Evidence for a Global Flood About 5000 Years Ago

Posted in Creation/Evolution, Genesis Flood on August 11th, 2020 by dhawkinsmo


Copying this over from the Science Forum where I argue about various topics with various scientists and engineers on all kinds of topics … Read more »

Sir Isaac Newton, the 25 Inch Sacred Cubit and Noah’s Ark

Posted in Creation/Evolution, Genesis Flood on January 25th, 2011 by dhawkinsmo

“That the sacred Cubit was very large, appears from the Jewish Calamus or Reed, which contained but six of these Cubits; and from the antiquity of this Cubit, since Noah measured the Ark with it;” –Sir Isaac Newton [1]

“It is agreeable to reason to suppose, that the Jews, when they passed out of Chaldea, carried with them into Syria the Cubit which they had received from their ancestors. This is confirmed both by the dimensions of Noah’s ark preserv’d by tradition in this Cubit, and by the agreement of this Cubit with the two Cubits, which the Talmudists say were engrav’d on the sides of the city Susan during the empire of the Persians, and that one of them exceeded the sacred Cubit half a Digit, the other a whole Digit … The Roman Cubit therefore consists of 18 Unciæ, and the sacred Cubit of 25 3/5 Unciæ of the Roman Foot” –Sir Isaac Newton [2]

“The 25 inch cubit is found in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Syria, and probably in Greece, varying from 25.1 to 25.4. In modern Persia, Arabia, Greece, Candia, Algiers, and Italy, a pic or braccio of the same length is found, varying from 25.0 to 25.3. The possibility of this widespread unit having some connection with the Chinese foot (the double of which is 25.18 +/- .04) and with the North American mound builders’ foot (1/2 of 25.20 +/- .04) should not be disregarded; though farther evidence, beyond these very close resemblances, is needed to prove a connection. Don Quiepo also connects with it the Japanese inc 75.21–i.e., 3 x 25.07. … The Egyptian form of this cubit is probably nearest to the original, as being the oldest that we have, and this gives 25.10. This is well known as the sacred Hebrew, Royal Persian, and Chaldean cubit, mentioned by Newton, Golius, Kelly, Quiepo and Oppert.” –Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie [3]

Answers in Genesis is building an ark.  A full size one!  See this link. I think this is a fantastic project and will be a tremendous educational tool. When I heard about the project, I checked to see what size cubit they were planning to use and it appears that the current plan is to use what some refer to as the Royal Egyptian cubit of around 20.7 inches. Make no mistake, AiG’s ark will be impressive at ~500 ft long if they use this cubit. But what if the cubit Noah used was really ~25 inches as the opinion of Sir Isaac Newton appears to be? Wow. That would make AiG’s ark 625 feet long! Even more impressive!

What is the evidence? Well, first we have Sir Isaac Newton’s research in which he makes the statements listed above. He lists 6 evidences from ancient literature supporting his belief that the sacred cubit was close to 25 inches long. Read more »

RATE Carbon 14 Study Withstands Scrutiny

Posted in Creation/Evolution, Genesis Flood on June 1st, 2010 by dhawkinsmo

“… Baumgardner’s coal samples do show significant radiocarbon above background, inviting explanation.” –Dr. Kirk Bertsche, AMS Expert  At left: Accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (From Wikipedia)

The RATE team from Institute for Creation Research has produced some very interesting physical evidence for a young earth … one of their experiments involves measuring Carbon 14 in coal.  To make a long story short, there shouldn’t be any Carbon 14 in coal that is supposedly 300 million years old.  BUT … there is and Dr. Baumgardner and his colleagues were alert enough to notice.   Link here to Dr. Baumgardner’s paper.  Paul Giem of GRISDA did a literature survey of studies in which “too much” carbon 14 was found.  This prompted the RATE team to do their own experiment and sure enough … they found carbon 14 which was significantly above background.  Dr. Baumgardner argues that the C14 is intrinsic but of course Old Earthers say it’s not.  What are the Old Earth explanations?   Dr. Bertsche in his article at Talk Origins has suggested mobile humic acids, microbial growth and neutron bombardment.  Kathleen Hunt in her article at Talk Origins says …

The short version: the 14C in coal is probably produced de novo by radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium isotope series that is naturally found in rocks (and which is found in varying concentrations in different rocks, hence the variation in 14C content in different coals). Research is ongoing at this very moment.

(The fungi/bacteria hypothesis [that 14C in coal is produced by modern microorganisms currently living there –Ed.] may also be plausible, but would probably only contribute to inflation of 14C values if coal sits in warm damp conditions exposed to ambient air. [It wasn’t — read Baumgardner’s paper on how the samples were handled] There is also growing evidence that bacteria are widespread in deep rocks, but it is not clear that they could contribute to 14C levels. But they may contribute to 13C.)

So, it looks like in-situ production of new 14C is the best-supported hypothesis;

So this appears to be the leading Old Earth Hypothesis but Dr. Bertsche failed to mention in his article that Dr. Baumgardner had already thought of this hypothesis and had calculated the amount of Carbon 14 this would produce.  His calculations showed that the amount of C14 produced would be 4 orders of magnitude too small.  I challenged people at the Talk Rational forum to show that Dr. Baumgardner’s calculations are wrong and several people tried including Dr. Bertsche.  Here is what he wrote recently …

“When I do the above [calculations on neutron bombardment of 14N to produce 14C in coal] on the back of an envelope, I get a 14C abundance that is too low by about 3 orders of magnitude. LINK HERE.

So the two are very close.  Dr. Bertsche has come back today (6/1/10) saying that this is not conclusive and “in situ” contamination is not ruled out.  That’s fine, Dr. Bertsche, if you think it’s not conclusive … you are welcome to keep trying with the calculations.  As for “in situ” contamination, don’t you think your friend Dr. Gove has considered those other sources of contamination?  Why else would he think that in-situ production of new 14C is the best-supported hypothesis?  If Old Earthers would stop ignoring the Elephant in the Living Room — the Global Flood, SOOO many things would be easier to explain … like the bazillions of fossils all over the world which require rapid burial to be preserved, like global sedimentary rock layers, the short history of civilization, legends of a global flood from around the world and so on.  Oh … and Carbon 14 in coal that shouldn’t be there.

“Fountains of the Deep” on Mars

Posted in Genesis Flood on May 26th, 2008 by dhawkinsmo

Did you know that scientists believe that Mars has “Fountains of the Deep” under it’s surface? And that this sounds very similar to the “Fountains of the Deep” on Earth which we read about in the Biblical book of Genesis which kicked off the Global Flood of Noah? (Genesis 7:11) Check out this paper …

Semi-three dimensional computer simulations of large-scale cataclysmic flooding: A model and parameter sensitivities

Miyamoto, H. | Baker, V.R. | Komatsu, G.
34th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference; Abstracts of Papers. 2003

Many cataclysmic megafloods in the geological history of Earth has [sic] been recognized. They are linked with late Pleistocene glaciation, and therefore research on these floods might provide insights on climatic changes of Earth. Megafloods appear also to have occurred on Mars, at scales so large that the outflows may have been responsible for the formation of a transient north polar ocean on the planet. Relevant to these problems, the understanding of discharge rates and durations of megafloods will be quite important. A variety of quantitative methods have been applied. However, these computations were confined to a single reach at one time. Therefore, it was difficult to reconstruct the continuous flow relationships among multiple reaches, which is necessary to estimate a discharge rate for the whole system of a megaflood. Link to abstract

Read more »

Oil and Coal Do NOT Require Millions of Years to Form

Posted in Creation/Evolution, Genesis Flood on May 13th, 2008 by dhawkinsmo

(Picture credit www.changingworldtech.com)
Evolutionists and other various Deep Time advocates believe that oil and coal require millions of years to form … but they don’t. They just require the right conditions. Consider the following recent article …

Nuclear microprobe analysis of artificial coal

Alan M. Bailey, William A. Hollerman, Rudolph Gibbs, Arthur D. Cohen, Gary A. Glass, Shelly F. Hynes, Justin Fournet and Richard Greco

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, Volume 189, Issues 1-4, April 2002, Pages 418-420
Department of Geology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette – 70504-4530, Lafayette, LA, USA, Acadiana Research Laboratory, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, P.O. Box 44210, Lafayette, LA 70504-4210, USA, Department of Geological Sciences, University of South Carolina – 29208, Columbia SC, USA

Abstract
An artificially coalified Taxodium peat was used to examine the behavior of inorganic constituents in terrestrial organic matter during the early coalification process. The artificial coal is produced by subjecting the peat to incremental increases in temperature up to 60 °C and pressures to 14.48 MPa over a four-week period in a partially open reactor.

4 weeks, folks. That’s all it takes given the right conditions. Read more »

Absence Of Clouds Caused Pre-human Supergreenhouse Periods

Posted in Genesis Flood on April 17th, 2008 by dhawkinsmo

ScienceDaily, Apr. 11, 2008 — “In a world without human-produced pollution, biological productivity controls cloud formation and may be the lever that caused supergreenhouse episodes during the Cetaceous [sic] and Eocene, according to Penn State paleoclimatologists.

Kump and David Pollard, senior research associate, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, looked for another way to create a world where mean annual temperatures in the tropics were above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and polar temperatures were in the 50-degree Fahrenheit range. Changing the Earth’s albedo — the amount of sunlight reflected into space — by changing cloud cover will produce supergreenhouse events, the researchers report April 11 in the journal Science.

According to the researchers, changes in the production of cloud condensation nuclei, the tiny particles around which water condenses to form rain drops and cloud droplets, decreased Earth’s cloud cover and increase the sun’s warming effect during supergreenhouse events.

Normal cloud cover reflects about 30 percent of the sun’s energy back into space. Kump and Pollard were looking for a scenario that allowed in 6 to 10 percent more sunlight.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080410140531.htm

This is interesting to me because of my familiarity with the Book of Genesis, where it says things like … Read more »

Lake Suigetsu: No Help for Old Earthers

Posted in Creation/Evolution, Genesis Flood on April 11th, 2008 by dhawkinsmo

Lake Suigetsu is a small lake in Japan which is often used by Old Earth believers to try to disprove the Young Earth timescale. They say that Lake Suigetsu has a continuous record of varves (fine laminations deposited annually) in the sediment below the lake for the last 100,000 years or so. Here’s Glenn Morton’s description of Lake Sugetsu. One person I debated recently claimed that Lake Suigetsu disproves the Book of Genesis as a historical record. But does it really? Or is this just one more false claim put forth by anti-creationists?

We cannot say for sure yet, but it’s looking like yet another false claim. I have now been investigating Lake Suigetsu off and on since June 2007 and I have discovered some very fascinating stuff. For instance …

1) INCREASING RECOGNITION THAT MANY “VARVES” ARE NOT ANNUAL LAMINATIONS AFTER ALL.

“It is very unfortunate from a sedimentological viewpoint that engineers describe any rhythmically laminated fine-grained sediment as ‘varved.’ There is increasing recognition that many sequences previously described as varves are multiple turbidite sequences of graded silt to clay units … without any obvious seasonal control on sedimentation.”
Quigley, R. M, Glaciolacustrine and glaciomarine clay deposition: a North American perspective; in: Eyles, N., editor, Glacial geology—an introduction for engineers and earth scientists, Pergamon Press, New York, p. 151, 1983.

Read more »

Titan’s Underground Water Lends Support to Creationist Walt Brown

Posted in Genesis Flood on March 21st, 2008 by dhawkinsmo

titan_ocean.jpg“We believe that about 62 miles beneath the ice and organic-rich surface is an internal ocean of liquid water mixed with ammonia,” —Bryan Stiles of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in, Pasadena, California.

Hmmm … another body in our solar system with an underground ocean. Maybe Creationist Walt Brown’s “Underground Ocean on Earth Prior to the Global Flood” idea isn’t so crazy after all! Don’t forget about Enceladus, that other little moon of Saturn’s which not only has underground water but is also still spewing. And don’t forget about Venus which–like the postulated event on earth at the time of the Global Flood–got a total resurfacing job.

You can read about Walt Brown’s Hydroplate Theory at http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview2.html

You could also search my blog for the word “hydroplate” as I have written about it several times.
Here’s the article which appears today in Science Magazine…

Science 21 March 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5870, pp. 1649 – 1651

Titan’s Rotation Reveals an Internal Ocean and Changing Zonal Winds

Ralph D. Lorenz,1* Bryan W. Stiles,2 Randolph L. Kirk,3 Michael D. Allison,4 Paolo Persi del Marmo,5 Luciano Iess,5 Jonathan I. Lunine,6 Steven J. Ostro,2 Scott Hensley2

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s high time that geologists quit laughing at Walt Brown, as many mainstream scientists have laughed at pioneers of the past, and start investigating his theory in a serious way. Sorry, but mainstream theories for the explanation of the geologic record on Planet Earth are weak. Read more »

Could Creationist Walt Brown be Right About Comets?

Posted in Creation/Evolution, Genesis Flood on February 25th, 2008 by dhawkinsmo

“Comets are literally out of this world. As the flood began, the extreme pressure in the interconnected subterranean chambers and the power of supercritical water exploding into the vacuum of space launched about 50,000 comets, totaling less than 1% of the water in the chambers.” –Dr. Walter Brown, Creationist

“Scientists were stunned to find a huge range of minerals in the particles captured by NASA’s Stardust probe as it swooped past the comet Wild 2 on 2 January 2004. Many of the compounds could only have formed close to a star [Ed. like deep under the surface of the earth?]— far from the chilly outskirts of the Solar System where the comet first coalesced.” –Nature 440, 260 (16 March 2006) (See below)

Dr. Walter Brown is somewhat of a contrarian creationist … that is, he doesn’t subscribe to the ICR/AIG theory of the Flood of Noah, which currently is Dr. John Baumgardner’s Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT). He has his own theory called the Hydroplate Theory and the parts I’ve studied seem to make a lot of sense, including his comet theory, given this new “stunning” information about high temperature minerals in comets. You can read an overview of his theory online HERE. One interesting part of his theory is his belief that comets originated in the “Fountains of the Deep” (Genesis 7:11), contra to the mainstream view of the Oort Cloud Theory. Read more »

North and South Poles Were Once Tropical!

Posted in Genesis Flood on February 12th, 2008 by dhawkinsmo

MR. NOAH: Honey, where would like to go for vacation this year?
MRS. NOAH: Well dear, we’ve been working so hard this year, I think we should take the big one and go to the North Pole. I’ve heard the beaches are great and the snorkeling and scuba diving is legendary.

Sound weird? According to recent studies, this scenario is entirely possible because the North and South Poles were both once tropical.

Wednesday, 31 May 2006, 17:21 GMT 18:21 UK

Arctic’s tropical past uncovered

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

Fifty-five million years ago the North Pole was an ice-free zone with tropical temperatures, according to research. A sediment core excavated from 400m (1,300ft) below the seabed of the Arctic Ocean has enabled scientists to delve far back into the region’s past. An international team has been able to pin-point the changes that occurred as the Arctic transformed from this hot environment to its present cold status. The findings are revealed in a trio of papers published in the journal Nature.
Read more »