The problem is when you have a stack of strata and you claim a different depositional environment for each layer based on its contents, as if the environment had changed from one level to the next. THAT's what makes no sense. I do expect a rational person simply to see why it doesn't make sense, and beyond that I don't know how to prove that it doesn't, so since you won't see why it doesn't there is probably nowhere to go with this from here.
The problem is you are trying to cram everything into a few hundred years, or less, when it actually took a few millions to many millions of years.
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?--Robert A. Heinlein
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"Multiculturalism" does not include the American culture. That is what it is against.
Yes, I kind of included them with dessication to keep things simple. However, I think that most of the time evaporation in a restricted basin is necessary to generate the salinity differences.
Glenn MOrton makes a good point in showing how they do not propagate from layer to layer, which indicates a sequential deposition and not some kind of post depositional origin that Faith seems to favor.
But YOUR problem is that you are spreading everything out to millions of years that really only took thousands. But even if it took millions, the idea of depositional environments becoming stacked one on top of another identifiable by different kinds of rock is nuts. Wny isn't this obvious and why can't I say why it's nuts? Is our present time going to be compressed down to a few indicators buried in a particular kind of rock? Do you really believe that? If nothing else think of what would have to be left out, and yet nobody minds saying a former "environment" was "oxygen-deprived" simply because the only life forms that got preserved in the fossil record were snails and something else. Isn't that insanity?
And (drum roll please) we are back to Walther's Law!
The problem is when you have a stack of strata and you claim a different depositional environment for each layer based on its contents, as if the environment had changed from one level to the next. THAT's what makes no sense.
It's an amazing comeback to the topic's original message 1 theme!
In message 1, I was trying to show how deposits of lateral environments are also shown in the vertical sequence when environments shift in a sea transgression.
Let's put it this way: If you have silt along the Nile then that's its depositional environment, no problem.
Now I don't offhand recall where I read it (or if it made it into this topic), so I'm going to commit the crime of not having a reference. But when Walther was formulating his law, he was looking at river sediments.
Even in the river environment, there are sub-environments. The most prominent different sub-environments are channel deposits vs. point bar deposits vs. floodplain deposits. At any given time the flood plain is lateral to the channel. When the river channel meanders, you then get floodplain sediments on top of point bar deposits on top of channel deposits. Or if the entire river basin is building up, then you might get the opposite vertical sequence.
You're fond of saying that ideas you don't like are "nuts" or that any rational person would reject them. But you never provide any rational reason for doing so.
Why for instance would anyone reject the idea that sediments take time to deposit ? It seems obviously true to me. But once we accept that then it is obvious that there is a sense in which the sediment bed represents the period of time during which it was deposited. But you disagree ? Why ?
Wny isn't this obvious and why can't I say why it's nuts? Is our present time going to be compressed down to a few indicators buried in a particular kind of rock? Do you really believe that? If nothing else think of what would have to be left out, and yet nobody minds saying a former "environment" was "oxygen-deprived" simply because the only life forms that got preserved in the fossil record were snails and something else. Isn't that insanity?
I think you would find that it's all a bit more complex than that. I find it odd that you have accepted Walther's Law, but now reject stacked environments.
1) I thought some of the layers of the Geologic Column were considered by standard Geology to never have become surface but were always under water, so that the next layer deposited on it under water. Yes/No/Which? That's one question.
Very possible, but to me the surface would also include the bottom of the ocean. The depositional surface is the surface. We might go from one formation to the other continuously or there may be an interruption. Personally, I think that there is more time represented by the interval between layers than within the layers themselves.
2) Another is if you are seeing the cracks in exposed surfaces, as in the walls of a well, how do you know when the cracks formed? (Unfortunately that is one of the many pictures on that page that I'm unable to see on my computer for some reason).
The question is, how did the cracks form? Certainly we know what cracks look like in dried mud, for instance. The key is dessication. That doesn't happen under water except under unusual conditions, and it doesn't happen with burial compaction.... So, what is your alternative?
Let's put it this way: If you have silt along the Nile then that's its depositional environment, no problem. The problem is when you have a stack of strata and you claim a different depositional environment for each layer based on its contents, as if the environment had changed from one level to the next. THAT's what makes no sense. I do expect a rational person simply to see why it doesn't make sense, and beyond that I don't know how to prove that it doesn't, so since you won't see why it doesn't there is probably nowhere to go with this from here.
But a rational person can see all the examples of environment changing at a given location over time. Not very long ago much of the Sahara was verdant with folk living there hunting and fishing and growing crops and the Sahara itself turned in to a lush Savanna. And this was only about 6000 years before either of the Biblical Floods were supposed to have happened.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
I think you would find that it's all a bit more complex than that. I find it odd that you have accepted Walther's Law, but now reject stacked environments.
Well, yes, precisely, there's that contradiction, but Faith doesn't understand Walther's Law. She still thinks that a flood's incursion onto land deposits sedimentary layers following Walther's Law.
But even if it took millions, the idea of depositional environments becoming stacked one on top of another identifiable by different kinds of rock is nuts. Wny isn't this obvious and why can't I say why it's nuts?
You can say it's nuts if you like, but try another example first. Let's imagine that the Nile had a big flood in 1960, leaving a couple of feet of mud and silt along its banks. This sediment dried out, and then, in 1966 and 1967, big sandstorms covered the it with desert sand. A big flood in 1968 then laid more mud over the sand. The Aswan High Dam was finished in 1970, and stopped the floods, and sandstorms since then laid more sand on top of that second silt layer.
Is it "nuts" to say that you could not tell the sands from the silts if you took a shovel and dug a hole through this (short) stack? I think I could do it.
Very possible, but to me the surface would also include the bottom of the ocean.
I used the term "surface" in the sense of "surface of the earth" meaning in the air, above water. The context is dessication of the surface of the rock, which would have required being at the surface of the earth. It wouldn't dry out under water.
2) Another is if you are seeing the cracks in exposed surfaces, as in the walls of a well, how do you know when the cracks formed? (Unfortunately that is one of the many pictures on that page that I'm unable to see on my computer for some reason).
The question is, how did the cracks form? Certainly we know what cracks look like in dried mud, for instance. The key is dessication. That doesn't happen under water except under unusual conditions, and it doesn't happen with burial compaction.... So, what is your alternative?
No, that wasn't the question I asked. My question was how you know WHEN the cracks occurred that are exposed in the walls of a well. Since they are exposed to air, that is, how is it possible to determine their age?
No, that wasn't the question I asked. My question was how you know WHEN the cracks occurred that are exposed in the walls of a well. Since they are exposed to air, that is, how is it possible to determine their age?
By comparison with known occurrences of dessication that we can see today. For instance, in volcanic rocks we know that cracks occur upon cooling. We know that mud develops cracks upon drying. Do you have another way of producing cracks like these?
ABE: Do you understand what I'm getting at here? The fact that cracks form upon drying is evidence that cracks in ancient rocks also formed that way.
Calling the idea of stacked depositional environments "nuts" isn't really how I'd prefer to say it, I'd rather be able to say what I mean more articulately, it's just that I keep being thrown by what seems to me to be a strange irrationality and unable to say exactly why it hits me that way, though I do give the reasons I have. So I know it's inadequate to say the least but I am left with just hoping someone might grasp what I'm alluding to.
It isn't about LOCAL layering or even local "depositional environments," it all comes down to the Geologic Column which purports to represent long long ages on this planet by slabs of rock, flat slabs of rock. TIME as measured by flat slabs of rock. A different kind of rock per era. And their different fossil contents that supposedly tell us what a particular time period was like, what the climate was, what creatures lived then. This is what hits me as nuts and hits me that way every time it crosses my mind. Every time I think about the stack of rocks exposed in the walls of the Grand Canyon for instance. Not a local event but the entire world, not a trackable time period in the present that goes from local flooding that deposits silts to wind blowing sand in from the desert, but unknown and unknowable time periods of the prehistoric past compressed into flat slabs of rock. The idea keeps astonishing me.
Walther's Law is interesting because it gives a purely mechanical model for the separation and layering of different sediments by water. Most previous EvC discussions of the layering, such as in the Grand Canyon, pictured separate sediments laid down in water, not all but most anyway, without any reason for why one followed another, just that that's the kind of sediment that happened to be there at that time. It's been clear nevertheless that water does layer sediments, as in river deltas, but it made it all the more explanatory to have this model of how transgressing and regressing sea water actually does it, and Moose's river example helps as well. Now some say it couldn't explain deposition by the water of a worldwide Flood but to me it still seems precisely suited to that situation. That's not my point here though.
What I keep trying to say with the nutty word "nuts" is something about how the purely mechanical laying down of sediments by water becomes Time Periods. Whole eras of time on this planet compressed into these slabs of rock. All I can say is it’s nuts, I don’t know how to say it better than that.
And then there is that point I tried to make some time back about how it appears that the Geologic Column has actually come to an end, and everybody got all exercised about that and claimed that it’s continuing at the bottom of the oceans. Well, think about what the Geologic Column IS, look at those diagrams for instance, such as
Sure looks like a done deal and after you all answer that it's continuing at the bottom of the ocean it's even clearer that it's a done deal.
Think about the fact that the Grand Canyon is a done deal, it’s been cut, its record of past time periods is at an end. Add to it the record of the Grand Staircase whose layers were originally continuous with those of the Grand Canyon, just one deep block of strata about three miles deep before the Great Erosion in recent time that formed the cliffs and the canyons and all that. There may have been some layers above the uppermost layer there now, but that would be the end of it forever. An amazingly complete record of all the supposed Time Periods is in that three mile stack but there will never be another layer added to it.
No, now we’re supposed to look to the bottom of the ocean for the continuation of the Geologic Column although there is no way the fossil record that has supposedly been climbing the ladder of evolution is going to continue the climb at the bottom of the ocean.
So what happens to the fact that the known Geologic Column supposedly represents all the time periods the planet has gone through with its sequence of climate changes and varieties of flora and fauna that supposedly all evolved up the stack during all those supposed time periods? What happens to that if it is now located at the bottom of the sea? It’s essentially come to an end, the very model of Evolution itself has come to an end and nobody thinks that’s a big deal?
Well, there's a hodgepodge post for you. Hope it conveys something I'm trying to convey although I know I'm not really getting it said.
ABE: Sorry about the huge size of the images I post. It's good for showing the details but I'd rather post them smaller, and clickable for zooming, but I don't know how. That's just how they come from Photobucket.
ABE: Trying to adjust the image according to Percy's instructions. I can get the main image smaller but now it zooms way too big. Oh well.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Edited by Faith, : bunch of edits trying to adjust the image
Of course I get it, the problem for the Flood is how the cracks occurred on the surface of separate layers if they were not exposed to the air during the deposition of the entire stack. I've been thinking about it. First question I had was how the Old Earth system explains it if some of those layers never saw the light of day as it were.
The Grand Canyon wasn't where it is now when the layers were being deposited. The plate that it sits on has been moving around on the planet and being subjected to all kinds of different environmental conditions throughout the whole process.
Here's an animation on plate tectonics that show how much movement has been going on:
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