Talk Titles by Michael Oard

(all talks about one hour)

1. Creation/Evolution: A Changing of the Tide

This talk demonstrated the revival going on in the church for the belief in the straightforward history of Genesis 1-11. People are waking up to the devastation caused by the acceptance of evolution and deep time. Challenges are being answered. There are new creationist organizations and many new speakers. Whereas 35 years ago when I became interested in this issue, there were very few resources, now there is a wealth of information to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

We have discovered that macroevolution is not a fact or scientific since it is not observed going on today. The extreme complexity of creation shows that creation is true. Millions and billions of years are not facts but interpretations. There is much evidence for the global Genesis Flood. The Flood is also the great "time cruncher" of deep time, for example bringing back the Flood from its "Enlightenment" rejection, an ice age can happen rapidly. We do not need hundreds of thousands or millions of years for an ice age. Ultimately, it is not an issue over facts, but it is a worldview issue: the worldview of Christianity versus the worldview of naturalism, which has taken over the culture since the Enlightenment. Finally, we have discovered that Genesis cannot be "reinterpreted" without destroying the whole Bible as God's word and the gospel message. The talk ends with an appeal to become equipped yourself.

2. Is Evolution a Fact? (versions for adult and children grades 3 to 12)

Although the culture claims evolution is a fact, this talk goes into three main reasons why it cannot be a fact. First, evolution cannot be a fact by the definitions of evolution and science. Macroevolution is not observed going on today, so it is not science. Proofs of evolution are in the area of “microevolution,” which is really the diversification of the genetic material already created in the organisms and is not real evolution. Macroevolution is simply the history (or religion as some call it) of the atheistic worldview.

Second, evolution cannot be a fact because modern biology shows that every organism is vastly too complex to have evolved by chance, even with the pathetic mechanisms of mutations and natural selection. Furthermore, macroevolution is not seen in the fossil record because complexity is tremendous, right from the “oldest” organisms and the lack of the millions of transitional fossils required by macroevolution. Closed shelled mollusks also show that the rocks containing the fossils were deposited rapidly and worldwide.

Third, evolution cannot be a fact because it is contradicted in the Bible. Genesis 1 states that organisms were created by kinds and to reproduce within their own kinds and not into some other kind, which is evolution. Plus the order of creation contradicts the evolutionary order twelve times. The Bible also teaches and summarized in Rom 5:12 that there was no death of man or the animals until man sinned, while evolution states that there has been mass death, survival of the fittest, etc. hundreds of millions of years before man supposedly evolved at the very end.

3. Is Evolution Probable?

We are told by evolutionists that given gobs of time, what seems impossible becomes virtually certain, making evolution seem plausible. This talk provides a quantitative estimate of such an assertion, which goes against the second law of thermodynamics that states order goes to disorder with time in an isolated system. I use a very simple probability equation to show that not even one simple step in the supposed evolution of life from non-life can occur in the supposed age of the universe.

4. Flood talks

I have one to four Flood talks based on time and interest. Any number less than four are summaries of the four main Flood talks, which are summarized.

A) Noah’s Flood: What Does the Bible Say?

This talk lists the many reasons why Scripture clearly says the Genesis Flood was global, and that Jesus believed in a global Flood. It talks about details of the ark, such as whether it was roomy enough for all the animals. What we know about the pre-Flood environment is discussed as well as the controversial suggested mechanisms for the Flood.

B) Worldwide Evidence for Noah’s Flood

The evidence for the global Genesis Flood is provided by all the hundreds of flood traditions from all over the world. Evidence for the Flood is found in sedimentary rocks that commonly cover huge distances and show little or no erosion between layers—unlike how mainstream geologist interpret the rocks based on small events over millions of years. Trillions of fossils in the sedimentary rocks provide powerful evidence for a global Flood, since fossilization today is rare (remember that mainstream scientists rely on present processes to explain the past). Moreover, the fossil record does not show evolution because of the gaps in the fossil record. Mollusks that make up 95% of fossils are predominantly closed shelled, strongly indicating that they were buried and fossilized rapidly all over the earth. This points to a global catastrophe and not small events over millions of years, the alternative mainstream view. Lastly, the talk delves into what we learned about the Flood from the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

C) Earth’s Surface Shaped by Receding Floodwater: First as Sheet Flow

The talk first discusses what the Bible says about how the Floodwater drained from off the continents. Then geological evidence for parts of the Earth’s crust rising and parts descending to drain the Floodwater is presented. Geological evidence of sheet currents flowing off the continents is shown in the form of huge erosion of domes and the erosional remnants left behind. All the eroded sediment is deposited at the margin of the continents forming the continental shelf and slope. As the water is moving off the continents, sometimes at high speed, a rough surface is planed smooth by the debris being carried along by the Floodwater. These surfaces are called planation surfaces, if they are flat, and erosion surfaces, if they are rolling. A veneer of the debris is commonly left on top of the planation or erosion surfaces as a thin layer of cobbles and boulders. These rounded rocks from water action sometimes contain percussion marks caused by all the intense turbulence of the draining Floodwater. At the same time, resistant rocks are carried long distances from their sources, documented from the northwest states and adjacent Canada for transport distances of up to 800 miles. All these features are difficult if not impossible to explain by the alternative ideas of mainstream geologists.

D) Earth’s Surface Shaped by Receding Floodwater: Last by Channelized Flow

After sheet flow continued for many days, more and more mountains and plateaus extend above the draining Floodwater, forcing the water to channelized around these objects. Channelized flow, therefore, carves valleys and canyons rapidly, and creates many other features that are difficult if not impossible to explain by mainstream geologists. Such features include water and wind gaps, which are perpendicular cuts through mountains, ridges, or plateaus; pediments, which are planation surfaces at the foots of mountains or ridges; and submarine canyons that are cut perpendicular to the shoreline through the continental shelf and slope.

E) Earth's Surface Shaped by Receding Floodwater

A variety of evidences for the receding of the Floodwater off the continents will be provided. Geological evidence is first presented for differential vertical tectonics to drain the Floodwater. As the Floodwater first drains as wide currents, great erosion occurs with the formation of planation surfaces and the long transport of resistant rocks. As more and more land is exposed above the Floodwater, the water becomes more channelized forming another set of unique landforms. Water and wind gaps, pediments, and submarine canyons will be described. All these features are very difficult, if not impossible, to explain by the uniformitarian paradigm, providing strong evidence for the reality of the Genesis Flood.

5. Talks on Millions of Years

I have three talks dealing with the issue of millions of years versus the young age from Scripture. Each talk is a separate talk, but the talks build on each other.

A) Is the Earth Old? Why Ages in Millions and Billions of Years?

This talk traces the history of the concept of old ages. I first show that the issue is important, causing millions of people to leave the Church or to have a low view of Scripture by attempting to fit the millions of years into the Bible. I then show that the Bible, including Jesus, teach a young earth and universe. Both Christian and secular scholars believed in a young earth up until the 1700s. However, this changed with the beginning of the so-called "Age of Enlightenment." By the late 1700s scholars almost unanimously believed in an old earth and threw out the Bible. But this belief occurred at a time when very little was known about geology. It was an arbitrary choice that continues today, based on the secular worldview.

B) Is the Earth Old? Is Radiometric Dating Accurate?

There are actually hundreds of "dating methods" and most give a relatively young age of the earth and universe. Several examples are given. But radiometric dating gives ages in millions and billions of years. I go through the three main assumptions to radiometric dating, showing that these are unreasonable assumptions. Examples of radiometric dates that are clearly wrong are presented. Then I go through the RATE project result that answered the question of why the radiometric dates still come out with millions and billions of years. The RATE group discovered, based on sound scientific data, that there was a period of accelerated radiometric decay during the past 6,000 years at creation and possibly during the Flood. I then explain the carbon-14 dating method that only dates carbon that is younger than about 80,000 years. I show that with better assumptions and bringing the Flood back into earth history results in all carbon-14 dates telescoping within the young age of the earth from Scripture. Also, carbon-14 in diamonds show that diamonds are less than 80,000 years old, when geologists believe they are 1 to 3 billion years old.

C) Is the Earth Old? The Flood is the Great Time Cruncher

This talk first goes through the Scriptural evidence for a global Flood, and shows that even Jesus believed in a global Flood. It then goes on to show that many processes assumed to take a long time, too much time for the short timescale of Scripture, can occur rapidly when the Flood is brought back into earth history. Examples include rapid formation of thin sedimentary layers; Yellowstone fossil "forests;" dinosaur tracks, eggs, and scavenged bonebeds; and the Ice Age. The differences in how people view how fast processes occurred in the past is a worldview issue.

6. What is the Origin of the Grand Canyon?

The origin of the Grand Canyon has been a huge mystery for mainstream scientists for over 150 years. This is demonstrated right away in this talk. Then the talk goes into the two creationists hypotheses for the origin of the Grand Canyon. It shows that the post-Flood dam-breach hypothesis, supposedly caused when 2 to 3 lakes ponded east of Grand Canyon by the draining Flood waters, breached several hundreds years after the Flood. There are many problems with this hypothesis, two of which seem fatal. The second creationist hypothesis is more likely and that is the Grand Canyon was carved late in the Flood by rapid channelized erosion. Evidence for this is presented as well as how each segment of the Grand Canyon can be carved by the draining, channelized Floodwater.

7. Whatever Happened to the Dinosaurs? (versions for adult and children grades 3 to 12)

This is a fun talk with lots of cartoons. It goes into the types of dinosaurs, which is important for how many dinosaurs were needed on the ark, a subject discussed later in the talk. Evolutionists have many problems with dinosaurs, such as what animal did they evolve from and why they went extinct. Other problems include dinosaurs living at polar latitudes, dinosaur living in the “desert,” and unfossilized dinosaurs with soft tissue that is supposed to have survived in the ground for over 65 million years. The last topic is whether dinosaurs were on the ark. If they were then there were post-Flood dinosaurs, which explain a host of mysteries, such as dragon legends all over the Earth, pictographs and other artwork depicting dinosaurs, and the likelihood that Job saw dinosaurs, such as Behemoth and Leviathan.

8. The Ice Age: Only the Bible Can Explain It!

The Ice Age is a major mystery of mainstream Earth science, the difficulty of which is analyzed in the talk. The evidence indicates that the Ice Age occurred after the Flood, so the Flood must have caused a climate change right afterwards that resulted in a rapid Ice Age. Many details of the Ice Age have been worked out from over 30 years of research, such as it was only about 700 years long, there was only one ice age, the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheet mostly built up during this time, animals of the Ice Age were a mix of warmth-loving and cold-loving types, the existence of big lakes in now dry areas of the Earth, and the mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age.

9. Whatever Happened to the Woolly Mammoths?

This talk shows that the woolly mammoth lived during the Ice Age; they did not die early in the Flood by a quick freeze. It focuses on the mammoths in Siberia and answers many mysteries of why they would live in Siberia, what they would eat, and how they died. Many other mammoth mysteries are also answered by the post-Flood rapid Ice Age, such as why the lowlands of Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon were not glaciated; why there were so many large animals so far north; why some mammoth carcasses are found in a generally standing position, having suffocated; and why some have broken bones.

10. What Does the Lake Missoula Flood Teach Us? [Being revised]

This talk describes the abundant evidence for the existence of glacial Lake Missoula at the peak of the Ice Age and its bursting forth creating the Channeled Scabland of eastern Washington in a matter of days. It focuses on the question of why practically every mainstream earth scientists rejected the Lake Missoula flood for 40 years, despite a overwhelming amount of evidence. The reason shows their bias against big events and shows why they will never see evidence for the Genesis Flood that stares them in the face. Now that mainstream scientists have accepted the Lake Missoula flood, they have gone on to postulate anywhere from 40 to 100 at the peak of the last ice age, not to speak of there other 30 supposed ice ages in the past 2.5 million years. Obvious evidence is presented that there really was only one large Lake Missoula flood. The features left behind from the Lake Missoula flood are then used to show that similar features all over the Earth were caused by a global Flood.

11. Is Man the Cause of Global Warming?

Global warming seems to be the major topic of concern by many environmentalists, the media, and politicians. There is a huge amount of hysterical sounding statements made by many, and there are many contradictory statements floating around in the culture. This talk goes first into the facts and second what are likely facts, based on the scientific literature. From this data analysis, we can clear away much of the fog on this issue. We can understand what is going on with this hot button topic.

12. Dinosaur Tracks, Eggs, and Bonebeds Explained Early in the Flood

Despite being able to explain many big-picture observations of the rocks and fossils, there are still a few hundred earth science challenges to the Flood model of earth history. One of these challenges is the existence of billions of dinosaur tracks, millions of dinosaur eggs, and scavenged bonebeds on thousands of feet of Flood strata. Such observations seem to imply too much time to have happened early in the Flood before dinosaurs were all dead by Day 150.

However, a closer examination of the bonebeds, tracks, and eggs indicates many unusual features for a uniformitarian environment. Unique features of bonebeds include the observations that some dinosaur graveyards are huge, monospecific, and lack babies and young juveniles. Unique features of dinosaur tracks are that practically all trackways are straight, tracks are always on flat bedding planes, and baby and young juvenile tracks are rare. Several unusual features observed with dinosaur eggs are that they are practically always laid on flat bedding planes, despite their significant porosity that would result in the death of the embryo, and nest structures are very rare. Such observations from all across the world suggest that another hypothesis is needed.

An hypothesis will be presented to explain the dinosaur data, which has been previously suggested in the creationist literature. This is the BEDS (Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments) hypothesis, which postulates that after rapid sedimentation during the Genesis Flood, the distance between the top of the sediment and the Floodwater surface became shallow. Such sediments would then become vulnerable to exposure by local drops in relative sea level caused by five mechanisms operating during the early Flood. There would of course be local rises in relative sea level inundating the BEDS. There could be hundreds of local sea level oscillations of various amplitudes and periods on BEDS during the first 150 days of the Flood due to all five mechanisms. Interference patterns from all the mechanisms would reinforce sea level lows and highs.

Dinosaurs swimming in the water, finding refuge on log mats, or trapped on higher refuges then could walk on BEDS and lay eggs. A gentle, local rise in relative sea level would cover up the tracks, eggs, and dead dinosaurs, preserving and eventually lithifying or fossilizing them. Because of all the oscillations in local sea level, there could be multiple layers of tracks and eggs at any one location.

The BEDS hypothesis also can potentially explain a number of other seemingly puzzling features associated with dinosaur tracks and eggs, such as true mudcracks, raindrop imprints, coprolites, ripple marks, "paleosols," burrows and tracks of invertebrates, possible social insect nests, and bird tracks. BEDS can also explain these features when not associated with dinosaur tracks.

13. The Geomorphology of the Uinta Mountains and its Implications

The Uinta Mountains provides evidence for Flood runoff. As the Uinta Mountains uplifted and massive erosion occurred, a large, gravel capped pediment formed along the north and south side of the uplift. This pediment, called the Gilbert Peak erosion surface, bevels rocks of all ages within the uniformitarian geological column (used for discussion purposes only). The "gravel" up to large boulder size is called the Bishop Conglomerate and is commonly composed of red Uinta Group Quartzite from the heart of the mountains. Pediments are not being formed today, but are being destroyed. They are readily explained by fast Floodwater flowing parallel to the mountain range (Oard, 2004). After forming, the Gilbert Peak erosion surface was greatly dissected by subsequent erosion, which must have occurred late in the Flood

Waters gaps are common in the Uinta Mountains. These water gaps are also nearly impossible to explain by uniformitarianism but can be readily explain by Flood runoff. The pediment and water gaps were formed during the Cenozoic and therefore the Flood/post-Flood boundary is in the late Cenozoic in this area. The pediment also caps sedimentary rocks of the Green River and Bridger Formations, making these formations Flood formations.