I'd guess you didn't try to answer him because his evidence is so very good and it's not going to be easy to come up with an answer to it.
I think it's more to do with it being vague, unconfirmed and requiring much more detailed analysis than I've seen.
Funny, I'd have said it was very sharp, very specific, very detailed and very well argued myself.
1) that the erosion between the Unconformity and the Tapeats had to have been formed mechanically rather than chemically as the conventional explanation has it, which would reflect its once having been surface exposed to weathering which has a chemical effect.
It's hard rock and it had been deeply buried. Much deeper than the current depth of the Grand Canyon. I don't know what degree of chemical weathering would be expected.
It had also been exposed for quite a long period after that whole mountain that was so absurdly conjured to cover it over for an even longer period had supposedly eroded away, but apparently there are NO signs of weathering at all.
Even worse, I don't know what degree of chemial weather is actually present. This reconstruction of the formation of the rocks in the Grand Canyon talks about explaining deep chemical weathering in the same surface prior to the deposition of the GCS.
What?
Obviously there is a contradiction here, and I'd need more information to confirm what was going on.
No idea what you're talking about I'm afraid.
And 2) The strata that follow the contour of the East Kaibab Monocline show by that fact that they are all the same age and not millions of years apart.
No. Simply following the contour isn't enough. Garner argues that there is no evidence of deformation of the sand grains or disturbance of the cement - and that is far more important - but again, I don't know what degree is expected or really present. He is relying on a creationist source, after all.
I've also seen a geological paper arguing that the monocline is due more to faulting than bending of the strata. If that is the case, I'd expect less distortion of the component grains or damage to the cementing material elsewhere.
Exactly the same situation is found on the north-south slopes of the uplift, the same strata following the contour obviously in identical states of malleability. Are you going to conjure up faults everywhere along the slopes to explain away the obvious implication of this?
And 3) After those you might consider his section on Steve Austin's study of the Redwall Nautiloid layer which so clearly shows among other things that those creatures could not possibly have died any random natural deaths but had to have been killed all at once in a catastrophic event. 00:22:47 to 00:39:46.
I've already pointed out alternative answers to that.
I must have missed them.
Given the numbers I prefer a hazardous environment - perhaps an anoxic layer - that caused a large number of deaths over a longer period.
Layer of what? Don't you guys picture things dying and falling willynilly to the bottom of the ocean where they manage somehow to get buried before scavengers destroy them? This layer is a current of ocean water, or a wave, full of sediments PLUS nautiloids obviously being carried along in the current. Where did the anoxia enter the "layer?" Did it just suddenly diffuse itself throughout a few hundred square miles of water they were happily swimming in? Shouldn't they have encountered this condition the way the canary encounters dead air in a mine and just dropped dead at that spot, piling up on top of each other? Instead they're rather regularly dispersed throughout the layer, billions of them apparently, over that huge distance.
But even if it was otherwise localised catastrophes can and do happen, so simply arguing that a catastrophe happened at one place and time doesn't help you much.
Um, in a layer in the Grand Canyon where the common interpretation is normal death over great periods of time with creatures just falling dead to the ocean floor, it would be very odd if just one layer were an actual current with creatures swimming along in it for hundreds of square miles and dying all at once.
A review of a creationist book makes these points:
I have examined these nautiloids in only a few localities within the Grand Canyon National Park, to which he was kind enough to direct me, where I noted that a nautiloid fossil occurred about once every 4 or 5 square meters. From this I infer that either Austin has collected most of the samples from these localities or the abundance of nautiloids claimed is exaggerated. However, unlike Austin, I hesitate to extrapolate from observations at a few isolated localities to a huge area.
\Garner claims 1 nautiloid per square meter for the length of the canyon...
Oh call him a liar, of course, what else should I expect? How careful was this guy to follow Austin's tracks anyway? Garner presents Austin's markings on the rock showing where he found each nautiloid, from which he made his estimation of the number.
High concentrations of fossil nautiloids occur elsewhere, for example, in Morocco and in the Czech Republic. Ferretti and Krz (1995) describe several such examples in the Silurian of the Prague Basin and attribute them to the effects of surface currents or re-deposition in shallower environments by storm events during broad scale fluctuations in sea level. Why not the same in the Grand Canyon?
Because the evidence suggests what Austin concluded.
Garner's assertion that it must be a mass kill because it represents a cross-section of the population is also absurd. Assuming that he is correct about the data all it can tell us is that the cause of death did not greatly discriminate by size.
The sizes represent exactly what one would expect of the normal range of a living population, not to mention the orientation of each individual as an indicator that they were just being carried along in this current when they died rather than dying randomly.
But I guess you guys will assert anything as long as it seems to contradict the Flood, no matter how good the evidence for the Flood is, and Garner's is really great evidence.
Oh well, as usual anything can be interpreted to mean whatever you want it to mean. I shouldn't be shocked at how easily you think you can explain it all away. True, that's the situation on both sides of this argument, but your answers in this case seem stretched way beyond reason.
But I do suspect that Garner could answer you. Maybe when he gets back from investigating the Coconino.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
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