Summations Only

Well that was a confused rant that completely failed to answer the question.The creatures live on the surface. What goes on deep underground has little to n effect on them. Do you understand that much ? Because it certainly doesn't look like it.

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...the problem here is to see how the strata we've actually got was formed by the events supposed for them: particular depositional environments for particular rocks have to be considered, and then their burial and lithification, but all in the right order so that you end up with the given strata that is the basis for the problem here.

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If that is the problem, why have you been ignoring it all through this thread ? The only way to talk about the strata we've actually got is to talk about the strata that we have actually got i.e. real examples, and you refuse to do that.

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So, this soil is not destined to become part of the strata unless it's also a landscape or depositional environment, and since you contrast it with landscapes above it, apparently it isn't.

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That's just weird. Coyote is talking about material that is in the process of lithified and you think that makes it unlikely to be lithified ?

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Therefore it will have to be eroded away before the landscapes (plural) you say are above it take their place as rocks in the strata

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This makes no sense at all. Having assumed for no sensible reason that the material that is being lithified won't become lithified you then assume that it would somehow get eroded away without the material above it being removed.Faith you really need to take a step back and really think about things. I know that you don't like accepting that your ideas are wrong but you really have been spouting too much nonsense in this thread.

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PaulK thought I was saying the sediment/rock being lithified wouldn't be lithified and I'm at a loss to understand how he got that idea,

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If you had read the portion of you post that I quoted there would be no mystery. If what you write is at odds with your intent then the problem is yours.

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...what I WAS saying was that the soil that buried that sediment in order to lithify it, was apparently just plain sediment, and not like the sediments in a stratigraphic column which represent "depositional environments."

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That is also a pretty damn weird thing to say. The sedimentary material in the soil would have been deposited in a depositional environment. Because a depositional environment is just an environment where there is net deposition of sediment.

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To try to state the problem or puzzle: Starting from a stratigraphic column, reconstruct the depositional environments indicated by the clues in the rocks of that column, and trace out the events or processes that would have to occur to show how each depositional environment or landscape ended up as the rock in the column.

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And it makes no sense to do that without an actual example. Which makes your refusal to consider actual examples more bizarre.Anyway, as you should know by now geologists have considerable success in doing exactly that.

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The whole idea of former landscapes or depositional/erosional environments either, is purely imaginary, THAT's what's unscientific.

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So you say. However the basis for that claim seems to be somewhat questionable to say the least.

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And it's what I'm trying to get at with my puzzle because I believe you cannot scientifically/honestly get from your imaginary landscape to the rock that represents it.

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Because when you try to think about it you come up with objections like:When the landscape is lithified, the creatures that lived there millions of years ago will lose their homes.Seriously, Faith ? You think that is a problem for us ?

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No, it's one of the hypothetical weirdnesses that is made necessary by the craziness of the Stratigraphic Column and its Depositional/Erosional Environments, nothing else, just facts that present themselves as one tries to follow out that craziness. I understand that you must fail to appreciate this fact for reasons of your own.

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Faith, it is not a fact, it is crazy nonsense that you made up. And that is why we don't believe it. What more reason would we need ?

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Definitely not. Because they think the stratigraphic column and the depositional/erosional environments and the geo timescale make sense. What I'm doing is showing that they don't. Unfortunately nobody gets it. But ya know what? I'm beyond caring.

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It is quite obvious that you don't get it. You don't get what geology says - and even you don't understand your objections.Faith, if what you were saying was at all true you would be showing that your objections made sense - but you don't even try to present any reasoning to support them.

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Not exactly. It's where the actual circumstances lead me. Not to any place a geologist ever goes because they are too busy avoiding the facts that would lead them there. Lots of general principles are thrown at me, but following out the actual facts, no.

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The first sentence is a lie - you don't look at any actual circumstances, so how can they lead you anywhere ? When we ask you to point at real examples you just refuse. Since you insist on keeping your argument on the level of general principles, is it surprising that the answers mostly do the same?It is obvious that you hate the ideas that you are discussing to the point where you can't bear to really think about them or understand them - and will throw out any nonsense as an excuse to reject them, but that is hardly going to convince anyone else.

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As I said in a recent post, that drew a chorus of accusations of lying, I'm trying to show something geologists have missed

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I stand by my point that you have not dealt with any actual examples, and in fact refuse to produce any actual examples.And you have an odd way of trying to show things. You make a lot of assertions but they don't seem to make any sense - and you fail to present anything like the supporting reasoning that is needed.So, really you are not only failing to show that geologists have missed something you don't even look like you are making a real attempt.

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This isn't something geologists think, it's something they haven't noticed because they normally stick to general statements about landscapes and environments and don't try to construct how you get from a landscape to a flat slab of rock in the stratigraphic column.

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Firstly, you are the one who sticks to general statements - you are the reason we haven't discussed any actual examples in this thread. And since you obviously "see" what you claim to see by dealing only with general statements it can hardly be the reason why geologists do not see it - even if it were not the case that geologists do look at actual examples.Also you ignore the fact that preserved landscapes are often more than flat slabs of rock. Which is par for the course for you.And quite frankly I find my efforts to avoid treating you with the unreserved snark you deserve are quote severely under appreciated.

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I barely managed to get anything said about my argument. Every time I got a post out about it, just a bare beginning, instead of anyone addressing its points I'd be buried in snark and accusations and other kinds of objections.

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Simply untrue. In fact you often get people asking you to explain - and you don't.

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I also many times said it's a hard argument to make, but that didn't lead anyone to make it any easier.

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And how could we do that ? You make claims that seem nonsensical but won't give us any hint as to how you reached those conclusions even when we ask. I advised you to deal with a real example, but you refuse to do that, sticking to entirely general claims. Dwise advised you to break the problem down but you haven't produced any attempt at that either. You tell us that if we try to reconstruct the events required - in a purely abstract general sense - we will found what you "found". But if you had actually produced your own reconstruction you could just present it, with an explanation of your reasoning. So obviously you have not done what you tell us to do, and have no idea what we would really find.

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If I were a mod you'd be gone for a LONG time, but I'm not, so I'm the one leaving.

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Yes, you would abuse your moderator powers. Fortunately for debate here the moderation is honest and largely fair - even if you are given a huge amount of leeway.

Faith I note that, yet again you are dealing in generalities.

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What happens after Environment #1 is buried so deep there is no habitat left for its former inhabitants?

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There are a number of possibilities, and it depends in what buries the original habitat.First, it need not be true that the burial leaves no habitat - the surface could remain inhabitable by the same life.Second, as in the case of a marine transgression or regression the habitats may be expected to "migrate", moving as the coastline does. This is the reason for Walther's Law.Third, they may migrate to other places.Fourth, if the change is sufficiently slow, adapt to the new conditions. Some species will be lost, others will not.Finally, the life may indeed die out. Indeed, we have evidence of mass extinctions where a large proportion of life on the planet died out. It can happen, so long as it does not happen everywhere. I remind you that your own Flood beliefs require a remarkably quick recovery from a great disaster, and even if you appeal to your assumed "vitality" it can hardly outweigh the vastly greater time available for conventional geology.

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As long as I'm focused on a specific Environment #1 it's not a generality, it's a specific case we can discuss through various changes.

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But it is not a specific. It is a completely unspecified environment. Which ends up getting buried by something equally unspecified.

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Remember, it has to become a rock in a stratigraphic column.

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Actually you should forget that. It's irrelevant. All that matters is that the surface is buried to the extent that it no longer serves as a habitat to the creatures that used to live on it. Let us not confuse the issue with events that happen long after the important point.

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All that matters to my puzzle is what finally appears in the stratigraphic column representing that particular environment

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That has no relevance to the question of where the creatures went. If you think it does, no wonder you have problems with your argument.

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If your environment moves somewhere else it isn't going to show up in the stack of rocks

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Wrong. And obviously so. If a depositional environment "moves" through the means of a transgression or regression, the sediment it has already deposited is still left behind.

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This is way too general.

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If it is, it is entirely your fault for presenting a completely general situation.

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We're talking about a stack of rocks that may cover huge spans of territory, which in itself poses a problem for any possible relocation

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Not really. We don't have to move everything out. An adequate breeding population of most species will be fine. We can easily afford to lose some species, and many, many individuals.

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Again, all that matters to this puzzle is what ends up in the column, not what MIGHT have happened that you have no way of demonstrating.

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That would be true if we were dealing with a real example. But you chose not to. So what might happen is all that matters. Complaining that I answer the "puzzle" as you posed it is just silly.

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Then show this in the result in the column.

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This is not a real example. There is no column.

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But what MIGHT happen isn't going to solve the puzzle

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It solves the "puzzle" you posed. If you wanted to deal with real examples you should have posed it in terms of a real example. I asked you to do that. You refused.

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You have to show what DID happen to a particular environment in the process of becoming a particular rock in the stratigraphic column

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No. I don't. All I have to do is answer the general question, because that is what your "puzzle" is.

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In the process of trying to construct how the environment got to be a rock I ran into the problem that habitat must be lost in that process, which doesn't fit with what Geology has in mind, so I conclude that there is a contradiction here between the theory and the reality.

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Obviously you have no idea what geology says. Of course geology accepts that habitats are lost. Suggesting otherwise is absurd.

In other words, because we HAVE answered your argument as you presented it you are "forced" to claim that all the opposing evidence us a massive coincidence.I guess that is as close to an admission of defeat as we can expect.

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If the creatures' habitat has been destroyed there's no place for them to go.

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That is not necessarily true, as i have already explained. And - as I should not need to explain - it is precisely the sort of claim that can be dealt with by offering alternative possibilities.

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Gosh you're good at twisting thing

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Always the same false accusation.

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No, all you've given is a bunch of imaginary scenarios, in keeping with the overall imaginary claim of there having been ancient environments where all those rocks in the stratigraphic column now are

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In fact I offered real possibilities. You cannot honestly claim that transgression and regression in particular are imaginary. Coastlines change in the modern day.And, in fact, such an answer was forced by your presentation of the alleged "puzzle". Was your refusal to deal with real situations a deliberate tactic to allow you to reject any answer as "imaginary" ?

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Historical Geology is a fine exercise in imagination, but the reality is the rocks are rocks and never were environments.

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If you had any argument to support that then you should have produced it.

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You have to be able to demonstrate those possibilities, you can't just imagine them into existence.

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If we were dealing with an actual example that would be appropriate. Since we aren't it is really up to you to give reasons why they are not possible. And I note that you are not even trying.

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You have to make up some other habitat out of thin air then because all you have in reality is a great expanse of rock.

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The fact that you keep confusing yourself with irrelevancies despite my repeated warnings is hardly encouraging or helpful to your position.

False accusations are hardly an adequate alternative to substantive posts.I will just take your failure to refute my points as an admission of defeat.

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In the current world yes. But your problem is that you assume the environments you see in the rocks are real and behave the way the world behaves today. They aren't true history though; they are just figments of the geological imagination.

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This begs the question though. If your argument relies on us assuming that we are wrong despite the evidence then you don't have an argument.

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That other thread jar started is a case in point. I'm sure he means it as some kind of response to this thread, but that's nonsense. You're discussing stuff that anyone can observe today. But it's merely an assumption that it existed in the "time periods" found in the stratigraphic rocks. A perfectly empty assumption that I'm proving false on this thread.

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On the contrary, it is valuable information for this thread. If we can explain what is seen as a result of known processes - and geologists certainly can - our views are viable.And I hardly think that your failure to produce any viable argument can be considered as "proving" that you are correct.

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What I'm "enchanted" by is the fact that there is so much ROCK out there all stacked up in huge slabs. It makes no sense at all on the standard Geological explanation and there is no way to get from those environments to the rock they represent. Oddly enough, although you assume it. It's all assumption.

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In reality - as we can see - you prefer to divert discussion of that subject and talk about habitat destruction instead. Which is clearly a peripheral issue at most. If you really had a case why do you keep talking about something else - even though you don't have a case for that either ? Your lack of interest in the subject, of course, is hardly evidence in your favour.And as we can see from your first paragraph you are reduced to insisting that the "problem" is that we don't make the (false) assumptions you want us to make.