Long build up of Sediments

Well, the old-fashioned way is to compare the rocks with present day depositional systems. In other words, if we see abundant fine-grained sediments with chert beds and a few basalt flows over large areas, we would assume a marine environment because that is where we see such rocks being deposited today. If we find fossil coral reefs, then we would probably assume a continental shelf or other shallow marine environment since that is where corals occur today.

I see. Well, then kindly explain the millions of years assigned to the various periods of time in the geo timetable. [I see, farther down you reduce it all to a few years of accumulation with none whatever for the millions left over. That's convenient]. If say, the Permian or the Triassic or the Devonian -- or you name it, I have a bunch of charts of all this stuff but I think we only need the general principle to make this point -- take a period like that and identify it at a particular location, say the Grand Canyon, or again, you pick it, and note the depth of that particular layer called by that name, and then note the number of millions of years assigned to that period on a standard Geo Timetable chart, and divide the feet or inches or centimeters or whatever applies into those millions of years and that ought to give you a figure for the average rate of accumulation of the sediment in that layer. No problem if some of it accumulated faster or slower, it all will have to average out to something that adds up to that particular number of millions of years. If in fact that layer was supposedly deeply eroded, then add the depth of sediment you think is missing and recalculate: the rate of sedimentation will be a little faster than the first figure to fill up the assigned number of millions of years, right? But still it's going to be a VERY slow rate of sedimentation. YOu don't have a million feet of any layer anywhere, even assuming massive erosion, which would be a foot a year for a million years, yet most of the layers/time periods are designated to have lasted MANY millions of years, and to accumulate what, fifty to a hundred feet max? OK, then factor that in to get this average rate that is necessary to fill up that particular depth in that particular number of millions of years. Oh, and can you explain how a particular period -- of your choice -- is known to have lasted so many millions of years in the first place? Is this due to radiometric readings exclusively or what? If there was no accumulation for 99.99% of that period, how would know know much about it at all? And of course how would you know whether there was or wasn't a period of nonaccumulation? Surely you come up with this because the slow accumulation that otherwise has to be the case IS absurd. I don't understand the question but also I'm not prepared to discuss coral reefs. If the principle I'm talking about applies, please apply it.Also, I am not right now trying to explain anything by the Flood but to raise questions about the standard explanation. I have no idea what you are saying here. Seems to me you'd better explain it all by some such conatrivance, however ad hoc, as the implications the other way make a shambles of the whole timetable idea. But if you only have ten years of deposition for ten feet of accumulation in a period that lasted umpteen million years, that's a foot a year, and still a rather slow rate of accumulation for something that buried and fossilized all those living things. But yes, it is a more viable explanation. Though proving that it happened this way would of course be impossible. It's just another completely wild speculation, in this case designed to plug holes in the other completely wild speculations. Of course not. The whole geo timetable is so absurd anything that seems to reduce the absurdity would be a welcome port in the storm as it were. Some yet-to-be understood phenomenon explains it I'm sure. But again I'm simply questioning the interpretations, the ones I listed in my Message 22 on the other thread (sorry, forgot which thread I'm on), and this takes us elsewhere.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-10-2006 10:00 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 03-10-2006 10:03 PM

Radiometric dating. Until this technique came along, no one really had a good handle on absolute ages. Convenient and sensible.Correct. On the average deposition is gradual. That is because we know that absolute ages are great. On the average. Some sequences are thought to be uninterrupted for kilometers. Already done. Your questions are getting repetitive. We may not. That is the point. However, we do know something and that something needs to be explained. For instance if we see dune sands with terrestrial trace fossils, how does that fit into a flood model? In general is is determined from the presence of discontinuities such as erosional surfaces. Please explain. I have already said that some accumulation is rapid, other is slow. Is that a hard concept for you to follow? Of course not. It's one of those nasty little details that I was talking about. It in only natural that you would want to avoid it. Please amplify. What is this principle? Well then, your position is sophomoric. It is the easy way out. If you say that the flood is a better explanation, then you should explain... I had a feeling that was the case. The fact that some layers are deposited rapidly and some are deposited slowly is just a detail that YECs seem to ignore. Ad hoc? Well, it may seem to be, but there are hundreds of years of experience with unconformities that suggest otherwise. On the average, a foot a year is quite rapid. Howver, there are some deposits that are much more rapid than that. An interesting statement coming from someone who has never studied geology. Talk about wild speculation... What storm? Do you understand what an unconformity is? And you are the one complaining about wild speculation? It's fine to question the data, but one should listen to the explanation. Otherwise, your quest for knowlege is a dead end.

Very very slow deposition there still, inches per year for a period of millions of years,* but I will be continuing to think about this and answer further later.What occurred to me to ask right now is How do geologists explain where all the sediment comes from that has supposedly piled up to such a depth?{abe: * hard to figure how so many living things managed to get themselves buried at this rate, to the extent of being covered and compressed enough to become fossilized rather than merely decomposing.{abe: Oh, sorry, forgot. Of course if those kilometers piled up in just a few years and nothing else happened for the rest of the millions then you'd have a high enough rate of deposition to make a case. That's the very convenient explanation.So radiometric dating says these periods are so many millions of years old, and in order to get the rate of deposition down {abe: correction, up} to something reasonable {abe: that can account for fossilization maybe} we have to think that there was no deposition at all for an enormous part of those millions of years, only in this very short time span, and this pattern must have repeated itself in every time period because the same situation pertains. And I have to say that this whole scenario sounds even more untenable than the one I started out with -- ad hoc after ad hoc.But I'm just ruminating. More tomorrow.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-11-2006 12:37 AM

Ah, yes. A very interesting problem for "flood geology". Virtually all clastic sediments are derived from emergent, and therefor eroding, land masses. We can usually tell where they are by looking at the distribution of rock types and the location of unconformities. My question is: where are these land masses during a global flood?

What is an "emergent and therefore eroding" land mass? Is this something that is pure speculation or something observed?And "tell where" WHAT are? and why does WHERE they are matter?And why would this be a problem for a worldwide flood which would dissolve an incredible volume of land mass?This message has been edited by Faith, 03-11-2006 12:28 AM

Faith,You have been making this claim of absurdity repeatedly. What evidence do you have that the rates of accumulation are faster than the current theories explanation? Simply putting the "is" in capitals doesn't establish the case "IS" absurd at all.Intuitively light should move faster from a rapidly moving source but turns out intuition is wrong. So aside from your intuition about how much material should be deposited what measured evidence do you have that materials are deposited at rates that would have the depth of layers be greater than we find them?lfen

Hey Faith,Just wanted to say you are asking good questions, some I had thought of while reading.If you are up for a suggestion though, refrain from the comments of absurd or ridiculous (don't think you've used that one yet). Scientist are just as sensitive about their position as you are about yours and your religion. Maintain a respectful attitude.Carry on.

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

I'm a nonscience person, so please answer accordingly.I can understand why the long buildup of sediments would be useful to counter the young earth scenerio, but not sure why it would be used to counter a world wide flood scenerio that lasted about a year.

quote:

---

No. This is not a blanket interpretation by mainstream geology. Some layers are deposited rapidly, others slowly. With training, it is relatively easy to tell the difference

---

Given that the flood happened within a timeframe of about one year, wouldn't it only encompass one layer? Realisticly how much sedimentation can be put down in that short timeframe?

quote:

---

In fact, I am of the opinion that most geologic time is spent during periods of non-deposition. Just look at coral reefs, for instance. One can go back to the same location year after year and see little change in the 'landscape'. And yet, in the geologic record, we see coral reef upon coral reef, with numerous interruptions of the sequence by other rock types. How does the flood explain this?

---

The flood scenerio only encompasses about a year. How much time does the geologic record cover?Is there a layer that reflects the timeframe the flood was supposed to have happened? If yes, how does its composition differ in different areas around the world?Length of Flood

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

I've explained this Lfen, in the last few posts I think. The rate of deposition is based on the depth of the layer x the number of millions of years it supposedly took to accumulate. So if the Mississippian "period" took 50 million years to form, as one of my charts of the Grand Canyon says it did, which is nothing but "redwall" limestone, and according to Wikipedia from 450 to 525 feet thick in the canyon, rounding it to 500 feet means it accumulated about a foot in 100,000 years. That's a pretty slow rate of deposition.But other factors such as the possibility of the loss of huge quantities through erosion may speed up the rate of deposition, though it still remains extremely slow, and the possibility of edge's idea that the deposition itself maybe only lasted for a few years out of the 50 million.I took into account the possibility that a great deal of the layer had eroded away, which would increase the rate somewhat.Edge says the original depth could possibly have been in kilometers. That would call for an increased rate of deposition certainly, but given the millions of years allotted to most of the layers it's still a very slow rate.Again, the more I think about this, the more difficult it becomes to imagine where such an incredible depth of sediments could have come from under the gradual accumulation theory. Kilometers of depth?The rate of deposition affects the plausibility of fossilization, for one thing, which requires more than just burial to prevent decomposition, which is a pretty rapid process under most conditions. What all it requires I'm not sure, compression at least I think, oxygen depletion perhaps? Somebody will have to fill me in on this. But about the fastest rate of deposition I can come up with, even given kilometers of depth accumulated in the usual millions of years alloted to a given layer, is still only about a maximum of a foot a year and I don't see how even that rate would favor fossilization.But then, again, edge says that he thinks the sediments were probably laid down in a matter of mere years, and that for the greater part of the millions of years allotted to a particular layer or time frame (greater part being as much or more than 99.99% of those millions of years) no deposition was occurring at all. This of course would speed up the rate of deposition of a given layer enormously. Say it took only ten years out of those millions to build up a layer that is now fifty feet in depth; say also that 450 feet that once existed has been eroded away. That's 500 feet accumulated in ten years, or 50 feet in one year or about a foot a week. I don't know if that is a fast enough rate to permit fossilization or not. I also don't know if that's a lot or a little sedimentation without a clear idea of what is bringing it about. It's also odd to think that all those layers we see that are supposed to represent millions of years of an ancient time period (Jurassic, Mississippian, whatever) could have been laid down in just a few years as a regular pattern for all the layers.But this is all a rather different angle on the subject than I started out with. The original point focused on the difficulty of explaining the change from one sediment + particular fossil contents to another over millions of years and the apparent neatness of the layers considering how long they supposedly took to form. That is, we have a "period" of 50 million years during which nothing but this particular limestone accumulated over a huge area of the Southwest US, and then "suddenly" (judging by the relatively straight line between it abd the layers above and below) a completely different kind of sediment starts depositing for another few million years.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-11-2006 08:53 AM

This may be a difficult concept, but when land is above sea level, it is almost always being eroded. And yes, we observe it every day. So do you. Where the erosion is occurring. That is the source of sediments. Well, if all of the land is under water, from where do we get clastic (sand, silt, etc.) sediments? Particularly beach sands and conglomerates which are found throughout the geologic record. In a flood scenario, we should be finding ONLY depostion and no erosion.

Actually, scientists, for the most part, don't really care. They throw these charges around among themselves quite liberally.

It isn't. It is/was only used as a qualitative measure of the age of certain earth features. Well, the first and main problems is that there is no such layer. For such a monumental event, there should be a very distinctive flood layer. No one has found it, including flood believers. Over 4 billion years. But let me tell you, geologists are very fond of finding marker beds that are only one year, or less, in duration. See above. Even after repeated questioning, YECs cannot even tell us where to look in the record for the beginning and end of the flood.

"Emergent" suggests something arising out of something else. Or do you only mean that it is above sea level? OK, now somehow these eroded sediments had to get into very thick layers, and layers of only one kind of sediment at a time, and had to become the corpus of the land mass itself, so why wouldn't it all simply have eroded into the sea and been lost, or eroded into valleys and filled them up. That is, how did you get these neat layers out of erosion? Or are you supposing they eroded into the sea and formed this huge area of thickness of some kind of sediment? Just one kind. (And what then made it change to another kind?) And eventually you have this extremely thick stack of individual sediments all formed under water and then the ocean level lowers and we have the Southwest USA from Arizona through Utah or what? You mean sediments that were formed by abrasion? Could have been a lot of abrasion in a great flood. But already-formed sediments of that type would also have been moved around in the flood. I'm not really seeing a problem here.

The entire geologic column was formed by the flood. THAT's the beginning and end of the flood. I don't know where people get the idea they have to get out their microscopes and peer into one particular half inch of one layer to find it. The evidence of the flood is EVERYWHERE. I see it wherever I go.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-11-2006 09:10 AM