Summations Only

Wow! I'm starting to feel bad for being so shocked at Faith's willingness to ignore certain evidence. I tried out the point about the meandering GC over at Christian Forums and am now surprised and fascinated to find myself in an argument about whether the GC meanders at all. I posted this picture to help clarify things for my interlocutor, yet he insists the the GC doesn't meander: I included that yellow line in case he needed some help with the concept of straight vs meandering.Say what you like about Faith, but she never tried to deny that the GC meanders!

I will give it a try, though the task is somewhat daunting given that I literally had to draw this guy a picture to illustrate the difference between a meander and a straight channel. And he still doesn't believe me.I hope some of EvC's resident creationists take a shot at your new thread. I suspect Faith might be a bit tuckered out at the moment though.

You seem to be saying at the start of the post that the GC only meanders gently, then by the end you are akcknowledging it meanders strongly in places. Also, remember that high-velocity flows don't create meanders at all, as others here have pointed out, so I'm not sure what use making the distinction is for you. As for my interlocutor, he is insisting that the GC is actually straight
Look at this picture again: There are gentle meanders. There are two giant hairpin turns and several smaller ones and it is nowhere near straight. The meanders are there and continue to represent a problem for the Flood model because high-energy flows can't create them.Edited by Atheos canadensis, : changed sentence.

If you look at the satellite photo I provided you can see both large-scale meanders and small-scale meanders. Note the small-scale (relatively speaking) meanders Percy and others have posted. I'm sure you aren't arguing that the canyon doesn't meander because there is photographic proof before your eyes that it does. I think you have accepted (or at least are beginning to accept) that the Flood could not have produced such meanders and that is why you are trying to minimize them. But the meanders of the GC, both large and small, show that the Flood did not create it and by extension that the earth is not young.

I agree that the river created the meanders. But the canyon meanders from the top of the canyon to the base of the canyon. That means that the river has been at it for a very long time. The Flood didn't carve the meanders and that means there is no mechanism for the rapid weathering you require to maintain a young earth belief.

Now now, Faith, let's not get mean. You and I at least were having a cordial exchange of late. I understand that you are feeling threatened and put upon, but let's make an effort to be nice to each other.Let's clarify. So you think tectonic forces cracked open the upper strata and then Floodwater poured in to excavate the rest of the canyon. There are a couple problems with this. First is that, as I have pointed out and as you can see from the photographs, the canyon meanders from base to top. That close-up hairpin meander in particular definitely doesn't fit the model of a giant crack opening up in the crust. Second, even if the upper strata were split apart by rifting, the Flood water flowing in still doesn't explain the meanders formed by the walls of the canyon lower down. Rifting followed by Floodwater flowing into the rift will not produce the meanders we see. If you do not understand this, please ask for specific clarification instead of declaring it idiotic and insane which is quite unproductive.

This is pretty evasive, Faith. One of your main points is that no erosion occurs between strata. Dwise has posted a seismograph showing just that. How is that a side issue? You say no erosion occurs between layers, he shows you evidence of this, you say it's irrelevant. This is awfully suspicious. I still think you are lying to yourself when you claim that things like the meanders and the brooding dinosaur and the speleothems and the grain sorting (etc. etc.) are not relevant, but I would at least agree that they are not directly addressing your point that no erosion occurred between strata. But that seismograph is addressing exactly that! Edited by Atheos canadensis, : added quote

Now hang on, Faith. You're doing that double standard thing again. Here you are making a big deal about violating the laws of nature, but when I point out to you that it requires a violation of natural law to say the meanders of the GC were caused by the Flood or that an in situ brooding dinosaur was buried by the Flood, you declare it irrelevant. Seems a bit sketchy. Why is violating physics only a problem when you think others are doing it?

Oh hi there Faith. Sorry, I have been traveling over the holidays or I would have answered your overconfident bellow sooner. Not that I see the point. It has already been pointed out to you that the information you highlight here doesn't actually change the point I made. Note that the angle of repose (AoR) for dry sand is different from the AoR for submerged sand, i.e. sand that is deposited underwater. Even this chart you have posted says that dry sand has a different AoR than submerged sand. I apologize for the confusion I may have caused by imprecisely referring to submerged sand as wet sand. But now it's all cleared up and you're back where you started. Except now you have acknowledged the issue and it will be embarrassing if you decide you don't want to talk about it again. This quote is fairly revealing: This makes it rather obvious that the reason you had no intention of pursuing this topic was that you had no counterargument to present. Now that you have mistakenly concluded that this chart supports your position you have suddenly become interested again. But now that it has been pointed out that the chart still doesn't say that submerged sand and dry sand have the same AoR, I suspect you will "lose interest" again.I'm guessing that, despite the fact that you are once again discussing what you originally declared to be irrelevant, you will not be interested in providing an explanation for that brooding dinosaur. It seems that things are only relevant when you think (however misguidedly) that you have a good explanation for them. Prove this impression wrong by actually trying to refute my point about the brooding dinosaur.

I see RAZD has already answered this question thoroughly, but in case you found his post too technical, I will summarize it for you. Basically once the crossbedded strata are buried, the weight on top of them will keep them from moving and so they will retain their AoG even if they dry out.And now that you're talking about footprints again, would you like to resolve the issue I pointed out long ago? The fact that various layers with footprints appear are interspersed with marine deposits is inconsistent with your model. Where did the trackmakers from the the strata above the marine strata come from?And I take it you are still not able to mount a counterargument against my point about the brooding dinosaur. You seem interested in the idea that the Coconino sandstone may be partially aqueously deposited, but you are ignoring the unambiguous evidence of aeolian deposition represented by the brooding dinosaur.

You think that some animals survived for a while during the Flood to make tracks. But trackways don't occur only near the bottom of the rock record as you would expect if they had survived the early days of the Flood only to be drowned later on. Tetrapod trackways in fact appear all the way to the top of the record, which is inconsistent with your model. How did the track-makers survive as water covered the land completely and how were they able to make tracks if the water was high enough to cover mountains? Remember that tetrapod tracks appear high in the record, not near the bottom where you'd expect if they were created near the beginning of the Flood. Hmm, we already went through this and you were forced into the position of having to deny the law of superposition in order to support the assertion that the Flood could have buried that dinosaur. Lets review:- The dinosaur is sitting undisturbed on its nest. I gave you the evidence proving that it was undisturbed.-The undisturbed nature of the brooding dinosaur shows that it wasn't buried in any catastrophic deluge-You pointed out that scientists proposed a mechanism whereby the surface layer of sand was saturated by rain and, thus destabilized, slid down and buried the dinosaur. You claimed this was consistent with the Flood model-I pointed out that the proposed mechanism only works in a terrestrial environment, which you accepted-You said that it could have been buried in the beginning of the Flood when it had just started to rain, thus destabilizing the sand-I pointed out that we should then expect to find the dinosaur near the bottom of the rock record rather than near the top.-Your only response to this was to deny superposition and, when pressed to support this denial, to declare that you had once again lost interest in the topic.You even said And now here you are again saying that it was buried by the Flood despite the fact that the in situ nature of the animal and its nest as well as the fossil's position high in the rock record proves that it was not deposited by any stage of the Flood . So have you come up with a refutation of the law of superposition or did you forget that you already conceded the point?

While you're thinking about that, keep in mind what I said; trackways are found all the way to the top of the rock record. The Coconino is Permian in age and so fairly far down, but the Cretaceous period is rife with tracks, yet they are near the top of the rock record, not the beginning. I accept the task of reminding you of this if you forget. There is. The problem is the law of superpostion. The same problem you have with the brooding dinosaur example. The only possible way your model could explain the presence of tracks and an in situ dinosaur in sediments supposedly laid down by the Flood would be if they were deposited at the very beginning of the Flood. But their presence near the top of the rock record prohibits this possibility. So it is indeed a problem for you, one that I have previously pointed out to you. That was when you conceded the point (disingenuously, as it turns out) and declined to discuss it further. This too I will take the opportunity to remind you of if you forget to address it again.Edited by Atheos canadensis, : extraneous word

Before this devolves into another half dozen posts of caps-locked invective and cartoons, lets you and I have a nice polite discussion. Remember when you asked to be reminded of the point about trackways in case you forgot? I'm just giving you that reminder. So how is it that there are trackways all the way through the rock record when they really should be limited to the very bottom layers which, according to you, represent the early stages of the Flood?And if you're in the mood, how about that brooding dinosaur, eh? In either case, it basically comes down to you needing to refute the law of superposition, a task which I seem to recall caused you some distress earlier.

Um, no. It matters a great deal if an undisturbed nesting dinosaur shows up preserved in a terrestrial environment when you're trying to claim that it was deposited during the Flood. You tried to argue that it had been deposited during the beginning of the Flood but when that idea was refuted by the fact that it appears so high up in the rock record you chose to stop talking about it rather than try to argue with the law of superposition. If I said "being an animal connects it with evolution. doesn't matter how it happened" I'm sure you wouldn't consider that a valid response. So it is hypocritical of you to make such a statement. You are asserting that the fact that it is a fossil proves it was somehow deposited by the Flood when in fact the issue is whether it really was deposited by the Flood. You are begging the question, not making a reasoned argument.You should have a problem with trackways that don't appear low down in the record because they mean that animals were still walking around when the earth was supposedly covered in water up to the mountain tops. Again your issue is superposition.Look, you accepted already that the dinosaur was terrestrially deposited, so your only possible recourse now is to present a refutation of the law of superposition. Can you do that? If you want to stick to your stance of "The Bible says the Flood did it, therefore the Flood did it" then go ahead, but don't try to pretend the fossil record supports that.

Faith, I appreciate that fact that you try to answer many posts from many posters. I am less impressed by the fact that you only tend to do so until you run out of counterarguments and then declare it irrelevant.I will clearly state the law of superposition and succinctly explain why it is a problem for you, that way you won't have to spend time understanding. I do this trusting that your confusion is sincere and not merely a evasive fabrication.The law of superposition basically sates that strata lower in section were deposited before and are older than the strata that are higher in section.The Problem: The dinosaur is preserved undisturbed in terrestrial deposits. The only way that works with the Flood model is if it were buried at the very start of the Flood. But it appears near the top of the rock record, no near the bottom which one would expect if it had been deposited at the start of the Flood.Do you see the problem? Please explain what you don't understand about this and I will clarify.The same problem applies to trackways. Trackways appear throughout the record, including the very uppermost layers. Are you claiming that there was still ground available to be walked upon in the very last stages of the Flood? That doesn't sound very biblical.