St. John the Baptist was thrown into prison and later beheaded because he spoke the Truth about the evil of the grave sin of adultery.

Many saintly folks since the Fall of Adam and Eve have spoken out against grave evil in their own times and places. Some received the treatment analogous to that of St. John, but many were merely mocked or even simply ignored. The latter was the case with Noah, whose calling of others to turn to God, as is implied in 1 Peter 3, was not believed.

This incredulity is chilling in the context of Our Lord speaking later in the Gospel about folks marrying and being given in marriage and about them engaging in ordinary activities…until THE FLOOD TOOK THEM AWAY.

A look at the opening photo of this short essay reveals ordinary everyday activity at a section of Gyirong Port near the one discussed in the last post. Trucks, buses, cars, and vans are parked atop and next to what appears to be a parking garage adjacent to what appears to be a small office building, or perhaps a dormitory given the relatively remote location of this border control complex in Tibet at the edge of Nepal.

The opening photo here is a still from a cctv video that was on the same “2026 Nepal Floods” article on Wikipedia as the other video from which the stills in the last post were taken. Things look routine.

However, when viewing the roughly minute-long video in its entirety, one sees that the tiny human figures are running. Running from something sudden: that hideous, turbulent rock and mudlide that was about to overtake them…to take them away. Its dark, heralding muddy mist is already in view near the left edge of the photo.

Within seconds of that first still, the garage is flipped violently sideways at the valley wall.

Vehicles and all.

Other vehicles are briefly seen before the moment of that second still, and then they vanish into the chaos.

Further on, with jawdropping rapidity, truck trailers are ripped open and their cargo containers spilled out and scattered before disappearing into the dark violence.

Again, given the tiny percentage of the folks there being baptized, we can only sorrowfully commend their souls to God.

The place was obliterated. Though a few bodies may yet be recovered, many more will be pulverized, small random pieces eventually recovered somewhere deep in Nepal or even in India.

This ghastly scenario would have unfolded on a much broader scale during Noah's Flood: people doing everyday things when suddenly startled by shaking ground, torrential rain, and the terrifyingly rapid, pulverizing advance of a broad-fronted rock-filled tsunami from a Fountain of the Great Deep.

Some would have little time to react. Some, further away, would flee, with the same horror pursuing them repeatedly as the global water level rose as well as the thickness of the sediment that these waves left on the land until the water covered everything, with no more place to escape to. In each case, there would be time for repentance because God brought about the Flood as a last-ditch effort to shock an incorrigibly sinful mankind into repentance. Imagine the deep grief of Noah during that time, knowing that so many had to perish, people he knew. But there may have been deep comfort in his heart knowing that this destructive overturning of their world may finally turn them to God, Whom he so loved.

It is asked why are there no fossils of humans from the Deluge, and where are their artifacts?

Because mankind was so evil, there were relatively few people around: murder (Genesis 6) and contraception (Book of Jasher 20). The tsunamis would have pulverized many near the Fountains, while the rest would flee until swept away by water and eaten by sea creatures. There is a human fossil worth looking at…

…a fossilized human finger found near Glen Rose, Texas and now on display at the Creation Evidence Museum of Texas in the same North Central Texas town. (Photo courtesy of author.) As for the rest of the person to whom this finger belonged? Look at Gyirong Port.

As for man-made objects, there are a number of them, but they will be covered in the next post, which will be for paid subscribers only.

The Great Flood was real, horrific. The Tibet-Nepal Floods just now give a miniscule taste of its terror. The Ark was an amazing construction, given what it had to endure and remain intact. It certainly wasn't the cutsie-poo bathtub with smiling Noah and beasts towered over by a smiling giraffe!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, guide us to all Truth!

I apologize for being incommunicado for three weeks. Have started another job for more steady income, and, as y'all know, work takes time, and in the case of this job, because intellectual, leaves a fellow too mentally fatigued to do additional writing. Thanks be to God, am approaching a balance, so am hoping to be posting more often, finally including posts exclusively for those among y'all that are paid subcribers.

I write this post with a heavy heart, but a didactic one nevertheless.

By now, most everyone has at least heard of the catastrophic rock-/mudslide that obliterated China/Tibet's Gyirong Port at the border with Nepal Wednesday morning local time on August 26th.

Many of you have seen the disturbing pictures and some have seen the very disturbing videos of destruction along the river valley in Nepal and the jaw-dropping cctv videos of Gyirong Port being pulverized and obliterated by the hideous flow in its early stages as it flowed out of the Tibetan stretch of the valley before entering Nepal.

The flow was filmed from multiple locations along its path, and besides being dark, almost black initially, from the rocks, gravel, sand and mud it contained, it was so turbulent that multiple directed blasts of its very dense, rocky fluid continually erupted from it, often hitting areas high above its general surface. It had a hydra-like look, as if multiple serpent heads on longish necks were jumping forth from it. In addition, it was accompanied by a dark muddy mist that made it look like it means business.

And it meant business. As the sequence of still video frames here shows, starting with the title image, a busy-looking complex of border control buildings is seen intact, then about to be engulfed by a dark cloud, then invisible under dark chaos while a metal mount for who knows what is seen, then a rocky blast about to hit that mount, then the mount flattened.

Everything happens in the space of about a minute. Tiny human figures are seen running in vain to safety ahead of a flow moving at roughly a hundred miles per hour. It is distressing to think that the region has only a few baptized Christians of any sort: we can only leave the souls of the many unbaptized perished to God!

This flow became less rocky with distance and more muddy in consistency.

In my opinion, most people who actually accept the historical reality of the Great Flood of roughly 4600 years ago have a merely intellectual idea of it. The horror of what was going on then does not strike them in the heart.

What happened at Gyirong Port was geographically tiny, constricted in a narrow valley. The Fountains of the Great Deep during the Deluge were expelling tsunami after tsunami of pulverized granite onto the land over a BROAD FRONT as the crust of the Earth at the crack repeatedly convulsed. As in Nepal, the tsunamis’ sediment load settled out over a distance and they became more watery, but closer to the Fountains, it was complete obliteration of everything on the land, as in Gyirong Port.

Accompanied by continual torrential rain, these rocky tsunamis destructively invaded increasingly higher ground as the global water level rose and the already submerged land was buried ever more deeply under new sediment the waves would bring in.

Mobile animals not engulfed fled in panic to diminishing unsubmerged land, terror-stricken people as well.

This lasted almost SIX WEEKS!! Soon before the fortieth day, there was no exposed land left. Whoever and whatever had hitherto survived perished.

The horror of what happened in Tibet and Nepal is but a miniscule taste of what God had had to unleash on an incorrigibly sinful humanity to try to save at least some of its souls. See 1 Peter 3, mid chapter, to see what happened to them.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, aid us!!!

PS All photos are stills from the video on the Wikipedia article about the Nepal Floods.

I rewrite this post after unintentionally pressing backspace and erasing it all!😭

Martyrdom…a sure way to Heaven…is violent. Indeed, Our Lord Himself said: “And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.” [Matthew 11:12, Douay Rheims, drbo.org] The appended commentary says: “[12] "Suffereth violence": It is not to be obtained but by main force, by using violence upon ourselves, by mortification and penance, and resisting our perverse inclinations.” We each, unless Baptized babies and the like, must suffer willingly to enter full union with God which is eternal bliss.

And, given that God created this world to, among other things, teach us, it bears marks of violence that remind us that it is not our eternal home, but a proving ground for our love for Him. Its passing but amazing beauty points us to our eternal home, and makes our longing for Heaven all the more keen.

The benign beautiful landscape of Florida has hurricanes and alligator attacks among its marks of violence. Dear Montana's marks are like shattered crockery.

The toothiness of its mountains.

Their abrupt rising out of flatlands.

Even the broken appearance of its surface rocks.

Yet, even atop a violent-looking mountain above Butte, Our Lady beckons us to eternity with Her Divine Son.

Our Lady of the Rockies, pray for us!

On a writing tear…let's see how long it lasts! 😇

As with the last post, no homework with this one 👏: simply observe, absorb, and ponder. AND…don't forget y'all's God-given common sense and observational powers! Enjoy!

The following series of shots is from our late May Southwest Airlines flight from Bozeman, Montana to Denver, Colorado. No comments from me until after you've looked at them for a bit. No rush.

For those of y'all, unlike myself, who've grown up and continue to dwell in climates where snow is an infrequent or absent feature: snow, when it piles up, compacts from evaporation and recondensation of its ice crystal points into a mass of more closely packed, thus denser, particles.

That pile of particles with time congeals into solid ice with a few air bubbles.

Ice, though it floats on water, is HEAVY. If it's on a slope, it'll start moving downhill like tar.

Because snow initially lands on the very irregular surfaces of soil and rock, when it does its congealing thing, it'll interlock with that soil or rock surface. (If anyone can find a mirror smooth natural surface — obsidian doesn't count! -- I'll eat my hat, with hot sauce! Ice would even stick to mirror smooth anyway.)

A nice big pile of ice on a slope, therefore, will rip off the underlying rock or soil as it moves downhill, like a poorly placed sticky bandage does a scab when removed.

When the process is continuous, as is the case at high-altitude locations, the underlying terrain acquires a jagged appearance.

Thus, the astounding terrain of the Eastern Rockies featured above is the result!

Because downhill-oozing ice droops in the middle bc it has some give, its gouges on the mountainsides are rounded. The remnant land amid the gouges (aka “cirques”) are the peaks (aka “horns”). (For those that wanna impress their friends over filet mignon, the sharp ridges connecting the horns are called “arêtes.” Oui! Oui! C'est vrai!)

(BTW, running water, as in liquid, carves out v-shaped valleys bc water doesn't droop broadly like solid ice, but usually compacts into a narrow stream, unless it's sheet runoff, in which case the slightest irregularity can cause a mini-v-valley to begin forming anyway.)

Thus, the Rocky Mountains, though still snow-covered in late May, show the effects of a much greater and prolonged past piling on of ice that carved that highland landscape: the post-Flood Ice Age. It started very soon after the receding Floodwaters washed off a lot of the initial, not quite hardened, buckled sediment into the vast sediment apron we call the Great Plains. That apron begins roughly at the Eastern foot of the Rockies. Two of the last three photos above show its general start near and under Denver, while the remaining one shows the view across it to the Rockies from Concourse C at Denver International Airport. (Right by the gate where we caught our final leg to Cincy, in fact!)

(Denver International Airport. Concourse C is the closest, with the control tower. We landed at the Left (East) end, and took off at the Right (West) end, the one with the awesome view. Quite the trudge! (Airport pic from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_International_Airport, with credit for the specific pic to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Murphpics.))

Now, the erosion of the late flood strata is evident in the very wavy-looking pale grayish strata pictured below (far right, middle of edge), with a close-up cropped from the original for better viewing. Their wavy glory is not the result of buckling in this locale — they're still horizontal — but of the receding Floodwaters scouring out the broad valley that they face, plus late to post-Flood streams forming little valleys that make the ground surface of the mountain slope undulating. Ice gouging is visible further upslope. Note that they are not under the Floodwaters-caused sediment apron: that's further East; the pic is looking roughly West.

The advantage of late-Spring snow cover in the process of melting off is that differential melting reveals sediment layers and stream valleys that would not be evident under the deep snow of Winter nor in Summer’s bare ground. (Incidentally, a couple of weeks after our late-May departure, it snowed in the mountains around Butte, but hey, it was only June!)

I invite y'all to ponder the above and similar landscapes through the Great Flood paradigm: things make a lot more sense. The might of God in causing the Great Flood cataclysm, done out of love for the many souls who perished rather than otherwise being damned, as well as His bringing the good of awe-inspiring beauty out of that horrific, nay, VERY horrific, event shows His deep love for us, both the ante-Diluvian victims and us who are now all Noah's descendents, the other lines having been extinguished by the Deluge.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, lead us to all wisdom in these matters!

(That's Delta Airlines.)

I apologize for being incommunicado the past weeks. Been traveling a lot (posts on that upcoming), then a sickness on the last trip, followed by a prolonged cough, residual from illness at first, but then aggravated and rekindled by multiple days of ozone, and a couple of them also featuring Canadian smoke. Our central air could electrostatic-HEPA out the smoke, but not the ozone! 🫩 Trachea and nasal passages felt like they were lightly sunburned.

(Please pardon my still-unskilled privacy protection measures!)

But at least, as of yesterday, Mama's doing well. As am I, mostly.

The past several Montana posts largely dealt with the underground, so this time, we shall look at what's above ground.

(Bozeman, MT airport. Looking Northeast.)

(View from cowboy hat friend's cabin outside Bozeman, looking South.)

(Word of Warning: there will be ZERO homework this time: just relax and enjoy! (Lotsa damp Kleenex all around, I'm sure. You betcha!)

(Looking North from friend’s cabin towards the Airport.)

(Over Chicagoland, on the way from Cincy to Minneapolis-St. Paul.)

(Montana lowland landscape on approach to Bozeman.)

In case it isn't obvious, I love to fly! When relaxing in God's Presence, the next best thing after being in front of the Blessed Sacrament is being in the window seat with the Baby Jesus, looking out with awe at His world! Being a Great Flood Geologist and also having a Meteorology degree under my belt, if the post-Flood world isn't causing me TMJ problems from jaw-dropping scenery, then it's the cloud formations! Nota Bene, clouds behave VERY similarly to smoke, the difference being that smoke is heated from beneath, while clouds are heated both from underneath, and from within from the heat of condensation of water droplets and/or ice crystals.

(Cumulonimbus clouds rising up over the mountains and dropping their snowflakes melting into raindrops.)

All that said, let's recall the Great Flood: Fountains of the Great Deep causing torrential rain and simultaneously power blasting the sides of the world-encircling rupture(s) while sending pulse after pulse of sediment- (and dead critter-) laden water onto the granitic continents, piling up the dirt and debris to a depth of about two miles. Then the whole kit and caboodle mostly sliding Pacific Basin-ward (as the Atlantic Basin rebounds from lack of (power blasted away) overburden) and wrinkling/deforming as the bottoms of the plates snag on irregularities in the now nearly-empty subterranean water chambers.

All of this, at this point, is happening under water: a global ocean, but soon the global interior mass shifting plus the slide-caused buckling forms deep ocean basins that enables the water to run off the continents, doing A LOT of erosion…RIGHT QUICK.

Besides creating features like the earlier-featured Jefferson River Gorge by scouring out the not yet fully hardened sediment to form local valleys, the water also deposited vast sheets of sediment on the flanks of mountain ranges, ranges that would have been taller before the receding water did its work!

(Denver, Colorado is at the start of the sediment blanket washed off the Rockies, a blanket we call the Great Plains, extending all the way out to the Mississippi. The Rockies are in the haze behind the city. (Ya, Southwest Airlines on the way back East.))

The Rocky Mountains, majestic though they are, have a violent look to them, and that's often the case up close. (Following shots on the way to Butte from the East. Driving on I-90.)

The receding water did its work, but so did subsequent glaciation: during the post-Flood Ice Age that lasted until the very high continents and very deep ocean bottoms isostatically adjusted to the present day equilibrium. Lower, warmer land altitude melted most of the ice caps, while rising ocean bottoms, and melt water, covered land bridges and reduced the overall exposed land areas. Peleg would have experienced that not terribly long after Babel. More on glaciation next post.

So, whether flying or driving, if you have the correct paradigm in mind, you'll see the marks of the Great Flood everywhere you look.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, aid us!

On this warm, humid afternoon, after a much-needed lunchtime thunderstorm, my memory is drawn to all the Caverns and mines that I've visited over the decades.

The overwhelming majority of them are humid, though never warm, this being because their interior temperature reflects the average annual temperature of the air outside, and their mid-latitude locations having a cool annual average from the high forties (Fahrenheit) to the high fifties (roughly nine to fourteen Celsius).

Each cavern has a unique personality as expressed in the orientation of its Flood-caused tunnels as well as in the variety and arrangement of its post-Flood speleothems. The same holds true for underground mines, but the personality of each of these is determined by the uniqueness of its Geology combined with the ingenuity of man through galleries, shafts, and equipment/infrastructure used for extraction of the mineral wealth contained therein.

Mines are for another post. Today's focus is on the production of speleothems. And, as before, examples from Montana's Lewis and Clark Caverns will be used.

As written before, the process of speleothem formation is simple, and, as meditated on before, the results are God's artistry, producing astounding beauty in hidden, thus inspiring of both curiosity and a sense of adventure, places that were the result of a global cataclysm that God had to have happen to both cleanse the world of its rampant, pervasive sin and to give the suddenly-overtaken sinners a chance to repent and save their souls, now that He had their attention through them seeing their world being rapidly (though not instantly) destroyed.

The chemical process involved in making cave formations is simple:

1.) Rain and snowmelt absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The carbon dioxide reacts with the water to form carbonic acid, a weak acid.

2.) As the water seeps into the ground, its acidity is often enhanced by acids released by plant roots and by the acids of decaying plants (and dead critters). The water can even be stained by organic matter dissolved in it or by minerals it has picked up along the way. Formations can then have a growth-ring look inside like tree trunks do, except that the layering just reflects what the water was carrying and depositing, not the number of seasons or years. (This example, like the opening picture, shows the layering. Normally, the layering is invisible, but the final blasting of the Lewis and Clark Caverns access tunnel snapped these stalactites, and exposed their inner layering.)

3.) When that water encounters a layer of limestone, it starts eating away a small portion of it, and ends up carrying dissolved calcium carbonate.

4.) If that water enters an air-filled tunnel left behind by the Great Flood, it drips or trickles in, depending on how much water is coming, and how quickly.

5.) Evaporation can reduce the water's holding capacity, and a bit of calcium carbonate will come out of solution and then stick to the nearest solid surface.

6.) Same if the water is jostled, such as by splashing or by trickling down an irregular surface (Recall Turner Falls in Oklahoma, from a previous post.). The jostling drives out some of the dissolved carbon dioxide, reducing the carbonic acid concentration, and thus reducing the water's ability to keep its dissolved calcium carbonate dissolved.

(All this can occur in mines and in storm sewers. Time for HOMEWORK!!! 😱😱😱 Ya, look up cave formations in mines, and also, specifically, in the older storm sewers of Montréal, a huge city sitting atop limestone.)

Now, cave tunnels generally don't have high winds, so dripping is generally downward, and trickling is also down, down whatever surface the water is clinging to, as water on a solid surface is wont to do. (Note the smooth surface immediately to the left of the tourist's baseball cap.)

A lot of caves don't get flooded, though some levels might be submerged at times, as is the case with Seneca Caverns in Northern Ohio. Florida is honeycombed with caverns, but the overwhelming majority are under the water table, and explorable only by diving; if no formations, either always submerged or insufficient time airfilled. There's only one airfilled cavern open for tours in the state, Florida Caverns, near Marianna, Central Panhandle right under Alabama.

Now for the specific speleothems. This is not an exhaustive list, but simply an overview of the common ones, all found at the Lewis and Clark Caverns:

STALACTITES: StalaCtites…C for ceiling. They are the fang-like things hanging from the ceiling. (If they grow hollow, w calcium carbonate precipitating on the outside of a hanging droplet, they're called SODA STRAWS, but tend to stay small. They're simply hollow calcium carbonate cylinders filled with water.) Because gravity narrows a hanging drop, the stalactite shape generally stays narrow, even when elongating and thickening with time.

STALAGMITES: StalaGmites…G for ground. They're the fanglike things pointing out of the ground…the floor of the cavern. They tend to grow wider than their roof-hanging counterparts because a falling droplet splatters upon landing, depositing calcium carbonate over a wider area, generally resulting in a broader, stubbier formation.

(In the photo above, numerous small stalactites hang from the roof while thick stalagmites rise out of the floor of the cavern. It's from the dripping pattern, and from the difference between hanging elongated up top and splashing widely down below.)

FLOWSTONE: The vertical ridged calcium carbonate deposits that are seen on walls plus, in the case of the Lewis and Clark Caverns, forming the beards on the stalagmites. Just like water running down a windowpane in little rivulets during rain, rivulets of water running down the side of a stalagmite will, by varying speed and having been jostled by splashing, deposit the mineral along their paths, gradually forming a ridge, generally a vertical ridge because of gravity.

COLUMNS: When stalactites and stalagmites grow together.

(Toward the back here.)

(Here, Babe Ruth's Baseball Bat, as mentioned in a previous post, is a long, smooth stalactite joined by growth to the flowstone-bearded stalagmite beneath.)

DRAPERIES: Lined-up stalactites (like those growing from a crack in the ceiling) growing together into a sheet-like slab of stone that often has an undulating shape if the stalactites aren't in a perfect line. (Visible far right above the brim of my friend's cowboy hat.)

Finally,

CAVE POPCORN: Looks like….well…popcorn!! 😉 Forms from seepage out of a surface and/or irregular splashing onto it. (Note the 55-degree-tilted pre-speleothem strata!) Some hanging above and some growing below.

HOMEWORK again!! 😡 Look up HELICTITES and CAVE BACON! And…visit a cave: it's really fun!!! 😇

Until next post,

Our Lady of Guadalupe, guide and protect us!

Since childhood, I've been fascinated by underground places, whether caves or mines. Looking down a man-made tunnel or gallery, or a down a natural one, evokes within me a sense of mystery simultaneous with adventure.

Neither of these underground spaces came into being without considerable drama, whether by pickaxes and explosives or by the earlier posted-about actions of the Great Flood of Noah.

And there is an element of surprised wonder when you enter into one of these places. I remember Crystal Cave in Kutztown, PA, a large room or rooms with eye-poppingly beautiful formations, all under a very ordinary-looking low wooded hill. It was in my childhood, my first ever underground experience. You went through a door into the hill, then down some stairs, the air rapidly got cool, then your eyes widened 👀, your mouth agape.

Caverns, being natural, are God's artistry, beautiful in their variety and individual personality: impressively long like Mammoth Cave (KY), of staggering variety like Meramec Caverns (MO), cute like Lost River Caverns (PA), or man-enhanced like Luray Caverns (VA) with their Stalacpipe Organ which uses various individual ceiling formations as sources of tone, each producing a note through being connected to a little electric hammer and microphone.

Each is an example of God bringing good out of evil: mystery-wrapped beauty out of the cataclysm of the Great Flood, the Flood necessitated by the need to rescue souls from a life almost unavoidably leading everyone to hell, with no other alternative possible.

With the above in mind we will now take a tour of the formations (speleothems) found in the Lewis and Clark Caverns near Whitehall, Montana, roughly halfway between Butte and Bozeman.

The Caverns have two entrances, the upper roughly 200 vertical feet above the lower. (See far left of map.)

The upper opening (Entrance) is natural. In colder weather, the cool, humid air inside would come out and condense, forming a plume of vapor. This led to it be called Smoking Mountain. However, the tunnels/galleries of the Caverns were mostly below that entrance, so, pre-WWII, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) blasted out the 500-ft access tunnel pictured far above. Both entrances are now protected by locked doors. (We were told of one poor fellow of the CCC that decided to explore the Caverns ALONE at the start of a weekend. He got lost and his lamp went out. After a couple of days, he was finally found, lying in a fetal position, not responsive to calls bc, in that total darkness and deep silence, he thought he was hallucinating! Only physical touch was believable to him. Took him a week to recover. COMMON SENSE around underground cavities, please!!🤦‍♂️)

Entering can be a dizzying affair when you're not accustomed to the 5300-ft altitude…

…but the staggering and risk of bumping one's head on the ceiling is worth it when the Paradise Room is entered!!

A plethora of speleothems meets the eye within one field of view:

— StalaCtites (C for ceiling): fang-like things hanging down.

— StalaGmites (G for ground): fang-like things pointing up. They tend to be thicker.

— Flowstone: the beard-like ridges on the stalagmites. And on the walls. And smoothly covering the floor in spots.

(Note numerous small Stalactites.)

— Soda Straws: tiny Stalactites that are hollow inside.

— Columns: when a Stalagmite and Stalactite grow to meet and join.

(Here's Babe Ruth's Baseball Bat.)

— Cave Popcorn

(Note the 55-degree tilt of the pre-speleothem limestone strata.)

— Draperies: Stalactites growing into an undulating curtain-like slab of stone hanging from the ceiling.

(Far right, above the brim of my friend's cowboy hat.)

— Cave Bacon: Draperies w undulatingly parallel stripes.

Remember, they are all post-Flood phenomena, still occuring today. (Just ask Rocky, your now-petrified teddy bear! 😅)

Next post, we'll look at how these speleothems are formed.

Until then,

Our Lady of Guadalupe, guide and protect us!!

We Byzantine Catholics wrapped up Paschaltide two days ago with the Sunday of All Saints. (Unlike the Roman All Saints Day of November 1st, ours falls on the Sunday after Pentecost each year. No Hallowe'en on Saturday, though.) It is now the “After Pentecost” roughly half of the year wherein we strive to live out the graces we were given in the intense Advent through Paschaltide portion. It is a slower time, a time for thanksgiving and reflection and…implementation!

That said, let us reflectively plunge (literally) underground to consider how caverns arose through the agency of the Great Flood.

Last post, we looked at a very plausible scenario for the formation of Southwest Montana's mountains, specifically the Tobacco Root Range within which the Lewis & Clark Caverns are located.

(This is at the Main Visitor Center. The Cave Visitor Center is up a long, winding road. And the Caverns’ entrances are down paths from that Center. Here's a map…

In this post, we’ll consider a plausible explanation for Great Flood-connected cavern formation, using the Caverns as an example.

Remember the video of that drive along the Jefferson River Gorge last post, with assorted cave openings and solution cavities?

(The cream-colored fuzziness in two of the photos below is the reflection off the windshield of my friend’s cowboy hat upon the dashboard. Gives things a Western “texture”, doesn't it? 😉)

(In the last photo, the opening is about man-height or taller. In the other two photos, the trees provide scale: some of those openings are man-sized, too.)

Those openings and tunnels are found in limestone. Also in dolomite. (And, for me personally, BECKON to be explored!)

Limestone is calcium carbonate. Dolomite is calcium-magnesium carbonate. A small portion of the world's limestone was produced by aquatic organisms, mostly marine, but most of the limestone was ejected to the surface from the subterranean water chambers by the Fountains of the Great Deep during the Flood. No organism produces dolomite; it also came violently up from far below, its magnesium from the basaltic floor of the subterranean water chambers. (Basalt is an igneous rock that contains much iron and magnesium, along with the usual silicon and oxygen; granite also has silicon and oxygen…more, in fact…but has aluminum, calcium, and sodium as its main metal ions.)

Both limestone and dolomite, being carbonate compounds, dissolve in acid, especially limestone.

When the Earth was totally submerged during the Great Flood, and the continents slid, deforming strata, the strata of the Tobacco Root Range were like partially set pudding.

These strata contained much water. Some of it was acidic, patches of it. The volcanic activity during the Flood contributed to it: magmas are generally acidic. But also the decay of countless creatures killed by the Flood: decaying organic material is acidic as well.

As long as everything was submerged, the patches of acidic water dissolved the limestone that they were in. The strata of sandstone, shale (mud), etc. were not significantly affected.

When the Floodwaters started receding into the newly formed ocean basins, the water in the strata started coming out. It seeped out of the sand and mud, etc., but in the limestone (and dolomite), besides seeping, it gushed out of the cavities had dissolved: tunnels of various sizes and lengths resulted, some of their openings visible in the earlier-pictured cliffs above the Jefferson River. The receding Floodwaters scoured out the layers that had occupied the present Jefferson River Gorge, and the water still in the limestone strata of the flanking mountains gushed out, leaving air-filled tunnels.

(There are some caves in the world (I can sense homework coming!! 🙄 Ya, look ‘em up!) where one finds hard mud and animal bones in cavities and hollows of the CEILING. Apparently, decaying animals were floating in muddy water in these caves, filthy water that had rushed in after the initial gushing out, and the mud and critters remains had gotten glued to the ceiling hollows as that second water ran out! Still stuck up there today!)

The tunnels of the Lewis & Clark Caverns have been mapped, a lot of them, and are evident in this block diagram…

Almost random appearance.

Now, our atmosphere contains carbon dioxide. Some of it dissolves in rainwater and snowmelt to produce weak carbonic acid. That acid will dissolve limestone and keep it in solution until evaporation and/or jostling of the water expel some of the carbon dioxide forming the acid into the atmosphere, in which case some of the calcium carbonate precipitates out…i.e., forms a solid, often sticking to the nearest solid surface. (Acids from plants above, living or decaying, add to the acidity.)

A dramatic example of this is Turner Falls near Davis, Oklahoma, right off I-35, halfway between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth, Texas.

The creek runs out of limestone, and its water is rich in dissolved calcium carbonate. However, the jostling of the water in the creek bed expels carbon dioxide gas, and some of the dissolved calcium carbonate sticks to the creek bed. As can be seen from the photo, the creek bed and lip of the falls are like a waterslide, growing up and out, because of the accumulation. Better there than in your pipes at home! 😅

The Falls are like mineralizing springs and wells. Look ‘em up. (Oh no, MORE homework! 😲) Some of them are tourist attractions. You can put your teddy bear, Chauncey, in the water, and in a few weeks, his name has changed to Rocky, and instead of being comfortingly plush anymore, he's now useful for breaking windows with. You likely can change Chauncey to Rocky at Turner Falls!

Now, that mechanism works in the air-filled tunnels/caverns left behind by the Flood. Rain, snowmelt, and plant/decay acids, seeping through the limestone above a cavern, will dissolve the limestone and drip into the cavern. Evaporation and splashing will cause the calcium carbonate to precipitate out and produce…drumroll please…SPELEOTHEMS! (The technical term for cave formations. Impress your friends! 💪)

A collection of speleothems are in the opening photo. Next post, we'll consider them in detail.

Until then, Our Lady of Guadalupe, guide and protect us!

We Byzantines don't have the Traditional Roman Ember Days this Octave, rather, we celebrate, including no fasting or abstinence on Friday coming up!

As Gene Autry (I think.) sang, “I'm back in the saddle again!”

I was gonna write about living pterosaurs, but that'll have to wait. After a geologically intense albeit short visit to Montana last week, I'm barely containing my blurting!!

This post is occasioned by a dizzying (literally bc altitude sickness and a bit of lingering vertigo from an acute case at home before the trip) but fascinating visit to the Lewis and Clark Caverns near Whitehall, Montana, which is off Interstate 90 roughly halfway between Bozeman to the East and Butte to the West. The region is just within the Rockies, a sorta short distance above Southeast Idaho.

To say that the scenery was spectacular, both above and under the ground, is to not do it justice. Jaw-dropping is more like it.

Unlike the many folk who have no doubt seen the Mountains and Caverns through Old Earth, multi-million-year-processes eyes, I chose to look at them through the accurate lens of the literal Great Flood, employing the Hydroplate Theory as the paradigm to explain the processes that produced both features.

For the Hydroplate Theory, I refer y'all to my previous posts on the subject. (Oh, no! He's assigning homework again! 😫) (Darn tootin’! No assignment too big, no grade too small! 🤓)

Essentially, there are mountains with obviously tilted strata. Very tilted.

(Screen shot from approach video.)

They are steep-sided.

The Jefferson River that runs between them is in a gorge rather than a regular valley.

Some of the strata have obvious caves. They're on the cliff sides, and beckon strongly to my explorer’s heart!!

The Jefferson River looks inviting for trout fishing, and is THE Jefferson River that meets up not far away with the Madison and Gallatin to form the mighty (and mighty long!!) Missouri! (The Ohio River near me has a similar start in Pittsburgh at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela.)

The Lewis and Clark Caverns have their lower entrance on a mountainside over a thousand feet above the Jefferson (Look carefully at the base of the distant mountain!).

To get to said entrance, one has to walk for a third of a mile along a gravel path with a steep slope of rocks on the right and the abyss in the above photo to the left.

Hair-raising for yours truly!

Before we step into the mountain, let's ponder how these local Mountains formed:

FIRST, the fountains of the Great Deep blasted out pulses of subcrustal lime mud plus sediment formed from the power-blasted sides of the rupture that they were fountaining from. That stuff was in horizontal layers.

SECOND, when the world was totally submerged and the suddenly unroofed-from-60-miles-of-granite-thickness Atlantic basin bounded upward, the Pacific side correspondingly downdropped, leading to North America sliding Westward, but eventually snagging on subcrustal irregularities where the subcrustal water had been. This buckled and tilted the strata.

THIRD, these strata were semi-hardened when the Flood waters were receding, hard enough that the water running out through the now-Jefferson River Gorge couldn't wash out a broad valley.

That's how the local landscape developed.

Next post, we'll address the Caverns themselves.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, guide and protect us!!

Mama is safely in a Catholic Memory Care facility now. After being unable to stand even with a walker last Christmas afternoon, she ended up in our excellent community hospital for the Octave, the latter few days of which were a suspenseful time of searching for a rehab that would take her, not an easy task when the patient has dementia/alzheimers issues that require day-long company because of World War II PTSD incurred through living in said war's hell as a child.

Growing frantic as the Octave progressed, I reached out to my Godbrother, David (We were both Baptized and Confirmed on Christmas Day in past, different years.). He had me pray to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower, and, not surprisingly, she sent down the rose of a CATHOLIC rehab in our metro, so that, on the evening (not eve) of the Feast of Our Lord's Circumcision, she was already safely ensconced there. I really owe you, Godbro! (And St. Thérèse!)

After three weeks of fruitless rehab, and cognitive decline continuing, she was moved upstairs to the Memory Care unit. She adjusted there very quickly: the constant company of about a dozen-and-a-half fellow residents, including another Ukrainian speaker, plus a truly caring staff meeting all her needs, has enabled her to finally be the interiorly secure woman that she should have been had WW2 not PTSDed her. (Here she is proclaiming wisdom.)

When my relatives and/or I come to visit, she now reacts to us as if we were just another of her fellow-resident buddies coming to say hello. It's a huge load off my mind, having been her primary caregiver, to see her so content!

I squared away her paperwork on February 12th, exactly fifty days after Christmas, plus the fourth anniversary of my Dad's entrance into eternity. Like a personal Paschaltide for me, with Daddy's help!

Am saying this because, after roughly eleven-and-a-half years of full-time caregiving, with relatively infrequent respites, I was suddenly experiencing three unexpected things that struck forcefully:

1.) PTSD: From years of almost constantly living on edge, not knowing what the next calamity would be, or when. It resolved pretty quickly.

2.) Bewilderment: analogous to a soldier returning home after many years on the battlefield, not knowing how to adjust to peaceful civilian life again. That has largely resolved, and am enjoying actually living my own life!

3.) Weariness: masked by years of chronic adrenaline. This is still resolving. Have not recovered my past stamina, and still get quickly tired by mentally taxing activities, hence the long time to resume posting.

Three much-needed vacations were given me by Our Lord these past months…Florida, Wisconsin, and Montana…through my airline points and the generous hospitality, local transportation, and funds provided by dear friends: Leo, Dan, Kathy, Danny, Joe, Jackie, and (also traveling companion on two of the trips) Tate!

[I love to fly: if anyone has a million airline points collecting dust, please consider donating! (I'm not shameless. Why do you say that? 🤣)]

Topical posts will resume soon…stay tuned!!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, guide and protect us!

(The dizzying view from near the lower but still high-altitude (1400 ft above the distant Jefferson River) entrance of Montana's Lewis and Clark Caverns. The entrance is at about 5300 ft above sea level.)

(Hair-raising, in fact. That's yours truly.)

Glory to Jesus Christ, y'all, on this Byzantine Feast of the Monk Macarius of Egypt!

Mama has suffered assorted disabilities and illnesses the past few months, and her condition continues to decline. Being her primary caregiver, I've been preoccupied. She's in a Catholic rehab now.

Please pray! Maria Rakowsky.

Thanks!

Glory to Jesus Christ, y'all, on this Byzantine Feast of the Venerable Theodora and the Roman Feast of the Martyrs Protus and Hyacinth!

I apologize for the long hiatus! Been a lot going on:

— Prep for the Kolbe Center Leadership Retreat in the hill country Northwest of Hickory, NC.

— Participation in said Retreat, wherein, for the grown-ups and teens, I presented a comparison between Catastrophic Plate Tectonics and the Hydroplate Theory. (Those are covered in the immediately previous two posts on this Substack.); for the children it was a brief presentation about the how and WHY of the Great Flood, followed by a very enthusiastically received rock, mineral, and fossil giveaway, most of the items from the buttes in Brusett, Montana.

— Maria Owen, wife Kolbe Center Director Hugh Owen, writes and puts on a play at the Retreat each year about a Creation-themed saint or saints. Its a suberb way of teaching youngsters the Truth of Creation in a very enjoyable, concrete way. This year, it was about St. Martin of Tours and about Leo DuPont of Holy Face devotion fame. I was given a delightfully simple (and keeping with my character 😂) role of a filthy, squalid, huckster, invalid, veteran beggar seeking funds from Monsieur DuPont for the bottle!

(Glasses came off for the performance!)

— And there was an hour-forty interview with Catholic journalist Stephen Kokx about the Great Flood, the Ark, the falsity of Evolution, and such:

https://kokxnews.substack.com/p/catholics-should-reject-evolution?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true

— This was followed by much time spent notifying folks on my extensive contact list about it.

So, very good to be back “scribbling!”

Before we embark on subsequent posts, it behooves to review a few things so as to be clear-thinking.

First, regarding thinking itself:

DATA SET: any claim made about anything, ANY claim whatsoever, needs data to back it up. A data set is a collection of observations, and of basic principles, that are verifiable thus hard or impossible to contest.

PARADIGM: the interpretive framework that makes sense of the data set. At its root, it is theological (even if denying God's existence), and it encompasses under that umbrella metaphysical and other philosophical principles.

Second, the pitfalls that affect the paradigms:

TEMPORAL SNOBBERY, i.e. folks in the past were primitive dolts compared to us sophisticated moderns! Oh, yeah? You try rebuilding the Great Pyramid, and call me in the morning!

CREDENTIALISM: Oh, FATHER McGillicuddy said… Oh, DOCTOR Snodgrass said… Oh, the RESPECTED SCIENTISTS at Whatchamacallit University said…: Poppycock!! Without data, their credentials are (as we say in our pre-WW2 Galician Ukrainian dialect) “worth a pound of lint.!”

INCOMPLETENESS: Make sure your data set is as complete as possible! (Oh no, he's gonna say it! 🫨) DO YOUR HOMEWORK!!

Third, the effects of sin on one's data set and/or paradigm:

PRIDE: — “I say that gravity pulls upward! — “But, sir, Nature always shows that things fall downward.” --"So much for Nature! Huff!”

PRIVATE SINS: What private sins will I have to give up (but don't want to!!!!) if the data set shows that Sacred Scripture is true and that therefore God exists, and thus His moral law?!

Fourth, there is the pitfall, especially when dealing with observations of natural phenomena, of DISREGARDING ANECDOTES. Just because Mrs. Drushliak didn't make an audio recording of strange bird calls in her back yard doesn't mean her testimony is false, but just needs followed up on. It may be that the neighbors are hearing them, too, and it may turn out that a flock of cockatoos had escaped from a pet store miles away.

So there y'all have it.

The upcoming posts will be rather unusual, 16 being about LIVING pterosaurs. Stay tuned!

Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!

A grace-filled Roman and Byzantine Feast, y'all, of Pope Innocent I, Confessor, with the Martyr Pope Victor I also on the Roman Calendar. (The Martyrs Nazarius and Celsus fill out today Roman-wise, while the Byzantine is filled out with four of the Martyred Deacons of Acts 6:5: Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, and Parmenas.)

As a geologist by passion and training, this writer has been habitually gazing at the ground as well as admiring cliffs, roadcuts, and rock outcrops since childhood. No greater outdoorsy joy than tramping around in badlands! (Like the one in Montana pictured in an earlier post!)

As a cradle Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic who grew up in a thoroughly Traditional Catholic (despite the decline in practicing the Faith among many in it) Old World Ukrainian subculture in Philadelphia, and as a Thomistic theologian by training later in life, this author has strongly held the Truth of Sacred Scripture, and sought to integrate it with the Geology he both personally witnessed and was trained in.

He was led astray for a good chunk of his life by evolutionary Old Earth thinking bc of wicked, heretical “reinterpretation” of the plain, literal sense of Genesis into mythology, a mythology temporal-snobbishly thought to be all that the Almighty God could say to the supposedly primitive, uncomprehending, stupid ancient Israelites, a mythology that us Godless majorly superior bein's of Modern times alone can properly interpret!

In learning of the natural world, especially when it comes to Geology, there's no substitute for seeing. The problem is seeing with a mistaken paradigm. Today, having dealt with the mistaken paradigm of the Old Earth in previous posting, we will consider a second popular paradigm that is consistent with the literal Truth of Genesis: the Hydroplate Theory (HPT).

(All images from free on-line book mentioned immediately below. 😀)

Proposed by engineer Walt Brown, this theory focuses on the “fountains of the great deep” as drivers of the Great Flood cataclysm. (again, CATACLYSM…a violent upheaval, overturning). (It's explained in great detail, including many technical notes, in a free on-line book at creationscience.com.)

Like all theories that try to explain a process, initial conditions are necessary.

One can say that theories are an intellectual reverse engineering from observed phenomena (the data set) to the initial conditions that led to the process that had the said observed phenomena as the outcome.

The initial conditions vary with the theory for the same data set. Good Natural Science can have multiple theories floating around, their respective proponents duking it out (hopefully politely! 😂) until one prevails bc it best explains things. The discovery of new data can discredit a theory outrightly or simply cause an existing one to be slightly tweaked.

The Hydroplate Theory's initial (pre-Flood) conditions will, unlike Catastrophic Plate Tectonics’ familiar-to-everyone plate-tectonics Earth set-up, have to be bullet-pointed here. They assume:

— a solid basalt-composition (medium to low silicon with lots of iron and magnesium) interior of the Earth. No liquid outer core.

— a granitic (high silicon with lots of aluminum and sodium and calcium) crust about 60 miles thick, with an undulating surface that had low mountains, as well as bodies of water that covered roughly a third of the surface. Globally lush vegetation, abundant critters (land, air, and water), and people dwelt atop the granite, which had a bit of soil on land and a bit of sediment under water.

— a mile-thick layer of water between the granitic crust and basaltic interior. Now the granitic crust didn't float on the water, but sagged down in multiple places to sit upon the basalt, thus anchoring the crust: this would be consistent with the “pillars of the earth” that are written about in the Old Testament.

Now, this subterranean water layer is crucial to the HPT:

— Because of solar and lunar tidal flexing daily, it was very hot, like glowing orange hot, but, because confined by a 60-mile roof of rock, it couldn't boil. So highly pressurized, like thousands of atmospheres pressurized, water, besides very hot.

-- At that temperature, water becomes SUPERCRITICAL, neither vapor nor fully liquid, but gas molecules mingling amid liquid drops of only about ten molecules each, the droplets repeatedly evaporating and recondensing.

— At such a high tempetature, water is a super dissolver, so it had honeycombed the overlying granite with cavities. The dissolved mineral material, because the droplets evaporate so frequently, ended up flaking down to the bottom of the chamber and protecting the basalt from dissolution.

— As a result, the whole water layer contained lots of different mineral slurries that came from the dissolving: salt, gypsum, limestone, dolomite (magnesiumized limestone), iron hydroxide (rust), silica…

When God had had quite enough of human sin, He caused the granite crust to crack…

(Remember, the Great Flood was a supernatural event with many natural processes and tangible results.)

…that crack racing around the Earth like a giant baseball seam. The confined water blasted upward violently, some going into space but most condensing very high up and falling back as blindingly torrential rain. It was tepid when falling bc, as with air coming out of a pressurized tire and steaming, the expansion of the water on the way up drastically cooled it. Here you have the Scriptural “fountains of the great deep” having been “broken” and the “windows of Heaven” opened.

In the meanwhile, the sides of the global crack, bc unsupported, kept collapsing into the escaping water, which behaved like a gargantuan power washer, pulverizing the granite into sediment of various sizes, some sediment blasting vertically, but most of it running sideways with some of the laterally-moving water to violently cover the original land. Of course, the vegetation and critters were caught up in the chaos, ending up fossilized with evidence of violent and/or sudden demises.

The cracks in the granite crust continued to widen as their edges were blasted out and, because of the violent exit of the subterranean water, the crust vibrated, like a ginormous water hammer in old plumbing, causing tsunamis on the increasingly submerged and sedimented-over land, plus the water and sediment ran across the land in pulses, all under torrential rain. All this actually sorted and layered sediments, and their fossils.

Forty days is almost SIX WEEKS. The land did not all get submerged immediately, but when it did the fountains stopped bc the subterranean water had mostly run out of its chamber.

(The top image is of a limestone quarry exhibiting upward buckling after overlying limestone removed. Imagine this in an ocean-sized area with sixty MILES of overburden gone!)

At this point the initial crack was very wide, likely hundreds of miles. The now-widely-exposed basalt bottom with sixty miles of heavy granite blasted away, rebounded upward most of those miles: not much to hold it down anymore. It is the present-day bottom of the North and South Atlantic Ocean, a few miles deep.

If something goes up on one side of the world, something else has to go down on the other side: it resulted in the Pacific Ocean basin. “WAIT! STOP THE BUS! It takes me fourteen hours to fly across the Pacific, but only seven for the Atlantic. I mean, the Pacific is GINORMOUS!!!” Indeed it is! Spherical geometry is such that if you pull a little material out of one side it, the other side will sink, but in a BROADER area that is LESS DEEP. The Pacific side sank, but not by fifty-something miles: its bigger sinkage area compensated for the depth.

The enormous energy involved in the whole shifting of material from Pacific to Atlantic side ended up melting an outer core, plus the million pieces of the shattered Pacific side, likely granite atop basalt, etc., experienced a lot of melting themselves from the frictional downward motion, and, as a result, the Pacific bottom was paved with basalt and studded with roughly a million volcanoes. PLUS, the sinking created numerous trenches.

Now, all this was happening under water, so not affecting Noah, his family, nor his Ark faunal entourage.

(This orientation is deliberate: visualize the Americas sliding downward on the map! (Map credit in online book given to Marie Tharp.))

Because the Pacific side was now lower than the Atlantic, and there was still a thin layer of subterranean water left under the granite plates (proven by deep drilling), these plates (the original granite shell now broken into pieces) slid toward the Pacific basin on the thin layer of water still left under them (why they're called HYDROplates) until they snagged on something (Recall the irregular pillars underneath.) and they and their now two-mile thick sediment covering buckled into mountain ranges mostly near the leading edge of the sliding.

Then the water ran off. How?! The whole Earth is covered! Well, the big, deep Pacific basin made a lot of room for it, plus the buckling of the hydroplates reduced their area and left even more ocean bottom available. It took a while to finish draining.

OK, let's all take a breath! That was quite the ride!!!

The big advantage of HPT is that it's very detailed in initial conditions, and is comprehensive as an explanatory tool bc it even accounts for the cratering of the moon and asteroids! (Too much for a short post. Consult the book online.)

Nostra Mater de Perpetuo Succursu, adiuva nos!

Мати Неустанньої Помочі, поможи нам!

Glory to Jesus Christ, y'all! And a grace-filled Roman Feast of St. Anne, Mother of Our Lady and Grandmother of Our Lord! (We Byzantines celebrated her Dormition yesterday.) (And this author is rejoicing in having two opportunities in two days!)

Tsunamis have been in the news a lot the past couple of decades, the ubiquity of cell phone cameras enabling photo and film documentation of often horrifying overrunning of water onto a shoreline or up a river valley.

The one in Northern Japan in 2011 was even filmed from helicopter as it rampaged (in eerie slow motion as seen from high up) across the landscape, and closeup videos from higher ground of towns being overrunning and destroyed were taken. During the Indian Ocean one of 2004, there was no lack of photos and footage. In fact a likely terrified photographer on a tall hilltop by a bay filmed a poor victim who'd wandered out onto the middle of suddenly exposed muddy bay bottom (often, the water recedes before the wave hits), the victim suddenly kneeling as a huge wall of muddy water came roaring back into the bay right at him. God rest his soul and those of the many thousands who perished from these and other tsunamis! (I would've assigned this topic as homework, but it is too gruesome to spend time on. 😢😞 Time would be better spent praying for the salvation of the victims.)

Now, to oddly switch gears: when one looks at places where water runs across a solid surface with great speed, on surfaces as varied as the blades of a motorboat propeller or the bottom of a spillway of a dam, one often finds pits or even fracturing of the surface. The phenomenon seems very counterintuitive: how could nice running water do something like that? I know my shower doesn't!

The answer is CAVITATION: when swiftly running water is made to go turbulent, it is thereby forced in certain places to flash into bubbles of water vapor despite being way below its boiling point in terms of temperature. Because the temperature isn't sufficiently high to maintain those bubbles, they will collapse back into liquid form, but with a violent snap. If that snap is near a solid surface, it can pit that surface, like on the blades of a motorboat propeller, or it can even fracture that surface if brittle, like the concrete bottom of a dam's spillway. (Lots on the subject online…[cough]…homework…[cough]: of particular interest is what happened at the Oroville Dam in Northern CA in 2017.)

Now, one of the paradigms that is being used to explain the vast, very thick, and obviously rapidly-emplaced Great Flood sediments (as discussed in the Twelfth Post) is Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT). This paradigm — CPT — posits that very frequent, monstrously huge tsunamis overran the largely granitic rock of the continents, their cataclysmic-level turbulence pulverizing that underlying rock into sediment, with that sediment being emplaced atop the continents in thick, areally vast, horizontal layers. The huge number of critters caught up in the turbulence became the numerous fossils that we encounter today.

(Tsunamis (red stripes on oceans) spreading out from a vibrating plate boundary. (Ref 1))

Now, what caused the tsunamis?

(Mainstream plate tectonic diagram. The plate going under South America is SUBDUCTING. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a place of SPREADING. (Ref 2))

The theory assumes an Earth initially set up much like mainstream plate tectonics has it set up: rigid plates, continental and oceanic, floating atop a hot, taffy-like mantle, with some of the edges of the plates dipping down (subducting) under horizontal neighboring plates, the junction being a trench like we have in many places today, and other plate boundaries being either places of spreading, like the mid-ocean ridges, or of horizontal sliding, California's San Andreas fault being an example. The whole mantle slowly rises mid-ocean and sinks at the subduction zones, dragging the plates’ edges downward. Everything moves about as quickly as the growth of a fingernail. (Homework! 😉)

(RUNAWAY MELTING: though this is a 2-dimensional representation, the idea is nevertheless validly represented. (Ref 3))

What triggered the Flood would have been RUNAWAY MELTING, a sudden catastrophically rapid overturning of the mantle because of sudden (due to heat and pressure) density changes in mineral crystals within it. This would drag down a significant length of the dipping crustal slab at the trenches at high speed…ealking pace (WAY quicker than a fingernail growing).

(Trench closeup. (Ref 4))

The friction (i.e. getting frequently stuck) between the descending solid subducting slab and the solid neighboring horizontal slab would've caused MASSIVE flapping up and down of the junction, like thousands of feet, with the seawater above being disturbed into ginormous tsunamis, racing around the globe to do their cavitation/erosion work on any continent they'd run onto. There'd be a wave generated roughly every hour.

The tsunamis, coming onshore at high speed, would've pulverized the underlying rock, especially closest to shore, into sediment by cavitation, dragged the stuff inland, and, because going uphill slows down forward speed, the sediment would’ve started settling out, the biggest amount furthest from shore, resulting in an ever-growing (with each new tsunami) mound of stuff in mid-continent. Because water sorts things in varying ways, depending on current speed, sediment proportion, etc., the sediment would end up layered in various ways and particle sizes.

(Ribbon of hot rising mantle boiling off sea water, which condenses into heavy rain. (Ref 5))

(Hypothetical cracks where hot mantle material would’ve come to the surface. (Ref 6))

Meanwhile, while stuff was sinking at the trench, hot mantle material would've been rising elsewhere to compensate, vaporizing the seawater above it, the vapor of which would've risen up into the atmosphere to condense into prolonged torrential rain. This risen hot mantle material would've solidified into new ocean floor that would keep being pushed apart sideways. In the end, after all was over, the rising portion in the middle would be what we nowadays call the mid-ocean ridges.

As the mantle was overturning, it would've been dragging the overlying tectonic plates around, splitting continental landmasses and rearranging them into the configuration we see today.

Once the whole plate/mantle overturning process stopped, the sea water that was piled onto the continents by the tsunamis would've gently run off back into the ocean basins, leaving behind the huge sediment load that it had initially violently emplaced albeit a bit eroded.

Advantages of CPT:

— provides a simple explanation;

— can fit into the short time frame that Genesis requires;

— can account for the tectonic plate boundaries (trenches, faults, etc.) as they are seen today;

— can account for the global torrential rain; and

— provides a plausible mechanism for erosion of pre-Flood land surface, plus piling up of the resulting sediments onto continents.

Disadvantages (in view of the author):

— Would God have created an Earth with an unstable mantle that could rapidly overturn?

— Genesis 7:11-12 talks about “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the flood gates of heaven were opened: And the rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” (from drbo.org) This seems to indicate primarily a water event, water coming out of somewhere in vast quantities for nearly six weeks.

--Did God create the Earth in a plate tectonic configuration with trenches, etc., structures that would indicate earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. pre-Flood?

In the next post, we'll look at a different paradigm…The Hydroplate Theory (HPT).

Nostra Mater de Perpetuo Succursu, adiuva nos!

REFERENCES:

—2, 4, 5, 6: https://answersingenesis.org/geology/plate-tectonics/a-catastrophic-breakup/

— 3: https://icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Catastrophic-Plate-Tectonics-The-Physics.pdf

— 1: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=icc_proceedings

Glory to Jesus Christ!

A grace-filled Feast of the great penitent Saint Mary Magdalene (Roman AND Byzantine calendars! 😇), y'all!

The mainstream Old Earth/Evolution paradigm teaches that the assorted rock strata we see on our travels, whether soaring out of the ground or along road cuts as we drive, were formed (deposited, squeezed, chemically altered, melted, etc.) over very long time periods, and what we witness nowadays is the end result of over four BILLION (That’s 4,000,000,000.) years of Earth's history.

“WOW!!!!” listening onlookers say as they swoon, overwhelmed in wonder. 🫠🫣

This author says: “POPPYCOCK!”

Why?

Because he looks at the rocks with a mind that thinks outside the box and which questions questionable narratives. Here he is by a little cliff around three miles from his dwelling…

(All photos in this post by author.)

The strata are horizontal. The rock comprising them is made of a mix of fine-grained sand and clay/silt. Except for the little vertical faults that offset the layers, and occasional changes in composition, the horizontality extends out for large distances.

Going along the 40°N parallel, where the photos were taken, the layers are horizontal some two hundred miles East to the Allegheny Mountains in Western PA. They extend Westward largely horizontally roughly one thousand five hundred miles to East-Central CO near Denver.

And even at the geographical extremes just mentioned, they're still layer-caked, just faulted up and down and/or wrinkled WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT CRACKING in the mountains of PA and CO.

Last I checked, your friendly neighborhood rill, stream, brook, creek, or river does not deposit sand or mud with such vast, monotonous horizontality: there'd be channels evident in the cliff above — silted in for sure, but evident…the horizontal cracks would have an occasional semicircle shape to them. Yes, no evidence of that.

Sooo…some BIG process must've brought all that sediment in from somewhere.

And in the regions East and West where the layers were wrinkled, they must've been wet and soft…otherwise they'd bend as smoothly as saltines or peanut brittle 😳, i.e. they'd break. And, what process wrinkled them? Must've been very big and very quick…before the water escaped from the layers.

Going to the East end of the author's favorite state, Montana, one finds rimrocks: high, long cliffs that extend for many miles…

(Behind tiny Winnett, for example.)

Again, horizontal strata. The horizontality extends down with very few interruptions Southeastward some four-five hundred miles to the above-mentioned strata near Denver. Billings, MT airport sits atop a rimrock: fascinating take-off view of Downtown a couple of hundred feet below!

(Note skyscraper at left.)

Again a huge process to deposit so much horizontal sediment over so vast an area. Same wrinkling nearby like the sort mentioned earlier in PA or CO, too.

Another puzzle arises from observation of the rimrock landscape. Obviously, sediments deposited by water or wind don't solidify into nice cliffs. Strata are deposited in a broad sheet cake configuration, with running water cutting parts out.

The little cliff by the author's dwelling can easily be cut by the little creek (Salt Run) at his feet in the above photos. (The author can attest to the violence of the flooding that Salt Run inflicts on the land around it, with boulders, stumps, slabs, fallen trees, and loose sediment deposits, familiar from many hikes, significantly moved if not outrightly swept away who knows where.) And the cliffs there form the sides of a little valley with higher land close by all around.

Not so with the Montana rimrocks! Arid climate, so not much running water. Vast length, and vast lowlands between the rims, like someone just sliced out a big piece of sheet cake from the middle and left a gaping hole.

What gives? Must have been a large process that acted quickly.

Then there's that pesky problem of all these sedimentary rocks being so THICK!!! On the continents, the thickness averages about two MILES. (Homework strikes again!! 😵‍💫 🤣 Look up the thicknesses!) The underlying rocks are granite (of tombstone fame) and related rocks. They're the bedrock of a continent.

For example, in Texas, the author's second favorite state, these limestone and marl (limestone with clay) layers behind the Baymont Inn and Suites in Glen Rose go down about one thousand five hundred feet before hitting bedrock. The thickness increases to some FOUR miles (20,000 ft) near the coast of the Gulf, some two hundred miles away.

And in the oceans, very little sediment. (Homework!!! 🫨) Why?

All these things discussed in this short post are not adequately explained by the Old Earth paradigm. In sum, because of the uniform strata horizontality over large distances, indication that folded strata were wet upon folding, and large areas of missing sediment from the surrounding sediment sheet cake, the slowness of the Old Earth explanation just doesn't work.

The observations are clamoring for a different, better paradigm, and this series of posts will examine two of them, the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) model as well as the Hydroplate Theory (HPT) model. Both assume the historical reality of the Great Flood of Genesis from the get-go and, as we examine the visible evidence further, we'll see that only that cataclysm can account for what we see in the rocks out there.

Keep in mind also that Earth's history is really part of human history: the Flood was a necessary drastic correction to the God-hating trajectory that man was taking.

God caused the Flood to save souls: Noah and his family on the Ark could ponder during the time aboard and in the drastically changed new world they encountered starting on Ararat; everyone else had to face their world destroyed and their lives fading out (The rain lasted nearly SIX WEEKS, the land taking a lot of time to be fully submerged.) — they're the “spirits in prison” that Our Lord preached to after dying on the Cross (1 Peter 3:18-20).

The Flood was a supernatural event, but with many physical manifestations that we can explore. For this author, the deeper he investigates the Great Flood Geology, the more he realizes what an absolutely horrifying event it was!!

Our Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!!

And a grace-filled Byzantine Feast of the Major Prophet Ezekiel and Roman Feast of St. Lawrence of Brindisi!

Everybody's heard of the Great Flood. It's in the Bible in the book of Genesis. Most, including most current Catholic churchmen, think that it's a mythological account, an account useful perhaps for the primitive ancient Israelites who wrote it, maybe a regional pagan story dressed-up to make it compatible with Yahweh.

Sadly, as this author has written before, modern man's mind is seriously infected with temporal snobbery: past folks were primitive, stupid, uncomprehending, unaware, unobserving dolts, very unlike us sophisticated, intelligent, SUPERIOR moderns.

A falsehood repeated often enough (like “Blondes have more fun.”) ends up conditioning the hearing/reading mind into thinking that that said falsehood is a fundamental principle of reality. This author was raised in the 1960s and 70s, and, repeatedly exposed to prevailing pop culture, considered an LAX luggage tag to be the height of travel glamor, and the celebrity denizens of Los Angeles to be the gods of the West Coast Mount Olympus. Thanks be to God, that pack of lies and others did not root too deeply in him because, growing up, he was also regularly exposed to the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, wherein actual Reality was taking place. However, extirpating them has nonetheless been a many-year project: mental conditioning is powerful!

With a childhood of summer Pocono Mountains (Northeast PA) rock prospecting and collecting under his belt, the author eventually earned a BA in Geology and went through young adult life uneasily trying to maintain the Genesis Flood account and Old Earth Geology/Evolution in the same mental space. Never the twain would meet. Finally, a multi-inch stalactite on an only century-old concrete railroad bridge convinced him that the Old Earth story was bogus, but he had not the paradigm to replace the mainstream Old Earth History with.

After about a decade or two, he came across the Hydroplate Theory paradigm that comprehensively put the many geological puzzle pieces together.

Having traveled to and/or flown over (window seat) the vast majority of the fifty states of the USA, the author can confidently say that the signs of the Great Flood are nearly everywhere! (And there's nothing like the beautiful photography of states’ tourist info to fill in where a fellow couldn't set foot!)

Interestingly, a group of formations like this, photographed by the author in Brusett, MT,

has a nearly identical copy some thousand miles to the South in the Navajo Nation straddling the AZ-UT line. And very similar landscapes appear in ND, SD, and KS. This speaks of a similar or identical process or set of processes taking place in a significant chunk of the country. (And yes, it's cold coffee in the plastic bottle! 😃)

And a close-up look at the strata, the chunks of rock in them, as well as the fossils, hints at an event of great violence.

The upcoming posts will be exploring the Great Flood further, including a treatment of each of two competing Great Flood paradigms:

The Hydroplate Theory (HPT)

&

Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT)

Each has an explanation to offer to account for what is seen out there.

Stay tuned!

Our Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!

First, a bit o’ housekeeping: I mistakenly labeled the Eighth Post the Seventh Post bc I'd forgotten that there already was a Seventh Post. So, what's labeled Eighth is really Ninth…y'all get the drill, so here we are at the correct numeration. 😃

Our perspective affects how we take in a data set and how we interpret it, and that interpretation will lead us down one train of thought to a set of conclusions, while the missed perspective and its conclusions will be hidden from us.

OK, looking a this shape…

…we see:

— a convulsing buffalo?

— my toddler nephew's sketch of Fido, the family pug?

— a square hamburger bun run over by a bicycle?

— my dog ate my homework?

— a private cay in the Exumas of the Bahamas?

Hint: Sandy Hook, Raritan Bay, Cape May Peninsula…

YES, it's Joisey…I mean…New Jersey!

(Original outline from https://gisgeography.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/New-Jersey-Outline-Map.jpg)

Our perspective often determines what we see. This holds especially true for maps, where we've all been conditioned from childhood to see every map with North at the top, and thus every geographical feature aligned only North-South. For navigation purposes, the convenience of this convention far outweighs the benefits another perspective would provide. However, for other purposes, alternate perspectives would be very useful. To wit, let's look at a map of the World Ocean Floor…

(From: https://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview2.html, specifically https://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/images/hydroplateoverview-tharp_world_ocean_floor_map12.gif)

…it's the configuration and orientation we're all familiar with: North at the top. (It's easy to forget, though, that the Earth is a sphere while the map is flat, so the features of its spherical surface need to be projected onto a flat plane, in this projection, everything around the equator being normal size while all else getting disproportionately large as you go toward the poles, making Greenland, Alaska, and Northern Siberia far larger than they actually are. 😀)

Looking at the Atlantic Ocean in particular, we see a familiar jigsaw fit between Africa and South America, and even kinda-sorta between North America and Europe. It's what inspired the Theory of Plate Tectonics: continents drift. The location of a lot of the mountain ranges (brown color) makes subduction zones of that Theory plausible.

Now let's turn things sideways…

…focusing on South America. Shrinking the Antarctic end of South America to match the tropical end scale, look at the island arcs at either end: the Caribbean and the South Sandwich Islands running from the Tierra del Fuego to the Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica. What do you see?

I see:

— the swirls waist-deep water makes when I slowly walk through it, and

— the swirly piles of dust that are left on two sides when a broom sweeps through a pile of dust wider than the broom, and

— the wrinkles that a tablecloth develops when you push it in the middle with one hand.

Now, look at the LONG mountain Range running from Southern Alaska over to the Tierra del Fuego.

In a normal map configuration, it's a really amazing feature!

In this sideways configuration, it makes me think of:

— a slippery-bottomed throw rug sliding on a floor until its front end snags on something and wrinkles up.

SOOO, ponder what happened? And how quickly? My observations and ponderings suggest sliding…quickly.

Also (Homework!! 🙄), rotate the map around to varying degrees and ponder how the other mountain ranges formed.

Our Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!!

Ademar

One thing that an unquestioned narrative or unquestioned consensus does is that it blinds us to what would otherwise be obvious. (If they are solidly based on reality THEN they lead us to the Truth.)

I'm an avid drinker of raw milk. According to the consensus out there, I'm risking brucellosis and/or listeria (BTW, cute names for kittens!) for committing this heinous act. I've been drinking this noxious liquid enthusiastically and in great abundance for several years now with no disease in sight; in fact, my relatively few seasonal allergies have all but disappeared, and I'm feeling quite chipper for a sixty-something!! My personal experience and observations have revealed that the consensus is false. (Of course, my supply comes from a source that I know to be scrupulously clean.)

Along the same vein, I am a hardened, totally unrepentant criminal, with full knowledge and full consent, regarding another narrative-and-consensus-labelled offense that I've known the evil of since the intermediate grades of elementary school.

FOR SHAME, Ademar! We might have to call the police on you!! What a disedifying example you set!! What nefarious activity are you so boastful about?

I…

…y'all hold your breath now!…

…put Q-tips into my ear canal!!

[collective gasp]

They efficiently clear the canals, preventing me from swiftly becoming as deaf as a post. Multi-decade experience and observation have shown me that the not solidly based childhood advice (narrative/consensus) I was getting about not putting into my ear canal anything smaller than my elbow was pure flapdoodle.

Now let's go to Mexico’s 🇲🇽 Veracruz (True Cross) State wherein we find huge basalt heads made by the Olmec people. These heads have serious tonnage, and were emplaced far from their source quarries.

(Pic credits from first head downward: Matshall Astor at https://www.flickr.com/people/lifeontheedge/; Maribel Ponce Ixba at https://www.flickr.com/people/frida27/; Caldwell Kvaran Archive at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carptrash; and Michel Wal.)

If we hop across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from Veracruz, and fly South-Southwest over the Eastern Pacific for some three thousand miles to Rapa Nui/Easter Island, we also encounter huge solidified volcanic ash (aka tuff) heads, called moai, of a different shape than in Mexico, but still of serious tonnage and most set upright a ways from their source quarries. Some even have hats!

(The last photo is of the quarry that the moai rocks were taken from.)

(Pic credits top to bottom: Ian Sewell at http://ianandwendy.com/OtherTrips/SouthPacific/Easter-Island; Bjarte Sorensen at https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BjarteSorensen; Aurbina at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Aurbina; and Dropus.)

If we fly West Northwest from Easter Island, across the Pacific some five thousand miles to the Caroline Islands to the little neighboring Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) islands of Pohnpei and Kosrae, we don’t find huge basalt heads, but we DO find a small ancient city on the shore of each, both cities constructed of large, quite heavy, basalt logs.

On Pohnpei, it's called Nan Madol…

(Map and Pics credits from top: Hobe/Holger Behr at https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hobe; NOAA at http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/mvey0173.htm; CT Snow from Hsinchu, Taiwan at https://www.flickr.com/people/75391858@N00; and Dr. James P. McVey at http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/mvey0180.htm)

On Kosrae, it's called Leluh…

(Map and pic from top: Paul Hambruch & Ernst Safert; and Maloff 1 at https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Maloff1)

(All images above are from their respective Wikipedia articles. It's easy to find data out there.)

Some archeological consensus and narratives that we grow up with are:

— Ancient peoples were generally more primitive than us in most ways, including technology. A couple of civilizations were the exception: Egypt, etc.

— They were generally isolated one from another, unless geographical neighbors.

— They used primitive tools and methods for building, sculpting, and the like.

The internet has more videos about the four places I mentioned above than you can shake a stick at. If you like rabbit holes, have at it: from amid the hubbub, you may glean some useful information.

However, there's one simple mental activity that each of us can do quite easily without relying on consensus or narrative (or videos): PATTERN RECOGNITION.

Do we see a pattern when considering Olmec basalt heads, Easter Island volcanic tuff heads and hats, and Carolinian basalt logs structures?

Do your homework (Y'all thought you could get away with none this time? 😂) and look for connections. Some suggestions:

— What's basalt? Tuff?

— When did each civilization exist, and what is the definitive historical evidence for the dates?

— Could they conceivably have had contact with one another? If so, how?

--Why did they make rather elaborate and heavy basalt or tuff items while other peoples in basalt/tuff-rich areas like the Faroe Islands 🇫🇴 or Hawai’i or Eastern Washington State did not?

— Are there other ancient groups that built or sculpted things of basalt or tuff comparable to the above-mentioned groups?

— Given the reality of the Great Flood, everyone's subsequent descent from Noah, the fallenness of human nature, and what I'd written in my First Post, how would these civilizations fit into that framework, so different from mainstream consensus and narratives?

The key thing is to make observations without preconceived notions, narratives, or consensus preventing us from making obvious connections…UNLESS those notions, narratives, etc. are based in reality!

AAAND…HAVE FUN!!! There is a LOT of fascinating yet puzzling archeological stuff out there to try to make sense of!

Our Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!!

Ademar

A grace-filled Byzantine Feast of the Martyr Julian of Tarsus and the Roman Feast of the Confessor Aloysius Gonzaga, y'all!

OK, you dig a two-foot-deep hole in the ground in your backyard: because, why not? 🤓 The next day, a heavy thunderstorm washes an-eight-inch layer of pine needles into it from up the hill. Two days later, another heavy thunderstorm washes in eight inches worth of sand from up the hill. A few days after that, a two-day nonstop steady rain washes in eight inches of soil just like the soil all around it. The hole is gone. Because you were hoping to plant a rose bush in that hole you dig it up again, but aim wrong and dig into the side of the original hole. You see a layer cake of pine needles under sand under soil. Because you witnessed all three rains, you know that the bottom pine needle layer came first, and is thus older than the two above it.

Same goes with your lasagna: the cheese topping came AFTER the noodle under it, and that noodle was laid down AFTER the cheesy-tomatoey-ground beef, and so on. Top is younger than bottom.

Well, natural science men in the 1800s seeing layers of rock, assumed that they were laid down bottom to top, and, keeping in mind that it takes time between laying down of layers, they calculated that a LOT of time had to pass to lay down the whole stack.

Sadly, this enabled a long time-frame that the evolution theory could piggyback on.

However, some natural science men, like modern Frenchman, Guy Berthault, thought outside the box: what IF the layers were laid down in a different way? What if sediments were carried by swift currents? How would they deposit? Well, he up and did experiments, including water flumes.

Some interesting results came about:

Still water: if you dropped mixed sediments into still water, layers often formed spontaneously…

(Would be nice if you could do that with lasagna, just dump everything into the baking dish all at once! 🤣 Same for shepherd's pie!)

If you ran mixed sediment particles in a swift current, you got a layer cake all at once!!!

And the layer cake deposited SIDEWAYS!!!

Older is UPSTREAM, and the pattern continues downstream! Quickly!

(Imagine the huge Grand Canyon layer cake being laid down in weeks by several huge currents in a row…saves a LOT of time!)

So, FUN homework this time 😊😀😃☺️: find all the above, and much more, including videos, at sedimentology.fr It's in English. (Cet website est disponible aussi à français.)

Our Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!!

Ademar

A grace-filled Feast of Corpus Christi (Gregorian Calendar) and of the Apostle Jude (Thaddeus), cousin of Our Lord and brother of St. James the Less!!

— The first is a good reminder that Our Lord is REALLY and TRULY present under the appearance of bread and wine at every valid Mass and Divine Liturgy, often being reposed in the Tabernacle afterwards, where He continues being present. Whether we receive Him as Holy Communion or simply visit Him (or acknowledge Him from afar if distant residence or duties of life do not permit a visit), His graces pour forth upon us if we are simply open to them!

--The second is a good reminder that Our Incarnate Lord was/is like us in every way except sin, and that includes HAVING BLOOD RELATIVES: not just His Immaculate Mother, but cousins like Jude and James. (Fun homework: look up other blood relatives of Our Lord. Also, His legal ones through St. Joseph. 😇)

Now two final points about Radioactive Dating. (Homework with each one so that y'all know that it isn't old Rakowsky yelling and screeching his delusions. 😄)

FIRST, when a sample is dated, rock or organic, multiple trials are done. That's good science.

It's also common sense: when Mom or I are feeling sick, I measure her or my temperature three times with our old-fashioned electronic oral thermometer that goes “beep!…beep!…beep!” when done. If it reads 101.2, 97.6, & 97.9, I know there's no fever; if 101.2, 98.6, & 101.1, I know we got us an illness!

The same goes with the radioactive dating results. You look for a trend in the multiple results.

Now, if our home thermometer reads 67.2, 135.4, & 98.6, I pitch the thing in the trash: it's not reliable.

Radioactive dating results, sadly, tend to be scattered like readings from a broken thermometer (Look it up. Homework. Told ya! 😉) So what's done is that the results that are closest to what the researcher THINKS is the object’s age, are chosen! (Look it up, too. 🤯) Can you spell C I R C U L A R R E A S O N I N G? (E.g. the Anytown Herald is the awesomest paper in the state! Why? Because it's owned by the Smith family. What's so special about the Smith family? They own the Anytown Herald!)

True Natural Science looks for reliable data that is:

— consistent, and

— not filtered through preconceptions.

SECONDLY, if you find a dinosaur bone in your back yard and want to have it radiocarbon dated, you should be able to take it to a lab and have it done, right? They shouldn't refuse to date it because they don't think there's any C-14 left in the sample, right? There are multiple radiocarbon dating labs around, charging good money (justly) for the work they do (Very elaborate procedure. Homework time!! 🙃). Really, your wealthy Great Aunt Hortense should be able to go have her shawl radiocarbon dated every month if she wants, right? Right? (Homework yet again!! ☺️) They are providing a service and charging for it, right??

But, is that the case? Or do the labs filter out objects based on preconceptions? (It's OK to refuse to radiocarbon date a lump of lead or a sheet of aluminum foil, of course: they possess no carbon.) (So BIG Homework here!! 💪)

Speaking of Homework, has coal, conventionally believed to be hundreds of millions of years old, ever been radiocarbon dated? Or diamonds, assumed to be without any C-14 because formed deep in the Earth? (Also, look up kimberlite pipes. Would be nice to have one out back! 😃)

True Natural Science never fits reliable data to a paradigm if that data contradicts it: humility requires adjusting one's paradigm to account for that data.

Our Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!

Ademar