#8: Fossils:
According to the Bible, there was a worldwide deluge that destroyed all terrestrial life. The only survivors were Noah, his family, and the animals he had taken with him on the Ark. The event, known commonly as Noah's Flood, radically changed the earth's topography and created most of the fossils we find in the so called, “geological column.” A popular meme used by evolutionists has the caption, “We have the fossils. We win.” The truth is, there are so many things about fossils that are better explained by the creation model that I would say that I could do a 10 part series on just fossils. Of course I won't do that. Consider this a single item with multiple sub-points. We'll call it a series within a series.
Abundance: Evolutionists advance the idea that fossils are created gradually as creatures die, are buried, and their bones become mineralized over millions of years. The reality is that fossilization is normally an extremely rare event. When a creature dies, its carcass is usually gone in a matter of weeks or maybe days, the result of scavenging and decay. There is very seldom enough carcass left to even become a fossil. The best chance for an animal's remains to become fossilized is if the poor critter is buried immediately. As we observe the world, we see there are literally trillions of fossils buried everywhere. You can hardly turn over a shovel of dirt without finding one. Seeing that there are so many fossils everywhere and knowing that virtually none are being created now, our observations fit well with the idea that the creatures were buried in the catastrophic flood described in the Bible.
Sudden burials: Numerous examples have been found of animals fossils in the middle of the act of doing something. For example, fish have been found fossilized in the act of eating another fish. An icthyosaur has been found in the act of giving birth. These fossils and others further attest to the fact that these creatures were buried suddenly in some disaster – even before having time to swallow – and preserved as fossils.
Polystrate fossils: The common evolutionary assumption is that rock layers are laid down gradually with each stratum representing some amount of time, similar to the rings of a tree. The lower the layer, the older the fossils in it are believed to be. Often, though, we will find fossils that intrude through several layers. Fossil tree trunks are a common example, where a trunk, several feet tall, stands upright through several strata. Obviously, the tree could not have stood upright for millions of years while sediment was deposited around it. Neither could it have been driven down into the rock like a nail. The more reasonable explanation is that the successive layers were laid down rapidly before the trunk had time to decompose. Besides trees, clam burrows have been found showing where clams had dug through several strata. The clam certainly could not have dug through solid rock so the strata had to still be soft when the clam dug through it.
Preserved Details: Completely intact, larger animals are more scarce in the fossil record. However, an abundance of smaller fossils exist. Something striking about many are the exquisite details that have been preserved – the fragile wings of insects, the scales of fish, leaves (which begin to wilt almost immediately after falling from the tree), and even the soft bodies of jellyfish have all been preserved. Since all of these things would begin to shrivel and decay within hours, the remarkable details could have only been made if the creature was buried immediately upon death. Again, this fits well with the biblical flood.
Ubiquitous Marine Animals: If you've ever found a fossil, I'll bet I can guess what it was. //RKBentley thinks// It was a shell!! Am I right? It's not hard to guess, really, because nearly the entire fossil record (some 95%) is comprised of marine animals, primarily shellfish. Most of what is left are plants and algae. The next largest group (about .25%) of fossils are insects. Only the tiniest fraction of fossils are of terrestrial vertebrates. Even dinosaur and primate fossils are always found with marine fossils in the same layer. There are marine fossils found from top to bottom in the geological column. Marine fossils cover nearly the entire earth's surface including the tops of the highest mountains. The fossil record does not show a history of simple to complex; a more accurate description would be marine animals, amphibians with marine animals, plants with marine animals, reptiles with marine animals, dinosaurs with marine animals, and birds and mammals with marine animals. It is entirely consistent with a worldwide flood.
Out of sequence fossils: Richard Dawkins once told a great lie when he said, “Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.” I've written before about human footprints found in volcanic ash in Mexico dated by evolutionists to be 1.3 million years old. There are also the Laetoli footprints; these (allegedly) 4 million year old footprints are virtually indistinguishable from modern human footprints. They are said to belong to the species Australopithecus afarensis except that the fossil specimen, Little Foot, shows A. afarensis had very chimp-like feet. Flowering plants are believed to have evolved only 380 million years ago but fossils of pollen spores has been found in Cambrian rocks dated at 1.7 billion years old. There are many more examples I could cite; Dawkins said just one would disprove evolution!
Creationists believe the order in the fossil record depicts better where the creatures lived rather than when they lived. In a universal flood, the bottom-dwelling sea creatures would be buried first, then swimming marine creatures, amphibians and reptiles further up, with mammals and birds at the top. That's roughly what we observe. “Out of place” fossils are only a problem for the evolutionary theory which claims the creatures were separated by eons rather than environments.
Read this entire series
The Bible does not actually state that Noah's Flood created most (or any) of the fossils in the geological record. Note that if it did, this implies that the forests, grasslands, jungles, etc. of the pre-Flood world were buried inaccessibly (along with the animals that had lived in them) under miles of mud when the animals disembarked from the Ark; this would be very inconvenient for the animals when they started looking for food aside from each other. One wonders, indeed, where Noah's raven found that olive twig. I know that many creationists posit floating mats of vegetation -- but in that case, why is finding the olive twig regarded as relevant to the question of how far the floodwaters had receded? I do not think flood geology is consistent with Genesis, much less with geology.
ReplyDeleteMinor quibble: while the Bible itself is not entirely clear, most interpreters hold that Noah did not take whales aboard the Ark (to say nothing of fish, cephalopods, lobsters, etc.), yet they survive.
An abundance of fossils can be explained by one huge fossil-forming event one time, or by billions of small fossil-forming events spread out over millions of centuries. I think that in general the abundance of fossils supports the latter: based on sampling, the Karoo formation of South Africa contains the remains of ca. five thousand fox-sized mammal-like reptiles per acre. That's a ridiculous population density for animals that large, even in a lush environment. It seems to me far more plausible that they weren't all buried in the same year, or in the same million years.
Likewise, millions of centuries of local inundations, mudslides, sandstorms, etc. will produce myriads of sudden burials over time. But what produces layers of evaporites (salt, etc. from dried-up seas) between layers of water-laid sediments, or layers showing the distinctive cracks of dried mud (sometimes with fossil insect eggs in the cracks), again between layers of water-laid sediments? Only time, and lots of it, with alternating periods when land was submerged and above water and dry.
Yes, polystrate fossils are explicable only by rapid deposition of layers. In some cases, this results from repeated falls of volcanic ash over a period of months, gradually burying trees whose roots are still found fixed in buried soil layers. Uniformitarianism does not require that the past be an unbroken succession of mild spring days; it does not rule out storms, earthquakes, impacts of extraterrestrial objects, eruptions, etc. I suppose you could say that mainstream geologists are fine with "micro-catastrophism" (including some incidents, like the end-Cretaceous bolide, that don't seem all that "micro"), but reject "macro-catastrophism" such as floods that would take more water than is actually on the surface of the Earth.
You find nothing surprising in fine details being preserved by a flood that buried the pre-Flood world under miles of mud and sand? Forty days of driving, pounding rain combined with tsunamis that make anything in secular history look like something that belongs in a kiddie wading pool, and you say that this predicts articulated skeletons and insect wings preserved in microscopic detail? Again, I find the evidence more compatible with a variety of processes spread out over a vast variety of situations and times.
Surely the overwhelming proportion of marine fossils among fossils is evidence against their origin in a global flood? It suggests, not that most fossils originated in a single catastrophe that buried sea and purely terrestrial animals indifferently and together, but rather was due to millions of years of sedimentation, most of which took place in shallow seas that did not form swiftly and catastrophically.
It is ungenerous to call Dr. Dawkins a liar; perhaps he is merely misinformed, lacking your own superlative expertise in geology, paleontology, biology, and physics.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the Wikipedia article you link to says that there is no consensus on what species of Australopithecus Little Foot belongs to -- and for that matter, I do not think there is any certainty as to which Australopithecus species left the Laetoli footprints. For that matter, there is no consensus as to how many Australopothicus. species existed, altogether or just four million years ago, though it seems quite possible that they differed in how advanced their feet were. At least one site assigns Little Foot to its own distinct australopith species, A. prometheus. There is variation among the feet of existing A. afarensis specimens (so that some may have been more primitive than others); it is at least barely conceivable that there were changes changes in the foot bones of australopiths as individuals aged.
I note, for what it's worth, that reconstructions of Little Foot's little foot are based on four bones from the ankle and one toe, one of them broken. How much the big toe was abducted is one of those inferences from limited evidence of which you are so suspicious when it concerns, e.g. wings on velociraptors.
Rocks dated at 1.7 billion years old are Pre-Cambrian. The particular example to which you refer was recovered at the Grand Canyon and the pollen grains found on it are identical to those of flowering plants at the Grand Canyon today (which is, I suppose, compatible with Noah's Flood but not particularly expected, since presumably the local ecology has changed greatly since the flood). It seems more reasonably explained in terms of superficial contamination of the sample by modern, locally-produced pollen.
We find fish fossils that are dated as significantly younger than, say, T. rex (why not? we still have fish today). We find fossil mammals alongside the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous and even the Jurassic -- though they belong to no extant (or at least, no discovered extant) species, genus, or family. I think I've pointed out before, here, that the living coelancanth species belong to a different genus from any known fossil coelancanth, and while trilobites are found throughout the Paleozoic, different species and genera are found in, say, Cambrian rocks than in Devonian, to say nothing of Permian. We don't find fossil whales and fossil ichthyosaurs in the same layers, although there are a variety of both adapted, apparently, to a variety of marine environments. The fossil record does not resemble your description of what the Flood model predicts.
Steven J,
ReplyDeleteI always appreciate your comments and you know that I will always publish them. You're welcome to comment as much as you'd like. Keep in mind, though, that it's not unusual for your comments to be 1,000 words long. Due to the character restrictions imposed by Blogspot and the normal constraints on my time, you can understand that I can't respond in detail to every point you raise. As usual, I'll hit some highlights.
You said, “The Bible does not actually state that Noah's Flood created most (or any) of the fossils in the geological record.”
True. It does discuss the Flood and describes its duration and scope. Such a significant event in history certainly affected geology and biology. Creation theory attempts to explain the evidence while keeping the Flood in mind.
You said, “One wonders, indeed, where Noah's raven found that olive twig.”
It was a dove, by the way, the raven returned empty handed but I get your point. Considering that even today, cuttings from mature plants will take root when replanted, it's not hard to see how some plants endured the Flood floating in large mats, then immediately began to take root as the waters assuaged. I might write a post on that subject in the future.
You said, “Minor quibble: while the Bible itself is not entirely clear, most interpreters hold that Noah did not take whales aboard the Ark (to say nothing of fish, cephalopods, lobsters, etc.), yet they survive.”
Genesis 7:22 is very clear that “all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died.” So Noah specifically preserved terrestrial, air-breathing animals. Fish, whales, and cephalopods were not his concern. Certainly, many of these creatures died but obviously some of each kind survived outside of the Ark.
You said, “An abundance of fossils can be explained by one huge fossil-forming event one time, or by billions of small fossil-forming events spread out over millions of centuries. I think that in general the abundance of fossils supports the latter: based on sampling, the Karoo formation of South Africa contains the remains of ca. five thousand fox-sized mammal-like reptiles per acre. That's a ridiculous population density for animals that large, even in a lush environment. It seems to me far more plausible that they weren't all buried in the same year, or in the same million years.”
First, I'm curious how you would explain the extreme concentration of fossils in the Karoo formation in the first place? Is there something about the area that is especially conducive to fossilization? It seems to me it's easier to believe the bodies were washed there together in a single, huge flood.
The problem of population density only persists if you assume they all lived exactly where they are buried. Like I said, they likely were transported from a larger area and simply deposited there. If you spread the population over all of southern Africa, you will find per acre populations consistent with what we find today.
I'm sorry but I'm going to have to snip the rest of your post. I may circle back around sometime later. Thanks again for your comments. God bless!!
RKBentley
I stand corrected on Noah's birds.
ReplyDeleteThe Karoo formation is interpreted by geologists as a former rift valley (a long, narrow lowland between two splitting tectonic plates). It would have spent millions of years filled with rivers and lakes -- a good place to accumulate sediments. Note that other areas of Africa also yield fossils (again, based on sampling, most paleontologists conclude that there are millions of hominid fossils buried throughout Africa; they just haven't been uncovered and examined yet, since paleontologists usually concentrate on fossils exposed at the surface). Likewise, the Sahara has, buried beneath it and occasionally poking in fragments out of the ground, fossils of dinosaurs and early whales, among other organisms. The Karoo formation does not contain fossils from all over Africa, since fossils from all over Africa are, well, all over Africa.