According to Biblical creation science, human beings lived with the dinosaurs before the time of Noah's flood, and the layers of sedimentary rock which preserve fossils was laid down as the raging flood waters buried the animals of the earth in sediments, something that has been given the scientific sounding name ‘Flood Geology'.
This theory of flood geology, while lending a scientific sound to what is in fact a conservative Biblical apologetic, and a literal religious interpretation of the story of Noah's Ark and the flood, is intended to scientifically explain the evidence of the fossil record in a manner consistent with a young earth hypothesis, something necessary if one is going to insist that the (conflicting) genealogical lists of the Bible are inerrant as historical records. An examination of this theory is interesting for what it reveals about the close correlation between the methods of conservative Biblical apologists and the methods of their coworkers, the Biblical creationists.
Some truly nimble speculative arguments are employed in both cases. Around the world the fossil record reveals the same picture. What is found is that fossils are neatly sorted in layers, and the pattern is global. Fossils are created in areas where sediments have consistently accumulated over a long period of time. In some areas, where the balance of sedimentation and erosion have titled in favor of erosion effects, fossilization would not have occurred, and in those areas where conditions favored the accumulation of sedimentation fossil beds will be found. These deposits follow the same pattern. At the bottom of the layers are extremely simple creatures, single celled and simple multi-celled organisms. Move up a layer and the complexity increases. Move up a layer again and the complexity increases. At a certain level dinosaurs are found. Globally there is a thin deposited layer of iridium, and above this deposited layer of iridium, no more dinosaurs are found. Small mammals appear. Move up higher, and the complexity in mammals increases. Finally in the highest layer are found human beings. This orderly arrangement is global and is the defining characteristic of fossil beds.
This orderly arrangement of increasing complexity is not characteristic of the type of random, chaotic fossil beds one would expect to find if the animals of the world were all swept together in a raging flood and buried by torrents of sediment. It is at this point that the Biblical apologists turn to the standard techniques of apologetics and begin to apply them to what is called the science of flood geology.
Two pseudo-sciences are employed at this point. The first pseudo argument is to point to the small fraction of disturbed fossil beds in the world, beds that have been tossed or disturbed by earthquakes or heaving of the earth over geological time, thus breaking the orderly symmetry normally found in almost all of the world's deposits. There are also a few anomalous beds created by shifting patterns of sedimentation and erosion over geological time, resulting in missing layers which once again disturb the symmetry and orderly arrangement of a typical deposit. The technique of the Biblical apologist in this case is transferred to the field of science. Nullification is employed, the conflicting evidence is simply ignored. The much ado about some anomalous disturbed fossil bed contributes nothing to science, but then it was never intended to contribute to science but rather to bolster the claims of Christian apologists and thus serve as a tool for conservative evangelism, which in the end is about social and political power. If s scientist doesn't believe it, who cares. If you believe it, that is all that matters.
Now if that disturbed fossil bed distortion works, so much the better, but in the case that perhaps it will not, it then becomes necessary to have a back up argument,the new pseudo-science of ‘hydraulic sorting' and arguments about mobility. The reason why, for example, mammals are found neatly stacked above dinosaurs around the world, is because mammals are fast and mobile while dinosaurs were slow, lumbering creatures who had a hard time running up hill to get away from the rapidly rising flood waters (having been those dinosaurs who failed to get a ride on Noah's Ark). The truth be told, many dinosaurs were extremely fast moving creatures. Others could fly, and thus surely should have been found up high in the ‘fast moving mammal' and bird part of the fossil record. A new science is also created and given the scientific sounding name ‘hydraulic sorting'. You see the animals got neatly sorted in the fossil record according to their flotation properties in the waters of Noah's flood.
Among the many blatantly obvious holes in such a Biblical apologetic argument is the fact that plants float on water. Thus we would expect to see in the fossil record not the same neat sorting of plants that we find around the globe, plants sorted in different layers (obviously accumulating over different periods on the long geological time scale) but rather a whole mess of plants all mixed and jumbled up at the top of the sedimentary layer. This hydrological sorting theory has been debunked by making note of how conveniently all the animals of the world just happened to have the right ‘hydraulic sorting characteristics' to wind up sorted in a manner which appears remarkably evolutionary in its final result. Animals with purely reptilian characteristics will always be found below animals with combined reptilian characteristics and mammal characteristics, which will always be found sorted below true mammals. Aquatic animals, like the plants, even those aquatic animals that changed over time but retained the same general shape, would be found to have different sorting characteristics so that they would also wind up sorted in this way, even though the general stream lining of their shapes did not change. Humans, in spite of the fact that they are not as fast as cheetahs, are found at the top of the layers because humans are smart, and knew enough to high tail it to higher ground during Noah's flood, and one must suppose that they were lucky as well, so many people being swept away in floods after all, as we see all the time, and they must also all have lived near the mountain ranges in those days, so remarkable was their escape that we do not find humans buried with Trilobites, for example. Flood geology is not a branch of the science of geology, but a branch of conservative religious apologetics and a tool of evangelization employed by the religious right. As for equal time, it certainly doesn't deserve equal time in the classroom, and it already has all the ‘equal time' anyone could ask for, flooding the airwaves twenty four hours a day after all, so its not like their voice is not being heard.
A Unified Field Theory
The Unified Field Theory
is also available as a zip file -> unified.zip
Introduction :The Pioneer Effect and the New Physics. A brief description of the new physics required to explain the 'Pioneer Effect', which is the constant deceleration of space craft as they fly through space.