Disproval of the RE model

To the defence of 6 literal days of creation:

Exodus 20
9. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Here, we see a direct correlation between a 6-day working week, 1-day rest that God told to keep for the people and 6-day creation, 1-day rest of God during the creation week.

You comments on the Grand Canyon have been dealt with well by Erasmus; so I'll just add you may want to look into the concept of erosion (which is High School level geography class material here in Canada).

Really?
From http://www.kaibab.org/misc/gc_coriv.htm
"The headwaters of the Colorado River are located in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. From here, at an altitude of 9,010 feet, the Colorado begins it's flow southwestward toward the Gulf o f California and the Pacific Ocean. By the time the river enters the Grand Canyon, at Lee's Ferry, its altitude has fallen to 3,110 feet, dropping over one mile since its beginning. The river will drop another 2,200 feet before it reaches the other end of the Grand Canyon, the Grand Wash Cliffs, 277 miles away."

So, again, back when it just started eroding Grand Canyon (no canyon exists yet, just the river) It originates at 9010ft flows downhill to 3110ft until the place it starts eroding (future beginning of Grand Canyon), then it flows uphill to 8900ft (top part of canyon) and drops to 2200ft (at the place where canyon ends). So it goes from 3110ft to 8900ft to 2200ft in just 277 miles.

How many ignorance points does this worth?

Really?
From http://www.kaibab.org/misc/gc_coriv.htm
"The headwaters of the Colorado River are located in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. From here, at an altitude of 9,010 feet, the Colorado begins it's flow southwestward toward the Gulf o f California and the Pacific Ocean. By the time the river enters the Grand Canyon, at Lee's Ferry, its altitude has fallen to 3,110 feet, dropping over one mile since its beginning. The river will drop another 2,200 feet before it reaches the other end of the Grand Canyon, the Grand Wash Cliffs, 277 miles away."

So, again, back when it just started eroding Grand Canyon (no canyon exists yet, just the river) It originates at 9010ft flows downhill to 3110ft until the place it starts eroding (future beginning of Grand Canyon), then it flows uphill to 8900ft (top part of canyon) and drops to 2200ft (at the place where canyon ends). So it goes from 3110ft to 8900ft to 2200ft in just 277 miles.

How many ignorance points does this worth?

Malrix!  I missed you in the three days since you told me we were breaking up... I say that with all sincerity.  I'm glad to see you're back to your old Bible-as-indefatigable-truth antics.

Anyway, I guess we're still not clear on the Grand Canyon issue.  Does the Colorado River *currently* flow from 3110 ft. to 8900 ft. to 2200 ft.?  Or are you saying that asserting that the river carved the canyon in the past entails that it must have flowed in said pattern at some point in the past?

So, I had a look at one of those videos on halos.com!  Really good presentation, excellent speakers -- you could tell they cared.  I wasn't aware that one could base one's entire careers on "creation science", but since all their evidence was found in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, I guess there's plenty of funding there for that sort of work.

My biggest complaint about the video is that they followed "can --> must" reasoning.  I don't know if there's any philosophy jargon for this sort of fallacy... "Necessitas ab potente non sequitur," perhaps: "Necessity does not follow from possibility."  They showed that one can seal a chunk of wood in a steel pipe filled with superheated, high pressure steam for eight months, and coal will result, and inferred from that that all coal in the world formed in eight months -- someplace, in the presence of superheated, high-pressure steam.

Along similar lines, also went way overboard arguing from the specific to the general.  For instance, we found this log and a million fossils buried obviously by a single catastrophic event -- so it must be the case that all fossils were buried by a single catastrophic event.  We found this huge patch of almost pure coal that must have been created by a catastrophic event afflicting vegetation with, miraculously, no impurities, so all patches of coal must have been formed by a catastrphic event afflicting vegetation, impurities notwithstanding.  It didn't seem to occur to them that maybe these dinosaurs that appeared to have been buried by falling volcanic ash were, in fact, buried by falling volcanic ash -- a hundred million years ago.  In fact, they made no connection to timing whatsoever.

Come to think of it, they never made any positive connection between any events and the point in history at which they occurred -- merely that it wasn't the case that the event required extremely long time intervals to complete.

I found the polonium halos entirely unconvincing.  Don't get me wrong; I was entirely convinced that any halos formed while rock cooled over millions of years would be erased during the cooling process... not that they offered any explanation why, oh, except in that isn't hot molten rock so very similar to water with alka-seltzer in it?  Brilliant analogy, why didn't I see it myself!  What I found lacking was an explanation of how it was impossible that the halos formed *after* the rock cooled.

Then there were unnecessary assumptions and downright absurdities, surrounding "continent buckling", not to mention the rather farfetched notion of hydroplates themselves; a mischaracterization of the way water flowing out of lakes -- something I'm sure you'd appreciate, with your distaste for uphill-flowing rivers; conflation of circumstances, such as water flowing over a free surface and water flowing through a pressurized tube; blatant disregard for the chronological ordering of layering in sedimentary deposits; convenient omission of alternate explanations for some geological phenomena that every geologist should know about (ever hear of "uplifting"?); hugely speculative quantitative data with no hint of computational rigor -- how do they know what the rate of flow out of the "great fountains" was, or how quickly the "hydroplates" slid?  Considering this video was an attempt at proselytization, it could have backed up its wild speculation a bit more.

Oh, and now that it's gotten my blood boiling again, this entirely unfounded accusation of inconstancy in the rate of decay of radioactive isotopes!  Are they really suggesting that maybe, at some point in the past, the strong nuclear force was, say, much stronger?  This is fairly outlandish, to put it blandly.

Anyway, the video wasn't a total waste of time.  Some of the things they studied were quite interesting -- the huge fossil find, for example.  The pure coal deposits as well -- though I think their explanation for it is as weak as any of the competition that I'm aware of.  Some things to look into.  We'll see what the next video has to offer.

Thanks for the recommendation, and welcome back.

-Erasmus

Thank you for welcoming me back. I'll be checking things out from time to time, but not as often as before.

Anyway, I guess we're still not clear on the Grand Canyon issue.  Does the Colorado River *currently* flow from 3110 ft. to 8900 ft. to 2200 ft.?  Or are you saying that asserting that the river carved the canyon in the past entails that it must have flowed in said pattern at some point in the past?

No, now it flows from 3110ft to 2200 thru the canyon with a constant drop, but at some point when there was no canyon it would have been problematic for it to climb to 8900ft and then drop to 2200ft.

I'm glad you checked the halos out.

In my opinion, based on the information we know now, there are 2 ways how Po halos appeared in the granite:
1. U decayed into Po while the rock was molten (erasing any evidence of U halos), as soon as Po was formed the rock was cooled completely in time that is less than the half life of Po-214 (which is 200 microseconds), because Po-214 halo is present in the granite.
2. Granite was created very rapidly with Po already in it.

That they are trying to challenge in the Uniformitarian Principle (the one that says the way things are now is the way they were alwas been) that science is built on. They showed that if you melt a piece of granite and cool you will not get the same granite piece, but instead it will have a lot smaller crystal size than the original. As of yet no one was able to reproduce the crystal sizes that we see in nature's granite (some crystals get up to several feet in size) by melting the rock and cooling it slowly. And again, in my opinion there are 2 ways to explain the fact:
1. Granite did not cool down for millions of years like evolution teaches, but rather was formed some other yet undiscovered way.
2. Uniformitarian Principle is wrong.

Since Uniformitarian Principle was written by man (that were not inspired by God) it could very well be wrong, which makes any dating method completely useless.

Just to pipe in about the Grand Canyon thing... I think Malrix's argument is that the Colorado River originates at some altitude, slopes downward, and keeps sloping down.  Makes sense, right?  Water flows from a high altitude to a lower altitude.  But wait!  The top edge of the canyon is, at present, higher than the altitude of the river!  How would it flow up to the top of the canyon for erosion to occur?  Ahhhh!!!

Let's think about it logically... step by step:

1.  The river originates at approximatley 9,000 feet
2.  The top edge of the Grand Canyon (where the CR enters) is approximately 8,000 feet
3.  The river currently flows at 3,000 feet where it enters the Canyon
4.  The river, flowing down hill, is at 2,000 feet where it exits the canyon (?)

So if the theory is that the river eroded the Grand Canyon to its present form, one would have to make sure that the theory doesn't require the river to flow uphill for any extended period of time.  So think of the Grand Canyon before it was a canyon.  A river flowing from 9,000 feet to 8,000 feet (downhill) is picking up sediments and moving them--thus eroding the ground to form a canyon.  Skip thousands of years later (or more?)--the river's slope is now much more drastic.  It completely eroded a bunch of land and created the Grand Canyon.  So now instead of the river flowing from 9,000 feet to 8,000 feet it flows from 9,000 feet to 3,000 feet.

I dunno about all this but it seems to me like Malrix is arguing that the river as it is now can't possibly flow uphill 5,00 feet!  As far as I know, the theory doesn't require that to happen at all.  What's happening is a misinterpretation of fact on Malrix's part.

Here, we see a direct correlation between a 6-day working week, 1-day rest that God told to keep for the people and 6-day creation, 1-day rest of God during the creation week.

Finally a valid argument about the six literal days!  As of now, I will not argue with the meaning of these passages to be literal or metaphorical.  However, I will say this:  let me start a new sentence because this will be too long to put after a colon.  Humans wrote the Bible in its entirety.  Humans can easily be confused--especially when they lack knowledge about science!  This was a time when other religions had their own far-fetched creation stories as well.  There is still no telling as to whether or not the 144 hour creation occurred.  The evidence for it is a few human-written scriptures in the Bible.  But then again, the evidence for other creation stories is equally valid.  It's a creation story.

In my opinion, based on the information we know now, there are 2 ways how Po halos appeared in the granite:
1. U decayed into Po while the rock was molten (erasing any evidence of U halos), as soon as Po was formed the rock was cooled completely in time that is less than the half life of Po-214 (which is 200 microseconds), because Po-214 halo is present in the granite.
2. Granite was created very rapidly with Po already in it.

Those are I suppose plausible, providing you can find a thermodynamic explanation for where the heat of the world's molten granite would go, and how it could get there in less than 200 microseconds.  Though maybe that only applies to Way 1.

I'd like to add a third, namely that granite cooled with something in it that wasn't polonium when it cooled, but eventually decayed to polonium.  The question here is, can polonium decay form halos in solid granite?  It's certainly the case that radiation can discolor solid materials; that's how photography works, after all.

As of yet no one was able to reproduce the crystal sizes that we see in nature's granite (some crystals get up to several feet in size) by melting the rock and cooling it slowly.

Why the assumption that the starting point for the historical process is also the ending point?  I.e., why assume that it's possible or necessary to start with crystals of size X, melt them down, and cool them again in order to get crystals of size X?  Perhaps you need to start with something else entirely.  Note that granite is formed in nature by melting of metamorphic rocks, but can also be formed by metamorphic properties itself.

Since Uniformitarian Principle was written by man (that were not inspired by God) it could very well be wrong, which makes any dating method completely useless.

Interesting.  So Antiuniformitarianists claim that the Laws of Nature, originally set in place by the word of God, can change -- or, dare I say it, evolve -- over time?  Interesting.

I might conclude from that that we have no way of knowing that an hour was the same length six thousand years ago as it is today; maybe one day, back then, was really 240 million years (as we measure time today), instead of 24 hours (as we measure it today).  Furthermore, perhaps plants during Creation Week could survive indefinitely without the sun (perhaps they were, like Adam and Eve, immortal).

The thing about Antiuniformitarianism is that you can't conclude *anything*, about any event in any time or place, except here and now.

Fortunately, I think, Uniformitarianism must be correct.  God preserves his Word, right?

-Erasmus

2.  The top edge of the Grand Canyon (where the CR enters) is approximately 8,000 feet

Wrong. It's 3110ft. River doesn't enter at the highest point of the Canyon. Read my post carefully.

Elevation of the banks of the Colorado River are as follows:
Origination: 9010 ft
Before it enters Canyon: 3110ft
Hightest point of the Canyon: 8900ft
point where river exits the canyon: 2200 ft

try again.

I'd like to add a third, namely that granite cooled with something in it that wasn't polonium when it cooled, but eventually decayed to polonium.  The question here is, can polonium decay form halos in solid granite?  It's certainly the case that radiation can discolor solid materials; that's how photography works, after all.

Wouldn't that something leave it's halo as well? And what else can decay into Po other than U? I don't know enough about rocks and radioactivity to answer these questions, as well as the ones about granite being produced by something that is non-granite.
In any case it is the matter of faith. You may believe that there was some other element that decayed into Po and granite was formed by non-granite, and I believe that it is one of the proofs of creation.

I might conclude from that that we have no way of knowing that an hour was the same length six thousand years ago as it is today; maybe one day, back then, was really 240 million years (as we measure time today), instead of 24 hours (as we measure it today).  Furthermore, perhaps plants during Creation Week could survive indefinitely without the sun (perhaps they were, like Adam and Eve, immortal).

You are right an hour wasn't the same amount of time it is now, it was probably shorter. I'm sure you know that Earth is slowing down in it's revolution around sun (that's why we have leap year), and also slowing down the speed of revolutions around it's axes (it's what they call leap second). So as light, it also is slowing down. Even Big Bang theorizes that light travalled a lot faster at time zero. So if light was a lot faster, why couldn't the half-lifes?

Wrong. It's 3110ft. River doesn't enter at the highest point of the Canyon. Read my post carefully.

Oops now I see that you're saying the 8000 ft is later on in the canyon.  So now I can finally see what your argument is.  Perhaps it's a correct analysis.  But if that's your argument can you explain what the river's altitudes were thousands of years ago?  Anyway, the first post I ever made on here when you asked what could have caused the Grand Canyon was:

Who knows how it was formed. I think when I was younger I was taught it might have been formed by a glacier or something. That isn't very strong evidence by the way. It could have been formed by a number of things. It was just as likely to be formed by Paul Bunyan dragging his axe behind him as it was to be formed by a flood covering the entire earth

Anyway, I've always been somewhat curious about how a flood caused the Grand Canyon to exist.  Maybe you'll be kind enough to shed some light?

Wouldn't that something leave it's halo as well?

I don't know.  It seems that the special property that polonium has is its incredibly short half life -- that is, it releases lots of energy in a short period of time.  Maybe this is related to why its decay creates halos, so maybe you wouldn't expect to see halos from isotopes with longer half-lives.  Just speculation.  Also, I've never heard of halos being formed by radioactive decay of other elements, but it's not exactly my field.

And what else can decay into Po other than U?

You'll want to look up "decay chains" for more info on this.

In any case it is the matter of faith. You may believe that there was some other element that decayed into Po and granite was formed by non-granite, and I believe that it is one of the proofs of creation.

No, it's not just a matter of faith, and frankly, I think this is an attempt by you to abort a debate that isn't going your way.  Not everything is a matter of faith, and while yes, everybody's entitled to his opinion, some opinions are more reasonable than others, some are better backed up by evidence, some have better predictive value, and some are downright farfetched.

If Gentry has the same attitude towards science as you are putting forth now, then all his claims are invalid.  Surprisingly, I don't think he *does* have that attitude... which is why he went through so much trouble to convince me by writing all those papers and making all those videos.

You are right an hour wasn't the same amount of time it is now, it was probably shorter. I'm sure you know that Earth is slowing down in it's revolution around sun (that's why we have leap year), and also slowing down the speed of revolutions around it's axes (it's what they call leap second).

I know about the latter (daily rotational slowing due to tidal drag); I didn't know about the former (annual revolutionary slowing).  What's your point?  It's pretty clear that any Uniformitarianism worth its salt doesn't claim that processes don't have dynamic parameters; that's idiotic.  In fact, almost all dynamic processes have rates of change that are proportional to their current size... population growth and radioactive decay are two examples.  It's how radiometric dating works, in fact.

More likely they claim that some fundamental constants won't change, such as, say, the strength of the strong nuclear force.  Oh by the way, any science that implies that such "constants" do in fact change, say, as a result of the changing curvature of spacetime or some such thing, it will likely also predict that the change happened over billions -- not thousands -- of years.  Just a guess -- more research will tell.  But on that note....

So as light, it also is slowing down. Even Big Bang theorizes that light travalled a lot faster at time zero. So if light was a lot faster, why couldn't the half-lifes?

So I've read a bit about this.  It seems the results are pretty controversial, but that nobody has gone anywhere near suggesting the kinds of changes in the speed of light that would invalidate radiometric dating.  However you're right that if light was a lot faster, half-lives would be... a lot different, probably, in ways that are not clear to me.  However, it's almost certain that there's a relationship, if by nothing else than through the fundamental dimensionless constants, such as the fine structure constant, for which there are suggestions that it may not be constant in time.

But I must stress that there would be no measurable change over a period of 6000 years; *all* of the "variable constant" theories talk about how things might have been different back when light left such-and-such quasar; i.e., billions of years ago.

Anyway, I think constancy is a good practical bet when discussing events that took place over the last 6000 years.  It certainly seems that the fundamental constants have not changed in that interval.

-Erasmus

Anyway, I've always been somewhat curious about how a flood caused the Grand Canyon to exist.  Maybe you'll be kind enough to shed some light?

Well, you'll want to check the videos at halos.com for a more detailed description (I lie... they don't give more details), but the basic idea is that after the flood, large lakes were left behind.  Then for no particular reason, the lakes overflowed their shores, eroding relatively small regions of the shores.  As the shore was eroded, it created a notch.  Water, against all that is natural, continued flowing out of the lake, through the notch, like this:



The first image shows a lake after the flood but before the drainage.  The second shows it after the canyon begins forming.

Malrix: any disagreements with my presentation?  This is just what I got out of that video.

-Erasmus

Malrix: any disagreements with my presentation?  This is just what I got out of that video.

-Erasmus

Your pictures are good, only a little adjustment.
Remember the elevations of the banks of the river?
Origination: 9010 ft
Before it enters Canyon: 3110ft
Highest point of the Canyon: 8900ft
point where river exits the canyon: 2200 ft

Here is what probably happened:
The lake was in the valley between the Origination and the Highest point of the canyon, so the highest point of the canyon was like a dam. At some point water started to go over the dam and since the rock was still soft from the flood, water washed out that dam very rapidly with the help of a process called hydraulic plucking. After the initial trench was washed out by the process, the walls kept eroding until they harden, and Colorado river has done some damage to the bottom and the walls as well.

Same thing happened after Mt. St-Helens and then one of the lakes overflowed. The canyon that was formed is a lot smaller, but the same basic idea

Your pictures are good, only a little adjustment.
Remember the elevations of the banks of the river?
Origination: 9010 ft
Before it enters Canyon: 3110ft
Highest point of the Canyon: 8900ft
point where river exits the canyon: 2200 ft

Here is what probably happened:
The lake was in the valley between the Origination and the Highest point of the canyon, so the highest point of the canyon was like a dam. At some point water started to go over the dam and since the rock was still soft from the flood, water washed out that dam very rapidly with the help of a process called hydraulic plucking. After the initial trench was washed out by the process, the walls kept eroding until they harden, and Colorado river has done some damage to the bottom and the walls as well.

Hmmm... I'm going to need a picture from you now, I think.  The impression I got from the video was that the ground was flat and level before the canyon was carved.

I'm not sure what the dam you describe is damming.

I also think I need to get a better idea of what that area was like, topographically, before the flood, and what it's like now (not including the canyon of course).  Was it all mountains back then, or was it flat, like I seem to think?  The existence of flat striations seem to imply that it was flat.

-Erasmus

One picture is worth a thousand words



This is the basic idea.

Hey, Knight, are you still writing that paper about how flood didn't happened?

Absolutely.  So far I think I have it pretty much planned out with my arguments.  The problem is that I have to do it in 5-6 pages so it will have to be short and sweet.  I'm confident though.

Absolutely.  So far I think I have it pretty much planned out with my arguments.  The problem is that I have to do it in 5-6 pages so it will have to be short and sweet.  I'm confident though.

Is it something you have to do for school?
What are your arguments?

Is it something you have to do for school?

Well, it's college.  A composition class--we're supposed to write a research paper about something.  So I chose this.

What are your arguments?

Well, I'll try to give a basic overview without getting into too much detail.  

1.  The ancient belief of the "whole world" was much different than the present understanding of it.  At the time this flood was said to have occurred, nobody really knew anything except that which was somewhat local to them.  They didn't know anything about America, Eastern Asia, Australia, etc.  Their belief of the "world" was, in fact, their world.

2.  The flood is not scientifically feasible by today's terms (at least, not to the extent that the Bible says).  That is, unless the entire ocean floor around the world was to rise up a whole lot and the dry continents were to sink down a whole lot.  Then it would be possible.  But the extent that that would have to occur is far too great to be comprehensible.  

3.  The Old Testament was written at a time when many people believed the earth was flat.  The ancient Hebrew view of the world was that of a "flat" earth, surrounded on all sides by water.  This earth or continent was "floating" on the Great Deep--an ocean which was connected to the other oceans.  By the ancient Hebrew belief the flood would have been feasible.  To them, it could have happened (because of what they believed).

4.  The geological evidence discovered by William Ryan and Walter Pitman in their book Noah's Flood shows that there was a great flood (which was local--like all floods) 5600 years ago.  Their conclusion is that the so-called "worldwide flood" was actually this local phenomenon at the Black Sea (and Bosporous Strait), and that the people of the time saw it as a great event and it turned into a legend.  Eventually it was written down and (*some*) people believed it.

All of these things lead to the conclusion that there was a flood, but that it was only a local phenomenon.  Science supports this conclusion.  The fact that in the times that the story was written there was the general belief in a world system that would allow for something like this flood to occur is further evidence.  And finally, the simple fact is, people didn't know what the concept of the whole world was.  They only knew that which was local to them.  There was not a flood that covered every mountaintop.

Yeah unluckily all the unicorns died....Noah took two males...he figured they both looked somewhat girly. Yes I wanted to add comedy into your serious conversation...Dont hate me.

Quote from: "6strings"

Sorry, but how is that theory any less arbitrary than your own?

Do we really need to get into arguments about predictive value, falsifiability, and parsimony?  Yeah, I guess you could claim that using those traits as a metric for a theory is itself arbitrary, but then it would be fairly clear that you weren't really interesting in pursuing truth.

So what if he's not interesting in pusuring truth? If saying such wanton rubbish makes you somehow more interesting or indeed better in any way then by all means take your cheap shots, but at least make an attempt to prove something besides your own debaucherous superiority and others idiocy

Quote from: "Erasmus"

Do we really need to get into arguments about predictive value, falsifiability, and parsimony?  Yeah, I guess you could claim that using those traits as a metric for a theory is itself arbitrary, but then it would be fairly clear that you weren't really interesting in pursuing truth.

So what if he's not interesting in pusuring truth? If saying such wanton rubbish makes you somehow more interesting or indeed better in any way then by all means take your cheap shots, but at least make an attempt to prove something besides your own debaucherous superiority and others idiocy

Debaucherous superiority, eh?  That's something I've never been accused of before.  Does it mean that the way in which I am condescending involves partying and drinking?  Or something?

Anyway, I'll explain what I mean, just for you, and I'll use small words.  There are some things that make science good or bad.  Most scientists agree on what these things are, but it's possible to disagree with them on that.  I think that if you disagree about what makes science good, then probably you'll be less successful in learning things about the world, and in getting other people to believe that your ideas are right.

Better?  Less "cheap shotty"?

-Erasmus

In your arguments you make a lot of assumptions and build on them.
Just some of them:
You assume preflood people weren't as intelligent. Incorrect assumption considering that each one lived at least 800 years. How much stuff can you learn in 800 years? how far can you travel?

You assume there was Africa, America, Asia and so on, again assumption you cannot prove.

Main Ocean was not connected to the Great Deep, you should really check out halos.com and watch "The Young Age of the Earth" video, closer to the middle it explains how flood started and why we have ocean ridges and why main mountain ranges are parallel to them.

And then of course, there is the formation of Great Canyon, or do you still believe Colorado River did it?

Yeah unluckily all the unicorns died....Noah took two males...he figured they both looked somewhat girly. Yes I wanted to add comedy into your serious conversation...Dont hate me.

No I don't think he took 2 males, I think he never found them in the first place, because, you know, they were blonds and ran off the edge of the Earth. :lol:

I'm not sure whether this post was referring to me, but I'll address its points anyway:

In your arguments you make a lot of assumptions and build on them.
Just some of them:
You assume preflood people weren't as intelligent. Incorrect assumption considering that each one lived at least 800 years.

You're arguing in circles.  Since I've doubted the Bible's literal veracity in other areas, you can't expect me to believe that people really lived 800 years.

You assume there was Africa, America, Asia and so on, again assumption you cannot prove.

I'm not sure what you mean by this; certainly the landmasses were there.  The video merely indicates that they were divided up by waters, and that the hydroplates shifted.  Essentially, this means that Africa, America, Asia, and so on, were all present... simply bigger, and in different places.

Anyway, could you point out how a refutation of the assumption that those places existed damaged some argument of mine, or of somebody else's?

Main Ocean was not connected to the Great Deep, you should really check out halos.com and watch "The Young Age of the Earth" video, closer to the middle it explains how flood started and why we have ocean ridges and why main mountain ranges are parallel to them.

As a warning to whomever this addresses: you'll probably notice this yourself, but in case you don't, I should point out that the video doesn't actually *explain* this, but merely shows a cool computer-generated animation of it.  Basically, it suggest that mountains formed when sheets of the Earth's crust slid sideways and smashed into each other.  The smashing caused the sheets to buckle up (to form mountains) or buckle down (to form ocean trenches).  What it doesn't explain is how it is possible for the sheet to buckle downwards, when there's nothing below it but a thin layer of water, followed by more rock.  It also doesn't explain how rock floats on water.  It also doesn't explain where the sheet's kinetic energy came from.

And then of course, there is the formation of Great Canyon, or do you still believe Colorado River did it?

Well, of course I do.

It seems to me that what you described, and what your pictures show, is a lake on higher ground spilling out and then flowing downhill.  Isn't this "spilling out" kind of exactly like what a river is?  They typically start in mountains and flow downhill.  It's entirely plausible to me that a river carved the canyon in millions of years, and your topographical complaints were caused either by uplifting, or by a misrepresentation of the river's source height (as long as the source was higher than all other points on the river, then the water would always flow the full course of the river.  It can flow uphill by filling in the valley behind it until the water level surpasses the height of the hill it wants to flow over, just like in your picture).

The only issue, then, is the river's flow rate and the canyon's erosion rate.  The flood model demands that the ground the canyon was carved from not rock but loosely packed mud -- no explanation, that I recall -- as to why this might be.  Note that if this is not the case, then your picture doesn't suggest to me the astronomically high outflow rate required -- namely the tens of thousands of gallons of water per second -- in such a small area to carve hard rock (as in the dam outflow damage analogy).

According to your picture, just the water from the uppermost surface of the lake, initially, would spill out.  It's hard to see how this might cascade to the level of destruction required to create the Grand Canyon, unless the canyon were made of something softer than it is today (what you refer to as "recently compressed mud").  The problem with this is there's no explanation as to why the ground would be so soft.  Also, it doesn't explain why *nowadays* the ground would be any harder.

-Erasmus

Also, concerning the recession of the flood waters.

First off, can you suggest what the difference in sea level was, between the apex of the flood and modern-day sea level?  This would be useful to calculate the volume of water involved.

Supposing the flood water was at least 8110 feet deep (enough to carve the Grand Canyon), this suggests a volume of water of 784,080,000 cubic miles.

Where did all this water recede to?  You suggest that much of it receeded into deep trenches in the Earth's crust.

Suppose every contintent is completely surrounded by an oceanic trench ten miles deep (as deep as the deepest trench in the world) and forty miles wide (as wide as the Peru-Chile trench, which runs the entire length of S. America's Pacific coast).  For simplicity (and because I couldn't find the continental perimeters of every continent) I'll assume that every trench is 3,666 miles long (the length of the Peru-Chile trench), and furthermore, that
1)  N. America and S. America each have two such trenches.
2)  Europe has one (Atlantic coast).
3)  Asia has three (southern and Pacific coasts together).
4)  Africa has two.
5)  Australia has two.

That's a total of 12.  Just in case I missed some, let's double it, to get 24 such trenches.

The volume of each trench is 1,466,400 cubic miles.  24 trenches gives us a total trench volume of 35,193,600.

So assuming each of the 24 trenches, each as deep as the world's deepest, wide as the world's widest, and long as the world's longest, was created by the plate buckling described by hydroplate theory, that's enough free space to hold less than 4.5% of the total flood volume.

Getting to the point.  Where did all that water go?

-Erasmus

In your arguments you make a lot of assumptions and build on them

Alright...let's see what you got.

You assume preflood people weren't as intelligent

Quote me on that one.  I'm not too sure I said that.  Perhaps ignorant of the rest of the world... but I never said they weren't as intelligent.

each one lived at least 800 years

Yeah... ridiculous as that sounds, it stil doesn't help your argument whatsoever.

You assume there was Africa, America, Asia and so on, again assumption you cannot prove

Nor do I need to really.  There is an Africa, America, Asia, and Australia.  The readers of my paper can assume that these continents existed a few thousand years ago too.  After all, it was you, I believe, that said God created everything in six days and did not create anything after that.  Right?

Main Ocean was not connected to the Great Deep

I don't know if you're stating that as a fact or as an incorrect assumption on my part.  Either way, the diagram I have shows a bunch of water with a continent (earth) floating on it.  Oceans on all sides and below.  Perhaps you're arguing that there was some kind of wall keeping that water in the Great Deep from touching the water from the oceans that surround the continent.  Okay...

And then of course, there is the formation of Great Canyon, or do you still believe Colorado River did it?

Geez Malrix, always circling back to this argument huh?  I'll say this one more time, I have not studied the Grand Canyon enough to make any decisions on that.  For that matter, I haven't studied Geology enough to even know about things like that.  I've said it many times.  For what it's worth, I'll say this:  if the Grand Canyon was caused by a flood, it certainly wasn't a worldwide flood.

So Malrix, that's it huh?  Or were you waiting to bring out the heavy artillery.  I think it was you who made some incorrect assumptions about what I was saying.  The good thing about writing persuasive papers is that people can read them and possibly believe them.  Then maybe if you were to write a paper they could make a decision on which they believe.  You could say in yours that there probably wasn't an Africa, Asia, Australia, and America back in those days and that people lived 800 years and therefore were much more intelligent than present-day humans.

I think that I have solved the problem.
The answer is a banana 7 inches long and the clue is that "His Father's name was Smith"
Am I right
Gran
I told you that I challenged assumptions

Where's Malrix when you want to argue???  Btw:

I told you that I challenged assumptions

Huh?