otseng wrote:micatala wrote:Why is there a wide variety of different kinds of layers if all or most of these layers were the result of a single event and its aftermath? How did the water sort the sediments according to chemical composition?
I'll say up front that there needs to be more research in this area to give a good answer to this. But here are some thoughts on this.
In the FM, there are several factors to account for where fossils are found and for rock layers.
Life in a particular habitat would generally be found together. This would be true also for SG. However, it would be difficult to determine exactly all the life that was in a particular habitat, especially if such fossils do not exist at that place. So, to say a particular fossil
should be found, but is not found, would be hard to prove.
Animal mobility would be another factor. There would at least be some pattern in which less mobile animals were towards the bottom and more mobile animals towards the top.
I would agree that fossils of life that existed in the same habitat at the same time would generally be found together. I would agree animal mobility could be a factor. I would also agree that, because fossilization is a rare event, we have to allow that a species may have existed at a certain spot at a certain time but may have left no fossil evidence. The more "hard parts" a species has, the more likely it is to fossilize, and as previously noted, marine organisms are much more likely to fossilize.
However, we can limit the discussion to examples of species that we HAVE found in the fossil record. For example, we have found trilobites, pteronodons and other dinosaurs, both ground dwellers and those capable of flying, both large and small, and we have found hominid species and many other marine species. If we HAVE found fossils for a species, but only find them at particulal depths and in particular locations, especially if we find LOTs of them (like trilobites, crinoids, etc.) then when we don't find them in other places, we can reasonably assume they did not exist in those other places. This is especially true if we NEVER find them except in particular layers.
Now, previously I had addressed an example of this in
Post # 310
You can see that post for a discussion of trilobites and echinoidea. The main issue stated was:
micatala wrote:
So, echinoidea are common in the fossil record, but there are no sand dollars in layers designated older than 65 MYA, and no true sea urchins older than the late Triassic. The Triassic runs from about 250 MYA to around 206 MYA.
Now, trilobites were at least mobile. How is that ALL the trilobites, the bottom dwellers and the non-bottom dwellers, ended up BELOW the less mobile bottom dwellers like sea urchins and sand dollars??
Note that this is true whether the trilobites inhabited the same areas or not. Some are bottom dwellers but not all. They lived in many places around the world in many different depths and habitats. They are ALL below the sand dollars and sea urchins, even though the latter are NOT mobile and, based on your criteria, should be in LOWER layers than the trilobites, and this really should be true whether or not they inhabited the same geographical habitats.
THus, while you make some valid observations, they have not addressed this vary major point. Note that this is but ONE example and I am sure with research we could find many, many others.
I will again bring up the issue of Pterosaurs. THese would be large animals and quite mobile, being capable of flight. We find examples in the fossil record. Why did NO Pterosaurs make it to layers above the KT-boundary. I will point out that an explanation and references were given which explained the very small number of dinosaur fossils found above the KT-boundary. See
Posts #313 and #315 and for example.
Flood water would also be expected to be able to carry plants/animals from to another location, particularly to more low lying regions. This would account for coal beds, oil deposits, and mass fossil graveyards.
I would agree flood waters would move things around. One implication of this is that we should find fossils from different habitats mixed together more than they would be if there had not been a global flood. In particular, it would be more likely that we would find marine and land species together in the same undisturbed layers.
Mass fossil beds can also be explained by local floods or by large amounts of plant matter which was coverd in place over time.
In addition, you have not addressed the shear mass of these coal deposits.
As quoted in Post #315
Where did all the organic material in the fossil record come from? There are 1.16 x 10^13 metric tons of coal reserves, and at least 100 times that much unrecoverable organic matter in sediments. A typical forest, even if it covered the entire earth, would supply only 1.9 x 10^13 metric tons. [Ricklefs, 1993, p. 149]
How do you explain the relative commonness of aquatic fossils? A flood would have washed over everything equally, so terrestrial organisms should be roughly as abundant as aquatic ones (or more abundant, since Creationists hypothesize greater land area before the Flood) in the fossil record. Yet shallow marine environments account for by far the most fossils.
Sorting and layering was significantly affected by lunar tidal forces. Roughly twice a day, it would experience two cycles of tidal forces. The sediments under water were cycled with high pressure and low pressure during high and low tides. Also, the energy of tidal waves are now dissipated by the coast lines, but when the water covered the entire Earth, there were no coast lines to absorb the waves. These forces would account for similar sediments to be sorted together and account for rythmic layering.
I would agree you would have tidal forces and they may be greater with no land masses. You have given us absolutely no reason to believe, however, that such forces could create the kind of layering I referred to above, and something like the iridium layer. Common sense would seem to indicate, in fact, that this would produce even more uniformity of the mixture of sediments and produce LESS difference between layers.
How can SG account for similar rock layers? Shouldn't it instead be a continuous gradient instead of discrete materials in layers? Why would deposits be entirely of one composition for millions of years and then abruptly change to an entirely different composition?
One possible explanation might be a mass extinction. If, say, a large number of plant species went extinct, then their detritus could change the chemistry of the run off. In general, under the assumption that sediments include eroded material from elsewhere, the nature of the material would change the nature of the sediments.
To look more objectively at the organization of fossils, we would need a chart of all the fossils found at a particular point on the Earth. This type of data would allow us to look at the raw data and interpret it for ourselves.
We don't need this to address the examples that I have cited above and others like it.
Again, I am going to bring us back to the issue that if the FM is falsified by some subset of the data, we do not need to keep looking for data that support it and we especially do not need to look at the data comprehensively. While I understand we should not, for the purposes of debate on the forum, take hearsay about the data at face value, I must point out that mainstream science HAS already taken a comprehensive look at the data and I am quite sure that the more comprehensive approach we take here, the worse the FM is going to come off.
Now, I also acknowledge I did not address all of your questions from the post I am referencing here. I am going to push for having the problems I have raised with the FM addressed first before doing so, since this thread is primarily about the flood model. Not having answers for the questions you raise is not going nullify the evidence that falsifies the FM.
" . . . the line separating good and evil passes, not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart . . . ." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
