Debate: Evolution is a lie
Side: False

Uniformitarianism simply means that scientists look at what goes on in the present to see what went on in the past, or said in another way the "present is the keys to the past". Scientists see examples of slow deposition in the present, as well as examples of quick deposition caused by volcanoes, flash floods and other similar events. They believe that the current occurrence of both types of deposition shows that both types of deposition occured in the past. Therefore, "polystrate" fossils(what you described) do not contradict uniformitarianism, but simply show that similar things that happen now happened in the past as well. The exact same definition for Uniformitarianism. Creationists only believe that fast deposition occurred in the past, while they disagree that very large sediment layers were created by slow deposition, because this process would have taken millions of years.Many polystrate tree fossils form when a tree is subjected to rapid sedimentation, that is, when a tree is buried due to a flood, mudslide or volcanic ashfall (the three most common causes of rapid sedimentation). In other words, the strata that the tree passes through were laid down during the tree's lifetime, and or time of death. All of Yellowstone's upright petrified trees are rooted in place, having been buried alive during a prehistoric volcanic eruption. The Carboniferous fossil lycopod stumps show a series of roots that suggest that the trees were buried in floods, but continued to grow by producing more roots and adding more height to their trunks. You believe a global flood did it? Evidence?How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution if they were laid down in the turmoil of a single flood? That is usually dismissed with a hand wave by saying the animals quickly sorted each other out based on their ability to compete for the shrinking high ground.It overlooks an important issue: Since fossil layers were really constructed over millions of years, there was sufficient time to accumulate a consistent layer of corpses from many many generations of animals over wide areas. You could dig up a layer of trilobite fossils in Boise, for example, and it would have the same density of trilobite fossils as the same layer in Kansas City. So if you read the Noah story back into this observation, the antediluvian world must have been wall-to-wall trilobites, not to mention all the other animals in the other layers. In fact, there must have been far more animals than the biosphere could reasonably be expected to support, all because YECs compress a billion years of fossil building into a few weeks.The theory also fails to take into account fossilized plants, which show the same type of order as animal fossils, and which are not noted for their ability to flee rising floodwatersRepeating series of layers within coal measures indicate cycles of sedimentation rather than being laid down as part of one single event. The huge Carboniferous limestone strata which consist of the remains of innumerable marine shells, require long periods of clean water. Any flood would have mixed the remains with silt and sand to give us the grey cliffs of Dover rather than the white ones we see today. Here is other problems with your flood theoryWhere did the water come fromWhere did it go? Water never leaves the earthThe flood story does not explain the present geographic distribution of species, e.g., how did marsupials wind up in Australia, and only in Australia? The Deluge, according to the Ussher chronology, occurred circa 2348 BCE. It should have represented a clear historical breaking point for every civilization around the world. No such breaking point exists. History appears to continue uninterrupted through the flood in every other part of the world. Once the animals got off the ark, they would have nothing to eat. All the plants would have died in the flood, so the herbivores would have nothing to eat. The carnivores would wipe them out anyway, and then they would die too. Creationists often claim that there were only babies of each species and only seeds of each plant on the ark, but then this would require a time for them to grow. For every ten units of mass on one level of the food chain, only one unit of mass can be created on the next level. That means for a lion, which weighs over 400 pounds, to become fully grown, he needs to eat 4,000 pounds of meat, and that animal would have to eat 40,000 pounds of plant to get that much weight.A single worldwide deluge cannot explain the distribution of fossils in the fossil record: Radiometric dating, geological layering (both fossils and otherwise), major extinction events, corrosion, and mountain range formation all line up to show the same age. Any argument that attacks a single dating method has to address why all of them show the same thing. Even if the dating method is not accepted as accurate (i.e. you don't believe a fossil is 250 million years old), every dating method shows the same relative difference. So to be successful, even an argument that attacks every dating method would have to show why they're all out by the same amount, to account for the agreement over the relative age. Given the distribution of fossils, even if fossilization were accelerated under high-pressure water, which it is not, there have still been several times when almost all life has been wiped out (we're talking 50-75% of all species going extinct, not 50-75% of all individual animals dying). No apologist argument addresses all five major extinction events.