Dialogue – The Hoax of Geology Part 3

This post is a continuation of an ongoing series. For maximum benefit, please read the previous posts.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

The fossil evidence clearly shows that there were dinosaurs and all kinds of other creatures which lived before people (since no fossils of contemporary creatures are found in the same strata). These animals lived and died and fought and ate and bred - we even find dinosaur nesting sites. Did all that happen in the space of twelve hours?

Of course not! All life forms were created simultaneously during ma’aseh bereishis. Dinosaurs eventually went extinct perhaps because they were hunted by humans, perhaps because of the flood, perhaps for a thousand reasons. Who knows? Why did the Wooly Mammoth go extinct? Why did the Saber Tooth tiger go extinct? Why do hundreds of species continue to go extinct right now, in modern times? Over 750 species went extinct in the past 500 years alone. Species go extinct; that’s a fact of life.

As far as Rabbi Slifkin’s claim that "no fossils of contemporary creatures are found in the same strata [as dinosaur bones]", this is just plain false. More on this shortly.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

And it's not as though there was only one period of prehistoric creatures. The fossil record shows beyond doubt that there were numerous distinct periods. The therapsids lived before the dinosaurs; the dinosaurs lived before the mammoths. And even amongst dinosaurs, different layers of rock reveal distinct eras. Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Allosaurus are never found in the same layers of rock as Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, and Velociraptor. The conclusion is that each existed in a different period; the former lived in a period which has been termed the Jurassic, while the latter lived in the Cretaceous period. This is not part of some evil conspiracy by scientists, nor the result of mistakes on their part.

True. What it is the result of is Rabbi Slifkin’s unmitigated lack of knowledge regarding the facts of geology as delineated in the professional literature. He believes that "the fossil record shows beyond doubt" that therapsids lived before dinosaurs who lived before the mammoths etc. But this is the furthest thing from the truth. Here are the facts.

The age of sedimentary beds is established by evolutionary geologists based solely on the fossils found therein.

1) If the relative position of the strata in question does not conform to the dictates of evolution, it is ignored.

2) If the composition of the strata in question does not conform to evolutionary theory, it too is ignored.

3) If fossils from disparate time-periods (according to evolutionary theory) are found in the same beds, the beds are arbitrarily cut up, horizontally, and sometimes vertically(!), in order to conform to the theory. Thus, the evolutionists can never lose!

This is a lot to digest (or believe) for the uninitiated layman so let’s tackle each of the three above-noted assertions, one at a time.

Assertion #1: If the relative position of the strata in question does not conform to the dictates of evolution, it is ignored.

Before we turn to the appropriate scientific literature for clarification, the following question should be broached. Rabbi Slifkin maintains that the science of geology has shown us that "the same strata of rock are always found in the same order of superposition, and they always contain the same fossils". So, if it could be shown that, say, a Devonian limestone bed was covered over by a Cretaceous bed (older covering younger in evolutionary terms), would this not constitute a solid refutation to the theory? According to Rabbi Slifkin’s assertion regarding the facts of geology, the answer should be yes; kal va’chomer if this inverted superposition occurred on a regular basis. Unfortunately, according to evolutionists the answer is a resounding no!

Whenever the relative position of the beds does not conform to the theory of evolution, evolutionary geologists invoke a nebulous mechanism referred to as "overthrusting". This refers to the wild assumption that huge geographical surfaces were somehow inverted or otherwise displaced and now lie uniformly atop younger sedimentary layers. These surfaces are referred to as thrust-planes, or thrust faults, and are identified solely by the type of fossils imbedded in them. Geologists have no idea what type of mechanism could possibly be responsible for the displacement of hundreds of thousands of square miles of mineralized sediment. What compounds the outlandishness of this suppostion is that often-times the thrust-planes lie in prefect uniformity with the layers below, without any evidence of displacement or inversion! To be sure, never has such a process been witnessed in the history of recorded Geology.

In the following post, we will, bi’ezras Hashem, investigate the scientific literature which pertains to Assertion #1.

To be continued shortly b'H…