If the earth is young, God created evidence of it being old.

Con has constructed a list of explanations almost entirely without reference to established science. The topic of the debate is that YEC cannot be reconciled with established science. So if Con, for example, proposes that the Grand Canyon could have been cut by rushing water in less than 40 days, then he ought to reference a scientific text or journal article that shows how that could be possible. Current science claims that the rushing Colorado River, laden with abrasive sand, took 4.5 million years to do the job. Con's unsupported assertion that it could have done in a few days is not remotely responsive. I asked Con to explain how it could be that scientific mistakes in twenty different areas could randomly lead to one consistent time line. Con never addressed that question. On to the specific points: 1. Con did not explain where the sand would come from. The natural process derives sand from granite by chemical weathering, a process taking hundreds of millions of years. If a few days of rushing water can carve the Grand Canyon, we should see new canyons forming all the time. Erosion is really a million times slower than con supposes. The sequence is volcanoes > granite > sand > sandstone > upheaval > erosion > Grand Canyon. How was all the sandstone created then eroded in a few days? 2. Florida, for example, is made almost entirely of limestone. So Con's explanation is that enough dead animals washed away in a few days for the skeletons to create Florida. There could not possibly have been enough animals for that. If the limestone was created with the creation of the earth, then the resolution is affirmed. I acknowledge that the earth could be young if God created evidence it was old. 3. Limestone caves could not originally have been created by mechanical erosion, because that would require a tunnel through which water carrying abrasive sediment is rushing. Limestone has only tiny cracks when formed, and the water seeps in very slowly, typically the advance is about a foot per year. Slow moving water cannot carry sand to they is no possibility of erosion. Limestone caves are today only formed by chemical action, so supposing a completely different method acting only in the past affirms the resolution. 4. The calcium concentration in the water is limited by the solubility of the calcium, which is very low. Therefore there is no time at which it could have been high enough for rapid formation of stalactites. The caves had to be first formed when the limestone was below the water table, then they had to be drained before stalactites could begin forming. 5. The sequence again: volcanism makes granite that erodes to sand that is carried to the ocean, then sandstone is formed, the sandstone is raised up, and a canyon is eroded. Explain how all that happens in 40 days. Note that there is virtually no erosion under water. Why can't we take a fire hose and cut a 5000 foot slice through sandstone in a few days today? 6. No, I did not say all erosion is from the freeze/thaw cycle. Efflorescence is another method, one that works in deserts. Chemical weathering decomposes granite. However, there is no known mechanism that breaks down rocks with anywhere near the speed of the freeze/thaw cycle, and we know even that is very slow. 7. Sorry for the typo. Obviously the weathering of granite could not be from a flood. Water at high velocity has no effect on granite, because the material is so hard. Blast a fire hose on a chunk of granite for a month (or a year or a century) you will get wet granite, but no erosion whatsoever. Granite is a mixture of minerals formed by volcanic action. Chemicals in the air erode some of the minerals in granite, which ultimately frees the nearly-impervious quartz crystals. A flood would block the air, actually slowing the disintegration. The quartz crystals are then sand, which is why it takes hundreds of millions of years to form sand. 8. Provide a peer-reviewed scientific reference as to how wood can be mineralized quickly. You assert it is possible within the realm of current science. Keep in mind that the organic material is completely replaced by rock. 9. There is virtually no erosion by undersea currents, because the currents very rarely travel fast enough to pick up abrasive material. Currents are only produced by flooding near a river mouth, but in a great flood, as supposed, the world would soon be covered in water ending erosion. There are characteristics of glacial erosion, like the angular shapes of the Matterhorn and Grand Tetons that cannot be produced by moving water erosion. Also, very large masses of material are moved by glaciers that cannot be moved by water. 10. I said I could not find a good reference on the net, so I copied the explanation from a text and gave references off the web. I'll try again to explain it briefly. Water carrying dissolved minerals seeps very slowly through rocks. Near the surface of the rock, if the atmosphere is dry, the water evaporates and the dissolved minerals form crystals. As the crystals grow they exert pressure on the rock. Eventually the rock surface flakes off parallel to the surface. Since this is most important in deserts, the flakes are not sweep away by water and tend to pile up as talus at the base of the rock. This is a very slow process that is stopped by water. The amount of erosion by efflorescence shows that the earth is old. 11. Shaking up sediments and hitting them helps sorts by density, so it does not explain how pollen grains could be sorted in layers by season. The claim that there is no consistent order in sediments is false. Fully-ordered sediment cores have been found in lake beds at more than two dozens locations around the earth, confirming that the earth is much older than 6,000 years. 12. Con makes unsupported assertions that Antarctica has variable seasons. No, carbon dating does not depend upon the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. It does depend upon variations in cosmic radiation, but that's less than a 10% uncertainty that's been calibrated. Even uncalibrated, it correlates well. 13. Con asserts nature was dramatically different in ways inexplicable to science. That affirms the resolution. 14. Con asserts that in past that there was a mechanism that allowed continents to drift hundreds of thousands of times faster than any method known to science. That supports the resolution, that God changed the laws of nature. The resolution concurs that divine intervention is possible, and moreover, that if the earth is young that divine intervention makes it appear old. Con agrees. Standard texts, such as referenced, explain continents having joined and separated multiple times. 15. Tectonic activity can only work slowly because in is driven by convection currents in extremely viscous magma. 16. The half-life of uranium is 700 million years, that of carbon 6,000 years. To get the uranium measurements of 13.7 billion years down to 6000 years, uranium must have decayed over a million times faster than now observed. But to get carbon measurements of 45,000 years down to 6000, it had to have decayed less than ten times faster. There are a couple dozen isotopes with intermediate half lives. But the dates of objects as measured with different isotopes cross check, so each must have sped up at a different rate. 17. I suppose that in some sense summer and winter differ only by weather. But in modern times, nothing shorter than a seasonal variation affects coral growth, and it is cross-checked with isotope dating. 18, 19, 20, 21 make claims unsupported by science, not referenced by any reputable source, and completely inconsistent with science. The erosion of sandstone in the Grand Canyon took 4.5 million years by moving abrasive-loaded water; the Hawaiian Islands are isolated basalt. Cons claims are ad hoc and completely unsupported. The resolution is affirmed.