Evidence for God from Science

A friend who is a YEC and a strong adherent to the teachings of creation ministries international recently alerted me to an article on that website wrt Fast Octopus Fossils. http://creation.com/fast-octopus-fossils I grew up in the YEC but now am leaning strongly to an old earth view, but not sure which one.....

How do you guys in old earth camp answer these kinds of statements from YEC: from the above link: "What’s more, this particular fossil octopus is enclosed in limestone. Long-age geologists have thought that limestone takes long periods of time to form—hence this octopus fossil, being entombed in limestone, presents an additional challenge to evolutionary thinking. But for biblical creationists there is no mystery, as conditions during the global Flood would have been suitable for rapid limestone formation.11"

Regardless we need to understand conditions for fossil formation. There is really no such thing as slow fossil formation. If you go skuba diving, one thing you will not see is dead fish on the ocean floor. If you go into the woods you will not see a dead animal slowly being covered over years and years of gradual build up. Scavengers will leave little to nothing behind for such preservation.
Yet, some in secular science say that the layers that fossils are found in were formed over lenthgy time frames. Rapid deposition is really the only way in which an could be preserved to discover at some future time. So, if you are seeing a fossil you are seeing a result of a disaster, and its victims frozen in time. Fossils give us a preserved death record. We even have fossils of fish eating other fish, and animals in the process of giving birth.
We can test and observe today results from pyroclastic flows, floods, landslides, etc. that will result in rapid burial. It is also interesting to note that we also are able to observe rapid sedimentation and statifying of layers within the sediment.

If there are fossils in limestone, then the limestone deposit formed rapidly. And the fact is that limestone is rich in fossils.

jlay wrote:Regardless we need to understand conditions for fossil formation. There is really no such thing as slow fossil formation. If you go skuba diving, one thing you will not see is dead fish on the ocean floor. If you go into the woods you will not see a dead animal slowly being covered over years and years of gradual build up. Scavengers will leave little to nothing behind for such preservation.
Yet, some in secular science say that the layers that fossils are found in were formed over lenthgy time frames. Rapid deposition is really the only way in which an could be preserved to discover at some future time. So, if you are seeing a fossil you are seeing a result of a disaster, and its victims frozen in time. Fossils give us a preserved death record. We even have fossils of fish eating other fish, and animals in the process of giving birth.
We can test and observe today results from pyroclastic flows, floods, landslides, etc. that will result in rapid burial. It is also interesting to note that we also are able to observe rapid sedimentation and statifying of layers within the sediment.

If there are fossils in limestone, then the limestone deposit formed rapidly. And the fact is that limestone is rich in fossils.

Fallicy #1: Not all animals become fossilized so noting anecdotal appeals to the absence of observation in real time says nothing about the animals that do become fossilized.

Fallicy #2: Rapid deposition may indeed be one means of fixing an animal in a context to be fossilized, but again, it doesn't follow that it is the only means. It's likely the most common, but that's as far as I would go with it.

Fallicy #3: Rapid deposition doesn't necessarily follow that the fossilization process itself is accelerated simply because deposition is involved. Deposition fixes the animal or plant but the speed of fossilization to the state observed today is independent of that process.

Notice Bart I didn't say how long the deposits had been there, or how long ago they were laid down. Let me clarify. Rapid deposition is the best explanation for the volume of fossils we have today.

Is it possible that fossils were formed rapidly by many separate catastrophes, over a long history? Instead of just one major catastrophe(global flood)?

jlay wrote:Notice Bart I didn't say how long the deposits had been there, or how long ago they were laid down. Let me clarify. Rapid deposition is the best explanation for the volume of fossils we have today.

Consider though too that in the context of limestone, that most of the material present in limestone is calceriforous (I hope that's a word ....) meaning it's shells and bones and in most cases, there's no reason I can see that would preclude natural and normal accumulation at the bottom of an ocean without any more rapid deposition than what can be observed today. What is being fossilized there is not soft tissue or something subject to decay or scavengers.

I think the other context where what you're saying could be more true is in the context of volcanoes where there is a rapid deposition of ash or a mudslide etc where the animal or plant is rapidly covered and encased and the imprint generated in a very fast manner due to cooling or compression with a great deal more material and weight being laid over it after that.

Other contexts of fossilization include amber where usually insects are caught in tree sap. I don't know how common that is as opposed to other methodologies but I think that's outside of rapid deposition.

Fossilized footprints, don't necessarily fall into that category. Although I imagine that some could.

Tarpits and quicksand are other instances where it's not so much rapid deposition as it is immediate encasement in existing material and then a sinking to lower levels where pressure naturally increases.

Coal and oil are themselves organic in origin so it's not hard to see how fossilized images of the overall root material would be present. That doesn't necessarily have to be rapid deposition.

I don't think I've ever looked at or considered the categories of fossils and the relative number of them known and which process is more common. I think the limestone scenario might well be because of the relative percentage of the surface of the earth subject to those conditions. You don't need a worldwide flood to explain that.