1) There are no straw men when I refer to "other methods". I'm not sure why you are not understanding what I am talking about. The hand book listed three methods. Two were essentially instrumental, and the third was mapmaking. They are all current and I am separating mapmaking from the "others". I am not disputing the others or putting them down in any way. Indeed I'd be one to argue that at this point modern instrumental methods might be superior in many cases. However where instrumental methods cannot be used or are inconclusive, mapmaking takes over.
Fine. I don't understand why you felt the need to mention them but fine, all accepted and never in dispute.
2) There are no straw men when I discuss alternatives to OE paradigm for mapmaking. I discussed, and you now seem to acknowledge, that paradigms for what a formation's depositional environment was is useful to mapmaking. Now if you disagree that the OE paradigm is accurate and so a formation is not actually what geologists "say" it is, but just happens to look that way, then that still raises the question of what paradigm did it form under?
Raises no questions at all. I've acknowledged that it formed under the OE paradigm.
What better paradigm should we be using?
I'm not even questioning the UTILITY of the paradigm up to this point. But what I DO object to in the theory, the ancient ages, is not in fact of any practical geological use, as relative age within short time-periods of formation will do just as well for "explaining" the "landscapes" being studied. Which seems to me to call the paradigm into question, although I'm not complaining about it at the purely descriptive level, only about its begging the question of ancient age.
And if formations generally present challenges to depositional environments NECESSARY under YE assumptions, then some form of OE is in fact challenging YE, and geologists cannot work under, or claim to hold stock in YE theories.
The FORMATIONS do NOT "present challenges" to anything having to do with YE conceptions. The actual *objective* *physical* *formations* are NOT IN DISPUTE. Only the INTERPRETATION OF HOW THEY CAME ABOUT is in dispute.
3) I did understand what you were trying to describe, jettisoning theory from terminology for strata, and dealt with it in my post... where was your reply? Did you read my post throroughly? Your refusal to deal with my example resulted in you reasserting your position that "shoreline" is mere descriptive of rock type and not requiring any meaning beyond that. Let me try this again...
At the surface of a seashore we see a specific depositional environment, just as we see a different depositional environment inland, or by a meandering river, or in a desert, or under a volcanic ash cloud. Now I'll assume you have no problem in digging down and consulting maps over a number of decades and saying that the deposited material you see in those environments are really of those environments.
There is no rule of evenly distributed burial of "environments" is there? It is tendentious to call them buried "environments." Various formations get buried in places and not in others and I would assume I would be describing this or that buried PHYSICAL characteristic, particular sediments, characteristics of rocks etc. rather than "environments." And when it comes to digging deep into supposedly ancient "landscapes" I will no doubt also not use the concept of "environments" in the OE sense you do, I will use it as DESCRIPTIVE only, if I have to and I may not have to. But if I do I'd use it as descriptive of the buried physical configurations themselves while "jettisoning" the baggage that claims they were once ancient surface landscapes that lasted millions of years. That they may have been short-lived surface configurations is possible, or that they never saw the light of day but were formed in the midst of a great upheaval as layer piled on layer is also possible, but I'm not offering these theories, merely objecting to the current theory.
What geologists did was that same thing, sometimes nature favors the geologist and sections are exposed such that one doesn't even have to dig to see a history of that specific location over time. But in any case one can dig. The assumption is that when one finds similar characteristics at depth, that one finds at the surface and have no problem identifying, they should be considered the same.
They may be similar in a descriptive sense. The same geological factors are no doubt in play. There are underground rivers and rocks in formations that could be described as "hills" and "valleys" and so on. (But as a matter of fact I don't think oil explortation terminology involves such concepts. They tend to speak in terms of "overcrops" and "compartments" and "barriers" rather than "environments" and "landscapes.")
That is why we can talk about depositional environments at all, and use them to predict so as to make maps. It was not to promote an agenda regarding age, but to understand and predict what one would find elsewhere in a strata.
Which I have acknowledged. This is the utility factor I have acknowledged over and over, merely trying to keep it separate from its conceptual birth in the theory I dispute, which is the idea of old age.
When people say *you have to accept the whole baggage of OE in order to find oil* or that *without the OE you can't find oil* I balk. That's what this conversation is about. You do NOT have to accept the whole baggage of OE, which means accepting the whole theory of ancient landcapes that lasted millions of years, in order to find oil, AND you also don't have to jettison the PRACTICAL science that has been developed WITHIN the OE paradigm either. NOBODY is disputeing that useful methods and objective observations have been developed UNDER this theory and USING its terminology and concepts, and that at a purely DESCRIPTIVE level there is no problem with this at all. (The problems come in only with its question-begging tendentiusness with regard to the mother theory).
Let me use an example...
At a sea where we know from maps over the last few hundred years that the shore has moved out and then back in. We dig down and find a certain pattern left because when the sea was in it deposited certain material and when it was out other material was deposited, and we know because it was sedimentary deposition that the material would generally lay flat. Thus you get a naturally banded structure that should remain horizontal until deformed in some way, and with particular features at their boundaries.
When we find that at depth, but solidified through pressure and heat into stone, why are we to say that it is no longer actually a shoreline, and that we are instead looking at something else with conveniently similar characteristics but if not for OE assumptions, we could just as easily call it something else... like a "zoreline"?
Since I DON'T know geology I don't know how accurate you are being in making the analogy from the one surface example to the other deeper example, but assuming the analogy holds up in its particulars I don't have a problem with calling the deeper formation a "shoreline", only I would not be lugging the conceptual baggage of *ancient landscape* along with the description, would use it purely descriptively to indicate the physical characteristics involved.
There is a practical difference when it comes to mapmaking. If it is a shoreline then when we find the physical signs of a shoreline in a formation, but it is no longer horizontal, we can make predictions of what we will find it doing at depth. That is because a shoreline has (as we saw at the surface) a predictable natural pattern.
If it is a zoreline (built up by some wholly unknown process) then when we see it tilted, we have no way to know if it is really a zoreline at an angle or some new type of formation built up at that angle originally and thus might do anything as one moves down or across the strata. One loses the ability to predict outside of simply stating what conditions one has found in any particular location.
I have to suspect that there's a bit of imaginative fudging going on in this example. For one thing I really doubt that being sure it was once horizontal is going to give you significantly improved mapmaking accuracy as you claim, and for another thing I don't see that anything other than the actual physical characteristics of the formation are of value in your predictive ability, as opposed to the concept of "shoreline," to describe them. I mean, what's of importance is the depositions themselves and the condition they are found in for predicting what might be in their vicinity. "Shoreline" might be a handy shorthand for the whole configuration (and if "zoreline" labels *exactly* the same characteristics I would think it would have equal utility). But from what has been said here, this sort of prediction is far from an exact science despite the obvious need to muster whatever clues you have available.
If you are about to argue that if it looks like a shoreline but at great depth, it is not really a shoreline but should be assumed to hold all manner of properties as a shoreline, including what one would expect due to deformation or alteration of a shoreline... then aren't you simply engaging in semantics?
I have no problem with the name DESCRIPTIVELY, merely with the idea that it implies something that lasted millions of years in an ancient "landscape." No problem with thinking it was a short-lived shoreline in a short-lived "landscape." The physical characteristics fit both scenarios.
If it looks like and acts like and should be assumeed to be for purposes of prediction in mapmaking, be something one finds at the surface and can identify, WHY are we supposed to believe it is anything different? And at what depth does this crossover occur, where something we can identify as a specific environment no longer can be considered that?
Again I don't have a problem with the concepts PURELY DESCRIPTIVELY, only with the baggage of the idea of millions of years. Clearly there are strata and upended strata and so on, and they have identifiable demarcations or "surfaces" that can be described as "landscapes" in a *certain* sense.
However, it does seem awfully odd to me as usual that there would have been discrete layers that could be described as "environments" given a theory of gradual buildup over millions of years per stratum. On that theory every inch or two should constitute a discrete separate "landscape," rather than the depths of strata we in fact see on whose surfaces are found these "landscape" features such as "fluvial environments" and so on. What magic makes a certain demarcation a landscape and all the increments that built up to it not landscapes? The REASON there ARE such features that can be described as "landscapes," or to put it another way, that you can even DESCRIBE such "landscapes" at all, is that that scenario of gradual buildup over millions of years COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. That is, what you actually have is RAPIDLY DEPOSITED sediments in layers to some depth, whose *surfaces* were then acted upon in ways that you describe as "landscapes" and which, after deposition, were also often subjected to tectonic pressures that rearranged them. What you have is one rapidly deposited layer on top of another rapidly deposited layer of some completely different sediment, with some kind of break in between of probably relatively brief duration. There is NO WAY the individual layers were gradually built up over time. If they were, then you'd have a "landscape" at every teeny weeny increment of buildup. That's because every inch or two represents at least hundreds of years, or even thousands depending on the millions assigned to the particular layer. But that's not how the geo column is described. It is only the SURFACE of an individual stratum that is described as a "landscape," with its erosion and its "fluvial environments" or its "desert environment" or whatever, even if that stratum is hundreds of feet deep.
You claim that simply knowing the composition of rock within a strata will be useful for predicting what that strata will do over an area. Explain how that would be, when rock can form in so many different ways, and it is only the method of a strata's formation which indicates what a strata will do, specifically when compared to other strata.
But I include ALL those factors in the necessary physical description, not just the "composition of the rock" but also the ways it formed and how it was tilted and so on and so forth. ALL the physical characteristics are included.
This is not to mention incongruities or nonconformities. If depositional paradigms are removed, then there really is no such thing as an incongruity or nonconformity, as the real environment could have formed just as one sees it.
Nobody is suggesting removing "depositional paradigms." They are obviously descriptive of the physical reality.
Yet understanding features at depth as a place where something occured to an original structure to change it, is important.
NOBODY IS DISPUTING THESE THINGS, only the idea that they represent millions of years of previous ancient landscapes. (And what I say about that a couple of paragraphs above shows that the actual objective physical formations do not fit such a scenario anyway, but fit a rapid deposition scenario much better, with short periods of "landscape" formation on the surface of rapidly deposited sediments).
Again, if you are going to say that nominally we should call it X (though it is really Y), because it looks like X, and it is useful for mapmaking assumptions to treat it as X, and if one sees something similar but not exact, one should not call it Z but treat it as X with something that occured to alter it because that has better predictive value... then why is it not really X?
You are wearying the same old straw man here. I believe I've answered this sufficiently above, and I'm getting too worn out to do it again in any case.
This is a point where, it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, gave birth to more things that look like ducks, and made what amounts to a great duck dinner, but you insist that we are simply "calling it duck" for convenience but it is really something else. Doesn't you see that this is what you are doing?
Straw man. See above.
4) I said that radioactive dating corroborated relative dating using other methods. You claim that that is contested. You are in error. The accuracy of radioactive dating to proving actual absolute ages of rock has been contested, even if one finds such contests rather silly.
I concede that radioactive dating is the main -- in fact only real -- stumbling block to YE ideas. Nevertheless there are experts who do contest it.
What has not been contested, as far as I have seen, that radioactive dates CORROBORATE the relative ages, which means strata X came before strata Y before strata Z.
There is no problem with relative ages, that's plain common sense, only with the absolute ages OE theory posits.
I would be amazed if you are about to advance a position that we cannot determine that relative age of strata, especially as you have already voiced agreement to the rules used to make such determinations.
I only wish you'd be amazed at the rest of the straw man arguments you impute to me.
5) A clarification:
But the other author didn't claim to be working for an oil company, he said he didn't get the job and went on to work for ICR didn't he?. So you mean THAT guy who didn't work for an oil company challenged THIS guy who claims he did lo these many years of supposed investigations into flood theory? Does this serve your purpose here? Doesn't this suggest that the guy who is obviously in the process of debunking flood theories was lying?
I guess I wasn't clear, though I guess this underlines that you do not bother reading cited sources. I assumed you would read it and so understand what I was saying.
It took me hours to get through that post as it was. Sorry.
Morris (the ICR guy who advanced a creo startegy to oil companies) claimed at the conference where Morton (the now ex-YEC person) was delivering his paper, that he himself was employed by an oil company. He did this when trying to challenge Morton about claims regarding geology in oil exploration creating real challenges to YEC models. Morton then blew his lie by asking him to name the company. Morris then had to admit he was not employed by oil companies.
OK. So the story was presented with the real facts as you quoted it.
It is not surprised that Morris did not mention his false claims and public depantsing in his article on trying to pitch a creo oil strategy to oil companies.
Now do you get what the problem is?
Too bad.
6) Atomic theory vs OE "theory"
nobody has any problem with any science that is testable and replicable like chemistry, only with far-out imaginative scenarios like the ToE and the geo time scale, that are glued onto the data rather than organically related to them.
But you can test the principles of geology, and there are organic (sometimes literally organic) relations to them.
Yeah I knew I set myself up for that, but if you had grasped what I was saying to this point you would not be pushing this same old straw man again. I ACCEPT THE SCIENCE aspects. I DISPUTE NONE OF THEM. I DISPUTE NO ACTUAL GEOLOGY. But while the science developed during the hegemony of the OE model and using its terminology and concepts, NEVERTHELESS I DISPUTE THAT MODEL as such.
Go look at a seashore and what its sedimentary deposits create as strata as it moves in and out. Then look at what one finds as one keeps diggining down. And then you tell me at what depth you can no longer recognize what you are looking at, even if much more compressed and its bits glued together.
Answered above.
And if you have a problem with that, you tell me when you have seen with your own eyes subatomic or even atomic particles. Atomic theory is wholly theoretical compared to geology where you can actually get your hands on the material and identify objects.
No dispute with actual science. Getting very tired of this straw man though I am beginning to get why I keep running into the fellow. Getting very tired period. Have no more energy to write another word. A good thing I'm at the end of this one.
™ Version 4.2