REACTIONS

Origins 5(1):6-8 (1978).

Re: Student Research Organization

    The readers of your publication might be interested to know of the formation of an inter-campus organization called "Students for Origins Research" (SOR) whose main purpose is to assist college students and instructors in studying the evolution-creation issue.
    Recent debates concerning scientific views of origins held on many university campuses have prompted students to evaluate the evidence for themselves. As a result, students have been forming campus clubs at various schools. In 1974, several science students started one such group at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California known as the "Creation Society of Santa Barbara." Since then, other groups have been formed, such as the "Evolution Inquiry Association" which was started by a pre-med student at the Los Angeles campus of the University of California, and a Creation Research Society student chapter at the University of Texas, El Paso. We are continually receiving requests from students to help initiate similar groups at their schools. Since very little effort is being made by school administrators or professors to present a balanced view of origins, students are being motivated to take the initiative.
    Among the present goals of SOR are:

• Prepare a packet of material that will help students form an origins research group on their campus.
• Help students plan lectures and debates, and provide them with information concerning scientists who are willing to speak on different theories of creation.
• Provide reference materials for students who would like to do term papers on origins-related topics and who would be interested in including the creationist viewpoint.
• Publish the newsletter, ORIGINS RESEARCH, that would:
1. report on student activities;
2. provide a means for students to have their research papers distributed;
3. provide a cost effective means to present sound scientific evidence concerning the creation model of origins to skeptical or uninformed students and professors;
4. discuss the philosophical features of the creation and evolution models of origins.

    The first issue of ORIGINS RESEARCH was published in February 1978, and we hope to put it out every two months, depending on available finances and student research papers. This newsletter will be sent free of charge to all students and faculty requesting it, and will be available at a $2.00 annual subscription rate to all other interested persons.

Dennis Wagner
Blair Sawyer
David Johannsen

Students for Origins Research
P.O. Box 203
Goleta, CA 93017

Re: Roth: Clastic Dikes (ORIGINS 4:53-55)

    Sandstone dikes in granite are anomalous in terms of current assumptions of a detrital origin of sand grains in sandstones. One would not expect layers of sandstone beneath granite; so it has been postulated that sand must have intruded granite from above by some means. In Colorado some such mechanism must have been capable of forming a vertical wall 1000 feet high and 300 feet thick in granite.
    The common tendency for sandstone dikes to pinch and swell seems to indicate that the idea of sediments infilling cracks is an oversimplified or incorrect explanation. Cracks formed in a host rock ought to have parallel side-walls. The usual suggestion that sand was forcefully intruded into cracks, causing the walls to dilate, encounters several problems: 1) no adequate mechanism for intrusion of sand is known; 2) sandstone dikes occur in porous rocks, and similar structures are found even in unconsolidated material, in which the pressure needed to cause intrusion would dissipate; 3) a fluid mixture of sand and water, or whatever else is believed to have intruded the host rock, would be incapable of dilating rock walls composed of granite or of most other rocks.
    Another problem with the conventional theory of sandstone dikes is the origin of the vertical stratification which sometimes occurs. Vertical laminations resembling cross stratification within a sandstone dike were reported by Peterson [Peterson, G.L. 1968. Flow structures in sandstone dikes. Sedimentary Geology 2(3):177-190]. He suggested, however, that this structure probably originated in a manner entirely different from normal cross stratification, generally thought to involve deposition from rapid currents. Perhaps the assumption of an exogenous origin of sand grains in dikes should be reexamined. The term "clastic dike" may be a misnomer. An alternate explanation of sandstone dikes is possible, utilizing a mechanism of rock disintegration during uplift of the continents at the end of the Noachian Deluge, as proposed by the writer [Cox, D.E. 1975. The formation of cross stratification: a new explanation. Creation Research Society Quarterly 12(3):166-173]. Rapid uplift of continents would be accompanied by faulting. Rocks under pressure subjected to faulting could be altered in the vicinity of faults. These faults would be low pressure zones penetrating the rocks. Here, shattering and granulation could occur, forming sandstone dikes by conversion of the host rock into sandstone.
    This alternate explanation for clastic dikes does not detract from the suggestions about time constraints associated with these peculiar structures pointed out by Roth.

Douglas E. Cox
Petersburg, Ontario, CANADA