Questions to Justice Frangi about Noah's flood

[Visaki]

I'll leave posting links to vids debunking the ice canopy "theory" to others and just leave this quote here:

"The Canopy theory is a now largely discredited model originally developed as an explanation for the source of the flood water that covered the Earth during the Biblical flood of Noah"
- Creationwiki

 

[Inferno]

JusticeFrangi

I see that you're posting a lot of stuff that Kent Hovind suggested about 15 years or so ago. If you're ever feeling the need to regurgitate Hovind: Don't. Hovind is the worst sort of liar around and it's trivial to prove it.

Now, you might disagree with the tone of the following videos, but I suggest you take the 15min or so. All relate to Hovind's idea of "The Flood".
Why do people laugh at creationists (part 3)
Why do people laugh at creationists (part 4)
Why do people laugh at creationists (part 5) <- HINT: Canopy "theory"

Short version: You state that this "canopy" would filter out quite a bit of UV light. In fact, it would filter out every bit of light. The earth would have been in complete darkness. Second, you claim that there would be more pressure. Indeed, the pressure would be so great as to vaporize us immediately.
Please re-think your use of Hovind-material.

So far so good. I'd also like you to use "theory" and "hypothesis" in their correct forms. The "canopy theory" is not a theory. It's, as Thunferf00t correctly states in the videos, not even a hypothesis. It's not even a coherent idea.
Now, next time you're using these words, please be aware that they mean something like the following: (Taken from AronRa's "dictionary")

Science: An objective method of measurably or verifiably improving our understanding of physical nature in practical application or mathematics, through observation and experimentation with falsifiable hypotheses explaining a body of facts in a theoretical framework, to be subjected to a perpetual battery of critical analysis in peer review.

Fact: A point of data which is either not in dispute, or is indisputable in that it is objectively verifiable.

Evidence: Factual circumstances which are accounted for, or supported by, only one available explanation over any other.

Hypothesis: A potentially-falsifiable explanation one which includes predictions as to what different test results should imply about it.

Law [of nature]: A general statement in science which is always true under a given set of circumstances. Example: That “matter attracts matter” is a law of gravity.

Theory: (1) A body of knowledge including all known facts, hypotheses, and natural laws relevant to a particular field of study. A proposed explanation of a set of related facts or a given phenomenon. Example: *How* “matter attracts matter” is the theory of gravity.

Proof: [legal sense, common vernacular] Something shown to be at least mostly true according to a preponderance of evidence. [scientific sense] Inapplicable except in the negative: It is only possible to dis-prove a hypothesis or theory. It isn’t possible to prove them positively.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

(The whole theory that dinosaurs have "bird like" lungs has been developed to solve the problem of lung efficiency for dinosaurs)

Actually, there is evidence to support this. I have personally held T. rex vertebra where one can see where the air sacks would have went as clear as day.

I predict that we would find animals that currently would not be able to sustain flight under the atmospheres current pressure levels.

Actually, pterosaur flight has been studied quite a lot as of late. In addition, the newest conclusions show that they could have had sustained flight even in modern times.

I predict that if humans could age to hundreds of years old that we would find unique features consistent with very old human growth patterns.

This is followed by a link that talks about bone growth and loss in the faces of humans of old age. I know you are trying to claim that the Neanderthal skulls we find are just very old modern humans, which exposes just how little you know about the skeletal anatomy of a Neanderthal. There is a lot more on a Neanderthal skull that allows a anthropologist to identify it as one than just brow ridges. Furthermore, the fusion of bones, loss of sutures on a skull, and eruption/wear/loss of teeth are far better markers for aging a skeleton. Using those methods, we have found several Neanderthal specimens from a year old to around 70. One of your next citations covers this. Also, guess what, the Neanderthal children also have large brow ridges and the other aspects of the skull that allow anthropologists to identify them as one.

Beyond this, we have discovered juveniles of other earlier hominins that also have large brow ridges. I have said it before, and I will probably say it again; your ignorance is not an argument.

When something breaks apart and is traveling through a resistive force (like the ozone) an increase in surface area will decrease the velocity and impact of that object immensely.

Show your math.

He stated that even if the meteor broke apart it would hit the earth with exactly the same force. This is not true.

Show your math.

When an object breaks apart in space it is not "free" from gravitational forces.

I do not remember the video claiming this.

The video assumes that every broken off part of an ice meteor would be traveling at exactly the same rate.

The video showed its math to conclude that. Now show mathematically how it was wrong.

This also is not true. When an object breaks apart (due to impact with other objects or due to structural instability) the pieces that fall off do not travel faster then the object they fall from.

I do not remember the video ever making this claim.

Super cold ice (like what we would expect to find on a meteor) is magnetic.

Citation needed.

This would tend to cause the ice to gravitate towards the north and south poles.

Citation needed

I am NOT saying that all the ice there if from a meteor, rather that a deposit of super cold ice could, after being attracted to the poles magnetically, snow down on the mammoths and cause them to freeze before rotting.

All examples of frozen mammoths we have discovered have shown some signs of rot and scavenging. None are flash frozen.

 

[Isotelus]

The mammoth freezing portion of the theory is almost completely irrelevant. Makes almost no difference in the theory, but is a problem that is in need of explanation.

A link to the Science article that Wikipedia cited: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/133/3455/729. I have access to it, and I can confirm what HWIN stated above. They refer to accounts made by the actual discoverers of the mammoths in question, as well as to recent taphonomic studies. Indeed, all mammoths remains (39; the majority of which are not complete) show evidence of decomposition and scavenging prior to freezing and complete burial. I hope we will not have to repeat this again.

As I've told many creationists before, if you want to debate on scientific subjects, you have to go to the original sources as much as possible, and you have to stay up to date. That's what good research is. Equally important, searching for evidence and making it seem that it your own notions is not how science proceeds, and it’s leading you astray, because you are overlooking some rather crucial details and ignoring the points that would contradict you. As an example, those pterosaur studies are referring to one genera of that is roughly as tall as a giraffe. You absolutely cannot make a reasonable prediction of how it would fly in current levels of atmospheric oxygen based on studies focusing on body size. Again, you are extrapolating far too much. Even if what you said was true, it wouldn't explain other large extinct flying animals. The fully volant Argentavis magnificens went extinct comparatively recently and had a wingspan of around 23 feet.

 

[Justice Frangipane]

HWIN,

Please site where your getting your info from as well.

I appreciate that you state that "I have personally held T. rex vertebra where one can see where the air sacks would have went as clear as day." While that may be true, it is very unfortunate for the rest of the world to not have said privileged. Please show some documentation.

For the Ice Canopy theory, it doesn't matter if someone else says "no, I no longer believe this." That in itself has no power to change the validity of a theory. Regarding the mass of water coming from the canopy, that is not what I believe at all.

If you would like to pretend that ice isn't translucent, feel free. With out any help from anywhere else, I am OK with making that assertion that light would pass through ice. So brazen...

As far as showing my math. Let me ask you a few questions. Did you ACTUALLY go through that video and check any of the math? Or did you just ASSUME it was right because you agreed with his point of view? It's a good point to show your work, but if I did show my work, would you THEN check the math?

Really the Ice Meteor is not a foundational part of the theory. We can bring it back up later, but not worth it. If none of the mammoths were flash frozen than it may have no real need inside the theory.

Pterasaur flight sitation? The link given was a joke. If they have a theory that has a work around for what is an obvious problem, that doesn't mean that it is no longer a problem. Or that that is what really happened. I am okay with adding options to the choice in what we teach. I think this belief that there is only one viable solution is often short sighted and wrong.

Sorry got to go for now.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

HWIN,

Please site where your getting your info from as well.

I appreciate that you state that "I have personally held T. rex vertebra where one can see where the air sacks would have went as clear as day." While that may be true, it is very unfortunate for the rest of the world to not have said privileged. Please show some documentation.

All my citations were hyperlinked into my reply. Seeing as how you found some of them, I do not understand why you missed the others. However, be more specific with what you would like me to cite. Furthermore, the most I can do through the Ethernet is cite websites, videos, and open access journals. What more would you like me to do through the Ethernet?

As far as showing my math. Let me ask you a few questions. Did you ACTUALLY go through that video and check any of the math? Or did you just ASSUME it was right because you agreed with his point of view? It's a good point to show your work, but if I did show my work, would you THEN check the math?

It would be easy to check the calculations thunderf00t did to come up with his results. Thunderf00t provided the actual formulas that are used for calculations of this nature. Thus, if he did get something wrong, it should be easy to demonstrate. All you have done is boldly assert what would happen, thundef00t actually gave the real calculations that anyone can repeat for him or herself. Thus, let us see your calculations to support any of the claims you made about this ice meteoroid and I would be happy to check and see if you are correct.

Pterasaur flight sitation? The link given was a joke. If they have a theory that has a work around for what is an obvious problem, that doesn't mean that it is no longer a problem. Or that that is what really happened. I am okay with adding options to the choice in what we teach. I think this belief that there is only one viable solution is often short sighted and wrong.

Why was the link I gave a joke, because it disproved something you thought? An actual paleontologist that has actually done research on actual pterosaur fossils wrote that blog. He even went as far as to cite his sources at the end of the blog. Thus, I do not understand how one can simply wave it off as a joke, unless they are caring a preconceive notion they are unwilling to shake.

 

[Isotelus]

HWIN,

Please site where your getting your info from as well.

I appreciate that you state that "I have personally held T. rex vertebra where one can see where the air sacks would have went as clear as day." While that may be true, it is very unfortunate for the rest of the world to not have said privileged. Please show some documentation.

All my citations were hyperlinked into my reply. Seeing as how you found some of them, I do not understand why you missed the others. However, be more specific with what you would like me to cite. Furthermore, the most I can do through the Ethernet is cite websites, videos, and open access journals. What more would you like me to do through the Ethernet?

Straight from my compilation of scientific papers. Saurischian dinosaurs (sauropods and theropods) demonstrate pneumatism of the bones (i.e. where the air sacs would go) to varying degrees across members of the group:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003303 - this one is open access
http://sauroposeidon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wedel-2009-air-sacs.pdf - so is this one
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7048/full/nature03716.html
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1666/0094-8373%282003%29029%3C0243%3AVPASAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-4877.2006.00019.x/abstract

 

[Justice Frangipane]

The cervical air sacs lie alongside the vertebral column in living birds and sometimes invade the vertebrae and ribs via pneumatopores of variable size. Invaginated pneumatic spaces that enter the lateral aspect of the centra, called pleurocoels, have been traced back in the fossil record to the Late Jurassic bird Archaeopteryx [23]–[25], to various saurischian dinosaurs [23], [26], [27], pterosaurs [23], [28], [29], and possibly to even more primitive, crocodilian relatives in the Triassic [30]. Although doubt was cast recently on the use of fossae as evidence of pneumaticity in basal archosaurs [31], a new basal suchian (distant crocodilian relative) has just been described with cervical pleurocoels [32].

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003303

We all know that throwing a link up on the forum doesn't mean that the information on that link is CONCLUSIVE or correct. Yes, it's good to site our sources, but lets not confuse them with PROOF. At best this would be evidence that the possibility exists, rather than proof of any kind. What we are really finding is holes or pouches in the bones. EVERYTHING else is assumption and interpretation of that data.

HWIN,

The link on pterasaurs was a link to about 3 sentences with almost no data. Maybe the link was off, or maybe it was a link to another link, or maybe my browser interpreted the website data incorrectly and the information that was in the pages genome laid dormant in the habitat of my web browser.... =)

either way these new links worked better. I'll go try the link again.

Question.

In relation to polystrate fossils, the answer given by Isotelus

Poly-strata (aka polystrate) fossils imply rapid sedimentation, but note that this does not necessarily indicate a large flooding event. The types of fossils you are referring to typically occur in basins or subsiding regions such as floodplains and swamps. These types of environments experience a nearly constant influx of water flow (via rivers) carrying and depositing large loads of sediment, often in distinct layers. As a result, comparatively large sequences of layers can be formed relatively quickly geologically speaking, the important point being that we do not assume that in this particular case that one layer or several in conjunction represent a large geologic time period. The often touted polystrate trees are a perfect example of this. Poly strata/polystrate fossils are not terms used by geologists, and as a Geosciences major, I again urge you to research further into these topics, but this time go beyond the creationist sources.

Okay, Isotelus, a few questions for you.

What are polystrate fossils called in Geosciences?

Are million year old fossils found in the same layers as "polystrate" fossils?


Thank you everyone for your continued participation in this forum. It's a lot of fun and I am learning quite a bit on a regular basis because of you guys.

 

[Rumraket]

I appreciate that you all appear to be very passionate about what you're talking about, but please remember, I'm not the enemy. I'm a guy with a different opinion than your own.

I'm going to rescind the super frog theory. You brought up some good points and after considering what you mentioned and doing some more research, I don't think that it is a good theory.

Thank you for actually considering the arguments, that's more than I can say many other creationists have done.

It is very possible that there are many "kinds" of frogs and that each of those basic kinds of frogs could have been on the ark.

Sure but it seems to me that in your effort to try to square the biblical flood with the facts of reality, you're moving further and further away from the strictly literal interpretation. You're allowing yourself more wiggle room with respect to how you understand what a "kind" is, how many there are etc.

How do you determine whether you're still actually sticking to the real meaning of the story, and isn't it possible the story isn't actually true? How far are you prepared to stretch your suspension of disbelief before you concede that the flood story of the bible simply isn't true?

I don't mean these questions as insults or attacks, but is your religious faith in christianity, ultimately critically dependent on retaining belief in literal young-earth creationism?

They didn't even have to be on the ark as the Bible states that the animals on the ark were from land and air that breathed through nostrils. Frogs, do both, breathe through absorption in the skin and nostrils (cutaneous respiration). Frogs can also survive a flood just fine. While the whole earth was flooded at one point, it doesn't mean the whole earth was flooded for the whole time. There could easily be parts of the earth that were just flooded during a few crest weeks. There is no reason to assume that some kinds of frogs wouldn't be able to survive on debris mats for a few weeks or months, as well as some that can live in the water just fine. Insects would also be able to survive a flood just fine, so the frogs would not have a short supply of food.

Again all this is the same kind of ad-hoc reinterpretation as above, of the story, to try square it with reality.

There are plenty of insects that don't live in water and can't survive for long without elaborate interrelationships with other insects. Try flies, bees, ants and wasps for a start. Particularly bees and various pollinating insects are critically necessary for plants. Thousands of species of ants live in underground colonies that would all have been flooded and the in habitants drowned.

Now you can try to square all these things by sitting there and reinterpreting everything about how the flood happened, how deep the water was, how much of the planet was covered at any one time, how many species were on the ark and so on and so forth. But the simple fact is, the bible quite clearly states that every living thing on the earth which was not on the ark, was killed. And that every living thing that had to survive, therefore had to be on the ark:

6:17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

6:18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.

...

7:4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

...

7:17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

7:18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

7:21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

7:23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

7:24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

That's a lot of water for a long time, killing everything but what was on the ark.

But at least you're now telling me you don't believe this could have happened in the literal sense implied by the story. The question is, why believe this in the first place if you're forced to reinterpret the story to square away the absurdities of it?

Man has "developed" 300+ varieties of dogs in just about 200 years. The same thing has happened with corn, apples, pigs etc.

Sure, through some very stringent selective breeding done with the explicit intend and oversight of the breeders. Nature left to it's own devices is hardly this efficient, a fact many other creationists often invoke as a supposed argument against using selective breeding to show that natural selection can drive phenotypical change and produce adaptations. As they say, human beings have foresight and "they're still just dogs" etc. etc.

But now you seem to be invoking the very same artificial selection to explain how a lot of natural evolution could have happened in significantly shorter timespans than that which paleontology implies the diversifications of extant biodiversity had available over geological time.

Climate does that for animals quickly. It's called adapting to the environment.

Absolutely, climate is a strong selective factor. But is it that strong?

That can only happen on info ALREADY IN the gene code. Cold weather "selects" for dogs with thick fur. It does not CREATE the fur or the gene for thick fur. The gene was there all along.

Or genes already there mutate, making longer coats of fur. I don't see any reason to think this can't happen.

So just to make sure I've got this right: You don't think there's a problem with the theory of evolution as such, you just believe you've got an even better one?

You seem to imply that you would not have a problem with the possibility of current frog bioderversity evolving in ~260 million years?

I do think there are a variety of problems with the theory of evolution. Which we can get to when we are satisfied with this thread.

Such as?

Negative, harmful mutations abound in our world and would be supportive of this theory. http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Most_muta ... re_harmful
Compatible with, not supportive of. Important distinction.

Deleterious mutations are perfectly compatible with the theory of evolution too, so it can't really be said to be evidence of your theory. To do that, you have to be able to say much more specifically how many deleterious mutations should happen on your theory vs how many on the theory of evolution. That's the only way to see whether it supports one theory more than the other.

Yes, you could say it was evidence for both theories.

Well, since you have pretty much abandoned the superfrog theory, I assume you've abandoned your defense of the underlying genetic argument too?

After a world wide flood, the ideal breeding grounds for frogs would be enormous.

How do you know?

Why wouldn't a post flood world be ideal for frog breeding? plenty of water, lots of bugs, organic debris. I don't see this as an arguable point.

Because of the statements in the bible surrounding the nature of the flood. It's really quite unambigous with regards to the magnitude and the mortality rate of everything but what was on the ark.

Why is there no single geological layer containing pretty much everything on the planet, from humans to dinosaurs?

Hydrologic sorting forbids certain things from happening (most of the time) I think there is likely a number of rare exceptions to what is typical.

This is directly contrasted by evidence from normal flooding events, landslides, earthquakes etc. etc. When everything dies at the same time, we usually find it all mixed together in the same layer

It's also important to note that the Bible says the the water came out of crust of the earth (subcutaneous water chambers) as well as from the sky. With water (likely extremely hot water) killing things on the bottom and land creatures drowning at the top its not going to be simple thing for them to all get to the same place. I think that the fault lines are likely locations for the water to have come out of the earth.

Then why's there no evidence of these supposedly colossal underground water reservoirs? Why'd the water come out of them, then seep back in? Do you have any evidence of the causal mechanism, or is this just more religious belief for it's own sake?

I don't think that the mountains we see today needed to be at their current heights during the flood.

So you're saying pretty much the entire geology of the planet was radically different approximately 4000 years ago? Got any solid evidence of this?

Without land to disrupt the movement of tides, there would likely be a lot more hydrological sorting than we might have originally thought.

It's also important to remember that the buoyancy for different things will have an effect on where it ends up getting buried.

Hydrological sorting is an ad-hoc interpretation of the fossil record invented by Henry Morris back in the 1950's and 60's. The hydrological sorting of fossil species as an explanation for the fossil record has been pretty extensively falsified through rather simple observations.

See for example:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH561_2.html
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fossil_sorting_by_the_global_flood
http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Fossils_sorted_hydrologically

Now, all of this simply look at patterns of fossilization in sedimentary rock layers. Let's not forget we can date the rocks with radiometric dating, the results of which unambigously falsifies the claim that the layers were laid down progressively in a short timespan about 4000 years ago.

Poly strata fossils would suggest a flood and provide a HUGE problem for million year old strata.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html

The lack of erosion marks between the layers is also a real issue.

What do you mean?

http://creation.com/the-lost-squadron

That's a terrible article attacking a number of strawman arguments that I haven't seen anyone make. Noone's claiming that snow can't be laid in a short period of time.

 

[Isotelus]

The cervical air sacs lie alongside the vertebral column in living birds and sometimes invade the vertebrae and ribs via pneumatopores of variable size. Invaginated pneumatic spaces that enter the lateral aspect of the centra, called pleurocoels, have been traced back in the fossil record to the Late Jurassic bird Archaeopteryx [23]–[25], to various saurischian dinosaurs [23], [26], [27], pterosaurs [23], [28], [29], and possibly to even more primitive, crocodilian relatives in the Triassic [30]. Although doubt was cast recently on the use of fossae as evidence of pneumaticity in basal archosaurs [31], a new basal suchian (distant crocodilian relative) has just been described with cervical pleurocoels [32].

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003303

We all know that throwing a link up on the forum doesn't mean that the information on that link is CONCLUSIVE or correct. Yes, it's good to site our sources, but lets not confuse them with PROOF. At best this would be evidence that the possibility exists, rather than proof of any kind. What we are really finding is holes or pouches in the bones. EVERYTHING else is assumption and interpretation of that data.

Two things:

1) The quote you highlighted does not help your point. It appears as if you saw "doubt was cast" and assumed this means all examples of pneumaticity are totally open to interpretation. As I stated in my last post, the papers I included are presenting evidence of the function of pneumaticity in Saurischian dinosaurs. The highlighted sentence is referring to basal archosaurs and making a brief statement on the potential appearance of pneumaticity in Archosauria as a whole. Basal archosaurs include groups like Proterosuchids, Erythrosuchids, Euparkeria, which are the most primitive members and aren't dinosaurs, let alone Saurischians. But the rest of the sentence says pleurocoels were recently found in a basal archosaur, meaning the doubt that fossae indicate pneumaticity is a moot point.

2) The links I'm throwing up are peer-reviewed scientific articles. The research is done and presented by paleontologists who are experts in geology, anatomy, phylogeny, etc. This is the absolute best that one can provide in terms of evidence on an internet forum. It is disingenuous to use news articles (which incidentally are reporting on peer-reviewed scientific articles) as citations as evidence for your own points and at the same time dismiss the original sources I provided outright as only assumption and interpretation.

Both groups of modern representatives of Archosauria (crocodilians and birds) have air sacs in association with holes and pouches in the bones. Non-avian dinosaurs fall between crocodilians and modern birds in terms of phylogenetic relationships, therefore it is not a mere assumption that dinosaurs also had air sacs associated with holes and pouches in the bones; it is the most parsimonious explanation. I included only 5 papers that all support the presence of air sacs in various groups of Saurischian dinosaurs; this is more than simply a possibility.

Okay, Isotelus, a few questions for you.

What are polystrate fossils called in Geosciences?

Are million year old fossils found in the same layers as "polystrate" fossils?

Thank you everyone for your continued participation in this forum. It's a lot of fun and I am learning quite a bit on a regular basis because of you guys.

They're called fossils. No, I'm not being facetious.

Again using the example of trees, probably the most famous ones are the Joggins Cliffs (Carboniferous in age), and yes, there are numerous types of insect and vertebrate fossils (amphibians and reptiles), found in the individual layers associated with the trees. As a side note, there are recent examples of "polystrate trees" deposits forming, such as in modern delta settings, coast lines, and even near active volcanoes. Here's one example.

Edited link.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Oh, it's over top mentally retarded kind of creationist, I know, oxymoron.

I do believe in something called the "canopy theory". I have no idea what the "evolutionists" viewpoint is on this theory, but I'll do my best to answer questions about it. I think its a very interesting theory to say the least.

Do you mean to say retarded?

One does not simply state how they want their theory to work without consequences.

The theory is that there was a canopy of water (or ice) above the atmosphere. Water floats just fine in our current atmosphere and this layer of water/ice

Water doesn't float in the atmosphere. Do not get confused with water vapor, which is present in the atmosphere in the form of a gas or an aerosol, Liquid or solid water have the property of being about 1000 times denser than air, and as such don't get suspended in the air very well, reason why you don't see the oceans and icebergs floating around.
Your statement just won the prize for the most retarded thing a creationist has said this year.

wouldn't have to be very thick to accomplish a number of important functions.
1. It would filter out UV light and greatly decrease the amount of radiation getting into the atmosphere.

If we are thinking in the proportions of biblical flood, it wouldn't just block UV light, it would have blocked all light.

2. It would help pressurize the atmosphere

A sure way to get the internal organs of most of the macro organism out of their bodies under a rapid decompression.
Not to mention the drop in temperature caused by the expansion of gases.

3. It would create a type of greenhouse effect for plant growth.

Green house effect concerns heat, what plants need is light, but in those circumstances you would actually have neither.

Not to mention other problems, like for instance that such a structure would be unstable and come crashing down to earth almost immediately, that during the diurnal motion the tidal force would just shatter the entire structure. Or a quite obvious problem, where did all that world wide flood water go? Did it simply "float" back into the air and fucked off?

I predict based off this theory that we would find animals that could not breathe under the atmospheres current pressure levels.
http://www.livescience.com/18314-dinosaurs-grew-huge.html (The whole theory that dinosaurs have "bird like" lungs has been developed to solve the problem of lung efficiency for dinosaurs)

Which you failed to support. Your link does not substantiate your claim, despite your delusions.

I predict that we would find air trapped in substances with increased oxygen levels.
http://www.uibk.ac.at/public-relations/presse/archiv/2013/466/

Can I get a number on how much, and how did you get at those numbers?
Not that it wouldn't matter because:
1. Your own source claims exactly the opposite of what you claim, which tells me that you never read it.
2. An increase in pressure would due fuck all to increase oxygen levels. If you get an hermetic container filled with air, and then compress it, the ratio of oxygen to other gases remains the same, they only occupy a smaller volume.
Something that you would have known had you had a real scientific education instead of being feed fairy tales.

I predict that we would find animals that currently would not be able to sustain flight under the atmospheres current pressure levels.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3352699/Pterodactyls-were-too-heavy-to-fly-scientist-claims.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/49746642/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/pterodactyl-was-so-big-it-couldnt-fly-scientist-claims/#.UwZLLvldWSo

I would not classify the specimens in your link as "current". In any case that is the least of your problems, because you see, it is true that with a more dense atmosphere it is possible to achieve an higher lift with smaller speeds, but as any aerospace engineer would know, there is no lift without drag, and drag would also increase thus requiring more power. So I don't know what exactly you would win with this.

I predict that with a lack of UV and other radiation, increase in oxygen and higher air pressure that creatures would live longer and grow larger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-radical_theory_of_aging
http://www.info-archive.com/oxywoundhealing.htm

And also has nothing to do with the canopy theory?
If you want to connect exposure to UV with aging that is fine. Let me just give that to you for free. This is evidence for the canopy theory how?
I guess you forget the step where you actually demonstrate that humans did in fact lived longer in the past, but since what your try to prove in the first place is the absurd chronological interpretation of the bible with the canopy theory and not the other way around, this kind of trips over its own shoe laces and accidentally hangs itself and exposes his fat circular logic bum as it is.

I predict that if humans could age to hundreds of years old that we would find unique features consistent with very old human growth patterns.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/004788.html

And I fail to see how an article about aesthetic signs of aging demonstrates that. And how does it demonstrate that humans in the past lived to a far older age.

I predict that we would find these larger animals and older humans
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131104-giant-platypus-evolution-science-animals-paleontology/
http://www.livescience.com/20395-smart-car-sized-turtle-roamed-colombia.html
http://www.fossil-treasures-of-florida.com/giant-beaver.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

Does this count as evidence as well:

The examples you gave are actually different species than those of modern day counterparts.
And even tough a small fraction of our genome is Neanderthal, Neanderthal were certainly not homo-sapiens-sapiens.
And this quite dramatic difference between skeletal proportions makes it quite clear:

I bet I don't even have to tell you which one is which.

As far as the "meteor hitting the earth" youtube video, He is wrong on a few points. When something breaks apart and is traveling through a resistive force (like the ozone)

You couldn't pick a worst example than ozone, it is really fucking thin. It maybe good radiative shielding, but other than that, its mechanical properties against space debris is fuck all, and it might just as well not be there for all the difference it makes.

He stated that even if the meteor broke apart it would hit the earth with exactly the same force.

No, he stated that it would delivery the exact same amount of energy. This is like confusing weight with distance. The fact that you were able to confuse the 2, speaks about your science education, i.e. its fuck all.
Even if he did actually said force, an object of the magnitude describe wouldn't find the atmosphere to be much of a resistance at all.

This is not true.

No, It would be absolutely true as the energy is always preserved.

If a meteor hit the earth (possibly causing the tilt of the earth) yes, the local impact of that strike would cause heat in that specific area. But it doesn't mean that would be the ONLY effect of the impact.

True, if an object big enough to cause a considerable tilt on the earth, were to impact the earth, it wouldn't just heat the specific area of the impact, it would vaporize the entire surface of the earth completely sterilizing it.

When an object breaks apart in space it is not "free" from gravitational forces. The video assumes that every broken off part of an ice meteor would be traveling at exactly the same rate.

I failed to see where such assumption was made.

This also is not true. When an object breaks apart (due to impact with other objects or due to structural instability) the pieces that fall off do not travel faster then the object they fall from.

Fro, all the things you can think of, you gave the example which is absurd, the next comment will explain why.

(perhaps this can happen, but would be exceedingly rare)

If that were ever to happen it means that there was an explosive force between the fragments, but since you were not thinking of such forces, if that were ever to happen wouldn't be just rare, it would have been a fucking miracle, as it violates conservation of momentum (and energy). Every time you say shit about physics it's so monumentally wrong that I would suggest to you just stop. Just stop. Go learn some basic science first, only then comeback.

If fragments of ice where broken off from a meteor, they could be captured by earths gravity and pulled into the atmosphere without being converted into just heat.

It doesn't matter if they are in one piece or in million pieces, the result is the same, this is conservation of energy, there is no arguing this.

Super cold ice (like what we would expect to find on a meteor) is magnetic. This would tend to cause the ice to gravitate towards the north and south poles.

Where the hell did you get that?

I am NOT saying that all the ice there if from a meteor,

None of it is.

rather that a deposit of super cold ice could,

It could have been absolute zero, it wouldn't stay that way for long.

after being attracted to the poles magnetically, snow down on the mammoths and cause them to freeze before rotting.

To bury the mammoths where they stood, it would need a mass big enough to flatten them as well (and how would it snow under the mammoths? beats me).
Secondly you once again have a problem with meteor fragments. If you have a block of ice, and smash to bits, you don't get snow, you get ice bits, snow has a very peculiar crystalline structure that you can't change once its already solid. But let's forget that for a moment, given the average particle size of snow, a meteor broken into such fragments would vaporize long before it ever reached the surface, for it to have any hope to survive the atmospheric burnout long enough to reach the surface, it must be a large chunk where the core is protected from the exterior only due to it's shear volume.

The mammoth freezing portion of the theory is almost completely irrelevant. Makes almost no difference in the theory, but is a problem that is in need of explanation.

I don't see frozen mammoths as a problem, things quite naturally freeze on very cold climates, which they certainly are since those mammoths remained frozen. I.e. you are looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.


In summary. Your post was so unbelievably stupid, so misinformed in the most basic scientific concepts, that I suggest that you take the time to educate yourself before you do shit like this and so spectacularly embarrass yourself.
There is simply no amount of words to describe how wrong this is. In this day and age, this is simply unjustified, its inadmissible, you might just as well tell me that the world is flat and sits upon a turtle and offer me leaches as a cure all medical treatment. I can't believe how the level in education in the United States sank so low.

 

[Rumraket]

Another thing about the insane canopy theory. Even if the tallest mountain at the time of the flood was just 1 km tall, let's just say we only need to add 1km of extra water depth everywhere on the planet, and that half of it came from "underground" somehow.

Now we add what would be another 500 meters of liquid water, but in the form of that crazy water vapour "canopy", as in : steam. As we all know, the phasechange of water from liquid to gas increases it's occupied volume by a factor of roughly 1700. Maybe slightly less if we assume the temperature of the steam is about 15-20 degrees C, instead of 100. That would still give an increase in volume of about 1300 times.

Rough estimation says the atmosphere would then be somewhere around 500 kilometers thick with dense clouds. It's currently only about 11 km thick.

Meaning, with 500 kilometers of cloudcover = No light would hit the surface. The temperature would rapidly drop, everything would die.

And that's before we add the pressure of 500 kilometers of additional atmosphere on top.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

... As a side note, there are recent examples of "polystrate trees" deposits forming, such as in modern delta settings, coast lines, and even near active volcanoes. Here's one example (yes, it's another scientific article, no, it's not open access. Haven't found one that is yet.)

Isotelus, the article to which you linked is accessible as a PDF

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Isotelus]

Greetings,

... As a side note, there are recent examples of "polystrate trees" deposits forming, such as in modern delta settings, coast lines, and even near active volcanoes. Here's one example (yes, it's another scientific article, no, it's not open access. Haven't found one that is yet.)

Isotelus, the article to which you linked is accessible as a PDF

Kindest regards,

James

Fixed it. Thank you.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

HWIN,

The link on pterasaurs was a link to about 3 sentences with almost no data. Maybe the link was off, or maybe it was a link to another link, or maybe my browser interpreted the website data incorrectly and the information that was in the pages genome laid dormant in the habitat of my web browser.... =)

I see. I wonder why it did not work. It works for me just fine. Just in case it still is not working, I will provide the title and author (Pterosaurs breathed in bird-like fashion and had inflatable air sacs in their wings by Darren Naish) so you will be able to just Google it if the link still does not work.

 

[Justice Frangipane]

HWIN,

thank you for the updated info on the link. I'll check it out, very interesting reading fyi.

First thing

Scratch Creationwiki's definition. Stupid.

Second, someone please explain what you think I'm saying? This whole you can't see light through a few inches of ice comment that keeps popping up is driving me bonkers. I'm not sure whose theory your addressing but it surely isn't mine we are talking about.

Second, water comes out of the earth all the time without destroying everything around it, subterranean water chambers are by no means any type of mystery. Caves that once were filled with water exist all over the planet as well. Obviously this would take far more water than what I'm referring too. But we are talking about a world wide catastrophe that massively reshaped EVERYTHING. There is currently enough water in the oceans to cover the earth easily if you smoothed out the low and high points.

 

[Inferno]

HWIN,

thank you for the updated info on the link. I'll check it out, very interesting reading fyi.

First thing

Scratch Creationwiki's definition. Stupid.

Second, someone please explain what you think I'm saying? This whole you can't see light through a few inches of ice comment that keeps popping up is driving me bonkers. I'm not sure whose theory your addressing but it surely isn't mine we are talking about.

Second, water comes out of the earth all the time without destroying everything around it, subterranean water chambers are by no means any type of mystery. Caves that once were filled with water exist all over the planet as well. Obviously this would take far more water than what I'm referring too. But we are talking about a world wide catastrophe that massively reshaped EVERYTHING. There is currently enough water in the oceans to cover the earth easily if you smoothed out the low and high points.

I'll address your first "second" first and will move on to your second "second" later.

We're addressing Hovind's canopy "theory", which is all you've given us. If you have a special canopy "theory", then you should present it in its entirety so we can assess it.
Now in Hovind's "theory", he suggests a layer about 10-30 inches thick. Now obviously this has to be ice, not water, simply because water would immediately drop. However, 10-30 inches of ice would immediately break apart! And by "immediately" I mean in less than 24 hours. Furthermore, it would have melted within 2 days.

All that wouldn't be a problem if Hovind were to suggest that the ice sheet magically formed *poof* and then disappeared a day later. However, Hovind states that the ice sheet was there for at least 2000 years. So now you calculate back: 2000 * 365 * 0,5 = 365,000m of ice. Roughly. (I think Thunderf00t's calculations are off, he suggests 1000km. I don't know where I went wrong, so let's take 365km as the creationists's best hope.)

And so on and so forth. 365km of water would simply drown every living creature on earth and would furthermore cause ocean fish to die for lack of salt. That's another thing that's never mentioned: How the hell would freshwater fish survive? Or the other way around...


Now onto your second "second" point.
You are assuming that the earth was pretty much flat about 4000 years ago. I'm a student of geography (finish in summer) and I have a fair bit of geology and geomorphology in my classes. Let's take the Alps: They're about 55 million years old, though of course there's been movement for longer than that. That number is consistent with their current growth rate of 1mm per year. (I should clarify that: This isn't constant growth, you have to factor in erosion, periods with very little growth, etc.)

Now if you take 4000 years, you'd need 1.5m of growth per year. (I'm building on this ridiculous notion that the earth was pretty much flat, which would require the current water level of 0m to be far below that, let's say at our current -500m or so) We'd obviously require twice that for the Himalayas! That amount of movement would cause massive earth quakes, the sort of which we've never seen before. (I'd go for Richter scale 15 and beyond, the largest one in known history was 9.5!)

That's not considering geomorphology. Rocks are pliable up to a point. Under enormous stress and heat, they can bend into fairly crazy shapes. However, these processes take, depending on the type of rock, millions of years. You're suggesting this should take place in a few thousand years. Now I've never undertaken this sort of calculation and I'm certainly not going to take time doing it. I'm going to make a fairly educated guess: Rocks under this sort of pressure would simply break apart. We wouldn't have "The Alps", we'd have the largest pile of pebbles known to humans.

 

[australopithecus]

Canopy "theory"? LOL! That is all.

 

[Justice Frangipane]

Hello everyone.

There is a lot going on in this thread that is requiring way more of my time than I have available. With about 15 new questions to answer each day, I need to focus on specific things. That's fine, I enjoy the discussion. But Please be patient with the timeline I have available.

The canopy theory comments are a plenty,.... so lets tackle a few.

The ice doesn't need a yearly growth rate. It is unnecessary to assume that the starting 6 to 12 inches of ice would need to grow each year. It would only need to be sustained for about a thousand years.

The theory is that the atmosphere would have been about 10 miles thick at the time.

The amount of water in the canopy falling down wouldn't be significant to the flood itself, but would contribute.

That the conversion of water to steam, or steam to water releasing enough heat to cook the planet is silly. We aren't talking about that much water for one. Secondly with the atmosphere going from 10 miles compressed to expanding to 50 - 60 miles that would have a drastic cooling effect.

at less than a foot of ice, yes, light would pass through. All these ridiculous claims of no light getting through the canopy are looking at something totally different.

for the ice meteor. (not that this is all that important of a point, I would rather drop it)

If you spray water into a fire (as a firefighter would do to extinguish a fire) you would have water to steam conversion along the outsides of the channel of water, and you would have cool water in the center hitting the fire. If a large Ice meteor hit the atmosphere, yes, some would convert to steam releasing heat. Other parts would pass through and stay frozen.

Changing the tilt of the earth would cause the cold poles. I do also believe that the whole world had a very consistent climate before the flood, explaining vegetation at the poles.

Continental drift and massive earthquake would rock the globe and create many of the mountain ranges we see.

The fault lines we see, appear to be a logical place for water to have burst out of the earth.

Many if not most of the mountain ranges we see today run along the same path as the fault lines.

Mountains can form extremely quickly and we have seen islands and mountain ranges form this century due to volcanic activity and earthquakes. A world wide catastrophe would not only be able to create mountains and our current topography, it would be expected to do so.

Polystrate fossils are explained by the strata they are in created by rapid formation due to flood waters. With modern science explaining rapid layer formation and stratification by flood waters, there is logical to think that this could have happened on a much larger scale.

I, of course, do not have all the answers, but I do think that there is a possibility that this is what happened. And it should not be ruled out as an option.

There are many aspects to the theory of a Godless creation that leave questions unanswered. (origins of life, matter, space, time, laws, energy...)

While I won't pretend to have all the answers I do think that this is a reasonable consideration.

 

[Inferno]

The canopy theory comments are a plenty,.... so lets tackle a few.

Do you understand, yes or no, that not even main-stream creationists are taking the canopy "theory" serious any more? You're on the fringe of the fringe.

The ice doesn't need a yearly growth rate. It is unnecessary to assume that the starting 6 to 12 inches of ice would need to grow each year. It would only need to be sustained for about a thousand years.

You misunderstand. Nobody's claiming that the ice canopy would have been growing, quite the contrary.
What happens when you put ice in sunlight? Why, it melts! It shrinks!
The same principle must apply to your ice canopy. If there had been an ice canopy around the world, we would expect the ice to melt at a more or less steady rate. (depending on solar flares, sun intensity, day/night, etc.)

Now we work backwards: If at the time of Noah it would have been 6 inches thick, how thick was it 1000 years before that? And 1000 years before that? (supposedly the creation of the universe)

The theory is that the atmosphere would have been about 10 miles thick at the time.

Again, you're misusing the word "theory".
Also, where are your sources? On what do you base the idea that the atmosphere was that thick?

That the conversion of water to steam, or steam to water releasing enough heat to cook the planet is silly. We aren't talking about that much water for one. Secondly with the atmosphere going from 10 miles compressed to expanding to 50 - 60 miles that would have a drastic cooling effect.

I haven't done the calculations but I expect TF's math is fairly solid.
That completely aside though, why exactly was the atmosphere expanding? If you say "because of the pressure" then let me remind you that such a pressure would have had far more drastic effects than simply having insects grow larger.

at less than a foot of ice, yes, light would pass through. All these ridiculous claims of no light getting through the canopy are looking at something totally different.

As I already explained, you don't even understand the principles of your own (or rather Kent Hovind's) idea. We're not talking about a foot, we're talking about thousands of kilometres. Again, ice melts under sunlight. Unless, of course, your God put some magical anti-melt sheet on top of the canopy.

If you spray water into a fire (as a firefighter would do to extinguish a fire) you would have water to steam conversion along the outsides of the channel of water, and you would have cool water in the center hitting the fire. If a large Ice meteor hit the atmosphere, yes, some would convert to steam releasing heat. Other parts would pass through and stay frozen.

You're missing the point. What happens when it hits the Earth? There was such an event called the Tunguska event. A small asteroid or comet hit the earth and flattened everything in the area (2000km[sup]2[/sup])

Changing the tilt of the earth would cause the cold poles. I do also believe that the whole world had a very consistent climate before the flood, explaining vegetation at the poles.

What you believe is utterly irrelevant, what can you show to be true?
And what do you mean by "changing the tilt would explain X"? Be more specific: How would it explain that?

Continental drift and massive earthquake would rock the globe and create many of the mountain ranges we see.

Let me remind you that rock isn't that easily pliable. Under enormous stress under a short amount of time and with little added heat, rock will simply break (in most instances, it all depends on the types of rock) and would not form mountains. Take a single class in geology and your whole idea will crumble.

The fault lines we see, appear to be a logical place for water to have burst out of the earth.

Except that there's neither any evidence for that nor is there, as far as I'm aware, water beneath the crust.

Mountains can form extremely quickly and we have seen islands and mountain ranges form this century due to volcanic activity and earthquakes. A world wide catastrophe would not only be able to create mountains and our current topography, it would be expected to do so.

Wrong, utterly wrong.
As you've correctly stated, these islands and mountain ranges were formed due to VOLCANIC activity, aka the rocks are igneous. Igneous rock forms through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava.
Metamorphic rock makes up a large part of what we see when we're in some mountain range. For example, I live in Austria and there's an area called the "Granit- und Gneisplateau". Now part of that is igneous rock, but the other part, Gneiss, is metamorphic. How do you account for that?

And then there's sedimentary, but we needn't concern ourselves with that.

There are many aspects to the theory of a Godless creation that leave questions unanswered. (origins of life, matter, space, time, laws, energy...)

Again, you're using "theory" incorrectly.
Also, "evolution" =/= without god. You're mistaking evolution for atheism. Big no-no right there.
Finally, ask your questions. I can already smell six of them and there are answers for all of them. (Even though about half of them are "nobody knows".)

While I won't pretend to have all the answers I do think that this is a reasonable consideration.

Nonsense. I've already pointed out how nearly every one of your sentences is based on a great deal of ignorance, but I haven't even begun to delve into the internal inconsistency of your idea. I won't do that, it takes too long and I have little time as it is.
I would suggest you register in a geology course, a physics course, a chemistry course and a biology course. With any luck, you'll understand why you're dead wrong about damn near everything you've said so far.