Ice Age

this will be the last post on this area, unless someone requests more. Dr. John Baumgardner, a highly trained Creationist scientist, has proposed the scenario of "runaway subduction" that explains the Genesis Flood. In his scenario, the present arrangement of continents is a result of a sudden breakup of one supercontinent through tectonic forces. This also entailed a sudden increase in ocean temperature causing it to boil and eventually producing the Biblical 40 days of rainfall. Then shortly thereafter, an Ice Age that lasts about 700 years occurs; among other things, this creates land bridges that allow animals to disperse to Australia and the Americas.

an obvious objection to this scenario is, why doesn't Genesis mention an ice age? something that causes the extinction of vast numbers of extremely large mammals surely merits some mention. evidently, the only mention of "ice" in the Bible occurs in Job, according to AIG:

Interestingly, there seem to be certain references to this Ice Age in the ancient book of Job (37:9–10, 38:22–23, 29–30), who perhaps lived in its waning years. (Job lived in the land of Uz, Uz being a descendant of Shem [Gen. 10:23], so that most conservative Bible scholars agree that Job probably lived at some time between the Tower of Babel and Abraham.) God questioned Job from a whirlwind, ‘Out of whose womb came the ice? And the frost of the heavens, who fathered it? The waters are hidden like stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.’ (Job 38:29–30).

Such questions presuppose Job knew, either firsthand or by historical/family records, what God was talking about. This is probably a reference to the climatic effects of the Ice Age—effects not now seen in the Middle East.

the other passages from Job, are these:

9Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north.
10By the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the waters is straitened.

22Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,
23Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?

i doubt anyone can interpret these two excerpts as evidence of an Ice Age. so, the conclusion is that the only evidence for an Ice Age in Biblical times is the phrase "the face of the deep is frozen." also, the claim that such effects are not now seen in the Middle East is misleading; here's a counterexample from the National Climatic Data Center:

Global Hazards and Significant Events
February 2003
A storm system produced heavy snow across parts of Israel, Lebanon and Jordan during February 24-26.

source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2003/feb/hazards.html

moreover, the phrase "the face of the deep is frozen" suggests that the oceans were frozen. as far as i can determine, as a non-expert, there is only one time this might have happened:

The Cryogenian (ca. 720–630 million years ago) was characterized by the most intense glaciations Earth has ever experienced, often called the “snowball Earth” glaciations.

source: http://www.geosociety.org/news/pr/05-01.htm

in this scenario, the oceans were covered with ice almost to the Equator. it seems implausible to me that mass migrations of animals to remote continents could occur in climate conditions that severe, or that the Bible contains no record of the hardships such extreme cold would cause. Creationists are fond of pointing out the occurence of Flood legends in many cultures, but how do they explain the absence of any Ice Age legends around the world?

if you're still reading, there's a connection between this Ice Age material and the previous entry on fossils. recall that it was claimed that large mammals were fossilized after the flood, during the Ice Age, but no mechanism was proposed. well, a mechanism is proposed for fossil humans:

Human fossils have been found, hundreds of them, but generally in deposits which most creationists would think were post-Flood (e.g. buried in caves during the post-Flood Ice Age—see What about the Ice Age?).

source: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4419.asp#r15

but large mammals probably didn't live in caves, so how were they fossilized?

fossils

i've realized the irony of creationists constantly chiding "evolutionists" for the supposed lack of intermediate forms, while glossing over the total absence of modern species fossilized in the same formations as extinct species, such as dinosaurs. here's how AIG addresses this issue:

Further, the more mobile, intelligent animals would tend to survive the Flood longest and be buried last, so their remains would be vulnerable to erosion by the receding floodwaters at the end of the Flood and in the aftermath of the Flood. Hence their remains would tend to be destroyed. The intelligence factor could partly account for the apparent separation of dinosaurs and mammals such as cattle, for example.15

Most creationists would regard large mammal fossil deposits, such as in the John Day County of Oregon, USA, as post-Flood. Return to text.

source: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4419.asp#r15

so, the difference in intelligence between cattle & dinosaurs explains things. but the large mammals, presumably also intelligent, couldn't have been fossilized by the flood, ergo, they must have been fossilized by some unexplained mechanism. and any dinosaurs that had a brain to body ratio comparable to mammmals--and there were some--somehow weren't able to survive any longer than the mammoth, stupid, dinosaurs. and slow moving mammals like sloths all managed to find a handy raft to cling to, until succumbing to fish at the end, as in this scenario from AIG:

On the other hand, land animals, such as mammals and birds, being mobile (especially birds), could escape to higher ground and be the last to succumb. People would cling to rafts, logs etc. until the very end and then tend to bloat and float and be scavenged by fish, with the bones breaking down rather quickly, rather than being preserved. This would make human fossils from the Flood exceedingly rare.

yet somehow, not all birds survived this way, many turned into fossils. not even talking about disputed birds like archaeopteryx, there are plenty of undisputed fossilized birds.

creationism, part 2

lest anyone think AIG is an exception that proves the rule, here's an excerpt from an icr.org article by Dr. Morris:

It was the "kinds"—seven of every "clean" kind and two of all other kinds—that went out to repopulate the whole earth, with all its different ecological niches. Within each kind was a created genetic system capable of considerable recombination, so different varieties could quickly develop within each kind, as the descendants migrated to different regions of the world with all their different environments. Some of these eventually became stably reproducing species or even genera—probably still capable of reuniting to produce hybrids but normally remaining distinct.

Thus, all the dogs—including domestic dogs in all their varieties, wolves, coyotes, foxes, etc.—presumably descended from the two members of the created "dog kind." The same may well have been true of the cats and other zoological families

source: http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=567

it seems the height of hypocrisy to be constantly characterizing evolution as "just a theory" while accepting it to just the extent required to account for the abundance of species in the wake of a supposed global flood, and carping that "no one has ever seen it happen" while assuming that dogs turned into coyotes and horses into zebras. incidentally, if the flood covered the earth and destroyed all life, then it's necessary that new species arose after the flood, because Noah only had 7 days to load the ark, which made it impossible to load 2 of every species.

young earth creationism

while examining ID, i encountered some creationist arguments against Stephen Gould's punctuated equilibrium that seem to work much better against young earth creationism. to wit,

2. PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...

and the Biblical flood account is a claim that every animal now living is a result of inbreeding. the next claim doesn't precisely apply to creationism, but a fairly analogous claim would:

3. PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.

and young earth creationism requires that the species of animals alive today managed to drive into extinction a vastly larger number of species in just a few thousand years on a planet that was virtually unpopulated.

incidentally, answersingenesis.org, or AIG, gives the date 2304BC for the flood. and here's some interesting hermeneutics from AIG about the word "kind"

For example, horses, zebras and donkeys are probably descended from an equine (horse-like) kind, since they can interbreed, although the offspring are sterile. Dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals are probably from a canine (dog-like) kind. All different types of domestic cattle (which are clean animals) are descended from the Aurochs, so there were probably at most seven (or fourteen) domestic cattle aboard. The Aurochs itself may have been descended from a cattle kind including bisons and water buffaloes. We know that tigers and lions can produce hybrids called tigons and ligers, so it is likely that they are descended from the same original kind.

Woodmorappe totals about 8000 genera, including extinct genera, thus about 16,000 individual animals which had to be aboard. With extinct genera, there is a tendency among some paleontologists to give each of their new finds a new genus name. But this is arbitrary, so the number of extinct genera is probably highly overstated. Consider the sauropods, which were the largest dinosaurs—the group of huge plant-eaters like Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, etc. There are 87 sauropod genera commonly cited, but only 12 are ‘firmly established’ and another 12 are considered ‘fairly well established’.5

source: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i2/animals.asp

so this creationist site acknowledges that species have evolved in just the last 4300 or so years, yet creationists constantly claim that evolution is impossible, by defining evolution as the development of new genera. it strikes me as flagrant sophistry to condemn the author of "origin of species" (not origin of genera) while allowing speciation within genera--with the exception of genus homo, of course.

ID

it's been in the news recently, so i've brushed up on it a bit. ID is really the same as creationism if it rejects macroevolution, because then it can provide no explanation for the evidence of mass extinctions in the fossil record. if the species that don't perish in an extinction do not produce daughter species, then either all species were created at the beginning--which raises the question why are there no fossils of humans & dinosaurs & trilobites all found in the same geologic formations--or new species were created after each extinction--which raises the question, why weren't the original species simply recreated each time?

i also found a website that has a good overview of the concept of punctuated equilibria by none other than Stephen Gould himself, since punctuated equilibria is often cited as a critique of macroevolution. here's an attempt at a summary:

if evolutionary change occurs gradually, why are there no intermediate forms? Gould says, change mainly occurs when small populations become isolated, allowing favorable mutations to spread rapidly. then, when changing conditions favor some mutation, a small population can supplant a much larger main population, so that the new species appears to have arisen fully formed. so, species evolve by branching rather than gradual accumulation of mutations, but they evolve nonetheless.

finally, here's Gould's comment on the misuse of punctuated equilibria by creationists:

Second, the theory became an issue (quite coincidentally) just when creationism reached its acme of thankfully temporary influence. Creationists, with their usual skill in the art of phony rhetoric, cynically distorted punctuated equilibrium for their own ends, claiming that we had virtually thrown in the towel and admitted that the fossil record contains no intermediate forms. (Punctuated equilibrium, on the other hand, is a different theory of intermediacy for evolutionary trends—pushing a ball up an inclined plane for gradualism, climbing a staircase for punctuated equilibrium.) Some of our colleagues, in an all too common and literally perverse reaction, blamed us for this mayhem upon our theory. At least we were able to fight back effectively. Most of my testimony at the Arkansas creationism trial in 1980 centered upon the creationists' distortion of punctuated equilibrium.

source: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_opus200.html
(i tried to put in a link, but that didn't work somehow :( )