Have any Biblical literalists been to the American Southwest?

I found evolutionistic ideas to be unprovable before I became a Christian. Since I became a Christian I've seen that there are good reasons to doubt them. I'm not a geologist but I have a good visual and mechanical imagination.Hutton couldn't explain uncomformities right? Upended vertical or diagonally slanted strata topped by horizontal strata. That's what made him an old-earther.One possible alternative explanation is that tectonic forces pushed up settled strata before the next layers were laid down on top of them over a relatively brief period of, say, years, or even less.Or, as it happens to look to me at the Grand Canyon area, the entire stack could have been laid down already, even up to the height of the Grand Staircase, and already compressed greatly, after which magma from beneath displaced some of the lower stack and forced them in a vertical direction. This force was not great enough to displace the entire stack because of its enormous weight. So the weight of the upper stack was a counterforce that prevented the verticalized lower stack from doing more than uplifting the upper stack at the area of the Grand Canyon. This is what is seen on a cross section of the area.The layers must have been still relatively soft as they maintain their even horizontal configuration over the entire slope caused by this force from underneath, the rounded area to the north of the north rim of the canyon that then slopes down rather steeply to a flat area upon which the higher strata of the Grand Staircase continue upward in broken segments. Throughout the whole area you see canyons, the Grand Canyon being the most dramatic, because it is situated right over this magma bubble. The ones to the north, where the strata remain horizontal, are smaller. However, they all look like large cracks in clay. Enormous quantities of material must have washed away, some of it down the canyons, especially the Grand Canyon, as clearly the strata were built up at one point at least to the highest layer in the Grand Staircase area, and all that has been washed away leaving steep cliffs where chunks broke off and no longer exist.Here's a link that has a very nice drawing of a cross section of the area, showing the uplift to the north of the Grand Canyon and the other canyons all looking like cracked clay to my of course both arrogant and inferior imagination. Also the ascending cliffs, which are the inspiration for the name Grand Staircase, which certainly are the remaining ends of strata that once covered the entire area but broke off and eroded away, maybe by the force of a receding worldwide flood.Requested Page Not Found (404)This message has been edited by Faith, 09-08-2005 04:32 PM

Please see link I just added to my above post.

Hullo Iano. Blatant humility huh? Are you serious or being ironic? No POTMs for me in any case, please.It's true I don't give a lot of credence to the theories of the opposition and can sound pretty arrogant as a result, especially considering that most of what I know about geology I've learned from being at EvC lo these many moons. But hey, there WAS a worldwide flood so there's nothing wrong with trying to figure out how it happened, and I've also had the experience of praying about it and being shown various aspects of the situation.Sometime I'd like to see the opposition seriously defend the Flood, just as an exercise, the guys with the geological knowledge. I wonder if they're up to it. I mean seriously, not Nuggin's idiotic caricatures.Oh well. I like to think about this stuff. Of course they may boot me out of here any minute because they don't like the way I think about it. They already booted me off the science fora, and not even for posting ON the science fora, as a matter of fact, just saying that I don't allow that the Bible is open to question, and I said it on a Faith and Belief thread. Sigh.My first post here a few months ago was on a science question, so I'm not "becoming" anything I haven't already been. The problem is that the opposition likes to offer this or that concrete specific objection without bothering to really think about the whole problem from the YEC's point of view, which puts the whole weight of it on me, while half a dozen of them vie with each other to bury me under this local problem and that local problem. I guess that's kosher because this is Debateland after all but it just means I have to pick and choose and not get bogged down in it all, which of course makes them more irate. They never acknowledge any good point I make, and I've even made a few on this thread so far (I take that back, Crash once said he got a lot out of my arguments about the natural limits / population genetics discussion, but I don't remember any others; holmes likes my writing though. I'm very clear apparently, though I have nothing much to be clear ABOUT. Anyway. I'm not really complaining. What else would I expect? But having to answer a zillion objections makes it difficult to pursue a line of thought.)On a great debate some months ago many pages went down in which I was berated up one side and down the other for not calculating the rate of deposition in relation to erosion, when my whole point about erosion had nothing to do with the loss of quantity but only with the disturbance of horizontality -- which was stated clearly in the very first post. This kind of thing seems to happen pretty frequently, and it's hard to combat something when you can't figure out what it is they are thinking and it just hits you as nonsense, and abusive at that. Doesn't encourage give and take to say the least. Or they'll give an example of something that does in fact occur -- somewhere -- without demonstrating any connection to the actual point in question. Jazz has been doing that with his stressed rocks bit. Sometimes someone like Nuggin will create total confusion by making up an absurd caricature that has nothing to do with anything. Or someone will impute stupid stuff to me like thinking a tree is a cabbage or the like, schrafinator in that case. Randman is gone, alas, or I might expect to have a little help on my side here, but then he's not a YEC anyway.Weird about taking a break. I AM taking a break, oddly enough, limiting my time here quite a bit, getting a lot done away from the PC. But my normal work load also stopped for a few days so I don't have that reason to limit my time here at the moment. I do limit it however because of other objectives.I don't recall what your position is on these questions, or maybe you haven't said?This message has been edited by Faith, 09-08-2005 07:19 PM

First, there is nothing "religious" about the idea of a worldwide flood. It either really happened in real time and on this real planet or it didn't.Second, if I take it as my premise, it is still not a "religious" consideration. That is your own assumption, not mine.Third, if I address only the physical phenomena then I am leaving out "religious" considerations. Those are your own preoccupation.

Sorry for not being precise enough. The alternative explanation IS the brief period part. Isn't the term "lithified," not "lignified?" I certainly don't see this occurring DURING the flood, but afterward. The idea is that the layers were laid down over some period of time by water, how long a time is not known but within years, including both the flood period and the time the flood took to recede afterward -- which period of receding would have included tidal action over the land areas. Yes, I am visualizing what you describe except that I have a worldwide flood in mind so I do picture damp sediments that took quite a long time to dry out and harden into rock -- though I would think that the sheer weight of the stack could accomplish hardening in a relatively short period of time. Thinking of the way the Grand Canyon area looks, as I said, I figure it COULD have happened the way I described. Look at the Grand Staircase diagram. Not sure you are addressing what I'm describing. The intrusion didn't even get into the strata of the Grand Canyon proper, only into the uncomformities at the very bottom, as can be seen on the diagram I linked (after you wrote this post I'm answering I understand, but I'll get to that eventually). All it seems to have done, besides intruding into those tilted strata at the bottom, is push the whole Grand Canyon area upward from underneath, including those uncomformities themselves, which I'm suggesting against your objections could have been tilted at that same time by that same force.How do you explain the neat layering of the overlying strata from the bottom unconformity all the way up to the Kaibab, following the hump and the slope to the north and yet maintaining that parallel layering as it did, if the uplift that caused the hump and probably the unconformity at the base as well, did not occur AFTER the entire stack was complete? I mean, there's no way neat parallel layers of loose sediments are going to lay themselves down over a big hump and a steep slope like that. They would wind up in a heap at the lowest part of the slope. That didn't happen. I can't imagine that geologists think anything different but then don't they have to agree that the uplifting force occurred after the strata were laid down? And isn't that a likely cause of the tilting of the uncomformity at the bottom too? Clearly they were laid down as fairly even horizontal deposits and THEN the upthrust from below pushed them into the hump-and-slope configuration. And it seems to me that same force would have created the uncomformities at the bottom at the same time. Sorry I know I keep repeating myself but I've had the experience so often here of saying something that seems obvious to me but others misread that I feel it's necessary. I figure the flood had receded by this point for starters. The stack was built by it, but we are now talking about post-flood effects. If the force from beneath occurred after the entire stack was built, which is the idea I am pursuing here, the weight of the upper part of the stack could simply have provided a counterforce that would in effect shear off the top of the uncomformity, perhaps at the junction between two different particular kinds of sediments that allowed for particularly mobile slippage between the two. Where would the sheared off corners go? I guess they'd form rubble somewhere in the vicinity of the uncomformity, under the bottom layer (The Tapeats? I keep printing out stuff on these things but it's hard to keep track of. I need a better file system). Even the fact that the layers of the uncomformity are in two separate sections, separately uptilted broken segments of the same layers, suggests that they enountered a counterforce from above. The lowest layers of both are identical. The next layers above are identical -- the red section into which the magma from below has intruded -- etc. They were once the same horizontal strata until the force from beneath tilted them. (Is this the way the Great Uncomformity appears everywhere? Haven't been able to track it down yet). But if there had been no layers above, why wouldn't the whole stack have uptilted? Why sections? I hope this is clear. I'm simply trying to account for the fact that the many layers above the unconformity at the bottom show such a neat parallel structure, although they cover an enormous distance over that hump and slope created by the uplifting force from beneath. If that is possible after lithification, fine, it doesn't affect the point. The point, again, is to explain this DRAPING effect of the entire stack of layers over this hump and down this slope in such neat parallel form, which is seen on that diagram I linked. Seems to me that layers couldn't form so neatly over hills and dales. They had to have been horizontal originally, and that being the case, the hump was created after they were all in place, and that being the case, there's this other question about how they draped so neatly and stayed so parallel if they were solidly lithified -- which as I said, may be possible as Jazz claims though it seems unlikely to my untutored imagination just looking at it -- you tell me.

Fine, then your prejudice factor is so rigid and closed-minded you really should not be involved in any discussions about it. My bias is just as solid but YECs do not have an established body of knowledge such as those on your side claim to have, and being up against opinion as solidly lithified as yours is hard enough without the added contempt of your considering the whole discussion beneath you.

Actually, there's a lot that needs explaining about that unconformity. Yes, it looks "eroded flat" at the top, but it also looks "eroded flat" in the vertical plane, up against the fault line itself where it is just as diagonal/slanted as it is on top, and clearly had to have lost its corners there too as it were. How did it get "eroded" there? Whatever the process was that sheared it off vertically is likely the same process that sheared it off horizontally, under the layer identified as "V" or #5, and obviously, being underground, the vertical process was not erosion -- it had to be friction from the fault shift itself. Yes, where's the rubble that would have created? I don't know, but in any case erosion didn't cause the sheer straight flattening along the fault line.Also, the whole thing is clearly the same stack of layers shown above and to the right, only tilted, and capped by the uppermost layers, the layer "V" on both sides and the part of a layer above that. The layer "IV" is marked on both sides, and you can see that the sequence of strata is identical though higher and curved upward in the direction of the fault line on the right and tilted straight and diagonal and lower on the left. I am curious how geologists explain all this.Even the magma intrusion a few layers above "IV" is identical on both sides. This means of course that the left side of the hurricane fault was tilted after the stack was completely laid down. Looks to me like the fault is the point at which forces from underneath broke the one side from the other and did the tilting too. Clearly "V" was ALREADY LAID DOWN when the fault occurred as it exists on both sides of the fault line, and on the right it's curved upward but maintains its parallel with the other strata, so it couldn't have been laid down after the fault shift occurred. So, I don't know HOW it happened, but the tilting to the left of the fault line occurred UNDERNEATH layer "V" while leaving it horizontal. The whole stack, whatever it once included, was in place when the shift along the fault line occurred. I'd guess there were once many more layers on top, and "V" was the bottom layer of a big stack when the fault shift occurred and the lower area tilted -- the tilting no doubt caused by the fault shift itself -- following my idea that the weight of an upper stack makes a counterforce to the tilting force beneath that causes the shearing off of the strata somehow or other. I keep trying to think of everyday examples of this sort of thing, and they almost occur to me but don't quite come into focus.So, how do YOU, or how do geologists, explain the vertical shearing of the tilted strata on the left since erosion can't be the explanation there?This message has been edited by Faith, 09-09-2005 12:17 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 09-09-2005 12:18 AM

See my Message 77 which I just laboriously wrote. The point is to prove that great ages are not needed to explain such uncomformities by showing that they occurred after the upper horizontal layers were in place. Explaining HOW is something else, but clearly it is what happened, and happened as a result of forces from beneath. Under the Grand Canyon it appears to have been magma bubbling up. Probably the same magma is what caused the fault line on the far left, pushing up the right side of the fault line and tilting the strata on the left in the same event. But the upper layers ("V" and the partial one above it plus probably many more) were already there, shown by the curve of "V" on the right. The idea that it could have been laid down after the faulting just doesn't fit the picture at all.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-09-2005 12:26 AM

Sorry, Jazz, it's simply irrelevant after all. I don't care if it was lithified or soft. When rock looks gracefully draped or folded, as it does both in the Appalachian illustrations and the Grand Staircase illustration, I tend to think "soft," but if that kind of graceful draping and folding can happen to hardened rock, that's OK too -- it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference. It would help, however, if you would address the actual examples I'm discussing instead of giving examples from other places in the world.{Edit to add the link to the Appalachian diagramsThis message has been edited by Faith, 09-09-2005 12:37 AM

So what? If the argument is conducted on the physical facts it doesn't matter where the premise came from and your harping on it is a red herring in this context. I should have by now, in Message 77

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that anyone who could come up with such silly caricatures should be logic challenged as well. What part of the argument that proves that the upper layers had to be there before the tilting occurred can't you follow? What part of the argument that shows that the "erosion" of the tilted layers had to occur along the fault line too can't you follow? Interesting that you don't address the substance of the argument, but continue to blow hot air.

Thank you, RobinRohan. SO glad when somebody on the other side of this argument shows straight thinking. (You ARE on the other side I believe?)

Why don't you actually THINK about the argument? I'm arguing that the unconformity at the bottom happened AFTER the strata above were in place, and part of my evidence for this is 1) that the strata were already in place when the uplift occurred that caused the hump and slope to the north of the Grand Canyon (otherwise they would not have been laid down in neat parallels as they are);and 2) the force that caused the uplift would explain the tilted unconformity at the bottom too, so that it too was created after the upper strata were already in place. This is because of how it looks in the diagram, pushing up under the canyon strata as it does. That could be merely coincidental, however. That is, the unconformity could have been created and eroded and the stack built on top of it and THEN pushed up along with the whole stack much later.BUT 3) in discussing the left end of that diagram as I also just did, another piece of evidence emerges: Clearly the layer "V" was already in place when the left side of the fault line was tilted. This is obvious by the curve it makes upward toward the fault line on the right, showing that it was in place to be deformed by that fault shift, which pushed both sides upward, but the right side kept rising higher -- OR the left side dropped, or both.AND 4) the idea that erosion had to occur before the horizontal layer "V" was laid down is disproved by the fact that the same kind of shearing had to happen to the tilted strata at the vertical interface created by the fault line, where erosion could not have been a factor.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-09-2005 01:15 AM

For heaven's sake, if you feel the need to explain all that which I just got through explaining you aren't bothering to read anything I wrote.

It is based on witness evidence, the very best kind of evidence there is. All the speculations at thousands of years remove cannot be proved, but a witness from the time itself is worth gold. It is your rank prejudice that calls it "unscientific."