# Petroleum and Young Earth Creationists **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 29, 2012, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081 "2012-08-29T22:57:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2018, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/41 "2018-05-31T23:29:31Z")
> [@stonepalatin](#): > > I find it interesting that so many people in this thread were there at the creation… Stopped reading your post, and the thread, here. I assume other dopers are pointing out how dumb this is already. ---
**Author:** ![Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Backwater\_Under\_Duck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Backwater_Under_Duck)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/42 "2018-06-01T00:46:51Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Buses are God’s arch enemy. And the Lord said, [Truely, that was seriously fucked up.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAIcEXUEtEw) ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/43 "2018-06-01T02:55:23Z")
I have a betamax tape of the creation of the world. Unfortunately, there are no more usable betamax players, so I can’t show it to anyone any more. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/44 "2018-06-01T06:57:49Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Do all the “were you there?” religious types ever ask that question when talking about the Bible? > > Were you there when Jesus walked on the water, healed the sick, and rose from the dead? Did you see it with your own eyes? No they don’t ask, and the reason they don’t ask is that they don’t believe Jesus walked on water or healed the sick or rose from the dead. They pretend to believe, for reasons that only they could know. There is not a single literate modern person who sincerely believes that everything in the Bible is true; every Bible literalist in America is a hypocrite. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/45 "2018-06-01T07:05:45Z")
> [@stonepalatin](#): > > I find it interesting that so many people in this thread were there at the creation of the world and saw the formation of oil and gas. The truth is that none of us were there to scientifically observe and record any information ourselves. Oddly enough, the evidence of the rocks is very clear about what happened. Not at the finest level of detail, but the general picture is clear. Now, either they are telling a true story, or God put the evidence there to fool us. (I assume you don’t think the devil was hacking God’s handiwork during the creation.) So either the evidence shows what it shows, or God is a liar. You calling God a liar, bub? He might not like that. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/46 "2018-06-01T07:39:04Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > I am not a geologist but I believe geology is in its infancy too Only if you would also characterise physics, chemistry, calculus as “in their infancy”. Geology as a science is [at least](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Steno)as old as these, if not [older](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophrastus#On_stones). > [@](#): > > If I understand correctly, we have not even explored 1% of the earth’s depth (radius) of 6400 km. You do not understand correctly, unless you pedantically insist exploration something means setting foot there. Because we have plenty of other tools for exploring the whole Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/47 "2018-06-01T08:49:26Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > This thread treats geology as a very mature science and geologists as know all about the earth. > > This in my opinion is not true. Consider for example the Kola Superdeep Borehole - the deepest point we have ever reached (about 15 km) into the earth. This is equivalent of the skin on an apple, if the apple represented earth. > > Even at this small depth, the geological predictions were proven wrong: At this depth the geologists predicted a temperature of 100C- it was found to be 180C. Geologists predicted a transition from granite to basalt at about 7 km depth - it was not found :). They predicted no water at these depths but the rocks were found to be saturated with water. They predicted no hydrogen at these depths but there was large quantities of hydrogen. You get the idea. > > Next time a geologist gets cocky around you, remind her about the Kola borehole. Scientists do fieldwork and experiments to test their theories. If they dont match, they review their assumptions. What would a Young Earth Creationist do if the real world failed to match what was expected by prior belief? ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/48 "2018-06-01T12:50:47Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > Scientists do fieldwork and experiments to test their theories. If they dont match, they review their assumptions. Agreed. As a former scientist myself, I love the scientific method. But just like any other profession or endeavor, following the Pareto principle, 20% of the scientists produce 80% of the results and the rest sit around thumping their chest. Anyways, my point about Geology being in early stages is well illustrated by the following: 1687 : Newton published Principia. Newton’s laws survive even today and are used for classical mechanics. They have been amended by Relativity and QM, but for most of the world we encounter, Newton’s laws are perfectly valid. 1749 : Georges-Louis Leclerc, published his Histoire Naturelle, in which he attacked the popular Biblical accounts and calculated the age of earth to be \*\*75,000 years. \*\* 🙂 > [@](#): > > What would a Young Earth Creationist do if the real world failed to match what was expected by prior belief? If the goal of Geology is to prove Young Earth Creationists to be wrong, it’s doing a bang up job. There’s the parallel Chemists/Physicists proving Alchemists wrong 🙂 about centuries back. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/49 "2018-06-01T13:48:40Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > Anyways, my point about Geology being in early stages is well illustrated by the following: > > 1687 : Newton published Principia. Newton’s laws survive even today and are used for classical mechanics. They have been amended by Relativity and QM, but for most of the world we encounter, Newton’s laws are perfectly valid. > > 1749 : Georges-Louis Leclerc, published his Histoire Naturelle, in which he attacked the popular Biblical accounts and calculated the age of earth to be \*\*75,000 years. \*\* 🙂 > > If the goal of Geology is to prove Young Earth Creationists to be wrong, it’s doing a bang up job. There’s the parallel Chemists/Physicists proving Alchemists wrong 🙂 about centuries back. Errm, did you read my links? In _ **1669** _, Steno published, amongst other things,[4 laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Steno#Geology_and_stratigraphy) of stratigraphy _ **which still hold today** _ (amended,\* like Newtonian physics\*, by later information). By your own reasoning, Geology has seniority over Physics because it has prior laws still valid today. Or would, if that reasoning wasn’t stupid. Who cares if somebody later made a miscalculation? Leclerc based his calculations on imperfect knowledge, but his thinking was perfectly sound - base an estimate for formation on cooling rates. He is to be commended for it, not ridiculed. Newton also thought he could turn lead into gold, since you brought up Alchemy. Not really relevant, but I love bringing it up. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/50 "2018-06-01T13:57:47Z")
Also, remind me when Physicists dropped Aether Theory, again? ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/51 "2018-06-01T14:34:01Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Also, remind me when Physicists dropped Aether Theory, again? Please don’t take this personally. There are several disciplines of science that are not mature. Take food science for example; we know more about what makes a star fat but not so much about what makes a human fat. And the understanding of human biome is truly at its infancy. Then there is the famous nurses study which yielded widely inconclusive results. [Nurses' Health Study - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurses%27_Health_Study) ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/52 "2018-06-01T14:44:22Z")
> [@Enola\_Straight](#): > > [Omphalos hypothesis - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis) > > Also called Last Thursdayism. > > I guess creating a “past” is necessary to keep the machinery of reality consistent. I think this works great with the supposition that our reality is a simulation. We keep finding or discovering things that are millions or billions of years old that we “somehow” never noticed or realized before. Like those Denisovan bones in a cave that was known to humans (and Neadertals!) for over 40,000 yearsa. One reason could be, they’ve been there for millennia, undisturbed… Or, they’ve been there for 40,000 years, since about 10 years ago when the simulation got patched with a backdated artifact. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/53 "2018-06-01T14:44:47Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Also, remind me when Physicists dropped Aether Theory, again? If by æther you mean a homogeneous substance that permeates the universe, then physicists haven’t dropped it … just the New Speak name is dark matter … … just saying … ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/54 "2018-06-01T15:13:19Z")
Speaking as another renegade from the oil industry. The vast majority of people in the oil industry are not geophysicists. Indeed right, now most exploration geophysicists are flipping burgers for a living. (In a downturn, the first thing to go is exploration.) As described earlier - an understanding of how oil forms and how some of it it is still around is key to finding the stuff. You can’t see oil or gas on seismic. What you can see (if you are lucky) is structures that make sense as traps, and structures that make sense as possible source rock. Then you drop a well into what you hope is a trap. Until you drill a hole in the ground you never know what is there. But there a poor head of exploration with a team of geos working for him, who eventually has to draw an X on a map, and commit anything from a few to a 100 million dollars for a well to be drilled. If you are about to blow $100,000,000 on a single well, you sure as hell had better have a good idea about how things work down there before the drill rig starts vacuuming money away faster than you can imagine. What has really struck me is how ignorant many in the industry are. Once you get past exploration, you can and do find 6000 year fundamentalists. They don’t care how the exploration side finds the oil, as far as they are concerned, that is just a matter of working out where God put it. There is an interview done by an Australian TV journalist a few years ago, where he was exploring peak oil and attitudes to it in the US. Interviewing a senior Texan oilman, he asked about the possibility of the oil running out - the answer was - God will just make some more. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/55 "2018-06-01T15:31:48Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > There’s usually an exception for things that _someone_ has witnessed, not just them personally. Unless you were there when the witness wrote down their account of the matter, how could you possibly be sure that the markings on the page mean anything at all? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/56 "2018-06-01T18:08:38Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > If by æther you mean a homogeneous substance that permeates the universe, then physicists haven’t dropped it … just the New Speak name is dark matter … > > … just saying … … just saying random nonsense, as usual. Dark matter is theorized because the visible universe doesn’t have enough visible mass. The aether was theorized because physicists didn’t understand how light traveled in vacuum. The two are totally unrelated. > [@am77494](#): > > Agreed. As a former scientist myself, I love the scientific method. But just like any other profession or endeavor, following the Pareto principle, 20% of the scientists produce 80% of the results and the rest sit around thumping their chest. > > Anyways, my point about Geology being in early stages is well illustrated by the following: > > 1687 : Newton published Principia. Newton’s laws survive even today and are used for classical mechanics. They have been amended by Relativity and QM, but for most of the world we encounter, Newton’s laws are perfectly valid. > > 1749 : Georges-Louis Leclerc, published his Histoire Naturelle, in which he attacked the popular Biblical accounts and calculated the age of earth to be \*\*75,000 years. \*\* 🙂 > > If the goal of Geology is to prove Young Earth Creationists to be wrong, it’s doing a bang up job. There’s the parallel Chemists/Physicists proving Alchemists wrong 🙂 about centuries back. Leclerc’s calculations were wrong because _physics_ was in its infancy. The idea that the earth and the universe around it could be billions of years old was not credited because nobody understood how a star could burn for billions of years, or how the earth could retain its heat for billions of years. That was because physicists and chemists had yet to discover radioactivity. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/57 "2018-06-01T18:36:52Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > … just saying random nonsense, as usual. Dark matter is theorized because the visible universe doesn’t have enough visible mass. The aether was theorized because physicists didn’t understand how light traveled in vacuum. The two are totally unrelated … [snip] Has it been conclusively demonstrated the two are unrelated? … how did we measure the wave action of dark matter to show it was unrelated to electromagnetic waves? … my understanding is we are currently conducting experiments to determine this, and still waiting for results … the æther concept of electromagnetic propagation isn’t off the table quite yet … not while there’s still experiments to be conducted based on such a hypothesis … Science abhors absolutes … ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/58 "2018-06-01T20:58:03Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > Please don’t take this personally. Whyever not? > [@](#): > > There are several disciplines of science that are not mature. Sure. Geology is no more one of those than physics or chemistry. There is a broad consensus as to how geological processes work- the field is highly commensurable. There hasn’t been a strong paradigm shift since plate tectonics. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/59 "2018-06-02T00:24:47Z")
> [@DavidwithanR](#): > > No they don’t ask, and the reason they don’t ask is that they don’t believe Jesus walked on water or healed the sick or rose from the dead. They pretend to believe, for reasons that only they could know. There is not a single literate modern person who sincerely believes that everything in the Bible is true; every Bible literalist in America is a hypocrite. I don’t think you have talked to any Biblical literalists. Many are morons, but most people are morons no matter what they believe. There are also serious people who believe the Bible is the literal truth and understand that there are contradictions in it; they struggle to understand the contradictions. You may scoff at this but they do in fact believe. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081/60 "2018-06-02T23:17:14Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > If by æther you mean a homogeneous substance that permeates the universe, then physicists haven’t dropped it … just the New Speak name is dark matter … > > … just saying … Except that dark matter isn’t believed to be homogeneous at all - some of the best evidence for dark matter involves observations indicating non-homogeneous motion of dark matter ([[astro-ph/0309303] Direct constraints on the dark matter self-interaction cross-section from the merging galaxy cluster 1E0657-56](https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0309303) discusses a particular example of this evidence). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/petroleum-and-young-earth-creationists/633081.md?page=4)