Re: Worldwide Flood

"Frank Sullivan" <gimbal.locked@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1130055686.889915.89370@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

>
> Peter Besenbruch wrote:
>> On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 00:12:25 -0700, Frank Sullivan wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>> > However, what do you say to a person who a) believe that the earth
>> > is old, b) believes in evolution in some form, and c) believes that
>> > there was a worldwide flood at some point in man's history?
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> > Is there any evidence against a worldwide flood of this type, which
>> > occurred on an old Earth at some point while humans were on it?
>> > Anything that we would expect to see, but do not see? Anything that
>> > we would not expect to see, but do see?
>>
>> One would need to see sedimentation layers world wide that could be
>> dated to the very recent past. We don't see this.
>
> I've thought about that, but honestly I don't know how much "play"
> they would have with this. In other words, you would probably expect
> some sort of worldwide sedimentation, however it wouldn't necessarily
> be uniform across the globe. You might have one sort of sediment in on
> place, and another somwhere else. Also, you would see thicker
> sedimentation in valleys than you would on mountaintops. Someone who
> believes in a catastrophic, worldwide flood, even on an old earth,
> might also believe in catastrophic mountain-building too, which would
> mix things up further. Then, you have the problem of not being able to
> date pure sediment directly, like you can lava flows (for example).
> You can bracket the sediment in between dated strata (such as lava
> flows), but you might also include other layers of sediment in that
> bracket, which are themselves unrelated to the flood, and so it gets
> even more confusing. As you can tell, I've found the sediment "angle"
> to be sort of problematic, although this guy's beliefs are so damned
> plastic that I will probably run into similar problems with any other
> type of explanation.
>

Actually, there are ways to date both time of exposure at the surface and
date of burial of sediments that were once exposed. The first uses
short-lived radioisotopes of light elements (Beryllium-10, aluminum-26,
and chlorine-36, if I recall correctly) created by the interaction of
high-energy cosmic rays with near-surface material. Age of burial can be
determined by the fact that ambient radiation can damage the crystal
lattice of quartz, and that such damage is annealed by short exposure to
solar UV, and that such damage can be measured by a phenomenon known as
thermoluminescence. Both cosmiogenic radionucleide and TL dating
techniques can be used throughout the time span of H. sapiens. Thus we
could well date a recent global sediment layer.

Another aspect of flood sedimentation that seems to be missing is that
unless the rising waters uniformly eroded the existing soil horizons, one
would expect to find characteristic soil layers buried by post-flood
sediments - a global paleosol. If the rising waters DID erode
significantly, then one would not expect to find the thick, deeply
weathered, highly leached red clay soils of the subtropics and tropics.
That is, we have a pretty good idea of how long it takes for a 5 meter
thick layer of red clay to form by weathering of in situ materials, and
we sure as patoot can tell the difference between clay layers formed from
weathering and clay layers formed by sedimentation (e.g. lack of
depositional structures, presence of continuous chemical variation with
depth, etc.). Since we find thick clay blankets formed in situ, and
without any evidence of erosion or deposition on top, well, it kinda
looks bad for a flood. Oh yeah - the characteristic variation of
concentrations of soluble salts in desert soils strongly suggests lack of
flooding. Thus the pesky little details spell woe for the flood
hypothesis.

.

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