Since both sides seems to love to quote dogma, here is some of mine according to zen. “If something is true, then the opposite is also true.”
The science side of this argument is JUST as dogmatic as the Creationist side usually, and usually it uses semantics to make it’s point, which is more or less the same as saying, “Creation is true because Corinthians 7-12.6x9-3 said…”, more or less you end up quoting your bible and he ends up quoting his. On both ends anyone that would do one or the other is going to be agreeing with the person that is quoting his bible of choice.
Back completely away from the abiogenesis angle, for now. Make the point to him, as strongly and as firmly as possible, that abiogenesis and evolution are completely different matters. Tell him that evolution says nothing one way or the other about how the first life forms arose, and that he can accept the facts and theories of evolution while still believing in a Divine creation of the first living organisms.
It will be a lot easier to work on his obstinant objections to a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth, natural selection, the origin of speices, common descent, etc., if you don’t have to keep getting side-tracked with discussions about the possible origins of life.
Errrr… riiight, assuming for one moment that you’re not joking, we’re talking about very thick layers of chalk and/or limestone here, like the White Cliffs Of Dover* - perhaps you can suggest a scenario wherein a single extiction event (of a non-sustainable population) could lay down such a large amount of material
*What is visible as an exposed edge in Dover is actually part of a chalk/limestone bed that extends for several hundreds of square miles (just in case you were going to suggest that the animals that died to produce it lived across a wider area and it just got washed together in a thick lump at Dover somehow).
Here’s an encyclopaedic resource on foraminiferans - the tiny creatures whose shells make limestone and chalk.
" The first question which must be asked of the fossil record to determine if it could have been formed in a flood scenario is quite simple. Are there too many fossilized foraminifers for them all to have lived and died within the short time allowed?
Answering this question quantitatively would require a detailed analysis of the entire geologic column to estimate the number of foraminifers preserved. Although foraminifers are found throughout the geologic column, they are actually quite sparse in most sedimentary rocks. In Paleozoic and early Mesozoic strata, most specimens are recovered from small fossiliferous areas. A micropaleontologist studying the Triassic, for example, may process samples from a dozen localities before finding any specimens.
The number of foraminifers that could have lived between creation and the flood is also difficult to estimate. The reproductive capability of foraminifers is among the highest on Earth, with a doubling time of 3.65 days (Berger 1976). The pre-flood conditions were likely good for rapid growth and reproduction. During and after the flood the turbid waters would have included high levels of organic matter and other nutrients needed to fuel growth."
You will no doubt notice that the author makes no attempt to answer the “first question that must be asked”.
The author assumes that the ‘doubling rate’ is something that could continue indefinitely, which clearly can’t be the case (the volume of organisms would quite quickly outweight the water that they are living in).
It should be quite easy to shut me up on this one though, if somebody wants to carry out a controlled experiment using live foraminifers, in water, you may add as much nutrient and oxygen as you like, and see if you can get them to deposit sediment in a layer several hundred metres deep in 40 days (and nights), remember, that’s several hundred metres when compacted.
What’s that you say? not forty days and nights, something about six thousand years? hmmm, sorry, I’ll allow you two thousand years at the very most; the Egyptian pyramids are made of limestone, composed of the dead remains of foraminifers, and were built over 4000 years ago.