I admire your certitude and surety, Sean. Likewise ;-) …

Comment on Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood? by Sean Pitman.

I admire your certitude and surety, Sean.

Likewise 😉

As I recall, it was you who confidently told me that I obviously didn’t know what I was talking about… with minimal “reservation”.

(1) If the dinosaurs managed to survive the 40 days and nights of rain and avoid becoming egg bound during the many months (“majority of the year-long Flood,” which you propose) of extraordinarily severe conditions during which asteroids (as you seem to suggest) struck the planet, massive displacements and heating of water occurred from major continental crust movements, and multiple giant tsunamis repeatedly circled the globe, when and how did all those nasty (and surely some friendly) dinosaurs finally die off? Did Noah and his family members have to finish them off? Seriously.

Most dinosaurs seem to have died out by the end of the Cretaceous – with most of the trackways ending within the mid-Jurassic and most of the body fossils being buried in the Cretaceous above the footprints (which is most easily explained with a Flood model it seems to me).

(2) Why did all the dinosaurs die off, but not other reptile groups like the crocodilians, or contemporary avian and mammalian groups? Surely many of the smaller dinosaur species were more harmless and less threatening to humans than crocodiles and bears. Did God just say, “let this entire clade be destroyed outside the ark” while going out of his way to preserve others within the ark?

Some of the smaller ones didn’t die off – like the alligators and crocodiles you mention. Ellen White does say that some types of animals, probably including certain types of dinosaurs, were deliberately excluded from the post-Flood world: “There were a class of very large animals which perished at the flood. God knew that the strength of man would decrease, and these mammoth animals could not be controlled by feeble man.” (Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4a, p. 121). Perhaps other varieties survived the Flood as well that are no longer with us? Certainly a great many different types of animals did exist after the Flood that are now extinct for various reasons…

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Sorry, but I have a few more questions. Where do you get the following facts?

(1) “Before the Flood there were no great oceans or continents as we have today. There were only rivers and shallow seas.”

The Bible suggests that it didn’t rain before the Flood, but that the ground was watered each day by dew. The Bible also mentions four great rivers that watered the Earth, and Ellen White mentions a sea, but no large oceans like we have today. Ellen White also comments that, “Rain had never yet fallen, but a mist or dew had fallen upon the earth, causing vegetation to flourish.” (EGW, SRGES 42.3). The lack of large oceans would have made the no-rain environment possible and would have made the weather much more mild and predictable.

(2) “The Earth was a fairly flat place compared to today’s world.” It consisted of “rolling hills and the ‘highest’ rolling mountains of a thousand or so feet tall.” Where do you get 1,000 feet as the maximum elevation?

As far as a lack of very high mountains, even mainstream geologists describe a very low-relief or fairly flat Earth during the early Paleozoic.

As an aside, it has been calculated that if the earth’s surface were completely flat, with no high mountains and no deep ocean basins, that water currently on the surface of the planet (not counting the oceans of water beneath the mantel of the Earth) would cover the earth to a depth of over 8,000 feet. So, I suppose it is possible for at least a few of the pre-Flood “mountains” to be up to around 8,000 feet tall. The point is that there was no tectonic activity and no active mountain building going on before the Flood. Generally speaking, it seems to have been a fairly “flat” word with no extensive mountain ranges of massive mountains like we have today. It just seems to have been a very different world.

Mrs. White also describes the “mountains” before the Flood as being symmetrical or “regular in shape”. She says, “The beautiful, regular-shaped mountains had disappeared. Stones, ledges, and ragged rocks appeared upon some parts of the earth which were before out of sight.” (EGW, SRGES 47.4) This is consistent with the time of the rise of large rocky and very jagged and irregular mountain ranges toward the end of the Paleozoic and then throughout the Flood and continuing to this day. Again, before this time, there seem to have been no such large mountain ranges as we have today.

(3) During the flood the waters were “a thousand or so feet” in height.

In other words, the Flood was easily deep enough to produce massive tsunamis that could traverse the entire planet… even by the most conservative estimates.

(4) There were “massive earthquakes that would have been produced around the entire world.”

If the crust of the planet is all broken up within a single day, creating moving continental plates that start to crash into each other, subduct underneigth each other, and start building massive mountain chains and ocean trenches, it seems like a forgone conclusion that this is going to result in massive earthquakes all around the world…

(5) Asteroids (even one) struck the earth during the flood.

There is quite a bit of evidence for numerous impacts from large asteroids hitting the Earth within the geologic record. One example is the Chicxulub crater located near the town of Chicxulub at the tip of the Yucatán peninsula which it the Earth during the formation of the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), producing a crater some 186 miles across. Then, there is the Acraman Crater located in southern Australia with diameter of 56 miles, which it the Earth during the Cambrian period. The Woodleigh Crater is another Australian crater some 75 miles across that hit the Earth during the later Paleozoic. The largest Australian asteroid was estimated to have been 10 km in diameter and created a 248 mile crater close to Queensland during the Paleozoic (Link). And the list goes on and on…

(6) There was any kind of “breakup of the Earth’s crust” during the flood.

The Genesis account says, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month–on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” (Genesis 7:11). That sounds to me like the moment of catastrophe – like the moment of impact of some massive asteroid that was powerful enough to break up the crust of the Earth and create the continental plates as well as rapid continental drift.

(7) There were any tsunamis at all during the flood.

How would tsunamis be avoided given many large asteroid impacts and massive earthquakes all around the world?

(8) Dinosaurs survived more than the 40 days and nights of rain.

Why not?

(9) Dinosaurs layed eggs during the flood.

There are lots and lots of dinosaur eggs within the fossil record all around the world… with many showing signs of stress as well as being laid in mud flows, some of which were increasing and still flowing while the eggs were being laid.

(10) Dinosaur footprints were not created before or after the flood.

Do you know of any T. rex prints within the Cenozoic layers?

(11) Only atheistic scientists come up with “just so” stories that go beyond available data.

Where did I say that?

(12) Could any portion of your account be a “just so” story?

Of course, I personally think my “stories” (many of which are also told by the authors of the Bible) are consistent with the currently available empirical evidence. However, all useful hypotheses or stories about the world in which we live are open to at least the potential for falsification – of being wrong.

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood?
Actually, the Biblical Flood lasted about a year with Noah and his family still on the ark during this entire time – well beyond the 40 days of rainfall.

As far as the physical evidence is concerned, the actual science, consider the fact that dinosaurs worldwide were stressed (throughout the fossil record), were buried by water-born sediments with bodies in layers above their footprints, that their remains still contained preserved soft tissues, proteins, and even DNA, and even high levels of radiocarbon within their tissues. Also, there is the problem of the high detrimental DNA mutation rate for all slowly reproducing creatures (like mammals, birds, and larger reptiles – likely to include dinosaurs as well) leading to an inevitable decay of genetic information over time beyond the power of natural selection to correct (i.e., devolution, not evolution). How are all of these features explained by the NeoDarwinian story of origins? It seems to me that these facts fit much more neatly within the biblical account of origins…

In short, I suggest you do a bit more reading and studying for yourself regarding what are and are not “proven facts and history”.


Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood?

Your understanding of tsunamis is still way off. They don’t consist of a single wave; thus, the multiple waves would cause even greater fragmentation and cancellation when they meet on the opposite side of the planet. I don’t know how far a tidal wave can carry, but friction will slow the wave propogation, and more so with less water depth and increasing amounts of sediment in the water. In deep water, the wavelengths are very long but shallow, and waves travel at fast speed; only as they approach shallow water do they build height, but they also slow down.

And your point is? Again, we are talking about a completely flooded fairly flat (low relief) Earth with no continents, deep oceans, or large mountain chains (just beginning to form after the initial massive and sudden breakup of the Earth’s crust). The initial impact(s) that broke up the Earth’s crust would have released huge amounts of energy, creating massive tsunamis. And, the breakup of the Earth’s crust would have also produced massive earthquakes as well as huge tsunamis of their own. The illustration below shows what the impact of a meteor of just ~30km in diameter would look like (Link):

Meteor ~30 km in diameter

So, even though tsunamis are comprised of multiple waves, given the above scenario, they would easily traverse the entire globe, laying sediment down over one or more of what are now continental regions. Of course, this would have used up energy and the “repropagation” of such tsunamis on the opposite side of the globe would have been reduced – obviously. Again, however, there wasn’t just one tsunami. There were many many tsunamis being generated throughout the Flood – being more concentrated toward the beginning in number and size.

After all, consider what computer simulations show for a relative small asteroid (2/3 of a mile) would do if it hit the ocean today. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States (Link). And, this is a relatively small asteroid impact compared to one needed to break up the entire Earth’s crust in a “single day”. The same is true for the massive earthquakes that would have been produced around the entire world and the huge tsunamis that they would have generated on their own. The amount of energy produced, and the resulting size of the tsunami produced, increases more than linearly with the diameter of the asteroid (since the volume, therefore mass, of a sphere of a given material increases exponentially with a linear increase in the diameter as follows: V=4/3πr^3).

For example, an asteroid with the size of 4 km (2.5 mi) in diameter falling onto the 5 km (3.1 mi) deep ocean would blast the water off the ocean floor for at least 60 km (37 mi), and make a wave over 200 m (660 ft) high on the southern end of Chile and the Antarctic Peninsula. After ten hours, waves around 35 m (115 ft) would reach Tasmania, Fiji and Central America, and the New Zealand east coast would be washed with 60 m (200 ft) high waves. If the impact object was 1 km (0.6 mi) in diameter, the wave heights would be five times less (Link).

So how deep was the ocean at the time of the flood? You have argued that the waters were fairly uniform in depth because you seem to know that “there were no large mountain chains or distinct continents.” Obviously, waves can’t persist at “thousands of feet tall,” as you have imagined, unless the water is much, much, much deeper than the 60 feet (40 cubits) above the highest land, as mentioned in scripture. If the seas are 100 feet in depth, then a wave can’t persist at greater than 200 feet in height because the bottom of the wave would be knocked out. Waves thousands of feet tall, going around and around the globe, according to your claim? Then you’re going to need seas that are thousands of feet deep, which would mean that there must be very tall mountains if they were covered to a depth of only 40 cubits.

How tall are the highest mountain chains today? – over 12,000 feet? If, before the Flood, you had rolling hills and the “highest” rolling mountains of a thousand or so feet tall, I wouldn’t call that “very tall” now, would you?

Obviously, if there were areas of dry land during the many months of the flood’s duration, which you have also claimed, those waves “thousands of feet tall” would grow to tens of thousands of feet tall as they approached the dry land(!); they would collapse partially or completely as they rolled across the dry land; and they would diffract sideways around the area of dry land, again creating very complex waveforms that would break up the massively tall waves.

I’m talking about waves hundreds or even “thousands of feet tall” at their max height. Again, if all the “mountains” before the Flood were covered with water there would be no dry land except for fairly short periods of time when a tsunami was coming (which would pull the water from a place before it arrived). Remember also, before the Flood there were no great oceans or continents as we have today. There were only rivers and shallow seas. The Earth was a fairly flat place compared to today’s world. Such a relatively flat world, when covered with a thousand or so feet of water on average would have easily allowed for massive tsunamis to traverse the entire globe. Yes, lot of energy would have been used up during this process. However, I mention again that there wasn’t just one massive tsunami nor was the Flood a simple symmetrical process (see image below of the known asteroid impact sites around the world; Link). It was indeed complex Flood…

You’ve done a good job of revising your description of the flood events, but you’ve got more work to do. I still see no way that “paleocurrents” in a uniform direction supports a global flood. If anything, the very complex flood that you have now admitted had to be the case would be consistent with a hypothesis of largely random paleocurrents. Post hoc explanations based on uninformed imagination are simply “just so” stories.

What have I revised? Paleocurrents are indeed largely random (from a continent-wide perspective at least) above the Paleozoic and some of the Mesozoic. However, within the Paleozoic in particular there are clear continent-wide paleocurrent patterns. Sure, they aren’t perfectly symmetrical or unidirectional by any means, but the patterns are quite clear in a continent-wide distribution. This is not at all difficult to explain from the perspective of a complex massive Noachian-style Flood. However, such features are very difficult to explain from the perspective of tens or hundreds of millions of years of slow uniformitarian geologic evolution. The same thing is true for dinosaurs being stressed out around the entire globe the entire time and for their body fossils to generally be found in layers above their footprints… not to mention numerous other features of geologic and fossil records that strongly favor a catastrophic model of origins.


Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood?
Again, what physical law prevents a tsunami from traversing an entire globe that has been flooded? You now seem to be saying that it is in fact possible for a tsunami to traverse the entire globe during a global flood – just not in a perfectly symmetrical manner? Is that right?

So what? Beyond the fact that a tsunami doesn’t have to come back on itself perfectly in order to repropagate itself, I never meant to suggest that the Flood was perfectly orderly or symmetrical or that it only flowed in one direction – just the opposite in fact. What I’ve explained numerous times here is that I believe that the Flood was a complex Flood (the actual title of the section in question here), with currents changing direction over and over and over again with many huge tsunamis being generated from many different locations around the world – each laying down a layer of sediment from various directions over a given point on the globe.

Given this position, it is clearly possible and perfectly reasonable for huge tsunamis to produce continent-wide current patterns within the sedimentary layers that were deposited by water as these tsunamis moved over entire continental regions – which you yourself seem to admit is in fact possible, just not perfectly symmetrical. However, just because tsunamis may later move over the same region in a different direction is irrelevant to the main point here. What is clear, and relevant, is that paleocurrent data does in fact show continent-wide patterns – especially in the Paleozoic layers. And, this data is supported by the massive transport of sand all the way from the Appellation Mountains to the Navajo Sandstone on the other side of the North American Continent – right in line with the paleocurrent data for these layers (Link). It is also supported by the universal stress exhibited by dinosaurs and other creatures all around the globe throughout much of the fossil record. The data here (and there is much more data beyond the little that has been presented in this post) is actually quite consistent with the concept of a huge Noachian-style Flood.

I’m sorry, but I fail to see how my reasoning is all that “convulated” [sic] here. I’m sure you can do better 😉


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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

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