read that average life expectancy in ancient
Greece was ca. 20 years -- notwithstanding philosophers and playwrights
active into their 70s; the low average was the result of the
aforementioned high childhood mortality).

>
> > >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood
of
> > >very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and
a
> > >worldwide flood.
> >
> > Yes there is. 1. The volume of water required differs by orders of
> magnitude,
> > 2. The bible describes a global flood, and 3. What are the odds of
> enough
> > regional flood to occur close enough in time to replicate the effect
> of a
> > global flood?
>
> There's plenty of water in the existing oceans to support a global
> flood, if the topography of the world were more flat.
>
Yes, but where is the evidence that the topography of the world was
more flat?

>
> > But there is no reason to doubt the current theories of why
mountains
> exist, in
> > the sense that we observe mountain-building events (or earthquakes)
> at tectonic
> > borders with regularity.
>
> Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even remotely
> similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.
>
If you see a finished statue, and next to it you see a sculpter
chiseling on a block of stone, do you argue that the sculpter can never
create a statue that way, since the chips he flakes away are not even
remotely similar to the volume of stone he would have to remove to
create a statue like the first? There is abundant evidence that the
Earth is billions of years old; what one earthquake cannot do,
thousands or scores of thousands can.

>
> > Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain building
> event
> > (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
> that the
> > planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
> thousand years,
> > and then inexplicably stopped.
> >
> > And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
> flood...well. Who
> > here knows what a tsunami is?
> >
> > And if you go to deja's archives, you can find some other
interesting
> stuff on
> > the structural integrity of the ark itself.
> >
> > And, for some other problems with the flood, you can also visit
> >
> > http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/flood.html
>
> Your closing comments here are just an emotional attack on
> creationism. It helps explain why scientists are so reluctant to
> accept the possibility of large floods, but does little to address
what
> likely happened.
>
I've seen emotional attacks in this NG; that wasn't one of them. He's
arguing, concisely, why it's absurd to assume that mountain-building
events occurred over years, or even centuries, rather than over
millions of years.
>
> Andy
>
>
-- Steven J.

Boikat

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Dec 31, 2000, 10:33:41 PM12/31/00
to
and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
[snip]

>
> Watch and learn indeed, AGelbert. I raise a couple of common sense
> issues, like human population,

What about "human population"? The "rational"
used by the claims by YEC cetinists leaves out the
effects of mediating factors (Like genocide
ordered by the all powerful and loving God,
plagues visited upon whole nations by an all
powerful and loving God, and so on) Using YEC
population predictions we should also be covered
by several thousand miles of rodents.


> fish fossils in mountains,

Mountain building by tectonic forces. Why are no
fish fossils found on the tops of extinct
volcano's?


> and mountains
> themselves,

Plate tectonics explain them quite well. By the
way, how do YEC's (or you, since you are riding
the YEC hobby horse today) explain the different
apparent ages of all the mountain ranges in the
world? If they were all created by some imaginary
force during the flood, why do the Appalachian
Mountains look more weathered than the Rocky
Mountains?

> and cite recent scientific endorsement of large regional
> floods.

No, you mentioned "recent scientific endorsement
of large regional floods", but you provided no
citation. Your comment could be referring to the
Black Sea flooding, or to the recent findings of
the Mars mapping mission, which provided evidence
of large regional flooding on Mars.

> In response, there's nothing substantive by any evolutionists
> in opposition to a worldwide flood.

You are suffering from some sort of delusion. All
of the claims you made have been refuted over and
over again. There is no evidence that supports a
"world wide flood" as presented by YEC's.

Boikat

David C. Fritzinger

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Dec 31, 2000, 10:53:00 PM12/31/00
to

and...@my-deja.com wrote:

You seem to forget that there have been catastrophes. The black plague
comes to mind. Also, the human survival rate wasn't always what your
calculations require.

> , fish fossils in mountains,

Others have touched on this. Plate tectonics. Parts of the earth that were
once under water get pushed up when 2 plates collide with one another.
Another result is earthquakes. Look at the US west coast.

> and mountains
> themselves,

See above.

> and cite recent scientific endorsement of large regional
> floods.

Yes, there is evidence that the Black Sea Basin may have flooded, I
believe, about 10,000 years ago. However, there is no evidence that this
flood was worldwide

> In response, there's nothing substantive by any evolutionists
> in opposition to a worldwide flood.

Back about 200 years ago, everyone believed in the Noachian Deluge. A group
of English naturalists decided to look for actual evidence that this
happened. Some of them were Anglican ministers. They examined the evidence
and found absolutely no evidence for a worldwide flood. They were good
scientists, as well as being good Christians, and they decided the flood
never happened. Since then, no one has presented any evidence that such a
flood has occurred. Look up Henry Buckland, who was one of the naturalists
I mentioned above.

Your claim that nothing substantive has been presented is just plain wrong.
But, Happy New Year anyway.

Dave Fritzinger

David C. Fritzinger

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 10:56:35 PM12/31/00
to

and...@my-deja.com wrote:

> In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,
> gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> > From andysch:
> >
> > > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> > >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
> What
> > >evidence
> > >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
> >
> > >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
> cite
> > >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
> >
> > How are they explained by a worldwide flood?
>
> The mountains were underwater, so the fish fossils lodged there.
>
> As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
> thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
> mountains (and valleys) would be formed.
>
> > >but not so easily explained otherwise.
> >
> > Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion years.
>
> That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains. Nor would the pressure
> be as great as water pressure. Finally, if plate tectonics were the
> cause, then man would have observed something analogous. Instead,
> we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a mountain.

Look at the Rockies. You are wrong. And, it is noted that your assertions
are entirely unsupported.

>
>
> > This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
> obtusity". When
> > one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes, the
> whole
> > system goes down.
>
> Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood theory is
> what's now under water, so to speak.

Wrong. Any floods seen were local, such as the Black Sea Basin, and
periodic floods in the Tigris Euphrates valley.

>
>
> > >They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
> > >that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD
> 1650
> > >there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
> > >small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
> > >thousand years BC.
> >
> > But the growth rate they use is about +.59% a year. The growth rate
> was never
> > that high until around 1850.
>
> You can use much smaller growth rates and still reach the same
> conclusion: man hasn't been around for 100,000 years unless an enormous
> catastrophe(s) killed most of the population.

Such as the Black Plague?

>
>
> >
> > For further details, see
> >
> > http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
> earth/specific_ar
> > guments/population_growth.html
>
> I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism. It
> claims that population growth of humans would be zero without
> technology. Zero population growth requires that the average woman
> have only 2 children who reach maturity. All observed pre-technology
> rates are much higher than that.

And, the death rate would have been much higher as well. Again, Andy, learn
some science from some scientists, instead of Creationist Tracts.

Dave Fritzinger

Boikat

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 11:00:31 PM12/31/00
to
and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,
> gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> > From andysch:
> >
> > > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> > >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
> What
> > >evidence
> > >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
> >
> > >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
> cite
> > >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
> >
> > How are they explained by a worldwide flood?
>
> The mountains were underwater, so the fish fossils lodged there.

However, the sediment would have washed away when
the waters receded, taking the fish with them.

>
> As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
> thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
> mountains (and valleys) would be formed.

So, how come we do not see this same phenomena
happening today? The only mountains being "built"
under water today are volcanic. They are nothing
like the mountains which contain "fish fossils".


>
> > >but not so easily explained otherwise.
> >
> > Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion years.
>
> That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.

The hell it doesn't.

> Nor would the pressure
> be as great as water pressure.

Which has more mass: Water or rock?

> Finally, if plate tectonics were the
> cause, then man would have observed something analogous.

What? Why observe something analogous when you
can see the real thing?

>Instead,
> we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a mountain.

You really are ignorant, aren't you? Some
mountain ranges are still growing idiot. It's
measured constantly. The Grand Tetons the
Himalayans, all are still actively growing

You've never even *opened* a geology book in your
life, have you?

>
> > This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
> obtusity". When
> > one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes, the
> whole
> > system goes down.
>
> Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood theory is
> what's now under water, so to speak.

Maybe the problem is that you don't know what your
talking about?


>
> > >They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
> > >that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD
> 1650
> > >there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
> > >small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
> > >thousand years BC.
> >
> > But the growth rate they use is about +.59% a year. The growth rate
> was never
> > that high until around 1850.
>
> You can use much smaller growth rates and still reach the same
> conclusion: man hasn't been around for 100,000 years unless an enormous
> catastrophe(s) killed most of the population.

Like the black plague killed millions? Like
droughts and local floods haven't killed
millions? And since some of those number values
are unknown, it's stupid to attempt to use
population growth to attempt to establish the age
of the earth. Even on the face of it, it's stupid
to even use population growth to estimate how long
a species has even been in existence.

>
> >
> > For further details, see
> >
> > http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
> earth/specific_ar
> > guments/population_growth.html
>
> I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism.

There's that problem with reading comprehension,
again.

> It
> claims that population growth of humans would be zero without
> technology.

No, it'd be lower. That does stand to reason (not
that you will let "reason" sway any of your
opinions). Technology is what allows one farmer to
raise enough crops to feed hundreds of people at
the turn of the century and thousands of people
now.

> Zero population growth requires that the average woman
> have only 2 children who reach maturity. All observed pre-technology
> rates are much higher than that.

What's the mortality rate?

>
> > >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
> > >very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a
> > >worldwide flood.
> >
> > Yes there is. 1. The volume of water required differs by orders of
> magnitude,
> > 2. The bible describes a global flood, and 3. What are the odds of
> enough
> > regional flood to occur close enough in time to replicate the effect
> of a
> > global flood?
>
> There's plenty of water in the existing oceans to support a global
> flood, if the topography of the world were more flat.

There's enough water in a gold fish bowl to cover
the world if the worlds topology was flat.

>
> > But there is no reason to doubt the current theories of why mountains
> exist, in
> > the sense that we observe mountain-building events (or earthquakes)
> at tectonic
> > borders with regularity.
>
> Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even remotely
> similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.

Did anyone say that mountain ranges were built due
to one single earthquake? If so, could you pleas
point out where they said that? *If* you even knew
a smidgen about what you are pretending to know
about, you'd know that earthquakes gradually build
mountain ranges in as little as fractions of an
inch to several feet at a time, over a long period
of time. And even then, mountains can be built
over time by simple "creep", as plates collide and
simply over ride or warp each other slowly over
time. As long as the upwarping or over riding is
faster than the local rate of erosion, eventually
mountains are formed. The process is ongoing and
is currently directly observed.

>
> > Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain building
> event
> > (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
> that the
> > planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
> thousand years,
> > and then inexplicably stopped.
> >
> > And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
> flood...well. Who
> > here knows what a tsunami is?
> >
> > And if you go to deja's archives, you can find some other interesting
> stuff on
> > the structural integrity of the ark itself.
> >
> > And, for some other problems with the flood, you can also visit
> >
> > http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/flood.html
>
> Your closing comments here are just an emotional attack on
> creationism. It helps explain why scientists are so reluctant to
> accept the possibility of large floods, but does little to address what
> likely happened.

You're attempting to be deceptive again. The
subject is the world wide flood of Genesis, (and
mountain building) not large local events like the
flooding of the Black Sea, or the Channeled
Scablands. There is no evidence that supports the
literal Genesis flood.

Boikat

Boikat

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 11:06:07 PM12/31/00
to
Gyudon Z wrote:
>
> From andysch:
>
> >In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,

[snip]
(Der Andyslickmeister wrote)

> >Your closing comments here are just an emotional attack on
> >creationism.
>
> Did you read the entire page? The opening is an attack on ridiculous
> creationist thinking, but the next eighteen printed pages detail problems with
> the flood.
>
> >It helps explain why scientists are so reluctant to
> >accept the possibility of large floods,
>
> Because the empirical evidence does not support them.
>
> >but does little to address what
> >likely happened.
>
> So, can you answer any of the scientific objections to the flood? Any five
> answers to the twenty-eight numbered ones that open the article, that stand up
> to our scrutiny, will suffice.

Nah. He has to answer them all.

Boikat

and...@my-deja.com

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 11:12:46 PM12/31/00
to
In article <20001231215819...@ng-cj1.aol.com>,

gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> From andysch:
>
> >In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,
> > gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> >> From andysch:
> >>
> >> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> >> >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
> >What
> >> >evidence
> >> >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
>
> >> >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
> >cite
> >> >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide
flood
>
> >> How are they explained by a worldwide flood?
>
> >The mountains were underwater, so the fish fossils lodged there.
>
> In a manner of speaking, that's how the mainstream understanding of
biology
> works.
>
> It's just that the underwater rocks weren't part of a mountain yet.

The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.

> >As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
> >thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
> >mountains (and valleys) would be formed.
>
> I fear that this effect would not be as pronounced as you may like to
think.
> Since water on this planet generally positions itself so that its
surface is
> perpendicular to the local radius to the center of the Earth, you
would get
> just as much pressure pushing down on a forming mountain as you would
trying to
> form it. Same with valleys; you would get just as much pressure
resisting the
> displacement of the stone as you would for the displacement itself.

Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
substantial.

It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
toggle.

> >> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
>
> >> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion
years.
>
> >That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.
>
> Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air during
the normal
> mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.

As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against this.

> >Nor would the pressure
> >be as great as water pressure.
>
> We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the Himalayas
into the
> air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the flood
consisted
> of all the water in the world's oceans).

4000 psi is huge, and perhaps it was even higher. The force keeping
the mountains from rising would only be 14.7 psi in air pressure and
gravity of the displaced solid.

> On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water can
exist in
> the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure would
make it
> impossible for humans to breathe.

So? There's enough water in existing oceans to cover the world if it
had a flatter topography.

>
> >Finally, if plate tectonics were the
> >cause, then man would have observed something analogous. Instead,
> >we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a
mountain.
>
> We've seen mountain-building events that raise existing mountains by
some
> distance. In fact, even before Darwin's time geologists used the slow
rate of
> geological processes to conclude that the earth was extremely,
extremely old.

I don't see what an old earth has to do with this discussion about a
possible worldwide flood.

> >> This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
> >obtusity". When
> >> one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes,
the
> >whole
> >> system goes down.
>
> >Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood theory
is
> >what's now under water, so to speak.
>
> We don't oppose any flood theory. We are quite opposed to the global
one.

Real scientists are not emotionally opposed to anything. It looks as
though scientific inquiry into a flood is being distorted by views
against the Bible. That distortion needs to be eliminated.

[snip]


> http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
> >earth/specific_ar
> >> guments/population_growth.html
>
> >I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism.
>
> Yes. It is an attack on the ridiculous creationist thinking that
could even
> conceive of the possibility of six billion people arising out of four
mated
> pairs in a mere four thousand years.

I'm not interested in discussing hysterical reactions to creationism.
Scientifically, an observed population growth rate applied across 4000
years does generate 6 billion persons. No observed population rate
applied to 100,000 years generates only 6 billion persons.

[snip]


> >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
remotely
> >similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.
>
> Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
suppose that we
> have a number of these earthquakes.

You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.

> Why are creationists so obsessed with the one-shot-or-nothing
approach?

Ask them if you like. Why are some scientists obsessed with rejecting
any occurrence, like a worldwide flood, that happens to be accepted by
creationists?

> >> Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain
building
> >event
> >> (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
> >that the
> >> planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
> >thousand years,
> >> and then inexplicably stopped.
>
> No answer for why the earthquakes would magically stop?

I don't follow this. Earthquakes are probably as old as the earth.
They don't build mountains.

> >> And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
> >flood...well. Who
> >> here knows what a tsunami is?
>
> No answer for this problem with the flood?

I don't follow this. Earthquakes happen under water today, and it's no
big deal.

[snip]


> So, can you answer any of the scientific objections to the flood? Any
five
> answers to the twenty-eight numbered ones that open the article, that
stand up
> to our scrutiny, will suffice.

The name of this thread is "What's the evidence for a world wide
flood?" If you want to pick out what you think is the best evidence
against a worldwide thread, then feel free to do so. I'll consider the
best evidence, but not hysterical arguments against some so-called
creationists.

Gyudon Z

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 11:21:03 PM12/31/00
to
From Boikat:

>Gyudon Z wrote:
>>
>> From andysch:
>>
>> >In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,
>
>[snip]
>(Der Andyslickmeister wrote)
>
>> >Your closing comments here are just an emotional attack on
>> >creationism.
>>
>> Did you read the entire page? The opening is an attack on ridiculous
>> creationist thinking, but the next eighteen printed pages detail problems
>with
>> the flood.
>>
>> >It helps explain why scientists are so reluctant to
>> >accept the possibility of large floods,
>>
>> Because the empirical evidence does not support them.
>>
>> >but does little to address what
>> >likely happened.
>>
>> So, can you answer any of the scientific objections to the flood? Any five
>> answers to the twenty-eight numbered ones that open the article, that stand
>up
>> to our scrutiny, will suffice.
>
>Nah. He has to answer them all.

To have the global flood be accepted as valid geological history, yes.

I'm asking him to do five just to assure myself that he is capable of making a
scientific, well-supported, logical argument.

John Segerson

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 11:43:47 PM12/31/00
to

and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
[snip]


>
> Sure, you could get mountains rising above a floodline due to the
> enormous water pressure. How else does one explain all the high
> mountains -- and the fish fossils found high up in them?

How deep does the water have to get for the mountains to float?

catshark

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 11:51:46 PM12/31/00
to
In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
and...@my-deja.com wrote:

[snip]

> > >> >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains.
They
> > >cite
> > >> >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide
> flood
> >
> > >> How are they explained by a worldwide flood?
> >
> > >The mountains were underwater, so the fish fossils lodged there.
> >
> > In a manner of speaking, that's how the mainstream understanding of
> biology
> > works.
> >
> > It's just that the underwater rocks weren't part of a mountain yet.
>
> The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
> Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
> about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
> only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
> plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
> mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.
>

I think everyone on T.O. should make a New Years resolution not to
respond to Andy unless he posts something even stupider (and more
impenetrable) than the above.

Then I think we should have a pool as to how long it takes for Andy to
achieve this feat. Put me down for 11 hours (I've always been an
optimist).

--
J. Pieret

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worthwhile
chewing through the leather straps.

Jonathan West

unread,
Dec 31, 2000, 11:54:02 PM12/31/00
to

"Gyudon Z" <gyu...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20001231215819...@ng-cj1.aol.com...

> On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water can
exist in
> the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure would make
it
> impossible for humans to breathe.
>

Its actually an awful lot less than that. Sea-level atmospheric pressure is
roughly 1 kg/sq. cm, or the equivalent of a meter of water.

At temperature roughly equivalent to average sea surface temperature (say
23.4C) the saturation water vapour pressure (i.e. at 100% humidity) is about
2.89 kPa, or the equivalent of just under 3cm of water.

Unless you raise the temperature, you simply cannot get any more water
vapour into the atmosphere. If you raise the temperature to 100C, then the
vapour pressure of water rises to the same as atmospheric pressure (that's
why water boils at that temperature)

Therefore, evaporation can't be used to explain where all the water
disappeared to after the flood.

--
Regards
Jonathan West

stev...@my-deja.com

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 12:39:32 AM1/1/01
to
In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
and...@my-deja.com wrote:
Younger, surely, in some cases. Mountain ranges are of various ages.
As the Earth's tectonic plates move about, their collisions raise
mountain ranges faster than erosion wears mountains down. Once plates
stop moving towards each other, the mountain ranges start to be worn
away, so very old ranges are low hills if they still exist. Most of
the ranges that are still prominent would have arisen within the last
couple of hundred million years.

>
> > >As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in
this
> > >thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
> > >mountains (and valleys) would be formed.
> >
> > I fear that this effect would not be as pronounced as you may like
to
> think.
> > Since water on this planet generally positions itself so that its
> surface is
> > perpendicular to the local radius to the center of the Earth, you
> would get
> > just as much pressure pushing down on a forming mountain as you
would
> trying to
> > form it. Same with valleys; you would get just as much pressure
> resisting the
> > displacement of the stone as you would for the displacement itself.
>
> Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
> differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
> substantial.
>
> It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
> toggle.
>
Enough to move teratons of rocks, MILES into the air, in under a year?

>
> > >> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
> >
> > >> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion
> years.
> >
> > >That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.
> >
> > Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air during
> the normal
> > mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.
>
> As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against
this.
>
As shown above, not so.

>
> > >Nor would the pressure
> > >be as great as water pressure.
> >
> > We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the Himalayas
> into the
> > air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the flood
> consisted
> > of all the water in the world's oceans).
>
> 4000 psi is huge, and perhaps it was even higher. The force keeping
> the mountains from rising would only be 14.7 psi in air pressure and
> gravity of the displaced solid.
>
Air pressure? The Flood COVERED the high mountains. I grant that,
assuming low mountains and shallow sea basins, you could cover the
entire earth with the present world supply of water, and the highlands
would be under less pressure than lowlands. Do you have:
(a) any sort of model for calculating the approximate pressure
difference (i.e. how high were the pre-Flood mountains, and how low was
the pre-Flood sea floor)?
(b) any sort of model for where the water was BEFORE the Flood, and why
and how it got out?

>
> > On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water
can
> exist in
> > the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure would
> make it
> > impossible for humans to breathe.
>
> So? There's enough water in existing oceans to cover the world if it
> had a flatter topography.
>
And we wouldn't have to import oil if the Great Lakes were filled with
petroleum instead of water. For better or worse, they aren't. Do you
have any evidence for a significantly flatter global topography within
the last 10,000 years?

>
> >
> > >Finally, if plate tectonics were the
> > >cause, then man would have observed something analogous. Instead,
> > >we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a
> mountain.
> >
> > We've seen mountain-building events that raise existing mountains by
> some
> > distance. In fact, even before Darwin's time geologists used the
slow
> rate of
> > geological processes to conclude that the earth was extremely,
> extremely old.
>
> I don't see what an old earth has to do with this discussion about a
> possible worldwide flood.
>
It has a great deal to do with the argument that plate tectonics could
raise mountains. You argued that you had never seen the creation of a
mountain; if the Earth is very old, such events could be too small or
incremental to attract your notice. And, of course, if the Earth is
very old, that is an argument against the need to explain geologial
strata as the results of a single, year-long global flood.

>
> > >> This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
> > >obtusity". When
> > >> one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes,
> the
> > >whole
> > >> system goes down.
> >
> > >Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood
theory
> is
> > >what's now under water, so to speak.
> >
> > We don't oppose any flood theory. We are quite opposed to the global
> one.
>
> Real scientists are not emotionally opposed to anything. It looks as
> though scientific inquiry into a flood is being distorted by views
> against the Bible. That distortion needs to be eliminated.
>
"Real" scientists don't have emotions? For that matter, Guydon Z did
not use the adverb "emotionally." Do you not think that scientists can
be "real" if they oppose ideas that completely contradict the
evidence? Indeed, could they be "real" if they did NOT oppose such
ideas? Did you miss assorted posts about how CREATIONISTS first
noticed that the actual geological evidence was completely different
from what they naturally predicted on the basis of a young Earth and a
global Flood? To this day, there are many old-earth creationists who
are as appalled at young-earth creationists as they are at geocentrist
creationists.

>
> [snip]
> > http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
> > >earth/specific_ar
> > >> guments/population_growth.html
> >
> > >I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism.
> >
> > Yes. It is an attack on the ridiculous creationist thinking that
> could even
> > conceive of the possibility of six billion people arising out of
four
> mated
> > pairs in a mere four thousand years.
>
> I'm not interested in discussing hysterical reactions to creationism.
> Scientifically, an observed population growth rate applied across 4000
> years does generate 6 billion persons. No observed population rate
> applied to 100,000 years generates only 6 billion persons.
>
So the only plausible population growth rates are those you've observed
personally? Nothing you haven't observed in your lifetime could
exist? That in itself puts paid to a global Flood. Of course, if you
travelled to Europe, you'd observe population growth rates of zero or
lower, which, applied over 100,000 years, yields a population much
lower than 6 billion. And, again, population CANNOT grow faster than
food supply, unless you've observed people survive and reproduce
without eating.

>
> [snip]
> > >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
> remotely
> > >similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.
> >
> > Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
> suppose that we
> > have a number of these earthquakes.
>
> You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.
>
Why not?

>
> > Why are creationists so obsessed with the one-shot-or-nothing
> approach?
>
> Ask them if you like. Why are some scientists obsessed with rejecting
> any occurrence, like a worldwide flood, that happens to be accepted by
> creationists?
>
He DID ask. All scientists accept many occurrences accepted by
creationists. I think you mean to ask, why are some scientists
obsessed with rejecting occurrences for which there is neither a shred
of physical evidence, nor any physically possible model, even though
creationists have no problem believing in such events?

>
> > >> Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain
> building
> > >event
> > >> (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to
assume
> > >that the
> > >> planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
> > >thousand years,
> > >> and then inexplicably stopped.
> >
> > No answer for why the earthquakes would magically stop?
>
> I don't follow this. Earthquakes are probably as old as the earth.
> They don't build mountains.
>
Plate movements can build mountains, by lifting or pushing huge masses
of rock into the air, a little at a time. The earthquakes are a side
effect.

>
> > >> And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
> > >flood...well. Who
> > >> here knows what a tsunami is?
> >
> > No answer for this problem with the flood?
>
> I don't follow this. Earthquakes happen under water today, and it's
no
> big deal.
>
Sometimes it's a very big deal -- those tsunamis can be a major pain.
I think his point is that enough movement of the sea floor (which, in
the Flood, would have been the entire surface of the Earth) to raise
mountains within in year would have created nonstop major earthquakes,
and nonstop tsunamis sufficient to shatter or sink any conceivable
vessel on the ocean's surface.

>
> [snip]
> > So, can you answer any of the scientific objections to the flood?
Any
> five
> > answers to the twenty-eight numbered ones that open the article,
that
> stand up
> > to our scrutiny, will suffice.
>
> The name of this thread is "What's the evidence for a world wide
> flood?" If you want to pick out what you think is the best evidence
> against a worldwide thread, then feel free to do so. I'll consider
the
> best evidence, but not hysterical arguments against some so-called
> creationists.
>
The link in Guydon Z's post connected you to an essay that was hardly
hysterical, and gave calm, reasonable arguments against a global Flood,
and contained a link to additional evidence and arguments. If you
agree with the creationists, you must accept these arguments against
your position. If you do not agree with them, explain how your own
position is immune to the arguments listed.
>
> Andy
>
>
-- Steven J.

John Monrad

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 12:59:16 AM1/1/01
to
In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, and...@my-deja.com says...

> In article <20001231215819...@ng-cj1.aol.com>,
> gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:

[...]


> >
> > It's just that the underwater rocks weren't part of a mountain yet.
>
> The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
> Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
> about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
> only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
> plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
> mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.

Please explain how probability requires mountains to rise before the
Cambrian. Which "plate tectonic theory" are you referring to? It
certainly bears no resemblance to the theory as it has developed since
the 50s.

> > >As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
> > >thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
> > >mountains (and valleys) would be formed.
> >
> > I fear that this effect would not be as pronounced as you may like to
> think.
> > Since water on this planet generally positions itself so that its
> surface is
> > perpendicular to the local radius to the center of the Earth, you
> would get
> > just as much pressure pushing down on a forming mountain as you would
> trying to
> > form it. Same with valleys; you would get just as much pressure
> resisting the
> > displacement of the stone as you would for the displacement itself.
>
> Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
> differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
> substantial.

Yes, but in the wrong direction for your scenario. In the volume
displaced downward, you are replacing material of greater density (rock)
with material of lesser density (water). Your depressed volume would
immediately pop back up to a *higher* level than when you started.

[...]


> > >That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.
> >
> > Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air during
> the normal
> > mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.
>
> As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against this.

Care to show those "time-based probabilities" again? You seemed to have
forgotten to post them the first time.

[...]


> > We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the Himalayas
> into the
> > air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the flood
> consisted
> > of all the water in the world's oceans).
>
> 4000 psi is huge, and perhaps it was even higher. The force keeping
> the mountains from rising would only be 14.7 psi in air pressure and
> gravity of the displaced solid.

Okay, so replace the trifling amount of water with the same trifling
amount of rock. Calculate how much pressure is exerted by the latter.

> > On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water can
> exist in
> > the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure would
> make it
> > impossible for humans to breathe.
>
> So? There's enough water in existing oceans to cover the world if it
> had a flatter topography.

And pigs could fly if they had wings. Have you evidence for this flatter
topography? The geologic record won't support you.

[...]


> > We don't oppose any flood theory. We are quite opposed to the global
> one.
>
> Real scientists are not emotionally opposed to anything. It looks as
> though scientific inquiry into a flood is being distorted by views
> against the Bible.

The scientific aspect of the inquiry has yielded no evidence supporting a
world-wide flood, Biblical or otherwise. It looks as though floodites of
whatever stripe are the emoters.

> That distortion needs to be eliminated.

Contemplating suicide?

[...]

> > >I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism.
> >
> > Yes. It is an attack on the ridiculous creationist thinking that
> could even
> > conceive of the possibility of six billion people arising out of four
> mated
> > pairs in a mere four thousand years.
>
> I'm not interested in discussing hysterical reactions to creationism.
> Scientifically, an observed population growth rate applied across 4000
> years does generate 6 billion persons. No observed population rate
> applied to 100,000 years generates only 6 billion persons.

Why are you assuming a constant rate? Do you have any evidence that
supports a constant growth rate?



> [snip]
> > >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
> remotely
> > >similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.
> >
> > Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
> suppose that we
> > have a number of these earthquakes.
>
> You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.

Try one inch of uplift in ten years (say, 2.5mm/yr) as an average. Over
1,000,000 years, how much uplift would obtain?

> > Why are creationists so obsessed with the one-shot-or-nothing
> approach?
>
> Ask them if you like. Why are some scientists obsessed with rejecting
> any occurrence, like a worldwide flood, that happens to be accepted by
> creationists?

Acceptance is one thing. Support for the assertion of a world-wide flood
is quite another. If creationists could provide some evidence for their
assertions, you might be surprised at the reaction. Folklore stored in
some book of fables doesn't constitute evidence.


> > >> Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain
> building
> > >event
> > >> (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
> > >that the
> > >> planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
> > >thousand years,
> > >> and then inexplicably stopped.
> >
> > No answer for why the earthquakes would magically stop?
>
> I don't follow this. Earthquakes are probably as old as the earth.
> They don't build mountains.

But the movement of rocks that accompanies earthquakes does.

[...]

John Monrad

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 1:08:43 AM1/1/01
to
In article <92p2d3$a9q$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, cats...@my-deja.com says...

> In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> and...@my-deja.com wrote:

[...]


> >
> > The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
> > Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
> > about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
> > only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
> > plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
> > mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.
> >
>
> I think everyone on T.O. should make a New Years resolution not to
> respond to Andy unless he posts something even stupider (and more
> impenetrable) than the above.
>
> Then I think we should have a pool as to how long it takes for Andy to
> achieve this feat. Put me down for 11 hours (I've always been an
> optimist).
>
> --
> J. Pieret
>
> Some mornings it just doesn't seem worthwhile
> chewing through the leather straps.

Wish your post had shown up on my newsreader before I responded to him.

At first I thought he had a pre-1950s, vertical tectonics view. On
further review, he appears to be pre-Lyellian. Where does he get this
stuff?

Regarding the pool: I'll subscribe to the theory that his every post is
better than his next. Put me down for a couple hours or his next post,
whichever occurs first, and assuming it isn't past his bedtime.

Mark VandeWettering

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 1:15:40 AM1/1/01
to
On 31 Dec 2000 23:12:46 -0500, and...@my-deja.com <and...@my-deja.com> wrote:

>The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
>Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
>about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
>only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
>plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
>mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.

Wow. Andy, you are really quite, quite profound.

Quite profoundly ignorant and stupid.

Tell me, is there any subject of which you aren't profoundly
ignorant? If so, we've seen no evidence of it so far.

As a hint: there ARE forces which destroy mountains as well. That
rather modifies the mean age of observable mountain ranges. As an
example, 1/10th of all mountains were not formed within the first 400
million years of the earths history.

>Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
>differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
>substantial.

I suggest you work the details of this "hypothesis" out. If you could
manage it, you might also explain how it explains the currently observed
phenomena of subduction zones.

>It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
>toggle.

Ah, analogy. In the hands of the intelligent, a useful tool for gaining
insight. In the ignorant, an attempt at handwaving past the real problems
with their argument.

>As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against this.

As shown above, you couldn't figure your way out of a wet paper bag.

>Real scientists are not emotionally opposed to anything. It looks as
>though scientific inquiry into a flood is being distorted by views
>against the Bible. That distortion needs to be eliminated.

If you claim that the reason that we find fish fossils on top of mountains
is because of a global flood, you are profoundly ignorant. Even the most
rudimentary understanding of geology renders that theory impossible.
The fact that you cannot seemingly master geology which has been known for
over two hundred years is even more baffling to me than all the other
subjects for which you have demonstrated criminal ignorance.

>> Yes. It is an attack on the ridiculous creationist thinking that
>could even
>> conceive of the possibility of six billion people arising out of four
>mated
>> pairs in a mere four thousand years.
>
>I'm not interested in discussing hysterical reactions to creationism.
>Scientifically, an observed population growth rate applied across 4000
>years does generate 6 billion persons. No observed population rate
>applied to 100,000 years generates only 6 billion persons.

Allright Andy. Let's see the math. Tell me what your population model
is, what your assumptions are, and let's see where we stand.

>[snip]
>> >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
>remotely
>> >similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.
>>
>> Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
>suppose that we
>> have a number of these earthquakes.
>
>You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.

As an example, the current speed of the Pacific Plate relative to the
East Pacific rise is about 8cm per year. That takes only about 19600
years to make a mile. Let's round up and call it 20k just for kicks,
which works out to 50 miles per million years, or 5000 miles per 100
million years.

Can't get from an inch to a mile that way? Really?

It might behoove you to try to explain the similarity in shape between
South America and the African coast using your flood model.

>> Why are creationists so obsessed with the one-shot-or-nothing
>approach?
>
>Ask them if you like. Why are some scientists obsessed with rejecting
>any occurrence, like a worldwide flood, that happens to be accepted by
>creationists?

Because they don't stand even a moment's casual analysis?

>> >> Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain
>building
>> >event
>> >> (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
>> >that the
>> >> planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
>> >thousand years,
>> >> and then inexplicably stopped.
>>
>> No answer for why the earthquakes would magically stop?
>
>I don't follow this. Earthquakes are probably as old as the earth.
>They don't build mountains.

Try to explain how your flood model accounts for the Himalayas in particular.
What kind of stress raised these mountains and how long ago?

>> >> And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
>> >flood...well. Who
>> >> here knows what a tsunami is?
>>
>> No answer for this problem with the flood?
>
>I don't follow this. Earthquakes happen under water today, and it's no
>big deal.

I can't even begin to follow what line you are pursuing here.

>[snip]
>> So, can you answer any of the scientific objections to the flood? Any
>five
>> answers to the twenty-eight numbered ones that open the article, that
>stand up
>> to our scrutiny, will suffice.
>
>The name of this thread is "What's the evidence for a world wide
>flood?" If you want to pick out what you think is the best evidence
>against a worldwide thread, then feel free to do so. I'll consider the
>best evidence, but not hysterical arguments against some so-called
>creationists.

Believing that fish fossils got to the top of mountains by Noachian deluge
isn't just creationist: it is moronic. It betrays a profound lack of
knowledge so deep it can only be intentional. Is there no argument so
profoundly stupid that creationists won't attempt to send up the flag pole
in some vain attempt to attack science? Don't you have ANY pride?

Mark

>Andy

--
/* __ __ __ ____ __*/float m,a,r,k,v;main(i){for(;r<4;r+=.1){for(a=0;
/*| \/ |\ \ / /\ \ / /*/a<4;a+=.06){k=v=0;for(i=99;--i&&k*k+v*v<4;)m=k*k
/*| |\/| | \ V / \ \/\/ / */-v*v+a-2,v=2*k*v+r-2,k=m;putchar("X =."[i&3]);}
/*|_| |_ark\_/ande\_/\_/ettering <ma...@telescopemaking.org> */puts("");}}

Mark VandeWettering

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 1:27:28 AM1/1/01
to
On 31 Dec 2000 23:51:46 -0500, catshark <cats...@my-deja.com> wrote:

>I think everyone on T.O. should make a New Years resolution not to
>respond to Andy unless he posts something even stupider (and more
>impenetrable) than the above.

If I tried I couldn't come up with something more stupid than Andy's
drivel, but I believe Andy is a better man than I. I'll join in
your resolution.

>Then I think we should have a pool as to how long it takes for Andy to
>achieve this feat. Put me down for 11 hours (I've always been an
>optimist).

He'll probably be out celebrating the New Year and getting drunk.
Anything he posts while drunk and/or hungover won't be as stupid
as what he says when sober, so put me down for 17 hours.

Mark

Boikat

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 3:05:01 AM1/1/01
to

There is ample evidence of mountain ranges that
have weathered away, if that's what you mean. Look
at the topography and geological characteristics
of the Ozarks, the Appalachians, the Ouachita's,
the Teton range and the Rockies, to mention just a
few. Do you imagine that the Ozarks were always
gently rolling hills?

>
> > >As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
> > >thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
> > >mountains (and valleys) would be formed.
> >
> > I fear that this effect would not be as pronounced as you may like to
> think.
> > Since water on this planet generally positions itself so that its
> surface is
> > perpendicular to the local radius to the center of the Earth, you
> would get
> > just as much pressure pushing down on a forming mountain as you would
> trying to
> > form it. Same with valleys; you would get just as much pressure
> resisting the
> > displacement of the stone as you would for the displacement itself.
>
> Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
> differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
> substantial.

However, there is no evidence that this occurred.

>
> It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
> toggle.

Likewise, the malleability of rock is not
analogous to an electronic flip-flop, astable or
otherwise.

>
> > >> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
> >
> > >> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion
> years.
> >
> > >That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.
> >
> > Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air during
> the normal
> > mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.
>
> As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against this.

You haven't shown an "probabilities" above
anywhere.

>
> > >Nor would the pressure
> > >be as great as water pressure.
> >
> > We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the Himalayas
> into the
> > air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the flood
> consisted
> > of all the water in the world's oceans).
>
> 4000 psi is huge, and perhaps it was even higher. The force keeping
> the mountains from rising would only be 14.7 psi in air pressure and
> gravity of the displaced solid.

I'd like to see the research that led to this
conclusion. No, sniffing glue and having a
"vision" doesn't count.

>
> > On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water can
> exist in
> > the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure would
> make it
> > impossible for humans to breathe.
>
> So? There's enough water in existing oceans to cover the world if it
> had a flatter topography.

So what? Please present evidence that the world's
topography has been substantially flatter than it
is today.

>
> >
> > >Finally, if plate tectonics were the
> > >cause, then man would have observed something analogous. Instead,
> > >we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a
> mountain.
> >
> > We've seen mountain-building events that raise existing mountains by
> some
> > distance. In fact, even before Darwin's time geologists used the slow
> rate of
> > geological processes to conclude that the earth was extremely,
> extremely old.
>
> I don't see what an old earth has to do with this discussion about a
> possible worldwide flood.

The comment was about the rate of mountain
building as opposed to the claim that the flood
caused mountains to form rapidly. Do try to keep
up with what was said instead of attempting to
dodge the issue.

>
> > >> This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
> > >obtusity". When
> > >> one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes,
> the
> > >whole
> > >> system goes down.
> >
> > >Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood theory
> is
> > >what's now under water, so to speak.
> >
> > We don't oppose any flood theory. We are quite opposed to the global
> one.
>
> Real scientists are not emotionally opposed to anything.

Did he say he was 'emotionally opposed"?

> It looks as
> though scientific inquiry into a flood is being distorted by views
> against the Bible.

No, since quite a few people that reject the world
wide flood are also catholics of one sect or
another.

> That distortion needs to be eliminated.

Are you advocating censorship of views that are
opposed to the biblical interpretation, not
because they are meant to oppose the bible, but
simply because they happen to also refute the
bible? A call for censorship by a Schlafly? It
boggles the mind!

>
> [snip]
> > http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
> > >earth/specific_ar
> > >> guments/population_growth.html
> >
> > >I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism.
> >
> > Yes. It is an attack on the ridiculous creationist thinking that
> could even
> > conceive of the possibility of six billion people arising out of four
> mated
> > pairs in a mere four thousand years.
>
> I'm not interested in discussing hysterical reactions to creationism.

Where did you see any of that at the site?

> Scientifically, an observed population growth rate applied across 4000
> years does generate 6 billion persons. No observed population rate
> applied to 100,000 years generates only 6 billion persons.

Yes it does, if you take into account the events
in the past that have decreased the population
faster than it increased. Things like wars,
famine, natural disasters, and so on.

>
> [snip]
> > >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
> remotely
> > >similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.
> >
> > Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
> suppose that we
> > have a number of these earthquakes.
>
> You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.

Yes, you can, as long as the erosion rate is not
faster.

>
> > Why are creationists so obsessed with the one-shot-or-nothing
> approach?
>
> Ask them if you like. Why are some scientists obsessed with rejecting
> any occurrence, like a worldwide flood, that happens to be accepted by
> creationists?

Because there is no objective evidence to support
the claim of a world wide flood as accepted by
creationists.

>
> > >> Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain
> building
> > >event
> > >> (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
> > >that the
> > >> planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
> > >thousand years,
> > >> and then inexplicably stopped.
> >
> > No answer for why the earthquakes would magically stop?
>
> I don't follow this. Earthquakes are probably as old as the earth.
> They don't build mountains.

You don't know squat about plate tectonics, so how
can you even presume to make such as stupid
statement?


>
> > >> And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
> > >flood...well. Who
> > >> here knows what a tsunami is?
> >
> > No answer for this problem with the flood?
>
> I don't follow this. Earthquakes happen under water today, and it's no
> big deal.

Most people, when confronted with something that
they do not understand, will make a small attempt
to find out about the subject that they do not
understand, rather than publicly flaunt their
willful ignorance. Unless they are simple trolls,
that is.

>
> [snip]
> > So, can you answer any of the scientific objections to the flood? Any
> five
> > answers to the twenty-eight numbered ones that open the article, that
> stand up
> > to our scrutiny, will suffice.
>
> The name of this thread is "What's the evidence for a world wide
> flood?" If you want to pick out what you think is the best evidence
> against a worldwide thread, then feel free to do so. I'll consider the
> best evidence, but not hysterical arguments against some so-called
> creationists.

Since creationists are about the only people that
claim there was a world wide flood, any evidence
presented that refutes a claim of a world wide
flood will be construed by you as a 'hysterical
argument' against creationists, so no matter what
anti flood evidence is presented is not going to
be considered by you as evidence against the
flood.

Boikat

WickedDyno

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 3:09:16 AM1/1/01
to
In article <3A500135...@bellsouth.net>, Boikat
<boi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

<s>

> There's enough water in a gold fish bowl to cover
> the world if the worlds topology was flat.

Not quite; you're forgetting surface tension, which would stop it from
spreading very far.

The point stands, however.

--
| Andrew Glasgow <amg39(at)cornell.edu> |
| SCSI is *NOT* magic. There are *fundamental technical |
| reasons* why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat |
| to your SCSI chain now and then. -- John Woods |

Gyudon Z

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 3:13:08 AM1/1/01
to
From andysch:

Why would one expect that? Mountains, however slowly, are constantly being
built up and eroded away.

Suppose it takes one powerful earthquake to raise a mountain one inch. At the
junction of the tectonic plates, one expects one such earthquake, for the sake
of argument, every fifty to a hundred years. Everest really wouldn't have taken
all six hundred million years.

In fact, one wouldn't expect to see *really* old mountains; after hundreds of
millions of years they would either be eroded away or pushed back into the
earth's crust.

>> >As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
>> >thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
>> >mountains (and valleys) would be formed.

>> I fear that this effect would not be as pronounced as you may like to
>think.
>> Since water on this planet generally positions itself so that its
>surface is
>> perpendicular to the local radius to the center of the Earth, you
>would get
>> just as much pressure pushing down on a forming mountain as you would
>trying to
>> form it. Same with valleys; you would get just as much pressure
>resisting the
>> displacement of the stone as you would for the displacement itself.

>Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
>differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
>substantial.

Over one year?

Such a displacement exists on this planet at this very moment; they're called
oceans, and I've never seen a geological paper saying that the water in the
oceans is pushing the landmass higher into the air. Do you have one?

<snip>

>> >> >but not so easily explained otherwise.

>> >> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion
>years.
>>
>> >That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.

>> Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air during
>the normal
>> mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.

>As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against this.

Except that mountains really don't date back billions of years.

>> >Nor would the pressure
>> >be as great as water pressure.

>> We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the Himalayas
>into the
>> air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the flood
>consisted
>> of all the water in the world's oceans).

>4000 psi is huge, and perhaps it was even higher.

There isn't enough water on the planet to make it substantially higher.

>The force keeping
>the mountains from rising would only be 14.7 psi in air pressure and
>gravity of the displaced solid.

And most of the 4000 psi that are still on top of the mountain.

And, for that matter, there are only 14.7 psi now. Why aren't the mountains
shooting up into the air as we speak?

And if you cite the gravity (i.e. mass) of the displaced solid as an
explanation, then why aren't all the mountains on this planet exactly the same
height? Same gravity, same air.

>> On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water can
>exist in
>> the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure would
>make it
>> impossible for humans to breathe.

>So? There's enough water in existing oceans to cover the world if it
>had a flatter topography.

Yes, but for the planet only to have had fifteen meters of rain...

And there is no evidence that the earth had such a flatter topography four
thousand years ago.

At the very least, the land around the "old" mountain ranges should show huge,
huge cracks if the mountains arose all of a sudden. Such cracks are not
forthcoming.

Moreover, if the topography was flatter, then why wasn't the earth under eight
thousand feet of water immediately after its creation? Remember that no more
than fifty feet of that water can be in the form of vapor. Remember also that
dense things, like stone, sink in less dense things like water, so any cracks
in the surface of the earth (such as exist between tectonic plates) would have
made short work of any theoretical "fountains of the deep."

>> >Finally, if plate tectonics were the
>> >cause, then man would have observed something analogous. Instead,
>> >we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a
>mountain.

>> We've seen mountain-building events that raise existing mountains by
>some
>> distance. In fact, even before Darwin's time geologists used the slow
>rate of
>> geological processes to conclude that the earth was extremely,
>extremely old.

>I don't see what an old earth has to do with this discussion about a
>possible worldwide flood.

Evading, Andy? The point at hand was that geological processes take thousands
upon thousands of years, not one year of flooding.

>> >> This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
>> >obtusity". When
>> >> one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth) perishes,
>the
>> >whole
>> >> system goes down.
>>
>> >Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood theory
>is
>> >what's now under water, so to speak.

>> We don't oppose any flood theory. We are quite opposed to the global
>one.

>Real scientists are not emotionally opposed to anything.

Neither are we. We are opposed to it because the empirical evidence still says
"no."

>It looks as
>though scientific inquiry into a flood is being distorted by views
>against the Bible. That distortion needs to be eliminated.

Or the empirical evidence in favor of the flood needs to be proposed.

>[snip]
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
>> >earth/specific_ar
>> >> guments/population_growth.html
>>
>> >I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism.

>> Yes. It is an attack on the ridiculous creationist thinking that
>could even
>> conceive of the possibility of six billion people arising out of four
>mated
>> pairs in a mere four thousand years.

>I'm not interested in discussing hysterical reactions to creationism.
>Scientifically, an observed population growth rate applied across 4000
>years does generate 6 billion persons.

Except that the observed population growth rate in question was never actually
experienced until 1850 or so.

Apart from which, observed growth rates of bacteria can be projected backwards
to conclude that there was only one bacterium on the entire planet ten years
ago. Somehow, I don't think this was the case.

>No observed population rate
>applied to 100,000 years generates only 6 billion persons.

What about in the fourteenth century when the growth rate for Europe was
negative? It is not an emergent property of populations that they are always
growing at a measurable rate.

>[snip]
>> >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
>remotely
>> >similar to what would be required to create even a small mountain.

>> Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
>suppose that we
>> have a number of these earthquakes.

>You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.

Why not? You just have another earthquake that raises another inch, and so
forth. The tectonic plate isn't about to stop pushing.

>> Why are creationists so obsessed with the one-shot-or-nothing
>approach?

>Ask them if you like. Why are some scientists obsessed with rejecting
>any occurrence, like a worldwide flood, that happens to be accepted by
>creationists?

Because there is no empirical evidence that such a flood occurred.

>> >> Dave Horn remarked about living through a one-inch mountain
>building
>> >event
>> >> (better described as a high-magnitude earthquake). Are we to assume
>> >that the
>> >> planet endured one magnitude 8 earthquake after another for six
>> >thousand years,
>> >> and then inexplicably stopped.
>>
>> No answer for why the earthquakes would magically stop?

>I don't follow this. Earthquakes are probably as old as the earth.
>They don't build mountains.

Why, because you say they don't?

I say they do. So our arguments are on equal footing.

Except that mountain-building events have occurred in recent history.

>> >> And if the earthquakes involved actually occurred during the
>> >flood...well. Who
>> >> here knows what a tsunami is?
>>
>> No answer for this problem with the flood?

>I don't follow this. Earthquakes happen under water today, and it's no
>big deal.

Tell that to the Japanese. They get horrible tsunami damage.

Ironically, their islands, along with all the islands along the edge of the
Pacific crustal plate, are volcanic. They're basically underwater mountains.

>[snip]

>> So, can you answer any of the scientific objections to the flood? Any
>five
>> answers to the twenty-eight numbered ones that open the article, that
>stand up
>> to our scrutiny, will suffice.

>The name of this thread is "What's the evidence for a world wide
>flood?" If you want to pick out what you think is the best evidence
>against a worldwide thread, then feel free to do so. I'll consider the
>best evidence, but not hysterical arguments against some so-called
>creationists.

The twenty-eight numbered objections are not hysterical. They seem quite calm
to me. Your characterizing them as hysterical indicates that you didn't read
them; you just read the introductory material.

The main arguments against the flood hypothesis are:

The lack of segregation of fossils,

The existence of delicate fossilized structures,

The lack of evidence of a recent population bottleneck in all species,

The fact that zoogeographical studies do not show a dispersal pattern for all
species from one location,

The fact that the observed ordering of marine fossils is inconsistent with the
flood model (i.e. sea turtles above ammonites even though dead ammonites float
and dead sea turtles sink)

Tthe failure of the "head for the high ground" explanation of the order of land
fossils to account for plants, or why pollen and spores are always associated
with their own fossilized plant species,

And, when one compares the DNA of extant species, it is usually the case that
the closer the DNA match, the nearer they are in the fossil history. How did a
flood sort creatures by their DNA as well as their hydrodynamical properties?

Boikat

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 3:13:21 AM1/1/01
to
John Monrad wrote:
>
> In article <92p2d3$a9q$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, cats...@my-deja.com says...
> > In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> > and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> [...]
> > >
> > > The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
> > > Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
> > > about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
> > > only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
> > > plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
> > > mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.
> > >
> >
> > I think everyone on T.O. should make a New Years resolution not to
> > respond to Andy unless he posts something even stupider (and more
> > impenetrable) than the above.
> >
> > Then I think we should have a pool as to how long it takes for Andy to
> > achieve this feat. Put me down for 11 hours (I've always been an
> > optimist).
> >
> > --
> > J. Pieret
> >
> > Some mornings it just doesn't seem worthwhile
> > chewing through the leather straps.
>
> Wish your post had shown up on my newsreader before I responded to him.
>

Same here. :P

> At first I thought he had a pre-1950s, vertical tectonics view. On
> further review, he appears to be pre-Lyellian. Where does he get this
> stuff?
>

I'm beginning to suspect "Testors"(TM) plastic
model glue.

> Regarding the pool: I'll subscribe to the theory that his every post is
> better than his next. Put me down for a couple hours or his next post,
> whichever occurs first, and assuming it isn't past his bedtime.

I'm too much of a miser to take or make bets. But
I'll pick up the tab for the first round of drinks
at any local Howlerfest held in the Shreveport
area in of 2001 if any one of the Schlafly's can
pull their head out of their collective arses
before said Howlerfest.

Boikat

Gyudon Z

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 3:20:14 AM1/1/01
to
From Jonathan West:

I wasn't talking about the solubility problems of water in air (nor the heat
problems in condensing all that vapor back into rainwater); I was talking about
how human lungs do not work properly when the air pressure goes too high.

The solubility problem (the air would have to have been 99% water vapor) and
the heat problems (condensing it back would have raised the Earth's temperature
on the order of thousands of Kelvins) are just icing on the cake.

Gyudon Z

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 3:24:10 AM1/1/01
to
From John Segerson:

There are two answers. One is a negative number and the other is inconceivably
huge, because it takes a great deal of pressure to make liquid water denser
than rock. And even with that answer, the mountains wouldn't float on the
surface, just somewhere in the middle of the huge amount of water.

Boikat

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 3:48:26 AM1/1/01
to
WickedDyno wrote:
>
> In article <3A500135...@bellsouth.net>, Boikat
> <boi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> <s>
>
> > There's enough water in a gold fish bowl to cover
> > the world if the worlds topology was flat.
>
> Not quite; you're forgetting surface tension, which would stop it from
> spreading very far.
>

It's a realy big fish bowl. ;}

> The point stands, however.
>

Boikat

Bobby D. Bryant

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 5:27:11 AM1/1/01
to
and...@my-deja.com wrote:

> I agree that extrapolation is inexact. Still, we're talking about
> orders of magnitude here. Given humans 100,000 years and there should
> be orders of magnitude more people than there are now, in the absence
> of enormous catastrophe(s).

IANAMathematician, but I *do* know how to operate a pocket calculator.

[Not to imply that a fixed growth rate makes a good model, but] Do you have
*any* idea how closely you would have to guess the per-generation rate of
population increase, if you wanted to keep the error bounded by a mere few
orders of magnitude?

Assume 100K years = 4K generations. Calculate

1.001 ^ 4000 ==> ~54x growth
1.005 ^ 4000 ==> ~ 480,000,000x growth

Do you have a principled method of discerning which of these numbers is the
better model?

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas


Bobby D. Bryant

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 6:07:23 AM1/1/01
to
PZ Myers wrote:

> > They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards
> > suggests that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of
> > people. In AD 1650 there were only about 650 million people,
> > and working backwards at a small population growth rate
> > results in very few people circa a few thousand years BC.
>

> I thought you claimed to know something about statistics and
> mathematics? You should know, then, that those calculations are
> rather grossly flawed...among other things, they lead to rather
> bizarre underestimates of world population during fairly well
> documented historical periods, such as that of the Roman Empire.

Since I already had my calculator out...

Assuming 25 years/generation, and a global bottleneck at 3000 BCE
(what's the "authoritative" figure for the date of the globlal flood,
BTW?)

3000 BCE -> 1650 CE ==> 186 generations.
3000 BCE -> 1 CE ==> 120 generation.

Take a population of 6 at 3000 BCE (counting out Pa and Ma, since I
don't recall them having the traditional "other sons and daughters").
So, assuming the 650,000,000 for 1650 CE is correct, you need an overall
growth of ~1,080,000x, over 186 generations.

Solve r^186 = 1,080,000 to get the rate required by the extrapolative
constant growth-rate model, and you get r = 1.07755 plus some small
change.

Now try 6 * r^120, and you get a world population of 6 * 7,808 = 46,848
for 1 CE. Ooops. No wonder Augustus was so alarmed at the loss of
three whole legions -- about 20,000 men -- in 9 BCE. That was almost
1/4 of the worlds's population.

Or let's try the time of Solomon, about 1000 BCE.

3000 BCE -> 1000 BCE ==> 80 generations.
6 * r^80 ==> 6 * 394 = 2364 people in Solomon's generations. Ooops.

Similarly, we can calculate that the powerful Sargon I ruled over a
mighty empire of 41 people. Assuming he ruled the whole world. Ooops.
Even fewer were available to build the first of the great pyramids.
Ooops.

Maybe we need a better model for the world's population, eh?

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

p.s. -- Has anyone ever charted the births and deaths of the
superannuated patriarchs, to see whether any of them died in the flood?
Or, Heaven Forbid, lived beyond it according to their recorded ages?


Bobby D. Bryant

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 6:34:40 AM1/1/01
to
Gyudon Z wrote:

> >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
> >very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a
> >worldwide flood.
>
> Yes there is. 1. The volume of water required differs by orders of magnitude,

Major understatement. Compare filling part of a hole where the Black Sea is, vs
covering the whole earth slightly deeper than Mt. Everest.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas


Bobby D. Bryant

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 7:19:16 AM1/1/01
to
John Monrad wrote:

> And pigs could fly if they had wings.

Some birds can't fly. Why not flightless pigs?

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas


Bobby D. Bryant

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 7:22:13 AM1/1/01
to
John Monrad wrote:

> In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, and...@my-deja.com says...
>

> > I'm not interested in discussing hysterical reactions to creationism.
> > Scientifically, an observed population growth rate applied across 4000
> > years does generate 6 billion persons. No observed population rate
> > applied to 100,000 years generates only 6 billion persons.
>
> Why are you assuming a constant rate? Do you have any evidence that
> supports a constant growth rate?

The biblical model posits three races stemming from the three sons of Noah.
With constant rates, we would expect to find those three races with equal
populations at any given point in history since then, no?

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas


Jon Fleming

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 11:17:17 AM1/1/01
to
On 31 Dec 2000 21:05:22 -0500, and...@my-deja.com wrote:

>In article <n63v4t008b9uv06ov...@4ax.com>,
> Jon Fleming <jo...@fleming-nospam.com> wrote:
>> On 31 Dec 2000 12:58:56 -0500, and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>>
>> >In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,


>> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
>What
>> >evidence
>> >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
>> >
>> >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
>cite
>> >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood

>> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
>> >

>> >They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
>> >that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD
>1650
>> >there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
>> >small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
>> >thousand years BC.
>> >

>> >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
>> >very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a

>> >worldwide flood. Without the current topography, there's plenty of
>> >water in existing oceans to cover the world.
>> >
>> >Andy


>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >Sent via Deja.com
>> >http://www.deja.com/
>>

>> Watch and learn, AGelbart. That's typical creationist "evidence".
>> They claim that easily-explained phenomena are unexplained. They make
>> unwarranted wild extrapolations and ignore the consequences of those
>> extrapolations (calculate the number of people on Earth at the times
>> of various Biblical and historical events in the centuries after the
>> supposed flood using Andy's proposal). They present ad-hoc
>> hypotheses, ignore the questions raised by those hypotheses, and don't
>> go looking for evidence for or (Heaven forbid!) against those
>> hypotheses.. They misrepresent (sometimes willingly, sometimes merely
>> from ignorance) the state of scientific knowledge and thinking.
>>
>> It appears they do this because they are convinced that they know all
>> the answers already, and mere reality should not be consulted.
>
>Watch and learn indeed, AGelbert. I raise a couple of common sense
>issues, like human population, fish fossils in mountains, and mountains
>themselves, and cite recent scientific endorsement of large regional
>floods.

Not at all, You've repeated a few old chestnuts that have been
thoroughly refuted in textbooks, in postings on the Web, and in
journal articles. Either you're ignoring those refutations or you are
ignorant.

> In response, there's nothing substantive by any evolutionists
>in opposition to a worldwide flood.

Please define "substantive". Calculations have been presented, as
have brief explanations with references to more complete explanations.

I recommend Science and Earth History", Arthur N. Strahler, ISBN
1-57392-717-1.

>
>Andy


>
>
>Sent via Deja.com
>http://www.deja.com/

--
Change "nospam" to "group" to email

Jon Fleming

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 11:51:29 AM1/1/01
to

Only if you assume that mountain building has been approximately
constant throughout the life of the earth, and if you also assume that
there are no processes which tear down older mountains. Care to
justify those assumptions?

(hint: they are wrong).

>
>> >As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in this
>> >thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
>> >mountains (and valleys) would be formed.
>>
>> I fear that this effect would not be as pronounced as you may like to
>think.
>> Since water on this planet generally positions itself so that its
>surface is
>> perpendicular to the local radius to the center of the Earth, you
>would get
>> just as much pressure pushing down on a forming mountain as you would
>trying to
>> form it. Same with valleys; you would get just as much pressure
>resisting the
>> displacement of the stone as you would for the displacement itself.
>
>Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
>differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
>substantial.
>
>It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
>toggle.

No. See below.

>
>> >> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
>>
>> >> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion
>years.
>>
>> >That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.
>>
>> Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air during
>the normal
>> mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.
>
>As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against this.

But the time-based probability is based on incorrect assumptions,
therefore the probability is incorrect.

>
>> >Nor would the pressure
>> >be as great as water pressure.
>>
>> We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the Himalayas
>into the
>> air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the flood
>consisted
>> of all the water in the world's oceans).
>
>4000 psi is huge, and perhaps it was even higher. The force keeping
>the mountains from rising would only be 14.7 psi in air pressure and
>gravity of the displaced solid.

Gee, you really _are_ incapable of thinking things through, aren't
you?

And you _almost_ had it ... all you had to do was take the obvious
next step.

Yes, the only thing holding back the raising of the mountains would be
14.7 psia air pressure and the weight of the displaced solid. (I
won't give you a hard time about using the inappropriate "gravity"
instead of the appropriate "weight"). So the obvious question is
"what's the weight of the displaced solid?".

The density of rock ranges from around 2.1 g/cc to about 3.3 g/cc,
with an average density of 2.7 g/cc
(<http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/single_image/0,5716,6022+asmbly%5Fid,00.html>).
The density of fresh water is 1.0 g/cc. The density of salt water is
slightly higher; 1.03 g/cc
(<http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/2/0,5716,115012+10+108518,00.html>).

So, if a rock mountain of volume V were raised under water by whatever
means, it would displace the same volume of water. The force pushing
down on the mountain would _*INCREASE*_ by V times the density of the
rock minus the density of the water. Since the density of the rock is
greater than the density of the water (except in a few rare
pathological cases, like pumice), the density of the rock minus the
density of the water is greater than zero, and the force pushing this
"proto-mountain" down _*INCREASES*_ as the mountain raises.

In other words, it's _not_ a positive feedback situation as you
assumed (and didn't check .. could that be because it gave you the
answer you liked?). It's a negative feedback situation which tends to
flatten topography under water.

Another way you could have, but didn't, check your model is to make a
prediction. Let's see ... if Andy's model of positive feedback is
correct, small perturbations in the topography of underwater surfaces
should magnify themselves. Mountains should be rising underwater all
the time, in lakes and the oceans. Do we see that happening? No.
Therefore the model is incorrect.

Mostly, they're not. They are opposed to wasting time discussing
tired old theories that have been investigated and discarded because
they just ain't so. Your question is like asking why scientists
reject phlogiston.

--

Jon Fleming

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 11:57:47 AM1/1/01
to
On 1 Jan 2001 00:59:16 -0500, John Monrad <jrmo...@worldnet.att.net>
wrote:

>> As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against this.
>
>Care to show those "time-based probabilities" again? You seemed to have
>forgotten to post them the first time.

No, he posted them; he's referring to his simplistic 8/9 of the age of
the earth at the beginning of his post.

Jon Fleming

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 12:03:26 PM1/1/01
to
On 1 Jan 2001 03:05:01 -0500, Boikat <boi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>and...@my-deja.com wrote:

<snip>

>> The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
>> Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
>> about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
>> only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
>> plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
>> mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.

<snip>

>> As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against this.
>
>You haven't shown an "probabilities" above
>anywhere.

He thinks his 8/9 is a probability.

<snip>


>> It looks as
>> though scientific inquiry into a flood is being distorted by views
>> against the Bible.
>
>No, since quite a few people that reject the world
>wide flood are also catholics of one sect or
>another.

Perhaps "Christians" or "Theists" would be a better word than
"Catholics".

<snip>

>Boikat

Mark Isaak

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 12:28:07 PM1/1/01
to
In article <92ns4s$evu$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <and...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
> agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood. What
>evidence
>> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
>
>Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They cite
>mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
>but not so easily explained otherwise.

I have never heard of a flood depositing fish on high mountains. I
have never heard of a flood creating mountains. Both of these are
easily explained without a flood, but a flood can't explain them.

>They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
>that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD 1650
>there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
>small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
>thousand years BC.

And leading to the conclusion that the pyramids were built by about 30
people.

>Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
>very large regional floods. Not much difference between those and a
>worldwide flood.

Four orders of magnitude is "not much difference"?
--
Mark Isaak atta @ best.com http://www.best.com/~atta
"The commonest fallacy is to suppose that since the state of doubt
is accompanied by a feeling of uncertainty, knowledge arises when
this feeling gives way to one of assurance." - John Dewey

Mark Isaak

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 12:36:08 PM1/1/01
to
In article <92onkr$2rh$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <and...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>Sure, you could get mountains rising above a floodline due to the
>enormous water pressure. How else does one explain all the high
>mountains -- and the fish fossils found high up in them?

This may come as a shock to you, Andy, but mountains don't float. Not
in water, anyway.

If you really want an explanation, you will go to a library and learn
something about plate tectonics.

Richard Harter

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 12:48:00 PM1/1/01
to
On 1 Jan 2001 07:19:16 -0500, "Bobby D. Bryant"
<bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:

>John Monrad wrote:
>
>> And pigs could fly if they had wings.
>
>Some birds can't fly. Why not flightless pigs?

What about feral flying pigs?


Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net
http://www.tiac.net/users/cri
Leviticus summarized in one sentence -
There are things man is not meant to know.

Mark Isaak

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 12:51:39 PM1/1/01
to
In article <92oo7r$38g$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <and...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>> Whoa, that's news to me. I thought mountains (and the
>> distribution of those fossils) were nicely explained by
>> conventional geology, and that a global flood doesn't say much at
>> all about why the Rocky Mountains exist.
>
>Sure it does. The enormous water pressure -- and very large lakes --
>could push down on the earth, pushing the earth up to form mountains.

Again, mountains don't float. They push down harder than the water
pushes down. You are grasping at straws and ending up with bricks.

>[population growth argument]
>Please explain. The only gross flaw I see is how humans could have
>arrived 100,000 years ago and yet we only have about 6 billion persons
>now.

What was the population growth rate 50,000 years ago, or even 650 years
ago? (I don't expect you to know exact numbers, but take a shot at an
order of magnitude estimate.)

Mark Isaak

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 1:14:04 PM1/1/01
to
In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <and...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
>Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
>about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
>only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
>plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
>mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.

Most mountains did rise during that older time. Most mountains also
eroded during that time. You can see some of them (or thier remains) in
the plains of Canada.

[much snipped]

>The name of this thread is "What's the evidence for a world wide
>flood?" If you want to pick out what you think is the best evidence
>against a worldwide thread, then feel free to do so. I'll consider the
>best evidence, but not hysterical arguments against some so-called
>creationists.

I'm not sure these three are the best, but each is fatal to the theory
of a global flood:

1. Fish on mountain tops. Floods deposit sediments in valleys, not on
mountaintops.

2. Mountains. The flood scenario requires that the earth start out flat
so that the water can cover it all, but it has no mechanism to supply
the mountains later. Water pushing down wouldn't do it because rock is
much denser than water. Besides, forming mountians in a year would
leave some pretty significant signs of stress which have never been
seen.

3. Human population growth. If humans descended from a minuscule
population just a few thousand years ago, there would be very little
physical variation in humanity. Also, many diseases could not survive
such a small human population, so the fact that they exist today proves
that the human population never dropped below several hundred people for
many thousands of years.

Johnny Bravo

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 2:56:18 PM1/1/01
to
On 1 Jan 2001 06:34:40 -0500, "Bobby D. Bryant"
<bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:

To cover Mt. Everest today would take an additional billion
cubic miles of water; that is in addition to the 1/3 a billion
cubic miles of water already present in all the world's oceans
and seas.

--
  Best Wishes,
    Johnny Bravo
BAAWA Knight, EAC - Temporal Adjustments Division

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - HP Lovecraft

John Monrad

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 3:53:44 PM1/1/01
to
"Boikat" <boi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:3A503C7E...@bellsouth.net...

> John Monrad wrote:
> >
> > In article <92p2d3$a9q$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, cats...@my-deja.com says...
[...]

> > > I think everyone on T.O. should make a New Years resolution not to
> > > respond to Andy unless he posts something even stupider (and more
> > > impenetrable) than the above.
> > >
> > > Then I think we should have a pool as to how long it takes for Andy to
> > > achieve this feat. Put me down for 11 hours (I've always been an
> > > optimist).
> >
> > Wish your post had shown up on my newsreader before I responded to him.
> >
>
> Same here. :P
>
> > At first I thought he had a pre-1950s, vertical tectonics view. On
> > further review, he appears to be pre-Lyellian. Where does he get this
> > stuff?
> >
>
> I'm beginning to suspect "Testors"(TM) plastic
> model glue.
>
Even chronic MEK exposure isn't *that* toxic, is it? I'd opt for something
heritable.

> > Regarding the pool: I'll subscribe to the theory that his every post is
> > better than his next. Put me down for a couple hours or his next post,
> > whichever occurs first, and assuming it isn't past his bedtime.
>
> I'm too much of a miser to take or make bets. But
> I'll pick up the tab for the first round of drinks
> at any local Howlerfest held in the Shreveport
> area in of 2001 if any one of the Schlafly's can
> pull their head out of their collective arses
> before said Howlerfest.

At last, an unquestionable probability of 0.0.

and...@my-deja.com

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 4:17:09 PM1/1/01
to
In article <92p56c$bue$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,

stev...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> and...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > In article <20001231215819...@ng-cj1.aol.com>,
> > gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> > > From andysch:
> > >
> > > >In article <20001231163844...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,
> > > > gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> > > >> From andysch:
> > > >>
> > > >> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
> > > >> >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide
flood.
> > > >What
> > > >> >evidence
> > > >> >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
> > >
> > > >> >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains.
> They
> > > >cite
> > > >> >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a
worldwide
> > flood
> > >
> > > >> How are they explained by a worldwide flood?
> > >
> > > >The mountains were underwater, so the fish fossils lodged there.
> > >
> > > In a manner of speaking, that's how the mainstream understanding
of
> > biology
> > > works.
> > >
> > > It's just that the underwater rocks weren't part of a mountain
yet.
> >
> > The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as
the
> > Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old
(or
> > about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
> > only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
> > plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
> > mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time.
> >
> Younger, surely, in some cases. Mountain ranges are of various ages.
> As the Earth's tectonic plates move about, their collisions raise
> mountain ranges faster than erosion wears mountains down. Once plates
> stop moving towards each other, the mountain ranges start to be worn
> away, so very old ranges are low hills if they still exist. Most of
> the ranges that are still prominent would have arisen within the last
> couple of hundred million years.

Do you have any references on this claim -- that the prominent ranges
all arose within the last couple of hundre million years?

> >
> > > >As to the mountains themselves, please see my other postings in
> this
> > > >thread. The water pressure would cause the earth to shift, and
> > > >mountains (and valleys) would be formed.
> > >
> > > I fear that this effect would not be as pronounced as you may like
> to
> > think.
> > > Since water on this planet generally positions itself so that its
> > surface is
> > > perpendicular to the local radius to the center of the Earth, you
> > would get
> > > just as much pressure pushing down on a forming mountain as you
> would
> > trying to
> > > form it. Same with valleys; you would get just as much pressure
> > resisting the
> > > displacement of the stone as you would for the displacement
itself.
> >
> > Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
> > differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
> > substantial.
> >
> > It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
> > toggle.
> >

> Enough to move teratons of rocks, MILES into the air, in under a year?

Please show me a few instances where man has observed rocks move "MILES
into the air, in under a year."

> >
> > > >> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
> > >

> > > >> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion
> > years.
> > >
> > > >That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.
> > >
> > > Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air
during
> > the normal
> > > mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.
> >

> > As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against
> this.
> >

> As shown above, not so.

Let's look at your references.

> >
> > > >Nor would the pressure
> > > >be as great as water pressure.
> > >
> > > We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the
Himalayas
> > into the
> > > air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the
flood
> > consisted
> > > of all the water in the world's oceans).
> >
> > 4000 psi is huge, and perhaps it was even higher. The force keeping
> > the mountains from rising would only be 14.7 psi in air pressure and
> > gravity of the displaced solid.
> >

> Air pressure? The Flood COVERED the high mountains. I grant that,
> assuming low mountains and shallow sea basins, you could cover the
> entire earth with the present world supply of water, and the highlands
> would be under less pressure than lowlands. Do you have:
> (a) any sort of model for calculating the approximate pressure
> difference (i.e. how high were the pre-Flood mountains, and how low
was
> the pre-Flood sea floor)?
> (b) any sort of model for where the water was BEFORE the Flood, and
why
> and how it got out?

The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b). As to
(a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood. As the
water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains, the
mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.

> >
> > > On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water
> can
> > exist in
> > > the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure
would
> > make it
> > > impossible for humans to breathe.
> >
> > So? There's enough water in existing oceans to cover the world if
it
> > had a flatter topography.
> >

> And we wouldn't have to import oil if the Great Lakes were filled with
> petroleum instead of water. For better or worse, they aren't. Do you
> have any evidence for a significantly flatter global topography within
> the last 10,000 years?

I never said this happened in the last 10,000 years. The issue of this
thread is whether it ever happened. It's plainly possible.

> > > >Finally, if plate tectonics were the
> > > >cause, then man would have observed something analogous.
Instead,
> > > >we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a
> > mountain.
> > >
> > > We've seen mountain-building events that raise existing mountains
by
> > some
> > > distance. In fact, even before Darwin's time geologists used the
> slow
> > rate of
> > > geological processes to conclude that the earth was extremely,
> > extremely old.
> >
> > I don't see what an old earth has to do with this discussion about a
> > possible worldwide flood.
> >

> It has a great deal to do with the argument that plate tectonics could
> raise mountains. You argued that you had never seen the creation of a
> mountain; if the Earth is very old, such events could be too small or
> incremental to attract your notice. And, of course, if the Earth is
> very old, that is an argument against the need to explain geologial
> strata as the results of a single, year-long global flood

You can make the earth as old as you like; the mountains still contain
fish fossils no older than 600 million years, and no observed means for
their origination.

> >
> > > >> This is the problem that hiero5ant described as "irreducible
> > > >obtusity". When
> > > >> one creationist argument (like the 6000-year-old earth)
perishes,
> > the
> > > >whole
> > > >> system goes down.
> > >
> > > >Sounds like the opposition by many evolutionists to any flood
> theory
> > is
> > > >what's now under water, so to speak.
> > >
> > > We don't oppose any flood theory. We are quite opposed to the
global
> > one.
> >

> > Real scientists are not emotionally opposed to anything. It looks


as
> > though scientific inquiry into a flood is being distorted by views

> > against the Bible. That distortion needs to be eliminated.
> >

> "Real" scientists don't have emotions? For that matter, Guydon Z did
> not use the adverb "emotionally." Do you not think that scientists
can
> be "real" if they oppose ideas that completely contradict the
> evidence? Indeed, could they be "real" if they did NOT oppose such
> ideas? Did you miss assorted posts about how CREATIONISTS first
> noticed that the actual geological evidence was completely different
> from what they naturally predicted on the basis of a young Earth and a
> global Flood? To this day, there are many old-earth creationists who
> are as appalled at young-earth creationists as they are at geocentrist
> creationists.

The creationist v. anti-creationist spat distorts science. Real
scientists don't let their emotions distort their work. The assertion
that "We don't oppose any flood theory. We are quite opposed to the
global one" is unscientific.

> >
> > [snip]
> > > http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
> > > >earth/specific_ar
> > > >> guments/population_growth.html
> > >
> > > >I looked at it. It's little more than an attack on creationism.
> > >
> > > Yes. It is an attack on the ridiculous creationist thinking that
> > could even
> > > conceive of the possibility of six billion people arising out of
> four
> > mated
> > > pairs in a mere four thousand years.
> >
> > I'm not interested in discussing hysterical reactions to
creationism.
> > Scientifically, an observed population growth rate applied across
4000
> > years does generate 6 billion persons. No observed population rate
> > applied to 100,000 years generates only 6 billion persons.
> >

> So the only plausible population growth rates are those you've
observed
> personally? Nothing you haven't observed in your lifetime could
> exist? That in itself puts paid to a global Flood. Of course, if you
> travelled to Europe, you'd observe population growth rates of zero or
> lower, which, applied over 100,000 years, yields a population much
> lower than 6 billion. And, again, population CANNOT grow faster than
> food supply, unless you've observed people survive and reproduce
> without eating.

Technology and widespread affluence has reduced population growth in
narrow segments of the world recently. Other than that, population
growth of humans has always been observed to be significantly greater
than 0. Food supply has never limited global population growth of
humans.

> >
> > [snip]
> > > >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
> > remotely
> > > >similar to what would be required to create even a small
mountain.
> > >
> > > Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
> > suppose that we
> > > have a number of these earthquakes.
> >
> > You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.
> >

> Why not?

The next earthquake would tear down the inch that the first earthquake
produced. Long way to a mile from there.

[snip]

and...@my-deja.com

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 4:28:28 PM1/1/01
to
In article <20010101031945...@ng-ct1.aol.com>,

The flood issue is one of topography, not quantity of water. There's
already enough water in the existing oceans to flood the earth if the
topography were flatter.

and...@my-deja.com

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 4:34:17 PM1/1/01
to
In article <4k225tgk82m3mqc46...@4ax.com>,

Johnny Bravo <bravo...@usa.net> wrote:
> On 1 Jan 2001 06:34:40 -0500, "Bobby D. Bryant"
> <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
> >Gyudon Z wrote:
> >
> >> >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the
likelihood of
> >> >very large regional floods. Not much difference between those
and a
> >> >worldwide flood.
> >>
> >> Yes there is. 1. The volume of water required differs by orders of
magnitude,
> >
> >Major understatement. Compare filling part of a hole where the
Black Sea is, vs
> >covering the whole earth slightly deeper than Mt. Everest.

And it would take 1/1000th as much water to cover the whole earth if
the hole were 1/1000th as deep as Mt. Everest.

> To cover Mt. Everest today would take an additional billion
> cubic miles of water; that is in addition to the 1/3 a billion
> cubic miles of water already present in all the world's oceans
> and seas.

And if Mt. Everest were 1/10th its current height, and oceans 1/10th
their current depth?

David C. Fritzinger

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 4:45:23 PM1/1/01
to

Jon Fleming wrote:

> [snip]


>
> Please define "substantive". Calculations have been presented, as
> have brief explanations with references to more complete explanations.

To Andy, substantive means something that supports his pre-concieved
notions. And, he is right, by his definition, nothing substantive has been
presented.

Dave Fritzinger

Gyudon Z

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 4:54:07 PM1/1/01
to
From andysch:

The issue is how that water suddenly found itself covering the planet instead
of "stored up" somewhere, so where the water was before the flood and at the
start of the flood actually are very important.

And again, what evidence have you that the topography ever was flatter?

David C. Fritzinger

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 5:00:44 PM1/1/01
to

and...@my-deja.com wrote:

Just look in any good geology textbook. You will find bunches of
references. There are probably some references on the web, but I'm not
going to do your work for you.

No, that is the creationist claim. Get on the program! Scientists say that
the building of mountains takes millions of years. YECs say that it must
have happened in a few years, since the earth must have been flatter at the
time of the flood, and the flood took place only a few thousand years ago.
As you seem to imply above, they must be wrong, and with that, a good
portion of their argument goes to pieces. Thanks for refuting your own
argument, Andy!!!

And you have some evidence for this claim, or are you pulling this out of
your, um, butt?

>
>
> > >
> > > > On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water
> > can
> > > exist in
> > > > the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure
> would
> > > make it
> > > > impossible for humans to breathe.
> > >
> > > So? There's enough water in existing oceans to cover the world if
> it
> > > had a flatter topography.
> > >
> > And we wouldn't have to import oil if the Great Lakes were filled with
> > petroleum instead of water. For better or worse, they aren't. Do you
> > have any evidence for a significantly flatter global topography within
> > the last 10,000 years?
>
> I never said this happened in the last 10,000 years. The issue of this
> thread is whether it ever happened. It's plainly possible.

Give us some evidence for this assertion.

>
>
> > > > >Finally, if plate tectonics were the
> > > > >cause, then man would have observed something analogous.
> Instead,
> > > > >we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a
> > > mountain.
> > > >
> > > > We've seen mountain-building events that raise existing mountains
> by
> > > some
> > > > distance. In fact, even before Darwin's time geologists used the
> > slow
> > > rate of
> > > > geological processes to conclude that the earth was extremely,
> > > extremely old.
> > >
> > > I don't see what an old earth has to do with this discussion about a
> > > possible worldwide flood.
> > >
> > It has a great deal to do with the argument that plate tectonics could
> > raise mountains. You argued that you had never seen the creation of a
> > mountain; if the Earth is very old, such events could be too small or
> > incremental to attract your notice. And, of course, if the Earth is
> > very old, that is an argument against the need to explain geologial
> > strata as the results of a single, year-long global flood
>
> You can make the earth as old as you like; the mountains still contain
> fish fossils no older than 600 million years, and no observed means for
> their origination.

You are wrong. Tell me, do you enjoy making a fool of yourself on an hourly
basis?

But, there is absolutely no evidence that supports a global flood. Regional
floods, yes. Global, no.

Again, look up what life was like in the past. We were food limited before
the advent of agriculture. Population fell in the 14th century because of
the Black Plague. And there has been much war, famine and epidemics that
severely limited population growth in the past. You are pulling your
assertions out of your butt again.

>
>
> > >
> > > [snip]
> > > > >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
> > > remotely
> > > > >similar to what would be required to create even a small
> mountain.
> > > >
> > > > Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
> > > suppose that we
> > > > have a number of these earthquakes.
> > >
> > > You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.
> > >
> > Why not?
>
> The next earthquake would tear down the inch that the first earthquake
> produced. Long way to a mile from there.

Andy's typical assertion that if he doesn't believe it, it can't be true.
You live in a strange world, Andy. And, I might add, you are welcome to it.

Dave Fritzinger

catshark

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 5:08:24 PM1/1/01
to
In article <92qs4a$h5u$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
and...@my-deja.com wrote:

TO: John Monrad, Boikat, Mark VandeWettering:

We are going to need a ruling! Does the following satisfy the
condition of the pool?

> Technology and widespread affluence has reduced population growth in
> narrow segments of the world recently. Other than that, population
> growth of humans has always been observed to be significantly greater
> than 0. Food supply has never limited global population growth of
> humans.
>

That last sentence certainly comes close to topping Andy's previous DUH
best. If we all agree, does someone know anyway we can determine how
long it took him so we can determine who won?

There were a few other candidates in the same post, particularly when
he denied that the flood had to be 10,000 years ago after going on
about how extrapolation of population figures shows there was a general
decimation of H. sapiens just that long ago, and the following:

> > > > Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
> > > suppose that we
> > > > have a number of these earthquakes.
> > >
> > > You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.
> > >
> > Why not?
>
> The next earthquake would tear down the inch that the first earthquake
> produced. Long way to a mile from there.
>
> [snip]
>
> Andy
>
> Sent via Deja.com
> http://www.deja.com/
>
>

. . . but I really think the first one is the only one that could be
*clearly* said to be stupider than the one on mountain building
probabilities.

--
J. Pieret

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worthwhile
chewing through the leather straps.

Gyudon Z

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 5:19:33 PM1/1/01
to
From Andysch:

Any intro-level geology textbook.

You might also try the Encyclopedia Britannica, in the section on Continental
Landforms "In some regions, mountain belts have been formed by crustal
shortening within a continental mass, rather than where two continents have
collided. Some 40 million to 80 million years ago, The Rocky Mountainsformed in
this way, and today both the Tien Shan and the Atlas mountains of northwestern
Africa are actively forming within a continent."

We might ask you the same, Andy. You seem to have disowned your own argument;
rocks moving miles into the air in under a year is part of your flood model,
not our geological model.

A very strange form of evasion, that.

Basically, what evidence have you that the topography of the earth was flatter
than it is now, and what explanation have you that this situation would have
changed inexplicably and then stopped changing equally inexplicably?

And your half-baked posturing about the effect of water pressure has pretty
much been taken to pieces, if you haven't noticed.

>> > > >> >but not so easily explained otherwise.

>> > > >> Except when you have plate tectonics acting over 4.55 billion
>> > years.

>> > > >That doesn't explain fish fossils in mountains.

>> > > Yes it does. The fossil-bearing rocks are raised into the air
>during
>> > the normal
>> > > mountain-building actions of plate tectonics.
>> >
>> > As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against
>> this.

>> As shown above, not so.

>Let's look at your references.

The intro-level geology text.

>> > > >Nor would the pressure
>> > > >be as great as water pressure.

>> > > We're talking about forces sufficient enough to raise the
>Himalayas
>> > into the
>> > > air, not the trifling 4000 psi the flood would inflict (if the
>flood
>> > consisted
>> > > of all the water in the world's oceans).

>> > 4000 psi is huge, and perhaps it was even higher. The force keeping
>> > the mountains from rising would only be 14.7 psi in air pressure and
>> > gravity of the displaced solid.

>> Air pressure? The Flood COVERED the high mountains. I grant that,
>> assuming low mountains and shallow sea basins, you could cover the
>> entire earth with the present world supply of water, and the highlands
>> would be under less pressure than lowlands. Do you have:
>> (a) any sort of model for calculating the approximate pressure
>> difference (i.e. how high were the pre-Flood mountains, and how low
>was
>> the pre-Flood sea floor)?
>> (b) any sort of model for where the water was BEFORE the Flood, and
>why
>> and how it got out?

>The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b).

No it doesn't.

>As to
>(a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood.

And the evidence to support the theory is...?

>As the
>water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains,

Water pressure doesn't do that. The model, that the mountains, being higher,
receive less water pressure on them and are therefore free to rise, is,
although pretty, riddled with incompetence. Your explanation neglects the
pressure of the rock of the mountain itself, which is greater than whatever
water pressure has been released, since rock is denser than water.

By the same token, any valleys and basins would actually tend to get less deep,
rather than deeper, because substituting water for rock decreases the pressure
that displaced the rock in the first place.

A heavy mass of water serves to decrease irregularities in the planet's
surface, not amplify them. Why do you think the abyssal plain is so flat?

>the
>mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
>gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.

And the mass of the rocks themselves. You seem to forget that rocks are not
weightless.

>> > > On a sidenote, no more than ten or fifteen meters' worth of water
>> can
>> > exist in
>> > > the air as water vapor; the resultant increase in air pressure
>would
>> > make it
>> > > impossible for humans to breathe.
>> >
>> > So? There's enough water in existing oceans to cover the world if
>it
>> > had a flatter topography.

>> And we wouldn't have to import oil if the Great Lakes were filled with
>> petroleum instead of water. For better or worse, they aren't. Do you
>> have any evidence for a significantly flatter global topography within
>> the last 10,000 years?

>I never said this happened in the last 10,000 years. The issue of this
>thread is whether it ever happened. It's plainly possible.

But for the biblical account of the global flood to be accurate, this would
have had to happen when humans were alive, and the Bible says that humans
haven't been around for more than ten thousand years.

And it is not plainly possible because there is no evidence that the topography
of the earth was less flat in geologically recordable history.

>> > > >Finally, if plate tectonics were the
>> > > >cause, then man would have observed something analogous.
>Instead,
>> > > >we've never seen anything remotely close to the creation of a
>> > mountain.

>> > > We've seen mountain-building events that raise existing mountains
>by
>> > some
>> > > distance. In fact, even before Darwin's time geologists used the
>> slow
>> > rate of
>> > > geological processes to conclude that the earth was extremely,
>> > extremely old.

>> > I don't see what an old earth has to do with this discussion about a
>> > possible worldwide flood.

>> It has a great deal to do with the argument that plate tectonics could
>> raise mountains. You argued that you had never seen the creation of a
>> mountain; if the Earth is very old, such events could be too small or
>> incremental to attract your notice. And, of course, if the Earth is
>> very old, that is an argument against the need to explain geologial
>> strata as the results of a single, year-long global flood

>You can make the earth as old as you like; the mountains still contain
>fish fossils no older than 600 million years, and no observed means for
>their origination.

Haven't you been reading? They originated in the oceans, and plate tectonics
carried them and the rocks they were in up into the mountains.

The assertion "There is no empirical evidence that supports a global flood at
any time in geological history" is perfectly scientific, and you have brought
no evidence to our consideration that suggests that the assertion may not be
true.

No evidence that has stood up to five minutes' scrutiny, anyway.

<snip>

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-
>> > > >earth/specific_ar
>> > > >> guments/population_growth.html

What about the 94000+ years before civilization appeared, when no one bothered
to record their observations. Are you so absolutely sure about them?

>Food supply has never limited global population growth of
>humans.

Except prior to 4500 BC, when it did.

A surplus of food supply being, after all, the hallmark of civilization. If
there was no such surplus, then there were no such civilizations before Sumer.

>> > [snip]
>> > > >Hardly. The most severe earthquakes that we see are not even
>> > remotely
>> > > >similar to what would be required to create even a small
>mountain.

>> > > Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
>> > suppose that we
>> > > have a number of these earthquakes.

>> > You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.

>> Why not?

>The next earthquake would tear down the inch that the first earthquake
>produced.

Clearly ignorant of how geological processes work. If you are "squeezing" a
continental plate from two sides, the rock tends to pile up, not get knocked
down. That's what happened in the Rocky Mountains.

If you are pushing two plates against each other, one side gets subducted and
the other side gets pushed up. That's what happened in the Himalayas.

Volcanoes are self-explanatory.

>Long way to a mile from there.

Not really.

Gyudon Z

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 5:30:24 PM1/1/01
to
From andysch:

This is all very interesting, but what evidence have you that all mountains
were at most one tenth the height of Everest and all oceans at most one tenth
their current depth at any time in the Earth's history?

and...@my-deja.com

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 5:33:32 PM1/1/01
to
In article <20010101165249...@ng-cj1.aol.com>,
gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
> From andysch:

> >The flood issue is one of topography, not quantity of water. There's
> >already enough water in the existing oceans to flood the earth if the
> >topography were flatter.
>
> The issue is how that water suddenly found itself covering the planet
instead
> of "stored up" somewhere, so where the water was before the flood and
at the
> start of the flood actually are very important.

Water covers most of the planet now. With a flatter planet, there
would be very little dry land. It could be flooded by virtue of almost
anything: an earthquake, a global warming (e.g., environmentalist
claims today), an extended period of precipitation, and so on. The
smaller the amount of dry land, the less that would be required to
flood it.

> And again, what evidence have you that the topography ever was
flatter?

The large amount of water on earth inevitably causes peaks and
valleys. It's happening now. Look at a river crawling through a
canyon, and you can bet that canyon was flatter many years ago. Ditto
for the earth as a whole.

Jon Fleming

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 5:39:13 PM1/1/01
to
On 1 Jan 2001 16:17:09 -0500, and...@my-deja.com wrote:

>In article <92p56c$bue$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> stev...@my-deja.com wrote:
>> In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>> and...@my-deja.com wrote:

<snip>

>> > Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
>> > differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
>> > substantial.
>> >
>> > It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
>> > toggle.
>> >
>> Enough to move teratons of rocks, MILES into the air, in under a year?
>
>Please show me a few instances where man has observed rocks move "MILES
>into the air, in under a year."

Er, Andy, he was referring to the fact that *your* claim requires
teratons of rock to move miles into the air in under a year (or at
least in some time incredibly short relative to typical geologic time
scales).

The answer, of course, is that we have not observed it, your theory
predicts it, and therefore your theory is discarded.

<snip>

>The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b). As to
>(a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood. As the
>water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains, the
>mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
>gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.

And, as has been pointed out by several posters, the effect of gravity
on the rock is far more than sufficient to resist the force of the
water. Your proposed scenario just doesn't work. Or do you really
think mountains float in water?
<snip>

>
>Andy
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com
>http://www.deja.com/

--

Vincent Maycock

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 6:38:11 PM1/1/01
to

<and...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:92r0js$kdf$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...

snip

> The large amount of water on earth inevitably causes peaks and
> valleys. It's happening now. Look at a river crawling through a
> canyon, and you can bet that canyon was flatter many years ago. Ditto
> for the earth as a whole.

Andy, I don't want to say this more than once: we know beyond a shadow of a
doubt that a global flood did not occur. The fossil record shows sorting
patterns inconsistent with a global flood, for example. I don't expect to
see anymore nonsense out of you, is that clear?

--
Vince

and...@my-deja.com

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 6:54:36 PM1/1/01
to
In article <ge125tscbcbj3upgg...@4ax.com>,

Jon Fleming <jo...@fleming-nospam.com> wrote:
> On 1 Jan 2001 16:17:09 -0500, and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> >In article <92p56c$bue$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> > stev...@my-deja.com wrote:
> >> In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> >> and...@my-deja.com wrote:
> <snip>
>
> >> > Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
> >> > differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
> >> > substantial.
> >> >
> >> > It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes
the
> >> > toggle.
> >> >
> >> Enough to move teratons of rocks, MILES into the air, in under a
year?
> >
> >Please show me a few instances where man has observed rocks
move "MILES
> >into the air, in under a year."
>
> Er, Andy, he was referring to the fact that *your* claim requires
> teratons of rock to move miles into the air in under a year (or at
> least in some time incredibly short relative to typical geologic time
> scales).

I never made such claim.

> The answer, of course, is that we have not observed it, your theory
> predicts it, and therefore your theory is discarded.

My arguments don't predict it.

It's the plate tectonics argument that claims that mountains magically
rose miles high out of the earth, but only *after* fish fossils were
formed in the mountain in the most recent 1/9th of the earth's age.

> <snip>
>
> >The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b). As
to
> >(a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood. As
the
> >water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains,
the
> >mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
> >gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.
>
> And, as has been pointed out by several posters, the effect of gravity
> on the rock is far more than sufficient to resist the force of the
> water. Your proposed scenario just doesn't work. Or do you really
> think mountains float in water?

The water also carves valleys and basins.

Ever visited the Grand Canyon? Think that's the product of plate
tectonics or water?

Vincent Maycock

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 6:53:26 PM1/1/01
to

<and...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:92qspl$hki$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...

snip

> > The solubility problem (the air would have to have been 99% water
> vapor) and
> > the heat problems (condensing it back would have raised the Earth's
> temperature
> > on the order of thousands of Kelvins) are just icing on the cake.
>
> The flood issue is one of topography, not quantity of water. There's
> already enough water in the existing oceans to flood the earth if the
> topography were flatter.

We know that a global flood did not occur. Stop posting nonsense on this
subject, or t.o regulars will humiliate you on Usenet within 24 hours,
causing you to retreat from the debate, ashamed and confused. Is *that* what
you want to happen? Or do you want to stop this nonsense and return to your
previous role at t.o, which involved posting mildly foolish ideas about
various other subjects (as opposed to extremely foolish ideas such as
creationism)? By the way, the evidence suggests that theism is false
(something I'm sure you are quite interested in discussing, here, of
course). There is no evidence for God, so it's appropriate to note that God
does not exist.

--
Vince

Vincent Maycock

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Jan 1, 2001, 7:04:59 PM1/1/01
to

<and...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:92r5bs$o8c$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...

Creationist ideas involve magical creation events, but plate tectonics is
supported by vast amounts of geophysical data and satellite measurements,
which show that the earth's plates are moving at rates sufficient to create
mountains

> but only *after* fish fossils were
> formed in the mountain in the most recent 1/9th of the earth's age.

The distribution of fish fossils is inconsistent with the idea that they
were formed by a world-wide Flood.

> > <snip>
> >
> > >The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b). As
> to
> > >(a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood. As
> the
> > >water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains,
> the
> > >mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
> > >gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.
> >
> > And, as has been pointed out by several posters, the effect of gravity
> > on the rock is far more than sufficient to resist the force of the
> > water. Your proposed scenario just doesn't work. Or do you really
> > think mountains float in water?
>
> The water also carves valleys and basins.

Large-scale flooding leaves evidence in the form of over-sized point-bars
and large boulder transport. These things are not found in the Grand Canyon,
though. You are confused and stupid, so it's not surprising that you have
sunken down towards posting nonsense about creationism.

> Ever visited the Grand Canyon? Think that's the product of plate
> tectonics or water?

Plate tectonics did not create the Grand Canyon. You are extremely ignorant
(possibly even inferior...or at least you would be inferior, if it weren't
true that all people are equal), and your ideas about this subject are not
wortwhile.

--
Vince

Jon Fleming

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 7:18:09 PM1/1/01
to

You said:

" Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
substantial.

It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
toggle."

It follows immediately from this claim of positive feedback that
mountains would be formed relatively quickly.

>
>> The answer, of course, is that we have not observed it, your theory
>> predicts it, and therefore your theory is discarded.
>
>My arguments don't predict it.
>
>It's the plate tectonics argument that claims that mountains magically
>rose miles high out of the earth, but only *after* fish fossils were
>formed in the mountain in the most recent 1/9th of the earth's age.
>
>> <snip>
>>
>> >The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b). As
>to
>> >(a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood. As
>the
>> >water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains,
>the
>> >mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
>> >gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.
>>
>> And, as has been pointed out by several posters, the effect of gravity
>> on the rock is far more than sufficient to resist the force of the
>> water. Your proposed scenario just doesn't work. Or do you really
>> think mountains float in water?
>
>The water also carves valleys and basins.
>
>Ever visited the Grand Canyon? Think that's the product of plate
>tectonics or water?

Indirectly, it's a product of plate tectonics: the motion of plates
caused the uplift of the Colorado Plateau which led to the situation
in which the canyon could form. Directly, it's the product of
erosion, which can be performed by any fluid in motion. Erosion is
irrelevant to your mountain-forming theory although, of course, it's
relevant to your "probabilistic argument" about the age of observed
mountains. Or do you think the Colorado River valley sunk down under
the weight of the water? If so, how? (Please include the fact that
rock is heavier than water)

>
>Andy
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com
>http://www.deja.com/

--

Mark VandeWettering

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Jan 1, 2001, 7:16:00 PM1/1/01
to
On 1 Jan 2001 17:08:24 -0500, catshark <cats...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <92qs4a$h5u$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
>TO: John Monrad, Boikat, Mark VandeWettering:
>
>We are going to need a ruling! Does the following satisfy the
>condition of the pool?
>
>> Technology and widespread affluence has reduced population growth in
>> narrow segments of the world recently. Other than that, population
>> growth of humans has always been observed to be significantly greater
>> than 0. Food supply has never limited global population growth of
>> humans.
>>
>
>That last sentence certainly comes close to topping Andy's previous DUH
>best. If we all agree, does someone know anyway we can determine how
>long it took him so we can determine who won?

Perhaps I'm just becoming staggered by the sheer magnitude of stupidity
illustrated by Andy, but this seems vaguely less stupid than the idea of
floods building mountains.

>There were a few other candidates in the same post, particularly when
>he denied that the flood had to be 10,000 years ago after going on
>about how extrapolation of population figures shows there was a general
>decimation of H. sapiens just that long ago, and the following:

Yes, it does illustrate the complete lack of consistency as to reasoning
or standards for evidence that is the hallmark of Andy-itis.

>> > > > Suppose that an existing mountain is raised an inch. Now let us
>> > > suppose that we
>> > > > have a number of these earthquakes.
>> > >
>> > > You can't get from an inch to a mile that way.
>> > >
>> > Why not?
>>
>> The next earthquake would tear down the inch that the first earthquake
>> produced. Long way to a mile from there.

>. . . but I really think the first one is the only one that could be


>*clearly* said to be stupider than the one on mountain building
>probabilities.

Perhaps stupider than the probabilities, but I'm still voting on the "flood
raising mountains" bit....

Mark

--
/* __ __ __ ____ __*/float m,a,r,k,v;main(i){for(;r<4;r+=.1){for(a=0;
/*| \/ |\ \ / /\ \ / /*/a<4;a+=.06){k=v=0;for(i=99;--i&&k*k+v*v<4;)m=k*k
/*| |\/| | \ V / \ \/\/ / */-v*v+a-2,v=2*k*v+r-2,k=m;putchar("X =."[i&3]);}
/*|_| |_ark\_/ande\_/\_/ettering <ma...@telescopemaking.org> */puts("");}}

Gyudon Z

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Jan 1, 2001, 8:00:59 PM1/1/01
to
From andysch:

>In article <ge125tscbcbj3upgg...@4ax.com>,
> Jon Fleming <jo...@fleming-nospam.com> wrote:
>> On 1 Jan 2001 16:17:09 -0500, and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>>
>> >In article <92p56c$bue$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>> > stev...@my-deja.com wrote:
>> >> In article <92p03v$8nq$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>> >> and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>> <snip>
>>
>> >> > Not so. Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
>> >> > differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
>> >> > substantial.
>> >> >
>> >> > It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes
>the
>> >> > toggle.
>> >> >
>> >> Enough to move teratons of rocks, MILES into the air, in under a
>year?
>> >
>> >Please show me a few instances where man has observed rocks
>move "MILES
>> >into the air, in under a year."
>>
>> Er, Andy, he was referring to the fact that *your* claim requires
>> teratons of rock to move miles into the air in under a year (or at
>> least in some time incredibly short relative to typical geologic time
>> scales).

>I never made such claim.

How long do you think the floodwaters were on the planet?

>> The answer, of course, is that we have not observed it, your theory
>> predicts it, and therefore your theory is discarded.

>My arguments don't predict it.

They do if you expect life to be able to "take over" the planet after the
flood.

>It's the plate tectonics argument that claims that mountains magically
>rose miles high out of the earth, but only *after* fish fossils were
>formed in the mountain in the most recent 1/9th of the earth's age.

Yes, in the most recent five hundred million years.

Mountains form slowly, but certainly quickly enough to fall in that limit. The
Rockies, for example, are at most eighty million years old.

>> <snip>

>> >The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b). As
>to
>> >(a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood. As
>the
>> >water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains,
>the
>> >mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
>> >gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.

>> And, as has been pointed out by several posters, the effect of gravity
>> on the rock is far more than sufficient to resist the force of the
>> water. Your proposed scenario just doesn't work. Or do you really
>> think mountains float in water?

>The water also carves valleys and basins.

So you're not even going to attempt to salvage your mountain-building
hypothesis? Smart man.

Only when it's flowing/draining off. It wouldn't drain off unless it had
something to drain into.

>Ever visited the Grand Canyon? Think that's the product of plate
>tectonics or water?

It's the product of erosion, last I heard.

But it had the Pacific Ocean to drain into.

Gyudon Z

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 8:12:20 PM1/1/01
to
From Andysch:

>In article <20010101165249...@ng-cj1.aol.com>,
> gyu...@aol.com (Gyudon Z) wrote:
>> From andysch:
>
>> >The flood issue is one of topography, not quantity of water. There's
>> >already enough water in the existing oceans to flood the earth if the
>> >topography were flatter.

>> The issue is how that water suddenly found itself covering the planet
>instead
>> of "stored up" somewhere, so where the water was before the flood and
>at the
>> start of the flood actually are very important.

>Water covers most of the planet now. With a flatter planet, there
>would be very little dry land. It could be flooded by virtue of almost
>anything: an earthquake,

Earthquakes raise land as well as lower it, if you know anything about plate
tectonics and mountains.

>a global warming (e.g., environmentalist
>claims today),

Well, today, melting the Northern Ice Cap wouldn't accomplish much since it's
already floating in water, and melting the Southern would raise the waterline
by all of 55 meters or so.

Are you saying that the maximum elevation of the earth was ever a mere 47.5
meters above sea level?

>an extended period of precipitation,

There's enough water vapor in the air at present to account for about an inch
of water.

>and so on. The
>smaller the amount of dry land, the less that would be required to
>flood it.

And, again, what evidence have you that the planet was ever substantially
flatter?

>> And again, what evidence have you that the topography ever was
>flatter?

>The large amount of water on earth inevitably causes peaks and
>valleys.

When a lot of it is flowing in one direction. If water covered the entire
planet, there wouldn't be any net directional flow except that caused by the
rotation of the earth.

You cannot seriously be proposing that our continents all owe their existence
to the Alaskan current and Gulf Stream.

>It's happening now. Look at a river crawling through a
>canyon, and you can bet that canyon was flatter many years ago. Ditto
>for the earth as a whole.

Except that the entire earth doesn't have a river crawling through it.

It's very interesting hearing about how most of the rivers and lakes in North
America are the result of glaciation from the last Ice Age.

It's also interesting hearing about how advancing glaciers two miles high tend
to scour the land nice and flat.

John Harshman

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Jan 1, 2001, 8:23:28 PM1/1/01
to
In article <92qs4a$h5u$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, and...@my-deja.com wrote:

> In article <92p56c$bue$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> stev...@my-deja.com wrote:

[many snips]

> > Younger, surely, in some cases. Mountain ranges are of various ages.
> > As the Earth's tectonic plates move about, their collisions raise
> > mountain ranges faster than erosion wears mountains down. Once plates
> > stop moving towards each other, the mountain ranges start to be worn
> > away, so very old ranges are low hills if they still exist. Most of
> > the ranges that are still prominent would have arisen within the last
> > couple of hundred million years.
>
> Do you have any references on this claim -- that the prominent ranges
> all arose within the last couple of hundre million years?

Try any historical geology text, or any popular work on the subject.
Mountains go down (through erosion) at a high rate. Of existing major
mountain ranges, only the Urals are pre-Mesozoic, and there's not much of
them left (even the Appalachians have experienced recent uplift, although
the range is ancient). All high ranges are of Cenozoic age, that is 65
million years old or less.

> > Enough to move teratons of rocks, MILES into the air, in under a year?
>
> Please show me a few instances where man has observed rocks move "MILES
> into the air, in under a year."

This is your claim (mountains form during a world-wide flood of about a
year's duration), not anyone else's. There are no such instances, because
of course it's impossible to form a mountain range in a year.


> > Air pressure? The Flood COVERED the high mountains. I grant that,
> > assuming low mountains and shallow sea basins, you could cover the
> > entire earth with the present world supply of water, and the highlands
> > would be under less pressure than lowlands. Do you have:
> > (a) any sort of model for calculating the approximate pressure
> > difference (i.e. how high were the pre-Flood mountains, and how low
> was
> > the pre-Flood sea floor)?
> > (b) any sort of model for where the water was BEFORE the Flood, and
> why
> > and how it got out?
>
> The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b).

How does the existence of large regional floods address b? All such floods
are either of land below sea level (the Baltic flood) or of a few hundred
square miles from the emptying of glacial lakes (the Channeled Scablands).
Both mechanisms are unavailable to explain a worldwide flood.

> As to
> (a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood. As the
> water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains, the
> mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
> gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.

What about the weight of rock, and the stiffness of rock? The highest
mountains are about the same height as the deepest oceans. Since mountains
are around 3-4 times denser than water, you would need at least 3-4 times
a depth of water to raise a given height of mountain. And the rock would
resist flow. Further, you ignore data indicating that mountains have often
not risen straight up, but have formed as folds, block faults, and
overthrusts, none of which your theory explains at all.

> > And we wouldn't have to import oil if the Great Lakes were filled with
> > petroleum instead of water. For better or worse, they aren't. Do you
> > have any evidence for a significantly flatter global topography within
> > the last 10,000 years?
>
> I never said this happened in the last 10,000 years. The issue of this
> thread is whether it ever happened. It's plainly possible.

Sorry, it's physically impossible. Your mechanism is laughably inadequate
to provide the necessary force, and fails in countless other ways.

> > It has a great deal to do with the argument that plate tectonics could
> > raise mountains. You argued that you had never seen the creation of a
> > mountain; if the Earth is very old, such events could be too small or
> > incremental to attract your notice. And, of course, if the Earth is
> > very old, that is an argument against the need to explain geologial
> > strata as the results of a single, year-long global flood
>
> You can make the earth as old as you like; the mountains still contain
> fish fossils no older than 600 million years, and no observed means for
> their origination.

It's only unobserved if you require the entire mountain-building process
to happen at rates that are theoretically impossible. If you allow for
realistic rates of uplift, we observe those all the time. Operating over
millions of years, existing rates of uplift can explain all the mountains
on earth. You have no comparable mechanism.


> > So the only plausible population growth rates are those you've
> observed
> > personally? Nothing you haven't observed in your lifetime could
> > exist? That in itself puts paid to a global Flood. Of course, if you
> > travelled to Europe, you'd observe population growth rates of zero or
> > lower, which, applied over 100,000 years, yields a population much
> > lower than 6 billion. And, again, population CANNOT grow faster than
> > food supply, unless you've observed people survive and reproduce
> > without eating.
>
> Technology and widespread affluence has reduced population growth in
> narrow segments of the world recently. Other than that, population
> growth of humans has always been observed to be significantly greater
> than 0. Food supply has never limited global population growth of
> humans.

Your observations are extremely short-term. Food supply has been locally
limiting very frequently, and globally limiting before the technical
innovations of the middle ages. It was certainly globally limiting before
the invention of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. Or don't you believe
in the invention of agriculture?

Besides, your assumption of a constant, positive rate of growth beginning
a few thousand years ago produces laughably small world populations in the
first couple of thousand years, due to the initial slow absolute rate of
increase of an exponential curve. We're talking about a world population
in the hundreds when Rome was founded, and such like. Your assumptions
lead to absurdity.

> > Why not?
>
> The next earthquake would tear down the inch that the first earthquake
> produced. Long way to a mile from there.

How can you assume that? I'm sorry to tell you that uplift is observed. In
general, mountains keep going up, not down. The compressive forces that
generate uplift don't flip back and forth as you seem to think.

--

*Note the obvious spam-defeating modification
to my address if you reply by email.

David C. Fritzinger

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 8:48:16 PM1/1/01
to

and...@my-deja.com wrote:

But, there is no evidence that the topography of the earth was ever
flatter. There is extensive evidence that there was _never_ a world wide
flood. This was discovered by Anglican ministers in the 1820s, and never
refuted. As I have said repeatedly, Learn some science, or you will
continue to make a fool of yourself.

Dave Fritzinger

John Monrad

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 9:07:44 PM1/1/01
to
In article <3a50c201...@news.SullyButtes.net>, c...@tiac.net says...
> On 1 Jan 2001 07:19:16 -0500, "Bobby D. Bryant"
> <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
> >John Monrad wrote:

[3rd try...]
> >
> >> And pigs could fly if they had wings.
> >
> >Some birds can't fly. Why not flightless pigs?
>
> What about feral flying pigs?

Ok, so these would be flightless feral flying pigs.

I think I see how this works. They're probably in the
same clade as those feral flying fowl.

That would make their LCA an Egg McMuffin, right?

catshark

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Jan 1, 2001, 9:14:01 PM1/1/01
to
In article <slrn9527hj...@peewee.telescopemaking.org>,

Ah, very well, we must wait a while longer then. Still, like a fine
thoroughbred, I'm sure our boy will soon break clean from the gate and
come thundering down the stretch in record fashion!

and...@my-deja.com

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 9:33:47 PM1/1/01
to
In article <r7725t08jpq6vnq5c...@4ax.com>,

Jon Fleming <jo...@fleming-nospam.com> wrote:
> On 1 Jan 2001 18:54:36 -0500, and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> >In article <ge125tscbcbj3upgg...@4ax.com>,
> > Jon Fleming <jo...@fleming-nospam.com> wrote:
> >> On 1 Jan 2001 16:17:09 -0500, and...@my-deja.com wrote:
> >>
> >> >In article <92p56c$bue$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> >> > stev...@my-deja.com wrote:

> >> >Please show me a few instances where man has observed rocks
> >move "MILES
> >> >into the air, in under a year."
> >>
> >> Er, Andy, he was referring to the fact that *your* claim requires
> >> teratons of rock to move miles into the air in under a year (or at
> >> least in some time incredibly short relative to typical geologic
time
> >> scales).
> >
> >I never made such claim.
>
> You said:
>
> " Once a small amount of displacement occurs, the pressure
> differential between the rising mountain and the valley becomes
> substantial.
>
> It's analogous to the electronic flip-flop. The feedback causes the
> toggle."
>
> It follows immediately from this claim of positive feedback that
> mountains would be formed relatively quickly.

Note that I said valleys as well as mountains. At any rate, your
restatement wasn't the claim incorrectly attributed to me, which was
that "teratons of rocks, MILES into the air, in under a year."

The Big Bang was indirectly the cause of the Grand Canyon too.

> Directly, it's the product of
> erosion, which can be performed by any fluid in motion. Erosion is
> irrelevant to your mountain-forming theory although, of course, it's
> relevant to your "probabilistic argument" about the age of observed
> mountains. Or do you think the Colorado River valley sunk down under
> the weight of the water? If so, how? (Please include the fact that
> rock is heavier than water)

Water pressure created the basin. The greater the pressure, the
quicker it occurred.

Mark VandeWettering

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 10:00:29 PM1/1/01
to

No, your argument is the vastly more sensible "the force of water
pushing down on rock causes huge mountains to be pushed up out of
the water."

>> And, as has been pointed out by several posters, the effect of gravity
>> on the rock is far more than sufficient to resist the force of the
>> water. Your proposed scenario just doesn't work. Or do you really
>> think mountains float in water?
>
>The water also carves valleys and basins.

It does so by flowing. The faster it flows, the quicker it carves. It
is called erosion. Tell me, where was all this flood water flowing TO
when the world was mostly flat?

>Ever visited the Grand Canyon? Think that's the product of plate
>tectonics or water?

So by extension all valleys are carved by moving water? Even when they
are submerged?

Mark
>Andy

John Monrad

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Jan 1, 2001, 10:08:35 PM1/1/01
to
"catshark" <cats...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:92rdh7$u6c$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...

> Ah, very well, we must wait a while longer then. Still, like a fine
> thoroughbred, I'm sure our boy will soon break clean from the gate and
> come thundering down the stretch in record fashion!

Hmmmmm.

Gate, then stretch.

Yes, I believe you see it the way I do.

Boikat

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 10:08:50 PM1/1/01
to

Personally, I have faith that the Schlafly
entities can continue to come up with comments
more stupider than previous stupid statements
(Never underestimate the power, or creativity of
human stupidity). They seem to be in competition
with each other in that sense. But, for my part,
that first round of drinks to any potential
Shreveport area Howlerfest is still safe, since
his head is still clearly up his arse (I'll only
buy the first round when the craniums are
extracted).

>
> --
> J. Pieret
>
> Some mornings it just doesn't seem worthwhile
> chewing through the leather straps.

I've had days like that. :}

Boikat

Boikat

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 10:39:51 PM1/1/01
to

So, your question was a trollism.

>
> > The answer, of course, is that we have not observed it, your theory
> > predicts it, and therefore your theory is discarded.
>
> My arguments don't predict it.

The YEC arguments you are presenting does.

>
> It's the plate tectonics argument that claims that mountains magically
> rose miles high out of the earth,

Nothing magical about it, as you will learn
whenever you get around to opening any basic
geology book.

> but only *after* fish fossils were
> formed

Most likely, any mountain range that formed before
fish evolved has probably eroded away.

> in the mountain in the most recent 1/9th of the earth's age.

Andy, a dead fish can die and become fossilized
for hundreds of millions of years before the
strata that it's imbedded in is subjected to
mountain building processes. The first
sedimentary rocks ever laid down can remain
undisturbed for billions of years before it's
subjected to mountain building processes.
Implying that there is a problem with plate
tectonics because there is a fossil of a fish
that's 300 million years old in layers of rock in
a ten million year old mountain range goes beyond
ignorance.


>
> > <snip>
> >
> > >The recent acceptance of very large regional floods address (b). As
> to
> > >(a), the theory is that the world was flatter before the flood. As
> the
> > >water pressure causes earth movement and the creation of mountains,
> the
> > >mountains rise to above sea level and beyond. Only air pressure and
> > >gravity opposes the enormous water pressure.
> >
> > And, as has been pointed out by several posters, the effect of gravity
> > on the rock is far more than sufficient to resist the force of the
> > water. Your proposed scenario just doesn't work. Or do you really
> > think mountains float in water?
>
> The water also carves valleys and basins.

Yes, but that's due to erosion, not due to
submergence during a flood.

>
> Ever visited the Grand Canyon? Think that's the product of plate
> tectonics or water?

Completely different processes than what you've
been claiming.

Boikat

Boikat

unread,
Jan 1, 2001, 10:54:59 PM1/1/01
to

Creative censorship, noted. The original sentence
to which you are alluding:

"Enough to move teratons of rocks, MILES into the
air, in under a year?"

Note the "?" mark at the end. It was a question
about your previous claim asking you to clarify
your claim, not a claim in itself.

You really need to get some help with your reading
comprehension.

I don't think I've ever seen such an obtuse
attempt at evasion before. I think this qualifies
for that bet that catshark was asking about. But
I have faith that you can still make an even
stupider remark.

>
> > Directly, it's the product of
> > erosion, which can be performed by any fluid in motion. Erosion is
> > irrelevant to your mountain-forming theory although, of course, it's
> > relevant to your "probabilistic argument" about the age of observed
> > mountains. Or do you think the Colorado River valley sunk down under
> > the weight of the water? If so, how? (Please include the fact that
> > rock is heavier than water)
>
> Water pressure created the basin. The greater the pressure, the
> quicker it occurred.

You're playing word games here. Yes, the force of
the river current plus it's abrasive sediment load
could have carved the canyon at different rates if
the amount of water and sediment present in the
river channel was greater. However, a rapidly
carved Grand Canyon would not have the meanders
that are present in the real thing. But again,
this is not what your original statements were
implying.

Boikat

Boikat

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Jan 1, 2001, 11:10:34 PM1/1/01
to
Piggybacking:

John Harshman wrote:
>
> In article <92qs4a$h5u$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, and...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> > In article <92p56c$bue$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> > stev...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> [many snips]
>

[more snippage]

> >
> > You can make the earth as old as you like; the mountains still contain
> > fish fossils no older than 600 million years, and no observed means for
> > their origination.
>

"Fish" were not very common prior to 600 million
years ago, and didn't become "common" until later,
during the later part of the Ordovician and
Silurian and Devonian. How are you going to have
a fossil of an organism that didn't exist at the
time in any form conducive to fossilization? And
what the hell do you mean by "and no observed
means for there origination"? Fish, or mountains?

[sniped again]

Boikat

Noelie S. Alito

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Jan 1, 2001, 11:16:57 PM1/1/01
to

John Monrad <jrmo...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:XCb46.15508$bU.10...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...

Ooh, naughty, naughty....

N


Boikat

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Jan 1, 2001, 11:15:33 PM1/1/01
to

Sir, You ask the impossible!

Boikat
>
> --
> Vince

WickedDyno

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Jan 2, 2001, 2:19:13 AM1/2/01
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In article <NL846.221966$vc3.37...@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>,
"Vincent Maycock" <maycock...@andrews.edu> wrote:

Umm, vince? Surely you've noticed that Andy is too stubborn or too dim
to retreat when humiliated -- indeed, his entire t.o career has been
almost nothing but one humiliation after another.

--
| Andrew Glasgow <amg39(at)cornell.edu> |
| SCSI is *NOT* magic. There are *fundamental technical |
| reasons* why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat |
| to your SCSI chain now and then. -- John Woods |

Bobby D. Bryant

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Jan 2, 2001, 2:31:38 AM1/2/01
to
Mark VandeWettering wrote:

> On 1 Jan 2001 18:54:36 -0500, and...@my-deja.com <and...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> >It's the plate tectonics argument that claims that mountains magically
> >rose miles high out of the earth, but only *after* fish fossils were
> >formed in the mountain in the most recent 1/9th of the earth's age.
>
> No, your argument is the vastly more sensible "the force of water
> pushing down on rock causes huge mountains to be pushed up out of
> the water."

"...fast enough to leave unwary fish stranded on top."

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas


Bobby D. Bryant

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Jan 2, 2001, 2:39:37 AM1/2/01
to
and...@my-deja.com wrote:

> The flood issue is one of topography, not quantity of water. There's
> already enough water in the existing oceans to flood the earth if the
> topography were flatter.

epicycle, n. - A bogus hypothesis invoked to preserve another bogus
hypothesis which has been shown to be contrary to observable facts.


Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas


Bobby D. Bryant

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Jan 2, 2001, 2:43:19 AM1/2/01
to
and...@my-deja.com wrote:

> It's happening now. Look at a river crawling through a
> canyon, and you can bet that canyon was flatter many years ago. Ditto
> for the earth as a whole.

Ah, Catastrophism saved by Gradualism!

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas


Bigdakine

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Jan 2, 2001, 2:52:38 AM1/2/01
to
>Subject: Re: What's the evidence for a world wide flood?
>From: and...@my-deja.com
>Date: 12/31/00 3:48 PM Hawaiian Standard Time
>Message-id: <92onkr$2rh$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>
>In article <slrn94v0cc...@peewee.telescopemaking.org>,
> ma...@peewee.telescopemaking.org (Mark VandeWettering) wrote:
>> On 31 Dec 2000 12:58:56 -0500, and...@my-deja.com <andysch@my-
>deja.com> wrote:
>> >In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
>> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> >> Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide flood.
>What
>> >evidence
>> >> do they claim to have for a worldwide flood?
>> >
>> >Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains. They
>cite
>> >mountains themselves, which are easily explained by a worldwide flood
>> >but not so easily explained otherwise.
>>
>> Let's see, we can add "plate tectonics" to the long laundry list of
>> >that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of people. In AD
>1650
>> things that Andy apparently knows nothing about.
>>
>> >They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards suggests
>> >there were only about 650 million people, and working backwards at a
>> >small population growth rate results in very few people circa a few
>> >thousand years BC.
>>
>> Add to that "understanding of why extrapolation isn't a good thing".
>
>I agree that extrapolation is inexact. Still, we're talking about
>orders of magnitude here. Given humans 100,000 years and there should
>be orders of magnitude more people than there are now, in the absence
>of enormous catastrophe(s).

Well, what do plagues constitute?

>
>> >Scientists have recently (and reluctantly) accepted the likelihood of
>> >very large regional floods.
>>
>> I think you meant that Scientists have PROPOSED and cautiously begun
>> to accept the likelihood of very large regional floods where evidence
>> can be found.
>
>I said "reluctantly". And evidence is being found. I think the NY
>Times had a report on this.

If you're referring to Walter Pittman's work. Yes, evidence for catastrophic
local floods exist in the geologic record. Sorry, nothing anywhere near the
scale of a global flood exists.
>
>> >Not much difference between those and a
>> >worldwide flood. Without the current topography, there's plenty of
>> >water in existing oceans to cover the world.
>>
>> I suppose the global flood _built_ all this topography? Topography
>> that would be significantly above the floodline should this global
>> deluge reoccur?
>
>Sure, you could get mountains rising above a floodline due to the
>enormous water pressure. How else does one explain all the high
>mountains -- and the fish fossils found high up in them?

Plate Tectonics.. Learn it sometime.


>
>> I'm beginning to understand why you don't argue points of actual
>> science and evidence, Andy.
>
>It's New Year's Eve, Mark. Good time for us to lighten up a bit, don't
>you think?

Yes an while you're at it, read a book on geology. Try Annals of a Former World
for starters..

Stuart

Dr. Stuart A. Weinstein
Ewa Beach Institute of Tectonics
"To err is human, but to really foul things up
requires a creationist"

Bigdakine

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Jan 2, 2001, 2:59:37 AM1/2/01
to
>Subject: Re: What's the evidence for a world wide flood?
>From: and...@my-deja.com
>Date: 12/31/00 3:58 PM Hawaiian Standard Time
>Message-id: <92oo7r$38g$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>
>In article <myers-AECC1F....@news.newsguy.com>,
> PZ Myers <my...@mac.com> wrote:
>> In article <92ns4s$evu$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, and...@my-deja.com

>> wrote:
>>
>> > In article <20001231112237...@ng-fy1.aol.com>,
>> > agel...@aol.com (AGelbart) wrote:
>> > > Everything in creationist dogma hinges on the worldwide
>> > > flood. What evidence do they claim to have for a worldwide
>> > > flood?
>> >
>> > Creationists cite the fish fossils found high in mountains.
>> > They cite mountains themselves, which are easily explained by
>> > a worldwide flood but not so easily explained otherwise.
>>
>> Whoa, that's news to me. I thought mountains (and the
>> distribution of those fossils) were nicely explained by
>> conventional geology, and that a global flood doesn't say much at
>> all about why the Rocky Mountains exist.
>
>Sure it does. The enormous water pressure -- and very large lakes --
>could push down on the earth, pushing the earth up to form mountains.

Good grief. You're trolling right? Does the Archimedes principal mean anything
to you?
>
>I'm not saying this happened. If you've think mountains and their fish
>fossils are "nicely explained by conventional geology," then please
>provide that nice explanation and I'll look at it.

Read any modern text book on Geology. You could also try "Annals of a Former
World" by McPhee..


>
>> > They cite population growth, which extrapolating backwards

>> > suggests that something catastrophic had to wipe out lots of
>> > people. In AD 1650 there were only about 650 million people,


>> > and working backwards at a small population growth rate
>> > results in very few people circa a few thousand years BC.
>>

>> I thought you claimed to know something about statistics and
>> mathematics? You should know, then, that those calculations are
>> rather grossly flawed...among other things, they lead to rather
>> bizarre underestimates of world population during fairly well
>> documented historical periods, such as that of the Roman Empire.
>
>Please explain. The only gross flaw I see is how humans could have
>arrived 100,000 years ago and yet we only have about 6 billion persons
>now.

I'm sorry but this is getting dumber and dumber..

Johnny Bravo

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Jan 2, 2001, 2:59:09 AM1/2/01
to
On 1 Jan 2001 16:34:17 -0500, and...@my-deja.com wrote:


>> To cover Mt. Everest today would take an additional billion
>> cubic miles of water; that is in addition to the 1/3 a billion
>> cubic miles of water already present in all the world's oceans
>> and seas.
>
>And if Mt. Everest were 1/10th its current height, and oceans 1/10th
>their current depth?

Useless conjecture on your part unless you can prove both of
those assumptions.

--
  Best Wishes,
    Johnny Bravo
BAAWA Knight, EAC - Temporal Adjustments Division

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - HP Lovecraft

Sverker Johansson

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Jan 2, 2001, 3:37:41 AM1/2/01
to
and...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <4k225tgk82m3mqc46...@4ax.com>,

> Johnny Bravo <bravo...@usa.net> wrote:
> > To cover Mt. Everest today would take an additional billion
> > cubic miles of water; that is in addition to the 1/3 a billion
> > cubic miles of water already present in all the world's oceans
> > and seas.
>
> And if Mt. Everest were 1/10th its current height, and oceans 1/10th
> their current depth?

Then we would have evidence of recent massive tectonic upheavals,
evidence that just isn't there. Or did it reach its current height
by magic?

--
Best regards, HLK, Physics
Sverker Johansson U of Jonkoping
----------------------------------------------
Definitions:
Micro-evolution: evolution for which the evidence is so
overwhelming that even the ICR can't deny it.
Macro-evolution: evolution which is only proven beyond
reasonable doubt, not beyond unreasonable doubt.

marcof...@my-deja.com

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Jan 2, 2001, 1:03:27 PM1/2/01
to
In article <3A5183A8...@mail.utexas.edu>,

"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> Mark VandeWettering wrote:

> > On 1 Jan 2001 18:54:36 -0500, and...@my-deja.com <andysch@my-


deja.com> wrote:
> >
> > >It's the plate tectonics argument that claims that mountains
magically
> > >rose miles high out of the earth, but only *after* fish fossils
were
> > >formed in the mountain in the most recent 1/9th of the earth's age.
> >
> > No, your argument is the vastly more sensible "the force of water
> > pushing down on rock causes huge mountains to be pushed up out of
> > the water."
>
> "...fast enough to leave unwary fish stranded on top."

"...but not so unwary that they didn't tunnel into the rock and
fossilize themselves to confound emotional, atheistic evilutionists."

jmonrad

marcof...@my-deja.com

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Jan 2, 2001, 1:13:56 PM1/2/01
to
In article <3A507656...@mail.utexas.edu>,

"Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> John Monrad wrote:
> >
> >
> > Why are you assuming a constant rate? Do you have any evidence that
> > supports a constant growth rate?
>
> The biblical model posits three races stemming from the three sons of
> Noah. With constant rates, we would expect to find those three races
> with equal populations at any given point in history since then, no?
>

Nice. But before he gets any ideas...
What if the growth rates for each were constant but different? Maybe
that's why one is claimed to be relatively "inferior."
And what is a race, anyway? (No, *please* don't answer that.)

marcof...@my-deja.com

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Jan 2, 2001, 1:20:19 PM1/2/01
to
In article <7od15tssmqc6trbio...@4ax.com>,
Jon Fleming <jo...@fleming-nospam.com> wrote:
> On 1 Jan 2001 00:59:16 -0500, John Monrad <jrmo...@worldnet.att.net>
> wrote:
>
> >> As shown above, the time-based probabilities are strongly against
> >> this.
> >
> >Care to show those "time-based probabilities" again? You seemed to
> >have forgotten to post them the first time.
>
> No, he posted them; he's referring to his simplistic 8/9 of the age of
> the earth at the beginning of his post.

You mean this?

"The problem is that the dates of the fish fossils are as young as the
Cambrian explosion, and thus less than about 600 million years old (or
about 1/9th of the estimated age of the earth). The mountains could
only rise more recently than the fossils were formed. But under the
plate tectonic theory one would expect from probability that most
mountains rose during the older 8/9th of the time."

That's it? That's how he calculates probabilities? Not even a
spreadsheet? Despite the fact that we currently measure horizontal and
vertical movements of continents, giving a probability of 1 that uplift
is occurring, that's his argument against mountain building as
responsible for the presence of marine fossils in mountains younger
than Precambrian?

I think I woke up in the wrong universe.

Trick question: Andy, what evidence do you have that *any* mountain-
building occurred prior to the existence of fish?

marcof...@my-deja.com

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Jan 2, 2001, 2:17:15 PM1/2/01
to
In article <92qspl$hki$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
and...@my-deja.com wrote:

> The flood issue is one of topography, not quantity of water. There's
> already enough water in the existing oceans to flood the earth if the
> topography were flatter.
>

> Andy

You mean "flattest." You're fixating on something called (I think --
someone with a functioning brain cell help me out here) the hypsometric
curve, which shows the percent of material above a baseline. Using the
baseline as the deepset trench (-30,000 feet msl?), all topography is
above that depth, and nothing is above +29,000 ft and change. Yes, a
perfectly "flat" (i.e., no bumps or grooves) surface of the solid Earth
would be under water. But that flat surface presumes that the specific
gravity of all the surficial material is identical. That ain't the way
it is, nor the way it was. Oceanic crust has a Sp.g. of about 3.1,
continental crust about 2.65. That same relationship obtained over
3,000 mya -- do a search on "greenstone belts". And some of the oldest
dated rocks are metasediments derived from -- ready for this? --
continental crust, which means that continents (*landmasses* = "above
sea level") existed over 3500 mya.

Continental crust/lithosphere "floats" higher than oceanic
crust/lithosphere. That's why the oceans are deep -- not because
seawater is pressing down on the ocean floor, but because oceanic
crust/lithosphere is "denser" than continental crust/lithosphere. Take
away the sea water and the ocean basins will *remain* lower than the
continents.

Granted, there have been times when parts of continents were covered
with sea water. But much of the sediment deposited in those
continental seas was derived from adjacent landmasses, much like the
continental shelves are receiving sediment today from the landmasses
they border. We can use the sediment distribution patterns to identify
where those landmasses were and how long they contributed material to
the shallow continental seas.

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