The Grand Canyon Paradox

Before we can explain the Vishnu Schist, before explaining the Great Unconformity, the Floodists need to produce a model that explains the creation of the sand for the sandstone that became the Vishnu Schist.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Two premises taken as fact by YECs:1. All rocks are either hardened lava or hardened mud.2. Rock cannot be bent and shaped by great pressure over time.Both premises are false. The entire island on which I live is evidence against both.Limestone, granite, marble, jade--you don't get these things in a year from hardened mud. These are formed by certain processes involving heat and pressure and time. Rock can be, and has been, observably bent and shaped by such processes.Creationists have yet to run an experiment in which jade is produced in a year from 'flood-like processes.' But if their scenario had any connection with reality they should be able to do this without much trouble. Where is the jade?

This message is:1) A moderation message and 2) About something that is off-topic in this topic.If anyone wishes to respond to this message, you should go to the "General discussion...", topic link below.----- I think the above is on rather shaky ground, ranging from "kinda right", to "sorta right but actually wrong", to what strikes me as a "wild ass guess" (WAG) unsupported assertion. I encourage you to be more careful. Mostly I encourage you to bring the above to the "Angular Unconformity" topic. I also think that Kuresu is also getting pretty sloppy here. But that material also belongs in a topic elsewhere.Bottom line - People, if you are going to be representing the evolution/science side, please beware of "blowing smoke" over accurate and real substance.Or something like that.-----Again, if anyone wishes to respond to this message, you should go to the "General discussion...", topic link below.AdminnemooseusEdited by Adminnemooseus, : Change ID.

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Adminmoose is right that diving into too many generalities is off topic. Suffice it to say, just because rock has been observed to deform plasticly does not mean that it also does not fracture in certain circumstances.None of your reply to me addressed any of the comments I made about rock strain. Rock strain falsifies a young earth. It is one of the many "silver bullet" evidences to slay the idea that all geologic formation are the result of a Biblical flood. Including the Grand Canyon.Faith's explanation for the unconformities in the GC try to explain how an unconformity could possibly occur AFTER all the layers were deposited. Other than the obvious physical impossibility and lack of evidence (sophomoric attempts to correlate pictures not withstanding), her explanation fails to take into account the EXISTING evidence for erosion at the point of the unconformity or nonconformity.Erosion is the key and all the dancing around in the world does not make that evidence go away. At some point those tilted layers saw air. AFTER they were buried, hardened, and tilted. Not going to happen in a year.That is the problem with YECs, they simply fail to take ALL the evidence into account during the "alternative interpretations". Not explaining all of the evidence is a failure of the YEC paradigm.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Since Faith's comment references me I feel entitled to put in a reply.In actual discussion Faith ignored the evidence against her. Indeed her method was to look at evidence that seemingly confirmed her view, conclude that she was unquestionably right and then use that as a basis for rejecting contrary evidence. She got quite angry when instead of following her method I actually considered the contrary evidence as well before coming to a conclusion.And, as I commented when this message was posted privately, Faith still hasn't considered the problems of her proposal. She is talking about deeply buried rock freely moving, while the strata above it appear undisturbed ! That can't easily happen - I don't believe that it is possible. For her scenario to work the upper strata must be lifted up - intact - over a very large area. and then come down again, on a surface that just happens to be flat. The difficulties should be obvious to anyone who actually thinks about it.Appealing to erosion through the supposed motion does not work, either. Because the eroded material has nowhere to go. It should still be there - she should be able to point to it. But she doesn't, because it isn't there.Faith's ideas won't work.

Have any creation scientists tried to experiment and show that this whole OP is possible? I think (yes, just an assertion at this point) if one were to start with several hundred meters of sediment then cut out the equivalent materials of the grand canyon, the whole thing would simply sag and fill in without the steep canyon walls we find today. Is there a hypothesis from the creation camp that would allow this material to remain without invoking supernatural explanations?This doesn't even address the issue of maintaining distinct strata in all this material if one were to invoke the RAZD theory of hyper-tectonic plate motion(I assume the theory was in jest, but since no one else offered an explanation...).

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"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact ” which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!"
-Stephen Jay Gould

If the material were supposed to be still soft when the erosion happened, landslips would probably fill the canyon back in. Its a question of slope stability, and waterlogged unconsolidated material has precious little.

That's certainly what I would expect to happen. Please don't mistake my intentionally not disdainful tone as support of creationist claims. I am just trying to be a voice of civility. I feel neither the need nor the inclination to scream and rant and wave my arms to make a point. (Not Directed at you Matt)I think that even on a small scale such an experiment would fail to create any supportive evidence. One could even perform such a simple demonstration in their back yard.Edited by EighteenDelta, : grammar

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"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact ” which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!"
-Stephen Jay Gould

Of course the validity of this experiment would depend on when within the flood year people think lithification happened...

Isn't the whole point that the grand canyon was supposed to have formed while the mud, sand, silt, limestone was still kind of sloppy?
Otherwise they face the same problem as they claim mainstream geology does.
The canyon couldn't be carved out of lithified rock.Can something be partially lithified?

Granite and marble are formed from volcanic rock as well as jade i beleive.The grand canyon is made of sedimentary rock.And i believe the bent fossils were trillobites which have plated abdomens that flex.So it would be very easy for them to bend in soft sediment that is compressing.

Marble is actually thermally altered (metamorphosed) limestone, not volcanic rock.

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And i believe the bent fossils were trillobites which have plated abdomens that flex.So it would be very easy for them to bend in soft sediment that is compressing.

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So basically you assume that the only fossils said to be distorted by pressure are trilobites and that geologists are too stupid to tell the difference between flexing and real distortions ?Can you offer any evidence that this is the case, or are you simply making it up ?

Looks like a rationalisation after the fact really. So essentially made-up.There's a lot of assumptions in the Grand-Canyon-formed-by-the-flood hypothesis. I don't think it's in any way probable on its own, never mind all the other problems the flood explanation has. But anyway, examining the Grand Canyon alone; it contains several different types of rocks, for example red sandstone. In simple terms, red sandstone is red because it was exposed to air while it formed. Modern geology has a sound explanation for why there are thick layers of such rock - it formed gradually and as sediment was laid down slowly there was plenty of time for the whole layer to be coloured red by oxidisation. Flood geology (and I use such a term very loosely) has no explanation.Hypothesis: the flood formed these rocks.
Prediction: if a single event formed these rocks, they should only be reddened on the 'top' of the layer, and not all the way through, as only the top would have been exposed to air.
Testing: the evidence shows this is not the case.
Conclusion: the hypothesis is faulty and should be altered or discarded.This isn't exactly rocket science, it's basic chemistry. Iron oxidises and rusts when exposed to air. There is iron in certain sediments. When the sediments are deposited and left exposed for a while, the iron in them oxidises and turns them red. This has apparently happened to a layer of rock in the Grand Canyon several feet thick, meaning that every time a small amount of sediment was added to it, it was left for a time and allowed to oxidise. This is not consistent with the flood hypothesis, ergo the hypothesis should be thrown out or altered to account for this evidence - unless the creationists would like to suggest that the laws of physics were different back then, which brings in the 'goddidit' factor and really makes the whole thing a little pointless.So this is just one of many problems with the idea that the rock of the Grand Canyon was first formed all at once by the flood water, then the Canyon was carved out of them by the same water flowing away....Alright, being honest, the whole idea is patently ridiculous to me as a person trained in geology. And the geology of the Grand Canyon is quite simple in comparison to other areas such as, say, the Moine Thrust in Scotland.This is a geological map of Ireland, taken from the Geological Survey of Ireland website: Every colour there is a different type of rock. Admittedly Ireland is probably a good bit bigger than the Grand Canyon, but the point still stands I think. Try explaining this one, creationists.

Some of those rocks grew legs and invented the internet.Explain that evolutionist?