Geography & History intro Lesson #42

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #42

            breakout your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical world view. I chose to cover these two topic together because when we speak of Geography we will discuss the world from the prospective of countries, kingdoms and boundaries and the only way any map is correct is if it has a date on it, because countries, kingdoms and boundaries are always changing and in flux.  That being said the Bible is the greatest source for geography and historical information in all of antiquity. Not because it is a geography text or a history text, quiet to the contrary, purely as an incidental reality because the Bible contains so many names of people and places and chronological narratives and in-depth, detailed descriptions of, legal, spiritual, and cultural practices of peoples in their context, it is an invaluable resource for Historians, Cartographers, Archeologist, Paleontologist, and any other field of scientific study that touches on any aspect of God's creation.           

            That being said lets start by defining Geography & History (what follows is a paraphrase of what you can get at good old Wikipedia.

            Geography: Geography is from Greek geographia, "earth description" is the science that studies the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of the Earth.  A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276-194 BC). Historically there are Four traditions in geographical research. Modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline that foremost seeks to understand the Earth and all of its human and natural complexities. —not merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences". Geography is divided into two main branches: human geography and physical geography.

            History: History is from Greek historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation" this is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about these events. The term includes cosmic, geologic, and organic history, but is often generically implied to mean human history. History can also refer to the academic discipline which uses a narrative to examine and analyze a sequence of past events, and objectively determine the patterns of cause and effect.

            Historians sometimes debate the nature of history and its usefulness by discussing the study of the discipline as an end in itself and as a way of providing "perspective" on the problems of the present. Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur) are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends, because they do not support the "disinterested investigation" required of the discipline of history. Events occurring prior to written record are considered prehistory.

            Herodotus, a 5th century B.C. Greek historian is considered to be the "father of history", and, along with his contemporary Thucydides, helped form the foundations for the modern study of human history. Their influence has helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in University studies.

            George Santayana, a 20th century Spanish-American philosopher wrote in his book Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1  "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." this was a modification of Edmund Burkes statement in the 1700's, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.". I have also heard this said as "those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it". I would further state it this way. "Mankind's sinful nature will repeat itself and our knowledge of history and application of its lessons will have little affect on the pain and suffering sin will cause in the future, however the forgiving healing reconciling nature of Christ will heal all wounds of the past present and future.
In Christ Pastor Portier 

Erosion, Silt, Dust & Salt Cores, Lesson #41

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #41

            Welcome back class.  Please get settled in and take a hold of your pick point rock hammer and hand lens so that we can continue our study in geology.  Let’s wrap up our discussion on geology by looking briefly at mountain valleys which I touched on in lesson 35, erosion, silt, dust and salt cores from the Dead Sea.

            Normal erosion leads to V-shaped valleys.  It makes sense that over time as mountains wear down by rain, wind, and temperature variations, the different types of rock that make up the mountains would be broken down to varying sizes from boulders down to sand, silt, and dust. It also follows that these byproducts of erosion would cause many valleys to have soft gradual slopes giving us so many V-shaped valleys especially in the places where the mountains are older and more eroded.   This of course is in contrast to the U-shaped valleys caused by glaciers mentioned in Lesson #35.  We were able to identify evidence of glacial activity in the U-shaped valleys, with the signs of glacial till and moraines caused by the flowing ice. We can also look at the sediment, silt and dust (in areas around mountains) caused by water and wind to see how clearly the layers of these elements and known rates of erosion give evidence of a young earth on a world-wide scale.

                I feel the best evidence of this type can be found in the example of salt cores drilled out of the shore line at En Gedi on the west coast of the Dead Sea.  Dr. Steve Austin, a geologist and creation scientist from the Institute of Creation Research in San Diego CA, evaluated the findings of the geologists A. Agnon, C. Migowski, and S Marco, who investigated the chronology of earthquake disturbances in the Dead Sea area. Austin took Migowski's data on the uppermost 19 feet of laminated sediment of the Dead Sea and plotted it to make a 4,000-year sediment chronology.

            Dr. Austin notes that: "The biblical account does not specifically mention an earthquake, but the earth would have been shaken by the wall's collapse. Archaeological excavations at Jericho confirm that the massive wall made of mud bricks did collapse at the time of the conquest, about 1400 B.C. The site of the ancient city of Jericho sits directly on top of a very large fault associated with the Jordan Rift valley. Surprisingly, the Dead Sea sediment core has a distinctive mixed sediment layer at a depth of 15.1 feet that is evidence of a big earthquake at about 1400 B.C." This salt core gives an amazing record of biblical earth quakes which would have caused the brown layers visible at the point in which they appear affirming a connection between biblical earth quakes and the salt core evidence.  If you would like to read further on this topic, I would recommend visiting the blog: umarko.blogspot.com/2010/10/walls-of-jericho-really-did-fall-in. And the ICR article by Dr. Austin icr.org/article/greatest-earthquakes-bible/. That is where I got the chart below.

            Well this concludes our study of Geology. I hope you have enjoyed our study.  Next month we will begin construction on our next wing: History & Geography.  Wings still to be built in the future are Philosophy which will contain departments on sociology, social science, and psychology and our final wing which will be Theology....important wing for a Bible institute.  So you can put away your pick point rock hammer and hand lens and get ready next month to breakout your maps and histories as we travel in a time machine of sorts to examine History & Geography through a biblical world view.  Till next month, have a blessed new year.

In Christ, Pastor Portier    

Lesson #40 Volcanoes & Canyons

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #40

            Welcome back class.  Please get settled in and take a hold of your pick point rock hammer and hand lens so that we can continue our study in geology.  So let’s have a look at Volcanoes & Canyons.  The reason I am covering these two together is because of a unique case study that argues clearly for a young earth, and what connects these topics is one major geological event. Many people use Volcanoes & Canyons when arguing for an old earth, but they must ignore the evidence I share with you now to make such claims.

            At 8:32 and 17 seconds A.M. Pacific Standard Time on May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens at an elevation of 9677ft blasted off one half a cubic mile of material after a 5.1 RS earthquake shook its foundations.  This was no surprise to geologists because the mountain had been growing at a rate of 50 feet a day. Some 57 people lost their lives that day because they refused to heed the warnings of a geologist.  After a 20 million ton explosive blast blew off the side of the mountain, it was followed by a 550 degree, 200 mile per hour pyroclastic flow of hot steam and ash that decimated everything in its path for miles.  The mountain then spent nine hours in a state of constant eruption, spewing off another 400 million tons of explosive power. This is equal to 30 thousand Hiroshima-sized nuclear blasts at the rate of about one per second over that nine hour period.

            This event carries a lot of evidence for catastrophism which I mentioned way back in lesson 30. It gives us a lot of great evidence for a young earth and a worldwide flood and its aftermath.  This event gave geologists a whole new perspective on the deposition of sedimentary layers, and the formation of canyons, not to mention some amazing insight into the formation of polistrate fossils and coal beds. First, some quickly eroded canyons cut to a depth of some 75 feet in a very short time exposed a 25 foot layer mud flow laid down by the initial eruption. On top of that was another 25 foot layer from a pyroclastic flow of a later eruption on June 12^th 1980. Then there was a 25 foot top layer from a March of 1982 eruption. Some of these 25 foot layers had multiple layers within them giving an appearance that it was laid down over great periods of time if using standard geological methods of dating sedimentation. However, these many layers are known to be from just a few events over a few years, each laid down over the course of hours or days.          

            The formation of canyons such as Step Canyon and Loowit Canyon, not to mention as many as five other smaller canyons, that were formed in a mudslide in 1982 which released the west fork of the Toutle River from its source Spirit Lake, show just how rapidly a canyon can be formed.  Some of these canyons were cut in days. Some cut through volcanic rock formations that were hundreds and even thousands of years old, giving us canyons that are 1/40^th the size of the Grand Canyon.  This begs the question.... Did the Colorado river cut the Grand Canyon over millions of years or was it the rapid draining of a massive inland lake that cut the canyon in a relatively short time?  The difference in elevation of the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon, especially in the section that flows north would argue for a rapid cut, not a long slow cut which is the currently held popular view.     

            And finally, this amazing event gives us some clues on how coal beds and polistrate fossils were formed.  We find fossil trees in many locations that pass through many geologic layers representing a supposed millions of years.  How is it that this tree waited millions of years to be covered without decaying? The Flood offers a much better explanation and Spirit Lake gives us a micro-example of how that happened.  Hundreds of thousands of trees were blown into Spirit Lake during the 1980 eruption, covering half of its 4 square mile surface with logs. The first insight is that the logs rubbed all the bark off of each other leaving a 3 foot thick layer of bark peat at the bottom of the lake, and many coal seams are clearly layers of coalified bark peat. Second insight is that many of the logs, being denser at the root base, started to float upright until they slowly drifted to the bottom. Later layers of sediment caused them to be held and eventually covered in that upright position within multiple layers.....a clear explanation for polistrate fossils. So maybe the supposed 27 layers of successive forest on specimen ridge in Yellowstone National Park are not successive forest but a collection of logs that floated down at different rates and were covered at different levels after a world wide flood.  A comparison of tree rings at different levels on that ridge show similar weather patterns giving evidence of the same forest, not many separated by millions of years of peat accumulation that has no evidence of roots in it.  Well, I think that takes care of volcanoes and canyons.  See you next month.

In Christ,

Pastor Portier           

Lesson #39 Dinosaurs #2

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #39

            Welcome back class.  Please get settled in and take a hold of your pick point rock hammer and hand lens so that we can continue our study in geology.  Our discussion on fossils has led to a discussion on dinosaurs, which may be better addressed in our biology wing. However since we have started down this road, let us give it a full treatment. 

            When discussing dinosaurs, we touch on a number of different scientific disciplines: geology, biology and even history.  In the 1500’s, a European scientific book called ‘Historia Animalium’ listed several dragons as still living but rare.  In medieval times, the Scandinavians wrote of swimming dragons, and the Vikings carved dragons as their figure heads on the front of their ships.  The story of Beowulf and the story of Saint George killing a dragon may have some basis in fact.  In 1572, Ulysses Aldrovandus reported that a peasant had killed a small dragon in northern Italy. The carcass of that "dragon" was put in a museum. Its description matches that of a Struthiomimus, a type of dinosaur. In China there accounts of family's that raised dragons to pull the royal wagons for parades.  The first dinosaur fossils were probably found in China as early as the fourth century, but they were referred to as dragon bones.  In France, near the city of Nerluc, there is record of a creature that was armed with tusks that were sharp like pointed swords, a body larger than an ox, and it would lay in wait in the river. Its description matches that of a Triceratops.  In tenth century Ireland, a large beast was described as having large iron nails pointing backwards on its tail, a head shaped like a horse, and thick hideous legs with iron claws.  This sounds a lot like a Stegosaurus.  In Scandinavia, we have medieval reports of a creature with a body like an ox, two long back legs, two short front legs, covered with scales, with monstrous jaws, and it leapt like a frog. Could this be a Dryptosaurus?  Alexander the Great even reported a dragon-like creature when he went to India. They saw a large reptile over 30 meters long that the Indians kept in a cave.  Georg von Forstner, a German submarine Captain in World War I, reported seeing with four others, a large 65 foot long crocodile-like creature writhing in the wreckage of a British steamer after they sank it with a torpedo on July 30, 1915. Many of the rock drawings by ancient peoples all over the world have a clear resemblance to large dinosaurs.  Reports exist from ships at sea like a 1970's fishing vessel that pulled up a carcass of what looked a lot like a Plesiosaur, and another that pulled up a 6 ft long eel larvae. The list of modern day discoveries like this is long.

            In discussing dinosaurs, there is no good reason for us to exclude any report of dragons, dragon ingredients, or other mentions of dragons in history.  We must, of course, examine the sources of the information and admit that many ancient (non-biblical) documents are corrupted with exaggeration and embellishment.  However that does not negate the significance of these accounts and what they might reveal and add to our knowledge of extinct species of any animals including dinosaurs.  There are enough dinosaurs living today to justify such an approach (over-sized alligators, monitor lizards, and komodo dragons, the largest specimens living in very remote areas).

            So what happened to most of the dinosaurs?  Well, in this creation cursed by the fall of man, extinctions are not uncommon.  Many can be attributed to the very good earth becoming less than very good after the curse in Genesis 3, and perfect environments that once supplied all the needs of all life now made survival difficult for all life, especially the very large that need much more resources to survive, and this got worse after the flood.  But even worse in this fallen creation are fallen sinful human beings who are poor stewards of God’s creation, and when you look at even recent history over the past few hundred years, we can see the memory of large dangerous animals lingers in a large society long after they have been killed to extinction. If we simply look at the places where the largest human populations are, we find large predators like bears, large cats, and even wolves that were hunted to extinction in places like India, Europe, and North America. We have done the same thing to animals we eat to extinction or near extinction—fish, birds, large game like antelope and buffalo. Not to mention habitat we replace with our living spaces.  There is no shortage of places for us to live but we are lazy, and where we live in very high concentrations, one of the problems is a complete loss of habitat for animals. Not to mention where there are high concentrations of people, there are high concentrations of sin.  That is why God did what He did at the Tower of Babel. So I propose that we killed dinosaurs off because they scared us, but they continue in our collective conscience through accounts of large dragons.  These accounts are found in every ancient culture.  Just like you see bears depicted in a Germany or Switzerland where they haven't been for centuries, or tigers depicted in New Delhi that hasn't seen one roaming free for many years, and why the buffalo which once covered our continent, exist now only in areas reserved for them.  Stewardship is a biblical principal God calls us to apply to His creation.  God tells us in Romans 8:22: For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. This was true when Paul wrote it and it is true today.  Dinosaurs fit nicely into a biblical world view if you only take the time to put the information together.

            In closing, let’s talk about one more kind of fossil: fossilized tracks.  If you have a mud flat that is full of tracks that is quickly covered and fossilized by a softer mineral, then this can later erode away leaving fossilized tracks. I call to your attention "Taylor Trail," one of many on the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas.  On this trail is a series of 14 human footprints with at least 134 dinosaur tracks in the same layer.  If man and dinosaurs did not coexist.....then what can explain this rock solid evidence????

            Okay, next month back to more geology—Impact Craters, Volcanoes, Mountains & Valleys. We still have a few more rock formations to look at through a biblical lens.

In Christ,

Pastor Portier   

Lesson #38 Dinosaurs

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #38

            Welcome back class.  Please get settled in and take a hold of your pick point rock hammer and hand lens so that we can continue our study in geology.  Let’s have a look at some of the geological evidence that many extinct creatures had interaction with man.  Yes, even dinosaurs which supposedly became extinct over 65 million years ago.  This dating is a common position taken by many a Paleontologist; however, there is solid scientific evidence that calls into question this commonly held notion.

            There is no question that very large reptiles once populated the earth. The point of debate is how long ago. (I addressed the question of time in lessons 21-24.) While there were some very large dinosaurs, weighing in at an estimated 80 tons and standing 40 feet high (!), the average dinosaur was probably about the size of a small horse.  Were dinosaurs extinct 65 million years before we existed or were they part of God's creation on the day that corresponds with whether or not they flew, swam, or crawled along the ground? 

            If we examine history, we can find much evidence of the existence of dinosaurs along with man. First, let’s look at some biblical historical evidence in the book of Job, chapter 40, written about 4000 years ago, only about 300 years after the flood. In it, God describes a great beast. This great animal, called “behemoth,” is described in detail as “the chief of the ways of God,” perhaps the biggest land animal God created. Impressively, he moved his tail like a cedar tree!  This beast description best fits a large suaropod more than any other animal.  “Leviathan,” from Job 41, has a description that closely matches a Plesiosaur. Anyone familiar with sea lore knows about all the stories and drawings of sea monsters cooked up in sailors’ imaginations. However, there may be some basis in fact, as many of the sea creatures in those drawings have a striking resemblance to many known aquatic dinosaurs.

            It is easy for us to look at ancient documents like The Anglo Saxon Chronicle and say all of their descriptions of dragons and other massive beasts are either imaginative or fiction.  But there is sufficient fossil evidence in the British Isles to at least give credit to the chroniclers and to suggest that maybe what they describe as dragons are actually dinosaurs. It makes more sense to say it is a mixture of truth and imagination, than to say it is pure imagination because we decide with theoretical science based on unprovable assumptions that man never lived with dinosaurs.  This type of evidence exists all over the earth. Some Aborigines have reported a dinosaur like creature that matches the description of a Struthiomimus.  Marco Polo visited Madagascar and saw a huge bird 9 feet tall (now extinct). In 1649, there were reported sightings of “flying dragons” in Europe.  Sioux Indians saw a huge flying creature that got struck down in a storm. When they found the remains several days later, it had large claws on its feet and wings. It had a long bony crest pointing backwards on its head, and it had a wingspan of over 18 feet. What they called the “thunderbird,” could this be what we call today  a Pteranodon. 

            Ancient explorers and historians reported seeing flying reptiles in Egypt and Arabia that match the description of Rhamphorhynchus. The Greek researcher Herodotus wrote: “There is a place in Arabia, situated very near the city of Buto, to which I went, on hearing of some winged serpents; and when I arrived there, I saw bones and spines of serpents, in such quantities as it would be impossible to describe. The form of the serpent is like that of the water-snake; but he has wings without feathers, and as like as possible to the wings of a bat.”  There is also a sketch drawn in Egypt, by the Naturalist Pierre Belon, of a flying reptile.

            There are a lot of references to dragons throughout history. These creatures are probably based on real, living dinosaurs that are described correctly, or they have been described with the combined features of several dinosaurs, or they may be based on a real dinosaur with imaginative exaggerations. The 1973 World book Encyclopedia, under the catigorory of "Dragon" says,  “The dragons of legend are strangely like actual creatures that have lived in the past. They are much like the great reptiles which inhabited the earth long before man is supposed to have appeared on earth. Dragons were generally evil and destructive. Every country has them in its mythology.”  Is it possible that they are extinct because they were terrifying and could have been hunted for food? We have caused the extinction of many animals—why not dinosaurs?

            I have run out of space and still have much to say about fossils and the large beasts that produced them; so we will continue this discussion next month.

In Christ,

Pastor Portier

Lesson #37 Fossils

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute
Lesson #37
Welcome back class.  Please get settled in and take a hold of your pick point rock hammer and hand lens so that we can continue our study in geology.  So let’s have a look at fossils. We will examine how they form and what we can learn from them.  This is a massive data base of collected evidence consisting of millions if not billions of specimens that are clear evidence of the existence of hundreds of thousands of species of plant and animal life, many of which have become extinct, while an even greater number still exist today.

So how do we get fossils?  Most fossils are from the rapid burial of a plant or animal which  protects the specimen from disturbance.  Oxygen deprivation limits the decay and biological activity such as things feeding on the carcass. The sediment layer must remain intact long enough for the buried creature to be replaced over time by minerals in the sediment. It is also important that the biomass of the creature not be exposed to excessive heating or compression because this would destroy the structure needed to form a fossil.  That all being said, one can see how a world-wide flood would provide nicely for a vast collection of fossilized plant and animal life.  Or in the words of Ken Ham, "billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth."

When we speak of fossils, many assume and assert that vast amounts of time are required but science has proven other wise.  Decades or centuries are all that is required.  There are images online of common everyday items that have become “fossilized.”  (Simply Google for images of fossilized ham, hat, car keys, bells, or even a clock mechanism!) Now some of these things are not fossilized but they are encased in solid rock that did not take millennia to form.  In 1994, scientists studied the fossils of shrimp that were in the stomach of a fossil fish found in Brazil.  They found a way to create similar fossil shrimp in only 4-6 weeks.  The article reporting this research said that in only a few weeks, they managed to mimic a mineralization process that takes millions of years in nature.  If they can do it, why can't nature do it?  The point is that permineralization (the process that creates fossils) does not need millions or even thousands of years to happen.

Most of the fossil evidence for life appears in the Cambrian explosion.  It is called this because life suddenly appears in the Cambrian layer which is dated at 580 million years by popular science. (see Lessons 21 to 24 if you want to review the topic of dating methods.)  It follows clear logic that if the world were covered by a catastrophic world-wide flood, you would expect to find   "billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth." Possible connection with the Cambrian explosion???  Makes sense to me.

  This mass of evidence for millions of species is lacking something if we all have a common ancestor.  This tree has no trunk and not branches but only leaves.  If you have evidence in the fossil record of hundreds of thousands of species and not a single example of a theoretical ancestor, would it not make more sense to conclude that all the variety in life that we see in the fossil record and current life is the result of instant appearance on the earth?  This is what you would expect to find if a Creator spoke all that is into existence.

I would like to wrap up our fossil discussion with one more point that this mass of evidence makes very clear.  While many of the species in the fossil record are extinct, the bulk of them are not.  The fossils are given different names, but they are identical in every way to their modern counterpart. Here is a brief summary of fossils that have living counterparts today: Vertebrates contain living fossils in all three fish groups, both major amphibian groups, all four reptile orders, most bird orders, and all three mammal types.  Five-sided animals contain living fossils in all five major classes. Exoskeleton species contain living fossils in all major aquatic arthropods, all major insect orders, all major arachnid orders, and all major myriapod (centipede and millipede) classes. Shellfish contain living fossils in all five major shellfish classes. The same can be said for both major classes of Segmented worms, all three classes of Sponges and both hard and soft Corals. I only went through that long list to point out that we have fossils of every major class of living thing today.  This shows that the attempt in the scientific community to separate the living creatures from their fossilized ancestors is designed to foster an evolutionary view of life.  However a biblical world view would expect to see evidence of all current life to be reflected in the fossil record with all things looking the same as when they were created 6000 years ago.

SMBI #36 Ancient Lakes

Smoky Mountain Bible Institute

Lesson #36

            Welcome back class.  Please get settled in and take a hold of your pick point rock hammer and hand lens so that we can continue our study in geology.  We have a lot to cover this month as we continue our discussion of the Ice Age and its effect on the earth. 

           

            First, let’s examine the question of areas that are now desserts like the Sahara and the Middle East, which were once very green, but are now very dry, and how that might be connected with large inland lakes that no longer exist.  Shorelines and evidence of sea life confirm they once existed in these areas.  The North American continent had many of these massive lakes after the flood.  They even have names such as Lake Agassiz which once covered the center third of Canada.  Lakes Missoula and Bonneville once covered vast regions of the western US.  The Great Salt Lake is a mere puddle compared to the massive lake of which it was once a part.  These are just a few examples. If you start to do some research on prehistoric lakes and land elevations below sea level, you will find dozens of lakes, and sea salt being collected in areas hundreds of feet below sea level in places where there is no historical record of water.  Sea salt hundreds of miles from the nearest sea makes clear there was once a sea there.  The Ice Age played a major role in filling some of these lakes.  How did these lakes drain? Some were drained quickly cutting massive canyons, and others just evaporated over hundreds or even thousands of years.  We know this for two reasons. First, there is evidence of animal and human life on the ancient deserted shore lines of many of these lakes.  Secondly, there is evidence that the main reason the vast desert regions of the earth are so dry is because of sustained dry weather cycles.  Being cut off from the ocean, these lakes could not sustain their water cycle and when the water evaporated, it was carried to other places.  After hundreds of thousands of years, these lakes became dried-up basins that we know today by such names as Death Valley or the Great Rift Valley.      

            Another strange phenomenon to consider in conjunction with the Ice Age is mass extinctions of disharmonious associations, like wooly mammoths, hippos, musk ox, reindeer, giant beavers, saber tooth cats, all living in places like Great Briton.  All became extinct over a relatively short time, a few hundred years or so.  A mixture of harsh weather conditions and lack of food would logically follow during a 500-year or so cooling, ice-expanding part of the Ice Age.  Many of the animal kinds that got off the ark probably did not make it past the first thousand years.

            Ice cores are used to argue for an old earth.  Many measurements of these cores are used to calculate old ages like mass spectrometry, electroconductivity, deuterium excess, and CO2 levels.  These dating methods all have unprovable assumptions just like Carbon 14 and other dating methods discussed last year.  Ice cores have rings and it is still argued by many that each ring signifies a layer of summer ice followed by winter snow.  When you examine the numbers from this method, you can see why all old earth ice core dating methods "melt down".  One of the deepest ice core samples ever drilled was 10,000 feet deep and contained 135,000 layers.  Well, if you need millions of years, that won't do you much good. That is why they use chemical methods to make the deepest layers microscopically thin. 

            Here is a little better way to calculate the ice core data. Ice and snow layers are not representing years but are warm and cold indicators.  Therefore, you can get multiple layers depending on the weather patterns. We have a great example in two P-38 aircraft that crash-landed on the ice cap in 1942.  They were both recovered in 1990 and after 48 years the planes were 263 feet deep under hundreds of layers of ice and snow.  At an average cover rate of 5.5 feet per year, the ice cap is only about 1824 years old using our oldest ice core of 10,000 feet.  However, we must account for the lower layers being compressed at some reasonable rate making them thinner.  Using this data makes it very easy to estimate the current ice cap to be approximately 3600 to 4300 years old.

            I thought I would spend a little time on global warming—so here it is.  Weather comes in cycles, sometimes warm and sometimes cold.  In my lifetime, we saw cooling in the 1970's and warming in the 1990's. We should be good stewards of our environment, but I think it is a little misguided to think we have any great influence or control over our weather patterns.  That wraps up the Ice Age.  Next month: Fossils.

In Christ

Pastor Portier