Lift A Rock…
But then I came across the Earth History website via a Google image search . I had found a nice picture of Australian Archean greenstone with batholith formations there, and because it looked interesting, I read on:
“After deposition of submarine basalts 1-6 km thick (2.73 Ga) in Canada?s Slave craton, for instance, emergent volcanic and volcaniclastic sequences culminated in a basin as large as the Japan Sea that was filled by interleaving turbidite fans (2.68 Ga). These fans were supplied by the off-stripping and reworking of the volcanic cover and the unroofing of simultaneously forming granitic domes, in the course of craton-scale deformation. At a reduced level volcanism continued throughout the deposition of the turbidites. These, in turn, were followed by conglomerate-sandstone sequences (2.60 Ga) along regional fault systems as the entire craton was subjected to cross-folding.”
“An ill-defined collision event near the end of the Archaean triggered further large-scale magmatism, in which ascending granite transferred a significant proportion of heat-producing elements to the upper crust and enabled the lower crust to cool and stiffen.”
Comparable stratigraphies are observed in many cratons, such as the Dharwar (southern India), Zimbabwe, Wyoming cratons and parts of the Yilgarn craton (western Australia). “
So far, so pedestrian. I see no problem here. But read on.
It is difficult to see how 1 billion years (beginning, say, from 3.5 Ga) can credibly be allocated to such processes. Averaged over a thickness of 30 km, 1 billion years translates to a rate of just 0.03 millimetres per year, whereas volcanic eruptions are known not to erupt in slow motion and everything about the Archaean indicates large-scale processes taking place continuously and rapidly. If we halved the timespan so as to take account of intervals of erosion and non-deposition (unconformities), the average would still be only 0.06 mm per year ? less than the thickness of a sheet of paper. Archaean geology is incompatible with the dates produced by radioisotope dating and throws the whole geological timescale that constrains geological and evolutionary interpretations into serious doubt.
The proposed alternative view is to identify the Hadean ? ending, say, at 3.8 Ga (the boundary is not formally defined) ? with the 40-day cataclysm described in Genesis, and the Archaean with the subsequent 9 months during which the waters released in the cataclysm initially dominated the planet and then gradually subsided. At the end of this period the land around the Ark appeared dry, and 56 days later it was dry enough for animals to tread on. Although it seems likely that the Ark would have come aground on one of the first cratons to be dry and cool enough for walking on, where that was must remain a guess. The distinct change in the global rock record at the end of the Archaean, while suggestive of a synchronism with either day 314 or day 370 of the Flood, does not require it, and we should not be looking for a precise correlation. We can say, however, that by that stage substantial areas of land in many parts of the world were now permanently above water, and the Ark was on one of them.
THUD. THUD. Thud thud thud. Ow.
How many students have gone to the ‘net for research on geology and come across this mendacious, fallacious fundie codswallop?
The worst of all is that this comes from the country that bred Newton and Darwin.
So why have I linked to Robinson’s site? Surely that just gives more credence to his arguments?
I’m sick to death of idiots like this perverting honest scientific enquiry with their pseudo-scientific garbage, just because they’re unable to deal with their own cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty.
I have nothing against faith, but faith is not science. Faith is beleiveing in things you can’t see and for which there is no physical evidence. It’s perfectly possible to have faith and be an objective scientist if you have the intellectual capability to handle paradox – the Vatican astronomers manage it perfectly well. But to deliberately misrepresent physical evidence is just plain, out and out, old-fashioned lying. It’s not a difference in methodology, it’s lies.
Lying is a sin, so for a self-professed Christian to keep torturing the facts to fit a non-evidence-based, unsupported belief system should be a big, big sin – Commandment No. 9 says “Thou shalt not bear false witness. “. It also says that the penalty for breaking the commandments is death. Somehow this conveniently gets forgotten when fundies are lying through their teeth.
But then hypocrisy has always number one requirement for evangelical Christians. Without hypocrisy their heads would explode.
