Iron pot in coal (Talk.Origins)

Claim CC131:


 * In 1912, Frank Kennard, an electric plant worker, broke apart a large lump of coal, and an iron cup fell from the center, leaving a cast of the pot in the coal. The coal came from the Wilurton Coal Mines and is about 295 million years old, from the Mid-Pennsylvanian.

Source: ''
 * CEM Online. n.d. The iron cup in coal. ''(After displaying this page, click on "Museum Displays" in the left sidebar &mdash; a direct link to the iron pot page does not work.)

CreationWiki response:

The big problem with this one is that the cup was not discovered in situ but was found at an electric plant after the coal had been processed.

(Talk Origins quotes in blue)

Origins science is about history and a letter is appropriate evidence for history. It is better and less equivocal evidence than most of what is put up to support evolution! That said, we agree that it would have been more satisfactory for the iron pot to have been seen half-embedded in a seam.

This hardly seems relevant. The point of the claim is that something was apparently found where it could not have been found if evolutionary explanations of evidence were true.

Talk Origins' reference to the cup's being cast iron, and cast iron not being invented until the eighteenth century, is irrelevant since, if it did actually come from the coal bed, it would in fact represent evidence that cast iron was a lost art, reinvented in the eighteenth century.

It is difficult to imagine why a worker in a coal mine or its top workings would have a container for molten metal, something which has no apparent use in mining operations. Such equipment belongs in a metal workshop and is not casually carried around outside.

This is indeed a possible explanation, though it does not seem to match the account in the original letter:
 * While I was working in the Municipal Electric Plant in Thomas, Okla in 1912, I came upon a solid chunk of coal which was too large to use. I broke it with a sledge hammer.

An electric plant would want good coal to burn, not a concretion of coal dust, sediments and rocks. The appearance of good coal is not likely to be confused with such a concretion by someone who habitually works with it.

Note also how Talk Origins uses conditional language: "It could easily appear...could appear superficially...could have been recompressed...". In the same way evolutionary story-telling talks about how this animal could have developed into that one. Such a concatenation of speculation does not deserve to be given a great deal of weight.