Creationism and Baraminology Research News

School has started again, and I'm busy learning Hebrew, reading Greek, and learning the history of Christianity. I'll hopefully get some chance to post, but currently I am just too busy.

A recent article from CMI discusses a recent discovery of a vast underground reservoir of water called the Beijing anomaly. The article says that the anomaly is evidence for Baumgardner's catastrophic plate techtonics, in which rapidly subducting tectonic plates would have pulled massive amounts of sediments and water into the earth's mantle. He says that not only that, but he goes on to say:

Runaway subduction may well be responsible for the water in the Beijing anomaly. But even larger volumes of mineral-laden fluids (hydrothermal fluids) could have reached the upper mantle and the crust. Wherever they would have filtered through unbound sediments (and Noah’s Flood surely produced tremendous amounts of them) the dissolved minerals would precipitate, cementing the unbound sediments into hard rock. About 90% of all sedimentary rocks are considered to be ‘terrigenous’ i.e. made of fragments of previous rocks eroded away from the continents and bound together by chemical cements.

Anyway, very interesting. But I also wonder if this could be evidence for the hydroplate theory. Might this large chamber of water be part of the "fountains of the great deep" that broke open? Anyway, lots of interesting things to think about.

Ian Juby has another video out, which covers some fascinating data concerning flood deposition including the burial of polystrate trees as well as the existence of global strata. Anyway, it's a very fascinating video. One of the more interesting facts is that the upright polystrate plants are almost always hollow reeds, while the ones on their sides are hardwood, and they are all buried together. This indicates catastrophic burial in water (as I understand the reeds will fload upright while the hardwood will float on its side). Anyway, here's the video:

The Journal of Creation is beginning a massive effort to bring its back-issues online -- for free!

This is exciting news, as there have been many instances where I've wanted to look up past information referenced in current sources and have been unable to do so because I cannot get access to them. So this is fantastic! Thanks CMI!

Also, I think that ICR is working on putting together an online journal that can include multimedia content, which I believe would be the first technical journal to do so. Wouldn't it be cool, rather than just reading about flume experiments with sedimentation, to actually watch one? That's what ICR is planning on doing. Exciting stuff! I must say, I am thankful to be a Creationist today with all of these wonderful resources starting to bloom.

One of the more interesting ancient documents is the Sumerian King List, which includes a section on kings who lived before the flood. A summary of the king list is presented:

King	Length of Reign	Location of Reign
Alulim	28,800	Eridu
Alalgar	36,000	Eridu
Enmenluanna	43,200	Bad-Tibira
Enmengalanna	28,800	Bad-Tibira
Damuzi	36,000	Bad-Tibira
Ensipazianna	28,800	Larag
Enmenduranna	21,000	Zimbir
Uburtutu	18,600	Shurupag
Total Years	241,200

Interestingly, there are the same number of kings in this list as there are generations in the Genesis 5 list (the Sumerian list doesn't include the "first man" nor the flood hero, so we aren't including Adam or Noah in the count). Now, I don't know if the king list represents the same people as the Genesis list, but I do think it at least represents a real historical account of pre-flood history that has been misinterpreted. My main point of argument comes from this paper by Raul Lopez. I am not sure about his equating the king list and the Genesis lineages, but I think makes a lot of sense.

So why are the numbers so high? The way to understand this is to understand the way that Sumerians used numbers.

First, rather than using a positional numbering system, they used a tallying number system. That means that, for example, if we want to write one humdred and two, we would use three digits in a particular order: 102. If we used a tallying system, we would have type of tally mark for the hundreds place, a different type of tally mark for the tens place, and a different type of tally mark for the ones place. Let's pretend that we used "x" for hundreds, "y" for tens, and "z" for ones - then we would write the number as "xzz".

Second, their system was a sexagesimal system. This means it was a base 60. So, rather than having a tens and hundreds place, they had a sixties place and a three thousand six-hundreds place. But they also used an intermediate base of ten. Therefore, they had a mark for the ones place (60⁰), a mark for the tens place (10*60⁰), a mark for the sixties place (60¹), a mark for the six-hundreds place (10*60¹), a mark for the three-thousand six-hundreds place (60²), and a mark for the thirty-six thousandths place (10*60²).

So what does this have to do with how long the ages are? Well, it is Lopez's contention that the original lists were written in base ten, and the Sumerians who first translated the list misunderstood the bases. Let's look at the digits in the list, and compare it to numbers in the Genesis 5 list rounded to the tens place (the Sumerian list is obviously rounded).

King	Reign	10*602	602	10*60	Genesis Patriarch	103	102	101
Alulim	28,800	0	8	0	Seth	0	9	1
Alalgar	36,000	1	0	0	Enosh	0	9	0
Enmenluanna	43,200	1	2	0	Kenan	0	9	1
Enmengalanna	28,800	0	8	0	Mehalel	0	8	9
Damuzi	36,000	1	0	0	Jared	0	9	6
Ensipazianna	28,800	0	8	0	Enoch	0	3	6
Enmenduranna	21,000	0	5	5	Methusaleh	0	9	6
Uburtutu	18,600	0	5	1	Lamech	0	7	7
Symbol Total		6	6	6	Symbol Total	6	6	6
Numeric Total	241,200	6	7	0	Numeric Total	6	7	0

The "total" for the Genesis column is the total of the lifespans, not the total of the length of time that the list spans. The "symbol total" is the total of the symbols as they are presented. The "numeric total" for the Sumerian list is the total that the Sumerian list has, and the "numeric total" for the Genesis list is a rounded total of the exact (not rounded) ages of the kings.

Here are some notable things about the lists:

• The same (adjusted) number of patriarchs


• The same general magnitude of the symbols used


• The exact same symbols could be used for the total ages

Lopez thinks that the ages in the Sumerian king list were adjusted after-the-fact to make the total line up in the sexagesimal system. In fact, with the number of textual differences among the king lists and Genesis copies, it is difficult to know if the numbers could be closer in other texts. Whether or not they are the same people, it does seem interesting that the numbers do have a rough correspondence with each other if interpreted according to a decimal tally system instead of a sexagesimal counting system.

Anyway, this may all be special pleading, but I think it is an interesting paper that probably needs some follow-up work to see if there is more or less there than Lopez indicates. A starting point for research would probably be to evaluate textual variants of both Genesis and the King list to see if other variants have closer or less close correspondences.

One of the notable artifacts in the fossil record are the giant bugs that can be found. "300 million years ago" (according to the evolutionists - Creationists generally think these are flood sediments) in the fossil record we find dragonflies the size of hawks! In Biblical history, we also have the curious notion that people lived to very long ages. Could, perhaps, a similar cause be behind people having shorter lives and various organisms not growing to the size they used to?

The Creationist hypothesis has been that before the flood, the earth was very different. And so was the atmosphere. There have been many speculations about exactly how it was different, and what atmospheric/geologic structures made it this way. One of them is that pre-flood, the earth had a high concentration of oxygen and a much higher air pressure. Many creationists think that the reason hyperbaric oxygen therapy can be effective is because it simulates pre-flood conditions (Baby Jessica was treated in this manner, and this can be used as a treatment for diabetic ulcers). I have heard that it was specifically the oxygen therapy that saved her foot from being amputated, but cannot find a reliable source for it. One creationist, for instance, invented a small hyperbaric biosphere chamber. You can see a summary of research results here and here, though I don't know of anyplace where these have been published. Basically, things grew bigger and lived longer.

This idea is now receiving confirmation from this recent study (lay overview here). The basics is that:

The x-ray scans revealed that as beetles become larger, tracheae take up proportionally more room in their bodies because they need to be longer and wider to deliver enough oxygen. This, in turn, inhibits growth by crowding other organs.

The tracheae in the larger beetles took up 20 percent more room than in smaller beetles.

The area where the body and legs meet is particularly limiting, because that opening can only get so big, Harrison noted.

In the smallest beetle, tracheae take up 2 percent of the region, compared with 18 percent in the largest.

Using that information, Harrison estimated that the maximum beetle size under current oxygen levels would be about six inches (15 centimeters).

That coincides roughly with the largest known living beetle, the Titanic longhorn.

So, could the change in oxygen levels, pressure, and other factors account for both the size of insects and increased life span of humans? This is definitely an area open to further Creation research.

Hat Tip to GlobeLens for alerting me to the research.