nobody argues from the Bible here!!??

All scientific research is up for review, and experiments must be reproducable. If a creationist (who is an outsider to science in the first place) finds evidence for something, they have to prove it just like everyone else. Once their data is published their experiments/observations can be reproduced by people that don't have a conflicit of interest. Regular scientists must play by these rules too,but they don't have to prove anything to creationists since creationism is outside of science.

i don't think anybody is going to argue with that. interestingly enough, can you repeatedly experiment and demonstrate that a dinosaur turned into a bird 140 million years ago? no you can't. the only problem is, by your own words, you have to be able to to be part of science. weird weird world isn't it?

Can anyone provide linkage to research showing the occurance (or lack thereof) of a flood in the strata of the earth? I really would like to know, I'm not just being an ass here. Hypotheses I've seen include a flooding of the middle eastern areas, in which case the whole world might as well have been flooded because that was their entire world.

ugh, no you don't get it. we're not looking for evidence of a flood IN the strata, the strata themselves ARE the evidence. creationists don't accept mainstream beliefs that those strata are the production of millions of years of uniformitarianism, we believe that they were all layed down, all at once (mostly anyway) in a GLOBAL flood (scripture clearly teaches that the entire planet was covered in water, not just Noah's little valley). i'll find you some websites, on the sole condition that you don't get hung up on the fact that their written by creationists. think about it, who the hell else is going to offer a completely different paradigm from all of mainstream geology? the key thing to keep in mind is, it's not what's IN the strata, it's the strata themselves.

Where is there evidence that Jesus was a real person, outside of the Bible? I don't doubt it is possible (it makes sense in my twisted version of history) but I don't believe we have real evidence showing that yet. I am honestly interested.

i don't know that any historians, secular or otherwise, hold to the belief that Jesus never existed at all. and also, the Bible is pretty good indication tha the existed (hear me out) if probably a dozen people wrote entire books about him (four of which were deemed historical enough to put in the Bible), and if everybody was writing letters back and forth and all the rest of it, that's pretty good indication that He at least existed. plus, the Book of Acts, written by Luke, is considered by many to be one of the most historically accurate books from that time, Christian or otherwise. Luke was an amazing historian, who has had just about everything he ever said confirmed by external sources, whether these claims regard historicity, geography, anthropology, or archaeology, he's been right every time. and just for the record, this is the same Luke that wrote the Third Gospel.

here's some quotes from a book called "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict" (highly recomended for anybody who's into historical studies and/or religion, very in-depth): "No serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus"-Otto Betz (modern day); "Christus...was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius"- Cornelius Tacitus (first century Roman hisorian); "As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Christus, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome"-Suetonius (first century Roman historian. note that Luke talks about this event in Acts).

here's the websites i promised:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/geology.asp
http://www.biblicalgeology.net/
http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=geology&sp-a=00020fd7-sp00000000

to be completely honest, however, i probably won't be able to argue with you very effectively on the topic of geology. i don't know geology very well, and it bores me to tears. i'll do my best, though most of my arguments will probably just be reffering you to websites.

Here's an exerpt from Wikipedia on the topic of flood geology.

Mainstream science does not consider the literal biblical interpretation of a global flood and associated deluge mythology to be a valid scientific theory. Although flood geology was widely supported by early practitioners of geology and geosciences, it was contradicted by many scientific discoveries of the first half of the 19th century and it was abandoned as a serious scientific hypothesis by the middle of the century. It was revived in the early 20th century as part of the growth of the Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States.

Many scientific objections have been raised concerning the proposed mechanics of flood geology, which often require the suspension of basic laws of physics - something which mainstream science sees as being extremely improbable. A massive flood of the size suggested by creation geologists has extreme physical problems. In particular, the amount of water required to cover the Earth's entire surface is enormous and no naturalistic mechanism proposed to explain where it came from or where it went will satisfy mainstream proponents. The mechanisms proposed by creationists to account for the fossil record, lithospheric layering, and tectonic formations are balked at by the vast majority of scientists in the geologic field. In short, mainstream geologists consider it to be pseudoscience.

I just want to make mention of those parts I bolded.  In the past, the vast majority of geologists believed in creation.  In fact, the geologists who laid down the original relative timetables for strata layers were almost all themselves creationists.  It didn't take long before even the creationist-majority geologic community completely rejected the physical evidence for a flood despite the fact that they were specifically looking for it.
The other part I bolded: there are different theories about where the water came from for the flood (vapor canopy, underground etc) but they all are, well, impossible.  They all violate the laws of physics.

That's all fine and dandy if you say that God caused the flood, and then erased the evidence for it as well as making it LOOK like something else happened.  I can't argue with that, it's impossible to prove otherwise.
But it's not science, and science does NOT support a flood across ANY branch.

i find it interesting that you went that whole post, including a long quote from an online encyclopedia without even giving me a single point of argument. you can't just keep going on about it being impossible unless you're going to give me some reasons as to why it's impossible. that's not fair to me, nor is it even really an argument. i believe it's called "hurling elephants" saying things like "all of science says you're wrong" without giving any reason as to why.

and there are various theories as to where the water came from, each has it's own merrits and faults. i like the canopy theory, though some parts of it need some work. the fact of the matter is though, there is more than enough water for a global flood. if you smoothed out all the mountains and valleys on the planet, you would have water nearly twice as deep as the Bible says there was. which only means that there must have been small mountains and small valleys. a lot of scripture teaches that it was after, and during the flood that all the mountains rose up and the valleys dropped down. creationists agree that the flood and following times were of great geologic activity.

and again, we ARE NOT saying that God erased evidence of anything. God is not in the business of fooling us. we say that the evidence is clearly there, but people are intentionally misinterpreting it so that they can discredit the Bible. and yes, this is how secular geology came about. read about two pages of anything written by James Hutton and Charles Lyle and you'll see that the fathers of secular geology HATED the Bible and everything it said.

First of all, in the past the vast majority of geologists believed in the Bible and were in fact creationists.  I'm not sure why you dispute it, it's not really a fact in dispute unless it's just some new creationist spin of history.  However, with the vast lack of evidence for a flood and their professional reputations on the line, they abandoned the idea of a great flood as being a significant event in earth's history.  They still clung to the idea that it happened - they just conceded that it was not a major event in the geologic history of the earth.  In that sense, they were a credit to science unlike YEC's today who stubbornly cling to their beliefs despite a complete lack of evidence.

Let's start with the vapor canopy.  You may like this model, but even most creationists have rejected it by now due to some of the implications of it.  The atmosphere would obviously have to have contained much more water before the flood than it does today, if that is the source of the water.  There are implications for this.  In order for so much water to be in the atmosphere and NOT condense, you have to raise the temperature accordingly.  The atmospherical pressure first of all would go up considerably, from the 1 atm that we know today to about 900 atm, and the temperature would have to go up accordingly basically creating a pressure cooker on earth.  In addition, all that extra water in the atmopshere would raise the oxygen and nitrogen levels accordingly - to highly toxic levels.  Not a reasonable hypothesis from any standpoint.  How was the canopy suspended?  What caused it to fall when it did?  As usual, the list of problems goes on.

How do you propose that the fossils got sorted in the manner they are, if the flood itself laid down all these layers?  Fossils are not sorted by density (you don't see dinosaurs together with horses, for example), and there is no single process that can account for the way we find fossils sorted in the geologic record.  Except of course, for the mainstream theory that it was laid down over time, spanning many different time periods.  What evidence is there to the contrary, and what sorting mechanism do you propose?

Erosion.  Why are there such vastly different rates of erosion across the world?  If the flood hypothesis were true, we'd see more consistent rates.  The example given in Wikipedia is the Appalachian Mountains, which show very high rates of erosion versus the Rockies which show very little erosion.  The age of the mountain ranges explains erosion very nicely in mainstream science, and agrees with radiometric and other dating methods.  How is this explained in YEC?

Recorded history dates back to before the flood supposedly occured, with civilizations like the Ancient Egyptians and others.  They kept extensive written records, and didn't mention a global flood.  I have a feeling they'd remember such a flood.  In addition, carbon dating methods agree very closely with the ages that come from the archaeologists.  Not only would you have to explain why both camps are wrong, but you've had to explain just how exactly they could both be wrong YET come up with the exact same age.  Which, by the way, agrees with numerous OTHER INDEPENDENT dating methods!

There are many geologic structures that formed over a great period of time that cannot have been caused by a flood.  Meandering canyons, for example.



These are formed by rivers, and it takes a very long time to carve out canyons in rock like this with running water.   There are other geologic anomolies as well inconsistent with your geology but we gotta keep this managable.  I can get to them later if you like.

The Ark itself.  How did Noah fit all the animals on the arc, how did he care for them, how did he gather them all to the arc?  Some animals can't travel far, some can't move quickly, some can't leave their habitat at all.
How did he provide basically all the habitats of the world, in one small boat?  How did he even get them all ON the ark?  Supposedly he only have 7 days to make this all happen.  This would have to include dinosaurs, correct?  That certainly gives a vivid picture of the difficulties.  You couldn't even come close to fitting all the dinosaurs on the Ark, nevermind all plants, animals, insects, and so on.  What about fish?  How did they survive the flood?  They are very sensitive to changes in their ecosystem as well and a flood would have destroyed almost all of their habitats.  The list of problems goes on and on.

The polar icecaps.  Why weren't they broken up in the flood?  A worldwide flood would have more than enough water to break them up and float them off, and they wouldn't have regrown in so short a time.  Some would not regrow at all based on modern conditions (Greenland).  Or is our understanding of how ice forms in question now, too?

As I hinted at earlier, a heap of absolute or relative dating methods that all directly contradict flood geology yet are consistent with mainstream geology.  Tree rings, ice cores, radiometric dating, geologic column, lake varves, coral reef formation, and many more I'm not even familiar with.  Look them up if you want to know more.

Paleosols.  This might be my favorite.  We all know petrified wood, well paleosols are basically petrified soil.  We find paleosols scattered fairly commonly throughout the geologic record, and I'd be very curious to know how, during a great flood with rapid sediment deposit, petrified soil managed to get laid down between rock layers.  I'd also be very curious as to how living creatures, in the middle of all this, managed to carve out for themselves nice homes to live in.  Because there are numerous examples of paleosols with burrows in them - vertebrates, insects, you name it.  Quite the curiosity.  Here's a picture of some vertebrate burrows in a paleosol.  I'll post it as a thumbnail because it's a pretty large picture.



To close, there are many other predictions implicit in a global flood hypothesis.  This is the essence of science - we go and test those predictions and if they hold true, you have a solid theory.  Besides the major problems I listed, a global flood would predict evidence in the sea floor cores such as (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction (taken from talk.orgins) and more.  None of this shows up.  Why?

And make no mistake, there is much more that could be said.  But again, the discussion has to be managable.

As usual, to accept this YEC theory you pretty much have to throw away everything that mainstream science agrees on.  One would think you would have some compelling evidence to ask this, so where is your evidence?  I expect I am wasting my breath.  YEC's never present credible evidence of their own, they always just try and poke holes on mainstream evidence.  At least we HAVE evidence, and a track record for success.

It boils down to what I said earlier:  If you want to say the flood happened, and leave it as a matter of faith that's fine.  Great.  Maybe that's the case.  I can't argue with you.  But just stop pretending science backs up your religious beliefs.  It doesn't, and it's conclusive.

i find it interesting that you went that whole post, including a long quote from an online encyclopedia without even giving me a single point of argument. you can't just keep going on about it being impossible unless you're going to give me some reasons as to why it's impossible. that's not fair to me, nor is it even really an argument. i believe it's called "hurling elephants" saying things like "all of science says you're wrong" without giving any reason as to why.

Can you take your own advice?  Where's your evidence?  How can you explain away all of mine without simply saying "You might be wrong"?

holy shit. that was probably the most extensive argument i have ever seen on the internet. you have obviously done your homework. i'm going to try and find out everything i can on that, though i can promise no timeline since i'm basically starting from scratch here. and please, can we keep the mudslinging to a minimum? i get so sick and tired of both sides being so bitter towards eachother.

First of all, in the past the vast majority of geologists believed in the Bible and were in fact creationists.  I'm not sure why you dispute it, it's not really a fact in dispute unless it's just some new creationist spin of history.  However, with the vast lack of evidence for a flood and their professional reputations on the line, they abandoned the idea of a great flood as being a significant event in earth's history.  They still clung to the idea that it happened - they just conceded that it was not a major event in the geologic history of the earth.  In that sense, they were a credit to science unlike YEC's today who stubbornly cling to their beliefs despite a complete lack of evidence.

I don’t deny this, in fact I often wear this fact proudly like a badge. The vast majority of major scientific discoveries and advancements have come from creationists in the past. Nobody is arguing with that.

Let's start with the vapor canopy.  You may like this model, but even most creationists have rejected it by now due to some of the implications of it.  The atmosphere would obviously have to have contained much more water before the flood than it does today, if that is the source of the water.  There are implications for this.  In order for so much water to be in the atmosphere and NOT condense, you have to raise the temperature accordingly.  The atmospherical pressure first of all would go up considerably, from the 1 atm that we know today to about 900 atm, and the temperature would have to go up accordingly basically creating a pressure cooker on earth.  In addition, all that extra water in the atmopshere would raise the oxygen and nitrogen levels accordingly - to highly toxic levels.  Not a reasonable hypothesis from any standpoint.  How was the canopy suspended?  What caused it to fall when it did?  As usual, the list of problems goes on.

I’ve heard estimates that say that given the amount of time the canopy was up there, it could have been up to 2 meters thick, and this would have caused all the things you said it did, but to a degree that some accept to be beneficial. After all, high atmospheric pressures and increased oxygen ratios are how hyperbaric chambers worked, which are exceedingly good for your health. And anyway, I only loosely hold to this theory because I know how flawed it is. If it were thrown out tomorrow, I wouldn’t lose any sleep. There are different theories as to how it stayed up there, one is that it was super-cooled ice-crystals, which are slightly magnetic, along with the poles, which would work together with the centrifigul (sp?) force of the Earth’s spinning would apparently be enough to keep it up there. I don’t know if that theory holds any merit though, I’ve been told it’s not enough force, but until I see the calculations, I’m still going to (cautiously) put it out there. Another is that it was simply a thick layer of clouds that stayed up there the same way normal clouds do, with temperature inversions and whatnot. But like I said, I could drop this theory no problem, and really don’t even feel like arguing for it.

How do you propose that the fossils got sorted in the manner they are, if the flood itself laid down all these layers?  Fossils are not sorted by density (you don't see dinosaurs together with horses, for example), and there is no single process that can account for the way we find fossils sorted in the geologic record.  Except of course, for the mainstream theory that it was laid down over time, spanning many different time periods.  What evidence is there to the contrary, and what sorting mechanism do you propose?

There is more to be attributed to the sorting nature of the flood than just density. There is also habitat of the animals, ability to escape the rising water levels, ability to swim, numerous other things too I’m sure. And also, it’s not even entirely true that everything in water is sorted by density, especially under such turbulent conditions as are predicted by the Flood model. If you get a jar with water and different kinds of dirt, shake it up, it will sort itself into layers that aren’t necessarily “heavy-light” they might go “light-heavy-light-light-heavy” or anything else. And as for dinosaurs never being found in the same strata as horses, well there are a few examples of this that you can pull out, trilobites and dinosaurs is most common I think. But look at it from a creationist viewpoint for a second, there are tons and tons of animals that DO overlap. And I know, you guys know this, and have it as part of your theory and all, but think about it through my eyes for a second. It’s not as if animals just pile one on top of another right up through the ages, there is tons of overlap between the supposed “ages” of geology. For me, this really isn’t even a problem.

Erosion.  Why are there such vastly different rates of erosion across the world?  If the flood hypothesis were true, we'd see more consistent rates.  The example given in Wikipedia is the Appalachian Mountains, which show very high rates of erosion versus the Rockies which show very little erosion.  The age of the mountain ranges explains erosion very nicely in mainstream science, and agrees with radiometric and other dating methods.  How is this explained in YEC?

Not entirely sure how to answer this one, though I’ll do my best. First I want to point out that I do not accept radiometric dating methods because I feel that they are inaccurate and driven more by what we think we already know about the rocks, than they are by the actual method. Second, I’ll have to point out that we have no idea what those mountains looked like when they were pushed up. They could have been rocky and jagged, or rolling and smooth, we just don’t know, since nobody was there at the time (unless you count the mountains of Ararat).

Recorded history dates back to before the flood supposedly occured, with civilizations like the Ancient Egyptians and others.  They kept extensive written records, and didn't mention a global flood.  I have a feeling they'd remember such a flood.  In addition, carbon dating methods agree very closely with the ages that come from the archaeologists.  Not only would you have to explain why both camps are wrong, but you've had to explain just how exactly they could both be wrong YET come up with the exact same age.  Which, by the way, agrees with numerous OTHER INDEPENDENT dating methods!

I don’t know which civilizations you’re talking about, but I know of no civilizations that date back more than 5,000 some-odd years. I also know that most historians consider the Egyptians to be some of the worst record keepers of the ancient world, so we can’t really trust them. You mentioned that these ancient civilizations don’t have a record of the flood. This one amazed me, I didn’t even think anybody thought that argument to be valid anymore. Almost all ancient civilizations have stories of a flood, and in fact hundreds of them have stories today. Many are from civilizations that have never even seen a Bible, and many agree quite nicely with the Biblical account.

There are many geologic structures that formed over a great period of time that cannot have been caused by a flood.  Meandering canyons, for example.



These are formed by rivers, and it takes a very long time to carve out canyons in rock like this with running water.   There are other geologic anomolies as well inconsistent with your geology but we gotta keep this managable.  I can get to them later if you like.

First I want to point out that that is the strangest looking canyon I’ve ever seen. Just out of curiosity, do you know what the geography of the land is that would cause something like that? Anyways, I have no problem with this canyon as far as flood geology goes, keep in mind that not all features were constructed during the flood itself (it only lasted a year) but many, including probably most of the canyons, were formed shortly after the flood, when the rock was still relatively soft and the ice age was ending, giving us lots of water. Grand Canyon is the creationist’s favorite example of this of course, because that canyon is impossible to explain using uniformitarian processes, the water would have to flow uphill, and leave no delta worth speaking of. No problem if it was lots of water moving fast, but with the Colorado river, you’ve got some problems.

The Ark itself.  How did Noah fit all the animals on the arc, how did he care for them, how did he gather them all to the arc?  Some animals can't travel far, some can't move quickly, some can't leave their habitat at all.
How did he provide basically all the habitats of the world, in one small boat?  How did he even get them all ON the ark?  Supposedly he only have 7 days to make this all happen.  This would have to include dinosaurs, correct?  That certainly gives a vivid picture of the difficulties.  You couldn't even come close to fitting all the dinosaurs on the Ark, nevermind all plants, animals, insects, and so on.  What about fish?  How did they survive the flood?  They are very sensitive to changes in their ecosystem as well and a flood would have destroyed almost all of their habitats.  The list of problems goes on and on.

The ark was more than big enough to fit all the animals, using the measurements found in the Bible, it should be about 2/3rds the size of the titanic, and estimates say that he would have to fit about 16,000 animals on the boat. There are numerous logical reasons to bring babies on the voyage of course, they’re smaller, they weigh less, they sleep more, they’re tougher, they live longer, and since Noah was 500 years old when he was given the job, he was probably smart enough to figure this out for himself. The Bible states that only animals who have blood and the breath of life in them needed to be taken on the Ark, which basically refers to land vertebrates, though some have speculated that he probably brought some bugs on the Ark to help handle to problem of the waste leftover from the animals. You’re also assuming that animals back then were as sensitive to change as they are now, while Christians have been teaching for centuries that since the Fall, and even more after the Flood, things have been going downhill, and everything has been getting weaker and less adaptive. And no, he did not have seven days to get them all there, I don’t know why people keep saying this. Read the chapter again, it says that seven days before the doors closed and the rain fell, God told him to start sacrificing animals, and no, I don’t mean the ones he was taking on the Ark, I mean separate ones. Also, caring for the animals is often brought forward as a problem for Noah, and for this one, I’m going to have to step outside the rules and invoke a divine act. God brought the animals to the Ark, and given how smart He is, he probably picked out the healthy ones.

The polar icecaps.  Why weren't they broken up in the flood?  A worldwide flood would have more than enough water to break them up and float them off, and they wouldn't have regrown in so short a time.  Some would not regrow at all based on modern conditions (Greenland).  Or is our understanding of how ice forms in question now, too?

I don’t know much about this, but my impression was that shortly after the flood, there was an ice age, and that’s where the polar ice-caps came from. I’ll look into this more later.

As I hinted at earlier, a heap of absolute or relative dating methods that all directly contradict flood geology yet are consistent with mainstream geology.  Tree rings, ice cores, radiometric dating, geologic column, lake varves, coral reef formation, and many more I'm not even familiar with.  Look them up if you want to know more.

Tree rings: Depending on where you put the flood in history, whether it be 5,000 years ago, or the more common 4,500 years ago, tree rings might not even go past your favorite age, if they do however, you can easily take solace in the fact that it is not at all uncommon for trees to form more than one ring per year. Ice cores: Again, these do not represent summer-winter-summer-winter, they represent hot-cold-hot-cold. Unseasonal weather can easily account for this, I also refer you to the fact that when the lost squadron expedition went searching for the planes, they had to go through many hundreds of layers, even though they knew that those planes had crash landed less than on hundred years ago.

Paleosols.  This might be my favorite.  We all know petrified wood, well paleosols are basically petrified soil.  We find paleosols scattered fairly commonly throughout the geologic record, and I'd be very curious to know how, during a great flood with rapid sediment deposit, petrified soil managed to get laid down between rock layers.  I'd also be very curious as to how living creatures, in the middle of all this, managed to carve out for themselves nice homes to live in.  Because there are numerous examples of paleosols with burrows in them - vertebrates, insects, you name it.  Quite the curiosity.  Here's a picture of some vertebrate burrows in a paleosol.  I'll post it as a thumbnail because it's a pretty large picture.

Well given the minute amount that I know about the specific situations and the positions of the paleosols, all I can really do is speculate. My guess would be that those were pre-flood dirt layers, or possibly even post-flood, depending on the surrounding layers. It is also a commonly known fact that things do not take an excessive amount of time to petrify. It is also conceivable that those aren’t even burrows at all, they just look like it. Though that would probably be considered special pleading.

To close, there are many other predictions implicit in a global flood hypothesis.  This is the essence of science - we go and test those predictions and if they hold true, you have a solid theory.  Besides the major problems I listed, a global flood would predict evidence in the sea floor cores such as (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction (taken from talk.orgins) and more.  None of this shows up.  Why?

The vast majority of the fossils in the world are part of the mass extinction caused by the flood.

As usual, to accept this YEC theory you pretty much have to throw away everything that mainstream science agrees on.  One would think you would have some compelling evidence to ask this, so where is your evidence?

Ya, we’re an ambitious bunch.

Quote from: "KevinHallX"

i find it interesting that you went that whole post, including a long quote from an online encyclopedia without even giving me a single point of argument. you can't just keep going on about it being impossible unless you're going to give me some reasons as to why it's impossible. that's not fair to me, nor is it even really an argument. i believe it's called "hurling elephants" saying things like "all of science says you're wrong" without giving any reason as to why.

Can you take your own advice?  Where's your evidence?  How can you explain away all of mine without simply saying "You might be wrong"?

I just did. I don’t know which “creationists” gave you this image you seem to have of us, but it’s not true, we are just as interested in science as you are.

I could drop this theory no problem, and really don’t even feel like arguing for it.

If you drop this theory (vapor canopy), you need a replacement.  You can't just say "Maybe this happened even though it's been shown to be impossible".  I assure you, toxic levels of nitrogen and oxygen are not good for you.  Atmospheric pressure hundreds of times greater than that on earth is not good for you.  Corresponding temperatures that are necessary to maintain the vapor canopoy is not good for you.  Any more than building a giant pressure cooker, climbing in, and pumping it full of poison while turning it on to full power is good for you, at any rate.
You don't have the luxury in science of being able to ignore problems with your model.  Where the water came from is required.  How it was delivered is required, and where it went is required.  All of the implied consequences of the explanation are required to be dealt with.  That's not to say the model has to be 100% accurate - but it has to be a model consistent with the facts at the very least.  

There is more to be attributed to the sorting nature of the flood than just density. There is also habitat of the animals, ability to escape the rising water levels, ability to swim, numerous other things too I’m sure. And also, it’s not even entirely true that everything in water is sorted by density, especially under such turbulent conditions as are predicted by the Flood model. If you get a jar with water and different kinds of dirt, shake it up, it will sort itself into layers that aren’t necessarily “heavy-light” they might go “light-heavy-light-light-heavy” or anything else. And as for dinosaurs never being found in the same strata as horses, well there are a few examples of this that you can pull out, trilobites and dinosaurs is most common I think. But look at it from a creationist viewpoint for a second, there are tons and tons of animals that DO overlap. And I know, you guys know this, and have it as part of your theory and all, but think about it through my eyes for a second. It’s not as if animals just pile one on top of another right up through the ages, there is tons of overlap between the supposed “ages” of geology. For me, this really isn’t even a problem.

This certainly IS a problem, it is a very major one in fact.  The fossils are not sorted by the criterion you describe.  If you want a criterion where we observe how they are sorted, the theory of evolution is about the closest predictive map you will find.  I don't even know what your "trilobytes and dinosaurs" example even means, or that tons of animals do overlap.  Yes there is overlap, but that doesn't contradict mainstream theory at all.  For example, grasses cover the entire planet.  Why are they only found in the most recent strata layers of the fossil record?  Shouldn't they be found in older ones, as well?  Ferns are.  Do you *honestly* suggest that worldwide, fossils are going to be sorted in 100% agreement across every layer of strata?  I mean come on now man.  How do you explain raindrops and footprints?  How are these delicate features preserved amist a worldwide flood, and how are THEY TOO sorted?  This applies to a wide variety of SURFACE features, none of which would be produced were the layer not the actual surface of the earth for quite some time  Why are all the extinct fossils found so much deeper?  Shouldn't at least SOME extinct animals have been able to find their way into upper layers?  This holds for both plants and animals, swimmers and flyers - take your pick.  Surely the animals that flew could have made it to the upper layers!  Why are no human tools found in older layers?  They should be mixed throughout the fossil record if they populated the earth at the time of the flood and not just found in the absolute upper layers.  
Why do some strata layers have properties of being WIND deposits, and not water?
Floods do not even deposit fine-grained sediment.  There are fine-grained sediment layers, both above and below larger grained layers.  You need multiple deposit periods to get what we find just going by composition of the strata, nevermind all the fossil evidence and all the rest.
The layers represent different environments on earth, and it can be seen in the fossils how that is the case.  There's no way a flood would sort them that way, and the only possible explanation is slow deposit over time.
The layers are simply far, far too big to have been desposited at once.  It takes millions and millions of years for erosion to form the sediment necessaily to lay all those layers.  The same concept holds true for all the fossils - it takes time for all those animals to be born, live, grow, and die.  They can't all possibly have lived at the same time.
I'm just going to stop typing now in regards to strata and fossils.  There are far, far, far too many problems to list them all.  You may not "consider it a problem" but rest assured everyone else does.  You need to identify a sorting mechanism for your theory to even have a chance.  Vaguely throwing around different factors that may or may not affect sorting isn't sufficient. (Especially when the mainstream model is detailed, specific, and passes every test to this point)

Not entirely sure how to answer this one, though I’ll do my best. First I want to point out that I do not accept radiometric dating methods because I feel that they are inaccurate and driven more by what we think we already know about the rocks, than they are by the actual method. Second, I’ll have to point out that we have no idea what those mountains looked like when they were pushed up. They could have been rocky and jagged, or rolling and smooth, we just don’t know, since nobody was there at the time (unless you count the mountains of Ararat).

Sure, if you ignore everything we know about mountain building, erosion, plate tectonics, and so on that might be the case.  But science doesn't work that way.  If you drive home from work and see your front door busted in, all your stuff a mess in the house, and some valuables missing, you can probably guess you were robbed.  "You weren't there to see it" isn't really a valid argument in science.  It never has been, and it never will be.  Creationists love using it though.  If you want to say our understanding of how mountains are built is wrong and propose a new mechanism - by all means, present your evidence.  But until then, simply saying "You might be wrong" is not gonna cut it.  Our theories are such as they are because they best fit the evidence, and their predictive power is as of yet, unmatched.  They aren't willy-nilly and it takes more than say-so to overthrow them.
This also ignored the issue of energy release.  If you try to cram the mountain building, known meteor strikes, known volcanic activity, radioactive decay etc into a 6000 year period - well, the earth gets fried many, many, many times over.  But that's a seperate issue.
I'd also love to know why radiometric dating methods are wrong.  It's something that YEC's are forced to discredit, of course, so it's no surprise you "don't believe" it.  Unfortunately for you, radiometric dating is seen as extremely, extremely reliable by everyone but those with religious agenda.

 

I don’t know which civilizations you’re talking about, but I know of no civilizations that date back more than 5,000 some-odd years. I also know that most historians consider the Egyptians to be some of the worst record keepers of the ancient world, so we can’t really trust them. You mentioned that these ancient civilizations don’t have a record of the flood. This one amazed me, I didn’t even think anybody thought that argument to be valid anymore. Almost all ancient civilizations have stories of a flood, and in fact hundreds of them have stories today. Many are from civilizations that have never even seen a Bible, and many agree quite nicely with the Biblical account.

Well, you may not be aware of them but they were there.  The ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, and Mesopotamians spring to mind.  The Pyramids for example are dated to about 300 years before the flood based on written record.  Carbon dating verifies this, as does other evidence.  Spare me the "they are all wrong, and just so happen to all give the same age" in your response, please.  Written record of this culture indicates no flood, and in fact this civilization lives right on through it.
It's funny how you use the fact that flood myths are common as evidence FOR you.  Because those myths vary greatly, and are often stories of surviving the flood.  YOUR flood holds that all life besides what was on the Ark was destroyed and that disagrees with other flood myths.  These civilizations do not cease to be after their flood myths so it's grossly unfair to claim they support your flood.  So no, other flood myths do not even come close to fitting in with the Biblical account.  A little thought would have revealed this.

Grand Canyon is the creationist’s favorite example of this of course, because that canyon is impossible to explain using uniformitarian processes, the water would have to flow uphill, and leave no delta worth speaking of. No problem if it was lots of water moving fast, but with the Colorado river, you’ve got some problems.

It's funny you bring up the Grand Canyon, because it is FULL of contradictions of a flood scenario.  What evidence is there that the water must flow uphill to cause it?  That just isn't true.  The process that formed the Grandy Canyon isn't a mystery to mainstream geology, at all.  Quite the contrary, it is one of the most well-understood and well-studied areas in the entire world.  The billion or so year's worth of strata revealed in the Grand Canyon is a literal field day for geologists who want to disprove the flood.
The truth is, there is no evidence that the Canyon was formed by a flood, or that the strata layers found in the area were flood-deposited.  Evidence suggests the opposite in both cases.  Basic structure is the first clue: look at the sloped walls of the Grand Canyon.  Sloped walls indicate a slow process, while canyons formed by faster processes (like floods) have nearly vertical sides.  The strata itself gives a lot more clues.  For example, how land and water strata are interspersed.  Most are water layers, but you find some land ones tossed in there as well.  That isn't possible with a single flood.
I'm no expert, but if you choose to battle a geologist the Grand Canyon is probably the worst example you can use.

I’m going to have to step outside the rules and invoke a divine act. God brought the animals to the Ark, and given how smart He is, he probably picked out the healthy ones.

Great.  So you concede there is no scientific explanation for this then.  No need to discuss it further.

I don’t know much about this, but my impression was that shortly after the flood, there was an ice age, and that’s where the polar ice-caps came from. I’ll look into this more later.

An ice age after the flood?  Um...a little evidence, maybe?

Tree rings: Depending on where you put the flood in history, whether it be 5,000 years ago, or the more common 4,500 years ago, tree rings might not even go past your favorite age, if they do however, you can easily take solace in the fact that it is not at all uncommon for trees to form more than one ring per year.

Well you are basically saying the method is totally unreliable then?  It's not conclusive for all species but you can glean a lot of information from others.  Bristlecone pines for example can live as long as 9000 years or so.
I really don't care to argue about the effectiveness of each dating method used by mainstream science.(Not that you really criticized most of them...)  The fact that they are ALL consistent should tell anyone interested in the actual truth something.  Can you honestly with a straight face suggest that they are all wrong, yet miraculously consistent - and consistent WITH EACH OTHER?  Cmon...
This is usually the part where creationists go into this speech about incorrect "assumptions".  You guys LOVE that word.  So before you make vague assertions about mainstream science's incorrect assumptions causing all these dating errors, let me respond ahead of time:
WHICH assumptions are wrong?  HOW are they wrong?  What evidence is there to think so?  How exactly do these incorrect assumptions lead to independent tests agreeing on the answers?
Creationists tend to love to talk about "assumptions" in very vague terms, but avoid it like the plague when you try to pin them down on specifics.  

I also refer you to the fact that when the lost squadron expedition went searching for the planes, they had to go through many hundreds of layers, even though they knew that those planes had crash landed less than on hundred years ago.

How about a little more than a vague description here?  I have no idea what you are talking about, or how it's evidence for anything flood related at all.

Well given the minute amount that I know about the specific situations and the positions of the paleosols, all I can really do is speculate. My guess would be that those were pre-flood dirt layers, or possibly even post-flood, depending on the surrounding layers. It is also a commonly known fact that things do not take an excessive amount of time to petrify. It is also conceivable that those aren’t even burrows at all, they just look like it. Though that would probably be considered special pleading.

Man enough of that already.  Thousands of qualified geologists have studied this for hundreds of years.  Why do untrained creationists think that they can basically look at pictures for 5 minutes, and glean information that decades of study has missed?  It is soil.  Those are burrows.  There are thousands of examples, and hundreds if not thousands of detailed studies explaning why.  They are EASY to identify.  There is tons of evidence.  Provide some counterevidence if you think they are wrong.  You can't just say "Maybe they are wrong" as seems to be the habit here.  And I'm not sure why you think they can form quickly.  The soil itself takes decades to form in ideal conditions (sometimes hundreds or thousands of years) - nevermind the conditions, and time, required to petrify.
Also - if they are pre or post flood layers - how do they get squeezed into the middle of flood-deposited layers all over the world?  Did the flood magically sweep up a layer of soil, lay down some other layers, then rest the intact soil layer back down?  Then lay down more layers on top, of course.  I don't think so.

The vast majority of the fossils in the world are part of the mass extinction caused by the flood.

Well, that's interesting, but it's completely absurd.  Where do you think all these animals lived?  The scale here is not millions of animals, not billions, but into the trillions range.  You've have to jam-pack the earth from top to bottom with animals to squeeze them all in.  Not to mention, how they are so specifically sorted out and you never find fossils in the "wrong" layer of strata.  Not that you've proposed a mechanism that can explain the sorting, but it's just absurd to think that ANY mechanism can sort fossils in the way we find them.  Everything, worldwide, is found in the same strata.  Always.  Nothing ever contradicts it.  Creationists have you believing that water can sort them that way?  It's amazing the lengths people go to keep their beliefs from being falsified.

I just did. I don’t know which “creationists” gave you this image you seem to have of us, but it’s not true, we are just as interested in science as you are.

You couldn't be more wrong.  Creationist science is a sick warping of science, and it isn't even fit to be called science - for the most part.  I'm sorry you have been so thoroughly duped.  It seems harsh, but it's the truth.  The arguments creationists routinely used are sloppy, invalid, often DISHONEST, and almost always incorrect.  
Why do creationists think that science always gets it wrong? Oh...except...when it comes to agriculture, computers, medicine, travel, communications, and all of the everyday stuff that you simply can't deny anymore.  They are right then, and wrong all the rest of the time?  Let's get real.

I absolutely stick to my original point.  If you want to claim the flood happened, the earth is 6000 years old, and flat, go right ahead - if you base it on religious beliefs.  Stop trying to pretend science backs you up in ANY way, shape, or form.  It doesn't, it's CONCLUSIVE.  It makes your religion look bad to selectively accept what science tells us and to flat out ignore or call incorrect (with no reason for doing so) every piece of evidence that goes against your RELIGIOUS beliefs.  It's a mockery of science to do so.  That is why creationist "science" is not science at all:
Everything that backs up their religious beliefs is true.  Everything else must be false.  THAT IS NOT SCIENCE.

You also failed to provide any evidence whatsoever.  I'm not sure where in your bald assertions you think you presented any, but I don't see it.

Ya know what - I realize I'm the one who posted the giant list of reasons why the Flood couldn't have happened, but I'd like to narrow the focus down so we can really dig into it.  I don't think you really provided any evidence at all against any of my points, but I didn't exactly go quoting scientific journals either.
So let's pick something and properly argue the point.  You can pick whatever topic you like, I don't care what it is.  So long as you back up your claims with evidence.  I will do the same.  Topics could be paleosols, the Grand Canyon, the vapor canopy, the sorting mechanism, fossil deposition, radiometric dating - I don't care.  Heck we can broaden it to evolution, the Big Bang, universal descent, whatever.  Personally I'm not interested in talking about ALL that stuff at once, even though it seemed like a good idea at the time to lay it all out there.

*clapping excitedly in the corner*

*Sigh*

The bible is NOT scientific fact. It can never, EVER be used to prove ANYTHING except, perhaps, the literary techniques of the people of that time period. The bible is a piece of literature, no more, no less. It contains many great morals in its stories, and should be dissected to find these, not taken literally. When you sit down with a book like Gatsby and read it through, you don't think that these events actually happened! You need to analyze it and find the author's themes. The same holds true for the bible. The greatest use of it stems from finding the symbolism and meaning behind it, not from taking it word for word.

*Gasp!*

"The bible is a piece of literature, no more, no less. It contains many great morals in its stories, and should be dissected to find these, not taken literally."

I think you better re-evaluate your faith buddy (if you have any). This statement may be directed to anyone reading this, not just yourself: If you call yourself a Christian, you better damn well believe every word in the Bible as FACT. You have to. It says right in the bible that the events are real and actually happened. It doesn't say well some things happened and some things are allegorical. If you take the approach that the Word is fictitous stories from which you are to deduce a moral then how do you know which stories are the moral fables and which are the facts. Is the story of Jesus living and performing miracles and being crucified to atone for the world's sins just another moral fable? Don't you think as a Christian with the possible consequence of eternal damnation for improperly personally interpreting the Bible that, just in case, you better follow and believe the Word very strictly? And not the shiny new 2005 abridged, abbreviated and poorly-translated-into-common-vernacular version. If you're going to call yourself a Christian and mean it, do yourself a favor and research the true book and not the Reader's Digest version the Catholic Nycean Council threw together that incorporated the pagan stories to win them over. You're going to need to learn a few languages but do your research into the TRUE Word of God. Your eternal existence is depending on it!

Or don't. Whatever.

Once again, your position is fine and dandy but as I've been saying about it:
If you want to believe the Bible is true and the contradictions with mainstream science are true, go right ahead.  But please don't call it anything but faith, because that's all it is.  Science disagrees with you, science is not on your side, and don't make a mockery of science by pretending that it backs up Biblical events.  It doesn't.  But if you want to believe it on faith, more power to you.

If science is your bag then go with it but you can't be a tweener. You either believe one way or the other is all I'm saying. My point is that you can't call yourself a Christian but not believe the events of the Bible happened. Choose a side and go with it.

I agree with you. Christianity is entirely based on faith and sometimes flies in the face of science and "common sense." That's the big spiritual test isn't it - to experience something that seems to refute the Bible and yet as a Christian it's your obligation to deny it as fact and treat it as a flasehood meant to lead you down the "path to the darkside."

I should add that I don't mean this to be directed at you personally. This is intended for anyone reading this.

I'm new to the site and i'm shocked and amazed to see how little reference to the Bible there is around here.

The Bible is a good textbook for morality, but wasn't intended to be an astronomy textbook.

The willful misinterpretations of the handful of metaphoric-phrases such as "the four corners of the Earth" no more prove the shape of the Earth than the phrase "the pillars of justice" determines whether a courthouse should have a columned facade.

^HAHAHA!

To answer your question, the Flat Earth Society was created by Samuel Rowbotham. He was a highly religious individual and cited Revelations 7:1 as proof of a flat Earth:

"And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree."

Since 1849, though, the Society has abandoned a flat, square Earth in favor of a disc, thereby abandoning the Biblical origin of their belief.

To answer your question, the Flat Earth Society was created by Samuel Rowbotham. He was a highly religious individual and cited Revelations 7:1 as proof of a flat Earth:

"And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree."

Since 1849, though, the Society has abandoned a flat, square Earth in favor of a disc, thereby abandoning the Biblical origin of their belief.

And I suppose the disc sits on four elephants, standing on a huge turtle?