Sometimes, it's the little things that highlight the utter absurdity of the YEC worldview which asserts that not only is the Earth a mere 6000 years old, practically all the fossils were deposited by a global flood in a period lasting under one year a mere 4500 years ago. One of the best sources of such YEC-defeating material comes from Dr Joel Duff, whose website Naturalis Historia has featured here more than once. The last few posts at his website have features some of these fascinating glimpses into the past, including:
- A communal latrine in Argentina approximately 200 million years old used by mammal-like reptiles
- Fossilised moa footprints in New Zealand around 1 million years old
- Fossilised snakes in a dinosaur nest from the late Cretaceous around 67 million years ago
- A 'lost Grand Canyon' in Egypt.
Mainstream geology has no problem explaining these discoveries, but as Duff points out, YECs who start with their conclusion - a young Earth and a single recent cataclysmic event operating over a few months as the mechanism which created these phenomena - have insuperable problems to face.
For example, take the first problem of explaining the formation of the communal latrine:
So how does a group of strange-looking 8-foot long mammal-like reptiles survive the initial stages of a cataclysmic global flood in which 15,000 feet of sediments have already been deposited below where they gathered together? Even if they were running or swimming around during the flood and managed to find their way onto a small piece of land between waves how come these feces appear to have decayed for some period before being preserved? In fact we should note that the rocks show show desiccation cracks as if the soil in and around these coprolites had dried out before they were preserved.Also, how would a pile of loose digested plant material survive the next huge wave of water bringing sediments in to cover them up? In fact, the rock that these feces are preserved in is composed of material that geologist recognize as volcanic ash. It was a massive ash fall that preserved these feces in the geological record. How could a volcanic ash fall have happened in the middle of a global flood? [1]
The fossilised dinosaur nest in which a snake was found, presumably looking for an easy meal of dinosaur hatchling poses an even bigger problem for the YEC. Keep in mind that the dinosaurs were laying eggs during the flood, while a snake was at the same time seeking not shelter but food. Duff notes:
Young earth creationists paint a picture of half-crazed dinosaurs running around to escape the next giant wave washing new layers of sediments over the world and laying nests in barren sand layers and then running off to try to find higher ground. What we find in this nest contradicts everything about this explanation.Here we find clutches of preserved eggs, a hatchling dinosaur and a snake. How did the snake get there? How could dinosaurs have laid eggs during a global flood much less had the eggs survived long enough to incubate to hatching? Furthermore, there are thousands of eggs preserved in this area and there of several snakes of the same species preserved among them in addition to the one detailed in this particular study. Maybe a YEC could suggest that a long dinosaur survived weeks of flooding and laid its eggs and there was a snake that survived on a vegetation mat that happened to be there at the same time. But are we to believe that hundreds of the same species of dinosaur all laying eggs in the same area and multiple individuals of the same species of snake all ended up in that same location?How could these snakes survive weeks if not months of a global Flood that killed every animal except those on the ark to then find itself in this nest? One would not expect the preservation of complex ecological relationships to be maintained in the middle of a disaster and yet we see evidence of that in this preserved nest. [2]
Just one example is enough to show the intellectual bankruptcy of flood geology and YEC, simply because of the special pleading their explanation requires. Once you start looking at multiple examples, each of which requires a new set of ad hoc explanations, the YEC view collapses. Mainstream geology however has no problems, given that it accepts the evidence as it is, rather than forcing it to fit a predetermined conclusion that owes everything to a distorted reading of both Bible and natural world, and nothing to the real world.
References
1. R. Joel Duff. Piles of Fossil Poo: Providing a Peek into the Past Naturalis Historia April 17 2019
2. R. Joel Duff Snakes Preserved in Dinosaur Nests - Another Problem for Creationist's Flood Geology Naturalis Historia May 30 2019
