Sunday, May 24, 2009

Flood Geology?

I've just returned from a two week vacation, so I'll be posting here more regularly from now on. During our trip, my wife and I visited Bar Harbor, Maine, where I snapped this photo:


It's a large boulder sitting on the side of a mountain looking rather out of place. How did it get there? It's near the top, so it can't have fallen from somewhere higher up. The answer is that it was carried there by a glacier. Anyone who has seen a glacier will know that they move very slowly, so glacial action/transport can become a problem for young-Earth creationists since these pesky ice ages appear to have occurred over much longer timeframes than 6000 years. The "solution" that creationists have come up with is "flood geology". Creationists will talk about this as if it's a fully developed theory with true explanatory power, but really it's as vaccuous as their "God did it" explanation of how the universe was created:

Q: How are mountains formed?
Geologist: Upheaval caused by colliding tectonic plates.
Creationist: Noah's flood did it.

Q: How did sedimentary rocks form?
Geologist: Layer by layer deposition and high pressures over many years.
Creationist: Noah's flood did it.

Q: How is it that large boulders that don't match surrounding rocks can appear on top of mountains?
Geologist: They were carried there by glaciers.
Creationist: Noah's flood did it.

The problem with that, of course, is that rocks don't float. But flood geologists don't tend to let something so trivial as logic get in their way. Check out Hovind Junior's latest creation minute:



A handful of creationists have tried to expand upon "the flood did it" and have come up with some seriously bizarre theories and models. I'll be posting some of these soon, so watch this space.

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