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Author Topic:   Evidence that the Great Unconformity did not Form Before the Strata above it
Faith 
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Message 1 of 2 (752688)
03-12-2015 12:42 PM


I see Percy just promoted the earlier thread and retitled it Origin of the Flood Layers. This proposal I just started putting together came off that thread but it's not about the Flood, it's about my usual attempt to disprove the Old Earth. I haven't exactly disproved it but I've made progress: I believe I now can show that the Great Unconformity at the bottom of the Grand Canyon was NOT formed before the strata were stacked above it.
If Percy thinks this belongs in the old thread, fine, I'll move it, but I'm putting it here for now because it seems like a different topic to me. Trying to prove the Flood is one argument, disproving the Old Earth is another.
=====================================
I'm back to my favorite cross section of the Grand Canyon. HERE's my last attempt to use this cross section at EvC, showing a variety of observations that I think undermine the Old Earth.
But I have a new emphasis this time, which needs a slightly different version of the cross section:
I may need to rewrite some of this as I go but here's my new approach:
I. THINGS TO NOTICE ABOUT THE CROSS SECTION:
1. The rounded rise into which the canyon is cut. I emphasized this shape with red lines following its contour above and below.
2. The rise or mound is also visible at the bottom of the canyon, not just the top, where the Great Unconformity butts up against it, right beneath the Tapeats.
3. All the strata as a block follow the contour of the mounded rise, from the Tapeats or Cambrian to the Kaibab or Permian.
II. OBJECTIONS THAT OCCUR
The cross section exaggerates the mounded rise vertically. In reality it stretches a long distance with a much more gradual slope. This is true but the rise is certainly a real feature of the area, and just to confirm this here is another cross section of the area:
This one is even more exaggerated vertically but I post it just to confirm that this mounded rise is definitely a real feature of the area.
III. THINGS TO CONSIDER:
1. The strata were already in place when the uplift occurred that created the mounded rise. Evidence for this is that the strata all follow the contour of the mound.
2. Whatever caused the rise lifted the whole stack of strata as a block. Evidence for this is that the rounded contour is at both the bottom and the top of the canyon: it rises over the Great Unconformity instead of the strata butting in to it, as they would if it was there before the strata were laid down.
3. This means that the Great Unconformity was NOT there before the strata were laid down. It was lifted right along with the whole stack, and probably tilted at the same time. Evidence is as above: the layers don’t butt up against the GU as they would if they were laid down after it was there, they rise up over it in the mounded shape, and the GU is clearly pushed up into the mounded area.
Here's a perfectly horrible attempt to show how the layers would have butted up against the Great Unconformity if it was there before the strata were laid down. I moved the GU down, figuring none of it was raised. The drawing may be so bad it isn't a good idea to post it, but I decided to just because the idea seems to need some kind of attempt at showing what I mean.
IV: CONCLUSIONS
Again, the strata would not have risen in a mound up over the Great Unconformity if they’d been laid down after it was already formed because then they would have butted up against it instead of going over it. My conclusion is that they were laid down flat and horizontal over the strata that became the GU, which at that time were also flat and horizontal, and some force from beneath then pushed the GU upward, tilting it, also pushing up the whole stack of strata so that the mound contour continues all the way to the top of the canyon, and that’s what caused the strata to mound over the Great Unconformity as the whole stack was raised. Whatever lifted the whole stack lifted and tilted the Great Unconformity at the same time.
I've tried to think of ways it could have happened according to the usual interpretation but it doesn't work. The mounded uplift is what makes the evidence. I kept working around all these things in former discussions but never got to the point of pinning down this one fact until now.
All this shows that the force, probably tectonic movement, occurred after ALL the strata were in place, including the then-horizontal strata of the Great Unconformity. This same tectonic force would also have been responsible for creating the canyon itself, and all the massive erosion that formed the Grand Staircase to the north and scoured off the Kaibab plateau.
So, did all the strata form according to the conventional time frames assigned to them, Precambrian for the strata that became the GU, 575 million years ago for the Tapeats on up to the Kaibab considered to have formed 270 million years ago?
This I can’t prove one way or another just from these observations. To make the case against the Old Earth I’d go back to my former post, linked above, to muster the evidence for the utter lack of any significant tectonic or volcanic disturbance during the entire laying down of the strata, NOW INCLUDING THE STRATA OF THE GREAT UNCONFORMITY, since I do think what I’ve shown above is that it could not have been there before the strata above it were laid down. Also that it had to have occurred at the same time as the pushing up of the strata in that mounded shape, and since that is the case, also at the same time as the cutting of the canyon and the Grand Staircase and ALL the tectonic and volcanic events I’ve spent so much time trying to show are nonexistent during the strata-building period.
So I conclude that now I’ve finally proved that the Great Unconformity did NOT preexist the laying-down of the strata.
ABE: There are of course many different reasons why the Geologists think the Great Unconformity was there long before the strata were laid down, but if what I've said above is true, it makes all the other reasons wrong.
ABE: On the subject of the Old Earth I should comment that I still think the fact that the strata are all together as a stack conforming to the contour of the mound shape suggests they aren't all that old. Old Earth dating says the lower strata are much much older than the higher and yet they all obviously have the same degree of ductility, and also have no apparent hint to a difference in their age in any other way. I've made this argument before and am told that rocks are a lot more plastic than I think, so the fact that the whole stack of strata curves together up over the Great Unconformity and curves together all the way up to the rim of the canyon, is supposedly not unusual. I still wonder about this, though, that's why I'm mentioning it here.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : change laid down to formed, for GU
Edited by Faith, : add last paragraph.

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Message 2 of 2 (752802)
03-13-2015 7:24 AM


Thread Copied to Geology and the Great Flood Forum
Thread copied to the Evidence that the Great Unconformity did not Form Before the Strata above it thread in the Geology and the Great Flood forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

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