Growing the Geologic Column

Compare the vertical and horizontal scales on that. I have lived in several houses with floors less horizontal than that.

Why then is the yellow layer so thick above the area labeled "Albian" and so thin above the area labeled "Late Jurassic..."? If that section faulted after the yellow layer was deposited, wouldn't it have shoved the yellow layer higher and raised it above the adjacent layer?Are you also including the green layer and the tan layer beneath that and above the Paleozoic basement? I just don't see how you can possibly interpret that as all the layers were in place before any faulting.HBD

If you're going to say the uppermost layer is as good as horizontal based on the vertical exaggeration, and I agree it is great, then you might as well say that entire formation is horizontal from bottom to top, and in any case the Plio-Pleistocene layer follows the contour of those beneath it though it should have a clearly horizontal surface even at that scale if it's really new deposition.

I understand, we've all been there. I had to back off replying to you the other day so that I would not respond in a vengeful way. Remember its the position, not the person. I do not like your position at all; I think it is dishonest and ignorant. But I try very hard to not make it about you. If I do that, you can call me on it as well.HBD

Can only assume it got deformed in that particular way. The evidence that includes it with the other layers as already there is the fault lines that penetrate into it from the layers below, most clearly those to the left of the salt dome, and the salt dome itself which rises right through it. Isn't it clear that the green layer was already there? It extends all the way from left to right, broken by many fault lines. The separate sections of it wouldn't have been laid down individually, it had to be a continuous layer that was displaced by the faults. By the tan layer you mean on the left that says Oceanic crust? No, that's not part of the strata.And all the pink wavy layers were there because they also stretch the full width of the diagram, and so does the red Albian. It really looks quite straightforward to me. Layers get laid down as one continuous deposit.Also if any were deposited later, they should have a different surface than the ones already deformed beneath them, because they would always deposit horizontally and have an originally flat upper surface that would deform separately. The Albian on the left shows that sort of difference I would expect, except that its upper surface conforms to the wavy pattern to the right so that difference on the left has to have some other cause.I've wondered what that green layer is because it stayed straight didn't get warped like the ones that are wavy, just displaced by the faults. The salt layer was originally above it and has clearly deformed along with all the rest of them.The only real question is whether the one at the top labeled Base tertiary was already there, and there is a question about that because no faults go up through it. But I'd argue that its nonhorizontal surface and the fact that the salt dome pushes it up shows it too was already there along with the others.

Just what you said here about my position makes you my enemy.And how can you call a "position" dishonest and ignorant without calling the person that? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : taking back angry talk

A short break might be in order.

That doesn't look like deformation to me. What you are assuming that is obviously incorrect is that there was only 1 tectonic event. If you look at it as having multiple tectonic episodes with subsequent sedimentation, it makes more sense. Agreed No, the tan layers on the right side. They could just be part of the basement rocks, just colored to highlight them. They also have unconformity surfaces that are not parallel, indicating tectonic activity followed by erosion, followed by sediment (green), followed by tectonic activity, followed by erosion.Also, white layer doesn't extend beyond a fault line suggesting that the area to the right of it was lifted up while the white layer was put down. There is also a small yellow wedge above the red layer that also suggests the fault was there when the yellow layer was deposited. This whole section is challenging to interpret without more information. It would still be a challenge even with more information because there is multiple, complicated events that have occurred.I can't see this structure forming as a result of 1 sedimentation phase followed by 1 tectonic event. Just can't see it.HBD

Any given fault line proves that all the layers it penetrates were there at that time. You could argue that shorter fault lines occurred before they were all in place but there's really no proof for that, it would just be a supposition. And the four shorter lines on the right between the two longer faults all had to occur at the same time to form that whole unit with the Jurassic shelf section. That leaves the one short fault on the far left,Multiple tectonic events doesn't change the fact that a single layer is laid down as one length from right to left, it isn't laid down a segment here and a segment there but as one length. The faults then distort the layers, in multiple events fine, but that doesn't change the fact of how layers get deposited as one unit. I've taken all that into account. If a fault penetrates through all the layers they were clearly all in place at THAT time, but you can't tell when any of the faults occurred in relation to each other so you can't make any assumptions about supposed earlier depositions. You could say that the very short fault on the left occurred before any of the other layers above it were there, just because it only goes through the lower layers, but that's not really provable either.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Funny, I don't see you as my enemy. Do you want to compare who does the most name calling and employs personal attacks into their debate style? Faith: 1
HBD: 0As long as you continue participating here and make assertions that have no basis in reality and fail to support your claims with valid scientific evidence, you will continue to meet opposition. As a scientist, I despise your claims because they make a mockery of the hard work and methodology that scientists have dedicated themselves to. As a Christian, I see you as a sister in Christ who has taken a position that I see as dangerous and counter-productive to the goal of spreading the gospel. It makes it virtually impossible for anyone of this generation to accept the Bible as the Word of God. I wholly oppose fundamentalism.Those are the positions! Where in my statements did I make a personal attack on you?HBD

If it's obvious then you must explain how it's obvious. All you've been able to do so far is give unsatisfactory and insufficient reasons for why you're going to ignore or misinterpret evidence or make stories. Sandstone layers come from not just deserts but also from coastal regions where beaches form. The Coconino at the Grand Canyon contains lithified sand dunes (your "hilly piles of loose sand"). The Coconino also includes the fossilized tracks of reptiles and large insects, typical desert denizens.The same is true of sandstone layers formed from coastal areas along beaches. The same kind of sediments found at beaches are also found in sandstone layers, just in lithified form. And concerning fossils, just as you can find, for example, oyster beds along beaches, you can also find oyster beds in sandstone layers, such as the Coldwater Sandstone in Southern California. Why should we stop asking you for evidence supporting your claims? You claim a worldwide flood would do things that no smaller flood has ever done and that seem to violate known physical laws. For example, we know the densest and heaviest material should fall out of suspension first, so if all the sedimentary layers in the geologic record were formed by the flood then all the densest and heaviest sediments should be on the bottom, and all the least dense and lightest should be on the top. But that's not what we find, so it seems your flood is ruled out.Or for another example, a flood could not sort fossils by degree of difference from modern forms. If sorted by a flood then the heaviest and densest fossils should be at the bottom, and the lightest and least dense at the top. But that's not what we find, so it seems your flood is ruled out.Or for another example, a flood could not sort radiometric material, with the greatest amount of daughter material at the bottom and the least amount at the top. But that is what we find, so it seems your flood is ruled out. (By the way, the radiometric material used to date sedimentary layers is mostly found in tuffs and basalts.) Okay, that sounds good, as long as they're scientific facts. But that's not a scientific fact. It's not even a religious fact. It's an article of faith. And besides, you've already conceded that your interpretations of the Bible, made as they are by a fallen person, could be in error, and that includes even your judgements of what portions relate objective facts and which do not. See just a few paragraphs up for how the strata and the fossils rule out the possibility of a worldwide flood being responsible. You keep asserting this but never supporting it, all the while setting aside inconvenient facts that in the end you fail to ever take account of. Geology has no inconvenient facts it must set aside. A flood is not a depositional environment.A coastline is a depositional environment. A lake is a depositional environment. A shallow sea is a depositional environment. Death Valley is a depositional environment.At a coastline, which is an example of Walther's Law, different sediments are deposited at different distances from the coast. The sediments are delivered to the coast from land. The heaviest sediments still fall out of suspension in very active water such as the waves on a beach, so the heaviest sediments, sand and tiny pebbles, fall out of suspension there. The further from the coast the quieter the water and the finer the sediments that can fall out of suspension. This sequence of depositional environments moving along a landscape is what define's Walther's Law. That's how layers of sand, siltstone, mudstone and limestone extending for sometimes hundreds of kilometers form.A flood is not a depositional environment. It's a chaotic and unorganized incursion of water onto land. Whatever debris and sediment it happens to pick up it will scatter around randomly. A flood has no consistent supply of sediment and no consistent depositional environment. In particular, a flood cannot lay down a sequence of, for example, the 20 or 25 layers such as we see beneath the Claron Formation at Bryan Head. Floods are destructive and random. The only organization available to it is that the heaviest and densest material will fall out of suspension first.You described an experiment further along in your message where you suggested putting some sediments on a rock in water in a pyrex dish. This is a good idea. Grind up some limestone, some sandstone and some shale, add it to the water, then stir it up. If you kept the particle size consistent then you should get three layers sorted by density. Three, not 25. Good luck figuring out how to get 25 layers of interspersed sandstone, shale and limestone.Walther's Law combined with multiple transgressions/regressions (and, in the case of the Coconino, a desert environment) can produce any number of layers, and it results in interspersed limestone, sandstone and shale, and of course the material from any other geological events like volcanoes. No, the millions of years derives from evidence. The Law of Superposition gives us relative ages, radiometric dating gives us absolute ages, and the layers themselves are consistent with what we observe occurring all around the world today, which is very slow deposition. It's funny to hear you say this. Yes, of course this is true. Depositional environments of beaches and river deltas persist for very long periods of time, and they deposit their sediments atop the geologic column at each location.But they do it on the geologic timescale, that is, very slowly. The Mississippi with its huge sedimentary load has been flowing into the Gulf for a few hundred years of recorded history, and yet miles of sediments have not happened in all that time. According to Estimation of sedimentation rates in the distributary basin of the Mississippi River, the Atchafalaya River Basin, USA the sedimentation rate is around 2-5 meters/century. At 5 meters/century it would take 32,000 years to accumulate to a depth of a mile. That's geologic time, and there are no assumptions, just evidence. First, a flood would not scour the land. Only confined water flows fast enough to scour the land. Floods spread out across the landscape and flow slowly. Plus, as anyone knows who's ever been to a beach with good waves, once the wave rolls over you the water behind is much quieter.Second, there would be almost no sediments on land to scour away in the antedeluvian world. Land regions, for the most part, are areas of net erosion, not deposition. What am I thinking? I'm thinking that I pointed out how a flood won't scour a landscape, and you responded about something else, how floods can cause mudslides and leave mud everywhere. When the flood's over in your area, has everyone's lawn been scoured away? You say there would be "pretty fast-flowing water," but after an area is flooded the water is moving pretty slow, as here: Sure there will be some places with rapidly flowing water, but not many because water only flows downhill. Where do you imagine your water is flowing to? Okay, sure. The lowest lying regions flood first. Once flooded water is no longer flowing into them. Then as the water rises higher all the flooded low lying regions combine under the flood waters. The water rises higher and higher, eventually covering even the mountaintops. Where is this incredibly rapid and destructive flow of water that's going to scour the landscape going to come from, and what is going to drive it? Do you have any evidence of these huge waves? Where did these huge waves pick up their huge sediment load? As I pointed out earlier, tsunamis arrive on shore with no more a sediment load than normal waves. Waves, even huge waves, are not going to scour landscapes. And tides especially are not going to scour landscapes. You are continuing to make stuff up. I'm sure even you must concede that this is inadequate rebuttal, so let me repeat the the key reasons why we know a global flood 4300 years ago is not responsible for the world's geology. The sedimentary layers contain undisturbed footprints, burrows and nests that a flood would simply destroy, they contain fossils that become increasingly different from modern forms with increasing depth, they contain increasing amounts of daughter elements of radiometric elements with increasing depth, and they are not sorted by weight and density which is the only sorting flood waters are capable of. Whatever lay between the surface and bedrock in the antedeluvian world, it wasn't sediments. Most land is subject to net erosion, not deposition. Most deposition of sediments takes place in marine environments, because they're the lowest point. First, we know all limestone is older than 50,000 years because it contains no ¹⁴C.Second, sedimentation rates in warm quiet seas where the precursors of limestone layers form are around a couple meters per thousand years. if it was 2000 years between the creation of the world and the flood then only maybe five meters of limestone precursor layer would be on the sea floor.Third, even if sea levels rose due to 40 days and nights of rain, it wouldn't cause ocean currents that scoured the sea floor.Fourth, there is no evidence on the sea floor of sedimentary layers being being scoured away. Things that happen leave evidence behind, and the things you claim happened left no evidence behind, so obviously they didn't happen. I guess uttering fallacies like this is how you keep yourself going, but everyone else knows we have copious evidence and you have, well, nothing. For example, you go on to say: But the seafloor is millions of square miles and is accumulating layers that become deeper and deeper the further you get from oceanic ridges. And this image that you've seen before is an example of kilometers-deep layers that are hundreds of miles in extent still forming today: --Percy

No, it doesn't. If a fault slid 10 feet then stopped, and then sediment was deposited on top of it and then it slid again, the fault could then continue into the new layer. It could also deform the layers above, it would depend on forces and resistance involved (like what type of material the new deposit is).HBD

Actually, this probably isn't the case, particularly since the yellow unit (upper Cretaceous rocks) pinch out completely to the left.It is not uncommon for sediments in a basin like this to be thicker near the center.There is no real strong deformation here of the mountain-building type, it is mostly uneven compaction of the sediments and some faulting extending into the basement caused by sedimentary loading.I've been looking at this section for a while now and see that it had a very particular purpose. The creators of it were proposing deep drilling through the salt to tap a very large oil and gas target. So, I'm guessing that the details are probably pretty much selected for that purpose. For instance, the Albian rocks, are mostly (I think) mid-Cretaceous sands and were probably a nice target for previous drilling and now pose a datum for the intended audience of the section.I'm thinking that this is what I call a 'presentation graphic', and may even have some errors.Anyway, moving on... Well, actually not. In the area below the yellow unit there is a set of faults that only penetrate into the salt and maybe a little bit above it. Yes, those are what I would call late Cretaceous faults, and even though only one of them seems to pass entirely through the yellow unit, I would say from all cross-cutting relationships that these faults were active more recently than the ones on the right side of the diagram. The green layer, which underlies that salt everywhere is one of the older units. So, yes, I would expect it to be affected by the earliest to latest faults of all the faults shown here. This is not surprising. This is exactly what we would expect of the oldest layers. And yet the youngest layers (Tertiary, in purple) are the least affected by faulting. This is what I have been saying all along. HBD may be referring to some sandy colored layers below the green unit. It is not clear what these are, but I'm guessing that they would be Triassic sediments. It appears that they may have some more convoluted bedding that the layers above. Unfortunately, some of the stylized bedding lines are extended into the Paleozoic rocks beneath. This puzzled me earlier, but it could just be a mistake. They probably were continuous, but that's not really important. They are certainly of variable thickness and show some deformation related to faulting. However, they are still older than the yellow late Cretaceous rocks and the topmost Tertiary rocks, so they may show older deformation than those younger rocks. Your characterization here is a little bit misled. It is not uncommon, and it is apparent from the section, that different layer will vary in thickness. For instance, as I mentioned above, the yellow, late Cretaceous rocks do not even seem to exist on the left side of the diagram; while the Albian sands thicken in that direction. Assuming there is no gross error in the drafting of the diagram, the conclusion would be that it is less deformed because it was present for less time as the sediment pile compacted. Well, it was there before some of the salt dome forming process. But I don't see it there before any of the faulting. Once again, you fail to recognize a process that that maybe incomplete.

Just as an FYI, Albian refers to an age period within the Cretaceous. Here is the wiki reference.Albian - WikipediaAlso, when the diagram refers to 'base of Tertiary' that means that the sediments above that line are of Tertiary age.

The Bible is "humanly created" too. What are "natural laws" and how do they differ from the physical laws of the universe? Are you saying you're not really trying to make the Flood consistent with known physical laws, but rather with some set of laws of your own devising?--Percy