Why YEC can seem plausible

[James Brown]

Saw an interesting thread on Twitter. Do you know why fossils of dinosaurs or mammals or reptiles are never found in the Appalachian mountains?

You see, if those creatures were created around the time of Adam and Eve, and if they were all drowned in Noah's flood, then we would expect to see their fossils everywhere. But in the Appalachian mountains, the only fossils found there are ancient ocean creatures like trilobites and stromatolites. The reason is because the Appalachian mountains are old. Almost 500 million years old, and they've been eroding ever since.

In fact, it's possible to view the Appalachian chain stretch from the lower North American continent onto Nothern Europe itself. Not only are the Appalachians older than mammals and fish, but they are older than the Atlantic Ocean.

Can a YEC explain why we can find T-Rex fossils on the plains of Iowa, but not in the gentle mountains of West Virginia? Without invoking deus ex machina, of course.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Saw an interesting thread on Twitter. Do you know why fossils of dinosaurs or mammals or reptiles are never found in the Appalachian mountains?

You see, if those creatures were created around the time of Adam and Eve, and if they were all drowned in Noah's flood, then we would expect to see their fossils everywhere. But in the Appalachian mountains, the only fossils found there are ancient ocean creatures like trilobites and stromatolites. The reason is because the Appalachian mountains are old. Almost 500 million years old, and they've been eroding ever since.

In fact, it's possible to view the Appalachian chain stretch from the lower North American continent onto Nothern Europe itself. Not only are the Appalachians older than mammals and fish, but they are older than the Atlantic Ocean.

Can a YEC explain why we can find T-Rex fossils on the plains of Iowa, but not in the gentle mountains of West Virginia? Without invoking deus ex machina, of course.

That's very interesting and makes sense. I love the Noah story. It's really the first crazy insane story in the bible that made me realize that the bible can't be trusted.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Saw an interesting thread on Twitter. Do you know why fossils of dinosaurs or mammals or reptiles are never found in the Appalachian mountains?

You see, if those creatures were created around the time of Adam and Eve, and if they were all drowned in Noah's flood, then we would expect to see their fossils everywhere. But in the Appalachian mountains, the only fossils found there are ancient ocean creatures like trilobites and stromatolites. The reason is because the Appalachian mountains are old. Almost 500 million years old, and they've been eroding ever since.

In fact, it's possible to view the Appalachian chain stretch from the lower North American continent onto Nothern Europe itself. Not only are the Appalachians older than mammals and fish, but they are older than the Atlantic Ocean.

Can a YEC explain why we can find T-Rex fossils on the plains of Iowa, but not in the gentle mountains of West Virginia? Without invoking deus ex machina, of course.

That's very interesting and makes sense. I love the Noah story. It's really the first crazy insane story in the bible that made me realize that the bible can't be trusted.

It's like trusting in the literary truth of Little red Riding Hood.

But it isn't really a reflection on the story. The lack of trust should be directed at the ignorant who worship it as some kind of truth. It's them we should certainly not trust.

 

[excreationist]

.....Do you know why fossils of dinosaurs or mammals or reptiles are never found in the Appalachian mountains?

You see, if those creatures were created around the time of Adam and Eve, and if they were all drowned in Noah's flood, then we would expect to see their fossils everywhere. But in the Appalachian mountains, the only fossils found there are ancient ocean creatures like trilobites and stromatolites.....

A YEC explanation could be that those mountains were originally from the sea floor and were raised up... therefore only sea creatures would be found there...

 

[Keith&Co.]

.....Do you know why fossils of dinosaurs or mammals or reptiles are never found in the Appalachian mountains?

You see, if those creatures were created around the time of Adam and Eve, and if they were all drowned in Noah's flood, then we would expect to see their fossils everywhere. But in the Appalachian mountains, the only fossils found there are ancient ocean creatures like trilobites and stromatolites.....

A YEC explanation could be that those mountains were originally from the sea floor and were raised up... therefore only sea creatures would be found there...

Except there's no fish. So, only sea creatures of a type consodered to be older tgan fish.
Plus, a critical part of the creationist cosmology is that all strata come from the same event: the Flood. They cannot really have strata being deposited and fossils forming much at all before the one big superevent that laid everything down in such a way as to confuse lesser geologists into thinking they were multiple events.

So there should be some sea-going dinosaurs in the mix... Armored fish... A few sailors regretting their life choices before the end....

 

[DBT]

.....Do you know why fossils of dinosaurs or mammals or reptiles are never found in the Appalachian mountains?

You see, if those creatures were created around the time of Adam and Eve, and if they were all drowned in Noah's flood, then we would expect to see their fossils everywhere. But in the Appalachian mountains, the only fossils found there are ancient ocean creatures like trilobites and stromatolites.....

A YEC explanation could be that those mountains were originally from the sea floor and were raised up... therefore only sea creatures would be found there...

The description of the flood includes the mention of mountains.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Ark enthusiasts will want to take in Beanstalk Encounter in Blue Earth, Minnesota, next to the Jolly Green Giant statue. At Beanstalk we have demythologized the narrative of Jack and his beanstalk. Modern scholarship has uncovered a compelling factual overlay to the original text. Gone are such objections as:
1) No beanstalk could reach the clouds. (Scientists now point to ancient kudzu variants and low-lying stratus clouds, which, from an angle of vision at the base of the vine, create intersecting visuals.)
2) There are no giants. (The 'giant' is an ancient description of a sufferer of acromegaly.)
3) No goose lays golden eggs. (Yet a goose which drinks sulphur-infused water may produce yellow-tinged eggs, which, with mineralization, can cause the egg shell to harden to a glossy yellow surface.)
Those who would call the story a fairy tale are not only displaying bigotry toward the believers, but they are disrespecting the acromegaly community and, quite possibly, the geese.

 

[excreationist]

A YEC explanation could be that those mountains were originally from the sea floor and were raised up... therefore only sea creatures would be found there...

The description of the flood includes the mention of mountains.

Lots of high mountains seem to have sea creature fossils in them but that doesn't mean that there were no other mountains at the time of the flood...
This is a YEC article about related Bible verses:
https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j12_3/j12_3_312-313.pdf

 

[excreationist]

A YEC explanation could be that those mountains were originally from the sea floor and were raised up... therefore only sea creatures would be found there...

Except there's no fish. So, only sea creatures of a type considered to be older than fish....

Good points.... I assume there is no way for just the ocean floor fossils to just remain without the fish....? Or maybe the fish swam away during the relatively slow burial? (if that makes sense)

 

[Keith&Co.]

Good points.... I assume there is no way for just the ocean floor fossils to just remain without the fish....?

The creationist model is that all the layers of all the strata were laid dosn at one time, in the one event, meaning that all fossilized plants and animals existed in parallel.
You'dvreally need God to have performed yet anothe r miracle, to make sure all the appropriate animals and plants died THERE, and everything else died somewhere else. No predators caught any fish in that part of the sea at the right time to make fossils in that layer. And the y didn't lay any eggs thereabouts.
It'd be like finding a part of the ocean today that had no crustaceans at all, none of any kind, but everything else...

Or maybe the fish swam away during the relatively slow burial? (if that makes sense)

Thst would not explain the lack of later plants, though....

 

[hyzer]

A YEC explanation could be that those mountains were originally from the sea floor and were raised up... therefore only sea creatures would be found there...

Except there's no fish. So, only sea creatures of a type considered to be older than fish....

Good points.... I assume there is no way for just the ocean floor fossils to just remain without the fish....? Or maybe the fish swam away during the relatively slow burial? (if that makes sense)

I highly recommend the book: The Map That Changed the World

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Map_that_Changed_the_World

From Wikipedia: "The Map that Changed the World is a 2001 book by Simon Winchester about English geologist William Smith and his great achievement, the first geological map of England, Wales and southern Scotland. Smith's was the first national-scale geological map, and by far the most accurate of its time. His pivotal insights were that each local sequence of rock strata was a subsequence of a single universal sequence of strata and that these rock strata could be distinguished and traced for great distances by means of embedded fossilized organisms. Winchester's book narrates the intellectual context of the time, the development of Smith's ideas and how they contributed to the theory of evolution and more generally to a dawning realisation of the true age of the earth."

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

A YEC explanation could be that those mountains were originally from the sea floor and were raised up... therefore only sea creatures would be found there...

Except there's no fish. So, only sea creatures of a type considered to be older than fish....

Good points.... I assume there is no way for just the ocean floor fossils to just remain without the fish....? Or maybe the fish swam away during the relatively slow burial? (if that makes sense)

Relatively slow burial? Burial in what?

Simply put, there is no geologic evidence for a massive global flood. The soil and bedrock deposits do not indicate this happened. There are places where there is evidence of decent sized flood events, but nothing gargantuan in size. We have evidence for glaciers, ice dams, large scale events. Evidence for YEC is hidden in the hiccups of footnotes taken well out of context.

 

[excreationist]

Good points.... I assume there is no way for just the ocean floor fossils to just remain without the fish....? Or maybe the fish swam away during the relatively slow burial? (if that makes sense)

Relatively slow burial? Burial in what?

YECs might say sediment - sediment that the fish could swim through rather than being buried alive....

 

[James Brown]

Yes, they might say that - but that's not how it works. You can't just make up stuff and say it might have been something, then change the subject as if you've solved the problem once and for all.

Years and years ago, a YEC spoke at my church, and he told us that Noah carried dinosaurs on the ark. Then, after the canopy collapsed and flooded the world, the dinosaurs were released along with all the other animals, except now the air was thin and wispy compared to before the flood. Those poor sauropods just couldn't get enough breath, so they had to bellow their lungs rapidly in order to get enough oxygen into their systems. Well, everyone knows that if you pump air quickly enough it heats up. And so as these giant beasts were pumping air back and forth rapidly, the friction caught their nostrils on fire! (Right before they died due to lack of air and tissue damage, poor things.)

And thus, the legend of fire-breathing dragons was born!

He had no evidence for this, of course. He had never demonstrated how a living creature could inhale and exhale air so quickly that its face caught on fire. He never explained why the earliest origins of stories about fire-breathing dragons occurred thousands of miles away from Mesopotamia, meaning those oxygen-deprived creatures must have been able to survive quite some time before self-immolating. Nor did he explain why all the other animals, large and small, who had also been living comfortably in the pre-deluge canopy, had no trouble adapting to the dehumidified atmosphere.

But he didn't have to do all those things, of course. That wasn't his job. All he needed to do is imagine the way something might have happened and lo, the problem is solved. And so, some people had a small nagging question answered, the speaker collected his fee, and everyone was happy.

That is, until one impressionable young man went to college and expanded his scientific education enough to learn that he had been lied to as a boy. And that got him thinking, "If they lied about this, what else did they lie about?"


Young Earth Creationism is Cruel

Young-earth creationism is a cruelly efficient machine for manufacturing spiritual crisis. It has created more atheists than all of Richard Dawkins' books put together.

Young-earth creationism is no better than any other form of malicious gossip.

Young-earth creationism is not an exclusively intellectual error. It is not a harmless mistake or an innocent confusion. Young-earth creationism is a sin.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Good points.... I assume there is no way for just the ocean floor fossils to just remain without the fish....? Or maybe the fish swam away during the relatively slow burial? (if that makes sense)

Relatively slow burial? Burial in what?

YECs might say sediment - sediment that the fish could swim through rather than being buried alive....

STILL doesn't explain why the plants all escaped when the fish did...

And the creationist model absolutely requires a huge amount of the Earth's Crust was being churned during the 40 days. All the layers had to be created at the same time, and somehow sorting dinosaur corpses (and nests, and eggs, and predator-gnawed bones) all by species, with no mammals at those levels, so this 'murky sediment' that had 40 days to lay down the layers of, for example, the Grand Canyon, so that the dewatering could carve the Grand Canyon, would have been about the density of mud. Fish swimming through mud about as well as humans go through a smoke filled compartment. Maybe a short sprint, but it wouldn't be easy, and not everyone would make it through.
And we then have to wonder why the animals found at that level didn't make it out right beside the fish, t be found at much later levels, alongside finned fish and crocodiles and ice cream trucks.

Plus, my favorite, how did this thin sediment preserve footprints?

 

[Bronzeage]

YECs might say sediment - sediment that the fish could swim through rather than being buried alive....

STILL doesn't explain why the plants all escaped when the fish did...

And the creationist model absolutely requires a huge amount of the Earth's Crust was being churned during the 40 days. All the layers had to be created at the same time, and somehow sorting dinosaur corpses (and nests, and eggs, and predator-gnawed bones) all by species, with no mammals at those levels, so this 'murky sediment' that had 40 days to lay down the layers of, for example, the Grand Canyon, so that the dewatering could carve the Grand Canyon, would have been about the density of mud. Fish swimming through mud about as well as humans go through a smoke filled compartment. Maybe a short sprint, but it wouldn't be easy, and not everyone would make it through.
And we then have to wonder why the animals found at that level didn't make it out right beside the fish, t be found at much later levels, alongside finned fish and crocodiles and ice cream trucks.

Plus, my favorite, how did this thin sediment preserve footprints?

The core curriculum of YEC is based on someone who is deficient in science, teaching someone who is even more deficient in science.

 

[excreationist]

Young Earth Creationism is Cruel

Young-earth creationism is a cruelly efficient machine for manufacturing spiritual crisis. It has created more atheists than all of Richard Dawkins' books put together.

Well AiG says:
https://answersingenesis.org/why-does-creation-matter/

"Ultimately, the controversy about the age of the earth is a controversy about the authority of Scripture. If millions of years really happened, then the Bible is false and cannot speak with authority on any issue, even the Gospel."
​

See also post #426. I went from being a YEC to an atheist.

In this Old Earth Creationism "tract", the YEC also goes straight to being an atheist...
https://www.oldearth.org/tract/tract.htm

 

[excreationist]

YECs might say sediment - sediment that the fish could swim through rather than being buried alive....

STILL doesn't explain why the plants all escaped when the fish did...

Well there are some things that YECs have no counter-argument for but my attempt would be that the plants might not have had hard parts that could be preserved....

 

[DrZoidberg]

YECs might say sediment - sediment that the fish could swim through rather than being buried alive....

STILL doesn't explain why the plants all escaped when the fish did...

Well there are some things that YECs have no counter-argument for but my attempt would be that the plants might not have had hard parts that could be preserved....

FYI I think YEC is less credible now than when you started this thread. To be honest, I hadn't given it so much thought. I just passed them off as a bunch of crackpots. But after this thread. Nah, they're not crazy. They're just wrong. They have found a method by which to understand the world (Evangelical Christianity) and are now trying to shoehorn everything into the perspective. But it's not working out for them. They more they try, the more obvious it is that they are wrong.

 

[Keith&Co.]

YECs might say sediment - sediment that the fish could swim through rather than being buried alive....

STILL doesn't explain why the plants all escaped when the fish did...

Well there are some things that YECs have no counter-argument for but my attempt would be that the plants might not have had hard parts that could be preserved....

We find fossilized plants elsewhere, though....