Continuing with the single most important geologic event in history, that of Noah’s
Flood, and why it was important for evolutionism to replace it, we should keep
in mind that as far
as science is concerned, it should be remembered that events of the past are
not reproducible, and are, therefore, inaccessible to the scientific method.
Neither uniformitarianism nor catastrophism can actually be proved scientifically. Nevertheless, the Flood model fits all the geologic facts
more directly and simply, with a smaller number of qualifications and secondary
assumptions, than does the uniformitarian model.
In fact, native global flood stories are
documented as history or legend in almost every region on earth. Old world
missionaries reported their amazement at finding remote tribes already
possessing legends with tremendous similarities to the Bible's accounts of the
worldwide flood. Hans Schindler Bellamy in Moons,
Myths and Men (1936), estimates that altogether there are over 500 Flood
legends worldwide. Ancient civilizations such as (China, Babylonia, Wales,
Russia, India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and Polynesia) all
have their own versions of a giant flood, that are frequently
linked by common elements that parallel the Biblical account. These events
include the warning of the coming flood, the construction of a boat in advance,
the storage of animals, the inclusion of family, and the release of birds to
determine if the water level had subsided. The overwhelming consistency among
flood legends found in distant parts of the globe indicates they were derived
from the same origin—the Bible—but oral
transcription has changed the details through time.
Fossils are an obvious indicator of
catastrophism. Fossils in the sedimentary rocks, the
depositional processes had to have been rapid, or fossils could not have been
preserved in them
To become fossilized,
a plant or animal must usually have hard
parts, such as bone, shell, or wood. It must be buried quickly to prevent decay
and must be undisturbed throughout the long process. And the term 'fossilization'
refers to a variety of often complex processes that enable the preservation of
organic remains within the geological record:
1. Rapid and permanent burial/entombment. This protects the specimen
from any biological or environmental disturbance.
2. Oxygen deprivation. This limits the extent of decay and scavenging.
3. Continued sediment accumulation. Eliminates the surface from
eroding and preserves the long-term burial.
4. Absence of excessive
heating or compression. This preserves the fossil from
destruction.
Fossil evidence is
typically preserved within sediments deposited beneath water, partly because
the conditions outlined above occur more frequently in these environments, and
also because the more than 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by water. Even
fossils derived from land, including dinosaur bones and organisms preserved
within amber (fossilized tree resin) were ultimately preserved in sediments
deposited beneath water, i.e., wetlands, lakes, rivers, estuaries or swept out
to sea.
All of this should tell the
most naïve person that a gigantic Flood was necessary in order to preserve all
the fossils in water as we find today.
A fish dies naturally and drops to the
seafloor. If undisturbed, it remains exposed and within a very short time is
scavenged by other fish or crabs, its bone disturbed, currents scatter the remains.
In this case, no fossil remains
However,
if a fish is buried by an underwater landslide, or by flooding that collapses
seabeds, washed away and covered by slides, etc., it then remains undisturbed
and over time its moisture is driven out and the fish remains are covered within
forming rock, which later is pushed upward where some small portion is exposed and
found to contain a fossil impressed into the hardened rock—a remineralized copy
of the original skeleton
The importance of this fact is obvious when one realizes
that the identification of the geologic "age" of any given
sedimentary rock depends solely upon the assemblage of fossils which it
contains. The age does not depend on radiometric dating, as is obvious from the
fact that the geologic age system had been completely worked out and most major
formations dated before radioactivity was even discovered—the fact that later
radiometiric dating proved the column wrong in many cases was conveniently set
aside by evolutionists so as not to disturb "science’s" commitment to evolution.
It may also be of interest to note that neither does the age
depend upon the mineralogic or petrologic character of a rock, as is obvious
from the fact that rocks of all types of composition, structure, and degree of
hardness can be found in any "age." It does not depend upon vertical
position in the local geologic strata, since rocks of any "age" may
and do rest horizontally and conformably on rocks of any other age.
No, despite what geologists would have us believe, a rock is dated solely
by its fossils in the pattern of the geologic column which came into being long before any type of modern dating system (radiometric dating) was invented.
When science commits itself solely to uniformitarianism and
turns a deaf ear to catastrophism,
one wonders at how they view the very thing they ignore that occurs all around
us throughout the years.
White Cliffs of Dover lost millions of tons of
rock cliff
In this realm of
cataclysmic events, three years ago a large section of the white cliffs of
Dover collapsed into the English Channel following a "substantial"
rockfall. Tonnes of the cliff face sheared off near an area known as Crab Bay,
but no one was injured. Dover Coastguard said a full survey had yet to be
carried out to determine the exact amount and length of cliff that crumbled. In
other areas volcanoes have collapsed, islands appeared and disappeared, and sea
creatures have been killed in various ways. Fossils, of course, are part of that historic
record.
Consider, for a
moment, that if one of Britain’s greatest fears were to take place, the
collapsing of one flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma,
in the Canaries. While it is considered highly unstable at the moment, should
it collapse in one block, some 20 cubic
kilometers of rock, weighing 500 billion tonnes (twice the size of the Isle of
Wight) would fall into water almost 4 miles deep and create an undersea wave
2000 feet tall. Within five minutes of the landslide, a dome of water about a
mile high would form and then collapse, before the Mega Tsunami fanned out in
every direction, traveling at speeds of up to 500 mph. A 330-feet wave would
strike the western Sahara in less than an hour, the eastern coast of Brazil to
New York and Boston in 7 hours (the speed of a jet airliner), and to Britain in
six hours, annihilating everything within 20 miles of the coast and traveling
up both coasts of the Thames at 200 miles per hour.
For for those who wonder if this could actually happen, we have the 2004 Indonesia 9.3 underwater earthquake in the Indian Ocean creating a tsunami that killed a reported 200,000 people in 14 countries.
The point is, even in
small cataclysmic disasters, plant and animal life is disrupted and fossils,
over time, created, telling us a story we can hardly understand coming on the
scene so late in history. If we judge the past from the present, then we get
one answer—uniformitarianism; but if we judge the past from what we know, we
get another answer—cataclysmic events, such as the Flood.
The problem lies in
that the only chronometric scale applicable in geologic history for the
stratigraphic classification of rocks and for dating geologic events exactly is
furnished by the fossils. Owing to the irreversibility of evolution, they offer
an unambiguous time-scale for relative age determinations and for world-wide
correlation of rocks, because the
existence and identification of distinctive geologic ages is based on fossils
in the sedimentary rocks and the very existence
of fossils in sedimentary rocks is prima facie evidence that each such
fossiliferous rock was formed by aqueous catastrophism, such as the Flood.
L-R: Moses,
Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin
So one is left to
decide upon Moses (left) and the Flood Account as found in Genesis, the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, and on more
than 500 Flood legends around the world; or whether one agrees with Charles
Lyell (Center) and Charles Darwin (right) and reject the Flood and cataclysmic
events entirely, whose avowed primary or at least secondary purpose in their stand is to deny the existence of God.
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Fascinating summary of the history and "evolution" of "science". You have a gift to be able to understand complex topics and teach them in a simplified and logical manner. Thank you for sharing that gift.
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