How Does YEC Explain The Fossil Record?

[seer]

No apes, no men, no dog, no cats, no deer, no bears, no rabbits, squirrels, etc... This is a real problem for the flood model - perhaps even a defeater.

Just to clarify, you mean for the young-earth creationist, worldwide flood model, right? It presents no problems for the old-earth creationist, "global but not worldwide" flood model, of course.

Yes, a problem for young-earth creationism. The idea that the fossil record was the result of a global flood.

[seer]

Jim,

You asked a question, and I have answered to the best of my knowledge. If you do not find this answer adequate, you are at liberty to seek alternatives.

Steve, perhaps I missed it. Where did you offer a reasonable explanation for why we don't find present day mammals in the fossil record with dinosaurs? We do find some early mammal types, but they are not the same animals that we live with today, or have lived with in the past 10,000 years or so. Which should be there if the fossil record was created by a world wide flood. Really Steve - you don't see this as a problem?

[SteveF]

An excellent book on geology is called "The Bible Rocks and Time". It’s written by two Christian geology professors. They believe the earth to be old but address and treat the arguments of YECers with courtesy and apparent fairness.

The book also has an extensive section on the history of geological thought, principally with the Christian’s interest in mind. It also includes an analysis on the view of the Church Fathers regarding the Earth’s age and other interesting insights like the various calculations used to figure out the age of the earth using the biblical genealogies (I didn’t know so many people attempted to figure it out before Ussher tried)

One thing that really surprised me reading the book was the number of Christians that were leading geologists in the 1700’s and 1800’s. But it isn’t just the fact that they were Christians but that they approached the geological evidence with a preconceived assumption that the earth was about 5500 years old (in their day) and that there had been a worldwide flood and they would find evidence of it. It was what they discovered that slowly caused them to change their mind.

I have heard many times that if only geologists would take into consideration The Flood then they could reach different conclusions. The early geologists not only took into consideration The Flood but were actively seeking ways to reconcile it with the geological data. They spent about 200 years (many gave up sooner) trying to reconcile the geological record with a 5500 year old earth and couldn’t do it. The more the evidence came in, the less plausible it became.

Seer wrote:

If the the flood really caused these fossils they should be intermingled.

This was one of the pieces of evidence that steered them away from thinking the earth was young. Because they believed in a worldwide flood they were expecting to find fossils scattered in a somewhat chaotic fashion but they weren’t. They were systematically laid out in strata with certain kinds appearing in each level consistently. One geologist in England, William Smith, would amaze people by predicting the types of fossils that would be found in certain hill countries based on his knowledge of the strata. Little did they know that this phenomenon was being discovered in other parts of the world as well.

Early on, some geologists wondered whether there had been multiple creations and the last strata reflected the Noachian deluge.

I would recommend the book to anyone who is interested in geological evidence and specifically as it relates to Christians. Here’s the link:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-Rocks-T ... roduct_top

[mattrose]

A geologist friend of mine responded to this question via email from the YEC perspective...

Regarding dinosaurs, although we have found a lot of dinosaur fossils they are still quite rare compared to the size of the earth. The same can be said for human fossils. So to find them together would be an unexpected find. Another factor to consider is that people probably did not hang out in the same "neck of the woods" as dinosaurs, making it even more unlikely to find them fossilized together.

So... you can disagree with his expectations. But there's no good reason to suggest that he's lying about his expectations. I guess it comes down to whether YECism EXPECTS to find such fossils together. If not, you can hardly use an argument from silence AGAINST a view that doesn't expect noise.

[seer]

A geologist friend of mine responded to this question via email from the YEC perspective...

Regarding dinosaurs, although we have found a lot of dinosaur fossils they are still quite rare compared to the size of the earth. The same can be said for human fossils. So to find them together would be an unexpected find. Another factor to consider is that people probably did not hang out in the same "neck of the woods" as dinosaurs, making it even more unlikely to find them fossilized together.

So... you can disagree with his expectations. But there's no good reason to suggest that he's lying about his expectations. I guess it comes down to whether YECism EXPECTS to find such fossils together. If not, you can hardly use an argument from silence AGAINST a view that doesn't expect noise.

Matt, I never expected, or said, that we should necessarily find human fossils with dinosaurs. But how about the thousands of the other modern mammal species? Certainly there should have been quite a few of them living in the Dino's "neck of the woods." Could you ask your geologist friend about that - I would really be interested. Is there a plausible reason why we don't find them? Personally I would like YEC to be true.

[seer]

Seer wrote:

If the the flood really caused these fossils they should be intermingled.

This was one of the pieces of evidence that steered them away from thinking the earth was young. Because they believed in a worldwide flood they were expecting to find fossils scattered in a somewhat chaotic fashion but they weren’t. They were systematically laid out in strata with certain kinds appearing in each level consistently. One geologist in England, William Smith, would amaze people by predicting the types of fossils that would be found in certain hill countries based on his knowledge of the strata. Little did they know that this phenomenon was being discovered in other parts of the world as well.

Yes, I think this a real problem for the flood theory when it comes to the fossil record. And thanks for the link.

[darinhouston]

A geologist friend of mine responded to this question via email from the YEC perspective...

Regarding dinosaurs, although we have found a lot of dinosaur fossils they are still quite rare compared to the size of the earth. The same can be said for human fossils. So to find them together would be an unexpected find. Another factor to consider is that people probably did not hang out in the same "neck of the woods" as dinosaurs, making it even more unlikely to find them fossilized together.

So... you can disagree with his expectations. But there's no good reason to suggest that he's lying about his expectations. I guess it comes down to whether YECism EXPECTS to find such fossils together. If not, you can hardly use an argument from silence AGAINST a view that doesn't expect noise.

Matt, I never expected, or said, that we should necessarily find human fossils with dinosaurs. But how about the thousands of the other modern mammal species? Certainly there should have been quite a few of them living in the Dino's "neck of the woods." Could you ask your geologist friend about that - I would really be interested. Is there a plausible reason why we don't find them? Personally I would like YEC to be true.

This is just a theory below (and I'm not even that well informed, but applying logic...), I think what he's saying (and what I've read) is that it's a statistics issue -- we barely even find fossils compared to the number of beings living in a given time -- to my mind, it's quite a remarkable set of conditions that even allow them to be formed in the first place. To find them "together" would imply gross numbers of them on most occasions to be "together." The lack of fossil record of them "together" is consistent in my mind with low populations of them due to being natural prey. Small mammals like rodents would be found in volume (and they are) because they scurry about and aren't prey to the large dinos. But, the larger mammals don't survive long enough to be found in large numbers if we were to go back in time, so it's not at all unreasonable to expect they'd be hard to find in the fossil record. If my home town had 1000 dinos, maybe there's only a dozen cows hiding somewhere. The fact that at best you might expect to find 1 dino there, statistics suggest you probably won't find even one of the dozen cows in a fossil from that town. Not until the dinos died and the predatory pressure ceased on the population of cows would you expect to see the population density rise to a significant number sufficient to expect fossils to appear in the record. This is like having a security camera take a picture every 3 hours on my street and expect to see my son in the street. He's there quite a bit, but it might take 6 months to see him. You wouldn't conclude he didn't exist or even that he never played in the street just because he didn't show up on the photos.


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[mattrose]

The latest response from my friend...

Matt,

Fossils of mammals are extremely rare, so to find them buried together with dinosaur fossils would be a chance happening. Nevertheless, a few mammal fossils have been found in the vicinity of dinosaur fossils. At the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan there is a fossil of a mammal that has the remains of a small dinosaur in its stomach (See link below).

http://www.livescience.com/3794-dinosau ... omach.html

Chris

[seer]

The latest response from my friend...

Matt,

Fossils of mammals are extremely rare, so to find them buried together with dinosaur fossils would be a chance happening. Nevertheless, a few mammal fossils have been found in the vicinity of dinosaur fossils. At the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan there is a fossil of a mammal that has the remains of a small dinosaur in its stomach (See link below).

http://www.livescience.com/3794-dinosau ... omach.html

Chris

Thanks again Matt, a couple of points. First, fossils of mammals are not that rare just do a search for "Mammal Fossils." Second, we do in fact find these prehistoric mammals with dinosaur fossils, but never - to my understanding, do we find modern mammals. The rabbits, dogs, elephants, giraffes, pigs, goats, etc... that we are familiar with. But thanks for the link.

[seer]

This is just a theory below (and I'm not even that well informed, but applying logic...), I think what he's saying (and what I've read) is that it's a statistics issue -- we barely even find fossils compared to the number of beings living in a given time -- to my mind, it's quite a remarkable set of conditions that even allow them to be formed in the first place. To find them "together" would imply gross numbers of them on most occasions to be "together." The lack of fossil record of them "together" is consistent in my mind with low populations of them due to being natural prey. Small mammals like rodents would be found in volume (and they are) because they scurry about and aren't prey to the large dinos. But, the larger mammals don't survive long enough to be found in large numbers if we were to go back in time, so it's not at all unreasonable to expect they'd be hard to find in the fossil record. If my home town had 1000 dinos, maybe there's only a dozen cows hiding somewhere. The fact that at best you might expect to find 1 dino there, statistics suggest you probably won't find even one of the dozen cows in a fossil from that town. Not until the dinos died and the predatory pressure ceased on the population of cows would you expect to see the population density rise to a significant number sufficient to expect fossils to appear in the record. This is like having a security camera take a picture every 3 hours on my street and expect to see my son in the street. He's there quite a bit, but it might take 6 months to see him. You wouldn't conclude he didn't exist or even that he never played in the street just because he didn't show up on the photos.


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Well the fact is we do find prehistoric mammals in the fossil record, we just never find modern animals. And we have thousands of dino fossils, I'm not asking for thousands of modern mammal fossils - just a few would be enough to show that these species lived together. And remember it is said that these fossils were cause by the world wide flood - all killed rather quickly. The best explanation may just be that modern mammal did not exist back then and the fossil record was not cause by a world wide flood.