To Bex:
Haeckel has been rather villified. In many ways he was an important figure. The claims that he deliberately faked his embryological drawings have not been substantiated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_HaeckelWhat’s more, the main reason creationists seem to like to villify him is because he influenced Darwin; however the embryo drawings were not published until after On the Origin of Species, and other discoveries of Haecke’sl have stood the test of time. If scientists were trying to conspire to hide the fact that some of them sometimes make mistakes, why do you think Haeckel’s own mistakes are common knowledge? Theories are tested and re-tested over time and the ones that don’t hold up are thrown out.
“Embarrassing” hoaxes? Who were the people who exposed the hoaxes? Scientists, checking the evidence.
Quotes and “admissions”? If you choose to believe quote mines even though you have been given several explicit examples of how they do not accurately reflect scientists’ views, then my next question to you would be whether you base your interpretation of reality on facts or belief when the two seem to be in conflict. Quotes mean nothing in a debate anyway because they are an “argument from authority,” which is a logical fallacy. Instead of referring directly to the evidence, you are claiming “x” is true because someone said so. Scientists don’t take each other’s word for it, they verify the evidence for themselves, which is why studies (unlike Hovind’s dissertation) have to be rigorously referenced.
There is no “typical” amount of time it takes for sedimentary layers to form. I don’t know what context the quote from Charles Officer is taken from but he would no doubt have been referring to a specific site or a specific type of sedimentary rock.
Scientists have known for a long time that while some sedimentary layers are deposited slowly over many years, others can indeed form in catastrophic conditions, e.g. when a natural dam bursts. Upright fossilised trees within sedimentary layers were indeed formed quickly. Derek Ager, quoted, would have known this. Geologists who studied these formations over 100 years ago knew it. I suspect that the final sentence in the quote from him has been inserted after some missing text to give the impression that scientists are wrong about how sedimentary layers form. Can you give me a link to this text so that I can check?
How about giving me some real evidence now? Like I asked from SoSick – some bona fide geological evidence for a global flood? Upright trees, like the hadrosaur fossil mentioned in another thread here, cannot themselves prove that there was a worldwide global flood. They could easily have formed in localised conditions.
