The Dinosaur Extinction Scenario

Fifty years ago, Thomas Kuhn came up with a philosophy for science that challenged the traditional viewpoint at the time. Fifty years later, his philosophy has captured the hearts and minds of many scientists.

Instead of using science philosophies such as “empirical falsification” to see if it will stand up to the test of time as highly regarded British philosopher Karl Popper believed, Kuhn on the other hand was an advocate of science being a puzzle to be solved that was conducted by bias researchers with occasional questioning of the paradigm, which may lead to a shift as a result of its complexity. Kuhn’s approach provided the establishment with more control over hindering new ideas of interpreting the data or coming up with new theories. .

There is a fundamental difference between operational science and historical science. Historical science is where various worldviews (different biases) can look at the same evidence but come up with different conclusions. And these conclusions are always based mostly on circumstantial evidence!

Lyellian geology (which came from James Hutton’s book “Theory of the Earth” ) had a substantial influence on Charles Darwin who read the three-volume series “Principles of Geology” by Charles Lynell. Lyellian geology eventually replaced “flood geology” which was the prevailing viewpoint for a long time that is based from the Bible.

Its principle known as “uniformitarianism” postulated that the same natural processes that operate now have always operated in the past along with the same rates, with the same laws. Recently, in Science Magazine, claims of a Mexican crater named Chicxulub being responsible for the dinosaurs demise!   This hypothesis flies in the face of prevailing views about gradualism. The prevailing viewpoint in the scientific community 30 years ago was unwilling to consider anything outside its paradigm! A far cry on claiming that scientists are happy to be wrong because there is more to learn!

Luis Alvarez whose father proposed the impact hypothesis which claims that is how Dinosaurs went extinct rebuked those who protected the puzzle of gradualism.

In Live Science…

“The main culprit behind the end of the dinosaurs is now widely accepted to be an extraterrestrial collision of epic proportions, one that left behind the gargantuan crater of Chicxulub at Mexico. Evidence for this theory grows more ironclad over time –  yet only 30 years ago it was often thought to be nonsense.“

“It took a long battle to win many scientists over, researchers say. One of those researchers is University of California at Berkeley geologist Walter Alvarez, who recalls the resistance to his team’s claim that such a major change could happen abruptly instead of gradually.”

“It flew in the face of the position that geologists and paleontologists at the time had for gradual explanations for everything that happened in the Earth’s past, a position that went by the name of uniformitarianism,” said Walter Alvarez. “The notion that this mass extinction was caused by an impact, or even the notion that there was a sudden mass extinction, raised a lot of dispute at the time, and people strongly challenged the idea.”

Catastrophic changes is more in line with flood geology than with gradualism. But what about this dinosaur extinction scenario? Is it plausible because more researchers are accepting it? No! This hypothesis is flawed, for example, scientists used assumption-laden dating and then forced that data into another flawed assumption-laden dating for its conclusion. Then there is the impact itself which leaves a major question mark, if true, an impact like that would have affected other animals and insects as well, not just dinosaurs!

The impact wasn’t a smart bomb which is able to limit its destruction to a certain area with a certain effect. So how could this impact at that level of destruction just select the dinosaurs for extinction while not affecting other animals? It’s not logical! The research does suggest, “other factors may have played an important role…” But what are those other factors that could be considered? Because the impact hypothesis without direct observations of what happened, is not realistic!  Thus, this prevailing viewpoint is wrong too, just like gradualism!

The Bible provides evidence of what happened in the past which is a lot better than going into it, totally blind!

David Montgomery’s Book On Noah’s Flood

We discover in David Montgomery’s book, an argument on secular scientific reasoning being compatible with religion, in his view there is no “false dichotomy” as long as a certain interpretation of the data prevails.

In science daily he reveals pretty much the same arguments against the flood that have been used by others who were skeptics…

“For nearly two centuries there has been overwhelming geological evidence that a global flood, as depicted in the story of Noah in the biblical book of Genesis, could not have happened. Not only is there not enough water in the Earth system to account for water levels above the highest mountaintop, but uniformly rising levels would not allow the water to have the erosive capabilities attributed to Noah’s Flood, Montgomery said.

Some rock formations millions of years old show no evidence of such large-scale water erosion. Montgomery is convinced any such flood must have been, at best, a regional event, perhaps a catastrophic deluge in Mesopotamia. There are, in fact, Mesopotamian stories with details very similar, but predating, the biblical story of Noah’s Flood.

“If your world is small enough, all floods are global,” he said.

Firstly, what evidence did David Montgomery interpretation of the data comes up with that demonstrate the millions of years age in the rocks? His answer is this, “I believe in millions of years, therefore when I look at the rocks, I see millions of years.”  This is not hard evidence based on observations that he is making his argument against the global flood but rather uses circular reasoning.

What about the large fragments of sedimentary rock which include strata that are broken from a parent rock? Since the global flood happened, couldn’t the existence of folded strata show that hardening had begun underwater and if so, is there sufficient evidence to conclude that 100% hardening can be achieved underwater or is some sort of drying out process required?

Good question! How many of you are familiar with man-made cement? Water is an important ingredient which triggers the reaction in the mixture of dry cement and sand so that the cementing process not only relies on water, but can take place underwater! Many natural cements are similar in that they can achieve sufficient hardening under water without needing to dry out.

Even when the waters of the flood was still rising, the drying process was well underway, as a result of two causes, one normal global tidal rises and falls.  And the second involves giant tsunamis generated by the many destructive earthquakes that were repeatedly occurring during the Flood due to catastrophic earth movements.

No human being living today or in the recent past has ever observed what happened during those earlier years in earth’s history, therefore no nobody knows for sure what all went on during that time which we will get into in more dept shortly.  We also discover in David Montgomery’s book, a claim about being “open” which is generally always used as an attempt to sway people of faith to a worldly viewpoint.  Back when I was in college, my professor taught this very idea of being “open” in order to try to mold my values into his. And those who rejected his values were considered, “narrow.”

But let’s posed this to him.  Has David Montgomery read papers by creationists who are geologists or even talked to them with an “open mind” as they want people of faith to do with their conclusions on the data? Did he ever consider thinking outside the box?

One doesn’t think so, in fact he just goes along with popular fallacies among secularists by lumping Tibetan locals in the same camp with Bible scholars as “people of faith.” If he had done his homework, this is what he would have discovered…

According to accounts of the global Flood, there were extensive ruptures of the earth’s crust, rapid plate movements, and a reworking of the continents from low relief to high mountains and deep ocean basins.  These clearly would have caused catastrophic deposition and erosion, rather than a placid sea rising over post-Flood mountains as described in Montgomery’s book.

And the memories of locals were true accounts of the global flood rather than local floods in their area as he suggests.  Also, the memories which were taken during the time of the tower of babel by other groups eventually got distorted over the years while retaining some truth that eventually found its way to Mesopotamia.

The thing is this, it’s not who doesn’t have faith in coming to these conclusions, it’s whose faith is better interpreting the data that suits reality better! If you believe in millions of years as Montgomery stated, you are going to discover a billion of missing years between the bedrock granite and the Tapeats Sandstone or 100 million missing years in the Muav and Temple Butte limestones.

What Montgomery failed to observe, were the fault lines passing through the whole canyon from bottom to top, then one sees twists and folds of strata (strata supposedly separated by millions of years) showing soft-sediment deformation as a unit, along with evidence of high-velocity current flows in the Tapeats sandstone, also the pancake-flat strata over thousands of square miles arguing against long ages, the billions of nautiloids buried in a single layer of Redwall limestone, the evidence of sheet erosion over the continent, the rapid downcutting of the canyon, and so on!

His book and world view seems to be a bit outdated as well because many secular geologists no longer believe the Colorado River carved the canyon, but instead use catastrophic flooding in their theories. What evidence does Montgomery really have when he couldn’t observe it first hand that says a global flood couldn’t have carve out the Grand Canyon?

David Montgromery should stop his bandwagon jumping with using the assumption that a secular world view uses no faith while people of the Bible do.  It’s a matter of which faith uses solid reasoning based on observations. Biblical geology does use solid reasoning from what is being observed along with a recorded account of it happening, but secular geology has no such account but rather goes by blind faith and bias which is created by their peers for them to believe.

Calling On Present and Future Creation Geologists

Dolomite which was discovered 200 years ago and was named after French geologist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu, has remained a problem using the evolutionary framework.

In Phys.org…

“More than 90 percent of dolomite is made up of the mineral dolomite. It was first described scientifically in the 18th century. But who would have thought that the formation of this mineral is still not fully understood, although geologists are aware of large deposits of directly formed (primary) dolomite from the past 600 million years.”

“The process of recent primary dolomite formation is restricted to extreme ecosystems such as bacterial mats in highly saline lakes and lagoons. “As these systems are very limited in space, there is an explanation gap for geologists for the widespread presence of fossil dolomite,” explains Dr. Stefan Krause, Geomicrobiologist at GEOMAR | Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.”

What has been discovered here is that dolomite requires vast quantities of bacteria. In the lab, researchers were able to get dolomite to crystalize under conditions that prevail in the current oceans but this raised a new problem…

“Evidence of primary dolomite formation by a process as common as microbial sulphate respiration under conditions that currently prevail in the seabed, provides new insights into the reconstruction of fossil dolomite deposits. But why are large-scale deposits from primary dolomite no longer formed at the ocean floor?”

“Here we are still faced with a puzzle,” says Professor Tina Treude, head of the Working Group at GEOMAR.  “One possibility is that massive primary dolomite can form particularly during times when large quantities of organic matter in the seabed are degraded by sulfate-respiring bacteria. Such conditions exist when the sea water above the seafloor is free of oxygen. In Earth’s history, several such oxygen-free periods have occurred, partly consistent with time periods of intensified dolomite deposition.”

The tentative explanation which relies on conditions that at first were described as those that currently prevail, yet apparently do not prevail, because large-scale deposits of dolomite are not forming now on the ocean floor! While admitting to it as a “puzzle” using an assumption in the unobservable past, dolomite remains a gap after 200 years of research.

This is a great topic for research for creation geologists who can examine the data in terms of using global flood conditions.  They can’t do any worse than what we are observing with secular geologists who learn more about it, but create more questions than answers for the past 200 years.

Geology’s Pace Confirms Creationism

Public education which also teaches Darwinism also teaches “geologic time” as a very long duration of time like millions of years.  But reported through out this year in Darwinian publications, geology moves rather quite rapidly!

In the beginning of the year, it was discovered that kimberlite eruptions, which enable diamonds from deep in the mantle to rise to the surface, are much more rapid than previously thought.

In PhysOrg.com…

“Kimberlite, a type of magma that is normally found deep within the Earth’s crust is known to somehow make its way to the surface at times, and when it does, it quite often has diamonds in it. Scientists have long believed that some process whereby some unknown substance being dissolved in water and carbon dioxide was responsible and that the rise was likely rapid, but other than that, had no real good explanation of how they moved upwards. Now, the riddle appears to be solved.”

“Canadian volcanologist Kelly Russell and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia, as they describe in their upcoming paper in Nature, believe that when hot rising magma runs into silica rich minerals, carbon dioxide laden foam is released, forcing the minerals to the surface.”

According to a drilling survey, explosions under the sea in Norwegian waters is able to produce enough sand instantaneously to cover Manhattan almost 500 feet deep! According to Nature in May 2012…

“At the start of the most recent ice age, pressurized sand exploded through cracks in the sea floor at the bottom of the North Sea, producing a body of sand large enough to bury Manhattan under 160-metre-high dunes.”

They are talking about 10 cubic kilometers of sand erupting through these cracks quite rapidly.

Another another geological process that was assumed by the evolutionary time frame to be a long process is also quite rapid. In Science Daily…

“The depths of Earth are anything but peaceful: large quantities of liquids carve their way through the rock as fluids, causing magma to form. A research team led by the University of Münster, has shown that the fluids flow a lot faster through solid rock than previously assumed. In the Chinese Tian Shan Mountains, fluids pushed their way to Earth’s mantle from great depths in just 200 years rather than in the course of tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. “

“During field work in the Chinese part of the Tian Shan Mountains (Celestial Mountains), the research team found structures in the rocks they were studying which can be ascribed to massive fluid flows at great depth. “Our investigation has shown that a great deal of fluid must have flowed through a rock vein at about 70 km depth and that this fluid has obviously already covered a distance of several hundred meters or more — the transport of such large quantities of fluid over such a great distance has not been demonstrated by anyone before us” explains Timm John from the Institute for Mineralogy, University of Münster. “

“And the most exciting thing is that this amount of fluid flowed through the rock in what is for geological processes a very short time, only about two hundred years,” adds Nikolaus Gussone of the same institute.”

It is exciting to discover geological processes moving in a very short period of time!  But in order to keep millions of year in their time frame,  the Norway team decided not to take into account an actual observation of the fluid accumulation there and then they use Ad hoc explanations order to keep it into the millions of years time frame.  They write… “The release of fluids from minerals in the descending plates is a large-scale and continuous process that takes place at depths up to two-hundred kilometres and takes millions of years,” they explained. , “During this time, the fluids first accumulate.” 

In the creationist model, the earth is young, and observing rapid geological processes confirms it! There is no adjusting those observations to an Ad hoc explanation in order to fit into its timeline.  This isn’t going to be the last time you will hear of  “more rapid than previously assumed” because there are other rapid processes out there which falsify the Darwinian of assumption of millions of years!