Rocks on the ground and rocks in their heads - Uniformitarianism
As explained carefully and thoroughly in the last post, Uniformitarianism is a completely discredited idea in part because the standard geological column is a myth. Here is an example to help you understand the difference between claims of the Darwinists about the record of the rocks and reality:
Illustrations and excerpts from The Geologic Column: Does It Exist? interspersed in black print and blue cutlines. All references and the complete article are found here.
The Analogy of the Coin Jar.
Suppose you have a jar full of coins. Let's say that it is a small jar with only about two hundred coins. Two hundred coins of US currency, mostly pennies and nickels and dimes but also with a few quarters, a handful of half-dollars and one old silver dollar. Would you tell someone that you have a jar of silver dollars? Of course not! You would say that you had a jar full of coins. It would not be unusual if you were a person who likes to pay cash in this society of plastic money that you would begin coming home with a pocket full of coins and it would not take long to fill a small jar full of them. If you have randomly been putting the coins from your change obtained when purchasing groceries and gasoline and so on, that you would have a wide variety of coinage in the jar.
A Darwinist uniformitarian geological position would be as follows: The Darwinist fishes around and feels a silver dollar in the jar. He presents the silver dollar to everyone to view and proclaims that he took it from a coin jar. Since he has a silver dollar and shows you a silver dollar, when he tells you that the jar is full of silver dollars you would tend to believe him. After all, he shows you the silver dollar and you understand that it is a coin. It makes a certain sense...as long as you don't go look at the actual jar! You see, the so-called standard geological column is found in only about 0.5 % of the observed world (we have not cut up the world into slices to see everything under us, naturally) and even then the places where it is exhibited have variances in the thickness of the layers so that you will struggle to find even one clean representation of the column as presented in textbooks anywhere in the real world.
So let's not believe the Darwinist myth. Let us go to the coin jar and see what it actually contains...
So let's not believe the Darwinist myth. Let us go to the coin jar and see what it actually contains...
"Sometimes the motives of creationist researchers are challenged in an attempt to defend the concept of the geologic column. Consider, for instance, Glenn Morton’s tale of how I ‘set out to prove that the geologic column did not exist’, and then was forced to admit that it did.[8] This fantasy has been picked up and repeated by other anti-creationists on the Internet without first checking what I actually wrote. The fact of the matter is, I in no sense tried to prove that the geologic column did not exist. The truth is that I already knew it didn’t! Nor was I in any way surprised to find that there are some places where lithologies attributed to all ten geologic periods can be found. I had known that long before. So had other informed creationists,[9] as pointed out earlier. In fact, I said so plainly on the first page of my article.[10]
So, why did I do the work? As I said on the first page of the article, the aim was to measure the degree of incompleteness of the geologic column. That is why I set up the maps, tables, and graphs to show the percentages of the earth’s surface that have various combinations of the ten Phanerozoic systems in place. I thus had considered the sedimentary Phanerozoic systems not only as single, unrelated entities, but also in terms of stratigraphically consecutive combinations.
There are other ways in which Glenn Morton’s criticism of my work is without foundation. Morton[11] has led his readers to believe that I had only mentioned Poland and Bolivia, and that, furthermore, I was claiming that those are the only locations on earth with the ten geologic systems in place. Actually, I specifically mentioned other potential places with the ‘complete’ column (e. g., Cuba, Indonesia, and the Himalayas).[12] Morton is saying nothing new at his website when he cites additional locations where the ‘complete’ column is found and shows them on a visually-attractive world map. Note that most if not all of the locations that Morton mentions can be found on Map 15 of my article.[13 These locations appear as white spots on Map 15, and include such places as northwest Russia, Siberia, the Caspian-Sea region, parts of China, the Williston Basin in the western USA, Bulgaria, Chile, Tunisia, central Mexico, and Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan. It is of course, possible that some smaller locations with ten superposed geologic systems have been lost in the level of resolution afforded by the Alexander Ronov et al. maps used in my study.
But where does Morton get his information? He cites as his source the work of the Robertson Group, a London-based oil-consulting company. I have been unable to secure a copy of this work, as it is not listed in either WorldCat or GEOREF. Thus I cannot comment on the accuracy of this source of information, nor discern whether or not its portrayal of sedimentary basins is overly schematic. Evidently, Morton is citing a proprietary source not subject to public scrutiny. But let us, for the sake of argument, grant the complete validity of what the Robertson Group states, as represented by Morton. Even then the claims are overly generalised. For example, Morton’s does not say how given strata had been ‘dated’. Which ‘geologic ages’ had been identified according to the faunal content of the strata, and which had simply been ‘guesstimated’ according to lithological similarity and/or comparable stratigraphic position with faunally-dated sedimentary formations at adjacent locations? All this is moot, however. As noted earlier, since most of the sediment is missing, Morton’s arguments are completely specious even if the Robertson Group work is thoroughly accurate and not excessively schematic in its depiction of the world’s sedimentary basins.
Finally, the number of different locations on earth with the ‘complete’ column is completely irrelevant. After all, regardless of whether there are 10 or 20 or even 50 locations on earth where all ten geologic systems are superposed, there is no escaping the fact that this still totals less than 1% of the earth’s surface. Even this 1% does not include ocean basins. When the ocean basins are included (none of which have more than a few of the ten geologic systems in place), the global figure falls to less than 0.4%.[14]
If this were not enough, the situation gets worse when we include the faunal basis for separating and correlating the lithologies into ‘geologic periods’. As mentioned earlier, only a small fraction of index fossils are superposed at the same location on Earth. This has been documented in my Diluviological Treatise.[15] Therefore, all things considered, scientific creationists are more than justified in concluding that the standard evolutionary-uniformitarian geologic column is, in fact, essentially non-existent.
Anti-Logic — “1% is More Significant Than 99%”
To rescue the situation, anti-creationists have argued that the 1% of the earth’s surface where the lithologies of all ten geologic periods can be found simultaneously is somehow more significant than the remaining 99% where they are not superposed. Consider the contortions of facts and logic this entails. Morton makes an enormous leap when he claims the 1% means the geologic column exists.[16] Of course, as noted earlier, this misrepresents Morris and Parker, myself, and other creationists. And, again, it completely ignores the fact that only 16/100 to 16/200 of the column are actually present in any one spot — not to mention the palaeontological factors which, as discussed above, make the geologic column even more artificial than appears at first.Glenn Morton also made the extravagant claim that the finding of ten superposed Phanerozoic systems is ‘an important prediction’. Actually, as everyone who has studied the development of the geologic column knows, the geologic systems were constructed on an ad hoc, deductive basis. Nowhere in the 19th century geologic literature, at least to my knowledge, is there a hint of a claim that an eventual find of ten superposed systems is a necessary phenomenon for validating the (presumed) reality of the geologic-age system. If such a citation from the early geologic writings exists, I would gladly be corrected. Until and unless such a citation can be produced however, I think that we best treat this claim with the proverbial grain of salt.
Let us consider this claim in a different way. Assume for a moment that it had been established that there was no geographic location on earth where ten geologic systems were found superposed in a quasi-complete column. Would the failure of this supposed ‘prediction’ have caused uniformitarians to reject the validity of their geologic column? Not likely! The claim that finding ten superposed geologic systems is ‘an important prediction’ is clearly false.
Some anti-creationists have calculated the extreme improbability of ten such systems ever being deposited by chance during the Flood. Such a calculation is patently absurd, because creationist scientists do not believe that the order of fossils in the stratigraphic record (and hence the ten-named geologic periods) is entirely (or even primarily) the result of chance processes during the Universal Deluge. And, of course, any mixing of organisms during the Flood has already been accounted for by evolutionists by such things as long-ranging fossils (which are thereby not used as index fossils), and ‘reworking’ rationalizations, etc."
The Rocks in Their Heads.
Darwinists have been programmed to ignore logic and play fast and loose with truth. That is why Darwinists ignore the long line of "Lazarus" organisms that have been popping up in places like Indonesia and Japan and Papua New Guinea and Africa and South America and Australia and New Zealand even though such organisms falsify their supposed line of evolutionary changes over long times. That is why the Haeckel Embryo Chart was presented to students for many generations when knowingly a fake. It is why the horse evolution chart was presented as reality to students when it was largely a fanciful Darwinist just-so story. That is also why someone would trumpet their belief in the standard geological column chart despite of all the evidence to the contrary. Facts frankly do not seem to bother the guys at talk origins, for instance. The only rocks that line up perfectly into the standard geological chart are in their heads!
Remember, anyone who professes to place Darwin above Christ and blind chance in the place of God has not based their lives on Biblical principles so, in the end, why should they be expected to speak truth? If you believe that life was a random accident then we are not here with a purpose and we are not responsible to a higher authority. Therefore the laws of God are not important to them and they will gladly lie to advance their cause. Christians must do their best to know truth and follow it. Those who try to cram Darwin into the Bible will eventually and logically toss Christ out and all real meaning to Christianity along with Him. Small compromises have led formerly great church organizations to become meaninglessly incomprehensible in doctrine. Try to figure out, for instance, what the Church of Christ really stands for...how far have the Methodists fallen? All organizations who have willingly joined the National Council of Churches have left Jesus Christ outside at the curb. You really think Jesus came to bring "eco-justice" to the world? Fallen man has two choices, be at war with God or receive His peace through the gracious gift of the sacrifice of His Son for all the sins of mankind. Jesus came to "seek and to save that which was lost." Not to overthrow Rome. Not to make people rich. Not to ensure that men have short hair and women wear dresses. Not to judge anyone, for everyone without Christ is judged to be lost already. In fact, He did not come to teach YEC science. Jesus preached from the Old Testament by memory and He stressed the credibility of the Genesis account of human history. So His mission was not to make scientific claims but by upholding the inerrancy of scripture He was upholding those relatively few scientific claims that scripture makes. The Bible is a book intended to be God's dialogue with mankind. Most of it deals with history and morality and not science but I will stand by every scientific claim the Bible makes. Thus far that has worked out quite well for me and the majority of Christians past.
Thus, having used the geologic column to determine the geographic regions of non-deposition, the uniformitarians then complete the circle of reasoning by arguing that non-deposition accredits the 99%-incomplete geologic column. Clearly they are simply presupposing the great antiquity of the earth because that is the answer they want. An analogous line of reasoning holds for the presumed removal, by erosion, of previously-deposited strata. Let us now more closely examine how the claims of ‘missing’ rock do in fact beg the question. As Watson points out:
‘Is it circular to think of a process that would remove some rock, and then to use the absence of the rocks to argue that the process was in operation in the past? No, not if the argument is coupled with further evidence that the rocks were in fact once there.’[21]In most locations on earth, there is no independent evidence for non-deposition and/or erosion of presumably once-existing strata. Usually, erosional removal is simply assumed for a given geographic region because rocks assigned to one geologic period (or more) are regionally absent.
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Figure 3. (After Steven A. Austin, Ed., Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe, ICR, Santee, CA, p. 43, 1994). Four types of field evidences for periods of erosion and nondeposition:
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Beyond this, with the exception of angular unconformities, there is little or no solid independent evidence for an erosional removal of once-deposited sedimentary systems. Thus, following the statements by Watson above, most of the ‘missing’ ages, which are the rule for the earth, are in fact based upon circular reasoning."
Majoring in Minor Points.
What will typically happen in conversations with Darwinists is that they will change the subject or try to major in minor points that cannot be of consequence if the major points are understood. Therefore it is commonplace for commenters to try to take the blog back to a different subject or make a completely irrelevant point in order to get the reader's mind off of the subject.
For instance, let's say that I am asserting that an object is an automobile and Darwinists claim it is a house. It would be true that the Darwinist could tap on the top of the car and claim it to be a roof, they could open the driver's side door and then suggest that a house has both a roof and a door. But then while they are going into great detail about how having a roof and a door proves that a 1998 Ford Contour is a house, I point out that automobiles also have doors and a roof but also an engine, drive train, fuel tank, exhaust system and so on and so forth. They want to talk about the door. Eventually they will reveal their coup de grace! The object has carpeting, just as a house tends to be carpeted. Eureka! The Ford Contour MUST be a house!
So as soon as I begin to give evidence that all automakers provide both a carpet and an undercoating that insulates under the carpeting in their vehicles, the Darwinist will try to change the subject and ask a question or make an assertion that is totally unrelated to automobiles versus houses.This, therefore is why Darwinists try to take the discussion back to information when we are discussing genetics and take the discussion back to fossils when we are discussing the law of biogenesis. It is important to them to present their major talking points and then run away from the subject before we go into much depth. When they did try to hang in there during the discussion about information, they finally realized they were beaten and did two things - complain about my definition of information, which was the standard definition used by dictionaries all throughout the English-speaking world, and assert that I was required to quantify information, which I had proven logically was not material and therefore could not be quantified. Royal Truman had addressed this issue in answering Richard Dawkin's assertions on the subject and then the rebuttals well before commenters brought up Genetic Algorithms and I brought Dr. Werner Gitt into the discussion. A couple of reviews on our discussions.
As I asserted recently, studying the subject of rapid tectonic plate subduction gives us some insight into the remarkably catastrophic nature of the Noahic Flood. It wasn't just water falling down from the skies. It was remarkably cataclysmic.
Another point of view that is presented by Walt Brown suggests that the movement of plate tectonics was a result of underlying water forces, calling his theory the Hydroplate Theory.
While Darwinists continue to try to hold together the broken pieces of their uniformitarian point of view, real scientists are looking at the evidence that is best supported by historical narratives and on the ground fact. From the time back fifty years ago that a hydrologist named Dr. Henry Morris looked at the sedimentary rocks and collaborated with Dr. John Whitcomb to write a book called "The Genesis Flood" an ever-growing number of scientists and educators have been studying the face of the Earth and the fossil records and the living organisms now found on Earth along with the Bible record and other historical data, artifacts, drawings and also the Solar System and the Universe in an attempt to "think God's thoughts after him" and do real science, taking the place of the Secular Humanist religious viewpoint of Darwinists and give the world a chance to hear something other than Big Brother cloaked as "science" falsely so-called.
Someone suggested that I had a "denier" assigned to this blog by talk origins or the NCSE or some other such organization and it made me laugh to think about it. I immediately thought of The Screwtape Letters...if there is some kind of Darwinist "assigned" to me it will do no good. I have already been a Darwinist and I have been an Atheist/Agnostic/it'syourthingdowhatyouwannado. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Modern science is going to eventually throw Darwin away and it is going to be a painful and embarrassing process for many. But Newton would not have been angry that Einstein found new information that made Newton's laws into very good approximations. Both Newton and Einstein would have been interested in Quantum Mechanics were they young men just coming to science today. Pasteur would have been overjoyed to discover electron microscopes. Mendel would have been delighted to learn of the structure of DNA. Eventually science will acknowledge that life and information are supernatural in nature and that God did indeed create all things and move forward from there. A few complete ideologues like Ian Plimer will be left behind to form Darwinist Crackpots Anonymous while the rest of the world moves on and spends time working on cures for cancer rather than looking for aliens and ways to fix DNA structural devolution instead of trying to prove evolution.