Summations Only

I have no idea why some layers were deposited in some places and others weren't. I have no idea why one would EXPECT Flood waters to deposit them in any particular place or even everywhere in the first place so if they didn't I don't see a mystery. Different waves going different directions over the land mass? different levels of land or previous deposits causing water to go around them?, I don't know. It also looks like the diagrams are saying the same layers are at the bottom of the oceans? That's interesting.The video of creationist Paul Garner on the Grand Canyon included a mention that some layers are found well outside the canyon, the Coconino sandstone being found at great depths in some states to the east of Arizona, the Redwall limestone being found all the way across the US and also in the UK, and Steve Austin said the layer with the nautiloids extends into California and Nevada. So the idea that layers extend in various directions for various distances I don't see as a problem for the Flood.Seems to me it should be more of a problem for the Old Earth interpretation because it implies whole eras of TIME that are missing. And they do think in those terms, don't they? Actually think a whole layer was laid down and then eroded away completely and neatly even so there isn't the slightest hint it was ever there by just looking at it, but since the theory says it had to have been there they assume it was and assume it simply eroded away, so VERY neatly and cleanly it left no trace. It SHOULD make them rethink their whole theory but for some reason they just go forging on as if it made sense.You give a chart you found about how long it supposedly would have taken to lay down various layers in the GC. Was it made by a creationist ministry? 150 DAYS: I have no problem with the time frame, we're talking a world-covering OCEAN carrying all that load of sediments probably mostly scoured off the land mass that was denuded by torrential flooding over a few weeks, and dropping them all over the world, from currents, from water layers in the ocean itself, or from waves breaking high on the land, whatever.EROSIONAL FEATURES: between layers would be expected as water ran between the layers after they were laid down. Again, as I've been arguing, the erosion BETWEEN the layers is NOTHING like the kind of erosion that would have occurred on the surface of the earth if any layer had been exposed there for the great long ages assumed by OE theory. We see LOTS of erosion to the whole stack after it was all laid down though. Why should all THAT erosion ONLY have occurred ONLY in recent time if OE theory is correct? And the tectonic distortions and the lava fields and the earthquake faultings and so on? Again, it's evidence that the layers were laid down rapidly and THEN all the disturbances began, including the cutting of the Grand Canyon itself.SEQUENTIAL LAYERS MISSING: Again, there's no problem with "missing" layers for the Flood explanation, as I say above, since there's no reason to expect perfect layering from the Flood, it's all just sediments after all, being deposited from moving water. But there IS reason to expect it of the Old Earth theory, and it's THAT theory that ought to have the problem with it because the layers represent TIME PERIODS to you, and how can the planet lose whole time periods?ERRATIC DISPOSITIONAL PATTERNS: Ditto the above. Why expect anything more consistent of the Flood, it's Old Earth TIME-DEPENDENT interpretations that should have the problem.SEDIMENT NOT SORTED LARGE TO SMALL: Some creationist discussions I've seen claim it IS sorted that way, but this is a question for others to answer, I don't know.TERRESTRIAL LAYERS: The Flood picked up terrestrial stuff and moved it around so I don't get this problem. Shape of sand grains. EVERYTHING got carried in the water, from land and sea both. But I'd again point out that expecting a flat slab of rock to enclose a terrestrial landscape which was then covered up by another flat slab of rock after some millions of years seems to violate basic laws of nature and of reasoning. But again, something for somebody else to sort out. I've lost track of what I meant when I made that remark, but as I've said there has to be a limit to how far rock can stretched whether it is lithified or not, and in the Flood scenario it would most likely have been damp after all the strata were laid down and like damp modeling clay it WILL crack and break if you stretch it too far. I'm still not sure what point you are making here.Now you want me to go look at something so I'll post this and finish in a separate post.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Continuing from where I left off: What I see that's unique about it is that the strata have been preserved so well over time so that we can see the whole stack to its amazing depth over huge distances both within the canyon walls and all the way up through the Grand Staircase area, not to mention in the cross sections that show their continuing in such neat parallel form over the 250 miles between the two formations, and that's just south-to-north, they also extend east and west which is not shown on those diagrams.The writer says: Sure, he's partly explaining not what cut the canyon itself but what has been happening to it after it was cut, the erosion off the walls that has piled up on the layers as "skirts" for instance, caused by weather, water, ice and wind. When he gets to the course of the rive I'm not sure what he's explaining. Vulcanism would have shaken it up and knocked some things down, continental drift would have tilted and buckled some things here and there and so on, all AFTER the strata were all in place, and even after the canyon itself was cut through them. I still think if the implications of the canyon's having been cut through them all after they were all in place were recognized you'd have to realize that OE theory really doesn't explain any of it.I could go on commenting on that site's comments but I guess you want me to answer something in particular: OK, let me comment on some stuff here and there. He writes: Every time I run across this description of how a whole mountain chain was built up (which is surmised entirely from the tilted Supergroup at the bottom of the canyon) and then "over many millions of years eventually eroded away to form a level plain" (which is surmised entirely from the horizontal layers above the Supergroup) I think I must have fallen down Alice's rabbit hole, because where on Planet Earth does EROSION form LEVEL PLAINS? Out of MOUNTAINS yet? EROSION cuts and breaks and disrupts things, it piles up debris at the base of high things such as mountains that makes little mountains unto themselves, it does not FORM level plains.But it's the time frame of the sequence you want me to answer.Ya know what, HBD, that is a long long section giving the Old Earth scenario, which I don't think happened, but you want me to explain how THAT scenario happened on Flood timing? It would take too much time to go through it all and compare it with Flood suppositions and try to answer all of it so I've just got to bow out here. If you can somehow condense all that into questions of your own I might be able to deal with that. Sorry.ABE: I've been reading through it so maybe I'll post something in answer to your question eventually. All I know is that I follow the thinking of the orthodox preachers and teachers and theologians down the centuries, there's nothing unusual about my way of reading the Bible, but in modern times people have taken to reading it in order to make it conform with evolution and other beliefs that outright contradict its natural reading, the natural reading that has been pursued down the centuries. My reading isn't inconsistent, yours is.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I know you don't want to deal with my posts. You are now pretending that I am still being rude as justification for not responding when I am in fact being entirely courteous. Again, I don't think it is reasonable for you to expect that I won't point out, on a forum for debate, your logical inconsistencies.The fact is, Faith, that I have let go of quite a number of points that you've refused to address. A quick mental count puts the total at 6 logical inconsistencies and physical impossibilities I have pointed out with your position that you have deemed irrelevant (isn't that an amusing coincidence; 6 ignored points, 6 reasons you don't want to deal with my posts). And you keep threatening to address my posts even less when you haven't answered a single question I've asked for many posts now. I would be perfectly content to let yet another point fall by the wayside if you gave any indication that you were willing to address it somewhere at some point. That fact that you are refusing to consider evidence after evidence at all is irksome though.Now I'm not even trying to get you to defend your theory on these matters. I'm asking you if you can honestly say you think your behaviour is reasonable.If the members of this forum told you your point was irrelevant and refused to discuss it, would you feel they were being reasonable, honest and logical? I'm thinking no. So I'm asking you to explain how you justify your behaviour. Edited by Atheos canadensis, : No reason given.Edited by Atheos canadensis, : missing wordEdited by Atheos canadensis, : deleted sentence frag

Merry Christmas, Atheos!

Merry Christmas to you too! Have a nice holiday. Perhaps you will come back feeling refreshed and ready to answer a question or two?

How about you re-present your arguments for the shaping of the sand grains and the dinosaur sitting on its nest? I quickly googled both and didn’t find a lot of information.There’s an abstract of a paper about the dinosaur but it doesn’t include much description of the find, is more interested in the question how the species relates to birds. I’d want to know things like where it was found, the condition it’s in and so on.For the sand grains I understand that if they’re wet they have one angle of repose and if dry another, 34 and 45 I believe, and frosted means they were scratched and battered and lost their transparency. So one thing I’d want to know is how long it takes to shape them in their particular environments.

Thought I’d put up one of your pictures for reference:
Mississippian (Carboniferous) (Redwall limestone): I want to respond about the time frame as you asked but first have a couple of comments:You wanted me to give an explanation of the depositional facts in those charts and I did so in the previous post. I’d like to point out that this is speculating, what I’m doing, and Percy was also speculating in that post you recommended to me, message 508 I think(?), about why there are blank areas in the layers according to Old Earth thinking. I’m saying this because back there you said you wanted to put this up to show me that scientists aren’t speculating but dealing with evidence or facts. But really, all this demonstrates that you ARE speculating and you cannot help speculating, it’s all you CAN do, with the sciences of one-time events in the past such as the deposition of the strata and how to interpret them. We all have the same evidence, facts, data available, but we have only our imagination to go on to interpret it. OE interpretations build on OE assumptions, Flood interpretations build on Flood assumptions.And another comment:So I gather it’s OK with you, that is, it doesn’t violate your idea of what to expect of a period of millions of years on the earth that it’s represented by a layer of rock. So, a few million years from now would you expect to find, say, artifacts of modern America, or any other continent or civilization, embedded in a sedimentary rock layer of a very specific sort of sediment as all the evidence of the past is? And would you expect that particular sedimentary layer to extend horizontally over a large area of the continent and into the oceans as well, as do all these other rock depositions you’ve posted? I know it’s a bizarre question, but I find the whole idea of time being linked to the build-up of specific sediments in layers that eventually turn into rock to be bizarre to begin with.So now a few comments on the time frame question. Really nothing new I’m afraid but you asked. By God ex nihilo about 6000 years ago. This refers to the granite and the Vishnu schist at the bottom of the GC. I figure it was formed when the magma welled up from deep underneath, which I personally think probably happened about the same time as the tectonic movement that occurred after all the strata wree in place. I’m not sure what this refers to, but what an unconformity defined as missing rocks means is that OE theory expects a certain time period to be represented in the stack and it isn’t so they assume (imagine, speculate) that it was there originally but got eroded away, which I find excruciatingly unlikely. So my assumption is that what you see is what you get, there were no rocks there ever. Here we have the first mention of a layer that was supposedly exposed at the surface of the earth for its duration, which, since it was supposedly millions of years of such exposure, OUGHT to show a fair amount of erosion and distortion from the experience, but the drawing shows it to be a nice neat flat layer with straight lines.AND we have the reasoning employed by OE thinking here too: that is, because Stromatolites are associated with coastal areas THEREFORE this layer was once a coastal area. I always wonder if they know they are looking at a ROCK when they say such things but anyway. And gosh, a whole coastal area got laid down and then after a whole bunch of other kinds of landscapes got laid down on top of it, apparently leaving its nature as a coastal landscape intact oddly enough, then it gets subjected to some kind of force that tilts it. A whole coastal landscape you understand.As for when it was laid down, I figure this must have been one of the earliest layers to have been deposited by the Flood, at least it’s the first one that’s still intact enough to be represented on a chart.There were earlier layers but they no doubt got incorporated into the metamorphosed rock of the schist. As for the time frame, I don’t know how long it took for the Flood to lay down all the layers. That chart you posted is interesting and I don’t see why it couldn’t have been 150 days but I don’t have anything to go on really. Now they’re implying that coastal means underwater though I read coastal as land, so who knows, but anyway this new landscape, in the exact same place you realize, is now mud flats because the water has retreated, though this landscape is supposedly going to just pile on top of the previous coastal landscape which may or may not have been underwater. ,Seems to me that if there was shallow water over land and then the water retreated you wouldn’t have a separate layer that became rock to memorialize the previous watery landscape, you’d just have the mud flats where the earlier one used to be, with maybe some buried stromatolites, although they’d probably do just as well in the mud anyway. What IS this idea that over great aeons of time there’s this rule that the land keeps piling up and not just piling up but forming specific layers of specific sediments that memorialize each time period? What universe does OE theory inhabit anyway? I know that there are villages in the Middle East that build one on top of another as each former settlement gets buried by debris, but that seems to be a special situation. Gotta wonder exactly what phenomena inspired this particularly whimsical interpretation. See, we do get a lot of interpretation often without the facts it is based on.With the Tapeats we are now at the lowest horizontal layer in the canyon proper, that is laid down over the Supergroup which is a tilted block of layers composed of the layers identified above. What prompts that interpretation? Just the fact that it’s shale, i.e. formerly clay or something like that? And this is flatly said to have been deposited at the bottom of a shallow sea simply because limestone is often found at the bottom of a shallow sea. The way all these landscapes and comings and goings of seas are determined is simply by ASSUMING that the layer was laid down at its place of origin and its contents, of sediment or fossils, are the key to what sort of landscape was present at the time.But for all the above, the Flood interpretation is simply that these different sediments would have been removed from whatever their place of origin had been and transported in the water and then deposited by the water one on top of another at their current location in the Grand Canyon area. The former-landscape interpretations are, shall we say, creative, but unlikely in the extreme. Why should time on earth sort itself according to levels of layered sediments? Miles deep yet. And all these risings and fallings of the water level. How is that explained? All over the earth at the same time too? That is, are all the interpretations of the strata found everywhere coordinated with these? Underwater we go for the Redwall but back to the surface for the Supai. This is one very active planet according to this theory but the layers themselves show surprisingly little disturbance for all their ups and downs over millions upon millions of years. Until after they’re all in place THEN they get buckled by tectonic movement as a block, tilted as a block, faulted as a block, run through with magma to the very top of the block, canyons cut through them as a block. But I’m the crazy one here? Well, there are fossilized plants embedded in it, THEREFORE it had to have been above water, where the plants grew, right? Right where it is. But again, if the Flood explanation is correct, the mud or clay was merely carried from somewhere else, along with the plant life within it, by the ocean currents which laid it all down as a layer on top of the former layer.Time periods don’t layer themselves, landscapes don’t layer themselves, this planet doesn’t layer its eras. Please, can’t you see this? Blown I guess because the grains are apparently shaped the way aerially formed grains of sand are shaped, right? Guess I’ve got to ask Atheos c. who kept bringing this up, some questions about how long various grains take to acquire their shape and so on. And up and down goes the water again, unless it’s the land rising and falling. Don't see how either is possible myself. Now we’ve plunged to the BOTTOM of the sea. How do they imagine such risings and fallings are even possible on this planet? Explaining the one-time rise and fall of the Flood is hard enough but OE theory has the ocean bouncing up and down. Again, the ASSUMPTION is that the layers were formed IN PLACE over a LONG PERIOD OF TIME, although the very structure of the layers, their flat horizontality, their being made of separate kinds of sediments that became rock, argues against such an interpretation. If it contains fossils of marine life normally found at the bottom of the sea, the best interpretation is that those creatures were somehow transported in the Flood water to this location. Now there’s a nice simple fact for a change. Well, it’s an interpretation too, but it’s one I can agree with. Since you said to ignore the times given and just focus on the sequence of events I’ve been erasing all the time and age numbers, such as that the Rockies formed some 70 million years ago. But of course I also reject the idea of a series of landscapes or underwater environments piling one on top of another too, and the idea that mountains were built and eroded flat and all that. It seems to me from looking at the cross sections of the GC area that all the strata were laid down before any kind of tectonic or volcanic activity occurred, so that the Rockies began to be built at the same time strata all over the earth were buckled and tilted and so on, including in the Grand Canyon area, including the Great Unconformity at the very bottom of the canyon, and at the same time there were earthquakes and consequent faulting and so on. The great post-Flood lakes Missoula and Lahontan and Bonneville were very probably emptied as a result of such upheavals in the same time frame.You wanted me to explain how all this could have occurred in the 150 day time frame, which you find impossible, but that can only be because you are accepting most of the Old Earth view of it all. But if it was all just sediments and living things that got moved around and sorted out into layers by the worldwide Flood there’s no reason it couldn’t all have happened easily within months, or the whole Flood year or some such time period0He goes on to consider two theories about the role of the Colorado River and I’d only mention that one of them is rather similar to my own idea that the uplift would have diverted the river if it was already there, which he says it was, but that’s the only similarity with my guess.So I hope I’ve explained how it could have happened in 150 days or thereabouts since that was your question.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith, you accept that there have been vast tectonic plate movements on the Earth. You have suggested a speed of 20 feet per day, but that is way way too slow to open the Atlantic before recorded history. So you need to give us a speed and time for it to happen. Remember it also has to take into account the vulcanism generating the new oceanic crust as well as a great amount of the other vulcanism on the Earth.
You reject standard geologic dating. Do you understand how the dates are derived?

You really should learn something about the scientific method one day, it's really excellent. But only geologists are looking at them. A case in point: See, geologists are looking at the actual rocks. I don't know what you're looking at. Continental and marine sediments are actually different. It definitely builds up in layers, we can see it doing that, and I thought it was common ground between us that sediment can lithify. So what's "bizarre"? And yet the existence of the erosional surface make it look quite likely after all. "Oddly enough"? It should have turned into a tropical rainforest? What? One in which magic pixies don't magic away sediments after they've been buried under other sediments. The rocks which geologists have looked at and you haven't. Ah, the "Flood as magic bulldozer" theory. I refer you to my articles on historical geology which you claim to have read. Yeah, you see, this is pathetic. It's like you came to us saying: "I've figured out how to build a time machine." "Yeah, how will it work?" "Electricity!"You've say you've figured out how to explain geology. How? --- we ask you. With a flood! you say.

I ran across this doing research on Lake Suigetsu:Davidson, G., Wolgemuth, K., Christian Geologists on Noah's Flood: Biblical and Scientific Shortcomings of Flood Geology, BioLogos Forum, September 7, 2012, [2013 December 25], BioLogos - Not Found (404) - BioLogos; September 8, 2012, [2013 December 25], BioLogos - Not Found (404) - BioLogos; September 15, 2012, [2013 December 25], BioLogos - Not Found (404) - BioLogos; September 17, 2012, [2013 December 25], BioLogos - Not Found (404) - BioLogos,The first two parts deal with biblical, while parts 3 and 4 with scientific shortcomings of Flood Geology.Part 3 deals with the Grand Canyon:

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Grand Canyon: Order of Deposition

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The Grand Canyon is made up of a sequence of layers that defies any reasonable attempt to explain by a single flood. The alternating layers of limestone, sandstone and shale each form in unique environments. If these deposits were formed at different times under various sea-level stages, it is quite simple to explain the different grain sizes and rock types as a function of depth and distance from the shore line. If explained with a single catastrophic flood that abided by God’s natural laws of physics and chemistry, logic must be stretched beyond the breaking point.

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As a very simple observation, consider instructions given in virtually every gardening book. A good soil will have a mix of sand, silt and clay. To determine the quality of your soil, you take a handful or two, put it in a clear container, add water and shake it up. When you stop shaking, the coarse grained material will settle out first resulting in a sequence of layers: sand on the bottom, then silt, then clay. You can readily see how much of each you have by the thickness of each layer.

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This is informative of what we see in flood deposits. As moving flood waters slow down, finer and finer grained sediment settles out resulting in a fining upward sequence. If most of the Grand Canyon layers were laid down by the Flood, then we should see the same thing — a fining upward sequence. Instead, we see a series of alternating layers of fine and coarse grained material, with smaller-scale alternating layers within the larger ones (Fig. 2). Increasing the violence of a flood does nothing to negate the standard order of deposition. Repeated surging of flood waters across the surface likewise offers little explanatory power; in this case we might expect successive layers, each with their own fining upward sequence, but such is not what is observed. Further, the Grand Canyon includes multiple layers of limestone, which are never found in flood deposits of any magnitude. Even in floods as massive as one thought to have catastrophically deluged the once dry Mediterranean Sea basin with thousands of feet of water — limestone beds are conspicuously absent.

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If we revisit the Grand Canyon for a moment, is it not striking that there is not a single dinosaur, mammoth or bird in the entire exposed sequence? Not one. To find these, you have to go to younger sediments found in deposits outside the canyon that have not been fully eroded away yet. How could such a lack of mixing be possible if the Flood was violent enough to move continents?

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Dr. Gregg Davidson is chair of the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at the University of Mississippi and conducts original research in geochemistry and hydrogeology, often employing radiometric dating methods to determine the age of groundwater and sediments. In 2009 he published a book about his keen interest in integrating a lifetime of studying geology with his firm conviction about the infallibility of God’s Word, When Faith & Science Collide — A Biblical Approach to Evaluating Evolution and the Age of the Earth.

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Dr. Ken Wolgemuth is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Tulsa and a Petroleum Consultant teaching short courses on petroleum geology and Geology for the Non-Geologist. Over the last 10 years, he has developed a keen interest in sharing the geology of God’s Creation with Christians in churches and seminaries.

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I suggest you read the whole site. Consider this my Christmas present to you.Enjoy.

There's nothing new in any of that, RAZD, sorry.

Basically, as you summarize, wet sand has a 45 degree angle of repose while dry sand has a 34 degree angle of repose. Therefore if we are finding crossbedded strata with a 34 degree angle of repose, it is evidence that those strata were deposited in an aeolian rather than aqueous environment. I can't find any specific information on how long it takes for the grains to become frosted and faceted, though if you consider the hardness of quartz then the faceting must take a while. And when you find strata that contain certain bedding angles, facetted and frosted grains and the coarsening upward sequence I mentioned, it seems illogical to assume that all the aeolian features were actually produced in an aqueous environment.The dinosaur is more straightforward. It was found sitting on its nest with no evidence of having been transported at all. This is in fact the common condition of fossils found at Ukhaa Tolgod:

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Like most specimens from Ukhaa Tolgod, the specimen shows no evidence of transportation after death, and is preserved in a facies hypothesized to be deposited by large sandstorms. (Norell et al., 1995)

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If you google it you can see a picture as well. The fact that this dinosaur is sitting undisturbed on its nest does not seem to fit with the interpretation that is was buried by a catastrophic deluge.I'm also hoping your current vigour will extend to addressing the meanders of the Grand Canyon.

I thought I gave you all my calculations. Tectonic movement started about 4300 years ago, and vulcanism started about the same time, and over that amount of time caused all the continental drift to the current state of things. That works out to a starting speed of 20 feet per day between Europe and North America ending with today's couple of inches or so. What's your question?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

20 feet per day takes at least 1000 years to open the Atlantic. The plates can not have been moving that fast for that long or Abraham would have noticed the daily earthquakes. For that matter, they would not have been able to get any of the Tower of Babel up before it would be knocked down.You have to get your rapid movement out of the way before any recorded history. For now, I'll ignore the fact that history starts before your time for the Flood. Even at 20 feet per day, you would have at least 1000 years worth of current quakes every day.
Can't you see a wee problem with your scenario? And you still have to factor in the vulcanism.
Repeating an above question, do you understand how geological ages are determined?

But I'm not sure anybody has CLAIMED they were "produced" in an aqueous environment. Merely being transported isn't the same thing as being produced. But the time factor would matter here, because if it does take a long time to shape the grains in an aerial environment because of their hardness, then presumably after being aerially shaped they could be transported in the Flood water some unknown but possibly fairly short distance without the water itself contributing its own shaping effect. But I've been looking through creationist geologist Steve Austin's book on the Grand Canyon. He says the shape of the sand grains in the Coconino sandstone is consistent with deposition by very fast moving water. But I have more to read yet. Is this the fossil? I've seen drawings of it, but this kept showing up so even though it looks more like a piece of primitive art I guess it must be the fossil. In which case I don't get why this would be hard to explain on the Flood supposition. An article in Science News suggests that What exactly would be the evidence for or against its having been transported anyway? It may not have been transported, or at least not any great distance, but probably suddenly buried alive, after which the sediment might have been transported with its remains within. Pretty flattened too, it appears, unless that's NOT the fossil.The idea that they were buried by an avalanche of soaked sand fits the Flood rather well, something that could have come upon them suddenly. Dinosaur beds in North America suggest animals all being tumbled together to a watery grave. This suggests that many land animals were caught in the early stage of the Flood and rapidly buried. You require a lot of time and research of me. This is why I try to avoid side issues, especially since I think the overview I've been presenting, which I've researched over many years, is good enough evidence as it is against the OE theory and for the Flood.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.