Growing the Geologic Column

I've answered your accusation many times coyote. There are still people n the world whose "ears to hear" can be opened. I was as blind and deaf as all of you once. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

The attitude I'm talking about is in the post I was responding to. Good grief.But also in sarcastic remarks you've made that align yourself with the opposition here. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

If I didn't occasionally run into sane people in this world, EvC could do me in. You (collective) can't read, you can't think, you can't understand the simplest communication, you go for the least likely interpretation of almost any subject, you prefer the most twisted upside-down view to anything sensible. EvC is just a little backwater part of the internet but unfortunately it is a microcosm of the craziest views that are gaining ground in the world, which I think is what the Bible calls the Great Delusion that's coming on the earth in the last days, and a place to find out that it's impervious to sanity and reason. Why a SCIENCE website? Well that's a puzzle but there it is. A place where good is evil and evil is good and white is black and black is white and bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter and sanity is insanity and insanity is sanity and rationality is irrationality and irrationality is rationality and up is down and down is up ...

I would have thought scientists were thinkers who could get some things right, but the problem seems to be that we're in a time when it takes God and if you've rejected God you can't think straight. I'm not special, I'm no genius, but I find that most of the people who can think straight any more just happen to be those who trust the Bible as God's word. Most of the Christians who come on to EvC compromise the Bible in one way or another. And of course you laugh at those who take it seriously anyway. But that's the only source of truth there is in the end. Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

For angular unconformities you don't have any evidence either for how they formed, it's all theory or interpretation, and pretty wild fantastic stuff too.

Sure, if you really believe the faults had to go to the top of whatever layer was the topmost at the supposed time they occurred. I can't prove otherwise of course, but there's no necessary reason to believe that. For this example, though, it looks that way. I just wouldn't be dogmatic about it if I were you. And there are faults to the right of that one that go all the way from the bottom to the top, that is to the Base Tertiary, which shows that all the layers were in place when those faults occurred, and there's nothing there to show that the one you mention was earlier except its shortness, which probably doesn't mean that. Not at all, not when you can see the same layers those faults cut through continuing on across the formation where other faults cut through not only those layers but all those above, which would of course have to have happened after the faulting on the right as you are thinking of it, but there is really nothing to prove that was the order of things. The fault just to the left of that section of strata that lies beneath the Late Jurassic Shelf Edge, occurred with the pushing up of that whole section, leaving the very same strata on the left lower in the stack. That's all that happened there. All the strata were already in place at that time. Probably also the Base tertiary but of course that can't be proved based on the fault lines. Well you're good at the OE fairy tale, I'll give you that. Of course there were no millions of years, no eroded layers of an imaginary unconformity, just all the strata laid down in sequence and faulted and deformed according to whatever forces acted upon various parts of it.A NOTE ON INTERPRETIVE VERSUS PRACTICAL GEOLOGY
Now, all this is a perfect example of what I'd been calling "historical Geology" that is all nothing but unprovable untestable interpretations. I'm calling it Old Earthism now because that other term apparently includes more than I want to include. But the principle is quite clear. You've got the whole OE interpretive system going there without any way to verify it. Using the very same data I just answer with my own interpretive system which I think is a lot more plausible. For the purposes of Practical Geology none of this should matter, just the positions of the rocks relative to each other. If the Base tertiary was laid down before the faulting or after doesn't matter, all that matters for practical purposes is where the rocks are now.

This is all interpretive stuff. You have no more support than I do for your interpretation.

All the strata were originally flat and horizontal.

Maybe I'll get back to your post later, but I just have to point out that the evidence I see on that diagram is that the Albian could NOT have been deposited after the tectonic activity because it too is affected by it. If it had been deposited afterward its surface would have been level with respect to the layer it deposited on, but as you can see its shape conforms for the most part to the surfaces of those below. And really, the Base tertiary should show some signs of having originally had a horizontal surface as well if it was deposited after all the others were subjected to the faulting. I don't see any sign of that myself. Obviously the salt dome has pushed it up though, so that occurred after the layer was there.And along this same line of thinking, to Percy in particular, anywhere in the stack you claim that deposition occurred after the faulting you should be able to show that it deposited horizontally there too. But although the strata get shifted a lot by the faults a basic parallel pattern between them is maintained for at least the upper half of the whole area.I wonder what that lower layer is composed of, the one with the wavy lines top and bottom that maintains its straightness? The one that the salt has collected above.Guess I should include the diagram here too: 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.

Show us a picture of an angular unconformity forming today.

I don't think you got what I was trying to say. Which was that layers deposited above and after the tectonic distortion should be horizontal on their surface, since sediments deposit horizontally, but they aren't, they conform to the surface shape of the lower rocks. If they were deposited later and then deformed later as well they also wouldn't conform to the shape of the lower rocks, they would have their own pattern of deformation independent of them. But the Albian for one, except at the far left, keeps parallel to the shape of the lower rocks all the way to the far right. Why doesn't it have a flat horizontal surface, or at least a surface deformed differently from the rocks below it? It isn't just a matter of degree of deformation as you are saying, it's also a matter that the deformation maintains a mostly parallel form when a layer laid down later should have its own different pattern of deformation.And I was also suggesting that it is probably true of the Base tertiary as well: I've already noted that the faults do not penetrate into that layer, which is of course an argument that it was laid down afterward, but an argument that contradicts that is the lack of a horizontal surface which shows that it was deformed right along with all the rest of them even if the faults don't go all the way through. I also noted that the salt dome does penetrate through it, even raising its surface, showing at least that that part of the deforming forces came later.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So you send samples for radiometric testing?

I dunno edge, you really think soil piling on top of a folded block of layers is going to end up as an angular unconformity? The upper section at Siccar Point looks like a separate flat layer altogether, perched straight across the tilted rocks, but wouldn't the soil in the present example penetrate into the crevices instead of forming a layer with flat surfaces? Same I'd guess with the valley and ridge situation. Eroded I guess but flat enough so that a layer as flat as those in say the Grand Canyon would form over it? As flat as that jutting Tapeats ledge we can see in some of the photos of the Great Unconformity? (Actually I don't see how that very flat Tapeats could have laid itself down on the supposedly eroded surface that would have been left in the accepted scenario either: the scenario that has the unconformity being the base of a mountain range that then eroded all the way down, supposedly flat enough for the other layers to deposit beginning with the Tapeats, but how flat could that be? )Also, maybe I got this wrong but I thought I just read you saying somewhere in these recent posts that there is no erosion between upper and lower sections of an angular unconformity? If I find it and got it wrong I'll come back and correct this. But shouldn't there be erosion if the lower part is eroded down before the upper is deposited? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : spelling crevice error

I just supposed that in the case you described of having two intrusive rocks whose age you didn't know that's what you would have to do. Is there another way to determine it?

Which doesn't seem to have anything whatever to do with what I said. If sediments deposit horizontally then their upper surface should not conform to the shape of the lower rocks. I must be missing it because I don't get why you are emphasizing it. What you are talking about is something entirely different from what I am talking about and I don't know what you are getting at. Again, if sediments deposit horizontally then any that deposited after the lower layers were deformed should have horizontal surfaces, and if those too eventually get deformed, at least their upper surface should not follow the shape of the lower rocks. Am I not getting this across?Wherever there is parallel structure that means that whole block was already laid down horizontally as a block and then deformed as a block. So where this occurs it contradicts the interpretation that the deformation occurred before the next layer was laid down. [qs] But the Albian for one, except at the far left, keeps parallel to the shape of the lower rocks all the way to the far right. Why doesn't it have a flat horizontal surface, or at least a surface deformed differently from the rocks below it? But what I'm saying is that when it does get deformed it should not conform to the shapes of the rocks below it if it was deposited after they were deformed. Presumably it deposited horizontally which does not follow the shape of the rocks below, but then it also gets defomed and still wouldn't follow the shape of the rocks below. Yet most of the rocks are parallel in the diagram. I'm not following this. The layers ARE parallel in most of the diagram, which I guess is what allows the salt to flow? All I'm saying is that they shouldn't be parallel wherever the upper ones were deposited after the lower were deformed, as some here are claiming happened. Since they are parallel I conclude that they were already in place and not deposited after the lower ones were deformed.I was up all night and I'm falling asleep at the keyboard. Finish this later.