Summations Only

Faith, you've got to stop arguing pointlessly like this. Calling things names is not discussion. You can call our arguments mental cobwebs, and we could call your arguments (were you to make any) the same, and where would that leave us? Nowhere, because it's discussion of the evidence that counts.If you "don't know how the Flood did a lot of things" then that leaves you in an incredibly weak position. You can't remedy that weakness by refusing to discuss evidence from the other side and instead just engaging in name calling like "illusion" and "timescale paradigm" and "mental cobwebs." You're not discussing the topic, you're avoiding it.--Percy

I started something very similar a while backEvC Forum: Catholics are making it up.

These are just too absurd, I have to reply. Responding to a few of your messages...

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Replying to your Message 1745 to DWise1: When are you going to start? You've never offered any explanations that didn't violate at least one law of nature and usually several. But you're not focusing on any "physical facts." You're just name-calling. What "scientific effort of creationists?" If there were any science in creationism then creationists would have long since won the day. What creationists actually do is start with a conclusion then cherry pick a few facts that at least don't contradict them, then distort a few other facts, then make up a few other facts, then never explain major issues like how floods sort sediments by type and radiometric age and fossils. Like most accounts written by people, some is true, some false, some a mix, some of indeterminate veracity. Facts are established by studying the real world, and so regarding the Flood the Bible is definitely not fact.

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Replying to your Message 1746 to Tangle: Things that happen leave evidence behind. We can see the evidence of what happened in the past. Radiometric decay leaves its products behind that can be measured.Don't you think 17 years of not understanding radiometric decay is long enough, that maybe it's time to learn a little bit about what you're disregarding? You haven't even done it once, not successfully. You've made many attempts at explanations that were full of mistakes and errors and misunderstandings and omissions that were immediately pointed out, but you've never successfully explained how the Flood could explain the geology of the planet. You haven't even defined kind, let alone shown any evidence for built-in variation for kind evolution or for rapid evolution after the Flood, evidence for which is also completely lacking. To call this doing "pretty well" is pretty delusional.

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Replying to your Message 1747 to JonF: Nothing in science is provable, but the evidence says that the laws of the universe were the same in the past as they are today going back billions of years. Will you be describing any of this evidence any time soon? Or will you be continuing your pattern of half-baked attempts at describing evidence that are immediately rebutted, and then after that claiming you already proved your point? Followed by breaking off discussion, then resuming a few days or weeks later making the same arguments as if they hadn't already been rebutted.

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Replying to your Message 1749 to DWise1: And yet no field of endeavor has any problem studying the past, because what happens in the past leaves evidence behind. Even you concede this, for instance in forensics. How is a criminal leaving a fingerprint behind any different in principle from a radiometric isotope leaving daughter isotopes behind? Convincing people of lies through repetition has a long history of success in politics, but not science. You might try repeating things that are true, it would work much better.

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Replying to your Message 1750 to Jar: Like I said before, you just describe some nonsense that is instantly rebutted, then after that just claim you've proved your point. Just like what you're doing right now. Before you were born science already understood how the products of erosion are transported to low points, usually bodies of water, where sediments gradually settle out. This is just your mantra, not something you've actually demonstrated or that even has any meaning. And yet you're unable to address the evidence itself, calling the fossil order an illusion while never actually showing how this is so. You're going by a diagram of the Grand Staircase that doesn't contain that level of detail, but of course there were volcanic disturbances. It's the only way we would be able to radiometrically date. And the world is always experiencing tectonic forces and volcanism, just not everywhere all at the same time. During the period that the layers in the Grand Staircase region were being deposited there was certainly tectonic forces and volcanism at work elsewhere in the world. And yet just as huge parts of the world are flat and straight today, so was the world in the past. Nothing in science can be proved. All the evidence says that the laws of the universe were the same billions of years ago as they were in the past. And radiometric isotopes leave behind daughter isotopes.--Percy

Gee, thanks so muchly for responding to the first 5% of my post, while despite feeling so poorly posting 24 messages to other people on this day. Obviously how you feel is no obstacle for you, and now a few days later you must be feeling much better and could post 50 or even a 100 messages a day, especially since so many of them are content-free and some even one-liners.So how about responding to the rest of my post now? That is, if you have anything of substance to say in response, like something describing how the evidence supports your views, something that hasn't already been rebutted but that you just decided to ignore, like all the stuff you ignored in Message 1369.--Percy

I intended to get back to your post but due to the subsequent disparaging and discouraging remarks from so many here I don't feel like it now. Who knows, I may feel like it later.

In reading Percy's post, I see that I missed a few Faithisms.When you said this: It reminded me that in geology there is a definition that I learned many years ago. It is that the Devonian, for instance, can be a Period or a System.A "Period" refers to a time span (in this case, the Devonian as it was originally described). A "System" refers to the rock record deposited during that Devonian time span.There is no single Devonian stratigraphy. There are many, and the word System could refer to rocks of that age anywhere on the planet. In other words, the Navajo Sandstone is considered to be part of the Jurassic System deposited during the Jurassic time span, and the Old Red Sandstone is part of the Devonian System deposited during the Devonian Period.I sometimes get the impression that Faith thinks each layer is equated with a certain Period. But actually that layer is part of a System that was deposited globally during the same time as the 'Devonian' (named for Devon) rocks in Great Britain. That System includes all kinds of rocks all over the world that include, but are not limited to, the Old Red Sandstone Formation.In fact, a single layer or a 'Formation' (a sequence of related layers) can belong to more than one system.As I have said, the rocks are just like a 'recording' of sedimentary layers deposited on the 'tape' of the geological timescale.Well, I don't expect Faith to get this, but at least I tried to explain some of the embedded confusion of her posts. Edited by edge, : No reason given.Edited by edge, : No reason given.

:I do thank you for the attempt to help incorrigible me with my "confusion" and especially for being more specific than one usually encounters on this subject. Especially since you expect your offering to be rebuffed as I always have to expect mine to be. It's not fun, though being on the "right" side with lots of buddies ought to help soothe the pain from one lone stupid creationist's insults. Be that as it may... Please forgive me but I continue to have the same problem. (Do geology students just swallow all this without questions or objections by the way?)If there are "many" stratigraphies per time period, they still are all contained within the same rock layer or band of layers found around the world, right? Or however that should be said. Just different collections of sediment in different places, but all in the same band of rock or same level in the column, right? And all containing the same fossils.Why should there be a rock System associated with a particular time period anyway? Ever? And one per time period -- it is only one because although there are different rocks in different places they all occur at the same physical level and all contain the same fossilized creatures, yes? Why should EVERY "time period" have such a sedimentary representative, a System, at all? Isn't there something a bit contra Nature about such an occurrence?I understand that it would be hard to question something so utterly taken for granted, and which does in fact bear the label of the time period in all the representations of the geologic column, but I would think that someone might step back some time and ask why such a correspondence should exist at all, let alone so consistently. Why should there be a recognizable sedimentary System, set of layers or whatever, in any stack called the Geologic Column anywhere? One rock System per time period, and no time period without one. Is there a principle anywhere else in Nature that makes sense of this? But System will do, it doesn't have to be a single layer, it's whatever is bracketed on those diagrams of the Geological Column that is identified as belonging to the particular time period. Sometimes it's one sediment, such as the Redwall limestone, sometimes it's a few identifiable layers. I'm not stuck on some single-sediment formula, it depends on what I see on the diagrams. But can you understand why this specificity doesn't really change my perspective? They all occur at exactly the same level around the world, and they all contain the same fossils. Isn't that how it was recognized in the first place that there is something systematic going on here? There is no time period without its rock System and no rock System without its time period. I can't see anything else anywhere in Nature that justifies such an idea. Yes here and there a particular rock System fails to show up , but the amazing thing is that it's just here and there while the rule is that each time period has its pet rock System all around the world. And separated by millions of years. (Even if two different Systems should occur close in time, those on the other side of each are millions of years away. Are you sure you mean this? That a sequence of particular sedimentary rocks can belong to both the Devonian and the Silurian perhaps, or the Triassic and the Jurassic perhaps? But then they'd have to contain different fossils wouldn't they? Is this what you are saying? Now this is not at all clear. Could you find a different analogy to make it clearer?Look, I'm thinking this through honestly, I don't have anything "religious" in mind as I'm thinking it through, I'm thinking only of layers of rock around the world and time labels assocfiated with them. I'm basing it all on conclusions I've come to about the physical situation over the last couple of decades. I'd really really appreciate it if even if you think me crazy or stupid or just wrong you'd allow that I'm honestly thinking about the physical world and raising honest issues.After having thought about these things for so long it has become habitual to me to see things as I do and it does make me wonder how intelligent scientists can just take such truly weird contra-natural things for granted. I can answer "paradigm clash" but I'm nevertheless always astonished at just how adamantly ingrained it is.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You all keep complaining that a worldwide Flood wouldn't sort things, but I have to wonder why time would sort things physically either, meaning sort them into layers. Why shou8ld any particular collection of living things be found in a particular layer of rock? Why aren't fossils found buried willy-nilly instead of in neat rock layer graves? Why aren't they buried at different depths just becaue the earth is usually lumpy with hills and valleys in any time span. I mean even if you insist that they had to be buried at different levels because of evolution, why in identifiable straight rock layers? Representing what looks sort of like a clear order of living things over the taxonomic system? And it certainly seems that if a creature, say a rabbit, were to be found out of "place" (or "time") it would be over the supposed millions of years assuming earthquake and tectonic displacements. This is all way too pat, and, really, unnatural.I'm sure this could be said better but it's a start at saying something that's been bothering me.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Actually, my post was not meant to clear things up for you. It was more to explain to everyone else why you are so confused. No. They happen to contain similar fossils, yes. But they are not in the same band of rocks. For convenience. It is often necessary to talk about rocks of the same age. Not one layer. If sedimentation were continuous, yes. However, that is not what happened. Why wouldn't it?Because you think so? These are all based on normal geological processes that we see going on today. Because depositional environments change through time. Except where there was no deposition or where it has been removed. Make sense of your strawman? No. I didn't expect it to change your perspective. My intent was to help others understand your confusion, since the conversation never really goes anywhere. I might add that, contrary to known processes that we see in the geological record, you essentially see all rocks deposited in one year and hence are the same age. That is the basic reason why you are so adamant against the mainstream reality. What level are you talking about, stratigraphic or structural level? Right, but the concepts are different. You seem to equate them.Things are more complex that you think and geology is not something that you can teach yourself. I'm sorry it doesn't follow the logic that you prefer. But it works. I don't see the problem here. Let me be more general and say that, as Walther's law predicts, stratigraphic units are not restricted to a given time or Period. As transgression occurs, the age of a seashore deposit become younger as the shoreline moves across the continent. To you, I doubt it. This has been established by convention long before you came upon the scene. Your thinking is inadequate. You ignore evidence and known processes. You prefer mysticism over science and learning. You strategy consists of denial and adherence to a religious myth.I and others have enumerated your errors elsewhere.

Ah well, so much for fair and honest debate. Nothing you said here makes any more sense than what I was already dealing with.

(dreaded double post)Edited by edge, : No reason given.

Ah well, so much for fair and honest debate. Nothing you said here makes any more sense than what I was already dealing with.

Although this has been explained to you a brazillion times in a brazillion threads in a brazillion ways, fossils are found buried in the layer that was the surface at the time the critter lived along with the geology and environment that existed at the time the critter lived.It really is that simple.

So why don't we see a similar flat straight layer of sediment extending across huge spans of geography now, and collecting all the creatures familiar in our current time period? Of course it would have to extend through cities and towns and highway systems and so on and so forth, collecting lots of those artifacts too. The absurdity and physical impossibility of flat straight layers defining time periods escapes you all. Too bad. I guess the cosmos is going to have to roll up like a scroll before you see it.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.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

For the same reason only the Cult of Ignorance see such things in the geological record; such things are local just as they are today. There are flat straight layer of sediment extending across huge spans of geography today and also not flat straight layers of sediment extending across huge spans of geography today but regardless of the particular local you look at today what you see are the critters alive today living in the environment of today.Yes Virginia, we see the same geological processes going on today as went on in the past. And no Biblical Flood either now or in the past.Edited by jar, : appalin grammur