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Author Topic:   Why the Flood Never Happened
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 958 of 1896 (715443)
01-05-2014 3:22 PM


Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
Just to annoy you all further and especially poor Roxie who must not have many eyelashes left, I would like to reiterate my most simple observation of them all:
The idea that a rock, in fact a gigantic rock pancake of sorts
... 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. It assumes the idea that a specific kind of sediment, and ONLY that sediment, collected over such a huge distance by normal means we observe today, and that a peculiar assemblage of living creatures managed to die normal deaths over normal spans of time and get fossilized therein. And that this process repeated itself from time to time with a DIFFERENT sediment each time, for hundreds of millions of years, rock pancakes stacking up to miles in height /depth, so that we now have a record in these rock pancakes of former periods of time on the planet, with very specific flora and fauna etc etc etc. And all this is supposed to have occurred by normal means of sediment deposition, by streams for instance, and seas that in defiance of all known means keep rising and falling to accomplish this feat. I mean, REALLY, you poor dear human patsies, REALLY!
I'm not allowed of course to call this an argument, I must have EVIDENCE. But there really isn't much more in the way of evidence except the fact of the rock pancakes, the rest is all interpretation. I would think the drear facts ought to be sufficient, really, but I was inspired to do this post by reading a little on the Claron Formation, which is the layer of the strata which exhibits those fascinating pink hoodoos.
...about which I've commented that they demonstrate the principle I keep harping on, that first you get the layers upon layers upon layers, with NO cutting or other disturbance, until "recent time" when finally, suddenly, the planet undergoes tectonic movement, earthquakes, volcanism, etc etc etc, and you get the canyons and the other interesting shapes carved out of and into the strata. The implications of this for Old Earth assumptions are HUGE but you all just keep rationalizing them away. Which is of course easy to do because as I keep saying there are no safeguards against rampant interpretive error when you are dealing with the UNWITNESSED / PREHISTORIC past.
The complex fictions that have been put together supposedly to explain the formation of the various strata, such as in that Wikipedia article, in my opinion should make you all weep for the misuse of the human mind.
The strata are not a record of evolving life, though they do tell us what once lived on the Earth before the Flood, but really, what the strata are is a record of a massive DEATH. There is DEATH and only DEATH in the walls of the Grand Canyon and the layers of the Grand Staircase and the hoodoos and everywhere else you find the strata and the fossils. Geology is all about a gigantic GRAVEYARD.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Replies to this message:
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 Message 963 by dwise1, posted 01-05-2014 6:50 PM Faith has replied
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 962 of 1896 (715465)
01-05-2014 6:31 PM
Reply to: Message 961 by Percy
01-05-2014 6:14 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
The only "information" that was given concerning this situation was Dr. A's misapplied photos. There was nothing else. Oh the usual speculative stuff of course. Everybody else kept changing the subject. As you are doing right now. So far nobody has even GRASPED the point I'm making, let alone answered it.
Oh right, I forgot to mention the erosion which shaped the hoodoos. THAT didn't start until after all the strata were in place either. They ARE formed from strata though, Percy, you know, DEPOSITED SEDIMENTS. And THEN they were shaped by erosion. The implications of which ought to be obvious if you were inclined at all to understanding the truth about these things.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 961 by Percy, posted 01-05-2014 6:14 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 965 by Percy, posted 01-05-2014 7:32 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 964 of 1896 (715471)
01-05-2014 7:32 PM
Reply to: Message 963 by dwise1
01-05-2014 6:50 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
Ad hominems galore, accusations of perfidies galore, changes of subject. Well, what else could I expect?
Really, what I said is good enough to repeat:
I would like to reiterate my most simple observation of them all:
The idea that a rock, in fact a gigantic rock pancake of sorts
... the idea, I say, that a gigantic rock pancake, 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. It assumes the idea that a specific kind of sediment, and ONLY that sediment, collected over such a huge distance by normal means we observe today, and that a peculiar assemblage of living creatures managed to die normal deaths over normal spans of time and get fossilized therein. And that this process repeated itself from time to time with a DIFFERENT sediment each time, for hundreds of millions of years, rock pancakes stacking up to miles in height /depth, so that we now have a record in these rock pancakes of former periods of time on the planet, with very specific flora and fauna etc etc etc. And all this is supposed to have occurred by normal means of sediment deposition, by streams for instance, and seas that in defiance of all known means keep rising and falling to accomplish this feat. I mean, REALLY, you poor dear human patsies, REALLY!
I'm not allowed of course to call this an argument, I must have EVIDENCE. But there really isn't much more in the way of evidence except the fact of the rock pancakes, the rest is all interpretation. I would think the drear facts ought to be sufficient, really, but I was inspired to do this post by reading a little on the Claron Formation, which is the layer of the strata which exhibits those fascinating pink hoodoos.
...about which I've commented that they demonstrate the principle I keep harping on, that first you get the layers upon layers upon layers, with NO cutting or other disturbance, until "recent time" when finally, suddenly, the planet undergoes tectonic movement, earthquakes, volcanism, etc etc etc, and you get the canyons and the other interesting shapes carved out of and into the strata. The implications of this for Old Earth assumptions are HUGE but you all just keep rationalizing them away. Which is of course easy to do because as I keep saying there are no safeguards against rampant interpretive error when you are dealing with the UNWITNESSED / PREHISTORIC past.
The complex fictions that have been put together supposedly to explain the formation of the various strata, such as in that Wikipedia article, in my opinion should make you all weep for the misuse of the human mind.
The strata are not a record of evolving life, though they do tell us what once lived on the Earth before the Flood, but really, what the strata are is a record of a massive DEATH. There is DEATH and only DEATH in the walls of the Grand Canyon and the layers of the Grand Staircase and the hoodoos and everywhere else you find the strata and the fossils. Geology is all about a gigantic GRAVEYARD.
Y'all just need to learn to SEE the absurdity I'm talking about.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 963 by dwise1, posted 01-05-2014 6:50 PM dwise1 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 967 by Percy, posted 01-05-2014 7:40 PM Faith has replied
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 Message 981 by roxrkool, posted 01-05-2014 10:34 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 966 of 1896 (715473)
01-05-2014 7:34 PM
Reply to: Message 965 by Percy
01-05-2014 7:32 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
Funny how determined you are to change the subject.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 965 by Percy, posted 01-05-2014 7:32 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 968 by Percy, posted 01-05-2014 7:43 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 969 of 1896 (715478)
01-05-2014 7:48 PM
Reply to: Message 967 by Percy
01-05-2014 7:40 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
I'm SO sorry, but dwise and the rest of you just keep wanting to bury MY point and I'm determined to keep it on the table.
The absurdity of the OE interpretation of the sedimentary FACTS as I've described them kills OE. I'm not interested in pretending it's not dead by getting sucked into all the side issues again.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 967 by Percy, posted 01-05-2014 7:40 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 972 by Atheos canadensis, posted 01-05-2014 8:04 PM Faith has replied
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 970 of 1896 (715481)
01-05-2014 7:55 PM
Reply to: Message 968 by Percy
01-05-2014 7:43 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. A rock pancake of hundreds to thousands of miles in length and breadth, in a deep stack of similarly extensive rock pancakes of different flavors -- it's SO absurd I can hardly blame you for wanting to evade the issue.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 968 by Percy, posted 01-05-2014 7:43 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 984 by RAZD, posted 01-06-2014 3:05 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 987 of 1896 (715536)
01-07-2014 5:25 AM
Reply to: Message 984 by RAZD
01-06-2014 3:05 PM


Limestone Romance
This is another angle on a picture Dr. A posted earlier. It all looked to me like erosion that occurred after the strata were laid down, and it still does, only you've now highlighted a feature that wasn't apparent in the earlier picture, this supposed riverbed.
Funny, the Muav and the Temple Butte limestones look identical to me, at least the lower part of the Temple and the Muav, except for the color that's been added to distinguish them, and the barely discernible line that you romanticize into an ancient riverbed. Do riverbeds normally take such a neatly scooped out rounded form? Not that I've ever noticed.
And where are the pebbles and stones and rocks that usually collect in riverbeds, how come it's all limestone filled in with limestone? So this river ran for what, millions of years in hard limestone, in this nice rounded scooped out gully and then suddenly this other calcareous ooze just came along out of the blue and filled it in? I dunno, RAZD. You think your model explains this? Seems to me it's full of holes like the rock itself. As for the Flood model, so one limestone filled in a gully in another, it doesn't strike me as a great difficulty for the Flood model even if I can't say exactly how it happened.
Those ARE all limestones, right, subject to dissolution and the formation of karsts or caves, right? There is nothing out of the ordinary about that happening on "my model" after the Flood. There is nothing out of the ordinary about water running between the layers anyway, but its forming holes also makes sense since we're talking about limestones. The fanciful Romance you gave of how it all formed simply isn't necessary. It was all laid down in the Flood, and then the various forms of erosion occurred, the rubble skirt in front, the holes etc.
Another problem OE has is how the strata always form these horizontal straight connections such as between the Temple Butte limestone and the Redwall. It's somewhat collapsed now but originally it had to have been straight as all the strata originally were. But you're talking a river in a landscape, presumably. How does that form a flat horizontal surface on which the redwall ultimately deposited?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 988 of 1896 (715537)
01-07-2014 5:42 AM
Reply to: Message 977 by Coyote
01-05-2014 8:51 PM


Re: Channeled scablands again
The scablands were created by the catastrophic drainage of one of the gigantic lakes that was left after the Flood.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 977 by Coyote, posted 01-05-2014 8:51 PM Coyote has replied

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 990 of 1896 (715543)
01-07-2014 7:19 AM
Reply to: Message 981 by roxrkool
01-05-2014 10:34 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
Well, Roxy dear, you can certainly run rings around the Creationist with your technical knowledge, you are quite impressive with it and I've never had any doubt you are a terrific geologist. And you must have put a lot of work into this post too.
But let's see what I can do with this.
Faith writes:
that a gigantic rock pancake, 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."
Rox writes:
Let's do a quick comparison...
The Sahara Desert, which is currently being deposited, and the Navajo Sandstone, which is Jurassic in age and deposited in the western U.S.
So you want me to notice that there is this Navajo sandstone layer in the western US -- most of it in Utah I gather from the diagram (I know it's a layer in the Grand Staircase) but spilling over on all sides as well -- that is quite a bit smaller than the Sahara sands, and you ask:
So if we can have a desert the size of the Sahara being deposited today, why could that not have happened in the past?
Well, first I'd ask how you know the Sahara is BEING deposited? What is the source of the sand that is supposedly BEING deposited?
But my main question would have to do with how you expect that Sahara sand to get turned into a rock pancake within a stack of rock pancakes. I guess you have to imagine the sea rising again and the water flattening out all that sand into a horizontal layer so that some other sediment then gets deposited on top of it, making a nice sharp straight flat contact with it?
And then when you go on to describe the marine sediments being deposited in the oceans, one has to ask how they could ever become strata on the land, even deposited over or under something like the Sahara sands. For that the ocean floor would have to rise, no? So we've got sea rising and falling and ocean floor rising -- and falling? But isn't this simply physically impossible no matter how many millions upon millions of years you assume for it to happen in?
When I read the descriptions of each layer as exposed in the Grand Canyon, how this one was shoreline and that one was coastal and the other was formed in a shallow sea but yet another was Aeolian and still another was formed at the bottom of the ocean, I have the question how the layering of all these rocks with their entirely different origins could possibly occur physically at all, no matter how much time you give it. People make a big deal out of the question where the Flood waters went, but somehow take for granted all this rising and falling of sea and land.
To end up with something like the strata exposed in the GC you'd have to have the marine sediments layered over by the Sahara sands and then probably layered over again by something else marine and so on. Oh but I just realized, aren't those sand grains shaped in their Aeolian environment so they supposedly couldn't ever be under water anyway, so now we have to get the marine sediments at the bottom of the ocean to deposit ON TOP of the sands, somehow flattening the sands which don't normally lie flat at all but make dune hills, yet as shown in the GC you get that nice straight horizontal contact line between the sandstones and the marine layers, and I assume you have in mind that the planet is continuing to build strata such as we see in the GC. See, I have a big problem with the mere mechanics that have to occur to explain the formation of strata, which it seems to me the Flood deals with a hundred times better than any OE scenario. The planet can be covered with gigantic areas of desert sands and the oceans with marine sediments, but getting them to stack up as the existing strata obviously did, uh uh.
I've barely touched your post but already have to take a break, so I'll continue with it next post. Since the rest of your post may answer some of my questions it might be better if you not answer yet.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 981 by roxrkool, posted 01-05-2014 10:34 PM roxrkool has replied

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 991 of 1896 (715544)
01-07-2014 8:20 AM
Reply to: Message 981 by roxrkool
01-05-2014 10:34 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
So if we can have a desert the size of the Sahara being deposited today, why could that not have happened in the past? I believe I read somewhere that there were some aeolian units found further East that are suspected to be equivalent to the Navajo as well, making it larger than is known today. Still, even if it covered the entire U.S., it would still be smaller than the contemporary analog.
Just to repeat what I said in the earlier post, there is no problem with such sandy areas existing, the problem is getting them into the layered form that we see for instance in the walls of the Grand Canyon.
In addition, consider the size of the oceans today. An immense area of the planet is covered by water, which is why most of the rocks we see on the surface of the Earth are marine sedimentary. Reasonable enough. However, with plate tectonics, we know that much of the marine sediments never become rocks exposed on the surface because they are consumed in subduction zones. Sure, we get some marine rocks squeezed onto the continent during subduction, but these are usually so deformed they hardly look like marine rocks anymore.
OK, again the problem is how a marine-originated sediment got deposited on top of aeolian sand, making the straight horizontal contact between them too, and so on.
For instance, in the GC we have the Kaibab limestone at the rim, over the Toroweap formation which is made up of different rocks requiring different sources so of course this variety of sources is assumed:
Wikipedia writes:
The Toroweap Formation, a mixture of shales, sandstones, and limestones, forms the first slope below the rim of the canyon.
It was deposited 273 million years ago, during the Paleozoic Era- Late Early Permian Period. This formation, with its variable rocks, marks the return of the sea to the Grand Canyon region. Both transgressions and regressions occurred during deposition.
The Toroweap Formation was thus deposited in everything from shallow marine and intertidal to coastal dune environments.
And that is above the aeolian Coconino Sandstone, supposedly sand dunes that nevertheless somehow or other got horizontally flattened like all the other rocks, with flat top and bottom contacts with rocks of such different origins. The accusation that the Flood model requires magical thinking really should be applied to the mechanics required to account for all these various OE-based scenarios.
Marine sediments/rocks can be preserved if they once formed inland seaways that were later uplifted (Western Interior Seaway, for example), marine sediments deposited in passive continental margins then uplifted, those brought in via accreted terranes (such as island arcs), and through continental collision (Alps, etc.). Much of the western U.S. is formed through the accretion of island arc terranes, which are primarily composed of marine sedimentary rocks.
This point you are making about island arc terranes escapes me I'm afraid. As I understand it, the redwall limestone layer which is so prominent in the GC, extends all across the N. American continent and is even found in the UK. To anticipate something you will mention farther down, I know it's not all the identical sediment, and yet it is recognizable as the same layer wherever it is found. Limestone is of course originally a marine sediment. If a marine sediment covers such a huge area, and it's got aeolian and "coastal" layers above and below it, don't you have a small problem explaining the mechanics of this layering?
While we typically do do not see these marine units extending for thousands of miles across continents,
Redwall limestone?
they can be fairly extensive depending on their age (the older, the less likely they will survive tectonic upheavals) and where they are located (interior cratonic areas are very stable). I am not a stratigrapher, but petroleum geologists use their knowledge of sequence stratigraphy, geologic evolution of the continents, biostratigraphy, and many other tools to predict the best places to drill. They are successful for a reason.
Apparently the ordering of the strata is quite predictable.
What you don't understand yet is that these "rock pancakes" as you call them, are not necessarily homogeneous across their entire extent.
Well, actually, I do have some awareness of this variation in a layer.
In the case of continental units like the Navajo, the sand grains that form the sandstone will have different compositions depending on where you take a sample.
No problem with this. Problem enters with the following interpretation:
This can tell us that the northern portion of the unit is formed of sand that was sourced say from a granitic terrane, the southern end from clean beach sands, the east end from a metamorphic terrane, the central portion from volcanic rocks. All of which will have their own particular mineralogical compositions and geochemistry.
No problem with the observed fact of different compositions, problem is with the ideas about their sources which are pure abstract hypothesizing since apparently you have no actual existing source in mind for any of it. And again, don't you have a problem with explaining how all these different kinds of sand from different sources got together in one place and became an identifiable layer of sandstone?
Similarly, as you traverse across the Navajo to the south where it could meet the ocean (use your imagination) or perhaps a lake, the Navajo will gradually grade into a different rock type altogether. Aeolian sand dunes with interfinger with beach sands, or maybe lacustrine carbonates, or maybe a large fanglomerate shedding off an adjacent mountain range. While these rocks are no longer aeolian dune deposits, but a completely different rock type, they are still being deposited at the same point in time. They are time-correlative or time-equivalent.
Or in my language, what to you is "the same point in time" is to me simply the same layer: they are identifiable as one layer despite the different sediments found composing it in different places. And to my mind this interfingering of different sediments is VERY easy to explain if it was all deposited by Flood waters, NOT so easy to explain on your time model. For one thing you always lack a source from which they are BEING deposited, you just have to make one up, in fact you have to make up a whole bunch of them when you have such different sediments. There is no such problem with the Flood, which simply carried whatever got scraped off the land mass and broken down in the water.
Sediments are being deposited all across the continents in basins, small and large, while at the same time, higher elevation rocks are being eroded away. Therefore you can have deposition in one place at the same time you have erosion in another. In addition, as more and more sediment is deposited, the crust beneath the basin will sink with the weight, thereby accommodating more and more sediment until something forces a change.
OK here you are giving the source as geology presents it. Seems to me these sources are awfully small scale and fragmented compared to the actual extent of the strata in existence. Way back there HBD (herebedragons) put up a few diagrams of layers that extend for huge distances across North America. Nothing you've said is going on in the world now even begins to approach the extent of those layers. But the Flood could easily account for them.
Now let's look at some three dimensional images of depositional environments and what they look like in the subsurface. The cross-section is what we'd see in the canyon walls of the GC, in road cuts, or exploration drilling.
This is an image of a transgressing sea, meaning the sea is undergoing a relative sea level rise (compared to land). With rising sea levels, marine sediments encroach onto the continents.
OK I'll come back again to respond to this.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 981 by roxrkool, posted 01-05-2014 10:34 PM roxrkool has replied

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 992 of 1896 (715551)
01-07-2014 11:20 AM
Reply to: Message 981 by roxrkool
01-05-2014 10:34 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
I don't really understand the point you are making with the hypotheticals about the transgressions and regressions of the sea, although it occurs to me perhaps some of it could be applied to the Flood. But they ARE hypotheticals. Maybe I'll have a thought about them later.
Then you give the diagrams of a "lacustrine environment" and a meandering river. Are these environments supposed to be beneath the surface, I can't tell.
Anyway I'm not sure what those are supposed to demonstrate either, but I have no problem with "landscapes" of a sort occurring beneath the surface, since there are underground rivers after all. The only problem is how to put it all together with the sediment depositing scenario which would presumably fill in any former landscapes with the new sediments of the next layer up, completely fill up river beds for instance, and shouldn't we then expect the hills and valleys and river beds of the landscape to be clearly visible on any cut through the strata? Seems to me all these things really are is water running between layers after they were all laid down, causing erosion THEN, not earlier as part of a former earth surface landscape.
Perhaps you need to make it clearer what you had in mind with those illustrations. I'm not sure I'm getting it.
If you were to traverse the country today on foot, what would you see? You'd see different types of sediment that change depending upon the environment you find yourself in. You would pass through braided stream valleys, deserts, mountains, lakes, volcanoes, prairies, alluvial fans, and so on, until you have passed through a patchwork of sediments and depositional environments that may one day be buried, lithified, uplifted, eroded, and on display for the next generation of geologists.
I'm certainly aware of the variety to be found on the surface of the planet, my problem is how any of it could possibly get to be encased in a rock pancake by normal means. Buried by what? And how would burial lithify it anyway? Eroded FLAT supposedly, right? This always bemuses me. Erosion doesn't FLATTEN anything. It cuts and digs and breaks things. So how is this landscape going to get flattened as all the strata are, into those rock pancakes? Is a new landscape / bunch of sediments just going to pile on top of it all? Loose unconsolidated sediments, right? Maybe packed down after a while, but lithified? But also, although there are some different sediments in some layers, overall the existing strata are pretty uniform, they don't contain anywhere near the variety that normally occurs on the surface of the earth.
Actually I don't really even know what questions to ask, this whole scenario just hits me as so utterly impossible and strange.
During this, you see life everywhere. It is continuing today as it no doubt did in the past (we have the fossils to suggest this), with hardly a care that sediment is being deposited and rocks are being eroded or that Faith thinks it's pure fancy. We hardly notice it happening today except during catastrophes, or if we look for it.
I'm not sure what you are talking about here.
The fact that you can't or won't understand what the rocks are telling you, really makes no difference at all. All that matters is that geology can back up any assertion with real life evidence and draw reasonable and valid conclusions from them. We are also completely aware that the next geologist can force us to change them should they discover something new and compelling.
I think you are able to come to some valid conclusions simply because there is a fairly predictable order in the strata that can guide certain discoveries. The problems have to do with the explanation of the formation of the strata themselves.
What can Creationism give us that is useful?
Truth.
If you want to learn what geologists today actually believe, then a good book to pick up is Prothero's "Interpreting the Stratigraphic
OK.
But I want to go back to my Message 667 to bring out the information about the supposed originating environments of the various strata in the GC. (At the top of that post, by the way, I put up the diagram of the extent of the redwall limestone in North America).
Basically your response to that post was that I have a lot of nerve to dare to have an opinion about such things, but I still have these concerns about how on earth Geology thinks it can explain the strata in terms of such different environments when these strata are found stacked on top of one another to a great depth. For instance, here again is some of that article on the GC that I was responding to:
The thick layer of Redwall Limestone which began to deposited indicates that the land was submerged for a great deal of time.
The Supai Group which rests atop the Redwall and indicates that it was formed in an above water and coastal environment.
The Hermit Shale contains many plant fossils which indicate that it was also above water.
The Coconino Sandstone represents the remains of a vast sea of sand dunes which was blown down from the north.
The layers found within Toroweap Formation contains both sandstone and limestone, indicating that it was sometimes coastal and sometimes submerged.
The top layer of the Grand Canyon, the Kaibab Limestone, contains many marine fossils which indicate that it originated at the bottom of the sea.
This is climbing up the strata from the Redwall limestone to the Kaibab limestone, going from a layer that is said to have been "submerged for a great deal of time" to a couple of layers forming above water, to the Coconino which was of course above water because it's supposed to have been sand dunes, but the Toroweap was sometimes submerged and sometimes not, because it's both sandstone and limestone, and then we get to the very top layer, the Kaibab, which is said to have "originated at the BOTTOM OF THE SEA."
Do you see my problem here? The Kaibab is at the very top of the stack, it's a mile above the lowest horizontal layer, the Tapeats, and there's quite a depth of rock below that too, what with the Supergroup strata and the basement rocks and so on, plus the Kaibab is above the layers just mentioned that supposedly originated above water, and now WE'D HAVE TO SUBMERGE THE ENTIRE STACK to get the Kaibab to form at the BOTTOM of the ocean, although it would have to have this entire MILE of strata and more than that BENEATH IT? How is this possible, Rox? We just assume the whole stack is beneath the bottom of the ocean now? Did the ocean rise all those miles or what? That's a LOT of water. Even the Flood didn't rise more than a few cubits above the landforms which are thought to have been very low measured by today's mountains and hills.
ABE: But I did do some rethinking of the sea transgression/regression illustrations and I get that they are supposed to explain how the strata, for instance in the GC, with all their supposedly different originating circumstances could have occurred -- sea level rising and falling over periods of millions of years. I can kind of see it for many of the layers although since many of them do stretch for hundreds of miles we are talking very large risings and fallings of the water level (the Redwall limestone DOES stretch across the entire American continent, and if the water rose to that level we can be sure the rest of the world was also inundated, and if we're going that far why not just admit that we're talking about the Flood?And then when we get to the Kaibab, which was said on the GC website to have been formed at the bottom of the sea we have to have the sea rising to a staggering height and even then there's really no way to make sense of the idea that a layer so high in the stack could have formed at the BOTTOM of the sea that I can figure out. Trying to figure out the origin of the strata from their characteristics seems to me to create more problems than it solves. //end ABE.
And if you dig into a layer you find what, not whole landscapes but, if anything, certain kinds of fossilized life scattered rather willy-nilly in the sediment.
And again, the layers are all FLAT on the top and the bottom, they were obviously originally laid down as horizontal layers that became rock pancakes, a HUGE stack of them. It's probably the sandstones that are the hardest to explain in terms of the actual form of the strata since they are supposed to have been formed aerially, yet dunes don't just lie down flat, they create hills. How did the Coconino get so flat if it was originally just loose dune sand?
You've described various things at the surface of the planet right now. You assume eventually they'll all contribute to the strata stack. I think that's a romantic fantasy that absolutely defies reality. A one-time worldwide catastrophic Flood simply explains it all so much better, leaving a gigantic graveyard of the fossilized remains of what once lived before the Flood.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 981 by roxrkool, posted 01-05-2014 10:34 PM roxrkool has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 997 of 1896 (715592)
01-07-2014 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 978 by dwise1
01-05-2014 8:56 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
... layers upon layers upon layers, with NO cutting or other disturbance". And, of course, you chose to completely ignore the very existence of vast amounts of physical evidence that shows that you are wrong!
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. Meandering river in limestone? What? ABE: I'll get to that in the next post.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 998 of 1896 (715593)
01-07-2014 4:55 PM
Reply to: Message 963 by dwise1
01-05-2014 6:50 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
I was ignoring posts that seemed to change the subject as this one of yours did. Sorry about that, I was getting impatient with all the changes of subject and just skipped over what seemed to be the worst ones. But I'll try to answer yours now.
Basic to your groundless assumptions is the magical one that all geological processes were somehow magically suspended while those layers upon layers were laid down.
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 are the one who thinks in terms of geological processes being suspended because you believe in the Old Earth explanation which assumes they have been ongoing for billions of years. I simply point out that that assumption is challenged by the fact, that can be seen, that is actually in evidence, that the disturbances in question occurred AFTER the strata were all in place. This can be seen on the diagrams of the GC and it can be seen in most of the pictures as well. You can see the tight connections between the strata and the erosion that occurred afterward, NOT between the layers, not as they were being laid down, but after the stack was in place.
Please explain how that could have happened, that only certain continuous natural processes would have arbitrarily been suspended for extended periods of time.
They weren't. That is merely the only way the OE theory can explain the actual facts, it's not how a Floodist explains them.
And even more importantly, why do you insist that such a thing had happened? Your assumptions truly make no sense whatsoever.
They aren't assumptions. I've knocked myself out SHOWING how I arrived at this conclusion over post after post after post. And the reason it matters is that it calls into question the assumption of millions of years. Clearly it's ridiculous to assume that there could have been hundreds of millions of years when erosion and tectonic activity were suspended, but if the strata were all laid down rapidly over a short period of time there is no need to think in terms of anything being suspended. They were laid down and then the tectonic disturbances began, and the visible erosion that appears in the pictures as well. This appears to be EVIDENCED in the cross sections as I've pointed out over and over again.
Now rereading your post I'm trying to make sense out of this complaint of yours about the buried river:
A meandering river channel eroded into limestone. We all know that cutting a meandering river channel takes a lot of time and slow-flowing water; we learned about those processes in high school or early in college, just to show how basic that knowledge is. But even if you want to try to challenge how long it takes to cut a meandering river channel, this does still reveal your basic assumption of no erosion until all the layers had been laid down to be completely wrong. And this one meandering river channel eroded into limestone is only one of many all over the world, though admittedly others may well have eroded into rock other than limestone.
I'm a Floodist, remember, I think in terms of a few thousand years, not millions, I would explain this deeply buried river as water running between the layers after they were laid down and before the rock was lithified. I see no problem with underground rivers creating meanders between the layers over time, SOME time but not millions of years of course, and if it's not cutting through hard limestone but through unlithified sediment there shouldn't be a problem with the time factor anyway.
Morton should NOT have had a problem with this. Obviously he'd already absorbed too many OE assumptions and really thought he was looking at a former time period rather than a simple mechanical fact.
And your claim that this supposedly reveals my "basic assumption of no erosion until all the layers had been laid down to be completely wrong" is wrong. Again, 1) this is no assumption, this is a conclusion drawn from observation of the facts I've described over and over again; and 2) of course this internal erosion of a limestone layer occurred between the layers after the entire stack was in place as explained above. It raises no problem for what I'm claiming is the order of things.
By the way you've publically described me as becoming hysterical in an email exchange with you thaqt occurred years ago without giving the slightest evidence for that. First, making an email exchange public in any way is not nice, and second, I don't recall being anything that could ever be described as hysterical. I believe you owe me either evidence, preferably by PM, or an apology.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 1001 of 1896 (715603)
01-07-2014 5:57 PM
Reply to: Message 972 by Atheos canadensis
01-05-2014 8:04 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
This is pretty evasive, Faith. One of your main points is that no erosion occurs between strata.
Not exactly. I put up the hoodoos to demonstrate the majority of cases where the strata are tightly built one upon another before being shaped by erosion.
But in general the point has been that no erosion shows between the layers ON THE SCALE NECESSARY TO SHOW THAT THE LAYER HAD ONCE BEEN ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH. There is NO erosion between the strata of the hoodoos, but where there is erosion in other places it's not on the necessary scale. Granted, an actual river should be counted as within that scale, though I'd be looking for hills and valleys and much more dramatic erosion than a river myself because of what I see currently on the surface of the earth, which is pretty ragged stuff, not nice flat surfaces.
But anyway, as you may see from my post in answer to dwise just now, I argue that the river in question DIDN'T occur on the surface anyway, but is merely water running between the layers of the strata, which started AFTER the strata were laid down.
Dwise has posted a seismograph showing just that. How is that a side issue? You say no erosion occurs between layers, he shows you evidence of this, you say it's irrelevant.
I was geared to ignoring anything that avoided the implications of the rock pancake stack, and his did in fact do that. But now I've answered it.
This is awfully suspicious. I still think you are lying to yourself when you claim that things like the meanders and the brooding dinosaur and the speleothems and the grain sorting (etc. etc.) are not relevant, but I would at least agree that they are not directly addressing your point that no erosion occurred between strata. But that seismograph is addressing exactly that!
Yes, but it was also evading the point which I made with the picture of the hoodoos, that the vast majority of the strata are stacked neatly one upon another with tight connections between them and NO erosion there, and THEN AS A WHOLE STACK they are cut and carved. The hoodoos SHOW that, but they are not the only example. The Southwest in particular is littered with examples of strata-built formations that were clearly cut after the strata were in place,. This is why I just threw up my hands when I saw him "proving" erosion between layers somewhere or other, which is merely a way of avoiding the point again.
HOWEVER, NOW I've answered him. I hope everybody is happy.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 972 by Atheos canadensis, posted 01-05-2014 8:04 PM Atheos canadensis has not replied

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 1004 of 1896 (715611)
01-07-2014 6:42 PM
Reply to: Message 1002 by Pollux
01-07-2014 6:10 PM


Re: Back to Basics: The Strata Speak but you aint listening
Faith, I don't know how many times it has been said the idea of the Earth being billions of years old is not an assumption. It is based on the accumulation of a great many facts before RM dating was able to put figures on it.
Pollux, I've read a fair amount in the history of geology and especially the concept of deep time starting with Hutton (read the biography of Hutton, The Man Who Found Time). You are wrong, it is NOT based on facts, it is based completely on subjective impressions and arguments. Hutton looked at a formation and decided it had to be millions of years old. He decided this subjectively, not objectively, not with any evidence but only his own inability to see how an angular unconformity could have been formed rapidly, ignoring the fact that the entire formation clearly exhibits identical weathering rather than the millions of years between the sections of it that he asserted had to be the case.
Here, tell me the upper originally horizontal strata are less weathered by millions of years than the lower vertical strata at Hutton's famous Siccar Point:
He proposed this and it finally got accepted and and it went from there, adding millions to millions as it went. All from subjective ponderings, not evidence.
The early geologists went out with YEC assumptions and found they could not be supported by what was seen.
They had a very BAD understanding of YEC principles in the early days, really really bad ideas of what kind of evidence the Flood would have left for instance. Much of their bad understanding needed to be corrected, just as much of the nutty creationist ideas in Darwin's time needed the corrections in Origin of Species. Nevertheless the theories that supplanted those early bad ideas are just as false. I find it easy to support today's YEC explanations from the actual observed facts myself.
Layers of rocks being dead flat with razor-sharp areas of contact do not refute all the other old age evidence.
If you had even the smidgen of grasp of the implications you might think otherwise as I do.
Have you ever tried to refute that which is in RAZD's correlations thread? Show that is wrong and then we will all become YEC.
I believe if you grasp my argument, RAZD's arguments will have to be rethought.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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