Updated on January 31, 2016
Rock Time – Part 2
If you ask an evolutionist for fossil evidence of evolution, in one way or another, they will likely point you to the geologic timescale or geologic column. They try to use the geologic column to illustrate evolution of simple animals becoming more complex and diverse over time. Evolutionists say that the lower layers of rock on earth are older, and the ones above them are more recent, which definitely has a nugget of truth to it. Geologists who believe in the Biblical 6,000-year age of the earth would agree with most of the relative order of how the rock layers were laid down (more on relative dating here). It’s the long ages that are tacked onto those orders where we differ with the evolutionist.
Last week, we explored some of the usefulness of the geologic timescale or geologic column. In the most basic sense, it’s a handy tool for organizing and classifying rock layers (read the previous article here). An evolutionist will point out that lower layers, like the Cambrian, have a lot of fossil sea creatures like trilobites, and the higher you go on the geologic column, the more diverse life forms you find, including swamp creatures followed by land animals, like dinosaurs, and finally mammals. When you see a drawing lining up evolutionary progression from pond scum to people, it’s important to remember that :
1) It is art made by a person – we don’t find this complete progression of the geologic column between rock layers in any single location
2) The artist picks and chooses fossils from each section of the column. In reality, there is a wide range of fossils in each layer. Many fossils are found in layers classified in places throughout the geologic column.
Evolutionists interpret rock layers in the geologic column as an evolutionary progression through long periods of time. Instead, young earth creationists like me interpret it as a progression of time starting with creation (about 6,000 years ago), including huge sections laid down in various stages of the global flood (roughly 4,500 years ago), and ending with “after-shocks” as earth recovered from the flood, leading up to our present day. The geologic timescale is not a progression of life, but a progression of death and destruction. It’s not from chaos to order, but from original order to chaotic destruction.
Here’s a very simplified creationist interpretation of the geologic timescale that isn’t perfect, but makes a nice rule-of-thumb: Pre-Cambrian is creation rock, Paleozoic and Mesozoic are flood layers, and Cenozoic comes from events at the end of and/or after the flood. Most Pre-Cambrian rock was likely made during creation week, when God made the dry land on day 3. The flood would have scraped the continents clean, making the Cambrian rock layers some of the first flood deposits. As the flood progressively became deeper when the rain fell and the “fountains of the great deep” welled up underwater volcanoes, the first mud layers to bury fossils would have been in the seas, gradually working its way onto land. That’s why we find swamp creatures next, and land animals higher up into the Mesozoic.
While there are a number of imperfections and flaws in the geologic timescale/column as the evolutionists interpret it, these fit well into the young-earth creationist interpretation. For example, in some places Ordovician layers have been found below Cambrian, when typically they are found with Cambrian on the bottom. This is from a dramatic phenomenon called “overthrusting”, when the higher layers actually slide below a lower one. That would take some huge earthquakes! It makes sense if this happened during the flood, while both layers were still soft, and when catastrophic earthquakes were very common. In other places, like in the Grand Canyon, whole sections of the geologic column are missing. That would make sense during the flood, when rock layers covered large sections, but didn’t necessarily lay down all the same layers in all the same places – various tsunami-like tides would have made variations. The geologic timescale is not inherently evil or anti-creationist, but merely a tool of classification for bringing order in scientific observations. A tool that can be interpreted different ways.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, 2016
Updated on April 11, 2018
Dinosaur Wars – Creation Clues for Kids Vol. 5 No. 1
Dinosaur Drama
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be an explorer, discovering new places or buried secrets of the past? In paleontology, scientists dig up and study fossil remains of dinosaurs and many other types of creatures. During the 1800s, discoveries of different types of dinosaur bones in North America started to make fossils a very exciting part of science. American dinosaur discovery became extra exciting when two of the leading paleontologists of the time ended up working against each other in a bitter, head-to-head competition, sometimes called “Dinosaur Wars”. It was Edward Cope vs. Othniel Marsh. Things got pretty crazy, sometimes even to the point of blowing up a dinosaur dig site, stealing fossils, or giving the same dinosaur two or three different names.
Most fossils found in rock layers, like dinosaur fossils, are from creatures that were buried by Noah’s flood, just about 4,500 years ago. While many people may say that dinosaurs are “millions of years old”, there are a lot of problems with this – for example, blood cells that cannot last anywhere near that long have been found in dinosaur bones. Most importantly, the Bible says that ALL land animals (including dinosaurs) were created on the same day as people
Mr. Cope
Edward Cope grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where his family had plenty of property and large gardens to explore. He loved animals and was good at art from an early age. Edward was a little bit of a spoiled kid, who sometimes let his temper get the best of him. He had to quit formal school fairly early, but had a passion for science. Edward loved writing and got his first science paper published when he was just 18 years old. Even though he only lived to the age of 56, he published over 1,400 papers, which is more than most other scientists throughout history. Edward wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty digging up fossils. He also made friends with Ferdinand Hayden, who explored the Rocky Mountains and helped make Yellowstone a National Park. Knowing Hayden, who had traveled all over western America, would later help Edward find dinosaur fossils
Marsh Man
Othniel Marsh (his name is pronounced “Awth-knee-ull”) grew up on a farm in New York state where he loved to explore and learned about nature. Seeing how much Othniel loved science, his millionare uncle took him to the city and sent him to all the best colleges. He made friends with John Powell, who explored the Grand Canyon by traveling down the Colorado River. Knowing Powell would later help him find dinosaur fossils. Othniel didn’t really go out on digs much, instead he usually hired people to dig the fossils for him.
Fossil Fail
Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh were friends when they first met. Later, things got a little tense between them, but the first real explosion happened over a plesiosaur (water creature) fossil. Cope had a bunch of vertebrae from a plesiosaur that he was putting together when he accidentally put the tail where the head should be and the head where the tail should be. Putting the bones of an animal back together is no easy thing to do – it’s a lot like a puzzle, and just like you can sometimes “make” the wrong puzzle piece fit, you can also “make” a fossil fit in the wrong place. Marsh pointed out Cope’s mistake, making sure people knew that Cope was wrong. Cope wasn’t too happy about this and the great “Dinosaur Wars” between them started.
Vertebrae (said like “ver-ta-bray”) are the sections of bone that stack together to make your spine, supporting your back, head, and most everything else in the body. They also let us bend and twist. If you run your fingers along your spine, you can feel bumps that are your vertebrae.
Dinosaur Wars
Cope and Marsh really didn’t like each other from that point until they died, bitterly and brutally racing to discover more fossils than the other. Their teams spied on each other, stole fossils, and accused the other person of stealing fossils. Sometimes one team would even use dynamite to blow up a dig site and destroy the fossils before the other team could get to them. In the end, they both destroyed their own lives. Though they didn’t always do everything right and scientifically, their “Dinosaur War” helped jump-start paleontology in North America.
“Brontosaurus” is not considered a real dinosaur name anymore. In the rush to find & name dinosaurs, Marsh put the head of a “Camarasaurus” on the bones of a creature he had already named “Apatoaurus”. These are all different types of long-necked, heavy-footed dinosaurs like “Behemoth” mentioned in Job 40 in the Bible
Sandpaper
Are there times when you find it difficult to get along with another person? There will be people who grind on your nerves and say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But, just like sandpaper can grind off the rough, splinted parts of wood, you can let those “sandpaper” people grind away your rough areas. Don’t get caught up in always “getting back” at people, like Cope & Marsh. The Bible says that “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” – Proverbs 15:1
For Your Information . . .
CCK is written by Sara J. Bruegel. Many thanks to Eva Haley (age 12) for her cartoon. If you have a question, comment, cartoon, or drawing about God’s creation that you would like to share, please write to Sara at: CreationCluesForKids@gmail.com and it may get published in the next issue. Also, you can visit www.CreationClues.com to read a new clue each week or read & print past issues of CCK.
We encourage you to print as many copies as you like for yourself, friends, church, private school, ministry, or other groups, free of charge. All we ask is that you respect the author’s copyright by 1)giving full credit to the author, 2)DO NOT charge for this newsletter or in any way try to make money off of Creation Clues for Kids, and 3) DO NOT change any of the content
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, January2016
This is the January – March Issue – Vol. 5 No. 1
Print Friendly Version Here: CCK Vol 5 No 1 – Jan – Mar 2016
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Posted on January 29, 2016
Rock Time – Part 1
“May I borrow someone’s binder for a moment?” my geology professor asked in class one day. I offered mine. He started flipping through to find our next assignment . . . and continued to flip through the thick section of papers. “Sara, did you do all of these geologic timescale copies?!” I nodded, shyly. ”Man! No wonder she had it memorized so fast!” He declared. I loved geology class, and learning the geologic timescale was one of my favorite parts of class. I had almost jumped out of my chair from excitement on the first day of class when our professor announced that we would all be expected to memorize the names and order of all the major divisions of the geologic timescale (also called the geologic column) that semester. My classmates were not as thrilled. I was already familiar with the timescale from some of my “just for fun” reading before college, and I knew that having the timescale memorized would be very useful for my future.
The geologic timescale, or geologic column, is basically a chart used to divide and classify rock layers and the fossils found in them. If you ask an evolutionist what the scientific evidence for evolution or for the age of the earth being “4.6 billion” years old, they will probably point to the geologic column and radioisotope rock dating. Geologists say that there are two basic types of rock dating used to figure out the age of a particular rock or fossil:
1) “Relative dating” , that doesn’t give you a number, but just tells you which rocks are older and which are younger (read more about how this is done in Logical Layering), and
2) “Absolute dating”, which is where numbers like “4.6 billion” or “65 million” come from, using radioisotope decay. (read previous articles about radioisotope dating here).
The geologic column was made before radioisotope dating came along, so it is all based on relative dating and is quite useful. Sometimes you will see numbers added to the chart, showing how many millions of years each Eon, Era, Period, etc. lasted, but these could be just as easily switched to say things like “started 4,500 years ago, lasted 1 year”.
While there are a lot of big problems with “absolute dating” and the millions of years that they supposedly find, the geologic column and other relative dating tools are very useful in geology, regardless of whether a person thinks that earth is billions of years old or just a few thousand years old, like the Bible says. A biologist doesn’t have to believe that all life evolved from a common ancestor to use the orderly naming system invented by Carolus Linnaeus, a Christian who was interested in figuring out what exactly the Biblical “kinds” were. The geologic column is just a classification system for rocks and fossils. Instead of seeing the geologic column as sections of long time periods, I see them as groupings of similar rocks. Rather than millions of years, I understand each section as being deposited during different stages of the Biblical global flood, storms after the flood, or rock made during creation week.
While working in the field or traveling, I usually try to look up the area on a map and figure out how the rocks and fossils I might see are classified in the geologic column. For example, when traveling to Branson, Missouri last summer, I knew that most of the rocks I would probably see a lot of dolomite rock classified as Ordovician in the geologic column. The fossils I’d be most likely to find would be crinoids (a type of sea-lily), but not dinosaur fossils. Caves are also frequently found in this area. People in the oil field and all kinds of mining are able to use the column to help them find what they’re looking for based off where similar deposits are found. Next week, find out more about why the geologic column is useful for young-earth creationists and what some of its flaws are.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, January 2016
Posted on January 22, 2016
Be Still Already!
You’re running late. Someone forgot to send that thing you need to meet that deadline tomorrow, so you’re scrambling to figure out something else. Things are tense at work. Bedtime is not happening like it should for these kids. You’re favorite sweater shrank in the wash. You’re exhausted. Your work space and car look like they’ve been ransacked. Those dear people who know exactly what NOT to say and just the WRONG time to say it decide they need to enlighten you with their wisdom. Even worse, you let someone you love down, hurt a friend with your words, and forgot to pray. You did some hurtful things out of selfish fear or pride. Things are falling apart. You made a really big mess – of everything.
In our broken, sin-filled world, life gets messy some days. You look at the seemingly perfect, godly lives of “Sweet Sister Sally” and “Bold Brother Ben”, wondering what’s wrong with you and why you can’t become quite like them. Then, you look at pictures of starving children in Africa and feel guilty for thinking you have a lot of problems to solve. The real problem is that we humans tend to focus way too much on comparing everything and everyone. In comparing people, lives, things, values, character traits, etc., we tend to get caught up focusing on PEOPLE – both ourselves and other people – which is the first major mistake of human history. We are created in the image of God, made to live with Him and love Him. Our Creator God and His glory are meant to be our forever firm focus – not other people or ourselves!
When Adam and Eve originally chose to disobey God in the Garden of Eden, they were choosing to focus on their selves. Satan first questioned their trust in God, “hath God said . . . “ He questioned our Lord’s motives (Gen. 3:5), trying to convince Eve and Adam that maybe God didn’t really have their best interest in mind. Satan started by insulting the character and Word of God, then turning the focus on the created people (Eve and Adam) instead of the Person of the Lord. When we forget just Who God is and what His character is like (how He is love and life), we tend to trust Him less, which leads to sin.
When life gets crazy and problems come, in the midst of it all, remember to be still and turn your focus on WHO our Creator God is, instead of whatever the problems are or how you (or other people) are going to fix them. Personally, I tend to be task-oriented and want to solve problems. It’s easy for me to get caught up in all the “doing”. But it’s not about what we do: it’s all about WHO God is! So the next time you start to get anxious because the wedding is tomorrow and the cows are in the corn, remember to think about Who God is and how He has worked throughout history. He is faithful and trustworthy.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, January 2016
Updated on January 15, 2016
Life’s First Cry
I tried to breath as quietly as possibly, as mixed anticipation and excitement in the room grew. Suddenly, amid the other sounds of labor and childbirth, the first cry of a little baby reached my ears. Hearing that first cry of my newborn niece, I was overwhelmed with relief and joy! It meant that after a long night of labor in a snow storm, the baby we’d been waiting for was here and breathing like she should. It was an irreplaceable moment featuring a breath-taking (or rather, breath-GIVING) symphony of miracles. When my niece was born, took her first breath and let out a cry, her whole world completely changed, including vital functions of the body.
Think about it: this baby lived for about nine months completely surrounded by water. She didn’t breathe until after exiting her first water home. This baby was definitely not anything like a fish at any stage – she was fully human all along. Today, she uses her lungs to take in oxygen, and her heart pumps blood that circulates that oxygen all through her tiny body. Before she was born and filled her lungs with that first breath, oxygen came to the baby through her umbilical cord that was attached to her placenta. I like to think of the placenta as the baby’s “life box”, filtering everything the baby needs from her mother and customizing it to her own little body.
Because oxygen came to the baby through her belly button instead of her lungs, her circulatory system was wired differently before birth. One of these differences is a special bypass around the liver to the heart so that oxygen can have a direct route, getting to the baby’s brain quickly and efficiently to help her develop. You may have heard of a baby who had a “hole in his heart” when born. I wondered, “how did a hole get there?!” the first time I heard of something like that happening. Actually, in the womb, babies are supposed to have a special trap-door hole between the right and left side of the heart because blood flows through the heart differently before they’re born. When my little baby niece started to breath, it sent chemical signals through her body that told that trap door to close. A few days after her birth, that trap door is sealed and her heart works normally for life outside.
Yes, that first breath truly is a miracle. It completely changes the way blood flows through the baby’s body – including her tiny heart. It’s easy to worry about the endless list of things that could go wrong throughout pregnancy, birth, and infancy. But the fact that anyone ever simply lives through all of that is a miracle of the continual grace of God. The day after my precious little niece was born, a few tears began to well up in my eyes during one of the songs:
“No guilt in life, no fear in death, This is the power of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man, Can ever pluck me from His hand:
Till He returns or calls me home, Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand”~ In Christ Alone, by Stuart Townend & Keith Getty~
It was beautiful – but not quite accurate. Yes, the first breath is a phenomenal, life-changing event, but I know that my God is in control long before that first cry and for eternity after that final breath. Our Creator is not some distant, mystical force who created us and left us here to fend for ourselves. He beautifully orchestrates the life of every person, long before birth. He is good, and I know that I can simply trust and follow Him every step of the way.
“For Thou hast possessed my reins: Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well” ~ Palm 139:13-14
“Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion, and power, both now and forever. Amen” ~ Jude 24-25
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, January 2016
Reference:
- “The Miracle of Birth”. Episode 1, Made in His Image video series. Institute for Creation Research. 2015. Dallas, Texas, USA. http://www.icr.org/
https://creationsuperstore.com/product/made-in-his-image-dvd-series-icr/
Updated on January 8, 2016
Celebrating a Scientist who Rocked Our World
Beautiful, delicious layer cakes are often used in weddings, birthdays, and other celebrations. Monday, January 11, 2016 marks the 378th birthday of Nicolaus Steno, who was a brilliant creation scientist of history, best known for his groundbreaking work in the field of geology. While you could eat a piece of layer cake in his honor, only do so to help you celebrate his work with rock layers, as he used the Bible to interpret earth history. Steno is considered the founding father of stratigraphy, which is the branch of geology that studies the relative positions of rock layers and how they were laid down. Born in Denmark in 1638, Nicolaus Steno was originally named “Niels Stensen” but changed his name after moving to Italy for his profession as a medical doctor. He was first known for his scientific research in anatomy, which later led to his interest in paleontology while he was comparing the teeth of modern sharks with local fossil shark teeth.
During his time, it was fairly common to believe that fossils were not really the remains of once-living creatures, but naturally occurring things in the earth that just looked like animals and shells. Many Christians of the time thought that God created the rocks with the fossils in them, not that they were buried in the flood. Steno was a Catholic priest who took his beliefs in the Bible very seriously. He believed that the Bible is key to understanding nature – especially earth history. Steno noticed that there were fossil sea creatures on mountain tops and concluded that they are the result of Noah’s flood, which he determined must have been about four thousand years ago, in agreement with the Bible.
While his ideas seemed quite revolutionary, he said that his ideas were not really new, but based on Scripture as well as what he saw in nature. Steno noticed that the rock layers seemed to show that the entire earth had been covered in water twice, which he concluded happened first during the original creation week and second during Noah’s flood. Speaking of creation week, he said:
“In regard to the first aspect of the earth Scripture and Nature agree in this, that all things were covered with water; how and when this aspect began, and how long it lasted, Nature says not, Scripture relates” – Pg. 263, Steno’s Prodromus (Winters translation)
Steno realized that ages cannot really be determined from just the rocks, but that we also need to know a little bit about history to interpret the rocks – history based first on the Bible. Though most modern Biblical young-earth geologists would have slightly different interpretations on exactly where the specific strata happened in earth history (e.g, creation rock, flood rock, or post-flood formation), the basic principles are the same. This great geologist noticed that most fossil-bearing rock was laid down during the global flood:
“The formation of hills from the deposit of the sea bears witness to the fact that the sea was higher than it is now . . . Nature does not oppose Scripture in determining how great that height of the sea was, seeing that . . . definite traces of the sea remain in places raised several hundreds of feet above the level of the sea” – Pg. 265, Steno’s Prodromus (Winters translation)
He also thought of many of the physical mechanisms involved in the flood, like underground water and rising of the ocean floors. Nicolaus Steno was truly scientist ahead of his time, studying anatomy, fossils, strata, crystals, and the Bible. In historical science, he is best known for his principles of stratigraphy, explaining the logic of how layers are laid down in order (read more about how some of his principles work here). He completed his work before the times of Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, or James Hutton who pushed the ideas of old-earth (millions of years) and evolution.
Though Steno was a Biblical creationist who believed that science confirmed the age of Earth is about six thousand years, much of his work has been twisted and re-interpreted as supporting old-earth and evolution. His original principles did not require million of years, but only talked about relative sequence of the rocks and how they correlate across the globe. The points where Steno’s principles have been stretched to sound like they require long ages have actually been disproved with lab experiments in recent years. While this scientist is frequently mentioned in geology classes, rarely is the important influence that his faith had on his work mentioned. Nicolaus Steno was a man of God who saw science as a way to glorify his Creator.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, January 2016
References
- “Geological pioneer Nicolaus Steno was a Biblical Creationist” , by Tas Walker. Journal of Creation 22(1):pp 93–98. April 2008. Creation Ministries International. Last accessed Jan. 8, 2016. http://creation.com/geological-pioneer-nicolaus-steno-was-a-biblical-creationist
- “Google Doodle Celebrates Creation Geologist”, by Brian Thomas. January 19, 2012. Instituge for Creation Research. Last accessed Janurya 8, 2016. http://www.icr.org/article/google-doodle-celebrates-creation-geologist
- “Great Creation Scientists: Nicolas Steno (1638–1686); Founder of Modern Geology and Young-Earth Creationist”, by Ann Lamont. Originally published in Creation 23, no 4 (September 2002): 47-49. Answers in Genesis. Last accessed January 8, 2016. https://answersingenesis.org/creation-scientists/great-creation-scientists-nicolas-steno/
Posted on January 1, 2016
Logical Layering
The shadow of the Grand Canyon wall offered a little protection from the heat of the late summer afternoon heat as I gazed up toward the rim, though at times it was too high to see anything of the world above the Canyon. Splashes of the cold, chocolate-milk colored water from the river felt refreshing. Tight rows of tall, ebony-black columns stood majestically in the water, surrounding our rafts. Here in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I marveled at the rock layers I saw around me – the black, vertical columns followed by the colorful horizontal layers of reds, grays, and browns. Seeing the cross-sections of “dissected” rock layers made me think back on one of my favorite lab activities during a college geology course: stratigraphic sequencing.
Stratigraphy is simply the scientific study of rock layers and how they relate to each other. In stratigraphy, geologists want to figure out which layers came first, what happened to them, and how they correspond in different places around the world. Stratigraphic sequencing is when a geologist looks at a cross-section of layers and creates a list of geologic events, in order, that have happened to this area. It’s a lot like working a puzzle, because most of the “Principles of Geology” are based simply on logic. The first three “Principles” were created by Nicolaus Steno in the 1600s, a man who believed that what he found in the rock layers lined up with Biblical young-earth creation. Here’s an example of how stratigraphic sequencing works
The diagram below shows a cross-section of what the layers look like underground (below the stick figure). From this diagram, we can basically figure out what has happened to the rocks our little guy is standing on. Each of the gray, tan, or dark blue layers represent rock layers, while the black blob represents magma (same thing as lava, only underground instead of above ground) that has squeezed up through some of the rock layers.
The “principle of superposition” in geology says that in an undisturbed rock sequence, older layers will be closer to the bottom, while newer layers will be on top. The first thing that had to happen to our rock layers in the diagram is that (1) our lowest four layers (tan, light gray, dark gray, and blue) were laid down. These layers are curved, but the “principle of original horizontality” says that layers were originally laid down horizontally flat, because of Earth’s gravity. You can see this happening on a small scale with sand or pebbles at the bottom of a fish tank –they form a flat layer, level with the ground. So while these layers in our picture were originally flat, they were later bent (2). Bent layers are found all around the world and are excellent evidence for the young earth (find a simple explanation about bent layers and the flood in this video ).
After the layers were bent, they were leveled off by an “unconformity”, or break between layers (3), and the top of one of our curves got cut off. Things calmed down a little and two more layers (tan and light gray) were deposited (4). Notice how our big black blob of magma cuts through all of the bent layers and the two flat layers. It must have come after all of those layers were deposited because you can’t cut through something that isn’t there! The little hairs around the magma blob show that it came after all the layers at least up until (4) because those little hairs mean that the rock around it has been partly melted by the heat of the magma. Since we have slanted layers next, then level ground on top, something really interesting must have happened. The ground must have slanted to the right (6), and then layers were deposited (7) before the ground slanted back to the left. It’s a lot like a logic puzzle.
Stratigraphic sequencing like this is a good example of relative rock dating. A lot of the relative dating in geology can be very useful in understanding where to find resources, like coal or oil, as well as what all was happening to the earth during and after the flood. “Absolute dating” , like radioisotope dating, is where people come up with unreliable, anti-Biblical “ages” of the earth (read more about radioisotope dating here). Nicolaus Steno, who wrote these principles of geology was an incredible scientist, considered to be one of the founding fathers of geology, and he also believed in the Biblical account of creation and the flood, just a few thousand years ago. Next week, we will learn more about this incredible scientist and what he thought of the Bible and science.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, 2016
Updated on December 27, 2015
Measuring Snow – Taking a Core Sample Video
How to measure snow by taking a core sample. Read Sara’s past articles about snow measuring here
Full transcript of video:
Hello, I’m Sara Bruegel writer of Creation Clues, and today I’m going to show you how to take a core sample of snow or ice. I have the outer cylinder of my rain gauge, my “snow swatter”, and a ruler for measuring the snow depth. So come on and let’s go ahead and take a look at it . . .
Okay, so as we come closer here, this is my snow board that we have. It’s underneath all the snow, so you can’t really see it, so I have this stake to mark where it is. We’re going to put this cylinder, the outer cylinder, upside-down on the board – make sure it’s down all the way, so it gets in all the snow, and we use the snow swatter here (or you can use your glove) to clear away any of the snow until we get to the snow board down there. The “snow swatter” helps us get directly underneath it and flip it. Now we have our perfect core sample in there, and this is our snow board underneath it. We’re going to clear away some of the rest of the snow and measure how much snow is on top of our board. Looks like about 2.4 inches right now.
Now that we have our core sample measured, and the depth of the snow on the snowboard, we’re going to clear away the rest of the snow from the snow board so that we can start over with a fresh sample tomorrow. Notice the snowboard is white – it matches the snow. We want it to match the snow so that it . . . reflects the sun’s heat in the same way that the snow around it does. So we’re going to move the snow board to a fresh location, right there, brush off the snow, and then stake it. And we’re done! We’re going to take this in and we’ll melt it.
Now that we have our core sample of the snow, we’re going to melt it down to figure out what the “snow-water-equivalent” is – meaning how much water is in this snow. To do that, we’re going to melt it with hot water, just from the tap. We need to measure how much water – how much hot water – we’re adding. Right here, we have – reading from the bottom of the meniscus (that’s that curve at the bottom) – we have point six-three (0.63”) inches of hot water we’re adding. So we just pour it in and shake it around to start melting the snow. It still has a ways to go in melting, so we’re going to add some more. But, first we need to write down [what] how much we added.
By the time we actually got the snow melted, we ended up having to add exactly two inches of warm water, so we’ll subtract that out of the water equivalent measurement we get out of this. To measure the water equivalent, we’re going to take the funnel from the rain gauge and the inner cylinder, and we’re going to start measuring a little bit at a time. There’s point nine-four (0.94”). We’re going to dump that out and take note of it, and we just keep on measuring a little bit a time.
Okay, so after adding together all those measurements, we got, and subtracting how much hot water we added (2 inches), we measured two point seven-eight (2.78”) and minus the two inches we added, we have point seven-eight (0.78”) inches. So that’s point seven-eight (0.78) inches worth of water out of that much snow that we found in the core sample. That’s how you take a core sample, and we also caught, in the outer cylinder, we caught snow just regularly, and got point eight-four (0.84) inches worth of snow-water equivalent. So comparing that to our point seven-eight (0.78”), they’re pretty close. That means we got a pretty accurate measurement.
Here are the tools we use to measure snow. We have the official CoCoRaHS [stands for “Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network] rain gauge. Now this is just like the rain gauge used by the National Weather Service, only it’s half the size and is made out of clear plastic instead of metal. The clear plastic helps us see through it. Mine is pretty old, so the plastic is pretty foggy and beaten-up. It has three components: there’s the funnel, it fits on the top, and the outer cylinder and inner cylinder. The inner cylinder precisely measures how much rain we got in hundredths of an inch. The whole inner cylinder can only hold one inch, and any rain over that spills out into the outer cylinder the bigger part there.
When we measure snow, we just put the outer cylinder outside so that the inner cylinder, that’s smaller, and the funnel, don’t get clogged up with all the snow. And then we bring it in and melt the snow to figure out how much water we got out of it. You also are going to want a snow swatter, which is a cheap flyswatter basically, that you use to move the snow, and a ruler to measure how deep the snow is in different places.
Now that we measured the core sample and measured what was in the rain gauge, we’re going ot put the outer cylinder back outside, here on the bracket so that we can measure any new snowfall that comes in here, and we do the same thing measuring that. Sometimes the snow gets piled up all around the edges, and the way we fix that is we just hit it with our flyswatter and what falls in we measure, what falls out we don’t.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, December 2015
Posted on December 25, 2015
Faithful Observations
Thud! A soft noise sounded as I gently dropped another heavy geology textbook on the stack of books I was using for reference. Satisfied with the quiet, refreshing prospect of spending a few moments alone with a book, I settled into my perch, and one book at a time, I started searching for the topic I wanted. As I flipped through one, a headline near the beginning of the book caught my eye: “The Importance of Refutability: Religion vs. Science”. My interest perked, I read:
“The battle between religion and science has raged for centuries and continues today. In some parts of the country local school boards are trying to reintroduce ‘Creation Science’ as an equally valid counter-theory of evolution . . .”
Oh? I thought, smiling to myself. Having been actively involved in creation science ministry for almost four years and having sat through my fair share of college lectures on scientific method, I’ve definitely seen things like this before. That section of the book went on to say that, while considering “Creation Science” as an alternative theory might seem like a nice idea “on the surface”, it’s bad science because it cannot be refuted. There’s an important nugget of truth in these skewed claims.
In scientific method, a theory or hypothesis must be testable and refutable – meaning that you have to have some way to disprove the idea for it to be scientifically valid. No, we cannot go back and do experiments to empirically “prove” and “test” the original creation event, catastrophic global flood, dinosaurs and people living together, or radioactive decay happening faster than it does today. Neither can we really scientifically “prove” that any of the founding fathers of America ever existed, because we cannot observe and repeat their lives today. We cannot repeat and observe what is in the past – it is history. Biblical creation cannot really be scientifically “proven” or “disproven”. What the writers of this book completely missed is that evolution cannot be scientifically “proven” or “disproven” either, because both creation and evolution are models of history.
The controversial section in this book ended by saying:
“Religion is about inquiry based in faith, while science is about inquiry based on observation”
But, should it really be faith or observation – “Religion vs. Science”? We weren’t there to observe all of history, but there have been people there throughout history, recording what they observed happening around them. By faith, we can either choose to believe or not to believe the observations others have recorded. Some observations have to be taken by faith. Why do we even have faith in our own senses, when we know they can be tricked by illusions? The question is not one of whether or not you have faith, but more of a question of what is the object of your faith? Perhaps it is reason, self, your senses, authorities, peers, or God. Evolution and millions of years are ideas that are based on faith – it is just as much a religion as the creation account is. It’s one religion vs. another religion, not “religion vs. science”. Choose the faith that best explains not only what we observe, but also how and why we observe.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, 2015
Reference for book quoted:
- Paul Stoddard. Planetary Geology, Preliminary Edition. The Importance of Refutablility: Religion vs. Science. Pg. 5. 2008. Cengage Learning. Mason, Ohio.
Updated on June 14, 2017
Dimetrodon Drama
New discoveries and breakthroughs in science can be very exciting – whether it’s the latest modern development in technology or the most recent finds of ancient remains in archaeology and paleontology. But sometimes fascinating new discoveries can be made by re-investigating things that have been known about for quite some time. Such is the case with one of the first discovered Canadian “dinosaur” fossils, recently revealed to be a type of Dimetrodon. This fossil, including some teeth and part of the creature’s face, was originally found in 1845 by a farmer who was digging a well on Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Around this time in history, the science of paleontology was just beginning to get exciting in North America. The fossil ended up at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia where it was studied and first named by Joseph Leidy, who is one of the great pioneers of paleontology in America. Leidy was originally involved with the epic dinosaur digging rivalry between Edwin Cope and Othniel Marsh (read the stories of their rivalry here). This fossil was the second vertebrate fossil from Canada to be officially named – the first one had been named just two months earlier by Sir Richard Owen (who invented our modern term “dinosaur” in 1841). Leidy initially named the fossil Bathygnathus borealis, meaning “deep jaw” and “from the north”.
Over the past 170 years since its discovery, much research has been done on this historical Canadian fossil, as scientists continue to gather more information on similar fossils. They have been on the right track toward pinning down what creature this fossil is from (all they had were teeth and some of the bones around those teeth), but it wasn’t until just this year that some of the debates were resolved. In a paper that was just published in November 2015, researchers reported that using CT scanning technology on the teeth, they found them to be most like Dimetrodon, finally renaming the fossil Dimetrodon borealis.
While most people would think of this sail-backed reptile as a dinosaur, those who believe in evolution would tell you that Dimetrodons lived long before dinosaurs and consider them to be a type of “mammal-like reptile”. Evolutionists want to explain everything through the filter of their worldview – they are always trying to come up with “primitive ancestors” for mammals, especially because they want to explain people as being made in the image of other animals, rather than being specially created in the image of God. These creatures are buried in rock units categorized as upper “Paleozoic”, while dinosaurs are from the “Mesozoic” rock units. If you interpret these rock layers as being laid down over millions of years, it puts a big time gap between Dimetrodon and dinosaurs like T-rex or triceratops, which also leads evolutionists to think of them as “ancestors”. However, if you interpret these same layers according to the Biblical global flood, Dimetrodons, T-rex, and people all lived at the same time and were captured in the fossil record at different levels and surges during the flood.
Copyright Sara J. Bruegel, December 2015
References:
- University of Toronto. “Canuckosaur! First Canadian ‘dinosaur’ becomes Dimetrodon borealis.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 November 2015. Last accessed December 18, 2015. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151124112849.htm
