RLQuote: if evolutionists are correct that "salt in = salt out" today (more or less), then they must show how the seas lost the equilibrium that they had when fresh to become salty, and how that equilibrium was regained today so that they are not becoming progressively saltier.
The interesting feature that you forget is that there is as much salt evaporite and deep beds and "diapirs" from old seas and UNDER existing ocean basins to account for the "salt balance" There really is no problem to geologists. As far as uniformitarianism, Its doing quite well, we have a number of living evaporite basins throughout the low and mid latitudes wherein salt is being deposited inaccordance with its own specific solubility products for a specific compound. Eg, The Baltimore Canyon is a deposit where the salts evaporated at a rate faster than water could keep them in solution (This occured uring opening of the Atlantic after the Triassic . We have an unlimited amount of usable salt deposits in the US (about 160 domes and 6 or more huge basins) The Silurian basin alone covers parts of NY, Pa, Ohio, A large part of Michigan and some of W Va. The "salt balance " ploy was only adopted as a make believe issue by Creationists since they only got half the story. It isnt that salt comes in and out, sometimes (mostly) salt just evaporates and sticks in half mile thick deposits that lie beneath beds of hundreds of millions of years of sediment and also in present day deposits in the Areas around the world.
When you say"more recently by John Joly" what do you consider "recent" Joly died in the 1930s. He was an initial worker in radionuclide dating but, since he didnt have the standardized decay rates and modern MS machinery,(not available till the 1970s) he was unable to trace the radionuclide decay earlier than about 100 MY. There was a reason for his error. HE didnt know that continental drift usually "resets" the atomic clocks by insertion of "cleaned up " nuclides. I do honor Joly's memory since he was one of the few, back in the 1920's who agreed with Wegener that shallow mantle convection COULD serve as a mechanism for continental drift.He was one of a few that thought that Wegeners hypothesis (then a hypothesis) made sense, all the other geologists just laughed and, like Creationists , they really needed to "stick with the inviolate proposition that continental blocks only moved up and down like a WHACK-A MOLE game"
As far as the "decay of the earths magnetic field" I didnt know that Russ Humphreys was still pushing that "theory". The original Barnes theory had been proved wrong when the math for the Magnetohydrodynamics equations were solvable. The earth IS a dynamo and no one really refutes that anymore. So Ole Russ has glommed some "exponential decay equations" based upon physics and "God working hand in hand"
where The decay rate, T=t/ln{Msub c/M}
where t is the Time since Creation and Mc is the dipole moment at Creation and M is the moment measured today. in this equation he "makes up" a value of M sub c (Quite bogus and Russ has been told that by many) Because we now know that the earths dipole has varied and the poles have reversed through time, Humphries has had to adopt a whole new way of affirming his own calcs. Russ has ALL the pole reversals happening in a same week during Noahs flood(And you say that evolution is based upon la la science). He still holds on to this thinking, but since there is always some intervention of a "special k" factor , which is divine in nature, this aint science and Russ has usually shut up about it at conferences (he only writes this crap for ICR).
Besides the earths magnetic field isnt exponentially decaying . The "dynamo" is self sustaining as seismic data has affirmed the presence of an outer molten core.
With the exception of Humphreys holding on to his "Special k" theories, most of the Creationists have abandoned all this and adopted ID thought patterns wherein they stipulate to Pole reversals, the dynamo concept, an old earth, and some, even evolution (just directed). Theres just too much data and evidence from other disciplines that one cant isolate a single theorem into anything plausible. We have so much data about pole reversals that are confirmed by stratigraphy, thermoluminescence, radiochemistry, fossils etc that its necessary for Creationists to only concentrate on one thing and ask us to suspend all knowledge about other fields of evidence
