Evidence that the Great Unconformity did not Form Before the Strata above it

I'm not even sure what Faith means here. Is she saying that layers maintain parallelism to older layers or elevation contours?

I thought she was saying that sedomentation always forms flat level layers and will slide off any slope. This does not really apply to the layering that we see at the Grand Canyon. It is just a side issue, that I was disputing.

I agree with everything you said.

In past threads she has seemed to hold the position that the GU was formed by the layers of the GC Supergroup being rolled into a tilted position after all the other layers were deposited on top of it. That fails to explain where the rest of the material in the GC Supergroup disappear to.

That she imagines that the GC Supergroup could rotate enough to form the GU with thousans of feet of rock above it boggles my mind. All without major disturbance being obvious in the overlying strata. All the things she claims to have happened would have consequences and leave evidence that we could study today.

Hmmm, more stuff that I missed....

I always find that idea as absurd as the idea that the strata would conform to the slope of a hill.

Are you talking about a hill or fold?

Normal erosion doesn't reduce sharply tilted rock to a flat plain in my experience.

In your experience, of course not. But tell us why this could not happen.

But the relatively flat upper part of the G.U. is more reasonably explained on my scienario, ...

There is no such thing as an 'upper part' of an unconformity.

... as its upthrusting corners being sheared off in collision with the strata above under tectonic pressure from below, ...

And I presume you have some evidence of such shearing?

... the same force that raised the entire stack and formed the uplift.

Why would that have to be so? Why must you have major decollement-type faulting related to a gently uplift? Why not just say that all rocks were gently warped at the end of a long geological history?

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.

I have to applaud you for taking this bold assertive position. I wonder if you understand the burden of proof you've set for yourself.

Your thread carves out a rather precarious position similar to the one you carved out when you claimed to be able to prove that evolution was impossible because of the diversity loss concerns.
Any and every plausible counter explanation that cannot be ruled out based on evidence is enough to prevent you from making your point. I know that seems unfair and uneven, but by promising to be able to show something, you've grabbed the short end of the debating stick. I just hope you are not frustrated.

I won't be able to participate much on either side of the argument. Suppose I just pray that your spirit and resolve are not unduly tested? At least you won't have to deal with my particular frustrating antics.

And thanks for leaving the honest Christians to take all the insults that you get to escape by siding with the world.

I find this kind of nastiness particularly uncalled for, and not very Christ-like. Bear your own cross.

As you well know, the development of modern science was based largely on the Christian (especially Protestant Reformed) convictions that nature follows divinely-prescribed laws and that God has revealed truth through two "books", the book of Scripture and the book of nature (thus nature does reveal truth).

This is sophistry. Science did develop from Christian principles, the principle that Nature follows the laws of a law-giving God. It certainly never meant that Science was on an equal footing with the Bible, it just meant that if Nature is lawful we have some hope of understanding it. There is certainly truth in Nature, but NOT NECESSARILY IN SCIENCE.

Science is completely man-originated.

And when Science actively contradicts the Bible, as the Theory of Evolution and Old Earthism do, there is nothing at all you should even try to say in its defense. It's false and it is misleading people, particularly gullible Christians. I agree that creationism has also misled people who haven't been prepared for what these Sciences actually do, but that doesn't justify the all-out attempt to convert them to the false Sciences.

I LIKE thinking about these things and I honestly think I've shown the falseness of a lot of the OE arguments.

The only position I think a Christian should take who gives in to the Old Earth stuff is Kurt Wise's, who concedes the evidence is there but leaves it to the future to see how it's wrong.

I don't even see the evidence for most of it, I think it's laughable.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There is nothing unChristlike about calling people out on their false theology and treachery against God's word, especially when they are joining in the effort with unbelievers to undermine the faith of other Christians.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Thanks for your general approval, I appreciate it.

I personally believe both arguments are winners -- I particularly think the argument from the attrition of genetic diversity is a killer -- but proving it to anybody else is apparently never going to happen.

Prayer very welcome, thanks.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Face it, the Great Unconformity is older than the entire Paleozoic section. The faults that preserve fragmenst of the GC Supergroup are older than the Great Unconformity. The GC Supergroup is older than the the faults that preserve it. The Vishnu rocks are older than the GC Supergroup. This is all based on irrefutable principles and field evidence.

If I can't follow it you are conveying nothing by these assertions. Perhaps you proved it somewhere else but I really have no idea what you are talking about, how the relation of the faults to the Supergroup proves it to be older than the strata. Please clarify. And perhaps you could also review the evidence for the age of the Vishnu?

A rise of 160 feet in one mile is 1 inch in 10 yards. You couldn't see that rise with the naked eye. Why do you imagine that sediment following that essentially level 'contour' is absurd?

Three layers fifty feet thick would butt up against the rise in one mile.

As OE Geology itself says, most of the layers were wet when laid down. Remember that they don't thin out but keep their thickness.

I still can't believe that anyone would argue that wet sediments would follow the contour of a rise and keep their thickness and show no thinning.

It is clear from the evidence that the strata that makes up the GU was tilted long before the overlying sediments were deposited.

I haven't found the evidence convincing. Especially the idea that the uptilted Supergroup was eroded flat over millions of years.

Most of the material was eroded away over millions of years before being covered by more sediments.

This is all made up. The ends of layers of very hard rock aren't going to erode like that. Of course millions of years makes anything possible, doesn't it?

Faith, your whole problem is trying to twist your imaginary scenario into a one year flood and a few thousand years after that. That is an absurd notion that ignores all the details that have been pointed out to you.

Well, I'm not twisting anything, I simply actually SEE evidence against the Old Earth in lots of stuff produced by Geology. And yes, once I have the Big Picture I feel free to ignore the details that are all made up on a false theory.

You say that millions of years for all the strata to erode, be deposited, erode some more, be deposited some more, over and over is absurd.

What's absurd is the idea that enormously long time periods are demarcated by very particular sediments and that the fossil contents of these particular sedimentary rocks define the entire range of life forms that populated that enormously long period on earth.

I could get back into my genetic argument for a bit, to argue that it takes very little time to get dramatic microevolution, hundreds of years being enough to create dramatic new "species" and a lot less in many cases. It would be an amazing feat of LACK of genetic microevolution if creatures maintained the same form for millions of years, even hundreds. In the Creation described in the Bible, there would be no death so there would be no threat involved in such genetic changes over time, and original forms would be preserved along with the evolved forms, but in the world of evolution every creature would die out within much less than half a million years simply from loss of genetic diversity, yet here we've got this theory of time periods in which very particular forms supposedly populated the earth, they and only they, for multiple millions of years. And then we get another entirely different sediment -- a bizarre phenomenon in itself, as if a particular kind of rock stands for a time period. Why isn't this OBVIOUSLY absurd to anyone? Emperor's New Clothes phenomenon. So this particular rock has a brand new assortment of fossils and the weird idea just goes on and on against all reason and reality.

But that is all you can say, IT IS ABSURD.

Yeah. Frustrating. But I can say why it's absurd, as above.

Not if it took millions of years. Then it nakes perfect sense and explains all the evidence we see.

Pure magic those millions of years.

Sedimentation takes lots of time, erosion takes lots of time, see level rising and falling takes lots of time. TIME, MILLIONS OF YEARS OF TIME, explain it all.

Except if the Flood did occur, sedimentation would take a lot less time, sea level rising and falling would take a lot less time, erosion would occur afterward but if it occurred through the rushing waters of the receding Flood as I believe much of it did, not a lot of time is needed for that either.

You don't want that to be true because then it will make your magic book wrong, but the evidence is there, in the rocks.

Actually, I simply came to SEE how all that is absurd, and SEE how the Flood could have done it, SEE that all that "evidence in the rocks" is really an amazing bit of self-deception. I wouldn't have bothered trying to argue such things if I wasn't convinced by them.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Science is completely man-originated.

And rightly so. That means it doesn't have to kowtow to any of the made-up deities that humans have been saddled with for millennia.

I LIKE thinking about these things and I honestly think I've shown the falseness of a lot of the OE arguments.

Adhering to belief, rather than evidence, as you do, of course you think that. But when one studies the evidence, and follows where it leads, the opposite is true--as I have noted on several occasions, you are doing the exact opposite of science.

Faith writes: And when Science actively contradicts the Bible, as the Theory of Evolution and Old Earthism do, there is nothing at all you should even try to say in its defense. It's false and it is misleading people, particularly gullible Christians. I agree that creationism has also misled people who haven't been prepared for what these Sciences actually do, but that doesn't justify the all-out attempt to convert them to the false Sciences.

For a Christian to believe the Bible over the evidence of nature and the world simply makes God look like a liar and fool. It is false and it is misleading people, particularly gullible "Bible Christians".

Any one who accepts the Bible over nature is only blaspheming the Holy Spirit and deserves pity.

Edited by jar, : fix sub-title

Besides, we also have the interesting fact that the Great Unconformity is smack dab right beneath the highest part of the mound, and in very close proximity to the canyon. It's also smack-dab right under most of the continental crust of the entire planet.

Yes, and it can be easy to lose sight of its amazing size, but nevertheless in the canyon area, being right beneath that uplift, and right next to the canyon, suggests the effect I keep describing.

But its huge extent also suggests that there should be other places where similar tectonic effects are in evidence.

I've argued before that the canyon had to have been the result of strain in the upper strata, ... Which seems to hardly exist. What strain are you talking about?

I'm talking about the stack of strata that used to exist above the Kaibab in the GC area, that no longer exists. It was as high as the Grand Staircase, and I suggest that it was strained by that mounded uplift (the Kaibab Uplift) when it occurred, since the highest strata would have stretched more over such a rounded uplift than the lower, and that it cracked, which was the beginning of the breakup of all that upper strata that then was washed away in the receding waters of the Flood, AND was the opening of what became the Grand Canyon. I think it's a very neat hypothesis myself.

... which were more than two miles deep at that point, caused by the force of the uplift that also broke and tilted the strata that became the Great Unconformity. So, this 'Force' acted across the crust of the earth from Scotland to the Grand Canyon? Please explain this force.

The two miles of strata I'm referring to I just described above, the strata that were originally above the Kaibab over much of the Southwest area and into which the canyon was cut and out of which the Grand Staircase was carved. The "force" was the tectonic movement that caused the uplift and also the release of magma that is seen on the cross section under the GC and also at the far end of the Grand Staircase. I'd have to suppose that the same or other tectonic forces created the GU as far as it extends.

Sure is suggestive that all the events are related. And I still think that view has to be correct, however hard it is to prove it. In an overly simplistic mind, I suppose; but how do you get all of those cross-cutting features and inclusions of older rocks in younger rocks?

Since you haven't yet explained them I don't know. I'll let you know after you've clarified.

But of course maybe not hay? Maybe the strata had no problem spreading themselves along the contour of the mound, wet or not, ... I have no idea what you are trying to communicate here. Why could the sediments not have been deposited then warped by the Kaibab Uplift?

I'm being sarcastic about other posters' arguments. I agree that the sediments were deposited and then warped by the Kaibab Uplift.

... and maybe the Great Unconformity was the root of a mountain chain that managed to erode down absolutely flat, :eyeroll: ... How do you know it was flat and what would be the problem with a flat surface?

Seems to be what everybody is saying, how the GU eroded flat and that created the surface for the strata to buld on. The problem I see is that I don't see how such an upthrust piece of hardened strata could erode away to flatness.

... which is what I thought the strata supposedly built on, but that would mean the mound wasn't there yet. OR, the mound WAS there, which is it? If by 'mound' you mean the Kaibab Uplift, of course it came later. It warps the youngest rocks present in the system.

You are missing my sarcasm directed at others here. Perhaps you need to notice more carefully the name at the upper right side of a post to whom it is addressed. In any case I agree with you that the uplift came later. I'm not entirely sure what you have in mind when you say "it warps the youngest rocks..."

I had forgotten or didn't know that particular uplift was the Kaibab Uplift. Now I know.

Nothing caused it though. But then eventually there was some kind of uplift etc etc etc. I have no idea what you are saying here.

It's just a continuation of the sarcasm which you may be failing to appreciate because you tend not to notice the context of my comments and who they are directed to.

Do you understand that the Great Unconformity is an irregular surface? Not a solid entity?

Uh yeah, that's the point of my argument that it wouldn't have eroded flat.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If I can't follow it you are conveying nothing by these assertions.

I have supported my assertions previously. Since you had no response, I assume that you agreed with me.

Perhaps you proved it somewhere else but I really have no idea what you are talking about, ...

Of course you don't. You never addressed my evidence. I'm only repeating the sequence of events here.

... how the relation of the faults to the Supergroup proves it to be older than the strata.

You have it backward. The strata have to be there in order to be cut by faults.

Please clarify. And perhaps you could also review the evidence for the age of the Vishnu?

The faults are terminated against the unconformity. This means the faults had to be there first. If not, then they would propagate through the unconformity. This is pretty basic geological interpretation. The Vishnu Schists are the oldest rocks in the sequence. Their actual age is a matter of record, but it is not material to this discussion, but they are certainly older than all other rocks, including the granite intrusions.

I avoid the insults that you receive on the issues of the timing and mechanism of God's creation. I prefer to take a stand (and receive insults) on the primary issues of the Christian faith, especially the deity, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Once you have allowed the veracity of God's word to be brought into question, you have eroded the very foundation you need to make any claims at all for the primary issues of the Christian faith. If the Bible can't be believed in Genesis why should it be believed anywhere else? And as a matter of sad fact, the gospel NEEDS Genesis to make sense, why we need a Savior, how God promised to send us a Savior.