I am sure it has been pointed out before that the early geologists went out looking for evidence for the Flood and recent creation, and realised as the evidence accumulated that the only conclusion they could reach was that long ages were involved.
They didn't recognize the abundant evidence for the Flood and they just capitulated to the idea of long ages based on some flimsy logic.
The major periods - Devonian, Silurian etc were worked out quite early because it could be seen that similar fossils occurred in the same order in different areas.
Yes, there is a predictable sequence of fossils. The same creatures were buried at the same level all over the world. Something to do with how the Flood carried them. The idea that the different levels represent successive time periods is unwarranted.
These periods were soon subdivided into stages, again based on the appearance and/or disappearance of particular fossils. There are now about 100 of these stages, many worked out by 1850 and nearly all by 1900.
The human imagination is wonderful, it makes patterns out of anything. That's why some kind of experimental or empirical test is needed to save us from pure imaginative nonsense. But when it comes to the distant past there is no way to apply such tests. You cant replicate single events, all you can do is interpret them.
The fossils in these stages are of all sizes and include plants.
That long ages had to be involved was concluded from looking at the evidence, and not by imposing presuppositions on it.
"Looking at the evidence" was little more than imagining meaning in subjectively defined patterns, like determining that people with smaller skulls were inferior to those with larger skulls. It's just a wild subjective judgment. Hutton, who started the whole idea of enormous time frames, simply took a look at the angular uncomformity at Siccar Point, decided that it had to have been formed in stages, the lower section tilted before the upper was laid down, and concluded that it had to have taken an enormously long time to do that. IIRC he imagined it being underwater for some huge length of time, he imagined a whole series of events in the past that he could not possibly demonstrate. Just pure imagination. All an invention of his own mind. No actual science ever entered into that judgment, no experimental testing, nothing. It's ALL mental conjurings.
When radiometric dating became available, numbers could be applied to the years involved.
And that too is an illusion because while it seems to be a stable method in fact there's a lot of error and there is no way to prove it actually measures time in the distant past. It seems like it SHOULD, but again imagination thinks all kinds of things are real that aren't when there is no way to subject them to a test, and there is no way to test the results of dating, you just have to believe them.
The Flood being able to do this sorting, AND to nicely sort the igneous layers used in dating, defies belief.
The sorting is a subjective judgment reified, an illusion.
Somewhat off topic, but when you throw volcanism into the mix, with chains of volcanoes getting older as you go along them, at a rate consistent with tectonic plate movement, and try to fit in literally more than 100,000,000 cubic kilometres of volcanic products in Large Igneous Provinces into the Flood, it becomes more than a little harder to explain.
Judging from the evidence -- the undisturbed strata over supposed hundreds of millions of years and the massive disturbances to the strata in blocks, I believe volcanism was triggered by one big tectonic event that split the continents, which I think happened at the end of the Flood, after all the strata were laid down. I think it is what caused the Flood to recede by changing the sea floor. I believe that tectonic event accounts for all the disturbances to the strata that we see everywhere, including the angular unconformities. That event started the continents moving apart which is what triggers volcanoes. None of this fits INTO the Flood, but followed the Flood and deformed the otherwise neatly layered world the Flood left behind.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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