Objections to Evo-Timeframe Deposition of Strata

If I may just say, this reasoning is a mistake. For instance, by the same reasoning, we might observe that children all across the world recieve presents on Christmas, and that therefore it must really be possible to fly around the world in one night behind eight tiny reindeer. Oh, you might "jerryrig an explanation out of multiple local events, if necessary", but isn't it better to explain all the presents at once via one single explanation - Santa Claus?Sometimes we explain things with "multiple local events" because that's actually what happened.

In the most fundimental sense, the "geologic column" is a time line.It is divided into the preCambrian and the Phanerazoic, which are in turn subdivided into smaller units, which are subdivided into even smaller units, which are (often) subdivided into even smaller units.For the Phanerazoic (Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic), the divisions are (as I understand it) defined on the presence or absence of certain fossils (ie the type of life present in those time periods).Most prominently, the ends of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic are marked by major extinction events.Moose

Maybe you need to find some evidence that is diagnostic of the flood. I mostly see that you have been presenting evidence that does not support the flood in an exclusive way.In the meantime, the flood does not account for eolian deposits, evaporite deposits, terrestrial trace fossils, etc., etc. These items will demand that you come up with some pretty convincing stuff. You will certainly need something more compelling than the 'clams in the Himalayas' argument. That won't wash around here. Some of us here have studied the geological column for decades, at least. Believe me, your arguments have been forseen and dealt with many times before. In fact, many of your points have been brought up in early geology classes as logic exercises. Yes, I've known people who have problems confronting the uncertainties of geological thought. Some have had a near-violent reactions. Believe it or not, it all makes sense. THat is because it is not based on faith, but upon solid inductive reasoning and testing by independent techniques. I am sorry that you are leaving. In this post, you have expressed a more humble approach, which is (unfortunately), uncommon among our more outspoken YEC contributors; who seem to know, not only all of the science, but every thought and motivation of evolutionists.

So if there was a worldwide flood, what would you expect to see in rock strata? In a 6000 yr old world you would see a base of God made rock, then a large homogenous jumble of rocks, fossils and debris, then a layer of soils on top.If you have a very old earth you see hundreds of layers that vary with location that reflect the series of deposition from ocean or fresh water floods, wind blown layers, and erosion of same.While flooding is a means of deposition, it isn't the only one. When you see that some layers are deposited by water you cry "Flood!" and say its possible so that you don't have to weight the evidence, which is that there are many layers, not one.In my previous post I suggested a freshman geology text. Perhaps you need to read a logic text first.The subject isn't so huge that you couldn't learn about basic deposition and erosion and how it relates to geologic sequences around the world in a few hours. You don't need math,knowledge of DNA, or loads of time. Just get your nose out of those creationist texts, quit arguing for your intuitive ignorance, and do it!p.s. You never looked at Ned's links, did you?

There's not enough room on the Earth for all those organisms alive at one time.

I might come back later just to ask questions. How would that be? And yes I still intend to check out the other threads eventually, and haven't ignored all the information on this one either, for which I thank you.But at the moment I just have to ask: Would it kill you all to suspend your detailed scientific knowledge just long enough to allow you to see the worldwide appearance of the geologic column from a layman's point of view and realize that it DOES LOOK like something that could have been created by a gymongous flood? Laid down by water, warped and upended by later events. That acknowledgment would help a lot. Let me guess: yes, it would kill you, a ton of objections to follow. But thanks for any efforts in that direction.

Thank you for keeping us posted. That is a politeness that isn't often offered.You have done a better job of trying than many who come here. It seems that the layman's point of view is one that is totally unfamiliar with the actual facts. All we have been saying to you is that whatever picture you construct from that point of view is not very likely to be right. We believe we know what the facts are, you, I think, have agreed you don't.It is a bit surprising that you would think we would give your point of view much weight isn't it?If I told you I had never read the Bible, that I had now idea what it contains, had only read a bit of material years ago by people who not only didn't agree with it but really didn't know much about it themselves, would you then "suspend your detailed.. knowledge" and agree that any ideas I had about Christianity made any sense whatsoever?We do, I think, understand what your view is. It has become apparent that you are very, very uninformed on what the actual facts are. If you don't have those basic facts in hand then it should be no surprise that the conclusions your draw aren't very reasonable.

It wouldn't bother me. If I closed one eye and squinched up the other while looking at an schematic illustration of the geologic column in an old elementary school science book, that's very possibly what it would look like. But with any learnin' at all on what rocks are really outside your door, that mistake becomes apparent.

Having just read thru most of this thread it is apparent to me that Faith is working under the assumption that the "geologic column" shown is geo textbooks is exactly what is found uniformly, all over the world.She needs to be shown that the "geologic column" is nothing more than a representation of how differing layers from differing parts of the world all add up.She seems to be working under the assumption that the world is composed of straight uniform layers that exist everywhere and that when paleosols are mentioned you are talking about topsoil, as it exists now, that can be suspended in water and deposited as something you still recognize as topsoil.Could one of our wonderful geologists give a layman's account of what is shown by the "geo column" and what is actually found in real life?

---

Asgara
"Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"select * from USERS where CLUE > 0http://asgarasworld.bravepages.com
http://perditionsgate.bravepages.com

Well, while listening to Q&Q and waiting for someone who knows something to come along I'll have a crack at it.The surface of the earth consists of two major kinds of material:
1) sea floors - these are of varying age but all younger than a few 100 million years and consist almost completly of volcanic rocks with specific sediments laid on top.
2) continents -- there are core areas of the continents that are made of rocks of up to nearly 4 billion years old. On top of these are varying amounts of newer layers. In some places the old rock is at the surface.I will talk only about the continents.In any given location there may be from no new layers on top of the core to miles of layers.At the thicker (more "interesting") places the layers will range from horizontal to twisted in loops and broken angles. They will be at angles ranging from as flat as laid down to vertical. The layers are identifiable by the nature of the rock and the fossils they contain.If you search over the whole world you will find the layers that are shown in the geologic column. At no one place will every single small layer you can find be representated. This is taken to be for two reasons; that place was not receiving any sediment when other places where and any sediment laid down matching another location got worn off the one place and not the other.Layers can be very thin or 1,000's of feet thick. This is taken to indicate that the process that formed them lasted a shorter or longer time.The layers we see can all be matched up to the kind of processes we see forming sediments today.Some of the layers can be directed dated by various means. The dates of layers corrolate with the idea that lower undisturbed layer is older than the upper such layers.Some types of layers are traceable over very, very wide areas some are very localized.There are fossils in many of the different kinds of rock (but not all). Some fossils are only found in layers that are under many specific other layers and above other specific layers -- always without exception. These are then useful in taking a quick look at a hunk of rock and making a pretty good judgement of where it fits in all the layers. They are "index" fossils.Various layers may be flat and undistubed in a number of locations. To construct the "geologic column" these individual snapshots are jigsawed together to produce a complete picture of all the layers. The column does NOT contain ALL layers since some are only local. It is, as noted, a way of slotting in the geology to a time scale.

Just for info, my picture of the GC is not from diagrams in books, it's from photos of places where the strata are visible all over the world, as well as places I've seen in person, from the Rockies to the canyons and formations of the Western deserts. Of course there are exceptions and variations, but overall they are awfully straight and parallel for something built up gradually over time. But I'm gone, not arguing this any more.

I see what you mean, but I still have to disagree with you. I don't think that the geologic column holds the appearance of a worldwide flood. If we look at sedimentary rock, we see that there is not one layer, but there are countless ones. Certain organisms are found only in specific layers - for example, we don't find trilobites in the same layers we find fish. The strata does not appear to me to have been formed in a single event.Let's look at the Grand Canyon. I got this picture from the Wikipedia article on the Grand Canyon, and you can find a higher resolution version there.

Full Scale Photo
{Changed photo scale to "100%", to restore page width to normal, and added link to full size version. - Adminnemooseus}In this image, there are many visible layers. I feel it is reasonable to assume that they were not all laid down at the same time, or even in quick succession, because each one appears to be made from different types of rock. For example, at the bottom of the canyon, metamorphic rock about 1.6 to 2 billion years old is exposed. This contains no fossils, but it holds evidence of volcanic and tectonic activity. Plutons, objects formed from magma which has hardened underground, have been found in this lower layer, as well as layers of volcanic ash and dust indicating eruptions when this part was at the surface. The plutons were likely formed when this part was pulled underground by tectonic activity.Higher layers, of about 800 million to 1.2 billion years of age, show different types of rock with evidence of sedimentation. One part is called the Unkar group, and it contains several related layers. The lowest is a layer of limestone which contains stromatolite fossils, signifying life in a marine environment. I don’t see any way that could have formed from a single event that lasted only a couple months. Above this layer, there is evidence that the water receded for some time, forming a layer of shale from clay and mud. Further up, we see a layer of quartzite, which was once sandstone, and then a layer of sandstone and shale, and then a thick layer of lava, which appears to have eroded somewhat before being covered up by even more sedimentation.At this point, I see no evidence of a global flood. There is evidence at this point of flooding of the area, and of shorelines and shallow seas which eroded and changed that area greatly, but this does not match up with other parts of the world, which do not possess the same types of sedimentation, as would be expected in a global flood.Higher up, there is a layer about 550 millions years old with various fossils of animals such as trilobites, brachiopods, and burrowing worms. If there had been a global flood, I feel that at least a few of these would be found mixed up with the stromatolites in the Unkar group. Newer layers show fossils of crinoids, brachiopods, sponges, and corals, but these are separate from other layers containing lots of plants and amphibian fossils. These could not have lived at the same time, since the crinoids and corals are more likely to have lived in deeper water than the plants and amphibians, in much the same way we do not see frogs living in the middle of the ocean today, or corals living in freshwater streams.In summary, in the Grand Canyon we can find numerous layers of rock, each of which formed under its own conditions. For example, we can find rocks formed at least in part by sedimentation that are covered with a layer of igneous rock which could only have formed from lava. We also see fossils in higher layers that could not have lived alongside the creatures in the lower layers. The flood as described in the Bible is unlikely to have produced any of these formations. It is extremely unlikely that such a flood would have deposited separate layers of different types of sediment — clay and sand separately, forming shale and sandstone, for example, and it is unlikely to have produced the separations we see in the organisms found in the fossils of the Grand Canyon.This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 02-20-2005 01:25 AM

More accurately, it is what many YECs think the geological column should be; or what they think we believe it is. I think Moose cleared this one up nicely. It is actually a graphic representation of a timeline. It lays out geologic time in a sequence of relative ages. This is opposed to what we call 'stratigraphic columns' which are actual representations of the geological record at a given location and are often fragmentary. This is a grossly oversimplified viewpoint that is commonly promoted by YECs who contradict themselves by simultaneously discussing the incompleteness of the stratigraphic record.Stratigraphic continuity of units is an ideal situation rarely realized at any given scale. The 'vast, continent-wide layers', supposedly indicative of a flood deposit are broad generalizations that break down on detailed investigation. And no, there is no known way to transport a soil by moving water to a new depositional environment and have it remain a soil. I think that between Moose and Ned this has been done, unless there are some specific questions.

This is exactly what we would expect from seas moving back and forth across the continent. But in the case of these sediments, there were also emergent land masses, which is why we see fluvial and swamp deposits along with beach sands and eolian sand dunes.By the way, it is interesting that an actual time-stratigraphic horizon cuts across the layers that we see megascopically in these photographs. But of course, we probably wouldn't know that if we didn't have evolutionary models to compare with depositional models.

Yeah, we probably can. I know I can; as an ex-creationist I know that the YEC/Flood models are seductively simple explanations for a layperson's observations of the Earth. Just as Santa Claus is a seductively simple explanation for all those presents on Christimas morning.But when you dig deeper - when you so much as scratch the surface - you see that the Flood model simply can't be true. Just as you find out soon enough that 8 tiny reindeer won't tow you around the world in one night, no matter what you name them.Of course the Flood appears to be a good model at face value - that's on purpose, by the leaders of its proponents, or else there wouldn't be too many creationists, now would there? But it seriously doesn't take too much digging (pardon the pun) to see that the Flood simply can't have happened; that there's too many things that directly contradict the physics of covering the Earth in water. It's not a matter of what the flood doesn't explain. It's a matter of what it can't ever explain; the observations we make that wouldn't be possible if the flood model was true.