Summations Only

You didn't ask Faith "for her scientific procedure to determine depositional environments." You asked, "Put in the field with rocks you know nothing about what is the first thing you do?" In other words, you asked if we could tell what we were looking at were we out in the field instead of getting our information off the Internet or from books. The answer is no, that's why most people here get their information from geologists who have written things down, often with handy pictures and diagrams.If you think someone has provided incorrect information then I think that person would appreciate being corrected, including me. I think most people's goal here is to get things right, preferably the first time, but if not then at least in the end.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

That's all a bunch of interpretive speculative blah-blah really. And what I said about a GENERAL principle remains true. Besides which,
the karstification that occurs at the top of the limestone, ignoring all the claims of millions of years and all that of course, was most likely created by the water runoff between it and the layer above. There is no need for it to have been on the surface, and certainly no need for any millions of years to form it.Pictures that show the holes formed in limestone often show them in deeply buried strata that have been exposed as in the GC, and diagrams of sink holes due to karsts show them forming well above the void created by the karst in the deep limestone layer. I looked all this up when you first brought it up. There is no reason to think the layer had to be at the surface to form these caves.In fact if they HAD formed at the surface they'd have been filled in by the next sediment to deposit and therefore not so likely to be the cause of sinkholes anyway.The layers were all laid down and then the karsts formed afterward as did all the other kinds of erosion and disturbance to the layers.The picture I put up of erosion was to demonstrate the KIND of erosion I expected to see between layers, as opposed to the usual bit of rubble that passes for erosion, not the size of it. Karstification is something else in any case.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Not always but also certainly it happens sometimes, and other views of this channel in different parts of the canyon wall look different. Certainly the bottom portions of riverbeds can be shaped like this and upper banks could have been eroded away with the top of the Temple Butte Formation.And it's not me, Faith, but a geologist that made the colorized picture along the delineation between the formation -- a delineation that is not invented nor imagined but one that can readily be identified in the field. Of course that means going there and getting within arms reach to see clearly the difference between two rocks.The rest of your post is an amusing attempt by you to make up something on the spot to explain this formation. It would be hysterical if it were not pathetic at the same time. This is you time and again saying that you can't explain it by your model but you don't think it is a problem for your model: the epitome of turning a blind eye to the evidence that time and again shows your fantasy to be wrong.If we took all the times you have said this on this thread alone it would make for a long post, yet you blunder on sure that you can invent some other magic behavior that defies gravity, hydrology, geology and reason. There is an obvious unconformity at the top and bottom of the Temple Butte Formation and the top of the Muav formation -- you can see it clearly in these pictures. This is an unconformity that makes your limestone cave concept insufficient as an explanation, and this is an unconformity that proves your piles of pancake layers fantasy is wrong. Just like the meandering stream shown by the Temple Butte formation ...Yes that nasty Temple Butte unconformity shows that your fantasy is false ... But you will pretend that it isn't relevant, not important, don't look behind the curtain ... you'll get around to making up some impossible scenario for it ...But you are only fooling yourself.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : ...Edited by RAZD, : ...

Oh Dear, RAZD.
All that work you've put in here, in your correlations thread, in the debate with mindspawn, all thrown over by a glance at the GC. Such is the way Science works. We had better admit defeat and meekly roll over.

I honestly have NO idea what on earth you think you are saying and most of your post is just the usual accusations and abusive remarks in any case.That half moon shape carved in limestone and filled in with limestone just does NOT suggest a riverbed, sorry.And what IS your point about a supposed unconformity? I have NO clue what your point is about any of this. The picture looks like a heavily eroded limestone layer half collapsed on another one. And this is supposed to be a problem for the Flood HOW?Also, I just about NEVER say what I said about not knowing how to interpret something, so your claim I say such things "time and time again" is a lie.

Good idea. Only it would be better if you actually UNDERSTOOD the point I'm trying to make first.

Try understanding the point Pollux was making first. You have cited one book and claimed that it was all imagination so therefore all methods of measuring age are imaginary. This is bad logic even for you.But I bet you will never take the challenge to discuss age on that thread and that in the unlikely event you do, that you will quickly make some excuse to leave ... Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1In case you want to try. Or perhaps you would like to take up where mindspawn left off ... Great debate: radiocarbon dating, Mindspawn and Coyote/RAZDor where S1WC left off ... Age of the Earth in Stages, Great Debate, S1WC and RAZD onlyOr I can start another thread just for you.Curious that creationists just seem to disappear when confronted with this evidence.It starts with a tree in the Sierra Nevadas in California that is 5,063 years old and still living, with dead trees still standing that are over 7,000 years old, and with a Bristlecone pine dendrochronology that extends to 6,700 BCE for starters. Simply by counting tree rings, one year at a time. Objective empirical data.The earth is old Faith, very very old: get used to it.Enjoy

Of course you have to pretend that. But surely even you must admit that the erosional features must in fact be very large in order for there to be something to speculate about. In order for someone to "speculate" that something is a large paleovalley, it must, in fact, be large. Uh, no. 'Cos you said the erosional features were small when they're large. That's the opposite of being true, just like small is the opposite of large. Now, we discussed why this is impossible, didn't we?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yet it matches your example for the kind of disturbance that you said should be observable. Yet it is still top and bottom an unconformity in the layers showing erosion of the layers. Quite simply that you are wrong. You asked for evidence of erosion, and then deny evidence when it is provided. You state that there are no unconformities above the supergroup, and then deny evidence when it is provided.There is another unconformity at the Surprise Canyon Formation that also shows evidence of erosion between layers. That's on top of the Redwall formation.That's erosional unconformities

1. on the top of the Muav formation
2. on the top of the Temple Butte formation
3. on the top of the Redwall formation, and
4. on the top of the Surprise Canyon formation

But you will deny it and curl up in your armchair and say you can't see it so therefore it doesn't exist.You are blinded by belief in fantasy ... by your choice.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : .

We can observe real processes depositing sand in exactly this form, so it's not a problem for real geology. On the other hand, no-one has ever observed imaginary magical processes depositing sand in such a form, so they may constitute a problem for imaginary magical geology.Just to remind you, here's a photograph of a real non-magical thing that actually exists. Do you have any photographs of made-up magical things that don't actually exist?

RAZD, you just aren't getting the Grand picture, if you'll pardon the pun.The evidence does not matter to Faith and her brethren.They have a specific belief system that has no necessary relationship to reality, and they are not going to change that belief for anything. Even reality.They will deny, obfuscate, misrepresent, and ignore any evidence that does not conform to their belief system. For scientists, facts are stubborn little things that have to be accounted for and explained. Not so with religious extremists. If facts don't fit their belief system, away with them!Watching and participating in these debates has been a learning experience for me. A very scary one.I can see now how short a distance it is from denying reality to support one's beliefs, to being willing to die for one's beliefs, to finally be willing to kill to enforce one's beliefs.Maybe Lennon was right.

Oh I get it. it. it...Some people think a great flood
covered the whole world with mud
pretending to know all
they tried hard to show all
but it was just another big dud.

I would like to reply to your posts, but it will take me a bit. I am back to work now (vacation was way too short) and I have to keep up on my running if I'm going to make 500 miles by the end of this year.But I will try to hit some main points:1. We know the sand is being deposited because it exists as a concentration of sand. As long as sand is being picked up by the wind and dropped on the dunes, it is being deposited.2. Not sure what the source of the sand is as I have not had time to look it up. All I know is that if comes from the Northeastern part of Africa and is being transported by winds towards the Southwest.3. The Sahara may or may not become rock in the future. It really just depends on whether it gets preserved. All the sand could completely blow away before it ever gets buried enough to lithify. Parts of the desert to the south have apparently been vegetated, and this would serve to improve its chances of preservation. The deeper and thicker the dune sedimentation, the better the chance of partial or total preservation.Sand dunes will not become a rock pancake, unless you mean "stratigraphic horizon." They will retain their internal wind-blown, cross-bedded structure, and extend only as far as what has been deposited. If the sea were to come into contact with the dunes as they exist right now, the sand would be re-worked where the water came into contact with the sand and all internal cross-bedding structure would get wiped out and the surface "flattened" by the action of the waves.The upper-most part of the dune would become beach sands first, but perhaps the dunes are 200 feet deep? If so, the deeper portions of the dunes would not be affected by the rising sea and therefore not reworked, but preserved and eventually overlain by beach sands, shale, or carbonate rocks.As the sea continues to rise, the water will deepen, and more and more marine sediment will be deposit atop the dunes. And when the sea retreats, its own wave action will eventually erode its way back through the most recently deposited marine sediments.But because the marine seds reached a depth of 500 feet, not all the marine seds will be eroded away. At that point, you have encroachment of continental sedimentation (maybe the sand dunes) atop the marine sediments. And voila! A stack of sedimentary layers.The waters have fallen and risen during the last few thousand years, so we know and can SEE that this is not impossible.4. We see deposition today, so I'm not sure why you think it's impossible. It's all around you. The mountains are being eroded and the valleys are being filled. Talus piles are depositing, rivers are eroding banks and depositing sand bars, the ocean is precipitating carbonate, depositing muds (shale), and eroding beaches.5. In the Southwest near Zion, all those lithified dunes are currently breaking down into sand, which is being re-worked into new sand dunes. The sand for the dunes could have come from anywhere. Beach sands, other dunes, mountains, lakes, and so on. So yes. The sand could have come from the ocean.Edited by roxrkool, : Bad grammar and poor writing.

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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.

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You can declare the truth to be wrong all you like, but that wont chage the facts.

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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.

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Is this actually true, or another fiction like your "erosional belts" ?Also see post Message 210 for reasons why Hutton was right about Siccar Point. Of course you ignored it the first time around.

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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

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Simple question: Under the views of mainstream geology, how long have the visible surfaces in your photograph been exposed to weathering ? Show your working.However, I will note that the upper strata certainly appear to be more heavily eroded. So I have to ask how you judge the degree of weathering, too.

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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.

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I think you mean that the early geologists weren't nutty enough given some of the ideas that you've put forward. And certainly you've had great problems honestly supporting your ideas in this thread. I suppose it is easy ignore evidence (and demand others to ignore it) and to make up silly speculations - easier than actually caring about the truth. Coming to conclusions based on prejudice is much easier than following evidence and reason. And we know that you do that.

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I believe if you grasp my argument, RAZD's arguments will have to be rethought.

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Well that's obviously false. The evidence that RAZD uses is untouched by your argument and it still needs to be explained. Just as the order in the fossil record needs to be explained, and not dismissed with silly ideas about mechanical sorting (one of the daftest ideas I've seen from any creationist - even mainstream YECs know that that isn't viable).

The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood is an excellent general audience but pretty accurate history of early geology with lots of details about why deep time was known before Hutton. After all, Steno preceded him. On Siccar Point:

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THIRTY MILES EAST OF Edinburgh lies Siccar Point, a holy site of sorts. The farmer whose fields surround it is said to complain about an endless stream of geologists trampling his turnips. Rock hounds plague this windswept headland because it’s celebrated as the place where Scottish farmer James Hutton discovered geologic time ” the place he found the key to unlocking time enough for geological forces to reshape the world. Tucked in along the rocky shore below the turnips are the clear signs of two rounds of mountain building, erosion, and deposition recorded in two sandstones, one gray and the other red.

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On a rare sunny Scottish day six of us pulled up at the trailhead and parked just out of view from the farm. We skirted the fields and walked toward the sea cliff, passing by the ruins of a crumbling building amid glowing yellow gorse bushes. I could see striking beds of red sandstone diving down toward the sea to the west. To the east lay planed-off vertical beds of gray sandstone exposed along the shore. Walking out to the headland, we stood above where the two rock formations should meet before starting down a steep grass-covered slope pitching off to the surf below.

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At the bottom lay a jewel of an outcrop. The two rock formations sat there just as textbooks showed. Here, in front of me, were the rocks that helped inspire geology’s core concept of deep time, that the world is billions of years old. Over lunch I read the story in the rocks, laid out plain as day.

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The older gray sandstone formed as debris eroded off an ancient upland and settled to the bed of an adjacent sea until the sand eventually lay buried deep enough that heat and pressure turned it into solid rock. Then, something caused the rocks to buckle, lifting them back above sea level and tipping them into their now vertical orientation. Gazing along the shore, I could see how the contact between the two sandstones defined the surface of an ancient valley carved into the gray sandstone. As this new land sank back down beneath the waves of an ancient sea, red sand settled on top, eventually accumulating into enough of a pile to turn it, too, into bona fide rock. After all that, another round of tilting and uplift brought the works back to the surface, where waves peeled the cliff back to expose a low shelf of red sandstone dipping out to sea at a jaunty angle and truncating the underlying vertical beds of gray sandstone. Hutton’s unconformity at Siccar Point showing the inclined beds of the Silurian Old Red Sandstone truncating vertical beds of Devonian graywacke sandstone (by Alan Witschonke based on a photograph by the author).

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When Hutton discovered this outcrop in 1788, it confirmed his suspicion that mountains could be recycled into sand and remade into new rock. I had the advantage of having my colleagues from the University of Edinburgh explain how the gray rock, four-to-eight-inch-thick beds of sandstone separated by thin layers of mudstone, recorded erosion of the mountains that formed the geologic suture from the closing of the ancestral Atlantic Ocean. This collision united England and Scotland 425 million years ago during the Silurian Period, several hundred million years before the days of the dinosaurs. The upper formation, the Old Red Sandstone, formed when the younger Caledonian mountains eroded 345 million years ago in the Devonian Period, with the resulting sand deposited in what is now modern Scotland. The other half of the sandstone derived from erosion of the Caledonian mountains lies across the Atlantic, in New England, as the Catskill Formation in New York and Maine. The present far-flung distribution of the two halves of the red sandstone records the reopening of the Atlantic Ocean well after the life and death of the mountains testified to by the rocks themselves.

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Although I’m well versed in thinking about geologic time, I still have a hard time grasping how long it must have taken to raise and erode a mountain range, deposit the resulting sand in the sea, fold up the seabed into another mountain range, and then erode it all back into a new ocean. Siccar Point stands as a natural monument to the unimaginable expanse of time required to account for geologic events.

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Some good pictures and discussion of the area around the point at The making of an angular unconformity: Hutton’s unconformity at Siccar Point