I've picked out all the posts between us from the other thread (so other readers don't have to do any trawling!) and dumped them here so we can carry on where the other thread left off.
touchingcloth wrote:Jac - (just to pull back a bit to the initial topic of the thread, if that's ok...) presumably you attribute the time of the fall to being after the appearance of the first human...just curious what you make of the fossil evidence of carnivorous animals that is orders of magnitude older than fossils of the first humans? (Apologies if this has been addressed already)
Jac3510 wrote:Not much, TC. That would only be a problem if I assumed the geological evidence indicated that some fossils are "orders of magnitude older than fossils of the first humans." You have to assume uniformitarianism to get that, which is, at best, a philosophical, not scientific, position. As it stands, I believe in a global flood, which I take as a better explanation for modern geological structures, and thus, for the dating of fossils. Nothing, I presume, you haven't heard before.
touchingcloth wrote:Even considering the strata upon strata between the latest dinosaurs and earliest humans?
Jac3510 wrote:Yes. You have to realize that the assumption that strata only get built up by millions of years is a philosophical notion on your part. There's no reason to suppose that the Flood would bury them in the same places.
touchingcloth wrote:Well assuming that strata slowly build up is one part of it, as is dating rocks in the same strata as certain fossil species, as is noticing that certain species of animals (well, whole orders of animals in fact) consistently turn up in deeper strata than others.
There's not reason to suppose that a flood would bury them all in the same place, but there's even less reason to think that one would sort them (and rocks) in this manner.
Jac3510 wrote: Remember that at the time of the Flood, pretty much all humans were living in the same place. You wouldn't expect to find human fossils buried throughout the stata, especially not on a global scale.
touchingcloth wrote: You'd expect them to be in the same (or at least overlapping) strata as their supposed contemporaries, though.
Where is the place where all humans were living at the time of the flood?
Jac3510 wrote:"their" is ambiguous. Could you restate?touchingcloth wrote:You'd expect them to be in the same (or at least overlapping) strata as their supposed contemporaries, though.
The Middle East.Where is the place where all humans were living at the time of the flood?
touchingcloth wrote:In other words you'd expect to find human remains in at least some corresponding strata with those that dinosaurs are found in, wouldn't you? (Pardon the question, but you're "pure" YEC aren't you, not progressive or anything, just a single act of creation?)Jac3510 wrote:"their" is ambiguous. Could you restate?touchingcloth wrote:You'd expect them to be in the same (or at least overlapping) strata as their supposed contemporaries, though.
Jac3510 wrote: As I said, there were a relatively small number of humans living in a small area. I would not expect to find them buried together, especially not over the entire world. Further, humans are a bit smarter than animals, so they could have survived the flood longer, meaning any human remains that would have been fossilized during the flood--and there wouldn't have been many--would have been more likely to be found in higher strata.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "a single act of creation." I think creation took place progressively over six days.
touchingcloth wrote:But it is plausible that there will be some human remains in strata in the middle east that are deeper than corresponding strata in, say, Australia that contain dinosaur remains, right? Or in other words, finding human remains below the Kt boundary is entirely plausible?Jac3510 wrote: As I said, there were a relatively small number of humans living in a small area. I would not expect to find them buried together, especially not over the entire world. Further, humans are a bit smarter than animals, so they could have survived the flood longer, meaning any human remains that would have been fossilized during the flood--and there wouldn't have been many--would have been more likely to be found in higher strata.
Jac3510 wrote:To directly answer your question: possible? Yes. Plausible? That may be a stretch. Bear in mind that the YEC view has the flood happening very early in human history--maybe only a couple thousand years.
More generally, the KT boundary is problematic enough in itself for a lot of reasons I won't go into here. Further, you are still assuming uniformitarian geology. Who says that much of the pre-flood strata were not rearranged by the Flood?
Put the question this way: suppose there was a global flood during the very early portion of human history. What would you expect to find in the rock strata and fossil layers? You would expect a fossil record composed primary of marine and plant life, and then to a much lesser extent of animal life, and to a far, far lesser extent some human life. That human life would not be uniformly distributed throughout the strata but would be concentrated in the upper. You would also expect evidence of very quickly formed rock layers, of marine animals at the tops of mountains, of trees and even animal fossils protruding through various strata, and evidence of animals dying and being fossilized in an instant, and this, all over the globe, etc.
Guess what? We find exactly all these things. Now, at this point, we are turning the conversation more in the direction of a discussion about the Flood, which is not what this thread is about, so if you want to continue this line, I'd suggest opening a thread on it. My only point, though, in bringing this to your attention is that the fossil record is perfectly consistent with what we would expect in a YEC model, which, I believe, was the essence of your question.
Now, I'm not a geologist, and I don't spend a ton of time focusing on the geological defenses of YEC. Most of what I know are things I've picked up from here or there. My primary area of study is in biblical studies, philosophy, and Hebrew. I may have to do some digging to get the answers to some of your questions. But I think the general framework I've provided is sufficient to provide at least a broadly conceptual answer.
Whew! That was a mammoth post to edit!touchingcloth wrote:I'll put aside the various problems I have with this, and agree with you that given certain conditions a global flood could result in animals being fossilized in that order.Jac3510 wrote:Put the question this way: suppose there was a global flood during the very early portion of human history. What would you expect to find in the rock strata and fossil layers? You would expect a fossil record composed primary of marine and plant life, and then to a much lesser extent of animal life, and to a far, far lesser extent some human life. That human life would not be uniformly distributed throughout the strata but would be concentrated in the upper. You would also expect evidence of very quickly formed rock layers, of marine animals at the tops of mountains, of trees and even animal fossils protruding through various strata, and evidence of animals dying and being fossilized in an instant, and this, all over the globe, etc.
However, that doesn't account for older rocks being found in deeper strata; a 2 week old igneous rock is much the same as a thousand year old one, or a million year old one. As I've agreed that there are elements of plausibility to your flood hypothesis as an interpretation of the evidence, I'd hope you would agree that gauging the age of when a strata was laid down by the age of the rocks it contains is also a reasonable use of the evidence?
