Strawmen are not your friend

No matter where you are on the Evolution v. Creationism spectrum, you should avoid strawmen.  The following passage should never be taught to children, much less be in their textbooks. 

“It was very exciting when the first men walked on the moon in 1969. When scientists eagerly studied the moon soil and moon rocks, they found that the moon appeared to be about 6000 to 10,000 years old. This was not surprising to scientists who were Christians, because the Bible indicates that the Earth is also somewhere between 6000 and 10,000 years old. We know that our moon and Earth are about the same age, since God created Earth on the third day and the moon on the forth day of creation.”

Is the fossil record complete?

[I will eventually post something on embryonic cell lines, but I need to perform more research on the subject.]

My parents gave me some magazines from the Institute of Creation Research.  I was amazed to read that the fossil record was considered by creation science to be nearly complete.  Fossilization is a chance process by which some of a creature is preserved by replacing organic matter with rock.  The general model assumes that natural forces destroy most carcasses before they would even have a chance to fossilize.   The fossils that are preserved are a small minority that survived until fossilization, during fossilization, and after fossilization.  These fossils are accumulated over a billion years. 

Obviously the creation model assumes that fossilization is far more likely.  Instead of a billion years, the creation model advocates that all fossils were formed in a matter of thousands of years.   Fewer creatures lived and died and a much larger proportion were preserved.   However were about 100% preserved?  I would like to propose a few reasons why I do not think the Creation model is completely amicable to fossil formation.

Meteors

Then the third angel blew his trumpet, and a huge star burning like a torch fell from the sky; it landed on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. 8:11 (Now the name of the star is Wormwood.) So a third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from these waters because they were poisoned. ~ Revelation 8:10-11

The Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater 

 There are about 178 known fossil craters buried in different layers of strata.[Earth Impact Database]  The Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater, the largest crater in the United States, is close to home.  A meteor more than two miles wide slammed into the earth with more force than all the nuclear weapons on earth combined.  The general model puts the impact at around 35 million years ago during the Eocene [Bolide] According to Creation Scientist John R. Baumgardner, PhD, the Eocene occurred after the Flood, so the meteor struck sometime four thousand years ago. 

Answers in Genesis proposes that all 178 or more collided with the earth mostly during the flood year or close afterwards.  Most of the craters were buried in sediment at the level in the newly deposited geologic column they struck.  Therefore meteors with the forces of atomic weapons collided with the earth at a basic rate of one every few days.  These impacts would seem to me to destroy large amounts of fossils around the globe. [A Biblically-Based Cratering Theory]

Also another point about the meteors, Meteors follow trajectories governed by gravity.  These meteors would have been destined to hit the Earth for millennia. 

God saw all that he had made – and it was very good! There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. ~ Genesis 1:31

 So God created the Solar System with swarms of meteors that were going to hit the earth during the flood year.  He called this “very good”.  The flood seems almost like an act of mercy for drowning the people before they could die in an apocalypse from the sky.  During the tribulation only one meteor fell, but the Flood event had over a hundred.  God clearly sent missiles with nuclear equivalent power to earth from week one dedicated with wiping out mankind on an appointed date. 

Water Velocities of Ocean Currents

Most creationists believe that Noah’s Flood both deposited the sediments and then carved the terrain into canyons and hills.  So in order to deposit the sediment, the flood first had to create or find the sediment.  Considering that it is unlikely that a mile of sediment was just lying around, in 1994, some researchers at the Institute of Creation Research constructed a computer model that estimated the water velocity of Noah’s Flood.  According to them the currents were moving at about 40-80 meters per second.  Water at these speeds would erode large amounts of rock and distribute it over extensive areas in the short amount of time provided by the flood year. [Patterns of Ocean Circulation over the Continents during the Flood]

In 2010, scientists discovered the fastest ocean current moving around Antarctica.  They clocked it at 7.9 inches per second or 0.20066 meters per second. These creation scientists are postulating that the currents during Noah’s flood would have been 200 to 400 times faster than the currents today. These currents do not seem amicable to fossil preservation. Bones could have easily been washed away with skeletons separated from each other. I am not a geologist, but if these things are grinding up rock it does not seem like the carcasses have much of a chance. Anything that can do it to a rock …can likely do it to you. [Fastest Ocean Current Flows Beneath Antartica]