Woody said:
No. Where was the 24 hour literal day taken in latitude and longitude? If it were taken on the poles there would be no morning and evening. Odviously, when people use the earth as a reference time frame in Genesis it is not a very good one. Another example: evening and morning where? Evening on one side of the earth is morning on the other. The earth didn't even have a sun until day 4. So when someone takes this as a literal "24-hour day" it is their interpretation of what they read, not what the bible says.
No human observer could have been present during the so-called "creation." Obviously, this is written by people who used their own frames of references and ignorances. A "day" was considered to be an a priori assumption and the fact that it was based upon the revolution of the Earth in relation to the Sun was not understood. Moreover, the Genesis myth has clear roots and origins in earlier Sumerian and Akaddian texts. The poets that borrowed from these myths and stories did not have the knowledge needed to properly order the events of "creation" and would not have understood that the Sun was a star and that a star would need be in place before planets could orbit and coalesce into solid objects.
Indeed, if the Genesis myth were written by humans, we might expect to see an anthropomorphic assignment of the Sun and Moon as rulers of day and night (Exodus 1:16).
Woody said:
and the dead coral reefs several hundred feet below sea level?
Subsidence (Grigg 1982; Ludwig 1991).
Woody said:
It is used to explain the cambrian evolutionary life-burst, admittedly one of the weaker points in the slow-and-steady view of evolution:
The Cambrian only 'seems' to be a "life-burst" because of the limited availability of data due to time and geologic change. Fossil remains in the oldest strata aren't as well represented as they are in the more recent. Only a few outcrops of Cambrian or earlier strata are available compared to the number of Cretaceous strata for example. Also, the organisms of the earliest periods were less robust and smaller, making their survival in the fossil record more difficult. Even with more recent organisms of the Oligocene, paleontologists count themselves lucky to find mandibles or joints. Organisms that fossilize do so under just the right conditions. The creationist nutters, however, love to cite the Cambrian as a "problem" for evolution, though they only betray their limited educations and ingnorances when they do so.
Woody said:
A 90 degree change in the earth's rotational axis -- SkinWalker, would that be called catastropic?
I think you should actually seek an education before you dive into these kinds of discussions, Woody. It only makes you look as though your "engineering" degree was obtained through a diploma mill. Surely your institution of higher learning required at least
some basic instruction in the sciences to certify you as an "engineer." Or, perhaps, you are the type of "engineer" that secures the tickets of passengers and occasionally blows his whistle at appropriate crossings?
The case for True Polar Wander made by Kirschvink et al (1997) hasn't been demonstrated. Indeed, there is a bit of disagreement, partially because the data sets used were incomplete and faulty (Torsvik et al 1998). When evidence for TPW is found in one location, it isn't supported in other paleomagnetic examinations of the same period elsewhere in the world. If TPW were truly at work, this global phenomenon would be evident in other places (Cottrell et al 2000). Certainly, there is no evidence yet for a 90 degree shift in the true poles. There is ample evidence for
virtual polar wander, but real, verifiable evidence for
true polar wander is lacking. It doesn't mean it isn't a real phenomenon, it simply isn't verified.
Woody said:
Yes, there is a lot of work to do on catastrophic models that explain some of the earth's geological evidence. I agree with this Caltech geologist.
Yes, it is endlessly fascinating this tendency for creationist nutters to cherry pick their science.
References:
Chen, J.-Y. et al. (2000).
Precambrian animal diversity: Putative phosphatized embryos from the Doushantuo Formation of China.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97(9), pp. 4457-4462.
Chen, J.-Y. et al. (2004).
Small bilaterian fossils from 40 to 55 million years before the Cambrian.
Science 305, pp. 218-222.
Cottrell, R.D. et al (2000). Late Cretaceous True Polar Wander: Not So Fast.
Science 288(5475), p. 2283a
Grigg, R. W. (1982). Darwin Point, a threshold for atoll formation.
Coral Reefs vol 1, pp. 29-34
Kirschvink, J.L, et al (1997).Evidence for a Large-Scale Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental Masses by Inertial Interchange True Polar Wander
Science 277(5325), pp. 541-545.
Ludwig, K.R. et al (1991) Crustal subsidence rate off Hawaii determined from 234 U/ 238 U ages of drowned coral reefs .
Geology, 19(2) pp. 171-174
Torsvik, T.H. et al (1998). Polar Wander and the Cambrian.
Science, Science 279(5347).9a
