Is Genesis historically false? -- Constant Mews vs. afdave

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This thread has been set up for a formal debate between Constant Mews and afdave who will debate the following resolution:

"Resolved: that Genesis is demonstrably false as a historical record."

Constant Mews will affirm and afdave will oppose. The debate will have 5 rounds and Constant Mews will go first, per the parameters (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?p=4514061&postcount=25).

A Peanut Gallery (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=4524648#post4524648) is set up in the Biblical Criticism & History forum for the rest of us to comment on the debate.

Enjoy the debate!

- KWSN, FD Moderator

[Constant Mews]

Call me a theist. I admit at once that I am a Christian - specifically one of non-Catholic persuasion - but I am not such a one to demand that the religiously-minded world-concepts of a tribe of Bronze-age goat-herders be taken a scientific text. And I am willing to make that point in print.

This debate originated in a challenge made to me by Dave Hawkins, on the Richard Dawkins forum. Dave is a young earth creationist who believes firmly, fervently, and insupportably in the historical accuracy of the Bible. He has expounded at length on various aspects of this topic, both at the Panda’s Thumb and Richard Dawkins forums.

My original comment was that Genesis must be taken as metaphor by the rational Christian - my intent was to point out the necessary accommodation that a scientifically-informed theist must, in my opinion, make to the scientific discoveries of the last five hundred years.
I wish to thank the Internet Infidels for hosting this debate. I also wish to thank my opponent for his willingness to engage in structured conversation constrained by rules which to him appear both unnatural and unnecessary.
Finally, I appreciate - and find considerable humor in - the willingness of an atheist web forum to impartially host a debate between two theists on the historical accuracy of Genesis.

My approach in this debate will be fairly straightforward. I see three different possible demonstrations of the non-historical nature of Genesis: evidence of an event that does correspond to the Genesis time line; a Genesis time line event that does not leave the evidence that is necessary; or an internal contradiction in the Genesis account. Any one of these is sufficient to show that Genesis cannot be regarded as an accurate historical document. The last case is marginally more complex, since one may ascribe to copyist error any number of potential contradictions. I will address one or more of these possible refutations in future posts - this initial summary is merely intended to lay out the basic framework of my argument. I will try to rely on publicly available sources as much as possible

But in order to contravene Genesis, it is necessary to establish an actual Genesis time frame. This is surprisingly difficult, since it is a point upon which even Biblical literalists find consensus difficult to reach. A wide range of potential values exist, and an examination of various websites, such as Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research reveals confusion and ambiguity on this point.
The earliest effort to reach a precise date was that of John Lightfoot. In works published between 1642 and 1644, he dated the creation of the world to the year 3929 B.C. James Ussher who, in his works Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti and Annalium pars postierior published between 1650 and 1654 ascribed creation to October 23rd, 4004 B.C..
Answers in Genesis is more approximate - the AIG website places the creation of Adam at approximately 4,000 B.C. and some six days after creation. The site also admits that variant Biblical manuscripts permit sufficient leeway as to allow dates as old as 5,400 B.C..
For the purposes of this debate, it is sufficient that a literal reading of Genesis places the creation of the world at something less than 10,000 years BP. Other dates, as for the Flood for example, are likewise dependent upon the chosen starting point, but in any event less than 10,000 years BP.

It should be be noted that these time lines are - as is common with all Creationist time lines - derived solely from the Bible: no actual empirical evidence establishes these dates. By contract, the mainstream time line is based on two basic principles: relative positioning and radiometric dating. Even before sophisticated radiometric techniques were available, 19th century Christians scholars and scientists were assembling the basis of a time frame based on the placement of evidence such as fossils, bones, and man-made artifacts relative to each other. This process was stimulated by the railways of 19th century England, whose extensive cuttings revealed the fundamentals of layering to these early geologists and naturalists. Over time, techniques were developed to account for inversion of layers, apparently out of place artifacts, and the vagaries of weather, earthquake, volcanic eruption, tsunami, and other intermittent natural phenomenon that might interfere with tidy categorization. All that remained was a secure method for determining the absolute rather than the relative age of the layers.

The discovery and understanding of radioactivity provided that method. Radioactive decay, given the appropriate controls, could provide an accurate and objective age determination. It is beyond the scope of this introductory post to examine radiometric dating in detail, but let it suffice to say that we can now date the earth to approximately 4.6 billions years of age. Cosmological measurements allow to establish an age of 13.7 billion years for the entire universe. And the shortest scale, radiometric dating, corrected and calibrated by various phenomenon that allow completely independent dating methods such as ice-laying, varve formation, coral reef accretion, tree-ring creation, etc. permits us to date with considerable accuracy artifacts and events that have occurred within the past 50,000 years.

The virtue of the 'mainstream chronology' is that it is independent of human documentation; it permits cross-correlation between differing methods; it allows identification of outliers and anomalies; and remains an objective, rather than subjective measure of the passage of time. As with any dating mechanism, it has gaps and areas of dispute; it fails to provide the human element that documentation possesses in such abundance. But it allows us to confidently date events independently of human records, and in places and time where no documentation exists.

One final point needs to be stressed. If the scientific dating mechanisms are in error, then the inter-connectedness of scientific study guarantees that the majority of modern science is wrong. If radiometric decay, for example, is somehow in error, then our understanding of radioactive processes is deeply flawed - implying that our models of solar and planetary formation are in error, which throws suspicion on the basic laws of physics.

In my next three posts I will identify anomalies in the Genesis account - events that simply cannot have occurred at the times laid out by the Bible's stirring account.

Over to you, Dave.

[Dave Hawkins]

INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone. I also am a theist, that is, I believe that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures exists, that He created the universe in six literal 24 hour days, and that He spoke to Prophets and Apostles and caused them to pen the Scriptures. And I believe all this now primarily because of the evidence. I am also a Christian, which to me means that I try to follow the example of Christ, that is, Jesus of Nazareth. It seems to me that a person is only a partial Christian if they do not believe that Genesis is actual history because it is clear from His own recorded words that Jesus (the Christ) did regard it as actual history, as did the Apostles. Please have a quick look at my blog at http://afdave.wordpress.com for background info on me.

IS CONSTANT MEWS SHIFTING AWAY FROM HIS RESOLUTION?
I want my readers to note first that Constant Mews' resolution is that Genesis is demonstrably false as a historical record. Not that it contains some questionable details. Not that there are some disagreements between Genesis and the current consensus of modern science (a very fluid thing itself). No, no. Constant Mews is much more bold. He says it is demonstrably false as a historical record. In my opinion, he has an impossible task on his hands. Even Herodotus, who has many questionable items in his histories, and who is sometimes jokingly referred to as the "Father of Lies," is nevertheless also called the "Father of History." Why? Because his record is a valuable addition to the study of history and contains many details which are accurate. Are Herodotus' Histories "demonstrably false" because of items that are questionable? Of course not. The same is true for the Book of Genesis. Also, while his resolution is that "Genesis is demonstrably false," notice that he changes his wording later ... "possible demonstrations of the non-historical nature of Genesis" and "Genesis cannot be regarded as an accurate historical document." Non-historical nature? Not an accurate historical document? Wait a minute. You said "Genesis is demonstrably false as a historical record." Please stick to your resolution and do not shift to something easier to demonstrate such as Genesis is innacurate or it's non-historical or what have you.

DISCUSSION OF GENESIS
So let's talk about Genesis. Are there questionable items there? Of course. Is there disagreement between the inferred chronology of Genesis and the current consensus of modern science regarding the age of the universe? Yes. Is it hard to take seriously the accounts of talking snakes, magic fruit and giants and such? Of course, for the simple reason that we in the 21st century are not familiar with such things. But demonstrating that these things are false, in my opinion, is impossible. Can we show that there are no talking snakes today? Well certainly I don't know of any and I have heard no reports of any. I have heard of talking parrots. (Google "Irene Pepperberg" and "Alex".) But does not knowing of any talking snakes demonstrate that there never was one? Ever? Of course not. And furthermore, there are actually many good reasons for believing even the unverifiable things in the Book of Genesis such as those items listed above.

ANTI-SUPERNATURLISM
One of the biggest reasons that people are skeptical of the more fantastic parts of Genesis are that they involve supernatural things. God speaking the world into existence, talking snakes, magic fruit, and so on are not things we observe today. So many people say that Genesis is a myth. But wait a minute. Are you saying that you don't believe that supernatural things can happen? You probably are, and if so, then you are mistaken because you already believe that supernatural things have occurred, yet you probably don't admit it. What am I talking about?

MIRACLES THAT YOU ALREADY ACCEPT
Life came from non-life. We have no idea how and many say we are many years away from understanding how it occurred. Yet there it is. All around us -- birds chirping, dogs barking, cats meowing, crops providing food for us, micro-organisms decomposing our garbage for us and much, much more. LIFE. It is truly miraculous. Why do I use the term 'miraculous'? Because science hasn't the foggiest idea of how it came into existence ... yet here we are. We could go on talking about other lesser miracles, such as the origin of form and function in biology.(1) Evolutionists say they understand how this works, but they really do not. What they mean is that they understand a little bit about how species change and how species speciate, but they really have no idea how eyes evolve where there were no eyes before, or how legs evolve where there were no legs before, etc. Don't let them fool you. The origin of form and function in biology is MIRACULOUS -- meaning we have no idea how it comes into existence. So please don't tell me that the Talking Snake in Genesis is a myth, just because we don't understand how it could have happened. It MAY be a myth, but demonstrating it to be false is quite impossible.

RADIOMETRIC DATING AND THE AGE OF THE EARTH
Constant Mews has brought up the Age of the Earth and the Age of the Universe. The belief that the earth is 4.6 byo and that the universe is 13.7 byo are based on extremely questionable assumptions including the initial amounts of radioactive daughter products and the "closed system" nature of the rocks being dated. Not only is radiometric dating based upon faulty assumptions, but there are many, many physical indicators that the earth is <10,000 years old, including the fact that written human history only spans about the last 6000 years (why didn't modern humans write any history for the preceding 194,000 years if they existed?), intact DNA recovered from Neandertal bones and dinosaur fossils (DNA should degrade in <10,000 years), too much helium in zircon and other minerals, comets disintegrate too quickly, etc.(2) More detais on this later. And by the way ... science will progress just fine even if radiometric dating is wrong.

DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS DISCREDITED: SURPRISING DETAILS ABOUT THE BOOK OF GENESIS
The Book of Genesis has come under attack by critics who have claimed that it is not written, eyewitness history (as traditionally believed), but rather that it was written hundreds of years after the events described by Jewish scribes and not by Moses at all. Even the existence of Moses himself was questioned. Josh McDowell, an excellent scholar and agnostic-turned-Christian apologist, has written extensively on this school of criticism in his Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Vol. 2. This theory is known as the Documentary Hypothesis (DH) and is still widely accepted even though discoveries from archaeology have proved the fundamental assumptions of the theory wrong. McDowell quotes Wellhausen and others who wrote that writing was unknown in Israel during the time of Moses. But now, thanks to archaeology, it is widely known that writing was common in all nations long before Moses, so this assumption has been discredited. Other discredited assumptions include a priority of source analysis over archaeology, an evolutionary view of Israel's history and religion, and a legendary view of the patriarchal narratives. One interesting assumption which has NOT been discredited--it has been confirmed--is one asserted by Jean Astruc who was one of the first in modern times to notice that Genesis is a compilation. It is not an original work of Moses, but rather, Moses served as an editor and organizer of material, adding his own to the final work.

GENESIS IS PROBABLY A COMPILATION OF WRITTEN RECORDS
So the assertion of Astruc and others following him about Genesis being a compilation is likely accurate, though not in the way specified in the Documentary Hypothesis with the imagined J, E, D and P documents. How is it accurate? Well, the careful student of the Book of Genesis will note that there are 11 occurrences of the curious phrase "these are the generations of ..." followed by a name, names, or, in the first occurrence, "the heavens and the earth." Long story short, it turns out that a study of the thousands of excavated Babylonian cuneiform tablets reveals that it was a common ancient scribal practice to put a "signature" or a "catch line" or "colophon" at the end of a written tablet account. The recurring phrase in Genesis "these are the generations of ..." matches this pattern. Thus we have evidence that yes, Genesis is a compilation, but it is probably a compilation of written records rather than oral tradition. These written records were probably written down originally by the person or persons named at the end of each section, the names probably being inserted by Moses the compiler from the records handed down to him. It is likely that the original records were written down on clay tablets by Adam, Noah, Shem, etc., carefully protected and passed down from generation to generation, much as the Jewish Scriptures have been passed down accurately (recently demonstrated spectacularly with the Dead Sea Scrolls). You can read my book review of Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis by Professor of Assyriology Donald J. Wiseman on this topic at my blog (link above). Wiseman's theory has a few problems which have been addressed by Sewell(3), DeWitt(4) and others. For original work on colophons in Babylonian cuneiform texts we are indebted to Hunger, Leichty, Lambert and Millard. See Reference (5),(6) and (7) below. So, thanks to the efforts of 19th and 20th century archaeology, we have something that previous generations did not have--physical evidence from archaeology providing support to the traditional (pre-DH) view that Genesis is a carefully recorded, eyewitness account of actual events which occurred during the lifetimes of the patriarchs who observed them and recorded them, probably on clay tablets.

Other evidence of ancient written records at the time of, and prior to the Flood include references to the "Book of Enoch," the reference from Berosus of a command to Xisuthrus (probably the Biblical Noah) to commit to writing a history from the beginning to the Flood, the tradition recorded by Josephus about the children of Seth and their inscriptions in the land of Seriad, the references of Manetho to the books of Thoth (probably the same as Josephus' Seth), probably equivalent to the Phoenician Taut or Taautus. We also have the Indian Menu and the Persian Buddha, who also reportedly promulgated a heavenly book among men at the time of and before the Flood. The Celts of Britain and the Druids also have traditions of books no less ancient than the Flood. At least one Muslim writer records that Abraham found among the Sabeans the "long-lost chest of Adam" supposedly containing the books of that patriarch and likewise those of Seth and Enoch. Interesting material for further study to be sure.

AN OVERVIEW OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONFIRMATIONS OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS
Finally, there now exist many confirmations of historical and cultural details of the Book of Genesis. The Creation Account, Enuma Elish contained on seven clay tablets is now well known and contains parallels to the Genesis account in Genesis 1 and 2, suggesting that it was composed later than the original source material for the Genesis, and was corrupted by polytheism and political ambitions. The Garden of Eden has a parallel in the Sumerian account of the Land of Dilmun. The Fall of Man in Genesis 3 is reflected in the "temptation seals," and the Adapa Myth. The long-lived patriarch list in Genesis 5 is paralleled by the Nippur Tablets and the Weld Prism. The Flood described in Genesis 6-9 has many archaeological confirmations and hundreds of parallels in traditions around the world. Numerous books and journal articles have been written on this topic. The Table of Nations in Genesis 10 has been described by William F. Albright as "an astonishingly accurate document." Many of the cities of Nimrod listed there have been found and the ancient nations identified. The Tower of Babel account in Genesis 11 has parallels in an Assyrian tablet published by George Smith of the British Museum and is corroborated by Berosus, the Chaldean and others. The patriarchal narratives now have much confirmation, for example, the existence of the Hittites (Genesis 23:10) has been confirmed, the Nuzi Tablets confirm many patriarchal practices such as oral blessings and contracts, and Abraham's traditional image as the product of the brilliant and highly developed culture of Ur, has been rehabilitated by Woolley and illuminated by Albright, Gordon and Glueck. Genesis 37:28 gives the correct price of a slave in the 18th century BC according to Kitchen, the early use of camels has been confirmed, the battle of Abraham with the 5 kings now has excellent support, the Ebla tablets mention Sodom and Gomorrah, and studies of ancient Egypt confirm many details of the life of Joseph.

Regarding the early chapters of Genesis, it is significant also that the accounts of the One Supreme God, the Creation, The Garden, the Fall, the Seed of the Woman, the Flood and other details are reflected in the Oracle Bone Characters of the ancient Chinese. This is a fascinating story told in a recent book (1997) co-authored by Ginger Tong Chock who holds a PhD from Stanford in the History of Chinese Art. The book is entitled God's Promise to the Chinese, available from Answers in Genesis International.

SUMMARY OF MY OPENING POST
In this post, you should have learned that an anti-Supernaturalistic bias is a baseless reason to repudiate the historicity of Genesis, that many of the fundamental assumptions of the legendary view of Genesis have now been disproven, that Genesis is probably a compilation of carefully recorded eye witness records of actual historical events, and that there are many archaeological confirmations of details in Genesis. Have we proven that Genesis is the inspired Word of God? By no means. We are far from that. But we are beginning to show that it is reliable, and making it much more difficult to demonstrate as being in error, much less as being false.

FOOTNOTES
(1) http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177
(2) Evidence for a Young World, by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., http://www.icr.org/article/1842/
(3) Curt Sewell, "The Tablet Theory of Genesis Authorship", (http://www.trueorigin.org/tablet.asp)
(4) DeWitt, D., 1977, "The Generations of Genesis," Bible and Spade (Spring Issue) pp.33-48. (http://abr.christiananswers.net/bascatalog.html)
(5) H. Hunger, Babylonische und Assyrische Kolophone (Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon and Berker/Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1968)
(6) Leichty, E., "The Colophon," in Studies Presented to A. Leo Oppenheim, ed. R.D. Briggs and J.A. Brinkman (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1964), pp. 147-154.
(7) Lambert, W.G. and Millard, A.R., Atrahasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), pp. 31-32.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

afdave, please note that your statement has slightly exceeded the word limit agreed to from the parameters. We'll accept your statement as it is, but please try to keep future statements within the word limit.

Thank you,

KWSN, FD Moderator

Edit: afdave and I used different software in determining the word count. Due to this discrepancy with no fault of afdave's, I've agreed to retract the warning.

[Constant Mews]

I defer the bulk of my response to Dave's post to my terminus, as little of it bears on my actual argument. One point, however, needs must be addressed: Dave's concern that I am "shifting the goalposts." Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Dave himself confirms that I am approaching this debate from the correct angle: Wait a minute. You said "Genesis is demonstrably false as a historical record." Please stick to your resolution and do not shift to something easier to demonstrate such as Genesis is inaccurate or it's non-historical or what have you. Dave correctly indicates the nature of the problem: if Genesis is inaccurate then it is demonstrably false as a historical record. This is not incompatible with Genesis possessing some historical value. Names of places - and possibly individuals - can still have significance for historical research, even if the credibility of its internal timeline is impugned.

It is to that timeline that we know turn. The timeline of a literal Genesis makes certain predictions; the most important of which is that nothing older than 10,000 years exists. No literal creationist that I am aware of dates the world older than 10,000 years - most date it considerably younger. But that is the boundary of ages for any possible item. One well-researched object which falsifies that prediction is Lake Suigetsu in Japan, which can be dated to at least forty thousand and more probably one hundred thousand years of age by multiple, independent chronological metrics.

Lake Suigetsu

Lake Suigetsu is a small, kettle-type lake near the center of Japan on the island of Honshu, at latitude 35°35' North and longitude 135°53' East. It covers approximately 4.3 hectares, and has a maximum depth of about 34 meters. The value of this lake to chronologists lies in its distinctive laminar bed which alternates white varves - consisting of pollen-based assemblages of diatoms - with dark or dark-grey clay. The thickness of a complete layer (varve and clay) is somewhat less than 1 mm. The origin of the varve layer lies in an annual biological event. Each spring, small single-cell algae bloom on the surface of the lake. When they die, they drift down to the bottom of the lake and form a dense, compacted mass. During the remainder of the year, clay sediments filter down and are deposited on top of the diatom varve. These sediments are mixed with organic detritus, such as twigs, leaves, and insect wings, which are deposited on the surface of the lake and consequently become incorporated into that year's sediment. Finally, it is noted that the weather exercises an effect on the amount of sediment and algal blooms that comprise the layers.

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/suigetsucore.jpg

Each lamina thus represents the record of a single year of biological, hydrological, and meteorological activity at Lake Suigetsu and may be used to date the lake in three different ways (Kitagawa, et. al. 1993). First, the layers (or varves, since they are easier to visually identify in the core samples) may be counted directly. Using this metric, the lake is over one hundred thousand years old. Kitagawa and Van der plicht (1998a) consider varve miscounts and potential hiatuses and estimate the total error in varve counts to be approximately 1.5%, implying an inaccuracy of no more than 437 years in the 30,000 BP timeframe - a timeframe that is also amenable to C14 dating by means of the organic detritus. Finally, the variations in thickness of the laminae representative of climatological change have been correlated to European tree-ring chronologies.

The varve chronology/calibration with dendrochronology and C14 dating of in-situ layer organic detritus - overlaps other calibration metrics, such as the Greenland and Antarctic ice-core chronologies and the Vostok record. These ice-core chronologies are themselves calibrated by such mechanisms such as annual layer counts, electrical conductivity, laser light scattering of dust, stable isotopes, major anions and cations, insoluble particles, lead levels, and carbon from CO2 bubbles trapped in the ice. (Alley et al., 1993; Dibb, 1992; Meese et al., 1994a,b; Taylor et al., 1992; Wilson and Donahue, 1990). Other calibration metrics such as U-Th coral dating, Atlantic marine sediments are also applicable (Hughen, et. al., 1998; Hughen, et, al., 2004; Nakagawa, et. al., 2005). The results are remarkably well-matched:

http://home.entouch.net/dmd/suigetsu.gif

In essence, the varves of Lake Suigetsu represent a chronological metric; a metric that can be laid aside other metrics built using wholly different methodologies. This permits correlation between date metrics and independent confirmation of the methods used to develop them. While it is possible that a single method - visual counting, for example, could be in error; it is impossible to imagine how multiple, independent dating methods could each be in error and yet coordinate so closely. That there are discrepancies is true; all scientific measurement is sample and testing sensitive, and potential disagreements of more than a thousand years exist. But such discrepancies do not alter the fact that lake confirms an unbroken timeline far exceeding that allowed by even the most generous reading of Genesis. (It also, incidentally, disproves the existence of a global flood - but that is a discussion for a future post). Here we see the true value of multiple dating methods - the capacity to cross-check using methods based on wholly different areas of science and logic. If a literal reading of Genesis is a true historical account, then Lake Suigetsu cannot exist.

And yet it does.

http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l55/phoenix702/carbon1450000years2.jpg

Some comments on Dave's post

I will not address all of Dave's comments; most of them are irrelevant and the remainder either inaccurate or simply wrong. But there are one or two points that should be made.

Whether or not Genesis contains supernatural elements and whether it is rejected for this reason is irrelevant to this debate; I would suggest that Dave refrain from the inclusion of extraneous information - it looks too much propaganda. The historical nature of Genesis must be established or falsified on the basis of independent chronological metrics; the existence of mythological elements will probably not be addressed by me. More importantly, Dave makes a grave error of equivocation here: he equates "supernatural" with "unexplained by science". A supernatural event contravenes scientific laws; an unexplained event is merely that - unexplained. By this false equivocation, Dave accuses the entire scientific community of being liars - surely not what he intended?

I leave it to Dave to immediately correct this blatant misrepresentation of the scientific community.

Despite Dave's earnest protestations, radiometric dating is sold and well-established. To claim that science will progress just fine if radiometric dating is wrong betrays an extraordinary ignorance of scientific consilience. If radiometric dating is faulty, then either radioactive decay rates must be variable - a position for which no evidence exists and which implies potential nuclear disaster; or the assumptions made by scientists in its usage must be in error. And yet scientists devote a great deal of time to checking and cross-checking those assumptions, and we see - by the varve, ice-core, coral-dating, methods alluded to earlier that radiometric dating for C14 at least has been confirmed by multiple, independent lines of inquiry.

Dave wastes a great deal of verbiage discussing the structure and history of Genesis. This material is irrelevant to our discussion: if Genesis is shown to be wrong, then the mechanism of its production and the intention of its authors is not pertinent. Only one passage excites interest for its blatant unsupportability: Thus we have evidence that yes, Genesis is a compilation, but it is probably a compilation of written records rather than oral tradition. These written records were probably written down originally by the person or persons named at the end of each section, the names probably being inserted by Moses the compiler from the records handed down to him. We have no evidence whatever that the documents were written down by the persons named, and only the flimsiest of traditions concerning their intent and method of compilation. In any event, this line of argument has no bearing on our debate.

The current consensus is that the Old Testament Bible was composed during the first millennium B.C.. The various Sumerian and Akkadian myths and legends that Dave references as derived from - and consequently confirming - the Biblical account predate that composition by a thousand years or more. To argue that the Genesis account is confirmed by myths first documented hundreds of years earlier to take the most naïve view of Biblical exegesis.

I suggest that Dave learn to properly footnote his posts, if he chooses to use formal footnotes at all. The following reference: (1) Muller & Newman 2003; Webster & Goodwin 1996; Shubin & Marshall 2000; Erwin 2000; Conway Morris 2000, 2003b; Carroll 2000; Wagner 2001; Becker & Lonnig 2001; Stadler et al. 2001; Lonnig & Saedler 2002; Wagner & Stadler 2003; Valentine 2004:189-194 is not only wrong as a footnote, but gives every appearance of having been cut and pasted from here. (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177)

Finally, I am sincerely disappointed that my opponent would choose to begin his post with a personal insult; an insult that is also a logical fallacy: the fabled No True Scotsman. His implication that I am not a "true" Christian because I fail to accept his narrow, scientifically unsupportable view of the literal nature of Genesis is deeply saddening - and quite possibly a violation of IIDB guidelines. I had hoped to be able to conduct this debate in a civilized fashion. It appears this hope was unwarranted.

References

1. Alley, R. B., D. A. Meese, A. J. Shuman, A. J. Gow, K. C. Taylor, P. M. Grootes, J. W. C. White, M. Ram, E. D. Waddington, P. A. Mayewski, and G. A. Zielinski, Abrupt accumulation increase at the Younger Dryas termination in the GISP2 ice core, Nature, 362, 527-529, 1993.

2. Bard, E., Arnold, M., Fairbanks, R. G. And Hamelin, B. 1993. 230Th-234U and 14C ages obtained by mass spectrometry on corals. Radiocarbon 35, 191-199.

3. Bard, E., Arnold, M., Hamelin, B., Tisnerat-Laborde, N. And Cabioch, G. 1998. Radiocarbon calibration by means of mass spectrometry 230Th-234U and 14C ages of corals: an updated database including samples from Barbados, Mururoa and Tahiti. Radiocarbon 40, 1085-1092.

4. Dibb, J. E., The accumulation of Pb-210 at Summit, Greenland since 1855, Tellus, 44B, 72-79, 1992.

5. Edwards, R. L., Beck, J. W., Burr, G. S., Donahue, D. J., Chapell, J. M. A., Bloom, A. L., Druffel, E. R. M. And Taylor, F. W. 1993 A large drop in atmospheric 14C/12C and reduced melting in the Younger Dryas, documented with 230Th ages on corals. Science 260, 962-968.

6. Hughen, K.A., Overpeck, J.T., Lehman, S.J., Kashgarian, M., Southon, J.R. & Peterson, L.C. 1998. A new 14C calibration data set for the last deglaciation based on marine varves. Radiocarbon 40: 483-494.

7. Hughen, K.A., S. Lehman, J. Southon, J. Overpeck, O. Marchal, C. Herring, and J. Turnbull 2004 14C Activity and Global Carbon Cycle Changes over the Past 50,000 Years. Science 303, 202-207

8. Kitagawa, H., I. Fukuzawa, T. Nakamura, M. Okamura, S. Takemura, A. Hayashida, and Y. Yasuda 1993 AMS 14C dating of varved sediments from Lake Suigetsu, central Japan and atmospheric 14c change during the late Pleistocene Radiocarbon 37:2 371-378

9. Kitagawa, H. & van der Plicht, J. 1998b. A 40,000-year varve chronology from Lake Suigetsu, Japan: extension of the 14C calibration curve. Radiocarbon 40: 505-515.

10. Kitagawa, H. & Van der Plicht, J. 1998a. Atmospheric radiocarbon calibration to 45,000 yr BP: Late Glacial fluctuations and cosmogenic isotopic production. Science 279, 1187-90.

11. Kromer, B. and Becker, B. 1993 German oak and pine 14C calibration, 7200-9432 BC. In Stuiver, M., Long, A. and Kra, R. S., eds., Calibration 1993. Radiocarbon 35(1):,125-135.

12. Meese, D. A., R. B. Alley, A. J. Gow, P. Grootes, P. A. Mayewski, M. Ram, K. C. Taylor, E. D. Waddington, and G. Zielinski, The accumulation record from the GISP2 core as an indicator of climate change throughout the Holocene, Science, 266, 1680-1682, 1994b.

13. Meese, D., et al., Preliminary Depth-Age Scale of the GISP2 Ice Core, Special CRREL Report 94-1, US Army Corps of Engineers, Hanover, N.H., 1994a.

14. Nakagawa, T.; Kitagawa, H.; Yasuda, Y.; Tarasov, P. E.; Gotanda, K.; Sawai, Y. 2005 Pollen/event stratigraphy of the varved sediment of Lake Suigetsu, central Japan from 15,701 to 10,217 SG vyr BP (Suigetsu varve years before present): Description, interpretation, and correlation with other regions. Quaternary Science Reviews, v. 24, iss. 14-15 [SPECIAL ISSUE], p. 1691-1701.

15. Wilson, A. T., and D. J. Donahue, AMS carbon-14 dating of ice: Progress and future prospects, Nuclear Instrum. Meth. Phys. Res., 473-476, 1990.

[Dave Hawkins]

LAKE SUIGETSU DOESN'T HELP DR. MEWS' CASE
Apparently, Dr. Mews feels that attacking the implied Genesis timetable is the most effective means of impugning the reliability of Genesis as a historical record. I have two answers to this ...

1) It doesn't help you establish a long time scale
2) Even if it did, this would not help you achieve your stated purpose

It is impossible to demonstrate that Genesis is false as a historical record. Even if it were to have some incorrect details (I believe it does not), no historian could accurately say it is "false" as a historical record. Manetho's Aegyptiaca gives an implied chronology for Egypt, but there are uncertainties and Egyptologists debate the chronology to this day. Does this mean that Manetho's history is "false" as a historical record? No. Not at all.

LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT VARVES
Dr. Mews says ... The timeline of a literal Genesis makes certain predictions; the most important of which is that nothing older than 10,000 years exists ... One well-researched object which falsifies that prediction is Lake Suigetsu in Japan, which can be dated to at least forty thousand and more probably one hundred thousand years of age by multiple, independent chronological metrics.Dr. Mews posts a picture claimed to be from Lake Sugietsu which it may be, but we don't really know because the picture comes from the website of anti-Creationist Glenn Morton.(8) We'll assume that it is and analyze this.

PROBLEMS WITH VARVE CHRONOLOGY BUILDING
Dr. Mews describes the methodology well enough and everything sounds great. But there are some serious problems which he fails to address ...

1) Lamina have a very short range. Notice in the picture that some lamina end in the picture and others begin, right there in the short scale of the picture (about 2cm horizontally?). How wide is each varve? We are not told, but Oard (1992)(9) cites two studies that confirm that few varves can be traced very far horizonatally before they change. In one study he cites, there is a picture of two varves originating and ending in the space of only 2 feet! So the picture that most people have of a nice, neat stack of varves extending across the entire lake is false.

2) Only the "varves" below the top 29cm were usable. The Kitagawa paper(10) that Dr. Mews references says that the top 29cm of sediment was unusable because it was "flocculent" and "disturbed." Now wait just a minute here!! The whole premise of "Varve Chronology Building" is that sediments form annually, which means that they should still be forming today. Why then do we not see them in the top 29cm of sediment? My answer is that they are NOT formed annually. The whole assemblage was probably deposited rapidly in some catastrophic event. Recent sedimentation experiments have confirmed that rapid deposition often forms fine lamina.(11)

3) Were invesigators selective in dating the macrofossils? Kitagawa (1993)(10) says that the radiocarbon dates of 46 terrestrial macrofossils were plotted against sediment depth in Core SG4 and shows this plot. But Kitagawa (1998)(12) says that more than 250 samples were dated. It does say that 85 sub-samples were selected in the 1998 paper. Why were only 46 plotted in 1993? Why only 85 plotted in 1998? What were the C14 results/depths for the other samples? Did they perhaps not date to 'expected' values?

4) Why are any fossils preserved at all unless these layers were formed rapidly? Fossils require rapid deposition. Experiments conducted by the Chicago Museum of Natural History show that fish carcasses lowered onto the muddy bottom of a marsh decayed rapidly--it only took 6.5 days! And the fish carcasses were protected from scavengers with wire cages.(13) Kitagawa (Science 1998) reports that the macrofossils they dated were leaves, twigs, and insect wings.(14) Is it really plausible that these could avoid decay for 10 years or so until they could be covered up by sediment and preserved? (1mm varve thickness X 10 years = 10mm ... the smallest layer that could possibly be conceived by any wild stretch of the imagination to be enough to preserve a fossil ... it probably would require much more). I would challenge Dr. Mews to do his own experiment with some leaves in the bottom of his backyard pond and see what happens.

5) What type of diatoms are these? I would assume that there is a difference between freshwater diatoms and salt water diatoms. Has this been anlayzed? If they are saltwater, what are they doing in freshwater lake sediments? In other words, it appears that no thought was given to the possibility that these diatoms could have been transported by moving water and sediment from some other source. It seems that the assumption was made that they formed in situ in Lake Suigetsu.

6) The investigators in Kitagawa (1993) stated that it was difficult to determine a "zero year" starting point. They adopted a zero year layer based on comparison with "documented natural and human events." They cite Fukuzawa et al. 1994 in support of this. My question is that if it is difficult to determine, how can we be sure it is correct? What "documented natural and human events"? How can you correlate these events with this layer?

As you can see, Constant Mews is far, far away from presenting a convincing case that a chronology >10,000 years is established.

Not only have creationists cast serious doubt upon the supposed Swedish varves (1992)(9), but have also analyzed those of the Green River Formation (1997)(15), and those in Lake Van (2007)(16). In the Lake Van article, Oard points out that glacial geologist R.M. Quigley laments the fact that so many engineers misidentify rhythmically laminated fine-grained sediments as "varves." He points to the increasing recognition that many so called "varves" are not varves at all--that is, annually deposited layers--but rather, many of them are merely multiple turbidite sequences, with no seasonal control at all.(17) Oard is publishing a new book next year on varves. See footnote 22 of Oard's "Lake Van" article(16).

OTHER CALIBRATION METHODS
After his discussion of varves, Dr. Mews posts two impressive looking graphics and claims that they overlap the varve chronology thereby strengthening the overall case of these "independent" methods which supposedly "calibrate" Carbon 14 dating. But if other, similar chronologies, which also rely on supposedly annual processes are as shaky as the Lake Suigetsu example, the Green River example, the Swedish example, and the Lake Van example all cited above, then how do they strengthen the overall case? Answer. They don't. Dr. Mews does not give us the details of the other methods, but it appears from another debate I am having elsewhere that at least dendrochronology is built upon the same sorts of questionable assumptions as varve chronology.(18)

OBJECTIONS TO THE HISTORICITY OF GENESIS
In my opening post, I gave an overview of various archaeological examples which confirm many historical details in the Book of Genesis. You can read them again for yourself and I will now deal with typical objections to these examples, some of which can be found in the "Peanut Gallery" associated with this debate. Vos has a very helpful book for this purpose entitled Genesis and Archaeology(19).

EARLY USE OF CAMELS
An example of the typical critical attitude on this issue comes from T. Eric Peet of the University of Liverpool. He places the introduction of camels to Egypt centuries after the time of Abraham.(20) Peet and other critical scholars turned out to be wrong, however, as Vos' mentor Joseph P. Free points out. Free found much evidence for the knowledge and use of camels in Egypt long before Abraham. He cites a camel skull found in the Fayum dated between 2000-1400BC, some camel hair rope in the same area c. 2500 BC, and three pottery camel heads dated to ~3000BC. In all, Free describes 2 items from between the 15th and 20th centuries BC, 1 from the 23rd, several from the 25th, 4 from the first dynasty (c. 3000BC) and 4 from the pre-dynastic period.(21) Kitchen has also collected information on the domestic use of camels during the patriarchal period in Mesopotamia and Syria.(22)

WHICH IS OLDER? THE EARLY CHAPTERS OF GENESIS? OR VARIOUS SIMILAR TABLET ACCOUNTS?
Critical scholars assume the latter, but the evidence is against them. They assume this for at least 2 key reasons. 1) That Israel's monotheism developed gradually from earlier polytheism and 2) that writing was unknown in Israel in Moses' day. Julius Wellhausen and Hermann Schultz make clear statements regarding the second assumption(23) but this has now been discredited by 20th century archaeology. Critical scholars are also wrong about Israel's religious development. The truth is that Israel was monotheistic in the beginning. In fact, the whole human race was originally monotheistic and polytheism was a later corruption of this. Abraham, the father of the Israelite nation, came out of a society which had become polytheistic and God's purpose for Abraham was to return humanity (through the nation of Israel) to monotheism. Henry Halley assembles sources which support original monotheism on p. 62 of his popular "Halley's Bible Handbook."(24) He cites Langdon of Oxford who found Babylonian inscriptions suggesting that man's first religion was a belief in ONE God. He writes that Egypt was originally monotheistic according to Petrie. He reports Sayce's discovery of 3 tablets in the British Museum from the time of Hammurabi which say "Jahwe is God." And finally, Halley reports that the recent belief among leading anthropologists is that ALL the primitive races believed in One Supreme God.(25) The Chinese also, originally believed in Shang-Di, the one supreme, invisible God.(26) Therefore, given that the various tablet accounts paralleling Genesis are polytheistic, it makes much more sense to believe that they are corruptions of an older original, rather than to believe that Genesis is a distortion of the tablets. This belief also makes more sense in light of the colophons at the end of each section of Genesis, which match colophons found on many Babylonian tablets, strongly suggesting that Genesis is a compilation of written records.

IRRELEVANT?
Dr. Mews says that most of my comments are irrelevant. Really? I challenge him to provide one example of something irrelevant. Independent chronological metrics would be great if there were some reliable ones, but Dr. Mews has yet to establish that there are any. Dr. Mews says he will not address the "mythological elements" in Genesis. But one has to ask, "How does one know which parts are mythological and which parts are historical?" Am I to simply take Dr. Mews' word for it? I don't think so. And he has not specified which parts are and which parts are not. Dr. Mews thinks I am making a "grave error of equivocation" by equating "supernatural" with "unexplained by science." But thoughtful readers will recognize upon reflection that talking serpents, for example, are both unexplained by science and identified by some as supernatural. Does Dr. Mews deny this? Why is it not possible that science may someday understand how a serpent could once have talked, either through spirit possession and control, or by some other means (See "Alex" in my first post)? Many anti-Biblicists today want to style science as exclusive of such inquiry, but they are wrong. Science, from the Latin word for "knowledge" simply refers to a systematic methodology for gaining information about reality. We cannot say things are not real simply because we do not presently understand them.

MISCELLANEOUS
RE: Your complaint on my footnotes. The rules don't prohibit C&P, especially of footnotes. Rules prohibit quoting, the intent being to use your own words in your arguments. I didn't intend to insult you with the partial Christian comment and the moderator didn't take it as such. I made an observation pertinent to our debate. One could also ask how Jesus, the Creator (John ch. 1) could be unaware of the physics of radiometric "dating." Why did the One who created all things (thus knows everything about science) teach that Genesis is real history? Finally, I quote Dr. Mews once more ... ... radiometric dating is sold and well-established.Was this a Freudian slip? I would agree that radiometric dating is indeed 'sold' to the public by NCSE, TalkOrigins and others, but the public is unaware of what they are truly buying.

(8) http://home.entouch.net/dmd/suigetsu.htm
(9) Oard, Michael J., VARVES — THE FIRST “ABSOLUTE” CHRONOLOGY PART II — Varve Correlation and the Post-Glacial Time Scale, Creation Research Society Quarterly, 29:3, Received 10 January 1992
(10) Kitagawa, H., I. Fukuzawa, T. Nakamura, M. Okamura, S. Takemura, A. Hayashida, and Y. Yasuda 1993 AMS 14C dating of varved sediments from Lake Suigetsu, central Japan and atmospheric 14c change during the late Pleistocene Radiocarbon 37:2 371-378
(11) Berthault, Guy, "SEDIMENTOLOGY—Experiments on lamination of sediments ..." TJ 3(1):25–29 April 1988, Proceedings—C.R. Acad.Sc.Paris, t. 303, Serie II, no.17, 1986, pp.1569–1574. English Translation (http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v3/i1/lamination.asp)
(12) Kitagawa, H. & van der Plicht, J. 1998b. A 40,000-year varve chronology from Lake Suigetsu, Japan: extension of the 14C calibration curve. Radiocarbon 40: 505-515.
(13) R. Zangerl and E.S. Richardson,‘The paleoecological history of two Pennsylvanian black shales‘, Fieldiana: Geology Memoirs 4, 1963, cited in http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i3/greenriver.asp
(14) Kitagawa, H. & Van der Plicht, J. 1998a. Atmospheric radiocarbon calibration to 45,000 yr BP: Late Glacial fluctuations and cosmogenic isotopic production. Science 279, 1187-90.
(15) Garner, Paul, Creation 19(3):18–19, June 1997, http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i3/greenriver.asp
(16) http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/lake-van-rhythmites
(17) 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, cited in (16) above.
(18) http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15538&start=4
(19) Vos, Howard F., Genesis and Archaeology, Rev. ed., Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985.
(20) T. Eric Peet, Egypt and the Old Testament (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1924), p. 60, cited in (19), p. 61.
(21) Joseph P. Free, "Abraham's Camels," Journal of Near Eastern Studies (July 1944), pp. 187-193, cited in (19), p. 61.
(22) K.A. Kitchen, "Camel," Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Downer's Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1980), 1:228-30, cited in (19), p. 62. See also my Formal Debate on The Genesis Flood. (http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10675&start=0) Search the page for "Kitchen".
(23) AFDave Formal Debate on The Genesis Flood. (http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10675&start=0) Search the page for "Wellhausen".
(24) Halley, Henry H., Halley's Bible Handbook, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 24th ed., 1965, p. 62
(25) Schmidt, Wilhelm, The Origin and Growth of Religion: Facts and Theories, Translated by Herbert
Jennings Rose, 1935, Methuen & co., cited in (24) above, p. 62.
(26) Nelson, Ethel R., Broadberry, Richard E., Tong-Chock, G., God's Promise to the Chinese, 1997. My Flood Debate (http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10675&start=46). Search page for "Chock".

[Constant Mews]

I once again defer consideration of the various irrelevancies, inaccuracies, and misleading statements Dave offers to the end of the post, and concentrate on the core argument. And once again, I must begin by correcting Dave on the nature of historical records.

The Nature of Historical Records
Dave has asserted that Genesis is a historical record - a narrative sequence of events which actually occurred in the past in a very specific time-frame. How then, can the veracity of such a document be impugned? One simple method is to demonstrate that not only is the time-frame in error by a magnitude of 10^6 years - one million percent - but that all the key events of the first twenty percent of the work simply did not occur. These are not minor errors; they are not trivial inaccuracies that might be attributed to an inept scribe - they are major problems that completely invalidate key events of Genesis. Time permitting, I will deal with a demonstration that even minor events - such as the global famine referred to in Genesis 45:10, or the confounding of language at Babel are falsified by all available evidence. As I indicated earlier, Genesis may well contain some factual data that can be cross-checked against other records or archaeological finds. But is it a narrative of history? No. Neither, by the way, is Manetho. Manetho is a useful source of historical information - and his division of the Egyptian kinds into dynasties is a minor nuisance that has become embedded in historical research. But no historian considers Manetho to be a reliable chronicler of fact, any more than Herodotus is accepted as a reliable historian. If Dave is prepared to accept Manetho as a valid historical record, is he also prepared to accept the existence of the various gods and demigods who founded and controlled Egypt from the earliest times?

To give a useful counterexample, consider the novel Gone With the Wind. From it one can glean a great deal of quite accurate information about the Civil War and its aftermath, manners and customs of the period, architecture, slavery, and other characteristics of the time. And most of these can be cross-checked against both other sources and archaeological artifacts. But Gone With the Wind is not a historical record by any means.

The Fundamental Problem for a Young Earth Creationist
I alluded to this issue in my last post, I will now state it explicitly: the varve chronology of Lake Suigetsu has been shown to be in correspondence with multiple, independent chronological metrics. Even if one metric is questionable, it is virtually impossible for all the metrics to be wrong in different ways and yet produce similar results. And so my challenge for Dave is really quite simple:

Show how and why each of the multiple, independent dating methods agree on the same, creationally-impossible dates. That is what is necessary to disprove the varve chronology of Lake Suigetsu. The significant term here is agree. Showing that one or the other method is invalid is insufficient. They still agree.

As a reminder, the dating methods include varve counts (I will address Oard's issues later); the European and American dendrochronological records, both oak and bristlecone pine; the GRIP and GISP2 ice cores, C14 radiometric dating, speleotherms, forminifera laminae, and coral U/Th dates. Each and every method yields dates that are not only far too old to support any YEC scheme, but synchronized dates.

That is what needs to be done, Dave: Explain the synchronization.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dave's concerns.
Dave's comments are somewhat random, but they can be addressed under four general headers: obvious observations, clarification questions, pure speculations, and insults. In a spirit of Christian fellowship, the last shall be dealt with first.

Dave insults Glenn Morton.

Dave begins his second post as he began his first - with a personal insult. The difference is that this time it was not directed at me, but rather to a reputable petroleum geophysicist and devout Christian who is unable to defend himself in this forum. Dr. Mews posts a picture claimed to be from Lake Sugietsu which it may be, but we don't really know because the picture comes from the website of anti-Creationist Glenn Morton.(8) We'll assume that it is and analyze this.I question Dave's ability to be civil and note that he owes Morton an apology, inasmuch as Morton is a creationist. ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/21/111430/597)

Dave observes that the varves in the photo are discontinuous.

Of course they are. All varves are. This is hardly a new observation, and quite irrelevant to the dating process. Varves are deposited under anoxic conditions, in the absence of bottom-dwelling organisms. Deposition is affected by variations in diatom density and water turbidity.

Dave observes that the top varve layers not used.

This is quite correct. 'Flocculent' refers to the fact that the top-most varves have not yet been compacted under pressure, and are still in the process of solidification. In addition, they may have been subject to 'sampling damage' caused by the insertion of the probe. In order to eliminate any possible error produced by less than clearly defined varves, the researchers began their examination further down in the core. Dave's claim that no varves exist in the upper 29 cm. is incorrect, and the conclusion that he draws from it is an unsupported speculation. Varve formation may be observed in the present; and if the layers had been deposited rapidly, then no varves would exist at all, since the Lake Suigetsu varves are biological and hydrological sorting cannot produce them. Even Answers in Genesis admits this to be the case.

Dave questions the samples selected.

It is quite common for a fraction of the available macrofossils to be dated. C14 dating is not an inexpensive process, and generally the most intact specimens with the least likelihood of contamination are selected first. The papers give no particular explanation for the number of fossils selected; I suggest Dave contact the authors directly if he feels this is a significant issue. Dave's unsupported speculation regarding possible anomalous dates does not help his case, since the existence of any number of samples with C14 dates as indicated is impossible under his hypothesis. I suspect that Dave is confused about what 'falsification' actually means.

Dave repeats a PRATT.
Dave repeats an old canard of creationists here - that all fossilization requires rapid water burial. This is false. A trivial example will suffice: Dunn observes that the activity of microorganisms and macroinverterbrates prior to fossilization of organic detritus can take anywhere from months to years. (Dunn et al, 1997)

Dave's suggestion that I perform my own experiment using a backyard pond is both ludicrous and revealing: my pond does not in any way replicate the highly anoxic conditions at the bottom of Lake Suigetsu, and the idea that such an experiment would reveal anything about macrofossil formation in Lake Suigetsu represents an ignorance of scientific experimentation technique.

Dave speculates wildly.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the contents of the lake - tens of thousands of varves - were 'washed' in from elsewhere. The violence of such an action would certain destroy, not preserve the delicate varves. Were the diatoms salt-water diatoms, fresh water would have killed them, and no varves would have formed at all. Finally, as noted above, the complete lack of simple hydrologic sorting in the lake bed shows that the varves were deposited in situ.

Dave asks a question of clarification.

In the paper that describes the upper 29 cm of the cores as flocculent, the authors describe quite clearly their choice of 'zero' date for calibration purposes: the easily identified turbidite layers caused by the 1662 Kanbun earthquake. Since this is mentioned in the sentence directly below the one in which the zero point chronology is discussed, I suggest that in the future, Dave read the references I offer more thoroughly. It would alleviate his need to ask obvious questions.

Dave makes an unwarranted assertion.

Dave asserts that I have not offered a convincing chronology. But what is his argument? Two obvious observations, an irrelevant question, a PRATT, a foolish suggestion, a wild speculation, and a question of clarification. These do not add up to an actual counter-argument. The case I made still stands.

Dave then offers a simplistic paraphrase of an article by Michael Oard - a paraphrase which includes a number of irrelevant points, such as creationist musings on Lake Van, and the problem of misidentifying turbidite sequences as varves. None of this has any bearing on Lake Suigetsu, since it contains actual biological varves and is not, I am sorry say, Lake Van. At one point Dave asked me to indicate where he posts irrelevancies. This is an excellent example.

But now Dave finally reaches the actual argument: C14 calibration curves. In doing so he indicates that perhaps he still fails to understand the problem. I will repeat it for his benefit. It is not sufficient for creationists to cast 'doubts' - which as we see above are generally just errors and misconceptions - on a given dating method. It is the synchronization of the supposedly 'inaccurate' methods that requires explanation. That is what you must explicate Dave, in order to salvage your Genesis chronology, your flood, your six-days of creation, and hence, the historicity of Genesis itself.

Explain the synchronization.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dave now moves on to present comments which have no bearing whatever on the problem. I will comment only briefly on points that seem of interest.

Historicity of Genesis
I find this section puzzling: is Dave debating me or the members of the Peanut Gallery? My impression was that Dave was interested in a one-on-one debate on the topic of the historical validity of Genesis; this section appears to be preaching and/or propaganda directed at others. Perhaps it would be beneficial if Dave would clarify with whom he wishes to debate? Is Dave trying to open up this debate to others?

I do find one point quite amusing. Dave states In all, Free describes 2 items from between the 15th and 20th centuries BC, 1 from the 23rd, several from the 25th, 4 from the first dynasty (c. 3000BC) and 4 from the pre-dynastic period.(21) Kitchen has also collected information on the domestic use of camels during the patriarchal period in Mesopotamia and Syria. Note the dates. Dave is offering evidence which contradicts his own position.

Dave, why provide evidence against yourself?


Dr. Mews thinks I am making a "grave error of equivocation" by equating "supernatural" with "unexplained by science."And you are.But thoughtful readers will recognize upon reflection that talking serpents, for example, are both unexplained by science and identified by some as supernatural.And since you separate the two concepts here, it appears that I am correct. You are indulging in an error of equivocation. We are discussing history - this is not germane to the issue. You have defined supernatural in a totally idiosyncratic fashion: something which is not currently explained by science. But supernatural elements are by definition unexplainable by science. In other words, all things supernatural are without scientific explanation; but not all things without scientific explanation are supernatural.
Many anti-Biblicists today want to style science as exclusive of such inquiry, but they are wrong. Science, from the Latin word for "knowledge" simply refers to a systematic methodology for gaining information about reality. We cannot say things are not real simply because we do not presently understand them.And since no one but you has done that, I fail to see your point.

Dave violates the rules of the debate
Unfortunately, the rules do most explicating prohibit cutting and pasting - quoting of other sources will not be permitted. Remember? Whether or not the cut and paste in question is a footnote or not does not alter the case. I am glad, however, that Dave admits that the section was cut and pasted. I will draw the attention of the moderator to this.

Dave refuses to apologize for his insult.
I didn't intend to insult you with the partial Christian comment and the moderator didn't take it as such.Hardly an apology. You have engaged in the No True Scotsman fallacy and accused millions of the faithful of not being Christians. You have far more people to apologize to than just me.

I made an observation pertinent to our debate. One could also ask how Jesus, the Creator (John ch. 1) could be unaware of the physics of radiometric "dating." Why did the One who created all things (thus knows everything about science) teach that Genesis is real history? Since Christ did not do so, this is not pertinent. In addition, you are now engaged in yet another fallacy: circular reasoning. The contents of the Bible cannot be used to establish the truth of the contents of the Bible. I suggest you brush up on logical fallacies.

Misspellings
Was this a Freudian slip?No, it was a misspelling - I know far more than you do about Freudian slips. But your response is interesting. Radiometric dating is not 'sold' to anyone. It is taught as good science, since it is good science: consilient with physics and chemistry; well-supported by tens of thousands of experimental results; and cross-checked and confirmed by various completely independent chronological calibrations. You have yourself accepted C14 radiometric dating as valid in the various discussions on the Panda's Thumb forum, ATBC, as well as at RichardDawkins.net. Are you now withdrawing your acceptance of the technique?

References
Dunn, K. A., et al., 1997, "Enhancement of Leaf Fossilization Potential by Bacterial Biofilms," Geology 25:12 (1119-1122)

Summary
The existence of Lake Suigetsu, dated at more than 100,000 years in age definitively disproves the timeframe of Genesis as well as demonstrating that the events of the first ten chapters of Genesis did not occur. In order to counter the argument presented by the dating of Lake Suigetsu, it is necessary for Dave to explain the synchronization of all the various dating schemes with which the varve count is calibrated.

[Dave Hawkins]

SPECTACULAR, RISKY PREDICTION SUPPORTS GENESIS TIMEFRAME
In 2005, the RATE Team (Radioisotopes And the Age of the Earth) from Institute for Creation Research (ICR) published some rather spectacular findings(27) which support the historicity of the Book of Genesis. One of the most interesting to me was Sandia scientist Dr. Russell Humphreys' prediction of Helium in Zircons. This was a spectacular finding because it was a very risky prediction.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l188/dhawkinsmo/Zircon_prediction.jpg

The graph on the left is the predicted data for the Helium Diffusion Coefficient from the RATE Book 2000(28) before any experiments of this nature had been conducted by the RATE Group. The graph on the right is from the RATE Book 2005(27) and as you can see the data line up very well. A spectacularly confirmed risky prediction of the Creation model which supports the Genesis time frame of an earth which is less than 10,000 years old. To put this in layman's terms, the RATE Team led by Dr. Humphreys realized prior to these experiments that there is "too much" Helium which is retained in zircons embedded in deep rock (Up to 4 kilometers deep). Why do I say "too much"? Because according to the assumptions of scientists who believe in Deep Time--that is, that the earth is billions of years old--this Helium should not be there. It should have escaped from the zircons long ago because Helium is a very light gas and escapes very easily from many materials (you are all familiar with Helium balloons and how quickly the Helium escapes, right?). Even though zircons are very hard, Helium also escapes from them over time and the diffusion rate can be measured.

Long story short, Humphreys et al. proposed a new experiment to confirm their theory that the large amounts of Helium in zircons indicates that not enough time has elapsed since the creation of these zircons for the Helium to have escaped. The interesting thing that prompted Humphreys to do this experiment was some earlier data from Dr. Robert Gentry(29) which showed the Helium retention was closely correlated with depth of the zircons in the ground. Gentry found that the following Helium retention percentages as a function of depth/rock temperature:

0.96km/105C--58%, 2.17km/151C--27%, 2.9km/197C--17%, 3.5km/239C--1.2%

As you can see, Gentry found that the deeper you go, the hotter the rock is and the less Helium is retained. This makes sense because the interatomic spaces in zircon would be larger and have more kinetic energy the hotter they are, thus allowing the tiny Helium atoms to escape more easily.

So Humphreys' group took this data from Gentry, and also some Russian and some American data and proposed a new experiment with some new zircons. As I said earlier, their prediction of the diffusion coefficients is plotted on the graph on the left. The data from the later experiment is plotted on the right and lines up perfectly!

How did Dr. Humphreys manage to predict these coefficients so accurately?

HE READ THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

Yes, that's right. You know ... the book that many modern scientists say is a fairy tale and has no place in science?

Well, Humphreys and other YECs like myself happen to believe that it's NOT a fairy tale and that it is historically accurate. So the Book of Genesis becomes for us the source of many scientific hypotheses. And the prediction record of these hypotheses is astonishingly accurate. Why? Well the most obvious answer is that Genesis is a real historical record, communicated by the Creator Himself to Adam and selected descendants of Adam's, written down and preserved over time for us to read and benefit from, both in our science and in our daily lives.

So Humphreys and Co. used the straightforward chronological information in the Book of Genesis--the Ussher Chronology, which places Creation at 4004BC--and from this he formed his hypothesis that the Earth is only about 6000 years old. He then took this 6000 years and used it to predict the Helium diffusion coefficients in zircons and ...

His prediction was confirmed against great odds.

WHERE DID THE HELIUM COME FROM IN THE FIRST PLACE?
This is a great question and the answer is one of the best indicators that there was an episode of Accelerated Nuclear Decay during the early part of the Creation Week. Everyone knows (YECs and non-YECs) that Helium is produced during the radioactive decay of Uranium (U) and Thorium (Th) contained in granitic rocks in the upper continental crust of the earth. But non-YEC scientists assume that the earth is billions of years old, so they have a serious problem on their hands explaining how, on the one hand, so much Helium got produced in these zircons, but on the other hand, explaining why so much of it is still there. YECs have what I believe will ultimately prove to be the only viable answer:

The Helium was produced in an episode of Accelerated Nuclear Decay (AND Hypothesis) early in the Creation Week before plant and animal life was created. Then the Helium began escaping but has not had enough time to escape completely, hence the high retention percentages observed.

OBJECTIONS
You can find many objections to the spectacular Helium in Zircon findings of the RATE Group on the internet at anti-creationist websites such as Talk Origins. One objection is that Humphreys et al. faked some data. This is total nonsense. What they are talking about is the data from Magomedov (1970) which helped prompt them to do the experiment in the first place. Their later realization that Humphreys may have misinterpreted Magomedov's "ln(D,sigma)" had nothing to do with his prediction (shown in the graph on the left above). This is clearly explained in the RATE Books and at www.TrueOrigin.org for those who really care about the truth. Another objection is that maybe the Helium diffused INTO the zircons from the surrounding rock. Yes, it's a logical possibility, but highly unlikely. A lot of coincidences would have had to line up for this to be true. You can read the various objections and rebuttals for yourself, but you cannot escape the fact that ...

THE RATE GROUP MADE AN ASTOUNDING, RISKY PREDICTION ... AND IT WAS CONFIRMED BY THEIR EXPERIMENT!

An excellent experimental confirmation of the timetable of the Book of Genesis and an excellent indicator of the possible validity of the A.N.D. Hypothesis.

*************************************************

AGAIN, A REMINDER OF DR. MEWS' OPENING RESOLUTION
I remind Dr. Mews of the nature of this debate. This debate is not about me demonstrating that Genesis is a reliable historical record, though I believe it is, and I believe that I have demonstrated it do be so. This debate is not about Dr. Mews questioning some historical details. I freely admit that there are some surprising details there which I cannot prove. What this debate is about is Dr. Mews demonstrating that Genesis is false as a historical record. What does it take to demonstrate that a collection of narratives is false? It takes a lot. No one would say a narrative is 'false' unless it contained a very significant portion of demonstrably false statements. Even if some of the statements in a narrative were demonstrably false, people would not say that the entire narrative is false. They might say that it contains inaccuracies. Or they might say that there are some false portions. But to throw out the entire record and call the whole thing false, especially when the supposed inaccuracies cannot even be demonstrated, but only suggested, seems highly irresponsible.

DR. MEWS' OBJECTIONS
Dr. Mews asserts that the Genesis timetable is off by one million percent. A million percent??!! The only objection to the Genesis timetable that he has raised is the supposed 'varve' chronology of Lake Siugetsu. As I showed in my last post, there are many uncertainties with this supposed chronology and it is likely that these 'varve' are not varves at all--that is, not annually produced layers. It is more likely that they are rhythmites, which are not caused by seasonality, but are laid down by rapidly flowing turbidites. Dr. Mews attempts to answer my rebuttal points, but his attempts fail. The discontinuous nature of the 'varves' is a real problem for Deep Time advocates. If the varves are supposed to represent annual depostion why do they happen annually in say, a 20 square foot area, but not in the rest of the lake. And then another 'annual varve' supposedly forms in another 20 square foot area and so on, so that you have all these separate layers forming all over the lake throughout the year. Pardon me, but that seems to defeat the whole idea. Dr. Mews tries to explain why the top 29cm 'flocculent' layer is not used. 'Flocculent' means, according to Answers.com, that it has a fluffy or woolly appearance. Remember also that we are talking about almost a foot deep where there are no distinct layers at all! And what is this about compaction? Are you saying that the layers don't show up until they are compacted? I thought the idea was that the lake was very placid and the layers formed by the annual diatom blooms settling to the bottom ... not compaction. Where does AiG admit that hydrological [sic] sorting cannot produce these types of layers? On the contrary, I cited numerous articles that confirm that they can form very easily by hydraulic sorting. Please also see the Berthault experiment. Dr. Mews asks me to contact the authors to ask how and why they only selected 85 samples out of 250+ for C14 dating and he asserts with no support what their criteria was for selection. My question would be ... How do you know that this is how they selected the samples? The authors did not give any criteria for their selection. I am not the one that needs to contact the authors. You do. It is you that has presumed to be able to [i]demonstrate that the Genesis timetable is wrong, not me. Dr. Mews says that my assertion about fossils needing rapid burial is a 'canard.' Yet he tries to refute this 'canard' with a paper about microorganisms on organic detritus. His statement doesn't even address the issue. He says that "the activity of microorganisms and macroinverterbrates prior to fossilization of organic detritus can take anywhere from months to years" according to Dunn. OK. But we're not talking about the length of time of microorganism activity. We are talking about how rapidly organic material gets destroyed unless it is buried quickly. I could quote many authorities on taphonomy which support this. One such authority is Behrensmeyer(30) who says that contrary to the popular image of slow accumulation of sediment over long periods, lasting fossils are produced by quick and permanent burial. Dr. Mews says there is no evidence that these 'varves' washed in from someplace else. But of course there IS evidence. There are numerous studies which show that this does occur. They are called rhythmites and they explain most so-called 'varves' which have turned out not to be true varves at all. See my references in my last post. Dr. Mews says that his actual argument in favor of his long time scale is C14 Calibration Curves, implying that the long discussion about Lake Suigetsu was somehow peripheral. Yet he has not explained anything about "Calibration Curves" and how they supposedly establish the long time scale. He merely cut and pasted some charts with virtually no discussion or explanation of them at all. I am open to hear about these supposed confirmations of the deep time scale, but after your failure to make a convincing case with Lake Suigetsu, I remain skeptical. Remember ... you promised to demonstrate that Genesis is false. Not assert that it is false. Not make conjecture that it is false. Not make arguments by cut and paste charts that it is false. Demonstrate that it is false. Dr. Mews says I provided evidence against myself in the citations about camels, but this is not true. Free is referencing the conventional chronology merely so as to have a recognized reference. He may or many not agree with the conventional chronology exactly, but this is beside the point. The point of citing Free and camels was to show that even within the conventional chronology (which probably needs adjusting by several hundred years) camels are shown NOT to be an anachronism as supposed by many skeptics. Dr. Mews says, "But supernatural elements are by definition unexplainable by science. In other words, all things supernatural are without scientific explanation; but not all things without scientific explanation are supernatural." Oh good. I think we agree on this point after all. Maybe you just don't realize that we do. I say that talking serpents and magic fruit and such are currently unexplained by science. I think you would agree with this. And I say that the fact that they are currently unexplained by science does not constitute a demonstration that they are false, any more than the fact that we cannot explain OOL constitutes a demonstration that the statement that life originated WITH NO intelligent input is false. We cannot say that either situation is false, based on things we do not know. And remember what the debate is about. It's about you being able to demonstrate that things like magic fruit and talking serpents and a short time scale, etc. are false. Regarding Christ and Genesis and my alleged circular reasoning ... First of all, Christ and the Apostles did teach the historicity of Genesis.(31) Secondly, Dr. Mews makes the mistake of supposing that the Bible is one book. It is not. It is a collection of separate books. We look for corroboration of other historical texts in the works of other writers. So in this case, the historicity of the compiled work of Moses--Genesis, is corroborated by the work of several other authors--Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and others. So there is no circular reasoning at all. It is actually excellent external confirmation of the text of Genesis.

(27) Vardiman, L,, Snelling, A., Chaffin, E., eds., Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, vol. 2, Institute for Creation Research, 2005, p. 25.
(28) Vardiman, L,, Snelling, A., Chaffin, E., eds., Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, vol. 1, Institute for Creation Research, 2000, p. 347.
(29) Gentry, R.V., Glish, G.J., and McBay, E.H., "Differential helium retention in zircons: implications for nuclear waste management, Geophysical Research Letters, 9(10), 1129-1130, 1982.
(30) Behrensmeyer, Anna K., “Taphonomy and the Fossil Record,” American Scientist, vol. 72 (November/December 1984), p. 558-566.
(31) http://www.icr.org/article/2031/

[Constant Mews]

This appears an excellent time to survey the debate, particularly in light of Dave's most recent post. Before I begin, I would like to make some points clear to Dave about the rules and procedures of debate, since I recognize that he is a novice who has never before participated in an event of this kind.

DEBATE
We are engaged in debate, not education; I am required to support, explain, and clarify my argument. I am required to adduce evidence to support my claims and warrant for their acceptance. However, a debate is not a classroom; in particular it is not a remedial science classroom. On those points of which Dave is ignorant - such as the nature of varves or fossilization rates - he needs to avail himself of the learning opportunities afforded by the internet as well as public and private libraries. He has indicated that he has subscriptions to several science journals; these can also be used to rectify the gaps in his understanding. In debate, ignorance of a point of scientific fact does not constitute a counter-argument. One does not waste time in debate educating one's opponent on anything but the argument.

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THE ARGUMENT
That basic argument has now been established and explicated: Genesis is not an accurate historical record because the varves of Lake Suigetsu demonstrate that the Genesis timeline and key events of the first ten chapters of Genesis are false. The varves demonstrate this by confirming that the lake is at least 40,000 years old and that radiocarbon dating is valid. By extension, the synchronization of the varve dating metrics substantiates the science underpinning the metrics; science which concludes that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. Consilience is key.

REBUTTAL
My opponent has attempted some rebuttals: a misunderstanding of what it means to falsify a historical record; his and others personal belief in the accuracy of the Genesis account; the fact that some stories in Genesis have parallels in earlier Mesopotamian cultures; the consideration that although some elements of the Biblical stories are not currently explained by science, they might be someday; that other elements are not historically impossible; and a single example of research which claims to confirm that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, etc.

Outside all these is Dave's bizarre claim that the Bible is self-confirming: that because an individual in the Gospels mentions an event in Genesis, that the Genesis account is therefore true. Dave is committing a logical fallacy (and incidentally misrepresenting Christ; He did not "teach" that Genesis was true, but merely displayed His gift of replying to a question in terms His audience could understand.) Fan-fiction about Harry Potter frequently has Harry referring to events that occur in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, for instance. That does not establish that the event in question is true.

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THE HEFFALUMP IN THE SHOEBOX
Less succinctly, a purported historical record, such as Genesis, may be discredited by showing that its basic timeframe is false and a significant portion of its events did not occur. The varves of Lake Suigetsu, a Japanese lake confirmed by multiple date metrics to be at least 40,000 years old, disprove the Genesis timeframe, and consequently invalidate the six-day creation, the lifespans of the patriarchs, and the flood among other stories.

The key point is that the age of the lake is confirmed by multiple, independent date metrics; in order for Dave to show the dating of the lake is incorrect, he must explain why the various metrics all agree on the same date - showing that any one of them is in question is insufficient. The agreement between the various date metrics implies by consilience that we should also accept the soundness of radiometric dating and consequently a realistic age of the earth on the close order of 4.5 billion years; a variation on the timeframe of Genesis by more than a factor of 10^6.

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ON DAVE'S SEMANTIC ARGUMENT
Dave's attempts to redefine the terms of our debate hinge on the notion of falsification: Dave claims that I must falsify everything in Genesis to claim that it is not a historical record. But this is itself false. To use an analogy, I am claiming that a particular piece of paper is not letter-sized and is not blank. Dave claims that I must show that the entire sheet is covered with text. I need merely show that not only is the paper badly marked with ink, but that it is actually over one hundred miles long. But Dave's semantics are unavailing: either something is an accurate historical record or it is not. Genesis is not.

ON DAVE'S PERSONAL BELIEF
Dave's personal beliefs, and the beliefs of such men as Humphreys, do not constitute an argument. Personal belief is meaningless in the face of actual facts. Glenn Morton and I are both devout Christians - despite Dave's slanderous implications that we are not - and we both reject the historical accuracy of the Genesis account on the basis of facts, not faith.

ON DAVE'S CULTURAL ARGUMENTS
The fact that Genesis has parallels in other cultural 'origin stories' does nothing to establish that the Genesis account is correct, any more that the existence of multiple, independently-written stories by multiple authors establishes the existence of Hogwarts.

ON DAVE'S MOVING GOALPOSTS
Whether or not science is currently capable of explaining talking snakes and magical fruit has no bearing on the question of whether such snakes and fruit ever existed - though by definition, science will never be able to explain the magical fruit. But this is not my argument, nor is it an argument I need to make. I am not arguing that Genesis is not an accurate historical record based on the non-existence of talking snakes; I have already shown that Dave's contention that I must falsify every single element of Genesis is incorrect.

ON DAVE'S "SCIENTIFIC" ARGUMENT
The claims of Humphreys' experiments are not accepted as true based on very real faults, failures, and inaccuracies in his experimental methods - and Dave has not actually made an argument here - he is simply copying and pasting someone else's argument.

Humphreys' experiments do not replicate the real-world conditions under which the zircons formed. He uses a vacuum, rather than actual high-pressure conditions, for example, which has enormous implications for his results since the diffusion coefficients of minerals such as zircons depends on their activation energy which in turn depends on the pressure to which they are subject.

Humphreys makes a number of assumptions such as temperature consistency and isotropic diffusion rates that have been shown to be invalid. Humphreys' work requires one or more incidents of Accelerated Nuclear Decay, the most obvious byproduct which is heat. On the scale required to support Humphreys' case AND would produce sufficient heat to vaporize the entire planet. (Calilasseia 2007)

Finally, Humphreys' experiments do not demonstrate that the Lake Suigetsu dates or the metrics that established them are invalid. In order to invalid the Suigetsu varves Dave must explain why the various metrics all agree. Nothing else will suffice.

ON HANDLING AUTHORITIES
Both Dave and I make use of scientific research performed by others - if Dave wishes to dispute my sources he needs to point out the invalid assumptions and experimental conditions as I have done in Humphreys' case. Questioning a scientist's choice of samples does not demonstrate that the research was invalid. For example, if Dave wishes to claim that the macrofossil radiocarbon results were selected because the remainder of the results gave contradictory results, then he needs to actually demonstrate the existence of those contradictory results. Insinuating that inconvenient unpublished results might exist is not an argument. I do not dismiss Humphreys' work by asking questions about it - I point out that Humphreys work is irrelevant because his assumptions and techniques were flawed. I have pointed Dave to precisely what is wrong with Humphreys' experiments. All Dave has offered so far are insinuations of fraud.

The Behrensmeyer reference is simply baffling, since Behrensmeyer does not claim that catastrophic conditions are required for fossilization. I suggest Dave check his source.

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ANALOGY
Though I indicated earlier that one does not undertake remedial science education in a debate, I will take pity on Dave's ignorance and clarify C14 calibration since it is germane to my argument. First, an analogy....

Four engineering students are set the task of measuring the height of an oak tree planted two hundred years ago. Student 1 climbs to the top of the tree with a lead weight and a stop-watch. She drops the weight and measures how long it takes to hit the ground. Given the time and the rate of acceleration, she calculates the height of the tree to be 151 feet. Student 2 takes a yard-stick and, making marks on the bark, slowly climbs the tree, adding up the number of yards to reach a height of 152 feet. Student 3 is somewhat lazier; she takes a two-meter rod and measures the length of its shadow. She then takes a measuring tape and measures the length of the tree's shadow. A little quick geometry determines the height to be 149 feet. Student 4 is the laziest of the bunch. He looks up the average growth rate of oak trees given the climate in order to approximate the height of a two hundred year-old tree as 160 feet.

The students present their results to their skeptical professor. He points out that the rate at which oaks grow is variable; that the measuring tape and two-meter rod have not been checked for length; that the yard-stick is old and battered and missing its marks; and that the stop-watch is brand-new. But student 1 has checked her watch against two others; student 2 measured his yard-stick against the two meter pole; student 3 used a household measuring tape and checked it against the pole as well; and student 4 looked up climate variations on growth rate to refine his figure to 154 feet. What matters is the fact that the measurements all roughly match. After all, student 1 says, if one metric is wrong, there would be no reason for it to agree with the others.

The conclusion? A metric, such as a weight, is normally tested against a known quantity - such as a standard weight. But what happens when no known quantity exists to measure against? Multiple, independent metrics are used and checked against each other. Agreement among metrics them gives confidence that they are accurate. If one disagrees with the others, then that particular metric is inaccurate.

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LAKE SUIGETSU
With this analogy in mind, the problem of dating Lake Suigetsu becomes straightforward. A well-documented, regular cycle of algae blooms appear on the lake each spring and die off each fall. Core samples from the lake reveal that the annual algae bloom die-off has created 'layers' on the bottom of the lake: organic residue consisting of deceased diatoms alternate with layers of silt. Clarity and distinction of the layers correlates with depth. Below 29 cm, the layers are clear enough and distinct enough to count and observe fluctuations in the width of the varve with a high degree of accuracy.

VARVE COUNT
Historical records indicate that an earthquake sufficient in magnitude to produce measurable turbidites occurred in 1662. Such turbidites are noted approximately in the core approximately where straight counting would expect them. Since an earthquake is sufficient to produce turbidites that disturb the varve pattern, it implies that no 'flood' could have produced the varves - they are not composed solely of clay and silt particles, and organic varves cannot be produced by purely hydrological sorting. Taking this as a 'zero-point' it is possible to count 'downwards' more than 100,000 varves and assign a tentative date to the lake of at least 100,000 years BP. This is the basic metric: the varve count.

VARVE DATA
The accuracy of this metric is done by cross-checking against other independent metrics. The core contains two other data sets: certain layers have embedded organic non-diatomic residue such as leaves, twigs, insect wings, etc.; and the width of the diatom layer varies in thickness. This permits the use of two completely independent metrics to measure the 'age' of Lake Suigetsu: radiometric dating of the macrofossils, and coordination of the thickness variation with climatic variation, since climate variance causes variance in the quantity of diatoms which bloom.

RADIOCARBON DATES AND TREE-RINGS
Since there are a large number of macro-fossils, and radiometric testing is an expensive process, only a representative sample of fossils is tested. The dates given by radiometric dating of the macrofossils correspond closely to the dates of those same samples based on the varve count of the layer in which the fossil is found. In other parts of the world - North America and Europe - dendrochronological metrics have been constructed using tree-ring data. Tree-rings widths are also sensitive to climatic conditions. The dates given by matching the varve climate variants to dendrochronological climate variants also correspond closely to those based on the varve count.

At this point three independent metrics - varve count, radiocarbon dating, and dendrochronology - yield corresponding dates. This implies that all three metrics are reasonably accurate. After all, if any or all of them were invalid there is no reason they would all yield approximately the same date.

ICE CORES, ETC.
Ice cores available from both Greenland and Antarctica have been dated independently of the other by multiple metrics, which include annular counts, radiometric dating of trapped pollen, variations in trapped oxygen levels, etc. The ice cores also match quite well the dates given by varve count, radiometric dating of the macrofossils, and the dendrochronological record. Moreover, the various metrics such as the tree-rings and ice-cores match each other, as well as the varve counts. Similar logic can be applied to coral U/Th counts, varve formation based on forminifera from the Atlantic basins, speleotherms, and other date metrics.

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CLOSING
In his response Dave has failed to address any portion of my argument concerning the varves of Lake Suigetsu. He has asked simple questions about basic science. He has claimed accuracy for the Bible on the basis of an invalid circular argument. And he has refused to apologize for his false accusations that I am not a Christian and Glenn Morton is not a creationist.

Dave's refusal to deal with my direct question, "Explain the correspondence and synchronization of the metrics used to date the varves at Lake Suigetsu", appears to be a violation of the rules of this debate. Certainly his silence does nothing to counter my argument.

REFERENCES

Calilasseia 2007 Richard Dawkins Forum (http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=243228#243228)

[Dave Hawkins]

MORE EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG EARTH FROM CARBON 14 STUDIES
Carbon 14 has been found in easily detectable levels in supposedly 300 million year old coal beds! The coal detected indicates (according to conventional Carbon 14 dating assumptions) an age of only ~47,000 years old. Wait a minute. How can this be?! This coal is supposed to be ~300 million years old, supposedly dated by stratigraphic and radiometric dating of surrounding strata. What's going on here??!!

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l188/dhawkinsmo/RATE_Graph_C14.jpg

Well, that's what Nadeau et al. were also asking when they wrote their paper in 2001.(32) Here is one of their charts representing their results.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l188/dhawkinsmo/C14_Nadeau.jpg

Several things to notice here ...

1) These samples should be "Carbon 14 dead" according to the Deep Time view of geology
2) They are most definitely not dead ... they are well above the background C14 level for the lab
3) Even with repeated attempts at cleaning the samples, the results indicate way "too much" Carbon 14 for the supposed ages of the samples.
4) Notice the "7000 year" difference between the inside and the outside of several shells. What's happening?

Good question. That's what the RATE Group wanted to know as well. They presented a paper to the International Conference on Creationism in 2003 entitled MEASURABLE 14C IN FOSSILIZED ORGANIC MATERIALS: CONFIRMING THE YOUNG EARTH CREATION-FLOOD MODEL(33). In this paper they cited a list by GRISDA creationist Dr. Paul Giem of 90 samples from the literature with measurable C14 which should be "Carbon 14 dead" according to conventional geological time scales. But they weren't. This raised the obvious question ...

Why do so many samples which should be "Carbon 14 dead" have easily detectable levels of Carbon 14? Thus indicating that they are not several to hundreds of millions of years old, but rather less than 50,000 years old?

Conventional scientists who believe in Deep Time have no good answer. Nadeau et al. report that they have no theory to explain these results. They are stumped. See their 2nd paragraph in their Conclusion.

Creationists, on the other hand, have an excellent answer: That coal in those Pennsylvanian beds is NOT 300 million years old at all. It's probably about 5000 years old ... buried during the Great Flood of Noah, described in the Book of Genesis. The tentative RATE Hypothesis explains these data as a combination of 1) pre-Flood C14 on the order of 0.05 - 0.1 pMC, and 2) "in situ generation" from a small pulse of accelerated nuclear decay at the time of the Flood which would produce a variable quantity of C14 due to varying crustal environments. To read more about pre-Flood Carbon 14, see reference (34) below.

"ANOMALOUS" C14 NOT ONLY IN COAL, BUT IN DIAMONDS ALSO
In the same report(35), Baumgarder reports additional tests in diamonds which yielded a mean of 0.12 pMC after accounting for the laboratory's standard background of 0.077 pMC ... Carbon 14 which also should not be there according to Deep Time scientists.

The best conclusion one can make is ... that the Deep Time view is in serious trouble. The Flood really happened. Genesis is vindicated.

SOME OBJECTIONS
The best objection I could find anywhere is at Talk Origins, the popular Darwinism promotion website.(36) Kathleen Hunt notes that this "anomalous" C14 in coal deposits is a problem and does require an explanation. Hunt's answer is basically that the C14 is probably produced in situ by the radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series found naturally occurring in rocks. Note she said "probably" and she wrote this in 2002. The problem for her is that Baumgardner's report was published in 2005 and deals specifically with the in situ question in great detail. To make a long story short, Baumgardner took existing reliable measurements from published studies and calculated the probably C14 production for a typical crustal environment and found the quantity to be 13,000 times smaller than the mean value for C14 in the tested diamonds. (Thus 26,000 times smaller than that found in coal). This simply means that "in situ C14 generation" falls far short of being able to account for the C14 found in these samples. You can read some scans from this section of the RATE Report in Reference (37) below.

OTHER OBJECTIONS
Dr. Mews objection to Humphreys' zircon test in a vacuum (as opposed to under pressure) has been dealt with long ago in reference (38) below. For hard materials such as zircon, pressure has very little effect on diffusion. Dr. Kevin Henke, who attempted a rebuttal of Humphreys' work, used a bait and switch argument by discussing the pressure effect on diffusion in soft materials like mica. Obviously, a diffusion test of mica should take pressure into consideration ... but Humphreys was not testing mica. He was testing zircon. There is no need to say more about Lake Sigietsu. My previous objections are sufficient to call the results into question, thereby making it impossible for Dr. Mews to use this as a "demonstration" of the falsity of Genesis. Dr. Mews continues to misunderstand what I mean when I say it is impossible for him to demonstrate that Genesis is false. I will explain again. To demonstrate that a book of history is false requires more than saying a few details are wrong, or that the timescale is off. No historian would indict a work of history in this way unless a significant portion of the work was erroneous. But a significant portion of Genesis is NOT erroneous. The worst that can be said about it is a) that there are some questionable items which cannot be confirmed by science, and b) that modern dating methods disagree with the implied timescale of Genesis. But to say that the record is false, one would need a significant portion of the book to be in direct conflict with provable findings of science and/or archaeology. Dr. Mews is far from this.

Regarding Dr. Mews' supposed multiple, independent metrics let me say again, that Dr. Mews has not made an argument for this at all. He has simply cut and pasted an impressive looking chart in violation of the spirit of his own debate rules. He was very concerned about not letting me use "argument by link" and "argument by cut and paste", yet he himself has done this. We have examined one of the supposed correlating metrics in this debate, Lake Siugetsu and found it wanting. I have already referred to a debate I am having on another metric, Dendrochronology (See reference 18 above, previous post), and it is sorely wanting as well. Why would we not find the same types of problems with the other metrics as well if we examined them?

Dr. Mews goes on and on with other objections and rehashes which I will not bother to address because they are so weak. If he does not have more substantive arguments to offer to defend his position, then I consider my position to be well defended.

FOR FURTHER STUDY
In closing, I would like to remind readers of this debate that there are many, many evidences for a young earth. A good starting point for reading up on these is "Evidence for a Young World," by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., http://www.icr.org/article/1842/ but there are many other resources as well. Don't believe the lies that are told about creationists. While a few of them are irresponsible, for example Kent Hovind, most are not. There are literally hundreds of good credentialed scientists out there making all kinds of scientific contributions who happen to believe that the earth is young and the Book of Genesis is true. Yes, they are in the minority at present. But that is changing quickly. The author of a recent Nature article entitled "Selling Evolution"(39) noted that 54% of adults prefer to believe that humans did not appear by evolution, up from 46% in 1994. The "Genesis is Wrong/Evolution is True" sales pitch apparently isn't working too well. Maybe there's a reason for that.

Maybe the Book of Genesis is true after all.

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I will be out of the country for 8 days beginning today, so my next post may be delayed somewhat. This has been pre-arranged with the moderator.

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(32) Nadeau, M.-J., Grootes, P.M., Voelker, A., Bruhn, F., Duhr, A., and Oriwall, A., Carbonate 14C Background: Does It Have Multiple Personalities?, Radiocarbon, 43:2A(2001), pp. 169-176. Click this link to access all the Radiocarbon journal archives. http://radiocarbon.library.arizona.edu/radiocarbon/
(33) JR Baumgardner, AA Snelling, DR Humphreys, SA Austin, "Measurable 14 C in Fossilized Organic Materials: Confirming the Young Earth Creation-Flood Model", 5th International Conference on Creationism, 2003. http://www.icr.org/pdf/research/RATE_ICC_Baumgardner.pdf
(34) Dr. Robert H. Brown of the Geoscience Research Institute (GRISDA) has written extensively on pre-Flood Carbon 14 with several papers in their journal Origins beginning in 1975 with a paper entitled "C-14 Age Profiles for Ancient Sediments and Peat Bogs". You can click the link here http://www.grisda.org/origins/ndx-yr.htm to see an index for the journal. Then search the page for "C-14" to find all his article. You will also get some hits with the term "Carbon-14".
(35) JR Baumgardner, "14C Evidence for a Recent Global Flood and a Young Earth," Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) Vol. 2, Institute for Creation Research (www.icr.org), 2005, p. 587
(36) Kathleen Hunt, "Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits", 2002, http://talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html
(37) Scans from RATE 2005 which cover in situ C14 generation questions. http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13805&start=1743
(38) http://www.trueorigin.org/helium02.asp
(39) Mark Page, "Selling evolution," Nature 447, 533 (31 May 2007)

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Constant Mews, please note that your next statement is overdue. You will have a 3 day grace period to submit your statement.

Thank you,

KWNS, FD Moderator

[Constant Mews]

I apologize to any interested readers for my delay in posting - I was dealing with a personal issue that prevented full consideration of Dave's recent post. But upon exercising that consideration, I find myself puzzled: Dave's most recent post is almost completely content-free. It consists entirely of an old and discredited argument poorly and almost incoherently presented via quote mining, irrelevant diagrams, and a lack of understanding; and a point-blank refusal to address my arguments. I find this latter point highly baffling in what is supposed to be a debate. I will briefly dissect Dave's, and then sum up my position. Rather than a long analysis, I will emulate Dave's recent style and fail to use the bulk of my available verbiage: Dave's loss in the debate is sufficiently well-established without further confirmation.

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Calilasseia has done an admirable job of dissecting Dave's non-argument for in-situ C14 in coal samples in the Peanut Gallery, so I will only touch on the highlights here.

Dave offers the existence of trace amounts of C14 in coal samples as evidence of a young earth. But there several mechanisms known to explain the existence of such C14 - the most important of which is in-situ generation by means of radioactive decay. Since the trace amounts appear correlated to the ambient radiation level of the coal matrix, and since the dating of the C14 traces is vastly older than Dave's simplistic young earth model permits, it is safe to say that science has dealt with this issue. Dave indulges in quote mining here, as well - a highly dishonest practice that appears endemic to creationists, and such remarks by Dave as Nadeau et al. report that they have no theory to explain these results. They are stumped. See their 2nd paragraph in their Conclusion. completely fail to make his case because Nadeau's conclusions do not in any way support Dave's claim. The reason Dave finds this significant is of interest, I will consider this later in my post.

On an unrelated note, evidence for the hasty and incoherent composition of Dave's post can be found in the fact that the second diagram he provides has nothing whatsoever to do with C14 in coal - it is totally irrelevant. Perhaps Dave simply wished to fill space?

In any event, since C14 in coal has a perfectly reasonable explanation, and since the C14 dates of the coal traces are completely incompatible with Dave's model, C14 in coal is useless in demonstrating that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. What is odder is Dave's claim here: The best conclusion one can make is ... that the Deep Time view is in serious trouble. The Flood really happened. Genesis is vindicated.

The existence of C14 in coal does nothing whatsoever to counter the evidence of Lake Suigetsu. Lake Suigetsu remains a classic counter to the flood, six-day creation, short time-frames demanded by Genesis, etc.

Dave attempts to rebut my refutation of Humphrey's, but I fear he is less than successful. His claim, for example, that vacuum pressure in hard materials is irrelevant has been dealt with by parallel tests using garnets - another hard material. And Humphrey's himself uses biotites, which are soft materials. More details of the refutations of Humphrey's work can easily be found at Talk Origins website by any interested party.

And Humphrey's work still does nothing to refute the age and nature of Lake Suigetsu.

Finally, I must comment on a completely dishonest statement that Dave makes here:Regarding Dr. Mews' supposed multiple, independent metrics let me say again, that Dr. Mews has not made an argument for this at all. He has simply cut and pasted an impressive looking chart in violation of the spirit of his own debate rules.Had Dave read my prior post, he would see a complete chain of argument, including a solid analogy and a step by step discussion of the reason that C14 calibration works to establish Lake Suigetsu. It is, as I say, a complete fiction to claim that I did not explain the case. This appears to be an instance of Dave's refusal to deal with the problem.

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And to that problem we return. I will summarize my argument, and indicate the details of Dave's response to it.

Genesis contains the most recognizable events in the Old Testament: the six-day creation, the global flood, the patriarchs; indeed the entire panoply of world-creation and the short time-frame so beloved of creationists.


The age of Lake Suigetsu, and the nature of its laminates - organic detritus alternating with silt which cannot have been laid down by a single hydrologic action (I am glad that Dave finally recognized that we are not dealing with hydraulics here), is incontrovertible proof that the flood, the age of the earth - and consequently the ages of the patriarchs and the six-day creation - are all false. The record of this single lake in Japan destroys the historical nature of the first ten chapters of Genesis making it impossible to consider Genesis as a historical record. The remainder of Genesis - most family stories - is either unsupported by external confirmation of the events, or contradicted by lack of evidence. The world-wide famine of Joseph lacks any evidence whatsoever, for example.

The nature of the laminates is simple observation: it can established by direct visual examination. Since Dave has a fondness for visual graphics, I provided him a sample to inspect in my second post. I wish to point out that in his response to that post he made another completely non-factual statement: he accused Glenn Morton of being an anti-creationist. Though I have corrected Dave on this point, I have not seen him acknowledge his error.

The age of Lake Suigetsu is established by the remarkable congruence of multiple metrics, including varve counting, dendrochronology, C14 dating, foraminifera lamination counts, radioactive coral dating, and others. It is not the details of any particular metric that are important, nor is the accuracy or correctness; it is the congruence of the metrics. What is Dave's response to this congruence?

Nothing.

That is correct. Dave has completely failed to address the congruence aspect of the metrics. He has attempted to discredit varve counting - unsuccessfully; he has attempted in another thread attempted to discredit dendrochronology - unsuccessfully; but he has made no effort whatever to actually address the problem of metric congruence. At no time has he attempted to show how the various dating metrics - all of which must be wrong for the age of Lake Suigetsu to be in question - agree. For the sake of dramatic effect, let me sum up Dave's arguments concerning metric congruence once again.

Nothing.

Dave has made no counter-arguments at all. And in fact Dave appears to fail to understand what he needs to address, despite the detailed explanation provided in my last post. Consider this remark: Why would we not find the same types of problems with the other metrics as well if we examined them?

The problem has nothing whatsoever to do with the individual metrics. Dave could show that all the various metrics are wrong and the problem would still remain. The problem that Dave has to address is why all the metrics agree on the age of Lake Suigetsu. Until that is addressed, Dave has offered no counter-argument to the existence, nature, and age of Lake Suigetsu. And Lake Suigetsu completely destroys the historical nature of Genesis.

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In many ways, I have found this debate to be useful. It has confirmed some of my observations about creationists and their inability to coherently debate and discuss their own beliefs, and shown quite clearly that Dave is a classic example - more to be pitied than censured. The various handicaps he has labored under in this debate - his status as a novice debater; his apparent ignorance of basic science; his inability to construct a coherent logical argument; his tendency towards preaching and bombast; and his remarkable and unapologetic lack of civility lost him the debate before he even began.

I pray earnestly for Dave's redemption and hope that he will eventually return to God. I pray that he cease to deny the reality of God's handiwork in order to support the lies and deceits of men.

I thank the IIDB for hosting this debate, and to the participants of the Peanut Gallery who contributed, as always, insightful, intellectually-stimulating, and interesting facts and analysis.

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

afdave had earlier requested an extension to July 26 for his final statement. I had agreed to grant his request.

KWSN, FD Moderator

[Dave Hawkins]

RECENT CATASTROPHIST PALEO-GEOLOGY LENDS SUPPORT TO THE BOOK OF GENESIS

THE ENGLISH CHANNEL WAS FORMED CATASTROPHICALLY

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l188/dhawkinsmo/Megaflood_Eng_Channel.jpg

(See Reference 40 below for full article)

THE GENESIS FLOOD
One of the most significant events to be described in the Book of Genesis is the Great Flood of Noah which, from a plain reading of the text, can only be understood as a global, catastrophic event. Geological evidence for a global, mountain covering flood is plentiful and the geological record has traditionally been explained by recourse to the Biblical Flood. However, with the publishing of Sir Charles Lyell's book, Principles of Geology, in the late 1830's, the majority of geologists rejected Diluvialist explanations of sedimentary rock layers and instead opted for Lyellian gradualist interpretations, which asserted that "the present is the key to the past." This caused 19th century geologists to believe that sedimentary rock layers were the result of slow and gradual processes ... for example, the accumulation of sediment on the bottom of a sea floor over millions of years. This in turn, they asserted, was followed millions-of-years periods of uplift, followed in turn again by a downsinking, submersion by the sea, more sedimentation to form a new layer, etc. They asserted that this happened multiple times over the course of geologic history, thus giving us the many sedimentary layers that we see today exposed in places like the Grand Canyon. The Lyellian explanation of erosion of the Grand Canyon and others like it, such as the Palouse Canyon, was also gradualist in nature. 19th century geologists asserted that huge canyons such as these were also formed over millions of years by the gradual, erosive action of small rivers. It seems strange that professional geologists would accept such an outlandish theory as Lyellian gradualism, but history is full of examples of competent scientists accepting strange theories for many different reasons. In this case, the most probable reason was a desire to throw off the "chains" of Biblical authority. This phenomenon was occurring in the 19th century not only in geology. The Book of Genesis was also being attacked by the new Documentary Hypothesis as put forth by Julius Wellhausen and the new Theory of Evolution as outlined by Charles Darwin. These three men -- Lyell, Darwin and Wellhausen -- were very successful in selling their theories to the world ... with the combined effect of most of academia rejecting a literal, straighforward interpretation of the Book of Genesis.

But were they correct?

The evidence indicates "NO."

And the advance of scholarship in fields as diverse as Genetics, Archaeology, Egyptology and Geology have of late been combining to overthrow these 19th century paradigms ... at least, for those with open minds. The study of Genetics has shown the impossibility of the Modern Synthesis of Evolution which asserts that the accumulation of small changes in organisms -- mutations -- can combine to created large changes necessary to create the higher taxa. Mutations are destructive ... not creative.(41) And evolutionists are changing course quickly ... simultaneously proposing new, imagination-stretching mechanisms to salvage the Theory of Evolution while at the same time boldly proclaiming that all is well and that it's a great time in history to be an evolutionist.(42) Meanwhile, 20th century archaeology has overturned all the assumptions which gave rise to the Documentary Hypothesis.(43, 44) The Pentateuch is not a Post-Exilic work, redacted by Jewish scribes from oral tradition. This is a purely speculative and unnecessary hypothesis now that we know that writing was well known long before Moses and that monotheism, not polytheism, is the oldest religion. Recent reexamination of the assumptions of Egyptology has revealed the presence of the Israelites in Egypt, the richness of the reign of Solomon and the historicity of the Conquest of Jericho account, among other things.(45)

In Geology, there has also been a major shift. Gradualism is giving way to "Neo-Catastrophism" which simply means that modern geologists are finally realizing that Lyell was wrong. Sedimentary rock layers don't form gradually and canyons are cut rapidly. You can read some statements from Derek Ager, former president of the British Geological Association, at my blog.(46) One of the most interesting stories of gradualist geologists becoming catastrophists is in the case of the Palouse Canyon, which is now acknowledged as being formed by the catastrophic drainage of Lake Missoula, probably during or shortly after the Receding Phase of the Global Flood of Noah. The uniformitarians laughed at Harlan Bretz for years, but Bretz kept pushing his catastrophist view and finally won the day.(47)

A "MEGAFLOOD" FORMED THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
Interestingly, this is the conclusion of a recent study published in the leading scientific journal Nature. The lead author, Sanjeev Gupta, saw similarities between the English Channel and the Channeled Scablands of Washington formed by the Missoula Flood referred to above.(48) My guess is that as more and more geologists become aware of the major shift in thinking from gradualism to catastrophism caused by the Palouse Canyon debate, we will see more articles like this one by Gupta et al. The authors of this study note that a massive flood was a popular explanation for the English Channel early on, but that evidence to support the theory was lacking. Now, thanks to advances in technology, support for this theory is available and is quite convincing. The authors conclude that normal fluvial processes are inadequate to explain these features and that a megaflood is the only reasonable explanation.

OTHER MEGAFLOODS
In the footnotes of the article referenced above, there is another interesting article referenced in the journal Science entitled "The Study of Superfloods."(49) The author highlights the failure of Lyellian principles as evidenced by Bretz and the Channeled Scablands debate, then goes on to list many other instances of evidence which has accumulated over the last 40 years for catastrophic failures of ice-dammed lakes, which in turn explain canyon and channeled scabland features much more satisfactorily than any gradualist explanations. Examples include the southern margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the Altai Mountains of the upper Ob River basin in Asia, the upper Yenesai river basin in Tuva, the Columbia basin and others.

WHY SO CONTROVERSIAL?
The author of this Science study notes that these studies are "highly controversial." Interesting, isn't it? Why would they be so controversial? I can think of no other reason except the strong bias against catastrophism