Posted by Alpha Omega Institute on Dec 20, 2013 in Marianis from the Front, The Biggest Challenges to Evolution | 1 comment

Creation Answer:

“The order of the fossil record can best be explained by hydrological sorting during Noah’s flood.[i]  Currents direct the different sediment types to where they will be laid down. Animals often move in herds, flocks, or groups and thus you will find similar organisms with similar organisms.

Some animals could run and climb from tidal waves for longer or fly for longer before being submerged by the catastrophic flood. Because of these abilities, we see evidence for the order in the fossil record.

Coelacanth

Index fossils are not only found deep in sediment, but some have been found still living to this day. An example of a living index fossil is the Coelacanth. This is a fish that is found in 70 million year old rocks. This fish was thought to have gone into extinction at that time and so we can date other things to about 70 million years ago, but now they are found in the Indian Ocean. So now we can’t be sure if an organism next to a Coelacanth is 70 million years old or 10 million years old or 10 years old.

Other living fossils include: the gingko tree, graptolites (300 million years old), “the tuatara (supposedly extinct since the Cretaceous Period until found still living in New Zealand), the Lepidocaris crustacean (only found as fossils in Devonian rocks), the Metasequoia conifer tree (thought extinct for the past 20 million years), the Neopilina mollusk (supposedly extinct for 280 million years), the lingula brachiopod (“extinct” since the Ordovician), and even the trilobite (chief index fossil of the even more ancient Cambrian Period).” Algae that is supposedly in 3.4 billion year old rocks still exist today…are those rocks really 3.4 billion years old?

Search “living fossil” on the internet and the list goes on and on for more examples. There is simply abundant evidence that living organisms today are practically identical to fossilized grandparents of “millions of years ago” if not “billions of years ago.” This is evidence that no evolution has taken place in those organisms.[ii]

Index fossils are the primary method of dating something. Often there are huge inconsistencies between dating based on rock layer and index fossils as compared to radiometric dating methods.[iii]

Fossil dragonfly with contemporary dragonfly

Scientists study fossils (including index fossils) and claim that evolution happens from one fossil to another, but currently there is much confusion over what a “species” actually is. A snail with a different color or shape to its shell could be a totally different species. This is simply variety within the snail kind, but not evidence of evolution. They still have the same DNA which allows that variety.

This leads to another question, “are the index fossils a reliable way to date rock layers over billions of years of history if scientists can’t agree on the classification of living creatures today?”[iv]

Ph.D. geologist Steven A. Austin, also describes how index fossils often have a large range of layers where they can be found and that the geologic record has many inconsistencies, with fossils and rocks in places that they shouldn’t be.[v] There are many examples that “as more and more fossils are found, the ranges of fossils keep increasing.”[vi] So those fossils are less of a pinpoint to how old something is. Austin explains how the geologic record is not as cut and dry and simple as evolution would assume by saying “strata systems are believed in some places to be inverted, repeated, or inserted where they do not belong.”[vii]

The jumbled and ordered nature of the rock layers and fossils, alongside of the fact of many missing transitional fossils, provide better evidence of a massive global flood rather than the slow build up of layers over millions of years.

What the Bible Says: Genesis 6:17, Genesis 7-9

by Brian Mariani and others

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