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In This Issue

“ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM: IS OIL A FOSSIL, OR ABIOTIC?”

October Monthly Meeting

Tuesday, October 7th

“Every winged fowl, after his kind....”

by Douglas Roger Dexheimer

Then God said, “Let ... birds fly through the sky over the earth.” So God created ... every type of flying bird. God saw that they were good. God blessed them and said, “Be fertile, increase in number, and let there be many birds on the earth.” There was evening, then morning—a fifth day.  Genesis 1: 20-23. 

A short slide show will be presented on flight, followed by the DVD, "Design of Life, Volume 1 — Flight: The Genius of Birds." This is a beautifully filmed nature documentary on birds from an intelligent design perspective.

During the presentation some photos of recent waterfowl safaris to Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge will be shown. Also shown will be the video “Flight,” from Ilustra, as well as other videos demonstrating the intricate design required for birds of flight. You'll learn about some of the fascinating features required for flight, as well as other marvels of the avian world. At the smallest of scales, there is the fine programming necessary to develop a bird inside of an egg, and the intricate microscopic hooks and barbs on feathers that make flight possible. At the medium scale, there are the powerful flight muscles, and the incorporation of an ingenious pulley system. At the largest scale, there are phenomena such as flocks of 300,000 starlings flying in perfect formation, and arctic terns migrating from one pole to the other -- and back to where they started -- for a 70,000-kilometer round trip. You'll also see how the intricately designed hummingbird beats its wings so rapidly that it requires a heartbeat of 1,250 per minute as it simultaneously gathers the energy necessary to do so with its tongue. Human engineers, after exhaustive research and study of the hummingbird's design, have modeled an operational nano air vehicle (NAV) after it. What does this say about the Maker of the original NAV?

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Monthly Meetings

2014

(1st Tuesday of each month; content subject to change; no signup or registration necessary.)

• January 7th: “The Great Debate” DVD, moderated by Bob Farwell.
• February 4th:  (cancelled due to weather).
• March 4th: “The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record” DVD, moderated by Bob Farwell.
• April 1st: “Evolution vs. God” DVD, moderated by Kevin Anderson.
• May 6th: “Noah Extravaganza,” by Kevin Anderson & Bill Cowherd.
• June 3rd: “Radiometric Dating,” by Dave Penny.
• July 1st: “The Mystery of Our Declining Genes” DVD, moderated by Bob Farwell.
• August 5th: “The Ice Age - Only the Bible Explains It” by Michael J. Oard  DVD, moderated by Kevin Anderson.
• September 2nd: “Relativity and Creationism,” by Dave Penny.
• October 7th: “Every winged fowl, after his kind....”” by Douglas Roger Dexheimer.
• November 4th: “The Great Debate” DVD, moderated by Bob Farwell.
• December 2nd: “Hegelian Implications,” by Dave Penny.

CSA Monthly Meeting Location

Westbrooke Church
9777 Antioch
Overland Park, KS 66121
10 blocks east of 69 Highway (or Switzer) on 95th St. to Antioch, south two blocks on Antioch, on east side of street.
Fellowship & book table: 6:15PM. Meeting: 7:00PM.

For detailed Monthly Meeting information:

www.csama.org

2014 Creation Safaris

• March 28 (Friday, 7:30 PM) – Astronomy Safari (cancelled).
• April 25 (Friday, 8:00 PM) – Astronomy Safari.
• April 26 (Saturday) – Southeast Kansas Fossil and Mineral Safari.
• May 30 (Friday, 8:30 PM) – Astronomy Safari.
• May 24 - 26 (Saturday - Monday) – Western Kansas Safari.
• June 7 (Saturday) – Photo/Nature Hike Safari at Overland Park Arboretum.
• June 28 (Saturday, 8:45 PM) – Astronomy Safari. (cancelled)
• June 19-21 (Thursday - Saturday) – A float trip down the Ozark River. (cancelled)
• July 19 (Saturday) – Kansas University Natural History Museum Safari.
• July 26 (Saturday, 8:45 PM) – Astronomy Safari.
• Rock Bridge / Connor’s Cave Safari (not scheduled this year).
• August 16 (Saturday) – Greater KC Fossil Hunt.
• August 22 (Friday, 8:15) – Astronomy Safari.
• Aug 29 - Sept 1 (Friday - Monday) – Southeast Missouri Safari. (cancelled)
• September 19 (Friday, 7:30 PM) – Astronomy Safari.
• Safari Zoological Park, Caney, Kansas (not scheduled this year).
• October 18 (Saturday) – HaHa Tonka Safari.
• October 24  (Friday,7:15 PM) – Astronomy Safari.
• Bike Safari on the Katy Trail (not scheduled this year).
• November 21 (Friday, 7:15 PM) – Astronomy Safari.
• November 22 (Saturday) – Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge Safari.

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You must register for any safari.

For safari details, and to register please visit:

www.csama.org

or call

(816) 618-3610 or (816) 246-4517

Astronomy safaris only, call:

(913)-515-6421.

Too far away to attend CSA meetings?
Why not attend via audio or video tape?

Attend CSA Meetings by ordering the audio ($5) or video ($13) copy.
A full list of what is available can be found in a link at:
www.csama.org
To order, request by meeting date and topic. Copies of above items may also be borrowed from...

The CSA Lending Library
8904 Mastin
Overland Park, KS 66212
(913) 492-6545

ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM: IS OIL A FOSSIL, OR ABIOTIC?

by Douglas Roger Dexheimer

By way of review, in previous articles we’ve presented strong evidence indicating that:

• Caves are relatively recent formations.
• The Grand Canyon is younger than the Great Flood.
• The accuracy of radiometric dating of minerals and organic materials is highly questionable.

In this article we continue to challenge mainstream science’s religious faith in a uniformitarian philosophy, a random-chance evolutionary belief system proposing that evolution is proceeding over vast periods of time, measured in millions of years.  Creation scientists maintain that there is no scientific basis for a belief in the existence of such vast eons of time -- time demanded by evolutionists for the processes they propose created life as we know it.  This particular article demonstrates why I personally believe that petroleum is not a product of fossilization; nor was it generated millions of years ago from rotted organic matter.

Petroleum is commonly thought to form from plant (“ancient” forests) or animal (“prehistoric” dinosaurs) materials buried under deep layers of rock over long periods of time.  However, there is considerable evidence to challenge this viewpoint:

• Heavy bitumen seeps out of cracks in the Earth's crust, notably in the Great Rift Valley, where chunks of solidified bitumen float on the surface of the Dead Sea between present-day Jordan and Israel.  I have personally visited the Dead Sea, where I have observed chunks of black, tar-like material littering the water's edge.

• Liquid oil is known to seep from the ground at various locations.  Such oil was used as a salve by American Indians of the Seneca Tribe: "The Native Americans of New York and Pennsylvania region would rub cuts and scrapes with the petroleum collected from oil seeps that occurred naturally in the area. European settlers observed this habit, and began bottling and selling the substance as a cure-all. The preparation was sold as ‘Seneca oil’ in the mid-nineteenth century, after the local tribes….  Through mispronunciation this became ’Sen-ake-a oil’ and eventually ‘snake oil.’"¹

• The Athabasca oil sands (a.k.a., the “Athabasca,” or “Alberta tar sands”) are large deposits of bitumen, or extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada – roughly centered on the boomtown of Fort McMurray. These oil sands, hosted in the McMurray Formation, consist of a mixture of crude bitumen (a semi-solid form of crude oil), silica sand, clay minerals, and water. The Athabasca deposit is the largest known reservoir of crude bitumen in the world and the largest of three major oil sands deposits in Alberta, along with the nearby Peace River and Cold Lake deposits.²

• Bubbles of natural gas constantly rise from deep beneath the sea.  These bubbles coming out of the sea floor under Monterey Bay have been observed by an acquaintance of ours, Dr. Emil Sylvestru, a geologist with Creation Ministries International.

A few highly qualified scientists have asked some very critical questions of geologists -- questions that, as of yet, remain unanswered:

• The late Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty: "Oil is often called a ‘fossil fuel'; the idea being that it comes from formerly living organisms. This may have been plausible back when oil wells were drilled into the fossil layers of the Earth's crust; but today, great quantities of oil are found in deeper wells that are found below the level of any fossils. How then could oil have come from fossils, or decomposed former living matter, if it exists in rock formations far below layers of fossils -- the evidence of formerly living organisms? It must not come from living matter at all!”³

• Dr. Thomas Gold searched for petroleum at a site in Sweden where a large meteorite had cracked the crust of the Earth.  Gold achieved fame for his 1992 paper, "The Deep Hot Biosphere," in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  His paper presented a controversial view of the origin of coal, oil, and gas deposits, a theory of an abiogenic origin."⁴

• NASA scientists have published conclusive studies showing there is an abundance of methane gas of a non-biologic nature on Saturn’s giant moon, Titan, a finding further validating the non-fossil origin of oil. These studies were reported in the December 8th, 2005 issue of the scientific journal, Nature.

Further evidence:

• Oil has been discovered at a depth of 30,000 feet, far below the 18,000-foot limit for organic matter.

• The volume of oil pumped thus far in history cannot be accounted for by current biogenic models.

• Oil wells have been pumped dry, only to have been replenished with yet more oil.  Although it sounds too good to be true, increasing evidence from the Gulf of Mexico suggests that some old oil fields are being refilled by petroleum surging up from deep below, as reported by scientists. That may mean that current estimates of oil and gas abundance are far too low. Recent measurements in a major oil field show "that the fluids were changing over time; that very light oil and gas were being injected from below, even as the producing [oil pumping] was going on," said chemical oceanographer Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt. "They are refilling as we speak. But whether this is a worldwide phenomenon, we don't know....”  Also not known, Kennicutt said, is whether the injection of new oil from deeper strata is of any economic significance -- whether there will be enough to be exploitable. The discovery was unexpected, and it is still "somewhat controversial" within the oil industry.⁵

“This finding confirms one of the key arguments in Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil, claims co-author Jerome R. Corsi. “We argue that oil and natural gas are abiotic products, not ‘fossil fuels’ that are biologically created by the debris of dead dinosaurs and ancient forests.”⁶

At this point, I’d like to present my own condensed and simplified version of petroleum’s origin, based on what I regard as a Biblical, creationist, young-Earth perspective.  I’ll also incorporate a few other interesting thoughts and sidelights.   

1. First of all, I believe petroleum originates from deep within the mantle of the Earth.

2. It is continually being generated by a natural chemical reaction requiring high temperatures and pressures. This process has been going on since the initial phase of Earth’s creation.

3. Upward seepage of the liquid and gaseous components through cracks in the Earth has occurred from the very beginnings of their formation. This is the source of the bitumen that rises from beneath the Dead Sea, the gas bubbles that arise from the sea floor, and the so-called Indian snake oil that arises through the ground.

4. Most of the petroleum has been trapped under some type of sedimentary formation, such as the well-known Teapot Dome formation located in the state of Wyoming. These sedimentary formations might contain some vegetative matter that was buried during the Great Flood -- material that often masks the abiotic nature of the petroleum, and which is mistakenly used as evidence to indicate that the petroleum has an organic origin.

5. Until recently, wells drilled into sedimentary rock were comparatively shallow -- in the range of 2 to 5 thousand feet.  They were drilled through layers of limestone and sandstone which had trapped the oil and gas rising beneath them. 

6. Such are the well depths in Central Kansas, as so stated at the "Oil Patch Museum" in Russell, Kansas (which I personally verified on my return trip from our Western Kansas Chalk and Fossil Safari this year).

7. Earth’s outer layer, the continental crust, has a thickness of about 30 kilometers, or 19 miles. Under the sea, the oceanic crust is much thinner (8 to 10 kilometers, or 5 to 6 miles), but it is also much heavier.⁷  These figures seem to corroborate recent developments in the theory of catastrophic plate tectonics, as  promoted by Dr. John Baumgartner.⁸

8. Based on the theory that abiotic oil is constantly being generated deep within the Earth, oil wells have been drilled much deeper, some to 20 to 35 thousand feet, penetrating the granite bedrock. 

1. The technology to drill to such depths has largely been developed in Russia.
2. In 2010, failing to anticipate the high temperatures and pressures of the petroleum beneath the granite bedrock, British Petroleum (BP) attempted to tap the abiotic oil under the Gulf of Mexico. Their well-head safety valves were destroyed, resulting in the now well-known and catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
3. Successful deep wells are producing abundant abiotic petroleum offshore in the Arctic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the South Atlantic off Brazil, and in the South China Sea off Viet Nam.

9. The LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, maker of all that ever was, is, and ever will be, designed the natural process that generates petroleum, and He left ample clues for man to find and utilize those abundant fuels. 

Conclusion

I encourage readers to look further into the references I’ve cited here.  The information contained therein -- much of it in fact coming from non-creationists -- serves to reassure us that not only is there likely an abundant supply of petroleum ready for our taking, rather than a shortage as is so often “preached” to us through our major media outlets, but that there is also further evidence for a divine Creator-Redeemer.

For the more technically-inclined among us, you may find the information at the following link to be of particular interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin#Creation_within_the_mantle

It offers an in-depth look at the complex chemical processes involved in abiotic petroleum formation in the Earth’s mantle.

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabaska_tar_sands

³ http://www.abeldanger.net/2011/06/etymology-of-petroleum-peak-oil-fake.html

⁴ https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090408131300AAsVGOD

⁵ http://www.newsday.com/oil-fields-free-refill-seepage-from-the-depths-in-some-reservoirs-hints-at-greater-resources-than-expected-1.308663

⁶ http://www.wnd.com/2005/12/33678/#RkjtP0lapmraVucF.99

⁷ http://www.amnh.org/ology/features/plates/structure.php

⁸ http://creation.com/catastrophic-plate-tectonics-the-geophysical-context-of-the-genesis-flood

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Are you participating in CSA as much as you should?

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

Are you doing all the Lord has called you to do in the war for the minds and souls of our citizens... especially our youth? CSA is not a closed fraternity. Any born-again believer who is abiding in the words of Jesus, and has been gifted in research, computers, speaking, clerical activities, writing of articles or book reviews, etc., and who has heard a call to serve in an origins ministry should consider and pray about serving with us. Write or call for more information.

Help Wanted

CSAMA is seeking an editor for, and contributors to, our newsletter. If you are a born-again Christian, believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, subscribe to the literal 7-day creationist viewpoint, if you have researching and writing skills, and if you have suitable ideas for articles to contribute to our publication and can meet a monthly deadline schedule, please contact the newsletter webmaster via the link at www.csama.org.

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Never miss an opportunity to debunk the "millions-of-years" notion that evolutionists insist is necessary for life as we know it.

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