Skip to main content

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

Episode 35 of Season 2 on "Genesis Week" (found on youtube or Wazoolo.com) discusses how a recent fossil find of a supposedly 70 million year old dinosaur had unfossilized dinosaur skin attached.  It also discusses the large number of fossil human footprints found around the world, in particular in Laetoli, South Africa, and in Mungo Park, Australia, as well as the Paluxy tracks in the USA.  Also Mexico (Sylvia Gonzales found those).  They are using CT scans and ground penetrating radar to analyze them, and some of them are in layers that supposedly pre-date the dinosaur periods of time.   Interesting.  

Elder Lubbert, the statement I made was not made to capture the attitude of the socio-cultural worldview we live beside.   It was meant to speak to christians who would like to understand their own place in the evangelizing, discipling.  I would not speak to non-christians this way;  they are not the problem.  It is christians who are the problem.  The words I used are easy enough to understand, unless christians have already stopped attending church.  In that case, those would not be reading this.  

The socio-cultural worldview beside us is much the same as always, outside of Christ.  I mean that it focusses on pleasure, money, self, education, nature, security, sex, sport, pensions, entertainment, as alternatives to God.  And when those things become too important to Christians then it chokes the word of God in their lives as well.  

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

Allen, I'm antagonistic towards the use of the word "silly".    I just think it is important to keep in mind the fact that many people would claim that for Jesus to feed 5000 men (plus women and children) with five loaves and two fish, would just be plain silly.  

When we measure two distant objects by the angle of difference, and calculate their distance and thus the age of the light we are observing, it would seem to be silly to say that they are younger than 10,000 years.   Perhaps so, but perhaps also there is a reason we do not yet know.   This reason may be "miraculous", or it may be a phenomena not yet known or understood.   There are some aspects apparently about the expansion of the universe for example which are difficult to measure in terms of estimating events of the past. 

I don't think God threw in dinosaur bones to throw us off.   But it is possible that the assumption about the age of these dinosaur bones is way off.  

Bottom line is that dinosaur bones do not prove maco-evolution.  

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

John Zylstra on June 16, 2011

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

The ark apparently was big enough for those animals that needed to be on it, plus the feed they needed, particularly if most animals were in the form of baby animals.      One example of an ancient fossil was the coelanth fish.   Ancient in the fossil record.   And it still exists today, ocassionally caught in fishing boats in Asia.  So perhaps you could also say it is a modern animal.   Question, why would you find mammal fossils in the same location as reptile dinosaurs?    Or why would you find swimming reptiles such as alligators or snakes in the same place as land reptiles?  

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

John Zylstra on August 26, 2011

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

Thanks Ken, for your information.  It made me look up the solubility of NaCl, which is about 35g/100g at normal temps and increases somewhat at higher temps.  This means to get 500 feet of salt, you would need about 1500 feet of standing water to contain it.  Otherwise it would simply begin to precipitate out, and would not require evaporation for all of it to deposit.   For 2000 feet of salt, you would need about 6000 feet of standing water to contain it, or if you had less water, then it would begin to precipitate out sooner.   Since these beds have salt in the center of a theoretical lagoon, the salt apparently did not precipitate out in the reefs and surrounding beds of limestone, gypsum and dolomite.   It precipitated out in certain locations. 

We can only guess how long it took for those reefs to form, and interestingly, the salt itself is in layers with some thin silt and clay layers interspersed, indicating muddiness in the water, but not a consistent muddiness.  It seems that the water was evaporating faster than water was being added.   Whenever water would be added to this area after precipitating salt, it would have to be already very highly concentrated in salt;  otherwise it would begin to disolve the salt at the ocean floor, since salt is easily dissovable, unless the concentration is already at about 35g/100g.   Most ocean waters have a salinity of about 35, which is 35g/L, or  only 3.5% (one tenth of Ksp).   This would tend to dissolve salts by water that would enter the basin. 

In one photo, I noticed about ten layers that included silt within the salt, or ten thin layers of silt/clay with ten larger layers of salt within one meter of depth.   Average salt deposition between presumed influx of new water would be about 3 inches.  This would suppose an addition of perhaps 150 inches (12.5 feet) of ocean water to get 3 inches of salt after it evaporates.  It would be odd for that amount of water not to dissolve at least about one foot of salt before it redeposited or precipitated out the salt again.   This would remove such a layer of silt and clay, or dissipate it perhaps. 

Ocean water evaporates at between 30 to 200 cm /year under present conditions.  This means that 12.5 feet of water (about 380 cm) would take about four to eight years to evaporate completely at 50-100 cm /year.  Yet there are no indications of muddiness during that time period.  No indications of water entering the basin. 

When the water was shallow, and when new water entered the basin, we might expect to find some water creatures carried along by the ordinary sea water or by the fresh water entering the basin, which would then be killed by the contact with the extremely high concentrations of salt in the water.   Perhaps they would leave some fossils, preserved by the salt, although the salt is also very corrosive and destructive at those concentrations.  Granted organisms would not preferentially live there, and so there would be fewer of them there. 

It might be interesting to imagine a much quicker process of salt deposition in the middle of some reef beds, much hotter water temperatures and quicker evaporation rates and higher initial concentrations, and assume that the reefs might have taken several hundred years to form under certain nutrient rich conditions. 

The marine fossils found on mountain tops supposes that seas at one time covered these mountains.  So either the seas were very high at one time, or the mountains were lower under shallower seas, and then moved up from out of those seas, perhaps simultaneously dissipating or moving the seas.  Or a combination of the two possibilities.   These are dramatic events, not normally observed by us, so the question is whether dramatic events not normally observed by us, could have also resulted in the silurian salt beds, rather than the slow methodical evaporation and entrance of waters in the basin that is supposed to be the origin of the 500 to 2000 feet of salt beds.   

The Great lakes having some level of salinity was mentioned by sevandyk, and I make no comment on it, other than that the Great lakes are not considered to be saline lakes since their salinity is not high enough for that. 

Anyway, intrigued by the possibilities. 

While the crc has lost professing members since 2007, the noticeable decline in total membership has been steady since 1992, which was the high point for both total members and professing members.   That is a 20% decline since then, but when compared to national population increase in the last 21 years, the decline is larger on a relative basis.   I think the decline is because we don't put Christ first.   I will elaborate on that later, in the next couple of days. 

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

John Zylstra on June 16, 2011

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

Laughing at the idea of separate creation of species is an emotional reaction rather than a scientific reaction.   It's like laughing at the theory of evolution.   Blind tolerance is not the opposite of laughing;  that is the non-sequitor. 

You are right that the issue is not really about whether people are nice about other ideas;  its about whether the ideas are true.   But if your identity is wrapped up in an emotional attachment to the theory of evolution, then it will be difficult to retain perspective about whether any opposing ideas may have any merit. 

     

Quote:   "Yes. We have big brains and a desire to explain things - features that many people believe came from God. We use our brains to investigate the world around us, but, in so doing, we cannot assume a God.

This is because God is not controllable. You cannot do an experiment with God's involvement and without. But, by assuming no divine influence, we have been really quite successful in figuring things out. ie. Medicine, clean water, the nature of the solar system. We're good at this. Assuming a god did not work out - when we did that, people thought a chariot pulled the sun across the sky." 

This is an interesting quote because it reveals what you believe.   Why exactly is it that we cannot assume a God when we investigate the world around us?    Based on what assumptions?  

Maybe the fact that God is not controllable is the whole point.   By not seeing that, it causes all kinds of problems for us.    It causes us to assume that we can "control" the past.   Generally that is not good experimental science (it tends to be called statistical survey, which gathers information, but always guesses at cause and effect) , and is the opposite of what most experiments require, which is to control or establish controls for the future of the experiment.  

I do not see how assuming a God, stopped NASA from making it to the moon. 

Evolution says nothing about God?   I think it does.   It disallows God's intervention.   It relegates God to the blind watchmaker.   And because it does not allow God's intervention, it is forced to conclude that God is really just a human invention, an idea, another natural outcome of the evolution of the human race, which atheist evolutionists are quite convinced we will eventually evolve out of the need for. 

I work in science all the time.   Soil Science, agronomy, plants, animals, environmental, research.   I read abstracts of research from eight or nine professional journals regularly, and sometimes full length papers.   I attend scientific conferences.   Science is great!    It is a great tool for learning and discovery.   While my eyes glaze sometimes at advanced statistical analysis, I recognize it also as a great tool for making decisions about whether to accept a research conclusion or not. 

I love nature too!   We live on over four hundred acres of mixed vegetation land with several species of native trees, various grasses, reeds, cattails, deer, moose, mice, coyotes, numerous birds including a red-tailed hawk, dogs, cows, (no cats), garden, greenhouse, squirrels, woodpeckers, etc., etc.   I enjoy nature and sometimes have to fight nature, snow, weeds, mosquitos. 

So I understand natural explanations.   But I do not understand how one can explain nature, and not understand God better. 

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

John Zylstra on August 26, 2011

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)

A note on the growth rates of coral reefs:  when growth rates are measured, they are not measured together with a change in ocean levels.  Rather certain assumptions are made about past ocean levels that correspond to varying observed changes in the appearance of layers in the dead part of the reef.   Many assumptions are made about the past.  Yet the optimum  zone of growth for a coral reef is in shallow, clear, warm water with a sufficient concentration of calcium, and yet not too much dissoved carbon dioxide .  Too near the surface, and growth slows;   too deep and growth slows or stops.   Reef corrals prefer temperatures of between 25C to 30C, and salinity of about 35 to 37 parts per thousand.  In fresh water, they do not grow, and would not survive in salty water concentrations necessary for precipitation.  Estimated growth rates range from 1 to 250mm per year, while some measured depth soundings seem to indicate growth rates of over 400mm per year. 

Coral reefs can be broken up by water and then collect in other locations as a foundation for a new reef.  It is possible for some reefs to have survived the flood while others were destroyed by it or severely broken up by it. 

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

Ken, no need to begin insulting me.  It will not help your case.   "I have not been paying attention."?  While its true that it takes some time to digest another person's comments, I am indeed paying attention, and my comment was made quite light-heartedly, just as yours was earlier about my supposed propensity for assuming everything happened quickly.   Nor do I claim that the laws of nature have ever changed;  only our perception of them, and how they apply. 

Have you ever read Walt Brown's book, "In the Beginning:  Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood."   He looks only(almost only) at scientific principles, mathematics, physics in terms of evaluating his hypothesis.  Even supposing he was not entirely accurate in every aspect, since after all he is pieceing together something by extrapolation, he provides a new way of looking at the geologic evidence. 

About plate motion, as I said before, (were you paying attention...:o)  )  present rates of something are not indisputable indicators of what happened in the distant past.   We cannot do this with automobiles, with technological advancement, and probably not with plate tectonics.   If we only used present rates of observation, we would not come up with theories of hundreds of belts of ancient volcanoes consisting of hundreds of individual volcanoes and vents each, in the Canadian Shield area. 

You said:  [quote] We know what temperatures and pressures are required to produce various minerals, and therefore at what depth they formed, which in turn determines the thousands of feet of rock that would have to be eroded away to expose them. [/quote]  You are merely assuming that there is only one way to form the temperatures and pressures to produce various minerals;  this is your blind spot.   Even the fact that you produced them in a lab would indicate that there are other ways of doing this, but you cannot conceive of other circumstances, so you assume they do not exist.  Your uniformitarian paradigm is worn like a pair of blinders, methinks. 

You said, [quote]formation of metamorphic rocks and huge igneous rock bodies does not occur at the surface,  [/quote]

but, wikipedia and others disagree, "Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. Igneous rock may form with or without crystallization, either below the surface as intrusive (plutonic) rocks or on the surface as extrusive (volcanic) rocks " wikipedia

You said: [quote]We know that there is no radiogenic daughter product in a mineral or rock at the time it forms from magma, and when one half-lfe has elapsed, the ratio will be 1:1 [/quote]

If this were as simple as it sounds, then using the K-Ar method to detect age of basalt formed by a recent volano would not be a problem.  However, as you earlier admitted, some non-radiogenic product (presumably the same isotope indistinguishable from the radiogenic) was also trapped in the basalt (igneous).   So your statement is misleading.   Its presumption appears to be  incorrect. 

From Roger Wiens(Los Alamos, NM), "Although potassium-argon is one of the simplest dating methods, there are still some cases where it does not agree with other methods. When this does happen, it is usually because the gas within bubbles in the rock is from deep underground rather than from the air. This gas can have a higher concentration of argon-40 escaping from the melting of older rocks. This is called parentless argon-40 because its parent potassium is not in the rock being dated, and is also not from the air. In these slightly unusual cases, the date given by the normal potassium-argon method is too old". "  

The assumption is that these cases are unusual.  

 

Posted in: Genesis - Again!

While your comments are accurate, that is, not all deposits need be catastrophic, and while it is true that certain particles of different sizes and densities settle out in water at different rates, often at vastly different rates, we need to be aware that basically this says nothing about how slowly or how quickly the various laminae, as well as other earth layers, were laid down.  The different rates of settlement for   particles of various sizes deposited simultaneously in water,  tend to range from seconds to days, not to years or decades, even though this will vary a bit depending on the depth of the water. 

We want to hear from you.

Connect to The Network and add your own question, blog, resource, or job.

Add Your Post