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Author Topic:   Why the Flood Never Happened
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 792 of 1896 (714862)
12-28-2013 4:36 PM
Reply to: Message 783 by Faith
12-28-2013 2:25 PM


Re: meander
Answer from GEOLOGIST Steve Austin's Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe, page 99:
A creationist loony saying something is not evidence that it's true. Do you have any evidence that this is true?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 783 by Faith, posted 12-28-2013 2:25 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(2)
Message 793 of 1896 (714863)
12-28-2013 4:44 PM
Reply to: Message 785 by Faith
12-28-2013 2:50 PM


Re: Another Summary
The point is WHEN they were disturbed. The fact that such a long block of strata ARE undisturbed calls the Old Earth interpretation into question, since it seems to me one should normally expect a lot of disturbance over the hundreds of millions of years represented there but it doesn't exist.
What it calls into question is not "the Old Earth interpretation", but rather your doctrine that "one should normally expect a lot of disturbance over the hundreds of millions of years". Which is your idea, and which is contradicted by the studies of actual geologists.
And this is actually quite a common creationist maneuver: you make an amalgam of real science and crazy crap that you've made up in your head, and point out that this mixture is dumb and at odds with reality --- without noticing that all the flaws in it are inherent in the dumb stuff you added and not the science you added it to.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 785 by Faith, posted 12-28-2013 2:50 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 820 of 1896 (714897)
12-29-2013 11:28 AM
Reply to: Message 797 by Faith
12-28-2013 5:46 PM


Re: HBD's challenges about the Grand Canyon continued
I DO think the placid millions of years idea should be recognized as violating if not the laws of physics, any normal expectation of normal activity on this planet, certainly by Uniformitarians who should expect the same amount of tectonic and other disturbances we're familiar with in our own world today.
And you are of course wrong.
This appears to be your central blunder, the gross fatuous footling mistake to which all your other errors are mere frills and appendages. So it would be interesting and amusing to know how it got into your head: at some point you must have done something you mistook for reasoning to arrive at this staggeringly dumb conclusion. Would you mind giving us an insight into what was going on in your head that made you think it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 797 by Faith, posted 12-28-2013 5:46 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(5)
Message 825 of 1896 (714904)
12-29-2013 2:34 PM
Reply to: Message 797 by Faith
12-28-2013 5:46 PM


Orogeny: Some Thoughts
A couple have suggested it's not that unlikely that there WERE hundreds of millions of years in which no tectonic or volcanic disturbances occurred. Is that the explanation you have in mind? If not, I have no idea what explanation OE has that I'm ignoring. I DO think the placid millions of years idea should be recognized as violating if not the laws of physics, any normal expectation of normal activity on this planet, certainly by Uniformitarians who should expect the same amount of tectonic and other disturbances we're familiar with in our own world today.
Let's try and think about how rare orogenies in the Grand Canyon area should be. One figure that leaps to mind is that, at a minimum, it's been 35 million years since the last orogeny in the whole of North America. However, using this as an argument would involve persuading Faith to believe true things about the past, and if we could do that we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Instead, let's look to the present. There are only two orogenies going on today, the Alpine orogeny and the Andean orogeny. Most places are not undergoing orogeny; most places don't even have mountains.
Now this tells us something. If each location frequently underwent orogeny, then you would expect there to be a lot of places undergoing orogeny; just as if it was common for individuals to wear purple hats, you would expect there to be a lot of people wearing purple hats at this present instant in time.
What's more, we can say why there are so few ongoing orogenies. For after all we do know why the Andean and Alpine orogenies are happening: one is subductional, the other is collisional, and so both are occurring at converging boundaries of tectonic plates. Orogenies simply couldn't happen anywhere else: there is no motion within a plate; where plates diverge, you get a rift, not a mountain; where they slide past one another, you just get earthquakes; so really to have two converging plates is a necessary if not a sufficient condition for orogeny.
Which is why they are presently rare, of course. A glance at a map of the world and its tectonic plates will show you that there are only a very few places in the world that could be having an orogeny right now. Arizona, you will note, is not one of them.
So given what we know about the causes of orogenies, when can the Grand Canyon region expect to celebrate its next orogeny? Let's see if we can figure out a minimum date.
At the present rate of continental drift, a new supercontinent will form in about 250,000,000 years. Unfortunately, it probably won't be the one we want. In order to get an orogeny in the Grand Canyon area, we'd want China to hit California, something like that. Apart from the whole problem with Siberia and Alaska getting in the way, we also have geologists telling us about the Atlantic closing up again, which is no use to us, or Asia crashing into the north end of North America, which again is NFG. However, there does seem to be a scenario whereby what is now Antarctic hits the west coast of North America. That's nice.
So if luck is on our side, we might get a collisional orogeny on what is now the west coast of North America in as little as 250,000,000 years. But will it be big enough? Will it reach as far as the Grand Canyon region? Well, let's try and judge by the ongoing colisional orogeny we have as a paradigm: the Alps are only 120 miles wide. So the Grand Canyon region, sitting halfway along the northern end of Arizona, may well be too far inland. So 250,000,000 years is probably too soon for its next orogeny. Typical, isn't it? --- you wait a quarter of a billion years for an orogeny and then it gets no further than Las Vegas.
But Arizona will get another chance. Suppose the new supercontinent of rifts round about the longitude of Arizona. There's no reason to think it will, but it might. This will not, of course, be a mountain-forming event, but, give it let's say another 250 million years, and eventually there'll be a collisional orogeny ... oh, in exactly the wrong place, as the east side of what is now North America smacks into Europe. Or possibly North Africa.
(N.B: Why did I say another 250,000,000 years? Well, that's how long, at present rates, it will take us to get the next supercontinent, whatever it is. So if I say another 250,000,000 years between that supercontinent and the next one after that, I'm actually being conservative, because of course we've already had the opening up of the Atlantic, we're partway through our Wilson cycle.)
But that was just the run-up. Now we're all set. All we need is for this new supercontinent to rift again, and either we'll get a subduction orogeny in the Arizona region, or, if not, we will definitely get a collisional orogeny when it hits the western side of the eastern United States. Again, let's conservatively say another 250,000,000 years for another Wilson cycle.
So with a lot of luck, if everything goes just right for us, we might expect to see another orogeny in the Grand Canyon region in as little as 750,000,000 years. If we don't have that much luck, I guess we'll just have to wait another few Wilson cycles.
This is all very back-of-the-envelope stuff, but it gives you some idea of the sort of factors that Faith's ignoring.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 797 by Faith, posted 12-28-2013 5:46 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 836 of 1896 (714915)
12-29-2013 3:31 PM
Reply to: Message 826 by Faith
12-29-2013 2:38 PM


Re: Another Try
Oh but you need to recognize also that there are some here who are challenging the very idea of all that placidity, claiming there was such activity but it just didn't get recorded on the cross sections. Dr. A and Rox at least are trying to make that point.
I think you're confusing two things. What I have proved is that there were many episodes of erosion. RAZD is quite right to think that tectonic episodes were much rarer.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 826 by Faith, posted 12-29-2013 2:38 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(5)
Message 853 of 1896 (714935)
12-29-2013 8:02 PM
Reply to: Message 847 by Faith
12-29-2013 5:31 PM


Summary
OK, let's try to summarize all this.
---
According to Faith, if the rocks in the Grand Canyon were old, they would show signs of disturbance.
They do: for example the dike swarms, the Cardenas Lava, the Grand Canyon Orogeny, the Great Unconformity, the erosion of the Muav Formation, the erosion of the Surpise Canyon Formation, the erosion of the Redwall Limestone, the erosion of the Temple Butte formation, the erosion of the Coconino Sandstone, the Laramide Orogeny, the Uinkaret volcanic field, the formation and erosion of multiple volcanic dams, and the erosion of everything round the Grand Canyon above the Kaibab Limestone.
So she tries again. If the rocks were old, she says, they'd show signs of tectonic activity over the past 2 billion years.
These signs of tetonic activity include the dike swarms, the Cardenas Lava, the Grand Canyon Orogeny, the Laramide Orogeny, the Uinkaret volcanic field, etc.
So she takes another run at it. If the rocks were really old, she says, we should see evidence of tectonic events in between the two orogenies when there weren't any. (There were plenty of erosional events, hence her insistence that they should be tectonic; there is no intellectual principle underlying this constraint except that if she asked about subaerial erosion she wouldn't like the answer.)
So, she says, if the Earth was old, there'd have been more orogenies between the orogenies that actually happened. This is apparently based on a belief, plucked from the mystic chambers of Faith's ass, that orogenic events should be frequent and plentiful. She has never attempted to argue for this dogma, because, well, how could she?
In fact, all our knowledge of past orogenies, present orogenies, and the mechanisms underlying orogenies, tells us that we ought to expect vast periods of time to pass between two orogenies occurring in the same place.
This I explained at length a few posts back. A short summary: Orogenies happen at converging boundaries of tectonic plates, which is why they are rare at any given time (such as the present). In order for orogeny to hit the same place twice, it nears to be near a converging boundary, then stop being near ac onverging boundary, then be near a converging boundary again. These things take time because (as direct measurement reveals) continents don't move very fast; and more time because nature isn't actually trying to arrange for orogenies to occur repeatedly in the same place.
---
These facts deal with the bulk of Faith's nonsense. The other shot she has in her arsenal is not even an argument, merely an assertion that it is "STUPID" and "ridiculous" and "idiotic" to conclude that the sediments in the rocks are relics of their depositional environments.
But she is unable to point out the element of the ridiculous, because, of course, it isn't there. For we observe:
* Sediment is deposited in many (not all) environments.
* The forms in which it is deposited are characteristic of the environments in which it is deposited.
* This sediment necessarily builds up from the bottom to the top, so that the lower sediment is also prior in time.
* A sample of the flora and fauna of the environment are buried in the sediment as it accumulates.
* The accumulated sediment therefore forms a series of snapshots of the environment in which it is deposited.
That's what we can observe. What Faith apparently finds "ridiculous", "STUPID", etc is the idea that these real observable processes occurred in the past: despite all the evidence being utterly consistent with the proposition that they did.
That's as much depth as I can go into on that topic, because Faith hasn't actually argued for her opinion, she's merely reiterated it.
---
Finally, people have pointed out a number of features in the rocks of the Grand Canyon region which are inimical to "flood geology".
So, for example, we find what looks exactly like aeolian sand dunes, for example in the Coconino Sandstone. Not only are these features absolutely characteristic of aeolian sand, but some (suh as the angle of repose) cannot possibly form underwater.
Again, we have the Cardenas Lava; being basalt, and pahoehoe to boot, it must have formed subaerially.
Again, the same can be said of much of the erosion and weathering, such as the karst erosion at the top of the Redwall limestone; it can't have occurred underwater, nor when overlain with rock or sediment.
(Much of the erosion Faith merely lies about, calling it "small" or "invisible" when it is clearly visible even across the canyon and is often a hundred meters or more in depth. I don't know who she's trying to fool. On another thread she has tried to explain away the erosion at the Great Unconformity, but her argument appears to violate the law of conservation of matter.)
Similarly we find footprints in terrestrial layers deposited after the evolution of land animals. Faith has some sort of half-baked idea about animals scampering over Flood deposits at low tide during the Flood, but she hasn't elaborated on it. Do these animals run right round the Earth once every twenty-four hours, or what?
But even this vague handwaving doesn't explain the consilience of the evidence. I should like to hear Faith explain why these footprints are found only in sediment identified on sedimentological grounds as terrestrial, and why the remains of land plants are also found in these layers, but none of the fish that the Flood apparently drowned in such numbers.
As for the law of faunal succession, well apparently Faith finds it a little too good, and objects that its perfect agreement with evolutionary theory is a strike against the Old Earth. I can make nothing of this. Faith, if you're reading this, no, we're not at all perturbed to find ourselves being 100% right about everything. We're used to it. What's your point?
Then there's the form of the canyon. Incised meanders, it has been pointed out, require a gentle current (or they wouldn't be meanders) operating over a long time (or they wouldn't be incised). Faith has replied by quoting a professional creationist apologist saying the contrary, but has not reproduced his chain of reasoning.
Similarly it has been pointed out to Faith that features such as arches and mushroom hoodoos must have been lithified before erosion, implying that the erosion would have taken a very long time.
One point against Flood geology is the absence of hydraulic sorting. What one would expect is boulders and other coarse rubble at the bottom, grading up to finer clasts. We see no such pattern.
Finally, the question has been raised: if the Grand Canyon was caused by a magic flood rather than the Colorado River, what's the Colorado River doing in the Grand Canyon? How did it know it was there for it to flow to, why didn't it get lost on the way?
These, then, are some of the points that have been raised against a Floodist explanation; I apologize to anyone if I've missed out their favorites, but it's been a long thread. And of course many more could be added that haven't been mentioned on this thread. (I'd have thrown in a few more myself, except that I was busy trying to get Faith to admit that the large and plainly visible features in the photographs I showed her were large and plainly visible. We know how that turned out.)
Faith's main one-size-fits-all response to these points has been to say that her one crappy argument that the rocks of the Grand Canyon have been undisturbed (apart from all the, y'know, disturbances) is so awesome wonderful that she doesn't need to think about all these pesky details, but she's sure it would be easy to explain them away if she could be bothered to make the effort.
---
It should be noted that Faith's one singularly crappy argument isn't an argument for the Flood at all. It's an argument against real processes and normal timeframes; it's not an argument for a magic flood as the cause of geology any more than it's an argument for magic rock fairies making strata out of pixie dust. I don't think she's actually come up with a single argument for the Flood to balance out the many arguments against it. I don't know if she ever will.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 847 by Faith, posted 12-29-2013 5:31 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 877 of 1896 (715080)
01-01-2014 9:00 AM
Reply to: Message 874 by Faith
01-01-2014 3:25 AM


And I can't help but react to Dr. A's absolutely unfair Summary. Not in any detail ...
Perish the thought. Details are for evolutionists and suchlike reprobates.
because that's a waste of energy here though I may try to do that at my blog
You'd rather reply to me behind my back? Well, if that makes you feel more comfortable. Personally I'm not afraid to debate you. But then we are two very different people.
but just to say that he's persistently mischaracterized my argument
But in no way that you'd care to specify? Ah well.
In any case he's persistently tried to palm off pictures that show tectonic and erosional disturbances that occurred AFTER the strata were all in place, which is what I've been arguing is the case over and over again, presenting them as if they disprove my point.
Well, they don't, not one of them shows the kinds of disturbances I've been saying should have occurred to the stack WHILE THE STRATA WERE BEING FORMED
Yes, well, you keep saying this, but saying something over and over won't change the facts or the laws of nature. We've explained to you why what you claim is impossible. You, conversely, don't even seem to have tried to put up an argument showing that it's true.
or they refer to the Supergroup and other rocks below the Tapeats which I pointedly left out of my descriptions
You said this sort of thing when we were discussing genetics, too. It reveals a deep methodological stupidity underlying your particular errors of reasoning.
You may have chosen not to mention this stuff, but that doesn't make it "blatantly unfair" to bring it up. You are, as I've said, like someone who maintains that all birds are flightless, with much discussion of penguins and ostriches and kiwis. When someone says "What about hummingbirds and eagles and sparrows?" you say "I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THOSE!" Nor you are, but that doesn't mean they're not relevant to the claim.
I'm not here to debate
I guess we do need a whole new word for whatever it is you're doing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 874 by Faith, posted 01-01-2014 3:25 AM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(2)
Message 911 of 1896 (715129)
01-01-2014 4:10 PM
Reply to: Message 910 by Faith
01-01-2014 3:42 PM


Re: It could be so much worse.
That's your best argument yet.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 910 by Faith, posted 01-01-2014 3:42 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 921 of 1896 (715147)
01-01-2014 7:45 PM
Reply to: Message 913 by Faith
01-01-2014 4:14 PM


Re: It could be so much worse.
DAMP MODELING CLAY WILL CRACK AND BREAK.
Will it form incised meanders?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 913 by Faith, posted 01-01-2014 4:14 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 942 of 1896 (715218)
01-02-2014 12:09 PM
Reply to: Message 926 by Faith
01-02-2014 5:21 AM


Re: Dr. A's "SUMMARY"
Here's DR. A's SLEAZEBALL SUMMARY, MSG 853 I complained about in MY MESSAGE 874 which got ignored because everybody wants to make a federal case about the meanders, which I DO NOT CARE ABOUT. But I do care about Dr. A's blatantly unfair misrepresentation of my argument, which five of you nevertheless CHEERED. If you track back from that post of his you'll even find him taking my careful description of the tectonic activity I had in mind OUT OF CONTEXT, and I complained at the time. BUT YOU STILL ALL APPLAUD THIS PIECE OF SLIMEBALL "DEBATING." THE CLAIM THAT EVC HAS ANYTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH SCIENCE IS BELIED BY THE DEVIOUS ANTICS OF DR. A ALONE, WHICH ARE LEGION HERE. WHAT A JOKE.
Ah yes, my devious antics are legion. I feel that I should have a horde of minions and a maniacal laugh. But could you be more precise in your complaints? What is it you feel I've taken out of context? The only clue you give us is that it's a "careful description" of something and ... no, I can't find anywhere you've done that. It's evidently not your forte.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 926 by Faith, posted 01-02-2014 5:21 AM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(3)
Message 960 of 1896 (715459)
01-05-2014 5:55 PM
Reply to: Message 958 by Faith
01-05-2014 3:22 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
... a gigantic rock pancake, I say, that may stretch for hundreds or even thousands of miles across a continent, somehow represents a particular time period in Earth's history, IS ABSURD
Unless that time period is forty days and forty nights. Then, and only then, does it become sensible.
and that a peculiar assemblage of living creatures managed to die normal deaths over normal spans of time
Thanks for reminding us. Yes, there was only ever a forty-day span of time in which living creatures could die. The idea that plants and animals could also die over the course of millions of years --- pfui! Absurd!
Actually, I don't know why I'm bothering to supply sarcasm. You yourself are writing what I'd write if I was satirizing creationism. There's nothing for me to do.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 958 by Faith, posted 01-05-2014 3:22 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 979 of 1896 (715495)
01-05-2014 8:58 PM
Reply to: Message 970 by Faith
01-05-2014 7:55 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
There was never any "information" given to answer my point, let alone "correct" information. If the point is squarely faced, no more OE. There are also no profound problems with my ideas, there is only the speculations of my opponents, just speculations, no information, no profound problems. Meanwhile, the absurdity of treating a rock pancake as an era in time, and its fossil contents as an evolutionary stage, needs to be recognized, apprehended, thought about.
But first, Faith, it needs to be demonstrated. Simply saying over and over that it's absurd, to people who understand geology and therefore find that what you're misdescribing makes perfect sense, is not much of an argument.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 970 by Faith, posted 01-05-2014 7:55 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 985 of 1896 (715525)
01-06-2014 3:09 PM
Reply to: Message 984 by RAZD
01-06-2014 3:05 PM


Re: NSCE Smackdown
We've been here before, that's exactly the sort of thing that Faith describes as "invisible".

This message is a reply to:
 Message 984 by RAZD, posted 01-06-2014 3:05 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 986 by RAZD, posted 01-06-2014 3:34 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 999 of 1896 (715599)
01-07-2014 5:41 PM
Reply to: Message 998 by Faith
01-07-2014 4:55 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
I don't think anything was suspended, I think the EVIDENCE is that the layers were all laid down before the erosion and the tectonic and other disturbances occurred. There's nothing magical about it, I've described the evidence over and over and over again.
You've denied the evidence over and over again. Denied it, ignored it, lied about it.
And guess what? It's still there.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 998 by Faith, posted 01-07-2014 4:55 PM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 1000 of 1896 (715600)
01-07-2014 5:52 PM
Reply to: Message 997 by Faith
01-07-2014 4:39 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
I'm sorry, but you are wrong about this. I have not been shown to be wrong. Dr. A put up pictures that just about ALL show that the erosion and the other disturbances occurred AFTER all the strata were in place. The ONLY exception, which I allow although I disagree with it, is the Great Unconformity beneath the canyon. ALL the other disturbances occurred to the stack AFTER the layers were all in place.
Now, we've explained to you why this is physically impossible, haven't we?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 997 by Faith, posted 01-07-2014 4:39 PM Faith has not replied

  
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