Should intellectually honest fundamentalists live like the Amish?

The problem is that your way of dealing with me makes me not care about learning anything, and what I'm saying makes sense as is. You didn't answer what I asked, just to correct that however. First you gave me a link and then what you "said in your own words" was not an explanation but just another flat assertion. Yes I've read a lot of geology in specific discussions here but it will never be enough.

Just to let you know, you have slipped back to dishonesty. Just stick with "It cannot be because I cannot believe it is so, because my Faith says it can't, therefore there must have been another way". That is the only logical and honest comment you can give.The rest is a complete misrepresentation of the field of geology, which you claim to have read some of yet not know and aren't interested in knowing more. What you say may make sense to you, but only because you are talking to yourself or others that also have no idea what they are actually discussing, and so ANYTHING could make sense.You have not challenged your ideas by testing them against the real world, which is where actual geologists have built up their models. At best you seem focused on the grand canyon which consists of rather simple geology and so could be open to different interpretation. The world is NOT the grand canyon.There are structures which by their orientation and overlapping require an addition of age. It could not be a variety of sifting in a water column. This resulted in an age estimate that is at the very least in the 100s of thousands of years, though more like billions of years. The Billions have been corroborated by radioactive dating. The fact that two methods result in a similar result tends to support the model which predicts both methods would have that result.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Did you read deerbreh's first link? The models were created by looking at the geo column and seeing the consistency of the strata from one location to the next and extrapolating the OE theory from that. Flood theory is just as easily extrapolated from that but they extrapolated OE theory instead. If you can explain the same phenomena two different ways then your particular explanation is not as compelling as it may seem to you. And since the whole idea that distinctly different clearly differentiated strata to depths of hundreds of feet could have built up over millions of years is absurd on the face of it, requiring raisings and lowerings of sea level for instance, which is in itself impossible to explain, your explanation loses even more credibility. Except of course that you can just refuse to NOTICE that it's absurd and go right on insisting that this or that DID happen, since after all radiometric dating can always take up the slack for any absurdity, and there's no way to actually prove any of it anyway. It is the Grand Canyon which I've thought most about because of the previous debate on it. That's an odd copout, "could be open to different interpretation." Interesting. Different but not my interpretation huh? The GC demonstrates the absurdity of the idea that the strata could have formed over 600 million years, strata ANYWHERE, and I gave six reasons why it's absurd. There are more than that. Well that's a handy hedging-one's-bets time span I'd say. "Orientation and overlapping" somehow require at LEAST tens of thousands of years you say. I won't even ask. But orientation and overlapping sound like tectonically produced events off the top of my head, and there's no reason to think that took any great length of time. That's fine. I stay away from the dating methods. There are many objections to them in any case. But if the geological timescale is absurd on the face of it, which it is, all the other considerations like dating will be rethought eventually too.

We are not getting anywhere. I am not just "sprinkling terms around." These terms are well known for anyone who has done the kind of background reading in geological dating that you say you have. Ask the other posters on this thread if they know what loess layers and varves are and how they relate to geological dating and I am sure many will tell you they understand the connection perfectly. All of this is basic geology so I shouldn't have to be explaining it to someone who claims a knowledge of basic geology. Therein lies the problem. As long as you continue to think you can debate these issues "off the top ot your head" we will get nowhere. I will give it to you now that you ask.
Error 404 - Page Not Found So you are saying that sediments are layed down in horizontal layers and then pushed up later? Well of course. And just how is that inconsistent with OE geology? How long does it take to erode the sediments, deposit them into layers, have the layers turn into rock and get pushed up in some places (Allegheny Mts) and eroded away again in other places (Grand Canyon). 4000-6000 years? Now THAT is absurd.By your own admission Faith you are posting stuff off the top of your head. That might work if you were a trained geologist and/or evolutionary biologist or even well read in these disciplines. But neither is true so I think this discussion is a waste of your time. I know it is a waste of mine. God bless you and have a nice day.

I guess I owe it to you to answer this as well as it kind of goes to the heart of the problem we are having.I was a high school and middle school teacher in a previous life so I am always sorry when students are not motivated to learn and especially sorry if my methodology contributes to that. All I can say is I've done my best and tried to be as helpful as possible within the constraints of this type of forum. (Here comes the BUT) BUT, "And what I'm saying makes sense as is" indicates an attitude that is not conducive to learning. The hardest students to motivate were always the ones who thought they knew it all already. When I was teaching many (but not all) of these types of students miraculously changed course after the first unit exam and they discovered that maybe they didn't know as much as thought they did. Obviously that kind of "attitude adjustment" is probably not going to happen here so I will just leave it there. Again, God bless you and have a good day.Edited quote box codes.This message has been edited by deerbreh, 08-25-2005 10:28 AM

The question is did you read my links. Deerbreh's link (assuming I am understanding which link you are refering to) was a bit of a quick overview with specific focus on fossils.Relative dating can and did use fossils, but that was not all. I gave you links to the actual way in which modern geological theory developed, as well as its fundamental precepts. D's link discussed part, because it was focused, but not all of how relative dating is achieved.Indeed you seem to forget that all rock is not sedimentary. There is igneous and metamorphic. Metamorphic is time and heat altered sedimentary or igneous rock. We can assume for sake of argument that the length of time is not measured and so could be seconds (based on a miracle) or thousands to millions of years (based on known mechanisms of heating an cooling based on actual physical properties). The thing to note is that it requires a certain deposition first and then alteration.Beds crisscross or in other ways intercut which precludes "settling" scenarios. Here is an example, you find an igneous bed sandwiched between two sedimentary beds. There is alteration of the stone on the lower bed but not the upper bed right next to the igneous stone. That indicates directly that the lowest bed had solidified to rock and then had hot igneous rock lay upon that rock and deform it. Then after cooling the upper sed bed was laid down in some way.Then we know for sure the lower bed could not possibly have formed due to sifting at the same time the upper sed bed formed. This is irrelevant of millions of years presumption. It is straight out obvious logic.And so if you find a specific fossil environment in the lower but not in the upper, the reason cannot be sifting. Relative age and specified environment of deposition has been identified. Mere assertion, countered by reallife examples like the one above. There were more (including grand canyon geology) given in my link to the creo geologist who became OE after working in the oil biz.If it is just as easy, then show how easy it has been.Flying the space shuttle through an asteroid field is easy. See how easy it is? Do you believe me? Put your money where your mouth is. Okay, this just goes to show how ignorant you are. First of all sea level can rise and fall and it is not impossible to explain if you realize that water moves from ocean and lakes and is trapped in the atmosphere and ice. What's more the land itself moves up and down... duh... which can cause seashores to move. It can even move relatively upward or downward based on sedimentation issues.If you have a problem understanding this, look into what is happening in New Orleans and the Netherlands. Actually I didn't say that at all. This is a strawman. The GC very well could allow for a YE interpretation. That was my point. It could, but the whole world does not look like the GC. It is elsewhere, in much more complex environments that the age of the earth starts to become more obvious... or I should say that a YE becomes absurd. Who is hedging one's bets? I am discussing estimates originally made based on structures, and there have been various estimates over time as our knowledge of new structures and formational environments increased. I was stating that the SMALLEST FIGURES, based on rudimentary estimates, still places the earth well beyond YE estimates.Each event could be argued to take some short period of time, but added up they ADD UP. It is physically impossible for certain features to form at the exact same time, and can be shown to be impossible based on layering, orientation, and physical properties! Not assumptions of age. Why is it absurd on the face of it? You originally said there could be other equal explanations to OE models, this comments suggests that it is obviously incorrect. Now it simply cannot be totally absurd and yet have excellent practical use, which you have already admitted to. That assertion is absurd.(edited out single profane word)This message has been edited by holmes, 08-25-2005 02:01 PM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I haven't claimed a knowledge of any specific geologic content of "basic geology" as if I'd taken a basic course or something. All I've said is that I've read a ton of stuff about geology online and that's true. I've also run across the terms loess and varves but if it doesn't relate to my immediate interests I don't study the concept. No, I'm looking for particular information, I'm not taking a geology course when I spend hours online searching geology sites. Also I don't seem to be remembering terms very well, but I do remember the concepts.If you don't want to say how and why loess and varves are relevant to the discussion I just get impatient. That's your job, not mine. Meanwhile I've shown how the basic idea of the geological timescale is absurd. I guess it's hard to see after someone has become used to thinking in the terms that surround it and support it, but really there's nothing more to say except that the arrangement in distinct layers with distinct fossil contents doesn't make sense on the long-ages idea no matter what plausible scenarios can be concocted to rationalize it. Nice site. Proves what I knew it would, original horizontality which is what you were supposedly answering. I was answering your objection to my saying the strata were horizontal. You gave that site to prove they aren't always, as if I wouldn't have known that. That site shows that of course they were originally horizontal. You don't get parallel formations like that otherwise. If you hadn't objected to my original obvious point about horizontality we wouldn't have needed to go on this merrygoround, but that site is interesting so I don't really mind.It's a typical case of evolutionist interpretation being used instead of actual description, as in "The Rockwell and Purslane Formations were deposited during the early Mississippian, about 330 to 345 million years ago." Oh really? And how did they arrive at that? We'll never know, they'll never say. We're just supposed to memorize it and accept it. YEC explanations would have them laid down rapidly, which in fact fits a lot better with their actual disposition in neat layers of discrete sediments than any long-term deposition idea does, and also much better explains how fossilization processes could have occurred as frequently as they did.But why do you have the layers being eroded FIRST? The website has the strata built and the top layer eroded, then the whole thing buckled by the tectonic forces that created the Alleghenies, then the tops of the newly formed ridges eroded away and the harder sediments maintaining peaks etc. Obviously rapid deposition from a flood answers your question about how much time THAT would take, not millions of years but whatever period of time it took for the waters to completely recede from all land areas, which isn't known. The layers' formation into rock would have to do with the great pressures caused by the weight of the whole wet stack, rather than huge periods of time, although certainly it must have taken SOME time to dry out and harden into rock. If they were then folded so neatly into an accordian formation as the diagrams show, that suggests that they weren't completely hardened at that point, as one would think that hardened rock would crack and break before it would fold like that. So that suggests that the whole strata formation was laid down rather rapidly, not given time to completely harden before the force that buckled it into mountains occurred, though all of this could have taken a thousand years or so. The subsequent erosion shouldn't have taken any millions of years. The thousands since the Flood should take care of it nicely. No, it's about how I got dragged into this debate with you who piled on a ton of side issues when I'd said just a very few things that you didn't even address directly, and I can easily repeat my observations of various absurdities without special knowledge of how evolutionists rationalize them.Have a nice day yourself. I have to get to work.

Holmes - I suggest you edit the profanity out of your post. It just complicates things and stifles discussion.

I promised myself I would leave this alone now but can't resist this one. To get layers of sediment you need sediment. To get sediment you need erosion. The erosion occurs elsewhere and the sediment is deposited into the layers. THEN the layers change into rock and are further eroded and/or uplifted. Sometimes more layers are laid down after the erosion. After the uplifting occurs erosion continues. How eroded a mountain is gives us some idea as to its age (though we obviously have to consider erosion rate as well). Nevertheless because of the dramatic difference in erosion between the Rockies and Allegheny/Appalachians, we can be quite sure that the Rockies are younger and the Allegheny/Appalachians are older. Old worn down mountains such as the Appalachians are more evidence against a YE, by the way. There simply wouldn't have been enough time to do that. We are talking about rock eroding and it ain't all limestone.To summerize:
Erosion
Sediment layers
Rock formation
More erosion
Uplifting
Erosion
More sediment layers
More rock formation
More erosion, and maybe more movement up or downEach step can involve hundreds to thousands of meters of rock/sediment being moved around or up and down as well as rivers cutting a meandering course, rivers changing courses, oxbow lakes forming when rivers "pinch off" and cut across a meander etc. Not to mention fossil formation in many of the sediment layers.All in 6000 years? Please. (or 4000 - depends on when you think the flood occured and whether the sediment layer was deposited before or during the flood - oops, how do you get all that water erosion without any rain before the flood? Yeah I know - there was a "mist that came up out of the ground". Gigantic erosion potential there over a period of 2000 years before the flood.

Gotcha. Not the layers just the depostion of the layers. OK. Yes they had to come from somewhere and since the actual evidence shows that they were deposited quite rapidly and folded pretty soon after as previously discussed, we can figure that this occurred with the Flood's dissolving and battering of the pre-diluvian world, both undersea and on land, then either precipitating out or depositing in currents ior waves the separated out sediments. Which could happen in the last stages of the flood if there was a longish time gap between waves or tides, but as I pointed out the folding of the strata without causing breaks and all kinds of thrusting jutting elements suggests that the strata were still not completely hardened, so that erosion between the layers was not a prolonged thing, certainly not considering that in some places footprints were preserved by their filling with a new sediment, rather than washed away which would normally occur from water erosion. How so? The Rockies are mostly hard rock such as granite aren't they? They were also not formed by accordian-like buckling as the Alleghenies were, but by dramatic upthrusts in which the parallel structure of the strata were preserved and quite visible. It does seem that they would have been younger however in that the rock appears to have been solidly hardened before being upthrust in such long straight slabs, unlike the Alleghenies which just softly formed folds suggesting a degree of dampness or incomplete hardening and maybe even less tectonic force. Seems to me that both the composition and the way the Alleghenies were folded would make them more susceptible to severe erosion as compared to the Rockies. Unless it wasn't completely hardened when it was finally in its completed form, and besides, the way it buckled suggests more susceptibility/exposure to erosion. Or:
Erosion of land and stirring up of sea contents by the flood,
Sediment layers deposited one after the other in a relatively short time with relatively short intervals between,
Whole stack formed and top eroded by streams,
Uplifting before dry and hard, meaning accordian type folding in the case of the Alleghenies,
Both hardening and erosion occurring over time after completed formation,
No more layering or rock formation, it was a one-time event,
Just continued erosion to the present day. Fossils were deposited with the sediments. Rivers and meanders formed on a layer before the next deposited, as small versions of streams and pools also form on the beach at high tide and make rivulets before the next wave hits. The incredibly intense nonstop rain that caused the flood, not to mention the opening of the "fountains of the deep" whatever those were, would have stirred up sediments in sea and on land everywhere on earth rather drastically. Waters would have been heavy with mud -- and various kinds of dead creatures -- in many places. The final effects of whole thing from the rain and the dissolving of earth through the volcanic and tectonic upheavals to the layering, buckling and drying out of sediment layers could easily have been over within a few hundred years, though hardening and eroding would no doubt have continued, even up to the present. Nobody ever suggested that erosion occurred before the flood. The flood and concomitant catastrophic occurrences such as the movement of the tectonic plates when the fountains of the deep broke and the release of magma in volcanic action, all contributed to the breakdown and stirring up of immense quantities of sediments.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-25-2005 01:01 PM

No dice here. For most formations that are bent it is conclusive that they bent after they hardened. There are some cases where deformation happened prior to lithification but they are very tell tale and rare. This is a fact. Deformation of most layers happened after lithification.If you disagree, then maybe you care to explain strained fossils other internal structures of the rock.Goto section D on Strain:
Slate belts Lesson on Strain. PDF. Sorry for the long link Jar.Some Strained/Stretched fossils on the bottom:
http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/geolsci/dlr/106s_03/This message has been edited by AdminJar, 08-25-2005 01:27 PMThis message has been edited by Jazzns, 08-25-2005 01:59 PM

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll change the one single profanity I placed within my post. You let me know if you see that actually change the nature of this debate.I had plenty of posts without them, to no avail. I realize it adds nothing... but I don't honestly see how it can get any worse.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

A couple of these have issues when you deal with the actual physics/chemistry of rock formation, which Jazzns has already mentioned.One other issue is igneous rock intrusions. Deerbreh's example allows for dikes and sills and plumes to move into existing rock, before erosion or more sedimentation on top. Your example would not make sense at all.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Thanks Holmes. You can take it from here if you wish. I am tired of repeating myself. I would just like to have one YEC explain to me how we could get all of those strata forming (complete with unconformaties, intrusions, fossils, footprints, etc)in one flood event within a single year before I die (still a long ways away if all goes as planned but I figure it may take all of it the way things are going here).

I've already explained the strata being deposited within the time of the flood including the period during which it was receding. The uncomformities that are upthrust or otherwise displaced portions of strata occurred with the tectonic pressures on the column after all the strata were laid down. Intrusions could have happened at any time in the process, as there was a lot of volcanic activity released by the flood. So products of volcanic eruptions could have been carried in the water along with other sediments to form part of a layer or as magma that pushed up from below into the strata after they were formed too and possibly while still damp. Fossils as I said were dead creatures carried by the flood along with the sediments and buried within them when they were deposited by the flood waters. Footprints were fleeing animals running on the surface of the last deposit before the next one came, fast enough to preserve the footprints. I already explained most of this. It's not all that difficult to come up with such possibilities.