Ken Van Dellen

Thanks, John. I thought you sounded like an impatient guy who wanted everything to happen rapidly - reef growth, evaporite precipitation, plate movement, mountain growth, and my responses. :)

I apologize for not being clearer. When I said Silurian patch reefs in Michigan "may be" 140 meters tall, I was not expressing uncertainty at all. Their dimensions are well known, having been measured in drill cores and by remote sensing, such as seismic logs. Perhaps it would have been clearer had I said "as much as" 140 meters tall. I'm trying to give you facts to consider, and am trying to avoid "perhaps", "might have", "could have", and "may have", which I see sprinkled throughout your posts. I'm not at all uncertain. Are you? Your comment about reef growth, "At...approx one-half metre per year, it might have taken about 300 years to form", is a case in point. You can plug in any number you want, realistic or not, and get the result you want, but that doesn't prove or disprove anythiing. You need to consider all of the data.

I evidently confused you when I introduced post-glacial rebound in connection with mountain growth. Both involve isostatic uplift as a result of unloading, but the former is demonstrated in post-glacial shorelines of the ancestral Great Lakes in the Great Lakes states, notably Michigan, while the latter is demonstrated in mountainous regions. Yes, this takes careful measurement because it is so SLOW, but it is measurable.

Your material on the growth of the Andes is confusing to me because it is unclear what is a quotation and what is your commentary. However, I would suggest that you look at the numbers.Words like "slow", "gradually", "fast", and "suddenly" are relative terms. Consider a "growth spurt" in a teenager. So the Andes may have had a growth spurt, and geologists have discovered something we didn't know before. This doesn't significantly change the plate tectonics model, and is a much more complicated situation than reef growth or evaporite deposition.

In answer to your final question, let me ask how much sea water would have to evaporate in order to precipitate the amount of salt in the Salina Group in Michigan. Of course, you could speculate on temperature, wind, salinity of sea water at that time, etc., and some assumptions would have to be made, but might they not be reasonable assumptions? Or should we say, "It might have been really hot or really windy or the sea had a really high salinity"?

Remember that the subsidence of the Michigan Basin, the growth of the fringing patch reefs, and the deposition of the salt and gypsum during this time, however long it all took, are just a small part of the geologic history of Michigan (as an example of Earth history). The deepest crustal rocks in Michigan are granites and metamorphic rocks, the kinds of rocks that we find in the depths of mountain belts, and the surface of this basement rock is rather flat, which suggests that there were mountains here at one time, and those mountains were eroded away. Running in a curve, from Oklahoma to western Lake Superior, where it passes between Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula, and down through the Lower Peninsula in sort of an L-shape, is a rift valley, like the one in East Africa, splitting those ancient mountain roots. (The copper-bearing basalt beds and conglomerates, thousands of feet thick, of Isle Royale and the Keweenaw are a stretch of this rift valley that is at the surface, rather than buried under later sedimentary rock.) On top of the basement is sedimentary rock, 14,000 feet thick in the central part of the Basin, much of it deposited during subsidence, and most of it marine. It contains the record of a succession of life, and indicates various depositional environments. It tells of transgressing and regressing seas in the continental interior, while the continental margins were flood more continuously, but not always. Layers nearer the surface have coal beds and plant fossils in rocks indicative of coastal flood plains and stream channels. On top of it all, in most places, are the glacial deposits, with moraines, drumlins, and other landforms, including old shorelines that curve upward from south to north, recording the post-glacial uplift. Yes, we can wonder about how long it could take for some salt to precipitate, but there's a lot more than we need to consider. More than I have time and space to discuss here. 

It's exciting to study the creation and see what God has done. He has done more than most people imagine.

John, I have an entire shelf of books by Christians on the issue of origins, and covering the entire spectrum of views from young-Earth creationism to evolutionary creation, and many of them misquote or quote out of context what scientists have written, distort or misrepresent the data (either deliberately or unwittingly), and show vast ignorance of the subject. Judging from the reviews of these two books on Amazon, they are probably more of the same. Usually the more "orthodox" such books are, the worse the science is. Some Christian writers even simply recycle material gleaned from other writers, and use "mined quotes" from books that have lifted quotes out of context. Often authors have minimal education in the field they write about, such as engineers writing on geology, paleontology, etc. This is embarrassing to many Christian scientists.

On the subject of radiometric dating, many are "expert" on the subject who have never done anything with it. Suppose that you were manufacturing something, and you occasionally sent a sample to a lab to be analyzed for quality control. Would you do that if you knew ahead of time that the lab technique was unreliable and the results worthless? You wouldn't waste your money. Yet, you recommend an author who claims that geolgists are doing exactly that, paying for results that they know are worthless. Just as geologists, paleontologists, archeologists, and others, have uncovered the Piltdown hoax, the Nebraska man hoax, the dinosaur man-track hoax, and others, they would certainly, by now, have exposed the radiometric dating hoax. However, geologists use radiometric dating, and they have ways to check, using alternative isotopes, to verify that results are reasonable. (I won't say "accurate", because even you state your age, knowing your date of birth, you are accurate only within a certain range, +/- a year and not down to the second or...)

Incidentally, I know the former manager of a large lab that does radiometric dating, who was asked by a geologist affiliated with the Institute for Creation Research to date a recent basalt sample from Hawaii. The manager pointed out what this geologist probably already knew, that relatively young volcanic samples give very old radiometric dates by the K-40/Ar-40 method, because a lot of non-radiogenic argon in the magma is trapped in the resulting volcanic rock, noting that it is not their practice to date such material. He was told to go ahead and do the dating, and the lab was paid for the work. The ridiculous result has since been published as an example of the unreliability of radiometric dating.

A good article on radiometric dating written by a Christian is at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/wiens.html. I know there are Christian websites that disagree with this article, but if we look at the whole story, the radiometric dates make sense. (See my outline of Michigan geology, above.) If you want to use Genesis 1 as a rebuttal, consider when Earth was created - not in the seven days listed there. Theologian John Walton, in his book The Lost World of Genesis One, Intervarsity Press, makes the case that Genesis one is talking about the dedication of an existing creation. It's worth reading, even if you disagree, to get a different perspective on this subject.

Since you seem interested in geology, let me recommend "The Bible, Rocks and Time" by Davis Young and Ralph Stearley, published by Intervarsity Press. The authors are two Christian geologists writing about geology. (Note: They are not writing out of their field. Both have done research in geology, as well as teaching the subject.) The book presents facts and data about God's world, and explains how geologists interpret the data, while discussing how they, as Christians, integrate this with their faith. It's a little technical, but they explain things well, and I think you will understand it quite well.

Thanks. Wouldn't you expect a good response from me?

"This number is possible, based on some present day data, but that does not mean that it actually happened that way. But even if it took twice as long or four times as long, then the reefs could have formed in 1200 years."

As they say in the computer industry, garbage in garbage out. I question the source of your "present day data". Regardless, other evidence mitigates against anything that rapid in the Silurian, one of which is the rate of subsidence. Believe what you will, but one needs to consider the whole situation, and not just plug in a number that gives results that we like.

"I try to put quotation marks around quotes – I believe I did that there"

If you had, I would have had no difficulty distinguishing the quotation from your comments. Sorry!

"The article indicated some significant changes to the plate tectonics model would be required. But my point was only that the amount of time for something to happen in geological history still appears to be relatively fluid."

Not at all. We can predict what will happen, given a set of conditions. If one or more conditions is unknown, then we get unexpected results, which can happen in complex situations, but most situations aren't very complex. In this case, look at the time intervals you quote.

"Garzione, a professor of geology at the University of Rochester, and her colleagues examined the sediment record and found that the Andes had slowly grown for tens of millions of years before suddenly spiking between 10 and 6 million years ago -- a process they call 'delamination'...."

This research suggests that, rather than growing at a fairly constant rate over millions of years, the Andes grew at a more rapid rate for several million years. So? If this research is correct, conditions changed making the rate of growth change. That's like saying if we have heavy rain the creek will flood. What is more likely to occur, the "normal" situation or the anomalous situation?

One of my professors at the University of Michigan was a fine Christian (Presbyterian) man who was involved with InterVarsity. He once told me or a group of students that he believed that science developed to the extent it did in the western world because Christians believe in a God of order. He does what He says, and we can count on it. This man said, and this is slightly political incorrect, that people in other parts of the world in those days "were running around nailing things to trees". This was in reference to polytheistic ideas of weather gods, tree gods, rock gods, etc. God wants us to understand His creation, and has directed us to do so. Note that the Bible remarks about Solomon and others studying the plants and animals, and talks about constellations. Some Christians are fearful of what they might discover if they explore the creation. How sad!

"your reasoning could go both ways based on what you are saying here. In other words, in this location, the granites and metamorphic rocks remained in place, rather than being uplifted into mountains. The Canadian Shield is full of this type of rock as well, which is near the surface. The literature indicates a belief that this used to be many large mountains at one time. The reasoning is that rocks found under mountains are similar. Other evidence is lacking, apparently, since as mountains erode, the roots of mountains rise up. So in this case of the Shield, any mountain roots would be much smaller than they were originally, but then how would we know really? The article I saw also indicated that there used to be hundreds of volcanic belts in this area, each one with several hundreds of volcanos and numerous vents."

My friend, this is not reasoning, it is fact. I am telling you what we find when we go out and look with our eyes open. We find that in mountainous areas, there is granite (igneous rock) and metamorphic rock under sedimentary rock (if any still remains). Coarse-grained igneous rock can form only deep underground where magma will cool very slowly. It takes a long time for a large magma chamber to crystallize, and in mountain belts we find that this has happened repeatedly - intrusion, cooling and crystallization to form a batholith (large granite body), and repeat, and repeat. Around and above the batholiths is metamorphic rock, which forms under high pressure  and at high temperature, such as we find deep underground. It is possible to determine the depth, pressure, and temperature at which various minerals found in these rocks would develop. This is the kind of rock that the Canadian Shield is composed of. The conclusion is that mountains once existed there, and have been eroded down to their foundations (what I called roots, and made you misunderstand). That took a while, don't you think? When that tremendous weight was removed, the region uplifted broadly. That would initiate another cycle of erosion, and more, until equilibrium was established. No, my reasoning doesn't go both ways.

Let me suggest that you check out http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/understanding.html for some background on mountain building. Focus on convergent plate boundaries. The theory of plate tectonics was formulated in the early nineteen-sixties, and there are still questions. There always are. The more we learn, the more questions we have. However, it answers many questions about topographic features, seismicity, volcanism, biogeography, paleomagnetism, stratigraphy, and, more recently, what our GPS units indicate about relative motion of continents.

"Yes, probably, some material is recycled from other writers. But the evolutionary theory proponents do this all the time. Continually. Many evolutionary geologists do nothing else than recycle the thoughts of others. And many of those thoughts are already recycled."

John, is that a Christian thing to say? It's good to be inclusive, but this is an unfair generalization. Besides, Christian writers shouldn't model their behavior on the despicable behavior of atheistic evolutionists, should they? (Sarcasm!) Some Christian writers repeat arguments that others have made, often using examples that have been previously discredited (such as the Paluxey man tracks), and including quotes from scientific articles that have been taken, not from the original source, but from other anti-science books or books of mined quotes. (Look up "quote mining" to learn about books by Henry Morris, for example, that misrepresent what scientists have written, and turn unbeliever more strongly against Christianity.) I think this is different than a professional paper citing the research that others have done and the evidence they have obtained with respect to, say, the rocks and fossils of a particular locality. Even a Bible commentary cites other research.

"...the judgement about 'worse science' is often based on whether it fits with the prevailing paradigm or not."

No, what I meant in referring to the quality of the science in some such books, is that the authors simply do not know the subject well enough to discuss it intelligently, and often are not current with their information.

"...the experts should be able to use radiometric dating objectively. But it is not as simply as a chemical test for chlorine, or for acidity, or for aluminum or arsenic in water. Radiometric dating requires a tremendous number of assumptions... What cannot be done objectively is the assumption of what that proportion should have been originally, which is what the whole radiometric dating process relies on."

If you want to dispute something, you really need to be well acquainted with it. Have you read the article I gave you a link to above? "..tremendous number of assumptions"? Do you know that there are ways to check dates? Of course, radiogenic isotopes are, by definition, the result of radioactive decay, so it is reasonable to assume, yes, that the radiogenic atoms in a sample began to accumulate when the mineral they are in crystallized.

I'm spending way too much time on this, and I need to use my time more productively. I don't mind answering an occasional question, but I don't have time for long debates via keyboard, especially when we're bouncing from topic to topic. We can play "What about this?" and "What about that?" for the rest of our lives. I'm trying to write a book on Michigan geology, and I'd like to finish it while I still have my wits about me.

Nice talking with you, John. I'm not sure that anyone else is interested in such long "comments".

"That was quick, Ken. (for someone who thinks everything must happen slowly...) :o) "

That's cute, but you haven't been paying attention. I don't think everything must happen slowly, but there is no avoiding that some things have. You didn't like some examples I gave you, so I'll try a few more.

The opening of the Atlantic Ocean. Most would consider present rates of plate motion, based on GPS, to be a reasonable basis for calculating the time it took. It's interesting that the radiometric dates for ocean crust rock match nicely with the rates of today. They also match with the Palisades sill and other igneous rock in rift basins from Massachusetts to Virginia. Of course, one could say that we don't know Pangea ever existed.

The Hawaiian islands. Radiometric dates of volcanic rocks match well with the rate of plate motion there, and support the theory that there is a mantle plume under Hawaii (island) Pacific Plate that has produced volcanoes on Kauai to Hawaii, and earlier on island that are now reefs to the northwest of Kauai. The stages of erosion of the islands indicate that their age increases northward, from 0 to 60+ millionyears.

India. Paleomagnetic measurements of the rocks of India indicate that it has moved northward across a wide range of latitudes. The radiometric dates correspond well with current plate motion rates.

"How would you measure or determine the rate of subsidence in the past?"

It would be rather difficult without the use of radiometric dating which you don't accept (even though other data, such as the plate motion examples above, indicate that it is reliable). However, we could consider rock mechanics and present rates of rock deformation. The thickness of rock that accumulated in the Michigan Basin during the part of the Paleozoic in which the Basin was actively subsiding, would require an astonishing rate of subsidence to occur in the length of time that you will allow, causing a huge release of energy.

"My response is that both the unflooded and the flooded situations are normal."

Some of your responses make me empathize with Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole. If I told you that throwing a match into a puddle of gasoline on the ground under our atmosphere will always cause an explosion, you would say that maybe things weren't always the way they are now. Thank God for not changing the laws of nature that He established while humans have been taking notes, anyway!

"What is fact is that metamorphic rock is there. What is reasoning is that metamorphic rock is caused by high pressure and heat and therefore must have occurred deep underground at a slow pace. However, lack of evidence is not proof. Lack of sedimentary rock, lack of surface silt and clay, or lack of mountain foundations is not proof that it once was there."

This is another example of the strange world in which you live. Laboratory experiments have been done on metamorphic processes. 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. I don't really care how fast mountains erode away. I have no reason to want it to be slow, but that's the way it is. Rushing streams and powerful glaciers move down mountains and erode the rock, but it still takes a long time. As I mentioned, the removal of a load of rock leads to isostatic uplift, although not to the original elevation - think of removing most of the part of log floating above water, and how much it would rise as a result, followed by more erosion. How much time will you allow for the Andes or the Himalaya to erode down to a plain?

Lack of sedimentary rock? Sometimes we do find sedimentary rock on mountains, and formation of metamorphic rocks and huge igneous rock bodies does not occur at the surface, so what would you propose was on top of a region where such rocks are found today, if not sedimentary rock?

Lack of mountain foundations? Metamorphic rocks on a regional scale and large igneous bodies (batholiths) are mountain foundations, and they prove that mountains were once there - unless you want to say that they were created and didn't form.

It's simple forensic science. If the victim is found with a hole in his head, gunpowder residue around the hole, and a bullet is in his brain, we conclude that he was shot, even if there is no gun present. If there is residue on his hand, and the gun is in his hand, we may even conclude that he shot himself, although a killer could have held the victim's hand on the gun when the killer pulled the trigger.

I once went to a gravel pit with a young-Earth friend who wanted to discuss gravel with me. We saw some grooves on a vertical face, and he suggested that a raccoon had tried to climb up, although no raccoon was present. How could he know?

"But you would still need to know the original ratio at that place and time."

And we do. 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.

All questions in this response are rhetorical. I have to move on. If you would like to ask a specific question, use the link at www.wheaton.edu/acg.

 

I'm very sorry about that, Rob. I'm new at this, but I thought the idea was to discuss things here, rather than in email. Furthermore, I wasn't aware that email addresses of correspondents were available. However, when I received my email notification of this comment from you, it had options for opting out of comments at several different levels.

This is taking way too much of my time, and I'm trying leave, but I keep getting drawn back in. It must be some kind of curse!

John, I wasn't insulting you. We operate in two different reality systems, and now things are getting touchy. We both benefit from the application of the geologic principles that you disagree with, so God gives gifts to us both, even though we disagree on how He operates. Enjoy the Earth resources that He guides the geologists to find for us to use.

I'm going to opt out of email alerts to comments here, so if you don't get replies, it's not that I'm ignoring you, it's that I don't know that you posted.

Blessings,

Ken

I based my comment on two surveys. One, taken a decade or so ago, showed that a large percentage of scientists are not atheists or even deists. Unfortunately, it was cited in a book that I don't have here at the cottage. I'll try to remember to check it on the 22nd or 23rd when I have access to the book.

The other survey was done a couple of years ago on Christian scientists. You can find it on the website of the American Scientific Affiliation at http://www.asa3online.org/Voices/2010/07/16/asa-origins-survey-with-correction/. You can also go to www.asa3.org, and search for "origins survey".

I should confess that I was a little careless in my statement that a majority or high percentage of Christian scientists believe something. It was a high percentage of Christian scientists participating in a survey, but that survey was conducted by the what I am sure is the largest organization of Christian scientists (which takes no position on origins, unlike some organizations that require members to take a particular position).

I hope this helps.

Ken

I'm not sure that the cryptic but friendly "Ken, aka 'nobody', postscript applied to me, but I'll add that I don't believe there are any coincidences. Providence is in operation all the time, but we just notice it more sometimes.

Ken

John,

You’ve posted two replies to my comments, so you’re way ahead of me. In an exchange like this, the last person to post is perceived as winning the argument, so I’ll have to get to work and keep responding. Another problem is that someone can post something that needs a response, but it would take a book, or at least a chapter, to rebut it. This happens with letters to the editor, where I’ve been unable to get an adequate response published because of space issues. Perhaps there is a bit more space here, although I’ve wasted a bunch with this paragraph, and you’ve raised several issues, when it would be better to address one at a time.

Early attempts to estimate the age of Earth (various researchers, 1800, time for deposition of “total sedimentary record” based on average present rates; Kelvin, 1897, cooling from a theoretical molten condition; Joly, 1899, increase in salinity of sea from freshwater to present salinity) did not allow for factors that we have since learned about. While such measurements cannot give us the age of Earth, similar strategies can give us information about the amount of time involved in the formation of parts of the geologic record. We can get a good estimate of how long it took for a large body of magma to crystallize in a mountain belt or for a coral reef in a limestone quarry to grow or for tectonic plates to diverge, based on measurements we take today. Unless you choose to believe that God created the world with a lot of apparent history in the rock record, of events that never happened, or that the “laws of nature” (i.e., the way God usually operates) were suspended in past times, so processes occurred much more rapidly than today, then you have to accept that Earth is very old.

You talk about what could happen and what geologists can’t do, and I prefer to talk about what does happen and what geologists can do. Perhaps we should take each of your concerns, one at time, and examine them.

Since you’ve talked mostly about sediment, let’s just take note of a few things. Sediment that is made of solid particles (clay, silt, sand, pebbles, cobbles, and boulders, in increasing size), has to have a source (region that yields particle of that composition), an agent of transportation, and a depositional environment. The rocks that form from these particles can indicate certain things about the source (such as the kind of rock), the direction the sediment was transported, the agent of transportation (stream, wind, glacier, etc.), and if it was deposited in a sand dune, lake, sea coast, etc. Sediment that is made of material deposited from solution (salt, gypsum, some limestones, etc.) might have come from the other side of the globe, so they tell us little more than the depositional environment, although studies of modern, similar environments can tell us about rates of deposition, revealing something about the time involved. For example, one researcher estimates that the Silurian salt beds in the center of the Michigan Basin are 2000 feet thick, with one single bed about 500 feet thick. It would be easy to calculate how much sea water would have to evaporate to yield that much salt (assuming present salinity), and then do calculations on how long that might take with various temperatures and with intermittent influxes of fresh water.

Perhaps I’m telling you things you already know. I looked in vain at your profile to try to get to know you better.

If you want to talk about paleosols (buried soils), etc., let’s do it one topic at a time. My tired old brain gets overwhelmed, otherwise.

Ken