Refuting Creationism - How Sealife Recovered From Disaster - 66 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

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Life Recovered Rapidly at Site of Dino-Killing Asteroid. A Hydrothermal System May Have Helped. | Jackson School of Geosciences | The University of Texas at Austin

A figure showing a hypothesized semi-enclosed environment created by post-impact hydrothermal activity.

Credit: Sato et al.

A recurring point in this blog is that 99.9975% of Earth's history occurred before the time creationists claim the Earth was magically created out of nothing by an immaterial deity. It is strange how, despite the overwhelming evidence contradicting their viewpoint and a notable absence of credible supporting evidence, creationism endures as a belief system.

This requires either a profound lack of scientific knowledge and understanding, or extraordinary mental gymnastics, to cope with the cognitive dissonance and dismiss the abundant contrary evidence. Advocates of creationism frequently attempt to rationalise away this evidence, attributing it to errors, falsifications, or even alleging a global conspiracy within the scientific community.

Recently, another piece of evidence undermining creationist claims emerged with the publication of a study in Nature Communications. The paper documents how marine life rapidly recovered at the site of the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid impact in the Gulf of Mexico, 66 million years before creationism's mythical 'Creation Week'.

This rapid recovery was facilitated by nutrient-rich waters resulting from hydrothermal activity triggered by the asteroid collision.

Creationists might not want to hear this because they have well-rehearsed excuses for dismissing radiometric dating, but the study depended on analyzing the ratios of stable osmium isotopes in sediments at the Chicxulub impact site. This analysis is not a form of radiometric dating; rather, it involves comparing the naturally occurring ratios of these isotopes from terrestrial and meteoritic sources to trace their origin. By correlating these isotopic variations with sediment depth, researchers have inferred the contribution of meteoritic material over time.

The timing of the Chicxulub impact has been corroborated through multiple independent methods, including high-precision uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating of zircon crystals. These zircons, found in impact-related deposits, provide robust age constraints that align with the established date of the event.

Refuting Creationism - Scientists Discover What Caused Earth's Climate Cycle To Change A million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Rig used for obtaining core samples of seabed sediment

The pattern of glaciation and warmer spells changed about 1,000,000 years ago.

Deep ocean clues to a million-year-old Ice Age puzzle revealed in new study – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Like almost all of Earth's history, a sudden change in the cyclic pattern of climate change occurred in that long, pre-Creation period. To be precise, 700,000 to 1 million years ago the pattern of glaciation and interglacial warm spells changed from a 41,000 year cycle, due to changes in the degree of tilt in Earth's rotation (axial precession), to one of about 100,000 years with no obvious change in axial precession or external causes such as solar radiation. This is known to climatologists and geologists as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT)

Given the conviction of creationists that their putative designer god created Earth perfectly tuned for them to live on, it will probably be disturbing to learn that Earth's pattern of climate can change radically over the long term, and not caused by anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases but by perfectly natural processes that don't need the interference of a magic deity to explain them. On top of this all happening before they believe Earth was created out of nothing as a small flat planet with a dome over it, there is much here for creationists to ignore and for their cult to lie about.

Fine-Tuned Fallacy Exposed - How Earth's Ecosystems Caused Multiple Mass Extinctions Between 185 And 85 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Fossils of Crinoids that were probably killed in an Oceanic Anoxic Event

Credit: Professor Tom Gernon

Land-sea tag-team devastated ocean life millions of years ago reveal scientists | University of Southampton

It can only be by remaining wilfully ignorant of the history of life on Earth and how it has been affected by catastrohic changes, that creationists are able to maintain the childish delusion that Earth is somehow fine-tuned for life, and especially their life.

The fact that very much of the surface of Earth, such as oceans, deserts and high mountain ranges is lethal without special equipment, and without cloths, shelter and fire , most of the northern and southern latitudes are not survivable in an average winter should be a clue to the fallacy of the claim, but then, from the safety of small town, Bible Belt America, where the rest of the world might as well not exist, such places can be safely ignored.

But the fact remains, whether ignored or not, that there have been several periods in the history of life on Earth that the planet has become a very hostile place, resulting in mass extinctions wheree life looked as though someone had hit the reset button. The primary cause of these fluctuations is almost certinly plate techtonics which, through mid-ocean ridge activity, release sulphates and phosphates which produce blooms of plankton which then die, locking up carbon and producing anoxic sediments on the ocean bed, and by releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere where if causes a rise in ocean temperature.

Volcanic activity also produces basalt which, when eroded and washed into the sea adds to the phosphates which produce planktonic blooms and subsequent deoxygenation.

How these terrestrial and marine sources act together to produce the frequent OAEs has now been explained.

Unintelligent Design - New Species Of Deep-Ocean Worm - But What Is It For, Exactly?

Pectinereis strickrotti

[Right caption/credit]

New Deep-Sea Worm Discovered at Methane Seep off Costa Rica | Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Fig 1. Pectinereis strickrotti gen. nov., sp. nov. in life.

A, B, D. Several epitokous males swimming near methane seeps of Mound 12 (~1,000 m depth) of the Costa Rica margin and videoed via the submersible DSV Alvin. A. A frame grab from a video taken on Alvin dive 4503 on Feb. 4, 2009. B and D. Frame grabs from video taken on Alvin dive 4987 on Nov. 2, 2018. C. A fragment of an atokous infaunal female was collected at the same depth and locality via sediment pushcore on Alvin dive 4984 on Oct. 30, 2018. A white egg ~350 μm in diameter is visible on the exterior. Scalebar 1 mm. E. An epitokous male swimming near methane seeps of Parrita Scar (~1,000 m depth) of the Costa Rica margin. The specimen was initially caught via slurp with the ROV SuBastian (dive S0218, Jan. 11, 2019) but escaped.

Images A, B, D, courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. E, courtesy of Schmidt Ocean Institute.

One of the hallmarks of good intelligent design is that the designed object must be designed for a purpose. No intelligent designer is going to waste time making something that doesn't have any use. Even a decorative use is a function. As the designer William Morris said, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.", but creationism's designer seems to just design things for the sake of it - half a million different beetles, for example. And now we have the example of a deep-ocean worm that appears to have no other purpose than to make more deep-ocean worms.

It's almost exactly like these different organisms are being designed by a mindless, natural process without a plan and no sense of purpose!

According to creationist superstitions in Genesis, every living thing on Earth was created for the benefit of mankind, and, incidentally, named by Adam (as though Adam would have had enough time to name every living species!). So, a challenge to creationists is to tell us what these deep-ocean worms are for in terms of their utility value for humans, and how did Adam dive that deep to name them?

Its discovery if the subject of an open access paper in PLOS ONE and is described in a Scripps Institute for Oceanography news release:

Unintelligent Design - The Late Devonian Mass-Extinction Or How Earth Is Badly Designed For Life

Artist’s impression of a Late Devonian landscape

Nicolas Primola

Fieldwork at Trail Island in East Greenland, near a Late Devonian rock outcrop.

Photo by John Marshall, University of Southampton

Study reshapes understanding of mass extinction in Late Devonian era: IU News

Way back 370 million years before the mythical 'Creation Week' the seas were full of life and angiosperm plants were rapidly replacing the tree ferns and other Tracheophytes and life was looking good, despite the fact that the single large landmass, Pangea, was on the point of breaking up.

Then something happened to cause another of those periodic mass extinctions that have punctuated Earth's long 'pre-Creation' history. What exactly it was has been the subject of ongoing debate by geologists, biologists and climatologists ever since evidence of it was found in the fossil record, particularly in Devonian rocks like those in Greenland.

But whatever the cause, it's not good news for creationists who have been duped by their cult leaders into believing Earth is fine-tuned for life by a designer god, and, by the circular reasoning that characterises creationism, therefore this fine-tuning 'proves' their designer god exists. A cynic might wonder, if faith is any good, why creationists are so desperate to find scientific 'proof' of their god that they perform all manner of ludicrous mental gymnastics and commit just about every logical fallacy in the book, to tell themselves and their target dupes that they have discovered it - and will be producing it any day now, real soon!

But that's by the by.

Sadly for creationists the evidence is that Earth is anything but finely tuned and perfect for life. The simple truth is that an Earth that was perfectly designed for life would never have extinctions, let alone mass extinctions like the ones that ended the Devonian and Cretaceous eras, and the one that's in progress right now. In fact, there would not even be biodiversity on such a planet because there would be no reason to adapt to adverse conditions because since these would not exist on a perfectly designed Earth, so life would not have progressed beyond the simplest of self-replicating molecules.

So, just for any creationists still under the delusion that Earth is finely tuned for life, here is a brief description of the Devonian and the mass extinction at the end of it: