Why is evolution so controversial?

It's often pretty hard to tell what you're saying. This is you in Message 268: So which is it? They're still forming? They're forming but on a different scale? They stopped forming? You've said them all.In some parts of the world, those that are regions of net deposition, the geologic column is still gradually forming. In other parts of the world, those that are regions of net erosion, the geologic column is gradually disappearing.--Percy

Hi Faith,The only thing that is a joke is your comprehension skills. It's one thing to disagree with the explanation of geology, but you have to understand it first, and since you don't understand it you end up posting objections that make no sense.Yes, if all seafloor was subducted then there would be no geologic column, or at least a pretty short one. But as has been pointed out, seafloor occasionally becomes continent. This has been said many times, I just said it again in my message, and you quoted it.So how did you manage to miss it?Would you care to try again, this time not ignoring a key piece of information?--Percy

As long as the region around the Grand Canyon is higher than the surrounding regions, it will experience net erosion.But we live on a dynamic planet, and when comes a time that the Grand Canyon region is no longer higher than the surrounding regions then it will experience net deposition.You seem to think that there was a flood era during which the kind of deposition and erosion that could create a Grand Canyon and the geologic column could take place, and now that era is over and so the kind of deposition and erosion that created the geologic column no longer happens.But in geology the present is the key to the past. The same forces and processes active today were active in the past, and we can project what we see happening today into the past and figure out how the geologic layers and formations we see today were formed. All it takes for net erosion is elevation above the surrounding region, all it takes for net deposition is depression below the surrounding region. There's no such thing as a special kind of era that permits planet shaping erosion and deposition and where with its end such change ceases.Your flood is a silly, ridiculous idea. Scientifically a world-wide flood could never create the geology of our planet. You look at it and see "Flood" for no other reason than your religion demands it, and then you make up things this "Flood" could do that are scientifically impossible.--Percy

A centimeter per year can erode 3 miles in a half million years. For soil this is "normal everyday erosion," it's observed in many places all around the world. A hundredth of a centimeter per year can erode 3 miles in 50 million years, and this is "normal everyday erosion" for rock, also observed in many places all around the world. You're being idiotic to waste time denying the possibility of processes that we can actually see happening. Views like yours can only exist in a vacuum of ignorance. Your views ignore scores of simple facts. They not only deserve scorn, such overt and determined ignorance invites it. You're as dishonest and obvious as a used car dealer. Tectonic forces, uplift, subsidence and changing sea levels do not come into play only when Faith requires them, but rather when the evidence says they occurred. We have evidence for what we believe happened, you have none. Because what you believe never happened. Could you please take a break from your "You're misrepresenting what I said" stuff? You said it, I replied to it. Of course there's no net deposition in the region around the Grand Staircase - it's an uplifted region. How many times has this been explained to you? Why on earth do you think geology believes there should be more strata being deposited in an uplifted region? Can you not remember any geological fact that is actually true for more than a microsecond?Erosion and deposition are taking place everywhere all around the world. High regions experience net erosion, low regions net deposition. You can't be ignorant of simple facts like this and still hold views with any validity.And don't you dare accuse me of misrepresenting you. Display some integrity for once. Well, this is just incredibly vapid. You're denying decades of mountains of data from all around the world, including what can be seen with the naked eye. The oceans are greater in area than all the continents put together, an enormous scale, and all oceans are regions of net deposition.The deposition rate in remote ocean regions can be as low as 2-3 cm per thousand years, but after a hundred million years that still comes out to more than a mile. Deposition rates where there is a great deal of life or that are closer to continents are far, far higher, even as great as centimeters per year where rivers meet oceans. Sediment thickness off the Louisiana coast reaches 30,000 feet and more, and growing thicker all the time.Here's a map of the sediment thickness in the world's oceans (click to enlarge): In your silly flood scenario where the ocean basins only recently opened 4500 years ago you would need sedimentation rates of 20 cm/year just to get a mere 1000 meters of sediment thickness. To get the 20,000 meter thickness of some regions near continental coastlines would require 4 meters/year (13 feet/year). Nothing like that has ever been observed to happen on any consistent basis (certainly large storms and tsunamis can cause significant deposition events), and the evidence from oceanic cores says that the normal deposition rates we see today were also taking place in the past. See Larni's posts that included pictures of many cores. You can see that the layers from thousands of years ago are the same as layers from hundreds of years ago. Except that uniformitarian principles regarding the forces and processes in play in the past derive from evidence, while your views are made up. You are truly daft. That sediments collect in the lowest regions is not only scientifically established beyond any doubt, it's just common sense. Water and sediments always seek the lowest levels. At heart it's just gravity at work. About the only thing you're not terribly confused about is that new strata are not being deposited in the Grand Canyon region. Most of the layers in this region (and any region, actually) are marine layers. Marine regions dominate the planet, a truly massive scale. The Grand Canyon region was once sea bottom, and that's where its layers formed. Marine layers can only form on sea bottom. At some point in the past the Grand Canyon region was uplifted above sea level and now it is part of the North American continent. There's no evidence that a flood ever occurred, your ideas are full of impossibilities, your ignorance is on a vast scale, and your determination to maintain that ignorance seems to know no bounds.The science of geology, on the other hand, presents views that are fully supported by evidence.--Percy

How did all the marine sedimentary material come to cover the antediluvian land mass so it could be washed away?How did hundreds of millions of years of sedimentary deposits come to be anywhere on a landscape only a couple thousand years old?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Hi Faith,You seem to have somehow missed Message 373. Only you could find the term "marine sediments" ambiguous. That's "marine" as in "not land".In Message 359 you said: Most sedimentary layers are marine, so if the marine layers formed from material washing off of the land mass then most of the material on the land mass must have been marine. What is your evidence that most of the material on the antediluvian land mass was marine? What is your evidence that your flood scooped up material from the sea floor and deposited it on the land? What we actually observe about floods is that they wash material off the land and into the sea, not the other way around. If you think it did happen the other way around, what is your evidence? What is your evidence that all the sedimentary layers of the Earth were laid down within a year?If all the material in today's sedimentary layers originally resided on top of the antediluvian landscapes and seafloors, what is your evidence for how they came to be in their original location? There are millions and millions of cubic miles of silt and clay and limestone and shale and sandstone sedimentary layers out there today. At the rates we measure today it would have taken hundreds of millions of years to produce and deposit this much material. What evidence are you looking at that tells you how all this material was produced and deposited onto the antediluvian landscapes and seafloors in the couple thousand years between creation and the flood?I hope the answer you make up doesn't include material being deposited on land prior to the flood. To create deposits even just a mile deep they would have to accumulate at the rate of 2 to 3 feet per year over a period of two thousand years. Oh, those poor antediluvian farmers trying to keep the deposits from burying their homes and fields!--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar, improve clarity.

Perfection? I don't think so. This is just you again casting untrue aspersions.When deposited layers lie undisturbed until dated then radiometric dating is very straightforward and one can use a single simple method like K-Ar dating and be fairly confident in the date. If a layer hasn't lain undisturbed then dating becomes more difficult and more sophisticated dating techniques will have to be brought into play. Other factors can also make a layer difficult to date. This has been explained many times.What evidence do you have for a flood depositing sedimentary layers in order of isotopic concentrations that yield increasing younger dates in each succeeding layer? What evidence do you have of simple water having any influence whatsoever over isotopic concentrations?You don't even have any evidence of floods sorting by type of sedimentary material, let alone by isotope. In that case would you please describe the evidence you have that would cast doubt on the reliability of these methods? Science is always working toward a more and more accurate understanding of our universe, so increasingly our accuracy is evidence for the methods, not against.Maps of the world have also changed over time as techniques of measurement improved from stride lengths to measuring tapes to aerial observations to lasers to GPS, in the same way as radiometric dating techniques have improved, so by creationist logic one could say, "Columbus thought Japan was only 3000 miles west of Europe, and then we kept changing it. Measuring distances is completely unreliable and I don't take any claims regarding distance seriously. The distance form London to New York could be 10 miles or 10,000 miles, who knows." Your diagram is for a specific spot in the Grand Canyon. Do you see the Vulcan's Throne Basalts layer in your diagram? I've circled the layer portion here in an orangish yellow: See how that layer formed by a volcanic intrusion that you can see rising up vertically on the left side of the diagram? Well, the Cardenas Basalts intrusion that I've drawn a red square around also formed a layer, this one parallel to the Unkar Group. It was apparently eroded away in this particular section of the canyon but is present in other parts of the canyon. And the tilted intrusion, which was once vertical, is a column, not a plane. It does not extend into and out of the page like the layers do.Of course if the Unkar Group were never at the surface and so was never exposed to erosion then the Cardenas Basalts layer could never have eroded away, could it. In your creationist scenario the Cardenas Basalts intrusion shown on the diagram that just ends at the top of the Unkar Group could not possibly have ever happened. You couldn't possibly have buried layers that have eroded away at the spot where the vertical intrusion emerged to spread material over the existing layers, but be present at some distance from that spot.Time for more creationist magic, I guess. Well, then, there's a confirming test for your theory. Do you have any evidence that there is any rubble from the Grand Canyon Supergroup in the Vishnu Schist? Huge vistas of Vishnu Schist are visible in some parts of the canyon. If it is full of supergroup rubble then it should be very apparent. I don't know how everyone has missed it after all this time, but I guess if you say it's there then it must be there, right?Or are you just making things up again?--Percy

I agree that it's pointless to discuss with Faith, I have no excuse. Oh, wait, I'm doing it for the lurkers! Yeah, that's it, the lurkers! But she's not arguing that "Godidit." She's arguing that it happened naturally, obeying scientific laws. Of course, she thinks that scientific laws include magic water and magic rotating layers and so forth.--Percy

Of course they were once ocean floor. Since they're composed of the same type of marine sediments we see being deposited today on ocean floors, and since these marine sediments contain marine fossils, of course they were once ocean floor.But you have a different model: Most sedimentary layers are marine and they contain marine fossils. So please describe your evidence that these marine layers and fossils accumulated on land? You're making no sense. How can you believe that a land mass can be uplifted to be mountains, but that ocean floor can't be uplifted to be above sea level?In any event, it's more complicated than that, which is why I didn't provide any elaboration for how sea floor becomes continent, and I certainly wasn't so explicit as to say it occurs only through uplift. As has been described many times before, sea levels rise and fall. An ocean encroachment onto land during a period of elevated sea levels will leave behind marine layers on land. And land can be uplifted above sea level and can subside below it. And ocean floor can become part of a continent through accretion and other processes.These are all processes we observe happening today, and of course they also happened in the past. So when you talk about geology being made-up you're being particularly idiotic, because you're in effect denying that we can tell what is happening before our very eyes. But this is just another example of the extreme contradictory nature of your various claims. Mount Everest, uplift okay. Sea floor, uplift not okay. And not only not okay but yet another reason why modern geology is cuckoo. By what delusional mental episodes do you reach such absurd conclusions?--Percy

Statements like this are why people will continue to tell you that you know nothing about geology, along with barely concealed mumblings about your incredible and incredibly well maintained ignorance.Please try to follow this simple logic:

• Everywhere sediments are being deposited the geologic column is growing.
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• Sediments are being deposited on the ocean floor.
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• Therefore the geologic column on the ocean floor is growing.

Because sea floor eventually subducts into the mantle it has a limited lifetime. The oldest sea floor in the world is maybe 200 million years old, so the geologic column of sea floors will always be limited in extent and will never record more than the last 200 million years. You've already won the "most stupid comments this year" award, no need to continue.The topmost sedimentary layer in all oceans everywhere throughout the world are very recent, today in fact. Sedimentation upon all ocean sea floors everywhere is, to use your words, "building Recent Time periods on top of it." Faith, are you reading this thread or not? The only way you could make such an incredibly insipid comment is if you're not even reading this thread, because it has already been called to your attention several times that oceans are on a scale greater than the continents. The Pacific all by itself is greater in extent than the world's largest continent, and so its sedimentary layers must be greater in extent than the largest sedimentary layer on any continent. Again, are you even reading this thread? Here's the map of ocean sediment depth I posted back in Message 373: Click on the image to enlarge it, then note that the thickest oceanic sedimentary layers are 20 kilometers (12.4 miles).Faith, there's no need to keep repeating incredibly ignorant comments again and again. There's a way you could protect yourself against potential future commissions of stupidity: learn something. My God, how do you do it?Faith, the sedimentary layers we see in oceanic cores are the exact same ones we see in places like the Grand Canyon: sandstone, shale, limestone. Away from continental boundaries deposition is slow due to lack of sedimentary material, but close to the continental margins we see the exact same type of layers, namely sandstone, shale and limestone, that are so familiar at the Grand Canyon. Since every argument you used to reach this conclusion was dead wrong, the conclusion is dead wrong, too.Did you know that as you drill deeper and deeper ocean cores that the sedimentary layers eventually become sedimentary rock? Would you care to explain to us again your belief that there is a final stage of the lithification process that turns partly lithified rock into solid rock by drying? And how this happens beneath the sea floor?In reality, sedimentary layers become rock due to pressure, not drying. Your refusal to accept this is another reason why it is so apparent that you know so little about geology, and why it is likely to stay that way. You'll just go on rejecting one simple, obvious fact after another.--Percy

You've got this unbelievable talent for disbelieving the most obvious of facts. No wonder you don't know anything.The geologic column includes all the sedimentary layers right up to the present. Anything deposited on top of the geologic column adds to it.And life becomes buried in sedimentary layers forming today just like it did in the past. It won't turn into fossils for a long time, of course. You are a very strange person.As has been described to you many times, and as the layers of the Grand Canyon clearly show, deeply buried sedimentary layers have experienced erosion before today. This is more knowledge that you've rejected, but strangely your displays of idiocy have no impact on the facts.--Percy

It's something Faith believes. One can't help wondering where all the material the flood deposited to form the geologic column came from, and Faith's answer is that it washed off the antediluvian landscape. But most of the layers of the geological column are marine, and so the material of these marine layers, including their fossils, originally lay on land. Which of course makes no sense at all. I can include this distinction if you think it's important, but isn't Faith confused enough already? She doesn't even believe sedimentation in the ocean is contributing to the geologic column, so if I start distinguishing between ocean versus continental shelf sedimentation I can only imagine her confusion getting worse, though in what specific ways I couldn't possibly predict.I did make clear in one of my messages that sedimentary deposits near continental margins differ from those in mid-ocean. Right now I'm keeping it simple. If it's below sea level in the ocean then I'm calling it ocean floor. Again, Faith believes the material forming the layers of the geologic column was originally washed off the antediluvian landscape. Even though you put "land" in quotes, I'm sure when Faith read that she thought you were saying most of these layers were deposited on dry land and that you're pretty much taking her side.I do value being clear and accurate, but this is Faith we're talking about, and given Faith's level of ignorance and resistance to knowledge (e.g., she rejects repeated sea transgressions onto continents) I'm afraid that if I start saying the layers were deposited onto submerged portions of continents that she'll just get more confused. I'm open to suggestions for expressing it in ways that won't increase Faith's confusion.--Percy

So concerning the 12 mile thick layers in the Gulf of Mexico and off Long Island Sound and in various other places around the world, you're telling us that you don't believe they represent the geologic column in their respective parts of the world over the past hundred million years or so?Faith, you're not discussing, you're testifying. You're making statements of faith that are in no way tied to evidence, and you're even rejecting the application of simple terminology like the "geologic column" to cases where it clearly and unambiguously applies.You know, I think we're all okay with you not accepting the views of modern geology, with you believing they are wrong. What ticks everyone off is the great effort you make at insuring you don't even understand those views.What you need to do now is make an effort at understanding that modern geology views the layers on the sea floors all around the world to be part of the geologic column, and that the geologic column is growing in some places and being eroded in others. You don't have to accept this view yourself, but you do have to understand it (and many other things) in order to have an intelligent conversation. And then you have to develop arguments supported by evidence for why they're wrong. Just repeatedly declaring them wrong is testifying. It's religion, not science.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Actually, Dr A represented your views pretty accurately. For example, you do believe that God is responsible for the flood, as you stated here in Message 31, and which Dr A also quoted: You do have this tendency to get uppity whenever someone reminds you of what you've said in other threads. Why do you so often retreat from your own words? They certainly aren't taken out of context, as you just accused Dr A of doing, and they *do* accurately reflect your views, so what's the problem?And you do believe in magic water. You might not call it that yourself, but you've got to stop objecting every time people use different words than you would use. We know you don't call it magic water, but you believe water has properties that it clearly doesn't have, properties that one might only expect to find in a fantasy novel, and so magic water is the perfect term.And Dr A was also correct in stating that you don't know anything about geology. Your behavior here perfectly explains why that is: you reject geological views without understanding them.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Have you been drinking?This general complaint just won't do. You were not making "original observations." Rather, you were being dead wrong over and over, and I explained precisely where you were wrong and how. If you disagree post another reply to my Message 421 where you're specific about where you disagree and how.--Percy