Sapiens, shared this link on another thread, but some interesting points in it.
Even setting evolution aside, basic geology disproves creationism
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Early Christians read nature as well as the Bible
In researching my book
The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood
, I looked into the history of thought about the biblical flood. What I found surprised me on two levels. First, most of the early workers who pioneered what we now call geology were clergy dedicated to reading God's other book—nature. Second, in pitting science against Christianity, today's young Earth creationists essentially ignore centuries of Christian theology.
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For the first thousand years of Christianity, the church considered literal interpretations of the stories in Genesis to be overly simplistic interpretations that missed deeper meaning. Influential thinkers like Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas held that what we could learn from studying the book of nature could not conflict with the Bible because they shared the same author. Yes, it seems that one of the oldest traditions in Christian thought holds that when reason contradicts favored interpretations of scripture about the natural world then those interpretations should be reconsidered.
In keeping with this view, mainstream Christians reinterpreted the biblical stories of the creation and flood after geological discoveries revealed that Earth had a longer and more complicated history than would be inferred from a literal reading of Genesis. Perhaps, they concluded, the days in the week of creation corresponded to geological ages. Maybe Noah's flood was not global but a devastating Mesopotamian flood.
Young Earth creationists break from history
For over a century, such views dominated mainstream Christian theology until the twentieth century rise of young Earth creationism. This is the version of creationism to which Ken Ham subscribes – you might remember his
debate with Bill Nye from 2014. Young Earth creationists imagine that people lived with dinosaurs and that Noah's flood shaped the world's topography. In fact, this brand of
creationism, embodied by Ham's
Creation Museum in Kentucky, is actually one of the
youngest branches of Christianity's family tree.
Interestingly, one can challenge Flood Geology on biblical grounds. What did Noah do in the biblical story? He saved two of every living thing. So consider the case of fossils, which creationists attribute to the flood. What you find in the rocks is that more than 99% of all species entombed in the rock record are extinct. This simple fact offers a stark contrast to what you would expect to find based on a literal reading of the biblical story.
After looking into the long history of engagement and cross-pollination between geology and Christianity, I find it curious that the conversation constantly gravitates to arguments for and against evolution. Overlooked is how the young Earth creationist's literal interpretation of biblical stories runs afoul of basic geological observations—like that slab of
rock on the wall near my office.
Even setting evolution aside, basic geology disproves creationism
Scientific American
The Origin of Oxygen in Earth's Atmosphere
The breathable air we enjoy today originated from tiny organisms, although the details remain lost in geologic time
"It's hard to keep oxygen molecules around, despite the fact that it's the third-most
abundant element in the universe, forged in the superhot, superdense core of stars. That's because oxygen wants to react; it can form compounds with nearly every other element on the periodic table. So
how did Earth end up with an atmosphere made up of roughly 21 percent of the stuff?
The answer is tiny organisms known as cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. These microbes conduct
photosynthesis: using sunshine, water and carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrates and, yes, oxygen. In fact, all the plants on Earth incorporate symbiotic cyanobacteria (known as chloroplasts) to do their photosynthesis for them down to this day.
For some untold eons prior to the evolution of these cyanobacteria, during the Archean eon, more primitive microbes lived the real old-fashioned way: anaerobically. These ancient organisms—and their "
extremophile" descendants today—thrived in the absence of oxygen, relying on sulfate for their energy needs.
But roughly 2.45 billion years ago, the isotopic ratio of sulfur transformed, indicating that for the first time oxygen was becoming a significant component of Earth's atmosphere, according to a
2000 paper in Science. At roughly the same time (and for eons thereafter), oxidized iron began to appear in ancient soils and bands of iron were deposited on the seafloor, a product of reactions with oxygen in the seawater.
"What it looks like is that oxygen was first produced somewhere around 2.7 billion to 2.8 billon years ago. It took up residence in atmosphere around 2.45 billion years ago," says geochemist Dick Holland, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. "It looks as if there's a significant time interval between the appearance of oxygen-producing organisms and the actual oxygenation of the atmosphere."
So a date and a culprit can be fixed for what scientists refer to as the Great Oxidation Event, but mysteries remain. What occurred 2.45 billion years ago that
enabled cyanobacteria to take over? What were oxygen levels at that time? Why did it take another one billion years—dubbed the "boring billion" by scientists—for
oxygen levels to rise high enoughto enable the evolution of animals?
The Origin of Oxygen in Earth's Atmosphere - Scientific American
The Earth is billions of years old and below the first flowers are evolving around 128 million years ago.
Flowers Modern & Ancient
Archaefructus liaoningensis would never have made the cover of Better Homes & Gardens.
But this 125 million-year-old plant, discovered in fossil beds in northeastern China, did grace the cover of Science. It’s heralded as the earliest known angiosperm, or flowering plant. Here, explore what makes Archaefructus a flowering plant and how it compares to blooming beauties of today.
NOVA | Flowers Modern & Ancient
JayJayDee doesn't understand Nature nor wants too, ignoring God's work. How the Earth and solar system formed in the first place. For example, what the Van Allen belts have to do with all life on Earth in Earth's early history, Oxygen of the planet in the above information or how the moon formed, extinction events, micro and macro evolution, geology, DNA, RNA, Virsuses or any of science and sciences." They won't address those things at all, just all animals as 'Kinds." Which is archaic to the max.
