Have any Biblical literalists been to the American Southwest?

Erosion of relatively soft sediments doesn't take millions of years. The Rockies were thrust up at steep angles, their highly compressed strata remaining parallel and intact. The Appalachians were buckled and folded, which exposed more surfaces to erosion.The explanations of creationists about how water would have created the strata make lots of sense, whereas hundreds of millions of years to form horizontal strata makes no sense. The extravagant abundance of fossils is consistent with rapid formation also.Again, I have not relied on my religion for any thing I've said. I believe the physical facts elegantly support a worldwide flood and that the OE explanation requires a jury-rigged mass of explanations for every little observation.I guess I'm going to have to avoid reading EvC too, to avoid having to answer straw man misrepresentations for the rest of the day.Good luck getting some literalists to discuss this with as so many have been banned from EvC.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-07-2005 01:48 PM

Why don't you tell us how water can simultaneously deposit a hundred feet of sand in one spot and 200 feet of limestone 200 feet away and then 500 feet of shale one mile from that?Not only that, but please explain how a water column can deposit a stacked section containing 50 feet of sandstone, overlain by 10 feet of carbonate, overlain by 50 feet of shale, then 5 feet of evaporite, 30 feet of sandstone, 800 feet of carbonate including something that resembles a reef complex (replete with various coral species, sponges, etc.), 10 feet of intercalated redbeds and evaporites, 5 feet of pillow lava, 500 feet of lava, 100 feet of carbonate, 5000 feet of shale... etc. etc. etc.Please show us your model that explains the above vertical and lateral stratigraphies and include scientific support for your theory.

You keep saying this defensively, but you are getting all of your "facts" from the Bible. To say you haven't relied on religion to form this theory is simply a bald faced lie.If you accept Creationism, then you must accept Norse Creationism, as there is an abundance of evidence to support it. Same with Navajo, Babylonian, Greek, etc. Each of these Creation stories adequately accounts for everything around us within the same standards of Christian Creationism.If you discredit these, please explain why

Well, my girlfriend lives in Arizona, so yes. (I live in Virginia. Yes, this makes things difficult.)Last weekend, when I was visiting her, I saw the infamous creationist Grand Canyon book on her table. Opened it up to a random page, read a random paragraph, saw that it was lying about radioisotope dating, and put it back down again.Last night we had a two hour long fight about religion. :-( I've been down all day, I'm babbling right now, and this is all OT, but... it is cathartic to write it. Hope no one else is bothered by this.I struggle to understand her. In everything else she's logical and intelligent. She even seems to understand some science. It's just in this area she has these gigantic mental blocks because her entire life she's been told if she doesn't believe in a certain set of things she will suffer eternal torment. So to get eternal life she convinces herself that scientists are all wrong.'Oh, geologists all just change their minds to fit the times. [A friend of hers] was a geology major in college and she said that everyone just changed their minds suddenly and whatever had been evidence against plate tectonics became evidence for plate tectonics.'I try and explain underseafloor spreading and the reversals of the magnetic field, or the way that plate tectonics actually works (she claimed that 'evolutionists think that the sea level rose above Mt. Everest' one time...) and I just don't seem to make any headway. Frustrating.I love her, but right now... just depressed about the whole thing.Chris

The defensiveness is in your imagination, but your insistently claiming this is a misrepresentation of my posts on the subject and therefore a violation of Forum rules. All the Bible says concerning our topic is that there was a worldwide Flood; it doesn't describe strata or anything else as a result of it. Your obligation is to address what I've actually said, not irrelevancies.

The creationists explain these things far better than evolutionists do with their slow buildup notions. The enormous quantity of water of the Flood, the stirring up of enormous quantities of sediments and marine life in the sea plus the dissolving of all the land areas the water covered, all suspended in various currents of the water and moved and sorted and deposited from waves and currents are parts of creationist theory I have read about. "A water column" misrepresents their ideas. They talk in terms of currents and waves depositing separately sorted kinds of sediments and fossil contents {meaning living creatures that were buried with the sediments}, theoretically sorted by point of origin, by weight and other factors. And of course we're talking about loose sediments, not stone. They hardened after they settled out.However, this thread asked for subjective impressions of the formations of the Southwest by visitors there. I haven't been there, I've seen them only in films and photos. I look at those pictures and they convince me of the Flood just looking at them -- more, actually, they convince me of the nonsense of millions of years of slow build-up.Are you demanding of schrafinator that she produce scientific evidence for her subjective impressions upon visiting there?This message has been edited by Faith, 09-07-2005 08:53 PM

Well, what you've said is that you've never seen the material we're talking about, but think that it's proof of a worldwide flood.As far as irrelevancies are concerned, you need to grasp the formation and presentation of ideas.If you want to present an idea here (there was a great flood, or there is no number seven), then expect people to question where you get the basis for this idea (have you studied geology, or have you studied math).You certainly didn't look at the Grand Canyon and spontaneously come up with the idea for a Great Flood.If you don't want to discuss source material, that's fine. But, make that clear to people from the get go.(ie: I know nothing about geology, therefore I believe in a Great Flood. or I know nothing about math, therefore I don't believe in the number 7.)I doubt anyone would argue with that statement.This message has been edited by Nuggin, 09-07-2005 09:00 PM

Hey, Faith: here in my portion of the Southwest I can show you some places - like Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo or the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos valley north of Rotan, Tx - where the formations look like one of those German cakes with a zillion layers. But these rock layers are in rust-red and white - iron-rich sandstone and gypsum. And there are truly thousands of layers exposed in places, and many more cored out of oil wells out here.And these formations are also being formed very gradually today in some spots, like just off Interstate 20 east of Midland. There are large occasional lakebeds over there, that actually look lakelike a few times per decade when it rains noticeably. Most years these "playas" catch some windblown sand and dust. Right after a big thunderstorm they catch a big slug of water-borne sand and silt. But then, when the two-foot-deep water slowly evaporates, the lakebed picks up a coating of white gypsum (calcium sulfate) which falls out of solution as the water goes away. And the cycle repeats, building up perhaps a few inches each century. And a section through the bed looks just like the hundred-foot banded cliffs at Palo Duro or Rotan.What mechanism will build that sort of layer cake in a single big flood? How do we alternate sand supply and nearly sand-free evaporation when everything is under water? Any speculations?

The thing is, since this thread is not in the science forum, Faith can state/assert whatever the hell she wants without supporting evidence.And since she is banned from the science forum, precisely because she is incapable of presenting evidentiary support for her assertions, she's free to ramble on promoting whatever ignorance she cares to, here.Additionally, since she habitually makes these nonsensical geologic/scientific assertions in non-scientific threads, replying to her is generally off-topic.Imagine that!This message has been edited by roxrkool, 09-08-2005 02:16 AM

Do you know what the stacked strata consist of?Are they solid rock or conglomerate, and how would each have had to be deposited due to the particle size?What kind of rocks form the layers, and why are they in the order that they are in?How do you explain the sloping sides of mesas and buttes, and the isolated thin, vertical shape of spires? I saw what kind of erosion flood waters make (from some flash floods that occurred this past February there), and they cause perpendicular banks, not sloping banks.Why, for example, would Spider Rock, a precarious spire hundreds of feet tall, be left in the middle of Canyon de Chelly and not swept away by raging flood waters?Keep in mind that the tracks you see on the canyon floor are jeep tarcks and the "littel bushes" down there are actually trees which are quite large.

So, why would we find layers of fine sedimentary rock interspersed between layers of conglomerate, in which there are larger, sometimes quite large, rocks?Wouldn't all the fine sediment end up on top with all the big rocks on the bottom?

Why are the mesas and pillars slopes?Simple, the water of the great flood evaporated from the bottom up.Since it's "magic water" it can do that. The tops of the mesas were therefore subject to more erosion.Remember, anything goes when fact and observation play NO role in the theory

D'oh! Of course! That's also how it made many layers of gyp with sand between! Flood surges interrupted by bottom-up evaporation!Thanks for clarifying that, Nuggin. If I don't see that same idea argued seriously by a YEC in the next few months, I'll be sorely disappointed.This message has been edited by Coragyps, 09-08-2005 11:44 AM

That is soul-shattering country, isn't it?But the flood is not one of those things that has to be taken as a literal event. It could just be an intimation as to how God intends to make an end of all things earthly. He did promise to make an end of sin. The flood story could be mere warning.
Also, there is no proof that there is a God. I don't see how there ever could be. A relationship with God is based on faith. Not a scientific approach.

From reading I have a pretty good idea of the material in the Grand Canyon and Grand Staircase area to the north of it. I find it all quite fascinating. But the horizontal layers of disparate contents, which do exist all over the world although they are exposed only here and there, is what is the most convincing evidence of a Flood, along with the incredible abundance of fossils, especially marine fossils in mountains and deserts. I've been here a lot longer than you have, Nuggin, and obviously you haven't checked into previous threads on this subject. You simply share the establishment point of view so you don't have to face being challenged as a YEC does, and when you are challenged you don't have to bother to really think about it either, just ride along on the EvC wagon, just shout along with the crowd. No, I had read the creationists, and they opened my eyes. But my point was that I haven't used the Bible in my arguments and generally avoid doing that so your references to religion are out of order. It is the physical situation itself I'm talking about. You have an awfully autocratic attitude for somebody who just showed up here last month. The establishment really ought to call you on such impertinence.