Mr. Oard,

Could you explain what deep sea cores are, and how they are used to attempt to corroborate the results of other dating methods like ice cores?

Justin,  Thank you for your excellent question.  I worked on oceanographic research vessels for 4-5 months from which deep sea cores were recovered, and did my graduate work at a lab with one of the largest collections of deep sea cores - Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. A Christian brother who also studied geochemistry as I did worked on deep sea cores comparing results to ice cores.  In addition, for over two decades, the geoscience community has used a ship to collect cores from the top of sediment (the ocean bottom) down to oceanic crust of basalt, so there is an enormous body of sediment with lots of data and observations.  So I can share some of that with you if you wish.  With joy in Jesus,  Ken Wolgemuth

Justin, Specifically answering your question, deep sea cores are samples of sediment recovered below the mud line (at the sea bed) that are 3-4 inches in diameter and from a few feet to 10s or 100s of feet long.  One type of collection are piston corers that were used on the ships I was on.  Another method is with the Ocean Drilling Program where a drilling ship can recover core from the mud line through all the sediment to ocean crust - igneous basalt rock below.  A good website is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Sea_Drilling_Program for the drilling program and it has lots of links.

Here is a diagram of the piston corer:

Some more later on attempt to correlate deep sea cores to ice cores.

Justin,

Here is the ice core data from Greenland.  The age is from counting annual ice layers from summer/winter differences.  I sat with a Christian geologist who has spent months on the Greenland ice sheet, and he said it was possible to count layers visually back to about 50,000 years.  The curve is an indicator of cold temperation and warm, showing the end of the last ice age.  The warmup was about 11,500 years ago.

Justin, This is radiocarbon from a deep sea core collected in the Red Sea.  The warm/cold also represents the end of the last glacial period and the warmup to today interglacial climate.  The radiocarbon ages are, 3200; 8300; 15,100; 17,200; and 19,900 years. So the glacial warmup was between 15,000 and 8300 C-14 years. This work was reported by my advisor, so having worked in that lab for 6 years, I can affirm for integrity in reporting the lab measurements.  I hope these answer your questions.  Feel free to send an email if you don't understand these very abbreviated explanations.  Ken  email;  wolgemuth2@aol.com

Mr. Oard, thanks for coming on board here in "Ask the Expert."

Impact craters abound around the earth (dozens? scores? hundreds?). That they are visible indicates that they are late flood events, and perhaps some are even post flood, in the hundreds or so years of on-going residual effects of the Flood. Human population was still quite small during these impact events.

How much does the phenomenon of cosmic impacts factor into the Ice Age, additional stratification, post-Flood local inundations (Black Sea, other coastal cities now under water), local post-flood fossil formation? Could creationists give more attention to this an important causation for many post-flood events?

What articles and books treat this matter? It seems to me to be strongly supported by biblical evidence in abundance as an apocalyptic sort of event that might also have been the norm for the days of Noah (from age 600 to 930).

Hello..

What evidence or criteria do secular scientists use to determine dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago? 

Thanks!

Todd B.

What is meant by "the" canopy theory. Are there models in which some sort of canopy might be possible? Whitcomb still insists that it IS the product of sound hermeneutics. If a canopy be insisted upon as THE ultimate source of the waters of the flood, then such a volume of water as a canopy would not be feasible, but if there was only some amount of water above the atmospheric heavens relative to the earth, would this be an impossibility?

Certainly the "waters above" as referring merely to clouds would not be impossible. But as Joshua asks, I wonder too, is there some form of "canopy" that IS possible?

Do suscribe to the plate Techonics model that Dr. Baumgardner did? It showed how the rapid plate movments occured duing the flood.

Hello,

What is the best response to the often asked question, "Why don´t we see rabbits in the geological column where we find dinosaurs?  I ´ve heard that we often find fossils out of order but is there indeed a overall order to what we see in the geological column? In how many places can we find the geological column? These questions have probably been asked and answered before but this is my first time on here.

I spend a lot of time debating evolution on youtube. Are any of you other  members currently online debaters?

Mr. Oard, I have heard that the large sizes of some fossilized invertebrates and dinosaurs would be impossible with today's oxygen levels, so that there must have been more oxygen in the atmosphere when these animals were alive (I don't recall how much more; it could have been 15%?).  It makes sense to me that more free oxygen could have been included in the perfect creation, and that this could help animals (and people) gorw bigger and live longer.  However, I have heard people say (creationists and evolutionists) that much higher oxygen levels would lead to rampant wildfires and such things.  How much higher than present do you think oxygen levels could safely be?

But if everything were damper, more moisture, and green, and maybe fewer lightning strikes, wildfires would have been inhibited. Haven't the studies of ancient atmosphere showed by Amber Bubbles that the Oxygen levels were indeed higher - in what "era?" Carboniferous?

Todd Boatright asked about evidence that the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.  The leading hypothesis is an asteroid impact into the Yucutan Peninsula (Chicxulub Crater) that was so huge it threw dust and ash into the air that greatly impacted climate. There is evidence offshore Florida and in Europe.  Some scientists also promote the hypothesis of enormous volcanic rock flows in western India impacted climate and contributed to the exinction of the dinosaurs. These huge volcanic flows are called the Deccan Traps.  Volcanic rock can sometimes be dated by the potassium-argon method if the radioactive timer is set to zero.  This step has been done with samples from the Deccan traps, and some results are in the figure below.  The dating results range between 62 and 68 million years.

Ken W.

Dear Ken Wolgemuth:

By the graphs stated below and research done on ice cores and warmup etc.  It looks as though the ice age occurred before 10,000BC? 

With respect to Dinosaurs, while there is much speculation about them going extinct, it does seem there is  written evidence and other manmade inferences including the bible that Dinosaurs did indeed live on into man's written history? We have Alexander the Great, Sumerian wall designs, swords with dinosaurs drawn on them, potter and textiles with dinosaurs,wall paintings, and Medieval writings and drawings and many other evidences including of course living fossils of dinosaurs and animals that appear to have been from that same era that are alive today?m It seems many or some of the species of the era did indeed live on into mans written history.

Lou,  You are correct about the last ice age as you observed the graph, glacial ice about 2 miles thick was south into Illinois, Wisconsin, etc. and melted off with with most dramatic warming 11,500 years ago.  This is observed in multiple ice cores in Greenland, Antarctica, Mt. Sajama in Bolivia, and in deep sea sediments.  About species and families, indeed, some species do last over long geologic time.  One I am aware of is the gingko tree.  I am not a specialist in paleontology, but am not aware of a reptile species in the dinosaur families that have lived up to the last 10,000 years.  If they did, their bones should be found with the American mastadon and the wooly mammoth.  Blessings, Ken

Hello Mr Oard, I enjoyed your book about mammoths and the Ice Age. Are you familiar with the Grey Fossil site in Northeast TN?   

Dear Ken, my references of dinosaurs into mans written history, the Pterodactyl as stated by Alexander the great attacking his men and they shot it down with arrows... There are swords form Europe that have brontosaurus stamped on the blade from early dark ages, there are pictures of dinosaurs on rock paintings, and there are descriptions of dinosaur species written in newspapers from Medieval times.  Also the Coelacanth , Tuatara (Australian lizard), Horseshoe crab, and many lizards and insects found encased in amber..... There is a plethora of evidence in this arena....Also have read a few articles on the internet, don't know if they are scholarly that infere a mix of dinosaur bones with mastodons and others, but these "finds" are often not published or not looked for....I think there are evidences, especially if one can find a mans foot print along side some therapod....:00 

Here is a quote from the "Darwin Papers":

Over the past few years good evidence that dinosaurs lived until comparatively recent geologic times has cropped up in at least two parts of the globe. Bones that were discovered in Alaska (1985) in association with mammoth bones had been thought to have been elephant bones because of evolutionary time scales, but have proven to be dinosaur bones. Some of these bones were subjected to carbon 14 testing, and the dinosaur bones which were supposedly many millions of years old and thus shouldn't have given any carbon 14 readings at all actually yielded dates of a mere 25,000 years old! ­[16]

The time scales that are thrown around to bolster the idea that the dinosaurs lived millions of years ago are merely conjecture, much like the situation that we saw with the coelacanth.­[17]

Comment to Justin Mooney and Ken Wolgemuth

Ken described deep-sea cores for me, but from a uniformitarian, old ages interpretation. Deep-sea cores is a huge subject with much observational data. I took a brief look at them 25 to 30 years ago in studying the Milankovitch theory of ice ages, and I think Larry Vardiman is the only other creationists to look at deep-sea cores. So, this is an area that needs much research by creationists and I plan to work on it in a few years after I finish with the subject of geomorphology, Lord willing.

With that said, creationists do not accept the long ages. the RATE project gave us some of the reasons why, but much mroe work needs to be done on dating methods, especially individual dating methods. Explaining the observational data of deep sea cores will be a challenge, but we have the unique post-flood ice age to work with. In this ice age (see my books on the topic), the ocean water right after the Flood starts off very warm from top to bottom and pole to pole. Such a thermal state of the ocean will result in strong vertical overturning of the ocean, which would add nutrients to the surface layer and cause huge blooms of plankton and much greater sedimentation. Changes in some of the variables with depth down cores sould be related to short-operiod climate cycles during the ice age.

Comment to Jim Brenneman

You asked about impacts, a subject I am actively researching at the moment. The subject of impacts still needs to be worked out amont creationists. The first question to ask is how many have struck the earth in biblical earth history and when did they occur. Based on the craters of the moon (reinforced by other solid bodies of the solar system), I calculated a minimum of 36,000 impacts causing craters 30 km in diameter (see Journal of Creation, 2009, 23(3), pp. 61-69). I lean that a large part of this bombardment was during the Flood. Danny Faulkner in Journal of Creation, 1999, believes many of them struck during Day 4 as part of the formation of the solar system bodies. So, that issue needs resolution, if possible. I lean that most struck early in the Flood and tailed off through the mid and late Flood with a few afterwards, such as Meteor Crater Arizona. Becausse of crater saturation, great Flood tectonics, erosion, and deposition that the evidence for impacting has mostly been destroyed. I also place the early imapcting during the "Precambrian." I think some of the best evidence of modified impact craters are structureal basins and sedimentary basins on interior continental areas. They are called cratonic basin and there are about 600 of them with about 200 being over 300 km in diameter. They are difficult to explain by uniformitarianism. I am finishing a paper on this subject, possibly late today for the Journal of Creation. animmpact model for the Floodwith a focus on cratonic basins is also the subject of a paper that I just sumbmitted to the 2013 International Conference on Creationism.

Comments to Todde Boatwright

You asked what evidence do secular scientists use to show dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. I think a good part of this precise sounding date is due to circular reasoning, which I believe is rampant but difficult to prove in secular "historical science." But with dinosaurs, I have found lots of evidence, which has been publishined in many dinosaur papers in the Journal of Creation and from the recent book just published called Dinosaur Challenges and Mysteries: How the Genesis Flood Makes Sense of Dinosaur Evidence--Including Tracks, Nests, Eggs and Scavenged Bonebeds (obtained from Creation Research Society books).

Specifically, I have discovered dinosaur bones, tracks and eggs found in early Cenozoic strata "redated" as "Cretaceous" or claimed to be "reworked" from older strata. At this time, there is a formation in the San Juan Basin, New Mexxico, where dinosaur bones from the very early Cenozoic have not yet, as far as I know, been forced back to older than 65 million years in the uniformitarian timescale. In one 1998 article on dinosaurs I showed that at least some iridium anomalies thought to be 65 million years old were forced to that date to match the "time" of dinosaur extinction.

Another indication of the circular reasoning in the date of extinction of 65 million years ago is a quote from Jepsen (American Scientist, 1964, 52(2), p. 236): "Geologists themselves must take much of the responsibility for the dissemination of this concept [that the dinosaurs went extinct quickly] because they have often defined the end of the Age of Reptiles or Mesozoic Era as the exact time that dinosaurs beame extinct. Ergo, reasoning in a tight circle, dinosaurs became extinct at the end of Mesozoic time."

Comment to Joshua FitzPatrick

You asked about the vapor canopy--a subject in my field of atmospheric science. I would say that it is not physically impossible for the vapor canopy to have existed, but it is not looking good for it, mainly one with a high amount of precipitable water (the depth of liquid water after the vapor condenses and rains out). The reason was shown by Dr. Larry Vardiman in that it would cause the earth's surface to be too hot and the condensation of this water vapor would had too much latent heat to the atmosphere during the Flood. A vapor canopy with a modest amount of precipitable water could work, say on order of a few feet. More research needs to be done.

Comment to Jim Brenneman

To add to what I said to Joshua, the vapor canopy is a layer of water vapor created to float above the atmosphere. It would greatly help to cause a warm pre-Flood climate of which there is plenty of evidence in warm climate fossils, especially at mid and high latitudes (some likely transported during the Flood, however). The canopy cannot be the ultipmate source of the 40 days of rain, but there are other mechanisms, such as meteorite or comet imapcts hitting the pre-flood ocean and blasting up many cubic miles of water.

It is not impossible that those verses in Genesis on a possible canopy could be refering to clouds.

Comment to Dr. T. James Tofflemire

You asked whether I believe in John Baumgardner's catastrohic plate tectonics model. In short, I believe it 20% and disbelieve it 80% (using weather probablity jargon). It has evidence, such as the fit of the continents across the Atlantic and the sloping zone of earthquakes claimed to be subduction zones. Then there are lots of problems with both plate tectonics and catastrophic plate tectonics, which I have spelled out in two long articles in the book, Plate Tectonics: A Different View (Reed, editor, 2000, Creation Research Society Books). Clearly, much more research is required in an area with many unknowns.

Comment to Phil Owen

You asked about the order in the fossil record. The order of the fossils in the rock and their meaning is a very difficult question without enough information. I have published about 5 or 6 perspective articles in the Journal of Creation on the extension of the time ranges of fossils. Newer information keeps expanding their ranges in the geologial column either older or younger. The point is that we do not yet know the order of fossils in the rocks because of a lack of data. I believe in a general order in the geological column with lots of exceptions (see my article in The Geological column: Persectives within Diluvial Geology, Reed and Oard (editors), 2006, Creation Research Society Books).

Specifically why dinosaurs and rabbits are not found together is probably due to different environments in which they lived before the Flood, in other words ecological zonation, but there are other variables involved in Flood burial.

In regard to the geological column, there are claims of all the 10 periods of the geological column being in some small spots, such as the Williston Basin of eastern Montana and western North Dakota. However, if you look at a time chart, you will find much missing time, and besides these are just names. the important point is what fossils found at thest locations. I think there is a lot of fudging here. We still need answers to questionslike this, which is why I have been a researcher in earth science for over 35 years.

Michael, I have written much on the biblical evidence of impacts in connection with the Flood, which I would gladly make available to you. AND, have you considered Peter Macleod's paper on the possibility of a NEAR MISS of a planetoid? I think I have a copy or a link somewhere.

Macleod suggest that it would have set the crust to oscillating, contributing to the slosh of the waters of the deep over the earth. What if such a planetoid sped past the earth at very high velocity, accompanied by a swarm of smaller objects. The larger body resists the gravity, takes a trip around the sun and visits the earth again, late in the flood year, and sends more fragments to bombard the earth LATE in the flood year, during the weeks of abatement of the waters.

There is no evidence of this? That is what I hear. But the Bible does have the evidence. When the Son of Man comes it will be as it was in the days of Noah - of course this refers to the habits of society and culture (marrying and giving in marriage), but it may also refer to cosmic events accompanying divine judgement. In Revelation there are impacts (though one "star" falling from heaven refers to an angel (Rev. 9:1-2 - clearly a "him," a personal being), the others appear to be physical objects (Rev. 6:13-14; 8:7-12).

Cosmic impacts are mentioned in Rev. 6:13-14, as specifically causing land movements, it would seem. The Uplift of mountains (Ps 104) could have been caused simply by divine decree, but then God also could have destroyed all flesh by decree rather than by water, but He didn't; He used water. For the uplift of the mountains, God could have set it in motion by mere decree, or by the near miss of a large planetoid, and by major impacts causing the crust to buckle.

Dr. Oard > Specifically why dinosaurs and rabbits are not found together is probably due to different environments in which they lived before the Flood, in other words ecological zonation, but there are other variables involved in Flood burial

Wouldn´t the evolutionist´s response be though  that even so we find dinosaurs in the Jurassic layer where as we don´t find rabbits in that layer? Isn´t the Jurassic layer independent of ecological zones? Don´t layers comprise all of the ecological zones?

I said Jurassic layer when I probably should have said Jurassic period

Mr. Oard,

You referred to variables that change with depth down the cores. Are these variables the thing that is used to correlate the deep sea cores with the ice cores? If so, are there any climate cycles or events (perhaps associated with the ice age) that could explain correlation between the two?

• I´d appreciate some insight into a couple of questions just asked me

• Has anyone ascended up to heaven? Elijah went up to heaven: "And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." (2 Kings 2:11) "No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the son of man." (John 3:13). Can one pray in public? (Matthew 6:5-6) Jesus condemned public prayer.

Dear Phil--I am not a scholar--but look at the Word in context, and while Jesus condemned public prayer, look at what he was talking about and inferring "in that instance", if you pray in public to make your self look like something, more than likely you would also fall in the same category as the man who wants the best place in the church as opposed to the sinner who fell down on his knees and asked God for help. So to pray at a school function or other such thing, to pray at an open arena for a concert or in a courtroom, to me says these are dignifying events that lift up Christ.  God looks upon the heart of the man and his motivations. Even a man condemned to die along side Christ on the cross.  The other thing you answered should be clear by the word....not just one place in the word, but the whole counsel of God's word on context.

Thanks both of you

Thanks both of you

Dr.Oard--

There are many fossilized animals, that exist today. What ever the age of fossils... the fossil is a good representation of diversity at that time. Many thousands of amber encased insects some lizards, frogs and other geckos etc. exist in collections and museums, and these animals were existent at the time of the amber encased them or they got caught in it .  Many of these amber encased animals are modern. Actually thousand s of them, where do you place fossils with respect to original creation?  Many here believe very strongly that they(fossils) are the result of the flood.  Is there any sense in which these fossils could have been existent before the flood and part of God's Original creation which would have been fully robust, deserts, mountains, grasslands and the like to accomodate Gods creative genius and eco-niches for all the species he created....I am a young earth proponent, but still am looking at the subjects surrounding the flood.  I am very interested on what the fossil record means in context to creation, some people pass over this with little intrigue.

Comment to David Thomas Posey

I just had a conversation with one or more creationist biologists about this not long ago. They think the idea that some large organsims needed more oxygen requires more research and that what many of us have read is speculative. If oygen levels were higher, yes we would have trouble with forest fires and with oxidization of tissues, but what levels of increased oxygen would be harmful,I do not know. Other than that, I know nothing about this areas.

Comments to Jim Brenneman

Yes, there were one or more papers in the literature that indicated amber showed evidence of higher ancient atmospheric pressure, but those results were soon shot down because they discovered that amber is too porous to trap ancient atmospheres.

Comment to Ken Wolgemuth

There are a number of problems with what you said about evidence of dinosaurs dying out 65 million years ago, assuing the geological column for sake of argument. First, the Yukutan impact is too small. Second, many climate sensitive animals such as crocodiles and turtles did not go extinct. There is moreto the thin iridium layers supposedly dated to 65 Million years old, such as there are Ir layers at other dates and the Ir layer sometimes is quite thick to have been deposited in an instance, such as the classic area of Gubbio, Italy. K-Ar dating system is the worse one and i do not trust any results from it.

Comment to Lou Hamby

Your date of before 10,000 B.C. is the secular end of the ice age from old earther/uniformitarian geologist Ken Wolgemuth. Such scientists believe what the secular establishment claims, usually without deep analysis of this so-called wisdom of the world (1 Cor 1-3). We use different initial conditions, such as a very warm ocean and enhanced volcanic aerosols trapped in the stratosphere (being reinforced with time with copious post-Flood volcanism) to explain a rapid ice age of about 700 years long (see frozen in time: The woolly mammoths, the ice age and the biblical key to their secrets). We use the biblical dating for the Flood to date the beginning of the ice age, around 5,000 years ago or 3,000 BC.

comment on Lou Hamby's second question

Yes, there is plenty of evidence of post-Flood dinosaurs, so technically they did not go extinct at the Flood and maybe are not extinct, if they exist in the Congo (I need some solid evidence for this). The best evidence that dinosaurs lived after the Flood is a bas relief on an 800 year old Cambodian temple, recently discovered in the jungle, that looks very close to a stegasaur.

Comment to Steven Posey

No, I am not familiar with the Grey Fossil Site, nern TN

What do you think the possibilities are of some "ice age megafauna" being buried during the flood?  I understood from your book "Frozen in Time" that the Siberian mammoths died post-flood; are there any that you know of that could be fossils from the flood?

Comments to Jim Brenneman on impacts

I would like to see your papers on imapcts.Peter Macleod's paper on a near miss of a planetoid sound Velikovskian, which I have problems with. A near miss of a planetoid would cause a wave of water to slosh around the earth, but would it cover all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens by Day 150? the where did the object go? The idea seems too exotic.

When I advocate impacts, I am looking at a solid initial condition for the Flood based on observed craters on the moon and all solid bodies of the solar system that have not been subsequently modified. Even large asteroids have imapct craters. The earth could not have been missed. When did it happen? It must have been during the Flood, or else just a few of these large impacts before the flood would have wiped out the biosphere and they certainly did not occur after the Flood or we would not be here. And even if Faulkner is correct that some of these impacts occurred on Day 4 creation of planets and moons, he also has many for the Flood, such as the very large ones represented by the basalt filled imapct basins on the Near side of the moon.

I lean toward the view that some of the descriptions in the book of Revelation refer to impacts. I also lean that the differential vertical tectonics that raised the mountains and continents and subsided the valleys and ocean basins (Psalm 104:8) was caused by the Earth being variable out of isostatic balance caused by thousands of impacts blasting variable amounts of the crust out of the crater to be deposited elsewhere (this mechanism easily explains the origin of the sediments).

Comment to Phil Owens

Your question would take a book or two to answer and yet we have too many unknowns yet in geology and geophysics to get specific in answwering it. Like I said, the time ranges of animals continues to expand in the fossil record with further fossil finds, so that we really do not know the order of the geological column. For instance, evolutionists are slowly finding sophisticated mammals in the Jurassic, so we do not even know what animals lived during the "Jurassic." And was the Jurassic on one continent buried at the same time as on another continent during the Flood? There is also the element of circular reasoning in all this. Also, like I said before, burial in the Flood was by ecological zones. As far as the rabbit and dinosaurs, they may discover a rabbit like mammal in the Jurassic at the rate they are discovering Mesozoic mammals. I also wonder about how many mammals are ignored in dinosaur country, previously dated as Mesozoic by the discovery of dinosaurs?

As far as your example goes of rabbits and dinosaurs, take the coelecanth or the wollemi pine, living fossils of the Mesozoic. We do not find mammal fossils with them in the fossil recrod because they are not reported in the "Cenozoic," yet. This is similar to your example, and yet they must have lived during the Cenozic becasue they are alive today. Clearly much more research needs to be done and we need to be patient as research on fossil range extentions continues.

Comment to Justin Mooney

Some of the key variables going down a deep-sea core are oscillations in oxygen isotope ratios and carbonate percentages. There are also oxygen and deuterium isotop ratio oscillations down ice cores (see my book, The frozen record: examining the ice core history of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, 2005, still available from ICR but I do not think much longer). These wiggles in ice cores are correlated to deep sea cores (I believe they make the dating fit because there is a lot of fudging room in these dating methods), which are dated by the Milankovitch or astronomical theory of ice ages. Much circular reasoning goes into all these post-Flood climatic data sets. Deep sea cores, the Milankovitch mechanism, post-Flood climate sets, the ice age, and many other post-Flood variables are on my research horizon starting in about a year, Lord willing. Much more work is needed in these areas.

Comment on Phil Owens

I have jsut a quick addition to others comments on public prayer. Didn't Jesus pray publically in front of his disciples at times?

Comment to Lou Hamby

Yes, fossils, especially if they are permineralized, are a good representation of pre-Flood diversity. In regard to amber and insects and other creatures in amber, this makes up one chapter in a book on the log mat model now under review. Amber would ooze in abundance on billions of logs torn up by the initial flood catastrophe and floating on the surface of the Floodwater. Lots of creatures would take refuge on the log mat and small ones would become trapped in amber. The amber either falls overboard or is buried with part of the log mat. The formation of amber seems to be similar to coal, and amber is often found associaated with low-rank coal called lignite.

I am not sure of your question, but I will provide an answer to what I think it means. I believe there was lots of variety built into the Genesis kind at Creation. The kind probably averages about the family level in the modern, flawed classification system. So, the billions of fossils represent diversification of the original kinds during pre-Flood time that were buried during the Flood.

I do not think there were many deserts before the Flood. We find hardly any desert fossils. I am slowly looking at what we can deduce from fossils and the Bible about the pre-Flood world. The pre-Flood biopshere was much richer than today. Coal is the main fossil carbon in the rocks by far, and it is the remains of pre-Flood plants. The amount of coal (I have to check still whether they are referring to total coal or just recoverable coal) is about 10 times the carbon in land plants and trees today, which is the majority by far of the carbon in the biosphere. The pre-Flood biosphere, therefore, was enormous with predominantly warm-climate types and well watered, implying a unique hyrdology. 

Dr.Oard when you say there are not many desert fossils, I am aware of deserts being discovered under strata here in the US?  Also dinosaurs were found in that desert strata as in China too, also I do know that the Gila monster, Leopard lizard, Desert Collard Lizard, Texas Horned Lizards, and many other mammals and small animals are represented in the same desert regions that now exist in fossil remains? These animals interestingly are the same animals pre-flood that God created and the same animals in the same locations as post-flood ultimate dispersion results??  While agreed the diversity was much more wide spread, and many animals had distributions much wider than they are now...these are modern existent diversity I alude to.    

Also it doesn't seem that amber is found in relationship to large mats as you call them, but are found in relationship to forests and trees? Some of it is actually found in rock or strata".  We also have many stories and, records of fossil remains in coal as well as frogs and other animals being trapped in coal.....:0) 

Also I do subscribe to a young earth.... I have a hard time with the diversity of Gods original creation and the theoretical inferences of animal dispersion which matches location exactly the same, so unless God actually replaced the animal diversity off the ARk, I have questions and see anomalies, and while it is good for us to theorize about this, having a firm answer seems to escape me and makes it hard to support some of the ideas about dispersion though I know a lot scientists have got on board with the floating  masses of vegetation. But with in the confines of that theory and my own understanding of animal husbandry and natural history, there are a host of issues involved with animals finding themselves back in the original eco-system that God original placed them in.....including breeding on matts and having matts somehow find the closest coastline to their original distribution, especially recognizing the symbiotic relationship many of our diversity has with plants, insects or others, the balance of nature is incredible  I 'm sure we all agree, non of this could be existant as a result of a non-guided method, which leaves me to look at other possible explanations as to what we actually do observe........Cheers!      

Dr. Oard

Thanks for your response. I will archive your response for future reference. I also came across the following. I don´t know the geological periods very well but it might be related to what you were saying

The Amami Rabbit has remained essentially unchanged since the Miocene Epoch of the Neogene Period, or approximately five million years. It is believed that its ancestors diverged from other leporids, or rabbits and hares, approximately 20 million years ago.
Read more at Suite101: Amami Rabbits, Endangered Species | Suite101.com http://www.suite101.com/content/amami-rabbits-endangered-species-a2...

Hi Mr Oard! It's neat of you to set aside some time to answer our questions. I think this question would be well within your expertise, I hope so anyway, here's the problem: I'm an aspiring Christian Fantasy writer, and I want my fantasy world to resemble earth in some ways (although it really won't in most ways...I don't have hundreds of years to learn enough to make it that earth-like!). I'm wondering if you could tell me a few things about where different terrains would be found, like where you'd expect to find a desert, etc. And also where certain weather patterns would/should be found. I'm also a little confused about where mountains should be found, just from looking at the map I'm making. I hope this question isn't too broad, but I would appreciate any help you can give me, and (if you can think of any) any books that would be helpful.

God bless!

Mr. Oard, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to give insightful answers to all of our questions.  I definitely have plenty of them! I have one of your books, The Frozen Record (which I have not read yet, but it is next on my recreational reading list),.  I am very interested in meteorology, and immensely enjoy volunteering at the local NWS office.  How friendly was the NWS , being a government agency, to your creationist viewpoint? What about the American Meteorological Society? I have just joined, and am rather curious. Something I was recently wondering about the flood is this, did mountains exist before the flood?  I know that it says in Genesis 7:18-20 that the waters covered the highest hills and mountains, but does that mean that 1. things like earthquakes and fault-lines existed prior to the flood, or 2.the mountains that the flood covered were formed during the flood itself, or 3. that God just created the world with mountains already on them?  I thought that not having mountains prior to the flood would help the no rain before the flood factor by basically canceling out geographic lift.  Another thing I was wondering about is how rainbows could have not existed before the flood.  Do you have any insights on these thoughts?  I have been wondering how I can include my great passion for God and creation science into my aspirations in weather.  It almost seems as if being a geologist or astronomer would be more practical to creation science, and I think both of those fields would be interesting, but I am very naturally inclined to love weather.  What are some of the ways that you have managed to be an atmospheric scientist in the every-day world, while at the same time using those same skills in a ministry?  Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all of my questions, and God bless!

Comment to Phil Owens

Thanks for that tidbit. Many animals remain unchanged for tens and hundreds of millions of years. Furthermore, the Genesis kind is not the same as the arbitrary, subjective clasification of species. The creationist research project of bariminology is attempting to find out what constitutes the Genesis kind and many articles have been written in the creationist technical literature on this subject. The upshot of all this is the Genesis kind likely averages at the family level of the bilogical classification system, which means that God programed a fair amount of variety within each kind at the beginning. So, the rabbits and hares likely represent one Genesis kind and no matter what they claim about one changing to the other, they are all rabbits/hares.

comment to Jeremiah Stiles

the word terrain can have a number of meanings, but you essentially are thining in terms of climatology, which is based on the general or average circulation of the atmosphere. A related principle is clouds and precipitation form in air forced upward, while the air dries and warms when forced downward. so, with this in mid, the general circulation causes a lot of upward moving air over midd latitudes, resulting in precipitation. There is a corresponding downward airflow at about 30 degrees latitude, resulting in deserts and semi-arid areas. The tropics are variable due to converging trade winds that cause updrafts and precipitation and the monsoon forced inland. This brings me to the last principle in understanding climatology and that is the effect of higer terrain. Air forced up on the windward side forms clouds and precipitation, while the opposit occurs on the leeward side. that is why the western Olympic Mountains of western Washington receive 100 to 200 inches of rain a year, while Yakima, Washington, in the lee of teh Cascade Mountains only recieves 8 inches. I would find a layman's book on climatology to help you.

As far as where mountains should be found, no body really knows this well. Ollier and Pain, 2000, "The Origin of Mountains" (a semi-technical book) listed 21 reasons that would cause vertical uplift and said they cannot prove any of them. Plate tectonics, in other words plate collision, does not help because many mountains are within the interior of plates, such as the Transantarctic Mountains.

I hope this helps

Comments to Sara

Since the National Weather Service does not get involved in the subject, I really had no problems and it was rarely discussed with co-workers. I would bring it up and other Christian subjects once in a while when appropriate. My co-workers knew what I believed and some were creationists while most were people of the world. Now the American Meteorological Association would believe the "historical sciences," but it is more of a side specialty with few in it such as paleoclimatology or glaciology.

The Bible says that all the high mountains were covered by the Flood, so there likely were "high" mountains before the Flood. Either high mountains means 3,000 feet high or the very highest mountains would be pulverized and eroded during the early flood. I believe that impacts destroy most of the pre-Flood mountains early in the Flood but also caused other mountains to form. With that said,you may be correct about number 2--that the mountains were formed by early Flood tectonics. I believe the pre-Flood world was mostly still affected by the perfect creation and that there were few if any earthquakes or volcanoes. I can't prove this from Scripture, however, so it remains a speculation. Of course, the mountains we have today rose up out of the Floodwater as indicated by Psalm 104:6-9, especially verse 8. The tops of most mountain ranges today have marine fossils as part of the rock, such as crinoid fossils in limestone at the top of Mount Everest.

Yes, having no mountains before the Flood would cancel out uplift caused by mountains on the windward side, but there are other mechanisms to form precipitation. It is controversial whether it rained before the Flood or not.

As far as rainbows before the Flood,I do not know whether God created the refraction effect to cause rainbows or whether rainbows existed in such things as mist and then God made the rainbow show up from rainshafts, or not. It also depends upon whether it rained before the Flood or not.

You can certainly be in the field of weather and work in creation science. I did it for about 25 years. I did a lot of study on my own in geology, glaciology, and geophysics (atmospheric science is actually a field of geophysics). As far as subjects you can work on, there is the whole area of pre-Flood climatology, of which we have a few clues from Scripture and from rocks and fossils. There are still lots of ice age questions, some of which relate to geology, such as the amount of microorganisms on the bottom of the ocean and the wiggles in the variables down deep-sea cores, using computer models to model the ice age or aspects of it, reworking all the paleoclimatological data sets to within biblical earth history, dealing with the Milankovitch or astronomical theory of ice ages, etc. There is definitely enough research projects to fill many persons lifetimes. As far as getting a degree in geology or other historical sciences, that can be dangerous because the propoganda and peer pressure is very strong. And by the way, meteorology pays well if working for the goveernment, but if you have to work rotating shifts,they can be stressful physically. 

Hey Dr. Oard,

There is evidence that the C-14/C-12 production/decay rate has not reached equilibrium:

"The Specific Production Rate (SPR) of C-14 is known to be 18.8 atoms per gram of total carbon per minute. The Specific Decay Rate (SDR) is known to be only 16.1 disintegrations per gram per minute." (Sewell, 1999)

It takes about 30,000 years to reach equilibrium. My question is this, is there any additional evidence, through radiometric evidence in ancient tree rings or otherwise, that indicates the production/decay rate had a greater contrast a few thousand years ago and has steadily been seeking equilibrium the closer to the present we come? I would think that this could be calibrated in living trees that are a couple thousand years old. Tree rings could be counted and their corresponding cores could be compared with radiometric dating.

The reason I ask is that I have a friend who claims this has already been done and it shows that, although the production/decay rate varies due to cosmic rays and fluctuations in our magnetic field, the evidence shows no steady buildup toward equilibrium over a (ahem) 12,000 year period of comparative tree ring calibration.

I was hoping that since your field has everything to do with the atmosphere you may have knowledge of research supporting a steady buildup. Thanks!

C. Sewell, “Carbon-14 and the Age of the Earth,” 1999. www.rae.org/bits23.htm

Comment to Alexander Martin

By the way it isn't Dr. Oard, I just have a masters degree.

I do not think there is any method in tree rings to determine a greater contrast between the production rate of C-14 and its disintegration, or at least I cannot think of one. They do calibrate tree rings with C-14, assuming the tree rings are better dated. So in a plot of tree ring dates, which I don't believe, with C-14, they are off by, I think, about 2 thousand years at 10,000 years in their timescale. I think the tree rings are older. I do not trust either one of these dating methods, so I cannot comment on the difference between the two. Andrew Snelling is suppose to be doing a research project on C-14 to help us all out in these matters.

Yes, the uniformitarians have dodges for the decaying magnetic field with time, which was developed by Barnes and Humphreys, that would affect C-14 production in the upper atmosphere. One of them is changing intensity of the magnetic field and magnetic reversals and excursions. So, they would simply say the magnetic field oscillations affect C-14 production cyclically over hundreds of thousands and millions of years, so the higher production than disintegration today is no big deal. They use as evidence the magnetic intensity of ancient pottery, but of course pottery is dated by uniformitarian methods and cannot be trusted from our point of view.

To me a steady state build up of C-14 since creation makes sense. However another variable to consider is when they do C-14 dating, they use the ratio of C-14 to normal C-12. C-12 has varied greatly in biblical earth hsitory. It likely was around 10 times the amount today before the Flood, dropped to zero during the Flood, and increased rapidly right after the Flood. The nonequilibrium between C-14 production and disintegration plus perturbations in the C-14/C12 ratio is the basis for creationists being able to telescope C-14 dates that are not contaminated to within the biblical time scale. And we are using few assumptions and including the global Flood--the great time cruncher. As I said, Anderw Snelling is suppose to be working on this.

Thank you master Oard! That's good information. One thing caught my ear. You seemed to accept that tree ring dates can be calibrated back to 10,000 years... but doesn't the flood preclude ring matching around 4,500 years ago? Wouldn't the trees from before the flood not have any coresponding rings matching trees after the flood? We should find no intermediaries around that time should we? Could trees uprooted by the flood and floating for around a year survive the drainage of the flood only to find root when the continents reappeared?

Dr Oard...:0)  Did you miss my follow - up below or choose not to comment at all?  Cheers!  

Hello Mr Oard.  Picking up on earlier remarks about plate tectonics - if you're correct that catastrophic plate tectonics probably doesn't work as a theory, does that mean that the pre-Flood layout of land masses was similar to what we have now, i.e. if we could see a pre-Flood world map we would recognise them ?  Or would it have been altered by other forces associated with the uplift of mountains ?

Yes, that is very helpful, I'll definitely be checking out a book on climatology, thank you!

Dear Mr. Oard,

Maybe if man had not sinned the world would have ended after a thousand years, and every body who had not sinned would be glorified. Maybe turtles would stop growing and stop reproducing once the command had been fulfilled to "FILL UP THE EARTH."

If you want more headaches figure out all kinds of things like what would have happened if the first sin or disobedience had occurred FIVE generations from Adam, and by the Way, DID ADAM AND EVE have navels, other than oranges?

Comment to Alexander Martin

If I gave you the impression I accept tree rings dates out to 10,000 years ago, I am sorry that I wasn't more clear. I was giving the uniformitarian belief. I believe the tree ring data can be telescoped to with the time of the Flood, about 4,500 years ago.

Comment to Lou Hamby,

Yes, I missed it. You probably typed when I was working on other questions, since I did not updated it after I was finished.

The desert deposits you are talking about are really water laid. It is a uniformitarian assumption that they were desert deposits because of a few unique characteristcs, which can be explain in the Flood. Three creationists undeer the ICR FAST project have been studying the Coconino Sandstone, a presumed classical wind deposited sand, for about 5 years and they are finding all kinds of evidence for a water environment.It shows that uniformitarian glasses can really be blinders. Some of these "desert" formation have carnivorous dinosaur tracks, which means the sand was briefly exposed early in the Flood to osccillating local sea level. To see how this can happen, check out my latest book, "Dinosaur Challenges and Mysteries..." which you can obtain through the Creation Research Society book store.

Amber is fossilized tree resin from several types of trees, especially the monkey puzzle tree that originally is from the Southern Hemisphere. There are hundreds of amber locations, and amber is often found in low-rank coal called lignite. I believe it is readily shown that amber and its rather rare insects is a product of the log mats floating on top of the Floodwater. The remains of the log mats are the coal seams. I have a whole chapter on insects in amber in my book on the log mat which is under review. I don't know of any animals trapped in coal, which has been heated up to around 150 to 200 deg C.

In regard to post-Flood animal dispersion, you are entering an area with many unknows. So, we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions with meagre data. Besides land bridges, I believe the post-Flood log mats have potential to explain many of the exotic animal dispersions after the Flood. This is also one chapter in my logmat book. Logs/vegetation mats would be floating around the oceans for several hundred years after the Flood. There could be unique ecosystems on these log mats, if some of them are like a few today. Even the evolutionists have mostly given up on vicariance, the idea that animals arrived to where they live today or in the fossil record by vicariously being carried on plates as the plates moved horizontally. So, evolutionists are now stuck with vegetation mats, which is almost impossible to accomplish so many unique animal dispersions in their paradigm, since the log mats would be small, like some observed floating in the ocean today after storms, sometimes with lizards on them. I think creationists have a gold mine for research here, and my chapter in the logmat book only skims the surface.  

Comment to Colin Newton

I believe that the topography and geography after the Flood is much different that before. The reason is fairly simply since the Flood was a great tectonic and volcanic event, changing the surface tremendously. We have a mile or two average amount of sedimentary rocks on the continents that had to be eroded from somewhere. So, there was huge erosion and deposition during the Flood, further disguising the original layout of the pre-Flood land. During the Recessional Stage of the Flood, the mountains and continents rose up and the valleys and oceans basins sank (Psalm 104:6-9). I know some of the "Cenozoic" upward vertical tectoncis was on the order of 40,000 feet in places, again reinforcing that the topography today likely is much different than before the Flood.

A related question is whether the pre-Flood continents and oceans are generally in the same place today but just modified. This is a much more dificult question since the surface crust is lighter on the continents and heavier in the ocean basins. However, several lines of evidence indicate that the oceans and continents before the Flood switched places after the Flood. One line of evidence is that practically all the sedimentary rock is on the continents with very little in the ocean basins (the continental shelf and slope do not count since these were formed late in the Flood by eroding the continents during runoff). A basic principle of hydrology is that water runs downhill, so in order for sediments to accumulate only on the continents, the continents must have been lower than the ocean basins early in the Flood--the time of practically all the sedimentation (and even more seddiments eroded off the continents during the Recessional Stage of the Flood). Some paleocurrent direction indicators also show flow from current oceans to continents. But what about the light top of the continental crust and the heavy top of the ocean crust? Isostacy, resulting in the elevations of the land and ocean bottom today, depends on other variables besides the top of the crust. It also depends upon the composition and temperature of the lower crust and mantle. 

Comments to Steve Paul Johnson

Yes, reptiles slow way down in growth as they grow older. You asked how big would reptiles grow if Adam had not sinned. I believe that they would be larger today, just from the fact that some of the genes for largeness likely disappeared in the Flood. We have a lot of "giantism" in the fossil record. And of course, if they never died, they would have grown slowly for 6000 years, I suppose, but of course, there probably would have been an age where they were growing sl slowly that they essentially stopped growing.

I really don't know whether reptile growth today is a result of the fall. For all practical purposes, repitles grow so slow when they are old that they can be considered to have "stopped growing." The trouble with unanswerable questions is that they will give you a headache! 

Dr. Oard, I thank you for the answer, while I personally have many questions about what your intimating about the mats, I do thank you for an answer. While you see the floating mats as a "gold mine", certainly if it is you do need a lot of work, just the over all breeding of species on these mats as you say for hundreds of years in an ocean of storms and other weather phenomenon, lack of fresh water requirements for some species, even with occasional rain, also the competition between species, especially small animals that require insect fair, with no explanation about insect populations off the ARK.  No problem that we have different ideas about what the bible is saying in reference to observable nature, but I do lean at this moment to the idea that Gods original creation is more than likely the diversity we see now....

Lastly I may have missed your answering anymore questions..  BUt do you or anyone else here have an idea when the American Indian and South American populations would have populated the Americas after the flood?  I noticed that the lead butterfly ties used in walls in Egypt and other ancient old world city building is also employed in the new world as well.  There "may" be a tie between West African language and that of the Mayans....

Joshua

Obviously Post-flood, but when meaning what time or how long after the flood do you think these populations came into existence? I have no doubt that men sailed or canoed across large expanses of waters and many areas were or had to be started by these voyagers, but I am curious as to what the time factor was? 

Comment to Lou Hamby

There is a lot of research that can be done on the log mat, but the log mat model provides answers or potential answers to a lot of big challenges. The ones that I am fleshing out are: polystrate trees; the so-called Yellowstone fossils forests; diverse paleoofloral sites with many mysteries; insects in amber; coal; well-preserved insects; and post-Flood animal, insect, and plant dispersions. The log mat is a very reasonable idea since during the Flood, billions of logs with vegetation would be floating, locally preserving insects, microorganisms, and plants during the Flood. Life would have been rough I am sure and the majority of the organisms likely died. It is still an area of research. My book is just a non-technical foundation.

Just getting into post-Flood dispersion has shown me that creationists now have the potential answers, while uniformitarians thought they had the answer in the vicariance hypothesis of transport on moving plates, but they now are stuck with floating mats without the Flood. Some of the issues are all the unique animals on Madagascar, the southwest Pacific islands, flightless birds on a lot of islands, marsupials on Australia, and the unique ice age and present animals in Central and South America. For Australia, a land bridge probably is part of the answer.

And speaking of land bridges, it is known that the Berring land bridge would have been exposed at least late in the ice age becasue of lowered sea level, but I would lean that the land bridge existed right after the Flood to allow all the animals to migrate from the "mountains of Ararat" through northeast Asia, Alaska, down the ice-free coridor along the windy (foehn winds) east slopes of the Rockies, and to the lower 48 states. From the latter nothing would stop some animals from continuing into Central and South America. Winters would be much warmer in Siberia early in the ice age (see Frozen in time...).

I think all the Native Americans arrived relatively soon after the Babel dispersion. Like I said above, it would have been not too difficult, climate-wise, to migrate through Siberia to Alaska, and into the lower 48 states. there likely were temperate forests in Siberia and Alaska early and mid way through the ice age. The people could have traveled down the coast of Alaska and British Columbia by boat but archeologists are finding little evidence for this. Besises, it would not be a good place to take a boat during the ice age. It is known from DNA tests that the closest people group for all the Native Americas are people who live in northeast Asia (not the ten lost tribes of Israel by the way as the Mormons believe). 

Time factor of dispersion: After the Flood. The Flood was about 2500 BC - so the migrations have occured since then. Not 10,000 years ago. There was no "10,000 years ago." Maybe some people migrated before Babel, but the majority of the dispersion of mankind occurred after the confusion of the tongues. For several hundred years after the Flood there were abundant features of topography that enabled these migrations. In addition, clearly the Ark Builders and their descendents would have been quite capable of building seaworthy vessels and navigating the new oceans on the planet.

The fact that the cultures Farthest from Babel have the most accurate Flood Traditions seems to stand as an evidence that the lore was carried people who traveled as far as they could quite rapidly and set up their cultures at these distant points when they could go no farther (e.g. Patagonia).

When Europeans came to North and South America there were abundant cultures well established with high levels of technology. In fact some cultures were on the decline, while others had already come and gone (Anastazi, the people of the Kennewick Man).

Do we accept the idea of Scandinavian migrations prior to Columbus, in which these people reached inland areas, including present day Wisconsin? How about the Irish in Hide Boats around 700 AD? How about Africans reaching Central America from the East, across the Atlantic more than 1000 years prior to Columbus?

The fact remains that all these people reached the Americas AFTER the biblical flood since God's stated purpose in the Flood had been to destroy all mankind that He had created (Gen. 6:7). The ONLY survivors of the Flood according to the straight skinny of Scripture were quite simply those "eight souls" on the Ark and only those eight persons. So all the peoples of the world reached their present lands of habitation in the centuries and millennia SINCE that global flood.

All of the answers from this approach to the Word of God will never be acceptable to those place the "Facts of Reality," the timetables of uniformitarian science, supposed proof of the "fossil record," and DNA or whatever, over and above the simple straightforward sense of Scripture. The Flood was Global and the habitations and islands of the Gentiles were populated AFTER the Flood, exactly as described in the passages about that dispersion (Gen. 10 - 11).

Jim while it is celar that we don't agree one some of this, I suppose you were trying to make a point?

First of all I don't subscribe to uniformitarian science--- second, I already made comments about the connection between Africa and South America, it is clear that boat's were used by many cultures after the flood, and before?? I asked when the participants when that took place?  I did not infer any timeline???  So what are you talking about?????

Your comment about fossils is misleading if your speaking in reference to me, as it has already been established by several people here that fossils probably existed pre-flood as well as post-flood, but what ever their age pre or post, they reflect the fauna and flora of the time.  If you think that is false or a lie, then your more than welcome to believe what you want, but don't put words in my responses back, nor insinuate that what I am saying is unbiblical.... My question as to when the Americas were populated have nothing to do with any specific time outside 6,000 years. Your theoretical inferences are just that with respect to some of these issues.  I can only say that the observable animal kingdom is evidence and not theory, your rejection and limited understanding of animal husbandry and symbiotic relationships, Gods eco-systems, and some of the other issues surrounding being fruitful and multiplying and what that expectation in the culture would have been--plain evidence is not only truth but fact......:0)  

Lou, You asked for a timeline, when did the migrants arrive in the Americas. Didn't that answer the question?

The last paragraph is still true. The answers of those who follow the plain sense of the Bible will never be acceptable to those who follow the timetables of uniformitarian science. And you are uniformitarian. You do not recognize the interruption of the status quo by the universal flood. You have repeatedly declared that the animal kingdom, and all of the Eco-niches are the same now as they were in the original creation. That is uniformitarianism.

Didn't you ask:

but I am curious as to what the time factor was?

So I am trying to tell you what the time factor is. Why is that a problem? Is that somehow offensive to you? The time factor is after the destruction of the whole human race in the Flood. Simple. But you don't believe in the Flood so you can't accept this time factor.

And here you go again requiring us to re-interpret the Bible to line up with what you consider "facts" and "not theories." For you natural "evidence" controls your approach to Scripture. And all of your supposed facts are not facts at all because most of the time they don't line up with the inerrant revelation of reality in the Word. You are not malicious about this, just mixed up because of the pre-eminence you give to "plain evidence, truth, and fact." Scripture must come first.

Your notions about "husbandry," "Ech-niches" (hehehe), Symbiotic relationships, God's eco-systems, are quite laughable, and then you have the arrogance to assert that I "reject animal husbandry, and that my understanding of it is limited, as if yours is not. You are incredible. And you keep coming up with new ways to be incredible as you bring up the same old worn out arguments and pseudo science you did a year ago or so. Nothing new, But at least you recognize, grudgingly and with reservations the 6000 years clearly stated in Scripture - OUR "interpretation."

SO, apparently I missed the whole point of your question about the timetable of Migration to the Americas.

Moreover most creationists here believe that very, very few of the fossils in our strata were formed pre-Flood. I mean of the trillions of fossils only a very minute percentage were formed pre-flood. Of those discovered thus far and recovered maybe a dozen or so might be pre-flood. Now post-flood fossils would indeed be a much large quantity, but still a very small percentage of the trillions in the deep strata. Upper layer fossils, mammoths, and man are nearly all POST-Flood, as I am sure Mr. Oard would agree.

Why is not okay for me to note your agreement about the connection between Africa and the Americas? But now you are saying that you do not raise the question because in your view you find the repopulation of the earth and the migration of animals and man to the whole world impossible in the time frame allowed by the Bible? SO, then you have turned away from this former position of yours, your oft-employed basis for rejecting the record of the Global Flood?

You really seem to get a kick out of alleging that I "reject:"

the observable animal kingdom is evidence and not theory, your rejection and limited understanding of animal husbandry and symbiotic relationships, Gods eco-systems, and some of the other issues surrounding being fruitful and multiplying and what that expectation in the culture would have been--plain evidence is not only truth but fact

And I am sorry that I come across as INSINUATING that you are unbiblical in regards to the Flood and other matters of biblical interpretation. I don't mean to insinuate it, rather I hope that I come across as stating it plainly and direct. You ARE unbiblical in regards to the Flood. Simple. You say it was local, and the Bible and the strata and astronomy and the fossils and anthropology say it was global. You are not only unbiblical about the Flood, you reject the evidence of the fossil record. With regard to the plain statements we are not, as you are wont to say, "more than welcome to believe what you want." God does not afford us that luxury. We must believe according to what was written and not go beyond what was written. As you said of your "supposed science," we say of Scripture, but slightly inverted: plain evidence is not only truth but fact - straightforward Scripture is not only fact it is inerrant truth. The Flood was Global.

JIm apparently I can't post but a small portion now on this forum for some reason....

MR oard, about what % of all fossils do you place as flood deposited fossils?

thanks

Sorry,just to add onto last,what % fossils are ice age fossils and do you know how many ice age fossils total there are?

thanks

To add to Jeb Smith's question, I wonder about the percentages of fossils from three time frames:

1. Those FORMED pre-flood, We would think there are a very few PRE-Flood fossils, since the very material used to form fossils would have been ground up materials of the earth's land surface, including any pre-flood rock containing a rare fossil.
2. Those FORMED during the Flood year - very many Flood-generated fossils,
3. Those FORMED post-fllood. And we should expect a considerable number of fossils formed since the flood, due to residual flood events, like glacial run-off, the breaking of natural "dams" of ice or mud, to cause massive local inundations of blossoming animal populations in verdant areas below these water reservoirs.

For my part this question would relate to

1. all fossils in existence buried in the earth's crust on the one hand,
2. and also the break down of fossils that are currently being studied in labs and museums - those that are no longer in situ, but which have been removed from the ground.

I would think a big number of those under study are indeed post-Flood (anthropological specimens as well as stone age fauna). But on the whole are we correct in assuming that the vast majority of all the fossils in the earth were produced by the Flood (that is representing animals that were living at the time of the onset of the Flood, and some also which might have been born early in the Flood year)?

Of course we know that any "percentage" would be put forward wholly for illustrative purposes and would never be considered as a technically precise figure.

Hi Guys,

This is a question posed to me less than an hour ago. Any insight is always greatly appreciated.

 Yes... your side says speciation is possible but not large taxonomic changes.

Simple question: How come entire branches within levels of the biological taxonomy are missing during various time periods and only appear later? Are you asserting special creation for new classes of animals, young earth creationism, or what?

Also is anyone familiar with this book he mentions?

 Read the book "Your Inner Fish." It contains the research summaries to show who's wrong.

I just came across this online regarding the book. Discussion on it could prove interesting.

"I got to chapter 2 and thought, dang, I wish all those creationists would read this and understand it.  Then I thought, oh wait, I have a blog.

I have little hope that creationists will read this and understand, but I do want to take this opportunity to go over the things we know, understand, and don’t know about the idea of common descent, which is what this book is really about.  I’m sure that creationists will be able to handwave away all of the details that will be presented individually, but let’s see what happens when they are all presented simultaneously[

Phil I may not understand your question by the way its stated?

I don't believe in a "special creation" but that the diversity we see today, the dinosaurs and all were the direct result of Gods original creative acts.  We know dinosaurs and others lived on into mans written history. Also I am not so sure about the implied variations between different species and types.  Really.  I think that evolution has sold us a bill of goods, and I question some of these things based on an unreliable dating method.  I just read an article that the new discovery of an ancient city in Turkey is now 11,000 years old and is very advanced, the carvings, the 16 ton rocks that were draged or somehow moved from distances etc.  But whats interesting what is the basis for this 11,000 year old city?  THe carbon 14 test that currently exists is only good up to 2,500 years or 3,000 at the out most? If you don't believe that go to You Tube and look at the Australian team that explains the Carbon 14 teest and what is done in order to get a result (the protocol and process) and their own comments about its accuracy.... So do they make this 1,000 year od age on the basis of the layers of sediment?  See the same type of buildings with non-metal spear points exist in Meso-American culture and they are 1500 BC to 700 AD?   

So I am not sure I understand your question, but I believe that the living diversity we see to day is connected to Gods original creation, and so I currently do not accept some of the explanations for the WW Flood, only because I am looking for more answers about the subject---but I totally believe the ARK did happen and I just believe it was a local event and not WW.  There are some very excellent discussions and information.  Since I am the odd man out here you might solicit Jims response on this, as I don't fit totally into the forums full acceptance of some of the YEC teachings.  BUt I must challenge you that if there is a GOd and we have GOds Word and we have a chronology and we have a GOD that could create the earth in 1 day if he wanted too because he is omnipotent and omniscient, then it is my feeling and contention the World is around 6,000 years old, which while it falls in line with accepted YEC teaching, I am not a full fledged YEC. I hope that touched on what you might be asking me??  If not could you please be more specific because you question is a little ambiguous for me? 

Hello Mr. Oard,

You made a statement that I have questions about.

You stated: "In regard to post-Flood animal dispersion, you are entering an area with many unknows."

I agree with that completly unless you use the Bible for source information.

You continued: "So, we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions with meagre data."

I agree that we should not jump to conclusions.  But if the Bible makes a statement we should take it at face value.  I would guess you would get from that, that I am a littealist which I am.

You continued: "Besides land bridges, I believe the post-Flood log mats have potential to explain many of the exotic animal dispersions after the Flood."

What is the source information for "land bridges"? 

What do you base your belief on post-Flood log mats explaining animal dispersions after the Flood?

I assume you are stating that the animals climbed up on these log mats and survived the Flood.

If that is the case did God lie when it is recorded in:

"Genesis 7:21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died."

If animals could have survived on the log mats, why couldn't humans have also survived on the log mats as well?

I have many more questions but these will do for starters.

If these questions have already been answered I am sorry for asking again. But my cataracts limit my reading.

Aaron Lewis

Pastor Centeral Missionary Baptist Church Arcadia Fl.

Phil Said:

I just came across this online regarding the book. Discussion on it could prove interesting.

I go to chapter 2 and thought, dang, I wish all those creationists would read this and understand it.  

So all "us" creationists...what is Phil that you don't understand or that we need to know?  I was once an ardent evolutionist, and believed in long periods of time....I also excepted the tree of life evolutionary and taxonomic expressions for our animal and plant fauna.  This stuff is patently false, while I totally believe in the scientific method, which was created by Christian Scientists, the evolutionary outcomes and expectations that Darwin teaches is constantly being reenforced in papers written on scientific studies.  There is no room in the evolutionary doctrine for openness or acceptance or even consideration of an intelligent designer.

But Phil...it is a fact that the information that actually makes up DNA for all living things is outside of nature--what I mean by that is that nature did not produce this information.  It is like software running in the background and "is" Phil the determiner of all created syngent beings whether fauna or flora???  SO if you can go far enough in your thinking to reject the statement I have just made, then I don't think you understand the significance of an Intelligent designer that is all powerful and able to create all things and there is no evidence Phil, I repeat no evidence that a non-guided methd was responsible for any life.  Period!!!!!!! 

Aaron Lewis said:

If animals could have survived on the log mats, why couldn't humans have also survived on the log mats as well?

Aaron I think you misunderstood Mr.Oard...  

He said if I understood him, that when the animals came off the Ark, there probably was large floating mats of post-flood debris and logs like we see after Tsunami, and he implied that these log matts may have been a way some of the animals dispersing to locations through out the post flood world.....

Hi Lou,

Lou said:

"Aaron I think you misunderstood Mr.Oard...  "

That is very possible and is the reason I asked the question.

But the animals did not come off the ark until the water had receeded off the dry land mass which would have meant the animals had to walk to the water and then swim out in the water to get on the log mats if your thoughts are correct.

Or am I missing something?

Besides there was a lot of animals that there was only one male and one female.

Aaron,

So here we go again HIJACKING the "Ask the Expert Section."

These area should be reserved for questions to Michael Oard and HIS answers.

If anyone wants to expand on a topic here, please open a new thread of discussion in the regular forum. It is easy enough to do.

Aaron Lewis said:

"I agree that we should not jump to conclusions.  But if the Bible makes a statement we should take it at face value.  I would guess you would get from that, that I am a literalist which I am."

Aaron as a Christian which is not a literalist, when speaking of Genesis the word in hebrew is "erets" with respect to the land, there are many ways this word is used in Genesis, I am only one person with a different view of that word, so when one takes that word literal one does get a literal WW flood because it is used as not land but world.  So I am saying that one word can change the whole scenario.  BUt we both know that the word of God should also be read in context with the whole counsel of the Word and most everyone on this forum would read it that way.

I am just mentioning this only because if you remember the early Catholic church took the earth to be flat by reading the bible literally, and while I am no scholar, I only say we all need to examine what is taking place in scripture....I think Mr. Orad as a Christian sees the flood the same way as you? He did not say anything outside of a literal interpretation of the Genesis account.

Comment to Jeb Smith

I place practically all the fossil during the Flood, since that was the ideal environment to form fossils rapidly. There are also what are called fossils (depending upon defintion) during the Ice Age, such as woolly mammoths, etc. These would be post-Flood and are mainly unfossilized bones. There is commonly a difference between Flood fossils and the Ice Age "fossils" in that the Flood fossils are almost always permineralized, while those after the Flood are almost all unpermineralized. Permineralization is the process of adding chemicals to the bone, shell, and wood cells from the outside. The main chemical added is silica, which is also a cement for sediments into sedimentary rocks.

Comment to Jeb Smith

I did not see your followup question ont he percent of fossils. I would say that Ice Age "fossils" would number int he millions, but are less than .01% of all fossils.

Comment to Jim Brenneman

I would say your answer to Jeb Smith is the same as mine below.

O.K. Jim--I must not of got what you said, but I do now...  I wasn't hijacking anything.  Obviously Mr.Oard is more than able to answer these questions.  I didn't get I was raining on his stuff.  I am very sorry. O.k. so I just don't get how the forums work, and yes Jim you make every bit of sense --- I apologize to Mr. Oard for putting my fat mouth out there!!!! 

please note that I used the word "WE" with respect to hijacking, and to a degree I am doing it still!

All of these discussions are worthwhile and wonderful, and of course our own opinions are worthwhile too. For instance the discussion of log mats would be wonderful as a new topic in the regular forum. And in the regular forum we have the option to edit our posts for 15 minutes, but not here. We can even discuss the answers from the current expert in the regular forums.

Comment to Phil Owens

Speciation is possible because a species is rarely defined or experimentally verified. A species is supposed to be an interbreeding unit, but tests are rarely run. There are lots of hybrids, such as the Zorse, the cross between a horse and a Zebra that show the man made defintion of species is too narrow. so, when a new variety comes along and is claimed to a new species due to speciation, it is because they did not know where the true interbreeding population was. The bible uses Kind, which probably averages at the family level in the biological classificaiton system.

Many organisms are missing in what uniformitarians think are time epochs, but to us the rocks and fossils represent a burrial sequence (except during the erosion of the Recessive Stage of the Flood)

Comment to Phil Owens

You asked about the book "Your Inner Fish". I have read the book and it supposedly documents the find of the transitional fossil, Tiktaalik, between fish and amphibian in northern Canada. It is outdated now because tetrapod tracks were found in Poland that were dated 8 million years earlier than the suppose transtion. Check out the Journal of Creation for an article on it. Claim transitions come and go.

comment to Lou Hambey

So, you believe in a local flood? I suppose you have heard all those arguments from the historical account in Scripture of such things as why have an Ark, why bring two of each kind of animal on the Ark if it is a local Flood, boats do not end up in mountains but go toward the ocean in a local Flood, why were the animals told to repopulate the earth if only local, the rainbow promise would make no sense in a local Flood, etc.

But I want to leave before you the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:37-39: "For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so willl the coming of the Son of Man be." You undoubtedly have heard of this verse in which Jesus believes the Ark was a real boat and Noah a real person. You probably believe that where Jesus says that the Flood took them "all" away, he was just referring to all those in a region from a local to regional flood, right? However, many people overlook that last phrase and the context: "so will be the coming of the Son of Man." Jesus was telling of his second coming, and in Rev 1:7 it says that at his second coming, all eyes will see Him. In other words, it will be a global coming back. Well then, He would not us a local flood as an analogy for a global coming, would He? He would use a global event for a global second coming. Therefore, the "all" refers to all the people of the earth, whcih conservative population increase statisics easily show there there would billions of people on earth before the Flood.

Comments to Aaron Lewis

I can see that I did not make myself clear. I use the Bible and the many unknows refers to the scientific issues of how did the animals get where we find them and as fossils during the Ice Age. Are data of how they got to these locales is meagre--all we ahve is their rpesent and Ice Age, post-Flood fossil distribution. I too believe in taking Scriputre at face value and it is first, over what is called "science," which are interpretations of scientific data.

The source information for land bridges is shallow oceanic areas today. If you lower sea level 60 meters, which would be the case at the peak of the Ice Age, the Bering Strraight would be dry and the wide continental shelves of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean would be dry land. There are also tectonic effects, as seen by raised shorlines in areas. So, it is reasonable that sometime during the Ice Age, many animals and man rounded the Bering Land Bridge into the United States, Central America, and South America.

I base my belief of post-Flood log mats on the fact that tens of billions, if not trillions of logs, plus a huge amount of vegetation, would be torn up during the Flood (the pre-Flood biosphere was much richer than today based ont he amount of coal). This vegetable material is lighter than water and will float. Much of this material would be buried durign the Flood of course, forming coal seams and paoloflora sites, but some of it likely would have survived. Some logs, such as Douglas fir, can float for about 200 years. So, I think it is highly likely we had large log mats floating around in the oceans after the Flood. So as terrestrial animals that breathed air and lived on land spread out from the "mountains of Ararat", some would reach the oceans quickly. Logs mats can be quite dense. I have heard of some in Louisana lakes that are so dense, trees are growing on them and people can walk on them. So, I believe it is reasonable that some of these log mats would jam up against the shore, for instance at low tide, and unsuspecting animals would walk or rnun onto them, thinking they were land. Then with a change in tides, the log mat can move off of the shore and float to many places of the world.

I am not saying animals climbed up on these log mats and survived the Flood because scritpure clearly says that all air breathing, land animals perished (which of course would not happened in a local flood either). There likely were insects and microorganisms and viable plant seeds still on the log mats after the Flood. Insects do not breath air, but absorb oxygen through their skins, so likely did not need to be on the Ark, but could survive on the log mats.

I hope this clarifies the issue

Comment to Lou Hanby

I think the reason you misinterpreted one of my posts has to do with the lack of the end quotations. I probably should have emphasized that it wasn´t me making that statement but rather and evolutionist.

I do appreciate your response though. The posts were opened to anyone´s input but of course I had also hoped for the input of Dr. Oard. I may be wrong but I don´t think Dr. Oard would object to open discussions- That way he can see everyone´s take on a topic and maybe clear up any misunderstandings. I am new also to this forum and I didn´t notice that I could open up a new forum. But would there be an expert in each forum to share his or her expertise?

Hi Mr. Oard,

Thanks for the reply.

In your reply you said:

" I too believe in taking Scriputre at face value and it is first, over what is called "science," which are interpretations of scientific data."

Glad to see that the Scripture is supreme and the final answer.

This brings up the question concerning:

"Genesis 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good."

You seem to present the continents as being where they are today pre-Flood.

If all the water was in one place how many places was the dry land which God called Earth in?

You stated: "The source information for land bridges is shallow oceanic areas today."

So that is taken from scientific information.

The statement you made here raises some questions in my mind.

"I base my belief of post-Flood log mats on the fact that tens of billions, if not trillions of logs, plus a huge amount of vegetation, would be torn up during the Flood (the pre-Flood biosphere was much richer than today based ont he amount of coal)."

What would cause all these logs to be ripped from the Earth and then go floating around forming log mats?

It takes 2 tons of fossils to make 1 gallon of gas. There is 42 gallons of gas in a barrel of oil, which would require 84 tons of fossils to produce each barrel of oil.  There are trillions of gallons of oil in the Earth which would require trillions upon trillions of tons of fossils (animals and plant life) be buried in the Earth.  If all this vegetation was floating around where did all the vegetation and life forms that produced the oil, natural gas, and coal come from?

You said:

"I believe it is reasonable that some of these log mats would jam up against the shore, for instance at low tide, and unsuspecting animals would walk or rnun onto them, thinking they were land. Then with a change in tides, the log mat can move off of the shore and float to many places of the world."

It may be reasonable, but if the log mats were as thick as you say, how could they get close to shore?

Aaron,

Phil,

I don't know if anybody else mentioned this in their responses to you, but I wanted to point out that when the evolutionist said that branches were missing during certain time-periods, he is arguing from the position that the fossil layers represent time periods rather than just different areas from the same time period, the flood. 

Any time people begin talking about the "facts" of the "fossil record," they are always referencing a science-fiction fantasy and not reality. The primary fact of the "fossil record" is that there is a massive world-wide graveyard of trillions of fossils and the remains of trillions of dead plants and animals in other forms as well, all over the world from pole to pole, from the highest mountains to the lowest valleys, from surface level deposits down to the most deeply buried strata  - and this vast global graveyard is a silent and relentless testimony to a global destruction that happened in a very brief period of time, suddenly.

Comment to Aaron Lewis

I reall lean against the idea that the pre-Flood continents are the same as the post-flood continents. I favor the idea that the continents and oceans reversed during the Flood based on scientific information.

In Genesis 1:9,10, we really do not know how the continents were configured. It could be one continent or it could be many. All it sasy is that the seas [plural] were gathered into once place, i.e. interconnected.

Trees and vegetaion would be ripped up due to tectonics, meteorite or comet impacts, huge tsunamis, and erosion by a large volume of water.

As far as coal, oil, and log mats, you need to consider the carbon butget before and after the Flood. coal comes form plants, but oil can come from a variety of organic matter including plankton, which is assumed to be the major source. Coal represents a vast storage of pre-Flood carbon and is much more than the carbon in oil and natural gas. Moreover, the amount of carbon in coal is about 10 times that of the present biosphere, of which trees represent the largest propotion by far. So, it looks like there was ten times the number of trees on the pre-Flood world than now. Much of those trees were buried by several mechanism during the Flood, but a large proportion would float during the Flood with a lesser proportion after the Flood.

As far as a log mat jamming up against the shore during high tide, it depends upon thethickness of the logmat. There are other ways for a log mat to land on the shore and then be released, such as from storms and ocean currents.

Hi Mr. Oard,

Thanks for the reply.

You said: "I favor the idea that the continents and oceans reversed during the Flood based on scientific information."

But the scientific information has the land mass in one place and breaking apart 250 million years ago, so how are you using that to support a division of the land mass some 4300 years ago?

Genesis 10:25 says: "And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.

1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good."

So the Bible disagrees with you and science, as it says the dry land was divided in the days of Peleg. The same Hebrew word is used in Genesis 10:25 and 1:10 and translated Earth, which meant the dry land in 1:10.

You said: "All it sasy is that the seas [plural] were gathered into once place, i.e. interconnected."

But there are several landlocked bodies of water that could not have been interconnected in any way. Thus the water would not have been gathered to one place.

You said: "Trees and vegetaion would be ripped up due to tectonics, meteorite or comet impacts, huge tsunamis, and erosion by a large volume of water."

What information do you use to support that statement?

You said: "As far as coal, oil, and log mats, you need to consider the carbon butget before and after the Flood. coal comes form plants, but oil can come from a variety of organic matter including plankton, which is assumed to be the major source."

My problem is the volume of materials need to produce the gas that is in the Earth. I misstated the amount of material needed in my last post as I was going with materials we can make into gas, not that which had been made naturally. It takes 84 to 98 tons of fossil life forms to produce 1 gallon of gas. There is 42 gallons of gas in a barrel of oil. That means it takes 3,528 tons of material to make one barrel of oil. There has been a trillion barrels of oil used so far. There is another 2 trillion barrels of oil. Now this represents 30% of the actual amount of oil that had to be produced for us to get the 3 trillion barrels of oil out of the ground. That would require enough material to produce 10 trillion barrels of oil. Using 84 tons per gallon would require 35,280,000,000,000,000 tons of life forms just to produce the oil. Then you would need to add the material to produce the natural gas as well as the coal.

Everyday we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plant matter that grows on land and in the oceans over the course of a whole year.

That means it would take 41,505,882.35294118 years to produce the required amount of material at todays rate of growth to produce the oil in the Earth not counting the natural gas and coal.

With only 1700 years pre-flood the rate of growth would have to have been 24,415 times what it is today. All that material would have to have been buried before it died so it could be turned into oil.

I think that is on the edge of impossibility.

Now I know God can do anything but in Genesis 2:2 God ended His work.

So I will stop for now and worry about the log jam later.

Aaron

Comment to Aaron Lewis

In regard to the splitting of continents...this is controversial within Flood geology. I am one that leans against plate tectonics and catastrophic plate tectonics for a variety of reasons that are well stated in the creationist technical literature.

In regard to Peleg, this is even more controversial. Very few Flood geologists view the splitting of the continents as after the Flood. I believe words need to be read in context and the context of Genesis 10 and 11 is the dividing by people groups, languages, and territories after the Flood. So that is the way I take it. It is the same as the use of the Hebrew word "yom" in Genesis 1.

If a body of water is landlocked it would be a lake and not a sea. Just because God only mentions He created seas does not mean he did not create lakes.

My basis for the ripping up of trees during the Flood is because the Flood was a great erosive event. There is an average of a mile or two of sedimentary rock on the continents, deposited during the Flood. The sedimentary rocks are a result of huge erosion, so it stands to reason the surface biosphere had to be ripped up first in order to erode the rocks below, for there to be so much sedimentary rock.

In regard to the volume of material needed for the gas, I just read a book on the carbon budget, copyright 2010, and it stated that the amount of carbon in oil and gas is much less than that of coal, which is about tens times the amount of trees on the earth today. So, if we had ten times the amount of carbon in the land biosphere before the Flood, which is not unreasonabl when thinking about all the barren areas today. Therefore, there is enough carbon to acount for all fossil fuels with a richer pre-Flood biosphere with ten times the amount of trees and plant material as today, which is your original concern. There seems to be something wrong with your calculations.

Response to Aaron, agreeing, I hope, in principle with Michael:

Even if the passage which says, "In his days was the Earth divided" does not refer to a major tectonic movement of the continents post-flood, it still could have to some sort of noticeable culmination of separation between land areas, the end of land-bridges due to concluding up-lifts and deepening of ocean basins along with increased run-off of water and melting of ice. It need not be forced into meaning a major formation of continents.

Careful consideration of the grammar and vocabulary of the "Peleg" reference does indeed allow that it may refer to the Earth (Ha'Arets), and not People (`Am) or Nations (Goyim). On the other hand to insist that it must refer to a major plate division is unwarranted by the context and by grammar, as well as by geo-physical considerations.

Regarding and honoring the Word of God as our final authority does not preclude our considering and observing phenomena in the natural world as well. It is important however that we never let the latter be the basis for interpreting the former. Any passage of the Bible must stand on its own for its meaning - on the basis of grammar, vocabulary, genre, usage, and the commentary of other Scripture.

Noting the confirmation of the scientific view of natural phenomena is never a threat to reliance upon Scripture.

Hi Mr. Oard,

Thanks for the reply.

You said: "In regard to the splitting of continents...this is controversial within Flood geology. I am one that leans against plate tectonics and catastrophic plate tectonics for a variety of reasons that are well stated in the creationist technical literature."

Scientific plate tectonics hypothesis has much controversy in it also.

But there is no doubt that the text of Genesis 10:25 makes the statement concerning Peleg, "for in his days was the earth divided"...

Concerning Peleg you said: "In regard to Peleg, this is even more controversial. Very few Flood geologists view the splitting of the continents as after the Flood."

What is controversial about a declarative statement?

Since when does consensus of a group of people have more realibility than God's Word?

You said: "Genesis 10 and 11 is the dividing by people groups, languages, and territories after the Flood. So that is the way I take it. It is the same as the use of the Hebrew word "yom" in Genesis 1."

Well, no according to the text of Genesis 10:1 it is the beginning of the history of Noah's descendents.

Genesis 10:1 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood."

God was very explicit of what a yom was.

Genesis 1:5 "1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

God called a light period a yom.

God called a dark period night.

God added the two together and called a light period that ended with evening when darkness came and the ending of the dark period with the coming of the following light period at morning Day one.

Each evening of a light period followed by a dark period that ended with the light period of the next morning was called a day. 

Using God's definition of yom a light period and dark period constitute a yom.  That leaves no room for long periods of time being a yom. It does not even leave room for a light period followed by a dark period followed by a light period followed by a dark period.  That would be 2 yoms a plurality of days.

You said: "If a body of water is landlocked it would be a lake and not a sea. Just because God only mentions He created seas does not mean he did not create lakes."

According to Genesis 1:2 all land mass was covered with water. "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Could you explain where the following text says God created seas?

Genesis 1:9 says: "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so."

That says nothing about God creating seas.

It does say that the waters gathered into one place.

If the water was gathered into one place no body of water could be landlocked as that would make water gathered into two places instead of one making God a liar.

You said: " Flood was a great erosive event. "

And you base that upon what text? OR scientific evidence?

You said: "The sedimentary rocks are a result of huge erosion, so it stands to reason the surface biosphere had to be ripped up first in order to erode the rocks below, for there to be so much sedimentary rock."

There are many layers of sedimentary rock found all the way down to 40,000+ feet below the ocean floor.

How was all those different layers layed down in 150 days?

You said: "In regard to the volume of material needed for the gas, I just read a book on the carbon budget, copyright 2010, and it stated that the amount of carbon in oil and gas is much less than that of coal, which is about tens times the amount of trees on the earth today."

If you will do a little more reading you will find out

Hi Mr. Oard,

Part of my message last night got left off the post for some reason so I will finish it now.

If you will do a little more reading you will find out that oil and coal was produced from different materials.

You said: "There seems to be something wrong with your calculations."

The only thing that is possibly wrong with my calculations is the number I used for the amount of material to produce 1 gallon of gas which I got from papers by ecologist Jeffery S. Dukes.  I did not even use the full number he came up with which was 98 tons for 1 gallon of gas, instead I used 84.

At present we are consuming enough oil that it would take 1 years growth of life forms on Earth to produce.

There was 1700 years pre -flood to produce all the material to form all the oil that is in the Earth. 

If I divide 1700 years by 365 days I get 4.657534246575342 years.  Just a little over four years worth of oil if the materials were produced at the present rate.

The world uses 85 billion barrels per day at present.  There is a projected 3 trillion barrels of oil that can be extracted from the Earth of which 1 trillion has already been extracted.

If I divide 1 trillion by 85 million I get 11764.70588235294 days. If I divide that by 365 days equals  32.232070910556 years.  If I multiply that by 3 I get 96.69621273166801 supply of oil.  But since we have already used 1/3 of the oil we only have  64.46414182111201 years left at present consumption.

So I will round the number of years of oil supply to 100 years as in the Early years of oil consumption the rate was a lot slower.  That would mean that the life forms that formed the oil would have to have been over 20 times as what it is today.  That only takes care of the oil more would be needed for the natural gas and coal.

Maybe you have some data that would shed some light on how that would be possible.

Remember I believe God can do anything.  The only thing is He retired from work in Genesis 2:2 as He ended His work.

Aaron

Comment to Aaron Lewis.

This will be my last day as the "expert."

The phrase "for in his days the earth as divided" does not say the continents split. It is an interpretation. Although a difficult text, words and phrases having meaning with a context and the context is the dividing of the Earth by family groups, languages, and nations. 

You are correct that consensus is a poor method to make conclusions.

You mentioned Genesis 10:1, which has the phrase "after the Flood". Also Chapter 11 ends with verse 32 which says: "These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations; and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood (emphasis mine). The focus is the spreading of people groups after the Flood. If there was a Peleg split of the continents, there would be a catastrophe on par with the Flood. Why doen't Genesis 11:32 instead say "after the continental split"? The focus is the global catastrophe of which Scripture has a fair amount to say, but there are just vague phrases for a presumed catastrophe during Peleg's time.

I would agree that Genesis 1 is explit ont he meaning of yom, and the context backs that up.

As far as the seas are concerned, God did not directly create them from nothing, but God gathered the waters and called them seas in verse 10. Seas are in one place, which suggest to me interconnected large bodies of ocean water, sort of like what we have today.

in regard to lakes, God created a huge biosphere, which had to be water. So not all the water was in the seas, but God also created the pre-Flood hydrological system, which must have included underground water and ground water. I think you are reading too much into this and other verses.

As far as the Flood being a great erosive event, it is based on the erosive power of floods and a deduction based on the thick sedimentary rocks containing billions of fossils. it certainly was not a tranquil flood, which is an oxymoron.

There are hardly any sedimentary rocks below the ocean floor. The continental margins have thick sedimentary rocks, which can be accounted for by erosion of the continents as they rose out of the Floodwater (Psalme 104:6-9). The oceans have generally unconsolidated sediments and biological oozes on top of basalt sills or basalt basement. This is one of the reason believe the continents and oceans switched during the Flood, since water runs downhill and will spread sediments into the low areas, which are now the continents.

In regard to how the layers were laid down in 150 days, it was rapid sedimentation in deep water. meteorite imapcts would blast a lot of water up into the air that would end up in the water...that is one main mechanism for even gerating the original sediments. I don't see the problem.

Yes I do plan in the future to read more about the clues that can tell us more about the pre-Flood world.

Comments to Aaron Lewis's second post

Yes, I know that in general coal comes from plant remains, but the origin of oil is still a mystery. It is claimed to be mostly from plankton, but there are a wide variety of hydrcarbons that make up oil, so oil probably includes all parts of the biosphere, pulverized during the Flood.

Although there was 1700 years to produce some of the pre-Flood carbon, God created the world with a huge biosphere to start with. From the amount of coal, which is the vast majority of carbon in the rocks (including oil), the land biosphere would be about ten times the size as now. Based on the huge number of shallow water marine fossils, the oceans very likely were much shallower before the Flood. Shallower oceans are more biologically producive, and so the ocean biosphere could have been 20 times the current one. Most of the current volume of the ocean has low primary productiviy. Of course, such an earth with more land and shallow seas would have a large amount of water under the ground, which helps to explain how four rivers can be started at one location from a huge spring, likely under pressure, in the Garden of Eden.

Hi Mr. Oard,

Thanks for the replys.

Sorry to see your time has come to an end as I was enjoying the conversation and learning a few things along the way.

You said: "The phrase "for in his days the earth as divided" does not say the continents split."

The text says: Genesis 10:25 "And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan. "

The original word that plg comes from is a verb plg which means to divide split.  The 2 e's were added as vowels by the Masoretes, as was the two a's in the verb palag.  The verb translated divided is the action of the Earth which God called dry land in Genesis 1:10.  Since it is a verb of action the dry land was either divided or the dry land split and I don't see the difference.  It became more pieces than it was.

You said: "I think you are reading too much into this and other verses."

Sorry I just take the words written and their definitions at face value.

You said: "As far as the Flood being a great erosive event, it is based on the erosive power of floods and a deduction based on the thick sedimentary rocks containing billions of fossils."

But there is no real evidence for a great erosive event, described in the Bible.

I don't know that there are billions of fossils but there are quite a lot.

You said: "There are hardly any sedimentary rocks below the ocean floor."

Then why do the oil well drillers have to prepare for huge pockets of sand at 30,000 feet below the ocean floor or the well can fail?

You said: "In regard to how the layers were laid down in 150 days, it was rapid sedimentation in deep water. meteorite imapcts would blast a lot of water up into the air that would end up in the water...that is one main mechanism for even gerating the original sediments. I don't see the problem."

You were supposed to correct me and say there was 300 days.  Which would include the recession of the water.

There is no Biblical information of meteorite impacts, so I do see many problems.

You said: "Yes I do plan in the future to read more about the clues that can tell us more about the pre-Flood world."

Good, I plan to study until I get to ask Jesus the questions I have asked here unless He gives me the answers when I get my new body.  At 72 I probably don't have long to wait.

You said: "Yes, I know that in general coal comes from plant remains, but the origin of oil is still a mystery. It is claimed to be mostly from plankton, but there are a wide variety of hydrcarbons that make up oil, so oil probably includes all parts of the biosphere, pulverized during the Flood."

It did not have to be pulverized during the Flood.  It had to be burried under miles of solid rock.

You said: "Based on the huge number of shallow water marine fossils, the oceans very likely were much shallower before the Flood."

Let me give you something to think about.

In Genesis 1:1 there was no sea as the history of the day God created the Heavens and the Earth given in Genesis 2:4 through 4:24 tells us.  There was only the one river you mentioned that came out of Eden and watered the Garden that God had planted in Eden that split (same word as the word translated divided in Genesis 10:25) into four rivers.

If you pay close attention to the events in those verses you will not find where God formed a fish of any kind.

There was no sea, and it did not rain.

God Bless,

Aaron,

Friends - Mr. Oard's time is finished with us as the expert in our Ask the Expert forum. We will have a new expert soon. Do you have any requests for experts?

Andrew Snelling

woodmorrape? Jerry? Dr. Whitcomb?

Hello everyone

I know the topic for this thread has to do with geological formation but I didnt find another thread where other issues are being addressed. Therefore, either way is someone can help me out. Dr. Oard I know you are well versed in many topics so this question is mainly for you. The topic of ERVs in the minds of many evolution advocates is an open and shut case for evolution. Here is a youtube video link that I would like everyone to watch and if you can give me your feed back. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uNCDm-4tiQ Ideally, I would like to find a video or make a video that counters his points. I would appreciate imput from as many as possible and Dr. Oard if you can address what is being said as well as give your own imput. 

Phil,

Mr. Oard is no longer responding here in the "ask the expert" area of the site. You are free to initiate a new thread in the main forum any time you would like.

For me the case for creation over evolution stands simply on the plain and simple reading of Scripture in the normal sense of language and meaning as intended by the writers of the Narrative.

Every objection of Science so-called that speaks counter to the plain narrative of the Bible is never true. Start with the plain and straightforward sense of Scripture, and never base your understanding of the Word upon some newly discovered "scientific reality." Reality is what God says is reality.

Thanks Jim

However, I think your response is more appropriate when dealing with others who already believe in creationism. Most of the people, if not all are not Bible believers. So I think the approach has to be different for these types.

Thanks for your insight..

I've been reading David Down's book on the Kings of Israel and have already read his book, "Unwrapping the Pharaohs."  I respect his opinion and would like to know his recommendation on a Bible atlas, particularly one that might be aligned with his timeline theories - which I agree with.

John - Thanks so much for your question. We've consulted David Down regarding your question of a Bible atlas that might be aligned with his timeline theories. His reply: " there is no Bible atlas that would be consistent with the reduced chronology I advocate."

Thanks for your response, Jennifer.  My followup question then is - What Bible Atlas would David Down or any of you in this conversation recommend for us "Young earth Creationists"?

 Hey, anyone ran into someone who says, "the flood of Noah wasn't global because the people of earth hadn't spread out over the whole earth." I disagree because there are too many scriptures and other geologic evidence that show it was global. But still, what evidence could be shown that people lived outside of the Mesopotamian area?

Hi Raymond, are you talking about where people lived before the flood?

Yes, where were people living before the flood of Noah's day?  Progressive creationists believe they were confined to an area small enough that God would only have to flood one "Noah's local area-Mesopotamian" to drown everyone outside the ark (so that He wouldn't have to flood the entire globe).  Is there any evidence that people had spread to Egypt, Europe, or anywhere else before the flood?

Response to Raymond??  

Maybe this is too simplistic, but after God created Adam and Eve and they had children, what makes anyone think they all stayed in one area, I am thinking they spread out into different areas, but wether thy did or not, if you believe in a WWFlood then they were all destroyed except those on the ARK????

There is a lot of debate about how much (if anything) would survive the flood to become evidence of human occupation. I believe that there would be no trace of pre-flood culture. This is basically saying that I don't think we can know how much of the earth was settled by humans before the flood (I'm no expert). One thing is important to keep in mind: the pre-flood world would have been a lot different. We don't even know for sure that Noah lived in Mesopotamia before the flood. Just because there was a Tigress river before and after the flood, doesn't mean it was the same as the post-flood river. Out of the four rivers coming from Eden the only two historically identified are the Tigress and Euphrates. I think that what is now the great rift is thought to be one of the rivers. Again, all I can say is "I don't know".  

Steve, I believe I recently read a paper that implied, the 4 rivers may have been more east in the asian area as there are 4 rivers that seem to match some of the Biblical inferences....If I can find it, I will post it.

But I also know that the nile went right by the pyramids and its like 50 miles away now, so it could be that the other rivers after the flood were filled with sediment and no longer exist????

In the Local Flood view the four rivers are present in remnants in the post-flood world. Presumably the vestiges of Eden are still hidden some where in the world today. But according to Peter, the world that then was perished and those four rivers are no more. Later post flood rivers were named in memory of the pre-flood world. We still have persistent return to the erroneous theme that the biblical flood was local. The position of the Creation Conversations site is that the biblical flood was a global catastrophe which totally altered the face of the whole earth. We should be clear about then when posts representing a counter viewpoint appear. 

Hi Jim,

Didn't Peter say the world he was talking about perished.

2 Peter 3:6, "Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: "

Peter did not leave room for anything to survive.

God Bless,

Aaron

I agree that it was global.  I'm just looking for anything I may not have heard already.  Is there any other ancient literature that clearly states (if you could believe the source) there were people settling in Europe, Africa, elsewhere?  My best evidence is the 64 times the scriptures use terms of universality, such as "the earth" (not a locality), all flesh, every animal, every man died, under heaven, under the whole heaven, face of the earth, etc. etc.  Besides, earth's population before the flood, with an anemic 2% growth rate would have exceeded our own present population.  People lived longer, had more children, there were no abortions, etc.  The population couldn't have possibly been centered in one local area.  They'd have to all be living in 50 story buildings and not be farmers who need LAND just to survive.  The spreading out of the population is a given.  I'm just looking for more external evidence for my skeptical friend.  Just as showing the writings of Josephus and other early writers/historians help to corroborate the scriptures, I'm wondering if there is any ancient Babylonian, Greek, or other writings that testify to people being in other places all over the world.  Yes, I know there are 270 ancient flood legends, but I've never read any of them.  Things that are regarded as "legends" don't interest me much, other than they verify in a way that "there was a flood".

We believe in a world wide flood precisely because the Bible says just this: "if you believe in a WWFlood then they were all destroyed except those on the ARK????" All were destroyed except those "few, that is EIGHT souls were saved" from all the earth.

Other ancient literature is what we call cultural lore, or legend. And in these hundreds of cultural recollections of the Flood, it shows that all the people who share those legends are tracing themselves back to the few survivors who came off the Ark. And, those legends at least half the time declare that all other people and all animals were destroyed, exactly as the Bible tells it.

A petroglyph in the American west depicts four couples, an altar, and numerous pairs of animals, under a rainbow arching across the scene - and this is depicted on a rock wall with a natural arch nearby, suggesting that the carvers saw this natural arch as a memorial to their own history. The fact that this culture looked back to the Ark indicates that they are among the descendents of those 8 ark passengers, and dispersed AFTER the Flood.

I guess maybe I should read some of those "legends" after all.  It'd be interesting to see if they answer my original question, which is, "What if any ancient literature (including cultural lore/legends) is there that shows people living /settling(prior to the flood) in places other than the area where Noah lived."  I saw a map once showing the locations of the legends as spread out over the whole globe, i.e. South America, America, China, Russia, Africa.  Perhaps the very fact that the legends exist all over the world is the indicator I'm looking for.  Perhaps one could say, "since the legends exist all over the world, then it's safe to say the people to whom they pertain to lived there before the flood".  What do you think?  Now I'll add another follow-up question.  Besides 2 Peter, what other places in the new testament say anything at all about the flood?

Matthew 24:37,38 && 39, Luke 17:26, 27. I believe Job 22:15 && 16 are also referring to Noah's flood. There are probably others. 

Hi Raymond,

If you believe in a literal interpertation of the Bible you should have no problem understanding how the legends are all over the world.

Genesis 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

It appears that a piece of dry land appeared out of the water causing all the water to gather to one place.

That land mass was still in one place when the Flood happened.

Genesis 11:8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

This text tells us that when the people were building the Tower of Babel God scattered them over the face of the entire earth.

The earth was then divided in the days of Peleg according to the text.

Genesis 10:25 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.

The Hebrew word translated earth in Genesis 1:10 as earth is the same word used in Genesis 11:8 as well as in 10:25.

Therefore if all the land was in one place during the flood and after the flood which the people were scattered over which was then divided as we see it today, that would account for the many flood stories as well as answer the question as to how the animals and people got to the lands all over the earth.

God Bless,

Aaron 

Yes, as Steven Posey said, There are probably others. How about 2 Peter 3!

Mr. Nederhoff,

I don't think that the worldwide distribution of flood legends has any bearing on the worldwide distribution of pre-flood people.  For one thing, we know that few, that is, eight souls were saved from drowning in the flood; all the people who repeat these legends, then, are decended from Noah, not pre-flood people from around the world.  This fact is further supported by the fact that each legend is recorded in a different language, so all the people around the world had to come from Babel, not pre-flood civilizations.

Thank you so much to all that commented on my question.  I really appreciate it.  Verrrry helpful!

Can anyone suggest a conservative, creationist Bible Atlas?  I would love to see someone publish one that goes along with David Downs chronology, which in my opinion, resolves a lot of archeological controversy (if you believe the Bible).

So why not contact Master Books, or New Leaf about publishing a new Biblical Geography?

I have reallly enjoyed reading books and articles by you about the Ice Age. Can you expand on the idea that the Ice Age was a unique and non-repeatable event?