Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Noah's Flood is a Fairy Tale Part 1

1. Tree ring dating

The oldest living tree has been dated to over 4,000 years. Now, the creationist might say it began growing after the flood. But wait a minute, we have dead fossilized trees that lived before this one(nearly 9,000 years ago), as well as during its lifespan. How do we know this? The tree ring patterns (controlled largely by the weather, as to how far apart they are, etc.) match up. This poses a MAJOR problem to the flood. If the older fossilized trees had been alive, they managed to survive the flood. That's not possible. They would have drowned, or crushed by the weight of the water.


To break it down:

4,000 year old tree with specific growth ring patterns.

Fossilized trees with same ring patterns plus 5,000 years before 4,000 year old tree.

Keep comparing ring data....

IF there was a world wide flood, the trees would be killed off and there would be no overlap in ring growth at some point.

This is not what we see... So the trees continued to grow through a continuous period of time.

Carbon 14 dating is also in agreement with the ages.

Click here for some refutations to common creationist claims about tree rings.


2. Animal Burrows in the geologic column

Shrimp, insect, and other animals' burrows have been found throughout the geologic column. If there was a catastrophic flood dumping all the sediment at once, then how could animals have possibly burrowed through every single layer in the geologic column (which is about 15,000 feet deep or around 3 miles). All those sediments being dumped at once would have surely killed these creatures, and if not, it is grossly implausibe to think of them climbing through so much sediment! It fits much better with the idea of the sediments being laid down very slowly. Long before the sediments hardened into rock, the creatures would have had lots of time to burrow through the ground.


3. Fossilized Mudcracks

Fossilized mudcracks have been found in the geologic column, indicating it had time to dry out before being fossilized. Would a violent flood have preserved these? NO!

4. Plant Fossils

Plants have no way of "running for higher ground" or escaping in any way as creationists have suggested other animals did. So why did flowering plants not appear until the cretaceous period? Why didn't seeded plants appear until the devonian?

5. The Order of The Fossil Record

This one is a real doozy for creationists. Just why are sedentary, bottom dwelling fish found in higher strata? (Kitchins, "Living with Darwin") Why aren't flightless birds like the ostrich and emu found with dinosaurs? Why aren't human beings found with Australopithicenes? They have proposed several methods by which to explain why fossils just look like they have evolved, all of which have been refuted. Just listen to what Stephen Jay Gould said about this at the Arkansas Creation Trial,

"Another good example is in the evolution of single-celled creatures. It is a unicellular calcite called foraminifera. Many of the foraminifera are planktonic; that is, they are floating organisms. They all live in the same lake floating at the top or the upper waters of the oceans, they don't differ in hydrodynamic properties. They live in the same ecological zone, and they certainly don't differ in intelligence and mobility. They don't even have a nervous system.

And yet for the last twenty years there has been a worldwide program to collect deep sea cores from all the oceans of the earth. And in those cores, the sequence of planktonic foraminifera species are invariably the same. Each species is recognizable and lives in only a small part of the column; some at the bottom of the column, some at the top of the column. Those at the bottom do not differ from those at the top, either in intelligence, ecological examination, or hydrodynamic properties."


To be continued...

34 comments:

Courtney said...

Nice blog. Have you considered posting some of ExtantDodo's YouTube videos?

-Court (WWGHA)

AIGBusted said...

I link to him in my "links" section over to the top right.

SouthLoopScot said...

Again nicely done.

AIGBusted said...

Thanks American Scot! Stay tuned because more is to come! I also have a blog called "gillslits" and a youtube channel.

http://gillslits.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/ryansarcade9

» .k e n d r a † said...

Don’t ever let the brainwash you into this. Go ahead! Say “God didn't flood the earth." But see how many true Christians ignore this LIE. The Bible is more powerful than this Blog! God created this Earth and He HAS the power to do whatever He wants to it! You make me sick!

Anonymous said...

Don’t ever let the brainwash you into this. Go ahead! Say “God didn't flood the earth." But see how many true Christians ignore this LIE. The Bible is more powerful than this Blog! God created this Earth and He HAS the power to do whatever He wants to it! You make me sick!

----

Exactly. I could not agree more.
God flooded the earth, get over it. The Bible and Aig has ALOT more evidence to prove that a flood happened than you do to prove that the earth is "billions" of years old. Were you there millions of years ago? Nope, didn't think so. We have an accurate History book, the oldest history book that tells us the truth about what happened.

AIGBusted said...

How do you know it tells you the truth?

Unknown said...

good question... guy named Saul (Paul) in the bible asked the same thing... got the answer only by meeting God... Seek and you shall find. See if Genesis is crap, my relationship with Christ can't exist because the whole thing would be a lie. Thing is I know what I'm living, and it seems pretty real to me! But hey please don't stop knocking AIG down, the more you do that, the more people wil be interested in them! Thank God for this blog :P

Anonymous said...

You could write entire books on the impossibilities in the Noah fairy tale.

If the entire earth was covered with water, that means the surface of the ocean was over Mt. Everest. The water would freeze, crushing Noah's boat. Most of the animals would have died due to the thin air.

Did Noah only take pairs of animals? If so, rhinos would have died out. A rhino female needs other females around before she'll go in to heat.

Wouldn't all the fresh water added to the earth have diluted the salt water so much that all ocean life would have died? Did captain Noah stock ocean creatures as well?

You could go on like this all day.

Unknown said...

When you think about it you have to admit that according to the bible Adam wasn't ever a baby... so in that sense, why would all the trees surrounding him in the garden be young??? Couldn't God at the begining start out with already mature animals, plants, humans...? just a thought :P

AIGBusted said...

Hi Jon!

How old would the trees surrounding Adam be, and why? Also, even if the trees God first created were made to look as if they were 4,000 years old, tree ring data is still a problem for the flood story, as previously explained.

Peace,
Ryan

Unknown said...

Say Adam had died the day after he was created and you found his remains, how old would you say he was? 1 day? Our whole logic would be flawed in that it wouldn't make sense, how could someone one day old look and be so old/mature... If you follow the reasoning in the bible, Eden was meant to be paradise. If you designed your own paradise and had total power over how things worked, would you wait 1000 years for a tree to be massive or would you create it that old already. Would you wait 20 years for Adam to grow up or would you create him a fully grown man?

Anonymous said...

Jon:
How old would I guess Adam's age a day after he died? Well I wouldn't be alive, since he was the first man according to the Genesis myth. Without him and Eve to procreate I wouldn't be there to examine how old he was (or how long his corpse was lying around). Silly hypothetical stuff really. God could of set up his creation to start up from infancy to grow into maturity if he wanted to. Maybe impatience is one of his qualities. Of course the bible mentions on several occaisions of him changing his mind or wanting to change his mind about stuff.
You're ignoring everything else that's been put before you here and many other places but that's understandible as it won't make sense to the worldview you hold, the one I once held.

AIGBusted said...

Hello Ben,

I think what Jon is trying to say is that God could create stuff with the appearance of age. But the thing is, these trees are not from the garden of Eden. Even if it existed, the bible says that people cannot go there anymore, so that would be self refuting. Then there's the problem of trees existing during the flood (we know this because there is an unbroken chronology of tree rings going back 11,000 years, and this is taken from several trees). I say it's not possible, perhaps creationists should try keeping some of these trees underwater for six months to see if they live. And finally, even if God created these trees out west, with the appearance of age after the flood, we must ask why. This would be deceptive, first of all, second of all it would be totally unnecessary. Why would God need to create it? Why not just let it grow? The earth only had a handful of people and animals at the time, according to the bible.

Anonymous said...

To Anonymous,

How do yopu know the flood happened? Were you there? See, that question can work both ways. Citing a book that has been proved wrong on many occasions is not the way to win a debate.

Anonymous said...

The Bible has never been proven wrong and I have to admire jon when he refutes things thrown his way. That is what a true Christian does. we may not like what people say about our belief but we should not lash out at people and tell them that "they make us sick." Is that what Christ would want us to do. I do not think so, in fact I know that this is not what he would have us do. Why would anyone want to believe us if we are always angry and have to be right? Concerning the part about the water having to be higher than Mount Everest, you are right in the sense that it had to be higher than the tallest mountain but the Bible also states that the mountains arose out of the waters and that the flood waters were asuaged. Maybe Mount Everest wasn't as tall then as it is now. Maybe it was one of the mountains that arose from the waters.

Pvblivs said...

"The Bible has never been proven wrong...."

Well, not in any way that will satisfy those willing to close their eyes.

[camelopardalis] said...

>...but the Bible also states that the mountains arose out of the waters and that the flood waters were asuaged. Maybe Mount Everest wasn't as tall then as it is now. Maybe it was one of the mountains that arose from the waters.

Christians don't know about my plate tectonics. Seriously, you must have no idea about how mountain formation works. And no, floodwater has nothing to do with it.

Anonymous said...

hello im a 9th grade student and I go to a Chirstian school and I have to do a report on the Genesis Flood, but i have to use scientific facts, in other words and cant use scripture or beliefs. Im just going to say a few things 1. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/geologic-evidences-part-one in that article there is 6 facts of proof of a world wide flood. 2. its ALOT easier to "dis" or being critical of something than to prove something 3. The biggest evidence that evolution did not occur is that there is no record of a transitional form.

AIGBusted said...

Ben,

What would you have to see in a fossil to convince you it is transitional?

Unknown said...

I’m acutely taking a test of this and i have this paper to finish, but back to your question...

Good question, I would have to say it would have to show signs of being “half and half” as in half bird and half amphibian or have some kind of evidence of being transitional form. But, as far as I can see I have never seen a transitional animal. Even Charles Darwin recognized this problem and I quote “The number of intermediate varieties, which have formally existed on the earth, [must] be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urges against my theory.” If I saw a fossil of a half and half animal I would believe it, I would have to be crazy not to believe it. The archaeopteryx is so post to be a link between reptile and bird, but a closer look at the bird revels that it was a bird that posses modern flight and hallow bones like most birds today. Sure it some usual features as in teeth and claws on its wings, but just because an animal have different features doesn’t make this a “reptile bird”. Just because a monkey has fingers and toes, flattened toe nails, flattened finger nails, and 3 toes of teeth doesn’t make it ancestor of man.

Unknown said...

sry i must have hit H for some reason for my nick name. the bost above is Ben

AIGBusted said...

Ben,

You've stated that something with a mixture of characteristics between two groups would constitute a transitional fossil. You brought up archaeopteryx, but then go on to say that it is a modern bird. It's debatable as to whether it could fly or not, but let's just say that it could. We still have to deal with the fact that it has teeth, which no other modern bird does. Creationists could argue that birds used to have teeth, and so teeth don't count as a reptilian trait. Well, OK, but what about all the other reptilian characteristics it has?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html#to-fly

After that, what about the feathered dinosaurs that have been found? Don't those count as transitional?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=gigantoraptor-is-a-bird-is-a-dinosaur-is-a-mystery

Velociraptor had feathers
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070920145402.htm

Finally, what about this recently discovered fossil?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080201-AP-brazil-croc.html

Anonymous said...

jon and aigbusted, if you really want to know how or why adam wasnt a child or any questions like that...than you can ask God yourself in Heaven, im sure He would answer your questions there, if you dont end up in Hell first. a warning to yal.

Sheila J. Hazelet said...

I am really amazed at all of the lies that I have just read on this sight. I am very glad to see that AiG is still going strong. It is just unbelievable to think that people would believe in evolution of mankind when the truth is in the Bible, a source that has been proven true again and again. I think the people responsible for this sight need to read Revelation a book in the Bible and see where their lies are going to lead them and all that they influence with this sight, and that is into a Godless eternity. Just remember you can fool a lot of people with your big words and so called scientific truth bt you do not fool God.

AIGBusted said...

Sheila, you can fool a lot of people with your threats of hell and promises of heaven, but where are your facts? Where are your arguments to back up your accusation of lies?

Unknown said...

There's a really interesting book by Walt Brown titled, "In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood". It discusses Creation and The Flood according to the Bible. This guy is a retired full Colonel from the Air Force and has his Ph.D. He is a smart cookie, and he used to be an evolutionist, trying to prove that evolution is real. However, along the way, he found more and more evidence DISproving evolution and proving Creation and Intelligent Design. Anyone who is debating this topic of the Flood or Creation for that matter should check it out and make a well rounded decision for themselves. Just because one may not believe what he has to say doesn't mean that he should be written off without a look at his book. You all are in my prayers. God bless...

Steve T. said...

We know that Mount Everest absolutely was not as tall as it is today. We know that today Everest grows at 15 centimeters a year. Major catastrophic events, such as a flood, and who knows what other major events have happened in the last 6,000 years could have altered that rate. There is no way to know what the rate of growth was thousands of years ago.

But that’s not even the most important thing. Let’s imagine that it was still very high and the flood waters were raised. Air pressure is caused by the weight of the air above the point where the pressure is experienced. If the water was say, 9 kilometers deep (thinking of the current height of Everest), then the air that would have been in those 9 kilometers would have been pushed out and would then have sat above the water at 9 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. This would increase the air pressure and make it quite easy for Noah and the animals to breathe. (No more difficult than being on top of a three story building.)

Look, I know that you do not believe the Bible, so I won’t use it to try and convince you. But don’t buy all scientific arguments without thinking about them scientifically. Earth's highest mountains have fossils of sea creatures at their tops. How do you answer this? You are right, Christians should not be claiming to believe the Bible, but ignore its commands to speak the truth in love. I want to know the truth, so I’ll use my mind to try and find it. Will you join me in this quest?

AIGBusted said...

Hi Steve,

If you look in Part Two of the Noah's Flood Series, you will find a link which explains the marine fossils found on mountaintops.

Peace,
AigB

beleth said...

Ever wonder about the physics of that much water? Just how much water would that be, anyway?

According to the Bible, enough water to cover the Earth to a depth of 15 cubits above the tallest mountain (Gen 7:19-20) fell in a time frame of 40 days and 40 nights (Gen 7:4).

To err on the low side, and because that's what the source I am using did too, I will assume that the Israelites had no knowledge of Mount Everest and use the tallest mountain in Palestine, Mount Hermon, which is about 2,814 meters high.

The volume of all that water would be the volume of the Earth covered with that water, minus the volume of the Earth without that extra layer of water.

The Earth is about 6,372,795 meters in radius. So the volume of the Earth is 4/3 * π * R^3. R in this case is 6,372,795 m, so volume is about 1.084123 * 10^21 cubic meters. (Apologies for being kind of confusing with the significant digits.)

The volume of the Earth plus the water is 4/3 * π * (6,372,795m + 2,814m)^3 = 1.085560 * 10^21 cubic meters.

So the water volume was 1.436765 * 10^18 cubic meters.

Skipping to the punchline...

This much water hitting the ground in the timeframe specified leads to a water pressure of about 2,700 psi being applied to the entire Earth's surface every second, for 40 days and 40 nights. To put this in perspective, fire hoses typically operate at 800 psi. The atmosphere is about 14 psi, so this much water is 189 atmospheres worth of pressure.

Every second, of every day, for 40 days.

Whether the notion that a ship, much less its inhabitants, could survive such an horrific deluge is truly plausible is left up to the reader to decide.

Anthony said...

beleth, thank you for drowning your self in your own ignorance. You get the facts from AiG, and hold them as evidence. Unfortunately you forget one very important fact. After the flood reaches about one foot or less in depth, the falling rain can no longer make contact with the ground. The rest of the forty days and forty nights depends on erosion. Eorsion is most effective when the water is running. Unfortunately, after about twenty days (or less) of the water falling continuously (at god speed let's say), the water stops running at such a great speed. Sorry, but this is not enough to create the grand canyon.

Unknown said...

Great post!
But ofcourse, it does not matter what you say to a Christian, as I think most of them would still belive in this fairy tail, even if it was 100% proven wrong.

Jam

Anonymous said...

I just think that in regards to demanding visible proof and things of that sort isn't logical. I've heard people asking if God is real why cant we see him? and no, i've never seen God but i've seen what's he's doing and is still doing in my life..I usually explain it this way to doubters, you cannot see gravity, but you know it exists because you see what it does and how it affects everyones daily lives. You cannot see the wind, but you can feel it. No, i cannot see God but his presence is ever present in my life...I know there will be some type of backlash to this comment, and i'm okay with that because we all don't share the same beliefs.

AIGBusted said...

"I just think that in regards to demanding visible proof and things of that sort isn't logical. I've heard people asking if God is real why cant we see him?"

I agree with you that it wouldn't be reasonable for someone to demand to see God. Since God is defined as immaterial, the best you could do is to witness a material manifestation of God. But even that would not be absolutely necessary in order to show that a God exists (more on this later).


"I usually explain it this way to doubters, you cannot see gravity, but you know it exists because you see what it does and how it affects everyones daily lives."

You're totally right on this. We don't have to see something directly in order to know it's true. But if you witness something and can show that the best explanation for that thing is an unseen thing/event, it's completely fine to believe it.

With the issue of God, it's an issue of seeing whether the world looks how it should if a God existed or does not look how it should if a God existed. Of course, you've said you've had personal experiences that indicate to you that there is a God, but I would ask whether those experiences (good things in your life) could be reasonably explained without God. If you got that dream job you've always wanted, it may just be because you worked hard. If there isn't a God, we'd expect that hard-workers and talented people would still reach their goals, at least some of the time.

On the other hand, if a God existed would we expect things like the Holocaust, tornadoes, etc. to happen?