Off Topic Posts aka Rabbit Trail Thread - Mostly YEC Geology

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That's what happened in the field of Geology, it is not what happened in the Christian churches, which is my overall frame of reference.

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But it DID follow in Christian churches.

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My point in emphasizing the historical facts about Christian belief is not to reduce it to "tradition" but to emphasize that it's Biblical truth according to the majority of Bible believers, historically and through the present. You keep reducing it to **my** dogma, **my** belief, I'm answering, No, I'm representing mainstream Biblical Christianity, a huge company of believers through the millennia that I agree with.

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i.e. you are arguing for it on the grounds that it is a tradition....

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As for "evidence," you continue to think you HAVE evidence for an old earth, at least you think your evidence is iron-clad, and I am disputing that claim on the ground that evidence about the past can only be inferential. I've answered a lot of it to my own satisfaction if not yours, such as about Hutton's ridiculous speculative subjective "evidence" that was accepted by the whole field of Geology, but I've also said on that thread that if I can't answer a piece of your inferential "evidence" I still have to take the position of Kurt Wise that the Bible is God's word and I choose it over your evidence. And again I'll say that evidence in the context of the true sciences does not come in conflict with the Bible and that's the majority of the sciences.

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Since how you can't explain how the scenario you use to "answer" Hutton is even possible it can't be said to be satisfactory to any honest thinking person. It can't even be a valid reason to condemn Hutton's rationality. At this stage your argument only calls your own rationality into questionAnd indeed we DO have very strong evidence that you can't answer. If you choose to reject that then that's up to you. But you can't expect us to reject it just because you do.And I note that you have yet to answer my point about the sheep. Do genetics and developmental biology fail to meet your criteria for "true sciences" ?

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Oh I think there is no doubt that the plain reading of Genesis describes a young earth. It takes some fancy footwork to make it say anything else. And the Bible is God's Word, so since this is the accepted understanding by Bible believers down the centuries of course God said so.

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So the "accepted understanding by Bible believers" dictates what God and did not do, even if the Bible itself does not say so ? Even if the Bible itself weighs AGAINST that view ? That's a very odd stance for someone who supposedly believes in sola scripture.

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Because it's the truth, Paul, because it's the truth.

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It's up to you to convince us of that. Appeals to tradition aren't going to do it.

Here,s a simple answer. If there is even a possibility of salvation while "compromising" your dogma, it would be better for them to remain Christian, would it not? So why claim otherwise ?

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Some churches went liberal and that was one of the tenets that was compromised along with many others. Those churches are rejected by the Bible believing churches as not Christian at all.

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In other words your point was that acceptance of an old Earth didn't happen in the churches where it didn't happen. Not much of a point, then, was it ? (And I note that you're back to claiming that non-YECs aren't Christian)

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Yes in the sense you are using the word, but I avoid that word because in Christian history that term refers to NONBiblical doctrine, to man-made additions to the Christian life, and everything I'm saying here is about the BIBLICAL understanding, which is regarded as God's word.

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Then it seems to be tradition in the sense that you would use the word, too.

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Oh it should be but it would be hard to get it through the barriers set up by prejudice.

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I would say that the sheer implausibility of your scenario is the major barrier.

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It's quite reasonable to suggest that the angular unconformity of Siccar Point, and all such uncomformities such as the one at the base of the Grand Canyon, were created after the entire stack of sediments was in place, by tectonic or volcanic force from underneath that displaced a certain depth of the strata even to upright position while leaving the upper stack horizontal. Yes it does work and I am a thinking person. You can ponder my posts at my blog on the subject if you like:

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The Fantasy of Evolution: Angular unconformities.

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No, it isn't. You can't just ignore the upper strata. It isn't a given that they would just sit there, hardly affected, while the rock underneath is being so grossly distorted. There WILL be strong upward forces being exerted on those rocks, for a start.And your link doesn't work.

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Also, Hutton claimed in accordance with his idea that the lower strata were first tilted and then the upper strata laid over them, that there had to be millions of years between the two, but anyone with eyes can see there is no difference in the erosion or weathering of the two sections of the formation, which common sense should tell you there would be if there were millions of years between them. And this is also true for the exposed strata in the Grand Canyon and everywhere else. The strata show NO signs of differences in age let alone such huge differences.

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That's not even true. There are lumps of the (lower) greywacke found in the sandstone in places, which requires that the lithified greywacke was being eroded before or even while the sand was being deposited. And, of course, if you're talking about vertical sections weathering would start when they are exposed, not when they were deposited.

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It's his THEORY that's irrational, indefensible, pure subjective speculation. I'm sure the man himself was otherwise quite rational.

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What's irrational about it ?

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Hutton's theory is not strong evidence and not hard to answer. The only "strong" evidence you have is radiometric dating, that's the only evidence that's hard to answer, but someone will. Even now it's easy to see that there's an awful lot of slippage between the theory and the practice.

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You seem to have problems answering Hutton, and of course there is other evidence (such as observed erosion) which needs explanation.

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I guess you mean Jacob's thing about spotted sheep or something like that? I've never done an experiment to see if there's anything to it, have you? But I'd assume this was something God arranged. Surely there's nothing wrong with the genetics as such, it's only the means that was chosen to ensure the emergence of a particular trait that's in question.

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The Bible doesn't say that God had any part in it. And what makes you think that sheep's coats will be affected by the parents seeing striped rods while mating ? That's obviously not genetic and I doubt that you can come up with any plausible natural mechanism.

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But it does say so as Bible believers affirm. You are the only one saying it doesn't, based on what I can't imagine. The plain text is quite clear.

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OK, please quote the verse of the Bible where God explicitly says that the Earth is young. Include any other verses necessary to show that God did say it, according to the Bible.

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The Bible does not weigh against that view. That's your own bizarre notion.

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You mean that it is against your traditions - in YOUR sense. I've read the Bible, I know what it says.

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Most likely nothing I could say would do it. You could try believing it though

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Not really. Intellectual honesty forbids it.

A local flood seems to be a pretty common OEC view. Hugh Ross, for instance, seems to prefer it. So my point stands.

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Which are the true Churches which adhere to the Biblical revelation.

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Aside from the implication that only YEC-exclusive churches may be considered Christian, I still don't see the point. It is still a fact that the young-earth view declined in popularity because of the evidence against it.

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But I don't want to create confusion by using it so I don't.

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Consistent use of a word would not create confusion.

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I don't IGNORE them, I picture a huge stack of horizontal strata that was originally in place such that its weight would be a great resistance to any force from beneath so that the tilting action would be stopped at the point in the stack where ithe weight above equals the force from beneath. And when I was looking for the best model for this I ran across Lyell's illustrations and discussions that provided it for me. In the Grand Canyon the upward force was sufficient to lift the entire stack, which accounts for the "uplift" into which the canyon was cut. I do take all these things into account.

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I don't think that you take sufficient account of how they would be affected. I'll go into an important point below.

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I thought you were talking about the Grand Canyon for some reason so I wrote the next paragraph before this one. But the same logic applies. The erosion occurs where the tilted lower strata meet the upper horizontal strata and would have been brought about by the tectonic force that did the tilting. Both sections should have been partially lithified but also still damp from the Flood, and the harder greywacke would erode in lumps while the sandstone would sift downward as sand. The fact that the greywacke was on end or buckled while the sandstone remained horizontal would also contribute to this form of erosion.

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The tabletop experiments on which you base your view rely on the upper layers as being absolutely rigid, so that the lower - and much softer layers can deform beneath them. This is obviously inconsistent with lumps of the "softer" material infiltrating the rigid layers above. Remember you have to explain why the tilting force ONLY raises the higher strata, and doesn't cause it to be bent or deformed.

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The erosion in the Grand Canyon occurs only at the junction between the Great Unconformity and the layer above it, the Tapeats Sandstone.

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But that isn't true.

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The idea that they just sat there undisturbed layer after layer for a few billion years until after that long finally they got massively disturbed by the cutting of the canyon among other things, is nonsense no matter how you look at it.

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The idea that weathering is caused by exposure to weather is far from being nonsense. There is no reason to believe that older rock should show more weathering if it has been less exposed to conditions that would cause weathering.

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Pondering it now, I think maybe "irrational" isn't quite right. It's a reasonable enough speculation as speculations go. I just wanted to emphasize that it IS a speculation, and not science of the sort that can be replicated and proved in a laboratory and yet it was accepted as gospel by Geology. All this science of the past is inference and speculation and can never be more than that.

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So it's a very solid inference that you want to overturn with a scenario that even I can see serious problems with. A real geologist would likely see more problems.

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I actually don't have any problem answering Hutton at all, I've had a lot of fun thinking it through. It's all there at my blog.

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Erosion would naturally occur at the junction between the horizontal upper strata and the tilting lower strata when the tectonic force occurred, pushing the lower layers violently against the upper, perhaps for quite a long horizontal distance.

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But only if the upper surface was rigid, any bonding between the surfaces was weak enough to be negligible, and the lower strata were malleable enough to be deformed without significantly affecting the upper levels. So how exactly did those lumps of greywacke get into the sandstone?Seems to me that you just aren't seeing the problems with your answer.

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I thought it was cattle, not sheep. I'll go look it up later if you're going to insist on it, but not now. But it's absurd to think they didn't know how to get variation in their flocks. That's ancient knowledge even if they might have had some superstitious means for bringing it about and I don't know, I don't remember the story and don't want to take the time to look it up right now.

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It was sheep, and the Bible says that it worked.

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Oh come on. Absolutely not, that's too much to ask. You know perfectly well that the creation is described in "days" and that we understand them as ordinary days timewise and that counting the genealogy of Seth brings us to the Flood at only about 1700 years from the Creation.

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So it's an inference, an interpretation of a text. "God says" means your interpretation of a text that you attribute to God. I think that we can agree that I am not required to accept either your interpretation or your attribution without adequate reason.

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Then prove that it weighs against that view.

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Not one book of the Bible claims to be directly written by God, but several attribute human authors directly or implicitly. You ought to know that much.

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Which really means "the wisdom of this world" forbids it

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Wrong. It means that I can't make myself believe something I consider to be obviously false.

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God does not save people by intellectual means, by scientific evidence (although the Bible in itself IS evidence and chock full of it)or by worldly wisdom, but He has one way and one way only: BELIEVE. If you despise that method you've locked yourself out.

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If God requires self-delusion, then too bad for me. But if God is the sort of being who requires self-delusion, too bad for everyone.

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I've already answered this but I'll answer it again. It is not *my* personal interpretation of scripture I'm talking about, I'm talking about the consensus interpretation of the Bible-believing churches that the Bible is the word of God, and the plainest doctrines of it are agreed upon by all

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It's easy to get a "consensus" if you only count people who agree with it.

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My interest is in keeping it up front that the YEC view is the Biblical view, the plainest reading. Ringo agrees, showing it's pretty obvious.

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The two are not the same thing. And "Bible-believing" Christians will quite happily depart from plain readings when the plain reading goes against their belief.

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I don't take it that exactly literally. It's simply to illustrate that layers can buckle beneath layers that stay horizontal. In fact what it "relies" on is there being a difference between the two sections such that one can slip under the other. That can be the case with more rigid upper layers but it doesn't have to be. The buckling of the lower layers is caused by the tectonic force applied, and I figure the weight of the layers above was equal to that force and resisted it, facilitated by the slippage factor between the different kinds of rock.

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Of course there is an even greater weight being applied to the lower layers, so weight alone is obviously not the answer. The upper layer needs to be mostly unaffected by the tectonic forces, and it needs to be rigid enough to avoid buckling or breaking by the forces coming from below. Indeed, if it was not rigid it should be incorporated into the folds instead of riding above them as your scenario demands - and weight from above will only contribute to that.

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In fact I've become intrigued with your description of the erosion area at Siccar Point as containing lumps of greywacke apparently surrounded by sandstone, because that is very similar to the situation found between the Grand Unconformity and the Tapeats Sandstone in the Grand Canyon, where big chunks of rock can be seen embedded in the eroded area.

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And that makes a good deal of sense under the standard view of geology.

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In that case it is also a harder rock below and sandstone above. The difference in texture between the two would allow for movement between the two, I don't think the upper has to be the more rigid.

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Harder rock being ground against softer would break up the softer rock, so in the Grand Canyon we should see fragments from the sandstone in between the strata - at the very least. And if the upper rock is less rigid, why doesn't it fold?

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Let me put it this way: That's where the same KIND of erosion occurred as can be seen at Siccar Point, a wide lumpy band in which lumps of the lower rock somehow got buried in the sandstone from above, which I figure had to be caused by the violent horizontal friction between the two as the force from beneath tilted the lower strata.

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I don't believe that that is true either. Certainly I've seen references to breccia derived from formations that have otherwise been completely eroded away at the Grand Canyon. And as I said above, the softer rock should be broken up far more.

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The idea that they all just SAT there unexposed, undisturbed, unweathered, for billions of years is what is nonsense, and only after all that undisturbed time to then suddenly be disturbed by the cutting of that huge canyon

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Well, you've got to be talking about the hard rocks beneath the Great Unconformity here. And I fail to see why we should expect anything else from hard, deeply buried rocks.

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Rigid ENOUGH, that's all

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Significantly more rigid than the folded rock below, for a start. I really can't see how you can explain an extreme case like Siccar Point any other way.

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It was all still wet or at least damp from the Flood.

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I'd be surprised at that given that you need all the rocks to be lithified for your scenario to work.

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The greywacke buckled and was forced vertically up and slid horizontally against the sandstone layer above, causing great friction obviously. Lumps of the tilted greywacke were broken off by the abrasive contact but the flat sandstone was exposed more to the horizontal abrasion, and being still soft from the Flood waters, sifted down between the lumps of greywacke.

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Why didn't the sandstone buckle if it was so soft, and under heavy pressure from above?
And how was it able to break off chunks of greywacke? The soft sandstone should just give way.

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It's the majority reading, not my own.

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Certainly it's the majority reading amongst those that read it that way... I'm not so sure that it is an absolute majority, though. Or that the majority reading is necessarily correct. But quite frankly you're arguing for it because you believe it.

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There are passages in the New Testament we understand to tell us that all scripture is inspired by God, of course through human agents. We know that all the prophets spoke by God anyway, because they say so: "The word of the LORD came to me..."

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I think that you mean ONE passage in the New Testament, that DOESN'T claim that God literally wrote a word of the Bible and that there are passages in the Prophets where the writer claims to be repeating words that God sent to him. Which does not include the passages in Genesis that we are talking about. So, by your own words, we see that I was correct.

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Same thing. You are applying the standards of the world to God's word, when you need to apply God's word to the world instead.

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The first thing I would do is to identify God's word. I've read the Bible and it isn't anything that I would attribute to a God

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God requires trusting him over your own mind. He knows more.

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Which apparently means trusting you over my own mind. And I KNOW better than to do that.

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I DEFINE IT FOR PURPOSES OF MOST DISCUSSIONS HERE HISTORICALLY, by the great names in its history who agree on the BASICS of the faith.

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It seems to be more for your personal convenience. You didn't want to admit that there were Churches which allowed people to take non-YEC views so you suddenly reversed your position and made YEC belief a defining point of Christianity.The fact that a belief was historically held within the Church is NOT sufficient to make it an unchallengeable dogma, however much you would like to say otherwise.

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By the standards you are employing here you all ought to recognize that your belief in evolution is just as personal and "subjective" as you keep imputing my beliefs to me. Do that and then we can get back to reality.

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In reality that claim is false. Even if we talk about authority then we have a genuine scientific consensus while you only have a consensus manufactured from selecting people who agree with the very view under question !

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That's not something you can SEE, Coragyps, that's THEORY you impose on what you see that causes you to believe there is an age difference.

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We can't see what rock a fossil is found in ? Looking at fossils in rock is "THEORY" ?

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My point, to try to get back to it, is that the stack of strata to the naked eye (and not close enough to make out fossils), shows no signs of age differences whatever, and that there was no appreciable disturbance to them at all until the canyon was cut through the whole stack. Don't give me teeny little disturbances like erosion between layers that you have to get up close to see and was no doubt caused by water runoff after the Flood.

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I think you mean that to the uneducated eye relying on long-distance photographs of the Grand Canyon walls the signs of age aren't obvious. The limitations of that approach should be obvious.

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I believe I said I've been unable to be certain about how much this belief counts in defining salvation, there hasn't been a sudden shift just that I'm not sure

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Of course there's been a sudden shift. And I have to say that insisting that any church that accepts non-YECs as members isn't Christian doesn't sound like someone who's unsure of the importance of the issue.

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When people outright contradict the Bible as in turning its world wide flood into a local flood that seems to be seomthing that would compromise their salvation just because it involves tampering with the scripture, but on the other hand I don't want to make these scientific questions that throw so many people definitive of salvation IF THEY OTHERWISE ADHERE TO THE DOCTRINES OF SALVATION AS SPELLED OUT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, and I end up just not knowing

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"Not knowing" would mean not taking a firm position. Not changing position all the time.

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The point was that it is not my own personal private idea, as so many keep trying to make it out to be, it has a large weight of consensus and history behind it, and in fact is consdiered by this tradition to be THE Church that goes back to the beginning. Nothing is going to persuade someone who doesn't want to be persuaded, I'm simply arguing that this is no minor trend or private interpretation.

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On the other hand it's quite clear that your main reason for arguing for it is that YOU believe it, and that's the point that you are trying to argue against.

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Huh? This is quite strange. I could say that your consensus is equally selected, since many of us don't agree with it.

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You'd be very dishonest if you did. It's a fact that the vast majority of scientists who work in relevant fields accept evolution. That's a real consensus of the relevant experts. There's no selection for anything other than expertise (a VALID criterion). Your "consensus" is based on selecting people who agree with the view in question (an INVALID criterion that begs the question).

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No there hasn't

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Then I guess you must be engaging in doublethink, because there's no other explanation.

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The TRUE CHURCH is YEC. If nonYEC views aren't enough to keep one from salvation, and I hope they aren't, they are still a deviation from the true BIBLICAL doctrine that the TRUE Church has embraced through history. Occasional exceptions don't alter the rule. The true Church still has to allow for weak members who stumble over secondary issues, as long as they don't violate the basic doctrines of salvation.

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So there could be people on your "TRUE CHURCH" who do accept that the evidence disproves YEC belief ?

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Just as the fact that you argue for evolution because you believe it is the point you are now trying to argue against. Yes, my believing it is NOT the criterion, my claim that it has historical consensus is the criterion. Again, if my belief were the point so would your belief in evolution be the point of what you are arguing against me, which you are denying. Likewise I deny that my belief is the standard I'm referring to.

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In other words the basis of your argument is tradition. Except we know very well that you can heartily condemn tradition whenever you disagree with it.

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Well, the vast majority of Christians from the Reformation on taught all the doctrines I adhere to, AND STILL DO, and the Reformers pointed back to believers all through the centuries to the apostles as well, and that's the consensus I'm referring to. The fact that apostasies and corruptions have always existed and been growing for a century or so doesn't alter the nature of the true Bible-believing Church which is still THE Church.

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I very much doubt that you can support that without begging the question, as you have been doing.

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The difference is that the vast majority who believe in evolution are wrong

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Of course that is just another piece of question-begging on your part.

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That is not true and if it were it would describe belief in evolution as well, as I keep saying. I trace the true Church through thousands of "experts," men trained in seminaries and so on, as well as recognized famous evangelists and others down through history

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Of course it IS true. And you are right to put scare-quotes about "experts" since you reject the views of most of the relevant experts. Being a "famous evangelist" does not in itself grant any special knowledge, and even seminaries are devoted more to teaching doctrine than facts (although many do teach some real Bible scholarship).

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I went into this at some length with PaulK, I don't know if it was on this thread or the previous thread. I referred him to my blog where I discuss it in some detail using illustrations from Lyell -- which he insisted on taking too literally, but anyway he got the basic principle at least that it's possible for lower layers to buckle while leaving upper layers intact.

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Not "taking literally" UNDERSTANDING. The reason why the book does not buckle. Is because it is rigid. That rigidity is essential to the illustration working as it does.

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Books aren't a suitable model for such an experiment. The strata were still damp in my model and capable of stretching and buckling without breaking, which books aren't. Lyell's model used folded cloth between books showing how the cloth buckles from lateral pressure from the books to the side with a book overhead as resistance. That's what PaulK took too literally, as if the lower strata had to be malleable but the upper rigid, and that's not at all what I had in mind. That model was simply to demonstrate the basic principle that lower can be affected without affecting the upper.

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i.e. we weren't meant to understand HOW it happens. If you cared about the truth the you would already have thought about that...

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The same effect can be had if the force from beneath is met by an equal force from above in the weight of the strata, also facilitated by the difference in texture between the different kinds of rock at the point between the buckled lower strata and the remaining horizontal upper strata, which allows slippage between the two. Of course there would be severe abrasion of the buckled strata, which accounts for the breaking off of chunks that got embedded in the sandstone from the higher layer which was abraded horizontally. This is the case both at Siccar Point and the eroded area between the Great Unconformity and the Tapeats Sandstone in the Grand Canyon.

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Of course, that isn't true. Pressure from above will not stop the the "upper" layer from being deformed by the pressures from beneath. The "upper" layer must be rigid enough to prevent that happening. And "breaking off chunks" or even abrasion would require both strength and rigidity. Not to mention that the lower layer must be pretty solid for it to remain in chunks... And then there's the question of the lateral forces causing the deformation, and why they aren't affecting the "upper" layer...So no, you don't have a working model.

What ? Your assumed water layer ? That's not going to help against an upward force.

You're the one who keeps talking about everything being wet as if it's relevant, and about slippage between the strata. But what is the explanation if it's not that ?

So what is this difference in texture that you're talking about? Have you even examined the texture of the rocks in question? And how does a difference in texture cause slippage, especially given the pressure from above?And I still want to know your explanation of why the upper layer isn't deformed if it is no more rigid than the lower levels that have buckled.